As Venezuela disintegrates, a new breed of pirates terrorises the Caribbean

In the flickers of sunlight off the cobalt blue of the Caribbean Sea, the vessel appeared as a cut on the horizon. It sailed closer. But the crew of the Asheena took no heed.

“We be lookin’ for our red fish as normal, thinkin’ they be fishin’, too,” said Jimmy Lalla, 36, part of the crew that had dropped lines in Trinidadian waters last April a few miles off the lawless Venezuelan coast.

The other vessel kept approaching. “They be needin’ help?” Lalla recalled wondering as it pulled aside their 8-metre pirogue. A short, sinewy man jumped on board, shouting in Spanish and waving a pistol.

“Then we knowin’,” Lalla said. “They be pirates.”

Centuries after Blackbeard’s cannons fell silent and the Jolly Roger came down from rum ports across the Caribbean, the region is confronting a new and less romanticised era of pirates.

Political and economic crises are exploding from Venezuela to Nicaragua to Haiti, sparking anarchy and criminality. As the rule of law breaks down, certain spots in the Caribbean, experts say, are becoming more dangerous than they’ve been in years.