Charlemagne Peralte was a Haitian nationalist leader who opposed the U.S. invasion of his country in 1915. Leading guerrilla fighters called the Cacos, he posed such a challenge to the U.S. forces in Haiti that the occupying forces had to upgrade their presence in the country. He took up arms mainly to defend the Haitian peasants and Haiti's sovereignty.
In the summer of 1919, U.S. authorities secretly launched a campaign to kill Peralte. They founded Jean Baptiste Conzé, a lieutenant in the Cacos' movement. He betrayed the movement for $2,000 in cash and the promise of the rank of officer (which was exclusively the domain of White Americans) in the Gendarmerie.
On the evening of October 31, 1919, Conzé smuggled a U.S. Marine Sergeant named Herman H. Hanneken, who headed this operation and Corporal William R. Button, both in black face, together with 18 Gendarmes into a Cacos camp near Grande Riviere du Nord, where Peralte sat by a fire. Hanneken shot two bullets at close range into Peralte’s back, instantly killing him. The rest of the camp, about 1,200 men, was machine gunned in the surprise operation. The next day, before burying Peralte’s body in an unmarked grave, U.S. authorities photographed the corpse tied to a door, with the Haitian flag draped around its head, and then dropped thousands of copies of the photo over the entire country.
In conclusion, being hunted down and then executed, the U.S. Marines who killed Charlemagne Peralte, nailed his dead body to a door in the public square in the North of Haiti at Cap-Haitien and photographed the body to start their conspiracy in order to scared the Haitians away from taking up arms against their savagery. They did partly succeed in their conspiracy but as always, they never actually stop the Haitian resistance movement. The Cacos movement die out though but their movement left behind a martyr whom stood up to fight for the empowerment of the Haitian people. Majority of Haitians by then, after the death of Peralte, came to viewed the Occupation as a project of “savages” and Peralte as a martyr for Haiti’s sovereignty.
This is what was inscribed on the marble at his gravestone at the Cap Haitien cemetery. It's a poem written by Christian Werleigh.
"Dead at thirty three years of age, betrayed like Christ, Exposed nude under his flag, crucified;
As one day he had dared to promise it to us,
And for our Nation he sacrificed himself.
Confronting the American, and alone to shout: 'Halt':
Let's bare our head before Charlemagne Peralte!"
