Patrick Bell
Portrait – Jimmy Charizier was part of an elite police unit. But after fifteen years of service, he decided to switch sides in 2018 and become the leader of the G9. Its troops stormed the country’s two main prisons on Saturday, freeing thousands of convicts.
Jimmy Charizier is the leader of the most powerful gang in Port-au-Prince, G-9. He is a slightly chubby man with a friendly attitude who welcomed us to his Delmas 6 stronghold last July, wearing a white T-shirt with the inscription “Happy Birthday Baby”. He wanted to show us his project: the construction of a school for neighborhood children. “I was born in the provinces because there is a tradition for women to go to rural areas to give birth. But I have lived in this neighborhood since I was nine years old. Half of the children in Haiti do not have an education. The state is completely absent from the neighborhood. The only schools that exist pay fees and are out of reach for most Haitian families. So I decided to give the children of my neighborhood a chance to be educated.”
To enter his neighborhood, a heavy green metal gate blocks the street. Armed security is very discreet but very present. Some armed men…
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