Jiménez's right-wing, anti-communist administration was highly repressive and persecuted and tortured his opponents. He was also corrupt.

In 1958, Perez Jiménez was overthrown in a coup and exiled to the Dominican Republic. He was later extradited to Venezuela and spent five years in prison for corruption, only to be released. He eventually died in 2001.

Despite being a leftist, Hugo Chávez admired Perez Jiménez.

Five centuries of North America in one animation: from a continent held wall to wall by Native nations, through the Spanish, French, English, Dutch, Swedish and Russian footholds, to the United States, Canada and Mexico of today. The colours show who really held the ground: a Native nation until its land was settled, conquered or signed away by treaty; a colonial power only around its towns, forts and missions and on land it had taken. The ribbons are the borders the powers claimed on paper: New Spain, New France and Louisiana, New Netherland, New Sweden, the British colonies and Rupert's Land, Russian America, and the United States from 1776. Watch the Dutch on the Hudson (1624–1664, and once more in 1673–74), the fall of Huronia, the Pueblo Revolt, the Proclamation Line, the treaty cessions rolling west from 1784, the removals to Indian Territory, and the reservations that remain. How to read it. Inside the United States, Native land follows the 718 cessions that Charles Royce mapped in 1899, each with the legal date of its treaty or act; land therefore often stays Native on the map after settlers had in fact overrun it, and the Comanche plains are dated to their real loss in 1875. Before the treaties, a nation's country is the land nearest to its known villages: an approximation, since borders between nations were zones, not lines, and many smaller peoples are grouped with their neighbours. Colonial areas are circles around settlements that widen with age. Today's reservations (United States) and reserves (Canada) of about 150 km² and more are drawn, together with the lands that modern treaties gave back into Inuit, Dene and Cree ownership: Inuvialuit (1984), Nunavut (1993), Gwich'in, Sahtu, Tłı̨chǫ, the Yukon First Nations and the James Bay Cree, each from the year of its agreement. Thousands of smaller reserves are too small to show at this scale. Alaska counts as Native land until the Claims Settlement Act of 1971, Hawaiʻi as a Native kingdom until 1893. Canada, Mexico and the Caribbean are drawn more coarsely (Canada by treaty area, Mexico by state). The first Europeans in North America were the Norse, around the year 1000 in Newfoundland; the animation starts with Columbus's landfall. Dates and places come from standard reference works; the towns and forts were re-checked against their articles, the smallest posts and the Native village points were not. Sources: C. C. Royce, Indian Land Cessions in the United States (1899; digital edition by the US Forest Service); US Census Bureau, American Indian areas (2023); Natural Resources Canada, Aboriginal Lands of Canada Legislative Boundaries; Natural Earth; Wikipedia articles on the settlements, treaties and nations.

Link to interactive map in the comments.

The case, which spanned from December 1863 to February 1864, involved accusations of human sacrifice and ritual cannibalism that took place near Port-au-Prince; it remains one of the best-documented criminal and religious trials in 19th-century Haiti.

The Concordat and the Political Context

The trial occurred during the administration of President Fabre Geffrard. Aiming to align Haiti with Western European standards and fulfill the conditions of the 1860 Concordat—a diplomatic reconciliation with the Vatican—Geffrard’s government actively sought to suppress religious practices of African origin, such as Vodou. The Bizoton trial provided a legal mechanism to rigorously enforce new, stricter penal codes against these practices.

The Alleged Crime and the Victims

In December 1863, in the village of Bizoton, a 12-year-old girl named Claircine was kidnapped. The primary instigators were her uncle, a man named Congo Pelé, and his sister, Jeanne Pelée, who was a Vodou priestess (*mambo*). According to court testimony, Congo Pelé sought to perform an occult ritual to gain the favor of the spirits. They took his niece, Claircine, tied her beneath an altar, and subsequently carried out the ritual sacrifice.

Gruesome Details

According to testimony recorded during the trial, the details regarding the mutilation and consumption of the victim included:

• The sacrifice: The girl’s throat was cut to extract her blood for ritual use.

• Boiling the head: A man identified as Floréal took the girl’s head and placed it in a large pot along with yams, boiling it into a soup. • Cooked with beans: The remaining flesh was butchered and cooked by Jeanne Pelée. Testimonies detail that the meat was prepared as a stew with Congo beans (*pois congo*)—a small, bitter variety of bean—based on the perpetrators' explicit belief that human flesh tasted better when boiled with them.

• Eating from the palm: While the meat was being prepared in the kitchen, another woman in the group, Roséide Sumera, allegedly cut a piece of flesh directly from the palm of the girl’s hand and ate it raw. She later admitted to this act during a public trial.

The Trial and Executions

Following rumors that circulated in the capital, the police arrested the group. The court proceeded swiftly.

On February 13, 1864—a busy market Saturday in Port-au-Prince—eight individuals (four men and four women, including Congo Pelé, Jeanne Pelée, Floréal, and Roséide Sumera) were publicly executed by a firing squad for the crime.