Welcome to Lovely Trinidad

Where gang violence ruins the lives of many

Here I am in Trinidad, a physically lovely country, which I first visited some 38 years ago, and where I am now starting my sabbatical. The house in which I write this is a few hundred yards from when my parents lived, and about a mile from the house my grandfather lived in and where my father was born. Since those far off days, Trinidad, still verdant and lovely, has changed a great deal. The change is the spectre of crime, and violent crime at that.

Tropical paradise, looking towards Maracas Bay, Trinidad.

Andalusia, Maraval, my grandfather’s house, still not claimed by modern redevelopment, much to my surprise.

Some six months ago The Guardian ran a well meaning but rather silly piece about the Trinidadian crime wave. The paper tried to link the crime wave to the way Trinidad is an anti-feminist society, which they blame on traditional Christianity. Nice one. The article then gives the game away by steering away from the real causes of violent crime in Trinidad, which is predominantly between young men, and caused by gang warfare. Ten percent of murder victims in Trinidad are female, which means that 90% are male, and that men are much more likely to be murdered than women. This is not to condone rape and violence against women, but it is to see it in its wider context. And understanding the wider context is vital to finding a solution. But do read the Guardian article for yourself: you may find it explains things better than I do.

If one looks at the facts and figures, Trinidad ranks high in the murder league table of the world. That in itself is pretty frightening. If you look at this article from Wikipedia, you can see the murder rate per 100,000 by country. Several happy places, including the Vatican, have no murders at all. The worst is Jamaica, which had 1,508 murders in 2022, which represents a murder rate of 53.3 per 100,000 people. Trinidad comes in fifth place with 605 murders in 2022, which represents 40 per 100,000.

This article charts the rise, not quite year on year, of the Trinidad and Tobago murder rate, still using the rate per 100,000. We are told:

Trinidad and Tobago murder/homicide rate for 2021 was 29.36, a 11.73% increase from 2020.

Trinidad and Tobago murder/homicide rate for 2020 was 26.28, a 25.89% decline from 2019.

Trinidad and Tobago murder/homicide rate for 2019 was 35.46, a 3.21% increase from 2018.

Trinidad and Tobago murder/homicide rate for 2018 was 34.36, a 2.63% increase from 2017.

It also tells us that the murder rate for Trinidad was a mere 9.01 in the year 2000. And it provides comparisons. Mafia-ridden Italy has a murder rate of 0.51. The further one delves into the facts and figures the more one realises that Africa, where I lived for four years, is not the most dangerous place on earth, even if South Africa makes it into the upper reaches of the league table, along with Lesotho. The most dangerous places on earth are mainly in Central America, the West Indies and South America.

So why is this? The real reason, one suspects, is the rise of the gangs, and those gangs did not come about in a vacuum, but rather arose with the drug trade. That is the real mover of violence: gangs fighting gangs to get control of the most lucrative trade on earth, which flows from South America through the West Indies and Central America to the United States and beyond.

Or as one article puts it:

“Trinidad and Tobago has the sixth-highest crime rate in the world. Trinidad and Tobago's government faces several challenges in its effect to reduce crime, such as bureaucratic resistance to change, the negative influence of gangs, drugs, economic recession, and an overburdened legal system. There is a great demand for illegal weapons as well, which drug trafficking and gang-related activities fuel. Trinidad and Tobago has a Level 2 travel advisory, meaning that travelers should exercise increased caution. Visitors are typically victims of pickpocketing, assault, theft, and fraud.”

So perhaps we should fight The War on Drugs? Oh, hang on, we did. And we lost it, and we lost it badly. The cartels won. We need to face up to this and act accordingly. Legalise, regulate, tax all drugs, and put the cartels out of business. In the short term drug use will rise, but in the long term it is the only way.

On Long Circular Road here in Port of Spain, opposite each other, stand the site of the new US Embassy and the present Embassy of the People’s Republic of China. I wish I could have photographed them for you, but I suspect that would not be allowed, and there are no pictures I can find on the internet. The Chinese Embassy is a heavily fortified compound, complete with razor wire, and the new US Embassy, to be built on the site of the Country Club, once the Big House of the Champs Elysées estate, will be something similar. The Americans are leaving their downtown premises, just as they did in London, and just as they did in Nairobi, where, back in 1998, their embassy was blown up by Islamist terrorists with the loss of 213 lives. There is always the fear that might happen again.

An ISIS propaganda picture showing happy Trinidadian jihadis. Most are thought to have died in Syria.

People do not like to be reminded that Trinidad is also the epicentre of crime of another sort, namely Islamism. Which country sent the most ‘volunteers’ per capita to fight for the Islamic state? Yes, Trinidad. The Guardian once again has the story. Here is the key quote:

‘For many Trinidadian Isis recruits, religion was more excuse than driving motivation, said anthropologist Dylan Kerrigan, a lecturer at the University of the West Indies.

Young men, many of them recent converts, were drawn to the caliphate mostly by promises of money and a sense of community – an appeal similar to that of gangs in an increasingly violent country, he said.

“[A gang] provides a family, male role models, social order and it promises access to what many young men might think they want: money, power, women, respect,” said Kerrigan who has researched extremism for UN counter-terrorism units.

“[One] imam told me that instead of joining a local gang, some see traveling to the Middle East as like joining another gang.”’

So, Islamist extremists have come to Trinidad and recruited young men to fight jihad; they have found a pool of willing recruits here, many of them not even Muslims to start with. Once more it is the gang mentality that is the problem, and the way that the gang can offer a sense of community, along with money, power, women and respect. In other words the gang makes a bunch of losers into people who are feared and respected. Sounds familiar? It is straight out of the Mafia playbook.