Tony Savino has been covering Haiti with his cameras since 1987, when he covered the first attempted elections after the fall of Jean-Claude (Baby Doc) Duvalier on assignment for Time Magazine. Those elections were aborted, along with the Haitian people’s democratic aspirations, in a bloody military coup.

Savino continued to photograph the stormy political landscape, which was punctuated by more violent coups-de-etat and counter coups as Haiti’s ruling elite fought for control over the country. In 1990, a popular movement swept the nation, bringing a priest with fiery class and anti-imperialist rhetoric to power in the country’s first democratic election. The eight months that president Jean-Bertrand Aristide was in power saw the beginning of self-empowerment and an accelerated rate of popular organizing. This period came to an abrupt end eight months later with yet another bloody coup. Haiti, whose people heroically defeated Napolean’s army to create the first Black republic, was no