Dy­lan Ker­ri­g­an

The com­mon nar­ra­tive about crime in mod­ern T&T is that of­fend­ers are most­ly young black men liv­ing in poor, run­down, ur­ban ar­eas, com­mit­ting vi­o­lent and drug-re­lat­ed crimes.In pre­vi­ous columns it's been point­ed out this nar­ra­tive leaves out a whole list of crimes, at the top of which is white-col­lar crime.Of­ten, when we hear about rur­al crimes, it is prae­di­al lar­ce­ny–the theft of grow­ing crops–or fam­i­ly dis­putes and cas­es of do­mes­tic vi­o­lence.

These two nar­ra­tives of crime in ur­ban and rur­al spaces re­flect a trend iden­ti­fied by so­ci­ol­o­gists that says, in gen­er­al, we un­der­stand cer­tain crimes as hap­pen­ing most­ly in cer­tain places. Or put an­oth­er way, places, like ur­ban ar­eas shape our and the me­dia's un­der­stand­ing of crime, telling us where crime hap­pens and where crim­i­nals live.

Most re­cent­ly in To­ba­go, cer­tain events seem to be com­pli­cat­ing this sim­ple nar­ra­tive. Away from Scar­bor­ough, in some of the rur­al vil­lages up and down the is­land, a gang cul­ture more fa­mil­iar to ur­ban Trinidad seems to be grow­ing.One piece of ev­i­dence of this change is the re­cent shoot­ing that took place in To­ba­go on the night of the na­tion­wide black­out.

Short­ly af­ter the lights went out, a gun­man shot in­to a crowd­ed bar full of lo­cals, tourists and oth­er vis­i­tors who were try­ing, un­der the emer­gency light­ing of a few car head­lights, to make a plan for an­oth­er lim­ing spot. The gun­man stood across the road away from the bar and shot a to­tal of six times, hit­ting a woman in the leg.Ini­tial­ly, peo­ple thought it was fire­works. As it was dark, no one knew ex­act­ly what was go­ing on. Po­lice re­cov­ered five cas­ings and lo­cals point­ed out a sixth shell still in the wall.

Eye­wit­ness­es de­scribed a scene of com­mo­tion. Peo­ple scram­bled away from the bar. Tourists in a restau­rant right next to the bar, and cus­tomers in a small food out­let, all locked them­selves in­side. Some are said to have been face-down on the floor and hys­ter­i­cal, since they had no idea what ex­act­ly was hap­pen­ing. Re­mem­ber, this wasn't ur­ban or rur­al Trinidad; this was on a vil­lage green in rur­al To­ba­go, slight­ly off the beat­en track and away from where the ma­jor­i­ty of tourists find them­selves.

Speak­ing to lo­cals to try and find out what and why the shoot­ing hap­pened, these are some of the rea­sons res­i­dents and lo­cals gave: the shoot­ing was gang-re­lat­ed. Two men from an­oth­er vil­lage came to ex­e­cute the big man from an­oth­er vil­lage. This big man was lim­ing at the bar with col­leagues from the vil­lage where the bar is lo­cat­ed. Lo­cals de­scribed a clan­nish con­nec­tion be­tween their vil­lage and the oth­er vil­lage, both through fam­i­ly and ge­o­graph­i­cal close­ness.

Lo­cals ex­plained that al­though the po­lice sta­tion is a five-minute dri­ve away, the po­lice did not ar­rive for over 20 min­utes, dur­ing which time sup­port­ers of the in­tend­ed vic­tim pulled up in their cars look­ing for the gun­man, who by then, it is as­sumed, had fled.Now prop­er re­search needs to be done in­to the trans­for­ma­tions tak­ing in place in To­ba­go.

The lo­cals them­selves ven­ture one nar­ra­tive.

They de­scribe dis­grun­tled, young men, hang­ing around in groups of ten or 20 from vil­lage to vil­lage. Add in a mix­ture of vi­o­lent in­ter­na­tion­al me­dia, an il­le­gal tourist mar­ket for drugs that is im­pos­si­ble to stem, an em­ploy­ment cul­ture that is lim­it­ed, an in­flux of guns and crim­i­nals from Trinidad work­ing in To­ba­go, and lo­cals say you come to un­der­stand some of the fac­tors con­tribut­ing to the growth of what is most fa­mil­iar in me­dia and politi­cian nar­ra­tives as ur­ban ghet­to be­hav­iour–not idyl­lic rur­al greens.

What emerges from this short sto­ry tells us many things. A cul­ture of frat­ri­ci­dal be­hav­iour–killing one's broth­ers–is emerg­ing. Much like in ur­ban Trinidad, it fol­lows the eye-for-an-eye mantra. This cul­ture of vi­o­lence is al­ways a reg­u­lar fea­ture on the TV news and news­pa­pers, no doubt in some small part con­tribut­ing to the growth of this be­hav­iour in To­ba­go.

Now, it is im­por­tant that we are care­ful here not to sen­sa­tion­alise the sit­u­a­tion. To­ba­go is not Trinidad, its cul­ture, his­to­ry, and so­cial cli­mate are dis­tinct.Yet be­cause we ex­pect dif­fer­ent things of To­ba­go we may be blind­ing our­selves to the steady and creep­ing growth of a gang cul­ture we don't ex­pect to find in rur­al parts of the coun­try, and es­pe­cial­ly rur­al parts of To­ba­go.

�2 Dr Dy­lan Ker­ri­g­an is an an­thro­pol­o­gist at UWI, St Au­gus­tine