1986 · Haitianyear only

Two Rara bands fight and each president loses a son

The bodies were laid crosswise over one another in the road.

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1986 to 1990 · Haitianspan

Most of the labour on the Maissade check dams came from landless neighbours

Landless neighbours supplied fifty seven per cent of the work on ravines they would never profit from.

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1986 · Haitianyear only

Hundreds of Vodou worshippers are killed at Soukri

In the year the Duvaliers fell, a crowd attacked one of the great ceremonial sites of the north.

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1986 · Haitianyear only

A crusade kills worshippers and a temple in the Artibonite is abandoned

Sanba Gregory Sanon lost a comrade and moved the house, and the spirits followed.

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28 January to 6 February 1986 · Haitianspan

The Cap riots and Jean-Claude Duvalier packs his bags

Papa Doc had left his son a rule of thumb for knowing when the end had arrived.

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7 February 1986 · Haitian

Half a million people surround the palace on 7 February 1986

Fifteen years of absolute rule ended under American escort and the dechoukaj began.

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7 February 1986 · Haitian

Déchoukaj

A single church bell at 5 a.m., and by evening people were walking on the palace sidewalk.

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7 February 1986 · Haitian

A church bell at five in the morning starts the dechoukaj

The poor of Port-au-Prince learned by bell what the rich had learned by telephone.

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7 February 1986 · Haitian

Six men take power in Haiti and three of them are army officers

The council announced on the morning of the flight called itself a government of national liberation.

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7 to 9 February 1986 · Haitianspan

The council inherits an empty treasury and armed militiamen

Under two million dollars sat in the state accounts and the barracks behind the palace were full.

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7 February 1986 · Haitian

Twenty nine years of one family end on an American jet

Father and son had held the palace since 1957. The reprisals killed more than a hundred militiamen.

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7 February 1986 · Haitian

Columbus goes into the sea and Peralte's name goes on the wharf

The last Duvalier flees and a cult of Peralte takes hold within months.

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7 February 1986 · Haitian

The last full-dress parade of the Macoutes, then the family flies out

Diederich and his son were arrested at the January service that turned out to be the dynasty's last.

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7 February 1986 · Haitian

Half a million reoccupy Port-au-Prince and uproot Duvalier symbols

The déchouquage went after statues, shrines and graves before it went after men.

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7 February 1986 · Haitian

Jean-Claude Duvalier leaves on an American aircraft

Twenty nine years of family rule end in a departure the army had spent months arranging.

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8 February to March 1986 · Haitianspan

The army smuggles abroad the militiamen who knew the most

Madame Max left the country in a crate of mangoes, or dressed as a nun, depending who tells it.

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February 1986 · Caribbeanmonth known

Jamaica, not CARICOM, sends the negotiator when Baby Doc falls

Seaga dispatched a minister to Port-au-Prince while the regional body stayed silent.

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February 1986 · Haitianmonth known

Washington pushes Duvalier out and hands the state to his army

Dupuy reads the fall of the dynasty as a managed coup, not a popular victory.

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March to 26 April 1986 · Haitianspan

Machine guns wait on the roof of Fort Dimanche

A memorial march for the dictatorship's dead was fired on, live on the radio.

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spring 1986 · Haitianseason

A crowd marches on the Trou Sen Jak carrying concrete

Radio Lumiere called them out to seal the pit where Ogou comes out of the earth.

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April 1986 · Haitianmonth known

The army fires on a crowd at Fort Dimanche

Two months after Duvalier goes, the men who replaced him shoot people at his prison.

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26 April 1986 · Haitian

Soldiers fire on a march to Fort-Dimanche

Less than three months after the fall, the army stopped a peaceful commemoration.

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May to December 1986 · Haitianspan

Miami rice arrives and twelve thousand assembly jobs vanish

The first free year cost the capital a fifth of its factory work and the Artibonite its market.

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1986 · Haitianyear only

A protest cry from 1986 turns colour language into class language

After Duvalier falls, the children of Dessalines and of Petion become the vocabulary of politics.

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1986 · Haitianyear only

Duvalier falls and a slogan about two founders enters the streets

After thirty years of family rule, protest reorganises itself around Dessalines against Petion.

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1986 · Haitianyear only

A crowd throws Columbus into the harbour at Port-au-Prince

The statue on the waterfront went into the water and the empty plinth got a new sentence.

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23 August 1986 · Diaspora

Hanneken dies at ninety-three in what Michel calls the centenary

The killer outlives his victim by sixty-seven years and refuses every interview.

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October 1986 · Haitianmonth known

A commission of sixty one sits down to write a new charter

Twenty members were appointed and forty one elected to draft the rules for life after the Duvaliers.

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January to 29 March 1987 · Haitianspan

The new charter takes elections out of the army's hands

More than half the electorate turned out and over ninety nine percent of them voted yes.

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1987 · Haitianyear only

Duty free garments on condition the cloth is woven and cut in America

Special Access Programs and Guaranteed Access Levels fix Haiti's job as sewing.

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1987 · Diasporayear only

The first Haitian Catholic priest settles in Palm Beach County

Six years after the boats, and by then many of the newcomers were worshipping elsewhere.

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1987 · Diasporayear only

The constitution grants religious freedom and a tenth department appears

Haiti has nine departments on the map and more than a million citizens living outside them.

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March 1987 · Haitianmonth known

Ninety nine percent vote yes and Kreyol becomes official

The language nearly every Haitian speaks was written into the country's own charter at last.

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March 1987 · Haitianmonth known

A charter written against the office that produced Duvalier

Every clause answers something the dictatorship did, which is why it reads like an indictment.

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April to 31 July 1987 · Haitianspan

Three hundred peasants are cut down near Jean-Rabel

A cooperative that organised the landless walked into an ambush of machetes on 23 July.

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April 1987 · Haitianmonth known

The last big sugar mill shuts and three thousand go home

The colony that once supplied Europe with sugar could not compete with sugar arriving at its docks.

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August to 29 November 1987 · Haitianspan

Candidates are shot, ballot presses smashed, radios silenced

Everything an election needs was destroyed one piece at a time before polling day arrived.

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29 November 1987 · Haitian

Soldiers and macoutes shoot voters and the junta cancels the election

At least twenty-two dead at the polls, and the independent electoral council disbanded.

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29 November 1987 · Haitian

Gunmen kill voters in the queue and the election is called off

Haiti's first presidential vote in thirty years that the army did not run lasted about three hours.

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the late 1980s to 2013 · Haitianspan

A goat park at Darbonne hands out one pregnant doe at a time

Four thousand households near Leogane draw a numbered tag after two days of class.

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January 1988 · Haitianmonth known

A boycotted election produces a president for the army

The major candidates stayed out, so the council chose from the men willing to deal with it.

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January 1988 · Haitianmonth known

A Philadelphia garbage barge unloads its ash at Gonaives

The crew called it fertiliser, dropped four thousand tons and sailed away in the dark.

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17 January to 7 February 1988 · Haitianspan

Five percent vote and the winner is given 50.27 percent

Independent observers counted one voter in twenty. The government counted one in three.

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17 January 1988 · Haitian

Leslie Manigat is elected by fewer than one voter in ten

A rerun staged by the junta produces the weak president Washington wanted.

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February to June 1988 · Haitianspan

The army runs the borders, the barracks and the cocaine

A president who understood Haiti better than anyone in the palace could not reach a single lever.

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7 February 1988 · Haitian

A political scientist gets four months in the palace

Manigat was inaugurated two years to the day after the flight and removed before the summer ended.

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June to 11 September 1988 · Haitianspan

The mayor of Port-au-Prince sends gunmen into a Sunday mass

Franck Romain gave the order, the killers used machetes, and the church was burned afterwards.

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20 June 1988 · Haitian

Namphy removes the president he installed four months earlier

Manigat tried to reshuffle the officer corps and was out of the palace within days.

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c. 1988 to 2017 · Indigenousspan

The peaceful Arawak and the cannibal Carib are inventions

Two tidy island peoples, one gentle and one savage, come out of novels rather than the ground.

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11 September 1988 · Haitian

Soldiers across the street watch a church burn for three hours

The congregation had come in white to protest against the general. Twelve of them did not leave.

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11 September 1988 · Haitian

Macoutes attack a congregation at Saint Jean Bosco during Sunday mass

The massacre at Aristide's church becomes the grievance that topples Namphy.

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September 1988 · Haitianmonth known

Sergeants remove a general and a Duvalier man takes over

The coup came from the ranks. The officer it raised had run the dictator's money abroad.

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17 to 18 September 1988 · Haitianspan

Namphy takes a room below the president he had overthrown

Both men ended the year at the Concord Hotel in Santo Domingo, one floor apart.

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17 September 1988 · Haitian

Six heads of state in four years

Getting rid of a dictator took one morning. Building anything to replace him took longer.

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17 September 1988 · Haitian

Non-commissioned officers overthrow Namphy and install Prosper Avril

The brutality of the second Namphy government sets off a coup from inside the barracks.

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September to December 1988 · Haitianspan

Avril's record reads Duvalier from top to bottom

Quantico, the presidential guard, the arms contracts, the overseas portfolio, the family nurse.

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October to December 1988 · Haitianspan

The Salesians expel Aristide and a colonel eats his last soup

Washington wanted the drug officer gone and Rome wanted the priest quiet. Both got their way.

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January to 13 March 1989 · Haitianspan

The constitution comes back thirty seven articles lighter

Avril restored the charter after removing every clause that got in the way of military rule.

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2 April to August 1989 · Haitianspan

Soldiers mutiny over pay and cocaine and Avril survives

He won the week of fighting and came out owing more to the officers who had saved him.

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June to autumn 1989 · Haitianspan

The new American ambassador arrives quoting a Kreyol proverb

Alvin Adams said a loaded donkey cannot wait, and the capital gave him the nickname at once.

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1989 · Diasporayear only

A Sorbonne thesis puts Haiti behind Hegel's domination figure

Joseph credits Tavares with the argument a decade before it became famous in English.

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December 1989 to January 1990 · Haitianspan

Avril flies to Taipei and comes home with nothing

The opposition's telex reached Taiwan while the general was still somewhere over the Pacific.

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