François Duvalier

Dr. François Duvalier, known as "Papa Doc" (April 14, 1907 – April 21, 1971), was the President of Haiti from 1957 to 1971. In 1964 he made himself President for Life. He ruled until his death in 1971, in a regime marked by autocracy, corruption, and state-sponsored terrorism through his private militia known as Tonton Macoutes. He was estimated to have caused the deaths of 30,000 and exile of thousands more.

Early life

Born in Port-au-Prince, Duvalier was the son of Duval Duvalier, a justice of the peace, and Ulyssia Abraham, a mentally unstable woman who worked in a bakery. She lived in an asylum until she died in 1921. Largely raised by an aunt, Duvalier completed a degree in medicine from the University of Haiti in 1934. He served as staff physician at several local hospitals until 1943, when he became active in a US-sponsored campaign to control the spread of contagious tropical diseases. He spent a year at the University of Michigan studying public health and won acclaim for helping the poor fight yaws, malaria and other tropical diseases that ravaged Haiti for years.

François Duvalier had a front seat for an era of Latin American political turmoil. The invasion of US Marines on Haitian soil in 1915, followed by incessant violent repressions of political dissent, and American-installed puppet rulers, left a powerful impression on the young Duvalier. He was also aware of the latent political power of the resentment of the terribly poor black majority against the tiny but powerful Haitian elite class of mulatto or mixed-race peoples.

Lucky enough to be schooled and literate in a country where all but a tiny handful were illiterate, Doctor Duvalier became involved in the négritude (black pride) movement of Haitian author Dr. Jean Price Mars. He began an ethnological study of Vodou, Haiti's native religion, that would later pay enormous political dividends.

In 1939 Duvalier married Simone Ovide. They had four children: Marie Denise, Nicole, Simone, and Jean-Claude, their only son. He became director general of the National Public Health Service in 1946. In 1949, Duvalier served as minister of both health and labor. Having opposed the coup d'état of Paul Magloire, he left the government and was forced into hiding in 1954 until an amnesty was declared in 1956.

1957 election

Magloire resigned the presidency in December, 1956, leaving Haiti to be ruled by a succession of provisional governments. Through an election viewed as rigged by the Army (FADH), Duvalier won the presidency in September, 1957. He had campaigned as a populist leader, using a noiriste strategy of challenging the mulatto elite, who had created a class structure that divided the country, and appealing to the Afro-Haitian majority. After being sworn in on October 22, 1957, Duvalier revived the traditions of vodou. Later he used them to consolidate his power as he claimed to be a houngan , or vodou priest himself.

Duvalier deliberately modeled his image on that of Baron Samedi in an effort to make himself even more imposing. He often donned sunglasses to hide his eyes and talked with the strong nasal tone associated with the loa. Duvalier regime propaganda candidly stated that "Papa Doc: was one with the loas, Jesus Christ, and God himself. The most celebrated image from the time shows a standing Jesus Christ with hand on a seated Papa Doc's shoulder with the caption "I have chosen him".

Consolidation of power

After surviving an attempted coup in mid-1958, Duvalier curtailed the power of the army through a rural militia, the Milice Volontaires de la Sécurité Nationale (MVSN, National Security Volunteers). Commonly referred to as the Tonton Macoutes, which derived from the Creole term for a fabled bogeyman, they were patterned after the paramilitary blackshirts of Fascist Italy. The Macoutes had no official salary and made their living through crime and extortion.

In 1959, Papa Doc suffered from a heart attack and sustained oxygen deprivation that may have affected his sanity. He had been a diabetic since early adulthood and also suffered from heart disease and associated circulatory problems. On May 24, 1959 Duvalier suffered a massive heart attack. Possibly as a result of a subsequent insulin overdose, he was unconscious for nine hours. Many associates believed that he suffered neurological damage during these events that affected his mental health and made him paranoid and irrational. While recovering, Duvalier left power in the hands of the leader of the Tonton Macoutes, Clement Barbot. Upon his recovery, Duvalier accused Barbot of trying to supplant him as president and ordered him imprisoned.

By 1961 the Tonton Macoutes had more power than the army. Extraordinarily loyal to Duvalier, the group terrorized, tortured, and murdered those who seemed in any way to oppose the Duvalier regime. These threats were often aimed at social aid or community organizations without explicit political affiliations. The Tonton Macoutes' influence throughout the country created and bolstered support for and loyalty to Duvalier and later his son.

Internationally, Duvalier's government was known to be rife with corruption. In 1961 the United States cut off most of its economic assistance to the country. Duvalier responded by rewriting the constitution and then staging a single-candidate sham election two years before his term had been scheduled to end. The official count was 1.32 million votes for Duvalier and none against.

In April, 1963, he released Barbot from prison. Barbot started on a plot to remove Duvalier from office by kidnapping his children. The plot did not succeed, and Duvalier subsequently ordered a massive search for Barbot and his fellow conspirators. During the search, Duvalier received information that Barbot had transformed himself into a black dog. Duvalier then ordered that all black dogs in Haiti be put to death. Barbot was later captured, and was shot to death by the Tonton Macoutes in July, 1963. In other incidents, Duvalier ordered the head of an executed rebel to be packed in ice and brought to him to allow him to commune with the dead man's spirit.

Duvalier had the Haitian National Assembly enact a new constitution making him "President for Life” in 1964. His regime soon grew to be one of the most repressive in the hemisphere.

Papa Doc expelled almost all of Haiti's foreign-born bishops in the name of nationalism and replaced them with his political allies, an act that earned him excommunicated from the Catholic church. But in 1966, Duvalier managed to persuade the Vatican to allow him to nominate the Catholic hierarchy for Haiti. On an ideological level, this perpetuated the notion of black nationalism by allowing the country to appoint its own bishops. It also allowed Duvalier to expand his control to encompass religious institutions. With his enemies cowed and the entire nation in fear of the Tonton Macoutes, who increasingly assumed the character of a secret police force, Duvalier ruled Haiti as an uncrowned and nearly absolute monarch.

Educated professionals fled Haiti in droves for New York City, Miami, French-speaking Montreal, Paris, and several French-speaking African countries. Some of the highly skilled professionals joined the ranks of several UN agencies. The exodus created a brain drain that exacerbated an already serious lack of doctors and teachers; the country has never recovered. Duvalier's government confiscated peasant land holdings to be allotted to members of the Tonton Macoutes; the dispossessed swelled the slums by fleeing to the capital to seek meagre incomes to feed themselves. Malnutrition and famine became endemic. Most of the aid money given to Haiti was spent improperly.

Duvalier enjoyed significant support among Haiti's majority black rural population who saw in him a champion of their claims against the historically dominant mulatto élite. During his fourteen years in power, he created a substantial black middle class, chiefly through government patronage.

Foreign relations

Papa Doc often rebuked the United States for its friendly relations with the Dominican Republic’s Rafael Trujillo while leaving the "poor negro Republic out in the cold." Duvalier's repression often provoked an unfavorable response from the Kennedy administration. The United States attempted to seek a moderate alternative in hopes of preventing another Cuban-style revolution. U.S. pressure and sanctions against Haiti eased in 1962, as the administration grudgingly accepted Duvalier as a bulwark against communism in the Caribbean. Duvalier later claimed Kennedy's assassination resulted from a curse that he had placed on him..

In April 1963, Haiti was almost attacked by the Dominican Republic. However, a lack of senior military support for Dominican president Juan Bosch prevented the invasion. The conflict was mediated by the OAS.

Reign of terror

In addition to his pervasive control over Haitian life, Duvalier also fostered an extensive personality cult around himself, and claimed to be the physical embodiment of the island nation. Within the country, Duvalier used both political murder and expulsion to suppress his opponents; estimates of those killed are as high as 30,000. Attacks on Duvalier from within the military were treated as especially serious; in 1967 the fact that bombs were detonated near the Presidential Palace led to his execution of twenty Presidential Guard officers.

Such tactics kept the country in Duvalier's grip until his death in early 1971. His 19-year-old son Jean-Claude Duvalier followed him as president.

Popular culture

• Arcade Fire, a baroque rock band from Montreal, recorded the song "Haiti" for their first album, Funeral. The parents of Régine Chassagne, a multi-instrumentalist and singer in the band, fled Haiti in the 1960s during "Papa Doc" Duvalier's rule. The lyrics are a fluid mix of English and French. "Haiti, my country, wounded mother I'll never see/My family set me free/Throw my ashes into the sea/My cousins, never born, haunt the nights of Duvalier."
• The Comedians, a 1966 novel by Graham Greene is set in Haiti during the reign of "Papa Doc". Its portrayal of Haiti as a country falling into barbarism enraged Duvalier so much that he attacked the novel personally in the press and also made his Ministry of Foreign Affairs publish a brochure "Graham Greene Demasque" (Finally Exposed). Still people bought the book.

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