The fact is that his father was the tyrant and that he took over at the age of 19, but was really a puppet of his fathers' older and more experienced generals as well as of his well-connected wife and father-in-law.
It was his father-in-law who got rich selling the body parts and the drugs, for example.
It's rather ridiculous to believe that a teenager was running Haiti with an iron fist and ordering around a crew of hardened military advisors who had been running their own private army since before he was born.
What's particularly telling is that he has been living in a small apartment by himself since 1993, when his wife left him and took all the money that she and her family had looted from Haiti with her.
True. Gotta peel that onion skin back to get a clearer picture. Baby Doc, while no angel, was slowly trying to tamp down corruption and oppression. If I remember correctly, was it not during his regime that a free press came into being?
As for the Ton Tons Macoutes, Baby Doc had begun the process of reigning them in by the early 1980s. In a 4th-world hellhole like Haiti, leaders don't suddenly and precipitously expunge organizations like that... not if they wish to see the next day.
Not making excuses for the man... but there is more than meets the eye about the younger Duvalier.