November 1994 to June 1995 · Haitianspan
Gordon drowns Jacmel while the restoration is being celebrated2 sources
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Tropical Storm Gordon hit southern Haiti on 14 November 1994, killing about five hundred people, with Jacmel taken by a wall of water. This is six weeks after the American intervention restored Aristide and while the international coverage was still about democracy returning. Around the same months: the police chief Duperval was caught skimming gun licensing fees within four weeks and replaced by a fire department commander, Toto Constant of FRAPH walked into the United States on a valid tourist visa, dozens of former soldiers tried to take army headquarters, and the urban poor were saying openly that they were tired of the coffee of conciliation. I put the storm next to the politics on purpose. Haiti's disasters are always narrated as interruptions of its political story, and they are usually the same story, because what a storm kills is determined by what the politics built.
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