Yvonne Ba­boolal

A gang leader in Laven­tille has 21 "clips" (sub-gangs) and a rough to­tal of 600 young men un­der his com­mand.He once sold CDs on the streets of Port-of-Spain, has tak­en over late Laven­tille "don" Mark Guer­ra's turf, runs a car deal­er­ship in the area and is al­ways well dressed and re­port­ed­ly dri­ves a Mer­cedes Benz.

An off­shoot of the Ja­maat al Mus­limeen, this gang leader has "lieu­tenants" con­trol­ling his "clips" in sev­er­al ar­eas in east and south Port-of-Spain and has been try­ing to ex­pand his base on Dun­can Street. Some of the gangs are com­prised of on­ly Mus­lims."He is one of the most pow­er­ful young men in their 20s in the coun­try," said a well-placed source who re­quest­ed anonymi­ty.

The source spoke to the Guardian yes­ter­day, seek­ing to ex­plain the re­cent es­ca­la­tion in crime in the area which caused the ex­e­cu­tion of two teenagers last week Wednes­day.An­oth­er gang leader con­trol­ling Nel­son Street and oth­er places, the oth­er pro­tag­o­nist in the re­cent gang war, has been mak­ing sure his ri­val does not get a foothold. This sec­ond gang leader, in his late 20 or ear­ly 30s, has teardrops tat­tooed on both sides of his face sig­ni­fy­ing how many peo­ple he has killed.

"It all has to do with dol­lars and cents. It's about con­trol­ling turf. With turf comes pow­er, more sol­diers."The source said gov­ern­ment con­tracts, some giv­en out by In­de­pen­dent Lib­er­al Par­ty leader Jack Warn­er when he was na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty min­is­ter, had played a part in the re­cent spike in gang vi­o­lence in the area."In the Colour Me Or­ange pro­gramme, a con­tract was giv­en to paint the Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion build­ings on Dun­can Street," the source ex­plained.

At present, there is a con­tract to build a bas­ket­ball court on Dun­can Street and two oth­ers."The shoot­ing the oth­er day was over a Cepep con­tract," the source said."The giv­ing out of con­tracts to gangs did not start hap­pen­ing with this gov­ern­ment. It has been go­ing on with suc­ces­sive gov­ern­ments."Right now, Laven­tille gangs are "colonis­ing" the whole of Trinidad, said Hal Greaves, who de­scribes him­self as a "vi­o­lence in­ter­rupter" and works close­ly with gangs in the area.

"If you go in­to La Hor­quet­ta, the crime pat­tern re­sem­bles that of Laven­tille," he said."Chil­dren from Fe­lic­i­ty and oth­er places, wear­ing their pants be­low their waists and ban­dan­nas around their heads and lis­ten­ing to Mava­do and Pop­corn, are try­ing to be Laven­tille bad boys. They are fol­low­ing the ex­am­ple of Laven­tille.

"Laven­tille is not a place any more, Laven­tille is a cul­ture. They are see­ing that Laven­tille de­fies the sys­tem and Laven­tille wins. 'The teacher tells me I am dunce and puts me out the class but I de­fy her and make it.'"Greaves, from San Fer­nan­do, who played Roy in the pop­u­lar Roy and Glo­ria do­mes­tic vi­o­lence tele­vi­sion se­ries, be­gan work­ing with Laven­tille gangs more than sev­en years ago when he went to do a dra­ma class in the area.

"They shoot up the class and then apol­o­gised when they found out who I was," he re­called.Since then he has been work­ing with the gangs with the as­sis­tance of gov­ern­ment agen­cies, re­li­gious lead­ers and NGOs."When there's a shoot­ing, to pre­vent it from es­ca­lat­ing I would go in and try to talk to the boys and get them to hold," he said.Greaves said he did his "lit­tle part" in the re­cent gang war­fare be­tween Dun­can and Nel­son Streets but con­ced­ed, "It's a slow, hard process."

Gov­ern­ment con­tracts and drugs had a part to play but the re­cent gang vi­o­lence was on­ly the con­tin­u­a­tion of a big­ger war, he said.It all goes back to the con­trol of turf."With­out al­liances, you have no guns, no sup­port, you will get swal­lowed up. Some­body has to give you back­up," Greaves said."If you lose the key to your brain and go un­guard­ed even in a neu­tral area, you could get killed. Women from Dun­can Street can­not go the George Street health clin­ic. They will kill them."

But Greaves said he had seen a "small im­prove­ment" since he be­gan work­ing with the gangs."When I went it there, I was alone. I now have a team of for­mer gang­sters work­ing with me."When peo­ple have guns, it's dif­fi­cult to tell them, 'Let's try to re­solve this by talk­ing.'"