To recap, beginning Thursday, March 9, 2023, Vieux Fort rival criminal gangs went on a retribution killing spree that left seven dead in two days, representing the most intense violence (gang or otherwise) in the country’s living memory. But the recent mayhem was just the culmination of a trend of escalating violence. Initially, the drug gangs were killing their rivals or offenders under the cover of darkness and in not-so-public places. Then they graduated to shooting their quarries in broad daylight and in public places, on the streets, at fishery complexes, wherever they could be found. But then they up the ante by shooting their rivals at funerals, wakes, and churches, thus no place and no time of day were holy, sanctified, and out of reach. And in the latest spate of the two-day Vieux Fort killing spree, the gunslingers rachet up the violence by killing the mothers, fathers, and grandparents of their enemies as substitutes when they couldn’t be found. So now the criminals are of no respect of persons, places, and time of day; everyone, everywhere, all hours of day, are fair game for unleashing their mayhem. In the process, seemingly rendering authorities impotent and irrelevant, and saying in effect we are the ones in charge, we are the ones running Vieux Fort.
Reacting to the spate of violence, the public demanded that the government take action. Businesses closed down, schools took a hiatus, people stayed at home, Vieux Fort became a ghost town. Notwithstanding, in a world of ubiquitous cyberspace and social media, no one needed to remind the government of the potential negative impact such violence could have on St. Lucia’s precious, indispensable tourism industry, especially in light of the tremendous effort Minister Dr. Ernest Hilaire has been putting into the tourism and culture industries, the brightest light in Philip J. Pierre’s government. The crime wave was threatening to undo all of Dr. Hilaire’s good work. So if not for the locals, do it for the tourists, arrest the violence.
Prime Minister, Philip J. Pierre, responded. He declared Vieux Fort an escalated crime zone, thus granting the police force expanded powers. And he tapped into the Regional Security System (RSS) to fortify the St. Lucia Police Force’s ability to combat the crime crisis.
Headquartered in Barbados and comprising both military and police personnel, the RSS is a subregional force established to provide upon request collective response to security threats in member states. Antigua & Barbuda, Barbados, Dominica, Grenada, St. Lucia, and St. Vincent and the Grenadines are the six signatories to the treaty giving juridical status to the RSS. The RSS was first deployed in October 1983 when it teamed up with US and Jamaican military forces to restore order in Grenada during this country’s post-revolution political turmoil.
Before this speech to the nation, the prime minister, particularly when juxtaposed against his immediate predecessor, was often accused of timidity and indecisiveness, of failing to project or convey a sense of leadership, a sense that he was in charge, a sense that he was up to the task. But with this speech on how he will respond to the Vieux Fort crisis, no one could accuse the prime minister of not being up to the challenge, for he displayed resoluteness and confidence, and said in effect he was the one running the country, not the UWP opposition and definitely not the criminals. Never before had the prime minister appeared so prime ministerial.
With an intimidating army of RSS and St. Lucia police forces in army fatigues and equipped with menacing rifles patrolling the streets of Vieux Fort but concentrating on Bruceville, the main theatre of the violence, Vieux Fort effectively became a combat zone or a military-occupied territory. So for a while all was quiet on the Vieux Fort front. The criminals went into hiding. But not for long.
No sooner there was a lull in the intensity of the patrolling, when the first set of RSS personnel was returning home and being replaced by a second set, the violence resumed. In a span of two days there were three separate incidences of gun violence. A man was gunned down in the Vieux Fort suburb of Cedar Heights, another man was gunned down in Bruceville, and a grandmother and her two-year-old grandson were assailed in Bruceville by a volley of bullets, bringing the total killings to eleven since the start of the killing spree that began on March 9.
The gangsters had made a lie of the prime minister’s stance of him running things. It appeared that to them his fighting speech had been inconsequential baby blabber, and nothing else.
In the first chapter of this missive, we noted that as bad as is this recent killing spree, it isn’t the main crisis Vieux Fort faces, but a mere symptom, a mere fulfillment, and a taste of worse to come if the real crisis isn’t addressed. Vieux Fort faces a crisis of neglect, political leadership, unemployment, poverty, socioeconomic degradation. And clearly, all the armies and guns of the world will not solve this crisis. We noted that nothing less than a Marshal Plan for Vieux Fort will remedy the situation.
In this the first part of the Second Chapter of this missive, we will focus on who to blame for Vieux Fort’s predicament—The supernatural? Corruption? Socioeconomic Deprivation? Geography? In the second part of the Second Chapter, we will dwell on Who to blame—The Vieux Fort District Rep? The Government? And in the Third and likely final chapter, we will address how to finance the Marshall Plan for Vieux Fort.
Who to Blame—The Supernatural? Corruption? Socioeconomic Deprivation?
Who to blame? Let’s begin with the supernatural. The story is told of a Roman Catholic priest who became so despondent and frustrated with Vieux Fortians, that in despair and vexation he climbed to the top of Vieux Fort’s Calvary Hill, took off his sandals, and in Biblical fashion shook the dust from his feet, thereby laying an everlasting curse on Vieux Fort. According to believers, because of this curse, Vieux Fort can never amount to much, and nothing good can last long in Vieux Fort.
Who to blame? People speak of Dr. Kenny Anthony’s family connections with satanic forces. It is rumored that in the late 1800 or early 1900s one of Anthony’s progenitors (possibly Samuel Barnard II (1797–1877) or his son Samuel Barnard III (1832-1912), Kenny Anthony’s great-great-grandfather, made a deal with the Devil whereby the Devil provided him with a bridge over River Doree in the Piaye/Saltibus area, and in return, the first soul that crosses the newly built bridge would be offered as a sacrifice to the Devil. According to the conspiracy, Piaye people went to bed one night and woke up in the morning to miraculously find a bridge over the river. But the Barnard in question had one up his sleeve. The Devil had not specified whether it was a human soul or any other living soul, so to avoid having someone killed, he made sure that a stray dog was the first being to cross the bridge, which thereafter people called the Devil’s Bridge.
Besides Anthony’s progenitor, people speak of his wife Dr. Rose-Marie Belle Antoine as a witch (whatever that means), despite the fact that she is a distinguished law professor who was recently appointed as the Principal of the University of the West Indies St. Augustine Campus. It is rumored that she has hosted an international witch conference in St. Lucia, suggesting to believers of the conspiracy that she is high up in the witch’s hierarchy.
Leaving nothing to chance, Caribbean politicians, and maybe politicians worldwide, are believed to habitually seek the intervention of the supernatural in the form of obeah to ensure electoral victory. For that purpose, Haiti’s voodoo intermediaries seem to be the most sought-after.
Interestingly, I am told that the Vieux Fort drug lords also seek such supernatural intervention, of course not to win votes but to gain protection from their rivals and the authorities.
On November 10, 2011, just days before the 2011 general elections, a busload of people returning from a funeral plunged into a 120 feet precipice at Morne Sion, Choiseul, killing all 17 persons onboard, including a household of seven. With a deep-seated belief in obeah (no matter their level of education or religious affiliation), and smarting for roro and conspiracy theories, some St. Lucians suspected foul play. They surmised that given Kenny Anthony’s alleged family Satanic links, and that the number of persons who perished in the accident exactly matched the number of St. Lucia’s constituency seats, and that it was Kenny Anthony’s administration that won the elections that followed the tragedy, the deaths by precipice was the sacrifice offered for the 2011 electoral victory.
What does Kenny Anthony’s supposed connection with Satanic forces have to do with Vieux Fort? Well, it seems in a leap of conspiracy and transference theory, some persons believe that Vieux Fort is paying for him and his family’s transgressions. In the same breath, they point to the obelisks installed in the Kenny Anthony renovated Vieux Fort Square that they say are satanic symbols.
But Dr. Kenny Anthony’s detractors haven’t stopped there. As further proof of his supernatural blighting of Vieux Fort, they circulated a voice clip of his election campaign battle cry, which they construed as him having placed a curse on Vieux Fort and hence the spate of gun violence.
Understand that we will fight you. We will fight you in the streets, we will fight you in the courts, we will fight you in our homes, in our communities. I once warned there will be no peace, and so I repeat there will be no peace in Vieux Fort South.
Of course, these conspiracies are so far fetch that one would have to be totally against the district rep to buy into them.
Who to blame? Comments on an article—Shots Fired In Vieux Fort, One Man Dead—carried in the St. Lucia Times seem to cover the full gamut of who St. Lucians think is to blame.
Some of these commentators placed the blame strictly on evil and the absence of love.
Evil lurks throughout our land…and you all think PJP…Chas or RSS can stop evil? Only God and his enduring love can defeat Satan and his scourge…only he can rid our country of the lodges and the Natokis who spread sorcery and witchcraft and all the wicked deals for material things. It’s like we forget a shate like this happens every Easter weekend…you all forget! Teach our children love…teach them about the work of Jesus…Jehovah…about the life and mannerisms of Haile Selassie of Ghandhi…of mother Theresa…of the unification spread by Bob Marley. God is love…spread love. He is risen Today!
The most poignant thing in all of this is that for many people this weekend is supposed to be a highlight of the season that reminds the human race that God gave his “Incarnate Life” (Jesus Christ) on our behalf so that whoever believes (i.e., accept this wonderful truth by faith, then repent, and turn to truly live the life of love for God, and for one another), will be afforded eternal life—and escape eternal damnation! My fellow Saint Lucians, there is no way out of the road to hell or damnation EXCEPT TURNING TO JESUS CHRIST! That’s the message in all of this tragedy.
The Vieux Fort Roman Catholic priests seemed to agree with St. Lucians who believe that the land is possessed by a great evil, and nothing less than the intercession of God can return things to order. They led a prayer march vigil, joined by St. Lucians of all walks of life, including the Vieux Fort South District Rep, along the streets of Vieux Fort, culminating at Independence Square, beseeching the intervention of the Most High. This Roman Catholic prayer march vigil was eerily reminiscent of a similar prayer march almost a year ago by the Vieux Fort police and various religious denominations seeking help from the almighty to combat gang violence.
Some commentators blamed corrupt police and politicians.
“Police have urged anyone with information regarding that incident to contact the nearest police station, the Vieux Fort Police Station at 456-3905, 456-3906, or the Crime Hotline at 555 for anonymous reporting.” Who is at the other end of this line as the receiver? Is it one of the corrupt cops who they have been talking about? Will the receiver recognize my voice and then report it to the criminals? What assurance do I have that report will remain confidential? What happens if my identity is leaked to the criminal domains?
We are living in a corrupted country called St. Lucia where politicians are the root cause of all the negative and devilish things that goes on in this land. They are friends with all the criminals and award them big contracts for them and their boys. Next in line are the police who are dirty to the core. For a few thousand dollars they would sell out the people who come to report the criminal or so-called bosses…Before you can say what you saw, they have already called the boss telling him what you said and where you at… We need to rout out those criminals who call themselves politicians and police and pretend they are for St. Lucians. They are the cause of everything going on in our little country. We all know who the bosses and crocked leaders are…We St. Lucians need to do this for our children and our children’s future and we need to start NOW.
We have to start with the politicians who have the strongest influence on society. Stop the political division, victimization, corruption, greed and selfishness. Share the resources of the state equitably. All mouths must be fed, all lives must be valued. Together we prosper, divided we perish.
Some of them placed the blame strictly on the criminals.
Some of you Lucians are really unreasonable—if someone decides in his OWN HEART that his career of choice is to be a CRIMINAL—do you believe that any one can stop him or her? Some of you failed/decided not to go to school and instead made up your own mind to be CAREER CRIMINALS. Do the math, there are only two ways out for criminals. However, the sad thing is that in the process innocent folk can very often get hurt in cross fire—that’s the real tragedy in all of this.
Some of you are envious of others who decided to educate themselves, while you decided on your own to sit by the wayside—how dare you?How can you blame any political party for a decision that someone made with their own free will? CRIMINALS never have a desire to work a real legitimate job—their resume speaks for itself. It’s not the government responsibility to train your children—that’s your job as a parent and MOST of you LUCIANS have failed TREMENDOUSLY—look at the results—it is as CLEAR as day.
By the way, poverty will always exist—however, out of poverty came two Nobel Prize winners. These men could have also decided to be gang bangers—but instead they chose to educate themselves and the rest is history. We all have choices and some Vieux Fort residents have made their choice to deal in drugs and guns and have lived that way for many years—self destructive individuals 100 percent. Some of the mansions came from drug proceeds—give me a break—the proof is in the pudding—no job, no education, nice cars, designer outfits, does not equal mansion?
Some others placed the blame on governmental neglect, economics, and unequal distribution of wealth and opportunities.
They say don’t make it political. Are the shootings political? No. But the root of the problem is. Vieux Fort houses the only international airport on island but there’s hardly any tourist dollar remaining here. I think Vieux Fort needs help from the government to create jobs for the youth. Vieux Fort needs development. If you take a look at Castries and Soufriere, the standard of living in Vieux Fort is significantly lower. Vieux Fort towners cannot afford half of what Castries/Soufriere towners can. Why? Nun nah running. We still need to spend $20 to go get a passport or birth certificate. Jump high, jump low, there has been little to no development in Vieux Fort for the past 20 years. Nothing is happening in Vieux Fort so what is left for the people to do in a neglected town except to make the money the illegal way?
It is time that the government enact a minimum wage rate in Vieux Fort. They want people to work for them for EC3.00 an hour and they saying that half a loaf is better than none or it better than nothing while they are buying land all over the island and living the good life. It is the system that is causing the time. Very soon the tourist won’t come and big banks, hotels and government workers will suffer and not be getting the big salary that they are getting. The government need to enact a livable wage.
Who To Blame—Vieux Fort’s Geography?
Who to blame? Authors like Dr. Jolien Harmsen and Dr. Anderson Reynolds, in their books and articles, have placed some of the blame on Vieux Fort’s geography.
According to historians, some 12,000 years ago, in the fourth and final stage of St. Lucia’s formation, following a period of volcanic activity, a huge fan-shaped mudslide that started at the center of the island flowed south across the Vieux Fort area, building up the land, filling up the crevices, and covering all but the tallest hills, leaving Moule-a-Chique as one of the few landmarks that were left to stand out above the mudflow and the Vieux Fort area as one of the largest expanses of flat land on the island. It is this landslide, this freak of nature, this leveling of the Vieux Fort landscape, along with its extended coastline, that has largely determined Vieux Fort’s history, and accounts for Vieux Fort’s greatest blessing and yet its greatest curse.
Thanks to this large expanse and particularly of coastal land, from the establishment of the island’s first sugar plantations, mills, and factories, the accompanying importation of Africans as slave labor, the late 1930s Barbados Settlement Scheme, the American World War II military base that transformed Vieux Fort into a boomtown, Vieux Fort as a banana shipping point, the establishment of the international airport, and, more recently, DSH, Vieux Fort has been the site of choice for a succession of large, externally determined enterprises, of which the inhabitants had no say and which weren’t necessarily established to serve them but for the benefit of central government and foreign entities. This meant that historically Vieux Fort’s wide expanse of flat coastal land has been in use (or reserved for use) by large-scale externally determined enterprises, thus giving rise to the great irony that the history of the inhabitants of the part of the island with the most usable land, has been one of landlessness (see Part IV, of Who Runs Vieux Fort for a fuller treatment), hence the reason why Vieux Fort’s geography has been its greatest curse.
Thus, historically, Vieux Fort has been an artificial, makeshift, community, whose land and people were there merely to serve the interest of others. So apparently, Vieux Fort was never meant to be a place of permanent settlement or human development, but a playground, a place of quick adventure, a place of quick economic extraction, a place and people for exploitation, akin to a one-time visit to a brothel. If so, then this explains the historical government neglect; Invest St. Lucia’s tendency of turning a deaf ear to Vieux Fort Investors, but coming to attention no sooner a foreign developer comes calling. It may also explain Chastanet’s willingness to give the best of Vieux Fort to a foreign entity with no sense of what the people would be getting in return, and the tendency of Vieux Fort district reps to simply use the district as a national and regional stepping stone with no passion for and minimal interest in developing the place and its people. One suspects that even what comes to Vieux Fort as a means of economic development, arrives very grudgingly and because no other part of the island came close to being suitable.
The voice of Bruce “Daddy” Williams, Vieux Fort’s great humanitarian and one-term district rep, fondly known as Daddy Bruce, seeking reparation from the Americans and British for the World War II military occupation of the district, was a lone voice in a wilderness of apathy. Needless to say, his valiant efforts bore no fruit. But if we were to extend Daddy Bruce’s sentiment, Vieux Fortians should be seeking reparations from the government for its underdevelopment and impoverishment of the district. Or, as a reader suggested, in response to Chapter One of this missive, A Marshall Plan for Vieux Fort, Vieux Fort should secede from St. Lucia and become an independent state.
Not only have these enterprises been externally determined but most have been short-lived, giving rise to a Vieux Fort history of boom and bust, a history in Phases, as aptly captured in Phases, Modeste Downes’ epic, seven-page poem that traces the history of Vieux Fort.
Apparently, this history of boom and bust, of externally determined, short-lived enterprises, may have had a certain impact on the Vieux Fort psyche. For example, in Sugar, Slavery and Settlement: A social history of Vieux Fort, St. Lucia, from Amerindian to the present, historian Dr. Jolien Harmsen posited that because of this history, Vieux Fortians have learned that they are not the deciders of their fate. They have learned that they have no say, no control, over most of the events (as mentioned above) having the greatest impact on their lives.
Accordingly, many Vieux Fortians may have developed what Dr. Harmsen calls a hustler mentality. They have been conditioned to sit and wait for the next opportunity, the next decider of their fate that they hope to quickly exploit, and then wait again for the next decider. The problem with a hustler mentality, though, is that it is of short-term focus, it causes one to choose short-term gains over potentially greater long-term benefits, it precludes investing in the future. It fosters a hand-to-mouth existence, it undermines the accumulation of capital, an essential aspect of economic growth. By contributing to a sense of rootlessness, the landlessness of Vieux Fortians may have also helped deepen this hustler mentality.
It may also be the case that because of the hustler’s focus on quick, immediate returns, he may likely choose high-risk, high return, activities of short intense duration, over lower-risk, lower-return activities of longer more relaxed duration. If so, they are likely to choose peace work or contract work over wage-work, and entrepreneurial, enterprising work over salaried work. And besides the opportunities afforded them by their environment, it probably explains why Vieux Fortians have traditionally been engaged in fishing, charcoal production, stevedoring, and raising livestock, which are none 8 to 5 occupations under the scrutiny of supervisors, but in which persons decide when, how and how long they work.
So then how does all of this come to bear on Vieux Fort’s current spate of gang violence which we said is a mere symptom of the town’s larger predicament of socioeconomic decay? Well, landlessness, government neglect, political apathy, and misadventure, all historical byproducts of Vieux Fort’s geography, have oddly placed the district in the same grouping as Anse La Raye/Canaries and Dennery, districts with much less going for them, as one of St. Lucia’s most socioeconomically vulnerable and depressed districts.
Indeed, Vieux Fort’s geography, its socioeconomic decay, and maybe the mindset of some of its people have rendered it tailor-made for the drug trade and the rise of drug lords.
First, with over a third of Vieux Fortians living in poverty, and with an overall unemployment rate of 34 percent, a youth unemployment rate of probably over 50 percent, and a decrepit social infrastructure (discussed further below) that leaves youths with nothing to do, nowhere to go, the town serves as a gold mine for the recruiting efforts of drug lords.
Three-quarters surrounded by ocean, Vieux Fort’s extensive coastline, the longest of any district, provides ample avenues for entering and exiting the island unnoticed and undetected. Vieux Fort is at the extreme end of the island, the furthest point away from the capital, with Moule-A-Chique, a rugged and hilly peninsula at its very end. This isolation also facilitates undetected movement in and out of the island and allows for quick getaways. Vieux Fort’s isolation and distance from the seat of government and from the island’s revered tourism industry, have probably invited governmental neglect and limited projection of police authority, allowing the drug barons to operate with greater impunity than elsewhere.
Most of the drugs are sourced from South America, and Vieux Fort is St. Lucia’s closest point to South America, and nearest point to intervening islands like Grenada, St. Vincent, and Trinidad that facilitate navigation to South America. Vieux Fort’s fish-rich waters have given rise to St. Lucia’s highest concentration of fishing boats and fishers, accounting for the fact that it lands the most fish of any district. Vieux Fort’s large number of fishing vessels and plethora of seafaring, expert navigators, who know the currents and ocean well, give it a definite advantage in the drug trade since apparently much of the drug exchanges are done at sea between St. Lucia and South America.
Interestingly, a little-known aspect of Vieux Fort’s history also helps explain the incidence of a high concentration of fishers in Vieux Fort. In the days when sugar was king, to get a job, particularly as a tradesman, in Vieux Fort’s Central Sugar Factory, one of the first of its kind in the Caribbean, one had to loan the overseer a sister, a daughter, or a niece. But rather than prostituting their womenfolk in this way, in defiance, Vieux Fort men took to sea (see Vieux Fort: Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow by Marcus Andrews)
Vieux Fort’s international airport and ocean-going seaport also help explain the town’s prominence in the drug trade. International flights to primarily the UK and the Guest Banana boat and other such cargo ships visiting port Vieux Fort were the drug lords’ preferred method of shipping out their products, which apparently was a bit easier to accomplish in Vieux Fort than in Castries, St. Lucia’s other port of call, because controls were much more laxed.
Earlier we mentioned Dr. Harmsen’s theory of Vieux Fort’s hustler mentality. By extension, we noted that this hustler mentality might predispose one to opt for high-risk, high-payoff, short-term, entrepreneurial/enterprising income activities. Well, this seems to be precisely what is involved in the drug trade. If so, then the psyche of some Vieux Fortians may lend itself to excelling in drug trafficking.
If the forgoing discourse has any validity, is it any wonder that from Shawn to Wally to Garboo to Bonnie to Bagowire, to Breeko, and now to the current crop of Vieux Fort drug barons, all of the most notorious and most successful St. Lucian drug lords were either born and raised in Vieux Fort or got their start in Vieux Fort?
And is it any wonder that Bruceville, a makeshift community comprising of displaced, marginalized people, who migrated there from the mangue following Hurricane Allen and from various other parts of the island, which epitomizes Vieux Fort’s socioeconomic plight, and which presents a replay of Vieux Fort’s history of dispossession, is the principal theatre of the nation’s gang violence and home to probably the island’s wealthiest drug baron?
This concludes Part One of Chapter Two (Who to Blame) of this missive. In the next installment, we will present Part Two (Who to Blame—The Vieux Fort District Rep? The Government? ) of Chapter Two. And then we will move on to Chapter Three, How to Fund the Marshall Plan.
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