Haitian peasant Jean Claude Philippe, known as Janklod, was killed on April 30 during a massacre in rural Ti Rivyè, Haiti.
“The day we were leaving Haiti, Janklod’s eyes filled with tears, he held my hand and said: ‘Don’t forget me, okay? Because this will be the last time I’ll be able to see you.’ That really touched me… It’s crazy. It hurt my heart to know that he was right.”
Deangelo Assis’ voice breaks at the end of his story. The audio of the Santa Catarina peasant is abruptly interrupted. He only finds the strength to finish in writing. “I loved him. My greatest teacher.”
It was late afternoon on Friday, May 2, and the group of former members of the Dessalines Brigade of internationalist solidarity of Via Campesina in Haiti was trying to deal with a message that had just been sent, in the local language of the Caribbean island: “Bandits killed Janklod and burned many in Dofouno. My father’s and my aunt’s houses were burned down. It’s scary.”
Jean Claude Philippe, our Janklod, is dead. He would have turned 61 on June 23. A father of five, a member of the peasant organization Tèt Kole Ti Peyizan Ayisyen, he was responsible for the training center that welcomed internationalist brigade members from various regions of Brazil and South America between 2009 and 2015.
“He took care of us like a father takes care of his son,” said Oelinton Souza, from Rondônia. “He was essential for the existence of the Brigade,” added José Luís Patrola, from Rio Grande do Sul. “He may have even saved our lives a few times.”
Little by little, new messages arrived from Dofouno, a neighborhood in the city of Ti Rivyè, in the department of Latibonit, central Haiti, which is home to a large part of the country’s rice fields.
“Great catastrophe. We lost many friends. Bandits killed many of us and burned all the houses in Ti Rivyè. They destroyed everything they found in their path.”
Videos began to circulate. In one of them, a huge chain of people were swimming and walking across the river that gives the place its name (in Kreyòl, Ti Rivyè means Little River), in a desperate attempt to escape to the neighboring town of Verèt.
Another, terrifying, recorded peasant houses in flames. At least eleven bodies lay in the shared yard surrounded by crops. Burned, mutilated, with blood still running down the dirt floor. The mourning song sung by the author of the film was interrupted by a burst of gunshots and screams that echoed nearby.
In the last video, we discovered how Janklod died. While the people of Dofouno rushed out of their homes upon learning that members of the Gran Gif gang were approaching after razing neighboring villages, he decided to stay. His older brother, who had a disability that prevented him from walking, would not be able to escape. He helped neighbors and friends as best he could before retreating to his brother’s house. That same day, April 30, the two were murdered during the massacre that claimed at least twenty other lives.
Images showed their bodies with signs of gunshots and partially charred, already in a state of decomposition. It took a few days for a brief truce to allow residents to collect and bury their dead.
In another photo, an austere brown coffin is balanced on the head by two men in one of the streets of the Dofouno neighborhood. This is the last record we will have of Janklod, who was buried minutes later. Fear of further attacks prevented any wake or tribute from being held.
“It was just me and Janklod in the Center, in Dofouno, and a companion who was going to travel had forgotten his passport,” recalls firefighter Livia Morena, from Minas Gerais.
“We left in a hurry, on the motorcycle. He wanted me to ride the motorcycle, so I could gain experience. We were both a little tense, but he was always encouraging me. On the roads in Haiti there are those trucks nicknamed Diyab (devil, in the local language). Halfway through the trip, I was feeling more confident, when I saw one up ahead. Janklod started talking and I, wearing a helmet, didn’t hear. When the Diyab passed, we were on top of a bridge, we almost lost our balance and fell into the river. ‘Stop now,’ Janklod shouted at me.”
“’You don’t mess with the Devil, girl. When you see one, you have to stop and let him pass. If we die here, what will happen to your people in Brazil?’ Nervous, I didn’t want to ride anymore. He insisted and rode on the back of my seat until the end of the trip. He taught me about care, responsibility and trust in a single episode.”
Janklod, our host, teacher, and protector. We could not do for him what he did for us.
His death, however, is not an isolated case. It reflects the chaotic situation in Haiti, to the point that the Secretary General of the United Nations in the country herself warned of the imminent risk of “no return”.
During a UN Security Council meeting a few days before the massacre in Dofouno, María Isabel Salvador reported that between February and March of this year alone, 1,086 people were killed, 383 were injured, and around 60,000 were forcibly displaced – and since last December, there have been more than 1 million displaced people. Insecurity has closed 39 health facilities and more than 900 schools in Port-au-Prince alone. “As gang violence continues to spread to new areas of the country, Haitians are experiencing increasing levels of vulnerability and growing skepticism about the state’s ability to respond to their needs,” she denounced.
Gran Grif , the armed group responsible for the massacre in Dofouno, is the largest gang in Latiboniti state. Since 2022, it has been responsible for 80% of reported civilian deaths in the region, as well as attacks on the Haitian National Police (HNP) and the National Security Support Mission in Haiti (MSS), which was approved by the UN Security Council in October 2023. A Kenyan MSS officer was killed by gang members in February 2025, according to information from the US embassy in the country.
Added to this are G9, G-Pep, 400 Mawozo, 5 seconds, Ti Mak, Baz Galil, Vilaj de Dye, Vitelhomme, Viv Ansanm – some of the many armed groups responsible for the wave of kidnappings, rapes, robberies, and deaths that culminated in the assassination of Haiti’s last elected president, Jovenel Moïse, in July 2021, plunging the country into a spiral of violence and political instability that continues to this day.
It is worth noting that the United Nations has identified more than 500,000 weapons in circulation on the island, even though there is not a single weapons factory in its entire territory. More than 1,700 kilometers of coastline are monitored by less than 200 officers and a single patrol vessel in operation. The US Drug Enforcement Agency estimates that one-fifth of all Colombian cocaine consumed in the US passes through Haiti.
“The situation in Haiti is extremely serious. The only people who are safe are the political leaders and members of the national bourgeoisie and the international community who are still in the country,” says Wosnel Jean Baptiste, a member of the national executive of Tèt Kole Ti Peyizan Ayisyen. “The ones who are suffering are the peasants. They plant crops and the gangs seize their crops. They steal their cattle, pigs, goats and chickens. The little that the peasants produce and raise is being taken by force by the bandits.”
Wosnel points out that the main highways that cross the country are under the control of gangs and that the blockade promoted by the United States government is not working. The armed groups continue to be financed and supplied by accomplices living in US, Jamaican and Dominican territory.
For him, the solution to the crisis requires a joint effort between Haitian society and the international community that is capable of, on the one hand, putting pressure on the end of the channels of foreign financing and outflows for Haitian gangs, and, on the other, focusing efforts on combating the hunger that is ravaging the country. In Wosnel’s opinion, it is more than urgent to provide the Haitian people with security and stability to resolve their problems in a sovereign manner. “Without this, the country will end once and for all,” he says.
And one of the paths to reclaiming this sovereignty involves repairing the independence debt, imposed by France in 1825, which required the payment of 150 million francs from the former colonized countries. In 2022, the US newspaper The New York Times estimated that these payments “cost Haiti’s economic development between $21 billion and USD 115 billion in losses over two centuries, or between one and eight times the country’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in 2020.”
Furthermore, Brazil must also take responsibility for the damage caused after the fateful visit of the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH), led by the Brazilian army between 2004 and 2017. With a long history of violence, corruption, spread of diseases and violation of human rights, the military and generals sent by the Brazilian government managed to make the country even more fragile in its public security and institutions than before their arrival.
Precisely because of this perverse history, Brazilian support should avoid any type of military deployment, focusing instead on actions aimed at strengthening the Haitian National Police (PNH) through non-military civil cooperation that promotes specialized training, infrastructure improvements, and the collection and analysis of data on public security. As an alternative to the involvement of the army or police, this cooperation could be led by civil society organizations that are experts in the subject, such as the Security Observatory Network or the Fogo Cruzado Institute, for example.
Haiti was the birthplace of the anti-colonialist and anti-racist struggle in the Americas. Today, popular sovereignty and solidarity are needed to overcome the deep crisis facing it. Janklod, with his life dedicated to hard work and caring for others, sets an example for us.
“When I went to our old training center in Ti Rivyè, I tried to warn Janklod, but I no longer had his contact details,” said Rio Grande do Sul firefighter Paulo Almeida, recalling one of his last visits to Dofouno.
“When I arrived, I walked around the courtyard, kitchen, and living quarters. I looked out the bedroom window and there was the MST flag and a painting by Sebastião Salgado, a carefully preserved memory. It was a strange feeling. I was happy to be back where I had lived the most intense period of my life, and sad to see it abandoned. When Janklod was told I was there, he came running. When he saw me, his eyes already filled with tears, he hugged me. We cried for a while. That was a true friendship, the kind we will never forget.”
This was Paulo’s final hug to Janklod. And it was the last hug we all gave. We will never forget it.
This article was translated by Peoples Dispatch
