Tonton Macoute

[11] After the July 1958 Haitian coup attempt against President François Duvalier, he purged the army and law enforcement agencies in Haiti and executed numerous officers perceived to be a threat to his regime.

[12][13] They were renamed to Milice Civile (Civilian Militia) and, after 1962, Volontaires de la Sécurité Nationale (Volunteers of the National Security, or VSN).

Duvalier authorized the Tontons Macoutes to commit systematic violence, terrorism, and human rights abuses to suppress political opposition.

The victims of Tontons Macoutes could range from a woman in the poorest of neighborhoods who had previously supported an opposing politician to a businessman who refused to comply with extortion threats (ostensibly taken as donations for public works, but which were in fact the source of profit for corrupt officials and even President Duvalier).

[19] When François Duvalier came to power in 1957, Vodou was becoming celebrated as authentic Haitian culture by intellectuals and the griots, after it had been dropped for years by those with education.

[20] The Tonton Macoute were strongly influenced by Vodou tradition and adopted denim uniforms resembling clothing like that of Azaka Medeh, the patron of farmers.

The Tonton Macoutes wore straw hats, blue denim shirts and dark glasses, and were armed with machetes and guns.

[20] The Tontons Macoute were a ubiquitous presence at the polls in 1961, when Duvalier held a presidential referendum in which the official vote count was an "outrageous" and fraudulent 1,320,748 to 0, electing him to another term.

The most feared paramilitary group during the 1990s was the Front for the Advancement and Progress of Haïti (FRAPH), which Toronto Star journalist Linda Diebel described as modern Tonton Macoutes, and not the legitimate political party it claimed to be.

[10] Led by Emmanual Constant, FRAPH differed from the Tonton Macoute in its denial to submit to the will of a single authority and its cooperation with regular military forces.