The Underworld Podcast - The Gangster Warlords of Haiti's Collapse with Jason Motlagh

Episode Date: May 21, 2024

Haiti's gangs have effectively taken over the country, plunging into chaos and violence as warring gangster warlords like the infamous Barbeque fight for territorial control. In February gangs stormed police stations, shot up the airport and freed thousands of prisoners after storming the country's biggest prisons, causing a humanitarian crisis. Things have gotten so bad that Kenya is sending in 1,000 police officers to try to regain some sort of control. We're joined by reporter Jason Motlagh, who's been reporting down there for years and has hung out with Barbeque before. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Own it all. Pay off your home, travel for life, drive a Ferrari. In celebration of the world premiere of the Monopoly Big Board Buckslot Machine by Aristocrat Gaming, Yamava Resort and Casino at San Manuel is giving one person a $1.6 million dream package. The biggest prize in Yamaba's history. Club Serrano members can earn daily instant prizes and secure a spot in the finale May 29th.

Don't pass go and own it all. Only at Yamava, celebrating its 40th anniversary. You win? Details at Yamava.com must be 21-20. Please gamble responsibly. Monopoly is a trademark of Hasbro. Hasbro is not a sponsor of this promotion. Ambition comes in all shapes and sizes.

At First Citizens Bank, we roll with your goals because we're built for what you're building. Fit for your ambition for Citizens Bank. It's May 29, 2023, in the Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince. A doctor's without borders hospital. As good as it gets in a city gutted by natural disaster, disease, political turmoil, and, more recently, one of the world's bloodiest gang wars. Lordy Deney already suffered under the violence once in 2019, when mobsters torched his soft drinks store in the neighbourhood of Bel Air with Molotov cocktails and shot him in the foot and groin. Those guys belong to the G9, a conglomerate of gangs united under the leadership of a former cop

named Jimmy Chorizier, aka Barbecue, that swept through shanties and cinderblock hoods to become Porter Prince's most powerful organisation, arguably even more so than the government itself. The war ramped up in 2021 when Haitian President Jauvinel Moise was slaughtered at his residence. Now, Porter Prince is a full-blown conflict zone, buildings in ruins. It's frontline shifting from day to day and bodies left to rot in the open air. Civilians are often caught in the gangsters crossfire, but nothing can prepare Denis from the news he receives on this particular day. Two of his sons have been shot, one in the head, one in the heart, and they're both in comas. Deni races to the hospital's trauma ward, but it's too

late. The brothers pass away that same day, and their father, distraught, can't even afford to bury them. This area was once a safe place, he says. Now, he adds, pulling on a cigarette, barbecue is destroying everything. Welcome to the underworld podcast. Hello guys and welcome to the underworld podcast. I am Sean Williams, a journalist in Wellington, New Zealand. And I'm sorry I could offer you a more upbeat introduction for today's show, but it's a really, really important one.

And a story that's fallen down the media pecking order despite near unprecedented levels of chaos and gang violence. Yes, today we're going to talk about Haiti. and Jimmy Chirisier, aka Barbecue. And to do that, I'm joined not by Danny Gold, but by Jason Motlo, an award-winning reporter, photographer and filmmaker, who's been to just about every conflict zone you've heard of and probably several more that you haven't.

Jason's also a contributing editor of Rolling Stone, and it's his feature from Port-au-Prince last November that today's opening story comes from. And that's what we're going to focus on. A very, very brief request to follow us on social media, and click the follow button on Spotify to get our shows the moment they come out, of course. But thanks to joining me, Jason. Your piece is called Inside the World's Most Dangerous Gang War.

And reading it, I doubt anybody's going to question that. The story begins with the tragic death of two young brothers and the anguish of their father, a man named Lordy Deney. When were you out in Haiti reporting this story? Yeah, well, thanks, Sean. Very happy to be here. We made two trips last year, 2023, during the late spring, early summer. So May and June.

Each trip was a couple weeks long. To be honest, it didn't start as a magazine commission. My partner, Mark, and I were out looking for a second possible feature documentary film, and I'd been in touch with friends' fixers there for a long time. Things seemed to be percolating quite a bit, so we just felt like it was a good moment to go back and see what was going on. And spent a couple weeks the first trip, reconnected with Jimmy Barbecue Cherise,

the arch gang leader of the Genioree, and I had met him several years before working on a film for Vice documentary and so I was able to kind of pick up from there wasn't starting from scratch. There was some familiarity. What was interesting to see was just how much more self-possessed and sort of schooled to the media game that he was the first time I met him. He was very anxious, wore a suit to the interview. If you watch the film, he's got studded leather shoes, sweating incredibly. And by now he was seasoned. He had dealt with a lot of media. And so it was a lot cooler and kind of knew what his talking points were. One thing that kind of has remained constant was, you know, the amount of access and intimacy that was allowed. I thought given the past shoot that we would pick right up where we left off and knew we were trying to do more of a personal portrait of this guy beyond this kind of boogeyman caricature that you've seen in a lot of the Western reporting and took some time to get, you know, beyond.

where we had in the past and peel back the layers. I think a lot more guarded and in some cases understandably, just given what's going on and how many enemies he has. But we made a second trip in June, and it was actually on that trip that we met Lorde Deney, the father. It was early on that trip, and one of my goals at that point, having connected with editors and getting a magazine commission,

was I didn't want to just center, the gangs and barbecue, I think that had been done. I really wanted to look at the human toll of ordinary Haitians who were caught in the middle of this nasty gang war. And I met him. He was someone who was still freshly grieving from the loss of his sons two weeks before. They had both been hit in the crossfire on the way to school, allegedly by G9 gunman. One shot in the head, one in the heart died that day and was just still stunned. But welcomed us into his home, shared his story, the worst moment imaginable, and confided that two weeks after the boys had been killed, he still wasn't able to bury them because he didn't have the funds

needed. And so we knew that in there that was someone we were going to kind of track over the course of that trip. And we did. We went back to him on numerous occasions and got to know him better. And he at that point, it abandoned his home because it was under assault all the time. And people were getting hit by straight gunfire, burned out of their homes and was living in a little makeshift shanty camp back very near the White House actually right in the heart of the capital and so I think just that fact that you have people fleeing you know closer to the center was just very emblematic of how dangerous and desperate things have become yeah and it's really striking how I guess hopeless and almost I don't want to say like docility but there's a complete resignation to this from a lot of

the characters in the story that you flesh out and there's I guess this has been going on for so many years now that it's kind of become just the sort of daily shape of life in the city, in Puerto Prance anyway, it seems like it's not that people are kind of inured to it so much that they accepted as this kind of power structure, I guess, that just exists now. Yeah, that's right. I mean, people have been through so much over the last 20 years. Foreign intervention, the earthquake in 2010, and then a few years ago, another, the rise of the gangs, endemic corruption in the government. I mean, there's just so much cynicism

and a hardness that people have taken on because they just can't seem to catch a break. I started reporting from Haiti really early on in my career in 2006 is one of the first places I went, and I've never seen this level of despair. I mean, it really is just a complete resignation. What was interesting is even when you talk to experts, right, the, the, the, the, the, the policy people, you know, who are paid to have ideas about what needs to happen to uncink the situation and make improvements. Everyone was at a loss. No one even pretended to have an answer to get out of this morass that we're in now. And that's me was telling. You know, it's rare that you talk to experts who are just kind of speechless, echoing the same thing. I don't know where we

go for here. This is uncharted territory and, you know, the primacy of the gangs is undeniable. They've always been a factor, but now they very much are the law into themselves as I write in the peace and have kind of untethered from their traditional paymaster. So we're in just a new, completely new phase with the prospect of another foreign intervention on the horizon, but they've never encountered gangs that are, you know, this heavily armed, this organized, this violence. Is it really that in 2021 when Jovenel Moise was killed, the former president is that is that really the kind of spark that lit this particular fire i mean obviously the gangs had been operating with political patronage before then and kind of running around

and causing chaos on on politicians behalf but that really seems like it's almost like a sort of joker movie moment where you know the the gangs just completely overturned this power structure and and run wild yeah i think especially where barbecue is concerned right because, you know, the understanding is that barbecue was linked to Moy's administration, you know, and doing his bidding on the street. And so, you know, he had already created the G9, but the violence just hadn't exploded to the level that we're seeing now. And, you know, after that happened, it was like, all bets are off.

And the G9 got way more aggressive in terms of pushing out, fighting their enemies. And everything has escalated since then. So, yeah, that kind of, I guess just rip the lid off what has been festering for many years as these gangs have grown more powerful. And I think once Barbecue saw that, you know, he genuinely had hopes, I think, in Moise. I mean, at least he told me that, you know, there would be some reform and that he had an ear to the people. And that it wasn't just going to be, you know, a guy doing the bidding of the oligarchs as usual. And then that, when that was stripped away, it just activated him. and now he's just been very clear about wanting to take on sort of the whole existing structure

and the opposition who killed Moise and he'll do anything he can to tear it down. Yeah, it's kind of there seems to be a bit of a contradiction in his own self-mophology, right? Whether he was somehow, like you said, that he told you that he was somehow inspired by a chance to break the oligarchy or simply whether he was striking it out alone and trying to make a power grab for himself. It's kind of unclear, I guess. What else that you sort of took from him this time around was different? Apart from this kind of like sheamed media savvy, I guess. I mean, yeah, he has spoken so many times to media members,

and you often see the same quotes from story to story attributed to him in the news media especially. what kind of is different about his character now compared to back then? I think the noises he's making about being a revolutionary. They rang a little hollow, I think early on, because it was early days, and you've heard that kind of thing before. It's often a great PR smokescreen for criminal activity or what have you, and over time it tends to play out that way. But just more overtly political statements,

I think part of that is just the fact that, you know, he's been leading this G9 for some time. I chalk some of it also up to perhaps the fact that this guy Iskar, who was one of his co-leaders, I could say, almost like a shadow leader of the G9 out of Sisolé died under murky circumstances. As I understood, barbecue would often work in consultation with him. He was quite, quite smart and wouldn't make really moves without him. And so absent, you know, his right-hand man, it was like, okay, this is on me for better and for worse, I need to own this. And just stepping out unilaterally and being far more directly political in word and floating

the idea of potentially getting into politics in the future. And I think he's reinforced that, you know, saying that it will fight any foreign intervention that tries to come into the country, he'll treat them as hostiles, and that any kind of settlement it needs to involve him in the gang alliance. Otherwise, it's a non-starter. And he told me as much that he may well have to enter politics when the situation is right. But I think right now he's still very much on a war footing, which, you know, let's be honest, is where he's most comfortable, right?

He's a soldier. I mean, he came up through the police. He was in this very aggressive SWAT kind of unit, riot suppression. And, you know, that experience very much infuses. how he runs the G9 and his guys. There's a lot of discipline, a real command structure that he relies on to keep himself. And lower Delma, his base, relatively safe.

And he chalks that up to why he's lived this long in a place where betrayal can come from anywhere, a bullet can come from anywhere. And so right now, as you saw, one of the early March, when the guy, the G9 had made the move on the airport, shut it down, this dual prison break,

4,000 plus prisoners getting out, he did sort of an impromptu press conference and he was wearing his flack vest. I think that very much signifies where he's at and his bracing for more as foreign forces finally appear to be mustering to come to Haiti. Yeah, there was talks for a long, long time

of Kenya sending troops into the country, which seemed to be scuppered and then Ruto, the president there, was kind of saying, no, no, this is still on. And then I think I read a couple days ago in the New York Times that it says, Kenya will now lead a coalition of seven nations and 2,500 men and women, including the Bahamas, Bangladesh, Barbados, Benin, Chad, and Jamaica. I don't know if they just picked those countries alphabetically or something, but that is a strange coalition of forces,

with 300 million US dollars from D.C., except, you know, most of it can't get through Congress because, well, yeah, we all know why. But that is a strange coalition. What is your feeling and how that's come about? Why was Kenya involved in the first place and why did they not? You know, it's a coalition of the sort of kind of willing. I mean, the U.S., Canada, France, all the usual players, they don't want to touch this one. I mean, the U.S. being spread very thin overseas right now as it is, but I'm just looking at the way past missions have, have panned out. There's just not a lot of appetite to go back hot into Haiti. And so, you know, even where the funding is concerned, I mean,

I think it's, you know, a little over 20 million or something that has been fed into this collective pool to fund this, this whole mission, which is not a lot of money. Yeah, I think the Kenyans came forward because they saw it as an opportunity to make a statement, right, that we can have our name on this one and be out in front. And, you know, they've been involved in different African Union missions to varying degrees of success. As for the others, it almost feels like sort of a token participation, you know, 150 police here, a couple hundred soldiers there. Personally, you know, just with that level of manpower and funding, and given how armed

to the teeth the gangs are at this point, we're talking military-grade weapons from the U.S. and elsewhere, it just doesn't seem to be a very serious proposal to take this on. And we're talking about potential urban combat in an area that the gangs know better than anybody. They have weapons that are almost equally as good. It doesn't see how this all holds together. And then you look at the Kenyans leading the operation. They don't have the greatest track record. And these are police officers that they're coming in with.

So how effective can they be in a foreign country? Even though there is an openness in the country because things have just gotten so bad, there's also a deep-seated aversion to the presence of foreign troops in the country. I mean, Haiti's a very proud country, and past experiences have not panned out well, and so

I don't think it could take much for public opinion to turn against them, you know, if civilians there are caught in the crossfire, reckless gun battles, you know, as we saw in 2004 and 5 in places like Sita Soleil, when the Brazilians were present,

there's still a hangover from that experience. People haven't forgotten. So this whole thing doesn't really inspire a lot of confidence. Hey, how are you? Ready to go for a run? Running connects us to a rush of energy that flows through our world. The cheers of friends that unlock a new gear within us. The intersection of interests that inspires a run crew. The support that gets you over the finish line. Connection is why we move forward. And what inspires us to keep going. Let's run there. Learn more at brooksrunning.com. I wrote a little song to remind you,

Choice Hotels, get you more of the experiences you value. The Canberia hotels got it all. A rooftop bar, have a ball. Cocktails up here feel just right. It's Cambria amazing all right. Bring a date, your team, or even your mom.

Book direct at choiceotails.com. See you on the roof. The jurors sat in a dark room, hands resting on a Ouija board. They weren't guessing. They were asking the victim who killed them. Sounds unbelievable, right? But it happened. And that's just one of thousands of stories waiting for you on Morning Cup of Murder.

Hi, I'm Karina Bimus Durfer. And every single day on Morning Cup of Murder, I bring you a real, chilling, true crime story connected to that exact day in history. from killer cannibal brothers to the Boy Scout who was obsessed with the occult and the strange story of the bloody hammer in the frozen cabin. These aren't the cases you've heard a hundred times. They're the ones that make you stop and think, how have I never heard this before?

With over 2,500 episodes and a brand new story each and every single day, morning cup of murder becomes part of your routine fast. If you like your coffee hot but your bones chilled, then sit back and start your day with a morning cup of murder. Go listen to Morning Cup of Murder wherever you get your podcasts. And remember, stay safe. No, I mean, you know, I guess a silver lining is that the Bahamas and Chad can finally work together after their decades of enmity.

But it just, it is a really strange one. It's a motley crew. Yeah. And it remains to be seen. But I don't think anybody, you know, who follows affairs in Haiti. has taken this very seriously. I mean, it kind of moves on to another point I want to ask you, which is you mentioned the amount of high-powered weaponry that the gangs have got there.

You know, it's sort of accepted that it's leaking out from the US. And it kind of plays into another one of the factors here, which is that the transshipment of drugs, right, is a growing problem, or it seems to be a growing problem. I guess on one hand, the complete lack of law enforcement or order would suggest a good place to do business, but then the G9 is not the best bedfellow, I would imagine, for the likes of the Sinaloa cartels. How big a role did you feel that narcotics was playing in the situation? Not as much as people might think, given the power of the gangs right now. I don't think the G9 is very much involved. I mean, they might be looking the other way in certain years, but actively

involved in the drug trade, not to my knowledge. Perhaps more so on the G-PEP side. You know, my senses it's always been politically, you know, people connected to the oligarchs who are very powerful in the interior of the country and able to manipulate the ports, right? And things that are coming in and out by

sea that are really calling the shots in the drug trade. And I don't think we should overstate. I mean, it's certainly a significant entrepreneur for cocaine coming from Colombia, but it's not, you know, a major transshipment hub.

that said that could well change. I mean, we don't know, you know, how this is going to play out with the G9 and the GPEP, and most of their power is still concentrated in Porta Prince. If, you know, they're able to push further out into the countryside where you have private airstrips and things like that, you could see more involvement in the drug trade, you know, further along the coastline.

That could start to change. But as of now, I don't think the gangs are major players. in the drug trade. I think that's more like on the side of the traditional business elite and some of the politicians that they have in their pocket. I want to talk about just the experience of being in that city right now because some of the photos that you took alongside the piece, it's pretty raw.

I mean, you know, charred bodies of combatants, basically, and gang members, the likes of which you would rarely see outside of an incredibly hot conflict zone. Do you feel that comparison there, What is it like to walk down these streets? Is it really, can you fear that it's sequestered off from one gang to another from street to street? How does it feel like there? Yeah.

No, I mean, parts of Port-a-Prince are de facto war zone. You know, no pretense of government or police authority. I mean, the gangs hold sway. And, you know, this is an intensely congested city. If you're coming in for the first time, even if you have a lot of experience, it's very hard to discern where the neighborhoods end and, you know, the next terrorist. begins and you know these fault lines they can be be very fluid too so you know even versus the last time i was there um doing the vice film like some of the the front lines had had shifted considerably but no it's the kind of place where it you know as the story illustrates bullets can rain down at

at any time almost anywhere and you know it's it's a lot of tin and cinder blocks so these things just kind of tear through and ricochet around and you know a lot of the gunmen are teenagers with incredibly powerful weapons. And, you know, when you're with, say, the G9 or with barbecue, you feel a little more secure, at least I did, because, you know, of his rigor and his discipline, which comes from his time in the police, you know, he's not running around high and a sleepless bender. He has a lot of protocols, and he's kind of keeping track. And so you feel the odds are more in your favor. But, you know, if you're going to the GPEP areas, it's like you, anything at any time, the police are shooting harassment fire.

There are snipers around. You never know when they're going to make another attempt to break through. And it's just kind of anything goes. But, you know, having worked in a lot of conflict zones, I think one of the more treacherous elements is just having, you know, these young gunmen with really strong rifles who, you know, might be strung out on drugs.

You know, maybe have eaten once, barely, you know, have flip-flops on their feet, but they're lethal. And it just lends itself to this very, volatile kind of atmosphere. And so you just have to be hyper vigilant as you're moving around. Yeah.

You know, it's a kind of place you can be walking down the street and you feel like you're surrounded on, you know, both sides, but there's a crack in a wall and there's someone, you know, 50 yards away on the other side of that who's waiting for someone to appear, you know, at any moment and send a bullet through. So you just have to be very aware.

And, you know, my security is the people I work with. I'm lucky to work with two of the best Haitian journalists around, have known them for years. And so I just trust them and their judgment implicitly. And we're able to get places and cross fault lines that are very difficult to maneuver around. But when they say it's time to go, we're out. And no questions asked. I feel like the kind of narrative of the story as well, it's almost like you start

by laying some very big bricks to show a couple of opposing parties. You've got the GPF and the G9, obviously, and Jimmy Terrizio. But and then the kind of allegiances, I guess, unravel as the story continues and you've got these smaller splinter groups and just like you say, groups of young guys off their heads, you know, arm to the teeth, just criminals, just gangsters basically running around trying to sort of, I guess, cop a bit of clout money for themselves. When you met those, there's a particular scene in the story where you meet this really young kid who's just, he looks up to this gangster as a kind of father-feet. really sad. Is that the growing trend there for these sort of smaller street gangs to pop up or is it being consolidated more? Yeah, I think that's that's the phenomenon we're seeing as to how the gangs have proliferated so so rapidly is you've just got a lot of despair among young men who just don't see like a viable pathway to a future in the country as it exists. You've got this entrenched

elite will do anything to protect their interest and then there's everybody else. And so, you know, if you're coming up in a poor neighborhood and you see the guys on the corner and they've got swagger and, you know, they've got cheap dope and, you know, they're packing a heavy weapon. Like, it's very enticing. And I think, you know, with a guy you're referring to, you know, as with others who were, this was in Village de Jue on the GPEP side. But just, it's kind of this nihilism, really. It's like, get what you can while you can. Life is cheap and it's short. And, you know, at least I can have a little fun and, you know, walk around with a heavy weapon and maybe get a little respect in my neighborhood before it's my time to go. And, you know, it's not just guys who,

you know, were sort of condemned from the beginning, you know, being born in the wrong place. I mean, I met young men who were coming from middle class neighborhoods, right, who, you know, could have had like a pretty basic job, but just, just didn't see any point and had broken away from their own families, you know, one case where a guy's sister, you know, was basically on the other side and he had gone to fight for the GPEP. And it wasn't uncommon to hear stories like that. And I think it just all speaks to how dire things have become in Haiti. And for some people just don't see an alternative. And so, you know, it's that really get what you can while you can mindset that's kind of infected a lot of these areas. I guess that kind of chimes with barbecues ostensibly his

his mission is to sort of rid the country of these sort of venal oligarchs that are taking away the futures of all young people because there isn't really anything for anyone to hold on to. So his is the only story that has any teeth, right? No one else is offering anybody anything. Yeah. And it strikes like a deep court in Haiti, right? Because, you know, this is the first black republic. They cast off their French colonial masters.

And so there's a real resonant narrative there, I think. know, that they're being controlled and manipulated by these elites. And it strikes a chord for a lot of people on the street. And, you know, barbecue is savvy to that. I mean, not just in the things he says, but just the visual messaging, you know, you see these billboards of him sort of as Che Guevara, Barbivara, right, wearing a beret. He's got a cell phone case, yeah, a custom cell phone case with Barbavara and then all this other iconography of other leaders like Nelson Mandela and Castro and others in these areas and you know I think he genuinely believes in some of that or is trying to position himself in such a way I think in other areas say in the G9 orbit that you know

maybe don't have as much of a intent you know a revolutionary intent it's more just kind of window dressing and they're fine to go along with it. But I think he takes it pretty seriously and he's got a pretty decent sense of history and the country's trajectory and is trying to position himself in that same vein of disruptors of people who are taking on the existing system

to upend it and restore the people to power. Yeah, I mean, and he's sort of semi-seriously position, well, I guess seriously positioning himself as saying of a politician, right? You mentioned him going around as if he's on the campaign trail, kissing babies and proselytizing this vision to people. But no one's going to

bring him to the table, right? They're going to end up killing him, surely. I mean, this is how this ends. They can't. They can't. Yeah. It seems faded. But there have been plenty of crooks in office. I mean, I guess the thing now is, like, it's hard to imagine this scenario, you know, unless

he takes a bullet, you know, out of the blue, like, of how peace can be reestablished in any meaningful way. In Porta Prince, when he's not in the picture, they just have so much firepower. And who knows if this alliance with the G. Pepp will hold. But, you know, it's almost like the warriors where the gang leaders united all the gangs into the super gang in New York. And like, we're going to take on the police and all these other institutions. I mean, he's been working on that for a long time. And when they announced that alliance, it was no surprise. And so, yeah, I mean, who's going to be this point? They're always spoilers looking about in Haiti, but things continue to go on and, you know,

this intervention falters and he remains a force on the ground. It is kind of hard to imagine that scenario without him. And I would speculate that, you know, it has to involve some kind of an immunity, right, for alleged crimes, massacres that he's been tied to. It's ugly. But, you think someone like Guy Philippe, right, who was instrumental in this insurgency against Sarah Steed back in 2004. He was in office and

implicated in drug trafficking and all sorts of other crimes. We spent years in a U.S. prison just came back and is making a play at residency again. And he was quite popular. I've heard rumblings that he might, you know, be in

contact with barbecue and I don't know if that's true yet. But yeah, it feels like at this juncture, really anything is possible. and that business as usual just no longer applies. Have you got any plans to go back out there at all? Are you focusing your work elsewhere as it stands?

I would like to go back. Things are happening so quickly right now and with this foreign intervention. Our hope was to make a feature film. And at the moment, we're trying to take what we've got and cut it into a shorter film with the hope that that will entice some interest in funding to do a longer project that would see us back.

multiple times over the next year, year and a half. That's very much our goal. As I've said, it's very difficult place to work beyond just being dangerous, also very expensive, right, to get around and work with the right people. And so we're looking for support on that front. But yeah, if it does come together, I think this could be our next big project and it does feel right for it. I think with all that's going on. And then, of course, the connection to migration to the U.S., right? Haitians make up a huge tranche of migrants coming to the southern border. That's being weaponized by the right at this time. And so show what these people are up against back home, you know, that these aren't arbitrary claims they're making for asylum,

but their lives are very much at risk and they're fleeing what amounts to hell so much so that they're willing to travel to South America and cross, you know, more than a dozen borders over land and run that gauntlet to get to the U.S. border and have a chance at entry into the U.S. So, you know, the more light that can be, I've always felt it's important to really... Yeah, very true. I think anyone who is questioning those motives should just... I mean, beyond reading your story, they should just go on Wikipedia for Haiti and read the history section, because it is really, I mean, since 1804 when they shook off the French, but not really. I mean, they had to pay billions of dollars of reparations.

It's just one disaster slash period of turmoil after another. And this does seem like it's all reached a bit of a nadir. But it's insane. I wonder if the sort of experiences in, say, El Salvador is starting to make people wonder whether, you know, extremely heavy-handed anti-gang tactics are the way to go. I mean, they haven't worked in plenty of other places. I mean, you know, they were going to send the military in Cape Town. And obviously, stuff's happened in Rio that's been a disaster.

I don't know. It could, yeah, it's hard to see where the Bahamas, Barbados and Chad, can help. Yeah, I mean, I mentioned this story, but at some point, I think there were people make inquiries into getting the Wagner group, getting mercenaries over there, you know, with no concern for human rights. Jesus. blast up, you know, the slums and, you know, as it gets worse, who knows? I think, you know, the thing in Haiti right now is just the state, right?

The police are outnumbered, outgunned. They're just in no position to go and pull something like off. Like we saw Buceli doing in El Salvador, right, just go neighborhood by neighborhood and roll these guys up. Wireless can feel like a world of traps, but not with Visible. It's one-line wireless with unlimited data and hotspot. Powered by Verizon for $25 a month, taxes and fees included. Plus, for a limited time, new members pay just $20 a month for one year on the Visible plan. Using the code Fresh Start.

Refresh your wireless with Visible. Tap the banner to switch today. Terms apply. Limited time offer subject to change. See Visible.com for plan features and network management details. How many discounts does USAA auto insurance offer? Too many to say here. Multi-vehicle discount. Safe driver discount?

New vehicle discount. Storage discount. How many discounts will you stack up? Tap the banner or visit usa.com slash auto discounts. Restrictions apply. At first, I didn't think it was real. I woke up to this blinding light and I was transported to another place. Pluto TV. Then I heard a voice.

Come with me if you want to live. There were thousands of movies and shows. and they were all free. The truth is our city. It's just so beautiful. On Pluto TV, free streaming of Terminator 2, Fringe Arrow, the 100 N-EX files may cause excitement, loss of sleep and sudden belief in extraterrestrials. No credit cards or alien encounters necessary. Pluto TV, stream now, pay never.

Throw them to a prison and, you know, El Salvador, pretty basic weaponry, sometimes homemade guns, where, you know, these kids in Haiti just have M-14s, AR-15s, galils. I mean, real hardcore military hardware. So it's hard to imagine without like a total bloodbath. And a lot of people would die. The optics, you know, would be terrible. So, yeah, I don't know what, you know, a solution looks like without maybe in some way involving some of this lead up. And, you know, it's probably a longer term demobilization effort.

But, you know, that's going to require a lot of money, a lot of patience, and creating viable alternatives that appeal to these kinds of young men we're talking about who the gangs praying for recruitment, trying to draw them away to other alternatives. With just the general apathy from foreign countries to Haiti to get meaningfully involved after all these different failures, I don't see where that comes from at this point. So, yeah, I hate to sound like invariably bleak, but I think it's, maybe that's it.

Maybe it's just calling it for what it is and something comes out of the ashes. No, I think that's incredibly important. You don't need that over-optimistic, you know, footnote or kicker or whatever. I mean, I was going to say, actually, to end our conversation, I wanted to bring you back to Lodi because as you close out the story, you come back to him and he has finally mustered the cash. to pay for his son's funerals, although in local custom, he's not supposed to attend because it's considered bad luck, although I'm not sure what worse luck you could ever go through. But it really is, like, bleak the way that the story ends. But I think that's incredibly important because there is, like you say, there's kind of an apathy or a nihilism that just is written through everything from the international response to the kids on the streets, to the politicians and everything that's going on. how I guess to ask you a kind of journalistic question, how important do you think it is to retain that realistic peg to a story and not fall into the idea of, well, we've got to make something sunny at the end of this.

Because I think a lot of stories do do that and it kind of pisses me off from time to time. It's not necessarily how things are in life. Yeah, 90% rain and then a little bit of sunshine at the very end. I think a lot of that was kind of drilled into our heads at some point, so you got to leave the reader with something, you can't come all this way and walk away just completely

broken. No, I think it's important to play it as it lays, and you know, in this case, it was just echoed to me from everybody I talked to, whether people on the street to academics in the U.S., there was

just no more pretending. You know, we've been through all of those things and the grand talk and the promises and this is where we've got and um my hope was at least at some base level human level like the story would stir uh some compassion in people and i don't think i needed to do that by appealing to a hope that i could do it by just appealing to um you know their sense of decency or of being a parent just a concerned human and for a story that I think a lot of people can relate to. If you've never had experience with gangs, I mean, having a child and losing that child,

that's pretty universal, whatever the place or the culture. And so that was what I really wanted people to take away. And yeah, my story, you know, there's not much coming out of Haiti now. It's a drop in a bucket. But the hope is that there's follow-up reporting and it's not just completely lost in the shuffle as it's been for so long. And, you know, hopefully more people will come to do this kind of work. And it'll spark some kind of a shift.

And I think if that's done at a broad enough level, it eventually finds its way into policy and into the halls of power where those kinds of decisions are made. Yeah. Now, I would like to see a lot more coverage of Haiti. Also, you know, Sudan, Myanmar, the other conflicts that are roiling around the world that perhaps aren't getting a column inches that they desperately need.

So many. If you, I mean, if you believe in the media, really, in the sort of base causes of the media, then we should be looking into this stuff a lot, a lot more.

But yeah, I guess that's our job to convince people to send us to these places. No, it's getting harder. As we both know, but I think there's so much of the world that, that's just ignored and undercover it. And yeah,

it's up to, you know, us to find ways to connect the dots and get news organizations and, you know, viewers interested. I often think it's the news organizations that are in the trouble, a lot of the gatekeepers and their idea of, you know, what matters and, you know, what is in, you know, the interest of an American or Western, you know, viewer, reader, whereas I've always believed really strongly in the storytelling. You know, if the story is strong, people will follow wherever that is. And let's give them the benefit of the doubt.

Yeah, I totally agree. And I will be saying something to that effect next week to an editor about the country of Tuvalu. So we'll see if that goes down. But yeah, thanks so much for joining me, Jason. Really enjoy your work. And yeah, thanks for spending the time. And good luck in there. I think you're just about to jet off up country to the northwest coast of the US as well, right?

Yeah, up to Portland, doing a follow-up film. the opioid crisis there. So yeah, should be equally depressing and, you know, this is, this is where we are. It's a different front, it's the home front. And, you know, in some ways, it's equally troubling, just where things are going in this country at the moment. But we'll save that for another conversation. Yes, we will. Well, have a safe trip up there. And, yeah, I hope to have you back on the show when you're back in there with your family. Love to. Thanks for having me. Cheers.

Some follow the noise. Bloomberg follows the money. Whether it's the funds fueling AI or crypto's trillion dollar swings. There's a money side to every story. Get the money side of the story. Subscribe now at Bloomberg.com. This podcast is brought to you by Carvana. Selling your car should feel like one less thing on your list.

Not one more. With Carvana, it is. Just go to Carvana.com, and to your license plate or VIN and get a real offer down to the penny. No back and forth, no surprises, just an experience you can trust. Like your offer?

Accept it. Schedule pickup, and we'll come to you with a check in hand. Your car, your timeline, your terms. Visit Carvana.com to sell your car today. Carvana. Pick up fees may apply.