1934-08-14: (The U.S.

1934-08-14: (The U.S. Marines Withdraw From Haiti After Nineteen Years of Military Occupation, Leaving Behind a National Guard, a Road System, and an Intact Mulatto Elite Power Structure That the Occupation Had Reinforced Rather Than Reformed): On August 14, 1934, the last U.S. Marines withdrew from Haiti, ending nineteen years of military occupation. The occupation had built roads, bridges, hospitals, and schools. It had brought clean water to Port-au-Prince and connected the major towns by telegraph. It had also killed over two thousand Haitians in the Cacos Rebellion, reimposed forced labor through the corvée system, excluded the Black majority from political participation, reinforced the mulatto elite’s control of the economy, and treated Haiti as a colonial possession in all but name. The Marines left behind a National Guard trained and armed by the United States, which became the instrument through which future strongmen would seize and hold power. The occupation had not created a democracy. It had not reformed the political system. It had not addressed the structural poverty that the French indemnity and a century of misgovernment had produced. It had modernized Haiti’s infrastructure while leaving intact every social and political pathology that had defined the Republic since independence. The Ligue Féminine d’Action Sociale, the Women’s League for Social Action, was also established in 1934, along with the Haitian Communist Party, both markers of a civil society that was emerging from occupation with new ambitions and new organizational forms.