The founder of the first Haitian gang in Montreal lifts the veil on the racism and humiliations at the origin of its creation, while the metropolis is experiencing a new rise in violence between criminal clans.
“We were a group of friends, we played basketball, but we had to defend ourselves,” says Maxime Aurélien, head of the Bélangers during the 1980s, in an interview.
Made up of about twenty young Haitians, his gang was referred to in several media in 1979 as the very first “street gang” in Montreal, and often portrayed as a criminal organization.
However, the ex-chief and his co-author, the associate professor of geography at Concordia University Ted Rutland, evoke a more complex reality in their book, “It was necessary to defend oneself”.
Joel Lemay / QMI Agency
Maxime Aurélien, first leader of the Haitian gang “Les Bélanger”, and Ted Rutland, associate professor at Concordia, have been working on writing their book for 3 years.
What united these sons of immigrants in their early days was a willingness to fight back against racists and skinheads who preyed on black people, they write. And there were many of them.
“When we were walking in the street, people were shouting at us “dirty n*****”, “boula boula”, “go back to your country”. There were clubs with “no n*****” posters at the entrance”, describes Maxime Aurélien, to name just these examples.
It was barely 40 years ago. And after years of taking insults and racism without flinching, the Belangers have begun to use strength in numbers to respond violently to racist attacks.
Self-defense
“It was a self-defense group, maintains Ted Rutland, who has taken an interest in gangs in speeches on public safety. Often white violence isn’t seen as a crime, but if black people fight back, that’s one.”
According to their story, we also understand that the Bélangers are far from the collective imagination of today’s “street gangs”, motivated by the lure of profit and armed to the teeth.
Photo courtesy of Inkwell Memory
Maxime Aurélien (left), leader of the Bélangers, and his friend Patrick in the 1980s, in Montreal.
The authors do not hide that several members have nevertheless been involved in burglaries, shoplifting and pimping.
But these were individual actions motivated by poverty and lack of work opportunities, not the primary purpose of their group, they argue.
A bend
The tone changed towards the end of the 1980s, when Ducarme Joseph, a member of the gang who dreamed of becoming “a real mafia gangster”, gained influence.
The future boss will rename Les Bélanger by the name of “Terrorist”, and will rise in the criminal ranks before dying assassinated in 2014.
Photo courtesy of Inkwell Memory
Maxime Aurélien (left) and the future boss Ducarme Joseph, in a car borrowed from Montreal North.
“Ducarme had higher ambitions than just flying. I did not see myself in his direction, ”says Maxime Aurélien, who is gradually abandoning the group.
He is also increasingly chilled by his gang’s attacks directed not at white racists, but at Jamaican or even Haitian gangs.
He fell into crack himself and was convicted a dozen times – mostly for bank fraud – for a total of four years in prison, before getting back on his feet.
Today, the veteran, an ex-gang member who does not deny his past, advises the new generation to avoid prison at all costs.
“I try to make them understand that they don’t have a criminal record. As soon as you have one, it’s over… Nobody hires you, I almost went crazy”, drops the energetic 57-year-old man, met in his hairdressing salon paired with a pawnshop of east of Montreal.
We had to defend ourselves will be released by Mémoire d’encrier on May 8.
Extracts from the book
On the Bélanger Park affair
“During the intervention, the police repeatedly called the group of Haitians made up of soccer players a ‘gang’. […]. This term, like so many others used by agents, was nonsense. The members of the “gang” had a common interest in sport, so they constituted a team and not a “gang”.
On the responses in the subway
“Having defended ourselves on the subway had suddenly released a feeling of frustration that we had suppressed all these years and that we no longer felt. […] Without having to say it out loud, we had made a pact: we would no longer accept racist insults and threats during our outings.
On the objective of the Belangers
“For those of us who paid the rent by resorting to illegal acts, it was something we did alone or in small groups. We realized them in parallel in order to be able to make our lives together, but it was not the ultimate goal of our group. We were a gang only when we defended ourselves and when we went out together.
On pimping
“Pimping, at least the kind of pimping my friends had learned to practice, lent itself more to men who knew how to attract women. […] Their relationship with sex workers often began with the appearance of a romantic relationship, or even an actual romance. […] They spent their nights around the Main, talking to sex workers on the street, trying to convince those who didn’t yet have pimps to work with them.
On double standards
“It’s interesting when you think about it: nobody seemed to care about groups of white people, including white gangs that were going after us. There were no scandalous articles in the newspapers about them. No special police campaign to eliminate them.”
On the trajectories of Maxime and Ducarme
“If the tragic end that Ducarme experienced is the logical consequence of the choices he made in the past, Maxime’s current lifestyle is the fruit of his own choices. If he could start from scratch, would Maxime have made changes in his life? He would have liked to spend more time on the school benches than in prison.