Something to Scratch Your Head About

Last Sunday evening the we started receiving text messages on our cell-phone about the most unexpected event--the return of one of Haiti's two most notorious exiles, Jean-Claude Duvalier. (The other notorious exile, Jean Bertrand Aristide, also has recently said he is ready to return to Haiti). Jean-Claude, also called Baby Doc, is a former president and the son of Haiti's most infamous patriarch/president, Papa Doc Duvalier. The Duvaliers are well known in Haiti for ushering in three decades of stability. The cost however, was repression at the hands of the Duvaliers' gang of thugs known as the Tonton Macoutes. The Macoutes were the original "men-in-black" (they wore black suites and sun-glasses) and anyone they went after disappeared permenantly. Jean-Claude is especially remembered for pillaging Haiti's treasury of untold millions before being exiled to France in 1986 where he lived the high-life. After barely 48 hours on Haitian soil, Jean-Claude was pulled out of his hotel and drug before the Haitian courts on charges of corruption. A number of criminal complaints have been filed against him by his alleged victims. With Jean-Claude back in Haiti and put up in the docket, the soap opera that is life in Haiti will no doubt become more interesting. Why would Jean-Claude ever return to Haiti? Something to scratch your head about.