Tobago’s lost innocence

TWO MAJOR drug busts in Tobago expose an illicit, hierarchical underworld long suspected of infringing upon the island.

It is an underworld in which both small fry and big fish have much at stake, swimming side by side like sharks in the waters of what was once Paradise.

In the year 2024, Tobago’s image as Crusoe’s Island has been shattered.

First came February’s mysterious oil spill, a national emergency which cost the state at least $244 million in damage.

Then, a surge of murders, with figures in October rising higher than ever before.

Now, on December 2, in what the police describe as the biggest narcotics haul in the island’s history, officers have seized 231.7 kilos of marijuana and 13 kilos of cocaine.

The drugs, which were found after police saw two individuals loading a pirogue, have a street value of more than $40 million.

But this find, made at Pigeon Point Road, was the second along that stretch in months. On October 7, 29.7 kilos of marijuana, worth $1.6 million, was intercepted in a parked car.

The wildly varying quantities involved and the differing circumstances of discovery are enough to suggest multiple layers – in terms of organisation and international reach – within the murky dealings affecting the island.

Additionally, if we assume both incidents are manifestations of a wider pattern, then the prevailing perception of an exclusive Colombia-Venezuela-Trinidad drug pathway cannot hold.

Officials say the items passed through Trinidad before arriving in Tobago, which may be a buffer zone.

On the other hand, if these discoveries reflect one-off developments, it is notable that they coincide with the murder spike. To link that surge to the drug trade, as already postulated by law enforcement, is not a leap.

However, the higher death toll may well reflect other dynamics.

Notwithstanding efforts to arrest a vessel abroad, the difficulties in identifying the culprits behind the oil spill suggest major weaknesses at Tobago’s border, especially as it relates to the Coast Guard.

It is entirely imaginable that these recent drug hauls reflect crimes of opportunity undertaken only because of the perception of fresh vulnerabilities.

Worryingly, there was something relatively brazen about the way the two people found with the contraband items this month were going about their business, not opting for more clandestine methods.

Yet it is also imaginable, and perhaps more likely, that these transactions are par for the course and have now come to light given increased scrutiny of crime in Tobago.

Either way, authorities have cause to be embarrassed.

For it is clear the drugs twice escaped the notice of officials in both Trinidad and Tobago, while the capture of the big fish or fishes behind it all appears nowhere in sight.

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