The Immaculate Invasion » (Bargain)

Widely celebrated upon its original publication in 1999, National Book Award–winning writer Bob Shacochis’s The Immaculate Invasion is a gritty, poetic, and revelatory look at the American intervention in Haiti in 1994.

In 1994, the United States embarked on Operation Uphold Democracy, a response to the overthrow of the democratically elected Haitian government by a brutal military coup. Bob Shacochis traveled to Haiti for Harper’s and was embedded—long before the idea became popular in Iraq—with a team of Special Forces commandos for eighteen months and came away with tremendous insight into Haiti, the character of American fighters, and what can happen when an intervention turns into a misadventure. With the eye for detail and narrative skills of a critically acclaimed, award-winning novelist, Shacochis captures the exploits and frustrations, the inner lives, and the heroic deeds of young Americans as they struggle to bring democracy to a country ravaged by tyranny. The Immaculate Invasion is required reading, essential for anyone who wants to understand what has happened in Haiti in the past and what will happen in the future.

Amy Wilentz

...Shacochis proves that he is a writer of rare grace and intuition....[H]is goal is not to be objective. His goal is to tell the truthas best he can....The issue the book raises most successfully is...what role can the United States Army play in the post-Vietnam war...era if its greatest concern in any operation is the safety of its own personnel? —The New York Times Book Review

Glossary ix

Preface xv

Map of Haiti xviii

Part 1 The Day You See Me Fall Is Not the Day I Die

Vodou Rhythms 3

Repression Works 12

Cowboy Heaven 25

Talking Heads: Swing 34

Crackdown 36

Part 2 Our Work Is as Old as Our Country

The Great Voodoo War 51

Prelude to an Ass Whipping 53

The Way In 60

The Price Is Right 67

Talking Heads: Schrager 73

The Way In-Act Two 75

The Way In-Parallel Universe 82

Infil 89

Part 3 Liberation

Inside the Manifestation 97

Flamingo 108

Immaculate Invasion 114

Field Notes 124

Here's My Ass (Come Beat It If You Can) 125

Talking Heads: Miller 131

Inside the Manifestation-Act Two 132

Talking Heads: Miller 140

Through the Wire 143

Talking Heads: Jones 149

Whose Side When 152

Talking Heads: Schrager 156

Part 4 Operations Other Than War

The Imaginary Colonel 161

Field Notes 168

The Limbé Muddle 169

In Vitro Democratization 178

Field Notes 186

Unstable and Insecure 187

Preparations for the Second Coming 193

Field Notes 199

Le Borgne 200

Guerrillas in the Myths 206

Field Notes 213

Life with Commandos: You're Lucky I Don't Shoot You 214

The Chicken Takes Back the Egg 220

Part 5 Baby-sitting Ogoun Feraille

Field Notes 235

Soldiers (New and Used) 236

Field Notes 242

Crimes of the Century 243

Volunteers and Granola Munchers 251

Field Notes 257

Bitchfest 258

Santa Claus Absolved 264

Field Notes 268

How to Cook a Captain 269

Portaprens 279

Mission Sag 283

Field Notes 292

Ansanm, Ansanm, Nou Se Lavalas (Together, Together, We Are the Flood) 294

Fictions 302

Ogoun Feraille, the God of War 309

Exfilration 321

Part 6 Beyond the Mountain

Talking Heads: Master Sergeant Frank Norbury and Captain Garth Estadt, ODA 344 331

Hope 333

311 Redux-Wildebeests 335

The Poet of Savanette 343

Tet Caylé 347

The Legendary Whatever 352

Limbé, Finé 356

Madonna and Child in Hell 360

Happy Anniversary 364

It Always Ends This Way 369

Epilogue

Talking Heads: General Dick Potter 377

Sandy's Slide 379

Big Eaters 387

Afterword 395

Acknowledgments 417

Index 419