Tourism, Security and Safety From Theory to Practice

Table 1
Determinants of Drug Offenses: Regression Results
Equation F-Value
Independent Variable
Coefficient
t-Value
R
2
(adj.) (%)
8.85
1 Population density
0.622
2.04*
67.7
Visitor density
7.442
4.75*
Unemployment
5.020
0.28
Political status
64.80
0.28
19.20
2 Population density
0.632
2.29
72.2
Visitor density
6.910
5.72*
Source:
Interpol for crime data; 
World Factbook
(CIA, 2002) for independent variables except visitor density
(see Padilla & McElroy, 2004). Caribbean countries include: Antigua, Bahamas, Barbados, Bermuda, Caymans,
Dominica, Dominican Republic, Guyana, Grenada, Jamaica, Montserrat, Puerto Rico, St. Kitts-Nevis, St.
Vincent/Grenadines, Trinidad-Tobago, and Turks and Caicos.
Note:
Asterisk (*) indicates statistical significance at the .05 level or better.
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The highly open character of the insular economies’ structure is also a narco
asset. Intense dependence on export-import trade provides traffickers with a wide
array of air and sea transit opportunities. The burgeoning tourism industry based
on on-site consumption of environmental amenities and imported goods signifi-
cantly expands the menu for shipping contraband intercontinentally by freight as
well as by courier because of the increasing anonymity created by busy docks and
airports in the many popular tourist destinations across the region.
Money laundering—the conversion of drug profits into legal assets that cannot
easily be traced to their illegal roots—is a third ingredient in the narco-triad along
with drug transit and arms traffic. It likely exceeds $500 billion worldwide (Bryan,
2000) and is principally driven by the large 300–500% retail-over-wholesale price
markups common for illicit drugs. It thrives under the same conditions that have
shaped the Caribbean’s successful offshore financial sector: proximity to markets,
good communications systems, political stability, transactions secrecy, low taxation,
exchange stability, and a competent cadre of local lawyers, bankers, and accountants.
The islands (with Latin America) contain roughly 40% of the world’s offshore banks
and international business corporations (US DEA, 2003). In some small islands like
Bermuda, offshore finance is the dominant sector and accounts for half of all eco-
nomic activity. In the Caymans and British Virgin Islands, roughly one third of GDP
is sourced in offshore services (Griffith, 1997). A number of islands where traffick-
ing is on the rise are now considered top-tier money-laundering states. The US Drug
Enforcement Administration (DEA) estimates that some $60 billion in organized
crime proceeds are laundered through the islands every year (US DEA, 2003, p. 4).
The narcoeconomy is especially nourished by a climate of economic instability
and uncertainty. During the past decade, the Caribbean has been buffeted by a series
of external forces that have weakened traditional sectors, clouded the investment
climate, and reduced the opportunity cost of trafficking. In recent years the region
has become “increasingly irrelevant in economic and political terms” (Klak, 1998,
p. 12). As a result of the diplomatic downgrading of the Caribbean (the Cuban threat
in particular) with the demise of Communism, US aid to the region has declined
over 80%. Export preferences for traditional staples like sugar and bananas have
shrunk in the face of shifting US tastes toward artificial sweeteners and the consol-
idation of the European Union and World Trade Organization regulations.
Moreover, the islanders’ attempts to diversify toward light industrial exports
(textiles, assembly, manufacturing) have been thwarted on two broad fronts. On the
external side, the heavy impact of NAFTA has resulted in the relocation of over
120 apparel plants to Mexico since the mid-1990s (Rohter, 1997). On the internal
side, a host of domestic structural constraints continue to hinder viability. These
include mineral scarcity, fragmented transport systems, and relatively expensive
(by LDC standards) labor and utility costs. Even tourism has been damaged in
some destinations in recent years because the strength of the US dollar, to which
their currencies are tied, has discouraged long-staying, high-spending European
visitors (Watson, 1997). In some islands, chronic emigration has spawned demo-
graphic imbalances (surpluses of old and young and deficits of technicians and
innovators) that disfavor the skills and entrepreneurial talent required to prosper in
a global economy (Conway, 1998). In others, problems have been further com-
pounded by natural disasters.
In the larger heavily indebted countries like Jamaica, Trinidad, Guyana, and
Antigua, some authors have argued that the IMF-designed structural adjustment
The Growth of the Caribbean Narcoeconomy: Implications for Tourism
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programs (SAPs) to ensure loan repayment have weakened macroeconomic condi-
tions particularly for the poor and indirectly nourished the narcoeconomy.
Although no clear empirical links are established between debt burdens, SAPs, and
the drug trade, there is a preponderance of coincident evidence. For example, Ghai
(1991) associates substantial declines in Caribbean GDP with increases in debt
repayment outflows. In Jamaica, Guyana, and Trinidad, Grant-Wisdom (1994) sug-
gests that SAPs have coincided with infrastructure deterioration because of capital
budget cutbacks, the contraction of public employment, and the proliferation of
self-employment “indicative of the growth of the informal sector” (p. 171). Both
Bernal (1992) and Phillips (1994) find that SAPs have negatively affected the
delivery of basic services, and the latter concludes (pp. 147–148) that SAPs “are
associated with the worsening of the health status of the people of the Caribbean.”
These deteriorating conditions have combined with other internal problems,
notably the growth of a subculture of violent youth, daily aware of the “good life”
from the tourist hordes, but lacking the education, skills, and motivation to partic-
ipate in the mainstream. The drug trade worldwide flourishes in such urban areas
with an underclass of unemployed youth (UNDP, 1999). Their ranks are increas-
ingly led by the organized posses that originated in the 1970s in Jamaica as local
gangs in West Kingston trafficking in the domestic and regional marijuana trade.
At roughly the same time, rival political parties began arming ghetto youth and pit-
ting poor urban communities against one another (Stone, 1983). These “garrison”
constituencies were largely responsible for the rise in violent crime in Jamaica cul-
minating in 889 killings during the 1980 electoral campaign (de Albuquerque,
1996c). In the late 1970s, they came under the control of ganja gangs sustained by
marijuana exports to the United States and were led by posse “Dons” who were
responsible for internationalizing the ganja economy.
Fragments of these Jamaican-style posses have become embedded in other
Eastern Caribbean societies like Antigua and St. Kitts and are responsible for esca-
lating violence and setting up overseas branches of the narcoeconomy across the
island chain. Dominican gangs in the north and Arubans in the east have also
become involved (UNODC, 2003). They are heavily engaged in arms and drug
running as well as “money laundering, fraud, kidnapping, robbery, burglary, pros-
titution, document forgery, and murder” (Griffith, 1997, p. 124). Their increasing
responsibility for narco trafficking is a decentralization strategy employed by the
Colombian-based crime organizations that dominate the regional drug trade (US
DEA, 1998). The ranks of local gangs are swollen annually by drug felons from
North America and elsewhere. These sophisticated criminals with extensive expe-
rience in the US cocaine trade are notorious for introducing American-style drive-
by executions, the recruitment of juvenile runners, lookouts (Harriott, 1996), and
a whole range of semiautomatic weapons in Jamaica and elsewhere. According to
the Commonwealth Secretariat (1997, p. 105): “They leave our islands as high
school criminals and return to us as postgraduates.”