How to Be a Dictator

by Frank Dikotter

  The son’s first task was to demonstrate his loyalty to his father. He coordinated the construction of several monuments to mark the Great Leader’s seventieth birthday in April 1982. Right across the river from Kim Il-sung Square a granite megalith was erected, towering 170 metres over the city. The Juche Tower was topped by a forty-five-tonne red flame sculpture that glowed at night. Further to the north of Pyongyang an Arch of Triumph was inaugurated, modelled after the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, each one of its 25,550 granite blocks representing a different day in the life of the one who had liberated the country. The term Kim-Il-sungism, under his guidance, replaced Juche Thought.

  The Great Leader gradually withdrew from the scene. There were fewer on-the-spot guidance tours, fewer speeches and only rare interviews. He still travelled, making goodwill visits to the Soviet Union and China to restore amicable relationships. The cult took on a new dimension. In 1958 nineteen trees had been discovered with inscriptions carved by revolutionary fighters during the war of resistance against Japan. But in the middle of the 1980s a further 9,000 slogan trees came to light, all of them fabricated. Every tree was transformed into a shrine, with photos of the inscription on full display: ‘Long Live Kim Il Song, President of Independent Korea’, ‘The Great Man sent by Heaven’, ‘Kim Il Song is the Leader of a World Revolution’. Party members and military units now undertook pilgrimages to these shrines. Several hundred trees eulogised a baby boy: ‘Korea Rejoice! The Great Sun has been Born!’ When Kim Jong-il, now known as the Dear Leader, celebrated his birthday in 1990, a mysterious rainbow was observed over the Paektu Mountain, the holy land in the north.61

  The Great Leader died of a heart attack on 8 July 1994, aged eighty-two. Thirty-four hours later the population appeared in offices, schools and factories to listen to a lengthy obituary delivered by an announcer dressed in black. They all cried, although no one could tell who was sincere and who was not. Medical teams were on hand to help those who fainted. In the following days many of the mourners converged on Kim Il-sung’s giant statue on Mansudae Hill. They tried to outdo one another in displays of grief, pounding their heads, collapsing in theatrical swoons, ripping off their clothes, waving their fists at the sky in feigned rage. They were encouraged to do so by endless broadcasts on television of heart-broken comrades: there were images of pilots weeping in the cockpit, sailors banging their heads against the masts of their ships. A ten-day mourning period was declared, with the secret police keeping watch on everyone, trying to measure their sincerity by observing their facial expression and listening to the tone of their voice. One five-year-old spat in her hand to wet her face with saliva, making it look as if she was crying. Under the watchful eye of the Dear Leader the Great Leader’s body entered a giant mausoleum. But in life as in death Kim Il-sung retained his title of president. As new monuments known as ‘eternal life towers’, erected in all major towns, proclaimed, he ‘lives forever’.62

  6

  Duvalier

  Like the prow of a great stone ship, jutting out from the jungle on a mountain peak, the Citadelle Henri Christophe is the largest fortress in the Americas, designed to house up to 5,000 people. It was built between 1806 and 1820 by a former slave and key leader of the Haitian Rebellion. For years Henri Christophe had fought under Toussaint Louverture, the legendary black figure who transformed a slave rebellion in the French colony into a popular movement for independence. Toussaint Louverture died in 1802, but two years later his large and well-disciplined army succeeded in crushing the colonisers and establishing the world’s first black republic. Soon afterwards his lieutenant Jean-Jacques Dessalines was made emperor. His reign did not last, as he was assassinated in 1806.1

  A power struggle ensued, resulting in the division of the country into two halves. The south was dominated by gens de couleur, a term for people of mixed race who had been free before the abolition of slavery. Former slaves went to the north, where Henri Christophe established a kingdom in 1811. In the following years he proclaimed himself Henri I, King of Haiti, and used forced labour to build extravagant palaces and fortresses. Christophe created his own nobility, designing a coat of arms for his dukes, counts and barons. They, in turn, dutifully named his son Jacques-Victor Henri as prince and heir. But Henri I slowly descended into paranoia, seeing plots and conspiracies everywhere. Rather than risk a coup, he shot himself with a silver bullet at the age of fifty-three. His son was slain ten days later.

  The north and the south were reunited, but the social divisions remained. The elite were proud of their links with France, and looked down on the majority of the population, poor villagers descended from African slaves. For more than a century self-proclaimed monarchs and emperors from both communities succeeded one another, most of them ruling through political violence. The economy made scant progress, hampered, in large measure, by a crippling indemnity exacted by France in 1825 in exchange for recognising independence. The debt was not paid off until 1947.

  The United States occupied the island in 1915 and stayed for two decades, further deepening the racial divide. Among those who reacted against the American occupation was Jean Price-Mars, a respected teacher, diplomat and ethnographer who championed the island’s African origins. He viewed Voodoo, a mixture of Roman Catholic rituals and African beliefs that had thrived on slave plantations, as an indigenous religion on a par with Christianity. After the Americans left some of his followers went further, developing a nationalist ideology that advocated overthrowing the elite and handing over control of the state to representatives of the majority population. They called it noirisme, from the French word noir, black, and argued that the social differences that had divided Haiti for so long were determined by deep evolutionary laws.

  One such follower was François Duvalier. In an article published in 1939 entitled ‘A Question of Anthro-Sociology: Racial Determinism’, the young author insisted that biology determined psychology, as each racial group had its own ‘collective personality’. The true Haitian soul was black, its religion was Voodoo. The noiristes advocated an authoritarian and exclusive state, one which would place power in the hands of an authentic black leader.2

  As a child François Duvalier was shy and bookish. He had two influential teachers in high school. One was Jean Price-Mars, the influential enthnographer, the other Dumarsais Estimé, an outspoken opponent of the United States. Both inspired him to take pride in his country’s African heritage. He tried his hand at journalism, railing against the elite, defending the cause of the poor villagers. He already equated blackness with oppression.3

  After obtaining a degree in medicine from the University of Haiti in 1934 the twenty-seven-year old served in several local hospitals, occupying his spare time in researching Voodoo and writing about noirisme in the spirit of Price-Mars. He befriended Lorimer Denis, a humourless twenty-four-year-old who wore a hat and carried a cane, assuming the air of a Voodoo priest. Duvalier adopted his style, building a network of contacts with priests (houngans) and priestesses (mambos), seeing the religion as the very heart and soul of the Haitian peasantry. Together with Denis he worked for the Bureau of Ethnology, founded by his teacher Price-Mars in 1941 to counter a brutal campaign against Voodoo orchestrated by the state, as cult objects were destroyed and priests forced to renounce their beliefs.4

  By the end of the Second World War Duvalier had spent two semesters in the United States studying public health. In 1945 he went back to the countryside to help fight tropical diseases. There he projected himself as a selfless man devoted to the poor peasants, a medical kit strapped to one shoulder, a syringe in one hand. ‘He suffers their pain, he mourns their misfortune,’ he later wrote about himself in the third person.5

  In 1946 his former schoolmaster Dumarsais Estimé, a skilful civil servant who had risen through the ranks to become minister of education, was elected president and installed in the National Palace, a large, attractive edifice with a dome reminiscent of the White House built by the Americans in 1920. Duvalier was appointe
d director general of the National Public Health Service, becoming minister of health and labour three years later. But Estimé soon proved to be too radical for the elite: he expanded black representation in the civil service, introduced income-tax measures and promoted Voodoo as the indigenous religion of the majority population. In May 1950 a military junta under Paul Magloire, a burly military officer in charge of the police in Port-au-Prince, removed him from power. Duvalier lost his job, seething at the dominance of the elite. He learned a bitter lesson, namely never to trust the army.

  He went back to practising medicine in the countryside, but soon joined the ranks of the opposition. After the government put a price on his head in 1954 he was forced to take to the hills with one of his most trusted friends, a young man named Clément Barbot. They were sought out by an American publicist, who was led blindfolded to their hiding place. Herbert Morrison found both men disguised as women, with Barbot concealing a machine gun inside the folds of his skirt. It was the beginning of the myth of Duvalier, the resistance fighter flitting from one hideout to another to avoid capture.6

  In September 1956, after Paul Magloire granted an amnesty for all political opponents, Duvalier came out of hiding. A few months later Magloire lost the support of the army and fled the country with his family, leaving behind an empty treasury. By now there was a growing political desire for a break with the past, sufficiently widespread to pressure the military junta into orchestrating show elections. Antonio Kébreau, chairman of the Military Council, called for nominations to come forward.7

  Duvalier declared his candidacy, together with a dozen other contenders. Ten months of political chaos followed, with crippling strikes, widespread violence and the fall of five provisional governments. By August 1957 two main candidates remained, François Duvalier and Louis Déjoie, a wealthy sugar planter and industrialist. Throughout the campaign Duvalier invoked the widely respected Dumarsais Estimé, promising to consolidate and enlarge the revolution his erstwhile schoolmaster had launched in 1946. He made promises to the workers and promises to the peasants. He used appeals to national unity and economic reconstruction. But most of all Duvalier adopted a mild-mannered, unassuming persona, radiating a doctor’s concern for other people. He and his family were too poor to own a home, as the kind man was devoted to his patients. He worked tirelessly into the night. He was adored by his people. ‘The peasants love their doctor, and I am their Papa Doc,’ he gently pointed out. He came across as an inoffensive man.8

  The quiet doctor seemed easy to control. After he agreed to appoint Kébreau as the army’s chief-of-staff, the military junta took steps to weaken his main opponent. Army officers who supported Déjoie were dismissed, his supporters attacked, and finally campaigning in his favour was forbidden altogether.9

  Duvalier was elected president on 22 September 1957. Twenty-two was his lucky number. ‘My government will scrupulously protect the honour and the civil rights which constitute the joy of all free peoples. My government will guarantee liberty for the Haitian people,’ he solemnly declared during his inauguration speech a month later.10

  Duvalier’s first act was to remove his political rivals, who challenged the outcome of the election. Within weeks the ranks of the civil service were purged. Duvalier appointed his followers, regardless of expertise or experience. Two months later his allies dominated the executive and judicial branches of government, while the legislature was under his thumb.11

  Duvalier recruited Herbert Morrison as director of public relations. During the presidential campaign, Morrison had bought a second-hand camera and taken hundreds of photographs, promoting Duvalier abroad. Photos with the caption ‘Champion of the Poor’ had appeared with the president-elect posing next to a poor peasant. Now Morrison travelled the island with his camera, snapping pictures to portray Haiti as a beacon of democracy. On radio in New York a year later he described Duvalier as ‘a humble country doctor, a dedicated, honest individual who is trying to help his people’. ‘It’s the first time in Haitian history,’ he explained to his American audience, ‘that the middle class and the suburban masses, the rural masses, have elected in a free election the man of their choice.’12

  Clément Barbot was tasked with organising the secret police. Ordered to attack opponents of the regime, its agents did so with such brutality that it caused general indignation. Within weeks of the election boys as young as eleven were dragged off into the bushes and beaten with hickory sticks. Entire families ended up in prison.13

  Antonio Kébreau, the army’s chief-of-staff, intimidated, imprisoned and deported the regime’s opponents. Labour unions were crushed and newspapers silenced, their premises occasionally burned to the ground. A radio station was wrecked. Suspects were accused of being communists and placed under arrest in the hundreds. A curfew imposed by the junta before the elections was maintained indefinitely.14

  The seat of power, however, continued to be the army. The alliance between Duvalier and Kébreau was an uneasy one, born of mutual need. But as the junta helped him crush his opponents, they went too far, beating to death an American citizen who was a vocal supporter of Louis Déjoie. In December the American ambassador was recalled in protest. Duvalier exploited the affair, blaming the military for the violence. Kébreau was dismissed two months later.15

  In the following months the army was whittled down in size, as many officers were discharged, transferred or released on early retirement, in particular the senior grades. A further opportunity to purge the ranks presented itself in the summer, after five American soldiers of fortune accompanied by two Haitian military officers landed near the capital, hoping to rally the population and besiege the presidential palace on 28 July 1958. All the insurgents were killed by troops loyal to the president.

  The attempted coup was a blessing in disguise. A week later Duvalier addressed the nation on radio. ‘I have conquered the nation. I have won power. I am the New Haiti. Those who seek to destroy me seek to destroy Haiti itself. It is through me that Haiti breathes; it is through her that I exist … God and Destiny have chosen me.’ All constitutional guarantees were suspended, while the president was given full powers to take all measures necessary to maintain national security. Less than a year after coming to power Duvalier reigned like an absolute monarch, with few limits placed on his power.16

  In the name of national security, Duvalier further starved the army of funds, developing his own militia instead as a deliberate counter-balance to the regular forces. Like the secret police, they were supervised by Clément Barbot. At first the militia were called the cagoulards, named after the hooded fascists who terrorised France in the 1930s. But soon they became known as the tonton macoutes, a Creole term for bogeymen. Within a year Barbot claimed to have a force of 25,000 militia under his command, although they probably never numbered more than 10,000, with a hard core of about 2,000 in the capital. The macoutes dressed like gangsters, with shiny blue-serge suits, dark, steel-rimmed glasses and grey homburg hats. They carried a gun, tucked away in a belt or an armpit holster. Duvalier alone could enrol a macoute, granting him permission to carry a weapon. The macoutes, in turn, reported back to Duvalier. In the words of the New Republic, a macoute was ‘an informer, neighbourhood boss, extortioner, bully and political pillar of the regime’. They were Duvalier’s eyes and ears. Few were paid, and all used their power to extort, intimidate, harass, rape and murder.17

  The macoutes crushed or interfered with every liberty but one. The new constitution proclaimed freedom of religion in April 1958. At the stroke of a pen, the dominant position of the Catholic Church was undermined. Voodoo was no longer banned. For more than two decades Duvalier had studied the religion, systematically developing links with the houngans. Now he made good use of his knowledge, recruiting them to become leaders of the macoutes in the countryside. They were widely consulted, invited to the palace and asked to perform religious ceremonies.18

  Duvalier projected himself as a Voodoo spirit. Since his early friendship with Lor
imer Denis he had affected the manners of a houngan, often dressing in black, carrying a cane and adopting a taciturn demeanour. His model was Baron Samedi, the spirit of the dead and guardian of cemeteries. In popular culture Baron Samedi was often depicted with a top hat and black tailcoat, wearing dark glasses, cotton plugs stuffed in his nostrils, resembling a corpse prepared for burial in the countryside.

  Duvalier wore thick, dark spectacles, and occasionally appeared in public with a top hat and tailcoat. He would mumble mysteriously in a deep nasal tone, as if chanting incantations against his enemies. He encouraged rumours about his links with the occult world. In 1958 the American anthropologist Harold Courlander came to pay his respects in the palace. He had known Duvalier from his early years at the Bureau of Ethnology. The visitor blinked in surprise as a guard led him into a pitch-dark room draped with black curtains. Duvalier, dressed in a black woollen suit, sat in front of a long table with dozens of black candles, surrounded by his macoutes wearing their dark glasses.19

  One of the more persistent rumours began circulating after the macoutes intervened in the burial of a former rival in April 1959. They pulled the casket from the black hearse, loaded it into their own vehicle and drove off, leaving behind a crowd of stunned mourners. The official explanation was that the body had been removed to prevent a public rally at his graveside, but word soon spread that the president wanted to use his heart as a magic charm to strengthen his own power.20

  There were plenty of other stories. The president sought council from the spirits while sitting in his bathtub, wearing the top hat of Baron Samedi. He studied goat entrails in the Salon Jaune of the National Palace. But Duvalier did not rely on rumour alone. Much as he purged the ranks of the government and the army, so he eliminated the houngans who refused to cooperate. ‘Never forget,’ he told them in 1959, ‘that I am the supreme authority of the state. Henceforth I, I alone, I am your only master.’21