Gendarmerie of Haiti

Smedley Butler, shown here wearing U.S. Marine Corps uniform in later life, was Haiti's first commandant of gendarmerie.

The United States invaded Haiti in the last half of 1915. The invasion followed the violation of the French embassy in Port-au-Prince by a mob that seized Haitian president Vilbrun Guillaume Sam, who had earlier fled to the legation owing to popular unrest, and "mutilated his body in the street."[1] Admiral William Banks Caperton, leading the initial landing force, declared martial law and ordered the Haitian army dissolved.[1] In the absence of functioning police, U.S. Marines assumed civilian law enforcement duties, but occupation authorities had already set into motion plans to raise a local police force with the Haitian–American Convention, obligating Haiti's American-established interim government to "create without delay an efficient constabulary, urban and rural."[1][2][3]

The Gendarmerie of Haiti was formally established in December 1915. It became operational in February of the following year, with Smedley Butler (then a Marine Corps major) assuming the post of commandant of gendarmes and the Haitian rank of major general.[4][5] Officers, non-commissioned officers, and enlisted personnel of the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps were initially placed in command of the force, holding officer commissions from the Haitian government while retaining their United States commissions and enlistment status.[5] The process for commissioning of officers was set out in the Haitian–American Convention:[3]

All American officers of the gendarmerie shall be appointed by the President of Haiti upon nomination by the President of the United States, and will be replaced by Haitians when they have shown by examination  ... that they are fit for command.

Early attempts to establish an officer candidate school to train an indigenous officer corps from among Haiti's educated upper class failed due to a reluctance among potential candidates to be seen collaborating with the American occupation, and by the perception that the methods of American military instruction were demeaning.[5] Enlisted gendarmes, meanwhile, were recruited from indigenous Haitians who were paid between $10 and $25 per month.[5]

The gendarmerie was equipped initially with the Krag–Jørgensen bolt-action rifle.[6] Uniforms were surplus Marine Corps uniforms with plain buttons in lieu of buttons embossed with the Marine Corps Eagle, Globe, and Anchor.[7]

gendarmerie sub-District headquarters at Gros-Morne, Artibonite pictured in the 1920s

The gendarmerie quickly evolved into the cornerstone of the United States occupation, and gendarmerie officers had practical control over the U.S. client government of Philippe Sudré Dartiguenave; one visiting American observer noted that: "the actual running of the government comes pretty near being vested in General Butler and his young colonels and majors."[5] On one occasion, the Haitian ambassador to the United States balked at the idea of signing a Butler-inspired compact that would give the gendarmerie control of the nation's postal service. Butler forced the issue by placing an armed guard in President Dartiguenave's office, with instructions to compel Dartiguenave to telegraph the ambassador with orders to sign the agreement "or else".[7]

Even at the local level, junior officers were virtual "potentates", having not only military and police authority in their jurisdictions, but also being responsible to sit as judges in civil and criminal cases, to collect taxes, to manage prisons, to enforce weights and measures, to register vital statistics, and to audit the financial records of municipal governments.[8] Interference by gendarmerie officers into local governmental affairs prompted Solon Ménos, the Haitian ambassador to the United States, to file a complaint with the U.S. State Department, observing that: "the American officers of the Haitian gendarmerie  ... have extended their powers for the communal councils to such an extent that they wish to act as administrators of the commune and not rest within their powers."[9]

A Haitian gendarme photographed by Harry A. Franck in 1920

Some gendarmerie actions, including the enforcement of government press censorship, and the use of conscripted civilian labor for infrastructure development, have been cited as factors leading to the Second Caco War (1918–20), a rebellion by Haitians against the occupation.[10]

The conflict erupted on October 17, 1918, with an attack by 100 rebel cacos on a gendarmerie barracks. The assault was repulsed with significant loss of life, and commanding officer Lieutenant Patrick Kelly earned Haiti's Médaille militaire and a promotion to captain for his role in the defense of the barracks.[8] A wave of small-scale rebel attacks on isolated gendarmerie outposts followed; over a six-month period in 1919, the gendarmerie reported more than 130 engagements with cacos.[8][11]

The 1919 Battle of Port-au-Prince saw the first major action between gendarmes and rebels, and after-action dispatches reported the force acquitted itself well. The day following the Battle of Port-au-Prince, a contingent of 12 gendarmes under Lt. Kemp C. Christian overran the cacos' base camp, killing 30 rebels and capturing their only field gun.[12] Nonetheless, during this period, the gendarmerie was largely dependent on the U.S. Marine Corps to provide the "muscle" for its operations, though by the end of the rebellion gendarmerie units were beginning to operate independently.[11] By 1919 an experimental gendamerie unit had been raised under the designation "Provisional Company A". Unlike the bulk of gendarmerie units, which garrisoned towns, Provisional Company A was a mobile force organized to conduct preventative patrols.[13] Chesty Puller, then a gendarmerie officer, was given the captaincy of Provisional Company A. The company's executive officer, Lt. Augustin Brunot, was one of the first indigenous Haitians to receive a commission.[13]

By the time the Second Caco War ended in 1920, 75 gendarmes had been killed in action.[8]

A headline in the Des Moines Register from 1920 announces the planned probe of U.S. Marine Corps and Haitian Gendarmerie activity during the Second Caco War.

Following the war, the U.S. Senate's Select Committee on Haiti and Santo Domingo convened a series of hearings to investigate the behavior of gendarmes and marines during the conflict.[14] Several indigenous Haitian gendarmes who were asked to submit testimony to the hearing alleged that gendarmerie officers had executed prisoners.[14] One gendarme, Eucher Jean, stated that:[2]

... during the first part of the month of November 1918, while I was a first sergeant in the Gendarmerie d'Haïti, serving in the district of Hinche, Haiti, I saw Lieut. Freeman Lang, Gendarmerie d'Haïti, take a Haitian who was prisoner, named Teka, out of the prison in the town of Hinche, and purposely execute him with a machine-gun rifle.

Despite the sometimes gruesome testimony it was generally believed the hearings were politically motivated and that individual excesses could largely be traced only to Lang and Dorcas Williams, both of whom had been acting under the orders of a Marine Corps officer who had since been committed to an insane asylum.[14] Both of the accused gendarmerie officers had been indicted by U.S. Navy court-martial prior to the hearings.[14] A separate inquiry conducted by the Haitian government concluded that, outside of 10 killings attributed to Lang and Williams, the gendarmerie's conduct of the war had been justifiable.[15]