http://www.guardian.co.tt/news/2015-01- ... ling-crimeDrug trade fuelling crimeCracks in our BordersMulti-media journalist Urvashi Tiwari-Ropnarine has been investigating T&T’s flourishing illegal drug trade for the past several weeks. That journey has taken her to several parts of the country for extensive interviews with several people involved in the trade, people who have been researching it and members of the law enforcement agencies charged with trying to prevent the activity. Today, she presents part one of a six-part series on the trade titled Cracks in Our Borders.
Trinidad and Tobago lies just north of the equator. It is a country known best for its pitch lake in La Brea and two-day carnival affair. It is also a major oil and gas exporter but did you know of its billion dollar drug industry?
Author and researcher Trevor Munroe, in his book Caribbean Security in the Age of Terror, wrote: “Close to 50 per cent of the cocaine introduced to this US$35 billion United States cocaine market in 2001 passed through the Caribbean.”
He documented then the increase in progressive crimes in T&T along with other transit hubs like Jamaica and the Dominican Republic.
Local author and drug researcher Darius Figueira, however, tells Guardian Media Limited (GML) that Trinidad has again been “switched on” as a major trans-shipment point.
The fact that T&T is pinned, almost strategically, between the producers and consumers of drugs in North America and Europe, and the fact that many of its borders are easily accessible, facilitates the flourishing billion dollar industry.
Figueira’s street research tells what authors have been documenting for decades: There is a known nexus between the narcotic trade and the gang culture associated with violence in T&T.
He is author of “Cocaine and Heroin Trafficking in the Caribbean,” a case study of the T&T drug trafficking trade.
Yet, despite his extensive research, Figueira says besides figures collected by law enforcement agencies from seizures, it is difficult to estimate the value of the drug trade in T&T.
“It varies. It’s dependent on the levels of interdiction present at any of the regional territories at any point in time,” he said.
The United Nations Drug Control Programme (UNDCP), however, estimates that US$50 billion is being laundered across the Caribbean annually.
According to the United Nations’ Office on Drugs and Crime’s Caribbean Drug Trends Report (2001-2002), the total drug GDP for the Caribbean was US$3.684 billion during that period.
Figueira says there is a price to pay for involvement in this activity, as blood is the preferred currency on T&T’s streets as rival gangs all try to squeeze into the closed community of the drug trade.
“They continue to be locked out, having little, continuously fighting over scraps,” Figueira told Guardian Media Limited (GML).
Link to violence
Gun violence and murders are the result of their activity.
According to gunpolicy.org’s country profile of T&T, in 1995 44 per cent of the 135 murders were committed with guns and in 2009, its latest tally, 72 per cent of the 506 murders were because of fatal shootings, almost double the percentage two decades ago.
The 2012 Small Arms Survey, an independent research project conducted by the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva, Switzerland, records the global average of proportions of homicides committed with firearms to be 42 per cent.
It is also interesting to note that while guns are not manufactured in the Caribbean, the Association of Caribbean Commissioners of Police estimates there are over 1.6 million illegal firearms circulating in the region.
Figueira says the low-level traffickers in the game account for T&T’s high levels of gun violence and skyrocketing murder rate.
But it is when the drug gangs target each other’s supplies that things become critical.
“When one gang has its stash ready for export one day, another gang will attack, take and go by any means necessary,” he said.
And is there a consequence for the perpetrators of this violence?
The 2012 Small Arms Survey concludes that since few gun homicides are solved in T&T, impunity for gun violence may also be a factor in the rising numbers of gun crimes and homicides in particular.
Gun runners and drug pushers on the streets say with the right connections, one can order an assassination for TT$6,000 and if that’s too much for your pocket, as little as $2,000 can get you your own personal firearm.
The cost of these illegal guns varies according to the type, make and of course its level of use. The guns, sources told GML, are coming in alongside the drugs being transhipped through T&T.
One North Coast fisherman with knowledge of the illegal drug trade said: “What you finding now is guns coming in. I have heard from fellows who does take work to go for drugs, say sometimes to move drugs they does put a little bag of guns in your boat too.”
On the economic side of things, the United Nations estimates the narcotics trade in the Caribbean generates an annual US$3 billion, almost one third of our country’s fiscal budget.
Mexican cartel link
Figueira says the trade is decades old with T&T being a transit hub since the 1960s.
On the ground, stories are still being told of notorious drug lord Dole Chadee being a major pin in notorious Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar’s ring.
Asked why it is beneficial to transit cocaine through various countries, head of International Relations at The University of the West Indies, Professor Andy Knight, said:
“First of all you don’t want to have drugs sent directly from Colombia to the USA. Sometimes it’s easier to have it passed through a third party state like Trinidad to disguise where it comes from.”
After 1990, T&T had been abandoned as a trans-shipment destination, the then active Colombian cartel instead opting for Puerto Rico and Dominican Republic.
Time and convenience, Figueira says, navigated them back to a more logical route through the Caribbean.
“The eastern Caribbean is being switched on as a trafficking point and what that means is that T&T is also being switched on with greater volumes passing through T&T,” he said.
But there has also been a change in management.
“In the Caribbean today the illicit drug trade is dominated by Mexican transnational organised crime,” he said.
Two of the top crime syndicates in Mexico—the Sinaloa and Los Zetas gangs—mean local drug traffickers are immediately linked to international criminal organisations wielding a lot of power.
“Mexicans work though affiliation. Affiliates are part of the organisation, affiliates are traffickers, retailers, wholesalers traffickers. And the number one recruits for Mexicans come from gangland,” he said.
Affiliates, he says, are well taken care of.
“You get product that you can extensively retail. You get product that you can wholesale. You get product that you can traffic. You get to tap into a stream of weaponry and become part of trans-national organisation,” he added.
Figueira says they live by one rule: Execute orders with efficiency.
“Failure to carry out orders and that’s it for you,” he added.
