Istwa Nou

The plan for the night of 31 October 1919 was that Conzé would attack Grande Rivière while Péralte waited at Masère in the river gorge. The marines knew both halves of it. Meade brought gendarmes and a machine gun section quietly into the barracks at Grande Rivière, and blocking positions went out on every trail from Saint Raphaël to Vallière. Hanneken took eighteen picked gendarmes and Lieutenant William Button, dressed them as Cacos in worn denim, and blacked his own face and Button's with burned cork. Seven hundred Cacos filed past their ambush and Péralte was not among them. Jean-Edmond François then brought word that Péralte was waiting in camp for a detachment to fetch him in. Hanneken's party became that detachment and climbed through six Caco outposts using the password General Jean, chosen as a compliment to Conzé. At the last one a sentry tried to inspect Button's automatic rifle and Button snapped at him in Creole and pushed on. François pointed out a man in a blue shirt beside a small fire. Hanneken shot him twice through the heart.

The plan for the night of 31 October 1919 had Conzé, the informant, leading an attack on Grande Rivière while Péralte waited at Masère in the river gorge. On the 29th a secret radio message went out from the Cap. Herman Hanneken, blacked up and dressed as a Caco, walked through the outposts with Conzé's help and put two .45 rounds through Péralte's chest at close range. The marines then tied the body to a door, photographed it, and circulated the picture to prove the Caco leader was dead. The photograph did the opposite of what it was for. Propped upright with arms out against the wood, the image reads as a crucifixion, and that is exactly how Haiti received it. It went onto the one gourde note after 1986. The occupation produced its own martyr and then printed his icon itself.