He roasted his enemies: the Barbecue gangster became the new face of the Caribbean country

Over the past few weeks, Haiti’s powerful criminal gangs have plunged the already poor country into a coma. Some 4,000 hardened criminals have been released from Haiti’s two largest prisons, the country’s international airport has been partially overrun by criminal elements, and heavily armed bandits have attempted to seize the political quarter of the capital, Port-au-Prince.

Following a recent wave of violence, Haiti’s acting president and prime minister, Ariel Henry, has agreed to step down once a transitional council is established to govern the country. Henri became a pariah in Haitian politics. He turned out to be an unelected leader who came to power after the former president of Haiti was assassinated in 2021 – a new economic recession in the impoverished country is associated with Henri’s activities.

While the unlucky star of Ariel Henry is setting, a new “luminary” is rising on the political horizon of Haiti – Jimmy Cherizier, nicknamed “Barbecue”.

“A stunning gang-led uprising against the Haitian government has catapulted Cherizier, a dissolute 47-year-old machine gun-wielding gangster, into international headlines – a place that history shows he likes,” The Guardian writes of him.

It is unclear how the current political crisis will be resolved. But Cherizier emerged from the armed uprising as the most feared leader in Haiti, and some suspect the crime boss may have political aspirations of his own.

Cherizier claims to be waging a kind of holy war for the soul of Haiti, returning “it back to the hands of the chosen people, the ordinary Haitian, suppressed by years of abuse, racism and corruption.”

However, there is one important question, notes The Conversation. Can Cherizier reinvent himself from feared gang leader to legitimate political leader?

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Haiti’s history is littered with political leaders with questionable pasts, and the country’s citizens have become accustomed to their brutal machinations. François “Papa Doc” Duvalier, the ruthless dictator who served as the country’s president from 1957 to 1971, legalized gangs and made them a part of daily life for the Haitian people.

The dictator’s personal militia, the infamous Tonton Macoutes, were licensed to kidnap, torture and murder thousands of their fellow Haitians during Duvalier’s brutal reign.

The term “Tonton Macoute” comes from the Creole myth of an uncle (Tonton) who kidnaps and punishes naughty children by stuffing them into a sack (Macoute) and then eating them. This concept is associated with the traditions of voodoo and Haitian ideas about zombies. Well, the Tonton Macoutes themselves acted as a paramilitary force, combining the functions of “death squads”, law enforcement agencies and a political organization.

Despite all the cruelty (the total number of people killed by the Tonton Macoutes is estimated to range from 30 thousand to 60 thousand people), “Papa Doc” enjoyed great admiration and affection from those whom he commanded with an iron fist. This had much to do with his patronage policies and unique style of “grassroots” black nationalism.

Based on this, The Conversation notes, Jimmy Cherizier is not a rare outsider. He may be a murderous criminal, but he also enjoys cult status in Port-au-Prince. Wall paintings and graffiti in the poor Haitian slums he runs as his personal fiefdom compare him to Ernesto “Che” Guevara. In a country where there is a shortage of tall leaders, Cherizier is an extraordinary figure.

His nickname, “Barbecue,” which he reportedly earned from his penchant for burning his opponents alive, helped him build a “tough guy” image—a crucial character trait for any aspiring leader in this brutal country. Haiti’s last political leader of any significance, “Papa Doc” Duvalier, had this in abundance.

But, unlike other modern gang leaders in Haiti, Cherizier is a man with brains, The Conversation admits. He is articulate, knowledgeable and a big thinker. Far from the traditional gang boss who exists in the shadows, he actively seeks to be the center of attention.

“Barbecue” loves giving interviews and does everything he can to impress his audience with his revolutionary political zeal. Over the past year, he has invited a number of foreign reporters to gang-controlled areas of Port-au-Prince in an attempt to justify the gang uprising. According to Cherizier, his style of brutal street politics is very much in tune with the needs of the times.

In interviews, he poses as a God-fearing Caribbean Robin Hood, writes The Guardian. In doing so, Cherizier glorifies freedom fighters and agitators, including Cuban revolutionary leader Fidel Castro, Burkina Faso revolutionary Thomas Sankara and African-American black rights activist Malcolm X.

“I also like Martin Luther King,” Haitian gang leader Jimmy Cherizier told New Yorker journalist Jon Lee Anderson when they met last year. “But he didn’t like fighting with weapons, and I fight with weapons.”

“I’m not a thief. I’m not involved in the kidnapping. I’m not a rapist. I’m just waging a social struggle,” Cherizier told The Associated Press last year, sitting outside his bullet-riddled home. And in a 2022 interview with Vice, Cherizier called his ragtag favela army “a socio-political structure and a force that fights on behalf of vulnerable populations.”

Born in the 1970s, during the brutal and corrupt rule of “Baby Doc” Duvalier (the name given to the son of “Papa Doc” Jean-Claude Duvalier, who ruled Haiti from the age of 19 until his overthrow in a coup in 1986), Cherizier previously said he was one of eight siblings and lost his father at the age of five. The children grew up in Delmas, one of the run-down communities of Port-au-Prince, which he now runs, with a mother who sold fried chicken on the streets.

According to Cherizier, it was his mother’s profession that earned him the nickname Barbecue, although many argue that the real reason was his habit of burning his victims.

Before becoming Haiti’s most powerful gang leader, Cherizier was a member of the country’s national police. He worked for the Department of Law Enforcement, a riot control unit whose members were accused of shooting protesters.

The Haitian police motto is “proteger et servir”: to protect and serve. But, writes The Guardian, Cherizier, who also publicly expressed admiration for Duvalier Sr., did not seem to respect these values. He was expelled from the force in 2018 for his alleged involvement in a string of crimes, including a horrific massacre that year in a slum called La Saline in which 71 people were killed, seven women were raped and 400 homes were burned.

Cherizier, who heads a gang alliance called the G9 Family and Allies, denies wrongdoing. But the former police officer was sanctioned by both the United States and the United Nations for the crimes he was accused of.

The G9 control some of Port-au-Prince’s largest slums and major road arteries, allowing Cherizier to paralyze the country several times, cutting off gasoline supplies and forcing the closure of schools and hospitals.

“He’s a criminal businessman,” says Louis-Henri Mars, director of a Haitian non-profit organization. – In 2020, I and other peacekeepers went to him to ask him to stop attacks on the Bel Air area [в Порт-о-Пренсе], and he made several promises. But he still continued to burn people’s houses. He listens, but at the end of the day, he does what’s in his best interest.”

In an interview with the Financial Times, Mars compared “Barbecue” to a volcano, constantly ready to erupt. “He has some charisma, he is a thinker, but he is also a cruel person.”

Like many Haitian crime lords, Cherizier is also a man with high-level political connections. He was rumored to be close to former President Jovenel Moise, whose assassination in 2021 paved the way for the Caribbean country’s current chaos.

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The current political instability in Haiti was largely manufactured by Cherizier and the gangs he leads as a cunning survival strategy. But it is also reflected in an astute reading of the national mood of the Haitians and the populace.

In 2023, the UN Security Council approved the deployment of a multinational peacekeeping force led by Kenya to Haiti to curb gangs and their growing violence. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres stressed that “the decisive use of force” is necessary to disarm the gangs and restore order. However, the mission subsequently stalled.

Such an intervention would, in all likelihood, seriously undermine the power of the Haitian gangs. So, on the one hand, Cherizier’s decision to raise a political uprising can be seen as a planned strategy to scare away any external forces seeking to restore order in the island republic.

But Haitians have traditionally opposed any foreign interference in their internal affairs, no matter the state of disorder or chaos. A fiercely independent people, they are proud to be the first black republic to emerge from a successful slave revolt at the height of European colonialism, The Conversation notes.

Jimmy Cherizier used Ariel Henry’s unpopularity and the controversial decision to station foreign police officers in the country to spark a nationwide furious call for political change. In a video message to ABC News on March 11, he said: “The first step is to overthrow Ariel Henry, and then we will begin the real fight against the current system, the system of corrupt oligarchs and corrupt traditional politicians.”

In the past, Cherizier has put forward his own “peace plan” for the country. He demanded that gang members be given a full amnesty and that the country be governed by a “council of wise men,” implying that leaders like him would play a formal political role. With Henri now retiring from the political scene, the possibility of Haitians being forced to accept such an outcome may not be so far-fetched after all, The Conversation predicts.

Indeed, some suspect Cherizier has political aspirations of his own, The Guardian notes.

“Barbecue is engaging and truly a natural politician… When I met him, I immediately knew he was a force to be reckoned with,” Sky News correspondent Stuart Ramsay wrote after their 2023 meeting. “He sees himself as a revolutionary fighting against the dark corruption of government and business oligarchs, but make no mistake, he is a notorious gangster.”

Diego Da Rin, a Haiti specialist for the International Crisis Group, said Cherizier’s attempt to portray himself as a compassionate if unyielding defender of impoverished ghetto residents was not entirely unfounded: “He gives women gifts on Mother’s Day. He gives money to families who cannot afford to send their children to school. But people know that he is also one of the main culprits of the nightmare in which they live.”

This nightmare took on new dimensions the other day after Cherizier announced that he was leading a massive bandit attack on Henry’s government and ordered his fighters to take to the streets to wreak havoc. Since the attacks began on February 29, criminals have burned dozens of businesses and police stations, forced the closure of an international airport, released thousands of hardened criminals from prison and laid siege to a port.

“Unfortunately, Barbecue is now the most powerful person in Haiti,” states Judes Jonathas, an independent consultant from Port-au-Prince.