As Venezuela's economy collapses,
a tide of lawlessness is spreading to the nearby island of Trinidad. Its
fishermen now live in fear of Venezuelan pirates, discovers Colin
Freeman, while Venezuelan smugglers exchange drugs and guns for basic
necessities.
If your idea of a tropical paradise
is based on what you've seen in tourist brochures, the coastline of south-west
Trinidad will not disappoint. Golden beaches and coconut groves? Tick. Sleepy
villages, full of fishermen snoozing under palm trees? Tick. A relaxed,
laid-back vibe? Hmm. Actually, no.
Take a closer look in villages like
Fullarton, and you'll notice a few things seem out of place. For one, why have
so many of the fishermen got 200 horsepower engines on their boats, when 75 is
more than enough? And why, when they go out fishing at night, do none of them
put lights on any more?
The answer, as fisherman Gerry
Padarath explains from his beachside hammock, is pirates.
"We're all scared of them
now," he tells me. "There's been about 50 fishermen in the village
who've had run-ins with them, either being robbed or kidnapped. Our only chance
is to fish in the dark, so they don't see us, or buy bigger engines so we can
outrun them."
Hang on... Pirates? In the
Caribbean? That was 300 years ago, wasn't it? Back when men like Blackbeard and
Calico Jack sailed these waters. So far, the only pirate I'd seen in Trinidad
was a picture of Captain Henry Morgan. And he was on a bottle of rum.
Gerry Padarath: 'We're all scared'
Gerry Padarath knows differently. He
gestures out to sea, where across a stretch of mud-brown water another
coastline can be seen. It's mainland Venezuela - which, at its closest point,
lies just 20km (12 miles) from Trinidad.
In happier times, ferries used to
bring groups of Venezuelan tourists to party in Trinidad. Today, though, as
Venezuela slides further into all-out economic collapse, its impoverished
coastal ports have become modern Hispaniolas - havens for buccaneers.
Most of the pirates are
ex-fishermen, who used to make a good living catching tuna, octopus and shrimp
in the Caribbean's warm waters. But under Venezuela's former president, Hugo
Chavez, the fishing industry underwent a well-intentioned but disastrous
nationalisation programme, prompting companies to relocate abroad.
With the added blow of
hyperinflation, many of the fishermen now have no job and no way to feed their
families. They do however have access to boats and to guns, which are in ready
supply on Venezuela's increasingly lawless streets.
Candy Edwards was kidnapped and held to ransom
It's sadly reminiscent of the piracy
crisis in Somalia a decade ago, where jobless fishermen took up arms to prey on
passing ships. But while the Somali pirates targeted wealthy cargo ships, the
Venezuelans tend to go for fellow fishermen from Trinidad, who aren't much
richer than they are.
One such victim was Candy Edwards,
who I met in the village of Icacos, where long wooden fishing pirogues are
lined up on the beach. He was out fishing with two friends when a boatload of
men waving machine guns waylaid them.
"They jumped on board and tied
us up," he told me. "Then they took us off to Venezuela and held us
in a cage in some woods. They demanded a $35,000 ransom to release us. The
community here in Icacos had a whip round and we were freed after seven days.
But I was so scared I didn't go back to sea for a year."
Via Google Translate, a refugee
explains that essential goods in Venezuela are now costly
You can hear stories like this these
days all along Trinidad's south-western coast. But it isn't just the
kidnappings and robberies that have got people worried. The pirates are also
big smugglers, bringing cocaine and guns into Trinidad which fuel the island's
own vicious and increasingly deadly gang wars. On the return run, they bring boatloads
of nappies, rice, cooking oil and other basics, all now in desperately short
supply in Venezuela.
True, the gang problem has been
going on for nearly two decades, and unless you stray into the slums of the
capital, Port of Spain, you're unlikely to see it. But the more Trinidad is
engulfed in the tide of lawlessness drifting out from Venezuela, the worse it's
likely to get.
Venezuela once had its own
flourishing fishing industry - seen here, the island of Toas, near Maracaibo,
1950.
Presentational white space
Then again, not all the Trinidadian
fishermen are entirely innocent victims. Nosing around, my local fixer and I
were met with distinctly nervous looks when we asked about one pirate
kidnapping, which had happened just days earlier.
"Can't talk to you about that
right now, too many people watching," one woman hissed at me. Later on, by
phone, she explained.
"That kidnapping was all about
drug money that someone here owed the cartels," she said. "The drug
problem is getting worse and worse here - the moment you left, a drug boat came
in."
I can't say I was sad to have missed
that particular scoop. Enough people in Fullarton had mistaken me for a cop as
it was. But it did explain that sense of nervous tension. And it did get me
wondering about all those new 200 horsepower engines. Were they really all just
for running away from pirates? Or might they have other uses too?
Read the full story at BBC NEWS
Source : SN-TR / Photo : Guardian.
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