The US embassy in Haiti stands alone on a desolate stretch of road, with wrecked cars and piles of trash visible in the distance. American soldiers on its roof scan the surrounding scrubland for threats at all hours, always vigilant to what their neighbors might do.
This area is controlled by Kraze Baryé, one of the brutal allied gangs in Haiti's capital city Port-au-Prince that have plunged the country into a crisis of lawlessness. Just last week, they attacked a nearby civilian neighborhood, driving about 150 people from their homes in the dark and shooting one man in the heart, according to an eyewitness.
An island inside gangland, the American diplomatic complex is an inversion of Haiti's relationship to the US itself; here, Kraze Baryé is the fearsome regional power, dominating neighborhoods Torcell, Tabarre and Delmas through which Americans must cross to reach their embassy.
This uneasy geography also means Kraze Baryé's leader, Vitel'homme Innocent, effectively stands between the rest of Haiti's gangs and Washington, whose capacity and appetite for military intervention in the country's blood-soaked chaos are the subject of constant speculation in the country.
The incongruously named Innocent is wanted for murder, kidnapping, rape and other crimes, and has a $2 million FBI bounty on his head for alleged involvement in the 2021 kidnapping of more than a dozen US and Canadian missionaries, including young children; and in a 2022 attack on the home of an elderly American couple, which left a woman dead and saw her husband taken hostage for ransom before his eventual release.
And yet despite Рor perhaps because of Рhis "Most Wanted" status, he seems interested in keeping Kraze Bary̩'s relationship with the embassy neighborly. "It's an honor when a country has its embassy in our vicinity, it's because it wants to collaborate with us," Innocent told CNN in his first interview with foreign press.
CNN's David Culver and Caitlin Hu spoke with the gang leader earlier this month to understand the balance of power in this part of the city, and what it would take for the gangs to lay down their arms. Read the full story here.
