DA­REECE PO­LO

Se­nior Re­porter

da­reece.po­lo@guardian.co.tt

PART TWO

The moss-cov­ered stair­cas­es lead to aban­doned apart­ments lit­tered with rub­bish. Bul­let holes scar con­crete walls. A dead an­i­mal lies in­side one va­cant Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (HDC) unit.

Just a few min­utes from Port-of-Spain, res­i­dents of Mar­cano Quar­ry Lands, bet­ter known as Cana­da, say these con­di­tions have be­come part of every­day life.

For many, they are al­so part of the an­swer to a ques­tion that has long dom­i­nat­ed pub­lic dis­cus­sion: Why do some young peo­ple join gangs?

“Them leave us like stray dogs—who eat, eat. Who fight, fight. Who die, die. Dah is how it is.”

The res­i­dent, who re­quest­ed anonymi­ty, said years of ne­glect have left peo­ple feel­ing aban­doned by those in au­thor­i­ty.

Mar­cano Quar­ry Lands fea­tured promi­nent­ly in the sec­ond in­stal­ment of “Be­hind Gang Cul­ture: The Laven­tille Sto­ry,” a Guardian Me­dia se­ries ex­am­in­ing the so­cial con­di­tions res­i­dents be­lieve have made some com­mu­ni­ties vul­ner­a­ble to gang re­cruit­ment.

In 2008, fire tore through sec­tions of the HDC de­vel­op­ment. Near­ly two decades lat­er, res­i­dents say parts of the com­pound re­main in dis­re­pair.

Walk­ing through the de­vel­op­ment, the signs of de­cay are dif­fi­cult to ig­nore. Col­lapsed roofs, crum­bling build­ings, bul­let-marked walls and aban­doned apart­ments have be­come sym­bols of what many de­scribe as years of bro­ken promis­es.

Res­i­dents ar­gue that the phys­i­cal de­te­ri­o­ra­tion re­flects some­thing deep­er.

“The men in charge, do your job. If you not do­ing the right thing, what you ex­pect we who liv­ing in the de­pressed com­mu­ni­ties to do? If you not do­ing your job to up­lift us, what we will do? Not try to up­lift we self by any means pos­si­ble?”

He said years of un­ful­filled com­mit­ments have erod­ed con­fi­dence that mean­ing­ful change will come.

“We are not be­ing promised yes­ter­day or to­day, it’s 18 years of promis­es. ‘Keep pay­ing your rent else when it’s time you have noth­ing to get.’ And you’re pay­ing your rent to live like a rat. Be­cause ba­si­cal­ly when you walk through the build­ings, that is what you are see­ing. Look, we are in an apart­ment right now and there’s a dead an­i­mal in it. So imag­ine the oth­er apart­ments, what we are go­ing through.”

Res­i­dents re­peat­ed­ly re­turned to the idea that ne­glect ex­tends be­yond de­te­ri­o­rat­ing build­ings.

They ar­gued that when com­mu­ni­ties are over­looked for years, some peo­ple be­gin search­ing else­where for op­por­tu­ni­ty, be­long­ing and sup­port.

“Be­cause if we are be­ing per­se­cut­ed and looked down at, what we will do? Not act the way al­lyuh want us to act? If you treat us ah cer­tain way, wouldn’t we act that way? If you treat us as hu­man be­ings, we will act as hu­man be­ings. But if you treat us as an­i­mals, we will act as an­i­mals. And when wild an­i­mals are not be­ing seen, what do they do? They bite. And when we bite, every­body does feel it in the coun­try. Be­cause we ent bit­ing we own, in­no. We go­ing out and bite who have and liv­ing nice.”

The con­cerns ex­pressed in Cana­da echoed those raised by res­i­dents in neigh­bour­ing St Barbs, fea­tured in the first part of the se­ries.

One res­i­dent there said the stig­ma at­tached to grow­ing up in Laven­tille of­ten fol­lows young peo­ple long af­ter they leave their com­mu­ni­ties.

“It does hold back peo­ple when they think about go­ing out dey to go and find a wuk, the things what peo­ple go­ing and tell them. And that does break plen­ty lil youth men spir­it. Be­cause they don’t want to go out dey and some­body tell dem, ‘Boy, you from so and so, nah you can’t wuk here. Al­lyuh is so and so. You have to cut yuh hair. Yuh hair look­ing too nut­ty.’ Break­ing some­body spir­it. When you break some­body spir­it, they have no hope.”

He be­lieves that sense of hope­less­ness can make in­flu­en­tial fig­ures in a com­mu­ni­ty ap­pear to of­fer what the state has failed to pro­vide.

“Some peo­ple might­en have no moth­er, some peo­ple might­en have no fa­ther, some peo­ple might­en have food in dey place, some peo­ple might­en have clothes to put on dey back. It might have that one per­son in the com­mu­ni­ty, he might­en self be a gang mem­ber. He might be an ex-po­lice, he might be an ex-sol­dier, he might know where he could get he re­source from to help the com­mu­ni­ty. So, peo­ple will look up to he and they’d rather guard he be­cause he’s feed­ing them. The gov­ern­ment ent feed­ing them. He feed­ing them. So as long as he feed­ing them, the com­mu­ni­ty will watch he back, take care of every­thing, clean he car, wash he clothes, be­cause you feed­ing me.”

None of the res­i­dents in­ter­viewed sought to ex­cuse gang vi­o­lence.

In­stead, they ques­tioned why some com­mu­ni­ties have wait­ed decades for ba­sic im­prove­ments while crim­i­nal groups have stepped in­to the spaces left by fail­ing in­sti­tu­tions.

For them, the con­ver­sa­tion about gangs can­not be­gin with crime alone. It must al­so con­front the con­di­tions they say have left gen­er­a­tions of young peo­ple search­ing for dig­ni­ty, be­long­ing and op­por­tu­ni­ty.

Ques­tions were sent to Port-of-Spain South MP Kei­th Scot­land and HDC Chair­man Feeroz Khan. Nei­ther of them re­spond­ed up un­til the time of pub­li­ca­tion.