Nankissoon “Dole Chadee” Boodram was one of the early kingpins to achieve oligarchic wealth in the Trinibagoan narcotics trade. A primary target for exposition by the Scott Report, anecdotes elicited from witnesses portray him with legendary reverence and infamy. He entered the international drug trade leading a small gang, a group tasked with securing, and transporting narcotics from their point of entry to their port of departure. Employed primarily by the Cali cartel, Chadee supplied the Indian oligarch network along with a few other significant kingpins. In an effort to bring in greater profits Chadee would use tactics such as engineering fake police raids to scare his cartel supplier into leaving without collecting payment. Outfitting
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While rhetoric and statutes depict the state and police as a faction dedicated to the elimination of drugs, a conspicuous culture of bribery and greed throughout the relevant state institutions shows the state to be complicit in the trade. Much like the social contract upholding property rights in exchange for taxes, the state, particularly the institutions of the police, customs and port authority, and the judiciary were willing to accept financial reward as a deterrent against executing the legislation aimed at the narcotics trade. This détente continued until Patrick Manning and the PNM took control of the state in 1991 following a failed 1990 coup by jihadists who had entered the domestic narcotics market two years prior. In 1991, the new Manning regime undertook what Figueira calls a “blood letting” of the independent and Indian domestic drug lords, to the boon of the jihadist and Syrian/Lebanese associated drug lords. The deaths and disappearances of several crucial figures in this sector of the drug trade would have no reductive impact on the quantity of drugs nor the level of violence in Trinidad and …show more content…
Instead, it shifted the nature of the relationship between the state and the drug lords from one of bribery by highly materially endowed actors in exchange for a lack of police action against the drug trade to one of intense armed conflict between the state and many smaller patronage networks which fractured with the deposition of the patrons. By declaring war against the domestic narco-oligarchs, and restricting their capacity to participate in the institutional forms of wealth defense , the state has disenfranchised these patrons and many of their clients Further, this laid a precedent for using the strict enforcement of drug laws as a weapon against the political opposition, which necessitates that the drug oligarch employ armed wealth defense, as their treatment by the state becomes less contingent upon bribes, and more upon ethnicity and political allegiance, factors less malleable in the presence of financial pressure. As the fiscal methods of wealth defense, such as political investment become less effective, the narco-oligarch will utilize whatever power resources they have that are impactful in defending their
While rhetoric and statutes depict the state and police as a faction dedicated to the elimination of drugs, a conspicuous culture of bribery and greed throughout the relevant state institutions shows the state to be complicit in the trade. Much like the social contract upholding property rights in exchange for taxes, the state, particularly the institutions of the police, customs and port authority, and the judiciary were willing to accept financial reward as a deterrent against executing the legislation aimed at the narcotics trade. This détente continued until Patrick Manning and the PNM took control of the state in 1991 following a failed 1990 coup by jihadists who had entered the domestic narcotics market two years prior. In 1991, the new Manning regime undertook what Figueira calls a “blood letting” of the independent and Indian domestic drug lords, to the boon of the jihadist and Syrian/Lebanese associated drug lords. The deaths and disappearances of several crucial figures in this sector of the drug trade would have no reductive impact on the quantity of drugs nor the level of violence in Trinidad and …show more content…
Instead, it shifted the nature of the relationship between the state and the drug lords from one of bribery by highly materially endowed actors in exchange for a lack of police action against the drug trade to one of intense armed conflict between the state and many smaller patronage networks which fractured with the deposition of the patrons. By declaring war against the domestic narco-oligarchs, and restricting their capacity to participate in the institutional forms of wealth defense , the state has disenfranchised these patrons and many of their clients Further, this laid a precedent for using the strict enforcement of drug laws as a weapon against the political opposition, which necessitates that the drug oligarch employ armed wealth defense, as their treatment by the state becomes less contingent upon bribes, and more upon ethnicity and political allegiance, factors less malleable in the presence of financial pressure. As the fiscal methods of wealth defense, such as political investment become less effective, the narco-oligarch will utilize whatever power resources they have that are impactful in defending their