The hurricane season is under way in the Caribbean, but the tropical storms that batter much of the region miss the island of Trinidad, which is protected by its northern mountain range. It is one of the reasons that the grateful inhabitants – who love their food, their vibrant carnival and beautiful beaches – like to say “God is a Trini”.
The birthplace of calypso, steel pan and soca music – a fusion of the African and Indian culture of these descendants of slaves and indentured labourers respectively – the tiny nation’s musical influence is global.
But as of last month, the murder toll across the twin island state of Trinidad and Tobago was on track to overtake last year’s all-time high. As rates rise, more women are being killed than at any point in history. As of May, this year’s death toll was at 280, already overtaking the same period of 2022 – a year which saw 614 violent deaths. The Caribbean nation, with a population of about 1.5 million, now has the sixth-highest crime rate in the world.
Trinidad and Tobago was once the richest state in the Caribbean, but over the past two decades it has been dragged down by mismanagement of oil wealth, corruption, the drug trade and an explosion in gun crime and violence.
Photos of missing women appear on social media with regularity. Headlines of shootings are weekly.
For women, it is a “national crisis” says Dr Gabrielle Hosein, a writer and lecturer at the Institute for Gender and Development Studies at the University of the West Indies.
“The Caribbean has a significant feminist movement that is extremely vibrant, full of women who are articulate, analytical and progressive,” she says. “We have been pushing for a national prevention strategy for violence against women for a long time.”
She believes a key problem is violence in homes. “One in five women in Trinidad and Tobago report non-partner sexual violence, one in 10 report sexual abuse as a child. Violence is so endemic that its reduction and prevention should be treated as a national emergency. The figures of child sexual abuse and incest are very, very high. By the time we get to femicide, no wonder it is also high.
“Violence in the family is one of the major drivers for violence that happens to women later in their lives. Whether its sexual harassment at work or on the street or intimate-partner violence, the violence becomes more and more lethal.”
Hosein says any efforts by the state to intervene in domestic violence or child abuse are seen as a threat to the ideology of the traditional family by predominantly Christian and male-dominated groups. “So the state is ambivalent and just not responding,” she says.
According to a paper published in the International Feminist Journal of Politics in 2021 – the year the murders of two young women, Andrea Bharatt and Ashanti Riley, gripped public attention in Trinidad – too many young men in Trinidad are “breaking bad”.
The researchers linked “a lineage of violent male figures in poor neighbourhoods who were already bad” to leading increasing numbers of young men into gangs “which has mediated the pattern of new violence – the homicide boom – in Trinidad”.
This year’s report on illicit weapons in the region states: “The proliferation of firearms in the Caribbean region is arguably a catalyst for a more violent and, in turn, increasingly dangerous environment for women.”
Hosein says: “Unless we provide the necessary support for men and boys to rethink masculinity and to put policies in place – in education, in housing – to empower women, then the threat against women endures for their whole lives.
“When women die the questions are: ‘Why did she stay with him?’ or ‘Why did she go out alone?’ The question is never about why men are violent, or why they are acting with impunity or why the state is not challenging that. Acceptance of male violence is the norm.”
In 2021 and 2022, Covid cancelled carnival. Campaigners believe that a less-distracted population was the reason the murders of Riley and Bharatt gained such attention.
In a response to their deaths, Phillip Alexander, a social activist and founder of the Progressive Empowerment Party, started the Candlelight Movement. Together with lawyer and radio host Kandace Bharath-Nahous, herself a survivor of an abusive relationship, he collected more than 128,000 signatures – almost one-tenth of the population and the largest ever public petition in the country – calling for action to end violence against women. However, nothing has been done, says Alexander.
Carnival is taken seriously in Trinidad and Tobago. The steelbands, singers and costume designers warm up for months leading up to the annual party, which dates back to the 18th century in these, the Caribbean’s most southerly islands. But Alexander believes the new “hypersexuality” encouraged by commercial interests is part of the problem.
“Carnival is a two-day lapdance that distracts our population,” he says. “Without it there was a groundswell of outrage – people want a better country. Only the criminals and the corrupt want the massive narco- and people-trafficking pipeline through Trinidad and Tobago, which rivals the national economy. Few countries in the world are as blessed with natural resources and culture, yet criminality is rife. Rape is normalised.”
He says no costumery can cover the failings of politicians and police to tackle the murder rates, of which women consistently make up about 10%. As the rates rise, more women are dying.
In March, the police commissioner, Erla Harewood-Christopher, said “an evil had spread over the land” and that reducing murder rates was “a bit beyond” the force’s capabilities. An initial government response to the uproar over the murders of Riley and Bharatt was to announce that the use of pepper spray by women would be legalised. Later, the attorney general, Faris Al-Rawi, said permits would be needed. There have been no attempts to legislate or control the illegal “PH” (private hire) taxi drivers, who are widely regarded as a risk to the safety of women and girls in a country where public transport is limited and expensive imported cars are beyond the means of many.
“The PH drivers are a major problem, that could be easily resolved with political will,” says Bharath-Nahous. “So many girls are being taken away and never coming back. For women to feel they can’t go to their own yard or to the mall without parents dropping them off is heartbreaking. The government does everything in terms of stacking things against an honest citizen.”
Bharath-Nahous says stories abound of rape victims being turned away by police – she describes one woman who had been abducted and raped who was dismissed by local officers as having had a fling; another who ran naked and bloody into a police station and was sent home to put clothes on.
“Sexualisation is taught early, little boys think it’s normal to gyrate on little girls,” she says. “There is so much aggression if women don’t do what men want them to do.”
When questioned about femicide in April 2022, the prime minister, Keith Rowley, appeared to shrug off the issue with a dismissive: “We are a violent society.”
That assessment is shared by Claire Guy-Alleyne, the police superintendent in charge of Trinidad and Tobago’s special victim unit, although she aims to tackle the problem. Set up by the former police commissioner Gary Griffith in 2020, the unit is dedicated to domestic and gender-based violence and child protection. Guy-Alleyne works with 250 officers who are carefully vetted and specially trained.
“It’s not a job for the fainthearted,” she says. “There is a mindset inside the police that needs to be changed.
“Andrea Bharratt was a case that really ignited media attention and the police worked hard to find her. But every time a girl gets killed there is a lot of attention then it all dies away to nothing.”
Guy-Alleyne says there is no one face of a domestic violence victim. “In poor areas, a woman has nowhere to go with her children if she wants to leave. In a rich area, where a woman has her air conditioning, a nice apartment, maybe a maid, but doesn’t have a dollar in her bank account, she still cannot leave,” she says.
“People are still not accustomed to being taken seriously. There is little trust in police. Rape is not reported. They go home, bathe and try to see if they can live with it,” she says. “When young girls go missing, people say, ‘oh they’ve gone to meet a man’. They need to stop saying that, because that missing girl might end up dead.
“We are seeing change. It may be small, but we have women coming forward to say, ‘I have been in this abusive relationship for 20 years and because of the way your officers spoke to me, I am going to be able to do something about it.’”
Across the Caribbean, Jamaica, Barbados, St Vincent and St Lucia all had high murder rates in 2022. The region suffers almost three times the global average in terms of violent deaths. But Guy-Alleyne believes in change. “Of course it is very frightening for young women, but to the many young women who are thinking to leave Trinidad I’d say: stay and make a difference. We have to support each other as women. All these perpetrators have mothers, have sisters.
“If everyone make this thing their business then we can solve it.”
