Caribbean crime Concern grows in region over wave of violence

The last thing Raquel Rodriguez remembers of that afternoon is that she was playing with her neighbour's baby outside her home in the Trinidad and Tobago neighbourhood of Barataria. Then came a piercingly loud explosion.

- Natricia Duncan

"The noise was very, very close," she said. "It was very loud. So I stood there, frozen, with my left hand on my temple. And then I started to wonder what was going on. Then I realised that my eyes were turning dark. Then it went totally blank." She had been hit by a stray bullet that penetrated her left temple and tore its way diagonally to her right cheekbone. After falling to the ground, Rodriguez could hear her family and neighbours screaming as they rushed her to hospital.

Her swift recovery after the attack in September 2022 surprised health workers. But though the mother of three has regained her speech and mobility, her eyes were ruptured, leaving her blind.

Now an aspiring broadcaster, she is determined to stay resilient while she learns braille and finishes a degree she had started before the shooting. But Rodriguez said the incident had been tough on her family, and she yearns for the opportunity to migrate.

Rodriguez is one of thousands who have been caught in a recent wave of violent crime across the Caribbean, with statisticians describing the region as one of the most violent in the Americas.

At the extreme end of the scale of this trend, which has been branded by leaders "an alarming epidemic", is a rampant gang war that has plunged Haiti into bloody anarchy.

Armed factions have controlled most of the country's capital since the former president Jovenel Moïse was assassinated in July 2021, and about 2,500 people were killed or injured in the first quarter of 2024.