Pros And Cons Of Narco-Oligarchy

Narco-Oligarchy: Not All Wealth Is Equal In analyzing the actions of oligarchs across many nations with robust property defense laws and enforcement, a trend between source of wealth and methods of wealth defense becomes clear. Oligarchs whose primary sources of wealth are investments, real estate holdings, and corporate ownership rely on significant defensive institutions to secure these holdings. When the state both has the capacity and provides this property defense via legal protection and publicly funded law enforcement oligarchs will disarm themselves, resorting to financial rather than violently coercive means of influencing the political process. The key notion here is the exchange of government assurance of protection of wealth for …show more content…
Domestic usage, while of great concern to the country , was only one piece of the drug trade involving the islands. According to the Scott Report, there are two main aspects of the narcotics trade: Cocaine imported for domestic use, cocaine imported to be repackaged and shipped by international drug lords. These unique yet highly interconnected markets both create actors with massive relative wealth concentration. Two strata of narco-oligarchs emerged in Trinidad and Tobago as a result of the drug trade: the domestic kingpin, and the international trafficker. The domestic kingpin being a byproduct of the international drug trade passing through the country, their role cannot be understood without comprehension of the international drug trade, and its relation to these Islands. The Cali and Medellin cartels, Colombian cocaine producers had two primary routes for exporting their product to the United States and Europe, by land and by sea. The land route entailed travel through central America, entering the United States via the border with Mexico. To reach Europe and the Atlantic coastline, cartels would bring their product to Trinidad or Tobago, either via airdrop or clandestine boat landings leaving from the shores of Venezuela. With no restrictions on trade and movement between the two islands, shipments to either could be transported to Port-of-Spain for …show more content…
Due to systematic racial exclusion from the economy during and immediately after the colonial period in Trinidad and Tobago, the majority of business owners at the formation of the Colombian drug cartels belonged to one of the following ethnicities: Syrian/Lebanese or East Indian. With international business connections and arrangements typically falling along racial, and sometimes familial lines, the primary cartels (Cali and Medellin) employed ethnically homogenous networks of traffickers to transport their product from Colombia to the United States. The Medellin cartel utilized a network of descendents of Syrian and Lebanese immigrants who came to the Caribbean at the start of the 20th century, some of whom Figueria alleges in Cocaine and Heroin trafficking in the Caribbean came to Trinidad to expand their heroin trafficking empire. The Cali cartel employed a similar network of Indians, whose ancestors came to the islands during British rule, and enjoyed a privileged position over the Afro-Trinidadian and Tobagonian slaves they replaced as indentured servants. While the bulk of the profits from the cocaine trade ultimately found their way back to Colombia, the networks of Syrian/Lebanese and Indian traffickers grew to great relative wealth for their participation in the market.