The Underworld Podcast - Rasta City vs The Muslims: Trinidad's Gang Wars and Abu Bakr's Attempted Coup

Episode Date: March 11, 2021

In 1990, the tiny Caribbean nation of Trinidad and Tobago saw the only attempted Islamic militant overthrow of a government in the Western Hemisphere. The coup led by Abu Bakr and his Jamaat Al Muslimeem followers failed, but many on the island see it as a turning point that has led the murder rate to increase by 400% over the last few decades. Now, a raging war between the Rasta City gang and the Muslims gang doesn't show sings of stopping as they battle over lucrative government contracts and the street drug trade. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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At First Citizens Bank, we roll with your goals because we're built for what you're building. Fit for your ambition for Citizens Bank. July 27, 1990. 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 to 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 the 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. The revolutionary forces are commanded to control the streets.

There shall be no looting. Widespread looting immediately follows. Bacher, then live on air, repeals a 15% sales tax, which, like, I mean, go for it, you know. I don't think it's that big a deal, but you might as well do something that people like. And right away, cuts out, and the Disney movie, The Little Mermaid, starts playing as his image fades away. 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 Tony is addressing the other government officials.

Parliament's in session. And in video from the incident, you can see, Tony stops speaking as gunshots are heard off camera. and sort of looks off to his right. Screens follow. Tony and the others run and hide for cover as an armed man in camouflage fatigue 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, Damado Muslimin. It's the only attempted militant Islamic overthrow of a country in the Western Hemisphere to ever happen. The coup eventually fails when Bacher and his crew are forced to surrender. A Trinidadian journalist friend once told me that he thought Bacher 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 attack, 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. What do you, 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 day speaking to like German conspiracy theorists and right wing as neo-Nazis. So it's nice. It's nice to learn about Trinidad. Although I have a question. like why why the Little Mermaid that was like one of the weirdest part i mean it's pretty weird story to begin with but why the little mermaid i 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 friend 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 a west

indian lobster in that don't they and uh yeah yeah yeah is that is it about some kind of like Islamist takeover or something? Yeah. I don't know. No, but it's weird. They're not really jihadist. I'm going to explain. 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, 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, New York.

Even now it happens. 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 crews international ones don't really go there. It rarely gets attention, you know, especially because Jamaica's right there and Jamaica's 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. and 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 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 in 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 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 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, I watched the documentaries like he's a pretty imposing

guy. I mean, he's got a lot of charisma. He's, he's just huge. Like, I can see, I can see him, like, blasting on the TV at, like, dinner time telling me that he's taken over the country. I don't know. He's, 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 Jamata 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-Turidans. 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 of the United 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 Jamat 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 Toyn Bravo, Dennis Ramlin, Brian Lara and they were in the World Cup in 2006 and like 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. Like I see a lot about Jamaica, tons and tons of stuff about Jamaican gangs but pretty much nothing on Trinidad. It's like 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 like 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. What? Yeah. Yeah.

I think it was something like 150 people in a country 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 said 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 you know jamaama Muslim limine they were not jihadis they were like like you know like a black panther a 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

those some people say what's that Verizon 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 with that sort of thing. 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 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 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. 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, 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 didn't, I didn't really

feel fearful. Even when he looked at me and he was like, you're Jewish, aren't you? And I was like, Yeah, yeah, I am. Like 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 had a good time with him, man. He's a great interview. 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 Bacher and his people, they drain 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 Bokker.

So take it all with a grain of salt. But, yeah, the land dispute continues. And authorities occupy part of a compound. then refused to abandon their positions despite a court order. As this is going on, Bacher 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 true to this. Bacher 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 out 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 a large part of the 80s shipping cocaine money around the Caribbean,

who's saying, like, how everyone was in the pocket. The government's there. I mean, these are governments of countries that have just, like, you know, a few thousand people, few 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 um and i mean do they have a where does the money come from in trinidad then well the the money comes from the natural gas industry like they they're they're as all things consider they're a fairly wealthy country but they also are a trans shipment 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 to dominican public a couple years ago investigating the shooting of David Ortiz, and it's a similar situation like Trinidad, where, you know, the Coke goes there and stops over before it goes to the U.S. or to Europe. 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, you know, shipping containers, that sort of industry. And it corrupts the whole system and it 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 officers named Bernadette James, and she turns to Bacher for protection. James later dies suspiciously while participating in a police anti-terrorism exercise when a single live round was used amid 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 leave 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've 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 gun. government, he goes to the courts, he says nothing happens. He claims that 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 Jammat 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. Jemad 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. I was connecting with all these groups. I think in Africa and the Caribbean as well, which is, you know, just the wild 80s, man. So again, I'm, I want to reiterate, I'm telling Bacher's

version here. Some of it is corroborated, but let me also break in with some stories about Jemot. A Bacher associated was convicted of repeatedly attempting the trafficking guns from Florida. And in 2005 was sentenced to 12 years in prison. In 2005, Bacher was tried for conspiring to murder two former members of Jemot and was detained for questioning regarding a number of bombings in the Capitol. 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. Tithe? 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 Bacher's mosque. Bacher, who the FBI had been surveilling since 2001, was suspected 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 you doing yourself Jamat al-Muzamine and doing crime like that in the wake of 9-11. How were these guys not taken to a black side 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

that are not affiliated with Jammat, these breakaway guys. But Trinidad, the two main criminal groups are actually called the Muslims because of Jemat'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 GTA3. right, like something, something like that. And in 2014, 11 members of Jemat, 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 an independent senator looking into corruption. And during the trial, a special Brandt's intelligence memo featured in unconfirm report was leaked to social media, and the report indicated that law enforcement in Trinidad feared violence from Jammats, 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, Jamat members did launch an armed jailbreak of some of the suspected assassins in the Cedar Hall case. And during a shootout, one police officer and one Jamat member was killed. Also, Mark Guerra, who, I mean, this is another dude, the guys in my neighbor talk about, some of them, I think, knew him. He was one of the most famous gangsters that come out of Trinidad. He came up in Jamat. He went to New York City to sell drugs in the early. 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 I'm just, I'm trying to keep. keep the linear narrative, man. It's hard. No, this is the, 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. Yeah. 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

realized it's like they had no way out. And at one point, members of Jemot Station and Red House, they asked the Prime Minister to call off the troops because the army was there, and they handed 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 some balls right there, like, to do that. Like, that is, you got to, you got to 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 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, it gets even crazier than the prime minister are getting shot on 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 Bacher, the siege then wraps up with the government admitting they were wrong, which yeah, okay, sure. Anyway, while

Bacher 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. Mom, can you tell me a story? Sure. Once upon a time, a mom needed a new car. Was she brave? She was tired, mostly. But she went to Carbana.com and found a great car at a great price. No secret treasure map required. Did you have to find a dragon? Nope. She bought it 100% online, from her bed, actually. Was it? Scary? Honey, it was as unscary as car buying could be. Did the car have a sunroof? It did, actually.

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and your stylist sends personalized looks right to your door. Stitch Fix. Get started today at StitchFix.com. I want to hug you. I'm going to hug you. I'm coming in for a hug. A number of copies are made of the statement, and when everyone from Jemot 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 control in the streets. Bacher had been used since the 80s to rally the vote. And even after this, you know, people still 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. and to try to help the poorest sectors of Trinidad. 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 Wizz and Old Guy, 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 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 dock, and it's a thing I always did in docks. 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 take all those clips. Anyway, 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, Port of Spain areas, where they're now huge, 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 step 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 the same of those murders are attributed to the gangwards 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.

Jamat fractures 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, you know, on the straight and arrow. And I asked him if you thought it was, you know, a weird coincidence. So many of these ganglords 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. And others kind of scoff at this whole aspect and just say what Bacher did was teach the people 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, you know, as being all like this, as they're 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 for great people. Somewhere you should go if you're a terrorist 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, you know, 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 appreciated that you actually show like what is going on in these poor neighborhoods that people like to gloss over. And how Graves himself actually talks about it at the end of the dock. 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. That it does bum me out sometimes that I can't just go around, you know, part of the 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 murders a year.

They must be insane. I mean, if you live in these neighborhoods, right? It's like we talked about with St. Louis. If you live in these neighborhoods, like it is super dangerous. If you don't, 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, no one's gonna, 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 turning out and go down there. Like the dudes in my neighbor 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 gonna, I'm gonna bask in all the glory. But the reality is that 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 kind of how it works, right? 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 local Trinidad's that I work with. So I try not to do that. Yeah. But yeah, this is... 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. Like, they're not... My mom is not thrilled like when I go to the Middle East, right?

But if I'm like, oh, yeah, I'm going to do, like, cartel stuff or MS-13, like they don't... I mean, I don't really tell them ahead of time, but they don't really mind as much as opposed to like going somewhere where they were jihadis. Like if I was just like, I'm going to do this cartel war thing.

They'd be like, all right, have fun. Yeah. As opposed to going to like Iraq or Syria where there's a lot more concern. But where was I? My mom's everything. My mom's everything that's not like my back gun.

So yeah, this will help a great deal of this podcast. Did 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 the thing that was invented in Trinidad if you've been to Juvei the real Juvay 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 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 Rados 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, Rumblefish, 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 a point 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 people's 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 Gabbleg. It's always the right time to talk about Gabba Gable. But Inspector Alexander, who's the cop I mentioned at the beginning that I embedded with in 2014. seen, 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 know, you catch it 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 leader is either as the heads of the construction, sorry, this is a quote from Amsterdam News that did an article about the situation 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 look 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 base 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 these are local gangs right

they're not doing anything on a big level maybe they ship a kilo to Miami and 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 contracts. 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. 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 must do with Rastafarianism or Islam. The Guardian of Trinidad newspaper has a quote. In 2017, Laveantile West MP, Fitzgerald all the Hinn said gang culture was creeping into several Lavantile West schools, where some eight and nine-year-olds were showing such signs. Hidon said there were 42 gangs in his constituency, in his constituency, comprising Rasta City and Muslim units, and youths were being used by more

mature people established as large, powerful community figures. Hins 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 Rost the city versus Muslim's friction. So yeah, again, you know, they came a lot of them from Jamat, but 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 Trinidad and reggae sign called Borderlines you should look up, which is incredible. Yeah, I listen to a much borderline. to that. It's such a weird mix of like pretty heavy gang violence, not beat 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 a big piece to the war in gangs in Jamaica. But yeah, it's, it's, it's great. I mean, it's more popular for Soka, which is 99% about partying, so that doesn't really fit in with a stop

shooting thing. But how great. Graves talks about that. He says, you know, the kitchen is at war with the bedroom, meaning it's like next door neighbors are killing each other. There's a San Jose State University paper. I think I already quoted for it, but this is another quote from it. Before the coup, the Muslims used to run this down. 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 is

to be pre-1990, I think. He used to take money from kidnapping ransoms in jail. Some of the guys who are now Ross the 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 Lavantiel, which is up in the hills in Eastport, Spain. John John's the neighborhood that I know a bunch of folks from. Down the hill is Beatham Gardens, where Ross the city is based. And the dudes, like I said, who I live with in New York City, I think they're all Levantile 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 Rasta City, a guy they call Spanish. And Mark set this whole thing up for me. And it was just, you know, we got to beat him 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.

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. It'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 start rolling up big joints and like I don't even like weed anymore at this point of 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 watched the video you can tell them what my eyes are a little close 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

like Richard at 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 pushing him too much because, again, gangster. 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, I'm, 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, I don't think those guys can pull this kind of thing off. I'm not, I'm not, I think it's my unique skill set in this industry. But, yeah, I mean, you know, you also have VO where you can correct some sort of sort of these things and bring in other information. But I asked them 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 know? you're maybe maybe something else so we go to the party afterwards at spanish throes for the community drank some beers and then we met and met a bunch of guys wearing bala clava's

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 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 off 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 businessman 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 Bacher brings this up. And country, seven miles from Venezuela, so it has become this bigger drug shipment 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 West Africa route. 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.

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or crypto's trillion dollar swings. There's a money side to every story. Get the money side of the story. Subscribe now at Bloomberg.com. I don't know if it was that big in then, because I think back then it was more about heroin, right, in the 60s and 70s. And Coke was able to cross the U.S. 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 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, whackamo. Yeah. Yeah. That's what it's called whackamo. 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 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 boost drug sales locally too. This is a quote as well. 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. The increasing isolation of Venezuela and attention giving to commercial and other vessels leaving it

have made it more attractive for narcot 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, relative to the unguarded, that facilitate the traffic. In recent years, you've had even more issues with Venezuela

as the country's 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, M.

right. And GameStop. That's the only way you can get paid. Stunks, man. Now the street gangs themselves, the Muslims and the rosters, 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 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 Trinidad woman, hit me up on Facebook, out of nowhere to ask me to come down there again and do another story and 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 gang's 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 a rough period. And that's where it is right now. Bacher is still around. The ISIS thing was big news.

But you still won't see many more headlines about Trinidad until you, my loyal listeners, fun this podcast enough so I can go down there and make a sequel to the gangs of Trinidad documentary. And even before I head off tonight to go watch the Little Mermaid play backwards over Pink Floyd, you don't even have to give us money at the goodness of our own heart? We don't listen. No, wait, wait, no Pink Floyd. No Pink Floyd. No Pink Floyd. We don't support, we don't support Roger Waters on this podcast. Yeah, God. Who isn't canceled? 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. Uh, the book list going up like every,

every episode. Um, 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 daylight. And, uh, thanks for tuning in as always. All the Satan wickedness in the poor man communities. Borderline. Say, man and man fear to a gang in the next man vicinity. Borderline. Why the Satan wickedness in the poor man community?

So you say that you're a bad man. How much gun you got? You love to butt gunshot. Well, I say you must seem madman. No one of time for that. You're a idiot. And let me hear me from the voices in the ghetto. Ryan is Sauter style, sing it again and let me hear it echo.

Pardon me sort of style. There were no badman groups, no more badman troops coming to rub and shoot. We should be taking time to nurture the youth. Tell you remember where one with Sean Luke, somebody crossed the borderline. No man and man fear to walk down in the next man vicinity. It's borderline. Ryan Reynolds here. for Mint Mobile, the message for everyone paying big wireless way too much.

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