Society
Violence stalks the Caribbean
Published 21 February 2008
We need some international body, perhaps Unesco, to throw its weight behind a Caribbean-wide rescue operation
Only a few days ago a friend of mine brought back, from his Carnival holidays in Trinidad and Tobago, a tape-recorded copy of a radio programme broadcast at peak time.
It is a typical American-style, jock-radio call-in programme. The presenter posed the question: Should the government summon the army and the police to surround the working-class communities around the capital, to pick up those young men who are exterminating each other by the gun and execute them, leaving their dead bodies to litter the alleyways?
The calls came in fast and furious. Apart from a dissenting handful of citizens, all the callers shouted down the phone lines that mass, state murder was the only solution.
The dissenters were as one in their desire for the restoration of hanging, suspended some years ago by the Privy Council here in Britain for being “a cruel and unusual punishment”.
Today, in that tiny island state, the national pastime is the body count. It is running at one per day, and if a day passes without incident, be certain that the numbers will return to normal over the next couple of days.
Only a few weeks ago, two gangs fought with such ferocity that the residents of Laventille, a small community, were pictured packing their belongings and fleeing to wherever they could find refuge. Three homes were burned to the ground; the dead bodies of young men lay among the ruins.
Kingston, Jamaica, I am told, leads the body count in the English-speaking Caribbean. In Guyana quite recently, a gun-toting gang shot up the police headquarters and proceeded along the east coast, where they massacred 11 villagers, including women and children.
Some months earlier a firefight in Kingstown, St Vincent, lasted all weekend.
The soldiers, as these young men call themselves, are armed with the most modern of weapons, smuggled largely from Haiti in the north and from Venezuela in the south.
Ghettos abound around the capital cities, where all conventional restraints have disappeared. Time and again, peace treaties between gangs are signed only to be broken in the twinkling of an eye. The state is paralysed by this hitherto unknown phenomenon. Independence for these old, colonial societies was introduced 45 years ago and the old colonial state remains exactly the same.
Prosecutions fail because there are no witnesses. Any civic-minded individual who offers evidence to the police is executed at high noon. Scores of young men are kept on remand for up to five years without trial. Bribery and corruption infest all organs of the state, from the judiciary to the police on the beat. One young bandit was heard to declare: “Peace in heaven, not on earth!” All are consumed.
And this violence is not just a Caribbean phenomenon. Those of us who live and work in London, Birmingham and Manchester may tell the same story. We have escaped this full-blown barbarism only because our institutions of state have been established over centuries. Social restraints formed and shaped over the ages manage to keep this tendency to violence among the youths to a minimum.
I grew up in those areas of Port of Spain where social peace no longer exists. Alongside the working classes lived a lower middle class – teachers, civil servants at the bottom end of the scale, police officers and a whole raft of tradesmen. They have all migrated to middle-class ghettos, leaving a generation of young people to drift alone, poisoned by degenerate American street culture. Churches are empty, funeral homes thrive.
Hundreds of children leave school for ever at the end of primary education. Free secondary education is without content and offers no curriculum that explains who the students are and where they have come from. Thousands of children drift in the dark, left to imbibe the garbage emitted from DVDs imported from the United States of America. It is a diet of pure and unadulterated violence.
On the other hand, the middle classes have supped from the poisoned chalice of American materialism. Governments are mired in corruption. There is no solution in sight from within these tiny island states.
In this period of globalisation, we need some international body, perhaps Unesco, to throw its weight behind a Caribbean-wide rescue operation that must include the young people of black Britain as well as Caribbean youths in the US and Canada. Yes, we can!
Post this article to
We want to encourage people to comment on our content and to exchange views with other readers and hope this will be done on a courteous basis. However, if you encounter posts which are offensive please let us know by emailing comments@newstatesman.co.uk and we will take swift action where necessary.
