Real Dictators - Papa Doc Part 3: Vampire of the Caribbean

Episode Date: September 9, 2020

François Duvalier puts the finishing touches to his terrifying cult of personality. The President for Life declares himself an immaterial being - a spirit that will hover over Haiti even after his body dies. Thoughts turn to succession. His son - "Baby Doc" - waits in the wings. Our contributors reflect on the legacy of Papa Doc - a name that will forever haunt the nightmares of Haitians. For ad-free listening, exclusive content and early access to new episodes, join Noiser+. Now available for Apple and Android users. Click the Noiser+ banner on Apple or go to noiser.com/subscriptions to get started with a 7-day free trial. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Get groceries delivered across the GTA from Real Canadian Superstore with PC Express. Shop online for super prices and super savings. Try it today and get up to $75 in PC Optimum Points. Visit superstore.ca to get started. This dictator in the Caribbean was as powerful as Stalin was in Russia. Stalin had in Russia. Stalin had full control. Papa Doc had full control also.

He projected himself more and more as this immaterial being. He liked to project this idea of omniscience, that he, like a spider in a cobweb, that he was at the center of this network of information. The whole of Duvalierism was about the establishment of terror, and it was a terror that was inside people's heads. People were even afraid to think bad thoughts about Duvalier. People are rounded up by

the Makut and they are shot. People also, their houses are being taken over and shot in their houses. He wanted punishment to be exemplary, and therefore the more blood-curdling, the more violent, the more indiscriminate, the more effective it was.

On November 22, 1963, President Kennedy is shot by Lee Harvey Oswald, a former U.S. Marine, on a visit to Dallas, Texas. Thirty minutes later, the president is declared dead. Eighteen hundred miles away, in the Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince, the sound of popping corks rings out through the halls of the presidential palace. Mingling with the fuzz of television sets, all tuned to the same channel.

Former ambassador to the United States, Raymond Joseph, remembers the day well. When Kennedy was assassinated on the 22nd of November, Papa Doc Duvalier had champagne at his palace with his psych offense. And he said, I have succeeded. Because Kennedy was really anti-Devalier and was doing everything possible to get rid of him. But Papadoc isn't just pleased at Kennedy's demise, he's pleased with himself. Because according to the dictator, this assassination of a sitting U.S. president is all down to him.

The resignation of a sitting US president is all down to him. My name is Paul McGann, and welcome to Real Dictators, the series that explores the hidden lives of tyrants such as Adolf Hitler, Chairman Mao, and Kim Jong Il. In this episode, we return to Haiti to follow the incredible true story of the man they call Papa Doc, told by those who survived his regime. This is Real Papadoc. He is secure in his position, for now. Taking a sip from his champagne flute, Duvalier explains to the gang

of yes-men around him that he put a voodoo curse on the leader of the free world. It's no coincidence that President Kennedy was killed on this of all days. Papa Doc made people believe that on the 22nd of November

what happened in Dallas was his doing. Because he did everything on the 22nd of November, what happened in Dallas was his doing. Because he did everything on the 22nd. The 22nd was his lucky day. He got elected on September 22nd, 1957. He was inaugurated October 22nd. And he purported to have killed Kennedy on November 22nd, 1963.

The intended message is clear. No matter how powerful they may be, the fate of anyone who opposes Papa Doc is death. Even Kennedy. James Ferguson, author of Papa Doc, Baby Doc. Even if it wasn't true, that really wasn't the point, because if people believed it, then this was all grist of the Duvalier propaganda mill,

that this was a man who was not an ordinary man. In fact, he was a sort of supernatural leader. He would make these speeches, he would make these remarks like, I know everything in Haiti. Not only that, I know everything that happens in the United States, in the European capitals. He liked to project this idea of omniscience, that he somehow was at the centre, like a spider in a cobweb, that he was at the centre of this network of information that was gathered by his people, his spies, and that you couldn't escape his reach.

But even with his prime adversary out of the picture, the Haitian dictator still needs to keep his wits about him. Ruling by fear may keep him in office, but it means he can never rest on his laurels. There will always be people with an axe to grind, people who've had everything taken from them, with nothing left to lose. A group of young Haitians based in New York decide that the time has come to take matters into their own hands. It's time to end Haiti's suffering. Time for a new generation to take over. They call themselves the Jeune Haiti or Young Haiti.

The Jeune Haiti or Young Haiti movement from New York were supporters of John Kennedy. When Kennedy was assassinated, the Jeune Haiti movement felt that they had lost a great supporter. a great supporter. And they didn't feel that the Johnson administration would push through with programs that Kennedy had for Haiti. This program called for a new leadership with people that were studying in American universities like the Jeune Haiti. So the Jeune Haiti young men, 13 of them,

left New York and went to Haiti to carry out guerrilla movement, just like Castro did in the Sierra Maestra. They were going to do that in the mountains of Haiti. Most of the Jeune Haiti have lost family to Papadoc's regime. Inspired by the success of Castro's revolution in Cuba, this group of 13 students arrives in Haiti and starts to stir up trouble in the countryside. Initially they manage to go under the radar, without the Tonton Macoute getting wind of their plans.

These youthful revolutionaries are convinced that given an opportunity, ordinary Haitians will jump at the chance to be liberated. But the revolt never gets off the ground. Unlike in Cuba, the geography of Haiti is not well suited to guerrilla warfare. The rebels opt to lay low in the mountains, plotting their next move. But the mountains are bare and unwooded. It's no place to hunker down. One by one, the Jeune Haïtiia tracked down and killed by the security services. The body of one of the vanquished rebels is brought to Papadoc. The dictator will use it in a gruesome power play that hardly bears description.

John Marquis, author of Papadoc, Portrait of a Haitian Tyrant. He left the body in an armchair outside the arrivals hall of Port-au-Prince International Airport. So the few tourists that Haiti got at the time went through passport control, went out to get their taxi, only to be confronted by this decaying, rotting body sitting in an armchair. For several months, the last of the Jeune Hétis struggle on in the mountains. Eventually, only two are left alive. They are dragged to

Port-au-Prince, where their execution is set for November 12, 1964. It will be a horrific public event. For the executions, Duvalier declared a public holiday, told school teachers that they had to bring their school children to watch the executions. This is how

we deal with the enemies of Haiti. The executions were filmed and were played on television for weeks afterwards. And then periodically over the next few years, when there was a gap to fill in the schedules, oh, let's show the execution of the Jeune Aïti. I think the execution of the surviving Jeune Aïti members was typical of Duvalier's sense, rather macabre sense of theatre, that if you could stage an execution, then televise it and to make it even more grotesque, bring in a group of schoolchildren to witness it, because then the impact throughout Haiti, not that many Haitians had television,

but it would have been widely reported that this had happened, would have been immense. Papadok discovers that most of the Jeune Haiti originally come from the town of Jérémie. It's a stronghold of opposition. Plots are always emerging here. With the students' revolution crushed, Duvalier unleashes horrific vengeance on the town.

Professor Robert Fatten. People are rounded up by the Makut and they are shot. People also, their houses are being taken over and shot in their houses. It's not clear how many people died, but it's probably in the thousands. It tells you something about Duvalier, and that is that he wanted punishment to be exemplary. He was the master of the symbol. He realized that action could be used in a symbolic way

to terrorize, to cow a population. And therefore, the more blood-curdling, the more violent, the more indiscriminate, the more effective it was. And in a sense, it reminds you of modern-day phenomena whereby actions are intended for consumption by people who will be terrified. By the end of 1964, there is simply no viable opposition left. Anyone who might have stopped this regime is dead, dismembered or in exile. An incredible 50% of the government's total budget is spent on the Presidential Guard

and the Tonton Macoute. Papadoc has absolute free reign over the country and its population. I think by this period Duvalier could be defined as a megalomaniac. I don't think he can see beyond the maintenance of power. Power is everything. There is no alternative. He can't leave, he can't retire, he's got to stay there. So whatever it takes, he will do. It does appear that he has lost touch with the sort of everyday reality. The tyrant continues to freely embezzle millions of dollars a year from public funds meant to support the Haitian people. One of the greatest scams that Duvalier and his associates invented was the National Fund for Renovation. And this basically took the form

of extortion of taxes on everybody, on businessmen, on peanut vendors, anybody who'd get money. This money went pretty much directly into the pockets of Duvalier and his family and his cronies. Nothing was ever renovated using the Fund for National Renovation. That just wasn't the way the system worked. One of the most egregious excuses for extra taxation is the construction of a brand new town called Duvalierville.

This vanity project never even gets finished. Today you can walk amongst the uncompleted modernist structures. Over the years the smooth white stone has been bleached by the sun and eroded by the sand. It's a ghostly monument to Haiti's past. But not every scam visited on the Haitian public is to do with taxation. Some are more sinister than that. One of the valley's most prized henchmen is a man called Luc Necambron. He is the brains behind one infamous government scheme. One of the scams that he invented was to sell Haitian blood to the USA. Now, you might think that's not a very good idea, but in fact it's a very good idea because

antibodies that are built up in a population that is facing almost constant disease of one sort or another, there's a lot of antibodies and powerful stuff in there. So the plasma that you can make from Haitian blood was actually very prized by US hospitals. It wasn't entirely clear how he came across the blood that he then sold on to the USA. But yes, he had this reputation as being the vampire of the Caribbean. On June the 4th, 1964, Duvalier moves to take perpetual control of the country. He holds a constitutional referendum to make himself president for life. Unsurprisingly, in a country petrified into

submission, Papadoc wins 99.9% of the vote. Duvalier is now more powerful than any other man in Haitian history. But even total power in this world is not enough. Papadoc wants to be more than just a president. He wants to be a god. In a public address to the nation, he delivers a bombshell. He declares that he really is more than human. He is an immaterial being. Bullets cannot hurt him. No mortal can hope to vanquish him.

He was essentially saying that he was eternal. Even if he were to die, he was still there. He was some sort of spirit hovering over Haiti and that nothing, nothing and no one could prevent him from being that immaterial human being. Papadoc is now stating openly what many Haitians already believe, that their president really is an incarnation of the dreaded voodoo loa, or demigod, Baron Samadhi, guardian of the graveyard. Raymond Joseph, former Haitian ambassador to the United States. Papadoc may be a Caribbean dictator, but this tin horn dictator in the Caribbean was as powerful, I believe, as Stalin was in Russia.

Stalin had full control. Papadoc had full control also. Papadoc did his control with his Tontom Hakut and voodoo. In a country where mysticism is so well entrenched, Papadoc used voodoo to control the nation. Papadoc already dresses like Baron Samedi. Now he's claiming to actually be Baron Samedi. A rumor circulates. Duvalier has made a journey into the hills of Haiti's interior. He's been to a cave known as the Trou Foubin. It's a sacred voodoo site. There, he found something particularly, horrifically useful.

One of the stories that circulated about Duvalier was that he'd been to a place called Trou Forbant, which is a few kilometers north of Port-au-Prince, where there's a cave network. And he'd come back, he'd brought back from Tr-Forbent a bunch of demons called Bacca. He had them installed, they lived in the cellars of the National Palace. So in the minds of a superstitious population, the idea that he's got these demons ready to unleash is quite a disincentive to revolt or rebellion. Housing demons in his palace,

Duvalier claims to be able to speak to the dead. He orders the decapitated heads of his enemies to be brought to him. His Tonton-Macoute enforcers are more than happy to oblige. Duvalier became convinced that you could actually extract intelligence from the heads of political enemies. He would actually sit in the bath, sometimes complete with top hat, and consult the head of this opponent. He believed that he could actually get information from the head that would help him in protecting his interests. Death in Haiti for many people, especially the voodooists, is not natural. Very often they think that the dead person is taken to become a zombie.

So when the dead body is snatched by Duvalier, people think that Duvalier had made a zombie, probably maybe working for him somewhere. The foreign press are, to some extent, complicit in mythologizing this dictator. When Duvalier first got elected, American newspaper columnists reveled in rumors that the president studied the entrails of goats to seek political guidance. They delighted in recounting his transformation into Baron Samedi. Exotic tales of Duvalier's voodoo exploits

make for great newspaper columns. The problem is, this helps the myth to grow, which in turn bolsters Papadoc's position. As a newspaper editor in Haiti at the time, Bernard Diederich observed this phenomenon in action. It was thanks to the foreign press in many ways that made him into a voodoo practitioner. I mean, Devati used to smile because they made him a real voodooist,

where he wasn't. He was an atheist. He didn't believe in voodoo. He didn't believe in anything, just power. You hear these people writing all these stories about him doing this and that. These stories were repeated, and then that's why the people started to believe that he had this power. By the end of the 1960s, Papadakis succeeded in transforming himself, in the eyes of his people and those of the watching media, into a voodoo demigod. He has Haiti under his thumb. But there is one force he cannot evade, no matter how hard he tries. His own mortality. From 1964, Duvalier has so implanted himself as absolute leader. He has so terrified, murdered, cowed the opposition,

that there is no real viable opposition to him. He has achieved what he wanted. The only enemy really left is the Grim Reaper and his own failing health. This is ultimately what we'll see the end of him. Most dictators don't get away with it They suppress rebellion for so long But eventually it breaks out And when it does, they come toppling down But such is Duvalier's grip on Haiti That kind of outcome looks unlikely He looks set to rule until the end of his natural life

But beyond that, what will his fiefdom look like? Papadoc is in his 60s. He has diabetes. He's already had one massive cardiac arrest. Another one could be lurking just around the corner. He's had congestive heart failure and brain damage since his nine-day coma back in 1959. It's time to secure a legacy for himself and his children. He might die, but his voodoo powers will linger on. People believe that he really is Baron Samedi, and that will

give him insane power and influence, even from beyond the grave. The whole of Duvalierism was about the establishment of terror. And it was a terror that was inside people's heads as well as on the state. You could only run that kind of regime

if people internalized that terror. So, for example, if you take the case of censorship, the actual censorship of newspapers, books, etc. wasn't that efficient.

When censorship becomes really efficient is when you do it yourself, when you internalize the censor. So people were even afraid to think bad thoughts about Duvalier. Duvalier wants to project himself as almost synonymous with the country. So he makes these pronouncements about being the national flag.

The Haitian flag had changed over time from the founding of the Haitian Republic. It was initially red and black. It became red and blue. Various kings, presidents wanted to change it to suit their own imagery. But Duvalier changed it back to red and black. And symbolically, this was important because the blue looked back to the French colonial period. Black said, we are a black republic, a black nation. And this very much chimed in with his concept of noirisme.

He projected himself more and more as this immaterial being, as he put it. He was encouraged in this by his speechwriters. They fell over each other to invent new superlatives to describe him. So at one point he was called the great electrifier of souls, which was ironic given what they did in the basements of the torture chambers. The Lord's Prayer is rewritten as a prayer to Papa Doc. fire of souls, which was ironic given what they did in the basements of the torture chambers. The Lord's Prayer is rewritten as a prayer to Papa Doc, so our Doc who art in the National Palace etc. etc.

Duvalier is a trained doctor. He can recognise that his own death is approaching. That's why he's making plans for the future. Papadoc's eldest son is called Jean-Claude. He's still a teenager. He's lived a life of immense luxury, completely cut off from the world. Nevertheless, the demigod president has decided that this is the man to inherit the presidency, to continue his father's terrible work.

Professor Robert Fatten remembers the emergence of the heir they call Baby Doc. You start to see Jean-Claude going to inaugurations of schools, things of that sort. He becomes more a public figure. Prior to that, Jean-Claude was known simply as a kind of a fat playboy. So he's starting to look different, act different. François Duvalier begins to say that he was going to give power to the youth of Haiti. But no one took him seriously. No one imagined that Jean-Claude Duvalier was going to be the successor.

There was a referendum that was organized. Again, completely rigged, where 99% of the population said yes to Jean-Claude. Then he was 18 at the time, so the constitution had to be changed so you could be a president at 18. When François Duvalier would go to public event, Jean-Claude Duvalier would be next to him.

So it was something that happened fairly quickly, but systematically. On April 21, 1971, Papa Doc Duvalier dies peacefully in his bed. A quiet death from natural causes is a luxury he's denied thousands upon thousands of his own innocent people. The transition from papadoc to babydoc is seamless. At just 19 years old, young Jean-Claude steps into the presidential palace and picks up where his father left off.

The Duvalier dynasty will continue for a long time yet. Eventually, babydoc will be overthrown, but not for another 15 years. The Duvalier legacy is one of fear and broken dreams. Papa Doc wrecked an aspirational country and unleashed a nightmare His crimes haunt Haiti to this day I think Haiti was permanently scarred and disfigured by Duvalier He blighted a whole generation, he sucked the life out of the country He chased out the brightest and the best, he victimised, he plundered

What money was given in terms of aid was siphoned off and pocketed. He left it bankrupt and terrorized. Duvalierism was enormously damaging for Haiti, not just for the thousands, hundreds of thousands of direct victims and indirect victims of Duvalierism at the time, but also in the way that it did create a mindset and ideology which is still with us today. There are still Duvalierists. Among the Duvalier sympathisers in high office, a recent president of Haiti, in power from 2011 to 2016.

Michel Martelly is a Duvalierist. He's a former card-carrying Tonton Macroute. He's surrounded by former Duvalierists, old-timers who were there even in the days of Papa Doc and those there at the time of his son as well. There's a kind of Duvalierist mentality that Haitians have found it very difficult to shake off. It was an enormously damaging period of Haitian history.

Being a Duvalierist now means that partly that you were part of that gang, part of that set, part of that whole corrupt kleptocracy, that you believed that being in government was essentially to do with lining your own pockets and to be able to continue to do that through authoritarian government and through instruments of terror. Haiti started life as the first slave colony to win independence. It was a beacon of progress.

Now it's the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, crippled by debt and political chaos, held back by a lack of education. In no small part, this is the work of a single man. We are still living with the consequences of that and the extreme corruption that existed. The country was destroyed. Some dictatorships, when they are gone, there's something left. There's a structure, there's some sort of industrialization. There

was nothing. Haitians have never had the kind of a reconciliation with their past. And to some extent, it's because when Jean-Claude Duvalier died, the regime persisted in other forms. So there was never a real search for the truth. How evil was Papa Doc? Papa Doc was evil to the point of leaving about 30,000 people dead during his reign. I think that's how evil he was. I think Duvalier was evil incarnate. In the next series of Real Dictators, we're in Japan in the 1930s and 40s,

following the story of General Hideki Tojo. He is the man who led Japan through World War II. Without him, Pearl Harbor might not have happened. The atom bombs might not have been dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In his pursuit of Japanese dominance in Asia and the Pacific, Tojo was utterly cold-blooded. of Japanese dominance in Asia and the Pacific, Tojo was utterly cold-blooded. He wasn't technically a dictator, but he more than earned his place at this table. Ruling under a compliant emperor, Tojo gathered power to himself. He was prime minister, education minister, head of the army, and multiple other roles all at the same time.

He preached an absolute code of no surrender, a code which saw him fight one of the dirtiest wars ever known. He indoctrinated a people, then drove them to mass suicide when the tide of the war turned. In the pantheon of tyrants, this general-turned-politician is often overlooked. In the next series of Real Dictators, it's time to correct that. Real Dictators is presented by me, Paul McGann. The show is created by Pascal Hughes. Produced by Joel Dedao.

Edited by James Tyndale and Katrina Hughes. The music was composed or assembled by Oliver Baines from Flight Brigade. The strings were recorded by Dori McCauley. The sound mixer is Tom Pink. The sound recordist is Robbie Stem. Real Dictators is a Noiser and World Media Rights co-production. If you haven't already, we'd love you to follow us wherever you listen to your favourite shows. Or check us out at realdictators.com.