Entrepreneur, activist Bernard Fils-Aimé dead at 67
August 11, 2020
Bernard Fils-Aimé, 67, was an activist and organizer who was a founding member of the Haitian Refugee Center in Miami before pioneering cellular service in his native Haiti.
As an entrepreneur, he helped pioneer cellular service in Haiti as the chief executive officer of a mobile phone company where he made corporate giving and responsibility the rule rather than the exception, and gave working Haitians access to technology and the chance to get connected.
And as a retiree, he used his skills as a former assistant dean of students at Miami Dade College to groom Haiti’s next generation by giving them a shot at a college education as chairman of the board of the Haitian Education & Leadership Program, HELP.
But it is Bernard Fils-Aimé’s role as a militant activist and organizer, which eventually led him to become a founding member of one of the most powerful Haitian rights organizations in the United States, the Haitian Refugee Center in Miami, that he was most proud of and will be best remembered for.
“I was at the forefront of the battle to gain legal status for Haitian refugees,” Fils-Aimé told state Rep. Dotie Joseph in May as part of a spotlight on trailblazing Haitians during Haitian Heritage month. “We won many legal battles, which paved the way for the development of the vibrant Haitian-American community in South Florida today.”
Fils-Aimé, who spent his life working to raise the voice of Haitians at home and abroad, died Saturday at the University of Miami Hospital in Miami after becoming infected with the novel coronavirus. He was 67.
“What gave his life meaning, besides his loving family, is he always fought for people’s rights and for communities, especially for Haiti,” said son Karl, 35. “He was an exceptional human being and an even better father. He will be missed dearly.”
Fils-Aimé’s untimely death is not only hitting his family hard but a closely knit circle of friends and collaborators in South Florida and Haiti, the two communities where he and his wife of 41 years, Marise, called home and divided their time after moving back to Haiti in 1995.
A former president of the American Chamber of Commerce in Haiti, Fils-Aimé often advised his close friend, the late President René Préval, on a number of issues including the development of Haiti’s private sector. Lately, he had spent a lot of time thinking about the country’s political future, its struggling private sector and how he could best influence Haiti’s path.
“He had flawless rationale and the ability to extract the big picture from a huge amount of information or a big event. René appreciated his capacity to reach out to people from all categories and reunite them with a common purpose, which was to strive to make things change for the good of all,” said Préval’s widow, Elisabeth Débrosse Delatour Préval.
As news traveled this week about his death, former employees of his mobile phone company, Communication Cellulaire d’Haïti, S.A. or ComCEL, which was better known by its trademark Voilà before being acquired by Digicel Group in 2012, remembered Fils-Aimé as a caring and generous boss.
“He was really proud at one point because ComCEL/Voilà was the No. 2 organization that had paid the most taxes,” said daughter Erica Brown, 46. “He was proud because it was about providing stability for the betterment of the community.”
Another proud moment came just weeks before the Jan. 12, 2010, Haiti earthquake. In December of 2009, the company’s U.S. subsidiary, Trilogy International Partners, was honored by U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for Voilà’s corporate responsibility programs, transparent business practices and contributions to the economic development of Haiti under Fils-Aimé’s management.
“Some would like to see in Bernard two different people,” said Fritz Longchamp, a longtime friend and former Haiti foreign minister who served as chief of staff to Préval during his second term in office. “The militant activist who fought for the rights of the Haitian people and the minority owner of a telecom enterprise. But that was absolutely not the case. For Bernard, it was two sides of one coin. His primary objective was always the wellness of the people.”
Rulx Jean-Bart, a former director of the Haitian Refugee Center, agreed.
“Bernard is a guy, who practically all of his adult life was devoted to the betterment of the Haitian people,” said Jean-Bart, who lives in Miramar. “Whether it was as a student in college in New York, or his fight against Duvalier, he’s been there.”
Recalling the various Haitians organizations that he and Fils-Aimé were involved in to help Haitian asylum seekers win the right to remain in the United States, Jean-Bart said, Fils-Aimé “was a key person, instrumental in a lot of decisions.”
Fils-Aimé was born in Petionville, Haiti, on May 24, 1953. At the age of 13, he moved to New York with his mother to flee the dictatorship of Francois “Papa” Doc Duvalier.
As his children recalled his legacy and pivotal moments in his life on Monday, they said he had several loves: his wife, a good glass of Scotch with his friends and sòs pwa, a popular Haitian bean soup dish.
They recalled his stories about getting chased while fighting on behalf of farm workers, fighting against the Duvalier dictatorship and deciding to relocate to Miami from New York because he believed “this was going to be the front line for the rights of Haitian immigrants,” said son Gerard, 40.
“We’ve all been to protests with him at Krome when we were young kids,” he added. “He was a freedom fighter.”
In addition to his wife and three adult children, Fils-Aimé is survived by five grandchildren and a host of family and friends. Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, Fils-Aimé’s family said he will be laid to rest in a private ceremony on Thursday. A Catholic Mass in his honor will take place Friday at Saint Charbel in Peguyville, a residential area of Port-au-Prince.
In lieu of flowers, the family asks those who wish to honor his legacy to make a contribution in his honor to HELP, undefined, the education charity that was close to his heart.
Haiti-coronavirus: Jimmy 'Barbecue' Cherizier unites gangs while Moise watches
The Washington Post
Anthony Faiola
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — Jovenel Moïse is president of Haiti, but ask the people of the terrified shantytowns who's in charge in this impoverished Caribbean capital, and they'll point to a man called Barbecue.
A former police officer who portrays himself as the savior of the streets, Jimmy “Barbecue” Cherizier has come to symbolize the accelerating erosion of Haiti’s already challenged rule of law during the coronavirus pandemic. Accused of orchestrating massacres that left dozens of men, women and children dead, he has succeeded in accomplishing the once unthinkable: uniting the warring gangs of Port-au-Prince into a powerful new confederation aimed at what he calls “revolution.”
Daily protests are paralyzing Haiti. Here’s why.
Cherizier announced the alliance on YouTube in June in a powder-blue three-piece suit. His newly formed “G9 Family and Allies” paraded triumphantly through the streets of the capital last month, led by gang leaders and dozens of armed men — both a flagrant violation of coronavirus rules and a warning to all.
On a recent afternoon, Cherizier led a reporter through the run-down neighborhood of La Saline, stomping over festering piles of garbage, barging into one corrugated shack after another, bellowing, “You see the conditions they live in?” as residents cowered.
“This is an armed revolution,” Cherizier told The Washington Post at his headquarters in Delmas 6, a no-go zone where he is hailed as a protector. “We will put guns in the hands of every child if we have to.”
But critics say he’s not targeting the government — he’s going after its opponents. Human rights activists and political opponents say the U.S.-backed Moïse has done little to check the rise of Haiti’s anarchic gangs, at least in part because their growing influence has appeared to serve the president’s interests.
With an apparent goal of becoming the strongman of the streets, Cherizier and members of his consolidated gang are extorting businesses, hijacking fuel trucks and kidnapping professionals and business owners for exorbitant ransoms as high as $1 million.
As he brings Port-au-Prince to its knees, Cherizier is also terrorizing poor neighborhoods where opposition to Moïse runs deep — potentially neutralizing any challenge to his party’s continued rule.
Barbecue expanded his turf through the alliance, controlling all of Port-au-Prince’s downtown and critical cross sections leading to the north and south, and the dense, opposition-dominated slum Cite Soleil that is now living a gang-fueled reign of terror.
Cherizier denies an alliance with Moïse. But in Cite Soleil, victims and human rights groups say G9 gang members have looted and burned down shacks and stalls, systematically raped women, killed at random, and dismembered or torched bodies.
When Cherizier’s men took to the streets in June, witnesses claimed to have seen them ride in the same armored vehicles used by the national police and special security forces. Justice Minister Lucmane Delile denounced the gangs and ordered the national police to pursue them; within hours, Moïse fired him.
Haiti has a tragic history of disasters. Will covid-19 be next?
Moïse’s office initially agreed to an interview but then did not respond. The president has denied ties to the gangs, which he has described as Haiti’s “own demons.” His government says it is seeking a disarmament accord with them.
“We prioritize dialogue, even in our fight with bandits and gangs,” Moïse said in March. “I am the president of all Haitians, the good and the bad.”
There’s a standing warrant against Cherizier for allegedly possessing illegal arms and failing to report for duty — the reason police gave for firing him last year — but it has not been served. Cherizier denies that his gangs have committed violence in the slums. He has not been charged in a 2018 massacre that left dozens dead in La Saline, or any other killings.
But for his long-suffering countrymen, Cherizier’s G9 is evoking the horrors of the Tontons Macoutes, the government-backed paramilitaries that terrorized Haiti for decades under dictator François “Papa Doc” Duvalier and his son, Jean-Claude.
“The government has said nothing about [Cherizier’s rise], and the international community has turned a blind eye,” said Pierre Espérance, director of Haiti’s National Human Rights Defense Network. “There is no rule of law anymore. The gangs are the new Macoutes. It feels like there is a manifest will to install a new dictatorship.”
Governments across Latin America have used the coronavirus to harass their opposition, delay or manipulate elections, and consolidate power, undermining democracy in a manner not seen in the region in decades.
The right-wing interim government in Bolivia is accused of unleashing an intensifying wave of repression against its political opposition. Critics say Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele is violating civil liberties with mass arrests of quarantine violators and gang members. Courts controlled by the authoritarian government of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro have replaced the heads of opposition parties amid a fresh wave of arrests of journalists and social leaders.
15 babies and children died in a fire at a group home in Haiti run by a U.S. church
“Coronavirus is the perfect excuse for a power grab and authoritarian measures to crack down on political opponents,” said Michael Shifter, president of the Inter-American Dialogue, a Washington-based think tank. “This is a regionwide trend, but the consequences are worse in the countries already facing the most dire situations.”
Moïse, 52, won the 2017 presidential election after a 14-month standoff over alleged fraud in a previous vote. Analysts say his base of support is thin amid allegations of government corruption in the petrodollars that flowed for years from Maduro’s Venezuela.
The former business executive was the target last year of protests by students and opposition groups that led to a three-month Peyi Lok, Creole for “country shutdown.”
Businesses were burned, hotels and restaurants shuttered, and thousands of Haitians left jobless. By January, the underpaid national police joined the protests, burning their own vehicles and blocking traffic on the capital’s main arteries.
Moïse has postponed legislative elections indefinitely. The opposition says his term ends in February, but he says he can stay in office a year beyond that.
“There’s no possibility of holding elections while he’s in power,” says Andre Michel, spokesman for an alliance of opposition parties. The opposition is calling for Moïse to resign and a transition government to be put in place.
U.S. officials have urged Moïse to call new elections. But critics say they’ve largely turned a blind eye to his government’s alleged links to the gangs because they value his support for the Trump administration’s hard-line policy against Venezuela’s Maduro.
Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) sent a letter to U.S. Ambassador Michele Sison in May denouncing what she called Cherizier’s “politically motivated” death squad.
“There is no real concern for the plight of the Haitians, whether they are being beaten and killed by the president of Haiti,” Waters told The Post. “As long as the president is in our pockets, everything is okay.”
David Mosby, head of the State Department’s Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs, met with Haitian police officials this month to discuss the wave of gang violence.
Sison called on “all of Haiti’s actors” to engage in dialogue.
“Rather than pointing fingers,” she told The Post, “our point is to encourage all actors . . . to think about the most vulnerable who continue to bear the brunt of these challenges.”
U.N. peacekeepers fathered, then abandoned, hundreds of children in Haiti: Report
Few nations are as vulnerable as Haiti. The poorest country in the Western Hemisphere has lumbered through decades of misery, finally shedding the yoke of the Duvaliers in the 1980s only to spiral into a gyre of lost potential and repeatedly failed efforts to lift its population out of dehumanizing poverty.
The 2010 earthquake that killed more than 200,000 Haitians and left 1.5 million homeless crystallized the country’s plight, bringing, for a time, an avalanche of international organizations and promises, finally, of transformative aid. But many of the charities have since departed, the transformation unrealized, leaving a mix of resentment and hopelessness as the country has teetered on the verge of anarchy.
Health analysts feared the coronavirus would devastate Haiti. Most believe numbers are higher than the official count of 7,810 infected and 192 dead, but the country’s relative isolation seems to have spared it the worst of the pandemic so far. Still, the outbreak has made chronically underfunded health care here worse — medical staff, lacking protective gear, have failed to show up for work, leaving hospitals operating shorthanded or closing altogether.
Rumors, particularly in rural areas, that symptomatic Haitians are being used as experiments for unproven vaccines have led some to avoid treatment. Doctors say parents are now rejecting regular vaccines for their children in alarming numbers.
“People fear they are being guinea pigs,” said William Pape, head of the government’s covid-19 task force.
The coronavirus crisis has opened a window of opportunity for Barbecue. As a police officer, Cherizier, whose nickname stems from his mother’s locally famous grilled chicken, allegedly led a feared gang that for years was involved in murder, rape, extortion and kidnapping.
Haiti, spared a major coronavirus outbreak so far, now a ‘tinderbox’ set to ‘explode’
While Haitians were locked down, he helped unify street gangs under the G9 Family and Allies umbrella. Gang members began rolling into anti-government hotbeds in sophisticated armored vehicles with automatic weapons and tear gas. The National Network for Defense of Human Rights and witnesses say homes were torched, weapons fired and at least 111 people killed.
Police say they are unable to explain why their vehicles appear to have been used in the operation. They say they are investigating.
In a narrow alley between ramshackle two-story dwellings, Cherizier paced back and forth, alternately shouting or laughing into a succession of cellphones rushed to him by a posse of eager-to-please youth.
He insisted he was not working for the government but to liberate the Haitian people.
“The bourgeoisie, the opposition, the government, they are the problem,” he said. “They call us gangs — they are the gangs! We’re defending the ghetto. It’s live or die here.”
The alliance pushed last month into Cite Soleil. It was here that Lenese Leo, 38, says she was caring for her 8-month-old daughter on July 12 when bullets slammed into their shanty. When the shooting stopped, she said, the infant lay on the floor, bleeding from the head. She hailed a motorcycle taxi to go the hospital, but the child died in her arms.
In Haiti, family members of gang victims often avoid reporting deaths, for fear of reprisal. But Leo and her partner have instead insisted on an autopsy and shared their grief on social media. She says they now get death threats.
“It’s never been like this,” she said. “I’ve lived here all my life. I have never lived in so much fear.”
Faiola reported from Miami.
Program helps new immigrants blend into their communities
Geralde Gabeau, who emigrated from Haiti 26 years ago, started the Boston-based Immigrant Family Services Institute.
Social justice warrior Geralde Gabeau has worked for over two decades advocating for and developing public health initiatives for immigrants, especially for women and children.
But while working on her doctorate degree in strategic leadership several years ago, Gabeau learned something that moved her in a new direction and, in turn, is impacting the lives of thousands of immigrants in the Boston area.
"I came across some articles on immigrant integration and how long it takes for a new immigrant to integrate into the U.S.," she said. "So that really pushed me to research more and realize that it can take five to 10 years for an immigrant to fully integrate and that time means a lot of challenges for families, a lot of barriers to accessibility. And if they are children, most of the time, they are left behind."
That understanding motivated Gabeau to create the Immigrant Family Services Institute five years ago to help reduce the challenges faced by Caribbean, African and Hispanic immigrants in the Boston area. Adopting a "village model," the nonprofit organization provides academic support for children, advocates for immigrant rights, and acts as a bridge for employment, health care and education services. With a staff of 15 and a team of 200 volunteers, IFSI serves about 5,000 clients.
"We embrace the concept of the whole family, which means that we work with children, parents and grandparents," said Gabeau, who emigrated from Haiti 26 years ago. "So when we serve the children, we also serve the family. We also do a lot of educational programming for adults regarding the different issues immigrants are facing. The idea is to facilitate the integration of immigrating to their communities a little faster than usual."
One Dorchester family turned to IFSI for help when the youngest child faced difficulties in school. Restless and unfocused, the 4-year-old girl was having trouble learning and following directions. A friend referred her mother, Alice Therlonge, to the program, and things began to turn around quickly. After enrolling in IFSI's after-school tutoring program, Carla, now 7, is learning to play the violin and thriving in her classes.
"I can tell you this program is a miracle for me," Therlonge said. "She's sitting down and doing the work. She's listening. She does everything they ask her to do. I think the music program really helped her. She really enjoys the violin. She can play 'Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star' by herself. Imagine that!"
Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, the organization has moved its tutoring programs online. "She's doing well, just like when she's in the classroom," Therlonge said. "But she does keep asking me when she can go back. She misses her friends."
IFSI also is supporting Boston-area immigrants by identifying social determinants of health and educating clients to make healthy choices. It recently received a grant from the American Heart Association's Social Impact Fund, which invests in enterprises in several cities that are helping to overcome social and economic barriers to health equity.
"When we talk about health, if you don't know what's going on around you, you're going to make poor choices," Gabeau said.
In light of the nation's recent civic uprising and Black Lives Matter movement, staff and volunteers also have been working with the organization's youth on channeling their emotions and educating them on the best ways to express their anger, sadness or fears. The children are encouraged to write, draw or play music.
"Since we are an immigrant organization, anything that affects the community through our Black and brown children affects us directly," Gabeau said.
"We invite them to create something new that could be used as a symbol in the fight against injustice and against racism so that it doesn't follow the same pattern that we are dealing with now in our society."
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