11 to 14 October 1993 · Haitianspan
A hundred armed men on a dock turn an American warship around
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The Governors Island agreement required a United Nations force to land before Aristide could return. Opponents used that requirement to revive memories of the American occupation of 1915. A new organisation called FRAPH, whose acronym sounded like the Creole word for a blow, gathered the sons and grandsons of macoutes under Toto Constant, the forty year old son of a former army chief of staff. Many of its members had studied in the United States, spoke English, and staged demonstrations sized for American television. They had watched the American casualties in Mogadishu in early October 1993. When the USS Harlan County arrived off Port-au-Prince with lightly armed American and Canadian troops, about a hundred FRAPH men filled the dock with placards and weapons and blocked the diplomats sent to watch. Captain John Butcher had orders to land in a friendly environment, saw none, and sailed away. Aristide's justice minister Guy Malary was shot dead on 14 October. Clinton reimposed the embargo and sent warships to patrol.
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