By Ken Ali
Trinidad and Tobago could have ended up with a drug cartel bloodbath similar to what took place in Mexico a few days ago.
Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar expressed that fear in her blunt address to Caricom leaders.
Nemesio “El Mencho” Ruben Oseguera Cervantes, head of Mexico’s most powerful criminal group, was killed in a military crackdown in a mountainous area.
Nemesio “El Mencho” Ruben Oseguera Cervantes
The murder led to major instability in Mexico, with the murders of at least 25 soldiers, ambushes, and school and business closures.
There are some stunning similarities between the dreadful Mexican cartel culture and Trinidad and Tobago as a major drug transshipment hub.
At its peak a few years ago, T&T was a critical corridor for the trafficking of what the United States’ Department of State estimated to be more than US $17 trillion of cocaine a year through the Caribbean.
About half of that staggering amount was “filtered” through T&T, according to US intelligence reports, making this country “one of the world’s most significant cocaine routes.”
Porous borders – especially the sheltered Gulf of Paria – allowed drug boats to sail in, following which most of the cargo was moved out on Chaguaramas-based boats – with powerful engines – to Europe and the eastern coast of the US.
There have been a few sea seizures – through the involvement of US anti-drug agencies – such as the 168 kg bust worth US $234 million, in 2023.
But most were “undetected traffic.”
Drug lords carefully managed logistics, sometimes using air drops, and paying off corrupt officials.
Up to 71 per cent of local murders and other criminal offences were linked to the drug trade in 2014.
And just like Mexico, Venezuela and Colombia, there were criminal cartels behind the T&T cocaine industry.
Evande, a deadly Venezuelan group, “infiltrated local operations” and embedded with T&T cocaine and firearm traders.
Cartel de los Soles (Cartel of the Suns) operated with “near impunity.”
Tren de Aragua has been in T&T’s organised crime for at least six years.
Prime Minister Kamla Persad Bissessar
Transnational cartels, local gangs, and wide-open borders made T&T an easy avenue for frequent multi-million-dollar cocaine shipments.
US intel reports identified several named killings as directly linked to the drug underworld, with a record homicide figure of 626 in 2024.
Despite a 2015 general election manifesto promise, the PNM declined to set up a border protection agency.
PM Persad-Bissessar has accused the PNM of links to the “local drug mafia.”
The number of homicides has fallen in recent months, gang bosses were locked up during the State of Emergency, and the drug business was “significantly disrupted” by maritime boat attacks, according to the US.
Mexico has been destabilised – up to 34,000 murders a year! – as another dominant travel route for cocaine, heroin and meth.
Caricom’s business-as-usual approach – including the nebulous “zone of peace” – has provoked the PM Persad- Bissessar’s outrage.
T&T, she said, will craft its security policy “to defend our sovereignty, as we see fit.”
The country may have dodged a Mexican-style massacre.
