Better Know Jimmy "Barbecue" Cherizier, The Gang Leader at the Center of Haiti's Crisis

If present trends continue, "Barbecue" may become the de-facto ruler of Haiti

Haiti has taken a turn for the even worse. Gang violence is spiraling so out of control that the US military airlifted US personnel from the embassy this week. The country’s (unelected) president Ariel Henry is currently stranded in Puerto Rico after gangs prevented his plane from landing in Port-Au-Prince. Meanwhile, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken is attending an emergency meeting of the regional CARICOM group.

At the center of this unfolding disaster is an ex-police officer turned professional gangster Jimmy “Barbecue” Cherizier. In October 2022, I devoted an entire episode of the podcast to Cherizier’s story, and what his rise to prominence says about the role of gangs and the relationship between politics and gangsterism in Haiti. At the time, Cherizier was exacerbating an already dire humanitarian crisis in Haiti by imposing a blockade on a fuel terminal, preventing much needed petrol from entering the country. Things got so bad, the UN Security Council imposed individual targeted sanctions on Cherizier later that month.

With President Ariel Henry in exile, Jimmy “Barbecue” Cherizier is poised to become the de-facto leader of Haiti so I thought it might be useful to repost my interview with Jacqueline Charles, Caribbean Correspondent for the Miami Herald, and a longtime reporter covering Haiti. We discuss the biography of Jimmy Cherizier before having a longer conversation about Haiti's recent gang wars and the relationship between gang violence and politics in Haiti.

The full podcast episode and transcript is below the paywall for paying subscribers. Here is an excerpt

Jacqueline Charles Jimmy Chérizier, who is better known as Barbecue, is a former Haitian national police officer turned gang leader. I’m told that the nickname Barbecue has to do with that they basically would barbecue people, would burn them. He basically is the front man for a very powerful gang known as the G9 Families and Allies. And I say front man because he’s the guy that we hear a lot from. He’s very articulate. There’s a certain charisma to him.

Mark L. Goldberg He certainly gives a lot of media interviews!

Jacqueline Charles Exactly, he’s got his media savvy. You could tell that he’s not just some schmuck off the street. And in a country where the state is essentially nonexistent and gangs have stepped into the vacuum, he is popular in a very weird sort of way. I don’t think that there’s anybody in Haiti today who doesn’t know who Barbecue is. But when you listen to him, he will tell you, for instance, this is a revolution, and I’m doing this because we want to have health care. We want to lift people out of poverty.

But they’re using fiery barricades to block access in and out of the country’s main fuel terminal. One would argue that this very act of blocking the flow of fuel, blocking the flow of food, potable water is plunging people deeper into misery. It’s having the opposite effect of what he claims his actions are meant to do.