Many
tyrants have held power over nations by preying on simple human emotions, like
fear of invasion by hostile neighbors or by nationalistic pride in conquest
over weaker countries. Others have kept themselves in government by rigged
elections or by arm suppression of their own downtrodden populations.
But only one modern dictator has ever
managed to keep his people enslaved by a grisly combination of machine-gun and
mysticism, by the force of a vicious police state and an unholy alliance with
the Devil himself and his legions of demons and ghost, vampire and zombies.
In the era that saw austronauts land on
the moon and orbiting laboratories in space, President Doc Duvalier still ruled
the republic of Haiti by bullets and black magic, by real live bogeyman who
carried very real automatic pistols and by a supernatural ‘police force’ of
living skeletons raised from the dead. Millions of Haitians who suffered the
terrors of his 15 years of brutal dictatorship are convinced that he still
reigns from beyond the grave, controlling his country’s destiny from within the
gates of Hell.
The bitter irony of the plight the 5
million inhabitants of Haiti is that their struggling nation was once hailed as
the most progressive in the Caribbean, a proud democracy which showed the way
for other countries to free themselves from exploiters and foreign rule.
Haiti
shares the island of Hispaniola with the Dominican
Republic, and its lush and rolling sub-tropical forests
were one of the wondrous sights of the New World
for explorer Christopher Columbus when his ship foundered and was wreked there
in December 1492. It was an inauspicious start for a new nation. And over the
centuries the people of that island have paid terrible price for its accidental
introduction to the adventurers from the Old World.
By the end of the 16th century
most of the original population of Arawak Indians had been wiped out. Many fell
victim to newly introduced European diseases. The survivors were literally
worked to death on the plantations of their new Spanish masters. When the
Spaniards moved on, there was little left to plunder for the next occupants,
the rapacious pirates who used Hispaniola as
their base for marauding, murder and looting. The buccaneers who controlled the
whole western part of island renamed their territory by its original Indian
name- Haiti.
They were soon ousted by a new set of
colonial rulers, the French, who revived the plantation system and peopled
Haiti with black slaves captured on the west coast of Africa and packed into
stinking hulks for the voyage their new ‘home’ the wretched slaves brought with
them only two possessions- hatred of their new oppressors and their age-old
belief in African witchcraft and demons. The first of these two emotions was to
lead to uprisings so passionate and violent that even the all conquering Emperor
Napoleon eventually had to concede defeat in 1804 and Haiti, with its short history of
bloodshed and superstition, became the first independent black-governed
republic in the world.
Over the years this unhappy land lurched
from one incompetent or greedy regime to another. From 1915 to 1934 it was
occupied by US Marines. There followed a string of provincial presidents,
mostly mullatto descendants of mixed French-negro marriages, each being toppled
in the midst of scandal and crisis which only made the already poverty-stricken
population more miserable.
But in 1957 a popular new president
emerged: Francois Duvalier known to his friends and foes alike as Papa Doc’.
Duvalier was trained doctor, working on a US medical aid scheme before he
turned to politics. Since they provided almost the only source of incoming for Haiti,
the Americans were pleased to see a modern man of medicine as the new ruler.
But the black peasant who formed 95 percent of the population welcomed him for
a totally different reason.
To them Duvalier was not so much a
doctor, more medicine man and pure descendant of African slaves. They were
enthralled by his by his open boast that he was a skilled witch doctor with
experience in the dark practices of voodoo religion, a mixture of
French-inspired Christianity and ancient African superstition. Papa Doc
promised that by witchcraft and black magic ritual he would summon the devil
himself to share his power with all the voodoo worshippers of Haiti. On a more practical note, to
placate the more educated political opposition, he vowed that the millions of
dollars in American aid would be used to raise living standards. At that time
only ten percent of the population were literate, the national income averaged
1 a week and most Haitians died of malnutrition and disease by age of 35.
Within
a few years of gaining control, Papa Doc made it plain he would share
his power with no-one. Most of the finance from the United States was funnelled into
his own private bank accounts while he lived in seclusion in his palatial
presidential mansion. In 1961 he declared himself president for life in ordered
the Ill-disciplined Haitian Army to murder scores of political opponents. Their
bodies were strung up on lamps post around the capital, Port-au-Prince, with bloody voodoo symbols
engraved on their corpses.
They had been killed, Papa Doc warned
by the forces of Baron Samedi’, the avenging zombies of witchcraft. Baron
Samedi, a hellish figure dressed in black hat and suit of mourning , was voodoo
demon, a soul raised from the dead to prowl the earth and carry out the wishes
of the Devil.
To ensure that his own army was in fear
of him, Duvalier raised a secret police force, the Ton Ton Macoute- voodoo
bogeymen who swore allegiance to him as the supreme witch doctor. The 10,000
member of the Ton Ton were given the task to killing hundreds of Army officers
who were threatening rebellion against the blood thirsty tyrant. In return they
were given free rein to terrorize the countryside, looting and stealing from
starving peasants, carrying out murders which were always staged to bear the
hallmarks of terrifying religious ritual.
The savagery of Papa Doc and his
declaration of grotesque cult of voodoo as Haiti’s official national religion
looked certain to prove his downfall. In the United States, recently elected
President John F. Kennedy reacted with fury and indignation. Reflecting the
civilized world’s revulsion with Papa Doc’s depravity Kennedy announced that
American aid to Haiti
would cease as long as the Devil worshipper was in power. It was thought to be
only a matter of time the fangs of hunger or Haitians overcame their fear of
demons and zombies. As the rumbling of discontent grew, even the gunmen of the
Ton Ton Macoute were hard pressed to silence the increasing number of voices
raised in anger against Duvalier.
For Papa Doc there was only one
source of help to which he could turn. With power slowly beginning to slip from
his grasp, he announced that he had performed a nightmarish voodoo ceremony to
raise the devil from hell to put a curse on the American President. Six weeks
later, John F. Kennedy died of an assassin bullet in Dallas.
In Haiti the news was greeted with
stunned despair. Nothing could shake the belief of terrified Haitians that the
trigger of the assassin’s gun had been pulled by the bony finger of the
grinning zombie Baron Samedi. Now Duvalier found new ways to bleed his people
dry- literally. Still grasping for the American dollars, he used the Ton Ton
Macoute to round up thousands Haitians daily and march them to medical center
in the capital, Port-ou-Prince. There each was given a week’s wages 1 in
exchange for a litre.
Papa Doc continued to rule supreme in Haiti.
Any challenge to his power was met swiftly by the murder squads of the Ton Ton
Macoute. In 1971, dying of diabetes and heart disease, he altered the
constitution of Haiti to allow his podgy playboy son Jean-Claude, known as Baby
Doc, to assume the mantle of power….Papa Doc had been president for life. Now
he was trying to ensure that his power devilish dynasty survived even in death.
