Los bombardeados

No justice yet for Chad Joseph after US strike

Por Guardian Media Limited | Ilustración: Leo Parra

By Guardian Media Limited

Nes­tled in the north­east­ern coast of Trinidad, pil­lowed by ver­dant veg­e­ta­tion on land and blan­ket­ed by the surf of the Caribbean Sea, is the coastal com­mu­ni­ty of Matelot.

On land, it’s ac­ces­si­ble by a sin­gle, wind­ing road flanked by for­est on one side and coast­line vis­tas on the oth­er.

Matelot, the French word for sailor, like most com­mu­ni­ties along the coast, can al­so be ac­cessed by boat from the sea. Long ago, goods came to the com­mu­ni­ty from “steam­ers” and land­ed by the riv­er mouth, Shark Riv­er.

And it’s from the sea that most of the vil­lagers de­rive their liveli­hood. It’s the com­mu­ni­ty, where her­itage runs deep in the shore­line and life and lifestyle are linked to the sea, that Chad ‘Chapo’ Joseph, 26, grew up in be­fore he was al­leged­ly killed in a US airstrike on Oc­to­ber 14.

Last Sun­day, it would have been two months since Joseph died, his moth­er, Lenore Joseph, told Guardian Me­dia.

Out­side her bricked, one-storey home, is a ban­ner which marks his sun­rise and sun­set dates, which has been there since Oc­to­ber 22, when a memo­r­i­al to mark his life was held.

In Matelot, there is one high school, one pri­ma­ry school, a pri­vate bus which charges $30 one way to San­gre Grande, and a few par­lours that ser­vice the 300-plus mem­bers of the com­mu­ni­ty.

Signs of progress, like its Out­reach Cen­tre, are as vis­i­ble as its de­cay, like its di­lap­i­dat­ed wood­en homes.

A boy who start­ed fish­ing

In this place, some­what frozen in sto­ries of the peo­ple who live there, it was easy to chart Joseph’s sto­ry in the com­mu­ni­ty, as most peo­ple re­mem­ber him as a boy who start­ed fish­ing ear­ly af­ter he fin­ished school at Matelot Sec­ondary. He has sev­er­al un­cles and his moth­er and sev­er­al sib­lings–he has five in to­tal–who al­so stay in Matelot.

Most boys in the vil­lage, his un­cle said, grew up to be fish­er­men and ei­ther stayed in the com­mu­ni­ty or left be­cause of a lack of op­por­tu­ni­ties.

In Joseph’s case, when he was old­er, he went to stay with his aunt, Lynette Burn­ley, and rel­a­tives in Las Cuevas.

Gas­ton Gra­ham, a bar own­er in the vil­lage, said he re­mem­bered Joseph as a boy be­ing out at sea.

His­tor­i­cal­ly, Gra­ham ex­plained, the com­mu­ni­ties of Las Cuevas, Blan­chisseuse and Matelot were con­nect­ed as re­mote com­mu­ni­ties in the coun­try. As a re­sult, most fam­i­lies in the com­mu­ni­ties were con­nect­ed. And in these coastal com­mu­ni­ties, it was eas­i­er to get to Venezuela than to south Trinidad.

For the vil­lage, the con­nec­tion to Venezuela is not ge­o­graph­i­cal­ly bound.

Gra­ham said a lot of Joseph’s fam­i­ly be­longed to the Sal­vary fam­i­ly, which used to own acres of land in Matelot and were some of the first set­tlers from Venezuela in Matelot.

“He has Venezue­lan her­itage,” he said of Joseph.

“Fish­ing is em­bed­ded in the cul­ture of the fam­i­ly. They are sea­far­ing peo­ple,” he added.

Matelot com­mu­ni­ty in shock over Joseph’s al­leged links to drug traf­fick­ing

Gra­ham said the news of Joseph be­ing la­belled a nar­co-ter­ror­ist by the US Gov­ern­ment had shocked him and the com­mu­ni­ty.

“I didn’t be­lieve it,” he told Guardian Me­dia when the news broke. Two months on, peo­ple still find it hard to be­lieve of him.

With deaths mount­ing and lit­tle ev­i­dence to sug­gest Joseph was a nar­co-traf­fick­er, opin­ions have formed on the US and its ac­tions, hu­man rights, their un­der­stand­ing of the law and the Prime Min­is­ter’s sup­port for the strikes.

Gra­ham, who used to work as a sea­son­al farmer in Toron­to, re­turned and re­tired in Matelot sev­er­al years ago.

From his van­tage, it’s easy to iden­ti­fy what he termed delin­quents in the com­mu­ni­ty.

He ob­served that peo­ple’s lifestyles–like hav­ing man­sions as homes and sev­er­al ve­hi­cles–usu­al­ly in­di­cate whether they were traf­fick­ers, and there was lit­tle in Joseph or his fam­i­ly’s lifestyle to open­ly sug­gest such.

“I think there could have been a bet­ter method to find out what was in those boats; there was a to­tal dis­re­gard for hu­man­i­ty,” he said.

Fol­low­ing news of his death, Joseph was iden­ti­fied as the nephew of drug lord Vaughn “Sand­man” Mieres, who was charged with be­ing a gang leader dur­ing the 2011 state of emer­gency but was re­leased for lack of ev­i­dence.

“He was his nephew. But why peo­ple bring­ing all that up? That has noth­ing to do with what hap­pened to him (Joseph),” said his aunt Lynette Burn­ley.

Two weeks ago, Gra­ham said vil­lagers have heard the US drones “hum­ming”, and in one in­stance, an air­craft cir­cled a boat, but noth­ing hap­pened.

When Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed last week, there was on­ly one boat an­chored to fish. The own­er, Brent, who is al­so Joseph’s un­cle, said that things in the com­mu­ni­ty have been hard be­cause of the lack of up­keep of the fa­cil­i­ties and the chang­ing weath­er pat­terns.

A moth­er’s call for clo­sure

For Lenore, the dai­ly in­ter­nal strug­gle is pal­pa­ble–the shad­ow of doubt that lingers be­cause there is the lack of a body of her dead son looms large every day.

Since news broke, her life has been char­ac­terised by the con­flict­ing tur­moil of hav­ing faint hope and the harsh re­al­i­ty of Joseph’s sud­den death with no body for a bur­ial.

Joseph is her sec­ond child. She found out about his al­leged death from peo­ple telling her on so­cial me­dia.

While the fam­i­ly has had a memo­r­i­al ser­vice for Joseph and, for the most part, be­lieves he is dead, no one has of­fi­cial­ly con­firmed it.

Joseph and an­oth­er Trinida­di­an fish­er­man, Rishi Sama­roo, are be­lieved dead from the same strike. Joseph’s fam­i­ly be­lieve it was him be­cause he had com­mu­ni­cat­ed with his com­mon-law wife, Ayana Roberts, that he was com­ing home from Venezuela the night of the bomb­ing. He died in the sea be­tween the coun­tries in which he lived.

She said the last time she spoke with him, he told her he was hap­py in Venezuela, but he got tired and want­ed to come back home.

When asked whether he as­sessed the risk of leav­ing at that time giv­en that it was one month in­to the re­peat­ed US strikes, she an­swered, “I be­lieve so, and he took that risk.”

When Guardian Me­dia asked her why he took that risk, she re­spond­ed, “I know about the sea law; I know since I was young. If it’s a boat, what­ev­er, you’re sup­posed to stop it, see. The law is not to kill peo­ple. Wher­ev­er you are, you are not to kill peo­ple like that. This is the first time in my life, and I am 51 years old; I have nev­er heard about this kind of stuff,” she said.

On hav­ing her son la­belled a nar­co-traf­fick­er, she re­spond­ed, “Where is the proof? If it’s drugs, where is the proof? Where is it? You un­der­stand?”

It was Joseph’s fam­i­ly, be­ing one of the first to iden­ti­fy him out of over 100 peo­ple who have lost their lives in the strikes, which shed a hu­man light on the peo­ple who were dy­ing as a re­sult of the US strikes in the Caribbean Sea. The hu­man sto­ries start­ed to put pres­sure on the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion by mem­bers of Con­gress who called for trans­paren­cy on its strikes and have tried to chal­lenge and cur­tail them.

Trinidad and To­ba­go’s Gov­ern­ment has main­tained that no T&T fish­er­man has been killed. On No­vem­ber 13, At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie told the Fi­nan­cial Times that no lo­cal fish­er­man had been killed, and that po­si­tion was adopt­ed by For­eign Af­fairs Min­is­ter Sean Sobers a day lat­er.

Miss­ing per­sons re­ports have been filed by both Roberts and the Sama­roo fam­i­ly.

“It’s hard. Sun­day gone was two months since that hap­pened, and the Gov­ern­ment here say­ing they might both be locked up. If they are locked up some­where, in three days, we’re sup­posed to know what re­al­ly go­ing on,” Lenore said.

She said her MP, Wayne Struge, has not vis­it­ed the fam­i­ly since the news broke.

“And every­one knows us. They know where to find me. You found me. It’s not a se­cret,” she said.

Lenore, like 74 oth­ers in the com­mu­ni­ty, was em­ployed in the State’s make-work pro­grammes–Cepep, URP and Forestry–un­til she lost their jobs sev­er­al months ago.

With no in­come read­i­ly avail­able, she said she can’t stop her oth­er chil­dren, who are al­so fish­er­men, from go­ing out to sea.

“Some­times you can tell them, ‘Don’t go.’ How will they make their lit­tle mon­ey? Fish is fish … most peo­ple fish­ing and they make their mon­ey,” she said.

For now, she wants clo­sure and for the Gov­ern­ment to take an in­ter­est in its miss­ing cit­i­zens.

Guardian Me­dia could not get an up­date from gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials or from Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro on the sta­tus of these in­ves­ti­ga­tions or of the two de­com­posed bod­ies which washed up on the Cumana and Ba­lan­dra shores in ear­ly Sep­tem­ber, be­lieved to be linked to the strikes.