Venezuela’s pirates of the Caribbean turn on fishermen
With rich Caribbean fishing grounds on their doorstep, the villagers of Cedros in Trinidad are never short of fishermen’s tales to tell. The latest stories to do the rounds, though, are not about record-breaking hauls of kingfish. Today, the fishermen themselves have become the catch.
“I was out picking up my nets late one afternoon when a boatload of armed men came at me at full speed,” said Brian Austin, 54. “From about 200 metres away they started firing shots around my boat – it was terrifying.
“Luckily, I have a high-powered engine, so I managed to speed off, but they took my nets and all the fish in them.”
On that occasion, Mr Austin was the one that got away. Other local fishermen tell tales of being robbed of their boats, beaten, and even kidnapped – all victims of a new wave of pirates sweeping the Caribbean.
Operating with speedboats rather than tall ships, these marine raiders have made the waters around Trinidad as perilous as they were in Blackbeard’s day.
Most of the attacks take place just before sunset, allowing the culprits to flee under the cover of darkness. Nobody, though, has any doubt where they escape to – Venezuela, where years of economic meltdown under socialist president Nicolas Maduro has led hundreds of jobless fishermen – and, in some cases, the national coastguard – into buccaneering.
As the southernmost island in the Caribbean, Trinidad lies just 10 miles from the Venezuelan mainland, from where the pirates operate out of impoverished coastal fishing towns like Güiria. Once home to a thriving fishing industry, today it has become a modern-day answer to Hispaniola, the 17th-century pirate haven. Many of the pirates are thought to be ex-employees of Venezuela’s tuna fleet, which collapsed after a disastrous nationalisation programme by Mr Maduro’s predecessor, Hugo Chavez.
“Güiria is now a very bad place,” said Jose Gonzalez, a computer technician who left the town to seek work in Trinidad two years ago. He spoke under a pseudonym, fearing reprisals. “It is a real shame – the hardship there has changed the people’s mentality.”
Güiria’s lurch into sea banditry has echoes of the Somali piracy crisis, where impoverished fishermen likewise turned to hijacking passing vessels after the country’s collapse in the Nineties. But the Venezuelan pirates have so far stuck closer to shore. That means most of their victims are fellow fishermen, who are not much wealthier than they are.
“I’ve had my nets stolen three times now, which has cost me about TT$120,000 (£14,000),” said Mr Austin, who has now given up fishing as a result. “These waters are becoming very dangerous, and it’s us hardworking fishermen who are paying the price.”
In the nearby Trinidadian village of Icacos, Esook Ali, a local fishing association leader, said hijackings now took place nearly every week.
“Sometimes they just get robbed, other times they are taken to the Venezuelan mainland and held prisoner until a ransom is paid,” he said. “The ransom demands started off at just $5,000 or $10,000, but last week we had one for $33,000. People round here struggle to afford that.”
The pirates are also prolific smugglers, running boatloads of cocaine and guns into Trinidad. Many of the firearms are thought to have come from members of Venezuela’s underpaid security forces, who sell them to make ends meet.
The same smugglers then return to Venezuela loaded up with nappies, cooking oil, and rice – all of which are now in desperately short supply back home. Since hyperinflation hit more than 1,000,000 per cent, such basic commodities can fetch up to four times their value on the black market.
In a sign of how frayed Venezuela’s institutions have become, hijackings are also being carried out by Venezuelan coastguard patrols, who arrest Trinidadian fishermen on trumped-up charges of illegal fishing.
“We were fishing in Trinidadian waters one day when the Venezuelan coastguard came and told us we’d strayed into their waters, even though we were nowhere near,” said Vijay Hajarie, 53, from the Trinidad village of Fullerton. “They said we could either pay $3,000 there and then or we’d be taken to jail.”
Unable to pay, Mr Hajarie and his crewmates ended up spending seven weeks in a squalid Venezuelan prison. “It was terrifying – we were ordinary fishermen in with hardened criminals,” he said. “Our families eventually paid a fine of $500 to get us released, but our boat was confiscated.”
To counter the threats, many have taken to fishing at night. Others have upgraded their boat engines to improve their chances of getting away.
But it is not just Trinidad’s fishing communities who are worried. The influx of drugs and guns is fuelling crime, already near an all-time high.
Despite its tourist-friendly image, Trinidad’s capital, Port of Spain, is home to slums like Laventille, where army and police patrols were increased in the summer to quell a long-running gang war, which pushed this year’s annual murder tally to more than 500. Given that Trinidad has just 1.3 million people, it makes the murder rate roughly 20 times that of London.
It is already a staging post for Latin American cocaine cartels supplying Europe and America. In 2014, US officials blamed the assassination of a Trinidadian state prosecutor on “transnational” drug cartels, some of whom are believed to have police and coastguard officials on their payrolls.
In August, Gary Griffith, a former soldier was appointed police commissioner, declaring: “If they have no fear of God, I will make sure they have a fear of Gary.”
Even his supporters, though, concede he has an uphill task. According to a former British police adviser to the Trinidadian government, corruption is a serious problem. “The average policeman’s pay is a pittance compared to what the cartels will offer,” the adviser told The Sunday Telegraph.
Meanwhile, there seems little prospect of an end to the crisis in Venezuela. With the currency now worthless, the shops and hospitals empty of food and medicines, and with opposition parties banned, many now fear a civil war.
Already, more than three million Venezuelans have fled abroad, an estimated 40,000 of them to Trinidad. “The only way Maduro will go now is by blood,” added Mr Gonzalez, who is now scratching a living. “Life is hard here, but it’s better than Venezuela – there, every day is hell.”
‘These waters are becoming very dangerous, and hardworking fishermen are paying the price’