50 Years After Papa Doc, Haiti Democracy Still Work In Progress
By Amelie BARON
04/20/21 AT 1:48 AM
When Haitian strongman Francois Duvalier died, his subjects had no choice on their next president -- his 19-year-old son took over. The vote to approve him as successor was officially 2,391,916 to zero.
Half a century has passed since the April 1971 death of the elder Duvalier but Haiti is still struggling to achieve democracy, with the Western Hemisphere's poorest nation again embroiled in twin crises of political illegitimacy and rampant violence.
Dubbed Papa Doc due to his background as a physician, the elder Duvalier was democratically elected in 1957 but soon built a ruthless authoritarian state that is believed to have killed tens of thousands of people in its quest to maintain power.