Trinidad: a nation of Villains and Heroes, Victims and their Tormentors...

“…Then he and I are the same. Each believes himself the hero, the other villain. It is for history to decide who is mistaken…”

Crassus speaks about Spartacus

Spartacus: War of the Damned- Spoils of War (Season 1, Episode 6)

Awoken this morning at 4:00 am by the strangely calm voice of my mother, “Come see the CSI people in their white suites, someone’s been shot in front of our gate…”

Hours earlier I had heard the faint voice of my father in my brother’s room, his tone more alarmed than my mother, only for a second before sleep pulled my mind from conscious awakening…

Somehow, as my body rolled into a deeper state of slumber, the flustered tone of his voice was not enough to jolt me out of sleep…this thought hours later kept me awake, tossing and turning wondering why my body, why my sheltered, premature mind didn't respond to such an obvious sense that something was not right…

At the time my mother woke me, my first instinct was to go back to sleep, selfishly craving the confines of my dreams…but I got out of bed anyway, washed my face and took a look out of the window that overlooked the front gate…

I looked at the two ‘CSI people’, in their puffy, almost clown-like, white alien suites with flashlights dancing across the blood-stained street, the corpse of a man like any other still warm upon the ground and a musty, dry season breeze, dabbed with hints of smoke from the burning Northern Range that always seemed to cradle within its arms my house, protected, untouched by violence and crime…

One thought crossed my mind, “this is what these people do for a living…”

These people, not clowns or aliens...rather, angels of death appropriately dressed in white, emerging at all hours of the day and night to scrape humans like themselves off the roads of Trinidad and Tobago…humans, who just moments earlier stood as living, breathing beings...with plans, futures, hopes like you and me…

"When will my time come?”

 I whisper into the night as yet again I fall prey to the Sand Man, whisking me off into the safety of my dreams…

(i)                  I took this photograph this morning, after my parents had attempted to scrub the blood off the road, literally in front my gate…what a strange thing to say, what a strange reality. Just days earlier I was telling a friend of mine that I’ve never experienced a crime. Somehow life, full of grace and beauty has steered me clear from misfortune and danger. Now that same blessed guardian that once watched over me taunts my fantasies, “you child, you stupid, naïve little girl, not even you with all your privilege and shelter can escape”. 

Well I’m left without a choice, for the crime that I’ve read about in the new paper, that I’ve seen on the news, that I thought was far removed from my reality has caught up with me. I do not know the man who’s blood is in that photography, I did not see him die, I did not hear the gunshots, but I’ll be damned if I don’t feel some sort or remorse, or fear, or hopelessness and even worse…helplessness. Why do we do this to ourselves?

"Self Inflicted Wounds"

(ii)                In terms of my usual academic references, I will not be using Hall and Barrett’s book, Urban Geography as they do not have a clear-cut section about crime and urban spaces. I will however be touching on the multidisciplinary side of urban geography with reference to the study of crime from a Sociological Perspective.

The text I will be using is a book by Haralambos and Holborn, Sociology: Themes and Perspectives (7^th Edition). As in any academic perspective, especially in the social sciences, the various theories of the field are outlined in the first chapter(s) of the book. In this case the idea of Functionalism is of particular interest to me.

According to Haralambos and Holborn, functionalism was made influential by the theorists Emile Durkheim and Talcott Parsons. Briefly speaking, functionalism sees various parts of society as interrelated and together, forming a complete system. In other words, just as a biologist would examine a part of the body in terms of its contribution to the maintenance of the human organism, the functionalist will examine a part of society (in this case, crime) in the same way.

 Emile Durkheim (left) and Talcott Parsons (right)

In terms of crime, a functional analysis of deviance begins with society as a whole, and looks for the source of deviance in the nature of society rather than in the individual. Functionalists argue that crime is a necessary part of all societies and, (quite nonchalantly) that it performs positive functions for social systems.  Emile Durkheim sees crime as inevitable and crime as functional.

In terms of the inevitability of crime, Durkheim (1938) emphasizes that because we as humans are different, share different values and are exposed to different circumstances and influences, it impossible for us all to be alike. Therefore in this case, he explains that not everyone will be equally reluctant to break the law.

Durkheim also explains that crime is functional, and only becomes dysfunctional when it is unusually high or low. He argues that all social change (good or bad) starts with some form of deviance and in order for change to occur; yesterday’s deviance must become today’s normality.

In this way I suppose there is a comfort in crime, the idea of social change, the provision of jobs for my white-suited alien friends, a means by which society works out it’s kinks and develops social order…what happens though, when this so-called ‘functional inevitability’ starts to creep into our homes, infect our lives, rape our senses, exhaust our resources?

Quoting from Hall and Barrett in Ch. 9 of their book Urban Geography,

 a chapter so appropriately entitled Experiencing the City:

 “everyday life for the vast majority of people at least, is anchored around places that provide senses of safety, security, identity and belonging. The most obvious of these places are the home and the neighborhood” 

(Relph 1976)

I wonder what percentage of the population of Trinidad and Tobago can truly relate to this statement…

(iii)               The quote I started off with was one from this week’s episode of Spartacus: War of the Damned. The debate of the ‘villain’ that ‘hero’ is one that in my opinion will never be settled. Who in this case is the villain and who is the hero? The one who shot the bullets or the one whose body collected them? Circular, repetitive, redundant…I am ashamed to say that these should be watch words of our nation…as all I see when I look around, when I read about crime in our nation, is a never ending battle of villains turned into heroes, and heroes left to the fate of villains… 

Some songs to listen to, I purposefully chose the lyrics on screen versions: 

• Radio Active by Imagine Dragons http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3JnxmI1ojYc
• Safe and Sound by Taylor Swift http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5K4PGpXsOA

Lastly, a general Youtube search: "Crime in Trinidad"...if this is not chaos, what is?

• http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=crime+in+trinidad&oq=crime+in+trinidad&gs_l=youtube-reduced.3..0l4.92453.94898.0.95020.17.10.0.7.7.0.139.1105.1j9.10.0...0.0...1ac.1.wZaQK-3oRcM