Haitian villain Francois Duvalier originally frightened his people: "I will enchant you!" His promises were believed because the methods of persuasion were simple and straightforward. The military-political dictatorship was based on the physical elimination of all suspects of dissent. In total, over 30,000 people were killed during the reign of the voodoo president, nicknamed Papa Doc.
The island of Haiti was discovered by Christopher Columbus in 1492 and named by him Hispaniola. In 1697, the Spanish ceded the western part of the island to the French, who diligently oppressed the local population. In 1791, the voodoo priest Buckman called on the Haitians to fight the French colonialists. After his execution, the revolt was led by Jean François and Antoine Biassou and, finally, the famous Toussaint-Louverture, who after defeating the colonialists (total genocide of the whites), turned to the revolutionaries of the metropolis, where he fought against the Spaniards in the Napoleonic army, was captured and died in prison.
Jean-Jacques Dessalines and Henri Christophe continued their struggle and on January 1, 1804, under the nervous beat of drums on the island of Haiti, the first Negro republic on the planet "Land of the Mountains" was born and gained independence. In 1806, Dessalines was killed, the country split into two camps. On one side were the supporters of the mulatto Petion, the protégé of the landowners, on the other, those who supported the true African Christophe, who spoke for the poor. Then a series of different spineless personalities was in power. For 19 years the country of Haiti was occupied by the Americans, and in 1957 came the black horror - the dictatorship of Duvalier.
Francois Duvalier in May 1957
After graduating from medical school, François Duvalier got a job as assistant chief of the medical service of the American occupation forces. When the Marines left in 1934, the future "Great Benefactor" asceticised as a village doctor, and in 1940 he again became a member of the ambulance mission for newly arrived Americans. Four years later, he went on an internship at the University of Michigan to study the health care system in the United States, where he gained a lot of useful contacts.
François Duvalier and his wife Simone in 1957
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In 1946, for the first time in 30 years, a black man, Dumarcé Estilo, became Haitian President, and Dr. Duvalier became Deputy Minister of Labor and then Minister of Health. Then another junta overthrew the president, and the future dictator went into an illegal position - he was hiding with relatives, priests and friends. Out of boredom and not only he read Machiavelli's book The Sovereign.
The junta soon collapsed, a struggle for power began between the main contenders - mathematician Daniel Finnolet and lawyer Clement Jumel, and Duvalier was considered a "political pygmy" and wove a complex intrigue. Former health minister and typhus fighter Francois, having lost the fight for the softest seat in the country in 1956, with the support of the military, organized new elections with populist and anti-elite slogans.
He advised the interim president Fignola to appoint General Kerbo as commander of the army, who arrested the ill-fated mathematician 19 days later. François Duvalier easily bypassed his competitors - the Minister of Labor Jumel and the leader of the merchants, Depouy. The coming to power of Duvalier was regarded by the black population as an opportunity for historical revenge.
Presidential Palace in 1958 / Photo: W. Eugene Smith, Magnum Photos
The good doctor, humanist, ascetic declared himself an anointed of the African gods and an otherworldly being who uses the power of the spirit of the afterlife - the Baron of Saturday in domestic and foreign policy and himself believed that he was a sorcerer, Baron of the Cross and Baron of the Cemetery. And even the embodiment of Napoleon. He sat for hours in a bath with cat's blood in the ritual hat of a sorcerer, divined on goat guts, and spent one night a year at the grave of Dessalen, gaining the hero's belligerent spirit.
Also, Papa Doc often invited bokors (sorcerers) and hungans (priests) to the palace, until one of the old men did it with fear. He was given new pants and sent back to the jungle. Duvalier kept the whole island in fear for 15 years, relying on his "guardsmen" - Tonton Macoutes, abolishing all civil liberties, constitutional guarantees, banning trade unions - unbeaten leaders rotted in prisons or were expelled. He dispersed student organizations and priests, changed judges. The slightest attempt by the opposition led to raids, after which the hanged were swinging in the streets for a long time.
Life was like a horror movie: people simply disappeared at night, followed by those who tried to look for them. Every healthy person from 15 to 50 years old, and everyone who still moved was recognized as such, according to the decree of the ghoul, Duvalier was obliged to donate blood several times a year, which was highly valued in American hospitals. Preaching "black racism", Duvalier personally authorized the destruction of entire mulatto families, using their traditional confrontation with blacks, appealing to the African roots of the national idea
The military-political dictatorship was based on the systematic physical elimination of all suspected dissent. Duvalier ordered the killing of at least 500 people a year. After 6 years of bloody terror, Papa Doc held an original re-election - voters were escorted to polling stations where the word "yes" was printed on the ballots, and "no" had to be written by hand. The result of a 100% plebiscite was a foregone conclusion. And in 1964 a new Constitution was adopted, where Duvalier declared himself President for Life.
The happy islanders, noting that life in their country, to put it mildly, was a success, began to call Pope Doc nothing else but the "Sun of Haiti", "The Source of Happiness", "The Celestial Rainbow", "Apostle of Unity" and "Great Benefactor".
Haitian babies
Taunton Macoute, a Christmas character, "uncle with a jute sack," taking naughty children, an example of dark Haitian humor, became the horror of Haiti. Units modeled on the Italian Blackshirts, officially called National Security, with Werewolf Special Forces and the Fiet-Lalo (Iron Guard) special mobile group, roamed the streets.
They were founded by Kebro, who later became minister of defense, and then ambassador to the Vatican. His name, as well as the names of his successors - Barbeau, Jacmel and Lescaut, mothers frightened children. Sunglasses were an integral part of the black guardsmen, which they did not take off even at night.
Duvalier's guardsmen were self-financing and, like any "ideological" fighters, robbed and killed. There were chilling rumors, cultivated by Duvalier himself, that these "ghouls in black" were real zombies, cruel and merciless, not thinking about orders, adherents of voodoo. A somewhat less significant role was played by military intelligence with the Leopard Rapid Response Group and the Riot Control Group. After the failed military conspiracy of 1958, the competent Machiavellian quickly carried out a military reform, halving and beheading the regular army by purges.
Papa Doc is on a course of economic liberation. Despite the implementation of several major national projects, such as the construction of the airport in Port-au-Prince, the economy went into a tailspin. A wave of ruin swept across the country, but the cunning "Source of Happiness" simply banned bankruptcies, declaring them anti-government sabotage, and everyone pretended to work normally. And Duvalier was portrayed with his hand on the shoulder of Christ.
The power of voodoo
Dad Doc perfected the art of begging by hiring the right PR agent to begin with - the firm of John Roosevelt, Franklin's youngest son. The advertising campaign was a success - money flowed from America. And then the artisan began stunning games: "In the United States, the struggle for the rights of blacks, and you do not help us, because we are black," he blackmailed his wealthy friends. During the rampant McCarthyism, Duvalier pulled on a new verse of the beggar: "I am the main anti-communist, apply to fight their threat." And he pretended to make friends with Fidel “if you don’t help,” although he did not return the multimillion-dollar loans received from Batista.
The United States took the sugar quota from Cuba and gave it to Haiti; in the first 3 years, Duvalier received $ 21 million from the Americans, 7 of them - free of charge. The United States was clearly trying to control the regime, and Duvalier's longstanding ties to the Pentagon have borne fruit. He skillfully played on the contradictions within the American establishment, taking into account the personal interests of major politicians. Along the way, the swindler sold various nationalized objects several times, until there were no enterprises left that became the property of his family, at the same time raking in bribes. Corruption was elevated to the rank of national policy.
In the United States, meanwhile, Kennedy came to power and under him began to sharply criticize the Duvalier regime. Then Papa Doc for the first time publicly recognized himself as an adherent of voodoo, changed the color of the national flag, which he painted in the traditional red and black colors of the influential Bisango Bokor sect, and everywhere began to appear in a black suit with a narrow black tie - the outfit of the Baron of Saturday. Duvalier declared the popular cult the official ideology of the Republic of Haiti. This became the basis of undivided power. For refusing financial assistance, Papa Doc stabbed Kennedy's wax figurine with needles - and soon there was a shot in Dallas.
According to rumors, he even sent to scrape up the earth from the grave of the president and sealed it in a special vessel, gaining power over the soul of the latter. The new authorities resumed aid to balance Cuba's influence in the region, but Haiti's illiterate population took the fact as a demonstration of the unlimited power of voodoo. Even Elizabeth Taylor, who won an Oscar for her role in Comedians based on the novel by Graham Greene, the most famous and truthful book about the criminal regime, according to Haitian rumors, became very sick precisely by the grace of the President-Bokor. Hungry and intimidated people fled from the "paradise island" on any floating craft to Florida up to 4 thousand people a month, with a population of only about 6 million.
Zombie descendants
On April 14, 1967, a ceremony to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the tyrant was disrupted by bomb explosions. Pope Doc responded to the opposition with the most brutal terror. Duvalier's political opponents revolted: three ships of the Haitian fleet fired at the presidential palace. The mutiny was suppressed only with the help of American aircraft. Duvalier did not spare anyone, but he, as the most ordinary person, was conquered by time. In 1971, Papa Doc passed away peacefully in his bed. For several days they were afraid to report the death of the sorcerer-ruler, and later a legend was born about the abduction of the president's head by a former ally Jacmel, so that this worthy gentleman would not replenish the zombie army.
The successor was the young son Jean-Claude, who was simply added a year in his passport, and the case of the bloody dictator fell into good hands. Jean-Claude Duvalier had one undoubted "achievement": he entered the Guinness Book of Records as the youngest dictator of the 20th century - he became "president for life" at the age of 19. He was practically unknown outside the country. “We only know that he weighs 130 kilograms and loves to spend time in nightclubs,” one of the French newspapers wrote about him then.
Jean-Claude Duvalier
The youth received lessons from the Pope in the torture basements of the palace citadel, where political prisoners were tortured. At the age of 14, the son passed the first test for cruelty, shooting at point-blank range an officer of the presidential guard. He did not part with the pistol, and the number of souls ruined by him grew. Every year on the eve of September 22, when the Duvalier dynasty celebrated the anniversary of coming to power, Jean-Claude Duvalier handed over to the secret police a list with the names of those he disliked and the resolution: "I would like to get rid of them." In 1979, the list included 400 names.
Presidential palace. Port-au-Prince, Haiti, 2008 / Photo: Potums
Duvalier Jr. not only strangled his compatriots with the hands of the secret police, but also crushed them with the wheels of his Rolls-Royces and Jaguars as he swept through the streets of Port-au-Prince. The people continued to flee from the island, and even the fact that since 1981 the United States began to return the fugitives did not stop emigration.
In 1984, the first open uprising took place. The clutches of the Duvalier dictatorship were slightly weakened - Baby Doc started playing democracy games, allowed opposition parties and an independent press, but under the control of the Tontons Macoutes. And in 1986, the son had to flee himself, taking 800 million dollars, conjured by his father in a poor country. Only in the early 1990s, the new government seized bank accounts, and the descendant of the sorcerer disappeared without a trace, leaving debts of 500 million francs.
Port-au-Prince, Haiti, 2010 / Photo: Roland de Gouvenain
And before Duvalier came to power, the social structure of Haiti was extremely archaic, and the difference between life and death was so subtle that it is not clear who walked along the street - alive or dead. Today, zombies are legally equated with murder, but in this country there have never been any rules other than magical rites.
At present, Haiti is the poorest state on the planet, living only on humanitarian aid and loans. All these considerations were put forward by lawyers in defense of Duvalier Jr. when victims of the regime tried to bring him to justice, and such attempts were made many times.
The only tangible punishment he received was the arrest of accounts in Switzerland totaling about $ 5 million. In 2011, shortly after his return, Jean-Claude was placed under house arrest at his own mansion in Port-au-Prince. He also died there, and did not live to see the trial, which was postponed "for a month" for 3 years in a row.
Vasily Yelenin