Haiti, 1991 — military coup attempt

Event Summary

On the night of 6 to 7 January 1991 Roger Lafontant, a former interior minister under the Duvalier dictatorship and a figure tied to the feared Tonton Macoute militia, staged a coup attempt in Haiti to prevent the president elect Jean Bertrand Aristide from taking office. Aristide, a radical priest beloved by the poor, had won a landslide victory with about two thirds of the vote in December 1990, in Haiti's first free election, and was due to be inaugurated on 7 February 1991. Lafontant, backed by soldiers, seized the National Palace, took the provisional president Ertha Pascal-Trouillot hostage, and announced over state radio that he had taken power.

But his hold collapsed within about half a day: massive crowds of Aristide supporters poured into the streets of Port au Prince, built barricades, attacked Lafontant's headquarters, and the military high command, unwilling to back him against such popular fury, moved against him. Lafontant was arrested, tried, and sentenced to life for treason. Aristide was duly inaugurated in February 1991, though he would himself be overthrown by the army that September.