The Gangs Controlling Haiti: A Dead President, Amish Hostages, and a Psycho Named BBQ
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Is your vehicle stopping like it should? Does it squeal or grind when you brake? Don't miss out on summer brake deals at O'Reilly Auto Parts. The year is 2018, and Haiti is undergoing a bit of turmoil. Unfortunately, that's pretty common for the country. Despite billions of dollars pouring in after the disastrous earthquake of 2010,

Most of that money has disappeared and the country is even worse off. Inflation, violence everywhere, lack of fuel, clean water. Already the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere. Things are getting much, much worse. The rough neighborhoods of Port-au-Prince, the capital city, are in shambles. Poverty is everywhere and the people are taking to the streets to let the government know they're not happy.

These neighborhoods are dominated, controlled really, by brutal street gangs that are heavily kitted out with automatic weapons. And they hold the population hostage, kidnapping, extorting, raping, and murdering at will. It's Mad Max-like, and unfortunately, that's not just sensationalism. The president, Jovenel Moise, comes to power only a few years back in a questionable election where very few people voted. He was handpicked by the previous president.

Like a lot of the other political and business elite in Haiti, he too is tied in with the gangs. He's got them on the payroll. Anybody powerful in Haiti who wants to survive has to. He's particularly tied in with this man they call Barbecue, a notorious gang leader of the Delma Six Gang.

Some say he got his nickname because his mother used to run a food stall selling roasted chicken. Others, because it's what he does to his enemies. The funny thing about Barbecue is, he's actually a cop at this time. Either moonlighting as a gang leader or vice versa. He first comes to attention a year back in 2017, when an anti-gang police raid he's leading ends with eight dead civilians, some killed execution style. This time though, Barbecue is heading to the neighborhood of La Saline,

which is known as a stronghold of government opposition. It's only a few days before big scheduled protests are supposed to kick off. A response to a massive corruption scandal that saw billions stolen. Barbecue is there to send a message. Him and his men enter the shanty town, armed with guns and machetes, and they go to work. They kill, torture, and rape dozens, cutting up bodies and throwing them to pigs and dogs. Later investigations put the number of dead at at least 71.

When all is said and done, top-level government officials in Haiti will be implicated in the massacre, not only directing Barbecue and his gang to attack, but also providing them with weapons. One of them is even quoted in a UN report by a witness as yelling at gang members during the attack, saying, quote,

In Haiti, far too often it's the gang leaders that do the killing, but the political and business elite giving the orders. Barbecue goes on to commit a few more massacres over the next few years, always protected by the government. But then the president, his top patron, is assassinated. And now the gangs have lost their funding and have no one to answer to. So Barbecue and his coalition of gangs formed in 2020, called G9, are holding the entire country hostage.

This is the Underworld Podcast.

Welcome, welcome back to the Underworld Podcast, where we teach you that political debates are more interesting when the AKs come out. Every week, a different story about organized crime with two reporters who've covered it around the world. Myself, Danny Gold, and my charming British co-host, Sean Williams. That's a new one on me. I also want to go back to that nickname. Barbecue's either because he likes standing out back smoking chickens or because he roasts humans on spits. There's like a big vibe switch there from Midwest party dad to deranged mass murderer.

No, no, it's because his mom used to run like a chicken stand, like a food stand, or because he burned his enemies alive. It's one or the other. You know, I saw it mentioned as either one in different reports and you kind of got to hedge your bets there. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. I mean, the rest of the intro kind of tees up the latter, but yeah, we're giving the benefit of the doubt. Yeah, yeah.

As always, patreon.com slash the underworld podcast for less than the price of a cup of coffee. You guys can support us. You can also get bonus content. We have interviews that go up every week, sometimes so many episodes and all that good stuff. Anyway.

Let's go back to the first week of July this year. Haiti is having a really rough go of it. There have been ongoing protests since 2018. We've got these allegations of corruption. And, you know, there's billions of missing funds. And it's the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere where things keep going from bad to worse. So the president is extremely tied in, according to most people. Some would say supporting or sponsoring some of the brutal street gangs that have turned the capital of Port-au-Prince into...

into an increasingly more violent and chaotic war zone. When I say war zone, I don't mean like how we describe maybe like a bad block in Chicago or parts of Sweden. I mean like checkpoints with burning tires and stoned teenagers holding AK-47s where UN or government forces and armored personnel carriers have had to retreat.

We're talking real firepower here, like military grade, paramilitary, whatever you want to call it. Here's a great quote from 2016 in Prism, which is a magazine at the National Defense University that really captures it.

Some of Haiti's gangs, particularly those affiliated with organized crime, paramilitary, and private security companies, are tied to the country's political elite. It is those with money and power who are most inclined to use gangs as a means of intimidating enemies and extending business interest. As everyone in Haiti knows, there are specific politicians, business leaders, and wealthy landowners who serve as the gang's chief patrons.

essential to diminishing insecurity associated with gangs than is a better understanding of these relationships and exposing them for all to see. And this has been going on in Haiti for a pretty long time, right? Pretty much its entire modern history. But is it like, has it just hit an absolute low these days? You know, it's been going on from what I've seen. We're talking going back like 40, 50 years to this sort of emergence of what you would call these gangs. But right now seems the most chaotic situation

Uh, that it's been in a very long time. There've been other periods, including some that have had sort of led to, uh, an American intervention and, and coups and all that. But now it just seems like completely wild. And even people that study this sort of thing are just, you know, sort of in awe and how bad the situation has gotten. And we're going to get deep into that, but you know, whatever the reason somebody with means had enough, uh,

of an issue with the president to kill him. They hired a bunch of Colombian mercenaries to run up into his home. They pretended to be the DA and they killed him. And until this day, we don't know exactly who did it and why. And then again, only a few weeks ago, 17 missionaries, they were Mennonites and Amish. And I think, I'm going to be honest with you guys, like I don't know the difference between

and didn't feel compelled to learn for this episode. No disrespect to our large Amish fan base, but 17 of these missionaries, 16 of them Americans and one of them Canadian, were

were kidnapped and are being held for ransom by a gang called 400 Maboso. And again, my French pronunciation, it's going to be awful, but you know, it is what it is. Missionaries, you know, missionaries are just, I mean, they're always up to some shit. I mean, those dudes, like people look at reporters like me and Sean and they're like, you guys are crazy, but you want to know who's really crazy is missionaries. Like they are not scared of anything except for maybe God's wrath. I don't know. But

you know, they're always the ones who are in the thick of things. I think there's one called Good Samaritans, maybe something Samaritans. And they're always like the last ones left in a war zone, even after the reporters have pulled out. And, you know, when things get too bad and they're the only ones there, like, you know, it's time to leave. Also, FYI, missionary is a really, really good cover. If you're out in the middle of nowhere, like carry a Bible, do that cross thing over your chest actually works. I'm not recommending folks head into war zones wearing a dog collar,

Actually, no, just don't do that. I got lucky. Yeah, wait, when did you, you did that in Burma, didn't you? Yeah, I did that in Burma. It did work. I mean, these guys were like fully playing along with it. Whether they believed it or not, I don't know, but they didn't shoot me dead. So I'm going to say that's a win. I'm pretty sure they teach you not to do that in journalism school, but you know, real life is real life and you gotta, you gotta make choices. Anyway, depending on who you ask, Mawozo means either simpletons, good for nothing, country bumpkin, something along those lines.

And the months since the president's assassination, the country has slipped further into anarchy. Kidnapping was already super high this year, has gone through the roof. And this gang, which started out as cattle or car thieves in the rural areas not too long ago, have carved out a reputation as the premier kidnap gang in Haiti who spare no one. Not Americans, not even priests who they kidnapped before. And as of us recording this, they've been holding these poor church folk going on a month, I think.

with ransom demands of $1 million per person, though I think that'll get negotiated way down. And the situation right now in Haiti, you know, I hate to have only negative things to say right now, but like we're a podcast about organized crime and violence. So like it is what it is. You have burned out neighborhoods, rubble, trash everywhere, demolition,

teens with automatic weapons standing in front of burning tires and homemade blockades, neighborhoods where the police are terrified to enter. They're outgunned. They're outnumbered. Rival gangs just patrolling their fiefdoms. Truck drivers trying to transport essential goods that are being robbed and held up. Pastors kidnapped. I mean, the country is hurting. It is post-apocalyptic.

And here's a quote from a recent AP story. The situation is out of control, says James Boyard, professor of political science at Haiti State University, who, like other experts, accused some politicians and business owners of funding gangs. They made them too powerful. Now they are terrorized. They didn't know things would go out of control the way they did. I mean, did they not know that? You've got to be pretty dumb to think gangs are just going to sit on and keep order for you.

Yeah, I mean, it's like quintessential Frankenstein's monster story right there. Like, you know, this is this is like the most expected blowback that you could possibly see. So how did Haiti get to this place where a corrupt president is getting murked in his mansion as warring gangs rule the streets, you know, carving out the capital into territories while they kidnap Amish people?

Well, listener, I'm glad you asked because I wrote a lot of words on the subject and I'm going to read them to you while Sean occasionally makes some hard to understand joke about cricket that no one actually thinks is funny. I got two, two personal messages this week from folks saying they're into organized crime and cricket pubs in Birmingham. Name another show catering to that audience. So the 0.001% of our listeners that are into it, I'm actually super into it. So we'll let you keep going.

Haiti is often called the world's first black republic. It was founded by free black slaves who rose up against their French colonial overlords and declared their independence in 1804. Right away, though, they're screwed over. You know, they face blockades and a host of other issues put into place by countries like the U.S. and France. In fact, France basically extorts Haiti to pay reparations that they didn't even finish off paying until 1947. So people do get reparations. Yeah.

Yeah, yeah. But they get reparations for the slaves that they owned, which is, you know, not how that's supposed to go. And the U.S. itself is no stranger to Haitian affairs either. They've invaded and occupied the country in 1915 until 1934 when FDR pulled them out. And the U.S. also went in in 94 and in 2004. The U.S. actually occupied Haiti for like 20 years? I didn't know that. Why? Yeah, I think like around in the early 1900s, like...

As a means of, quote, ensuring stability and all that sort of situation. But yeah, the history of Haiti, I mean, I'm not going to get too into it. This isn't a history podcast, but it's fascinating. And if this stokes your interest, definitely go in there, especially about the recent earthquake and the UN stuff. I think Jonathan Katz has a book, The Day the Big Truck Fell.

drove by or something along those lines. It's a really good book about the situation in the past 10 years or so and what went wrong there. But moving on, in the 1960s, President Francois Duvalier, a.k.a. Papa Doc, he runs things as a brutal dictator that doesn't tolerate opposition, and he arms his own paramilitaries called the

Sean, I'm going to need your help with this. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. To protect him against the military and crushed dissent. And it ushers in this new bloody era that sees something like 60,000 killed in that decade. Here's a quote from a 2008 United States Institute of Peace paper that I'm going to use a bit in this

In this episode, during his long and brutal dictatorial reign, François Papadoc Duvalier created the Tonton Macou, a personally loyal force of armed thugs that was given complete immunity and allowed to murder and rape at will. Duvalier used this group to quash any challenges to his authority from the Haitian military and to intimidate and terrorize the population.

And I couldn't get a read on whether these guys were more like a militia or just a street gang. But obviously, it's, you know, an example of how street violence and politics really tie in here and are going to for the next, I don't know, 60 years. Yeah, the Tontomakus are horrible. They're all, they're like everything rolled into one, secret police as well. I mean, there's one quote from their one-time leader, Lukma Kambron in

independent newspaper. And he said that a good Duvalierist is prepared to kill his children for Duvalier and expects his children to kill their parents for him. So dark. Yeah. I mean, we talk a lot about how politics is insane right now, you know, and people are annoying on Twitter, but that's like, it's a whole different level right there of, uh, of like being, being a little too, a little too into it.

In 1971, Papa Doc dies, but his son, who they call Baby Doc, takes over. He's only 19 years old at the time.

And he's just as brutal as his father. In 1986, he's run out by a popular uprising. But the damage done by the Duvalier successive dictatorships, like, really takes hold. And we've talked a lot about countries coming out of situations where they're held hostage by just brutal regimes. You know, I think we talked about a lot actually with Albania and how there's just, like, collective trauma in the population that even when you get rid of the dictator, there's just so much –

whatever you want to call it, that it usually leads to more violence because people, you know, all the systems that are supposed to be there to sort of make sure these things don't happen are gone. And the people, you know, they've been taught to use violence to settle anything. And it's hard to get that out of a population it's been ingrained in. Yeah, we just did that. We just did that thing on the Peaky Blinders, right? And it was all about the guys who went to war and they were just completely brutalized and messed up. And the only way to solve things back then was just to shoot someone or knife someone. That's,

pretty much how the violence continues. Right. And when you have an entire population under a dictatorship where that's, you know, the violence is like the rule, it's hard to get rid of that. So, you know, you look at a situation like Libya, and I always say this, like it's not going to be Switzerland the next year. Like it takes time for these things to work themselves out. Yeah. Anyway, here's that paper again, quote, although the combined 29-year-old Duvalier dictatorship ended then, the damage it had done would not be easily remedied.

The Duvaliers had disempowered the judiciary, the legislator, and any other independent source of power that might challenge their control. They stole huge sums of public money, established corruption networks throughout the state, and bought the allegiance of segments of the bourgeoisie who controlled key sectors of the economy, killing any who resisted.

Secret police and the rulers' militia, the feared Tonton Makou, presided over widespread human rights violations such as extrajudicial executions, torture, disappearances, arbitrary arrests, and detention, and a near total ban on freedom of expression, assembly, and association. So yeah, I mean, it's going to fuck you up, you know? Yeah, a bit.

So those dictatorships end, and then in 1990, Jean Bertrand Aristide wins a democratic election, the first really, and he's this leftist, charismatic, popular priest who – the poor love for all his work that he did in the slums.

but he pisses off the military and the elite. And in 1991, there's a military coup that topples him. Now, he has his own bandit thugs and bandits, which we'll get to in a minute, but the Haitian military and their right-wing supporters, they create their own sort of gangs and paramilitary forces during this time who attack his

his supporters. And things get chaotic, but Aristide returns to power after a US invasion that was intended to restore stability in 1994. And he disbands the army who, you know, had overthrown him before and were known to be pretty heavy handed. That's a good idea. I reckon that's going to work out. Yeah.

It's not a lot of foreshadowing here. Meanwhile, the U.S. had imposed sanctions against the coup doers, and they also instituted these economic reforms with seemingly good intentions that end up doing a lot of damage, trying to turn the country into a manufacturing center and steering it away from agriculture, which decimates the agriculture industry there. And the manufacturing never really gets off the ground. And, you know, the country just keeps staying poor and messed up.

But anyway, Aristide, right? According to the AP, experts place some blame on him for also creating the current gang situation because he starts arming people in the slums. You know, he had this support base there and he creates this armed force and they were called chimeras. Chimeras, how do you say it in French? Chimera. Yeah, yeah. And it's said to be a mythical fire-breathing demon. Some sources just call them the ghosts. Basically roving street gangs politically affiliated with him.

Says the Times, quote, gang leaders who act as de facto spokesmen for long neglected slums gained entry to the presidential palace and helped dole out jobs and other spoils to their men. And the military troops were forced to take early retirement, and they also kind of formed their own bandit groups. And you have a real genesis of the warring gangs that we see now from that 2008 USIP paper.

Although ostensibly criminal in nature, gangs were an inherently political phenomenon. Powerful elites from across the political spectrum, from former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide to the bourgeoisie, exploited gangs as instruments of political warfare, providing arms, funding, and protection from arrest. Aristide also saw the gangs as an armed counterweight to the former soldiers and the private security services that were in the pay of Haiti's social and economic elites.

As challenges arose to his rule, the chimeras, or ghosts, emerged from the slums to silence political opponents and prey on the general population in a futile attempt to regain power. In the late 1990s, the country's also almost entirely dependent on NGOs and aid money, which it doesn't do a great job in establishing a working country with strong institutions.

Rene Preval takes over as president in 1996, and he's said to be the only president who didn't have his own sort of extra-legal armed factions, didn't have a paramilitary force, and didn't have street gangs. He paid off, which is a good step in the right direction. But Aristide wins the election again in 2000.

And the country quickly finds out that those weapons he gave out in the neighborhoods where he had support, right, basically in exchange for more support, they aren't just used for political violence. They're used to take over. And the thing to know about gangs like this is, you know, we keep calling them political, right? But it's not really political in, like, how they think, right? They don't have an actual ideology or convictions.

These guys, you know, they're not like Marxist militias giving lectures in their downtime, right? They're just aligned to the politician that's paying them or supporting them, whoever it is. And they'll go wherever the money is. And I always use this case of Jamaica in the 60s and 70s as my go-to here, which I promise we'll have an episode on soon.

Basically, that was open warfare in the streets by two gangs who were completely aligned with the two opposing political parties, one right wing and one left wing. And it wasn't like these gangs had real political differences. They just represented different neighborhoods, and each neighborhood had a party they voted for. And if your candidate won, he delivered resources to your neighborhood and not the other one. And also, he paid you

It was all calculations of opportunity and money. And of course, the politicians and political parties will build up those gangs and give them impunity when they're in charge, give them weapons and all that. And what do you think happens, right? It's a classic Frankenstein's monster. They don't decide to only use their weapons and impunity for the party.

they go out there and they rob and they kill and they sell drugs and they take over. And pretty soon, you know, they're out of control. And that's exactly what's happening in Haiti and what happened in Jamaica. I guess like similar to what you said about this culture of violence taking over as well. Like if you make people believe that underneath all of the political speech and the ideals, there's just nothing but guys shooting each other dead. It's not going to inspire anyone to get involved in democracy. I mean,

It's like this kind of stuff has happened in so many African states recently, too. We've had the gangs in Nigeria. They were getting paid off by the politicians to do all kinds of horrible shit. And then we've got Guinea-Bissau coming up next week, and that's a completely separate basket case. I mean, you could kind of argue that's what's happening in Mexico right now, especially with the Zetas. Gang crime doesn't really lend itself to Gandhis, right?

I mean, I don't necessarily agree with that, right? Because I think, I think like Mexico, whatever else, those are gangs that rise up and then make deals, you know, sort of with the politicians. Here, it's a lot more intertwined, I think, a lot more connected. Obviously, Mexico, you've got levels of corruption where, you know, politicians could, especially if you're watching Narcos this season, where it could be seen as, um...

as actually almost being parts of the cartels. But like, I know this feels a little, a little different to me. And this is from a 2021 international crisis group report, quote, members of the armed gang groups or gangs are overwhelmingly young men from the poorest sectors of big cities.

Areas with few to no social services, poorly equipped schools, no clean water, and scarce healthcare facilities. These young people have scant employment options and face a grim future, making it easy and cheap for politicians and the business elite to buy them off, often for only a few dollars per day. In contrast to most organized criminals in other Latin American countries, who remain largely autonomous even if they rely on state and elected officials for protection,

Hired guns in Haiti serve those seeking to advance a political agenda, harm an economic rival, or ensure protection of an important warehouse or other strategic location. According to one Haitian anthropologist, violence entrepreneurs, politicians, and business elites sponsor gangs to control territory, secure economic monopolies, and deliver voters during elections. I don't believe there's not a drill outfit called like violence entrepreneurs. I like that.

Yeah, I really like that term and that title, and I'm surprised I haven't heard it before. It's got to be something that we use or make a joke about in the future. I'll try. In 2003, Aristide is facing a lot of opposition again, and he really starts putting the gang leaders he was tied in with in positions of power, including in the Haitian National Police. He's ousted in 2004, and without him, the Ghosts and the other gangs too, they basically become freelance thugs, right? They rent themselves out to the highest bidder.

And after he's ousted, UN troops arrive for a stabilizing mission around this time to try to calm things down. I think it's called MINUSTA. I'm not sure how you pronounce it. M-I-N-U-S-T-A-H is the acronym. And they deploy peacekeepers. Oh, God. So that's another UN catchy acronym. Mission in something united, stabilizing task force, something, something Haiti. I don't know. You know, I probably should have looked that up before the episode, but I just, I didn't feel the need to. I don't know why. So we'll, we'll figure that out eventually.

Anyway, the peacekeepers, right, they're viewed as an occupying force and the gangs make use of this. They start attacking them to gain legitimacy from the public. Says Paul Angelo in a recent New York Times op-ed, quote, some gang leaders fashion themselves as contemporary Robin Hoods, distributing money, foodstuffs, and stolen merchandise to their devotees. The vast majority, though, asserted their control over turf through violence, illegal detentions, and extortion. And, you know, keep that Robin Hood thing in mind because when we get to current day barbecue, he's all about that.

So in 2004, 2005, 2006, you have these gangs just like fighting, raping, preventing anything from moving economically, not allowing aid in, just getting more and more violent and more and more powerful. The Haitian National Police had actually developed decently from 94 to 2000, but they

But then Aristide, when he took over, he replaced some of the more senior people. He kind of sabotaged them and weakened them. From the prison paper I quoted earlier, quote,

When Mayusa did not react with the same aggression as the Animanaf before it, gang attacks became much more aggressive, more freaking and deadlier. Yeah, that's the Smurfs all over again, right? Yeah, it's kind of like, you know, I think I had this sort of...

assumption that these guys were like very unorganized and literally just like stone teens in flip flops holding guns. But from, from researching this or reporting it, it seems like they're actually a lot more coordinated and organized than, than one would assume or that I assumed beforehand.

So the gangs, they start targeting the UN peacekeepers, going after them hard. And at first, the peacekeepers weren't really equipped to handle it. The UN forces, they didn't have a mandate to really go in and hit back or do raids. There's a whole bunch of stuff about the UN and missions and different mandates and acronyms. And, you know, we're not writing an academic paper. And frankly, it bored me, so I didn't learn too much about it. But basically, they couldn't do much at first. And by December of 2006, the gangs had just gone too far. They

They kill a father, take his daughter to school, and kidnap a little girl. They stop a school bus, and they take seven children off to hold for ransom. A 16-year-old boy is killed. A teenage girl is raped and mutilated. And the press down there is just going nuts. People are really fed up. They're repulsed. And there's growing pressure from everywhere for the UN and the government to do something. And the president of Haiti at the time, Préval,

He had tried to make nice with the gangs at first, negotiate with them, like try to get them to calm down, but it doesn't work. So finally he declares war on them and he literally says like, quote, surrender or die, like word for word. To do that, he partners up with the 8,000 strong UN peacekeeper force and they really go in. They go block by block. We're talking like real deal gun battles with APCs and everything. From the Times, quote, the biggest of the United Nations operations have been aimed at one of the most wanted and feared of all the gang leaders,

an unlikely and unpredictable power broker in his 20s who goes simply by the name Evans. Evans and his groups have been linked to a rash of kidnappings in the Capitol, and lately his men have been locked in fierce battles with United Nations peacekeepers. It continues, within the confines of Cite Soleil,

Okay.

I mean, I like the idea that there's like some gang leader running around Haiti called like a Welsh guy called F-Hunts. But that's got to be one of the worst underworld gang nicknames of 2021, by the way. And killing cats? What a scumbag.

Dude, killing cats. He's lucky social media didn't exist then because we would have sent the Marines. Social media got a hold of that. We would have sent the Marines, the SEAL, everything, the Army Rangers. There would be a task force bringing that guy to justice because if there's one thing the internet won't put up with, it's killing cats. And this dude just went too far. But it's interesting to think about because you read about this guy, Evans Dan. He's the boss. And 10 years later, that guy's nowhere to be seen. I don't think these guys...

have a good, you know, they don't have a big life expectancy at the top. It's not really a thing. So the president had tried to negotiate with the gangs, even meeting Evans and other gang leaders face-to-face.

which may seem like kind of the right thing to do at times, but it confers legitimacy and kind of gives the impression of subservience to gang leaders, to the general public. This is a huge thing in El Salvador with MS-13 and 18th Street. Like whenever it gets revealed that the government is secretly negotiating with the gangs and it happens...

in every administration there, including the current one led by Bitcoin boss Bukele. There's a huge outcry from the general public and a lot of people get really mad. Wait, Bukele's in with the gangs too? I didn't know that, actually. You should do an episode on him. Bitcoin, MS-13, violence and despair. That is right in our wheelhouse. Well, we do have the El Salvador episode that, you know, I did a lot of reporting down there over a number of years. So that's, it goes into this a bit, but I think we didn't really get into Bukele too much. But I think

We actually mentioned right before we recorded that episode, there was a revelation, probably one of the papers down there, Alfaro, which does amazing work, that he had engaged in secret negotiations with them, maybe paid some of them off. And it's a constant theme down there of these secret negotiations and truces with the gangs.

Anyway, Praval gives up on that track. He switches tactics and he sends the UN in to pacify Cite Soleil, which is the biggest slum in Port-au-Prince, Haiti's capital and most populated city. And I just want to let the listeners know, I kept saying Cirque du Soleil by accident. And like going into pacify Cirque du Soleil, that's a different operation entirely. To be fair, I'd send the UN in for that. But to be, you know, Cite Soleil is, it's, you know, very famous, well-known. It's where the roughest gangs have their base. Yeah.

And when the UN and police and the Haitian police go on an attack, you know, they're going hard. Like we're talking APCs are going in there and being turned back. Sometimes RPGs being fired, full on assaults here, Jordanians, Sri Lankan teams, and they take heavy fire. They have to retreat at times. There are legit raids and attacks. Like the gang members will launch attacks against UN bases and police stations. You have a situation where the ICRC has to negotiate a truce to remove the wounded. Like this is a war.

But once the gangs realize that the UN isn't playing around anymore, that their ROE or their mandate has changed, many of the gang members desert their leaders. Says one paper, quote, Haitian gangs proved to be collections of individuals who formed around brutal and charismatic leaders. Unlike the hierarchical, tightly organized turf-based institutions found in the United States. By March, like they have complete control of Cite Soleil, 800 gang members are arrested and only one gang leader remains not captured or killed. Now,

there was definitely damage done, right? Dozens of civilians are killed in the crossfire. Homes are destroyed, but it's seen as remarkably successful at the time. NGOs can operate again. Residents are no longer living in fear. Things were looking cautiously optimistic, actually. Yeah, I guess from, apart from the ones that were shot dead. But I mean, yeah, they've got to do something. You know, it is what it is. Then in 2010, of course,

massive earthquake just destroys Haiti. We are talking over 300,000 people die, over a million made homeless, the entire economy, housing, everything, all the infrastructure just leveled. And that's a hard thing to come back from in like Japan. But in a desperately poor country like Haiti, like it's really, really rough. And what you're going to have now is a lot of desperate people. And then you have billions of aid money pouring in and, you know, with good intentions, but what do you think is going to happen?

massive levels of corruption. And the relief effort is almost a second disaster. Not even getting into the fact that the UN unwittingly created a cholera epidemic that killed even more people, thousands of people. In the immediate aftermath of the earthquake though, the gangs don't really get it started. In fact, there's a story of a vicious gang leader known as Blade because he tortured people with razors who escapes from jail like right after it happens. Wait, did he actually like torturing people with razors or did he just like cutting chicken into little pieces?

No, no, we know that it was from torturing people here. There's no cutesy nickname with that. He tries to reassert control back in the slums, confronting a group of residents working within a community group to repair the neighborhood. And he gets attacked and beaten to death with a shovel. His body is then dumped in front of a police station. I mean, that is an emphatic no. Wow. Yeah, that is.

Yeah, they didn't take too kindly to his attempts. After 2012, though, the gangs start to reemerge in the wake of earthquake recovery. Throughout the 2010s, they're ramping things up again, and despite all the aid money flowing in, things are just growing progressively worse. The president from 2011 to 2016 is this former compa singer, Michelle Martelli. Compa is like this Haitian merengue party music genre.

you know, kind of vulgar, what you hear at Carnival. And he's known for saying just like wild, vulgar things, kind of things that make Trump look like Mitt Romney. And he faces the usual allegations of corruption, of partnering with the gangs and deploying them to help his supporters target his opposition. There's a really good New Yorker piece we have up on the Patreon because we also put up, you know, all the scripts and all the sources up there, patreon.com slash the underworld podcast. So John Lee Anderson has a very good story on him from 2016.

And after another disputed election, his hand-picked successor, a banana magnate named Jovenel Moise, takes over as president. Right around the same time, the major UN force is withdrawn. And this is when barbecue rises to prominence. Barbecue...

is the kind of guy journalists love because he talks to them. He lets them hang out with him. He does his crimes in broad daylight and lets you film it. He's so far above the law, so full of operating with impunity, he doesn't mind at all. And like, who can touch him, right? It's a throwback to these days before every article and every story was on the internet and these guys really had to be careful, but he just, he doesn't care. Like here he is,

unloading boxes of AKs surrounded by his young soldiers, or he's out at night on patrol in his fiefdom with a pistol tucked under his waistband.

He now controls the port, which means he controls all the goods, including fuel, moving in and out of the city. Like I said in the intro, he's a cop, a former cop now, when he first makes waves for killing civilians in an anti-gang raid. He soon graduates, though, to murdering dozens of civilians at the behest of the government. So don't Instagram your crimes unless you own a country, then you're fine. Mm-hmm. All right. Basically, unless you're that tied in with the government, then you can get away with it. Yeah.

Have you been down to Haiti? It seems like kind of beat you would have picked up in your vice days. You know, I had an opportunity after the earthquake and I didn't go down there. It was a country that I actually wasn't super informed about, so I didn't want to jump down there. But I imagine, you know, in the past couple of months, if it's still possible to sustainably freelance as a journalist, I would definitely have been down there. Yeah, this would make a great doc.

Moise's administration starts sending in the gangs to commit state sanctions massacres. I mean, straight up just killing men, women, and children brutally, specifically in poor neighborhoods known for being opposition areas. A human rights group tracks 10 over four years with three being really, really bad, including the one from the opening in La Saline led by barbecue. Yeah. And when you said you were doing this episode, I was kind of like rummaging around online and I found this

Al Jazeera report from last month by a guy called Rob Reynolds. And I want to call out this guy in person because it's the worst report I've seen in ages. He just hands barbecue a mic. He doesn't show him getting grilled. That's not a pun. But all the criticisms on him on voiceover, so he doesn't even put them to him. It's just such coward journalism. I think we need to shut on the media more here. It makes folks rich on social media, doesn't it?

That's true. Complaining about the mainstream media will, I think, get us a lot more fans, maybe get us on some sub stacks. But I don't know, man. I've definitely been in that position where you want to mouth off, but it's kind of in your best interest not to. So maybe you do like, but that's when you always do the, you know, some people have said that I wouldn't say this, but other people have said that, you know, you're this. But, you know, I'm sympathetic. Yeah.

Yeah, some people have said, you've done this. Not me. Other people. How would you respond to that? So I am sympathetic to that sort of situation where maybe you're not as secure as it might appear or whatever else it is. But yeah, let's criticize the media more. I think that's a good thing for us to slide into. It's a good niche to occupy in this Patreon sub-stack podcast world. By 2019, things are getting increasingly ugly and people have lost all faith in the government.

protests start breaking out all over. People are fed up with the corruption, with the gangs, with inflation, prices increasing everywhere, power issues. They want to know where all the billions have gone and they want the president to resign. So they take to the streets and then you have looting, arson attacks, businesses shut down. It's chaos. And also it's not just the people, right? The gangs are also doing all this stuff. Oh, also the UN pulls out completely in 2009. They had left like a small advisory force and that's just when things go absolutely crazy.

haywire. In 2020, Moise dissolves parliament. People start getting worried. He's turning increasingly authoritarian. 2020 is also when barbecue forms this federation of gangs known as G9. And he announces it, of course, in a YouTube video. And pretty soon, he's coordinating a series of attacks on the police, on other neighborhoods, just growing stronger and stronger and starting to talk about revolution. In one series of attacks in Cid Soleil, I think 145 people at least are killed.

And now you have these gangs just threatening and extorting everyone. Like MS-13, their primary moneymaker is the extortion of street vendors, small businesses, bus drivers, the government, and now the bigger business owners too, the small cadre of families that control all the industry in the country. You know, you had this situation. It used to be the politicians and business elite were paying the gang members to do their bidding. And now it's the gangs extorting them, making demands, you know, taxing these guys. If you

If you don't want your warehouse robbed or set on fire, if you don't want your trucks hijacked and your drivers killed, you need to pay up. I guess you could say the haters have become the hatees. I mean, it's terrible. That's your one for the show. It's your one for the show. Come on. Yeah.

Awful, awful. And also you have the gangs increasingly providing functions the state is supposed to, like becoming quasi-governmental, clearing trash, providing food, clean water, fuel, sort of giving stuff out that they steal. And once gangs really get ingrained like that in society, they're very hard to get out. Ask Lebanon how that's working.

And then we have this past summer where early morning on July 7th, President Moise is shot dead in his villa in the hills by a group of Colombian mercenaries allegedly recruited by a Haitian-American pastor who lived in Florida and wanted to replace him. They claim they're DEA agents, so there's not a firefight with his bodyguards, and there's all these questions that remain about why his security just let them through.

A bunch of the mercs have already been killed in shootouts with Haitian police. A bunch are captured and they claim they didn't know what was going on really. And there's a Florida based doctor who has also been charged and along with some opposition politicians and some high level businessmen that did not like the government. You know, we should do an episode on American based coups. There's this, there's the guys who went into Venezuela recently. And then there's also the fellows who tried to take over the Gambia a few years back from Minneapolis, I think.

Wait, was that... Well, there's also the Equatorial Guinea one, right? Those were British and South African. Oh, am I getting it wrong? Maybe it was Equatorial Guinea. Yeah, I think you're getting that wrong. Yeah, it's the Wonga, the Wongaku. I think, yeah, it's Equatorial Guinea. Yeah, that's a... Usually in Africa, it's South Africans involved and things like that and the Brits. But it's a good story. My friend Ben Makuchat advised that a really good report on the Venezuelan situation. Those guys just seem like...

complete dummies. But yeah, maybe we should have him on and talk about that. I guess that's sort of organized crime in a way.

Anyway, this investigation, it's unfortunately stalled out because the country is just currently caught up in a crisis as things have just gotten even worse since the assassination. Here's a quote from the New York Times recently. Gangs have long been powerful in Haiti, often serving as muscle for politicians who, in turn, provided them with weapons and vehicles. But under Haiti's last elected president, and since his assassination in July, the power of gangs has only grown, while that of the police, dependent on an increasingly depleted state, has diminished. The

leaving officers even more underfunded, under-equipped, and severely underpaid. With Moyes dead, some of the gangs, including G9, they lost their main patron, they lost their funding, and now things have gone to complete anarchy, just haywire, whatever you want to call it. An AP article quotes someone as saying, when Moyes 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? BBQ and G... BBQ. Yeah.

Barbecue and G9, they're holding up fuel trucks, taking over big sections of the city. Some estimates say 60% of Port-au-Prince is under the control of over 90 gangs. Everyone is being extorted. The last I saw of Barbecue, he's demanding $50 million, and for the current president, Ariel Honore, to step down and resign...

Otherwise, he won't let fuel or food enter impoverished areas. He's also done this thing that gangsters like to do when they get a little power and press and opportunity. And I had an 18th Street leader in El Salvador do the exact same thing, who was actually really smart about it. He gave this spiel, though, where they try to portray themselves now as some sort of revolutionary, some voice of the frustrated poor ready to rise up. And it's like, nah, dude, you're extorting and murdering these people. They're terrified of you.

But that's barbecue's new deal. He's talking of revolution, of taking everything from the business and political leaders that have been his patrons forever and giving them back to the poor. Here's a recent quote. I have hatred for those people. Every time we look at them, we can say that there are two Hades. We have to put an end to the system of dispossession.

And from an AP article, quote, he mingles with the people 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 play no part in producing. I mean, the dickhead's talking about dispossession and that's literally his job.

Yeah, that's some great writing there too. You know, what really paints a picture. There are some people who think he'll likely get involved with politics soon, maybe even try to take over as president. And he's also specifically targeting Syrian and Lebanese families that are rich and powerful in Haiti and control some of the major industries. And it's not something I'm super well versed in and I can't find a lot of information in it, but I think these are generally families that have been there for generations and they're kind of reclusive. And I wonder if this is a Caribbean thing too, because it's

It's a big thing in Trinidad, right? It has the air of these whispered conspiracy theories, people blaming these very wealthy Syrian and Lebanese families. I don't know a ton of details, but they control some of the major industries and they're substantially wealthy. And people sort of look at them as like these puppet masters. And I don't know, I heard all sorts of,

when I was in Trinidad. I don't, there's nothing to verify them, but it's, it's this really strange thing that I wish I knew a lot more about. So if you do know a lot more about it, email us at the underworld podcast at gmail.com or hit us up on Twitter or Instagram and let us know. Cause I'm actually fascinated by it. Yeah. That's interesting. So,

Yeah, Barbecue is now holding marches, giving rallies, passing out food as he begins his long political journey. And one incident really ties the whole story in together. It happened recently. There's this day of an official commemoration marking the anniversary of the death of Haiti's founder, and political leaders usually lead a procession to a certain memorial. Barbecue's men shot at the procession. They

They chased out all the politicians, including the prime minister, who had to go 80 miles away to some other spot. In barbecue, he dresses up in a white three-piece suit and in front of TV cameras and dozens of masked armed gang members, he does the commemoration himself. He puts a bouquet of flowers down in front of a photo of the assassinated president and basically just leads this whole political thing that the president or the prime minister is supposed to lead. I've been playing too much Far Cry because that's basically just Far Cry right there.

Shout out to the gamers. And then we have, yeah, I'm not a gamer, but like, let's tap into, that's a big, that's a big niche too. So tap into that as much as you can. We're just going to talk about hating the media and video games now. We're going to become millionaires. Yeah, so rich. And then we have the kidnapping last month with the 400 Simpletons gang, where they grabbed the 17 Amish missionaries, mostly from Ohio. So, I mean, if you're from Ohio, you know, you're used to what the situation is like in Haiti right now.

They were actually visiting an orphanage, and they're now being held hostage. It's been like a month now, I think, they've been held. Apparently, it's very common to ask for gigantic ransoms of a million dollars per person and then negotiate it down to like 20K. But yeah, kidnappings have gone through the roof. Even street vendors, priests, it doesn't matter who, they're grabbing whole buses of people in the streets and just kidnapping them.

And according to the New York Times, the 400 crew did 60% of the kidnappings in Haiti from July to September. And Haiti now has the highest per capita kidnapping rate in the world. Wait, so how does an Amish missionary from Ohio make it to Haiti? Don't they have to use like rickshaws or something? I mean, you know, I'm not going to. That's the real thing, right? They can't just take the plane, right?

I don't know. I don't know, dude. And even though none of them are listening to this, I just still, you know, I don't want to mess with the Amish. Although, you know what's crazy? The Amish run these...

In Pennsylvania, they run these really shady puppy mills. I knew it because I helped someone adopt a dog recently, like a year ago. The Amish have... Maybe that's an episode. Organized crime, Amish puppy mills in Pennsylvania. It's a real thing. You can Google it. This is a real thing that goes on. Oh, man. You're close enough. You should get down there and do some pinhole camera stuff. I don't think you crossed them, man. I don't want to...

I don't want to wake up with three Amish guys staring over me. You don't want to piss them off. Anyway, the leader of the Ford and Simpletons is this guy, Wilson Joseph.

He's threatened to kill the hostages. He even appeared on video in front of hundreds of other armed men, promising the police that he has enough bullets to last an entire year. And he formed a bunch of alliances too. He now controls territory all the way from Port-au-Prince through the countryside to the border of the Dominican Republic. And before the president's assassinations, him and his crew were basically just like car and livestock thieves in the rural areas.

I've seen numbers that range from 90 to 165 in terms of how many gangs now operate in Port-au-Prince. More than 20,000 people have been displaced because of gang violence. And the AP says, gangs control access to and from the port, and therefore 80% of everything consumed in the island nation, according to port and business leaders. Merchandise coming out of the port is consolidated into convoys that must cross gang-controlled areas and face daily assaults as well as extortions.

More than a city, Port-au-Prince is an archipelago of gang-controlled islands in a sea of despair. Some neighborhoods are abandoned. Others are barricaded behind fires, destroyed cars, and piles of garbage occupied by heavily armed men.

So, yeah, I mean, it's not a great situation in Haiti right now. Hopefully those hostages get freed soon and, you know, everything is all good. Yeah, massive kudos for making it through the entire show without mentioning Voodoo once, although I just did it there. But, yeah, Voodoo.

Udo got loads of shouts after the earthquake and it was so annoying. So yeah, that is our episode next week. We have Africa's narco state, right? That's Guinea Bissau, which I think is going to be a really good episode. I just want to thank everyone again. Oh yeah, patreon.com, Sustainable World Podcast. But again, thanks to all our high tier people that are supporting us. Without this, without you, we couldn't do it. Mike Ulrich, William Wintercross, Train Ants,

Matthew Cutler, Chris Cusimano, Ross Clark, Jeremy Rich, and Doug Prindleville. And then also like, you know, all our sponsors that are, that are signing up now, if you guys want to advertise with us, definitely holler at us. Cause that, that keeps us afloat as well. And, uh, yeah, until, until next week, um, take care.