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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_dictatorship_of_Haiti_(1957–1986)

The official residence of the President of Haiti

History

Main article: History of Haiti

Further information: François Duvalier

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The Military Dictatorship of Haiti (1957-1986) was an oppressive regime. Characterized by sadism and destruction, Papa Doc's use of the Tonton Macoutes ensured that the roughly four million Haitians living under this regime were kept in a permanent state of fear.

In 1957, using appeals to nationalism and black populism, Papa Doc became President of Haiti. Following numerous coup attempts, Papa Doc established himself as leader for life, passing the presidency on to his son following his death.

During his reign Papa Doc drastically restructured the military of Haiti, purging many top leaders who he perceived as a threat to his rule, and set up paramilitary forces to maintain a firm grip on power. This paramilitary force, known as the Tonton Macoutes conducted widespread terror operations throughout Haiti, and was ultimately responsible for the deaths and disappearances of tens of thousands of Haitians.

History of Military and Paramilitary Police in Haiti

The history of Haitian military forces is one of substantial disorder and disunion. After the disbandment of all armed forces during the United States military occupation during the early 20^th century, a new military hierarchy was established by the U.S. with an emphasis placed on ensuring internal stability.

Following his election in 1957, and the subsequent failed coup attempt by a small number of officers within the armed forces, Papa Doc moved to consolidate his base of power, closing Haiti’s military academy and establishing a paramilitary group called Voluntaires de la Securite National (VSN). In the following years, this group would become known as the Tonton Macoutes, a reference to the Haitian Vodou tale of a boogie man. This force was fiercely loyal to Papa Doc, as he deliberately hired poor black Haitians in an attempt to cultivate an anti-elitist image amongst Haitians.

The VSN maintained a complex relationship with the army of Haiti. The VSN was responsible for spying on and assassinating military officers deemed disloyal to Papa Doc, and quickly came to reach a size substantially greater than that of the army itself. Under Papa Doc’s rule, trusted VSN members came to hold officer roles within the army, in addition to their informal leadership positions within the VSN.

Key Figures in Government and Military

Pro-Duvalier Figures

Simone Duvalier

Simone Duvalier was born into a life of poverty in Haiti. After growing up in an orphanage, Simone gained employment as a nurse in one of Haiti's hospitals, where she first met Papa Doc. The two quickly formed a romantic relationship, and were soon wed. As Papa Doc's political career ascended, so too did Simone's vanity and ceaseless yearning for ever greater wealth. This lavish lifestyle was funded through extensive corruption, corruption that increased substantially after the death of Papa Doc.

The relationship between Papa Doc and Simone Duvalier was fraught with tension. Although Simone held substantial power within the dictatorship, she and her husband frequently disagreed. Biographer of Francois Duvalier Bernard Diederich notes:

"She had a lot of power, but it wasn't an idyllic marriage ... The old dictator and his wife were often at odds over family matters."

Clement Barbot

As the original head of the Tonton Macoutes, Clement Barbot played a key role in helping Papa Doc marginalise and remove military leaders who Duvalier feared would not be loyal to his dictatorship. Backed by the United States embassy, Barbot led a failed coup attempt against Duvalier in the early 1960s. Escaping jail following this coup, Barbot turned the tactics of terror for which the Tonton Macoutes had become infamous against the Duvaliers, culminating in an unsuccessful kidnapping attempt of the Duvalier children. Barbot was ultimately killed in a shoot out with government forces in 1963.

Madame Max Adolphe (other aliases: Max Rosalie Auguste and Rosalie Bosquet)

One of Papa Doc's most trusted lieutenants, Adolphe was appointed warden at Fort Dimanche, where under her rule human rights groups estimate that "tens of thousands of people ... were illegally detained and tortured". After his father's passing, Baby Doc removed Adolphe from Fort Dimanche, and she went on to become mayor of Port-au-Prince.

Method of Rule & Programs Instituted by Government

Stability

Despite the abuse of human rights and repression carried out by the Haitian government under Papa Doc's dictatorship, some historians have noted that the period between 1957 and 1986 was one of marked political stability in Haiti (when compared with events preceding and following the dictatorship). Anthony Lewis, writing in Caribbean Quarterly has argued that Papa Doc's emphasis on indigenous cultural practices allowed him to enjoy significant authority over the Haitian people, whereas his son's lack of understanding and interest in these practices contributed to his down fall:

"Papa Doc's way of governing Haiti placed indigenous cultural practices, including the use of language and religion, at the forefront national politics. The younger Duvalier, on the other hand, saw very little importance in embracing folkways and was even less concerned with their use as political tools."

Volontaires de la Sécurité Nationale

Theft and extortion were carried out extensively by the VSN as a means of funding their activities. The government provided no official funding for the TonTon Macoutes (beyond the occasional land grant), and was acutely aware of the VSN's methods. Many of the top government figures during this period personally profited through the VSN's corruption.

Legislature

Papa Doc understood that a legislature opposed to his rule could potentially cause trouble, and early in his presidency sought to eliminate any possibility of dissent. Critics were intimidated and arrested, or else forced into exile. Following the 1964 constitution, Papa Doc was granted the authority to appoint legislators, and exploited this new power by filling the legislature with Duvalier allies, including senior leaders such as Madame Max Adolphe. This stacked legislature proceeded to cede further powers to the Duvalier dictatorship.

Civil Service

Ministerial positions within the government under Papa Doc were in a constant state of turbulence. In an attempt to ensure that no potential political opponent could garner support, Papa Doc made his ministers constantly swap roles, deliberately placing people in areas where they lacked expertise, creating under-performance. Jean-Germain Gros highlights this system of deliberate disarray, noting: "Between 1960 and 1964 alone, the cabinet was jettisoned six times."

This system of sabotage on the part of Papa Doc had consequences for Haiti's people. Haitian officials were motivated to engage in as much corruption as possible, knowing that the ongoing nature of their tenure in office was precarious at best. Consequently, the economy of Haiti under-performed, and the suffering of Haiti's poor worsened.

Outside Forces and Influence

The Duvalier dictatorship was maintained in part by the support it received from international forces. Jean-Germain Gros has noted (in reference to Haiti among other nations) the frequency with which superpowers during the Cold War "maintained in power rulers with little concern for the welfare of their own people."

During the Cold War the Duvalier dictatorship received substantial aid from the United States, in the form of military equipment, finance, food and medicine. The control that the president's family had over the aid was total, allowing the president and his allies to consolidate their power base, through the selective allocation of military equipment to forces fiercely loyal to the ruling class. Similarly, financial aid was distributed based on a system of greed, not need. Gros notes:

According to a 1983 World Bank study, fully 40 percent of aid to the Duvalier regime could not be accounted for.

This form of corruption was especially harmful to the people of Haiti, who predominately lived in poverty. The majority of aid being lost to corruption, and used by the Duvaliers to purchase the continued support of their political allies, meant that there were no funds left with which to employ the Tonton Macoutes. The flow on effect, was the state sanctioned predation of the Tonton Macoutes (a group whose numbers were estimated to be between 40,000 and 100,000) on the general population.

Ideology of Papa Doc's Regime

Flag of Haiti during the Duvalier dictatorship

Flag of Haiti post Duvalier dictatorship

Nationalism

Appeals to nationalism and noiriste populism were at the core of Papa Doc's political message. Although Papa Doc spoke passionately about the need for lower and middle class black people of Haiti to gain independence from the elite ruling class, his government took few actions to create this reality. In place of genuine structural reforms, Papa Doc resorted to symbolic gestures including the erection of statues, paying homage to Martin Luther King, and altering the Haitian flag.

David Nicholls has argued that although the regime was repressive, it enjoyed the support of large parts of the Haitian population. This is attributed in part to a trend found in numerous Latin American countries during this time period, where "ethnic or colour factors are readily available for exploitation by political leaders, so that the attention of the masses can be diverted from economic issues". Nicholls further contends that the Tonton Macoutes were as much a means of establishing support for the regime as they were a tool of repression, and that for many of the poorest Haitians there was a view that repression and mistreatment were to be just as likely under a new regime as the current.

Religion

Prior to his ascendancy to the presidency, Papa Doc and his governmental supporters had been critical of the influence the Catholic Church held in Haiti, particularly its educational institutions. Appealing to nationalist sentiments, Papa Doc argued that the church was loyal to a foreign power, undermining Haiti's national sovereignty.

Under the guise of protecting Haiti from the threat of communism, Papa Doc began ejecting union leaders and priests from the country. These actions sparked criticism from a number of catholic representatives in Haiti, who wrote columns in newspapers and pamphlets condemning the government's actions. Unperturbed, the regime continued its actions against the church, arresting a number of student protesters in 1960, who had received the backing of the church. Three of the students arrested died in prison, and further evictions occurred, with a number of catholic trade unions being forcibly disbanded.

In an effort to restore relations between the Vatican and Haiti, during 1966 Papa Doc and the church reached an agreement to appoint a number of pro-Duvalier men in to leadership positions within the religious hierarchy. This had the effect of stemming future criticism of the government from within religious sectors of the population, and instead provided a source of pro government propaganda.

Living Conditions and Impact of Dictatorship for Haitians

Poverty in Haiti

Living conditions for the average Haitian living under the military dictatorship of the Duvalier family were abysmal. Nathalie Baptiste notes that during the 1980s over half the population of Haiti survived on less than $1.25 a day. Robert I. Rotberg writes of Haitian poverty:

"Standard numerical equivalents cannot begin to describe the extent and impact of Haitian poverty. It is equally apparent in the extensive slums of the capital--they rival those of Caracas, Rio de Janeiro, Capte Town and Johannesburg in squalor and misery"

The staunchly anti-communist Duvalier dictatorship encouraged foreign factories to be set up in Haiti through corporate friendly tax incentives, that offered low wages and little else for the working people of Haiti.

Emigration

The lack of economic prospects for Haitians living under this regime is partly reflected in the mass emigration that took place during this time period.

Between 1960 and 1990 there was a significant increase in the number of Haitians fleeing the dictatorship to seek out safer and more prosperous lives in the United States. The number of Haitian immigrants living in the United States grew from a mere 5,000 in 1960 to over 680,000 in 2019. For a country that had a population of roughly 5.7 million in 1980, this is a significant flow of people leaving Haiti. Rotberg writes that:

"At least half a million Haitians left their country for the Dominican Republic, the United States and Canada between 1964 and 1969."

The consequences of this mass emigration can still be felt in Haiti to this day.

Human Capital Flight and Remittances

As funds were a necessary requirement in making the journey from Haiti to the United States, Haiti suffered a significant brain drain that has yet to be remedied. As Tatiana Wah notes "Some estimates show that as much as 70 percent of Haiti’s skilled human resources are in the diaspora." Whilst roughly $2 billion is sent home to Haiti in remittance payments each year, very little of these funds is used for productive investment in infrastructure including roads and sanitation systems, making it difficult to achieve long term improvement in Haitian's quality of life.

References

General References

• Aponte, David (2010). "The Tonton Macoutes: The Central Nervous System of Haiti's Rein of Terror". Washington Report on the Hemisphere. 30: 1–7. ISSN 0275-5599.
• Bethell, Leslie (1990). The Cambridge history of Latin America. Vol. 7. Latin America since 1930. Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 9781139055239.
• Gros, Jean-Germain (2012). State failure, underdevelopment, and foreign intervention in Haiti. Routledge. ISBN 9780415890328.
• Lewis, R. Anthony (2004). "Language, Culture and Power: Haiti under the Duvaliers". Caribbean Quarterly. 50 (4): 42–51. doi:10.1080/00086495.2004.11672249. ISSN 0008-6495.
• Nicholls, David (1979). From Dessalines to Duvalier : race, colour and national independence in Haiti. Cambridge University Press.
• Migration Policy Institute (2011). Countries of Birth for U.S. Immigrants, 1960-Present (Report). Retrieved 21 May 2019. {{cite report}}: |author= has generic name (help)
• Rotberg, Robert I. (1988). "Haiti's Past Mortgages Its Future". Foreign Affairs. 67: 93–109. doi:10.2307/20043676. JSTOR 20043676.
• Scobbell, Andrew; Hammitt, Brad (1998). "Goons, gunmen, and gendarmerie: Toward a reconceptualization of paramilitary formation". Journal of Political and Military Sociology. 26: 213–227.
• Wah, Tatiana (2013). "Engaging the Haitian Diaspora". Cairo Review. 9: 56–69.