Mul­ti-me­dia jour­nal­ist Ur­vashi Ti­wari-Rop­nar­ine has been in­ves­ti­gat­ing T&T's flour­ish­ing il­le­gal drug trade for the past sev­er­al weeks. That jour­ney has tak­en her to sev­er­al parts of the coun­try for ex­ten­sive in­ter­views with sev­er­al peo­ple in­volved in the trade, peo­ple who have been re­search­ing it and mem­bers of the law en­force­ment agen­cies charged with try­ing to pre­vent the ac­tiv­i­ty. To­day, she presents part one of a six-part se­ries on the trade ti­tled Cracks in Our Bor­ders.

Trinidad and To­ba­go lies just north of the equa­tor. It is a coun­try known best for its pitch lake in La Brea and two-day car­ni­val af­fair. It is al­so a ma­jor oil and gas ex­porter but did you know of its bil­lion dol­lar drug in­dus­try?

Au­thor and re­searcher Trevor Munroe, in his book Caribbean Se­cu­ri­ty in the Age of Ter­ror, wrote: "Close to 50 per cent of the co­caine in­tro­duced to this US$35 bil­lion Unit­ed States co­caine mar­ket in 2001 passed through the Caribbean."

He doc­u­ment­ed then the in­crease in pro­gres­sive crimes in T&T along with oth­er tran­sit hubs like Ja­maica and the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic.

Lo­cal au­thor and drug re­searcher Dar­ius Figueira, how­ev­er, tells Guardian Me­dia Lim­it­ed (GML) that Trinidad has again been "switched on" as a ma­jor trans-ship­ment point.

The fact that T&T is pinned, al­most strate­gi­cal­ly, be­tween the pro­duc­ers and con­sumers of drugs in North Amer­i­ca and Eu­rope, and the fact that many of its bor­ders are eas­i­ly ac­ces­si­ble, fa­cil­i­tates the flour­ish­ing bil­lion dol­lar in­dus­try.

Figueira's street re­search tells what au­thors have been doc­u­ment­ing for decades: There is a known nexus be­tween the nar­cot­ic trade and the gang cul­ture as­so­ci­at­ed with vi­o­lence in T&T.

He is au­thor of "Co­caine and Hero­in Traf­fick­ing in the Caribbean," a case study of the T&T drug traf­fick­ing trade.

Yet, de­spite his ex­ten­sive re­search, Figueira says be­sides fig­ures col­lect­ed by law en­force­ment agen­cies from seizures, it is dif­fi­cult to es­ti­mate the val­ue of the drug trade in T&T.

"It varies. It's de­pen­dent on the lev­els of in­ter­dic­tion present at any of the re­gion­al ter­ri­to­ries at any point in time," he said.

The Unit­ed Na­tions Drug Con­trol Pro­gramme (UND­CP), how­ev­er, es­ti­mates that US$50 bil­lion is be­ing laun­dered across the Caribbean an­nu­al­ly.

Ac­cord­ing to the Unit­ed Na­tions' Of­fice on Drugs and Crime's Caribbean Drug Trends Re­port (2001-2002), the to­tal drug GDP for the Caribbean was US$3.684 bil­lion dur­ing that pe­ri­od.

Figueira says there is a price to pay for in­volve­ment in this ac­tiv­i­ty, as blood is the pre­ferred cur­ren­cy on T&T's streets as ri­val gangs all try to squeeze in­to the closed com­mu­ni­ty of the drug trade.

"They con­tin­ue to be locked out, hav­ing lit­tle, con­tin­u­ous­ly fight­ing over scraps," Figueira told Guardian Me­dia Lim­it­ed (GML).

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Link to vi­o­lence

Gun vi­o­lence and mur­ders are the re­sult of their ac­tiv­i­ty.

Ac­cord­ing to gun­pol­i­cy.org's coun­try pro­file of T&T, in 1995 44 per cent of the 135 mur­ders were com­mit­ted with guns and in 2009, its lat­est tal­ly, 72 per cent of the 506 mur­ders were be­cause of fa­tal shoot­ings, al­most dou­ble the per­cent­age two decades ago.

The 2012 Small Arms Sur­vey, an in­de­pen­dent re­search project con­duct­ed by the Grad­u­ate In­sti­tute of In­ter­na­tion­al and De­vel­op­ment Stud­ies in Gene­va, Switzer­land, records the glob­al av­er­age of pro­por­tions of homi­cides com­mit­ted with firearms to be 42 per cent.

It is al­so in­ter­est­ing to note that while guns are not man­u­fac­tured in the Caribbean, the As­so­ci­a­tion of Caribbean Com­mis­sion­ers of Po­lice es­ti­mates there are over 1.6 mil­lion il­le­gal firearms cir­cu­lat­ing in the re­gion.

Figueira says the low-lev­el traf­fick­ers in the game ac­count for T&T's high lev­els of gun vi­o­lence and sky­rock­et­ing mur­der rate.

But it is when the drug gangs tar­get each oth­er's sup­plies that things be­come crit­i­cal.

"When one gang has its stash ready for ex­port one day, an­oth­er gang will at­tack, take and go by any means nec­es­sary," he said.

And is there a con­se­quence for the per­pe­tra­tors of this vi­o­lence?

The 2012 Small Arms Sur­vey con­cludes that since few gun homi­cides are solved in T&T, im­puni­ty for gun vi­o­lence may al­so be a fac­tor in the ris­ing num­bers of gun crimes and homi­cides in par­tic­u­lar.

Gun run­ners and drug push­ers on the streets say with the right con­nec­tions, one can or­der an as­sas­si­na­tion for TT$6,000 and if that's too much for your pock­et, as lit­tle as $2,000 can get you your own per­son­al firearm.

The cost of these il­le­gal guns varies ac­cord­ing to the type, make and of course its lev­el of use. The guns, sources told GML, are com­ing in along­side the drugs be­ing tran­shipped through T&T.

One North Coast fish­er­man with knowl­edge of the il­le­gal drug trade said: "What you find­ing now is guns com­ing in. I have heard from fel­lows who does take work to go for drugs, say some­times to move drugs they does put a lit­tle bag of guns in your boat too."

On the eco­nom­ic side of things, the Unit­ed Na­tions es­ti­mates the nar­cotics trade in the Caribbean gen­er­ates an an­nu­al US$3 bil­lion, al­most one third of our coun­try's fis­cal bud­get.

Mex­i­can car­tel link

Figueira says the trade is decades old with T&T be­ing a tran­sit hub since the 1960s.

On the ground, sto­ries are still be­ing told of no­to­ri­ous drug lord Dole Chadee be­ing a ma­jor pin in no­to­ri­ous Colom­bian drug lord Pablo Es­co­bar's ring.

Asked why it is ben­e­fi­cial to tran­sit co­caine through var­i­ous coun­tries, head of In­ter­na­tion­al Re­la­tions at The Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, Pro­fes­sor Andy Knight, said:

"First of all you don't want to have drugs sent di­rect­ly from Colom­bia to the USA. Some­times it's eas­i­er to have it passed through a third par­ty state like Trinidad to dis­guise where it comes from."

Af­ter 1990, T&T had been aban­doned as a trans-ship­ment des­ti­na­tion, the then ac­tive Colom­bian car­tel in­stead opt­ing for Puer­to Ri­co and Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic.

Time and con­ve­nience, Figueira says, nav­i­gat­ed them back to a more log­i­cal route through the Caribbean.

"The east­ern Caribbean is be­ing switched on as a traf­fick­ing point and what that means is that T&T is al­so be­ing switched on with greater vol­umes pass­ing through T&T," he said.

But there has al­so been a change in man­age­ment.

"In the Caribbean to­day the il­lic­it drug trade is dom­i­nat­ed by Mex­i­can transna­tion­al or­gan­ised crime," he said.

Two of the top crime syn­di­cates in Mex­i­co–the Sinaloa and Los Ze­tas gangs–mean lo­cal drug traf­fick­ers are im­me­di­ate­ly linked to in­ter­na­tion­al crim­i­nal or­gan­i­sa­tions wield­ing a lot of pow­er.

"Mex­i­cans work though af­fil­i­a­tion. Af­fil­i­ates are part of the or­gan­i­sa­tion, af­fil­i­ates are traf­fick­ers, re­tail­ers, whole­salers traf­fick­ers. And the num­ber one re­cruits for Mex­i­cans come from gang­land," he said.

Af­fil­i­ates, he says, are well tak­en care of.

"You get prod­uct that you can ex­ten­sive­ly re­tail. You get prod­uct that you can whole­sale. You get prod­uct that you can traf­fic. You get to tap in­to a stream of weapon­ry and be­come part of trans-na­tion­al or­gan­i­sa­tion," he added.

Figueira says they live by one rule: Ex­e­cute or­ders with ef­fi­cien­cy.

"Fail­ure to car­ry out or­ders and that's it for you," he added.