While a salty E-4 in the USMC, I was sent to Haiti in Aug 1980 for a hurricane disaster relief team. My job was to run the aux generator for the radio to talk back to CONUS. Like many Carter-era mil equipment, the radio didn't work. So basically, I was on 24hr liberty for two weeks.
We were billeted at the Holiday Inn, about 1 mile (maybe less) from the Presidential Palace. Port Au Prince.
At the time, Haiti was getting heavy US funding & support. Having said that, I can't begin to describe how filthy, nasty & gross a lot of the downtown city was. Just incredible.
Being that I was a fit, muscular young Marine, I tended to go wherever I pleased in Port Au Prince, at any time. All I had was my Buck 110 knife on my belt & attitude. Strangely enough, it worked. No one bothered, accosted or threatened me at any time or place. 2pm or 2am, it didn't matter. The men left me alone, who knows why?
At the time Baby Doc was still dictator. The notorious TomTom (secret police) were well in place, keeping opposition in their place. As a result, there weren't a lot of protests or "rebel" activity those days.
Eventually, Baby Doc went the way of his father & was ousted. Baby Doc fled to France, since France was the original colonialist govt. He eventually died of a heart attack in France in 1986.
The leaders who followed him were all disasters, for a variety of reasons. Mostly it was not enough support from the Haitian military, the US military & the Haitian people. This formula varied among the subsequent presidents, but that's the gist of it.
In the last 2-3 years, the govt basically disintegrated. Nature abhors a vacuum, so war lords popped up across the country ala` Somolia & other spots of paradise. Now there's cell phones & easy comms, so they got stronger faster, IOW.
As I recall, Haiti has a 90 or 95% illiteracy rate. Voodoo is a VERY big there as well. So a strong personality can indeed stir up a small army. Seems like this is indeed the case.
If one looks at aerial photos of both Dominican Republic & Haiti, the landscape looks like the surface of the moon (Haiti) & the Amazon Rain Forrest (DR). Had Haiti not gotten US funding all those decades, it would look worse than Cuba.
The only export Haiti ever did was they made American MLB baseballs. No food, no cigars, just baseballs.
So now Haiti is just like many of the inner countries of Africa: lawless, violent, uneducated, isolated & hopeless.
Oh, yes. The mil guards around the Palace all had M-14s. No clue if they were loaded (doubtful) or full-auto. I made one of them VERY nervous when I eyeballed his M-14 VERY closely while describing it to a US civilian I was hanging with.
I don't recall what pistol the very few cops I saw carried. I want to say they were revolvers.
