Word: tonton
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...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...
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...
...Duvalier has terrorized his 4,500,000 people into numb submission. Life expectancy is 32.6 years. Per-capita income is $70 a year. Population density is the highest in the hemisphere. Illiteracy runs 90%. "Haitians," Duvalier says quietly, "have a destiny to suffer." Duvalier's 5,000-man Tonton Macoute (Creole for bogeymen) roam the country, soaking up blood money from businessmen, torturing and murdering suspected anti-Duvalieristes-sometimes even slaughtering whole families. Early this year, one mutilated corpse lay a whole day in the Port-au-Prince sun, as a grim lesson to Haitians...
Fully half of Haiti's $28 million yearly budget goes into the pockets of Papa Doc, his Tonton Macoute, and other loyal supporters. The other half goes to government operations, which have all but shut down. Phone service is nearly dead. Lights wink on and off fitfully. Main waterfront roads are pot-holed or sometimes buried in six inches of muddy ooze. Business is grinding to a halt in the same way-partly owing to stiff taxes and partly to the emergence of a new, uneducated and sadly unprepared black elite that is replacing the bright, well-trained mulattoes...
...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...