The Dictator Beat, a nonfiction historical thriller by an award-winning foreign correspondent, and set in the second-largest island of the Caribbean, is akin to a Hitchcockian suspense drama. Two side-by-side dictators-Francois (Papa Doc) Duvalier in Kreyòl and French-speaking Haiti and Generalissimo Rafael (Chapita) Trujillo Molina in the Spanish-speaking Dominican Republic, sharing the island that Columbus named Hispaniola-were in the year 1960 each endeavoring to crush rising dissatisfaction among their peoples.
Though very different in their personas, the two tyrants bore the same contempt for human life, which filled their respective countries with the unmarked graves of their countless victims.
In Haiti, Papa Doc Duvalier, though elected president three years earlier, had assumed virtually absolute power. His murderous "Tontons Macoutes" thugs roamed at will, striking fear into all. On the Dominican side, Trujillo, after nearly three decades in power, was finally losing his grip. Yet his dreaded secret police still cruised the streets at night, reinforcing Trujillo's long siege of terror. The question was: What would be the fate of these two tyrants themselves? The answer is provided in this mesmerizing book by Author Bernard Diederich, who spent years reporting from both countries.
