When Vilbrun Guillaume Sam became president of Haiti in February 1915 became the seventh president to hold power in four years.
In fact , none of the five previous rulers had managed to spend a full year in the presidency.
Haiti was mired in constant instability, in which Sam himself had played a role by participating in the overthrow of three of his predecessors : Cincinnatus Leconte, Oreste Zamor and Joseph Davilmar Théodore.
The uprising against Théodore was driven by discontent against the president who had failed to pay the armed militias in Haiti – known as “Cacos” – who had helped him get out of the power to his predecessor, Oreste Zamor.
Those same forces mounted a brutal blockade around the country’s capital, Port-au-Prince, to demand the resignation of Théodore.
“ The city has been practically without food and water for the last three days and the revolutionaries have stopped the entry of all food and have cut off the water supply, a situation that they have declared will continue as long as President Théodore remains in office, “the US Ambassador to Haiti, Arthur Bailly-Blanchard, then described the situation in a communication sent on 22 February 1915.
Théodore agreed to resign and left on a ship for Curaçao and Sam was immediately recognized as the new head of the Power Executive by the rest of the revolutionary generals, which in practice, due to the political dynamics that operated in Haiti at the time, guaranteed that he would be elected president by Congress, as indeed happened a few days later.
His mandate would last for sentences about five months, but would open the doors to a long period of forced stability that would be imposed by a US invasion of the country that would last for 19 years.
Regarding the assassination of the president of Haiti, Jovenel Moïse, on July 7, we recover that other chapter in the history of the Caribbean country.
What happened?
From repression to assassination
Shortly after Sam came to power, the political instability that characterized Haiti at that time began to make itself felt.
Rosalvo Bobo, a former government minister or Théodore, who was in exile in the Dominican Republic, called for the insurrection of the Haitians against the government of Sam.
In his appeal, Bobo also targeted the interests of the United States .
“The manifesto issued tends to create bad feelings against Americans both in Haiti and in the Dominican Republic ”, he warned in a communication from 28 March United States plenipotentiary envoy in Santo Domingo, James Mark Sullivan.
In Haiti, Sam launched a strong repressive wave to drive potential rivals out of the game , which failed to prevent the uprisings.
At the end of April, troops from the government itself rose up in the Fort Libertad, in the northeast of the country and hundreds of Bobo supporters took the town of Cap Haitien, which reached that city at the head of a great force at the beginning of May.
Although there were marches and countermarches in the advance of the insurrectionary forces, in the end the government of Sam was not able to contain them.
The 27 July, the uprisings against the government took Port-au-Prince by surprise , managing to control part of the city and surround the government palace. Sam managed to escape and seek refuge in the French embassy.
That day, the agent ordered the execution of 160 political prisoners , among whom was former president Oreste Zamor.
That decision It aroused the ire of an angry mob that broke into the French embassy, assassinated Sam, dismembered him, and then toured the city displaying pieces of his body attached to the ends of long poles.
A temporary measure that lasted 19 years
The revolt and the Sam’s assassination generated a rapid response from the United States military forces.
“The president Wilson sent the Marines to Haiti to avoid anarchy. In reality, that act protected United States assets in the area and prevented a possible German invasion, ”says a text from the US State Department’s Office of History.
Since the mid-19th century, Washington was interested in Haiti and the Dominican Republic as possible centers from which to protect its interests in the Caribbean.
In 1889, the State Department tried to obtain permission to establish a naval base in Môle-Saint-Nicolas, a town in the north-west of the country.
Decades later, President William Howard Taft granted Haiti a large loan in the hope that that country would cancel its foreign debt to France and became more independent of foreign influence. That effort did not yield the expected results.
However, for 1915, the government of the United States was not as concerned about France as it was about Germany who was considered his potential rival for the time.
In fact, immediately after Sam’s death, the United States prevented the military forces of France and the United Kingdom from landing in Haiti giving them guarantees that the Marines would also protect the interests of both nations.
But that improvised landing and The emergency ended up giving way to a long occupation.
A controversial treaty
After the invasion, The United States imposed the signing of a treaty by which Washington acquired total control over the finances of Haiti, as well as the right to intervene in that country when deemed necessary and forced Congress to elect Philipp as president e Sudré Dartiguenave, who ruled until 1924.
This “election” was not to popular taste, so it did not contribute to calm the mood in the country.
To deal with any instability, the treaty of 1915 also envisaged the creation of the Haitian Gendarmerie, a military body made up of Haitian and American men under Marine control.
Some of the policies of this security force such as racial segregation, censorship of the press and forced labor were extremely unpopular and led to a peasant revolt in 1919.
United States Dos also unsuccessfully tried to change the Haitian Constitution to allow foreigners to own land in the country, something that had been prohibited since independence, but failed to get Congress to agree to approve this change.
On the contrary, legislators began to write a Constitution contrary to the interests of the United States, so Washington instructed the President Dartiguenave to dissolve Parliament, which did not function again until 1929.
That year, the United States decided to start preparing for its withdrawal of the country -after a series of protests and strikes- that became effective in 1934.
That occupation, the longest that the United States has carried out in its history, did not leave a favorable legacy, judging by the debate that was generated when in 1994 the government of Bill Clinton was evaluating the possibility of re-invading Haiti after the overthrow of President Jean Bertrand Aristide .
“We were there, as you know, for 19 years, and I am still struck by the fact that is the only place in the Caribbean where baseball , “said Lawrence A. Pezzullo, who had been Washington’s special envoy for Haiti.
“In all other places we leave something behind. In Haiti, we don’t leave anything behind ”, he concluded.
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