Word: docs
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...mourners filed through a spacious salon in the white Presidential Palace. There, dressed in a black frock coat and resting in a glass-topped, silk-lined coffin, lay the remains of one of history's most malevolent dictators. He was Francois Duvalier, who liked to be called Papa Doc. For 14 years he had held the wretchedly poor black republic of Haiti in a spell of fear. Now the spell was broken. At 64, weakened by heart attacks and chronic diabetes. Papa Doc died. His son. roly-poly Jean-Claude. 19, whom Duvalier had designated as his successor last...
Voodoo Spirits. Papa Doc cast his spell through the artful use of voodoo, which in effect is Haiti's national religion. Duvalier affected the staring gaze, whispered speech and hyperslow movements recognized by Haitians as signs that a person is close to the voodoo spirits. He solicited the allegiance of voo doo priests in the countryside, often bringing them to Port-au-Prince for a presidential audience, and he encouraged rumors that he possessed supernatural powers. "My enemies cannot get me!" he used to exult to his followers. "I am already an immaterial being...
...Duvalier declared himself President for Life. He held on to power by playing off one faction against another. With terrifying regularity, he sent his aides from palace to prison, and from there often to either foreign exile or execution. After a kidnaping attempt on two of his children, Papa Doc ordered 65 officers summarily shot. On another occasion, he personally commanded the firing squad that dispatched 19 of his closest followers, whom he suspected-probably without justification -of plotting against...
Occult Powers. Duvalier began to build a personality cult. The Lord's Prayer was rewritten. "Our Doc," the revised version went, "who art in the National Palace, hallowed be thy name." He boasted that he was a statesman of the same caliber as Charles de Gaulle and demanded homage from his people, who were trucked into Port-au-Prince to sing and dance his praises in front of the palace. To stir up enthusiasm for himself, he would sometimes ride through the capital in his bulletproof Mercedes 600 limousine and stop to scatter money among the crowds...
...Haitian exiles began staging small guerrilla landings in the 1960s, Papa Doc's behavior became even more bizarre. After the leader of a guerrilla group had been killed in a skirmish, Papa Doc had the man's head cut off and brought to the palace. There Papa Doc supposedly used his occult powers to conjure information about the guerrilla band's plans from the dead man's skull. There were rumors that Papa Doc had taken to torturing prisoners himself in the palace basement...