All-Female Focus Group
This focus group is not a complete transcription. It is a detailed narrative summary with many quotes.
PARTICPANTS
- #1, female, 55 years-old, Teacher, Martissant, 3 children, 11th grade
- #2, female, 34 years-old, Student, Site Soley, 1 child, 11th grade
- #3, female, 27 years-old, Student, Site Soley, 0 children, 11th grade
- #4, female, 26 years-old, Student, Martissant, 0 children, 11th grade
- #5, female, 35 years-old, Student, Site Soley, 1 child, Univ edu.
- #6, female, 28 years-old, Student, Site Soley, 0 children, Univ edu.
Tim: Explains why we are recording the focus group, that no one will be identified, that’s why we use numbers. Each person is assigned a number. The information is not for newspaper, but rather two professors who study conflict in developing countries with the objective of helping find solutions to problems…
Stephanie: Reiterates… explains that they can feel free to talk.
Everyone goes around the room and briefly introduces themselves.
Stephanie: Asks what type of groups they have in the neighborhoods,
They don’t understand.
Tim: Groups that are violent (not what I should have said)
Stephanie: They can be violent or not…
Tim: They don’t need to be violent. For example, you have brigad…
#5: Mumbling… Around my neighborhood, we have ‘The Men (Myseu) of Grand Ravine.’
Tim & Stephanie: We don’t understand.
Richard, that’s a place.
Stephanie: Yes, but are they calling the group that? It’s a name for the group?
#5: ‘They call the group gang that…. A group of young men.
Tim: They’re really a gang, not a brigad?
#5: Yes.
#6: Group Grand Ravine, I live in Martissant, they cause the most problems….
Murrielle: what do they do to serve the neighborhood?
#6: They don’t really serve. They destroy us…
Tim: Let me ask a question, are gang and baz the same thing?
#6: That’s going to depend… Gang is there to do what’s bad… Baz can do both. It can be there, can do what’s good. Can do both, good and bad.
Tim: Baz has a political aspect?
#6: She says that baz definitely has an aspect politic.
Tim: Eh gang?
#6: Gang, she says, “I can’t say much, I don’t know … they’re just there to commit crimes.”
Richard: Says a gang can refer to itself as a baz, that if you have 5 or 6 people, you have a baz. Baz can be a gang. Talks about Sink-San-Neuf (509), name of a baz in his neighborhood that shot someone the other day, the guy who did the shooting was part of the baz. I think his point is that the baz itself isn’t necessarily bad, but it has bad guys in it. Goes on to discuss how baz is a fraternite of any type.
#4: We have a baz in my neighborhood call Bon Sans (Good Sense). She’s from Site Soley, Bwa Neuf (Bo Jedria sp?). They sometimes fight one neighborhood against the other. Sometimes people in the neighborhood are victims (in the sense of causalities not combatants).
Stephane asks if baz and gang are the same thing. #4 says, “A gang makes a baz.” Stephanie then asks if all gangs are baz… are gangs. We see this discussed in the men’s focus group. A gang is a baz, but a baz is not necessarily a gang. #4 obviously knows this but is having a little trouble articulating. In fact, as will be seen below, shortly, and as I discuss in a note, this whole issue gets rather tangled up.
#4: She says, ‘they’re not that big a problem for us, except when they fight, then one zone can become a ‘victim’, the other neighborhood can become a victim too.’
Tim: ‘Ok, so they fight… But what do they do, what kind of work?’
#4: ‘They sometimes clean the neighborhood.’
When I ask if they commit crimes in the neighborhood, #4 says she can’t say, but that they sometimes fight with the other baz. Then I ask if baz from other neighborhoods come to steal in their neighborhood. She says that sometimes they come hunting for someone in a baz, and they hurt someone else, (someone not in the baz, not the intended victim).
Richard repeats the question, clarifies, asks if the baz of the neighborhood preys on the people in the same neighborhood.
#4: “Sometimes someone is mistreating people in the neighborhood and the baz put a stop to it.”
#1: Where she lives there is a baz rara (dance troop/trumpet band,) of women and a baz–that she does not specify is male but soon verify is all male–that if you come from some other area and come to cause problems, “they’ll receive you the way you come.” (from the expression, “the way you come is the way we receive you”, an English version of, “you get what you ask for.”, or “you get treated the way you treat people.”) “But themselves, they never cause problems on the block.” She not talking about the female rara group, although very interesting she mentioned them first. She’s talking about a predominantly male baz. I ask if they have a gang in her neighborhood and she says no. Richard asks for the name of the baz, and she repeats that there is a baz of women, the rara, and one of men, that is not rara. The female baz rara is really a ‘rara group’, they make music. Only women. They have trumpets. When I ask if they defend people too. She refers to the men. Then Richard asks and she says yes, as if both women and men baz defend the neighborhood, but it’s really not clear. In fact, seems much clearer throughout that the women are only about rara. What is clear is that the men have their baz, and she does not consider it a gang.
Stephanie asks if baz is good.
#1: “The reason I say baz is good is because I have not heard of any of them doing something they are not supposed to. Only that if someone comes from another area, for example Delmas 2 (a known violent neighborhood) comes, they’re looking for a fight, they fight among themselves.”
Tim: Asks if they have a lot thieves in her neighborhood.
#1: I don’t know.
Tim: Asks if they have a lot of stealing in her neighborhood, a lot people who are victims.
#1: “Like I said… when they come from Delmas 2 they come to ‘fe zak’ (literal do something criminal), apart from that, people in the neighborhood, they’re relaxed (poze).
Tim: OK, when people come from Delmas 2, baz helps? Richard gets into it, asks her to clarify that the baz defends the neighborhood, which she confirms.
Tim: Asks what the leaders of these baz do.
#1: ‘They have a school in the morning and the evening for both adults and for children. At the moment the school is not functioning. Since 2018 it’s stopped.’
I ask about the age of the men in the baz.
#1: ‘Young men. The youngest could have 26 or 28 or 27 years of age. When I ask about the oldest, she can’t say but as much not 50 years old…
Tim: I ask about the women in the rara.
#1: She begins saying they are very young, but then, “The oldest is 30 or 32 years of age.” They do have children. When I ask, she doesn’t think that any do not have children.
#1: She starts talking about her group, its catholic… She’s going to ask us about assisting them. We cut her off.
#2: She lives in )inaudible), there are young men and young women mixed up with adults who look out for the area, clean up. Then she talks about people coming from other areas do things. She talks about them stopping cars coming from the airport, and stealing from them. (a common crime. I was even reading some numbers on it the other day). The group in her neighborhood is trying to stop that from happening.
Stephanie asks how they call the group.
#2: She says they don’t have name… They try to create activities among themselves.
We ask how you would call the group, what type is it, she struggles, Richard offers “Neighborhood Committee” and she repeats it and says, exactly.
Stephanie asks if they have a leader. She doesn’t know. We ask about the age. She puts them at about 25-26 years of age and older.
#3: She’s from Bwa Neuf. She mentions baz Bon Sans. They clean the neighborhood. They control the neighborhood. They don’t let young women wonder around at night. If a young woman is in the street they ask what she’s doing out. They protect the area from thieves. She says that when there is a war (she uses the terms “Guerre” and this term is used often) they have never been victims.
Stephanie asks if gang and baz are the same and she says no, she says gangs are the biggest criminals. A baz is people in the area pulling together (she uses the extremely common Haitian phrase, “tet ansanm” heads together). But gangs do things they are not supposed to.
Stephanie asks if her neighborhood has a gang and she says no.
Tim: I ask about “wars”, what type of wars.
#3: She says, like when Proje enter into Bwa Neuf, meaning invades. People are sometimes victims, when they shoot.
Tim: I ask who they are shooting at and she says, people like themselves. People at the other baz.
Stephanie says, ‘so it’s baz a baz’ and she repeats the phrase in the affirmative and then Stephanie says, “But you don’t call them gang.” And she says, “No. I don’t call them gangs.”
Tim: I ask where they find money
#3: Someone on top gives them money.
Richard: If a baz is shooting at another baz, I don’t see the difference between that and two gangs shooting at each other…
Tim: I ask well if baz protects you, what does a gang do?
She explains that gangs are engaged in the worst things. They do things they are not supposed to. Baz will protect people…. Richard pursues it and she insists they’re not the same, that gangs do bad.
Tim: I ask if when there is shooting, ‘when there is “war” women are there, involved?’ She says no. I then ask if there are women in the baz and she says, “yes, there are women in the baz.”
Tim: But then I ask about gangs in her neighborhood having women, which confuses her a little because she said they don’t have gangs….
Jackly starts to talk about women serving as Antenna and carrying arms. Grand Ravine has gangs used as antennas. They will assist stealing a moto, act as client. Everywhere in Haiti has a baz… He talks about how they usually don’t rob people in their neighborhood, but that Grand Ravine as so “degenerated” that they search people in their own neighborhood. (Note that Haitians always use the word “fouye” for rob, in all the focus groups and in general that’s the word for robbed. It literally means search and is also used in casual reference to looking for something. You can say, ‘fouye my bookbag to see if I have a pen.’ And that’s what they do when they rob, they search a person’s pockets “fouye poche li” or they search cars, “fouye machinn” meaning they stop the cars, make the passengers get out and search the car. Just like police, they do it with roadblocks in crossroads or on pedestrian pathways). “In Bwa Neuf, if you go there they might fouye you, but if you know someone important, you say who you’re going to see and they’ll give you your money, phone and stuff back. They site a particular pastor who it is good to know. But in general, if you know someone….Pastor Elel.“
#4: “He’s not in the baz, but he has respect…” “As long as you have a reference in the area, you’re ok…” “If they don’t know who you are, they’re frustrated… they think you might be an antenna for another baz who has come to spy…” (note that whenever I write “antenna,” they are using the word, anten, literally antenna in English but meaning scout or spy).
Everyone, including Richard and Stephanie and Murielle, talk about a guy who was killed. A journalist. It was a big case. He frequented Gran Ravine. They all knew him in the area. The gang there in Gran Ravine told him not to take photos. He did it anyway. They took his laptop one day. When they saw that he had the photos, they killed him (rache li). It happened less than 2 years ago. They didn’t find his body.
One woman says that after they rache him (butchered him), “They buried him.” But #4 says, “No, in the katye popile (neighborhoods) they don’t bury people, they take them somewhere and dump the body.
#4: “You know what happens, they don’t take the time to bury you. They could burn you. Take you somewhere and let the animals finish with you. But they’re not going to take time to bury you.”
In what area? someone asks. Others respond, “Site Soley.”
#4: “All the neighborhoods have a place they call mang, where they throw bodies.”
Gary calls her on it, pointing out that’s the word for mangroves at the side of the sea. And it is. And he says Site Soley is by the sea. But she doesn’t seem aware of it –or that the fact that they pitch bodies into the mangroves, swampy areas where people do not go, might be the origin of the word–and insists that “mang” means a place where they dump bodies.
Stephanie asks #5 if the gang does more good or more bad?
Tim: “but do they do any good?”
#5: Sometimes they do good, sometimes they’re not good because people in the area suffer for the zak (crimes against other) they do in other baz… Like if Martissant has a baz in Grand Ravine, they’re fighting with the baz in 2nd Avenue, you, you’re from Martissant, you go out, because you are a young man from that neighborhood, and they’re starting to mess with women too, you can get shot when you go into the other neighborhood. And vice versa…. If you are from 2eme Avenue and you go into Grand Ravine same thing can happen…they’ll shoot you.
Tim: You mention women, they shoot women too?
#5: She says there are sometimes women with relations with men in both baz and if they come to see you as a traitor (she uses work “tret”) they’ll kill you too.
Tim: I ask specifically, if there is a war, and they see a woman who they know is in the other baz, will they shoot that woman.
#4: No.
Tim: Even if they come into the other area?
#4: No. they won’t do that.
Stephanie calls on #6, and she asks again, do you think baz does more good than bad?
Richard repeats the question again: does a gang do more bad than it does good.
#6: She begins slow, “I can say they do more bad than good. Sometimes they are in altercations with other areas and people can become victim” ….
Tim: I ask if baz ever does any good.
#6: “Yes, of course, they sometimes go good.”
Stephanie asks what good do they do?
#6: ‘That depends on the way they think (their “conception”), ok…..’ I want to interpret what she says next as, “A gang can be embedded inside of the baz, it comes from inside the baz,” but what she actually says is the other way around, “A gang can have a baz inside it” (note that this is in direct contrast to what #2 in the Male Gang/Baz focus group said) and then she repeats it, “inside the gang, a baz can come out of it, because a gang has a cartel, that is to say an association (as a noun), that has a couple people it dispatches to go out and check on the neighborhood for the gang.”
[something interesting here, semantically, is in reflecting the guy in the male focus group who made the point that the gang is embedded in the baz, he actually began saying what she said, that the baz can be inside the gang, rather than the gang inside the baz. The guy in the other focus group said the exact same thing, but then switched to saying that the gang was embedded in the baz. It’s an interesting twist because it seems to suggest, as she is literally saying, that the gang actually creates the baz, as a type of cover or insulation. Which is exactly what the men were saying elsewhere when the talk about doing things for the population to use them as a shield. But again, that’s not what the #2 said. It came off more like a mistake and he said very clearly that ‘where there is a gang, there is a baz. But a baz does not necessarily have a gang in it.’].
#6: “So a person can say, ‘we have a baz’ and we have a baz too and that depends on his conception. He could take the baz and say, we’re going to clean the neighborhood, where going to keep look out (for bad guys/provide security), we’re going to help the youth advance (meaning help them in school). They make a sort of Community (I think she means, ‘Community Committee’, as with the other woman, #2, who had latched onto the word before). But they just give it the name baz. But there are also those who make a baz just to help their own interests. To just do what’s bad ” What she says next is not quite clear. I think she says, “you can’t just say, ‘that baz is good’, you gotta look at what they do. Do they do good things or is it just a gang that sends people to motivate people for their own interests.”
Tim: I ask what she means, “they send people to ‘motivate.’”?
She talks about a time that the guys in her area were shooting at the guys on Delmas 2, she saw kids who were only 10 year-olds who were working as antenna for the big bosses. “They feed them, hunger isn’t sweet (grangou pa dous, by which she means the kids are hungry and so its easy to lure them in with food) … tell them here is what I’m going to do for you, and use them as antenna. It’s these children that tomorrow they will have eventually put a gun in their hand….” “They corrupt their spirits, give them guns….. they have to eat.“
Richard says, ‘motivating is usually a good thing,’ and she says, “No. Not in this sense…”
Someone cuts in, maybe Gary, and says he sometimes hears the big baz leaders on the radio saying they are doing “social affairs” meaning good things for the neighborhood, and she responds sarcastically, “Yeah!”.
Tim: I ask if the leaders have education. Or are they people who come from the street, who are extremely poor, with no education… who are criminals?
#6: She says, very metered, “People who have education do this,” in reference to the big bosses. They have capacity (meaning they have means and education). You (the poor child), who don’t know.. you just conform… You are in need, you have to accept.”
Tim: I ask #5 if she has the same experience, that children who are not very educated…
#5: Yes… they enter under the biggest bosses …
Tim: I ask if they are educated ones among them.
#5: Some are, some have started in school … but she says that for the most part if they had any education they wouldn’t get themselves involved.
Tim: I ask her about girls (children) being involved.
#5: “Yes, there are girls that enter under them. But it’s more boy who are in the baz.”
Tim: I ask #6 about girls being involved.
#6: There are girls. But most are boys.
Tim: Gary asks if I’m talking about leaders and I ask #6, “are there leaders that are women?”
#6: “I can’t say. I don’t know”
Talking is slow, responses are slow, they’re reticent.
Stephanie: says they should talk up, that we’re here to share information.
Tim: I say, let’s talk about women in the baz, in youth groups, in gangs…
Someone says something about committee.
Silence.
I ask #3—I think it is #3– if they have women in the baz who are educated.
#3: “No, the baz in my neighborhood doesn’t have women. The men have their wives and girlfriends. But I don’t see that they’re women in the baz.”
Tim: I ask, ‘now when they have something that happens, they help them out. Or they stay out it?’
#3: I don’t see the women involved in that around my neighborhood. I don’t see women at all…
Jackly comes in and tries to suggest how it happens that they would help out, he will make it clear again shortly that, no matter what these women have to say, from his experience, wives and girlfriends often help out. They have to.
#3: ‘I don’t see that around my neighborhood (that women help out the guys in the baz with their ‘work’).
Stephanie asks if the gang/baz defends the population. Jackly echoes her question. I say I think we covered that… and we should move onto politics. Stephanie asks if the gangs around their neighborhoods get into politics. Gary cuts in and asks if they claim they are giving people justice… For example they are fighting for justice, education, because they don’t have electricity. If there are people in their neighborhoods who claim that. (seems that’s what Stephanie had been trying to ask).
Stephanie calls on #4
#4: No, I’ve never heard of anything like that. I don’t know why they fight.
Richards asks, ‘what exactly is the question we’re asking here?’
#2: “I think… for example, they are on the radio or tv, a journalist is asking them questions, they say they are defending themselves, defending their interests.” This is basically a declaration of self-interest but she’s saying it almost as if she means they are declaring they are fighting for their neighborhood, that they are revolutionaries, when in in fact she seems to be saying inadvertently—or because perhaps that is what they do to, try to sound like Robin Hoods but in fact make selfish declarations–saying they come right out and say they’re fighting for their own interests, and she continues saying exactly that, “They say they are fighting for themselves, for their own interest. And there are those who also say that the country doesn’t offer any opportunities so they chose to enter (in a gang/crime) so they can take care of themselves. But it’s hard to believe that a gang in Haiti is defending the population…. Because they feel good to go and kidnap someone or do things…” [sic].
Jackly says, “I know a gang, but the population where he [sic] is doesn’t want you to call them gang because he imposes a series of actions that the state should do.” He’s talking about Fontamara and he starts describing a, “’big leader in the area who sends children to school, gives merchants loans, has the neighborhood cleaned. Now, if you give the guy a problem the population itself with rache you (butcher you). That’s in the zone Fontamara. He’s responsible for all of Fontamara. He’s a big leader in the area. He provides treated water. And he has guys in the street with guns in their hands… as if they were police. He has education, he saw the problems …”
Tim: I ask if the guy has ever run for office.
Jackly: No, he’s never run for office.
Tim: I ask if there are any guys in the gangs who have ever ran for an office.
Two subdued “no’s” from the women participants, and soon they’re explained that the politicians come to the baz.
#1: She explains how the baz will support candidates… but she says it very basically, matter-a-factly, and with little elaboration.
Richard talks about a friend of his in Belaire, near Fort National, who is like the guy in Fontamara. He sells treated water. He’s a big boss…He saved a lot of people after the earthquake, took them out from under the rubble. When there is a protest, he’s at the head of the protests with motos. He has a job with the State, so he’s protesting against himself, in that sense. He has a big position in the Social Security. People ask if he’s in a gang because he has all this. Big house, big stereo… People ask where did he get the money…. He has his good job in the State. One day Richard was passing a major anti-government protest in PV and he was in the front leading the protest.
Tim: I ask if the baz always participate in protests.
#1: She explains They don’t enter as a baz… but not as a unit.
Stephanie asks #3, #4, $5, #6, and all say no, “they do not enter a protest as a group (as in one political block), but as individuals…”
Jackly explains that when there is a protest, the opposition politicians send out the message to a leader in each area and then the leader mobilizes people. Jackly says he knows because he participates. The leader mobilizes people. Jackly will pass the message but he doesn’t participate. He says the guy at head of the protest could be a “militant”. …
Richard addresses me, ‘Tim, I have a problem, if this guy I was telling you about, he’s a nice guy, educated, if he can command a gang, if a gang follows what he says, then you can say he’s a gang leader.’
One of the women names the guy Richard is talking about….
I ask what they mean by a militant, and they say a political party leader.
I ask #1 about the rara group of women. I ask if the baz in her neighborhood engages in rara.
What ensues is a 5 to 10-minute exploration of a link between rara, ban and gangs or baz. Similar to baz, every area has a rara band. Some areas have several. Rara fight with other rara, they go after people, they go to protests as group. They seem to have a sponsor, a patron as the baz have politicians. But no one knows who the supporters are. And there is no direct correspondence between the rara and baz or gang. The best that can be said –i.e. what comes out of the conversation—is that the profile of rara band members and gang members is similar. Same backgrounds, education level. And of course, a gang member or baz member can be in a rara. But again, there is no direct correspondence between baz and gang and rara. Baz don’t have their own rara bands and neither do gangs. They are not the exact same people…. Jackly says the gang can use the rara, as they use other institutions. As for the female rara group seen early, seems to be an idiosyncrasy or a bias interpretation of what it is from #1. I’ve never heard of a female rara band before, not in the classic sense. But women do participate when rara are in the street.
Richard goes on about some guy in prison who was so tough they all referred to him as a gang. But this is basically in the sense that he’s so tough he’s a, ‘one man gang’. Then Richard is talking about another guy in prison, Ti Dominiken, who killed 200 to 300 people. When they arrested him, he turned on hundreds of people. At the prison he was a trustee, a major. This is all a major digression from the topic.
Stephanie brings us back on topic asking if there are girls in the gangs.
I point out we’ve been over this and try to shut the focus group down.
Stephanie persists. Asks if they serve as antenna, help in kidnapping.
#1: I don’t know anything about that. And she starts talking about how she was a teacher… and how everyone took their kids to the school… It’s not clear where she’s going with the topic.
Stephanie asks if they can give us any more insights into how women participate in gangs. She singles out #4:
#4: I’ve already said that I can’t say because I have never lived that life.
Stephanie: But you live in Site Soley, you have eyes… You don’t have to cite names.
#4: I never hear about it.
Tim: I ask, are there any gangs that are only women? Has anyone ever heard of that?
#4: “There’s a woman near our neighborhood who has been dominating us a lot. I haven’t experienced it but I’ve heard a lot about it.” The woman was in the baz in their area but something happened and she went over to the other baz in “Pwoje”, which might be Drouillard). “That means she’s a traitor.” #4 and #5 explain that she lives near the market and she knows most the people form their area, because she was in the baz in their area, she used to sell boz (marijuana), so she knows what everyone looks like. When she sees them, “she says there’s one.” …. [suggestion is that maybe she isn’t really pulling the trigger but telling others]. Then they talking about how people in their neighborhood made a route through the sugar cane to get to the market. Seems they made it to get around the other neighborhood and this woman. ‘But,” she says, “they discovered the route and a lot of people became victim.”
Stephanie asks exactly how, they shot them, they died, they beat them, they stole from them? When you say victim, what do you mean?
#4: “People had to use the route to go to work…There were several men who got shot when they discovered that route.” She talks about people in her area who used the route to go a factory where they had work. But they were ambushed. They would come and stand on top of some promontory and shoot at them when they saw them… “There were some women who where on the route so they could go to work in the factory and they were raped …”
Stephanie recaps it all to make sure we’re understanding, basically repeating what she said.
#4: She talks about the geography of the area and how we they go to Site Soley they have pass through the cane. She’s talking about the path. She gets very detailed, even citing names for a Rigol, and a ravine, how they had to make this path to get to work and to the market, “But if they see you, they’ll shoot after you.”
Stephanie asks if women really help the gang.
#4: “They help those like them…. for them (the gang, I think), they are traps.”
Stephanie turns to #5 and asks about women entering the baz, how they enter into the baz. Then she says, “And #4,” and asks the same question.
#4: She responds as if Stephanie has asked specifically about the woman she was talking about earlier, “She already lived around our neighborhood. She used to sell boz (marijuana)… She left our neighborhood… I don’t know what they did to her… She left the neighborhood and she went to live across from us… She turned into a trap… She entered in another baz. That means that as soon as she recognizes you, you’re a victim.”
Tim: Does anyone else know about a case like this, a woman doing this.
#4: Around our neighborhood, you don’t have women in the baz.
Tim: Does anyone else know about a case where women are involved in a war, shooting…
Stephanie singles out #3 and she says something inaudible.
Jackly says that, ‘if a guy is in a gang that their women are obligated to help them. Obligatory. The women hide their guns when the police are searching people… If they don’t help the men will beat them. They can even shoot them.’
Stephanie: How do people see women when their working with the gang. How do they see these women?
Gary echoes… saying women take guns from Port-au-Prince to Artibonite… How do you see this?
Women are mumbling, ‘I don’t know…’ , ‘we don’t have that in our neighborhood….’
Stephanie says, ‘it’s not if you have it or not, but rather how do you see it?’.
#3: Elaborates on how that’s, “a danger to society. Men do it… but there are other things a woman can do, like commerce, or some kind of work… She doesn’t have to be involved in that. If you decide to serve as an antenna, you’re a danger to society.”
#2: It’s not good…. And she says the same thing as the other woman, “It’s not good….You could choose another activity….
