François Duvalier (14 April 190721 April 1971), also known as Papa Doc, was a Haitian politician, dictator and physician who served as president of Haiti from 1957 until his death in 1971.
Duvalier completed a degree in medicine from the University of Haiti in 1934 and spent a year at the University of Michigan studying public health. In 1943 he became active in a campaign to control the spread of contagious tropical diseases in Haiti. His patients affectionately called him "Papa Doc," a moniker that he used throughout his life. Duvalier served as Minister for Public Health and Labor under the administration of Dumarsais Estimé.
Duvalier was elected president in the 1957 general election on a populist and black nationalist platform. After thwarting a military coup d'état in July 1958, his regime rapidly became more autocratic and eventually totalitarian. Duvalier was unanimously "re-elected" in a 1961 presidential election in which he was the only candidate. Afterwards, he consolidated his power step by step, culminating in 1964 when he declared himself president for life after another sham referendum and election.
An undercover government death squad, the Tonton Macoute (), indiscriminately tortured or killed Duvalier's opponents; the Tonton Macoute was thought to be so pervasive that Haitians became highly fearful of expressing any form of dissent, even in private. The Tonton Macoute eventually came to number 300,000 and more than half of the government budget was allocated to the group as well as the Presidential Guard. Duvalier further sought to solidify his rule by incorporating elements of Haitian mythology, most prominently Vodou, into a personality cult.
Duvalier remained in power until his death in 1971 and was succeeded by his son, Jean‑Claude, who was nicknamed "Baby Doc."
Early life and career Duvalier was born in Port-au-Prince in 1907, the son of Duval Duvalier, justice of the peace, teacher and journalist, whose family came from Martinique, and His aunt, Madame Florestal, raised him as a child. He completed a degree in medicine from the University of Haiti in 1934, and served as staff physician at several local hospitals. He spent a year at the University of Michigan studying public health and in 1943, became active in a United States–sponsored campaign to control the spread of contagious tropical diseases, helping the poor to fight typhus, yaws, malaria and other tropical diseases that had ravaged Haiti for years. His patients affectionately called him "Papa Doc", a moniker that he used throughout his life.
The racism and violence that occurred during the United States occupation of Haiti, which began in 1915, inspired black nationalism among Haitians and left a powerful impression on the young Duvalier. He was also aware of the latent political power of the poor black majority and their resentment against the small mulatto elite. Duvalier supported Pan-African ideals, and became involved in the movement of Haitian author , both of which led to his advocacy of Haitian Vodou, an ethnological study of which later paid enormous political dividends for him. In 1938, Duvalier co-founded the journal Les Griots. On 27 December 1939, he married Simone Ovide, a mulatto nurse's aide. They had four children: Marie‑Denise, Nicole, Simone, and Jean‑Claude.
Political rise In 1946, Duvalier aligned himself with President Dumarsais Estimé and was appointed Director General of the National Public Health Service. In 1949, he served as Minister of Health and Labor, but when Duvalier opposed Paul Magloire's 1950 coup d'état, he left the government and resumed practicing medicine. His practice included taking part in campaigns to prevent yaws and other diseases. In 1954, Duvalier abandoned medicine, hiding out in Haiti's countryside from the Magloire regime. In 1956, the Magloire government was failing, and although still in hiding, Duvalier announced his candidacy to replace him as president. By December 1956, an amnesty was issued and Duvalier emerged from hiding, and on 12 December 1956, Magloire conceded defeat.
The two frontrunners in the 1957 campaign for the presidency were Duvalier and Louis Déjoie, a mulatto landowner and industrialist from the north. During their campaigning, Haiti was ruled by five temporary administrations, none lasting longer than a few months. Duvalier promised to rebuild and renew the country and rural Haiti solidly supported him as did the military. He resorted to populism, stoking the majority irritation at being governed by the few mulatto elite, which is how he described his opponent, Déjoie.
François Duvalier was elected president on 22 September 1957. Duvalier received 679,884 votes to Déjoie's 266,992. Even in this election, however, there are multiple first-hand accounts of voter fraud and voter
Presidency
Consolidation of power After being elected president in 1957, Duvalier exiled most of the major supporters of Déjoie. He had a new constitution adopted that year.
Duvalier promoted and installed members of the black majority in the civil service and the army. In July 1958, three exiled Haitian army officers and five American mercenaries landed in Haiti and tried to overthrow Duvalier; all were killed. Although the army and its leaders had quashed the coup attempt, the incident deepened Duvalier's distrust of the army, an important Haitian institution over which he did not have firm control. He replaced the chief-of-staff with a more reliable officer and then proceeded to create his own power base within the army by turning the Presidential Guard into an elite corps aimed at maintaining his power. After this, Duvalier dismissed the entire general staff and replaced it with officers who owed their positions, and their loyalty, to him.
In 1959, Duvalier created a rural militia, the (, )—commonly referred to as the after a bogeyman—to extend and bolster support for the regime in the countryside. The Macoute, which by 1961 was twice as big as the army, never developed into a real military force but was more than just a secret police.
In the early years of his rule, Duvalier was able to take advantage of the strategic weaknesses of his powerful opponents, mostly from the mulatto elite. These weaknesses included their inability to coordinate their actions against the regime, whose power had grown increasingly strong. In the name of nationalism, Duvalier expelled almost all of Haiti's foreign-born bishops, an act that earned him excommunication from the Catholic Church. In 1966, he persuaded the Holy See to allow him permission to nominate the Catholic hierarchy for Haiti. Duvalier now exercised more power in Haiti than ever.
Heart attack and Barbot affair On 24 May 1959, Duvalier suffered a massive heart attack, possibly due to an insulin overdose; he had been a diabetic since early adulthood and also suffered from heart disease and associated circulatory problems. During the heart attack, he was comatose for His physician believed that he had suffered neurological damage during these events, harming his mental health and perhaps explaining his subsequent actions.
While recovering, Duvalier left power in the hands of Clément Barbot, leader of the . Upon his return to work, Duvalier accused Barbot of trying to supplant him as president and had him imprisoned. In April 1963, Barbot was released and began plotting to remove Duvalier from office by kidnapping his children. The plot failed and Duvalier then ordered a nationwide search for Barbot and his fellow conspirators. During the search, Duvalier was told that Barbot had transformed himself into a black dog, which prompted Duvalier to order that all black dogs in Haiti be put to death. The captured and killed Barbot in July 1963. In other incidents, Duvalier ordered the head of an executed rebel packed in ice and brought to him so he could commune with the dead man's spirit. Peepholes were carved into the walls of the interrogation chambers, through which Duvalier watched Haitian detainees being tortured and submerged in baths of sulfuric acid; sometimes, he was in the room during the torture.
Constitutional changes
In 1961, Duvalier began violating the provisions of the 1957 constitution. First, he replaced the bicameral legislature with a unicameral body. Then he called a new presidential election in which he was the sole candidate. His term was to expire in 1963 and the constitution prohibited re-election, but the referendum sought to extend his term until 1967. The election was flagrantly rigged; the official tally showed a total of 1,320,748 "yes" votes for allowing Duvalier to stay in office, with none opposed. Upon hearing the results, he proclaimed, "I accept the people's will. ... As a revolutionary, I have no right to disregard the will of the The New York Times commented, "Latin America has witnessed many fraudulent elections throughout its history but none has been more outrageous than the one which has just taken place in Haiti". On 14 June 1964, another constitutional referendum made Duvalier "", a title previously held by seven Haitian presidents; it also changed the flag and coat of arms from blue and red to black and red, with the black symbolising the country's ties to Africa. This referendum was also blatantly rigged; an implausible 99.9% voted in favor, which should have come as no surprise since all the ballots were premarked "yes". The new document granted Duvalier—or , as he was called—absolute powers as well as the right to name his successor.
Foreign relations
United States His relationship with the United States proved difficult. In his early years, Duvalier rebuked the United States for its friendly relations with Dominican dictator Rafael Trujillo (assassinated in 1961) while ignoring Haiti. The Kennedy administration (1961–1963) was particularly disturbed by Duvalier's repressive and totalitarian rule and allegations that he misappropriated aid money, at the time a substantial part of the Haitian budget, and a U.S. Marine Corps mission to train the . The U.S. thus halted most of its economic assistance in mid-1962, pending stricter accounting procedures, with which Duvalier refused to comply. Duvalier publicly renounced all aid from Washington on nationalist grounds, portraying himself as a "principled and lonely opponent of domination by a
Duvalier misappropriated millions of dollars of international aid, including US$15 million annually from the United States. He transferred this money to personal accounts. Another of Duvalier's methods of obtaining foreign money was to gain foreign loans, including US$4 million from
After the assassination of John F. Kennedy in November 1963, which Duvalier later claimed resulted from a curse that he had placed on Kennedy, the U.S. eased its pressure on Duvalier, grudgingly accepting him as a bulwark against communism. Duvalier attempted to exploit tensions between the U.S. and Cuba, emphasizing his anti-communist credentials and Haiti's strategic location as a means of winning U.S. support:
Cuba After Fulgencio Batista (a friend of Duvalier) was overthrown in the Cuban Revolution, Duvalier worried that new Cuban leader Fidel Castro would provide a haven for Haitian dissidents.
Duvalier enraged Castro by voting against the country in an Organization of American States (OAS) meeting and subsequently at the United Nations, where a trade embargo was imposed on Cuba. Cuba answered by breaking off diplomatic relations and Duvalier subsequently instituted a campaign to rid Haiti of communists. This move severed Haitian relations with Cuba for 38 years until the two countries re-established relations in 1997.
Dominican Republic