24296: (news) Chamberlain: Jolicoeur obituary (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Greg Chamberlain <GregChamberlain@compuserve.com>

(The Guardian, 18 Feb 05)


Aubelin Jolicoeur

By Greg Chamberlain



For nearly half a century, Haitian journalist Aubelin Jolicoeur, who has
died aged 80, cheerfully tried to convince the world that his country was
better than its horrific image of political brutality and extreme poverty,
that it was worth visiting and could be enjoyed.

His own image took a knock when Graham Greene immortalised him in his 1966
novel The Comedians as "Petit Pierre," a dandyish bon vivant and probable
spy for the murderous dictatorship of François "Papa Doc" Duvalier and his
family.

But the tiny, animated boulevardier with bedroom eyes and posh English
accent, who flounced about in a white suit and silk ascot twirling a
gold-topped cane, thrived on the smear because it brought him the fame he
craved.  And, thanks also to his unctuous courting of other foreign
celebrities, probably a shield against the whims of the mercurial dictator,
whom he called his "father."

Jolicoeur was introduced to Greene in Haiti by American writer Truman
Capote in 1954 and the pair soon gravitated to the romantic, creaking Grand
Hotel Oloffson, where Greene set his novel.  For the next 40 years,
Jolicoeur hobnobbed there, in the lingering ambiance of Haiti's "belle
époque," with a world-class panoply of showbiz, literary and media
glitterati.

He was delighted when they nicknamed him "Mr Haiti" for greeting them at
the airport and gushingly writing them up in his newspaper column. He
called himself "Haiti's first public relations man."

His counterpoint was useful to Papa Doc as the dictator grappled with
international revulsion and boycotts of his regime.  Jolicoeur showed the
acceptable face of Haiti and the distinguished foreigners were charmed,
despite the occasional body glimpsed on the airport road.

Vain, boastful, buffoonish and bending this way and that to the political
winds, he was nevertheless an astute, cultivated and industrious
journalist.  Under the Duvaliers, he mostly stuck to chronicling the social
and literary doings of the country's political, cultural and business
elite, laced with the obscure classical references once de rigueur for
recognition by Haiti's mannered upper class.  He said Papa Doc liked him
because "I write good French."

But Jolicoeur disdained the "vulgar" regime of the dictator's clueless son
Jean-Claude, who took over as "president-for-life" in 1971, and eventually
joined veiled press criticism that helped nudge the dynasty to its end.

He then became a more open political commentator, disgusted at the endless
incompetence sinking the country into ever deeper poverty and political
disorder.  "There's a thug inside every Haitian," he liked to say.  He
thought Haitians were "not ready for democracy" and harshly criticised the
recent excesses of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, with whom he was
bitterly disappointed.

Jolicoeur was born in a cemetery ("among the spirits," he joked) in the
southern town of Jacmel when his mother went into premature labour.  His
father was a local coffee and cocoa trader.  The young Aubelin hungrily
learned French, the language of the ruling class, and it became his ticket
to success as a journalist in the capital, Port-au-Prince, in days when
being his shade of black was a clear social disadvantage.

The few minor political posts he accepted turned sour - press secretary to
a fleeting general who rigged elections in 1957, four months as a
post-Duvalier director of tourism and an even briefer tenure as deputy
information minister that ended when he spat in anger at a crowd of
strikers at the ministry.

His way with women was legendary.  He greeted female guests at the Oloffson
with poetic flourishes in his ringing voice and they gigglingly checked the
next morning's paper to see who had won the best encomium - brilliant,
princess, sparkling, divine, breathtaking and other extravagances.
Jolicoeur, whose name means "flirt" and who contrived to expire on St
Valentine's Day, had a dozen children by as many women, the last only a few
years ago.

He was never rich like the upper class he fawned over or the marquises and
counts who put him up on his occasional expeditions to Paris.  He opened a
small art gallery named after his then-wife Claire, a Canadian, and tried
to wheedle tourists into buying the paintings but few did and he gave many
away.  For years he received a small stipend from Bollinger for mentioning
their champagne in his columns.  "Haitians are comedians," he would say.
"It's all a show."

When he was evicted from his rented house several years ago, he moved into
a shabby hotel where he lived amid cardboard boxes of his memories and out
of shame rarely ventured to the nearby Oloffson.  His famous gold-topped
cane was stolen and its replacement was only a silver one.

Enfeebled by Parkinson's disease and prostate cancer, his renowned
flamboyance vanished and he spent his last years at a seaside hotel in his
home town run by an old Duvalierist friend.


Aubelin Jolicoeur, journalist, born April 30 1924; died February 14 2005