On July 28, 1915 the United States invaded Haiti, and imposed its diktat on the nation for close to two decades. The immediate pretext for the military intervention was the country’s chronic political instability that had culminated in the overthrow, mob killing, and bloody dismemberment of President Jean Vilbrun Guillaume Sam.

The American takeover was in tune with the Monroe Doctrine, first declared in 1823, that justified the United States presumption that it had the unilateral right to interfere in the domestic affairs of Latin America. But it was not until the late 1800s when America had become a major world capitalist power that it actually acquired the capacity to fulfill its extra-continental imperial ambitions. In 1898 it seized Cuba, Puerto Rico, and Guam and soon afterwards took control of the Philippines, the Dominican Republic, and Haiti.

The US’s goal was to transform the Caribbean into an “American Mediterranean” inoculated from the influence of French, German, and Spanish power.