Seeds of Fiction: Graham Greene's Adventures in Haiti and Central America 1954-1983

349 Pages·2012·3.2 MB·English

by  Bernard Diederich

SEEDS OF FICTION
In 1965 Graham Greene made what he described as ‘a trip down the Dominican and Haitian border …
in the company of two exiles from Haiti’. Bernard Diederich was one of those two exiles, and Seeds of
Fiction includes a first-hand account of that trip, one that inspired one of Greene’s most significant
works, The Comedians.
Diederich, a seasoned correspondent for the British and North American press, had lived in Haiti for
many years. In 1963 he had been thrown out by Papa Doc Duvalier, and, in exile in the neighbouring
Dominican Republic, soon became a champion of the cause of the Haitian opposition.
Diederich and Greene had become friends in the mid-1950s when the celebrated author visited Haiti.
When Greene met Diederich in Santo Domingo in 1965 he was sixty-one and depressed and plagued by
religious doubt. Sensing that the volatile political situation in Haiti was something Greene could write about
and so help to expose the Duvalier regime in all its brutality, Diederich suggested they tour the border
region between the two countries, and together with an exiled Haitian priest, Fr Jean-Claude Bajeux —
whose family had recently been ‘disappeared’ — they set off. Along the way they met a number of characters
later fictionalized in Greene’s most politically charged novel, The Comedians, and Seeds of Fiction
illuminates in detail this pivotal episode in Greene’s career and provides a fascinating glimpse into the
writer’s life from a very personal perspective.
Diederich arranged for Greene to visit Panama and to meet its leader Omar Torrijos, and a friendship
quickly developed between the two men, with Greene making a number of trips to visit Torrijos and to get
to know the region. This formed the background to Getting To Know the General, Greene’s seminal work on
the situation in Central America at that time. These journeys and Greene’s relationship with Torrijos are
also explored in intimate detail in this book — everything from where to get the best rum punches to
Greene’s views on US policies in the region.
With extensive new material and exclusive, never-before-seen photographs of the author on his travels,
Seeds of Fiction tells the story of how a series of extraordinary and often hair-raising journeys gave one of
the greatest novelists of the twentieth century new inspiration in his writing.
BERNARD DIEDERICH was born in New Zealand and settled in Haiti in 1949. The following year he set
up an English-language weekly newspaper, the Haiti Sun, and became the resident correspondent for the
Associated Press, the New York Times, the Time-Life News Service and the Daily Telegraph. Exiled from
Haiti in 1963 by Papa Doc Duvalier, he settled in the Dominican Republic and concentrated on his career in
journalism. Later postings for Time magazine included Mexico City and Miami, and his close encounters
with dictators and death provided an abundance of news — covering coups, revolutions, invasions,
earthquakes, hurricanes and volcanic eruptions — as well as a wealth of material for his books about the
politics and political leaders of the Caribbean and Central America. Diederich was finally allowed to return
to Haiti in 1980 to interview Baby Doc Duvalier and his new wife Michéle, and he was then able to report on
the popular uprising that sent them both into exile in 1986. He now splits his time between Miami and Port-
au-Prince, Haiti. It was in the Haitian capital in 1954 that Diederich first met Graham Greene, and this led
to a life-long friendship — much of it based on a shared love of that country — which only ended with
Greene’s death in 1991.

| ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Graham Greene’s niece and last secretary, the late Amanda Dennys Saunders,
was the first person to encourage me to write this book. She was an inspiration,
and I owe dear Amanda, her husband Ron and daughter Lucy much gratitude.
Yvonne Cloetta, Graham’s companion, had cheered me on in spite of being a
target of malicious attacks and did not live to read the book.
There are many who helped me along the road to telling the story of a man
who over the years had become a father figure and to whom I turned for advice,
which I treasured. I wish to thank Graham Greene’s Estate, and especially
Francis, for permitting me to use my correspondence with his father. As a
compulsive note-taker — as was Graham — I recorded the dialogue between
Graham and myself for stories, some published and others shelved, but to this
day I can recall our journeys together.
There are many I must thank, beginning with our writer son Phillippe, my
editor, who deserves credit for making me break with my long-held view that a
journalist should not become the story and who weeded out so many distracting
details that had overloaded earlier versions of this book. I also thank my son
Jean-Bernard, who was privileged to know Graham — and several of the
photographs he took during our last visit to Graham appear in this book — and,
of course, my wife of fifty years who put up with my bringing dictators into our
various homes and courageously faced several of them down.
Professor Richard Greene (no relation) wrote the book Graham Greene: A
Life in Letters that is among the best editing of Graham’s correspondence. The
late Peter Glenville, although retired, was forthcoming in his interview with me.
Haiti’s Foreign Minister, François Benoît, allowed me to photocopy the
Ministry’s only remaining copy of Graham Greene Démasqué — a 92-page Haiti
Foreign Ministry bulletin that turned to dust in the January 2010 earthquake. Tel
Scott of the Havana Post had kept me informed of Graham’s 1954 antics in
Havana. Reverend Jim McSwigan, in charge of the Redemptorist Mission Home
at Las Matas de Farfán, saved us from dying of thirst on our border trip in
January 1965. I would also like to thank the lawyer Sauveur Vaisse for being
generous with his time in a Paris interview in 1986.
In Haiti there are so many to whom I am indebted — peasant neighbours,
fellow journalists, Haitians of all ranks of society and our extended family. As a
journalist I needed to break the heavy hand of Papa Doc’s censors to send my
stories out to the world. Among those who took great risks were RCA Cable
employees, especially Josseline Bazelais Edline at West Indies Cable, the only
international telephone company. My friend the late Albert Silvera, the owner of
El Rancho Hotel, kept me informed of Graham movements during his 1954 and
1956 visits. The late Aubelin Jolicoeur was a great asset to my newspaper, the
Haiti Sun; he liked to embroider his stories about Graham during his three visits
to Haiti but was nevertheless a good witness. My friend Dick Eder of the New
York Times was a superb journalist whose story on Graham in Haiti in 1963 was
loved by all. Manny Freedman, Foreign Editor of the New York Times, wanted to
know whether I had become a guerrilla when I was among the Kamoken
denounced to the United Nations Security Council by Papa Doc but accepted my
reasoning that a journalist must go to extremes sometimes to get the story.
Mambo Lolotte was understanding and showed great kindness in arranging a red
cushion and miniature rocking-chair for Graham’s bottle of vodka.
I am indebted to my employers at Time-Life News Service (TLNS), who
understood the importance of my close ties to General Omar Torrijos, not only
because Panama was a major story but also because of Torrijos’s knowledge of
the crisis in Central America. They also knew that my time with Graham Greene
produced stories. Editor-in-Chief Hedley Donovan, whose visit with other Time
notables to Panama I had to arrange, produced an excellent editorial on South
America that is quoted here. John Dinges’s excellent book The Underside of the
Torrijos Legacy is recommended for anyone interested in that period. My
colleagues who covered the same beat, such as Karen de Young of the
Washington Post and Alan Riding of the New York Times, shared the safe house
in Managua during the war and were tireless reporters, and their reviews of
Getting to Know the General: The Story of an Involvement gave a different
perspective of General Omar Torrijos. I would also like to thank my late friend
and colleague Gloria Emerson.
Gabriel (Gabo) García Márquez, a winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature
who believed Graham Greene should also have won the prize, quietly played an
important humanitarian role in Central America, unknown to the general public.
Thanks to my London publisher Peter Owen and especially to Simon Smith
who welcomed me to their prestigious house.
CONTENTS
Acknowledgements
List of Illustrations
Foreword by Pico Iyer: ‘Greene in the World’
Introduction by Richard Greene
Map of Hispaniola
PART I
Graham Greene in Haiti
Seeds of Fiction
A Quixotic Insurgency
Loving Haiti
A River of Blood
The Poetry of Faith
A Matter of Policy
Blood in the Streets
The Comedians
Papa Doc Reacts to The Comedians
After Papa Doc
PART II
On the Way Back:
Graham Greene in Central America
A Dictator with a Difference
The Years Pass
Rendezvous on a Pearl Island
Getting to Know Chuchu
Greene Goes to Washington
Fair Wind for the Isthmus
Operation Sir Francis Drake
Waiting for the Guerrilla
Our Man in Panama
Managua Nights
The General Is Dead!
Greene’s Other War
A Night in Havana
Master of Contradiction
We’ll Meet Again
Epilogue
Afterword
Index
| ILLUSTRATIONS
The Haiti Sun reports Graham Greene’s second visit to Haiti in 1956
Graham and Catherine Walston with artists at La Galerie Brochette, Haiti, 1956
Larry Allen of the Associated Press, the model for Granger in The Quiet
American
Roger Coster of the Grand Hotel Oloffson, Port-au-Prince, Haiti François ‘Papa
Doc’ Duvalier on the day he was inaugurated as president in 1957
Graham talking to journalist Max Clou in the Dominican Republic, 1963
Anti-Duvalier rebels training in the Dominican Republic, 1963
A public execution of two members of the Jeune Haiti resistance movement,
1964
Bernard Diederich, 1965, during the civil war in the Dominican Republic
Members of the Kamoken, the Haitian Revolutionary Armed Forces Fr Jean-
Claude Bajeux saying Mass to Haitian exiles in the Dominican countryside
Kamoken leader Fred Baptiste with other Kamoken in Santo Domingo,
Dominican Republic Fred Baptiste at the Kamoken base at Nigua, Dominican
Republic, 1965
Graham walks into Haiti, 1965 Fr Jean-Claude Bajeux at the Haitian border,
1965
Graham and Fr Jean-Claude Bajeux with Dominican soldiers at the Massacre
River, 1965
The Hotel Brisas Massacre de Mariav de Rodriguez in the town of Restauración,
Dominican Republic Graham and Fr Jean-Claude Bajeux on the Bridge at
Dajabón over the Massacre River, 1965
Graham photographs Haiti from no man’s land, 1965
Bernard Diederich changes a tyre on his Volkswagen, 1965
The cover of Graham Greene Démasqué, Papa Doc’s case against Graham
following publication of The Comedians
Poster for the 1967 film adaptation of The Comedians
The film of The Comedians is finally shown in Haiti in 1986
General Omar Torrijos, the Panamanian leader, in the countryside with his
people Torrijos in Panama City
Graham and Torrijos getting to know one another on Contadora Island,
Panama, in 1976
Graham and Bernard Diederich with rum punches on Contadora Island, 1976
Graham on the Panama Canal train, 1976
Graham at Cristóbal railway station, Panama, 1976
Graham fumbles with his camera, Cristóbal railway station, 1976
Graham and Bernard Diederich in the grounds of the Hotel George Wasington,
Colon, Panama, 1976
Graham at the Panama Canal with Chuchu, 1978
Graham at Torrijos’s house at Farallon, Panama, 1978
Graham and Chuchu searching for evidence of Sir Francis Drake at Portobelo,
Panama, 1978
Graham resting in an Indian village, Panama, 1978
Graham and Chuchu flying to Torrijos’s house at Farallon, 1978
Graham and Chuchu in a market in Panama City, 1980, waiting to meet
Salvadoran guerrilla Salvador Cayetano Carpio to help arrange the release of
the kidnapped South African ambassador Archibald Gardner Dunn Graham is
honoured by the Panamanian President Ricardo de la Espriella, 1983
Graham recieves the Order of Rubén Darío in Nicaragua, 1987
Bernard Diederich with Aubelin Jolicoeur, the model for the character of Petit
Pierre in The Comedians, Port-au-Prince, 1986
A painting of Baby Doc in the toilet at Graham’s Antibes apartment Graham
with his pen and midday martini, Antibes, 1989
Graham with Bernard Diederich the last time they met, 1989
Graham and Yvonne Cloetta in Antibes
Bernard Diederich, Yvonne Cloetta and Max Reinhardt at Graham’s memorial
service, Westminster Abbey, London, 1991
Yvonne Cloetta at Graham’s grave, Vevey, Switzerland
Jean-Claude Bajeux lecturing on Graham’s work, Port-au-Prince, 1995
Bernard Diederich giving a presentation during the Graham Greene
International Festival, Berkhamsted School, UK, 2001
| FOREWORD BY PICO IYER
Greene in the World
Bernard Diederich was already a legend when I joined the staff of Time magazine
in 1982. In those days, some writers — those seasoned, fearless foreign
correspondents such as Bernie — actually travelled the globe covering the news,
while the rest of us (bookish neophytes like myself) sat in little offices in Mid-
town Manhattan and drew on our expert colleagues’ reports to produce the
compressed pieces that appeared in the magazine. Time’s roving band of
reporters were themselves the stuff of many a wild rumour, some of them former
spies, others the lovers of princesses and all of them responsible for traversing
the world at a time when the magazine was more or less the globe’s deining news
source.
Even by Time standards, though, Bernie stood out. He looked like
Hemingway, I was told, and knew more about Haiti than any foreigner alive. He
had some of Hemingway’s glamour in his life, too, having run away from home
to join a four-master in his teens and then started a newspaper in Haiti, before
being sent to prison by ‘Papa Doc’ Duvalier. In my early years at the magazine
Bernie was constantly sending dispatches from Nicaragua and El Salvador, both
in the middle of bitter civil wars then; when Ronald Reagan invaded Grenada in
1983 Bernie, already in his fifties, was the one correspondent who somehow
commandeered a boat to take him to the island where the action was taking
place. I was deputed to condense and rewrite his vivid eyewitness account, as was
the unbudging custom then, until our top editor saw Bernie’s version and said,
‘Run every word just the way he had it!’
Apart from all this, Bernie was celebrated as the trusted friend of Graham
Greene, a man not known for his love of Time magazine (he included
mischievous digs in at least three of his major novels) and a writer clearly
suspicious of journalists, whose errors he loved to enumerate. Anyone reading
The Quiet American or many other of Greene’s works will note that the only
characters who are always treated unsympathetically in them are journalists — a
reflection, perhaps, of the fact that Greene was a rigorous and precise observer
himself and, having witnessed the news everywhere from Cuba to Vietnam, had