DAREECE POLO
Senior Reporter
dareece.polo@guardian.co.tt
PART ONE
From a hilltop in St Barbs, Laventille, the view stretches across Port-of-Spain, offering one of the capital’s most striking panoramas.
As the morning sun rises, children walk to school, birds sing overhead and another day quietly begins.
It is an image that contrasts sharply with the reputation that has followed the community for decades.
The United Kingdom’s Home Office estimates there were 186 active gangs in Trinidad and Tobago in 2023. The figure has since been disputed by Homeland Security Minister Roger Alexander. But for residents of St Barbs, the statistics tell only part of the story.
One resident, who asked not to be identified and is being referred to as Fabien, rejects the notion that his community can be reduced to the label of gang violence.
“It’s like family. So we grow up like a family in one big community. No gang. Everybody from this community. And we have to secure we community. It have some people want to come in and distress we community. It have some people want to come and take we community from we from different places. But we ent having that.”
To Fabien, St Barbs is home before it is a headline.
Yet he does not deny the hardships facing the community. Instead, he argues that poverty, unemployment and neglect have left many young people with few opportunities.
“It does hurt me to see plenty young children ent finishing school, dropping out of school, because their parents can’t feed them, their parents can’t buy books for them, because their parents can’t feed theyself too.”
He believes many young people are judged long before they are understood.
“It have real thing this community need. It have real thing the youth men them need in this community. It have plenty ah dem who finish school and have nowhere to go. It have some ah them, dey mother and dey father, they have nothing. It have some of them mother leave them with dey grandmother. Dey grandmother getting a pension, that can’t even self feed dey grandmother because dah is small money.”
For him, economic hardship can leave people feeling hopeless.
“When a man know he don’t have no wuk and he can’t feed he family, boy that will send a man mad boy. That will really make a man want to kill, too. Ah telling yuh. That will make a man really want to kill he self. Like, yuh going out dey and do something, yuh ent care if yuh dead. If you get through, yuh get through.”
But the story of St Barbs is not only about hardship. It is also about loss.
One grandmother, who still lives in the community, lost her 17-year-old grandson to gun violence.
“Bad enough because meh grandson went in the shop, trying to go in the shop to get a phone card, and get gunned down. He was 17 years.”
Along some roads throughout different parts of the community, old beer bottles stand upright along walls and pavements. Known locally as flambeaus, they mark places where lives have been lost—quiet reminders that grief remains part of the landscape.
For Grace (alias), the struggle extends beyond violence itself.
“It have nothing. It have nothing to eat. No food on the table. Yuh sit down on the chair and you’re wondering. You feel tears coming out of your eyes.”
When asked what she would tell a family member becoming involved in crime, emotion overtook her.
“I don’t want them in that kind of life, that life is not good, it ent suit them. Try and get some kind of work or some kinda thing. It does make meh... It does. It does.... Allyuh trying to bring back memories, making me feel to cry. Make meh feel to cry. It not easy. It not easy.”
Her words reflect the painful reality facing many families in communities affected by gang violence — where loved ones are not only lost to shootings, but also to the pull of criminal life.
For Fabien, St Barbs is defined by family, belonging and resilience. For Grace, it is where her grandson’s life ended.
Between those two experiences lies a more complicated picture than crime statistics alone can capture. It is one of communities wrestling with poverty, violence and grief while still trying to preserve a sense of home.
The next part of this series looks at why some young people are drawn into gangs and what can be done to stop the cycle?
