François Duvalier

Dr. François Duvalier, known as "Papa Doc" (April 14, 1907 – April 21, 1971 ), was the President of Haiti from 1957 and later dictator (President for Life) from 1964 until his death. His rule was marked by autocracy, corruption, and reliance on private armies (see Tonton Macoute) to maintain power.

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 and lived in an asylum until she died in 1921. Largely raised by an aunt, he completed a degree in medicine from the University of Haiti in 1934. He served as a hospital staff physician until 1943, when he become active in a US-sponsored campaign to control 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 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, as did the latent political power of the resentment of the incredibly poor black majority against the tiny, powerful mulatto Haitian elite.

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

1957 election
Through an election viewed as rigged by the Army (FADH), Duvalier won the 1957 Haitian election; 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.

Duvalier revived the traditions of vodou and later used them to consolidate his power, claiming 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 and talked with the strong nasal tone associated with the Loa. Propaganda by the Duvalier regime indicated candidly 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
Early in his presidency 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 and, possibly as a result of a subsequent insulin overdose, was unconscious for nine hours. Many associates believed that the neurological damage he sustained during the long period of time he was unconscious affected his mental health and made him paranoid and irrational.

After surviving an attempted coup in mid-1958, Duvalier curtailed the power of the army through a rural militia, the Volontaires de la Sécurité Nationale (MVSN). Commonly referred to as the Tonton Macoute, which derived from the Creole term for a fabled bogeyman, Tonton Macoute was patterned after the blackshirts of Fascist Italy. The macoutes made no official salary and as such made their living through crime and extortion. By 1961 the macoute 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 Macoute's influence throughout the county created and bolstered support for and loyalty to Duvalier and later his son.

In 1961, he rewrote the constitution and then staged a single-candidate sham election; the official count was 1.32 million votes for Duvalier and none against. He had the Haitian National Assembly vote him "President for Life” in 1964, and 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 got 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 his secret police, Duvalier declared himself "president for life", and rewrote the constitution to pass power onto his son Jean-Claude upon his death. Educated professionals fled Haiti in droves for New York, French speaking Montreal, Paris, and several French Speaking African countries (some of the higly skilled professionals joining the ranks of several UN agencies), creating a brain drain that exacerbated an already serious lack of doctors and teachers. Peasant land holdings had been confiscated and allotted to members of the Tonton Macoute; the dispossessed swelled the slums by fleeing to the capital to seek meagre incomes to feed themselves. Malnutrition and famine had become 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, largely 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" but 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. However, U.S. pressure and sanctions against Haiti eased in 1962, as the administration grudgingly accepted Duvalier as a bulwark against communism. Duvalier would later claim that Kennedy's assassination had come because he had placed a curse 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, claiming 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 bombs detonated near the Presidential Palace led to the execution of twenty Presidential Guard officers.

Such tactics kept the country in his grip until his death in early 1971, leaving his 19-year-old son Jean-Claude Duvalier as his successor.