El Clan del Golfo and the 168 kilos seized in T&T

El Clan Golfo/Gulf Clan, the 168 kilo bricks seized in T&T and the Myth of the War on Drugs

These are the realities that you must understand:

1. This is not the first seizure of kilos bricks of cocaine with Gulf Clan marking seized in T&T. This is the largest amount seized on land.

2. Which Gulf Clan? In the hegemonic discourse of massa of the war on drugs there is fabricated reality of their “Gulf Cater” which does not, cannot reflect operational reality on the ground. If you embrace this massa discourse you will be relentlessly spinning myth for reality and writing prescriptions for interventions that have no traction on the ground, hence doomed for failure from the 1970s to the present in T&T.

3. The real Gulf Clan: There are two Gulf Clan’s, one the struggling, shrinking vestige of the failed Colombian transnational organised crime (TOC) business model and the new, renovated Gulf Clan, an affiliate of Mexican Transnational Trafficking Organizations (MTTOs). Pax Mexicana. This Gulf Clan is a major player in the transnational cocaine trade moving product to the vibrant European market, pioneering the opening up of new markets as Asia and serving the old sunset market of the USA. The power the new Gulf Clan wields in the cocaine production business is illustrated by its displacement of Los Rastrojos, the paramilitary trafficking group who was Guaido’s militia in Venezuela, on the Colombian border with Tachira state, Venezuela. The Clan now controls Cucuta, Colombia and has present its Gangland affiliates: La Linea and Tren de Aragua. Note this reality where Gangland organised crime groups are affiliates, the foot soldiers, the workers of the apex production/trafficking TOC players. To constantly rank and rave in T&T about gangs, gangs, gangs without recognizing, seeing and targeting their TOC overlords is simply then bullshitting the electorate. As longs as TOC is operationally present in the Caribbean there will always be Gangland in operation, as TOC begets Gangland organized crime. Accept this reality and liberate yourself from being down the rabbit hole with Alice, get real. Gangs in T&T are not an African and/or Mixed race thing, it is a TOC thing. Wrap your mind around this reality and finally understand why all the so-called interventions have and will fail as they address a reality spawned by myth not reality on the ground.

4. Understand that the discourse of the politics of race in T&T is driven by the need to push race to bring out your voters NOT engage with the reality of TOC and its spawn, Gangland in T&T and how this reality has systematically destroyed social control in the social order. The politics of race can only embrace myth, fabricated reality and act on this myth which ALL sides share which inevitably fails to, cannot address the reality on the ground. Which demands that they constantly deny that their measures have failed and will continue to fail. The politics of race must demand a national security apparatus that marches in lockstep with this discourse of crime. Those in this apparatus who reject the myth have then poor career prospects. The circle is now closed as at the level of the idea those who manage the state are in stasis, and those in the shadows of opposition hoping for state power are also bedeviled, some worst than the two major parties.

5. Understand that the rivers of blood from 2017 to present are the result of a battle for hegemony between the old hegemonic business model in T&T from the second half of the 1960s to 2017, the Colombian model with its Gangland and the Mexican model with its Gangland. A futile resistance by the Colombian model bred by the arrogance of its lengthy dominance over the Game in T&T and its links to power in T&T. This battle is then threatening to drag state agencies into the war, a recipe for social collapse hastened by the deepening of The Cleansing as the Exterminators move up the food chain into the apex groups of the social order who are in the Game. T&T, you sow the wind and reap the whirlwind! Pax Mexicana!!!

Crime is a Drug Trade Issue NOT a Public health issue

Crime as a public health issue in CARICOM

The April 2023 two day event in T&T was convened to have governments within CARICOM work out and present an action plan to deal with an epidemic of gun violence especially in Jamaica, T&T, St Lucia, St Vincent and The Bahamas. The public releases of the CARICOM heads reveal a body of ruling politicians whose depiction of CARICOM reality on the ground reeks of denial which casts grave doubts on the efficacy of the intervention they have proposed.

The discourse of crime as a public health issue is straight out of the North Atlantic neo-liberal playbook on crime, especially that of the USA, but the politicians rejected the intervention prescribed by the 21^st century neo-liberal playbook choosing instead to go with a 1990s neo-liberal intervention devised by the war on drugs to handle the crack epidemic. This intervention failed miserably in the USA where it was created and during the late 20^th and early 21^st century it was applied in T&T and it also failed miserably. We have then once again embraced a failed prescription with no efficacy for the sake of political expediency and deflection. Same old wine in old wine skins which has long gone sour.

The only new initiative was not the product of action by a CARICON nation but Mexico, as per usual we are devoid of innovation in our governance, just copycats and riding other peoples bandwagons. The CARICOM group called on the USA to tighten its border controls to stem the flow of illicit guns into the Caribbean, shifting blame to the US for the grinding failure of the politicians to bring our agencies of border security kicking and screaming into the 21^st century. In T&T today Customs & Excise is gutted and unable to mitigate the transnational organised crime threat posed in the 1980s much less for the 21^st century. But whilst our barns burn and the horses have bolted we twiddle our political thumbs and call on the USA to solve our problem. If the USA closes down on the illicit gun supply, transnational organised crime has a series of supply pipelines to fall back on already operational in the Caribbean basin, it is called built in obsolescence and Pax Mexicana is a committed practitioner of this principle. But the USA cannot close this trade completely down to reduce gun violence in CARICOM to tolerable levels, just as they cannot close down the illicit drug trade.

The glaring deficiency of the discourse of the CARICOM crime symposium was the refusal to embrace the reality that the products of transnational organised crime (TOC) in the Caribbean with its premier illicit trades of drugs, guns, human and cash money smuggling have relentlessly degraded social control in specific CARICOM states marred with escalating gun violence, with its alternate culture and value system which have adherents throughout the structure of the social order. From the drug trafficking oligarchs, to the local launderers, the front businesses, the persons who sell impunity to the smugglers and launderers and Gangland created by transnational organised crime to serve transnational organised crime and the in-betweeners who flirt from the legal to illegal realms. To fail to accept that transnational organised crime and uts nexus of illicit trades, violence and the rule of survival of the fittest that has degraded our mores, values, ethics, morals and spirituality is NOT the driving force, the locomotive of our collapse as a social order, means that your intervention is addressing a reality that is not present on the ground, only in your minds and those of your advisors, you are simply playing us while there are those who are expecting a difference to be made by the ruling politicians. The two day symposium will then make no impact on the operations of transnational organised crime in T&T and CARICOM, which leave us naked to answer the pressing question if in T&T in 2023 we will surpass the murder toll of 605 of 2022. For fear is our daily reality aided and abetted by a political system in stasis induced by the politics of race.

The terrain of transnational organised crime and its impact on the social orders of Jamaica, T&T, St Lucia and St Vincent today is instructive and its lessons must be heeded if we are intent on arresting the escalation of gun violence in CARICOM.

Jamaica is now switched on as a growing trafficking point in the Greater Antilles for cocaine. Cocaine transiting Jamaica has now joined with the growth and export of ganja. Jamaica is joined to Colombia, Venezuela and more importantly Honduras by trafficking pipelines. Jamaican TOC has an organic relationship with Haitian TOC involving ganja, cocaine and weapons. Jamaican and Haitian TOC in the USA are adept at smuggling product into the USA and weapons and other products into the Caribbean.

T&T is the first stop on west to east pipelines along the Venezuelan Caribbean coast and the first stop on the Eastern Caribbean Trafficking Pipeline heading to the Greater Antilles. Ganja, cocaine, heroin, synthetic drugs, weapons, and humans are dropped off for local use and transshipment via any and all means available. T&T is also a strategic stop for refueling for the run north. The Colombian business model dominant in T&T since the 1960s is now dominated by Pax Mexicana which generated the tsunami of gun violence from 2017 to the present. This war accounted for the sourcing of AR-15s in the USA by those who found themselves losing the arms race with Pax Mexicana.

St Lucia and St Vincent are both impacted by the dual pipeline linking Martinique to France/Europe. Cocaine flows to France and Moroccan hashish and weapons flow to Martinique. St Lucia is linked to Martinique via the Colombian business model but this has been replaced by Moroccan TOC with new rules which generated the violence in St Lucia which is a battle for hegemony. Moroccan hashish is smuggled to the USA and possession of this prized product generates the violence in St Vincent.

For the first 4 months of 2023 in T&T the monthly murder toll eclipsed that of every one of the first four months of 2022. What is painfully obvious in as in the rest of CARICOM is the collapse of social control and the creeping anarchy of a state of proto civil war that in T&T is now being fanned by the failed political system with their knee jerk racist hegemonist discourse to hopefully deflect and deny the legacy bequeathed to us by the politics of race : the chronic inability to deal with TOC groups and mitigate their impact on the social order of T&T. The same reality applies to CARICOM. Pax Mexicana!!!

There is now a human smuggling pipeline as follows: Pakistan, Turkey, T&T, then illegally entering Venezuela at Sucre state via the maxi peneros that run back and forth night and day without hindrance from the T&T Coast Guard. TOC at its best. Pax Mexicana!!!

Pax Mexicana Evolves Further, its Impact on T&T Today

The Evolution of Pax Mexicana and its Impact on Trinidad and Tobago

From the final quarter of 2022 into January 2023 the war on the Colombian model heightened in Venezuela and Trinidad and Tobago. In Venezuela the mobilization of the FANB along the Caribbean coast especially in Falcon state and in the Atlantic margins namely Sucre state then finally the Gulf namely Delta Amacuro state targeted the drug trafficking infrastructure of the Colombian model hence the supply side of the business model in T&T and the Caribbean. In T&T the beating heart of Gangland remained dead quiet whilst the engagement with the Colombian model focused on the zones of transition where the Venezuelan operatives with their entourages lived. By January 2023 the Venezuelan Gangland contingent in T&T serving the Colombian model got the message graphically they they are marked for death and resistance is futile. The landscape of murder is now in transition as Gangland affiliated to the Mexican model never had it so good in their history going back to the second half of the decade of the 1990s, as the volume and range of illicit products entering and leaving T&T has exploded affording them the opportunity to earn dead presidents and euro in volumes they never earned before, money talks and bullshit walks. For the first time in the history of the illicit drug trade in T&T we now have Africans at the heart of the trade, shakers and movers dwarfing players and the race minorities who became oligarchs because of the trade now have to grapple with supply side and final consumer market entry problems. Pax Mexicana!!!

The change in the nature of the murder landscape in T&T in 2023 reflects this reality as Mexican hegemony over the illicit trades of T&T and the Caribbean hardens into operational dominance at the ground level on a daily basis. What is noteworthy in T&T is the killing of the transporters which indicates that there are operators in desperate need of supply seeking supply by barbarizing supply and transport lines they once were fed from, that is the height of desperation on the supply side in the business. This fuels the personal nature of murders in 2023 in pursuit of seizing property you know they have. What happens in the landscape of murder in April 2023 will testify further on the new reality on the ground.

In the illicit trades T&T is joined at the hips to Venezuela which demands a daily monitoring of events in the trade in Venezuela. I have presented for you signal events in Venezuela which send alarming messages for T&T and the Caribbean. First up is the discovery by the FANB in the Orinoco Delta of an abandoned semi submersible of distinctive design for operation in the Caribbean island chain. This vessel is distinctively different from semi submersibles that ply the Pacific route to Central America and the Atlantic route to Spain. The US Coast Guard has confirmed semi submersibles on the Puerto Rico route, this one discovered in Venezuela will also be used to deliver product to Martinique, Guadeloupe, St Lucia, T&T etc. Behold the sophistication of the technology displayed. The FANB has also confirmed riverine semi submersibles in Venezuela in Bolivar, Amazonas and Zulia states and remember the Orinoco Delta is an outlet to the sea and T&T is a hop skip and jump from the Delta. In T&T the national security apparatus continues to bring a knife to a gunfight with AR-15s. El Conejo started off as petty gangland extortionist in Aragua state until he was embraced by the Colombian paramilitary smugglers and turned into a gangland drug smuggler with a political agenda to create murder and mayhem thereby destabilizing a suburb of Caracas. When opposed by the FANB he would flee to Colombia and return to Venezuela to resume the mayhem. On his last foray into Venezuela the FANB knew of his plan, baited and set the trap for him. The questions for T&T is why did El Conejo by penero/pirogue flee to Irapa, Sucre state, a fishing village on the coast, thereby boxing himself in on the Atlantic coast of Venezuela? Was he on his way to T&T to disappear within the Venezuelan contingent in T&T and continue the murder and mayhem in T&T against the Mexican model and the government as they deal with Maduro, dragon gas?? The FANB knew exactly where he was going and he was eliminated. Remember Pax Mexicana gives up its enemies, another one bites the dust. Eighteen illegal male migrants from Pakistan were found wandering aimlessly in Monagas state, they were arrested and deported. It was subsequently determined that they entered Venezuela from T&T. T&T has now being added to the list of destinations in the playbook of human smugglers of transnational organized crime as the case of the group of Haitians who entered t&T and then traveled ot St Lucia where they were deported. Pax Mexicana. On the smuggling routes utilizing the Caribbean Sea, the Atlantic annd the Gulf of Paria Trinbagonians are being interdicted on smuggling boats transporting illicit drugs or smuggled humans which indicates the depth of our integration into the illicit trades from Colombia, Venezuela to T&T and the Caribbean. This is heightened by the push to turn Venezuela into a major producer/exporter of dried/herbal ganja for export which has already started in Sucre state, given the escalating level of demand in T&T and the Caribbean. It is now apparent that the politicians and the national security apparatus is down the rabbit hole with Alice. Pax Mexicana!!!

FANB inutiliza submarino semi sumergible usado por el narcotráfico

Persecución al Conejo inició en Chuao y culminó en Irapa

Deportados 18 paquistaníes capturados en Maturín

Incautaron en Falcón 504 panelas de marihuana y 60 de cocaína

T&T Murder Toll 2022: Lessons from the blood

On November 30, 2022 the murder toll for the year to date was 555 and on December 31^st, 2022 it was 606 murders which meant there were 51 murders for the month with no hint of slowing down to come. There were many lessons forthcoming in the period November to December 2022 which must not be silenced with a fixation with the new murder high of 2022.

These lessons are: the taking of the head, its display but no sign of the body, death by garroting whilst being beaten in the head then wrapped in cling wrap and dumped, the number of identified Venezuelans taken out and dumped, not counting those disappeared. Then there is the number of instances where ammunition with state marking were consumed in attacks and left behind to send the message that we have breached the security of your state, your state is corrupt, we pull the strings. The number of Taurus hand guns being interdicted by the TTPS towards the end of the year indicates the rolling out of a new aspect of the Mexican model in T&T. Taurus made in Brazil was never a desired weapon in the Caribbean given the desire for massa gun brands, now this is changing as Brazil is the largest growing consumer market and the premier export point for cocaine to the world. The dual pipelines into and from Brazil mean that T&T is now integrated into these Brazil pipelines which include Guyana and Suriname. The Taurus platform with its AR 15 models etc will now flow out of Brazil and up the island chain via the Eastern Caribbean Trafficking Pipeline with quality products. The event horizon is now expanding whilst the national security apparatus and the politicians transfixed on the Gulf.

2022 is directly linked to the war that commenced in 2017 and continues in 2023 which raises the question if the drug trafficking families of the T&T oligarchy, members of the national security apparatus and other agents of the state who are all in bed with the Colombians are now involved in this war in a desperate bid to breathe life into the moribund business model they are clinging to? What must be understood is that the Mexicans have encountered before such concerted opposition by oligarchic families and agents of the state in the Caribbean Basin and they mitigated the threats posed very effectively and are now exercising unchallenged hegemony over these drug trafficking zones! T&T the party now start! Note carefully the tonnage now flowing through Jamaica in spite of the normality of their high annual murder tolls, T&T that is your future, now. Pax Mexicana!!!

Murder Toll November 2022: The Parting of the Ways!

In November 2022 the murder toll was 43, with the year to-date toll at 555 which means a toll of 45 plus in December 2022 will put us into entirely new territory of 600 murders for the year signaling that T&T is now faced with a tsunami of gun violence whilst the politicians fiddle and seek out scape-goats with the latest being Customs & Exise T&T. From June to November 2022 the monthly murder toll is directly linked to the intensity of the war between the The Mexican TTOs and the Colombian capo in T&T. In the period the monthly murder toll escalates into the 60s per month when the engagement is at its highest and decreases into the 40s when it is at its lowest. Even when the level of intensity falls in the war between TOC models in conflict T&T, still has a grave gun violence problem. The monthly toll shows the swing between the 40s to the 60s clearly as follows: June 40, July 61, August 66, September 48, October 63, November 43. One expects then that December 2022 is supposed to be in the 40s in keeping with the trend, but predicting on past experience is foolhardy in the GAME given what transpires on the ground and in November 2022 there was the taking and display of a head. In November 2022 a head was taken and displayed but not fully in keeping with the Rule as the walkover is the expected point of display. To-date no identity has been determined for the head taken and displayed, no body found. The last occasion heads were taken and displayed in T&T an entire organisation of the Colombian capo was decapitated in T&T and a capo was disappeared in Venezuelan waters. Kilo bricks are washing up on the beaches of Sucre state, Venezuela, the FANB is now operationalised in Sucre and the command and control center for the capo operation in T&T in the municipality in Sucre has been publicly named. The spotlight has been switched on the capo disrupting his pipelines to T&T. How can you prosecute a war in T&T when your pipelines to T&T passing through Venezuela are under attack by the state and Pax Mexicana. The message was sent in November 2022 that enough is enough with this futile battle when you have already lost the war, not only in T&T but in the world as your operations in Europe are being dismantled. You have broken every rule of the Game in T&T with no concern for its impact on earning dead Presidents and Euro. A mindless, nihilist business model that destabalises the market from which you must earn. You will now once again be de-capitated in T&T. Pax Mexicana over Venezuela will now squeeze the capo in T&T into submission by any means necessary. Pax Mexicana. With peace in T&T there is still the grave problem of the have nots of the life which the capo armed to unleash mayhem and destabalise the social order, left out of control and under no order of discipline and incapable of being an earning member of a disciplined order of the Game. Certainly not Mexican TTOs affiliate or affiliate of an affiliate material. T&T’s long term problem. Pax Mexicana!!!

October 2022 Murder Toll Trinidad and Tobago

October 2022 Gun Violence in T&T

There were 63 murders in October 2022 compared to 55 in October 2021, a 14,55% increase over October 2021. October 2022 returned to the level of violence of August 2022 outstripping the level of September 2022. The wars between the Mexican TTOs and the Colombian capos in T&T continue but with marked changes in the engagement on the ground. During August 2022 the murder toll for this month was impacted by the hunt for underlings, associates of associates of the Mexican TTOs which then expanded to their families and friends and persons caught in the wrong place and time when they rode up on them, hunting these targets. October 2022 was then the month of children as collateral damage in this futile bid to break the back of a hegemonic business model. The push back appeared in October 2022 effectively sending the message that the apex of the hierarchy attached to the capos will be extinguished including the capos living in T&T. In December 2021 one such capo on his way back to Venezuela to celebrate 7 days of Feliz navidad riding in the pinero with all the party goods was so disappeared without trace, as such is again on the agenda as everyone gets slack celebrating Feliz navidad. The Mexicans will take you out on the day you Christen your precious male child. This shit ain’t done it now start.

In October 2022 we experienced in T&T the volatile propensity for violence generated by the mix of young teenage males, teenage conflict and the spontaneous use of the gun to resolve conflict in his favour predicated on the use of overwhelming force against an unarmed teenager in conflict with. The insight into the personality of the teenage personality is the method of disposal of the body of the victim. The perpetrator has to be assessed to determine if he has the personality traits of a psychopath, an asocial personality. Gun possession by a teenager spikes the evolution of a predator to the stage of murderer. Next stage the school, church, public places shooters!

Gun Violence in T&T 2017 to 2022

The nature of gun violence in this period has evolved rapidly for two main reasons: the volume of illicit guns available at affordable prices on the illicit market and the ever expanding range of types of weapons available summed up in the rapid rise of the AR-15 assault rifle as the weapon of choice. The illicit gun market of T&T is now unique to the Caribbean island chain far superior to that of Jamaica, matching the availability of weaponry, ammunition, weapon parts, the reloading of ammunition and other material of the US territories of the Caribbean who have the right to bear arms. The T&T illicit gun market today does not indicate characteristics of a market where the right to bear arms does not exist, and this reality speaks to the scope and nature of this grave problem.

There is now in T&T a return to the weapons market of the USA to source supply especially AR-15 assault rifles at much lower prices set by the traditional Colombian gun suppliers. The gun smuggling pipelines from the USA to T&T would source their supply in the states of Florida, Georgia and Texas and will be shipped to our legal ports from these states or from other US states. There is also the pipeline from Puerto Rico, the US Virgin islands and the Dominican Republic.

This is transnational organised crime in operation with the state agency charged with interdicting the entry of all illicit and smuggled goods into T&T, Customs and Excise in its present operational condition being not fit for purpose, incapable of engaging with transnational organised crime by effectively squeezing the flow into the legal ports forcing them to seek out other means to smuggle their weapons into T&T. As is now the ports of T&T are a safe zone for transnational organised crime. The effectiveness of Customs and Excise will be reflected in an unbroken rise in the price for weapons, ammunition etc where demand outstrips supply on the market. The reality today is a perverse opposite where we as a nation pay the cost in blood.

A multi-pronged intervention into Customs and Excise and all legal ports of T&T must be launched immediately to stem the flow of smuggled weapons, induce shortages of supply and escalate the cost of acquisition of illicit weapons. Customs and Excise has to be weaponized to lead from in front: recruitment, training, creation of an oversight authority to ensure the integrity of its employees, a review of its operational procedures, structure and management and of its compensation package in light of it being an organization forever in the sights of transnational organised crime. The interdiction powers under law of Customs and Excise must be weaponized with the creation of a border security agency with the immigration division which must also be weaponized through reform and overhaul.

The security apparatus of all legal ports and the post office must be reconfigured to engage with the operations of transnational crime through them. Trained personnel of integrity utilsing the latest surveillance technology that works and is maintained must engage with this threat constantly. The protocol that know determines which containers will be scanned, examined thoroughly and those that will not has to be scrapped and reformulated in terms of the realities of the operational tactics of transnational organised crime to breach port security. There must then be the required quantum of staff and working machinery to ensure the smooth flow of cargo in and our of these ports.

Our repeated failure to retool the state agencies constantly in order to effectively grapple with transnational organised crime over decades of their presence in T&T means that we must now move to erect brand new barn doors after all the horses have bolted, running wild, generating mayhem and bloodshed in the social order. Ours is a grave, complex problem that the TTPS by itself cannot solve for the problem arises from weaknesses in the state which are outside of the remit of the TTPS to act. To continue with the same old failed policies we are as the little boy on the beach who believed he could drain the ocean with a spoon. We the people of T&T must note that if the murder toll of October 2022 continues into November and December 2022 we will cross 600 murders for the year of 2022. Time to think out of the box of defined reality which has repeatedly failed.

Gunlandia T&T September 2022

Murder Toll September 2022

For September 2022 the toll was 48 which was a 26. 31% increase over September 202i (38) and a 27.27% decrease compared to August 2022 (66). Only time will tell if this decrease continues into October.

The signal event for the month of September 2022 was the attack on the cash in transit detail of Allied Security Co. at the Pennywise Plaza. The entire atttack reeked of underfunded and under resourced amateurs who undertook the heist simply because the detail presented a very soft target for the taking and the attackers were armed with AR-15 assault rifles outgunning the security detail. Their planning was deficit, their material assets were inadequate, their personal training was deficit and their counter measures to avoid detection and interdiction by the TTPS were non existent. This was then a operation where the assault on the detail was deficient as u it was rooted in relying on overwhelming fire power against a soft target with the attack launched when the target was at its most vulnerable. The robbers then came intent on slaughtering the three guard detail with a rain of gunfire, but visibly failing to deal with the crux of the matter: evading interdiction, capture with the loot in hand. The intent to murder the guards as the chosen methodology to grab the loot ratcheted up the level of engagement with the TTPS but you failed to expend the necessary resources to evade interdiction successfully with the loot in hand. What was then the rationale to murder in order to grab the loot? Six arrived in the assault vehicle six left with the loot in the same vehicle but there was no transfer of the loot to a series of escape vehicles and the splitting up of the kill group into cells, to then exit T&T with the loot. The loot was dumped and found by the TTPS, the kill unit headed to Pond Street, La Romaine with the TTPS in hot pursuit as they were engaging them before they exited the escape vehicle in Pond St. In Pond St they enter the yard of a household with 13 grandchildren and two aged grandparents living in a two story building where they entered the ground floor under construction with the TTPS in hot pursuit. The neighbour alerted the grandmother that armed men were in her yard and under her house, she immediately secured entry into the upper floor, the TTPS then corned the killers downstairs and four were killed in the firefight which leaves two not accounted for. If they had gained access to the upper floor the expected outcome would have been a hostage situation and already having killed there would have been no hesitation to continue.

This is not a transnational organised crime operation, not even an organised crime operation. This is young persons emboldened to kill simply because they had in their possession AR-15 semi-automatic rifles with lots of shots to expend. This was a case of the Wilding, Spree Killers according to US criminologists, for me it was simply terrorism in action for the cash/the loot and escaping untouched to enjoy was simply not the prime directive, killing was. The flood of assault rifles and ammunition into T&T is now giving opportunity to persons intent on killing for pleasure simply to do it, soon we will have the school shooters and various types of shooters who hunt soft targets to kill wherever they are gathered as malls. An exploding supply of assault rifles changes the nature of violence in a social order as these are weapons of war enabling anyone with emotional/mental problems to act out their fantasies of exerting violence on warm bodies. T&T you have sowed the wind and you are now reaping the whirlwind.

Gunlandia T&T 2022

Gunlandia T&T 2022

For August 2022 the estimated murder toll was 66 persons which outstrips July 2022 by 5.2% with its total of 61. A comparison of August for 2022 with August 2021 shows a 88.57% jump over the toll for August 2020 which was 35.

The river of blood of July 2022 accelerated in August 2022 with the escalation of the terms of engagement where there are no “safe zones” open to the public where business can be conducted regardless of who owns and controls these spaces. As long as there is a hit out on you and you are in these spaces this is open season on you. Gunlandia in then expanding to now embrace open season hunt spaces where there is no operating concept of collateral damage, of safe spaces to conduct business and of the need to minimize the blowback from the politicians and the State. Gunlandia is in yuh face and is potently indicating its contempt for the politicians, the State national security apparatus and now for the hegemonic oligarchy of T&T. The message then is the inevitable march up the food chain as the business models continue their engagement. In Gangland it is now clearly apparent that the move to eliminate the leadership of the affiliates of the Mexican TTOs at the beginning of 2022 has now backfired with the blowback being the drive up the food chain and the tit for tit hits.

The fact of the matter is whenever you leave home for any public destination especially those where targets transit you are playing craps, rolling dice with your life as you can very well place yourself in a conjuncture with a date with death by gun in Gunlandia. As you happen to be in the range of the shooter who is taking out the target as you are walking, passing by minding your business as in a mall cap park, waiting to purchase street food, liming in a watering hole in plain sight etc etc this is Gunlandia T&T where Ganglandia, TOClandia run riot whilst the national security apparatus is in tatters, the remand yard overcrowded, the judicial system morbidly constipated and the Office of the DPP in a ramshackle condition. Don’t worry blame the TTPS and seek persistently the deflection that the oligarchs and their politicians dish out in Gunlandia that can’t block bullet especially those of an AR-15 at close range. This is eating shots. Imagine Friday morning in a store on the drag in Puna and man eating shots, dead on the floor. This is Gunlandia, Tombstone Territory T&T.

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Tracking the Murder Toll June and July 2022 in Trinidad and Tobago

Using the reports of homicides published in the daily print media of T&T I have commenced tracking from June 2022 the monthly homicide toll to enable a comparative analysis with 2021 from June to December as this was the period the monthly homicide toll began its ascent in 2021 culminating in the peak in the final quarter of 2021. The murder toll in 2021 began its climb in spite of the fact that Griffith was Commissioner of Police at the time and it continues thereafter driven by realities on the ground in the illicit trades. The limitations of the methodology I am using is my sample is determined by what the three daily newspapers choose to print, it is as simple as that, but I have no other choice.

In June 2022 this methodology reported 40 homicides with 33 in June 2021, an increase of 21.21%. In July 2022 there were 61 homicides recorded compared to 38 in 2021, an increase of 60.52%. A July 2022 murder toll that outstrips the highest month for 2021. July was especially bloody as the engagement within gangland intensified as a series of drug retail points were lighted up in July 2022 and attacks on players continued. Two potent indicators of the intensity of the engagement between two contending transnational organised crime business models. The wanton blood lust of the have nots earned themselves a series of tit for tat attacks which further escalated the murder toll. Whilst the contribution of personalised violence used to mediate conflict continued and escalated and the tendency to resort to graphic violence in the course of crimes against the person and property escalated. Potently indicated by economic terrorists armed to the teeth to protect their illicit enterprise of stealing non-ferrous and ferrous metals. The interdiction in Barbados of the warehoused shipment of Colombian ganja with connections to operatives in T&T illustrate the operational presence in T&T of one of two transnational organised crime business models and the willingness of the other to give up their competition to state agencies.

The battle is lost, continued resistance is futile as earning dead presidents and euro are not enhanced by an operational reality of constant war. When your ability to earn is squeezed then you collapse and that is what is happening in T&T today as in the USA, Europe, Africa and Asia.

The Hegemony of the Mexican TTOs over the Illicit Markets of T&T in 2022

The rapidly changing nature of the illicit markets of T&T in 2022 is the result of the rolling out of the business model of the Mexican TTOs over the markets of the illicit trades in T&T in 2022. The ever expanding availability on the retail drug markets of synthetic drugs especially meth/ice, ex, fentanyl and their expanding market base in T&T is driven by the Mexican preference for synthetic drugs, its greater profitability and the preferred means to stimulate demand in a market where crack is a sunset drug. The Mexicans have already impacted the ganja market of T&T rapidly increasing the volume of supply to match demand whilst harnessing local production of quality ganja to export pipelines under the control of the Mexican organisations. The volume of cocaine and heroin being transshipped through T&T continues to increase whilst interdiction remains negligible. Entirely new vistas of criminal activity are being introduced by this hegemonic business model that will blindside the way in which T&T generates, manages, stores and protects wealth as IT systems are subjected to intensified, sophisticated assaults and physical plants as banks etc come under sophisticated assaults. The assault on Republic Bank, Couva was simply a wake up call as there were items of strategic value in the safety deposit boxes that needed to be uplifted. The Mexican coyotes now exercise hegemony over human smuggling into the Caribbean for final transit to the Mexican border with the USA, then to the USA and Canada. The movement of Caribbean peoples to the Mexican border then to the USA and Canada is now dominated by the Mexican coyotes from the Caribbean Basin onwards and they dominate the inter Caribbean pipelines that feed migrants to the Mexican border, then to the USA, Canada and to Latin American markets. This is potently illustrated by the diversity of pipelines that smuggle Haitians to a menu of destinations in in the Western Hemisphere and the rest of the world. In T&T as the rest of the Caribbean Basin violence is being generated in social orders as the Mexican business model displaces and dominates the former hegemonic model of the Colombian paramilitary Dons. The decision in the first quarter of 2022 by the foot soldiers of the Colombian Dons in T&T to assassinate an operative/affiliate of the Mexicans in T&T triggered an intensification of the Cleansing of the foot soldiers of the Dons especially those attached to the remnants of the Federation all the way to its lowest levels. This then is a battle to finally take out the business model of the Dons in T&T and the have nots the foot soldiers of the Dons armed in a bid to destabalise the illicit markets which is having a blowback effect on the T&T social order. Presently it is now apparent that the Dons have embraced in T&T their favorite go to position of destabalising a social order in which their business model is now in eclipse. A comparison of the murder toll of June 2021 with that of June 2022 shows a 21.21% increase in 2022 over that of 2021 or 33 in June 2021 and 40 in June 2022. This battle between the Mexican TTOs and the Colombian paramilitary Dons business models is now threatening to drag the drug trafficking families of the T&T oligarchy, especially the minority races, into the battle which will destabalise the T&T State to its dysfunctional core. The Dons have lost the battle, further futile resistance will intensify the destabalisation of the T&T State and its social order. Yesterday we saw in action the concept of political protest as guerrilla engagement with the State. Guess where they learnt that! Next comes the full application of the business model where everything that has a value on illicit markets will be appropriated as oil in pipelines etc. Understand what it is to have a gunman strung out on meth/ice putting down wuk in T&T or a met head in a domestic situation that is fraught with violence. Pax Mexicana!