Jean-Claude Duvalier
Jean-Claude Duvalier, Baby Doc, became president for life of Haiti at nineteen on his father's death in April 1971, the youngest head of state in the world, a plump, indolent young man who left the governing to his mother and his father's men, took what the treasury had, married in 1980 a mulatto divorcee whose wedding cost more than the state spent on health, and was flown out by the Americans in February 1986 after three months of rioting that began with the killing of schoolchildren in Gonaives; he lived in France on what was left, came home unaccountably in 2011, was charged with corruption and crimes against humanity, and died in 2014 before any trial. His father had changed the constitution in January 1971 to lower the age of the presidency to eighteen and had the succession approved by a referendum with 2,391,916 votes for and none against. The first years were run by his mother Simone, the Macoute chiefs and the ministers of the old regime, and the young president went to parties and drove fast cars; Washington, glad of the change of tone, restored aid, and the regime presented itself as a liberalisation, with some political prisoners released and the press allowed a little. The money was the same. Jean-Claudisme, as it was called, took the aid and the state monopolies for the family and a circle of business partners, and the marriage to Michele Bennett in 1980, the daughter of a coffee exporter, moved the regime from the black nationalist base of Papa Doc to the mulatto commercial class, which the old Duvalierists resented. A swine fever eradication programme demanded by the Americans in 1982 killed every pig in the country, the peasants' savings. The pope visited in 1983 and said things must change. The rising began in the provincial towns in November 1985 and the Catholic radio carried it; the army would not fire on the crowds, the Americans told him it was over, and on 7 February 1986 a United States air force plane took the couple to France with their luggage. France refused him asylum and let him stay; the divorce and the lawyers took the money. He landed at Port-au-Prince in January 2011, a year after the earthquake, saying he had come to help, and was charged within days, and the case was still before the courts when he died of a heart attack in October 2014.
- Lived: 1951 CE – 2014 CE
- Nationality: Haitian
- Roles: president, dictator
