Cocaine Nation

by Thomas Feiling

  The bankruptcy of the Jamaican government ensured that austerity measures and collusion with gangsters became the orders of the day. Seaga boasted that he would ‘lock down Jamaica tighter than a sardine can’. He brought food subsidies to an end, further devalued the Jamaican dollar and raised petrol prices. As unemployment rose and poverty deepened, the crime rate climbed still higher, prompting the government to get even tougher. By the mid-1980s, the Jamaican police were responsible for a third of the island’s murders. Seaga’s Caribbean Basin Initiative brought untaxed sweatshops to the island, the female workforce for which he supplied from JLP constituencies. The Prime Minister also launched a programme to revitalize Jamaican agriculture by supplying winter vegetables for the American market. The AGRO-21 programme was headed by Eli Tisona, an Israeli money-launderer for the Colombian Cali cartel. Its showcase farm was Spring Plains, whose head of security was Lester ‘Jim Brown’ Coke, leader of the Shower Posse, a JLP gang that was to pioneer cocaine smuggling from Jamaica to Miami and London.

  Between 1980 and 1990, one in ten Jamaicans left the island for the United States.32 Once there, the poorest and least educated had to ‘juggle’, to squeeze money from whatever opportunities came along. Very often, those opportunities were supplied by the gangs. They had been instrumental in mobilising voters in JLP-dominated garrison communities; their task complete, they now found themselves cast aside by the incoming government. Thus gangsterism became Jamaica’s third principal export, after its labour and its music. Schooled in violence by their politicians, Jamaican gangsters soon found that the United States’ booming cocaine economy supplied one of the few lines of work that actually required an ability to dispense violence. In New York, Miami and other East Coast cities, Jamaican gangsters became key players in the supply of ganja and cocaine. Between the early 1980s and 1995, Jamaican gangs killed 4,500 people in the United States, making them the most violent organized criminals in North America.33

  The Shower Posse, so named for the shower of bullets they rained down on their rivals, was one of the first garrison gangs to move into the cocaine business in the United States. The Shower was based in Kingston’s Tivoli Gardens, ‘the mother of all garrisons’ and the main distribution centre for cocaine and guns in Jamaica. It moved into Miami in 1984, and from there started running first ganja, then cocaine, and eventually heroin to New York City. The Shower Posse also moved into British drugs markets. When Pablo Escobar was killed in 1993, the Cali cartel took over many of the Medellín cartel’s cocaine-smuggling routes and contacts. The Cali cartel wanted to open new markets for their product in Europe, so they recruited the Shower to sell their cocaine for them in the United Kingdom. With the money they earned, the Shower bought guns to send back to their affiliates in Kingston.

  The Shower Posse was dependent for its success on the connivance of Jamaica’s politicians. However, then as now, widespread corruption and impunity have ensured that most of those doing the conniving have escaped justice. In the absence of a criminal conviction, the illegal activities of the island’s businessmen and politicians are the subject of incessant rumours, which the island’s journalists find either too difficult or dangerous to substantiate. The leaders of the Shower were Vivian Blake and Lester ‘Jim Brown’ Coke. Coke took his nickname from the American football star Jim Brown, the only black cast member of the film The Dirty Dozen, which had been a big hit in Jamaica in 1967. ‘Jim Brown’ had set up the first cocaine smuggling routes with Colombian traffickers. But the startling success of the Shower Posse’s cocaine smuggling operations was down to the complicity of senior Jamaican politicians. The story of how ‘Jim Brown’ shot and killed a minibus driver in Kingston in 1982 speaks volumes about the hidden relationship between Jamaica’s politicians, police and garrison dons. ‘Jim Brown’ was wanted by both the FBI and his Colombian suppliers, but the Jamaican police regarded him as untouchable. When fellow bus drivers saw that the police were not going to do anything about the killing, they went on strike. The city ground to a halt, leaving the police with no option but to arrest ‘Jim Brown’. His death is equally telling. While on remand in a Kingston prison cell awaiting extradition to Miami, ‘Jim Brown’ had vowed to testify about senior politicians’ involvement in his drug-smuggling operations. He died just days later. The prison authorities said that Brown died in a prison fire while attempting to escape (as if one way to die wasn’t enough).

  A second Jamaican crew that went to New York to juggle was the Gullymen of McGregor Gully in Kingston, headed by Eric ‘the Chinaman’ Vassell. At its height, their network of crack houses in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, was taking in $60,000 a day. The Gullymen also ferried cocaine from New York to Texas, returning with dozens of handguns to ship back to Kingston, and supplied street-corner crack dealers in Crown Heights, who paid the Gullymen a tax. ‘Vassell franchised his operation just like McDonald’s,’ said an FBI agent.34 Feared criminals in New York, the Gullymen were regarded as benefactors back in Kingston because they were a steady source of US-dollar remittances and ‘treats’. Treats date back to the days of slavery. Come Easter, owners would give their slaves a new article of clothing or a tiny ration of meat. Following this tradition, every Easter the Gullymen would spend thousands of dollars on treats for their communities back in Kingston. There would be toys and clothes for the children, and presents for their baby-mothers. In her book, Born Fi’ Dead (1995), Laurie Gunst describes a beauty pageant held in McGregor Gully, where each of the pre-teen contestants wore a sash bearing the name of the ‘soldier’ who had sponsored her. There was a Miss Sean, a Miss Jukie and a Miss Ever-Reds. Just before the winner was announced, a little girl stepped up to the microphone. ‘This is the fifth year since the Schnectady Crew’—she had a hard time pronouncing the name of the Brooklyn avenue where the Gullymen were based—‘from the United States of America have shown their love and care for us citizens of McGregor settlement. Words cannot say how much we love and care for you.’35

  The Jamaican gangs have become key players in an international trade. Recognizing the need for international aid to counter those gangs, in 2004 the Jamaican and British police launched Operation Kingfish to go after those running the cocaine trade in Jamaica. They dismantled two of Jamaica’s fourteen major gangs, and disabled five clandestine landing strips used to fly cocaine to and from the island. In 2006, Donald ‘Zekes’ Phipps, the don of Mathews Lane, was jailed for life for a double murder. Since 2007, prominent businessmen like Norris ‘Deedo’ Nembhard, Leebert Ramcharan and Donovan ‘Plucky’ Williams have been extradited to the United States and convicted of cocaine trafficking.36 News of the arrest of Robroy ‘Spy’ Williams was said to have struck such a blow to the business community of Montego Bay that supermarket sales in the town dropped 20 per cent.

  Drug law enforcement efforts and the switch to overland smuggling through Mexico have ensured that today just 10 per cent of the cocaine bound for the American market passes through the Caribbean, and most of that moves through Venezuela, Trinidad and Barbados. Many Jamaican operators have returned to the marijuana business. The impact of Operation Kingfish, while it lasted, is not in question: a kilo of cocaine that cost £2,000 in Jamaica in 2004 cost £4,000 by 2007. But Kingfish dented rather than crushed the business. In 2003, 100 tons of cocaine was estimated to have passed through Jamaica.37 Based on retail prices of $30,000 per kilo in the United States, that trade was worth at least $3 billion a year, which is three times more than Jamaica’s earnings from tourism, its biggest legitimate exchange earner after remittances from abroad.38 Since the last British police officer left, the arrests have dried up.

  How long these small victories will last is doubtful. The Jamaican government’s finances are in as parlous a state today as they were when the cocaine business first arrived. Sixty-five per cent of the government’s expenditure is allocated to the servicing of the national debt. Eighty-five per cent of Jamaica’s skilled labour emigrates, to the UK, Canada and above all the United States, where one in fi
ve Jamaicans now lives.39 Older Jamaicans complain that ‘easy money’ from relatives living in London or New York has made the young idle. Not that there’s much work to be done: the marketplaces are full of subsidized American farm produce, imported at prices that Jamaica’s farmers can’t compete with; the European Union has capped its preferential trade terms for Jamaican bananas and the sugar cane fields are on the wane. The island has deposits of bauxite, the main ore used in the making of aluminium, but all the processing plants are in foreign hands, so most of the profits go overseas. Officially, unemployment in Jamaica is running at 12 per cent, but in reality the rate is closer to 35 per cent. All of this bodes well for anyone considering running cocaine through Jamaica in the future.

  There are said to be twelve big players in the Jamaican cocaine business today. In contrast to the first generation of traffickers, many of whom were garrison dons, today’s traffickers are among the most prominent businessmen on the island.

  After the financial crisis of 1997, many businesses in Jamaica went bankrupt and a lot of commercial property came on to the market, which only the cocaine traffickers had the money to buy. They have access to sizeable sums of money, which they launder through tax-free accounts in the Caymans and the Virgin Islands, or by buying up tourist spots on Montego Bay’s Gloucester Avenue, car parts businesses, construction companies and the casas de cambio (bureaux de change). Until recently, the island’s biggest cambio owner was rumoured to be Adrian ‘Ruddy’ Armstrong, a white Jamaican reported in the Jamaican Gleaner as ‘facilitating the movement of billions of dollars from the US, Europe, Panama, Colombia and Jamaica for some of the big players in western Jamaica.’40 Another major trafficker is Samuel ‘Knighty’ Knowles, a Bahamian reputedly worth £100 million, who gave many of the first generation of Jamaican cocaine traffickers their break into the business. Knowles invested his earnings in construction and shopping mall projects, and has lieutenants in the Montego Bay districts of Canterbury and Norwood. These businessmen-traffickers have used their wealth to ingratiate themselves with the police, politicians and the wider business community of Jamaica.

  An investigation of police officers in Portland found they had stolen cocaine from smugglers; the corruption was judged to be so pervasive that the entire Portland police force had to be transferred from the parish. In 2005, all twelve members of the narcotics police unit in Montego Bay were also found to have accepted payments from local traffickers.41

  It is safe to assume that most such cases go undetected or unpunished. Once corruption is seen to go unpunished, all public finances become potential sources of illicit enrichment and even the most principled public servants come to crowd the trough. In 2007, the International Narcotics Control Board acknowledged the arrests made as part of Operation Kingfish, but still warned that Jamaica risked becoming a ‘kleptocracy’ if the government didn’t act against corruption by cocaine traffickers. So when JLP leader Bruce Golding won that year’s general election, thereby putting an end to eighteen years of PNP rule, many Jamaicans hoped that the nefarious alliance of businessmen, politicians and cocaine traffickers might be broken.42 Unfortunately, dismantling webs of corruption has turned out to be less than straightforward. The cocaine business is more lucrative than any other, and too many powerful people know too much about other powerful people’s dalliances with it. While it would be unfair to call the JLP the cocaine traffickers’ party, eighteen years in opposition made it the first port of call for anyone disgruntled by police crackdowns. JLP candidates are thought to have been given £650,000 to buy votes in Montego Bay alone, money said to have been made available by the town’s businessmen-traffickers.

  Both the PNP and the JLP have officially stated that they want to put an end to political tribalism and sever their alliances with the garrison dons, but partisan distribution of work, housing and ‘scare benefits’ still goes on. The politicians still rely on the gangs to mobilize voters come election day. The businessmen-traffickers still need the garrison dons and their shooters and still maintain close ties to Jamaican trafficking gangs in the United States—indeed, they are very often blood relatives of the government ministers vowing to wage war on ‘narco-terrorists’.

  But it is the change, rather than continuity, that is driving Jamaicans’ fear of crime. The politicians have much less to offer the garrison communities these days, and the dons realize that they can fund themselves, either through the cocaine trade, or by extorting legal businesses. The dons of Flankers and Rose Heights in Montego Bay have effectively become the heads of parallel governments, which cover the school fees and medical expenses of people who would otherwise go without.

  Before Operation Kingfish, there were about twenty-five dons in Kingston. Kingfish disrupted their control of the ghettos, but did nothing to tackle the deprivation that gave rise to that control in the first place. When the police arrested a don, his gang splintered and a leadership struggle among his lieutenants ensued, which only generated more violence. As the hierarchies of controlled violence have been dismantled, 100 ‘corner gangs’ have sprung up in Kingston. These gangs have no ties to politicians, and are far more bloodthirsty than the traditional gangs. The degeneration of political violence into criminal violence is creating a generation of twelve- to thirty-year-old, near-illiterate hustlers whose idea of a job is to kill a policeman for his gun, so as to rob a gangster for the start-up capital for a cocaine deal. All of this goes on within spitting distance of the tourists of Montego Bay, who enjoy their holidays blissfully unaware of the ‘daily burning’ going on around them.

  The shift from a ganja culture to a cocaine economy has also created a local market for crack cocaine on the island. Jah Runnings told me that every neighbourhood now has its resident crack user, often homeless, sometimes a thief, ‘what is left after the cocaine has finished with the person’, as he put it. ‘There are crack houses all over Jamaica. People who use it always turn stupid idiots. Some are returning residents, some are retired, some man get kicked out from foreign. I know good people who get hooked by it and can’t stop. Can you imagine, he has a little car, he has his family, but he’s on crack, and he sells everything to maintain that thing. Jamaica start turn wicked since the coke get burst.’

  At independence in 1962, there were six murders a year for every 100,000 Jamaicans.43 By 1988, at the height of the crack era in the United States, Jamaica’s murder rate was twice as high as that of the most violent American cities, and by 2005 the island had the highest murder rate in the world.44 Most gun crime is confined to the garrison communities of downtown Kingston, which has fuelled a rush to the suburbs and made Kingston probably the only capital city in the Caribbean without a tourist trade. The cocaine trade has made crime Jamaica’s most profitable enterprise and that trade has had knock-on effects. Prison authorities in the United States, the United Kingdom and Canada have been deporting Jamaicans who have completed (mostly drug-related) terms in their prisons. Between 2001 and 2004, Jamaica absorbed an average of 2,700 deported convicts a year, an influx equivalent to releasing half of Jamaica’s prison population in the space of a year.45

  Until recently, the principal way for poor Jamaicans to acquire power without resort to brute force was through education. Mass education was a keystone of post-independence government policy across the Caribbean, and parents did all they could to get their children schooled. But education no longer delivers jobs in Jamaica, so many of those who can, leave the island to look for work overseas. Political office offered a second route to empowerment, but politicians are more limited in what they can offer too.46 The power to affect change has passed into the hands of the island’s businessmen, who see few legal opportunities worth exploiting, but plenty of illegal ones.

  For those without economic resources, dramatic change, albeit at a very local level, can be affected by the purchase of a gun. Until recently, downtown Kingstonians would ask relatives abroad to send books or food. These days they ask for a gun. Possession of a gun is as good as a job
: it can be rented out, or used to rob what money there is, as well as to defend its owner from robbers. In 2003, a survey found that one in five Jamaican students had carried a weapon to school or college at some point in the previous month.47 The gun exercises a sinister fascination: with a gun a young man can command fear and defend his fragile self-respect. The longer the causes of the violence go unaddressed, the more normal violence becomes. ‘Street culture’ has become synonymous with ‘gun culture’ within a very short period of time.

  Successive Jamaican governments’ emphasis on law and order in tackling violent crime has only made matters worse. It seems that everyone is clamouring for order, but no one for effective laws. There were 1,000 murders in Jamaica in 2004 but only forty murder convictions. Defence lawyers have too much power and the judiciary is slow and easily corrupted. The police force is underfunded; middle-ranking officers who resist bribery don’t get promoted, and are regularly threatened by those involved in the cocaine business. Even discounting its corruption by the cocaine trade, the Jamaica Constabulary Force (JCF) is in no position to protect or serve the people of Jamaica. Per head of population, no country’s police force kills as many of its citizens as does the JCF. The JCF was founded in the wake of the Morant Bay rebellion of 1865 to put down insurrection.48 To this day, the JCF labours under the illusion that ranged against it is an enemy army of criminal combatants that parasitically draws shelter and sustenance from the civilian population, from which it must, in the words of Police Superintendent Reneto Adams, be ‘flushed out into the open, where we can deal with it.’ Adams has allegedly been involved in extra-judicial killings in which a total of thirty-eight Jamaicans have lost their lives, but he was tried and acquited of any offences. Away from the ghettos, the ruthlessness of the JCF has been widely applauded. Its apparent disregard for the law has come to be regarded as an entirely appropriate response to the breakdown in law and order.