Behind the Dudus Affair
Publication date : Thursday, May 27th 2010 - 16 852 views Gangs and Politics: Behind the Dudus Affair
From a distance, it looks like an ordinary manhunt for a drug trafficker by the authorities, the sort of thing you might see in Mexico or Brazil. Except that the ‘Dudus’ affair now shaking Jamaica is far more complex.
Boss of Tivoli Gardens, arms and drug trafficker,
‘Dudus’ illustrates the close ties between the Kingston gangs and Jamaica’s political world. To understand what is at stake, we have to go back in time. Right back to 1966, in fact, the year Tivoli Gardens rose from the ground and became the JLP’s electoral laboratory. In Jamaica, politics would never be the same again.
Wanted: Christopher ‘Dudus’ Coke
The official announcement confirmed the rumour that had been swelling in the streets of Kingston since Monday 18 May and fuelling panic: they want to arrest ‘Dudus’ and extradite him to the United States. First barricades around Tivoli Gardens and Denham Town, first demonstrations of support, mostly by women, first gunshots at nightfall and first deaths. Jamaicans know this song well and fear the worst: a bloodbath. On paper, ‘Dudus’ can be arrested, but who will dare go and get him in Tivoli Gardens, an impregnable neighbourhood? The police are not reckless – they admit that ‘Dudus’’s defenders are better armed than they are – and are leaving it to the military with their armoured vehicles. The state of emergency that has just been declared now gives them extended powers to ensure security on the streets. Why did it come to this?
In August 2009, the United States officially submitted an extradition request to the Jamaican government for Christopher ‘Dudus’ Coke, on the basis of a detailed report accusing him of international arms and drug trafficking. They even make him the last leader of the famous Shower Posse, a Jamaican gang at its height in the 1980s and responsible for more than 1,400 murders in the United States. A criminal story as much as a political one.
For ‘Dudus’, 40, also nicknamed the ‘Prezident’ or ‘Prezi’, is the strongman and unofficial leader of West Kingston. He rules in particular over Tivoli Gardens, a veritable garrison of the JLP (the Jamaica Labour Party, the more conservative of the island’s two main parties).
 Kingston, May 2010
Tivoli Gardens, a ghetto at the heart of power
Tivoli Gardens is the laboratory of the Jamaican political model. Built in 1966 by the Labour minister Edward Seaga, its concrete tower blocks, modern for the time, were reserved exclusively for JLP supporters. They are also the refuge of the most violent among them, who receive weapons used to infiltrate other neighbourhoods, relying on the gangs that rule there. This violence forces communities to equip themselves with armed militias affiliated to one of the two parties. In response, the PNP (People’s National Party), in power in the 1970s, launched a housing construction programme of its own (‘Concrete Jungle’ in Arnett Gardens is the best example). It is a vicious circle: even today, this garrison logic in working-class neighbourhoods governs Jamaican political life.
Voting discipline in Tivoli Gardens, subsidised by jobs and public contracts, is exemplary: the constituency, with its opaque electoral rolls, has never been lost by the JLP. It is, incidentally, that of the current Prime Minister, Bruce Golding. In 1972, when the PNP won the elections and managed to turn most of the poor neighbourhoods thanks to the windfall of victory, Tivoli remained the JLP’s only stronghold in West Kingston. The Labourites, led by Edward Seaga, pursued a policy of systematic opposition and destabilisation. Tivoli, which has always had the greatest firepower in Kingston, thus lived in a permanent state of siege, to the rhythm of attacks and counter-attacks on neighbouring districts. Its gang was then called the Phoenix and counted among its ranks Claudie Massop, one of the neighbourhood’s first godfathers and a key figure of the 1970s.
Report written by Benoit Georges
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Part 2
Publication date : 05-27-2010 
The turning point of 1980
The decision to arrest ‘Dudus’ is heartbreaking for Golding, who apologised for it before the Nation, a way of telling his West Kingston voters that he is betraying them under pressure from Uncle Sam. For it is indeed America that is demanding ‘Dudus’, since he faces no prosecution on his native island.
The first ‘Tivolites’ landed in the United States in the mid-1970s. Some fled Jamaica after the PNP victory of 1972. Claudie Massop, who was then ruling Tivoli, escaped to England, from where he continued to control the area. Those who tried their luck in the United States quickly noticed the criminal opportunities open to them.
Vivian Blake, originally from Tivoli, thus organised a ganja trade, at first small-scale and then large-scale, between Jamaica, New York and Miami. It is assumed today that part of the profits, in the form of money or weapons, went back to Tivoli, and therefore to the JLP. But it was with cocaine that these transfers intensified. The criminals affiliated to the JLP were the first to combine this trade with the herb trade. Control of the new docks of West Kingston made their task easier. Many observers also believe that the arrival of cocaine on the streets explains the violence and cruelty displayed by the Labourites during the 1980 election campaign. These efforts were not in vain: the JLP emerged victorious and Edward Seaga became Prime Minister.
The architect of this victory on the ground was Lester Lloyd Coke, nicknamed ‘Jim Brown’, the father of ‘Dudus’. In 1979, he reshuffled the deck with a wave of executions, of friends and enemies alike. Don Claudie Massop met the same end, gunned down by the police. Jim Brown and his Tivoli troops spread terror across Kingston and, with Seaga in power, did so with complete impunity from then on. The neighbourhood thus became a rear base for operations in the United States, built on a two-headed system: Vivian Blake, the businessman, and Jim Brown, the general.
 Edward Seaga and his cabinet in 1980
The American dream
The Tivoli gang was not the only Jamaican gang to embark on arms and drug trafficking on an industrial scale in New York and Florida, but it was certainly the one with the best political protection. It took advantage of the corruption prevailing throughout the Caribbean and of the complacency (at the very least) of the authorities, American and Jamaican alike. It has to be said that at the time the Reagan administration was not very particular about those who aligned themselves with its foreign policy: the fight against communism justified every scam. Indeed, the number of foot soldiers entering the United States illegally, the quantities in transit, often by suitcase, and the necessary contacts with the Colombian cartels say a great deal about the organisation that had been put in place. In the early 1980s, Vivian Blake and his men managed the transit of the drug as well as the distribution networks in several major cities and the laundering of the profits.
From 1983, the Tivoli gang, now christened the Shower Posse, moved on to crack, a product that also had a local market in Jamaica. Profits soared, offering an unequalled capacity for corruption and the possibility of autonomy from their political paymasters. The American services tried from 1984 to untangle these already extraordinarily complex threads, with little success. It was above all the unleashing of violence on the streets that spurred them into action. Jim Brown was already in their sights, but once he had taken refuge in Tivoli, no one could reach him. Operation Rum Punch, launched in 1987 against Jamaican gangs in the United States, resulted, on the Shower side, only in the conviction of mere foot soldiers, even if the role of the two bosses, Blake and Brown, was becoming clearer.
Report written by Benoit Georges
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Part 3
Publication date : 05-27-2010
Godfather from father to son
It is politics that shifts the lines once again. Michael Manley of the PNP returned to power in 1989, determined to clean up Tivoli Gardens. On the American side, an arrest warrant was issued against Vivian Blake and extradition proceedings began against Jim Brown. In 1990, police raided Tivoli to try to arrest him: more than 10 people died. Jim Brown was finally trapped two years later, naively believing he was going to a negotiation session between his lawyers and the Americans. His supporters took to the streets, and tension ran at fever pitch in the Labourite neighbourhoods. Brown challenged the extradition before the British Privy Council, which dismissed his appeal. He then tried one strategy after another to avoid the trip: he threatened to execute tourists, but also to cooperate with the Americans. If they were well documented on the criminal side, they in fact lacked evidence on the financial flows and political influence (corruption, laundering, political financing…).
The reckoning came in February 1992. Jah T, Jim Brown’s eldest son and right-hand man, was shot dead on his motorbike. On the day of his funeral, his father was found burned alive in his cell, while awaiting his imminent transfer to the United States. Seaga and many JLP figures attended his funeral, but the street was not fooled: once again the politicians had dropped and punished their informal ally.
Vivian Blake also felt the wind turning. After a short spell on the run in the Caribbean, he returned to Jamaica, invested in several businesses and watched over Tivoli for two years. His extradition request came through in 1994. Blake let himself be arrested and launched into a legal battle. For five years he lived quietly in Kingston’s General Penitentiary (GP), enjoying VIP conditions of detention. Despite the support of the street, he was extradited to Florida in 1999. He then entered plea negotiations, pleading guilty and admitting all the charges. This conciliatory attitude allowed him to avoid a trial. He finally served eight years in the United States, a surprisingly lenient sentence. Released in 2009 and deported to Jamaica, he returned to Tivoli, where he died this year… of a heart attack.
 Kingston, May 2010
A ‘Prezident’ for Tivoli
It is said that ‘Dudus’ took the reins of Tivoli after the death of his brother and his father. Many see his hand behind the counter-attack that ended in some twenty deaths on the streets of Kingston. Faced with a growing number of shootings and armed robberies, Seaga handed the new police chief a list of 13 names in 1994. They were all Tivoli criminals whom he asked to have arrested. A little late to admit that the hoodlums of the 1960s, now international traffickers and professional killers, had escaped his control. The ‘Tivolites’ retort that Seaga did not keep his promises and that they therefore no longer have to obey him. The divorce seems final. The socialist government of Percival James Patterson, who succeeded Manley in 1992, did not abandon the idea of disarming Tivoli Gardens, but kept running into the same obstacle: a police operation intended to seize weapons left 25 dead after three days of clashes and triggered an outcry from the opposition. Tivoli, and more generally the JLP-controlled neighbourhoods, remained a thorn in the side of the PNP administration, until the change of power in 2007, which saw Bruce Golding succeed Portia Simpson-Miller, the first woman in that post. The wheel turns again.
The ‘leadership’ of ‘Dudus’ is nevertheless marked by relative stability in Tivoli Gardens. In fact, ‘Prezi’ is rather well liked by the population. It is thanks to him that the Passa Passa parties developed in the neighbourhood without any incident. ‘Dudus’ believed that everyone, tourists included, should be able to party in Tivoli in complete safety. The resident sound systems, such as Swatch, and the artists, via dubplates, regularly paid tribute to him. He also fulfilled his role as ‘community leader’: security for residents, provider of jobs and contracts for local businesses, micro-credit, redistribution, cultural funding, he took on, like his predecessors, the duties of a failing state. It is even said that he intervened several times to allow the police to arrest a few lawless cop-killers who had taken refuge in West Kingston. Apart from these few anecdotes, nobody knows any more about him outside Tivoli.
Has he cut ties with the JLP? Nothing is less certain. Until his arrest warrant was published, ‘Dudus’ was represented by the lawyer Tom Tavares-Finson, a JLP senator. The Labour government took almost a year to reply to the United States on the extradition request. When it did, it was to challenge the legality of the investigation (the American services had carried out wiretaps in Jamaica). The Prime Minister was even accused of having contacted an American firm to examine every possible legal recourse to prevent the extradition of the ‘Prezident’. That was without counting on the subtle pressure exerted by the Obama administration, which some even thought they saw behind the visa cancellations of famous artists.
According to the latest news, ‘Dudus’ is trying to negotiate directly with the United States, via his lawyers. He cannot be blamed for distrusting the government and the Jamaican authorities.
Meanwhile, blood is flowing in Kingston, the opposition denounces a smokescreen and accuses the government of using the state of emergency to clean up the poor neighbourhoods, and the other gangs are oiling their guns to defend ‘Dudus’ or simply to take advantage of the climate of destabilisation. The population, which has been taking the blows for 50 years, fearfully wonders what would happen if Tivoli lost its ‘Prezident’.
Report written by Benoit Georges
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