Death
Gaetjens was not interested in politics, but his family was. He was related to Louis Déjoie (his great-grandfather Thomas married Leonie Déjoie), who lost the 1957 Haitian presidential election to François "Papa Doc" Duvalier, and although the family also had connections to the new president, Gaetjens's younger brothers became associated with a group of exiles in the Dominican Republic who wanted to stage a coup.
On July 8, 1964, the morning after Duvalier declared himself "president for life", the rest of the Gaetjens family fled the country in fear of reprisal for the younger Gaetjens brothers' rebellious associations, but Joe stayed, thinking that Duvalier's regime would be uninterested in him since he was only a sports figure. That morning, he was arrested by the nation's notorious Tonton Macoutes secret police and is presumed to have been killed some time that month. His body has never been found. Joe Gaetjens was posthumously inducted into the United States National Soccer Hall of Fame in 1976.
Gaetjens is interpreted by Jimmy Jean-Louis in the film The Game of Their Lives. In the film, he is depicted as a practitioner of Vodou (voodoo), but in reality Gaetjens, like most Haitians, grew up as a Catholic.
Read more about this topic: Joe Gaetjens
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