Istwa Nou

The National Assembly chose Franck Sylvain on 7 February 1957, a Catholic lawyer and journalist of forty six from Grand-Goave who was known to favour Francois Duvalier. He held office for fifty two days. The country was settling old scores under cover of an election. There were riots and shooting at Jacmel, where Duvalier was stoned, and at Les Cayes, Jeremie, Leogane, Gonaives and the capital. In early March a rumour that Fignole had been arrested sent the poor of Port-au-Prince against the police station and the palace itself, and the crowd smashed and looted its way through downtown when police pushed it back. Sylvain banned political broadcasts, set elections for 28 April, dissolved the legislature and ordered Jumelle's property seized. On 2 April the capital learned that police had found a bomb factory at Martissant, that two officers had died there, and that the president was under house arrest, accused of knowing about the bombs and about a plan to murder the candidates in their homes. The four men implicated were Duvalier supporters. Duvalier was not on the target list.

By May 1957 nobody governed Haiti. A committee of the candidates' representatives collapsed as fast as it was assembled. Every night after dark people hammered on iron lamp posts and fuel drums with stones and skillets, a din called bat teneb that announced how far the mourning had spread. Mobs attacked schools. Jeremie, a stronghold of the mulatre elite, was overrun by ten thousand peasants and set on fire. Committees of Public Safety took over Cap-Haitien, Gonaives and Saint-Marc, where peasants with machetes piled boulders and tree trunks into a barricade sixty feet long to stop food reaching the capital. On Flag Day the cathedral filled with Fignole's supporters and police killed two of them. Colonel Armand then moved against Colonel Cantave with the cadets, the police and three old artillery pieces. The one flyable aircraft dropped leaflets, came back armed, and rolled a bomb out of its side door over the barracks. It bounced across the parade ground and slid to a stop unexploded. Nobody had fused it. The guns shelled the bay. The coup failed and both colonels agreed to retire.