Baby Doc Duvalier

History remembers Haiti for a host of reasons. The country owns the distinction of being the first in the Western hemisphere to secure independence. Haiti is remembered too for its repressive military rule and its widespread and persistent poverty. Much has also been said and written   about Haitian national life and the voodoo religion.

One of the more enduring chapters in modern Haitian political life is the saga of the Duvalier dynasty, comprising, first, a medical doctor turned tyrant named François Duvalier, better known to the world as Papa Doc and afterwards, his less imposing son, Jean Claude ‘Baby Doc’ Duvalier. The former ruled Haiti from 1957 until his death in 1971. The day after his father’s death the younger Duvalier became the world’s youngest leader at 19. Following a 15-year period during which he retained the instruments of his father’s rule (and the ambition of being President for life), chiefly the terror infrastructure known as the Tonton Macoute, and under threat of being deposed by a countrywide uprising by impoverished Haitians, Baby Doc fled Haiti for France with United States assistance in 1986.

On Saturday he died in Haiti at 63. His father, incidentally, died at 64.

Between them, the two Duvaliers ruled Haiti for an unbroken period of 29 years – not what one would call an extended period by dynastic standards. They did, however, leave a huge socio-political footprint on their country.

In the case of the younger Duvalier, his rule was essentially a continuation of a regime that had been created by his father and which had made life worse for the already impoverished predominantly African population.

From most accounts, it seemed that Baby Doc was less of a hands-on tyrant than his father. He was, however, a willing disciple, and his cronies ensured that terror, murder and other human rights violations flourished under his rule.

There appears to be no doubt that Baby Doc found comfort and security in the methods and instruments of his father’s rule, though, from all accounts, his primary preoccupation was with ‘living it up.’ He was reportedly a lavish spender and a playboy of sorts who chased women and, like his father, took a liking to the unfettered access which he enjoyed to public funds.

There is no doubt that the persistence of the Duvalier Dynasty was largely a function of an American foreign policy posture that favoured ideological correctness over human rights bona fides. The Duvalier dynasty may have been authoritarian and corrupt, but its uncompromisingly anti-communist posture entitled it to a general tolerance in Washington during the Cold War era.

It took the advent of the Carter Administra-tion in 1977 to persuade Baby Doc Duvalier that the common ideological ground shared by Port au Prince and Washington would no longer be enough to excuse the former’s human rights delinquencies. In the same year of Carter’s accession to office, US Ambassador to the United Nations Andrew Young visited Haiti and   read the US President’s riot act. The Baby Doc regime responded by releasing more than 100 political prisoners and hiring a high profile public relations firm in Washington to shore up its image. That, however, did not stop Washington from imposing restrictions on the sale of military hardware to Haiti, or for that matter was there any subsequent evidence that the infrastructure of repression that had been created by the younger Duvalier’s father was dismantled in the wake of Washington’s diplomatic demarche.

Baby Doc’s unceremonious departure from Haiti in 1986 was followed by a quarter of a century of mostly ‘high life’ exile in France. It seems, however, that legal moves which led to the freezing of a Duvaliver Swiss bank account meant that the former dictator had to live at least some of his life in exile in a condition of unaccustomed austerity. Exile had also been attended by rumours of plunder of the Haitian treasury, divorce from his wife Michele and failing health. On his return to Haiti, Baby Doc was slapped with charges of, among other things, corruption and human rights violations. If the charges resulted in some measure of animation amongst the Haitian judiciary, the people of Haiti, preoccupied by that time with other far more pressing emergencies, appeared to have virtually forgotten about Baby Doc and his days as the country’s would be President-for-life. It was, it seems, the same healthy disposition of public indifference among Haitians that greeted news of Baby Doc’s death on Saturday.