1957, April–May 25: (Confusion Confounded: The Collège Croupion, the Bat Tenèb, St.

1957, April–May 25: (Confusion Confounded: The Collège Croupion, the Bat Tenèb, St. Marc’s Roadblock, the Cathedral Shooting on Flag Day, and Colonel Armand’s Coup — Port-au-Prince’s First Air Raid and the Unfused Bomb): Now was confusion confounded. Cantave tried to set up a collegium of representatives designated by each candidate — foredoomed, with candidates popping in and out of hiding, representatives flouncing in and out of sessions, and general strikes halting the economy. Every night came a lugubrious din called bat tenèb — people hammering iron light poles or fuel drums with rocks or skillets to produce atonal tintinnabulations indicating discontent or mourning. Le Matin reported that the country was without a government and on the verge of anarchy, the army the only possible arbiter. Simultaneous convulsions of color, class, and region raged: mobs attacked schools, arch-mulâtre Jérémie was invaded by 10,000 piquets and set aflame, the Cap, Gonaïves, and St. Marc were taken over by Committees of Public Safety, and at St. Marc machete-wielding peasants heaped boulders and tree trunks in a sixty-foot barricade to block traffic and food from reaching Port-au-Prince. On Flag Day, May 18, sixty-six years almost to the day of the Fête-Dieu attentat against Hyppolite, the cathedral was again the scene of carnage — Fignolist mobs from Bel Air converged roaring À bas le collège croupion and were held at bay only when police fired into them, killing two. The collège demanded Cantave’s resignation and appointed police chief Armand to succeed him; on May 25, prompted by Déjoie, Colonel Armand concentrated cadets, aviation, police, and the artillery battery at Bowen Field, seized Radio Commerce, proclaimed Cantave deposed, and sent the one flyable airplane — piloted by civilian Henri Wiener — on a leaflet-strike, then rearmed for a second sortie. Port-au-Prince underwent its first air raid: the DC-3 swooped past the palace and over the casernes, where through the side door rolled a bomb which tumbled over and over, hit the parade ground with a bounce, and skidded unexploded to rest beside the brig — in the excitement, nobody had thought to fuse it. The artillery, three old 105s, clattered onto the Champ de Mars and commenced firing on the casernes, but most rounds landed in the bay 2,000 yards over; Captain André Fareau, emulating Charles de Delva in 1915, led a squad down the Bois-de-Chêne ravine and picked off three officers and two cannoneers from 200 yards while massed crowds cheered from the grandstand. The Armand coup failed; Msgr. Augustin shuttled between camps and brokered a cease-fire in which both Cantave and Armand would retire, while the three noir candidates joined ranks to the exclusion of Déjoie and agreed on Fignolé as provisional president.