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1986-02-07

1986-02-07: (Jean-Claude Duvalier Flees Haiti, Ending Twenty-Nine Years of Duvalier Family Dictatorship, the Dechoukaj Erupting as the Population Uproots Eve…

Haitian

1986-02-07: (Jean-Claude Duvalier Flees Haiti, Ending Twenty-Nine Years of Duvalier Family Dictatorship, the Dechoukaj Erupting as the Population Uproots Every Symbol of the Regime): On February 7, 1986, Jean-Claude Duvalier and his family fled Haiti aboard a U.S. Air Force jet, ending twenty-nine years of Duvalier family dictatorship. The flight triggered the Dechoukaj, the uprooting, as the Haitian population attacked every symbol of the regime. Former Tonton Macoutes were hunted, captured, and subjected to Père Lebrun, placed inside tires coated with gasoline and set on fire. Over one hundred former paramilitaries were killed in the reprisals. Henri Namphy took control and established a military government. The 1987 constitution, promulgated the following year, recognized Kreyòl as an official language alongside French for the first time in Haitian history and instituted a semipresidential political system designed to prevent the concentration of power that had made the Duvalier dictatorship possible. The constitution was the most progressive Haiti had ever produced. Whether it could survive contact with Haitian political reality remained to be seen.