16 December 1990 to 7 January 1991 · Haitianspan
Lafontant seizes the palace and a crowd burns the cathedral
›Read the full entryClose
The American ambassador met the winner at once, and a State Department official explained that the point was to warn the Duvalierists and the army off any thought of undermining him. Aristide told foreign businessmen they were welcome in Haiti, though word had spread that he had stood outside a rich man's house on election day and remarked that a dozen families could live in it. Roger Lafontant promised on Christmas Eve that Attila the Hun would not get through the gates. On New Year's Day 1991 Archbishop Ligonde used his sermon to warn against authoritarian rule and Bolshevism. On the evening of 6 January Lafontant and a band of macoutes took the National Palace, the interim president and the broadcasting stations, and he announced on television that he held power. The army stayed loyal and retook the palace at noon the next day. Crowds then hunted macoutes through Port-au-Prince, burned the eighteenth century cathedral, sacked the papal nunciature and killed thirty seven people.
A code like HT-WIB-000044 is a bates number. It marks one page of our stamped scan of the book, so the same page can be found again by anyone working from the same copy. Open one to see every entry drawn from that page.