Istwa Nou

Woodrow Wilson disliked what he knew of Haitian politics, and disliked more the way Haitian and Dominican quarrels ran into each other. On 4 November 1914, with his approval, Acting Secretary of State Robert Lansing sent the American minister in Port-au-Prince a lightly edited version of the scheme Washington had just used to settle Dominican politics. Dana Munro of the State Department said plainly why it would not travel. Santo Domingo had organised parties with real followings. In Haiti the men who competed for power commanded paid bands of fighters, the mass of the population was outside politics altogether, and a popular election was out of reach. On 12 November, William Jennings Bryan offered Davilmar Theodore money and recognition in exchange for a list: American control of the customs houses, settlement of the railway and the Banque Nationale, guarantees about the Mole Saint Nicolas, and payment of private American claims. Once Haiti agreed, the State Department would ask the Banque to loosen its hold. Every item on the list required a government with revenue, and the Banque was the reason there was none.

Davilmar Theodore came into Port-au-Prince by train from Saint Marc on 6 November 1914. The bells rang and the old muzzle loading guns at Fort National fired salutes. He was sixty seven, a Caco general from the north, and the National Assembly elected him without a dissenting vote on 7 November. He took office on the tenth. His fighters had come south with him to collect on ten months of war, and there was nothing in the treasury to give them. Large districts of the north and centre stayed in the hands of armed Zamorists at Hinche, Maissade, Pignon, Ranquitte and Valliere. No foreign government recognised him. The United States had been preparing to intervene on behalf of the Zamors when the Zamors fell, and the European powers were busy with their own war. The American chargé Livingston reported that Theodore's followers would not believe a head of state could be unable to find money, decided he was withholding it, and turned on him. Within weeks he was the most unpopular man in Haiti.