A new breed of pirates
ers. After being beaten and thrown in the sea, he said, “I tried to keep my head above water so I could get air. I drank a lot of salt water. I looked to the stars and moon. I just hoped and prayed.”
There have been reports of piracy over the past 18 months near Honduras, Nicaragua, Haiti and St. Lucia. But nowhere has the surge been more notable, analysts say, than off the coast of Venezuela.
An economic crisis in the South American country has sent inflation soaring toward 1 million percent, making food and medicine scarce. Malnutrition is spreading; disease is rampant; water and power grids are failing from a lack of trained staff and spare parts. Police and military are abandoning their posts as their paychecks become nearly worthless. Under the socialist government of President Nicolas Maduro, repression and corruption have increased.
The conditions are compelling some Venezuelans to take desperate action.
One Venezuelan port official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to address official corruption, long worried about crime emanating from its neighbor. Since the 1990s, drug smugglers have shipped marijuana and Colombian cocaine from Venezuelan ports to Trinidad, and from there to other Caribbean countries and beyond.
Trafficking and piracy, locals say, have recently been expanding and becoming more violent. Five Trinidadian fishermen in the southern port of Cedros, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, citing fear for their safety, said in interviews that they had witnessed a burst of Venezuelan boats arriving in recent months smuggling military-issue guns as well as drugs, women and exotic animals.
“Sometimes, those Venezuelans are willing to trade the guns and animals for food,” said one 41-year-old fisherman.
Another fisherman said he was held for hours in January by Spanish-speaking pirates while his brother was contacted to pay a $500 ransom.
A Trinidadian coast guard vessel was dispatched to patrol the waters this year after several highprofile incidents of smug-