U.S. Marines assassinated Charlemagne Masséna Péralte in Haiti on November 1, 1919. Perarte's body was photographed nailed to a door in the town of Hinch.

　　U.S. Marines assassinated Charlemagne Masséna Péralte in Haiti on November 1, 1919. Péralte's body was nailed to a door in the town of Hinch. The U.S. military photographed the body and published photographs to try to demoralize Péralte's remaining followers. After the execution by the U.S. military, the corpse of Peralte, the leader of the Cacos, was put on display. The reverse effect, analogous to Jesus' descent from the cross, earned Peralte the honor of national martyrdom.

　Peralte was a Haitian nationalist leader who resisted the U.S. military occupation of Haiti in 1915. He led a group of guerrilla fighters known as the Cacos, who posed a challenge to the U.S. troops stationed in Haiti. After serious civil strife began and the government was again overthrown, U.S. President Woodrow Wilson sent the U.S. Marines to invade Haiti in July 1915. The U.S. occupied Haiti from 1915 to 1934. Peralte was commander of the Léogâne Municipal Army; after fleeing arrest for robbery in September 1918, Peralte declared the establishment of a provisional government in northern Haiti. Mobilizing thousands of peasant irregulars, he attacked U.S. military installations, including Port-au-Prince, on October 7, 1919. Peralte was betrayed by one of his officers, Jean-Baptiste Conze, and led by disguised U.S. Marine Sergeant Herman H. Hanneken (later promoted to second lieutenant for his service) and Corporal William Button, Grand-Rivière-du-Nord, in disguise and under the cover of night They invaded the rebel camp near Grand-Rivière, where Peralte was assassinated on November 1, 1919, after being shot in the heart from two shots in the back at point-blank range. Hanneken and his men tied Peralte's body to a donkey and fled.

　The murdered body of Perarte was released in Hinche. To discourage support for the rebels from the Haitian population, the U.S. military took photographs of Peralte's body tied to a door and distributed them throughout the country. However, it had the opposite effect, and the image, which resembled a crucifixion, became a symbol of the resistance and cemented Peralte as a martyr. 1934, due in part to the effects of the Great Depression and the hard-fought battle against Sandino's forces in Nicaragua, the good neighbor foreign policy of US President Roosevelt led to the withdrawal of the Marines from Haiti as well. The Marines were to withdraw from Haiti.