1867, March–June 14: (Salnave Président: The Carabinero Enters the Capital): In the vacuum left by Geffrard’s abdication, political catalepsy seized Port-au-…

1867, March–June 14: (Salnave Président: The Carabinero Enters the Capital): In the vacuum left by Geffrard’s abdication, political catalepsy seized Port-au-Prince — business was suspended, every man had a weapon, and the property of the late president and his relatives was sacked without objection — while Geffrard’s still-surviving Senate declared Nissage-Saget president, an honor he prudently declined. The populist revolution at St. Marc spread to Gonaïves where a provisional government was shaped and feverishly set to work on a new constitution, blocking any movement or communication from the North. On March 20, Nissage and Chevallier marched into Port-au-Prince with their Artibonite army, abolished the Senate, and set up a twenty-two-man Gouvernement Provisoire with Nissage as provisional president and Chevallier as chef d’exécution — the remodeled constitution, ratified on June 14, 1867, re-established a four-year presidency and otherwise took its lead from 1843. Somewhat out of touch with events, Sylvain Salnave had sortied from Turks Island aboard a schooner in mid-March, landed at Montecristi, rallied his Dominican filibusterers, and set forth to recapture Cap Haïtien — only to discover to his astonishment that the revolution had already taken place and he had won. Stopping only long enough to kill off a few enemies and settle old scores from 1865, Salnave raised a 4,000-man army headed by his favorite 30th Regiment of the North and marched south on April 10; from Arcahaie south, the road was decked with flowers and branches and the potholes were again newly filled. In triumphal progress, Salnave entered the capital on April 20, affecting the costume of the Dominican carabinero — panama sombrero, bright blue serape, great jackboots, and huge war machete — riding along the Grand’Rue in what Le Réveil described as “a rain of flowers.” The carnival atmosphere of Salnave’s entry — the flowers, the costumes, the cheering — performed what Glissant would recognize as the characteristic Antillean gesture of opacity: the surface spectacle of democratic liberation concealing the subterranean reality that no structural transformation of the state had occurred, that the same military-commercial apparatus remained intact, and that the cycle of revolt, accession, and dispossession would resume as inevitably as the Caribbean hurricane season.