Paul Polidor: Tha Cocain Traffic – Belize (British Sky Broadcasting-2008)
SECȚIUNEA DE TRADUCERI ÎN CADRUL
FESTIVALULUI-CONCURS INTERNAŢIONAL „PAUL POLIDOR” DE INTERFERENŢE CULTURALE
Traducere de MARIA-ALEXANDRA BARBU (Coordonator: Prof.Iulia Perju, Colegiul Național ,,Grigore Moisil,,-București)
(Text published on-line in the western magazines and presented within the Doctoral School of the Sociology Faculty – University of Bucharest)
BELIZE – THE TURNING FACE OF THE INTER-AMERICAN COCAINE TRAFFIKING
Benchmark:
Original Title: “Ross Kemp on gangs”
Genre: Documentary
The title with which the documentary was showed in Romanian:
“Ross Kemp în jungla urbană”
Presented by Ross Kemp
Series Producer: Matt Bennett
Directed by Evan Thompson
A TIGER ASPECT PRODUCTION and MONGOOSE PRODUCTIONS
for SKY TELEVISION
Copyright: British Sky Broadcasting – 2008
(The quotations from this material, which do not refer to a certain author’s writing, represent the transcription from the video tape)
- INTRODUCTION. The small countries, usually due to their geographic position, play a significant role in the extension of the trans border crime, especially in the context of a business running at an international level, and Belize does not make an exception in this way. This happens because we discuss about billions of dollars that are ruled in the cocaine trafficking from the South-American continent to the North-American one, 37% of the contraband cocaine entering the USA via Belize. The documentary presents some astounding images, which contrast with the official presentations of this small country, apparently insignificant in the regional and geopolitical concert, so that this study tries a tackling in the interferences’ area, which can enlighten certain obscure aspects or more difficult to understand ones.
- BELIZE, HISTORY AND BECOMING: A GREAT POWERS’ DISCOVERY
With a surface of 22.965 square kilometres (certain sources give the surface of 22.963 square kilometres, and others the one of 22.966 square kilometres) and with a population of more than a quarter million of inhabitants (a source from 2009 indicates a population of 295.000 inhabitants). Belize certificates, in our opinion, the status of the cultural interferences’ zone past centuries, being one of the territories with the most mixed-up population and hence without a clearly precise nation identity, despite the advertisement for various encyclopaedias and dictionaries. In the Middle Ages, Belize was the living area of the Amerindian Maya tribes (some of the relics from the pre-classical period, approximately 300-900 A.D., being studied for discovering the causes for which the Maya population turned north, after they had suddenly abandoned their settlements), and further it was inhabited by the Amerindians from the Caribbean. The presence of Christopher Columbus (1451-1506) is mentioned by different sources: some of them state that this territory would have been discovered by Columbus, others that it was visited by Columbus in 1502, and others that the navigator “observed the island in 1504, in the last of his four American voyages”(1) Starting with the 16th century Belize was included in the vice kingdom of the New Spain, so we would expect that, like in the majority of the countries from Central America, the official language of Belize to be Spanish. Spanish, is true, is currently spoken extensively, but it did not succeed in becoming an official language, and this has a political explanation. Another power of the time had other plans with this territory always in the blow of transit; so what happened in 1638? Shortening the story, one variant says that on the course of the Belize River English colonists settle, consolidate their authority and succeed a first recognition from Spain in 1798. More detailed and nearer to the truth it sounds like this: “Around 1638 some castaway British sailors arrived here and settled themselves. They immediately realised the abundance of the precious wood and made their living from its export. By the end of the 18th century, some conflicts with the Spanish blurted, and they capitulated in front of the British people and retreated, having been defeated.”(2) The 19th century has some important benchmarks, but, also there the data differs due to the sources. After 1798, having everything under control, after less than a half century, in 1836, Great Britain claims its statute of possession upon this territory named “the British Honduras” (on the sea the nearest neighbour is the “non-British” Honduras, at 75 km far from the namesake gulf). In 1862, it gains the statute of colony and only after nine years, in 1871, it becomes a colony of the British Crown, power which will hardly accept the idea of independency and granting it. The second half of the 20th century brought other forms of inter-zone confrontation: at the referendum from 1960, people of the British Honduras vehemently dismiss their annexation to Guatemala, in the pursue of this event Great Britain granting internal autonomy to the territory in 1964. One who looks on the map will observe that this small country, situated on the East coast of Central America, tied by the isthmus, neighbour in the East with the Caribbean Sea, earth bounded by Mexico in the North-West and by Guatemala in the West and South, seems to be “swallowed” by the dominating Guatemala, like Lebanon by Syria in the Middle East. On June 1st, 1973, the country takes the name of Belize, but only after eight years, on September 21st, 1981, it is granted its independence within the Commonwealth. If the small countries do not already have a powerful enemy, they are invented one for by the great powers which want to dominate them for concrete economical interests. So, there are sources which state that a permanent territorial conflict with Guatemala made absolutely necessary the continuation of the British military presence in Belize, which seems to us “too thin”.
It is true that Guatemala refused to recognise the independence of the new small neighbouring state, but, in fact, Guatemala was refusing the recognition of the independence of the last British colony from the American Space!… Initially it claimed the sovereignty of the entire country, afterwards only of 20% of the territory, the southern district of Toledo. In a nearby Hispanic territory, this oasis of British-American interests did not seem very comfortable for the neighbouring countries. And, as to give a conclusive example of deliberate exclusion of the state of Belize from the “zone club”, for Guatemala (we cite) “the commercial balance continues to be negative: the economic isolation from the period of the civil war is overcome step by step. In 2001 Guatemala, Mexico, Honduras and El Salvador signed an agreement of free trade from which Guatemala benefitted. The lack of investment is a barrier against the development, mainly because of the high level of interests and due to the spread of corruption”(3). In the macro-continental context, the American space means, in fact, the space dominated by the USA, and regarding the case analysed by us, there were usually installed only “good and obedient” leaders, so this is why Belize was not the victim of the adverse reactions and of the “checkerboard”, full of rebellions and revolts, like in Guatemala: ”United Fruit launched an aggressive campaign in the USA with the purpose of convincing the public and the American Congress that Arbenz (the ex-President of Guatemala, democratically elected, a leader who had promised that he would help the poor people and the middle class with a program of agrarian reform, when actually the American company, United Fruit Company, was the despotic owner of the many lands in Central America – prec.n.) was making part of a Russian conspiracy and that Guatemala was one of the Soviet Union’s satellite. In 1954 CIA orchestrated a putsch. The American pilots bombed the capital of Guatemala (Ciudad de Guatemala), and Arbenz /…/ was ousted, being replaced by the colonel Carlos Castillo Armas, a merciless right-wing dictator.”(4) The results did not take so long to be revealed, and the conclusion was only one: nobody opposes the USA! “The new government owed everything to United Fruit. Apart from thanks, the government embezzled the process of reforms regarding the land ownership, abolished the charges on the interest and the dividends paid by the foreign investors, eliminated the secret vote and sent thousands of people who were criticising him to jail. Whoever dared to speak directly against Castillo was persecuted. The historians established the origin of the violence and the terrorism that hit Guatemala until the end of the century in the alliance, not very secret, between United Fruit, CIA and Guatemala’s army, under dictator colonel’s leadership”.(5)
- THE FORMER CAPITAL BELIZE, THE PARADISE OF THE COCAINE TRAFFICKERS
For the trans border crime the state of Belize is a real gold mine. The long coast of hundreds of kilometres, which can also represent unguarded terrestrial borders, globally facilitates a cocaine traffic which reaches every year, as value, the sum of 23.000.000.000 (twenty-three billions) dollars. For the narcotic trek, Belize received a crucial role in the worldwide business of drugs, because the first stage of the business, the production on the south-American continent “takes place” through the most important stage, the one of sending and unpacking of the goods on the north-American continent. In this context, the most appropriate terms focus on “the import and the export (in their proper semantic connotations, the physical movement of the narcotics from one state’s territory to the interior of another’s or from the limits of one territory to another’s from the same state)”.(6) Belize beaches attract annually a number of tourists fourth times higher than the entire population of the country, but meanwhile the maze of mangroves and islands attract the narcotics traffickers. Unfortunately, the damages produced by a hurricane affected the city of Belize so much that in 1970 it ceded the statute of capital to the city of Belmopan. This could be the official explanation, the other type of explanation being an extremely practical one: we do need the government be interested in our businesses, especially as in connection with Belmopan, Belize cumulates a good part of the country’s population, plus the intense flurry of tourists and smugglers. Here cocaine comes on sea, the Columbians using the local gangs (repaid with drugs, weapons and cash) so that the “goods” arrive at the Mexican cartels, as it is specified in the document presented by Ross Kemp. In Belize approximately 3.000 (three thousands!) of gangsters live, the city is full of weapons and drugs, there are hundreds and hundreds of crimes annually committed by gangs, the US Department of State describing the situation as a critical one. But what does the American Department to do with a country which is not an American territory? There are lots of reasons which “explain” our supposition, according to which Belize is a discovery, a craft and a business of the great powers: firstly, the majority of the drugs direct, from Columbia, via Belize, to Mexico and USA; secondly, we do not believe that from over a million of tourists who come annually in Belize for entertainment, no one snuffs cocaine or spends money to delight himself. On the other hand, the dependence relation to the “mother-country” does not have to be ignored: in 1997, for example, the statistics indicated that, for Belize, the main unpacking market was Great Britain with 45,5%, so that it does not bother anybody, it is suggested in the document’s text, if the British army makes instruction in Belize. With no more than 70.000 inhabitants, the old capital “is the sixth dangerous place in the world where you can die shot. Belize is a city at a step from the anarchy: the police tries to control the violence, together with the defence forces, massively armed”.(7) And this is only one face of the problem. Now we will enter in the crux of the issue, on the gangs’ territory.
- “WE, THE BLACK PEOPLE, FORGIVE, BUT WE DO NOT FORGET: WE WILL KILL YOU AND YOUR WIFE!”
It is not a joke. Ross Kemp is in a car with a policeman, but the lawman says that, attention, at not even 100 metres from the police station you entered on the gangs’ territory. They are the police’s neighbours, whom they let “love notes” to on walls with small letters: ”We are the bloody killers. Go to hell all of you!” Beautiful, elegant. The policeman exemplifies: in a weekend it happened serious incidents with firearms. The zone about which it is talking is filmed: “The houses are made of wood, the bullets can go through them. They penetrate the house and all there is inside it.”(8) The victims that collapse are innocent children, women, generally civil population. Imagine these frightening scenes in Ploieşti, for example, that the bullets murder the children staying inside their homes. An increasing criminality should dispose also of a varied offer of “tools”, so in the active districts, where there are shoots, the guns are diversified: *rifle AK-47; *rifle AR-15; *rifle M-16; *semi-automatics; *explosives. After all, one evening, tells the policeman, a grenade exploded on a group of youngsters in the town. It is an extremely rare case in the history, says the lawman, when explosive is thrown over a populated district, where many little children live: “There are extremely poor zones. People do not receive any sort of social help and live from the selling of cocaine and marijuana.”(9) We remind you that we analyse the criminality in Belize, which is a state having, we cite: “Political regime: parliamentary monarchy in Commonwealth: Head of state: Queen Elizabeth II, represented by a general governor”(10) Violence has reached unbelievable rates, the documentary states, exemplifying by the Dog Pound gang, which became notorious in Belize, because, instead of attacking you with guns, “they were biting your neck or torn off your ears with their teeth; they were biting you like dogs, as to shred your neck, your ear or your cheek.”(11) This animal practice is rather in connection with the wilderness, so it was not filmed in a city from Central America, but directly in the Afro-American social jungle. The social relationships of this kind are distinguished also by the mind of the sociology’s classics, who tried to prevent the societies not a few times by assertions filled with visionaries: “Durkheim was very clever in the demonstration of the functioning ways of what he calls social realities, which he described as being ways of acting, thinking and feeling, external to the individual and endowed with a force of coercion, reason for which the social realities control the individual.”(12) Ross Kemp succeeds, assuming some risks, in making an interview with the Dog Pound gang. At the interview all of them had their faces covered. We note some benchmark-reactions, selectively, from the interview: “If they kill two of my sons, I kill three of their!” // “I was born in my district and here I will die.” // “We do not have good jobs, minimum salary, and some money. How can we live? We have been living in the ghetto. My daughter is three years old, my son one year old. I have a responsibility and I have to pay for it.”(13) The lack of perspective regarding the next day bears simple confessions, which explain why the crime remains among the only solutions of action and survival. To dominate a country with all the social structures, you must have specialists in urban criminality who prepare this sensitive terrain, so this is why it is no accident that the urban-specialised sociology that made detailed research in this direction was the American ones: “The sociologists from Chicago did not analyse the society as a whole or a mega system which controls everything, but the smaller groups and the way in which they understood their role in the society. Because Chicago was a fast-developing society, composed of numerous ethnic groups, the sociologists could follow directly a complete new social process. The immigrants’ cultures formed their own subgroups in the ghettos in which the standard ideas of the white Americans were not enough. The school from Chicago realised a series of studies about fool rebel groups and gangs.”(14) The aspect of the cultural interferences was researched a little, so it should make us think about the following passage of the film: “We, the black people, forgive, but we do not forget. If I forget about you today, it is not a problem, I will remember about you after four years and, if I have a gun in my hand, I will kill you and your wife. I kill you, I don’t give a damn.”(15) The electronic mail is, purely, assassinated by the famous “Nigerian letters”, subsequently west-African, even in Romania, but nobody wants to tell the truth about this kind of crime. Léopold Sédar Senghor ventures himself in the culture of the negritude, but however hard you try to find something about the Africans’ flaws, you will not find them. But still, the “blood” test as a product of the interferences in history is extremely interesting. Practically, what it hid in the volume about the violent gene, it stated indirectly regarding the “crossing” on other continents, in our case south-American. In a study, called “Asturias the mestizo”, Senghor stated that “he was born on October, 19th 1899, in Guatemala, at the confluence of the Spanish and Indian blood. Physically he was, thus, mestizo, but of a double one. Paul Rivet was teaching us that through the veins of the Indians from the tropical America streams black blood; Alexander von Wuthenau confirmed us at the First International Festival of Black Arts. Regarding the Spaniards, it is known well that, the same as the other Mediterranean people, they derive from all the relations: of the Iberians and Celts, of the Phoenicians and Jews, of the Germans who crossed the peninsula to wage wars in North Africa, and of the Moors coming from the shores of Senegal to occupy a third from the same peninsula, for seven hundred years. And, for not going until the engrains from Capsian, if the ancient Greeks called them Mauroi, “Moors”, was because of the dark colour of their skin. In fact, they were Berbers crossbred with black blood.”(16)
- THE COCAINE TRAFFIC. “WORKING” VARIANTS IN AN ANOMIC / UNORGANIZED SOCIETY
For the south-American cartels Belize represents a sensitive and profitable point, because almost all the conditions of the realization of high-scale crime are gathered. We say “almost”, because the police from Belize has neither technical facilities nor personnel to oppose the contraband forces: only in 2006, by financial support coming from the USA, appeared the first Coastguard in Belize, mostly of façade, in our opinion. Despite the fact that it has eight ships with which they intimidate the offenders (and that is all!), the Coastguard has to cover over 14.000 square kilometres of ocean, so it is impossible for them to obstruct the traffickers. arriving on sea. There is also the question: if towards north the border with Mexico is quite near, why don’t the wrongdoers take the goods directly to Mexico? They use Belize because there are not enough people or forces to defend its coast zones and shores. Due to the disastrous material situation, the inhabitants, instead of supporting the forces of police, make peace with the devil offering the traffickers fuel cans and information, that is they tell them where the reefs are, and also the hunting police. And they do the barter: the Columbians offer drugs in exchange for fuel. An interviewee also tells us how much: two kilograms of cocaine for two fuel cans! Does it seem little to you? Not to mention that there is also the “Nautical Lottery”, that is in Romanian “If it does not flow, it drips”: this meaning that the inhabitants find in the water what it remains after a delivery, matters of drugs, which break through the social environment. That they lead immediately to fights between gangs is a sure thing: however, they have nothing else to do. Since these dizzying quantities of cocaine appeared, there is no more homogenous skin colour, but only the all-powerful dollar, which does exactly what it has been doing throughout history: it divides and makes enemies. The gangs suspect and spy on each other, cut each other. Like the wolves that delimit with urine their territory, the gangs’ leaders defend their action zone with ferocity (example: they dig screwdrivers in the throat or in the back of their enemies!, because nothing has changed since the Latin quote, “Homo homini lupus”, or throw, in a “classical” manner a grenade in the public). Unfortunately, aiming a wall, the splinters will rebound, mutilate or kill. The most serious problem for the social environment, witnessing these horrors, constitutes the interferences between the enemies’ territories: people are effectively the prisoners of the street gangs, and the price of leaving the district where you live can be death. In Belize the traffickers do not abandon only their crafts, but also their planes, because they value just a little part from the charge. “State in state”, the great leaders behind the traffic closed a public location, in Belize, for using it as a runway. They bounded a portion of the motorway, wide enough to do their job, even riddled the police car’s windscreen that dared to bother them. Rentability. In this kind of plane, the interviewed policeman confirms, the cocaine having the value of 50.000.000 dollars (fifty million) can be casually transported, and the plane has the value of nearly a million, so if they abandon it, the loss is more than acceptable. Corporal Longsworth, interviewed by Ross Kemp, says that in Belize “the cocaine began to enter at the end of 1980 to the beginning of 1990. A kilogram of cocaine in Belize is around 10.000 dollars. If it is processed for distribution in small doses, its value triples. Tons of cocaine pass through Belize annually: 7% remains here, resulting mostly crystallized cocaine. The main distributor has a processing laboratory. He processes it, give it to the gangsters at the corner of the street, and they sell it to the drug addicts. The distributor is not the only leader; there are also others who have relations with the cartels and the gangs.”(17) The television news in Belize presents an extremely tough case and, at the same time, special, a case that confirms the drugs traffic poisoned ramifications up to governmental level, the documentary having the courage to reveal the unseen criminal face of a leader. It is not new that members of the governments are engaged in the maintenance and the development of the trans border crime, but what happens in a small country cannot be done, that goes without saying, except with the tacit concession of the great powers. Money is no more the devil’s eye, but it transformed into the devil itself, with tentacles instead of horns: “He was the head of the gang from George Street, a VIP in the underworld in Belize. He was hired (subl.n.) by a corrupt member of the government of Belize who cooperated with the Mexican district Juarez for introducing 12 tons of cocaine in the USA with the help of the armed members of the gang from George Street.
He was a tough guy, who was telling directly the policemen that he was untouchable and he had at his disposal 30.000.000 dollars cash.”(18) Thus it is set off a state of chaos in the society, and this state confirms the hypothesis that “chaos”, in a more special meaning, appears in everything that is imbalance between our “interior” forces (desires, passions, sensitivity etc.) and the exterior forces (the quantity of economic goods, the respectability, the appreciation, the power, the influence, the priviledge, the prestige etc.). Between the pleasure of the action and the painful unrest that accompanies it there should always be a favourable balance to the first one. Chaos is, hence, in this plan the condition that reverses this kind of balance, demotivates the action, makes it unpleasant, meaningless, painful, even absurd.”(19) Whoever attentively watches this documentary and tries to understand and to read “through the lines”, will observe the hiddeout of the great powers’ business in Belize, handling a puppet-government, engaged in the acceptance of the generalised crime, even supporting it. The history of the sociology calls this context the chaos in the society including “the inexistence or the inefficacity of an authority capable of saying what is right and fixing the passions’ limit, so that the limit to be admitted. When you say about a society that it is disorganised, you say that it lacks entirely in the moral power of fixing what is right and what is not in this society and putting acceptable limits to the various passions.”(20) Ross Kemp makes a force tour and, after this episode, he succeeds in catching a brief interview with one of the gang’s leader from George Street, Jason Brown, who, with disassociation, tells the boys from the film crew that he, for the ordinary members of the gang, considers himself “a kind of lieutenant”. He assures me that the soldiers carry out their tasks. I am paid, but I am responsible for the ones in my suborder. My car has tinted glass, you don’t see me, but I do see you. My boys will wait for telling them to act. In 15 minutes they will attack you and you will be dead. If you kill one of them, they want to revenge immediately. // If I, at lunchtime, shot one in the head and you were witness, if you told someone, I would shoot both your family and yourself.”(21) Jason Brown admitted that he was responsible for atrocious and shaking deeds and, with all these, even he knew that he was followed, he accepted to take the film crew to George Street. The criminals’ reaction was natural, for them the law of the jungle is in fact a condition: “No one fools around here. /…/ We don’t care about what band he is from, we kill him, no matter what. // I have already been imprisoned for the murder of a policeman.”(22) The reporter is shocked by their relaxed attitude regarding violence: “In other places you don’t feel that you stay in the street near the most inveterate criminals, who, however, can brusquely change to pull the trigger or to throw with grenades instantly.”(23) In our opinion, we have to deal with a form of particular types of criminality, especially by “the possibility of the transition from the acute condition to the chronic one.”(24) Like an animal among enemies, always on the lurk or hunted, the man is a beast in the urban jungle. Jason used one time his daughter as a shield against the fire when they shot upon him, so this is why Ross Kemp confesses in front of the video camera that it is hard for him to produce these broadcasts. It happens almost the same with us, the ones that analyse the documentaries about crimes: we charge ourselves with negative energy. The faces we saw in Belize, blacker than the cast-iron cookware, give you the impression that you find yourself rather in Africa than in Central America, and the presentations from various encyclopaedias and dictionaries give you misleading information: “The population is a heterogeneous mix. People of different colours, languages and origins, form a mixture of colours. As number, the biggest Mestizo group, 49% exceeding the Creoles that reach 25%. The Indigenous (11%) who live especially in the north and west part of the country, are the bereaved persons of the Mayas who lived in the past in the present-day Belize. Garifuna people (6%) form a distinct ethnic group from the mix of the black population (African slaves and their posterities) and Carib people. Beside these, there are also groups from the Asian countries (especially Indian and Chinese people) and European minorities.”(25) It was expected: did you see any place on the planet where Chinese people do not exist? This kind of manifestation against violence says a lot about the blood’s interference and even about certain inter-continental customs, and the conclusions of the documentary are revealing: “The fact that some of them still want to murder this young man and that he is still determined to take his revenge, demonstrates the endless cycle of violence and crackdowns that exists in Belize. It happens to me, after shootings, to leave with many more questions than answers. But the most worrying is that this small country is crossed by hundreds of tons of cocaine /…/ And the demand for cocaine is global!…”(26) Lawmen’s reactions, who are engaged in the stop of this kind of infractionality, almost from everywhere in the world, are unanimous: the globalisation system, conceived with premeditation, will not eradicate the phenomenon, but will amplify it.
NOTES
(1) THE GREAT ENCICLOPAEDIA – STATES OF THE WORLD
Original edition published in 2008
Das Neue Bild unserer Welt
Copyright 2008 wissenmedia GmbH, Gütersloh / Germany
Copyright 2009, Litera Publishing House for the Romanian version
Translated from English by Laura Perşoiu, Florentina Corban
Vol.7: Central America and West Indies, p.16
(2) Ibidem
(3) Ibidem, p.20
(4) John Perkins, Confesssions of an Economic Assassin, trad: Ana Budică – Bucharest: Litera International, 2007, p.20
(5) Ibidem
(6) See Eldar H. Hasanov, The Fight against Drug Crime. Aspects of International and Compared Law: Translation by Ştefan Hostiuc, Paideia Publishing House, 2002, p.51
(7) ”Ross Kemp on gangs”
(8) Ibidem
(9) Ibidem
(10) The Great Enciclopaedia, op.cit, p.16
(11) ”Ross Kemp on gangs”
(12) Richard Osborne şi Borin Van Loon, A Little on Sociology, trad. Roxana Niţă, Bucureşti, Curtea Veche Publishing, 2003, p. 44
(13) ”Ross Kemp on gangs”
(14) Richard Osborne şi Boris Van Loon, op.cit, p.76
(15) ”Ross Kemp on gangs”
(16) Léopold Sédar Senghor, From Blackness to the Universality Civilisation, Univers Publishing House, With the authour’s word, Selection and translation : Radu Cârneci şi Mircea Traian Biju, Bucharest – 1986, p.233
(17) ”Ross Kemp on gangs”
(18) Ibidem
(19) Ilie Bădescu, History of Sociology: Vol 1: The Period of the Great Systems, Economical Publishing House, Bucharest – 2002, p. 351
(20) Ibidem
(21) ”Ross Kemp on gangs”
(22) Ibidem
(23) Ibidem
(24) Virgil Dragomirescu, The Psychosociology of the Deviant Behaviour, Scientific and Enciclopaedic Publishing House, Bucharest, 1976, p.94
(25) The Great Enciclopaedia, op.cit, p.15
(26) “Ross Kemp on gangs”