DEMOCRACY
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Caribbean L 44 ife, June 14–20, 2019
In this May 22, 2019 photo, gang members patrol the street
holding guns six months after a massacre in the La Saline
slum of Port-au-Prince, Haiti. “Gangs are multiplying because
the government is weak,” said Paul Eronce Villard,
Haiti’s general prosecutor, who estimates there are more
than 50 gangs now operating. “It’s a real challenge for police.”
Associated Press / Dieu Nalio Chery
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By Danica Coto
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti
(AP) — He’s known as Barbecue,
an ex-cop suspected
in the massacre of dozens of
men, women and children in
the Haitian capital — and a
hero in his neighborhood, followed
by crowds of adoring
residents who consider him
their protector.
Authorities say men like
Barbecue, whose real name is
Jimmy Cherizier, are increasingly
taking charge of areas
across Haiti as public safety
disintegrates and the government
loses its grip on a country
facing one of its most violent
periods in recent history
despite a 15-year U.N. peacekeeping
operation there.
“Gangs are multiplying
because the government is
weak,” said Haiti’s attorney
general, Paul Eronce Villard,
who estimates there are more
than 50 gangs now operating
in the country. “It’s a real
challenge for police.”
Armed gangs, sometimes
with links to corrupt police
and believed financed by local
politicians and businessmen,
battle each other for control of
Port-au-Prince’s lucrative outdoor
markets, the source of a
steady flow of cash from socalled
``protection’’ fees from
vendors, as well as drug deals
and arms sales.
Among them is Base Delmas
6, which local human rights
groups say is led by Cherizier
in Port-au-Prince’s impoverished
Lower Delmas neighborhood.
Cherizier denies
that, describing himself as a
community leader who doles
out cash to residents when
they’re in need, clears garbage
from the streets and protects
the neighborhood from rival
gangs.
He’s also a suspect in the
country’s worst massacre in
years, accused by police and
witnesses of helping to orchestrate
the slaughter of up to 59
men, women and children in
the nearby neighborhood of
La Saline last year.
But despite being named
in a police report and in two
local human rights groups’
investigations of the killings,
Cherizier, remains not only
free, but the most powerful
man in Lower Delmas.
A police badge tattooed on
his right forearm and a 9 mm
pistol in his waistband, the
42-year-old Cherizier sleeps
during the day and spends
nights scanning the streets
for enemies. He enforces a
nightly curfew and has a small
army of lookouts who bang on
drums to alert residents that
rival gangs are approaching.
On a recent Saturday, Cherizier
ducked through purple
and yellow sheets hung out
to dry in narrow alleyways
and sidestepped rusty wheelbarrows
filled with sugarcane
and women doing their wash
in buckets. The smell of marijuana
and raw sewage filled
the air.
Swigging from a bottle of
Barbancourt rum, he later
pointed at a wide canal that
residents use as a toilet and a
shuttered medical clinic, then
noted the lack of schools.
“What do you see?’’ he asked
as he gestured at a crowd of
supporters gathered around
him. “It’s misery. None of
these kids have a future. In 10
years from now, they will have
guns in their hands.’’
Leader or killer? A day with
‘Barbecue’ in Haiti’s capital
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