Ray­mond Ram­char­i­tar

The Chi­na So­ci­ety's ad in last Sat­ur­day's Guardian ad­duced a strange di­men­sion to the crime is­sue. The con­tent, warn­ing its mem­bers that lo­cal se­cu­ri­ty was a dud, was not re­mark­able in the cir­cum­stances. It was the fact of the mes­sage, when added to Cunu­pia busi­ness­men say­ing crime was so bad they might close their busi­ness­es, the or­di­nar­i­ness of mul­ti­ple-mur­der days, the siege of com­mu­ni­ties as var­ied as Cas­cade and Cara­po; all this con­verg­ing to a con­sen­sus of na­tion­al help­less­ness.

A cur­so­ry look at that help­less­ness re­veals an in­ter­est­ing cause: am­biva­lence among sec­tions of so­ci­ety in con­demn­ing crim­i­nals, even an ea­ger­ness to con­done and en­cour­age them. When you see this am­biva­lence in the po­lice and oth­er po­lit­i­cal in­sti­tu­tions, it's clear that the chaos we're roil­ing in is ill-de­fined by the flim­sy la­bel of "crime."

What we call crime more close­ly re­sem­bles a low-in­ten­si­ty gueril­la con­flict, where the ur­ban crim­i­nal un­der­class is mak­ing war on the rest of the pop­u­la­tion. Gueril­la con­flict isn't new to Trinidad; there were an­ti-gov­ern­ment gueril­las in the 1970s (NUFF and WULF). The present con­flict is dif­fer­ent in that the gueril­las are an­ti-so­ci­ety.

Their prove­nance was out­lined in an ed­i­to­r­i­al of June 25, 2008, which de­scribed "the [PNM] Gov­ern­ment's ap­pease­ment pol­i­cy in which gang lead­ers are giv­en lu­cra­tive con­tracts as a means of buy­ing their al­le­giance." This tra­di­tion was a gift from "the late Dr Er­ic Williams" who "ini­ti­at­ed this sup­pos­ed­ly peace-bring­ing pol­i­cy."

And like its il­lus­tri­ous founder's ef­forts, when the PNM weapon-ised the gangs, it wasn't just with mon­ey. An in­dis­pens­able el­e­ment was ide­ol­o­gi­sa­tion, via talk ra­dio, main­ly, which added a new lev­el of in­san­i­ty. In 2005, the Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Au­thor­i­ty (TATT), re­spond­ing to myr­i­ad com­plaints, fi­nal­ly woke up to the re­al­i­ty of talk ra­dio. Dr Ralph Hen­ry, then head of TATT, said that "some of them want to take us down the road of Rwan­da or Bu­run­di."

Ra­dio com­men­ta­tors were spew­ing some fair­ly hor­rif­ic an­ti-In­di­an race ha­tred, which the me­dia es­tab­lish­ment de­fend­ed-press free­dom and all that. A main theme of this talk-ra­dio nar­ra­tive was dis­pos­ses­sion; the "oth­er" was steal­ing the na­tive's "pat­ri­mo­ny;" and it was moral­ly ac­cept­able to take it back.

Ca­lyp­so threw in with, for ex­am­ple, Cro Cro's Face Re­al­i­ty, which open­ly di­rect­ed "ban­dit pard­ners" to "kid­nap dem," to "equalise de econ­o­my." Re­al­i­ty was the most high-pro­file ex­am­ple of that genre. There were oth­ers in the tents which nev­er got wide air­play. One that did was Singing San­dra's Geno­cide in 2007, which said In­do-doc­tors per­formed unau­tho­rised hys­terec­tomies on African women.

The coup de grace of es­tab­lish­ing the gueril­las' le­git­i­ma­cy was the PNM's PR cam­paign: de­ny that crime ex­ist­ed as it was grow­ing ex­po­nen­tial­ly: kid­nap­ping was on­ly "in cer­tain ar­eas, af­fect­ing cer­tain peo­ple;" crime was "all over the world;" and to com­plain about crime was "bad-talk­ing the coun­try, mak­ing us look bad abroad."

There's no am­bi­gu­i­ty in what crim­i­nals read from these re­spons­es: en­cour­age­ment, even ex­on­er­a­tion. The am­biva­lence en­cour­aged much la­tent crim­i­nal­i­ty to man­i­fest in new crim­i­nal en­ter­pris­es, and when the gangs be­gan to re­cruit and crime went vi­ral, the nar­ra­tive adapt­ed to ac­com­mo­date. You start­ed hear­ing: "Is on­ly lit­tle black boys get­ting kill, dem is the vic­tims of the 'oth­ers' who giv­ing them guns and drugs. Doh blame de crim­i­nals. Blame the 'oth­ers.'"

Talk ra­dio so­lid­i­fied the epis­temic frame which al­lowed the eva­sion of key facts, like the PNM sup­ply­ing the lit­tle black boys with cap­i­tal that al­lowed them to evolve from street gangs in­to crim­i­nal cor­po­ra­tions; the dystopi­an char­ac­ter of fam­i­ly life in the un­der­class; and fac­tu­al da­ta on gangs, like those pro­vid­ed by Prof Anne Marie Bisses­sar in the Guardian of Sep­tem­ber 18, 2011. Gangs were main­ly along the east-west cor­ri­dor, mem­ber­ship was 83 per cent Afro-Tri­ni-da­di­an, 13 per cent In­do, four per cent "oth­er."

These re­spons­es co­a­lesced, and pro­vid­ed a sig­na­ture for a par­tic­u­lar con­stituen­cy dur­ing the state of emer­gency last year, once the im­ages of young black men be­ing ar­rest­ed en masse be­gan to cir­cu­late. In Par­lia­ment, PNM MP Joanne Thomas said it: we peo­ple suf­fer­ing but the dou­bles ven­dors in Debe still mak­ing a liv­ing.

The head of the Eman­ci­pa­tion Sup­port Com­mit­tee, and var­i­ous oth­er com­men­ta­tors, like Lennox Bernard, Mikey Matthews and so on, and so on, all moaned about woe to the black youth. (The con­stituen­cy evad­ed its own si­lence when the PNM was cre­at­ing the crim­i­nals.)

This sounds like an eth­nic re­sponse, and in sig­nif­i­cant part it is. The PNM MPs dur­ing the SoE de­bate, talk-ra­dio hosts and var­i­ous press com­men­ta­tors cer­tain­ly gave it an eth­no-po­lit­i­cal stamp, but to sug­gest this "con­stituen­cy" is Afro-Trinida­di­an would be in­ac­cu­rate. The mes­sage of am­biva­lence to crim­i­nal­i­ty, and the li­cens­ing of gueril­la be­hav­iour was in­gest­ed and man­i­fest­ed across eth­nic groups. Vi­o­lent crime is on­ly one man­i­fes­ta­tion, and sev­er­al "con­sci­en­tious ob­jec­tors" of var­i­ous eth­nic­i­ties quite hap­pi­ly bab­bled the nar­ra­tive(s) out­lined above.

You might un­der­stand this com­ing from the poor­er sec­tions of "ur­ban" so­ci­ety, but (to re­peat) the am­biva­lence-de­fence of crime came from sur­pris­ing places, some of them quite high up in the so­ci­ety. The rea­son (I be­lieve) is the pow­er­ful Fanon­ian el­e­ment of racial en­ti­tle­ment and re­venge hid­ing in Cre­ole na­tion­al­ism, which no one ad­mits is there, which was ac­ti­vat­ed by the talk ra­dio, ca­lyp­so, and the pro­pa­gan­da. So peo­ple who thought they were above racial con­cerns found them­selves man­i­fest­ing the racial para­noia.

And here we find our­selves: crime is en­dem­ic and un­stop­pable be­cause of the so­ci­ety's con­fu­sion: even agree­ing what crime is, and who the crim­i­nals are, and how they should be treat­ed, seems be­yond us-and this con­fu­sion shows in po­lice and in­sti­tu­tion­al paral­y­sis. And the crim­i­nals ex­ploit this. Un­til those prob­lems are solved, as they say in Star Trek, brace for mul­ti­ple im­pacts.