Word: tonton
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...Colonel Max Dominique, military commander of Port-au-Prince and the hus band of Duvalier's 26-year-old daughter, was sent packing off to Madrid as Haiti's Ambassador to Spain. As Dominique's plane taxied down the strip, Duvalier's private Gestapo or Tonton Macoutes (Creole for bogeymen), jumped Dominique's two bodyguards and chauffeur, then hustled the three men off to jail. Last month Duvalier dismissed Dominique from the army "for the good of the service," and ordered his son-in-law to return to Haiti to stand trial for "desertion, mutiny...
...injured. Duvalier's response was automatic. While the sirens of ambulances pierced the air and the government-controlled radio station called for all doctors to report to the city's general hospital, he ordered the mobilization of Haiti's trigger-happy militia, known as the Tonton Macoute, or bogeymen. Duvalier also placed the country's 5,000-man regular army on alert...
...Savior. The wonder is that there is anyone left in Haiti to set off bombs. In his years as President, Duvalier has stamped out virtually all opposition, executing 2,000 political enemies and driving the rest into exile or terrified silence. The Tonton Macoute is so ubiquitous that Haitians are afraid to talk to anyone they have not known for several years. The illiterate and docile peasants, who make up 90% of the Haitian population, believe what the government tells them-and it tells them ceaselessly that Papa Doc is their savior, to be revered on a par with Jesus...
Wifely laughter or no, his first performances electrified Paris. Writing all his own songs with the aid of a platoon of lyricists, he found himself swamped in acclaim. "The public took to me, and whoosh," he says. "I sang at this little cafe, Chez Tonton, and at the same time I made records. My price went up, and I still couldn't accept all the offers. This was all too fast for the classical guy I was-two, three, four five songs I had to write all at once, and yet I still needed new material...
...sure enough, last week both soldiers and Tonton Macoute were indeed less visible in Port-au-Prince. Cars traveling through the city were not stopped and searched. What's more, Papa Doc had even expressed an interest in visiting Argentina next August-a rare risk for any dictator afraid of losing...