Istwa Nou

Mutinous soldiers stormed the National Palace at half past five in the evening on 30 September 1991 and took Aristide prisoner. There was talk of shooting him where he stood, and nobody would do it. He was walked across the square to army headquarters instead, and from there the officers bargained with foreign embassies until they agreed to let him leave the country. He reached the airport by half past ten, met by the American and Venezuelan ambassadors, and waited among scores of jeering soldiers until a Venezuelan air force plane landed just before three in the morning. He flew to Caracas and on to Washington. Over the following days he gathered the members of his government who had escaped or who happened to be abroad, at the Haitian embassy on Massachusetts Avenue. Jean Casimir was his envoy there, Fritz Longchamps spoke for him at the United Nations, and the exile organisations in New York went back to the work they knew. Haiti now had two governments.

The Organization of American States met in emergency session on 2 October 1991. Secretary of State James Baker told the delegates that the officers who had seized Haiti would be treated as a pariah regime, without friends, without support and without a future, and that the hemisphere had to act together on behalf of the elected government. Two days later George Bush said publicly that he wanted Aristide back in office. The OAS agreed on language for an embargo. The United States froze Haitian government assets everywhere except those the exiled president and a few aides could reach, which guaranteed him money to work with. Two facts undid the measure before it began. The OAS speaks for the Americas alone, and the rest of the United Nations membership considered itself free to trade. Haiti also shares a long and unpoliced land border with the Dominican Republic, whose conservative government had no reason to help Aristide. The embargo ran for nearly three years and the officers grew richer under it.