François Duvalier

Haiti, Puerto Principe, 1907-1971 François Duvalier was elected president of Haiti in September 1957, after a military junta had deposed Dumarsais Estime who had ruled after a coup in 1945. Duvalier had been part of his government.

He was elected with the support of the black population, who saw in him a way to fight against the mulatto elites. Very quickly he imposed extreme repression, prohibited the opposition parties, instituted a State of Siege and received from parliament the authority to rule by decree. Duvalier created his own organization of secret armed police, the National Security Volunteers, known as the Tonton Macoutes, who spread terror and were able to suffocate all resistance.

In 1961, before completing his presidential term, Duvalier decided to dissolve parliament and aided by the Tonton Macoutes, considered himself elected for six more years. Faced with opposition from part of the army (a military plot was foiled on April 19, 1963) and from exiled Haitians, who tried to provoke a popular uprising on various occasions from the Dominican Republic, Duvalier enforced the repression even further.

In 1964 he made the National Assembly, whose deputies were nominated by himself, vote in a new constitution in which he was conceded absolute powers. That same year he proclaimed himself president for life with the right of succession. With the Tontons Macoutes he unleashed a bloody campaign against the opposition which, in 1967 alone, produced a figure of 2,000 executions.

In January 1971, the National Assembly amended the constitution to allow him to nominate his son, Jean-Claude Duvalier, as his successor. On the death of the dictator, April 19, 1971, Jean-Claude acceded to the Presidency of the Republic. He was 19 years old (hence his nickname of Baby Doc). He began by applying the policy of his father word for word before beginning a timid liberalization of the regime.

The repression and the extreme poverty in which the regime kept the population caused, from the end of the 70s, an exodus of the population particularly to Florida and the Bahamas. In 1986, a popular uprising overthrew Jean-Claude Duvalier, who left and sought refuge in the south of France.