There are books – preferably here pamphlets (145 pages) – that one senses from the first pages will refresh our memory or become as instructive as a tourist guide. Published in the United States in October 2024, "Ambassador Fritz ‘Toto’ Cinéas: Over 50 Years of Political and Diplomatic Life" takes its place alongside the bulky memoirs published by other figures, despite its brevity. If you are fond of professional successes, autobiographies of exemplary and exceptional figures, here is a life summary penned by Fritz ‘Toto’ Cinéas (born in Port-au-Prince on June 15, 1932) that intertwines the figures of political actors and diplomats, both Haitian and foreign, in sequences that assemble into a delicate, striking, and favorable self-portrait.

Many details and major events are unfortunately missing, but the evidence is clear: private secretary to President François Duvalier in October 1962 and Secretary of State for Coordination and Information under lifelong President Jean-Claude Duvalier in April 1971, Fritz Nerval Cinéas Poincy, known as ‘Toto’, who balanced a diplomatic career and political activity, marked by an engaged spirit and sharp intelligence, proves to be an extraordinary “young wolf,” a Duvalierist from the very beginning. From his very first position as First Secretary of the Haitian embassy in Mexico in 1959, he successfully led several diplomatic missions worldwide for half a century: in Chile, Puerto Rico, Mexico, Italy, Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay, the Dominican Republic, the United Nations, the OAS, Washington, and Spain. What a record! Who can top that? In addition to a security infrastructure based on very effective intelligence services, the Tonton Macoute regime could also rely on a diplomacy that "aimed (and often achieved) a high level of competence and demonstrated an absolute refusal to bow to foreign dictates in defending national interests" (p. 50). After the fall of lifelong President Jean-Claude Duvalier, he achieved the uncommon feat in Haiti of serving his country as ambassador in Madrid and then as chief diplomatic advisor to the National Government Council (CNG), ambassador in Santo Domingo under the governments of Presidents Boniface Alexandre, René Préval, and Michel Joseph Martelly. His last mission was in the Dominican Republic, a second time, after which he resigned in March 2015 to retire at the age of 82.