1920: (The 1920 US Senate Inquiry and Admiral Knapp’s Testimony — By the Early 1920s the US Military Claiming Victory in the “Cacos Wars” Measured Through th…

1920: (The 1920 US Senate Inquiry and Admiral Knapp’s Testimony — By the Early 1920s the US Military Claiming Victory in the “Cacos Wars” Measured Through the Capture Killing and Public Display of the Naked Body of Caco Leader Charlemagne Péralte in 1919, Rumors of Continued Indiscriminate Violence Leading to US Senate Investigations, Admiral H. S. Knapp Asked Whether 3,000 Haitian Men Women and Children Had Been Shot by American Troops Since 1915 — Replying It Was Very Possible That 3,000 Haitian Men Had Been Killed and That Operations Were Necessary to Restore Order, Characterizing Haitians as Endangering Their Own Life and Property Especially in the Northeastern Stronghold of “Cacos” — the Deaths of Citizens Renamed as the Cost of Order Imposed Upon a People Declared Incapable of Self-Governance): The 1920 US Senate inquiry into the occupation captured the disavowal at its most brazen. By the early 1920s, the US military claimed victory in the cacos wars — victories measured in large part through the capture, killing, and public display of the naked body of caco leader and intellectual Charlemagne Péralte in 1919, his corpse arranged to resemble a crucifixion and photographed as a warning to a nation that understood exactly what sacred iconography was being desecrated. Rumors of continued indiscriminate violence led to several US Senate investigations. During the 1920 investigation, Admiral H. S. Knapp, who had served in Haiti and conducted what he characterized as a thorough study of conditions there, was asked whether some 3,000 Haitian men, women, and children had been shot by American troops since 1915. Knapp conceded it was very possible that 3,000 Haitian men in all had been killed, but maintained these operations were necessary to restore order and respect for human life and property — life and property that were endangered, he insisted, by the Haitians themselves. The rhetorical architecture was colonial to its foundation: the deaths of citizens renamed as the cost of order imposed upon a people declared incapable of self-governance. The northeastern stronghold of the cacos was offered as geographic justification for what was, in substance, the mass killing of a sovereign people in their own land.