Baron Samdi is painted with Duvalier's face and blood streaming from his phallus

In 1991 the painter Edouard Duval Carrie produced a representation of Baron Samdi, head of the spirits of the dead, in which the figure's resemblance to Francois Duvalier is unmistakable and blood streams from his exposed phallus. Duvalier had ruled Haiti from 1957 until his death in 1971 and had deliberately dressed himself in the iconography of the Baron, black suit, black hat, nasal voice. The painting takes the borrowing back. It is a standing feature of Haitian art that the spirits are shown intervening in politics, quarrelling over the country, removing presidents and installing them. Camaau Rameau painted an assembly of the principal spirits, Azaka, Ezili Freda, Ogou, Ezili Danto and Baron Samdi, gathered to give counsel on the bloody dramas that surround power in Haiti. Duval Carrie's version is less consultative. It says that the evil forces running the country have taken up residence in the cemetery.

Through the autumn of 1992 nobody in the exiled Haitian government would say publicly what should happen if negotiation failed. Calls for armed resistance came mostly from people at a safe distance. Foreign military intervention was the one proposal nobody would make aloud, though debate at the United Nations was moving toward it. Nor did anyone suggest cutting off the money Haitians abroad sent home, which ran to 250 million dollars a year and was the country's largest source of foreign exchange. Aristide worked the constituencies open to him, speaking at rallies in Central Park and with the Congressional Black Caucus. Bill Clinton, campaigning for the presidency, called himself appalled that the Bush administration was sending Haitian boat people home. On 3 November 1992 he won. The Caucus counted for more in a Democratic administration, and Clinton had promised to change the refugee policy. One Haitian in four now lived outside Haiti. Who ruled in Port-au-Prince had become a question that American voters could be asked.

Legislative elections on 20 January 1991 passed without incident and with light turnout, leaving Aristide to face a chamber he did not control. Rumours in late January that Lafontant would be freed from jail brought barricades and burning tyres to the poor quarters; four macoutes were lynched and six people died as the army cleared the streets. Aristide left as planned for two days of talks in France with Francois Mitterrand. George Bush stayed away from the inauguration on 7 February 1991 and sent his ambassador and his health secretary instead. Aristide, thirty seven years old and from Port Salut, took the oath and accepted the blue and red sash from a peasant woman, then went to the cathedral for the traditional Te Deum while the ruins of the church burned a month earlier still smoked a few hundred yards away. He retired six of the army's eight generals with thanks for their service and named Raoul Cedras chief of staff. The next day he announced that Fort Dimanche, the Duvalier torture prison, would become a museum.

By 1995 New York carried thirty hours of Haitian television a week. Miami carried eight, New Jersey four, and Boston, Chicago and Hartford two each. The best known programme made by the diaspora in New York was a magazine show that ran on one public channel in 1988 and 1989 before moving to another. Its producer, J. Raynal Louis, also made a teenage show, an education show that covered bilingual teaching, a programme about the United Nations, an arts hour, and monthly programmes for Asian American and Jewish American audiences. Three of his programmes were in French and Creole for African and Haitian immigrants, among them a Creole talk show and a community news show. Some were broadcast simultaneously in Miami and the tapes were shown again in Montreal, so a Creole programme made in Brooklyn was watched in three countries.