‘Where There’s Drugs, There’s Guns’: Why Is There an Epidemic of Violence in the Caribbean? | Caribbean

The last thing Raquel Rodriguez remembers of that afternoon is playing with her neighbor’s baby outside her home in the Barataria neighborhood of Trinidad and Tobago (T&T).

Then there was a deafeningly loud explosion.

“The sound was very, very close. It was very loud. So I stood there, frozen, with my left hand on my temple. And then I started wondering what was going on. Then I realized my eyes were going dark. Then it went completely blank,” she recalled.

She had been hit by a stray bullet that had pierced her left temple and struck her right cheekbone diagonally.

After she fell to the ground, Rodriguez could still hear her family and neighbors screaming as they were rushed to the hospital.

She survived the attack in September 2022 and her rapid recovery – which she attributes to divine intervention – surprised health workers. But while the mother of three has regained her speech and mobility, both eyes were ruptured, leaving her completely blind.

Now an aspiring broadcaster, she’s determined to stay resilient as she learns Braille and finishes a degree she started before the shooting. But Rodriguez says the incident has been hard on her family, and she longs for the chance to migrate.

Rodriguez is one of thousands of people caught in a recent wave of violent crime in the Caribbean, a region statisticians describe as one of the most violent in the Americas.

At the extreme end of the trend, which leaders have labeled “an alarming epidemic,” is rampant gang warfare that has plunged Haiti into bloody anarchy. Armed factions have controlled much of the country’s capital since former President Jovenel Moïse was assassinated in July 2021, and some 2,500 people were killed or wounded in the first quarter of 2024.

The first branch of an international task force to tackle the gangs arrived in Port-au-Prince in June, but has so far had little impact on the violence.

But the effects of rising crime rates are being felt across the region. T&T has seen “bloody weekends” of murders, drug busts and robberies. Last week, Jamaica declared a 14-day state of emergency in the southern parish of Clarendon and announced plans to tighten gun laws after gunmen opened fire at a birthday party, killing eight people, including a seven-year-old boy.

When 21 Caribbean leaders met at their recent Caribbean Community (Caricom) summit, the crime wave dominated their discussions, Grenada’s Prime Minister Dickon Mitchell told reporters. In a joint statement, the countries expressed deep concern about “the level of crime and violence in the region, fueled in part by arms and ammunition trafficking, transnational criminal networks and a deterioration of social structures.”

The statement also refers to their previous statement from last year, in which they referred to commitments to numerous cooperation measures, including tackling money laundering and banning offensive weapons, except for security forces and sports competitions. They also pledged to strengthen education and youth empowerment strategies, which will be welcomed by anti-crime organisations who say more heavy-handed measures are not the answer and who call for more investment in preventive strategies, such as drug addiction treatment and skills-building programmes.

As governments and organisations attempt to identify and address the root causes of rising crime, academics in the region have been examining the legacies of colonisation and the culture of violence that stems from transatlantic slavery.

Dr Wendell Wallace, a professor at the University of the West Indies, said there was a “confluence of many factors” behind the alarming crime statistics in a region ravaged by climate and other vulnerabilities. Economic challenges, weak border controls, the drug trade, an influx of guns from the US and the breakdown of family values ​​topped his list.

“Our economies are small and in some cases smaller than the budgets of transnational organized (criminal) groups. That in itself makes it very easy to corrupt state officials and infiltrate the region.

“Most of the Caribbean islands are in the middle of the north-south drug trade, so we are at the transshipment points for drugs and where you have drugs you have guns. And with that you have this constant battle for territory,” he said.

He added that gangs and organised crime groups take advantage of socio-economic gaps, providing jobs, brotherhood and their own brand of communal justice. He warned that more legislation and hard-line approaches, such as states of emergency, were not effective as long-term solutions. The best approach, he said, was a “sensible mix of the hard side of policing and the softer side of policing”. Wallace also suggested establishing national youth services.

“Data shows that people involved in crime, and most of the victims, are between 15 and 35 years old. So if they are not in a productive role, let’s put them in a national youth service that offers a higher level of skills training. We need to involve the banking sector to make it easier for start-ups to access loans.”

Garth St Clair said countries in the region needed to do more to address the problem of addiction. It’s an issue he knows well: as a member of the Trinidad and Tobago Defence Force, he was introduced to cocaine by a senior corporal as an aid to exam preparation, and soon found his use had spiralled out of control.

“I left my house after stealing everything from my mother’s house, went out into the streets and ended up in jail,” he said.

After he got out of prison, St. Clair decided to turn his life around. Together with communications expert Natasha Nunez, he wanted to raise awareness about the dangers of drug and human trafficking. He did this through the radio show Eye on Dependency and their award-winning film Trafficked. Together with Nunez, he has shown the film in Trinidad and Tobago and Jamaica. He hopes to show the film in other Caribbean countries.

Eye on Dependency is one of a growing number of charities, police clubs and grassroots organisations using arts-based programmes, counselling, mentoring, conflict resolution, skills and confidence building and other community-based approaches to rescue young people from gangs and drug dealers. Many are now supported by their governments or international organisations.

At the regional level, Sherwin Toyne-Stephenson, CARICOM Crime and Security Programme Manager, said the organisation was developing an action plan to support governments in their efforts to address the full range of root causes, such as keeping children in school, rehabilitating offenders and addressing mental health issues.

He gave an example, adding: “We’re doing a study on the use of non-custodial sentences for minor non-violent crimes. People who have been incarcerated for small amounts of narcotics, particularly marijuana, would be given a sentence. It becomes a challenge for them … to get ahead, because if they’re trying to get gainful employment, a criminal record really pushes them in the other direction.”

Nunez said governments in the region are eager to spend money on law enforcement and border security, but more money is needed to support initiatives such as more drug treatment centers.

“The failure on our part in the Caribbean is that we pay so much attention to law enforcement, but not enough to prevention and treatment,” she said.