20360: (Hermantin)Palm Beach Post -Gangs tough it out (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: leonie hermantin <lhermantin@hotmail.com>

Gangs tough it out

By John Lantigua, Palm Beach Post Staff Writer
Sunday, March 14, 2004



PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti -- Outsiders entering the sprawling seaside slum
called Cite Soleil -- "City of the Sun" -- are warned to do so only with
well-connected escorts.

A stronghold of support for fallen president Jean-Bertrand Aristide, Haiti's
most notorious ghetto, part of Port-au-Prince, is home to about 200,000
people and 30 armed street gangs. Everyone agrees that over the years the
legal authorities lost their power here to the gangs. There are periods when
police don't dare pass through the portals of the neighborhood.

The gangs are armed mostly with handguns -- boys on street corners gaudily
flash old Glocks and 9mm Brownings. But they also own larger automatic
weapons.

On a recent visit, one gang headquarters was guarded by a sentry posted in
the middle of the street, toting an old M-14. Attached to it were two
30-round ammunition clips held together with transparent tape. Nearby, life
went on as if that were normal, with children playing in the narrow, dusty,
polluted streets.

Over the years, the gangs have killed each other over turf, crack and money
disbursed to the area by the Aristide government, locals say. This was in
addition to their sometime job for Aristide: attacking his political
opponents.

But since early February there has been comparatively little fighting among
the entrenched factions.

"We have put our heads together here," says Tupac, 24, a gang leader who
speaks from inside a new Ford Explorer and keeps a T-65 automatic weapon
wedged between his knees. "We know this is not the time to fight each other.
We have other matters that are more important."

The most pressing matter is that on Feb. 29 Aristide left the country for
exile in Africa and the gangs lost their protector. Whatever government and
security apparatus emerges in the coming days, the young toughs know they
are in trouble. Even many members of Aristide's own Lavalas Party opposed
his ties to the boys with the guns.

"President Aristide wouldn't allow the police to do anything to those
people," says Dany Toussaint, former chief of the national police under
Aristide and later a senator who finally split with the president several
years ago. "I told the president I wanted to go in there and clean it up,
but he refused. Now, when the police point their guns at these guys they
will know that things are different."

And it may not be just the police. The international peacekeeping force
here, which includes more than 1,500 U.S. Marines, says its duties include
confiscating illegal arms, which most Haitians consider the country's most
urgent problem. According to Toussaint, all the gangs in Port-au-Prince
possess about 500 automatic weapons together.


Sending out feelers

The peacekeepers have not yet confronted the gangs, and before they do, the
gangs are sending out feelers, trying to avoid a bloodbath. According to
Tupac, some gang leaders recently met with "a French colonel" about the
possibility of laying down their arms. The French Embassy confirmed the
contact but said it has yet to lead to an agreement.

The gang members are also trying to explain themselves so that they are not
seen solely as expendable street toughs. All of them are affiliated with
organizations that do social work in the slums, and these days they
emphasize that work.

"What we want is development here -- jobs, education, security," says Tupac,
explaining the guns are needed to provide the latter. "We are not gangs --
we are militia authorized by President Aristide."

Most of the young men have had Aristide as a major influence in their lives
since childhood. The charismatic former Catholic priest rose to national
prominence at nearby St. Jean Bosco Church, delivering fiery sermons that
demanded social justice. The people of Cite Soleil and the adjoining slum of
La Saline were his original political base.

"President Aristide came out of the poor and has never abandoned the poor,"
says Stanley Bruce, 30, an artisan and Aristide supporter. "He opened our
eyes about what was happening in Haiti."


Aristide's teaching twofold

As the poorest country in the hemisphere, Haiti had suffered a political
system that allowed its elites to live well while it repressed the
impoverished majority.

Aristide's message had a dual nature. It was a call for social justice but
marked by threats and an acceptance of violence as a political tool. Those
two qualities have come to characterize the gangs.

"Some of us are teachers and some of us have guns," says Dukens, 22, another
Aristide supporter in Cite Soleil.

But, unfortunately, the young men in question became much better known as
gangsters than teachers. All over Haiti rumors run about how Aristide
supplied the gangs with guns right out of the National Palace. You hear the
same phrase repeatedly: "They backed up the truck right to palace doors."

That gossip was fueled by the fact that he twice welcomed major gang leaders
into the palace for meetings and invited television cameras to document the
alliance.

Bruce explains the guns. He says that after Aristide was elected the first
time in 1990 and overthrown the next year by his own army, pro-military
assassins entered Cite Soleil, burned houses and killed some Aristide
supporters.

"President Aristide didn't want that to ever happen again," Bruce says. "He
didn't want us to be left without a way to defend ourselves."


'Aristide formed them'

Aristide was returned to power in 1994 with the help of more than 20,000
U.S. troops and soon disbanded the army. Because of a constitutional
provision that prohibits a president serving two consecutive terms, he was
out of office from 1996 to 2001.

During that time he ran an institute that worked with the poor and
solidified his relationships with young supporters in the slums of
Port-au-Prince, especially Cite Soleil and La Saline.

"The gangs did not exist 10 years ago," says Toussaint, the former police
chief. "Aristide formed them."

He was reelected easily in 2000, but because of fraudulent parliamentary
elections soon had opposition protests on his hands. As they grew bigger, he
used the gangs to attack demonstrations and harass the opposition in other
ways.

The gangs came to be called chimeres, which means ghosts or monsters. They
grew in notoriety and bravado. It is widely believed that it was chimeres
who killed some of Aristide's political enemies.

It was the unsolved killing of one such foe, Amiot Metayer, in the city of
Gonaives last September that touched off the armed rebellion that forced out
Aristide.


Mainly wait and talk

Today the gang members in Cite Soleil sit and wait to see what will happen.
Chimeres believed to be from another part of town, Belair, attacked an
opposition demonstration March 7 and killed seven people. And Saturday a
gunfight broke out between two Cite Soleil gangs over a truck of hijacked
rice. But mainly they wait and talk.

It is when the young men speak about their uncertain futures that one
realizes they are even younger than their years. Some are very angry and
accuse the U.S. government of kidnapping Aristide and taking him to Africa.

"We will not stop fighting until they bring Aristide back," artisan Bruce
says. "We elected him. If they don't bring him, we will all go to the
cemetery together."

But Tupac, the gang leader, has different plans. He and his younger brother
-- a gang leader known on the street as Billy Ironpants -- are musicians.

"My brother and I write our own music," he says, still holding his automatic
rifle and not a guitar. "I want to study more. I want to learn. I want a
better life."

john_lantigua@pbpost.com

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