Red Heat and the cold war

Red Heat: Conspiracy, Murder and the Cold War in the Caribbean

Francois "Papa Doc" Duvalier, dictator of Haiti from 1957 to 1971, entertained more than an anthropological interest in Afro-Caribbean ritual. His wardrobe of black suits and black homburgs lent him the aspect, says Alex von Tunzelmann, of the Vodou divinity Baron Samedi, who haunts churchyards in a top hat and tails like a ghoulish Groucho Marx.

The dictator's son Jean-Claude "Baby Doc" Duvalier was no less bizarre. In 2002, hoping to secure an interview with him, I dialled his number from my home in London. The instant he picked up his phone in Paris, a neighbour let off fireworks beneath my window. It was November 5, Guy Fawkes Day. Above a background detonation of rockets I tried to explain the significance of the 1605 Gunpowder Plot, but "Baby Doc" wasn't listening any more. The line went dead, and I never got my interview.

Von Tunzelmann, an Oxford-educated historian, has also tried but failed to interview "Baby Doc" Duvalier. A series of political convulsions - attempted assassinations, bomb plots - has followed the despot's expulsion from the Caribbean in 1986 and no doubt he sees journalists and even historians like von Tunzelmann as part of a larger threat. Red Heat, a zingy, well-researched history of the Cold War and its depredations in the Caribbean, offers a James Ellroy-like canvas of Duvalierist corruption, dubious CIA operatives and White House paranoia.

The book concentrates on Haiti, the Dominican Republic and Cuba. It was in these Caribbean nations that the US fought a desperate yet futile war against Communism. The proximity of Castro's revolutionary Cuba lent urgency to the war. After 1962, when Cuban exiles attempted their disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion, Castro aligned himself further with the Soviet Union. The Fidelistas were now united in their loathing of Uncle Sam and "Yanqui" imperialism. In spite of his authoritarian fanaticism, "Papa Doc" Duvalier was seen by the CIA as a bastion against local red insurgencies. His overthrow would only benefit communist Cuba.

As the 1960s progressed, it seemed the entire Caribbean basin was viewed in terms of East-West, Cold War prescriptions. Castro was as a bogeyman bent on leading millions into the red bloc; JF Kennedy was a playboy capitalist and corrupt. Yet even with the best will in the world, says von Tunzelmann, it is difficult to declare war on (still less control) an idea such as communism.

François Duvalier himself had no discernible ideology, but was surrounded by a lunatic halo of mystery and magic. He understood, as the US perhaps did not, that the best way to control the people is through the exercise of power, not ideology.

In the Dominican Republic, likewise, President Rafael Trujillo plundered government coffers and put friends and family in positions of power. A dictator in the megalomaniac lineage of Tamburlaine (and about as cruel), for three decades until his overthrow in 1961 Trujillo tortured political opponents. Yet the US backed him as an additional bulwark against the "infection" of communism.

In von Tunzelmann's analysis, the Cold War froze people's ability to think and, in the Caribbean at least, killed off interesting thoughts, interesting people and interesting ideas.

Castro's own brand of Cold War rhetoric served merely to draw a line in the sand, which one crossed at mortal risk. Us or Them? Even Americans of moderation and decency were tempted to commit grotesque acts of political violence in the name of freedom. Mercifully, this foolishness is over for the moment. Von Tunzelmann has read widely in the subject and produced a highly readable synthesis of all the available accounts; "Baby Doc" is sure to hate it.