The odyssey of surviving in neighborhoods controlled by powerful armed gangs in Haiti

Hundreds of neighborhoods in Port-au-Prince and other cities in Haiti They have lived for five years under the domination of the all-powerful armed gangs, where the neighbors resist without basic services and with great fear of the thin line that there separates life from death.

In Bel-Air, a neighborhood in the heart of Port-au-Prince, life has not been the same for years. The area is at the heart of a conflict that has seen bloody episodes, with hundreds of deaths, people burned alive, houses destroyed and thousands of displaced people.

This vast area looks like a battlefield, with desolate streets, burned down houses, rubbish everywhere. The fighting subsides, but never stops.

Although there is a complete absence of basic services and authority, its inhabitants, mainly young people, refuse to leave Bel-Air, one of the hundreds of neighborhoods held hostage by the more than 300 armed groups that control entire areas of Haiti and whose Practices range from robbery and murder to rape.

Territories lost forever?

In these neighborhoods, the armed men are in specific areas that function as bases and where they store their weapons, while guards are posted at intersections.

These areas, known as “war zones” and where there is no law, they exist in much of Haiti, but especially in Port-au-Prince, where the 80% of the territory is controlled by gangs.

“In these areas, people organize themselves in different ways. Some leave their homes, others resist and stay running small businesses that are not really profitable and that they usually lose when the fighting breaks out.”explains Angelot Petit-Frères, a resident of Bel-Air, during an EFE tour of that sector.

Here you can see many fronts, the so-called VAR, borders erected with sandbags and that should not be crossed in neighborhoods where entrances and exits are controlled.

In Brooklyn, in the Cité-Soleil commune, those “borders” they are made of cobblestones. On the walls you can see the names of “combatants” deaths and messages of resistance to the enemy. And everywhere they “scouts”which alert gangs to the presence of strangers.

Lack of basic social services

In these precarious neighborhoods, people live in total poverty and in unsanitary conditions that explain, in a way, the reappearance of cholera last October.

“There is no drinking water in the area. The inhabitants get it from trucks that don’t come very often”adds Angelot, who asks the authorities to come to the aid of a population that lives in the midst of garbage and mosquitoes.

In these conflict zones, many schools and even churches have become bases for the “soldiers” local. In Cité Soleil you can see schools with bullet holes.

In Bel-Air, Steeve Laroche, a teacher who works at the Dumarsais Estimé school, has witnessed the latest upheavals in the area and is part of a committee to ensure the operation of the center.

In order to operate, “We’ve had to adjust, get acquainted with certain ‘personalities’ in the area who want school activities to continue and who don’t want the area to die. That’s why we’re here.” it states.

Families living in the opposite areas do not send their children to this school, so it works with a small number of students. There have been cases of children being killed on the way to school.

Some neighborhoods with no more authority than the gangs

For the doctor in Geography Djems Olivier, “You cannot live in neighborhoods controlled by gangs without survival strategies. These are the ones that allow us not only to live with the gangs, but also to fight against stigmatization and discrimination”.

“When you live in a neighborhood controlled by gangs, you are between a rock and a hard place: you can be persecuted by gangs and stigmatized by society”Olivier tells EFE.

And it is that, he admits, “the only representatives of the State that are in these neighborhoods are the councilors”, which “They have no power over the gangs”.

In fact, in these neighborhoods it is the NGOs that play the role of the State, even if it is at the cost of enormous sacrifices because their facilities are often attacked.

This is the case, for example, of Doctors Without Borders, which has been forced to close several hospitals in situations that have endangered the lives of its staff. EFE

Source: EFE