Word: tonton
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...time a country doctor, Duvalier came to power in 1957, emerging as president after months of political upheaval, rioting, executions, and military rule. He modeled his regime after that of Trujillo in the Dominican Republic and enforced it with his secret police, the famed Tonton Macoute...
Stories of executions by the Tonton Macoute are common. Recently, after a Haitian citizen had been murdered in broad daylight, a judge ruled that he had died a natural death. As one of the characters in Graham Greene's novel The Comedians remarks, "Violent deaths are natural deaths in Haiti...
...Tonton Macoute themselves are veiled in mystery. They do not wear uniforms, but move among the people--who don't talk about politics, because anyone could be an informer. One university student admitted that his father was in jail...
...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...
...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...