Word: tontons
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...Papa Doc stood alone on the ballot, Bishop wrote: "The Haitians liked him so well that they elected him President for life. This was not a spurious, rigged election. He could call one tomorrow and win easily." Bishop was equally impressed by the dictator's secret police, the tonton macoute: They "comprise a personal force whose function is to keep President Duvalier acquainted with the true temper of the people...
Bogeywomen. All the while, Duvalier's reign of terror continues. Shortly after coming to power, he "organized his tonton macoute, meaning bogeymen in Creole, a vicious, plainclothes gestapo that collects taxes and blood money from merchants, tortures and murders suspected anti-Duvalierists. To help the tonton in their grisly business, there is now even a ladies' auxiliary−the fillette lalo, a group of pistol-packing molls who are just as predatory as their male counterparts...
...ways: nine governments in 20 years, the last headed by François ("Papa Doc") Duvalier, 58, a onetime country physician who took office in 1957, proclaimed himself "President for life," and rules through voodoo mysticism and the strong-arm terror of his 5,000-man Tonton Macoute secret police...
...wall, and in a Port-au-Prince bar last week a sodden upper-class mulatto suddenly raised his voice: "How long must we stand here and suffer and be killed?" But most Haitians have resigned themselves to a numbing life under Duvalier. The dictator's 5,000-man Tonton Macoute roams the country ferreting out opposition and collecting "donations" from terrified businessmen. Even Duvalier's own henchmen live in mortal fear. Using Haiti's pervasive voodoo mysticism, Duvalier has set himself up as the pseudo religion's top practitioner, and fearsome tales that he performs ghoulish...
...impoverished Caribbean nation ($70 per capita income, 90% illiteracy), it was a life sentence. Since he took office in 1957, Duvalier has ruthlessly liquidated every real or suspected foe of his regime. The 5,000-man Tonton Macoute, Duvalier's plain-clothes bully boys, shake down merchants and terrorize peasants, while his militiamen engage in macabre voodoo orgies, playing on the belief of the superstitious population that Papa Doc has occult powers. Haitian exiles, arriving in the Dominican Republic at the other end of the Caribbean island of Hispaniola, say that the rites have included sewing up newborn babies...