François Duvalier

Dictator of Haiti (1957-1971)

• Born: April 14, 1907
• Birthplace: Port-au-Prince, Haiti
• Died: April 21, 1971
• Place of death: Port-au-Prince, Haiti

A doctor and intellectual as well as a dictator, Duvalier promised to deliver Haiti from political chaos but instead plunged the nation into a nightmare of repression, murder, and terror.

Early Life

François Duvalier (frah-swah doo-vahl-yay) was born in Port-au-Prince to a middle-class Haitian family. His mother, Ulyssia Duvalier, suffered from severe mental illness throughout her life, which increasingly impaired her functioning. With few effective psychiatric medications and little therapy available at the time, Duvalier’s mother was hospitalized for lengthy periods. It is likely that the experience of his mother’s illness may have motivated the intelligent boy to study medicine. In 1934, he received a degree in medicine from a school that later became part of the Université d’État d’Haiti.

After almost a decade of hospital work, Duvalier became interested in public health, studying at the medical school of the University of Michigan in 1943 and getting involved in various disease eradication programs. Duvalier learned public health measures from American scientists; he apparently also reached novel conclusions about maintaining political power.

Once among the richest islands in the Caribbean, with fertile soil and healthful climate, by the early twentieth century, Haiti had become the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere. Politically, it was unstable, with decades of ineffectual leadership. Leaders came to power only with the support of the mob or the military. In 1915, using the pretext of a supposed German invasion, U.S. president Woodrow Wilson sent a small force of U.S. Marines to occupy Haiti and to ensure the safety of American and European investments.

For nineteen years, from 1915 to 1934, the United States guided Haiti. It collected taxes, administered government, and even created military police detachments to quell civil disturbances. Although the U.S. occupation offered some surface benefits, including improvements to the infrastructure and to education, the occupation ultimately was a social and political disaster. The major humanitarian goal of the United States to create a stable and ethically effective government in Haiti was hampered by the racist beliefs that led to the invasion in the first place, namely that Haitians were politically inept, backward, and utterly unable to govern on their own. Dominated by these beliefs, the Americans who administered the country had no incentive or desire to train Haitians adequately. Denied positions of real leadership and without the safety net of U.S. advisers and funds, Haitians learned to conduct neither the courts nor government.

In 1930, a commission established by the U.S. government observed that there had been no significant improvements in the conditions that led to U.S. intervention in the first place Haiti was still politically and economically fragile. Indeed, efforts by Haitians to seize power in their own country were quashed ruthlessly. A highly effective and ruthless police force was among the most dubious of benefits bequeathed to Haiti by the occupiers.

Throughout the 1940’s and most of the 1950’s, Duvalier was a political nonentity. He held minor cabinet posts in several presidential administrations in the late 1940’s, serving primarily as minister of health; until the late 1950’s, Duvalier was viewed as a public-health figure. (A rough analogy would be the political status of the surgeon general in the United States.) In 1957, after the government of yet another oppressive strongman collapsed in civil unrest, Duvalier ran for president and, with the secret support of the Haitian army, was installed as president of Haiti.

Life’s Work

In 1958, an odd and unsuccessful coup in Haiti had been attempted by two deputy sheriffs from Florida who were backed by a small group of Haitian soldiers. Duvalier struck back, using the coup as rationale for minimizing the power of the army. In essence a salutary action, Duvalier took extreme measures to remove from the army its ability to control the civilian government. First, Duvalier created an elite palace guard consisting of a strengthened army unit that had been responsible for guarding the president. Duvalier gave it additional staff power, better training, and more advanced weaponry.

Second, Duvalier created a new national militia, the Voluntary Militia for National Security, which would become known throughout Haiti as the Tonton Macoutes. The new militia-police force was loyal to Duvalier alone and became legendary for the ruthless extermination of those who were in opposition to the Duvalier regime. Lurid tales were spread that the Tonton Macoutes were sorcerers and that Duvalier was their master, able even to commune with the dead.

Like his fellow dictators the world over, Duvalier engaged in political gluttony, rewriting his country’s constitution in 1961 to make himself president for life. Eventually, Duvalier anointed himself President for Life, Maximum Chief of the Revolution, Apostle of National Unity, Benefactor of the Poor, Patron of Commerce and Industry, and Electrifier of Souls. As the phrase “Electrifier of Souls” suggests, Duvalier was cynical and gluttonous enough to seize religious power and to become, in effect, the head of Haiti’s official church as well as the demigod of the dominant, unofficial religion.

Throughout the 1930’s and 1940’s, Duvalier had studied voudon (or Voodoo), the indigenous Haitian religion, and played upon folk beliefs during his campaign for the presidency in 1957. During the campaign Duvalier claimed to be a Voodoo priest, saying he could heal and harm through magic. After being elected, he appointed a Voodoo priest to a cabinet post and employed Voodoo priests and sorcerers in his intelligence networks. Some writers claim Duvalier modeled his public image to resemble that of a Voodoo demigod named Baron Samedi.

Voodoo was not the only religion exploited by Duvalier, however. He also manipulated the Roman Catholic Church, expelled the Church’s foreign bishops, and, like a medieval monarch, demanded the power to appoint bishops for himself. Although he initially met with opposition and was even excommunicated, Duvalier was given the power to appoint bishops in the Haitian Church in 1966.

Perhaps most vitally for his regime, Duvalier understood how to manipulate U.S. leaders, who were ever poised to intervene in Haiti, either with money or military support. He played upon U.S. shame for its racist past by complaining that Haiti did not receive more aid because it was a black country. Duvalier also played on American fears of communism during the Cold War, arguing that he alone was the cure for chronic Haitian political instability and that only his continued leadership could avert a communist revolution like that which brought Fidel Castro to power in Cuba in 1959.

Unlike many dictators in the twentieth century, Duvalier’s health gave out before his political power did. During his adult life, he suffered from several chronic health problems, including heart disease and diabetes. He died of a heart attack in 1971.

Significance

Duvalier’s adult life confounds many writers. Until 1959 he was an intellectual, a doctor with undeniable humanitarian motives, and a relatively apolitical figure; after 1959, he posed as a demigod, ruthlessly oppressed his own people, and demonstrated immense political cunning and cynicism.

Some writers contend that Duvalier’s heart attack in 1959 caused these purported changes. Indeed, his heart attack and subsequent coma could have caused significant neurological problems. It is possible that these physiologic stresses as well as the psychological stresses of trying to govern brought out latent psychiatric problems inherited from his mother. Whatever the case, it is important to realize, however, that Duvalier’s actions after his heart attack and coma closely resemble his actions prior. Haiti’s problems during the late 1950’s and 1960’s were not new; Duvalier simply made existing problems much worse.

There had always been a dearth of opportunity for educated Haitians in their nation since before 1915; under Duvalier, the educated Haitian elite fled in droves. The crimes of the Tonton Macoutes were different in degree, not in kind, from the crimes of rural gangs and secret police forces before Duvalier. Rural Haitians had always sought better opportunities in the city; Duvalier’s government continued this process, stealing aid money targeted for the poor and leaving the Haitian people with even less hope.

Bibliography

Abbott, Elizabeth. Haiti: The Duvaliers and Their Legacy. New York: Touchstone, 1991. A frequently cited history that examines in detail the legacy of Duvalier and his sons.

Carey, Henry F. “Militarization Without Civil War: The Security Dilemma and Regime Consolidation in Haiti.” Civil Wars 7, no. 4 (Winter, 2005): 330-356. A scholarly examination of the history of paramilitary forces in Haiti.

Dayan, Joan. “Vodoun: Or, The Voice of the Gods.” Raritan 10, no. 3 (1991): 32-45. Examines the belief structure of Voodoo and its associated lurid tales.

Dewar, Robert. “Haiti’s Tradition of Curious Tyrants.” Contemporary Review 284, no. 1660 (2004): 265-267. A scholarly article that examines Duvalier in the light of cultural traditions in Haiti.

Engler, Yves. “A Denial of Beautiful Dreams” Ecologist (May, 2004): 16-21. An article briefly examining the Duvalier’s legacy to Haiti.

Peirce, Glen A. “Rumors and Politics in Haiti.” Anthropological Quarterly 70, no. 1 (1997): 1-10. Examines folk talk and discussion as a form of political criticism in Haiti from 1967 to 1997.

Renda, Mary. Taking Haiti: Military Occupation and the Culture of U.S. Imperialism, 1915-1940. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000. Focused exclusively on American attitudes toward Haiti, this scholarly book investigates the ideologies behind U.S. intervention.

Ridgeway, James, and Jean Jean-Pierre. “Heartbeats of Voudou.” Natural History 107, no. 10 (December, 1998/January, 1999): 30-38. Examines Duvalier’s manipulation of the Haitian religion.