Haiti, 1958 — military coup attempt
Event Summary
On 28 to 29 July 1958 a small force of three exiled Haitian army officers and five American mercenaries, led by Captain Alix Pasquet, attempted to overthrow President Francois Duvalier by seizing the Casernes Dessalines army barracks near the National Palace in Port au Prince and rallying sympathetic troops for an assault on the palace. Pasquet, an aviator who had trained with the Tuskegee Airmen, had been exiled after Duvalier's 1957 election and organized the raid from Miami, landing by boat and bluffing his way into the barracks by claiming to deliver prisoners. But the garrison showed no enthusiasm for revolt, and when one plotter sent a captured soldier out to buy cigarettes, the soldier alerted the palace that the rebels numbered only eight.
Duvalier donned a helmet and rallied his forces, and at daybreak on 29 July the army counterattacked and killed all eight insurgents. The failed coup deepened Duvalier's distrust of the army and spurred his creation of the Tonton Macoutes militia.
Researched Details
Researched
Independent research, added record by record. Hover any label for what it means.
Sources
Editorial Note
Cross-Reference
Only one dataset carries it. One of the three reference datasets we check against carries this event; the others do not list it. That is not a contradiction — the datasets cover different periods and use different thresholds — but it means the record has had less outside corroboration.
Identifiers for finding this same event in the other datasets:
- Cline Center id
04107281958
How the match is made is described in crossref-report.md.
Outcome and Target
Coup Atlas research identifies the target as: President Francois Duvalier survived the coup attempt unharmed and ruled Haiti until his death in 1971.
Baseline coding: Coup attempt failed to remove the incumbent. Recorded leader fate: remained in office; not physically harmed. The baseline file does not name individual targets; researched names are kept in a separate layer.
Baseline Dataset Citation
Baseline Source-Document Entries
CSP
Wikipedia
Washington Post
Manchester Guardian
New York Times
This is the citation trail carried by the baseline dataset, grouped by outlet and rejoined from the line-wrapped original. Coup Atlas has not independently re-checked every document; read the original before citing a specific claim. URLs the import damaged beyond safe repair are shown as plain text and listed in citations-report.md. How this list is built →