For the last six years of the twentieth century, a man named Mario Villanueva was the governor of Chetumal, or Quintana Roo, I?m not sure. The Americans were looking for him for a long time before they found him, that?s after he had finished his term as governor. The Americans said that Villanueva was facilitating the warehousing and transportation of cocaine while he was in office.

We see the craziness and violence of the crimes in Belize continue to escalate, and we blame our own people, especially the younger people, but the circumstances are such that the cocaine money moving around Belize is enormous, and the big cocaine money creates an environment where the violence is mad.

The thing about any kind of business in illegal drugs is that the men who are in charge find out very quickly that they have to be violent, and ruthless. That is the only way to maintain order and increase profits in the business of illegal drugs. You must establish and maintain discipline through violence. So you have to hire and pamper enforcers, torturers and murderers.

Now more than a decade ago, when the cocaine business here was in its relative infancy, before Villanueva and Calderitas and Herbert and so on and so forth, a murder and a retaliatory murder took place which are still incredible in the ongoing drama which is cocaine in Belize. This was 1992. Gangs were only three or four years old in Belize City, but, imported from Los Angeles, gangs had taken root and grown sensationally in the old capital. The public found out how big gangs were in 1992.

There are many splinter groups nowadays, but back then it was just the Crips and the Bloods. Derek ?Itza? Brown ruled the Crips from Majestic Alley. On Dean Street, Lyndon ?Tunan? Arnold, a business graduate from St. John?s College Sixth Form, had become the richest and most powerful don in an area controlled by the Bloods. Tunan, the business student, had an organized cocaine business. Itza Brown, the son of an outstanding center forward from my childhood days by the name of Calvin ?Gutsy? Brown, was all charisma and audacity. His followers adored him. Itza would go anywhere in the city and take anything he wanted, and nobody could stop him. Tunan was corporate; Itza was guerrilla.

We are talking about the underworld here, so there is no proof to these things. All we know is bodies started falling with bullets in them. The Crips claimed that Tunan, tired of having his operation ?jacked? by Itza, decided to eliminate him. The hit was like this. At the old National Stadium horse stables, Ninjaman Wiltshire took care of race horses. He was a friend of Itza?s. Ninjaman invited Itza to the horse track for a weed deal. Itza took a companion. Ninjaman waited until they were comfortable, then took out a gun and started shooting. He slew Itza, but Eugene Neal, Itza?s sidekick, pretended he was dead, and Ninjaman, unfortunately for Tunan, did not seal Neal?s deal. Eugene lived to bring back the story to Majestic Alley.

Itza Brown?s funeral showed how large the Crips were in Belize, and they had already convicted Tunan and sentenced him to death. The retaliatory murder proved even more sensational, because when it took place ten weeks later, it was in the streets of New York City outside a club.

Tunan was protected by expensive, high quality bodyguards at the time. He knew the Crips had a hit out on him. With all Tunan?s money and with all his protection, the Crips reached him. Street legend has it that the Crips gunman was Sani Santos who, in his own way, was as famous as Itza and Tunan. The streets say that Santos (with companions) circled the club in a car several times before he caught Tunan coming out with a hail of bullets which also killed two of Arnold?s bodyguards.

Cocaine ? money ? lead ? death. These are now a way of ?life?, so to speak, in Belize. Kidnapping ? decomposing bodies ? unidentified skeletons. Big money ? fast lives ? young corpses. It?s all real.