Word: tontons
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Dates: during 1962-1962
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Haitians call Duvalier's private bully boys the Tonton Macoutes, which means "bogeymen" in Creole. They are paid as much as $30 a month (high pay by Haitian standards), plus whatever they can extort from merchants and businessmen. When Duvalier wants to hold a rally, the Macoutes use their muscle to organize the crowds, commandeer trucks to carry the rooters to the appointed place. When Duvalier wants the opposition squashed, the Macoutes do the job. Three weeks ago, one of the "vagrant law officers" halted a bus near the village of Gressier, 10 miles southwest of Port-au-Prince...
Until the demands are met, the Duvalier regime has fashioned its own means of gathering pelf, at an estimated rate of $6,000,000 a year. Last year his private army of thugs called the Tonton Macoute (Creole for "bogeyman") circulated among Haiti's foreign and domestic businessmen soliciting "contributions" of up to $40,000 for a fancy housing project called Duvalierville. Some who refused to ante up were brutally beaten. The situation got so far out of hand that the diplomats of the U.S., Britain, France, Canada, Italy and Germany lodged strong protests with Duvalier's foreign...
...Tonton Macoute, estimated to number 5,000, take care of individual oppositionists. Uncounted hundreds have been hauled off to Fort Dimanche, outside Port-au-Prince; some have been blinded by the beatings, some deafened, some killed. Newspaper Editor Madame Yvonne Hakim-Rimpel was kidnaped from her home by Tonton Macoutes. She was taken to a local lovers' lane in St. Martin woods, beaten, raped, and mutilated. Says a foreign diplomat: "Duvalier's real contribution to Haitian history is government by gang. He is the king of the bogeymen...