Géographie de la ségrégation ethnique et géopolitique des drogues illicites. L'exemple de la Caraïbe indo-créole

• Main Authors: Daurius Figueira, Romain Cruse
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Université des Antilles 2011-08-01
• Series: Études Caribéennes
• Subjects: crime; slum; drug trafficking; racism; coastal tourism; insularity
• Online Access: http://journals.openedition.org/etudescaribeennes/5334

This paper focus on an analysis of the relationship between racism, segregation and the illicit drug trade inside three Caribbean territories known for their large share of population of Indian and African origin: Trinidad, Suriname and Guyana. Because of historical reasons, those territories have known the recent growth of a wealthy Indo-Caribbean business class. On the other hand, for similar reasons, Afro-Caribbeans today represent most of the urban poor lower class. From the 1980's Colombian cocaine trafficking affected those territories; hence a drug trafficking activities' ethnical specialization. At the bottom of the pyramid, young Afro-Caribbeans are today overwhelmingly represented amongst perpetrators of crime linked to the traffic. Progressively a racist discourse tends here to present « blacks » as more prone to crime...