Photographs and text by Paolo Marchetti
In August 2010, seven months after the terrible earthquake, I went to Haiti on behalf of Italian newspapers with the task of documenting the emergency response. It was then that I met Luisien, 43, a father of five children and a man with a turbulent history. He had faced difficulties and involvement in gangs, beginning in the 1990s in the so-called years of terror.
During those years President Jean-Bertrand Aristide was in power; he was a populist, a showman, and managed to get support through his speeches. But when they were no longer sufficient, his regime began distributing weapons and organizing armed gangs loyal to him; thus were born the chimères. These gangs had official powers and quickly became a normal part of politics in Haiti, an ordinary instrument for control of the territory. Today Port-au-Prince is largely in the hands of armed gangs, even if the connection with the political powers seems to be weaker than in the years of terror established by Aristide’s regime. Gangs are still active, a political tool of control, or simply made up of common criminals in groups fighting a war between districts.
After spending a few months with Luisien, I had safe access to a part of Port-au-Prince called Cité Soleil, an exceptionally poor and violent quarter of the city. But in August 2011 an email informed me that Luisien was dead, killed in gang violence. I heard this from his mother. I decided to go back to Port-au-Prince to learn more about the reality of armed gangs in Cité Soleil. Along with a man named Wilner, 23, a close friend of Luisien’s, I spent two months in the most inaccessible parts of the district. Shooting very few pictures per day (and not every day), I got to know some of what the hard reality of life there was like. Today I understand that the residents permitted me to look closely at their lives because of their exasperation with their situation—and their despair.
