CHIMERE - Gangs of Port-Prince

• Prize
• Photographer
  Paolo Marchetti, Italy
• Date of Photograph
  online
• Website
  http://www.paolomarchetti.org

Jean-Bertrand Aristide, the Haitian president was from the early nineties until 2004, when he fled to South Africa. He was the populist, the showman with their speeches. But when they were no longer sufficient, began distributing weapons and organizing armed gangs loyal to him: born Chimeres.
These gangs have official powers, and in no time become a normal part of politics in Haiti during the country's history, an ordinary instrument for the control of the territory. Despite this, today the city is largely in the hands of armed gangs even if the connection with the political powers seem to be weaker than the years of terror established by Aristide.

Chimeras are still active today, a political tool of control, or simply made up of common criminals are gangs fighting a war between districts. To date, the company can count thousands of Haitian victims killed and a culture of violence as a fundamental social, that terrorizes a large part of the company honest and peaceful present in Haiti.

• Biography
  Paolo Marchetti was born in Italy, he has been working for eleven years in the Italian cinema and commercial industry as camera assistant, favoring the italian and foreigners cinematographers and began his photographic studies soon with particolar attention to political and anthropology issues. He attends several workshops with authoritative photojournalists, meeting frequently many educational initiatives in his country Paolo currently lives in Italy in the city of Rome and works as a freelance personal projects. In the last years he told stories far from home, creating reports in Brazil, Cuba, Europe, India, USA, Haiti, central Africa, central America realizing personal projects or collaborating with humanitarian organizations, but its long-term project, (main ongoing project), realizing it at home, in his country for three years now: The extreme right in Italy.