TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/caps/86/86capts.19

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                                                                                February 10, 1986

HAITI

Bad Times for Baby Doc


As violent protests grow, a besieged dictator imposes martial
law


Like a hurricane born in the Caribbean and gathering momentum
as it pushes northward, word spread last week that Jean-Claude
Duvalier, 34, Haiti's President-for-Life, had fled his country.
The reports said that Duvalier, who is known as "Baby Doc," and
members of his family had gone into exile rather than face
vengeance at the hands of a burgeoning populist movement against
him. On Friday, in response to growing unrest throughout Haiti,
Duvalier imposed a state of siege. Hours later White House
Spokesman Larry Speakes made the dramatic announcement to
reporters traveling with President Reagan aboard Air Force One
that the Haitian government had fallen and Duvalier had left
Haiti.

Yet within hours, to the vast embarassment of the Reagan
Administration, the pudgy dictator appeared in the capital,
Port-au-Prince, like a spirit conjured up by practitioners of
voodoo, Haiti's folk religion. Baby Doc cruised throug the
streets in a BMW, surrounded by a bevy of armed outriders. In
a radio broadcast to the country, he used an old Creole saying
to brag, "I am here, strong and firm as a monkey's tail."

Haiti's crisis last week centered on a family that has used
terror and corruption for 28 years to grow wealthy by imposing
its will on the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere. For
the first time in Baby Doc's reign, spontaneous demonstrations
throughout the country brought misery-ridden Haiti close to open
revolt. Rioters controlled many parts of the countryside, and
the government was firmly in control of only the capital.

The demonstrations against Jean-Claude Duvalier stood in stark
contrast to the events of Jan. 22, 1971, when then
President-for-Life Francois ("Papa Doc") Duvalier decreed that
his 19-year-old son, quickly nicknamed Baby Doc, would succeed
him. The elder Duvalier died three months later, leaving a
legacy of brutality and fear on which he had built a
dictatorship after his election in 1957.

At first it appeared that Jean-Claude might be a more
enlightened despot. He promised an end to repression and an
economic revolution. But he actually made few real
improvements. True, political opponents were no longer executed
as often as they had been under Papa Doc, but the son imitated
the father in using the army and the secret police, the dreaded
Tonton Macoute (a term for bogeyman in Haiti's Creole dialect)
to brutalize the population.

The second-generation Duvalier flaunted an opulent life-style
in the midst of incredible poverty. The President, who is fond
of yachts and sports cars, did not forgo either pleasure when
a critical shortage of foreign currency last year left the
country almost without fuel. His most costly indulgence may
have been his 1980 marriage to Michele Bennett, 34, a Haitian
divorcee who once worked in New York City as a secretary. Their
wedding was Haiti's social event of the decade. The price tag:
$3 million. Fireworks alone cost $100,000.

Michele Duvalier at first endeared herself to the population by
distributing clothes and food to the needy and opening several
medical clinics, but her avarice quickly outpaced her
husband's. Today she is one of the world's richest women. On
shopping spress to the U.S. and Europe, she has acquired an
array of furs hardly appropriate to Haiti's steamy climate.
Late last year, in the middle of an economic crisis, she flew
to Paris to buy designer clothes, jewelry and works of art.

Government officials fear the First Lady because her power
rivals, or perhaps exceeds, her husband's. While Jean-Claude
sometimes dozes through Cabinet meetings, his wife scolds
ministers. The birth of her son, Francois Nicolas, in 1983
provided an heir apparent to the Duvalier fiefdom.

At the same time that the Duvaliers have been salting away
millions of dollars in foreign banks and squandering millions
more, the vast majority of Haitians live in deep poverty. Eight
out of ten people are illiterate. Most earn less than $150 a
year, although the official per capita figure is about $280.
The tropical farmland produces coffee and mangoes for export,
but the country is plagued by widespread the country is plagued
by widespread hunger. Its once thriving hardwood forests have
been chopped down for fuel.

Given that yawning gap between haves and have-nots, political
ferment was inevitable. The U.S., which provided $54 million
in aid to Haiti in 1985, warned Duvalier that future payments
would be jeopardized unless he improved the country's human
rights record.

The regime's reply was a nationwide referendum last July 22.
Truckloads of illiterate Haitians were driven from one polling
place to another to vote oui a dozen times or more. The
official results: 99.98% reaffirmed Baby Doc as
President-for-Life.

Young opponents of the regime, outraged by the sham referendum,
started organizing nonviolent protests that tapped a wellspring
or discontent. When three students were killed Nov. 28 during
an antigovernment-protest in Gonaives, demonstrations followed
in a dozen cities and towns. Last month an army captain and two
members of the Tonton Macoute were charged with the murders.

The government in recent months has tried to intimidate the
Roman Catholic Church, which has become a center of dissent.
Some 80% of Haitians are nominally Catholic, and the clergy has
spoken out more since the 1983 visit of Pope John Paul II, who
criticized the Duvalier regime and assured the downtrodden
population "I am with you." One day after the July referendum,
a 78-year-old Belgian-born priest was beaten to death by thugs.
Three other priests, including the director of the Catholic-run
radio statio Radio Soleil, wee expelled from the country in
July.

Last week's unrest begain in church. Sunday's evening Mass at
the old Cathedral of Cap Haitien had just concluded when a lone
voice in the congregation bellowed out, "Abas [Down with]
Duvalier!" With startling vigor, the cry was taken up by other
worshipers, and the chanting demand for Duvalier's ouster
quickly became the catalyst for a short-lived demonstration on
the steps of the church.

Within minutes, army troops from a nearby barracks descended on
the crowd. The soldiers fired rifles into the air, rained down
blows with hardwood clubs, and barged into the cathedral in
search of the instigators. As word of the brutal military
response spread, thousands of demonstrators roamed through the
historic town. The following day the Tonton Macoute showed it
had learned nothing from the November killing of the Gonaives
students. At a demonstration by several thousand people outside
the Cap Haitien Cathedral, militiamen fired wildly into the
crowd, killing three people and wounding 30.

On Wednesday the Cap Haitien warehouse of CARE, the U.S.-based
relief organization was stormed and looted by slum dwellers.
They trampled three people to death, then fought over canisters
of cooking oil and 100-lb. sacks of grain.

Almost hour by hour, the swells of revolt kept growing. Nearly
half the 60,000 inhabitants of Cap Haitien marched peacefully
through the streets Wednesday afternoon, calling on the army to
stage a coup d'etat and take power. There were also appeals for
a general strike to begin Feb. 12. Such a sustained work
stoppage would probably cripple the moribund Haitian economy,
which gets much of its foreign currency from tourism.

By Thursday the chant "Down with Duvalier!" was echoing across
the country. Said one resident of Cap Haitien: "No one is
afraid anymore. Duvalier must go." In Gonaives, thousands of
protesters blocked the streets with barricades and burning
tires. When the local army headquarters was overrun by
anti-Duvalier marchers, agents of the TontonMacoute tried to
open fire, but they were disarmed by an army tactical battalion.
Terrified, the agents ripped off their trademark blue denim
uniforms and tried to escape the mob's wrath. More crowds
demanded that the military overthrow the dictatorship, and
rumors started that Baby Doc, his wife and an entourage of 100
had already fled to France.

Even after Duvalier had declared a 30-day state of siege and
the armed forces put on a heavy display of power, the riots
continued. At an early Mass at the St. Jean Bosco church in a
poor district of the capital, a soldier shot and wounded the
priest for no apparent reason. An enraged congregation spilled
into the street and set off more protests. In others parts of
town, militiamen fired into the crowds, whle rioters smashed car
and store windowns, looted shops, and constructed roadblocks
from tires and burning garbage. By week's end an estimated 26
people had been killed. Although none of the 14,000 U.S.
citizens in Haiti were reported injured, the State Department
advised Americans not to travel there.

On Saturday, the capital was tense but calm. There were
reports of demonstrations in Cap Haitien, the second largest
city, and the Dominican Republic, which lies east of Haiti on
theisland of Hispaniola, was nervously monitoring the volatile
situation. While Duvalier was still in Haiti, there were
serious questions about whether the President-for-Life would be
President for long.

The protests that lured thousands of Haitians into the streets
last week to denounce the government probably represent a point
of no return for the country. Even if Duvalier's reign has not
yet ended and he somehow manages to cling to power for a while,
his viselike grip on Haiti has been irrevocably shattered.


By John Moody. Reported by Dean Brells/Por-au-Prince and
Bernard Diederich/Miami.