Rasta City vs The Muslims: Trinidad's Gang Wars and Abu Bakr's Attempted Coup
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July 27th, 1990. A normal afternoon in Trinidad and Tobago. A small island nation of around 1.3 million people in the Caribbean. The sun is shining. The Trinidadian music known as soca is blasting. People are eating doubles on the streets. They're little fried beans and bread. They're really good. Get them if you haven't had them. Maybe you're one of the many Trinidadians who works in the countries in the booming natural gas industry. The reason it's one of the richer countries in the Caribbean and Central American region with a GDP of like $18,000 per person.

and you sit down with your kids to watch the local version of Sesame Street. All of a sudden, the show goes out and the TV goes fuzzy. When the picture settles, a man by the name of Abu Bakr is in front of the screen. He's six foot four and wearing a flowing white robe and a scowl, seated behind a desk and looking deathly serious. He has an announcement to make. He says, at 6 p.m. this afternoon, the government of Trinidad and Tobago was overthrown. Prime Minister and members of the cabinet are under arrest. We are asking everybody to remain calm.

This is all real, by the way. This video is out there.

Meanwhile, at the same time at the Red House, the nation's parliament building, the former minister Joseph Toney is addressing the other government officials. Parliament's in session. In video from the incident, you can see Toney stops speaking as gunshots are heard off camera and sort of looks off to his right. Screams follow. Toney and the others run and hide for cover as an armed man in camouflage fatigues arrives and starts beating him with a rifle.

For the next six days and five nights, the nation of Trinidad is held hostage by Abu Bakr and 115 followers of his movement, Jamal al-Muslim. It's the only attempted militant Islamic overthrow of a country in the Western Hemisphere to ever happen. The coup eventually fails when Bakr and his crew are forced to surrender. A Trinidadian journalist friend once told me that he thought Bakr expected the country to rise up once he announced the coup. That did not happen. And he didn't have enough people to take on the military.

24 people are killed during the coup, the country's never seen anything like it. And some would say the country still hasn't recovered. None of the men who participated in the coup attempt, though, would even be in jail for it a few years later. When all is said and done, the people of Trinidad will talk about the coup attempt as something that powerfully transformed the country, setting it down the wrong path, leading it to go from a place with under 100 murders a year to over 500, as one of the world's deadliest gang wars has played out in the process.

Inspector Roger Alexander, the head of a special police task force in the capital of Port of Spain, told me that the coup affected the nation, the society on a whole physically, psychologically, and otherwise. It showed the weakness. And when weakness is exposed, many people take advantage. Welcome back to another episode of the Underworld Podcast. I am Danny Gold. I am here with Sean Williams in Berlin. I'm in New York. I'm in New York.

What do you got going on? I am going broke, losing all my money, day trading again and selling NFTs on the internet. I've been spending my days speaking to German conspiracy theorists and right-wingers, neo-Nazis. So it's nice. It's nice to learn about Trinidad. Although I have a question. Why The Little Mermaid? That was one of the weirdest parts. I mean, it's a pretty weird story to begin with, but why The Little Mermaid?

I honestly don't know. I mean, this was, this was 1990, right? So I don't think there were that many options in terms of like modern Disney movies. Personally, I'm a big fan of the Lion King, but I don't think it came out for a few more years. Maybe they just wanted everyone to chill out. And that's a pretty, you know, they got like a West Indian lobster in that, don't they? And, uh, yeah. Yeah. Is that, is it about some kind of like Islamist takeover or something? Yeah. I don't know, but it's weird. They're not really jihadists. I'm going to explain. Uh,

But also, yeah, we have the website going. We just put up merch. People kept asking for t-shirts. So we have that. Please buy them so I can afford to keep losing money day trading. And also the book, The Reading List, is up on Amazon. Every episode, not on Amazon, it's up on our website. It leads to Amazon. Every episode, we're going to update it with the books and sources that we've used for these episodes. So the basis for this episode was,

It's actually one of my favorite documentaries I've ever done. It's actually the most popular too, I think. It has 7 million views on YouTube and Vice has, over the last few years, sold it to TV stations around the world. I never saw a cut, but you know, it is what it is.

It was immensely popular. It kind of made me like a celebrity with Trinidadians. I swear to God, this isn't like a famous in Japan thing. You know, I'll be on the street in New York. Even now it happens. Like a bus driver will pull over and be like, dude, I love the documentary. Thanks for going to Trinidad and all that. Because the thing is that News Cruise International ones don't really go there. It rarely gets attention.

you know, especially because Jamaica is right there and Jamaica is such a bigger presence. I think in people's minds, people were just so thankful that someone actually went down there and paid attention. Like I didn't even know who Abu Bakr was before. And I only learned about that because I've lived on a Trinidadian block for about a decade. Well, it was mostly Trinidadian. Now it's changing a little too quickly, but I used to just hang out and drink Coronas on the street when I was, you know, just, just,

any afternoon in the neighborhood. And when people find out you do documentaries, you know, the first thing they want to tell you is what you should do your next documentary on. And usually you kind of ignore them or you just kind of, oh yeah, yeah, of course, man, I'll look into it. I'll look into it. So everyone was always just like, you got to go down the Trinidad. It's crazy there, blah, blah, blah. And I was like, whatever, whatever. And then one day I just looked into it and I learned about Bacher and I learned about all the gangsters there and the gang stuff that was going on.

And the way they would talk about Bacher was still in like hushed tones, you know, like, like he had men lurking on every corner and they were still scared. So once I started looking into it more, I just realized like it was something that I had to cover and I did. And,

Everyone was actually really psyched about it. Yeah, I mean, I watched the documentaries. He's a pretty imposing guy. I mean, he's got a lot of charisma. He's just huge. I can see him blasting on the TV at dinner time, telling me that he's taken over the country. I don't know. He's pretty mad.

Yeah, he's got a presence, man. Like he's just one of those people. You kind of, you definitely feel the, why he was such a successful leader and preacher, but he was born and turned out into poverty, but eventually he left and he went to Toronto to study.

where he converted to a style of Pan-African revolutionary Islam, heavily influenced by the Nation of Islam. This is like, you know, the late 1960s, early 1970s. You have the Black Panthers, Malcolm X, Farrakhan, and all that sort of really going into international consciousness. There's an alternate story that he converted after hearing a preacher from Egypt who came to Trinidad, but I don't buy that one. And, you know, he told me about Toronto.

So he comes back to Trinidad and becomes what else? A police officer. But he also starts building up this group called Jamaat al-Muslimim. A lot of people have tried to label them some hardcore Islamic group like Al-Qaeda, and they did actually train with Gaddafi in Libya. But it's not really fair to call them, I think, a jihadi group. They're more like a black power movement that used Islamist and revolutionary styles to try to lift up Afro-Trinidadians.

Trinidad's got this fascinating culture and the country is a big mix of people with mostly African heritage and also Indian heritage along with some Chinese as well. And in the late 1970s and 1980s, also now, Trinidad had problems and it was divided along racial lines between those with African heritage and those with Indian heritage. And a lot of the Afro-Trinidadians, they felt like the government was neglecting them. And there's still, like I said, this kind of vibe there right now that they get shafted

And so Jamaat comes into being and it becomes really powerful, functioning as sort of a stand-in for local government in some places. I mean, yeah, like I'm just thinking cricket when I hear about Trinidad, like...

Toyin Bravo, Dinesh Ramlin, Brian Lara, and they were in the World Cup in 2006. I actually looked up one of their biggest soccer teams and it's called Joe Public FC, so I like them even more. But I had no idea any of this stuff even existed. And you're right, I see a lot about Jamaica, tons and tons of stuff about Jamaican gangs, but pretty much nothing on Trinidad. I don't see it anywhere in the news ever.

Yeah, you don't hear a lot about it. And also, I have no idea who any of those people you said were. I'm assuming cricket players and maybe some of our listeners care about that. So I'm going to leave it in and not edit it out. There's like five fans, yeah. But no, actually, it did make the news because in recent years, they sent the most...

people in the Western hemisphere per capita to join ISIS. Yeah. Yeah. I think it was something like 150 people in a country of, of just over a million. So it's really, I mean, that's a whole other story. And the dude who helped me down there, like my local fixer who set everything up, Mark Bassant actually broke a lot of those stories. But again, we'll get to that a little bit later too. It's not, it's not really related. It's a little related, but these guys are

You know, Jamaat al-Muslimin, they were not jihadis. They were like, you know, like a Black Panther, Nation of Islam type of deal. Social justice stuff, but also with discipline and self-sustaining community thing, giving people jobs, clearing drugs off the streets. Though some people say... What's that? Rise and grind. Yeah.

I don't know about that. I mean, they weren't, you know, they weren't trying to, I can't see them hosting clubhouse rooms or that sort of thing, but, but, you know, kind of like build up the community. But some people say they were a little bit more shady, actually quite a bit more shady that they were basically a criminal organization, a militia that used the social services as cover. Now the siege, I actually got this explained to me by Bacher when I went to meet him at his compound.

Like I said, he's this big guy, massively tall, maybe six foot five, and he's still kind of fiery, though people say his power has waned a bit. And I'll never forget the quote he gave me in the beginning when I sat down with him. He goes, I've been charged with treason. I've been charged with sedition, with murder, conspiracy to murder, stockpiling guns, and nothing has stuck because it's fabricated. They list all these charges in a book and they just throw the book at me.

That's not prosecution. That's persecution. You know, he's got that way of talking like a preacher and just the way he talks, it's, it's that fabulous way of twisting words here and there speaking with authority. And when I asked him tough questions, he would just say, these are political questions and I'm, but a humble priest, which is, you know, hilarious, but also not, not true. He's definitely far more than a priest and he's charming, but you know, there's still that menacing air. He's got two huge bodyguards who follow him at all times. Um,

They were not that nice. And when I saw him in 2014, a multi-year commission of inquiry had just ended that was still looking into the coup. And he had been threatened with jail time for refusing to testify and all that. He just didn't listen.

He still tells me he sees the coup as a necessary thing that needed to happen. Like he's my guy is not sorry. And according to him, the whole thing, it starts over a simple property dispute. What's he what's he like? I mean, did he give you that sort of thousand yard terrifying stare or was he pretty chilled out?

He was pretty chill. Like I, I didn't, I didn't really feel fearful even when he looked at me and he was like, are you, you're Jewish, aren't you? And I was like, yeah, yeah, I am. Like there wasn't, there wasn't a level of fear there mostly because I think he's older and you kind of feel like his power has waned a bit, even though there's still some nasty stuff they've been convicted of or accused of 2014, 2015. But I, I had a good time with him, man. He's a great interview. Uh,

And I wish all my interviews were that engaging as he was. So he has this compound. It's on land that's gifted in 1969 to a Muslim organization that was like a predecessor for his group. And at the time, the area, it's nothing but swamp land. And Bakr and his people, they drained the swamp, literally. They build their own community. They have a nursery there. They have a wood shop, a garden, all that stuff. And decades later,

The area becomes prime real estate, and allegedly, these powerful people want to take it themselves. Now, keep in mind, this is all from Bakker, so take it all with a grain of salt. But yeah, the land dispute continues, and authorities occupy part of the compound, then refuse to abandon their positions despite a court order. As this is going on, Bakker says he and his followers are shutting down the country's street drug trade, kind of like how the Nation of Islam cleared corners in rough black areas in America. And there's definitely truth to this. Bakker claims...

This angers Trinidad's elites, many of whom, including the attorney general and the minister of national security, he accuses of being tied into the drug trade.

He says to me, they were all involved in the narco trade and we were opposed to that. We were cleaning this place up from drugs. And like, unfortunately, there's some truth to that. You know, there have been arrests and allegations against high level Trinidadian politicians for decades. Yeah, I mean, so much of the Caribbean is tied up with the drug industry. I mean, just a quick shout out to one of our previous bonus episodes, actually, we did on a guy who spent

spent a large part of the 80s shipping cocaine money around the Caribbean. He was saying how everyone was in the pocket of the governments there. I mean, these are governments of countries that have just a few thousand people, tens of thousands of people, so it's pretty easy to get to the top with pretty few phone calls. So yeah, check that one out. I mean, do they have a... Where does the money come from in Trinidad then? The money comes from the natural gas industry. They're...

As all things considered, they're a fairly wealthy country, but they also are a transshipment point for cocaine coming from Venezuela. They're like 10 miles off the coast of Venezuela, right? And you see this too. I was down in the Dominican Republic a couple of years ago investigating the shooting of David Ortiz, and it's a similar situation like Trinidad where the coke goes there and stops over before it goes to the US or to Europe. Right.

So you have high-level people that often get accused, some of them convicted, of being in on this because they're the ones who watch over shipping containers, that sort of industry. And it corrupts the whole system and filters down. But we're going to get into that a lot later. This is 1987, and there's a police officer who allegedly witnessed a number of powerful officials conducting a massive cocaine deal in a private room at the airport. The officer is named Bernadette James, and she turns to Bacher for protection.

James later died suspiciously while participating in a police anti-terrorism exercise when a single live round was used and made thousands of blanks reportedly fired. James was sitting on a bus filled with other police officers participating in the exercise and the live round allegedly fired by a man outside the bus struck James and killed her. And this is like, I think the crow, right? Wasn't that the thing with Bruce Lee's kid? Brandon, Brandon Lee or something. I never saw that. Yeah.

Yeah, that would actually, I mean, I feel like that would make for a really good podcast. Maybe we should just do that instead and just delete this from the episode. Yeah, yeah, all right, let's do that. But let's keep the merch. People can buy the merch. This is an effort. Like, I don't know if I have time to do another podcast, but someone else should definitely do that because I think that's a blockbuster idea. Anyway, so Bacher decides to expose what James had told him.

He goes to the government. He goes to the courts. He says nothing happens. He claims that an informant in the Ministry of National Security then tells him authorities are going to attack his compound and destroy everything in an attempt to provoke a reaction from Jamaat that would justify extrajudicial killings. Let me say that word again. Extrajudicial killings. That is horrible, that one. Yeah. It's a hard one, man.

Jamal had actually been stockpiling arms and training for years. Like I said, some of them have even received paramilitary experience in Libya after Gaddafi had connected with them. That was like a thing he did back then was connecting with all these groups, I think in Africa and in the Caribbean as well. Um,

which is, you know, just the wild 80s, man. So again, I want to reiterate, I'm telling Bakker's version here. Some of it is corroborated, but let me also break in with some stories about Jemhat. A Bakker associated was convicted of repeatedly attempting the trafficking guns from Florida and in 2005 was sentenced to 12 years in prison. In 2005, Bakker was tried for conspiring...

conspiring to murder two former members of Jamaat and was detained for questioning regarding a number of bombings in the capital. In 2007, he was tried for sedition based on a sermon he delivered two years earlier threatening rich Trinidadians who wouldn't pay him a religious teeth. Tithe? Tithe.

Yeah. Right. Damn it. He was never found guilty of anything, though, as he likes to point out. In 2007, three men were arrested for plotting to blow up fuel depots at New York's JFK International Airport. One of the men had spent time at Bakker's mosque. Bakker, who the FBI had been surveilling since 2001, was suspected of being linked to the crime, but he was never charged. And then, of course, you know, there's the whole try to overthrow the country thing in 1990. Yeah.

I mean, Jesus Christ, good luck cleaning yourself Jama'at al-Muzameen and doing crime like that in the wake of 9-11. How were these guys not taken to a black site in Morocco or something? I mean, they investigated them. I guess they really couldn't find anything. But the feds were definitely looking, especially after that JFK thing. I mean, that was a big deal. Many of his former lieutenants, too, they actually run a lot of street crews right now. They traffic drugs. They kill people, and they're part of these gangs. Yeah.

that are not affiliated with Jamaat, these breakaway guys. But turn it at the two main criminal groups are actually called the Muslims because of Jamaat's influence on them getting started, even though religion has nothing to do with it. And they fight Rasta City. And we'll get into that a lot later. I mean, it does sound like a side mission in GTA 3, right? Like something like that. And in 2014, 11 members of Jamaat, this

This is, I think, after I... Well, the killing was before, but the convictions and the accusations were after. 11 of them allegedly participated in the assassination of Dana Sita Hall, who was

who was an independent senator looking into corruption. And during the trial, a special branch intelligence memo featured in unconform report was leaked to social media. And the report indicated that law enforcement in Trinidad feared violence from Jamaat and made reports. The group may have been moving arms in preparation for an attack on police stations, but the attack never came. And on July 14th, 2015, though,

Jamaat members did launch an armed jailbreak of some of the suspected assassins in the Cedahal case. And during a shootout, one police officer and one Jamaat member was killed. Also, Mark Guerra, who, I mean, this is another dude the guys in my neighborhood talk about. Some of them, I think, knew him. He was one of the most famous gangsters to come out of Trinidad. He came up in Jamaat. He went to New York City to sell drugs in the early 90s, returned to Trinidad in 1993 and did the same.

He got entwined with the highest level of politicians. He actively helped one of the political parties get elected in 2001 and 2002 and received a cabinet position running one of the unemployment programs while still being one of the biggest gangsters ever on the island. But shortly after, he was shot dead. And we're going to talk more about those unemployment programs too. I feel like I'm doing that a lot now, right? Like the whole like, hold on, we got more coming thing. But yeah.

Yeah. I'm trying to keep the linear narrative, man. It's hard. No, this is the NPR side of it, right? I guess you got to keep people guessing, right? You got to keep them coming back for more. So Bacher, he's seen as this godfather type by a lot of people on the island.

Back to the siege. 1990, he's got this beef with the government. So he launches the siege for what he claims is a preemptive strike. The siege of parliament continued until Bacher realizes like they had no way out. And at one point, members of Jamaat stationed in the Red House, they asked the prime minister to call off the troops because the army was there. And they handed him a microphone to address the forces that are stationed around. But instead, he tells the troops to, quote, attack with full force. I mean, that's

That's some balls right there, like to do that. Like that is, you gotta, you gotta be willing to die at that point. And they shoot him, they shoot him right away in the leg, you know? Yeah. I mean, this is literally a Tom Clancy novel, but isn't this just like the bit of the little mermaid where that like octopus woman tries to take over? I don't know. I'm just trying to see where he's got that idea from. It could be this.

I think you've got to give up on that, man. I think it was just a random pick, an enjoyable one. I'm just joining the links, man. Look, if you go on Telegram, you're going to find this, all right?

Anyway, this is, um, it gets even crazier than the prime minister getting shot in the leg because near the end of the coup, there's this now infamous amnesty deal that's reached that was supposed to allow all members of Jamaat to go free. According to Bakker, the siege then wraps up with the government admitting they were wrong, which yeah, okay, sure. Anyway, while Bakker and his crew are negotiating for the amnesty, a government minister by the name of John Humphrey warns them to get the deal in writing.

A number of copies are made of the statement, and when everyone from Jamaat had turned themselves in, the authorities tear up the documents. Again, this is all according to Bacher. Him and his many followers are sentenced to death before a court battle ensues, and the amnesty deal is actually upheld. So they're released after two years in prison, and these guys who literally tried to overthrow the government and shot the prime minister in the leg...

Begin campaigning for the country's most powerful political parties right after because, you know, they had they had control in the streets. Bacher had been used since the 80s to rally the vote. And even after this, you know, people still wanted wanted him to get the vote out. So they also start receiving these lucrative government contracts meant to combat unemployment. You know, that's where a lot of the gas money comes in to try to help the poor sectors of Trinidad and.

It's known as the Unemployment Relief Program, which they essentially used as a money-making racket. And that becomes a big theme with the gangs of Trinidad. Yeah, I just wanted to ask you this point about Hal Greaves as well. Like, paint a picture of him, because in your doco, you're kind of walking around town with him, and he's the only guy who can move around freely between the gang territories. Like, wizened old guy, a walking stick. I want to know more about him.

He was a really popular entertainer. You know, he had the show that was super popular there. And as he's gotten older, he's become very active in these sort of keep the peace movements, which try to stop the violence from happening because, you know, he's the man in those neighborhoods. So he's out there campaigning, really trying to do something to stop all the shooting. And unfortunately, he's kind of fighting a losing battle. Side note, because I do it in this doc and it's a thing I always did in docs.

There's a scene here where I ask the police if they feel like they're fighting a losing battle. And I ended up doing that a lot, like unconsciously. It's a question I always use for these docs. So the editors made up a show called Fighting a Losing Battle with Danny Gold, where they would just like take all those clips. Anyway, yeah.

How does Bacher lead to the gangs is the big question. And this is one thing a lot of people kind of agree on, that Bacher's groups actually did shut down the street drug trade. And the gangs in these poor, poor Spain areas, where they're now huge, you know, they weren't operating back then like they are now. So after the siege, he kind of loses some of that power. And he claims that he and his organization, they stepped back from the streets. So they started opening them up.

And murders in Trinidad, which again were around 100 a year in the 90s, they're about 500 a year today, which is one of the highest murder rates in the world. And many of those murders are attributed to the gang wars that are raging in these neighborhoods where Bacher once exerted the most influence. And while Bacher may be irrelevant now, as some people have called him, his former lieutenants are alleged to be leading some of these powerful street gangs.

And some of these members, they're more interested in making money and doing crimes, which is understandable. It's a lot more fun than kind of wishing to follow Bacher and the strict interpretation of Islam on the straight and narrow. And I asked him if he thought it was a weird coincidence. So many of these gang lords came from his group, and he told me they were taught by me to be leaders. So obviously, if they're in the community, they're the ones who could be leaders. Hmm.

And others kind of scoff at this whole aspect and just say what Bacher did was teach the people of Trinidad gun diplomacy and show them that the state forces were weak. So other people were just like, we don't have to respect this or them. Let's do what we need to do.

And now you have these warring street gangs, this crazy jump in the murder rate and calls for states of emergency from various politicians over the last few years. Though, just to be clear, the violence in Trinidad actually is very concentrated in like a handful of neighborhoods. You know, the country wouldn't be dangerous at all for terrorists. It's just it's unfortunate. But it's one of those things when you do this kind of work, you know, you go and you seek out trouble. You seek out the worst, the worst. And it's tough because you don't want to give this impression to the country that

You know, as being all like this, as there being just violence all over. In some countries, it definitely is like that, right? But you kind of have to walk this middle ground where you want people to realize, like, it's a beautiful place full of great people. Somewhere you should go if you're a tourist because it's very unexplored. But the reality is things are super dangerous in those neighborhoods.

And it's a real problem. And it's tough because I think some people from Trinidad are going to get upset and be like, why are you talking about all the crime there? It's a beautiful country. But other people are really appreciative that you actually show what is going on in these poor neighborhoods that people like to gloss over.

And Hal Graves himself actually talks about it at the end of the doc. He's like, you know, we have a cancer here right now in the community. And if you ignore the cancer and pretend the whole body is fine, even if it's in a small part of the body, that cancer is just going to grow. So I kind of look at this work as doing something like that, though it does bum me out sometimes that I can't just go around, you know, partying and eating food and talking about the beautiful parts of the culture. Yeah, for sure. For sure. I mean, how dangerous are these neighborhoods as well? They're bumping up the numbers so much. It's got like 500 people.

murders a year they must be insane i mean if you live in these neighborhoods right it's it's like we talked about with san luis if you live in these neighborhoods like it is super dangerous if you don't it's it's not really that dangerous but it's also like when i go in there right i'm going in there as a white american journalist i'm not really under threat like i'm

No one's going to, no one wants the attention that, that killing me or robbing me is going to bring on them from the police in this situation. It's not that it's not dangerous. It is, but it's a whole other sort of thing. If you're trying to add and go down there, like the dudes in my neighborhood were all insanely impressed that I was able to go down there because they're from a rival neighborhood. And I'm just like, you know, I'm going to, I'm going to bask in, in, in all the, all the glory. But the reality is that, um,

I'm going down there. It's all arranged. You know, I'm not going down there. It's like El Salvador. I've talked about this, like, unless I'm getting permission and I have Mark Bassant who gives me, gets me permission, my local dude on the ground who hooks it up. I've got to still be cool down there and make sure people like me and want to talk to me. You can't be stupid, but I mean, that's, that's kind of how it works, right? It's not, it's not the same threat. There is a threat again, talked about this with El Salvador, that if I do something stupid, it's going to fall back on the

on the local trinidadians that i work with so i try not to do that yeah but yeah this is if my if my if my mom's listening to this episode that is exactly how journalism goes mom i'm never in any danger it's all totally cool actually it's all just like sitting on beaches and talking to random people that i meet on the beach so yeah just don't listen to anything else

It's funny you bring that up because my parents have a whole thing. My mom is not thrilled when I go to the Middle East. But if I'm like, oh yeah, I'm going to do cartel stuff or MS-13, I don't really tell them ahead of time, but they don't really mind as much as opposed to going somewhere where there are jihadis. If I was just like, I'm going to do this cartel war thing, they'd be like, all right, have fun. As opposed to going to Iraq or Syria where there's a lot more concern.

But where was I? My mum's everything. My mum's everything that's not like my back garden. So yeah, this will help a great deal with this podcast. Does she listen? Probably not. No, she don't listen, man. Come on.

The role that Bacher played, obviously, I think it's quite big, but Trinidad, like everywhere else, has always had some gangs. And the first gangs came from the steel poniards, which steel pond is a thing that was invented in Trinidad. If you've been to Juve, the real Juve, not the one where they started it now at 4 o'clock in the morning, which is BS, but the real ones...

Well, I guess if you've been to the BS ones too, you've also, you know, seen the Steel Pond drums. They're amazing. They're a big part of the culture. Each one back then used to represent neighborhoods. Shout out to Desper's and Rado's, which are the two big ones in the US. And they used to clash, you know, so each band had to get enforcers and it went on and on. But I kind of imagine that's like, you know, cute 50s gangs with leather jackets and switchblades, that sort of thing. Yeah, Rumble Fish, Matt Dillon doing theater school front kicks. It's awesome.

I'm sure it was a little worse, but at some point the government decides they didn't want to deal with these poor neighborhoods where the gangs were. So they looked for neighborhood leaders to appoint to help with the jobs programs and things like that. You know, they usually end up with the baddest dude in the neighborhood. And that's exactly what happens. Nowadays, Trinidad has these two programs that the gangsters profit off of. They're the unemployment relief program and the community based protection and enhancement program.

which again, basically jobs programs, usually construction or like public works funded with the gas money. And they're in control of gang leaders. And now you have a big problem because the gangs are entwined with the entire system. They control the flow of jobs to the poor neighborhoods.

So you cut off this flow of jobs, you're going to have unrest, you're going to lose votes. So the community leaders, who are essentially gang leaders, besides having street dealing and drugs, they control these valuable contracts that also control jobs for peoples in their communities, and it just reinforces their power. It's very like old school Sopranos construction sites, no-show jobs and shit like that. Gabagool?

Is that the right time? I don't know. I just wanted to say Gabigool. It's always the right time to talk about Gabigool. But Inspector Alexander, who's the cop I mentioned at the beginning that I embedded with in 2014, he told me these contracts, they make the job of the police 10 times harder because it's like, what do you do with a gang leader? You catch him with guns, with drugs. That's a crime. You can pin crimes on him. How do you catch a man getting legal money?

Also, shout out to one of the greatest undervalued rap albums of all time, Legal Drug Money, Lost Boys. Listen to it. I mean, it doesn't get better than that. The ability of the gang leaders, either as the heads of the construction... Sorry, this is a quote from Amsterdam News that did an article about the situation that turned out a couple years ago. The ability of the gang leaders, either as the heads of the construction firms or neighborhood points of access for contractors...

has allowed them to expand their hold over the communities by effectively determining who works and by doling out the resources that come from the execution of the contracts.

They also have a quote from police chief Gary Griffith, who complained bitterly in recent days. I think this is like from 2017 about the bloody fight between the gangs vying for state construction and other contracts, saying that perhaps nowhere else in the world would the state help to finance gangs rather than suffocate their activities by choking off their money supply. And this is the case on the island, he said, calling for an immediate halt to the contracts.

It is very difficult for the police service to try to provide safety and security to a country when the state continues to facilitate major contracts for gang members. This is not the first time, and I hope it would come to an end one day.

And like I said, in exchange for these contracts, the gangs deliver their neighborhoods to vote for the politicians. It's one big corrupt system and it's very similar to Jamaica. If you've ever looked into it, where the two main gangs in Kingston going back to the 60s and 70s were each backed by rival political parties and they used this to sort of grow and grow as the politicians looked the other way.

Because once those gangs get in there like that, I mean, it's a real problem to shut them down. It's far easier to shut down a regular street gang than a street gang enmeshed with politics in the community. I'm still shocked that feds aren't chasing down these guys, like Islamic-based gangs, violence, political instability. I mean, that's one thing, right? But messing with the gas industry, that gives you Eric Prince and ninja bombs or something, doesn't it?

Well, that's the thing. I mean, these are local gangs, right? They're not doing anything on a big level. Maybe they ship a kilo to Miami or New York here and there, but they don't have an international presence. You know what I'm saying? And they don't really mess with the gas industry besides dealing with these contracts. But dealing with these contracts, you know, you're not fucking with Exxon's money when you fuck with a local Trinidadian contract. Like, they don't care what's going on with that. If you start sabotaging pipelines, then yeah. I mean, the feds are going to go after you. Everyone's going to go after you. But it's, you know, they're local gangs, right?

And the two main gangs in Trinidad right now that serve as umbrella organizations for smaller gangs, like I said, the Muslims and Rasta City. Neither one of these gangs actually has much to do with Rasta foreignism or Islam. The Guardian of Trinidad newspaper has a quote. In 2017, Lavantil West MP Fitzgerald Hinn said gang culture was creeping into several Lavantil West schools where some eight and nine year olds were showing such signs.

Hinton said there were 42 gangs in his constituency, in his constituency, comprising Rasta City and Muslim units, and youths were being used by major, by more mature people established as large, powerful community figures.

Hinn said in the Muslim element, brothers were dealing with guns and drugs, dominating various blocks. But other brothers stood up to them, giving birth to Rasta city versus Muslims friction. So yeah, again, you know, they came some, a lot of them from Jamaat, but there's no, there's no real religious aspect. You don't have to be a Muslim to be in the Muslim gang. You don't have to be Rasta to be in the Rasta gang. It's very like Bloods and Crips too, where it could be like a street or it could be a storm drain.

that sets up these borderlines and you can't cross them. And there's an amazing Trinidadian reggae song called Borderlines You Should Look Up, which is incredible. Yeah, I listened to that. It's such a weird mix of like pretty heavy gang violence and upbeat reggae. I'm not, I wasn't really sure what headspace I was in listening to it.

Well, it's a call for peace, you know, which you have that in reggae songs in Jamaica as well. I mean, there's a fabulous Bob Marley story in another documentary I worked on about his attempted assassination, which talks about how he was trying to make peace to the warring gangs in Jamaica. But yeah, it's great. I mean, Trinidad is more popular for Soka, which is 99% about partying. So that doesn't really fit in with the stop shooting thing. But Hal Graves talks about that. He says, you know, the kitchen is at war with the bedroom, meaning it's like next door neighbors are

are killing each other. There's a San Jose State University paper. I think I already quoted from it, but this is another quote from it. Before the coup, the Muslims used to run this town. This is actually a quote from someone they interviewed in these neighborhoods. If you were a Muslim, you got respect. They started going into communities and taking drugs because it was bad for the body. But instead of getting rid of it, they would give it to others to sell for them. Abu Bakr wanted everything for himself. This has got to be pre-1990, I think.

He used to take money from kidnapping ransoms in jail. Some of the guys who are now Rasta City were Muslims. Some of them turned and started fighting the Muslims because the Muslims were taking advantage. The Muslim main stronghold is a place called Lavantillo, which is up in the hills in East Port, Spain. You know, John John's the neighborhood that I know a bunch of folks from. Down the hill is Beatham Gardens, where Rasta City is based.

And the dudes, like I said, who I live with in New York city, I think they're all live on teal guys. They wrap John John really hard every year during the parade. And when I went to Trinidad, the guys I got to hang with was one of the main leaders of Ross, the city, a guy they call Spanish. And Mark set this whole thing up for me. And it was just a, you know, we got to beat them gardens. I mean, you got lookouts everywhere. You can't go in there at all unless you're cleared. Well, I guess unless you're shooting Spanish shows up. Yeah. I'll never forget.

Only house with security cameras everywhere. He drives up in a bright blue Beamer, golds and shades. He's actually carrying his white sneakers by hand. He's got a big chain on. It was kind of a big deal when my friends from the neighborhood saw it because they all know who Spanish is and they can't go meet with him. They can't go to beat him because things get spicy otherwise. And they're all like, oh man, you're crazy. How did you pull that off? And I feel like I explained that earlier on.

Anyway, after meeting Spanish, we went to a nearby neighborhood and he's surrounded by like teenagers, right? Like 16 year olds. One of them has an AK tatted on his hand. And I'm like, okay, like I know what your role is, right? They,

They start rolling up big joints and like, I don't even like weed anymore at this point in my life. But my rule is that when gangsters offer you things like you do them, you know, so, so I'm going to take it. So I took like one puff, got a little high. I think if you watch the video, you can tell them what my eyes are a little closed, didn't enjoy it. But because of that, I got invited back for a party that night. And you think, you think Anderson Cooper is pulling that off? Come on, Richard, Richard Engel, like that's not, that's not happening.

but Spanish was actually throwing that party because he does, you know, a lot of those things for the community to getting good. He starts talking about himself as a contractor, how he does construction. He builds houses, he gets the money, he spends it on the people in the neighborhood. But like, you know, it's really easy to say that and you kind of have to push him without, without pushing him too much. Cause again,

So I'm like, do you think it's fair? They call you a gangster. It also helps to ask questions where it kind of might reveal some things about his life. Yeah. And this is also like one of the things we were talking about off air that

It's kind of so different to have to go into these kind of places doing what you do with your documentaries and what I do. I can kind of just sit there with a notepad, jotting things down. Everyone's like totally cool. They just think I'm a fucking nerd in the corner, which I am. But it's like totally different way of navigating those kind of situations. And also, like, I'm going to stand up for Anderson Cooper. I mean, do you reckon he didn't just smoke a bunch of dope with the Taliban back in the day?

I reckon he might. I reckon he might. I don't know, man. I don't think those guys can pull this kind of thing off. I think it's my unique skill set in this industry. But yeah, I mean, you also have VO where you can correct some sort of these things and bring in other information. But I asked him about the attempts made on his life, and he describes like two or three times how he always has to switch cars. And it's kind of like, you know,

If people are trying to kill you, chances are you're not just a construction magnet. You're maybe something else.

So we go to the party afterwards at Spanish Throes for the community, drank some beers, and then we met a bunch of guys wearing balaclavas holding guns because that's pretty much a requirement for any documentary when you're working for Vice. Like you need guys covering their faces, either holding drugs or guns. Otherwise, you get fired. I knew it. I knew it. Your Inside Vice News episode is just around the corner, by the way. I can feel it.

Well, you got to get the Patreon up a bit more for me to do that. Patreon.com slash The Underworld Podcast. I probably should have shot that out earlier. Hopefully you're all still listening. The young guys, you know, the guys I was talking to, they talk a lot about the Coast Guard and the police and the politicians, everyone taking bribes. And that's a big theme too.

Corrupt politicians, corrupt police, all that. They call them the big fish, you know, these mythical hidden businessmen that are the ones actually profiting off the drug trade who get away with it because all you see is the street guys fighting over dollars and shooting. They're the ones who get prosecuted, right? Even Bakker brings this up. And country, seven miles from Venezuela, so it has become this bigger drug transshipment point, especially as the route through Mexico has gotten tougher.

So the Coke comes there. It heads to the U S or to Europe as well as to the rest at West Africa route and

In 2014, 723 pounds of cocaine that came from Trinidad were busted in Virginia, I think in like tomato cans, which is $100 million worth. So there are major shipments moving through there. This is like the French connection, right? Back in the day, a load of stuff was coming over the Atlantic into Venezuela, up through into the States as well. And we've got an episode coming up next about a guy who used to do this actually. And I feel like I saw he was like,

spotted bringing something in Trinidad. So it must have been like a big trading post even then for the drug stuff. That was back in the 60s and 70s. I don't know if it was that big. And then because I think back then it was more about heroin right in the 60s and 70s. Yeah. And coke was across the US border. It definitely picked up in the Caribbean, I think in the 80s, because you had Miami just becoming this huge thing. And then, you know, they did a good job shutting that route down focused on Mexico, you

You know, it's like that game that you play when you're a kid where you bash the groundhogs when they come out of the thing. You shut down one area, it's going to go and get popular in the other area. And that's kind of like- Yeah, whack-a-mole. Yeah. Yeah, whack-a-mole. That's what it's called, whack-a-mole. How did I forget that? Come on, Connie Rose.

Yeah, but with the drugs coming in, right, so do guns because the drugs there either have to be, you know, continue going and smuggled or sold and you have to protect them. So you send guns in from Venezuela as well. And that leaves guns on the island. Some of them are either sold or they're just left there. And those guns end up making their way around the island.

Once there are more guns, there are more shootings, more murders. And also a big thing that happens with drug shipments like that is they get – the people that are helping you there sometimes get paid in product. So then they've got to move the product around the island and it boosts drug sales locally too. This is a quote from –

I think it's from that San Jose paper from Inside Crimes. I really got to do a better job of writing that down. But all our sources are always up. If you go to the Patreon $10 thing, you can see them. Increasing the isolation of Venezuela and attention given to commercial and other vessels leaving it have made it more attractive for narco traffickers to move their product into Trinidad and launch it towards the United States from there.

In addition, the ability to move drugs from Trinidad toward the United States by advancing island to island offers an alternative to taking a more direct route with more expensive and higher profile boats. Trinidad has 12 widely dispersed small ports of entry, relatively unguarded, that facilitate the traffic.

In recent years, you've had even more issues with Venezuela as the country collapses. You have lots of refugees pouring in, piracy, human trafficking, sex trafficking, and all that. It's a big issue in the country. You even have some Venezuelan gangs moving in there. But the drugs is the key there. I mean, that's the real moneymaker. Yeah, that and Bitcoin, am I right? And GameStop. That's the only way you can get paid. Stonks, man.

Now the street gangs themselves, the Muslims and the Rastas, on an international scale, like I said, they're small time. Maybe they try to move some kilos to Miami or to New York or Virginia. Maybe they charge some of the people moving big shipments through Trinidad protection fees, but they're not big time narco traffickers on an international level.

What many people in Trinidad do think, though, is that the Coast Guard and these high-level police and the politicians and other big fish, the elite businessmen, they're the ones involved with this high-level drug trade. They say that the impunity from that filters down because these guys never get prosecuted. And one interesting thing you'll hear whispered, besides the accusations on the politicians being in on this narco trade, is Trinidad, it has this small percentage of Syrian and Lebanese super wealthy families that came there a couple generations ago.

And they're often accused of being narco traffickers because there is that sort of connection with West Africa and with Latin America. The Lebanese are kind of known for it in that regard. But I haven't seen any evidence and I've looked for it. There's nothing there right now that points to that.

Meanwhile, most of the attention from law enforcement, of course, and the newspapers is focused on the gang members shooting it out in broad daylight over dollars. And the papers are filled with stories of lengthy, lengthy shootouts, 14 year old gangsters, police and criminals going after each other with the police doing a lot of shooting first and asking questions later.

politicians and columnists wondering how things got so bad. In fact, while I was actually writing this, a random Trinidadian woman hit me up on Facebook out of nowhere to ask me to come down there again and do another story on how crazy things have gotten. She's really concerned about the amount of women being killed. There were 539 murders in Trinidad in 2019, though 2020 did drop down to 395. In July of 2019, they had 24 murders in a seven-day period.

The country has been near a breaking point and appeals from all over the country for peace. Another researcher, Darren Figueroa, he called what's happening with the gangs a perpetual quest for dominance, which you see a similar theme anywhere where there's not like one super gang in control. You go to sleep Friday night, you wake up Saturday morning, and the person who was dominant is dead, and boom, you have a whole new person taking over and battles for control. And that's, I mean, Trinidad is just going through

And that's where it is right now.

You don't even have to give us money out of the goodness of our own heart. We don't listen. No, wait, wait. No Pink Floyd. No Pink Floyd. We don't support Roger Waters. Oh, shit, yeah. God, who isn't cancelled? Fuck.

You don't even have to do it out of the goodness of your own heart giving us money these days, guys. We've got merch. There's like a whole store page on the website. The book list going up like every episode. I know exchanging money for physical objects is pretty 2019, but we got you now. Yeah, thanks, guys. Again, patreon.com slash the underworld podcast. Sorry this episode was a day late. And thanks for tuning in as always.

Man and man fear to walk down in the next man vicinity. It's borderline. Why all the Satan wickedness in the poor man community? It's borderline. Say man and man fear to walk down in the next man vicinity. It's borderline.

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Bye.