“Where there are drugs, there are 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 in front of her house in the Barataria neighborhood of Trinidad and Tobago (T&T).

Then there was a piercingly loud explosion.

“The sound was very, very close. It was very loud. I stood there, frozen, with my left hand on my temple. And then I started to wonder what was going on. Then I noticed that my eyes were going dark. Then everything was completely empty,” she remembers.

She had been hit by a ricochet bullet that had pierced her left temple and worked its way diagonally to her right cheekbone.

After she fell to the ground, Rodriguez could still hear the screams of her family and neighbors as they took her to the hospital.

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

Now an aspiring broadcaster, she is determined to persevere while learning Braille and completing a degree she had started before the shooting. But Rodriguez says the incident has been hard on her family and she longs for the opportunity to emigrate.

Rodriguez is one of thousands who have been victims of the 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 what politicians have called an “alarming epidemic” is a rampant gang war that has plunged Haiti into bloody anarchy. Armed groups have controlled most of the country's capital since the assassination of former President Jovenel Moïse in July 2021, and some 2,500 people were killed or injured in the first quarter of 2024.

The first detachment of an international anti-gang force arrived in Port-au-Prince in June, but has so far been unable to contain the violence there.

But the impact of rising crime rates is being felt across the region. T&T has experienced “bloody weekends” of murders, drug raids 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.

As 21 Caribbean leaders met for 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, fuelled in part by arms and munitions trafficking, transnational criminal networks and a deterioration of social structures.”

The statement also refers to their previous declaration last year, in which they committed to numerous joint measures, including tackling money laundering and banning offensive weapons, with exceptions for security forces and sports competitions. They also promised to strengthen education and youth development strategies, which has been welcomed by crime-fighting charities who say tougher measures are not the answer and are calling for more investment in prevention strategies, such as drug addiction treatment and skills-building programmes.

As governments and organizations work to identify and address the root causes of rising crime, scholars in the region are examining the legacy of colonization and the culture of violence associated with 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 suffering from climate and other vulnerabilities. Economic challenges, weak border controls, drug trafficking, an influx of weapons 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 transnationally organised [crime] groups. This alone makes it very easy to corrupt state officials and infiltrate the region.

“Most Caribbean islands are in the middle of the north-south drug trade, so we are drug transit points and where there are drugs, there are also weapons. And with that comes a constant fight for territory,” he said.

He added that gangs and organised crime groups exploit socio-economic differences by creating jobs, brotherhood and their own form of communal justice. He warned that more and more laws and tough approaches such as states of emergency are not long-term solutions. The best approach, he said, is a “sensible mix of the tough side of policing and the softer side of policing”. Wallace also proposed the creation of national youth services.

“The data shows that the criminal actors and most of the victims are between 15 and 35 years old, so if they are not engaged in productive activity, we should bring them into a national youth service that offers them more comprehensive training. We should involve the banking sector to make it easier for start-ups to access credit.”

Garth St Clair said countries in the region need to do more to tackle addiction. He knows the problem well: As a member of the Trinidad and Tobago Armed Forces, he was introduced to cocaine by a corporal to help him prepare for exams. He soon noticed that his use was spiralling out of control.

“I left home after stealing everything from my mother's house, lived on the streets and ended up in prison,” he said.

After his release from prison, St. Clair decided to take his life in a new direction. He teamed up with communications expert Natasha Nunez to raise awareness of the dangers of drug and human trafficking through the radio program Eye on Dependency and their award-winning film Trafficked. He and Nunez have shown the film in Trinidad and Tobago and Jamaica and hope to show it in other Caribbean countries.

Eye on Dependency is one of a growing number of charities, police clubs and grassroots organisations that use arts-based programmes, counselling, mentoring, conflict resolution, skills and confidence building and other community-based approaches to help free young people from the clutches of gangs and drug traffickers, many of which are now supported by their governments or international organisations.

At the regional level, Sherwin Toyne-Stephenson, Caricom's Crime and Security Programme Manager, said the organisation was working on an action plan to support governments in their efforts to address all root causes, including keeping children in school, rehabilitating offenders and addressing mental health issues.

He gave an example, adding: “We are 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 receive a sentence. It becomes a challenge for them to get ahead because when they try to find paid employment, a criminal record really pushes them in the other direction.”

Nunez said that while governments in the region would like to spend money on law enforcement and border protection, more resources are needed to support initiatives such as additional drug treatment centers.

“Our deficit in the Caribbean is that we are very intensive in law enforcement, but we do not pay enough attention to prevention and treatment,” she said.