Landowners and macoutes massacre peasant organizers at Jean-Rabel

On 23 July 1987 armed men fell on the peasants around Jean-Rabel, in the Nord-Ouest, about 220 kilometres from Port-au-Prince. At least 139 people were killed. Most of the dead belonged to Tet Ansanm, the peasant movement pressing the big landholders for land. The killers were paramilitaries led by macoutes, said to be acting on the orders of the landowner Remy Lucas; days earlier General Henri Namphy had come to the area and publicly backed the Lucas family’s claim. One landowner later boasted on television that he had killed a thousand communists. Arrest warrants did not come until 13 September 1995, and when Remy Lucas, Leonard Lucas and Jean-Michel Richardson were finally picked up in 1999 they were held only briefly. Duvalier was gone eighteen months and the peasants who asked for land were still being shot.