In the San Juan valley, near the border with Haïti, followers of a Vodu faith healer named Liborio resisted the occupation and aided the Haitian "cacos" in their war against the Americans, until his death in 1922. When the Haitian and Dominican forces began to fight the U.S. interventions, they suffered immensely due to the superiority of U.S. training and technology. They were poorly armed and a "minority of them carried old-model black-powder rifles; the majority went into battle with swords, machetes, and pikes." The obsolete weapons as well as the lack of training and institutional control over the regional armed forces ensured American military preeminence in the region.