July 15, 2021 • 46 mins
Robert is joined again by Propaganda to continue to discuss Pappa Doc and Baby Doc.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Ah, we're back. Well, we never left in a lot
of ways, because I never leave you, my listeners, and
neither this prop. We're always there in your hearts, sometimes
in your home, you know, waiting behind the mirrors, watching
you to take me away from you. There's nothing men
on Mars could have or the men on MARSK. I
(00:22):
don't know what's leary. Men are more right, bless the
rains down in it. I don't know why I always started.
If I just just let yall into my child, that's
something that a hundred men on Mars could never do.
I don't know. You can't get me out of you
can't give me out this. Love it, love it. You
(00:45):
know what else? I love Jason Petty Rebellions a k A.
Prop host of Hood Politics. I love dictators And as
we start this episode, our friend Papa Doc friends Fall
Duvalier has made himself into addict hater. You know, um,
you know, the the election that made him present was questionable,
but not more questionable than the average election in Haiti.
(01:08):
But the whole forming your own secret military police force
thing in order to murder your enemies, that's some dictatorship,
you know, it's you've you've gone full tator. So d
Vallier knew that the only force that the military, was
the only force in Haiti capable of overthrowing his regime.
(01:29):
So as much as he dedicated the Taunton to the
Taunton mccoot uh to purging his political rivals and journalists,
he also said it towards investigating the top command of
the army. He was careful with this information. Rather than
use it to carry out public purchase, he instead engaged
in frequent shakeups of the high command, prematurely retiring officers
he thought might people link to coue him. At the
(01:49):
same time, he gradually cut the military budget, trimming its
numbers to make it something his into something his Taunton
mccoot could deal with. He also ordered all his of
the military's armament stored on the grounds of the presidential Palace,
where he could keep an eye on it, which is
not a dumb move, like, yeah, we're gonna keep all
the big guns in my house. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I guess.
(02:12):
I mean I would feel better. I mean if all
of our military's big weapons were kept in my basement,
because at least I know where they are. I know
where they are you know, I'm not going to use
them for evil often but all the time, all the time, constantly,
you're I'm gonna take vacation days and ships. Um. In
(02:35):
nineteen fifty eight, before the Tom Tom mccoop were formally organized.
But obviously you've got Clement Barbow, he's starting to like
gear stuff up. They haven't just haven't earned their name yet. Um.
The new president used his its predecessors to crack down
and what he saw is the first threat to his reign,
which was the labor union movement in Haiti. He canceled
that year's May Day rally, he had the leader of
(02:56):
the local union arrested, and he started sending out his
men to beat into which your labeler organizers. When the
Tanton mccoot came into being, Duvalier set them after this
task with Gusto, and by nineteen sixty the Haitian labor
union movement was completely dead. Now. The men who were
selected to join the Tanton mccoot were people with no
real other options for success in Haitian society. As one
(03:18):
right up by Charles River, editors noted quote. Ex soldiers
were recruited alongside criminal street thugs and sundry opportunists of
every stripe, and the entire contingent was then armed and
occasionally paid and given license to extort. Now that last
bit is crucial. They usually weren't paid, and when they were,
they were not paid. Well, that was not a downside.
(03:39):
That actually increased their loyalty because they in addition to
not paying them, they said, you're basically like you can
do anything like as like, we're not going to pay you,
but you you you have the authority of the president.
You can break whatever fucking laws you want to break. Yeah,
that's yeah, that's interesting that the tie between that's interesting,
the tie between being like, well, if we paid you,
(04:02):
then that would mean that we're kind of responsible for
your choices, and we don't pay you. It's like, well,
I mean, we don't pay them. They do what they want.
It also makes them more dependent on the regime because
if you're if the tontime MACUTER like a normal police agency, right,
and you have a salary, then they could support someone
else taking power, right, Like someone else could take power
(04:22):
and then they're just like, oh, well, they were just
cops doing their jobs and they can keep being cops
doing their jobs under the new regime. If they make
their money by extorting people and taking bribes and like
committing crimes and they're only allowed to do that because
the regime is friendly to them, then they have no
legitimate place in society outside of the regime. And they're
(04:43):
also they're committing all these crimes, so they know that
if the regime loses power, people are going to commit
me because they're pissed, you know. Um. Yeah, So their
comfort is entirely tied to the fact that the regime
allows them to operate as a mafia. These guys are
basically a mafia right there, am FIA slash FBI um,
which is different from the regular FBI because their badges
(05:04):
aren't as nice. Now. The Taunton uniforms, such as it was,
consisted of dark sunglasses, straw hats, blue denim shirts, and
in many cases machetes. They were allowed to disregard what
passed for Haitian civil rights protections, but they were not
accountable to any branch of law enforcement or anyone at
all but Papa Dock. By nineteen sixty there were thousands
of Taunton mccoot. Now I think they topped at like
(05:27):
nine thousands there's a lot of these guys. It takes
a lot. Yeah, it takes a lot. Now, the problem
with creating a secret police slash militia force like this
is that you're going to need someone to run them.
And if the first pick is obviously Clement Barbo, the
President trusts him. He'd done a good job, and he
did a good job of setting up this regime of terror.
From the New York Times quote and his crackdown on
(05:48):
potential troublemakers, notably those who had opposed his electioners stood
as a threat to any possible coup. Many were granted
asylum in foreign embassies. His rivals in the election fled
the country, but Taunton executioners few serious That one of
the losing candidates, Clement Jummel, had escaped, tracked down two
of his brothers and gunned them down as they surrendered
hands up. Opposition newspapers were bombed by Tanton hooligans. During
(06:10):
the first year of Duvalier's revolution, Editors and publishers of
seven leading periodicals were jailed, and most of them were tortured.
Mrs Yvonne Rampel, director of the anti Duvalier Fortnitely Lescal
was beaten unconscious before her children and taken by a
dozen tauntons to the outskirts of Port of Prints, where
they tortured and raped her and left her dying. So
(06:30):
pretty bad, dudes, Yeah, man, yeah, got dog man Now,
I just I just hate this so much. Yeah, it's
it's real bad. It's real bad. Now, if you've never
orchestrated repressive regime that murders huge numbers of people, uh yeah,
(06:51):
you might be surprised to learn that this pisses people off. Um.
People don't like it when you do that. Actually, it's
historically unpopular call um. And a lot of these exiled
politicians who like escape but their families get killed, And
a lot of citizens who like leave because they're like, oh,
this isn't gonna go anywhere. Well, they don't want to
just like leave Haiti and be like, well, I guess
an assholes in charge now, right. They try to overthrow
(07:14):
the regime. Um, and so they start raising these kind
of exile militias that will periodically enter the country to
try to take over. And these guys aren't generally trying
to do like they're not like whole armies. They're small
groups that are trying to come in and like raise
the people up. And because it's not there's not a
lot of soldiers in the Haitian army. You don't need
to like make a whole war thing, you know, you
just have to take out the right people. It's a
(07:36):
flo side note as an American, how often governments get overthrown? Yeah,
but I like tempted to be overthrown like thirty guys.
Yeah yeah, it happens all the time and has all
the time. Yeah. Um, we're not in support of this coup,
so it doesn't have to succeed. The first of these
exile militias attacks Haiti in nineteen fifty nine. It's a
(07:56):
group of thirty men. They land on the Haitian north
coast after sitting sales Cuba. And obviously these guys are
backed by the Cuban government. Right. We do the same
thing all throughout Latin America. In this case, the Cuban
government gives some some guys heavy weapons, um, and they
see some initial success. They take over an army post,
they start to recruit and hand out guns to nearby villagers,
and in pretty short order, two hundred people have joined them. Now,
(08:18):
while this happens like as these exiles are starting to
form their military, Haitian exiles and Venezuela start broadcasting appeals
to their countrymen, like sending out radio broadcasts that reach
Haiti to aid the insurgents. Now, two hundred men not
a huge force, but after two years of Devolierism, the
army is extremely weak, and the dictator was hesitant to
give them the weapons they would need to turn back
(08:40):
this invasion because then they might use the weapons on him.
So he's in a bad position, right, Two guys properly
organized and equipped could actually funk up his reach put off.
He's very worried about this, and it actually, by some accounts,
comes pretty close to to taking him out. But thankfully,
prop thankfully, oh, Papa Doc has a friend, and that
(09:02):
friend is the United States government, particularly the United States Army.
We have a military mission in Haiti, and we had
a good relationship with Duvalier because he was anti communist,
and he was an anti communist because he cared about
anything particularly he was anti communist, because that gets you
us support, right um. Now, Duvolier uh basically is like, hey, America,
(09:28):
some some mean guys are here. And because like don't worry, buddy.
We've got the Marine Corps and planes and they kill
all these rebels pretty quick. Um, well, some of them flat,
but yeah, they kill a bunch of dudes. Now. The
commander of the US mission in Haiti was a colonel
named Robert heinel Um, and he was well aware of
how terrible the regime he was propping up was. At
(09:48):
one point, his twelve year old son was arrested by
the Tonton mccoot because he expressed sympathy for a group
of starving peasants. So the guy who's massacring these revolutionaries
knows that he's helping the bad guys, but it's his job. Um.
Finel's orders from the State Department were very clear. He
later recalled what he was told by a State Department
(10:10):
official when he took the gig. Quote, Colonel, the most
important way you can support our objectives in Haiti is
to help keep da Vallier in power so he can
serve out his full term in office and maybe a
little longer than that if everything works out. Okay, got it,
got it? You get the feeling. Heinel feels bad about this. Later,
(10:31):
he didn't stop him from being the you know, didn't
stop Smedley, you know, at the same time, although maybe
a little bit longer, maybe a little bit longer than
his term where the State Department, we don't give a
ship as far as Papa Doc went, his regime weathers
the rebellion, right, it's it's a rough point for for
a while, but they get through with the help of
(10:53):
the US. But he has a lot of stress because
people are trying to overthrow him, and all of this
stress causes him to have a heart attack, which he
near he dies from. Thankfully, his good buddy of the
United States of America was there to help. Again. We
flew in teams medical teams from Guantanamo Bay and Washington,
d C. To operate on the dictator's heart and save
his life. Why are so bad, like maybe consistently inconsistent. Yeah,
(11:22):
we're gonna we're going to a dictator. Yeah, we overthrow
dictatorships asterix go to the bottom. This dictators we don't like,
that's you know what I'm saying. But there's some dictators
that like yo tator and kind of like why are
we so extra for somebody, Like why effort somewhere that's needed?
(11:45):
Family like America? Ye, good times. They would argue, we
are working for America, is their argument. Yeah, and I
mean they are. I guess, I don't know. Whatever. So
Devolier survives his fucking heart attack, and during his recovery
he's able to properly unable to. But like so he's
(12:07):
like fucked up for a while, and he can't be
a dictator when you're when you're sick, well no, because
power falls to his number two man, Clement Barbou, the
guy who murdered like Clement Barnbow, gets the nickname the
Muffler because of how good he is at silencing people.
Good God, So he's not a nice guy, The Muffler.
(12:30):
That nickname is so hard, but like horrible, it's very hard, Yeah,
it is. It is like i'd want to be I'd
want to be called them. Yeah, you don't get that
nickname unless you're like a scary son of and this
guy will be talking about him more, is terrifying. So
by all accounts, Barbau does a good job of holding
onto powerful Duvaliere. But the problem is that if your
(12:53):
boss is a paranoid psychopath, they're not great at trust.
So Papa Doc recovers and he takes back power, but
he decides the chances are better than zero that his
trusted aid had spent the time while he was fucked
up plotting against him. Because again Davalier grows up through
like a dozen goods. Yeah, he doesn't even wait to
see if that's the case. He just immediately throws Barboa
(13:14):
in prison for sixteen months, like like, come on, bro,
are you serious? Okay, of course I was plotting your murder,
but yeah, but say now back in the saddle. Davolier
decided that his next job was to get rid of
the pesky term limits that the Haitian constitution, which he
(13:36):
had written called for his first term, was set to
end in nineteen sixty three. So he got together with
his attorney general and had him put together a surprise
early election. Francois du Volier was the only person allowed
to run for president. His party was the only party
allowed to field candidates, so Haitian voters basically got a
slip of paper with Duvolier's name on it, and whatever
(13:57):
they might want to do, he was going to get reelected,
which he was by a margin of thirteen million votes. Again,
he didn't get all those votes, but there also, weren't
other options. Yeah, yeah, they've got a multiple choice, is
the answer? A. That's it. That's the If you write
(14:17):
anything but A, we are shooting you. Yeah. Yeah. So
when he was told that he had won by such
a totally legitimate margin, he is said to have declared
as a revolutionary, I have no right to disregard the
voice of the people. Well, if they want me that
bad man, I'm just saying that's what they said, Ain't
that right? That's what I said. That's what they said.
(14:38):
They voted for me. What you want me to say?
Who am? I? I love it? Now. This frustrated the
United States, who preferred the strongman that they backed to
put in a little bit more effort into hiding their
naked authoritarianism. Earlier that year, we've given Duvalier fifty million
dollars in economic and military to help prop the regime
up because grampant corruption had hollowed out the government's ability
(14:59):
to do any of them most basic tasks of governing.
Um and the US was frustrated that Duvalier had taken
fifty million dollars and then made such a naked power grab. Again,
we had no problem with this guy, staying in past
his term limits. But we didn't like how blatant it
was right to make it obvious, maam. We were also frustrated.
(15:19):
That same year he took some of that fifty million
dollars and used to make a utopian named after himself.
He called it Duvolierville because dictators are not subtle people,
and it was a town built as a monument to himself. Yeah, yeah,
not that creative either. He selected an existing village named
Cabaret as the location for his new project. Construction started
(15:41):
in nineteen sixty one and continued for several years. To
finances model city, he instituted heavy taxes on sugar, rice
and cooking oil. He docked the salaries of government workers,
and he forced them to buy bonds and lottery tickets.
Foreign businessmen were shaped down for contributions. Construction included a
water treatment plant which ever successfully treated any water, and
(16:01):
had a giant Greek style theater. From what I've been
able to find, was mostly used to store chickens. I
found a right up about the village in nineteen eighties six,
which shows where the project was twenty four years after
the start of construction. From the Chicago Tribune quote. We
don't have water, we don't have schools, we don't that
we don't have to pay for, and we don't have
a hospital, said Petite for Wilbert. What we have our
(16:24):
buildings with the name of the president's family. As one
enters du Volierville, a town of ten thousand people, there
is a large and now de face neon sign with
a light spelling out the name Francois du Volier. Just
beyond the sign lie a few square blocks of one
story cinder block houses. Chickens, goats, and the semi clothe
children wander amid the crumbling sidewalks that are the only
paved streets in this town. We have seven Sundays in Duvalierville,
(16:47):
the thirty five year old Wilbert said, ruling the lack
of jobs. The main complaint from the desperately poor people
here is about the lack of fresh water. The nearest
sources seven miles away, and the residents have to pay
people to bring it to them. A giant hugs the
project is there. It was going to treat the water
from the river, said Father Vital Middy, the parish priest,
talking about a plant. The elder Duvolier started to build
(17:08):
and never finished, but it has never worked. Father Middy
explained that work was begun in nineteen sixty two and
that once the late president inaugurated his pet project, nothing
more was done. Dude, First of all, at the phrase
seven sundays. Yeah, yeah, because we got no fucking jobs. Yeah,
we got seven Sundays. Also, can you imagine somebody asking you, hey, so,
(17:30):
how's that city named after you? Completely? Yea, it is fucked.
Let me tell you to go there. It's terrible, like yeah,
but but but I built a city, now you did
You didn't build, Yeah, I just named it and then
fucked it up. Yeah. So that same year nineteen sixty two,
when constructions kicking off for Duvalier, Ville, Clement barbo who
(17:53):
gets out of prison, you know it is now at
a prison after sixteen months, begins plotting to remove Duvolier
from office. And if it wasn't yeah, Now, Barbeau was
a frightening man, and he immediately launched a campaign of
very effective terrorism against the regime. In April of nineteen
(18:13):
sixty three, four of Duvolier's bodyguards were shot dead while
escorting his children to school. The kids were unharmed, but
Barboa sent Papa Doc a letter that made the meaning
of this attack very clear. Just target practice, basically, I
was I was just preparing to fucking kill you people.
I just wanted to check out if my guns were working.
So I killed your kids bodyguards and hey, I didn't
(18:36):
miss I didn't miss. Yeah. Weeks later, Barbo's men attacked
the schoolhouse filled with Duvolier supporters who were waiting for
their chance to come out and cheer the dictator on.
They've been packed into the schoolhouse as part of like
he was having a march through town. Right um, They've
been forced in there, and Barboux decides to ruin this
(18:56):
photo op and just machine guns the school kill seven people. Uh.
And the knowledge that Duvalier supporters could be although again,
these people didn't have the choice to support Duvolier right
like yeah, um, the knowledge that his supporters could be
massacred at a government rally shook the regime. From Time
magazine quote, Duvolier sent militia patrols to comb Porta Princes
(19:16):
festering slums, but Barbeau laid clever ambushes. In one final loan,
thirty loyal duvalieris were reported killed. While Duvalier's men were
out chasing him. Barbeau rated their lightly guarded barracks for arms.
He even telephoned the palace one day wanting du Volier
not to drink his coffee. It was poisoned, said Barbeaux Sky. Yeah, god,
(19:38):
he doing like you shouldn't drinking coffee, Like what because
I fucking poisoned it poison Like, oh, you're just gonna
tell me about it? I mean, yeah, go ahead and
sip it in. Like what this guy he gets one
are the only his thing, y'all. Only saving grace in
(19:59):
being under a dick hatership like that is knowing that
if you just support the dictator, you can't get touched.
And what this dude is just ruined that security that like,
oh no, you can still get touched. He is fucking
shipped up. And there's this amazing moment where he gets
cornered in a building and they just machine gun the
building he's in, blow it up and ship and a
black dog runs out of the building like he had
(20:21):
escaped somehow, but there was a dog and there the
dog runs out and it starts this myth that Barbo
can't be killed because he has the power to change himself.
He has the voodoo power to change into a black
dog and scape at will. So to follow he, being
the kind of dude he is, orders every black dog
and Haiti shot on site. Word. Oh he's a black dog. Okay, yeah,
(20:41):
gang bang. Now you know who won't order dogs assassinated?
I said won't. I said won't. Yeah, Sophie will not,
and neither will the products and services that support this podcast.
(21:03):
We're back. Uh boy, what a great what a great
ad break we just had. So as the whole ordering
all of the dogs that looked wrong shot thing might
have keep you in on Papa Ducks kind of paranoid
in this period. He's always been a paranoid guy, and
his paranoia was ratcheted up because of the c i A. So, well,
this is all happening. Kennedy takes power in nineteen sixty
(21:25):
well not whatever. Kennedy's elected in nineteen sixty one, and
that changes US policy towards Haiti because Kennedy does not
like Haiti um and it becomes US policy. US had
supported Papa Doc prior to this. Uh, it becomes Kennedy's
policy to force Papa Dock out of power. So he
sets the CIA to this task. The CIA, because they're
never quite as smart as as people like to think
(21:48):
they are. Um, let's see, IA decides that because he's superstitious. Um,
what they're gonna do is they buy the rights to
rewrite the horoscope predictions for his astrological sign in a
French monthly magazine called Horoscope. That TV red that's the
CIA plan. That's fun, this funking. I mean they also
(22:09):
try to arm dissidents and stuff like like they were
his horoscope, tuck him up. Yeah, this is the time
of the exploding cigar, you know, Like, okay, so mad.
Could you imagine being on the pitch team during this time? Like, yo, fun?
What about horoscopes? Yeah? Okay, guys, hear me out here,
me out the man reads a horoscope every day. What
(22:31):
if we just what if we just yeah, yeah, what's
a sign? I got an idea? Yeah, yeah, I have
not come across the tales and what they wrote for
his horoscopes. But this was not the only time the
CIA dabbled in astrology. In the nineteen fifties, they created
and distributed an astrological almanac and Vietnam in order to
play on fears and superstitions that were common in northern Vietnam.
(22:53):
They also repeatedly threw in predictions about prosperity in southern
Vietnam to try and make life there look more attractive. Um,
you may notice that didn't work, and I don't think
it works here. I don't have no way of knowing
if this makes him more paranoid, if like, maybe it does.
It's hard to tell. With Papa doc Um. I just
thought that was funny. Fired. He's like, right before the
(23:16):
person wants to stay at office, what do we do horoscopes? Yeah,
that's a good day's Yeah, at least nobody dies, leasna
have to go there. You know, we are so busy
killing people in Guatemala. Let's just try the horoscope thing. Yeah. So, um,
I don't know, we'll see. Uh. My guesses they were
probably trying to make him like feel like death was
(23:38):
coming for him and he should probably be an exile.
It doesn't work anyway. Back to Barbell. In July of
nineteen sixty three, Barbo's luck runs out. He had decided
to gather all of his supporters and launch an attack
on the dictator, but someone tipped the attack off to Duvalier,
and he sent a swarm of Tonton mccoot to Barbo's
hiding place in a sugarcane field, and they just light
the whole field on fire. When Barbone has men try
(24:00):
to escape, their machine gun to death, and famously Papa
Doc has his head cut off, put on ice and
delivered to the palace um because he's that kind of dude. Now,
the regime kills at least fifty other people during the
panic over Barbo. Dozens more picked up on suspicion of
being antidivaliarist, and I never heard from again. By the
(24:20):
time the whole sordid business is over, however, the regime
found itself in a relatively solid position. The greatest threat
to Papa Doc's reign was gone. There were several more
invasions by groups of exiles, most of which were launched
from inside the Dominican Republic, Haiti's neighbor. Again, they don't
get along, uh and and and fucking and Papa Doctor
as much of fucked up ship towards Haiti. There's a
(24:42):
lot of like yeah, like I'm not putting it on
the Dominican Republican again overthrowing Papa Dox, broadly speaking, a
good thing to do because he sucks um. So in
order to deal with all of these like cross border
attacks from the Dominican Republic, and to stop his own citizens.
More than that, to stop his own citizens from fleeing
to the Dominican Republic, Davolier burns a three square mile
(25:02):
swath of forest around the border between the two countries,
creating a no man's land so his soldiers can gun
down anyone trying to flee into or out of the country.
One threat to his regime came from a former army
officer who was also a voodoo guy and who bragged
that he was immune to death. Davolier had his men
proved the officer wrong by cutting his head off, putting
it in a bucket of ice, and sending it to
the presidential palace. He did this a few times. In
(25:26):
nineteen sixty four, Davolier ditched all pretense and made himself
president for life. He had a group of army officers
circulated petition demanding that he'd do this. Then he had
his legislature replaced the constitution that he'd written years before
with one that legalized lifelong presidency. Then he had another
referendum where he was again the sole candidate. He was
(25:46):
inaugurated president for life on June twenty two, nineteen sixty four.
From that point on, a lot of professionals in Haiti,
people with marketable skills like running a country, started to
flee for literally anywhere else. They're like us. Doesn't seem
like it's head in a good direct. This guy's already
lasted longer than any of the other previously. This is
(26:06):
not going to gonna end anywhere. While we should get
the funk out um, the fact that everyone who knows
how to do anything leaves means that the health care
and educational systems collapse entirely. School just stops being a
thing from because there's not fucking teachers. Duvolier confiscated peasant
land holdings and increased taxes on the poor, siphoning off
about five million dollars in taxes and foreign aid to
(26:27):
his personal fortune. Malnutrition and famine became endemic. His Taunton
mccoot grew larger and killed more people every year, beating
and torturing not just dissidents, but any person individual. Tauntons
took a dislike to as the regime wore on, so
did the repression. From the New York Times quote, After
six teenagers painted a down with Duvalier sign on the
(26:49):
Port up prints wall and were executed without trial, President
Duvalier ordered that all youth organizations, even the Boy Scouts,
be disbanded. He deported clergyman who criticized his rule, earning
his own excommunity cacation from the Roman Catholic Church. He
ignored Rome, however, and continued to attend mass carrying a
rifle inflanked by six to ten bodyguards. Tell me, how
(27:10):
are you gonna tell me what God? I sir, I'm
going to church today? These brothers with these weapons, tell
to do it with the sticks back here? I can't. Community. Yes,
send those Swiss motherfucker's with the birds and see how
they do. Send him down. Come round hood, hey, no
no no, no, no no no no no, hey, you shut
(27:30):
the funk up. All right past the past, the go ahead. Continue.
Even duvalier strong willed favorite daughter Marie Denise, fell victim
to his wrath when she insisted on marrying a Lieutenant
Colonel Max Dominique, a handsome black, Despite his public stance
that Haiti belonged to the blacks. Papa Doc had married
a mulatto and made it no secret that he wanted
(27:51):
his children to follow his example. Of course, yeah yeah.
After their marriage in nineteen sixty seven, President Duvalier got
the manifest Site by appointing Colonel Dominique ambassador to Spain.
Hours after the Dominiques had left, Papa Doc rounded up
nineteen of their army officer friends and, after accusing them
of plotting against him, personally led the firing squad that
executed them. Yeah, and that's why White Clef John left
(28:16):
and started the fujis in I'm just yeah, I think so,
that's exactly what happened. That's how the fuji started was him.
He was there in Haiti during this and his mama
was like, yo, we gotta go. Yes, this is not
going to end well yeah yeah, that's where he met
Lauren Hill and that's why we have the So something
good came out of the roy we got we got
(28:40):
we got the Shakira song yeh with White Clep there. Yes,
we didn't get any good hip hop acts out of Hitler.
Wait a second that was excellent? Was that was that
spot on you know the trick for secura is you
have to kind she's kind of kermit. It's kind of kermit,
but you have to do it on key. I just
(29:04):
wanted to give that some shine because okay, appreciate that.
Thank you. I don't know if I could do it
again because it was so off the head. Yeah anyway,
all right, so uh. Davolier spent much of the middle
late sixties engaging in an escalating war with the Catholic
(29:25):
Church clergy. He could not briber, threatened would be arrested.
He exiled several bishops of papal nuncio and numerous priests.
He confiscated church property, and in nineteen sixty six he
succeeded in bringing the Vatican to the negotiating table. The
end result was an accord that allowed him to nationalize
the Catholic Church of Haiti, effectively making him the head
of Haitian Catholicism. He was given the power to name
(29:47):
bishops and archbishops, albeit with the approval of the Holy See.
So let me tell you something. When you start traveling
hoods and you like no like like Haitian, like Haitian
thugs like Haitian gangsters, and justice like these people are
afraid of nothing. And and now like understanding the sort
(30:09):
of the cultural mew meal you where like even the
dictator was like, okay, first of all, we overthrew our oppressors.
Then we overthrew every politic or every uh colonial force.
And now we've ben't told the Catholic Church what we're
gonna do. You understand what I'm saying. You think you're
gonna serve from cocaine on my block? Like that that
(30:30):
this is making all that makes sense that like some
of the hoods in Miami would like these like way
like the Hatians do out there. Are you just like stated,
there's some people that you like, stay to hell out
their way, you know, and it is known you stay
out the Haitians. Just stay out their way, let them
do what they're doing. And I'm seeing now even at
(30:51):
the government level, you should just stay to hell out
their way. Yeah. And it's you know, it is a
mark of the level of skill and how frightening this
guy is that he's able to get He gets the
Catholic Church to like the seeds some of their sovereignty,
and the Catholic Church is like, yeah, you know, there
(31:12):
there is there as hard as it gets pretty much
with this millennial long yeah regime here, they've kept the
ship going a while, and they're like right, like we
we we've got to we've got to bow to you
some Okay, we all want no parts. It is go ahead,
do what you want to do. So uh yeah. Now unfortunately,
(31:33):
uh well, fortunately, I guess people die. Uh. And by
the late nineteen sixties he's old, he's in bad health. Um.
He tries to kind of burnish his image at the
end by putting out a bunch of propaganda about like
how cool the Duvolarist revolution, and he tries to actually
tie himself to like Mao and other great revolutionaries, even
though he'd spent his life as an anti communist. It's weird. Um.
(31:56):
One of the things he does is he adapts the
Lord's prayer so that Haitians can pray to him. Um.
And the adaptation goes, our doc who aren't in the
National Palace for life, how lo would be thy name
by present in future generations that will be done at Porta,
Prince and in the provinces, give us this day, our
new Haiti, and never forgive the trespasses of the antipatriots.
Who spent every day on our country. Let them succumb
(32:17):
to temptation and under the weight of their venom, deliver
them not from evil. He took the most wholesome part,
the most wholesome part, the most redeeming part of the
whole thing. Was like, oh man, you know what, how
you know your kind of give us this day our
daily bread. You know, forgive our debts as we forgive
(32:38):
our debtors. Like the one part you could say is
like this is pretty good, you know, just this idea
of radical forgiveness. He's like, and don't you ever in
your life forgive these people? Dog hard So Davoliers propagandists
put out a book, you know. Anyway, they do a
bunch of trying to tie him, like make him into
(32:59):
the great revolutionary leader. That's kind of his last big flex.
In nineteen seventy, he suffers a horrible heart attack. Um,
and like most men who suffer their second big heart attack,
after thirteen years of suppressing rebellions, Papa Doc starts thinking
about his mortality. UM. He decides he wants to be
succeeded by his only son, Jean Claude, a nineteen year
old giant who up until that point has mostly been
(33:21):
a party kid. Papa Doc had his legislature changed the
constitution again, which sort of begs the question of why
he bothered having a constitution in the first place. The
second constitution that he'd written in sixty four had stipulated
that the president for life had to be forty years old.
He changed this. He holds another referendum and asked people
to vote yea or nay on this question. Citizen Doctor
Francois du Volier has chosen citizen John Claude Duvalier to
(33:44):
succeed him to the presidency for life of the Republic.
Does this choice answer your aspirations and your desisures? Um? Obviously? Yeah,
Papa Doc gets his way, um. And two months later,
in February nineteen seventy one, Papa Doc Duvalier dies. An
estimated forty Haitians had died under his rule from a
(34:05):
mix of starvation, malnutrition, and murder. And we're going to
give the story much shorter story of Jean Claude Duvalier.
But first, you know who didn't kill forty people? The
products and services? That's that's right, that's right, that's right,
(34:28):
all right, We're back. So, Jean Claude Duvalier did not
really want to be president for life. Um. Prior to
taking power, he'd spent most of his time living in
the palace. He never really left the capital. He was
not very smart. He seems to have known this. He
was not very power hungry. Um. He suggested his sister
Marie Denise take the job, but his father said no. Um.
(34:49):
On the day he was sworn into office, Jean Claude
missed his own coronation because he was too high on valium,
because he was Yeah, I love it. He's like, man,
I'm just rich. I just want to rich. I'm just rich.
Don't work, Hey, you do it? Yeah. Look, my sister
she loves audit. I'm not great at history, but I
know enough to know that it's hard to be the
(35:10):
president of what you going through? Are you stressed out
all the time? Killing everybody that seemed miserable? He missed,
won't this? Uh? So. The one sign that he might
have some steel in him had come in nineteen sixty seven,
when John Claude was fifteen. His fa father had flown
into a rage at his mother and started hitting her,
and John Claude had shoved Papa Doc into a room
(35:32):
and locked him there for three hours. UM. That said,
the story was not widely known, and most foreign pundits
assumed he was going to lose power pretty quickly. Um.
But of course that's not how it went. He surprised
the people who thought that he was going to be
out quickly. He put on a friendlier mask to the
international community. Um. While his family, namely his sister and
(35:52):
his mom were the power behind the throne. Um. Meanwhile, like, well,
they were continuing to do pretty brutal ship. He opens
the palace to journalists. He starts paying off the country's debts. Uh.
He modernizes. He supports a quickie divorce law that makes
Haiti a tourist mecca. You can get divorced in twenty
four hours, so people start going there to divorce. Um.
(36:13):
And he gets good at cleaning up prisons, like right
before international observers visit. So he starts to like make
a play for now. I'm gonna modernize. I'm gonna fix
a lot of this ship that's wrong. We're gonna fix
this stuff. We're gonna clean up Haiti. Um. Davalier also
opened the country to foreign business and economic liberalization. He
called Jean claudeis um. This mostly meant giving US businesses
(36:34):
a lot of tax breaks and ship and letting take
advantage of cheap labor uh and letting them use the
Taunton mccoots to crack it down on any unions that
tried to form and damn Sean Claude. So all of
this makes the US government really happy. Oh, you're gonna
crack out on unions again. You gotta let businesses in.
For the first couple of years of his rule, for
and aid increased to Haiti by more than eight percent UM. Now, obviously,
(36:59):
as I said, his his mom and his sister are
the real power, and they're kind of a odds with
each other. His mom is a traditionalist. She wants to
do things the way that Dad had done things. UM.
His sister is more actually does want to seem to
want to modernize at least some things. The to fight
all the time, Baby Doc mostly spends his time playing
with fast cars and partying. In nineteen and other horrible
(37:20):
famine hits the country, Baby Doc begs the US for aid.
The United States obliges, and all those cash and food
shipments go directly into the hands of his powerful supporters.
This was discovered immediately. Congressman started yelling about Haitian corruption
until Baby Doc arrested a handful of people. But this
did not stop the famine or make Hatie less corrupt,
and in seventy six, Haitian refugees start flooding into the
(37:41):
United States. A lot of these guys die. It's a
really horrible trip. There's a lot of gruesome pictures of it,
and people get outraged. In nineteen seventy six, Jimmy Carter
takes office and he's like, we're going to change things.
You know, We're we're gonna tie aid to you, actually
improving human rights conditions. Um. This creates a problem for
Baby Docs, so he has to push through a bunch
of cosmetic reforms to try to trick Jimmy Carter. Not
(38:03):
the hardest things anyone's ever done. He arrests if Utahnton
mccoot um. Very few international absorbs are truly fooled, but
more AID is allowed to enter the country. I think
Carter's hope was that, Okay, they did a couple of things,
will send in more aid, maybe they'll change more. But
before anything could really change, Ronald Reagan gets elected, and
he did not give a fuck about whether or not
(38:23):
Haiti got more democratic Um. Baby, Doc is smart enough
to know. Okay, Ronald Reagan's and I'm gonna start talking
about how bad communism is. He actually holds a champagne
party when Reagan gets elected because he knows it's gonna
make it easier. Reagan's like anti communist. Here's a funkload
of money. Um. Yeah, and this is actually uh now
now seriously speaking, this is actually the the meal you
(38:45):
that made the Fuji's and why they're called the Fuji's.
It's short for refugees and it's because of this. Yeah.
And and by nineteen eighty, Haiti is completely dependent on
foreign aid, and the greatest recipient of foreign aid is
the Duvalier family. More than two thirds of the Tree's
development budget, which was about eighty one million dollars, came
from foreign governments, namely the US, Canada, West Germany, and
(39:06):
the United Kingdom. Um. And obviously this is incredibly, incredibly corrupt.
He's channeling a much of I m F money into
his his his accounts to there's constant like issues and
constant international anger over the fact that he's just stealing
all of this aid money that he gets, but nothing
is actually done about it. The term cleftocracy is actually
(39:26):
first coined by a Canadian government report on graft in
the Duvalier regime. That's where we get the word. The
whole government, including numerous state owned companies, existed as an
extension of the Duvalier family bank account now. One of
the chief movers of the Haitian economy was a guy
named Luckner Cambrone, who was the lover of baby Docs
mother Simone. He made a fortune exporting the literal blood
(39:48):
of Haitian citizens, often gathered by force by the Tonton mccoot.
The nation exported five tons of blood plasma per month
under Luckner. He bought it for five dollars a pint
and sold it for thirty five dollar to U S
firms like dal Chemical uh So, a bunch of US
companies profited off of the literal stolen blood of the
Haitian people. Sometimes they were paid, often people were just
(40:08):
paid to make sure there was access to blood. He
also sold cadaverous for medical research, literally selling the corpses
of his people because they've been robbed so thoroughly. Um
As his time in office, wore on Papa or baby Doc,
grew bolder. Uh he became more brutal. He eventually kicks
his mom out of power because he marries a woman
named Michelle, and she doesn't like his mom. There's a
(40:29):
whole thing, damn it. Michelle the First, the new first Lady,
hates that her husband's fat. She puts him on a
crash diet and threatened staff who feed him that by
saying that they'll wish they'd never been born. Killed your
mother in law and now your body shaming. Well, he
doesn't kill her, He just forces herd say yeah, yeah, yeah,
um yeah and uh so. By the start of Reagan's
(40:52):
second term, Haiti was and had been for some time,
the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere. The average life
expectancy was forty eight years old. For every teacher on
the government pay roll, there were a hundred and eighty
nine soldiers for every secondary school. There were thirty five prisons.
A majority of the population was food and secure, many
were starving. Clearing away the bodies of starved dead was
(41:12):
a regular task for city employees in the capital. Civil
rests began to burble up in nineteen eighty five, quickly
growing into a significant movement. The Catholic Church gets some
credit for this because the Pope actually gives a brief
speech where he critiques the government. Um liberation theology is
a part of this right. We see this in a
lot of the rest of Latin America. So it's a
number of things. And a student revolt breaks out and
(41:33):
students are initially shot dead by the Tanton mccoot, but
this leads to international condemnation and the US cuts off aid,
which is what kind of spell helps spell the end
of the regime because they're totally dependent on AID. On
the night of February five, nineteen eighty six, Baby Doc
flees the country. Before he leaves the palace, he orders
one of his voodoo sorcerers to lay a spell on
the presidential beds that the next occupant would die there.
(41:56):
A perhaps legendary story goes that the sorcerer called for
two unbapped as newborns to be sacrificed for the ritual.
The hospital charged four hundred dollars for the babies. Um Again,
whether or not this is true, it's definitely true. What's
definitely true is that two days after Baby Doc fled
they hitched a ride along with all of their cash, jewelry,
antiques and artwork from Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, courtesy of a
(42:18):
US Transport aircraft. We helped them flee to France where
they rent a villain near Cans from the Saudi arms
dealer at Non Kasho UM. So that's great. Uh. Now
the bad news is the really sad part of the
story is that Michelle and John Claude's marriage doesn't last UM.
A couple divorce in nine nine. He starts to run
(42:39):
out of money by two thousand three, and he was
said to be living with a mistress in a one
bedroom apartment in Paris by two thousand and three. UM.
In two thousand eleven, he returns to Haiti, claiming he
wants to help rebuild after an earthquake UM, but probably
just trying to get around Swiss banking regulations designed to
stop dictators from using money they'd stolen. He gets arrested,
(42:59):
but for whatever reason, he's kept in a hotel in
the mountains above Port of Prince rather than actually going
to prison, where he dies of a heart attack in
two thousand fourteen at the age of sixty three. So
Pap a dock and baby doc. That's the tail, not
at all. Yeah, that is harsh. Yeah, well I have
(43:24):
that that I feel that feeling of doling death that
you always feel at the end of these pods. Yeah,
that's our goal. That's the goal, the doling death. Yeah,
you can find me a proper pop dot com support
to the politics pod. Yes, also get get props. Book
(43:46):
is delightful and esthetically thank you. Yeah, get um and uh,
I don't know, get a get get get. Uh, don't
get a Haiti. Enough people have taken Haiti. Let them
just try to do something more. Yeah, I mean give
(44:06):
them I don't know, chance here aid and ship but
yeah whatever, I don't know. That didn't work out great either,
So whatever, I don't know what to do. Uh, don't
have fucked with Haiti for centuries. Yeah, lead them alone? Yeah. Um,
well that's the end of the episode. I have a
(44:27):
book you can find at a t r book dot
com and a podcast form and after the revolution, and
that's it. That's the end of the episode. Go home. Um,
kiss a cat or don't give your alertic to cats? Whatever,
kiss something. I don't care. Hey, everybody. Initially I was
going to plug the go fund me for the sequel
to my book, UM After the Revolution, which you can
(44:49):
find at a t r book dot com. But here
in the Pacific Northwest, we're having an unprecedented heat wave
and it's causing disastrous conditions, life threatening conditions for a
lot of houseless people, a lot of people without air conditioning. UM,
particularly in the city of Salem. UM activists everywhere have
been kind of gathering to try and um mitigate set
(45:10):
up cooling stations, hand out cold drinks, to do things
to help people get their temperature down. UM. I want
to try and raise funds for the Free Fridge of Salem, UM,
which are doing cooling stations in the capital of Oregon, Salem.
So if you go to venmo At Free Fridge Salem,
that's venmo At Free Fridge Salem, and send them a
couple of bucks, they could really use it. UM. Local
(45:31):
government has destroyed a number, like police particularly have destroyed
a number of water and cooling stations they've set out. UM.
It's you know, we're not going to be in triple
digit heats for the next couple of days after I'm
recording this on Monday, but it's still going to be
very hot people still need this, so please Venmo at
Free Fridge Salem if you have the wherewithal and the
financial resources to do so. One more time, the Venemo
(45:54):
is at Free Fridge Salem. Thanks
Ah, we're back. Well, we never left in a lot
of ways, because I never leave you, my listeners, and
neither this prop. We're always there in your hearts, sometimes
in your home, you know, waiting behind the mirrors, watching
you to take me away from you. There's nothing men
on Mars could have or the men on MARSK. I
(00:22):
don't know what's leary. Men are more right, bless the
rains down in it. I don't know why I always started.
If I just just let yall into my child, that's
something that a hundred men on Mars could never do.
I don't know. You can't get me out of you
can't give me out this. Love it, love it. You
(00:45):
know what else? I love Jason Petty Rebellions a k A.
Prop host of Hood Politics. I love dictators And as
we start this episode, our friend Papa Doc friends Fall
Duvalier has made himself into addict hater. You know, um,
you know, the the election that made him present was questionable,
but not more questionable than the average election in Haiti.
(01:08):
But the whole forming your own secret military police force
thing in order to murder your enemies, that's some dictatorship,
you know, it's you've you've gone full tator. So d
Vallier knew that the only force that the military, was
the only force in Haiti capable of overthrowing his regime.
(01:29):
So as much as he dedicated the Taunton to the
Taunton mccoot uh to purging his political rivals and journalists,
he also said it towards investigating the top command of
the army. He was careful with this information. Rather than
use it to carry out public purchase, he instead engaged
in frequent shakeups of the high command, prematurely retiring officers
he thought might people link to coue him. At the
(01:49):
same time, he gradually cut the military budget, trimming its
numbers to make it something his into something his Taunton
mccoot could deal with. He also ordered all his of
the military's armament stored on the grounds of the presidential Palace,
where he could keep an eye on it, which is
not a dumb move, like, yeah, we're gonna keep all
the big guns in my house. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I guess.
(02:12):
I mean I would feel better. I mean if all
of our military's big weapons were kept in my basement,
because at least I know where they are. I know
where they are you know, I'm not going to use
them for evil often but all the time, all the time, constantly,
you're I'm gonna take vacation days and ships. Um. In
(02:35):
nineteen fifty eight, before the Tom Tom mccoop were formally organized.
But obviously you've got Clement Barbow, he's starting to like
gear stuff up. They haven't just haven't earned their name yet. Um.
The new president used his its predecessors to crack down
and what he saw is the first threat to his reign,
which was the labor union movement in Haiti. He canceled
that year's May Day rally, he had the leader of
(02:56):
the local union arrested, and he started sending out his
men to beat into which your labeler organizers. When the
Tanton mccoot came into being, Duvalier set them after this
task with Gusto, and by nineteen sixty the Haitian labor
union movement was completely dead. Now. The men who were
selected to join the Tanton mccoot were people with no
real other options for success in Haitian society. As one
(03:18):
right up by Charles River, editors noted quote. Ex soldiers
were recruited alongside criminal street thugs and sundry opportunists of
every stripe, and the entire contingent was then armed and
occasionally paid and given license to extort. Now that last
bit is crucial. They usually weren't paid, and when they were,
they were not paid. Well, that was not a downside.
(03:39):
That actually increased their loyalty because they in addition to
not paying them, they said, you're basically like you can
do anything like as like, we're not going to pay you,
but you you you have the authority of the president.
You can break whatever fucking laws you want to break. Yeah,
that's yeah, that's interesting that the tie between that's interesting,
the tie between being like, well, if we paid you,
(04:02):
then that would mean that we're kind of responsible for
your choices, and we don't pay you. It's like, well,
I mean, we don't pay them. They do what they want.
It also makes them more dependent on the regime because
if you're if the tontime MACUTER like a normal police agency, right,
and you have a salary, then they could support someone
else taking power, right, Like someone else could take power
(04:22):
and then they're just like, oh, well, they were just
cops doing their jobs and they can keep being cops
doing their jobs under the new regime. If they make
their money by extorting people and taking bribes and like
committing crimes and they're only allowed to do that because
the regime is friendly to them, then they have no
legitimate place in society outside of the regime. And they're
(04:43):
also they're committing all these crimes, so they know that
if the regime loses power, people are going to commit
me because they're pissed, you know. Um. Yeah, So their
comfort is entirely tied to the fact that the regime
allows them to operate as a mafia. These guys are
basically a mafia right there, am FIA slash FBI um,
which is different from the regular FBI because their badges
(05:04):
aren't as nice. Now. The Taunton uniforms, such as it was,
consisted of dark sunglasses, straw hats, blue denim shirts, and
in many cases machetes. They were allowed to disregard what
passed for Haitian civil rights protections, but they were not
accountable to any branch of law enforcement or anyone at
all but Papa Dock. By nineteen sixty there were thousands
of Taunton mccoot. Now I think they topped at like
(05:27):
nine thousands there's a lot of these guys. It takes
a lot. Yeah, it takes a lot. Now, the problem
with creating a secret police slash militia force like this
is that you're going to need someone to run them.
And if the first pick is obviously Clement Barbo, the
President trusts him. He'd done a good job, and he
did a good job of setting up this regime of terror.
From the New York Times quote and his crackdown on
(05:48):
potential troublemakers, notably those who had opposed his electioners stood
as a threat to any possible coup. Many were granted
asylum in foreign embassies. His rivals in the election fled
the country, but Taunton executioners few serious That one of
the losing candidates, Clement Jummel, had escaped, tracked down two
of his brothers and gunned them down as they surrendered
hands up. Opposition newspapers were bombed by Tanton hooligans. During
(06:10):
the first year of Duvalier's revolution, Editors and publishers of
seven leading periodicals were jailed, and most of them were tortured.
Mrs Yvonne Rampel, director of the anti Duvalier Fortnitely Lescal
was beaten unconscious before her children and taken by a
dozen tauntons to the outskirts of Port of Prints, where
they tortured and raped her and left her dying. So
(06:30):
pretty bad, dudes, Yeah, man, yeah, got dog man Now,
I just I just hate this so much. Yeah, it's
it's real bad. It's real bad. Now, if you've never
orchestrated repressive regime that murders huge numbers of people, uh yeah,
(06:51):
you might be surprised to learn that this pisses people off. Um.
People don't like it when you do that. Actually, it's
historically unpopular call um. And a lot of these exiled
politicians who like escape but their families get killed, And
a lot of citizens who like leave because they're like, oh,
this isn't gonna go anywhere. Well, they don't want to
just like leave Haiti and be like, well, I guess
an assholes in charge now, right. They try to overthrow
(07:14):
the regime. Um, and so they start raising these kind
of exile militias that will periodically enter the country to
try to take over. And these guys aren't generally trying
to do like they're not like whole armies. They're small
groups that are trying to come in and like raise
the people up. And because it's not there's not a
lot of soldiers in the Haitian army. You don't need
to like make a whole war thing, you know, you
just have to take out the right people. It's a
(07:36):
flo side note as an American, how often governments get overthrown? Yeah,
but I like tempted to be overthrown like thirty guys.
Yeah yeah, it happens all the time and has all
the time. Yeah. Um, we're not in support of this coup,
so it doesn't have to succeed. The first of these
exile militias attacks Haiti in nineteen fifty nine. It's a
(07:56):
group of thirty men. They land on the Haitian north
coast after sitting sales Cuba. And obviously these guys are
backed by the Cuban government. Right. We do the same
thing all throughout Latin America. In this case, the Cuban
government gives some some guys heavy weapons, um, and they
see some initial success. They take over an army post,
they start to recruit and hand out guns to nearby villagers,
and in pretty short order, two hundred people have joined them. Now,
(08:18):
while this happens like as these exiles are starting to
form their military, Haitian exiles and Venezuela start broadcasting appeals
to their countrymen, like sending out radio broadcasts that reach
Haiti to aid the insurgents. Now, two hundred men not
a huge force, but after two years of Devolierism, the
army is extremely weak, and the dictator was hesitant to
give them the weapons they would need to turn back
(08:40):
this invasion because then they might use the weapons on him.
So he's in a bad position, right, Two guys properly
organized and equipped could actually funk up his reach put off.
He's very worried about this, and it actually, by some accounts,
comes pretty close to to taking him out. But thankfully,
prop thankfully, oh, Papa Doc has a friend, and that
(09:02):
friend is the United States government, particularly the United States Army.
We have a military mission in Haiti, and we had
a good relationship with Duvalier because he was anti communist,
and he was an anti communist because he cared about
anything particularly he was anti communist, because that gets you
us support, right um. Now, Duvolier uh basically is like, hey, America,
(09:28):
some some mean guys are here. And because like don't worry, buddy.
We've got the Marine Corps and planes and they kill
all these rebels pretty quick. Um, well, some of them flat,
but yeah, they kill a bunch of dudes. Now. The
commander of the US mission in Haiti was a colonel
named Robert heinel Um, and he was well aware of
how terrible the regime he was propping up was. At
(09:48):
one point, his twelve year old son was arrested by
the Tonton mccoot because he expressed sympathy for a group
of starving peasants. So the guy who's massacring these revolutionaries
knows that he's helping the bad guys, but it's his job. Um.
Finel's orders from the State Department were very clear. He
later recalled what he was told by a State Department
(10:10):
official when he took the gig. Quote, Colonel, the most
important way you can support our objectives in Haiti is
to help keep da Vallier in power so he can
serve out his full term in office and maybe a
little longer than that if everything works out. Okay, got it,
got it? You get the feeling. Heinel feels bad about this. Later,
(10:31):
he didn't stop him from being the you know, didn't
stop Smedley, you know, at the same time, although maybe
a little bit longer, maybe a little bit longer than
his term where the State Department, we don't give a
ship as far as Papa Doc went, his regime weathers
the rebellion, right, it's it's a rough point for for
a while, but they get through with the help of
(10:53):
the US. But he has a lot of stress because
people are trying to overthrow him, and all of this
stress causes him to have a heart attack, which he
near he dies from. Thankfully, his good buddy of the
United States of America was there to help. Again. We
flew in teams medical teams from Guantanamo Bay and Washington,
d C. To operate on the dictator's heart and save
his life. Why are so bad, like maybe consistently inconsistent. Yeah,
(11:22):
we're gonna we're going to a dictator. Yeah, we overthrow
dictatorships asterix go to the bottom. This dictators we don't like,
that's you know what I'm saying. But there's some dictators
that like yo tator and kind of like why are
we so extra for somebody, Like why effort somewhere that's needed?
(11:45):
Family like America? Ye, good times. They would argue, we
are working for America, is their argument. Yeah, and I
mean they are. I guess, I don't know. Whatever. So
Devolier survives his fucking heart attack, and during his recovery
he's able to properly unable to. But like so he's
(12:07):
like fucked up for a while, and he can't be
a dictator when you're when you're sick, well no, because
power falls to his number two man, Clement Barbou, the
guy who murdered like Clement Barnbow, gets the nickname the
Muffler because of how good he is at silencing people.
Good God, So he's not a nice guy, The Muffler.
(12:30):
That nickname is so hard, but like horrible, it's very hard, Yeah,
it is. It is like i'd want to be I'd
want to be called them. Yeah, you don't get that
nickname unless you're like a scary son of and this
guy will be talking about him more, is terrifying. So
by all accounts, Barbau does a good job of holding
onto powerful Duvaliere. But the problem is that if your
(12:53):
boss is a paranoid psychopath, they're not great at trust.
So Papa Doc recovers and he takes back power, but
he decides the chances are better than zero that his
trusted aid had spent the time while he was fucked
up plotting against him. Because again Davalier grows up through
like a dozen goods. Yeah, he doesn't even wait to
see if that's the case. He just immediately throws Barboa
(13:14):
in prison for sixteen months, like like, come on, bro,
are you serious? Okay, of course I was plotting your murder,
but yeah, but say now back in the saddle. Davolier
decided that his next job was to get rid of
the pesky term limits that the Haitian constitution, which he
(13:36):
had written called for his first term, was set to
end in nineteen sixty three. So he got together with
his attorney general and had him put together a surprise
early election. Francois du Volier was the only person allowed
to run for president. His party was the only party
allowed to field candidates, so Haitian voters basically got a
slip of paper with Duvolier's name on it, and whatever
(13:57):
they might want to do, he was going to get reelected,
which he was by a margin of thirteen million votes. Again,
he didn't get all those votes, but there also, weren't
other options. Yeah, yeah, they've got a multiple choice, is
the answer? A. That's it. That's the If you write
(14:17):
anything but A, we are shooting you. Yeah. Yeah. So
when he was told that he had won by such
a totally legitimate margin, he is said to have declared
as a revolutionary, I have no right to disregard the
voice of the people. Well, if they want me that
bad man, I'm just saying that's what they said, Ain't
that right? That's what I said. That's what they said.
(14:38):
They voted for me. What you want me to say?
Who am? I? I love it? Now. This frustrated the
United States, who preferred the strongman that they backed to
put in a little bit more effort into hiding their
naked authoritarianism. Earlier that year, we've given Duvalier fifty million
dollars in economic and military to help prop the regime
up because grampant corruption had hollowed out the government's ability
(14:59):
to do any of them most basic tasks of governing.
Um and the US was frustrated that Duvalier had taken
fifty million dollars and then made such a naked power grab. Again,
we had no problem with this guy, staying in past
his term limits. But we didn't like how blatant it
was right to make it obvious, maam. We were also frustrated.
(15:19):
That same year he took some of that fifty million
dollars and used to make a utopian named after himself.
He called it Duvolierville because dictators are not subtle people,
and it was a town built as a monument to himself. Yeah, yeah,
not that creative either. He selected an existing village named
Cabaret as the location for his new project. Construction started
(15:41):
in nineteen sixty one and continued for several years. To
finances model city, he instituted heavy taxes on sugar, rice
and cooking oil. He docked the salaries of government workers,
and he forced them to buy bonds and lottery tickets.
Foreign businessmen were shaped down for contributions. Construction included a
water treatment plant which ever successfully treated any water, and
(16:01):
had a giant Greek style theater. From what I've been
able to find, was mostly used to store chickens. I
found a right up about the village in nineteen eighties six,
which shows where the project was twenty four years after
the start of construction. From the Chicago Tribune quote. We
don't have water, we don't have schools, we don't that
we don't have to pay for, and we don't have
a hospital, said Petite for Wilbert. What we have our
(16:24):
buildings with the name of the president's family. As one
enters du Volierville, a town of ten thousand people, there
is a large and now de face neon sign with
a light spelling out the name Francois du Volier. Just
beyond the sign lie a few square blocks of one
story cinder block houses. Chickens, goats, and the semi clothe
children wander amid the crumbling sidewalks that are the only
paved streets in this town. We have seven Sundays in Duvalierville,
(16:47):
the thirty five year old Wilbert said, ruling the lack
of jobs. The main complaint from the desperately poor people
here is about the lack of fresh water. The nearest
sources seven miles away, and the residents have to pay
people to bring it to them. A giant hugs the
project is there. It was going to treat the water
from the river, said Father Vital Middy, the parish priest,
talking about a plant. The elder Duvolier started to build
(17:08):
and never finished, but it has never worked. Father Middy
explained that work was begun in nineteen sixty two and
that once the late president inaugurated his pet project, nothing
more was done. Dude, First of all, at the phrase
seven sundays. Yeah, yeah, because we got no fucking jobs. Yeah,
we got seven Sundays. Also, can you imagine somebody asking you, hey, so,
(17:30):
how's that city named after you? Completely? Yea, it is fucked.
Let me tell you to go there. It's terrible, like yeah,
but but but I built a city, now you did
You didn't build, Yeah, I just named it and then
fucked it up. Yeah. So that same year nineteen sixty two,
when constructions kicking off for Duvalier, Ville, Clement barbo who
(17:53):
gets out of prison, you know it is now at
a prison after sixteen months, begins plotting to remove Duvolier
from office. And if it wasn't yeah, Now, Barbeau was
a frightening man, and he immediately launched a campaign of
very effective terrorism against the regime. In April of nineteen
(18:13):
sixty three, four of Duvolier's bodyguards were shot dead while
escorting his children to school. The kids were unharmed, but
Barboa sent Papa Doc a letter that made the meaning
of this attack very clear. Just target practice, basically, I
was I was just preparing to fucking kill you people.
I just wanted to check out if my guns were working.
So I killed your kids bodyguards and hey, I didn't
(18:36):
miss I didn't miss. Yeah. Weeks later, Barbo's men attacked
the schoolhouse filled with Duvolier supporters who were waiting for
their chance to come out and cheer the dictator on.
They've been packed into the schoolhouse as part of like
he was having a march through town. Right um, They've
been forced in there, and Barboux decides to ruin this
(18:56):
photo op and just machine guns the school kill seven people. Uh.
And the knowledge that Duvalier supporters could be although again,
these people didn't have the choice to support Duvolier right
like yeah, um, the knowledge that his supporters could be
massacred at a government rally shook the regime. From Time
magazine quote, Duvolier sent militia patrols to comb Porta Princes
(19:16):
festering slums, but Barbeau laid clever ambushes. In one final loan,
thirty loyal duvalieris were reported killed. While Duvalier's men were
out chasing him. Barbeau rated their lightly guarded barracks for arms.
He even telephoned the palace one day wanting du Volier
not to drink his coffee. It was poisoned, said Barbeaux Sky. Yeah, god,
(19:38):
he doing like you shouldn't drinking coffee, Like what because
I fucking poisoned it poison Like, oh, you're just gonna
tell me about it? I mean, yeah, go ahead and
sip it in. Like what this guy he gets one
are the only his thing, y'all. Only saving grace in
(19:59):
being under a dick hatership like that is knowing that
if you just support the dictator, you can't get touched.
And what this dude is just ruined that security that like,
oh no, you can still get touched. He is fucking
shipped up. And there's this amazing moment where he gets
cornered in a building and they just machine gun the
building he's in, blow it up and ship and a
black dog runs out of the building like he had
(20:21):
escaped somehow, but there was a dog and there the
dog runs out and it starts this myth that Barbo
can't be killed because he has the power to change himself.
He has the voodoo power to change into a black
dog and scape at will. So to follow he, being
the kind of dude he is, orders every black dog
and Haiti shot on site. Word. Oh he's a black dog. Okay, yeah,
(20:41):
gang bang. Now you know who won't order dogs assassinated?
I said won't. I said won't. Yeah, Sophie will not,
and neither will the products and services that support this podcast.
(21:03):
We're back. Uh boy, what a great what a great
ad break we just had. So as the whole ordering
all of the dogs that looked wrong shot thing might
have keep you in on Papa Ducks kind of paranoid
in this period. He's always been a paranoid guy, and
his paranoia was ratcheted up because of the c i A. So, well,
this is all happening. Kennedy takes power in nineteen sixty
(21:25):
well not whatever. Kennedy's elected in nineteen sixty one, and
that changes US policy towards Haiti because Kennedy does not
like Haiti um and it becomes US policy. US had
supported Papa Doc prior to this. Uh, it becomes Kennedy's
policy to force Papa Dock out of power. So he
sets the CIA to this task. The CIA, because they're
never quite as smart as as people like to think
(21:48):
they are. Um, let's see, IA decides that because he's superstitious. Um,
what they're gonna do is they buy the rights to
rewrite the horoscope predictions for his astrological sign in a
French monthly magazine called Horoscope. That TV red that's the
CIA plan. That's fun, this funking. I mean they also
(22:09):
try to arm dissidents and stuff like like they were
his horoscope, tuck him up. Yeah, this is the time
of the exploding cigar, you know, Like, okay, so mad.
Could you imagine being on the pitch team during this time? Like, yo, fun?
What about horoscopes? Yeah? Okay, guys, hear me out here,
me out the man reads a horoscope every day. What
(22:31):
if we just what if we just yeah, yeah, what's
a sign? I got an idea? Yeah, yeah, I have
not come across the tales and what they wrote for
his horoscopes. But this was not the only time the
CIA dabbled in astrology. In the nineteen fifties, they created
and distributed an astrological almanac and Vietnam in order to
play on fears and superstitions that were common in northern Vietnam.
(22:53):
They also repeatedly threw in predictions about prosperity in southern
Vietnam to try and make life there look more attractive. Um,
you may notice that didn't work, and I don't think
it works here. I don't have no way of knowing
if this makes him more paranoid, if like, maybe it does.
It's hard to tell. With Papa doc Um. I just
thought that was funny. Fired. He's like, right before the
(23:16):
person wants to stay at office, what do we do horoscopes? Yeah,
that's a good day's Yeah, at least nobody dies, leasna
have to go there. You know, we are so busy
killing people in Guatemala. Let's just try the horoscope thing. Yeah. So, um,
I don't know, we'll see. Uh. My guesses they were
probably trying to make him like feel like death was
(23:38):
coming for him and he should probably be an exile.
It doesn't work anyway. Back to Barbell. In July of
nineteen sixty three, Barbo's luck runs out. He had decided
to gather all of his supporters and launch an attack
on the dictator, but someone tipped the attack off to Duvalier,
and he sent a swarm of Tonton mccoot to Barbo's
hiding place in a sugarcane field, and they just light
the whole field on fire. When Barbone has men try
(24:00):
to escape, their machine gun to death, and famously Papa
Doc has his head cut off, put on ice and
delivered to the palace um because he's that kind of dude. Now,
the regime kills at least fifty other people during the
panic over Barbo. Dozens more picked up on suspicion of
being antidivaliarist, and I never heard from again. By the
(24:20):
time the whole sordid business is over, however, the regime
found itself in a relatively solid position. The greatest threat
to Papa Doc's reign was gone. There were several more
invasions by groups of exiles, most of which were launched
from inside the Dominican Republic, Haiti's neighbor. Again, they don't
get along, uh and and and fucking and Papa Doctor
as much of fucked up ship towards Haiti. There's a
(24:42):
lot of like yeah, like I'm not putting it on
the Dominican Republican again overthrowing Papa Dox, broadly speaking, a
good thing to do because he sucks um. So in
order to deal with all of these like cross border
attacks from the Dominican Republic, and to stop his own citizens.
More than that, to stop his own citizens from fleeing
to the Dominican Republic, Davolier burns a three square mile
(25:02):
swath of forest around the border between the two countries,
creating a no man's land so his soldiers can gun
down anyone trying to flee into or out of the country.
One threat to his regime came from a former army
officer who was also a voodoo guy and who bragged
that he was immune to death. Davolier had his men
proved the officer wrong by cutting his head off, putting
it in a bucket of ice, and sending it to
the presidential palace. He did this a few times. In
(25:26):
nineteen sixty four, Davolier ditched all pretense and made himself
president for life. He had a group of army officers
circulated petition demanding that he'd do this. Then he had
his legislature replaced the constitution that he'd written years before
with one that legalized lifelong presidency. Then he had another
referendum where he was again the sole candidate. He was
(25:46):
inaugurated president for life on June twenty two, nineteen sixty four.
From that point on, a lot of professionals in Haiti,
people with marketable skills like running a country, started to
flee for literally anywhere else. They're like us. Doesn't seem
like it's head in a good direct. This guy's already
lasted longer than any of the other previously. This is
(26:06):
not going to gonna end anywhere. While we should get
the funk out um, the fact that everyone who knows
how to do anything leaves means that the health care
and educational systems collapse entirely. School just stops being a
thing from because there's not fucking teachers. Duvolier confiscated peasant
land holdings and increased taxes on the poor, siphoning off
about five million dollars in taxes and foreign aid to
(26:27):
his personal fortune. Malnutrition and famine became endemic. His Taunton
mccoot grew larger and killed more people every year, beating
and torturing not just dissidents, but any person individual. Tauntons
took a dislike to as the regime wore on, so
did the repression. From the New York Times quote, After
six teenagers painted a down with Duvalier sign on the
(26:49):
Port up prints wall and were executed without trial, President
Duvalier ordered that all youth organizations, even the Boy Scouts,
be disbanded. He deported clergyman who criticized his rule, earning
his own excommunity cacation from the Roman Catholic Church. He
ignored Rome, however, and continued to attend mass carrying a
rifle inflanked by six to ten bodyguards. Tell me, how
(27:10):
are you gonna tell me what God? I sir, I'm
going to church today? These brothers with these weapons, tell
to do it with the sticks back here? I can't. Community. Yes,
send those Swiss motherfucker's with the birds and see how
they do. Send him down. Come round hood, hey, no
no no, no, no no no no no, hey, you shut
(27:30):
the funk up. All right past the past, the go ahead. Continue.
Even duvalier strong willed favorite daughter Marie Denise, fell victim
to his wrath when she insisted on marrying a Lieutenant
Colonel Max Dominique, a handsome black, Despite his public stance
that Haiti belonged to the blacks. Papa Doc had married
a mulatto and made it no secret that he wanted
(27:51):
his children to follow his example. Of course, yeah yeah.
After their marriage in nineteen sixty seven, President Duvalier got
the manifest Site by appointing Colonel Dominique ambassador to Spain.
Hours after the Dominiques had left, Papa Doc rounded up
nineteen of their army officer friends and, after accusing them
of plotting against him, personally led the firing squad that
executed them. Yeah, and that's why White Clef John left
(28:16):
and started the fujis in I'm just yeah, I think so,
that's exactly what happened. That's how the fuji started was him.
He was there in Haiti during this and his mama
was like, yo, we gotta go. Yes, this is not
going to end well yeah yeah, that's where he met
Lauren Hill and that's why we have the So something
good came out of the roy we got we got
(28:40):
we got the Shakira song yeh with White Clep there. Yes,
we didn't get any good hip hop acts out of Hitler.
Wait a second that was excellent? Was that was that
spot on you know the trick for secura is you
have to kind she's kind of kermit. It's kind of kermit,
but you have to do it on key. I just
(29:04):
wanted to give that some shine because okay, appreciate that.
Thank you. I don't know if I could do it
again because it was so off the head. Yeah anyway,
all right, so uh. Davolier spent much of the middle
late sixties engaging in an escalating war with the Catholic
(29:25):
Church clergy. He could not briber, threatened would be arrested.
He exiled several bishops of papal nuncio and numerous priests.
He confiscated church property, and in nineteen sixty six he
succeeded in bringing the Vatican to the negotiating table. The
end result was an accord that allowed him to nationalize
the Catholic Church of Haiti, effectively making him the head
of Haitian Catholicism. He was given the power to name
(29:47):
bishops and archbishops, albeit with the approval of the Holy See.
So let me tell you something. When you start traveling
hoods and you like no like like Haitian, like Haitian
thugs like Haitian gangsters, and justice like these people are
afraid of nothing. And and now like understanding the sort
(30:09):
of the cultural mew meal you where like even the
dictator was like, okay, first of all, we overthrew our oppressors.
Then we overthrew every politic or every uh colonial force.
And now we've ben't told the Catholic Church what we're
gonna do. You understand what I'm saying. You think you're
gonna serve from cocaine on my block? Like that that
(30:30):
this is making all that makes sense that like some
of the hoods in Miami would like these like way
like the Hatians do out there. Are you just like stated,
there's some people that you like, stay to hell out
their way, you know, and it is known you stay
out the Haitians. Just stay out their way, let them
do what they're doing. And I'm seeing now even at
(30:51):
the government level, you should just stay to hell out
their way. Yeah. And it's you know, it is a
mark of the level of skill and how frightening this
guy is that he's able to get He gets the
Catholic Church to like the seeds some of their sovereignty,
and the Catholic Church is like, yeah, you know, there
(31:12):
there is there as hard as it gets pretty much
with this millennial long yeah regime here, they've kept the
ship going a while, and they're like right, like we
we we've got to we've got to bow to you
some Okay, we all want no parts. It is go ahead,
do what you want to do. So uh yeah. Now unfortunately,
(31:33):
uh well, fortunately, I guess people die. Uh. And by
the late nineteen sixties he's old, he's in bad health. Um.
He tries to kind of burnish his image at the
end by putting out a bunch of propaganda about like
how cool the Duvolarist revolution, and he tries to actually
tie himself to like Mao and other great revolutionaries, even
though he'd spent his life as an anti communist. It's weird. Um.
(31:56):
One of the things he does is he adapts the
Lord's prayer so that Haitians can pray to him. Um.
And the adaptation goes, our doc who aren't in the
National Palace for life, how lo would be thy name
by present in future generations that will be done at Porta,
Prince and in the provinces, give us this day, our
new Haiti, and never forgive the trespasses of the antipatriots.
Who spent every day on our country. Let them succumb
(32:17):
to temptation and under the weight of their venom, deliver
them not from evil. He took the most wholesome part,
the most wholesome part, the most redeeming part of the
whole thing. Was like, oh man, you know what, how
you know your kind of give us this day our
daily bread. You know, forgive our debts as we forgive
(32:38):
our debtors. Like the one part you could say is
like this is pretty good, you know, just this idea
of radical forgiveness. He's like, and don't you ever in
your life forgive these people? Dog hard So Davoliers propagandists
put out a book, you know. Anyway, they do a
bunch of trying to tie him, like make him into
(32:59):
the great revolutionary leader. That's kind of his last big flex.
In nineteen seventy, he suffers a horrible heart attack. Um,
and like most men who suffer their second big heart attack,
after thirteen years of suppressing rebellions, Papa Doc starts thinking
about his mortality. UM. He decides he wants to be
succeeded by his only son, Jean Claude, a nineteen year
old giant who up until that point has mostly been
(33:21):
a party kid. Papa Doc had his legislature changed the
constitution again, which sort of begs the question of why
he bothered having a constitution in the first place. The
second constitution that he'd written in sixty four had stipulated
that the president for life had to be forty years old.
He changed this. He holds another referendum and asked people
to vote yea or nay on this question. Citizen Doctor
Francois du Volier has chosen citizen John Claude Duvalier to
(33:44):
succeed him to the presidency for life of the Republic.
Does this choice answer your aspirations and your desisures? Um? Obviously? Yeah,
Papa Doc gets his way, um. And two months later,
in February nineteen seventy one, Papa Doc Duvalier dies. An
estimated forty Haitians had died under his rule from a
(34:05):
mix of starvation, malnutrition, and murder. And we're going to
give the story much shorter story of Jean Claude Duvalier.
But first, you know who didn't kill forty people? The
products and services? That's that's right, that's right, that's right,
(34:28):
all right, We're back. So, Jean Claude Duvalier did not
really want to be president for life. Um. Prior to
taking power, he'd spent most of his time living in
the palace. He never really left the capital. He was
not very smart. He seems to have known this. He
was not very power hungry. Um. He suggested his sister
Marie Denise take the job, but his father said no. Um.
(34:49):
On the day he was sworn into office, Jean Claude
missed his own coronation because he was too high on valium,
because he was Yeah, I love it. He's like, man,
I'm just rich. I just want to rich. I'm just rich.
Don't work, Hey, you do it? Yeah. Look, my sister
she loves audit. I'm not great at history, but I
know enough to know that it's hard to be the
(35:10):
president of what you going through? Are you stressed out
all the time? Killing everybody that seemed miserable? He missed,
won't this? Uh? So. The one sign that he might
have some steel in him had come in nineteen sixty seven,
when John Claude was fifteen. His fa father had flown
into a rage at his mother and started hitting her,
and John Claude had shoved Papa Doc into a room
(35:32):
and locked him there for three hours. UM. That said,
the story was not widely known, and most foreign pundits
assumed he was going to lose power pretty quickly. Um.
But of course that's not how it went. He surprised
the people who thought that he was going to be
out quickly. He put on a friendlier mask to the
international community. Um. While his family, namely his sister and
(35:52):
his mom were the power behind the throne. Um. Meanwhile, like, well,
they were continuing to do pretty brutal ship. He opens
the palace to journalists. He starts paying off the country's debts. Uh.
He modernizes. He supports a quickie divorce law that makes
Haiti a tourist mecca. You can get divorced in twenty
four hours, so people start going there to divorce. Um.
(36:13):
And he gets good at cleaning up prisons, like right
before international observers visit. So he starts to like make
a play for now. I'm gonna modernize. I'm gonna fix
a lot of this ship that's wrong. We're gonna fix
this stuff. We're gonna clean up Haiti. Um. Davalier also
opened the country to foreign business and economic liberalization. He
called Jean claudeis um. This mostly meant giving US businesses
(36:34):
a lot of tax breaks and ship and letting take
advantage of cheap labor uh and letting them use the
Taunton mccoots to crack it down on any unions that
tried to form and damn Sean Claude. So all of
this makes the US government really happy. Oh, you're gonna
crack out on unions again. You gotta let businesses in.
For the first couple of years of his rule, for
and aid increased to Haiti by more than eight percent UM. Now, obviously,
(36:59):
as I said, his his mom and his sister are
the real power, and they're kind of a odds with
each other. His mom is a traditionalist. She wants to
do things the way that Dad had done things. UM.
His sister is more actually does want to seem to
want to modernize at least some things. The to fight
all the time, Baby Doc mostly spends his time playing
with fast cars and partying. In nineteen and other horrible
(37:20):
famine hits the country, Baby Doc begs the US for aid.
The United States obliges, and all those cash and food
shipments go directly into the hands of his powerful supporters.
This was discovered immediately. Congressman started yelling about Haitian corruption
until Baby Doc arrested a handful of people. But this
did not stop the famine or make Hatie less corrupt,
and in seventy six, Haitian refugees start flooding into the
(37:41):
United States. A lot of these guys die. It's a
really horrible trip. There's a lot of gruesome pictures of it,
and people get outraged. In nineteen seventy six, Jimmy Carter
takes office and he's like, we're going to change things.
You know, We're we're gonna tie aid to you, actually
improving human rights conditions. Um. This creates a problem for
Baby Docs, so he has to push through a bunch
of cosmetic reforms to try to trick Jimmy Carter. Not
(38:03):
the hardest things anyone's ever done. He arrests if Utahnton
mccoot um. Very few international absorbs are truly fooled, but
more AID is allowed to enter the country. I think
Carter's hope was that, Okay, they did a couple of things,
will send in more aid, maybe they'll change more. But
before anything could really change, Ronald Reagan gets elected, and
he did not give a fuck about whether or not
(38:23):
Haiti got more democratic Um. Baby, Doc is smart enough
to know. Okay, Ronald Reagan's and I'm gonna start talking
about how bad communism is. He actually holds a champagne
party when Reagan gets elected because he knows it's gonna
make it easier. Reagan's like anti communist. Here's a funkload
of money. Um. Yeah, and this is actually uh now
now seriously speaking, this is actually the the meal you
(38:45):
that made the Fuji's and why they're called the Fuji's.
It's short for refugees and it's because of this. Yeah.
And and by nineteen eighty, Haiti is completely dependent on
foreign aid, and the greatest recipient of foreign aid is
the Duvalier family. More than two thirds of the Tree's
development budget, which was about eighty one million dollars, came
from foreign governments, namely the US, Canada, West Germany, and
(39:06):
the United Kingdom. Um. And obviously this is incredibly, incredibly corrupt.
He's channeling a much of I m F money into
his his his accounts to there's constant like issues and
constant international anger over the fact that he's just stealing
all of this aid money that he gets, but nothing
is actually done about it. The term cleftocracy is actually
(39:26):
first coined by a Canadian government report on graft in
the Duvalier regime. That's where we get the word. The
whole government, including numerous state owned companies, existed as an
extension of the Duvalier family bank account now. One of
the chief movers of the Haitian economy was a guy
named Luckner Cambrone, who was the lover of baby Docs
mother Simone. He made a fortune exporting the literal blood
(39:48):
of Haitian citizens, often gathered by force by the Tonton mccoot.
The nation exported five tons of blood plasma per month
under Luckner. He bought it for five dollars a pint
and sold it for thirty five dollar to U S
firms like dal Chemical uh So, a bunch of US
companies profited off of the literal stolen blood of the
Haitian people. Sometimes they were paid, often people were just
(40:08):
paid to make sure there was access to blood. He
also sold cadaverous for medical research, literally selling the corpses
of his people because they've been robbed so thoroughly. Um
As his time in office, wore on Papa or baby Doc,
grew bolder. Uh he became more brutal. He eventually kicks
his mom out of power because he marries a woman
named Michelle, and she doesn't like his mom. There's a
(40:29):
whole thing, damn it. Michelle the First, the new first Lady,
hates that her husband's fat. She puts him on a
crash diet and threatened staff who feed him that by
saying that they'll wish they'd never been born. Killed your
mother in law and now your body shaming. Well, he
doesn't kill her, He just forces herd say yeah, yeah, yeah,
um yeah and uh so. By the start of Reagan's
(40:52):
second term, Haiti was and had been for some time,
the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere. The average life
expectancy was forty eight years old. For every teacher on
the government pay roll, there were a hundred and eighty
nine soldiers for every secondary school. There were thirty five prisons.
A majority of the population was food and secure, many
were starving. Clearing away the bodies of starved dead was
(41:12):
a regular task for city employees in the capital. Civil
rests began to burble up in nineteen eighty five, quickly
growing into a significant movement. The Catholic Church gets some
credit for this because the Pope actually gives a brief
speech where he critiques the government. Um liberation theology is
a part of this right. We see this in a
lot of the rest of Latin America. So it's a
number of things. And a student revolt breaks out and
(41:33):
students are initially shot dead by the Tanton mccoot, but
this leads to international condemnation and the US cuts off aid,
which is what kind of spell helps spell the end
of the regime because they're totally dependent on AID. On
the night of February five, nineteen eighty six, Baby Doc
flees the country. Before he leaves the palace, he orders
one of his voodoo sorcerers to lay a spell on
the presidential beds that the next occupant would die there.
(41:56):
A perhaps legendary story goes that the sorcerer called for
two unbapped as newborns to be sacrificed for the ritual.
The hospital charged four hundred dollars for the babies. Um Again,
whether or not this is true, it's definitely true. What's
definitely true is that two days after Baby Doc fled
they hitched a ride along with all of their cash, jewelry,
antiques and artwork from Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, courtesy of a
(42:18):
US Transport aircraft. We helped them flee to France where
they rent a villain near Cans from the Saudi arms
dealer at Non Kasho UM. So that's great. Uh. Now
the bad news is the really sad part of the
story is that Michelle and John Claude's marriage doesn't last UM.
A couple divorce in nine nine. He starts to run
(42:39):
out of money by two thousand three, and he was
said to be living with a mistress in a one
bedroom apartment in Paris by two thousand and three. UM.
In two thousand eleven, he returns to Haiti, claiming he
wants to help rebuild after an earthquake UM, but probably
just trying to get around Swiss banking regulations designed to
stop dictators from using money they'd stolen. He gets arrested,
(42:59):
but for whatever reason, he's kept in a hotel in
the mountains above Port of Prince rather than actually going
to prison, where he dies of a heart attack in
two thousand fourteen at the age of sixty three. So
Pap a dock and baby doc. That's the tail, not
at all. Yeah, that is harsh. Yeah, well I have
(43:24):
that that I feel that feeling of doling death that
you always feel at the end of these pods. Yeah,
that's our goal. That's the goal, the doling death. Yeah,
you can find me a proper pop dot com support
to the politics pod. Yes, also get get props. Book
(43:46):
is delightful and esthetically thank you. Yeah, get um and uh,
I don't know, get a get get get. Uh, don't
get a Haiti. Enough people have taken Haiti. Let them
just try to do something more. Yeah, I mean give
(44:06):
them I don't know, chance here aid and ship but
yeah whatever, I don't know. That didn't work out great either,
So whatever, I don't know what to do. Uh, don't
have fucked with Haiti for centuries. Yeah, lead them alone? Yeah. Um,
well that's the end of the episode. I have a
(44:27):
book you can find at a t r book dot
com and a podcast form and after the revolution, and
that's it. That's the end of the episode. Go home. Um,
kiss a cat or don't give your alertic to cats? Whatever,
kiss something. I don't care. Hey, everybody. Initially I was
going to plug the go fund me for the sequel
to my book, UM After the Revolution, which you can
(44:49):
find at a t r book dot com. But here
in the Pacific Northwest, we're having an unprecedented heat wave
and it's causing disastrous conditions, life threatening conditions for a
lot of houseless people, a lot of people without air conditioning. UM,
particularly in the city of Salem. UM activists everywhere have
been kind of gathering to try and um mitigate set
(45:10):
up cooling stations, hand out cold drinks, to do things
to help people get their temperature down. UM. I want
to try and raise funds for the Free Fridge of Salem, UM,
which are doing cooling stations in the capital of Oregon, Salem.
So if you go to venmo At Free Fridge Salem,
that's venmo At Free Fridge Salem, and send them a
couple of bucks, they could really use it. UM. Local
(45:31):
government has destroyed a number, like police particularly have destroyed
a number of water and cooling stations they've set out. UM.
It's you know, we're not going to be in triple
digit heats for the next couple of days after I'm
recording this on Monday, but it's still going to be
very hot people still need this, so please Venmo at
Free Fridge Salem if you have the wherewithal and the
financial resources to do so. One more time, the Venemo
(45:54):
is at Free Fridge Salem. Thanks
Behind the Bastards News
Host
Robert Evans
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