1962 to 1963 · Haitianspan
A watchman is wound in barbed wire and hung up to bleed
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In August 1962, on the anniversary of the ceremony at Bois Caiman, the president presided over a repetition of it at which his cabinet and his senior militiamen drank warm blood from a chalice. The two years that followed were among the bloodiest the country has had. The killing looked shapeless at first. A watchman at the public works department was found wound in rusty barbed wire and left hanging outside his shack to bleed to death. Another was crucified against the cemetery wall at Petionville. Jean Chenet, an intellectual who liked chess, was shot on his own doorstep, and an army major stopped his American wife from moving the body until the following day. The human rights commission of the Organisation of American States asked twice to visit. The first request was ignored and the second was refused as an intrusion on Haitian sovereignty. Food shipments meant for starving peasants rotted on the docks because consuls abroad would not issue papers for them.
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