Papa Doc: The Voodoo Tyrant of Haiti
He led a murderous regime that kept his people in poverty
Many tyrants have held power over nations by preying on simple human emotions, like fear of invasion by hostile neighbors or nationalistic pride in conquest of weaker countries. Others have kept themselves in government by rigged elections or by armed suppression of their own downtrodden populations.
But only one modern dictator has ever managed to keep his people enslaved by a grisly combination of machine-gun and mysticism, by the force of a vicious police state and an unholy alliance with the Devil himself and his legions of demons and ghosts, vampires and zombies.
Haiti before Duvalier
Haiti shares the island of Hispaniola with the Dominican Republic, and its lush and rolling sub-tropical forests were one of the wondrous sights of the New World for explorer Christopher Columbus when his ship was wrecked there in December 1492.
By the end of the 16th century most of the original population of Arawak Indians had been wiped out. Many fell victim to newly introduced European diseases. The survivors were literally worked to death on the plantations of their new Spanish masters.
