In Haiti, the difficult relationship of gangs and business
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP) - Youri Mevs knew that the call was coming, and she was terrified.
Mevs is a member of one of the richest families in Haiti; she owns Shodecosa, Haiti´s largest industrial park, which warehouses 93 percent of the nation´s imported food. Like everyone else, she has watched with despair as her country descended into chaos since the assassination of President Jovenel Moise.
Her office got the call one early morning in August. It was from Jimmy Cherizier -- aka Barbecue, a former policeman who leads the G9 gang coalition which controls the coastal strip of Port-au-Prince. Most of Haiti´s food and gasoline flows through his domain, and he can stop it with a single word.
Barbecue´s demand: $500,000 a month, a "war chest" he claimed would be used to buy food for the hungry and fight for democracy.
Pay the price, no problems. Refuse, and Shodecosa would be ransacked, and the gangs also would block the roads around the port terminal owned by the Mevs family.
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Flanked by members of the G9 gang coalition, leader Jimmy Cherizier, aka Barbecue, right, talks to reporters near the perimeter wall that encloses Terminal Varreux, the port owned by the Mevs family, in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Wednesday, Oct. 6, 2021. Barbecue, a former policeman, fancies himself a man of the people and an enemy of the elite. (AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd)
This story is part of a series, "Haiti: Business, Politics and Gangs," produced with support from the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting.
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Mevs knew the threat was credible. Three neighboring warehouses were looted in June. It came down to math: "How much do we make? Can we afford it?" The answer was no.
Should she fight back? Again, no. "We are not going to shoot a gun to defend a bag of rice."
There was nowhere to turn for help. In Haiti, there is no functioning government. For decades, the country was ruled by political strongmen supported by armed gangs; with Moise´s killing, the state collapsed and the gangs were unbound.
Having lost their meal ticket - the government - the gangs have become independent predators. While some turned to kidnapping, like those who captured 17 missionaries and their relatives, Barbecue´s men took control of the port district, gaining a stranglehold on the country´s economy.
Mevs is far from poor. She is not starving, not struggling for survival -- in so many ways, she is unlike the migrants who are fleeing Haiti´s misery. Like others of her caste, she traces her roots to ancestors who came to Haiti generations ago from Europe and the Middle East and built fortunes.
But like those emigrants, she and others among Haiti´s wealthy elite have few illusions about life in Haiti. She wants her daughters to join those families moving abroad while the future of the country is settled. If life does not improve, she may have to sell what she owns and join them.
In the meantime, she vows to stand up and fight the political battle to rebuild the government and country. She accepts that the gangs are part of the Haitian eco-system, something to be dealt with constantly as she struggles to keep her business going.
But Barbecue and his gang are immensely powerful. Her money, her contacts with rival gangs, her political connections -- all may be to no avail.
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On a hot October morning, Barbecue -- the name comes from his mother´s occupation, selling food at a street stall -- receives reporters in his stronghold of Bellecour-Cité Soleil, a wretched neighborhood of tin shacks without water, electricity or any basic services.
Barbecue unboxes two new, American-made AK rifles with ammunition. Then surrounded by a dozen young, hooded men armed and dressed in brightly colored T-shirts and sneakers, he walks to the perimeter wall that encloses Terminal Varreux, the port owned by the Mevs family.
No, he insists. He did not ask for money from the Mevs in exchange for not looting their properties. "If I did that, they would have killed me by now," he says.
Barbecue fancies himself a man of the people and an enemy of the elite. He speaks blithely of a possible civil war of the poor against the rich and powerful "foreign" families who own Haiti.
This, he says, is what he believes: "Water, housing, school, university, security for all and not only for the 5% who have lighter skin" -- the rich families like the Mevs.
"I have hatred for those people, every time we look at them we can say that there are two Haitis. We have to put an end to the system of dispossession."
He mingles with the people of Bellecour-Cité Soleil, trying to present himself as not a gangster but as a revolutionary leader fighting for social change. He is not very successful.
Carrying a gun, he enters shacks without permission and does not say hello to the people living there before launching into diatribes about their living conditions. Generally, the occupants look down in silence, extras in a movie they played no part in producing.
Barbecue gestures to a teenager who walks behind him. The youth pulls a wad of bills from his back pocket and gives some to Barbecue; he, in turn, hands the money to the woman of the house.
"Their position is that of mental slaves, they have not always understood the struggle," he says.
He says he can do little more for slum dwellers. And despite all appearances, he says he is not positioning himself for a political career. He claims not to have any political affiliation or party and says he does not see himself "as a candidate in a system that I see as corrupt."
Mevs and others dismiss nearly everything Barbecue says as posturing -- especially his claims that he is not corrupt but an enemy of corruption.
He has been accused -- by the United Nations and other international organizations -- of participation in three massacres between 2018 and 2020.
The bloodbaths, said to have been sponsored by high-ranking officials in the Moïse administration, left more than 200 people dead. Women were gang-raped, and entire neighborhoods were burned, displacing thousands.
Barbecue´s extortion is brazen. And sometimes, a payoff is not enough to guarantee protection.
For 20 years, Giovanni Saleh, 44, rented a warehouse from the Mevs. It was located halfway between Cité Soleil and Shodecosa, the Mevs´ industrial park.
Saleh can offer no explanation for of what happened starting on the morning of June 6. He had complied with the rules. He had, he says, a "stable and correct" relationship with the gang.
"The last day I went to the warehouse I was preparing the food I used to leave for the gang every two weeks" -- cans of tomatoes, cartons of spaghetti, oil, beans, 20 sacks of rice. "I collaborated with them with food and some money on a regular basis."
Saleh says he received a call from Merci Dieu, a member of Barbecue´s gang coalition: "We are going to block the area for a couple of days to ask for money from the government and trucks leaving the port, so come now and take whatever you need and then stay away for some days."
Two days later, a friend called Saleh to tell him that there were rumors of an attack against his warehouse. He called security, no answer. He checked the cameras online and they were off. He called police, called everyone he knew. Nobody would do anything.
Saleh lost $3.5 million in goods over three days, as thousands of people directed by Barbecue and a colleague disassembled his warehouse box by box, bag by bag, shelf by shelf. Drone footage he took shows a constant and orderly flow of looters entering the warehouse from two directions.
Guards told him later that armed men fronting a mob had come to the door and knocked.
"Who would shoot? No one would shoot," Saleh said. "They opened the doors and left."
Saleh has sent his wife and two kids to Santo Domingo, and wants to join them. But for now he is rebuilding his business. He has taken out loans to reopen in the Mevs´ industrial park.
Youri Mevs "may be making the same mistake I made. I thought that by dealing with them, they would protect me, but they didn´t," he said. "They charge you, one way or the other, for protection, but instead of protecting you against other gangs or even the police, they turn against you."
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Magalie Dresse lives in an elegant home in the heart of Port-au-Prince, with a well-tended garden where she does yoga in the morning. "I need the strength to go out there and handle what I´m going to find, which is not going to be positive."
Since 2004, her car has been attacked; she has survived two kidnapping attempts; the government expropriated some of her properties; and her factory was damaged by arson in riots, costing her $400,000 in a single day.
And then there are the gangs. "At one point," she says, "we´ve had cash at home during the weekends in case a friend needed it for a ransom and banks were closed."
Dresse´s business sends about 50 containers of art to the United States each year. But before they arrive at the port, they must pass through gang-controlled areas.
"They can open them, check if there is something they want or even set them on fire," she says. So "we pay the police, then sometimes we have to pay a gang because they can barricade the route."
Later, she acknowledges that "some businesses" -- not hers -- "decide to have their own gangs on payroll. And that choice is the story of many companies in Haiti."
At the end of the day, she holds a cocktail party for friends and associates, and they swap stories about the impossibility of business life in a gangster nation.
"If you have $5 million worth of merchandise to unload and deliver, $50,000 (in bribes) is something you can deal with," says Geoffrey Handal, entrepreneur in the shipping industry and former president of the Franco-Haitian Chamber of Commerce.
But the uncertainty -- the possibility that Barbecue might close the port for three days, or block trucks -- is impossible to live with.
Political use of gangs in Haiti dates back to the 1960s, when Francois Duvalier created the Tonton Macute, a civil force that spread terror in the population for decades. When deposed president Jean-Bertrand Aristide ruled early in this century, he also created his own armed gang, the "chimères," based in Cité Soleil.
Moise and his predecessor, Michel Martelly, used gangs for hire to control the coastal areas where a large number of votes were concentrated.
When Moise was assassinated, the gangs decided there was no need to serve as middlemen for politicians anymore. "Why would they accept being used if they could manage the business?" Handal asks.
Barbecue´s revolutionary rhetoric is empty, he says. "If someone offers Barbecue 5% more than what he is making right now, he will change allegiances immediately."
For Handal, the issue is simple: How low must businesspeople stoop to succeed in a gangster nation? "Do you want to become one of them? Are you willing to have blood on your hands?"
Instead, Dresse says the solution is citizenship.
"We need people like us involved in politics with a long-term approach," she says. "We need to create a new political party."
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Youri Mevs does not pay the $500,000 extortion. She orders one of her managers to supply some of Barbecue´s rivals: "Get them corn flakes, milk, pasta, tomato and soap." How much? "$5,000."
She describes it as "looking for ways of compensating for the non-aggression." She does not believe in cash donations because "they will use them to buy ammunition," so she donates goods that cannot be used "to hunt me or people like me."
She has staked her future on the political system, one with overtones of the failed past.
When Moise´s government began to fall apart, she decided she could no longer talk about "they" and "them" when she referred to her own country: "Because I belong to the caste, I know what the caste has done to this country and what the country is doing to my caste."
In 2016 she met Youri Latortue, a veteran politician who was then president of the Senate. Latortue asked her to help with a report about a corruption scheme during Martelly´s administration.
In 2018 she became secretary general of Latortue´s party, AAA, which has led the opposition against Martelly and Moise since the 2016 elections. Now Latortue is "waiting for the party nomination" and Mevs is running his campaign.
Latortue has been accused of a lot in the past, from corruption to running gangs. He denies it all, and has never been formally accused. He says he wants to break with the Haitian tradition of strongmen and militias; that can only happen, he says, "with a strong state, a strong public force, and institutions that guarantee the functioning of the state."
Latortue and Mevs have proposed a special police unit, trained by international experts, to fight the gangs. And they want to put Barbecue behind bars.
But in the meantime, Mevs has to deal with him.
At the AAA headquarters, a truck awaits to be loaded with the food she ordered that morning. This is how she rationalizes the payoff: "It is a donation from the political party to a neighborhood. ... It is populism, but people are hungry. There is nothing wrong in giving them food."
Even if so, Latortue cannot be tied publicly to the shipment. "Some people could accuse me of giving them weapons because the place is at war," he explains.
The two delivery men are tied to their phones, discussing the route. There are reports of gunfights, it is going to be a long route of discussions and shouts and detours along the way to the "backdoor entrance" of a barricaded front line.
The truck stops three times, on three parallel streets. Every corner is guarded by a dozen young men. They unload the truck into a house, a school, a party office.
Behind them, on empty streets, gunshots ring out and armed young men stand guard at a barricade. They call themselves a self-defense group. They are simply one of Port-Au-Prince's gangs.
Businesswoman Youri Mevs talks on her cellphone as she sits to have lunch with her daughters, in their home in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Wednesday, Sept. 29, 2021. She wants her daughters to join those families moving abroad while the future of the country is settled. If life does not improve, she may have to sell what she owns and join them. (AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd)
Caribbean Craft workers receive their bi-weekly salary in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Wednesday, Sept. 15, 2021. The business sends about 50 containers of art to the United States each year. But before they arrive at the port, they must pass through gang-controlled areas. (AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd)
A worker takes a break while assembling art pieces at the Caribbean Craft company owned by businesswoman Magalie Dresse, in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Tuesday, Sept. 14, 2021. Dresse's business sends about 50 containers of art to the United States each year. But before they arrive at the port, they must pass through gang-controlled areas. (AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd)
An employee carries a sack of rice imported from the United States inside a Shodecosa industrial park warehouse, in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Wednesday, Sept. 29, 2021. Shodecosa is the country's largest industrial park, which warehouses 93 percent of the nation's imported food. (AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd)
G9 coalition gang members ride a motorcycle through the Wharf Jeremy street market in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Wednesday, Oct. 6, 2021. While some gangs have turned to kidnapping, like those who captured 17 missionaries and their relatives, Jimmy Cherizier, aka Barbecue, a former policeman who leads the G9 gang coalition, has taken control of the port district, gaining a stranglehold on the country's economy. (AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd)
People push and shove as they try to get their tanks filled at a gas station in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Wednesday, Sept. 22, 2021. In addition to kidnappings, gangs are blamed for blocking gas distribution terminals and hijacking supply trucks, which officials say has led to a shortage of fuel. (AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd)
A man jumps over loose bricks forming part of a barricade, a block away from the front lines that divide gang-controlled territories in the Bel Air neighborhood of Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Tuesday, Oct. 5, 2021. The gangs tightening grip on Haitian society is threatening the country's social fabric and its fragile, anemic economy. (AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd)
A G9 gang coalition member unpacks weapons that include American-made AK rifles with ammunition, in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Wednesday, Oct. 6, 2021. While some gangs have turned to kidnapping, like those who captured 17 missionaries and their relatives, the G9 coalition has taken control of the port district, gaining a stranglehold on the country's economy. (AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd)
Armed private security guards stand watch at the main entrance of the Shodecosa industrial park, in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Tuesday, Sept. 28, 2021. Shodecosa is Haiti's largest industrial park, which warehouses most of the 93 percent of the nation's food that is imported. (AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd)
Family and domestic workers gather round Huguette Mevs, singing traditional songs to celebrate her 92nd birthday, at her residence in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Sunday, Oct. 3, 2021. Huguette Mevs is a member of one of the richest families in Haiti; her daughter Youri owns Shodecosa, Haiti's largest industrial park, which warehouses most of the 93 percent of the nation's food that is imported. (AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd)
Musicians perform Haitian folkloric music during a birthday celebration for 92-year-old Huguette Mevs, in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Sunday, Oct. 3, 2021. Huguette Mevs is a member of one of the richest families in Haiti; her daughter Youri owns Shodecosa, Haiti's largest industrial park, which warehouses most of the 93 percent of the nation's food that is imported. (AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd)
Jimmy Cherizier, aka Barbecue, a former policeman who leads the G9 gang coalition, visits with friends as they play a game of dominoes in the Cite Soleil shantytown of Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Sunday, Oct. 3, 2021. Despite all appearances, he says he is not positioning himself for a political career. He claims not to have any political affiliation or party and says he does not see himself "as a candidate in a system that I see as corrupt." (AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd)
Businesswoman Magalie Dresse does a side plank during her morning yoga routine in the garden of her home in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Tuesday, Sept. 14, 2021. Dresse lives in an elegant home in the heart of the capital, where she does yoga in the morning. "I need the strength to go out there and handle what I'm going to find, which is not going to be positive." says Dresse. (AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd)
Neighbors gather outside their homes built with recycled metal sheets in the Bellecour-Cite Soleil shanty town of Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Friday, Oct. 1, 2021. Bellecour-Cité Soleil, a neighborhood of tin shacks without water, electricity or any basic services, is the stronghold of Jimmy Cherizier, aka Barbecue, a former policeman who leads the G9 gang coalition. (AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd)
Businesswoman Magalie Dresse steps away to her view her cellphone messages during a garden cocktail party at her home in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Wednesday, Sept. 15, 2021. During the party for friends and associates, they swapped stories about the impossibility of business life in a gangster nation. (AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd)
A worker stands on a truckload of corn flakes donated from the AAA political party to residents in the gang-controlled Bel Air neighborhood of Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Tuesday, Oct. 5, 2021. "It is a donation from the political party to a neighborhood. ... It is populism, but people are hungry. There is nothing wrong in giving them food." rationalizes Youri Mevs, campaign manager for the AAA's presidential candidate and businesswoman who is being extorted for 500,000 dollars by the G9 gang coalition. Mevs chose not to pay the extortion. Instead she gave the order to one of her managers: "Get them corn flakes, milk, pasta, tomato and soap." (AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd)
A map created by a businessman who asked not to be identified, notes the different territories controlled by gangs in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Thursday, Oct. 7, 2021. Jimmy Cherizier, aka Barbecue, a former policeman who leads the G9 gang coalition, controls the coastal strip of Port-au-Prince. (AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd)
Jimmy Cherizier, aka Barbecue, a former policeman who leads the G9 gang coalition, holds a weapon as he stands next to the coffin that contain the remains of Tonino Manino, one of his lieutenants, during a funeral service in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Thursday, Sept. 30, 2021. Barbecue has been accused -- by local and national courts and the United Nations and other international organizations -- of participation in three massacres between 2018 and 2020. There is a warrant for his arrest, although he's "hiding" in plain sight, protected by gunmen. (AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd)
The Croix des Bossales market, translated from Creole to the Slaves Market, a gang-controlled area, is located in the port district of La Saline in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Monday, Oct. 4, 2021. Gangs control up to 40% of Port-au-Prince, a city of more than 2.8 million people where gangs fight over territory daily. (AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd)
A worker walks through an empty warehouse owned by Marche Titony, in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Tuesday, Sept. 21, 2021. The warehouse was looted by gangs on June 16th. (AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd)
A private security guard stands watch as an employee opens up shop in the Petion-Ville neighborhood of Port-au-Prince, Haiti, early Monday morning, Sept. 27, 2021. For decades, the country was ruled by political strongmen supported by armed gangs; since the assassination of President Jovenel Moise, the state collapsed. (AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd)
A man carries a banner that reads in Creole: "Stop kidnapping. Justice," during a protest organized by friends and relatives of Biana Velizaire who was kidnapped and held for several days by gang members, in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Monday, Sept. 27, 2021. At least 328 kidnappings were reported to Haiti's National Police in the first eight months of 2021, compared with a total of 234 for all of 2020, according to a report issued last month by the U.N. Integrated Office in Haiti. (AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd)
A hairdresser styles the hair of businesswoman Magalie Dresse before she begins a full workday of meetings, in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Tuesday, Sept. 14, 2021. Since 2004, her car has been attacked; she has survived two kidnapping attempts; the government expropriated some of her properties; and her factory was damaged by arson in riots, costing her $400,000 in a single day. (AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd)
Swathes of green separate the densely populated Jalousie neighborhood from the wealthy suburb Petion-Ville, in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Monday, Oct. 4, 2021. Some of Haiti's wealthy elite can trace roots to ancestors who came to the country generations ago and built fortunes. Today there is a constant struggle to keep their business going in the face of threats and extortion by the gangs that rule a country where government has ceased to function. (AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd)
Residents wade through a street that was flooded after a rainfall, in the Cite Soleil shanty town of Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Friday, Oct. 1, 2021. Currently, the country is still spinning from the July 7 killing of President Jovenel Moise and a 7.2 magnitude earthquake that killed more than 2,200 people in August. (AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd)
EDS NOTE: GRAPHIC CONTENT - A boy crouches to avoid the camera as he runs past the body of a man killed during clashes between police and gang members, in the Martissant neighborhood of Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Saturday, Oct. 2, 2021. Haitian gangs have seized control of more land and committed more crimes than ever before - all without a care. (AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd)
