How to Be a Dictator by Frank Dikötter

Author:Frank Dikötter
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

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

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