Cartoons in the 1994 Dominican campaign make one candidate the Haitian

In the Dominican presidential election of 1994 supporters of Joaquin Balaguer and national media outlets circulated pictures meant to fix the figure of the Haitian onto his opponent Jose Francisco Pena Gomez. One showed a destitute migrant with exaggerated lips crossing the frontier while a large white hand held him back. Another showed the Dominican side of Hispaniola with white feet running away from the black feet of the Haitian side. A third had Pena Gomez pointing and promising to order the country set on fire if he were assassinated. A fourth showed him dancing with Haitian supporters under a caption in misspelled Creole while Dominicans knelt beside them, one of them gagged. The fifth put his face over a map of the island dotted with Haitian faces, with a caption saying he hated the Dominican Republic over the 1937 massacre of Haitians and of his parents, that Clinton and the European countries would back him, and that he was not black, he was Haitian.

In October 1994 Jean-Bertrand Aristide returned to the National Palace in Port-au-Prince, three years after the army had put him on a plane. The restoration was carried out by a United States military force acting under a United Nations mandate, with about twenty thousand troops entering the country. The officers left without fighting, having accepted terms in the hours before the invasion aircraft would have arrived. Three years of military rule ended. The manner of the return then shaped everything after it. An elected Haitian government had been put back in place by foreign soldiers, which meant that it owed its existence to a foreign decision and could be reminded of the fact whenever it suited. Aristide served the sixteen months left of his five year term, disbanded the army that had overthrown him, and handed power to Rene Preval in February 1996. From 1994 onward, Haitian sovereignty was a subject other governments considered themselves entitled to discuss.

On 24 May 1992 George Bush signed the order known as the Kennebunkport Order, which told the Coast Guard to carry Haitians found on the high seas straight back to Haiti without any screening at all. People who wanted asylum were told to apply at the American consular office in Port-au-Prince, inside the country they were trying to leave, and to be interviewed there by American immigration officers. Guantanamo Bay was overcrowded, attempts to place refugees on other Caribbean islands and in Central America had failed, and an election was months away. Bill Clinton called the policy cruel during the campaign and kept it once elected. After American troops returned Aristide to office in 1994 most of the Haitians at Guantanamo were sent home, the last of them in November 1995. The Cubans held there were admitted to the United States.

Competitive elections have become common across Africa since 1990. In Benin the Marxist ruler Kerekou accepted defeat at the polls in 1991 and won office back legitimately in 1996. A popular rising in Mali ended military dictatorship, and the elections held since have survived deep poverty. Botswana has held contested votes and watched incumbents retire since 1966. Ghana transferred power peacefully on a razor thin result in 2008, on the eve of an oil boom. Richard Reid treats a tally of elections as a poor measure of democratic depth. Nigerian votes are still bought by those with cash. The loser of the 2010 Ivorian election simply refused to leave. Kenya's 2007 result produced killings and an internationally brokered power sharing deal. In Ethiopia the ruling front suppressed the opposition after the disputed 2005 vote and took ninety nine percent of parliamentary seats in 2010. Museveni in Uganda, Kagame in Rwanda and Isaias in Eritrea all came out of liberation armies, and all of them treat political control as something they earned by fighting.