by Ioan Grillo
The word spread quickly to other conflict zones because after the Cold War so many armed groups emerged who were hard to describe. They were not leftist revolutionaries who would have been called guerillas, nor Islamic militants, who governments often labeled terrorists. But they commanded serious firepower that they used to become the de facto rulers of territories. Sometimes, they worked alongside central governments; other times, they fought against them.
Over in Latin America, journalists had used the terms drug lords and cartels since the 1980s. But for one particular gangster, many media outlets applied the term warlord: Dudus Coke.
“Troops and police storming the downtown stronghold of the warlord Christopher ‘Dudus’ Coke,” said the Independent newspaper. “The alleged drug warlord was still at large despite the assault on his stronghold,” said the Guardian. “A block-by-block manhunt for a crime warlord,” said the New York Post.
There is an obvious reason why journalists made the mental connection between the warlord term applied in Africa and this drug trafficker in the Americas: images of Tivoli gunmen firing at soldiers and those of African militias didn’t look that different. Any racial stereotyping is obviously bad for reaching a better understanding of these issues. However, there are valid reasons to compare the criminal power of Dudus with that of warlords on the mother continent.
Jamaican and foreign newspapers also recognized the Shower Posse gunmen as being a “militia” rather than just gangbangers. “The security forces say Coke’s militia was very well-organized and mounted stout defense,” wrote Karyl Walker in the Jamaican Observer. “Coke commanded a private militia and his supporters burned down two police stations,” wrote Horace Helps for Reuters.
In the following years, journalists slipped the warlord term into stories about other battlegrounds of the Americas, including Mexico and Brazil. “Lazcano’s Zetas have been the boldest of warlords,” wrote Dane Schiller in the Houston Chronicle in 2012. “One of Rio’s most dangerous favelas is owned by the church but overrun by drug warlords,” the Daily Mail said in 2013. “Drug Warlord ‘Chapo’ Captured in Mexico,” said Time in 2014.
“Warlord” is not a perfect term. Academics struggle to define the parameters of contemporary “warlordism.” Writers also use the word retrospectively to describe anyone from medieval mercenary captains to tenth-century Vietnamese strongmen. Some apply “warlord” to warring presidents. It is a broad expression.
But comparing gangster kingpins of the Americas with warlords who have emerged round the world since the Cold War is useful; it helps us get closer to what these figures have become rather than saying they are simply drug traffickers. It is also instructive to view many of the gunmen in Jamaica, Brazil, or Mexico as militias, rather than just gangbangers. It helps us understand how they are capable of confronting police and soldiers; how they have caused the flight of hundreds of thousands of refugees and carried out massacres comparable to civil wars. It sheds light on the mechanics of how the Zetas or Shower Posse control a fief, sometimes working with the government, sometimes fighting it, like the warlords of Africa do. It gives more depth and perspective.
However, I use gangster warlord with the prefix to better place the weird hybrid of Dudus or Heriberto Lazcano, the head of the Zetas. They are still gangsters running rackets while they command militias to rule their fiefs. Meanwhile, their control of territory is not as absolute as the warlords of China in their time. The gangster militias guard the borders of their domains, kill enemy gunmen who enter, collect extortion “taxes,” conduct trials, strong-arm politicians, and carry out social work. But the government still provides electricity and runs the schools and other services. The gangster warlords control selective aspects of the turf.
Dudus’s rule of his Tivoli fief is an interesting case study. He collected his “tax” from small businessmen, such as market vendors. A witness told the New York court that taxi drivers paid five hundred Jamaican dollars (about five U.S. dollars) twice a week, with collections on Tuesdays and Thursdays. This may not sound like a huge amount of money. But with a Jamaican minimum wage of about fifty dollars a week, it is a significant hit on earnings, and if you extort enough people the money adds up. Furthermore, the act of collecting money is a way to psychologically dominate people. It reinforces the don’s power.
Dudus also tapped into another racket associated with modern warlords: winning government contracts. With his Minister of Finance, the President carried out construction projects through a company he formed, called “Incomparable Enterprises Limited.” Despite Dudus being openly listed as a director, government ministries awarded it works such as repairs to high-rises and roads. By 2010, Incomparable had received more than one hundred million Jamaican dollars, or about one million U.S. dollars, government records show.3
Giving out construction jobs was a considerable source of power in the community. Furthermore, Dudus used his companies to put his gunmen on the payroll. Back in the New York court, Cowboy described how he was given a job and only occasionally showed up. As the prosecution asked:
Q.Would you have to work very hard?
A.No, sir.
Q.And why not?
A.Job controlled by the system.
Q.What was it that permitted you to show up, not work very hard, not be a generally good employee?
A.Sir … We bad men. So the jobs got the bad man list. So you can go to the job any time you feel like.
Q.Would it be fair, when you say the bad man list, would it be fair that means it was clear that you were a soldier?
A.Yes, sir.
These government contracts flooded in after the Jamaican Labor Party regained power in 2007 under Prime Minister Golding, the MP for Dudus’s constituency. To help the labor party regain power, Dudus oversaw the old racket of controlling the voting base. On the stand, Cowboy testified about this electoral coercion. It is notable that Dudus’s defense objected to the line of questioning, saying they were trying Coke on drug conspiracy, not vote rigging; but the judge allowed it, adding to the detailed portrait of Dudus’s criminal-political power.
Q:Did the system require community members to vote for a certain party?
A.Yes, sir.
Q.What party was that?
A.JLP.
Q.What was your understanding what would happen if someone in the community voted differently?
A.They get beaten sir.
What’s more, there are accounts that Dudus helped the JLP get votes in areas beyond his own garrisons. K. C. Samuels writes that the President had gained such power he swayed ghettos across the nation.
Dudus could influence what went on in zones not even familiar to him physically—that was no military secret—this was common knowledge on the streets. Then to top all that, Dudus also had the admiration and minds of the common man from all over Jamaica. Everyone had heard of his exploits, he was both feared and revered … (Somewhere on his way to the throne, Dudus became the symbol of every inner-city youth’s victory over a system designed to keep them submerged).4
Samuels goes on to say that Dudus pulled such weight, he may have influenced the Labor Party’s electoral strategy and the candidates it picked. Labor Party Prime Minister Golding angrily rejected the suggestion that he worked with Dudus in various statements. Nevertheless, when he was later hauled before a parliamentary inquiry, he conceded that he met with Dudus several times after he was elected to represent West Kingston in 2005.
“He was a benefactor,” Golding said of the President. “He was typical of what is called dons, wielding a considerable amount of influence and being held in significant esteem by a large number of persons particularly in inner city communities and constituencies.”5
So Dudus’s control extended to drugs, guns, extortion, building, jobs, music, youth clubs, and elections. He had influence in underworld circles from London to New York to Toronto. He was a president with a system, a minister of finance, a jail, generals and soldiers. After almost two decades in power, the gang
ster warlord appeared invincible. But while seemingly impervious in his stronghold in Tivoli, protected by his shottas and with a friendly Labor government, there was one power he did not dominate: the long arm of law enforcement of the United States.
CHAPTER 24
When Dudus first became don, police didn’t know what he looked like. Even while his name was legendary on the streets, nobody in law enforcement could find a photo of him. His invisibility was helped by the fact that he was a small man surrounded by big guys, so you literally couldn’t see him. Peter Bunting, who later became Jamaica’s Minister of National Security, described to me how Dudus arrived with his protective mob one time when he was watching a soccer game at the national stadium.
“I was at the stadium and I heard a stir and a big group moving in and people were saying, ‘It’s Dudus.’ But you couldn’t pick out Dudus in the group because he was a short guy in the middle, with a crowd of guys around him, and he was nondescript.”
Finally, in the mid-1990s, police picked up Dudus with a small wrap of marijuana and took him to the station. The detention, Bunting says, was really an excuse to get his photograph and fingerprints. This became one of the only pictures that police and media would have until the 2010 turmoil.
Following the marijuana arrest, Dudus was extremely careful about his security. For fifteen years, he operated under a PNP government, giving him less political protection, and he was afraid that police could arrest or kill him, as they had taken down his father. To defend the President, Cowboy describes how a network of shottas watched for police and moved Dudus round different safe houses, sometimes in the middle of the night. He stayed in various homes in Tivoli as well as a palatial mansion outside the ghetto.
It helped Dudus that police struggled to enter the Tivoli garrison. If any patrol cars ventured inside they risked gunmen firing at them from hidden points in the tower blocks or alleyways. Police almost always entered in massive force, which sparked shoot-outs and massacres every couple of years. The most ferocious of these battles erupted in 2001 when troops stormed Tivoli in search of guns used to assassinate the head of a rival gang. The incursion led to a prolonged firefight, which claimed the lives of a police officer, a soldier, and twenty-five Tivoli residents, including children.
Despite the rare incursions, Tivoli residents could enjoy most of their days without police officers looking after them—or breathing down their necks. Instead, the Shower Posse was the one to “serve and protect.” People could smoke marijuana on the street and get free electricity, and they generally didn’t have to worry about being robbed as long as they paid their “tax” to the Prezi. But if they ran afoul of the Shower, it was best to run for their lives.
Under the PNP government, Jamaican police officers did try and build up charges against Dudus, Bunting says. But their problem was that they could not get any witnesses; people were either too loyal or too scared; anyone who testified against Dudus in Jamaica risked imminent death. Dudus was also a sophisticated operator, careful not to leave his fingerprints at the crime scene, Bunting says.
“Dudus was a little more business savvy than your typical don. He had gone to a traditional high school. He had modern up-to-date computer systems and cameras to run his organization. He seemed to be able to maintain links into legitimate businesses, and various commercial ventures. He was more of a businessman.”
Starved of a witness or smoking gun, Jamaican police turned to a tool beloved by American detectives: the wire.
The details on the phone taps that nailed Dudus later came out in the New York court case amid fierce legal debate. Evidence shows that while Jamaican officers physically tapped the President’s lines, the operation was orchestrated from DEA headquarters in Washington, D.C., with a little help from British secret agents.
The DEA had been building up its case against Dudus with arrests and phone taps in the United States. However, it lacked evidence to link the crack and marijuana selling on American streets to the President. To get this proof, the DEA teamed up with the Jamaican Narcotics Division and signed two secret memorandums of understanding (MOUs) in 2004.
The MOUs laid out what they called Operation Anthem to tap the President. They authorized wires on Dudus’s cell phones and landlines operated by Cable and Wireless and Digicel. To sweeten the deal, the United States gave Jamaican police $3.2 million dollars. In return, American agents would be hearing Dudus’s calls from their Washington offices.
Also in this plot were British agents from the Secret Intelligence Service, commonly known as MI6. Fittingly, Ian Fleming wrote all his novels about fictional MI6 agent James Bond in Jamaica, and the agency appears to have a soft spot for the island, with its name appearing on the MOUs. British intelligence was also concerned about Shower trafficking to British cities.
To keep Anthem under wraps, many in the Jamaican government, and indeed the U.S. and British governments, didn’t know about it. While they began tapping calls in 2004, a Jamaican judge didn’t sign a document authorizing the wire until 2007. It is also murky when the U.S. State Department learned of the deal. Dudus’s defense lawyer Stephen Rosen used this to try and throw the taps out. “We have the illegality of the DEA trying to usurp the authority of the State Department and sign this document,” he told the court.
It shows the perseverance of U.S. agents that they took five grueling years of running the Anthem wire before they released their indictment. By that time, they had recorded thousands of phone conversations of the President and his cohorts. (Dudus’s defense lawyer said they tapped an incredible fifty thousand calls.)
Besides the wire, a major break came in 2009 when American police arrested Cowboy. The hit man had fled to America after he punched Dudus’s Aunt Twinny; on the run, he sold drugs from Massachusetts to Arizona. U.S. prosecutors slapped him with firearms, marijuana, and crack charges. With the prospect of life behind bars, the DEA leaned on him to “flip,” or testify, against his old boss. The President was already mad at Cowboy, and the American agents offered protective custody.
With their witnesses and phone taps, prosecutors unsealed the Grand Jury indictment on August 29, 2009. As it says in The United States of America v. Christopher Michael Coke, aka “Michael Christopher Coke,” aka “President,” aka “Presi,” aka “Shortman,” aka “Duddus”:
The members of COKE’s organization, known as the “Shower Posse,” and also as “Presidential Click,” (the “Organization”) reside in Tivoli Gardens, other areas of Jamaica, and in other countries, including the United States. From at least in or about 1994, members of the Organization have been involved in drug trafficking in the New York area, Kingston, Jamaica and elsewhere. The Organization members have sold narcotics, including marijuana and crack cocaine, at COKE’s direction and on his behalf. They have then sent the proceeds of the drug sales to COKE in Jamaica, in the form of cash and/or goods. Organization members rely on COKE to assist them in their drug businesses here in the United States and in other countries.
The same day, the State Department sent the indictment to Jamaica with diplomatic note 296 requesting that the government of Prime Minister Golding arrest President Dudus and extradite him.
When Golding returned the Labor Party to power in 2007, Jamaican politics had become largely devoid of ideology. Both parties supported the free market while claiming to help the poor and both valued working with the United States. Golding won with a promise of change, blaming the PNP for crime and sluggish growth. But he didn’t so much attack the PNP’s ideas, as attack them as individuals, calling them corrupt.
“If you are not changing course, it means that a few will continue to plunder poor people’s money because we will have to continue to live with their rampant corruption that has characterized this government,” Golding told a campaign rally. “But Jamaica has to change course. I have a team that is committed to changing that course, and I am the driver.” (He says that last phrase extra slow, with emphasis on “driver.”)1
A bespect
acled economist, Golding had grown up in politics, the son of a Member of Parliament. He took the helm of the Labor Party after Seaga retired in 2005. Like Seaga, he was MP for West Kingston, home of Dudus and the Shower. To show himself worthy of representing the garrisons, he stood with Tivoli residents when police stormed the ghetto that year. When officers charged, he held his ground and shouted at the superintendent leading the operation. Around this time, Golding held his meetings with Dudus.
Two years later, when Golding became prime minister, Kingston was one of the most homicidal cities in the world. Golding blamed the murder epidemic on the eighteen years of PNP rule and promised to lock up the “badmen.” But while police arrested hundreds of gunslingers, Dudus not only enjoyed his freedom but expanded his empire, winning his slew of government contracts.
After the extradition order came in August 2009, the country waited for Dudus to be finally arrested. But summer turned to fall turned to winter, and the President still operated openly. In a December session of Jamaica’s parliament, the opposition demanded to know why Dudus was at large. Golding replied there were legal questions over the extradition, including the validity of the wire taps.
