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Baby Doc Duvalier May Have Finally Helped Haiti – By Dying At The Right Time

Andres Martinez Casares
/
For the Miami Herald

COMMENTARY

Even for a fiend as monumentally corrupt as he was, the first words out of Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier’s mouth upon his return to Haiti in 2011 were shamelessly dishonest.

“I came back to help my country,” Baby Doc said after ending 25 years in exile in France.

Sure. Here’s the real reason Baby Doc came back: By then he’d squandered the hundreds of millions of dollars he’d allegedly robbed from Haiti during his brutal 1971-1986 dictatorship.

So he figured enough time had passed that he could return to Haiti and not be arrested. He could then make the case that he was no longer a wanted criminal there, and he could legally unfreeze millions in other personal assets in Switzerland.

That was Baby Doc’s noble motivation. He never got to thaw those Swiss millions because he was, in fact, indicted shortly after his return. But you’d be hard-pressed to find anything Duvalier ever did that helped Haiti.

That is, until today.

Not because he died this morning of a heart attack in Port-au-Prince at the age of 63. Even in Baby Doc’s case, I won’t be so unkind as to applaud someone’s death. But rather, because the timing of his demise is actually good.

Haiti at this particular moment could use a reason to wake up and consider which way it’s poised to go. Is it breaking out of its lot as the Western Hemisphere’s poorest and most politically dysfunctional country? Or is it backsliding to the authoritarian, banana-republic profile it thought it kicked when it kicked Baby Doc’s butt out of the country in 1986?

MIAMI HERALD: Former Haitian President Jean-Claude "Baby Doc" Duvalier Dies

Unfortunately, it’s too close to call right now. Despite recent disasters including an apocalyptic 2010 earthquake and a cholera epidemic, Haiti has made some economic and social strides. Not least is the fact that the 2011 inauguration of current President Michel Martelly marked the first time in Haiti’s history that power was peacefully transferred to an opposition candidate.

And yet Martelly hasn’t returned the favor. Ironically he's a Duvalier admirer who’s done his best to undermine Haiti’s fragile democracy by concentrating executive power – and repeatedly delaying parliamentary elections. Fears abound that he’s waiting for the current legislature to expire in January so he can rule by decree.

Baby Doc's obits will be a good reminder that when things get despotic in Haiti, they don't just get dirty. They get deadly.

So while Baby Doc’s sudden death may have cheated justice – he was facing a corruption trial when he died and perhaps human rights charges – it might also cause just enough reflection about him and his family’s horrific dynasty to help tip Haiti in a smarter direction.

His obits will be a good reminder that when things get despotic in Haiti, they don’t just get dirty. They get deadly.

Let’s start with the dirty. Haitian judicial investigators say that between 1957 – when Baby Doc’s dictator dad, the even more infamous François “Papa Doc” Duvalier, took power – and 1986, the family embezzled almost $1 billion from public coffers. In a country whose GDP is less than $8.5 billion.

Baby Doc pleaded not guilty to that larceny. But one of the most glaring accusations against him involved $300 million that had been appropriated for a Haitian railroad – which was never built.

TONTON MACOUTES

Baby Doc was never formally charged for the deadly part – incredibly, a Haitian judge ruled in 2012 there was a statute of limitations on human rights crimes – but earlier this year an appellate court re-opened that door.

So had Baby Doc lived longer, he finally might have had to answer for atrocity as well: The estimated 30,000 or more Duvalier opponents who were abducted, tortured and killed by the dictatorship’s Gestapo-like secret police, the Tonton Macoutes.

When Baby Doc returned in 2011, Haitian historian Georges Michel told me that for most Haitians, “It’s as if Adolf Hitler were still alive and just landed in Berlin.” And they'll find it appropriate that his fatal heart attack was brought on, according to news reports, by a tarantula bite.

Many Haitians, of course, hold the opposite view. Some 2,000 supporters, after all, met Baby Doc at the airport in 2011. Like Stalinism in Russia or Pinochetism in Chile, Duvalierism retains a perverse attraction in Haiti – even among its foreign service, whose bureaucrats issued Baby Doc the diplomatic passport he used to re-enter the country.

They consider the Duvalier dynasty a sort of belle époque of social and economic order.

They couldn’t be more wrong.

Which is why Martelly – who today called Baby Doc a "true son of Haiti" – should resist his temptation to hold a state funeral. If Martelly really wants to help his country at this juncture, he won’t exalt the fiend. He’ll just bury him.

And let Haitians consider which way they want to go from here.

Tim Padgett is WLRN's Americas editor. You can read more of his coverage here.

Tim Padgett is the Americas Editor for WLRN, covering Latin America, the Caribbean and their key relationship with South Florida. Contact Tim at tpadgett@wlrnnews.org
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