Thousands of Haitians mark annual pilgrimage far from a sacred waterfall surrounded by gangs

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP) — The massive crowd that would gather once a year at a revered waterfall in central Haiti where the faithful would splash in its sacred waters and rub their bodies with aromatic leaves was not there on Wednesday.

Powerful gangs in March attacked the town of Saut-d’Eau, whose 100-foot-long waterfall had for decades drawn thousands of Vodou and Christian faithful alike.

The town remains under gang control, preventing thousands from participating in the traditional annual pilgrimage meant to honor the Virgin Mary of Mount Carmel, closely associated with the Vodou goddess of Erzulie.

“Not going to Saut-d’Eau is terrible,” said Ti-Marck Ladouce. “That water is so fresh it just washes off all the evilness around you.”

Instead, Ladouce joined several thousand people who scrambled up a steep hill in a rural part of Haiti’s capital, Port-au-Prince, on Wednesday to honor Erzulie and the Virgin Mary of Mount Carmel at a small church that served as a substitute for the waterfall.

Like many, Ladouce thanked the Virgin Mary for keeping him and his family alive amid a surge of gang violence that has left at least 4,864 people dead from October to the end of June across Haiti, with hundreds of others kidnapped, raped and trafficked.

“People are praying to be saved,” he said.

Daniel Jean-Marcel opened his arms, closed his eyes and turned toward the sky as people around him lit candles, clutched rosaries and tried to push their way into the small church that could not hold the crowd gathered around it.

Jean-Marcel said he was giving thanks “for the grace of being able to continue living in Port-au-Prince,” where gang violence has displaced more than 1.3 million people in recent years.

“There is nowhere for us to go,” he said, adding that he and his family would remain in Haiti even as people continue to flee the ravaged country despite an immigration crackdown by the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump.

On Wednesday, U.S. authorities deported more than 100 Haitians to their homeland on the latest such flight.

Jacques Plédé, 87, was among those dressed in all white who gathered to give thanks in Port-au-Prince, of which 85% is now controlled by gangs.

He recalled helping build the small church but never thought it would serve as a substitute for the Saut-d’Eau waterfall.

“It’s very disgraceful for the country that the gangs are taking over one of the nicest waterfalls where people go to pray privately,” he said. “Life is not over. One day, if I’m still alive, I’ll make it back to Saut-d’Eau.”

On the morning of March 31, the Canaan gang led by a man known as “Jeff” attacked Saut-d’Eau. Police and a self-defense group repelled the attack, but the gang returned in early April with more than 500 men, prompting residents and authorities to flee, according to a new report from the U.N. human rights office.

Angry over the ongoing violence and what the United Nations described as “weak responses from authorities,” residents of Saut-d’Eau and other nearby communities in May and June took over a hydroelectric plant in protest, causing widespread power outages in Haiti’s capital and its central region.

On Wednesday, videos posted on social media showed Jeff Larose, leader of the Canaan gang, standing in the large church of Saut-d’Eau that traditionally hosted the annual Mass amid the three-day pilgrimage. The church was built under a presidential order after rumors began circulating in the mid-1800s that a local farmer had seen the Virgin Mary in a palm tree there.

Next to Larose stood Joseph Wilson, who goes by “Lanmo Sanjou” and is the leader of the 400 Mawozo gang, and Jimmy Chérizier, best known as “Barbecue" and one of the leaders of a powerful gang federation known as “ Viv Ansanm,” or “Living Together.”

The video showed them distributing money to some residents who gathered with their arms outstretched.

“They used to stop us from coming to Mount Carmel,” Barbecue said. “We are at the foot of our mother now.”

At one point, Lanmo Sanjou looked at the camera and said the Virgin Mary of Mount Carmel would give them the opportunity to perform more miracles.

The sounds of laughter and gurgling water were absent on Wednesday at the church in Haiti's chaotic capital where the substitute pilgrimage was underway.

Hugens Jean, 40, recalled how he and his family in previous years would visit Saut-d’Eau, where they would wash themselves in the waters and cook meals in the nearby woods.

“Today is a very special day,” he said. “I come here to pray for deliverance for my family and for the country that’s in the hands of gangs. One day, we need to be free from these systematic attacks. We don’t know who’s going to live today or who’s going to die tomorrow.”

Joane Durosier, a 60-year-old Vodou priestess known as a “mambo,” shared a similar lament.

Dressed in white with a rosary in hand, Durosier said she was praying for herself and her followers.

“A lot of people are suffering,” she said. “In a country like Haiti, everybody needs protection.”

Coto reported from San Juan, Puerto Rico.

Rosaries for sale hang from a vendor's stand at the entrance of the Mount Carmel Church during a Mass marking the feast day of Our Lady of Mount Carmel, in the Petion-ville neighborhood of Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Wednesday, July 16, 2025.(AP Photo/Odelyn Joseph)

Pilgrims attend a Mass celebrating the Feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel at the namesake church in the Pétion-Ville neighborhood of Port-au-Prince, Haiti, on Wednesday, July 16, 2025. (AP Photo/Odelyn Joseph)

Pilgrims pray during a Mass celebrating the Feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel at the namesake church in the Pétion-Ville neighborhood of Port-au-Prince, Haiti, on Wednesday, July 16, 2025. (AP Photo/Odelyn Joseph)

A cross-bearer leads a liturgical procession at the end of a Mass marking the Feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel at the namesake church in the Pétion-Ville neighborhood of Port-au-Prince, Haiti, on Wednesday, July 16, 2025. (AP Photo/Odelyn Joseph)

Pilgrims attend a Mass celebrating the Feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel at the namesake church in the Pétion-Ville neighborhood of Port-au-Prince, Haiti, on Wednesday, July 16, 2025. (AP Photo/Odelyn Joseph)

MEMPHIS, Tenn. (AP) — For 21 years, Steve Fowler and Sam Wilson have performed together in a band on Memphis’ renowned Beale Street. And for the past decade, the men have been neighbors on a quiet, leafy avenue.

But as of Thursday, they will no longer cast the same ballot despite living across the street from each other.

That’s because Tennessee’s Republican-controlled legislature redrew the congressional district of Memphis, which has long enjoyed its own Democratic-leaning U.S. House seat. Now, the city is split into three Republican-leaning districts, its majority-Black population sliced up and bound to mostly white, rural and conservative communities along lines that branch away from Fowler and Wilson’s East Memphis neighborhood.

A line runs down the middle of the street, placing Fowler in the 8th Congressional District, which runs hundreds of miles to central Tennessee across a dozen counties. Wilson is zoned for the 9th District, which extends across most of the state’s southern border before curving up to encompass the largely white and affluent Nashville suburbs.

“I think it’s horrible,” said Fowler, who is white. “This isn’t just going to be bad for Black folks in Memphis, but poor whites in these new districts also aren’t going to get services. How are any of these congressmen going to serve all these different counties?”

The redraw was sparked by a ruling from the conservative majority of the U.S. Supreme Court that may be a death knell for congressional representation of majority-Black Southern communities such as Memphis.

For 60 years, a provision of the landmark Voting Rights Act required mapmakers to prove they were not discriminating against racial minorities in how they drew districts, often leading to political boundaries that allowed some minority communities to vote for their preferred representative rather than having their vote diluted by white majorities surrounding them.

The rule had the greatest effect in Southern states, where neighboring Black and white communities remain highly polarized in partisan politics.

On April 29, the justices severely weakened that requirement, ruling that the way courts had handled it improperly injected racial matters into redistricting in violation of the U.S. Constitution. Republicans across the South immediately leaped at the chance to redraw their maps before the November elections to eliminate as many Democratic-held, majority-minority congressional seats as possible.

Tennessee’s legislature was the first in a GOP-controlled state to finalize a new map. But it is one of several Southern states — Alabama, Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi and South Carolina among them — engaged in a broader partisan redistricting competition sweeping the country.

Republicans have long complained that the Voting Rights Act prevented them from doing to Democratic, majority-Black districts what Democrats in states they control do to conservative-leaning, white and rural areas — scatter their voters for partisan gain. That is what Tennessee Republicans did in their initial congressional map in 2021 to the state’s other large reservoir of Democrats in Nashville, where they did not have to step gingerly because that city is majority white.

“Tennessee is a conservative state and our congressional delegation should reflect that,” said Republican state Sen. John Stevens, who shepherded the bill for a new map that made all nine congressional districts solidly Republican.

Wilson, the Memphis musician who is Black, was less distraught by the carving up of his neighborhood for partisan purposes. He saw the move as just another trial facing the city after a surge of federal agents sent by President Donald Trump to combat crime and amid narratives about Memphis' safety from neighboring suburbs and Republican state lawmakers.

“It’s a hustling community. We’re going to make ends meet for our families,” Wilson said. “The legacy of Memphis is music and our civil rights history,” he said, adding the two were intertwined. “Hard times mean you’re going to try and find your gift. That’s what we do here; music in Memphis is a way of life.”

The Memphis district predates the Voting Rights Act. For at least a century, well before Congress acted to protect minority voting rights, Tennessee has believed it made sense for its metropolis on the Mississippi River to have its own U.S. House district. But since that law was passed in 1965, anyone who tried to split up the district for partisan gain could be sued and have the maps thrown out. Now, legal experts say that is not much of a risk.

Nonetheless, Democrats and civil rights groups are suing to block the map. The symbolism is especially sharp as the city is home to the National Civil Rights Museum, built around the motel where the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in 1968. When the legislature passed the new maps, Democrats and protesters shouted “hands off Memphis!” and waved signs accusing Republicans of bringing back Jim Crow.

“Memphis is not just any city; it holds a central place in the national story of our quest for racial justice in this country and how, over time, we have increasingly achieved civil, voting, and economic rights for all Americans,” said Eric Holder, a former U.S. attorney general who chairs the National Democratic Redistricting Committee. “Black citizens protested, marched and died there for the right to vote.”

Memphis has faced dual stories in recent years. Billions of dollars in private investment and federal dollars have flooded into the area in recent years, but many local businesses still express concerns about a lagging regional economy.

Residents who spoke with The Associated Press expressed concerns about safety and public services but bristled at stereotypes about rampant crime. The twin stories are often on display in the river city, where pothole-filled streets run from empty storefronts to ornate mansion-filled neighborhoods and leafy college campuses only blocks away.

The city has long had a contentious relationship with the rest of the state, which voted for Trump in 2024 by a roughly 2-1 margin.

The conservative legislature in Nashville has clashed repeatedly with Memphis and accused its leaders of broad mismanagement. The legislature passed a law blocking many police overhaul efforts in Memphis that were put in place after the death of Tyre Nichols, an unarmed Black man, at the hands of city officers in 2023. It passed another measure seizing control of Memphis’ airport board and those of other cities across the state, and gave the state attorney general, also a Republican, the power to remove Memphis' elected district attorney.

“The state legislature is trying to take it over,” said U.S. Rep. Steve Cohen, the white Democrat who still represents the city in Congress until the new lines kick in after the midterms. “And that’s absurd. It was all partially because it’s a majority Black city.”

Thomas Goodman, a politics and law professor at Rhodes College in Memphis, notes that the new congressional districts may lead to greater friction over who receives attention — and funding — from lawmakers. Memphis residents will soon share districts with Republican towns with starkly different economies, geographies and demographics. Whoever holds those congressional seats will have an incentive to pay attention to those voters and not to Memphis’ population.

“It would not only deprive Black Tennesseans of proper representation,” Goodman said. “These changes also break up the city of Memphis as an entity into multiple districts, thereby removing a dedicated agent in government who knows the people, who understands their concerns and can speak for them and deliver on behalf of their interests and desires.”

Chris Wiley’s house sits in what was, before this week, a quiet street in Midtown Memphis dotted with duplexes, tidy lawns and sports fields. Now his neighborhood is carved apart at the intersection of three congressional districts. That is not surprising, he said, because “Tennessee is all about the dollar” rather than residents.

“Memphis is majority Black, so if you mess with that, what’s the point of even voting in Tennessee?” said Wiley, a 29-year-old sports stadium worker who is Black. “Whatever the congressional numbers, whatever that is, we don’t count on the scale as high, anyway.”

Associated Press writer Nicholas Riccardi in Denver and AP videojournalist Sophie Bates contributed to this report.

Rep. Steve Cohen, D-Tenn., of Memphis stands outside a House hearing room during a special session of the state legislature to redraw U.S. Congressional voting maps Wednesday, May 6, 2026, in Nashville, Tenn. (AP Photo/George Walker IV)

A person leaves the state Capitol after a special session of the state legislature to redraw U.S. Congressional voting maps Thursday, May 7, 2026, in Nashville, Tenn. (AP Photo/George Walker IV)

Steve Fowler, a Beale Street musician whose street was bisected by Tennessee's new congressional districts, strums the guitar in his front yard on Thursday, May 7, 2026, in Memphis, Tenn. (AP Photo/Sophie Bates)

Steve Fowler, left, and Sam Wilson, right, rehearse with their band on Thursday, May 7, 2026, in Memphis, Tenn. (AP Photo/Sophie Bates)

A portion of Shotwell Street in Memphis, Tenn., that is now a dividing line between two newly-redrawn congressional districts, is seen Thursday, May 7, 2026, in Memphis, Tenn. (AP Photo/Sophie Bates)