Savages

I was glad to hear that the Duvalier regime had ended. I know Haiti quite well, having been there three times under Papa Doc. These visits I risked only because I felt safe staying with the family of a diplomat; I went because I am very much interested in human psychology and in witchcraft.

Though Papa Doc, alias François Duvalier, had a U.S. medical degree, he worked hand in hand with bokors, the voodoo sorcerers (not to be confused with the houngans, the harmless priests). Talking to Catholic hierarchs and Baptist missionaries, I found that they all believed in the efficacy of sorcery. It is well known that Papa Doc had hurled the Great Curse, the ouanga à mort, against John F. Kennedy. Between two of my visits he had an “adversary,” Yvan Laraque, executed, put the body of the slaughtered man, in bathing trunks, in a chair on the main square of Port-au-Prince, and left it there to rot in the tropical sun. Only the protest of the entire diplomatic corps made him remove it.