This article records tradition as it has been passed down and reported. Its sources are not yet part of the atlas's verified catalogue.
Francois Duvalier, known as Papa Doc, ruled Haiti from 22 October 1957 until his death on 21 April 1971, declaring himself president for life in 1964 after a rigged referendum. His regime is estimated to have killed between 30,000 and 60,000 people through the paramilitary Tonton Macoute and other instruments of state terror, one of the most violent governments Haiti has known.
Duvalier did not suppress Vodou the way earlier Haitian law had; he co-opted it instead, deliberately modeling his own public image on the spirit Baron Samedi and folding Vodou imagery into a personality cult built around his rule, a use of the religion historians draw as distinct from either persecution or genuine devotion. What his general repression produced, apart from its direct victims, was mass political emigration: educated professionals especially fled Haiti throughout his rule, bound for New York, Miami, Montreal, Paris and French-speaking parts of Africa, seeking safety a Duvalier state would not offer at home.
That outflow, continuing under his son's regime and after it, carried Vodou practice abroad on a scale no earlier Haitian emigration had reached, establishing the religion as a durable presence in the American diaspora for the first time. What the Duvalier years changed for Vodou's spread was reach beyond Haiti itself, achieved not through missionary intent but through hundreds of thousands of Haitians carrying their religion with them into exile.