Alan Whicker - Journey of a Lifetime

He dismissed the insurgents’ bombing of his palace: “They are crazy. They will never reach their aim because I know who I am and I can’t be killed by anyone. I have faith in my destiny. No other President of Haiti could stand up and do what I did in the past eleven years—facing eight armed invasions and three hurricanes.”

Though he was President for Life and apparently convinced of his immortality, I wondered whether he had thought of a successor. He had not. “All of them are at school now—they are the young people.”

His only son Jean-Claude was sitting beside us in the presidential study. What he would do with his life? The fat moon-faced 17-year-old was embarrassed. “That depends on him,” said Papa Doc, regarding his son with pride. “I hope he will follow the advice of his father, of his mother, and become a medical doctor.”

As I grew more familiar with the President, I became more convinced that nobody’s all good or all bad. He had been a mild little country doctor looking after the peasants and earning his famous nickname. This non-smoking teetotaller who loved his family now saw himself as a poet. He presented me with Copy No. 892 of his Breviaries of a Revolution, and inscribed a collection of his poems, Souvenirs d’Autrefois, “to a friend of the first Black Revolution, Mr Alan Whicker, in souvenir of his short stay in the Island of Quisquetya, Sincerely, François Duvalier”.

It was said that after dinner in his palace he would sometimes go down to the dungeons to watch some political prisoners tortured, and on occasion might torture them himself. He was certainly known to slap ministers around his study, under the protective gaze of the Presidential Guard. A man of moods, he was sometimes almost playful and anxious to make a good impression, then glowering with suppressed fury at a critical word.

I had played myself in tactfully while getting to know him, leaving the tougher questions for a later visit. Then half-way through one conversation, I caught him regarding me balefully during a long silence. With a low menacing rasp, he said, “Mr Whicker, you are talking to the President of the Republic of Haiti.” It seemed a telling rebuke.

My crew had caught the distant clang of cell doors slamming, so when I turned to less sensitive matters there were audible sighs of relief from behind the camera. On a following day I reverted to my critical questions, about which he was matter-of-fact. It seemed that his occasional moods might be medically induced.

On one of these jollier days he even decided to show us his capital—and certainly one of the best views of Port-au-Prince had to be from the President’s bullet-proof Mercedes 600 limousine.

Papa Doc settled on the back seat alongside his gloomy bodyguard, Col. Gracia Jacques. We had no radio mikes in those days so our recordist Terry Ricketts rigged the unprotesting President with a neck mike and a long lead hidden around his body. Upon jumping out of the limo he several times did himself a slight injury, but without complaint.

He obviously wanted to show how popular he was, and certainly knew how to attract and hold an audience. A breathless cheering crowd chased us as we drove slowly through the town. Then I noticed Papa Doc was throwing handfuls of money out of his window. Our pursuers, scrambling in the dirt, were going frantic. When we stopped the President increased the excitement by bringing out packets of brand-new notes, peeling off wads and handing them out to anyone who seemed to have the right attitude.

In this land of destitution, the arrival of the black Mercedes amid a shower of free banknotes caused far more ecstasy than Santa Claus. With an annual income in every crisp wad handed out, it was well worth trying to keep up with the Duvaliers.

It seemed unreal to be riding around with one of the world’s most feared men, discussing subjects none of his countrymen would dare think . I asked how he felt about Graham Greene and The Comedians. He brushed the novel and the gory film aside. “He is a poor man, mentally, because he did not say the truth about Haiti. Perhaps he needed the money, and got some from the political exiles.”

He was far more bitter about a predecessor, Major Magloire, then living in New York but threatening to return, because he had got away with the money: “He took $19 million from the National Bank of Haiti and used this money to finance armed invasions and to bomb the palace. He tried to kill me when he was president. I was in hiding for several years. Why did he not come here himself instead of sending his young officers?”

He answered that one himself, right away: “If he comes here he will be killed, because he is what you call a vagabond. A vagabond.”

Almost half of Haiti’s revenue was spent on Papa Doc’s personal security. So I questioned the use of his hated Tontons Macoutes: “It is a militia, they help me to clean the streets, they help me to cultivate the land, they help the Haitian army and they fight side by side in face of armed invasions.” Papa Doc got out of the limo, and the escort of Tontons instantly set up defensive positions around us, as though assassination was imminent.

He could not understand why he was dreaded by so many of his people: “I am the strongest man, the most anti-Communist man in the Caribbean islands. Certainly the question is a racial one because I am a strong leader. The US considers me a bad example for the 25 million Negroes living there. I should be the favourite child of the United States,” he said, stumbling in his enthusiasm for the subject. “Instead of which they consider me…the black sheep!” He gave me our programme title—a cackle, and one of those ghoulish grins.

Although his 500-strong Palace Guard now recognized us and knew we were harmless and acceptable, they were all permanently terrified of doing anything new, like allowing us through the wrong door. Getting in to see him was a daily problem.

I had the forethought to arm myself with a pass sternly addressed to “All Civil and Military Authorities” and signed by the President himself. This got me through the sentries on the palace gate, past a quiver of anxious guards on various doors, up the stairs and along the corridor and right up to the entrance to his chambers. There I was stopped by the Presidential Guard itself, a nervous group of captains and lieutenants who admitted they knew he was expecting me, but had no authority to disturb him. This was the Haitian “Catch-22”.

The only person who could actually approach him was his secretary, Mme Saint-Victor, a formidable lady and sister of another son-in-law—but she was away ill. So we sat under the chandelier in his annex while the President sat inside and waited, and nobody had the determination to knock on his door.

In exasperation I finally broke the stalemate by leaving the palace and going to the town’s telegraph office. I had seen a telex in Papa Doc’s inner sanctum and noted the number—3490068—so sent a message: “Mr President, I am waiting outside your door.” This worked.

Encouraged by our successful tour of the town, I suggested he might show us Duvalierville, which he ordered built several years ago as a national showplace, a sort of governmental Brasilia which would be his memorial. He said it was 20 miles away, and that was too far for him to travel. He was always most cautious when on the open road.

We later went to look for ourselves and found he was not missing much. Like everything else in Haiti, his empty dream had died for lack of finance. Crumbling and overgrown, the few piles of cracking white concrete stood in wasteland populated by a few listless squatters. It seemed a fitting monument. However, the President agreed to organize a visit to a nearby health centre. I listened as on one of the few working telephones in the land he chased his daughter to become an extra: “C’est le President de la République! Where is Di-Di?”