Istwa Nou

The gendarmerie was the Haitian police force raised, paid and officered by the Americans, and the cacos in the hills had a settled view of the men who joined it. A public letter of 1920 from caco leaders said that most Haitians in the gendarmerie were men without conscience, worthless and doing worthless work, and that anyone with a conscience would refuse to fight the resistance. The phrase they returned to was bad Haitians. A gendarme was judged by what he understood about his own position. The same leaders wanted those men. General Theophil and Petit Severe dressed as women to get into the gendarmerie camps and talk to them, a disguise that says something about how loose identity had become under occupation. Petit Severe claimed afterwards to have recruited practically every gendarme in the north, with the plan already agreed: hit the small stations first, take in whichever gendarmes would come, then move on the larger towns where the white officers were posted.