May to June 1915 · Haitianspan
Heads carried through the streets of Cap Haitien
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Holding an army in the north was costing the Haitian government 140,000 gourdes a week and producing nothing. Recruiters were again pulling old men and boys out of village huts, clubbing them and roping them together for the march to the barracks. The fighting had stalled and Rosalvo Bobo was losing his hold on his Cacos, who told him they could walk east over the bridge into the mountains and find another leader whenever they liked. To make the point they beheaded two men of Cap Haitien who had not been enthusiastic enough, and shot others. Consul Livingston watched the heads carried about the streets and called it the worst savagery he had seen in seventeen years there. Bobo was a doctor educated in Paris and campaigning as a progressive. When he reproached a Caco general, the man answered that the Angels had ordered the killings and that if there had been a hundred people he would have killed all of them. The French cruiser Descartes landed marines to guard the consulates.
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