Aristide's rise was inseparable from Haiti's suffering. Since 1957, the Duvalier dynasty - first Francois "Papa Doc," then his son Jean-Claude "Baby Doc" - had ruled through the Tonton Macoute, a paramilitary force responsible for an estimated 20,000 to 60,000 deaths. By 1985, chronic malnutrition gripped the population, and roughly 24,000 people - just 1 to 2 percent of Haitians - controlled 40 percent of the country's wealth. Aristide, a priest ministering in Port-au-Prince's slums, joined Ti Legliz ("Little Church"), a coalition of Catholic groups influenced by liberation theology. When Jean-Claude fled to France in February 1986, the movement that pushed him out became the movement that would carry Aristide to the presidency. His political coalition, Lavalas - Creole for "avalanche" - captured the name's implication exactly. It was a force that gathered mass as it moved downhill, sweeping aside decades of entrenched power.

Inaugurated on February 7, 1991, Aristide governed as though Haiti's poor had waited long enough. He opened Fort Dimanche, the Duvaliers' notorious prison, for public viewing and invited impoverished Haitians to eat with him outside the National Palace. He launched a literacy campaign, cut food prices, enforced import fees the elite had long evaded, and replaced military administrators with civilians. His vision, articulated before the United Nations, framed democracy as the right to eat, to work, to access clean water and education - a "Growth-with-Equity" model that threatened every powerful interest in Haiti.

The military resented his creation of an independent presidential security force. The wealthy feared redistribution. Washington portrayed him as anti-American and unstable. When Aristide referenced Pere Lebrun - the Haitian term for necklacing - in an August 1991 speech, critics seized on it as evidence of authoritarianism. The ground beneath him was already shifting.

The coup had been planned openly enough that officers of Michel Francois's "Cafeteria" unit briefed their troops four days in advance. Some soldiers received bribes of up to 30,000 gourdes - about $5,000 - funded by wealthy families. On the night of September 29, troops mutinied. They shut down radio stations, attacked Aristide's residence, and fired on crowds in the streets. In Cite Soleil, the sprawling slum that was Aristide's strongest base, the Washington Post reported 250 people killed in a single night. Soldiers entered shanty towns and shot indiscriminately, firing into homes and at ambulances.

An armored car loyal to Aristide carried him and French Ambassador Jean-Rafael Dufour to the National Palace, surviving two ambushes en route. At the palace, Aristide's own security service had already deserted. He was taken to army headquarters, where the ambassadors of France, Venezuela, and the United States negotiated for his life. Venezuelan President Carlos Andres Perez chartered a plane, and Aristide left Haiti from Toussaint Louverture International Airport before dawn.

What followed the coup was systematic. Soldiers killed between 4,000 and 5,000 Lavalas supporters over the next three years. Roughly 300,000 people were internally displaced. Independent media was destroyed - Felix Lamy, director of Radio Galaxie, was abducted in December 1991, and the last three independent stations shut down. The military installed Joseph Nerette as provisional president after soldiers stormed the Legislative Palace and threatened to shoot legislators who refused to vote for him.

Driven by political repression and economic collapse - international embargoes had crippled what remained of Haiti's economy - tens of thousands of Haitians fled by boat toward the United States. The Bush administration intercepted them, classified them as economic migrants rather than political refugees, and held over 7,400 at Guantanamo Bay, denying them legal counsel. The Clinton administration supported Aristide's return in principle but faced opposition from its own CIA, which reportedly fostered the paramilitary FRAPH - an organization that murdered, tortured, and raped Aristide's supporters while receiving American weapons in violation of the embargo.

International pressure built slowly and unevenly. The OAS imposed an embargo. The UN condemned the regime. The Governors Island Agreement of July 1993 laid out terms for Aristide's return by October, including amnesty for the coup leaders. But when the USS Harlan County arrived in Port-au-Prince harbor on October 11, 1993, armed FRAPH members organized a dockside demonstration that turned it away - a humiliation recalling the Mogadishu debacle days earlier.

It took another year. On September 15, 1994, President Clinton threatened military action. The next day, former President Jimmy Carter, General Colin Powell, and Senator Sam Nunn negotiated a last-minute agreement for the junta's departure. On September 19, American forces landed in Haiti as part of a 19-nation coalition authorized by UN Security Council Resolution 940. Aristide returned to Port-au-Prince on October 15, 1994, three years and sixteen days after the phone call where Cedras had laughed about the rumors.