Cascadura [Spoken word]

CASCADURA from Maximilian Forte on Vimeo.


CASCADURA
By Roi Guanapo Ankhkara Kwabena [23/7/1956 - 9/1/2008]

so though i didn’t relish the mountain-dew
when laced with scorpions and centipede
nor tasted the caiman
singh did cook for me
i did enjoy the cascadura
and yes I wish in Trinidad to end my days
if i may

Refrain:
curry cascadu,
ah really love mih cascadura,
stew cascadu
ah really love mih cascadu

best village competition
tapia yard in st augustine
hosay nor ramleela
won't be banned, if i have my way

Refrain:
curry cascadu,
ah really love mih cascadura,
stew cascadu
ah really love mih cascadu

staring at island homes
nelson, carrera
an chacachacare
in dismay..
pepper sauce on the highway
soft coconut water round the queen's park savannah
hot doubles in san juan
traffic in the croissee

Refrain:
curry cascadu,
ah really love mih cascadura,
stew cascadu
ah really love mih cascadu

mincing fresh chive from sant d’eau
black mud in moruga, parang in
santa cruz or lopinot
divali in palo seco,
a lime in the north stand
for panorama, breadfruit oil-down
with saltfish in diego..
a curry cookup at caura or camelita

Refrain:
curry cascadu,
ah really love mih cascadura,
stew cascadu
ah really love mih cascadu

steel drums hammered in point a pierre
downtown carnival parade
bottle ‘n spoon in snake valley, laventille
elderly indian women in
carapichaima secretly teaching
a bride how to wine

Refrain:
curry cascadu,
ah really love mih cascadura,
stew cascadu
ah really love mih cascadu

politicians exposed in the mirror
muslim brothers guarding their border
liming on harris promenade
a dip in blue-basin or
la brea sulphur springs
me pelting mangoes in the mang…
shark 'n bake down chagville
a rude male breeze in
the middle of town, blowing up
sandra’s pretty dress

Refrain:
curry cascadu,
ah really love mih cascadura,
stew cascadu
ah really love mih cascadu

no one supports
stealing leather-back turtle eggs!

© Copyright – Roi Kwabena
Reprinted with kind permission of the author.

Source: The lyrics posted on this blog are often transcribed directly from performances. Although it is my intention to faithfully transcribe I do not get all the words and I have a knack for hearing the wrong thing. Please feel free to correct me or to fill in the words that I miss by dropping me a message via e-mail. I'd be forever grateful. Thanks in advance!
..............................................................................................................................




A Note From The Gull


Thank you, Roi. This post was originally presented on this blog on 4/11/06 but I am updating it to commemorate the third anniversary of our brother's departure from this world on the 9th January 2008. You are missed Roi. So much has happened in the world since you left and I would have liked to discuss some of these events with you.

Thank you, Max Forte for always remembering Roi, his life and his work and for loving the untainted soul of Trinidad and Tobago.

"Patria est communis omnium parens" - Our native land is the common parent of us all. Keep it beautiful, make it even more so.

Blessed is all of creation
Blessed be my beautiful people
Blessed be the day of our awakening
Blessed is my country
Blessed are her patient hills.

Mweh ka allay!
Guanaguanare

This Is Madness [Song]


Uploaded by Gentle Benjamin

THIS IS MADNESS
By Mighty Sparrow
Album: Wanted: Dead or Alive

N.B. The song was originally transcribed from the album which is no longer available so there are slight differences with words used in this live performance.

[This is madness, this is madness]

Once upon a time this country was sweet
People coulda lime freely on the street
Whether was North of South, you coulda always walk
Without the fear of molestation and intimidation.
We had no money but used to live right
The people used to be just poor and polite
It didn't matter what, we were always taught
You have to honour your mother and father
And love thy neighbour.
Now honour and respect gone through the door
We living in a state of undeclared war
The youths acting like they insane, parents want to abstain,
Shouting out, "Don't call mih name. I ent taking no kind of blame!"

Something happen along the way, now honesty was simply thrown overboard
This is madness, madness, this is madness, total madness!
Something happen along the way, morality we can no longer afford
This is madness, madness, this is madness, total madness!

What's going on in my country, lord?
Tell me what is wrong I want to know.
Is hijackers, kidnappers and multiple murderers
Trinidad and Tobago, long ago was never, never so.

[This is madness, this is madness]

People used to go in to sleep anytime
With their window open, no worries 'bout crime
Because the burglarisers, the Peeping Toms
And mischief makers were all behind bars...Uhumm
Now the murder rate gone up, I ent telling lie
Like the crime wouldn't stop, don't care how we try
The realisation is that the laws of the nation
Is in chaos and total breakdown.
Rationality is no longer the norm
It might well be we need more social reform
Politicians too, finding themselves in all kind of sexual act
But allegations can't be used as fact
So, not me, I ent touching that.

Something happen along the way, now self-respect seem to have little value
This is madness, madness, this is madness, total madness!
Something happen along the way, when intellect cannot resolve an issue
This is madness, madness, this is madness, total madness!

What's going on in my country, lord?
Tell me what is wrong, I want to know.
The disrespect, the contempt, decent people cannot cope
Even the judiciary losing hope
In the battle against the crime and dope.

[This is madness, this is madness]

They could make the case, here was Paradise
And no other place on earth was so nice
On land or sea or foam,
Once your navel string did bury here
You did must come back home...Uhumm
The living was easy, now thing get so tense
The reason is clearly too much violence
I say the wicked and the evil
Intimidates and terrorises the decent people...Aha
But the oil and the other resources still doing well
Carnival, calypso and steelband still weave a spell
But is heart rending when you realise the fear you can't dispel
What was once a paradise, nowadays is just a living hell.

Something happen along the way, now dignity seem to be sick and forlorn
This is madness, madness, this is madness, total madness!
Something happen along the way, integrity is all but over and done
This is madness, madness, this is madness, total madness!

What's going on in my country, lord?
Tell me what is wrong, I want to know.
Why we cast aside intelligence and abandon common sense?
With unprecedented violence for which there is little defence.

[This is madness, this is madness]

The sorrow and the pain revealed in this song
By the things that I saying, I wish I was wrong
Because you must admit that it don't make sense
To wash your dirty linen in public
Tell me where to hide it?
Mamaguism have to stop, so take my advice
Is time to wake up and open your eyes
Bring back the good old days,
Let the lord be praised and leave the devil and his wicked, evil ways.
The nation's youth must know they mustn't stop trying
So talk the truth with them and stop all the lying
Leaders must be circumspect and guidance must be shown
The youths must use their intellect for a happy future of their own

Something happen along the way, for the unrighteous is now the rich and famous
This is madness, madness, this is madness, total madness!
Something happen along the way, the protective force is no example to us
This is madness, madness, this is madness, total madness!

What's going on in my country, lord?
Tell me what is wrong, I want to know.
The wickedness is widespread, even babies won't be spared
Murderers cutting off head and the citizenry running scared.

[This is madness, this is madness]

Lord, put a hand... save the nation!

[This is madness]

Source: The lyrics posted on this blog are often transcribed directly from performances. Although it is my intention to faithfully transcribe I do not get all the words and I have a knack for hearing the wrong thing. Please feel free to correct me or to fill in the words that I miss by dropping me a message via e-mail. I'd be forever grateful. Thanks in advance!
..............................................................................................................................




A Note From The Gull


Thank you, Mighty Sparrow. These days, it is the deceit that is blowing my mind and the result, whether intended or unanticipated by those who seem unable to function without its cloak, will be the perpetuation of all the ills in our society of which you speak.

"Patria est communis omnium parens" - Our native land is the common parent of us all. Keep it beautiful, make it even more so.

Blessed is all of creation
Blessed be my beautiful people
Blessed be the day of our awakening
Blessed is my country
Blessed are her patient hills.

Mweh ka allay!
Guanaguanare

Cruz De Mayo As Celebrated in Trinidad and Tobago.


Uploaded by alexcaracas69


CRUZ DE MAYO
By Lilia Vera
[For the chords for this song, see El Cuatro Venezolano.]

Vengo a cantarle a la Cruz de Mayo, desde los campos del otro lao'
Donde mi negro me da cerezas, y donde crece lindo el cacao.
Olero lei leilola, Santísima Cruz de Mayo, Olero lei leilola
Yo vengo a cantarte ahora, yo vengo a cantarte ahora,
Con la voz que Dios me puso.
[Olero lei leilola, Santísima Cruz de Mayo, Olero lei leilola]
Con permiso a los presentes, con permiso a los presentes,
Y en especial las señoras.
[Olero lei leilola, Santísima Cruz de Mayo, Olero lei leilola]
Yo te pido Cruz bendita, yo te pido Cruz bendita,
Oye mi canto, mi ruego.
[Olero lei leilola, Santísima Cruz de Mayo, Olero lei leilola]
Yo te pido Cruz bendita, yo te pido Cruz bendita,
Que nos libres de la guerra.
[Olero lei leilola, Santísima Cruz de Mayo, Olero lei leilola]
Y que le digas a Dios, y que le digas a Dios,
Que le de paz a la Tierra.
[Olero lei leilola, Santísima Cruz de Mayo, Olero lei leilola]
Santísima Cruz de Mayo, Santísima Cruz de Mayo,
Oye mi canto, mi ruego.
[Olero lei leilola, Santísima Cruz de Mayo, Olero lei leilola]
Que la lluvia bañe el campo, que la lluvia bañe el campo,
Y de sus frutos la Tierra.
[Olero lei leilola, Santísima Cruz de Mayo, Olero lei leilola]
Santísima Cruz de Mayo, Santísima Cruz de Mayo,
Oye mi canto, mi ruego.
[Olero lei leilola, Santísima Cruz de Mayo, Olero lei leilola]
Llena de flores mis campos, llena de flores mis campos,
Para adornar tus floreros.
[Olero lei leilola, Santísima Cruz de Mayo, Olero lei leilola]
Yo vengo a cantarte ahora, yo vengo a cantarte ahora,
Con la voz que Dios me puso.
[Olero lei leilola, Santísima Cruz de Mayo, Olero lei leilola]
Con permiso a los presentes, con permiso a los presentes,
Y en especial las señoras.
[Olero lei leilola, Santísima Cruz de Mayo,
Olero lei leilola, Santísima Cruz de Mayo,
Olero lei leilola, Santísima Cruz de Mayo,
Olero lei leilola, Santísima Cruz de Mayo,
Olero lei leilola, Santísima Cruz de Mayo,
Olero lei leilola, Santísima Cruz de Mayo,
Olero lei leilola.]


CRUZ DE MAYO
The Fiesta de las Cruces ("Festival of the Crosses") or Cruz de Mayo ("May Cross") is a holiday celebrated 3 May in many parts of Spain and Hispanic America. [See Wikipedia entry]


May Cross 2009 / el Velorio de la Cruz de Mayo 2009
/ la Vigile de la Croix 2009 / vye kwa 2009



Uploaded by ricardusfilipus

According to Sylvia Moodie-Kublalsingh, in her 1983 article "Survival of Hispanic Religious Songs in Trinidad and Tobago." in Caribbean Quarterly 29 (1) : 1-31, in Trinidad, Spanish-speaking Trinidadians celebrated velorios or vigils several times a year on the eve of the most important religious feast days of their calendar and one of the most prominent velorios was that held on the third of May [Velorio de Cruz].

Quoting from Moodie-Kublalsingh's article:
--p. 19
"The altar, set up in a private house, was adorned with fruits, candles, flowers and sacred objects. Juanita Rodriguez, one of our informants, described the preparations for the velorio in this way:

"Yo, como ama de la crúz, tenía que preparado todo. Tenía gente pa coltal bambú, pa rajá ese bambu, pa raja ese bambú y limpiallo bien. Este es el principio del altal. Usté tiene que tenel papel de colol, tiene que tenel flore y cuadro de santos y siete escalone, cada uno máh chiquito. Esa cruz ehtá ayí vestidita de oro como una reina. En el altal tiene usté velas, rosas, flores silvestres, fruta y un platiyito con el agua bendita y una escobiya dentro. Pa empezal el velorio usté se pone a rezal el rosario, despué se toma café y se canta décima. A media noche se reza el rosario otra vuelta, se bebe café y se toma guarapo. Si se quiere comel, se come pastel arroz con frijol y otra comida buena. Se canta pol toa la noche hasta las seis de la mañana, la ama de la Cruz tiene que dil bajando la Cruz de escalón pol escalón. Ahora ya no se canta décima, se canta la malagueña, que es una música alegre. Se sale de la casa y todo el mundo va en derredol de la casa canatando y bailando. Despúes se escoge la madrina y el padrino pa el otro año, Si la ama de la Cruz está enfelma y no puede asistil, se pasa a la madrina."

(The text is not a phonetic transcription of the informant's words, but an attempt to convey the general impression of the sounds of the dialect.)

[Translation: I, as ama de la crúz, had to prepare everything. There were people to cut bamboo, to split this bamboo and clean it well. This is the start of the altar. You have to have coloured paper, have to have flowers and pictures of saints and seven steps, each one smaller. This cross is dressed in gold like a queen. On the altar you have candles, roses, wildflowers, fruit and a little saucer with holy water and a broom inside. To begin the velorio you start to recite the rosary, then coffee is drunk and the decima is sung. At midnight they pray the rosary another time, coffee and guarapo are taken. If you want to eat, you can eat pastel, rice and beans and other good food. Singing goes on throughout the night until seven o' clock in the morning, the ama de la crúz takes down the cross from the altar step by step. The décima is no longer sung, the malaguena, a cheerful music, is sung. The house is exited and everyone goes around the house singing and dancing. After the godmother and godfather are chosen for the other year. If the ama de la crúz is ill and cannot assist, it passes to the godmother.]
"Some families celebrated the velorio for generations as a manifestation of their devotion to a special saint who protected them from harm. Other individuals made a promise to host a velorio for a certain number of years in return for favours granted by a

--p. 20
saint. An element of superstition was present in the religious exercise for most 'payols' considered that unfulfilment of the promise brought ill luck to the individual and his family.

The velorio can be divided into four major activities:
(i) prayers
(ii) singing
(iii) eating and drinking
(iv) dancing

Devotees usually recited the rosary, litanies and various other prayers in Spanish. The music of the velorio was the octosyllablic décima but other aguinaldos and religious songs were also sung. The melody was the galerón which is known by very few people today. Characteristic of the galerón is the 2 x 4 independent melody which accompanies the soloist. It uses a combination binary and ternary beats and successive tonic-subdominant-dominant keys. The soloist chants the décima, the text of which is always religious and mystical. Few décimas are available at present and these are very fragmented. In some cases these décimas are a combination of octosyllabic quartets in which two lines are repeated.

At least two pauses were made for drinking coffee and eating foods such as rice and peas and pastel. At six o' clock in the morning the Cross was lowered from the altar, the malagueña, a lively tune, was now played instead of the mournful décima. Everyone danced around the house and the madrina and padrina of the velorio were chosen for the following year. This was usually done to ensure that there was someone responsible each year for arranging the velorio. The Cross was kept by the 'ama de la Cruz', ususally a woman who made sure that the Cross or other important images were safe from harm and who was also the chief organizer of the velorio.

Licencia pido, señores,
para principiar a cantal
y para así yo saludal
y para así yo saludal
a la Santa Cruz de Mayo
¡Qué bonito está el altal¡
Más bonito está el que lo hizo,
más bonita está la santa
sentida en su paraíso,
sentada en su paraíso.

(Give me leave, ladies and gentlemen,
to begin my song
and to bow
to the holy Cross of May.
What a beautiful altar!
More beautiful though is the person who made it.
The saint is even more beautiful,
seated in his paradise.)

Al pie de su helmoso altal
el nuestro Dios en persona
encontró a una paloma
y no le hizo ningún mal.
A los hombres castigó
pol vendel el camposanto
Como el lugal era sacro.

--p. 21
el ave mandó a quital
Pintó por la humildad
y el Espíritu Santo.

(Our God found a dove
at the foot of your beautiful altar
[and did him no harm].
He punished the men for selling
the burial ground.
since it was a sacred place
he had the bird removed,
He painted with humility
and by the Holy Spirit.)

De la arca de Noé
la paloma se escapó
Saltó y volando se fué
A los siete dias volvió
La otra, como eran dos
se quejaba el velse sola
entre las humildes aves
de las tierras y las mares:
no hay como la paloma.

(The dove escaped from Noah's ark.
it jumped out and went flying away.
After seven days it returned.
The other one, there were two of them,
became plaintive on seeing that
it was alone.
Of all the birds over land and sea,
the dove, the humblest of all.)

La humildad ha amado tanto
el Rey de la eterna gloria;
formó el Espiritu Santo
en forma de una paloma;
entre florecitas y hojas,
siempre buscando consuelo.
va volando por el campo
por el sustento de la vida
tan humilde y alecida,
aunque tan triste su canto.

(The King of eternal glory has
loved humility so much,
he gave the Holy Spirit
the form of a dove;
seeking solace among flowers and leaved,
it flies through the countryside
and sings a sad song.)

En la mesa hay cuatro rosas
y con la gracia divina
el padrino y la madrina
el esposo y la esposa.
Qué cosa tan misteriosa
y punto tan asentao;
cuatro son, pongan cuidao
y dos que vengan ahora:
Maria nuestra Señora
y Jesus Sacramentao.

(On the table there are four roses
and with divine grace,
the Godfather and the godmother,
the husband and the wife.
What a mystery!
There are four of them
and two more are coming:
Our Mother Mary
and the Sacrament of Jesus.)

Y al Viernes Santo a mediodía
todo se quedó en silencio
adorando al Sacramento
Cuando le vieron boquiar
las campanas s han parado

--p. 22
y el pueblo en gran tristeza
dice la madre Pureza:
se ha muerto mi Hijo querido.

[And on Good Friday at midday
everybody silently
adored the Holy Sacrament.
When they saw him breathe his last,
the bells stopped ringing
and the people were full of sorrow.
Mother Purity said:
My beloved Son is dead.)

(Décimas sung by Regino Noriega)

The following is a complete décima with its gloss. The theme, taken from the afore-mentioned story of Christ by Perez Escrich, is about Samuel, the owner of one of the inns where the Holy Family were denied entry. This décima was composed by Ciprián Ruiz of Lopinot.

¿A quién le contaré yo
lo que a mí me está pasando?
Se lo contaré a la tierra
cuando me la esté echando.

(To whom will I tell this story
about what happened to me?
I will tell this story to the earth
When it ejects me.)

Cuando Samiel tomó el báculo
y marchó sin dilación
para su eterna mansión
sin ponel ningun obstáculo
y sin detenelse un rato,
siempre su marcha siguió
Y porque detrás oyó
una voz que le llamaba
solo entre sí murmuraba
¿A quién le contaré yo?
La voz que se oyó
que le decía: "Andá, andá",
era que la trastornaba
Después de allí salió
Cuando a su casa llegó
un niño le estuvo hablando
y esté le dijo llorando
"Andá, andá, Belibel"
Dijo él "¿Quien podia sabel
lo que a mí me está pasando?"

(When Samiel took the rod and went to his eternal mansion,
with no obstacle in his way
and without making a stop,
he continued on his way.
And when he heard a voice calling him,
he muttered; whom will I tell my story to?
The voice he heard saying, "Go away, go away"
disturbed him.
When he got home a child spoke and said in tears
Go away, go away, Belibel.
He said: Who knows what is happening to me?)

Este niño no contaba
doce meses de nacido
y era su querido hijo
que de ese modo la hablaba.
Samiel no contestó nada
Siguió luego a una pradera
diciendo de esa manera:
¿Quién te pudiera contar?
Cuando yo deje de andar
se lo contaré a la tierra

(The child was not even twelve months old
the child was his beloved son
Samiel did not answer, he went out to a meadow and said
Who could tell you?
When I stop walking I will tell it to the earth.)

--p. 23
Después de allí salió Samiel
y pasó para un cemiterio,
y los mueltos le dijeron
"Andá, andá, Belibel"
El se quiso detenel
Siguieron los mueltos hablando
De allí se fue triste y pensando:
Con esta destinación
del cielo la bendición
cuando me la estén echando.

(Afterwards Samiel
went to a cemetery, and
the dead told him; Go away, go away, Belibel
He wanted to stop,
the dead bodies kept on talking to him
He left there in sadness and thought
with this destiny and the blessing of heaven,
when the earth ejects me.)

(Décima recited by Ciprian Ruiz)

SOURCE: Moodie, Sylvia (1983) "Survival of Hispanic Religious Songs in Trinidad and Tobago" in Caribbean Quarterly, Vol. 29 (1), pp. 1-31

Clarita Rivas and others at Cruz de Mayo/May Cross, 2011,
Lopinot, Trinidad
.


Uploaded by nunesie2

Paul Hernandez and others at Cruz de Mayo/May Cross, 2011,
Lopinot, Trinidad
.


Uploaded by nunesie2
This video features Paul Hernandez singing Rio Manzanares in Lopinot, Trinidad during the festivities for Cruz de Mayo. Next to him playing the cuatro is Clarita Rivas, Trinidad's first ever Parang Queen.

Levante, levante!! Raise up, raise up, raise up!!!!!

I love Paul Hernandez's rendition of the song Río Manzanares. It is said that this song originated in Cumana in the state of Sucre in Venezeula, and was brought to Trinidad by our Spanish ancestors. It remains one of the most appreciated and most frequently performed Hispanic songs in Trinidad and Tobago. El Cuatro Venezolano provides an account of how the song got its name:
"El Río Manzanares, en Venezuela, tiene origen en la Serranía del Turimiquire, a 2.200 metros sobre el nivel del mar, y después de recorrer 80 km y de irrigar una cuenca de casi 1.000 km², desemboca en el Golfo de Cariaco.
El origen del nombre lo tiene en que los conquistadores españoles decidieron darle el nombre del río que atraviesa Madrid, la capital de España.
Pasa por las ciudades de Cumaná y Cumanacoa , que impactan negativamente en la calidad y cantidad del agua, debido a la presencia de industrias, núcleos urbanos legales e ilegales, zonas agrícolas y zonas de extracción de arena, haciendo peligrar tanto la flora como la fauna."
Source: El Cuatro Venezolano
Manzanares River in Venezuela has its source in the Serrania of Turimiquire, at 2,200 meters above sea level. It flows after 80 km into the Gulf of Cariaco. The river irrigates a basin of almost 1,000 sq km.

The name was given to this river by Spanish conquerors who name the river in Cumana after the Rio Manzanares that runs through Madrid, in their homeland of Spain.

The Manzanares river runs through the cities of Cumana and Cumanacoa and this has impacted negatively on the quality and quantity of water due to the presence of industries, urban centres, both legal and illegal, agricultural areas and areas of sand mining, jeopardizing both the flora and fauna.

Cruz de Mayo/May Cross, 2011, Lopinot, Trinidad.


Uploaded by nunesie2

Cruz de Mayo/May Cross, 2011, Lopinot, Trinidad


Uploaded by nunesie2


Cruz de Mayo/May Cross, 2009, Lopinot, Trinidad - Part 1


Uploaded by ricardusfilipus

Cruz de Mayo/May Cross, 2009, Lopinot, Trinidad - Part 2


Uploaded by ricardusfilipus



Excellent, excellent work by Maria Nunes and ricardusfilipus! Muchas gracias por amar la cultura! Thanks to Max Forte for directing me to these videos.
..............................................................................................................................
"Patria est communis omnium parens" - Our native land is the common parent of us all. Keep it beautiful, make it even more so.

Blessed is all of creation
Blessed be my beautiful people
Blessed be the day of our awakening
Blessed is my country
Blessed are her patient hills.

Mweh ka allay!
Guanaguanare

Paradise? [Song]



PARADISE?
By 3CANAL

Heya Heya Heya-Heya-Heya
Heya Heya Heya-Heya-Heya
Heya Heya Heya-Heya-Heya

Hear mih Amerindian spirits calling [Heya Heya Heya-Heya-Heya]
Hear them Amerindian spirits calling [Heya Heya Heya-Heya-Heya]
Hear mih Amerindian spirits calling [Heya Heya Heya-Heya-Heya]
Hear mih Amerindian spirits calling [Heya Heya Heya-Heya-Heya]

A surf rise up deep in the ocean [Heya-Heya-Heya]
Loaded with Amerindian potion [Heya-Heya-Heya]
Come to bring the healing tide
And resurrect them ancient tribes
But something blocking the vibes. Yes!
Something just blocking the vibes. Why?
'Cause buildings filling the skies
A people dying for another to rise
Black gold and crimson tides
Is this Paradise?

Some say that we lost [Paradise]
Some say that we live in [Paradise]
Some say, well if this is [Paradise]
Good God, where the hell is [Paradise?]
Some say that we lost [Paradise]
Some say that we live in [Paradise]
Some say, well if this ain't [Paradise]
Good God, where the Hell is [Paradise?]

Paradise, oh-oh, oh-oh, leh we go, oh-oh, to Paradise
Oh-oh, oh-oh, leh we go, oh-oh, to Paradise
Oh-oh, oh-oh, leh we go, oh-oh, to Paradise
Oh-oh, oh-oh, leh we go!

Some say we lost, blown off course, help we find we bearings today
Some say we lost in a fog, lost at sea, we can't see we way
Lost, way off course, help we find we way back today
Lost, hopeless cause, help we, father, help we today.

Some say that we lost [Paradise]
Some say that we live in [Paradise]
Some say, well if this is [Paradise]
Good God, where the hell is [Paradise?]
Some say that we lost [Paradise]
Some say that we live in [Paradise]
Some say, well if this ain't [Paradise]
Good God, where the Hell is [Paradise?]

Paradise, oh-oh, oh-oh, leh we go, oh-oh, to Paradise
Oh-oh, oh-oh, leh we go, oh-oh, to Paradise
Oh-oh, oh-oh, leh we go, oh-oh, to Paradise
Oh-oh, oh-oh, leh we go, leh we go, leh we go!

Some say we lost,
Some say we lost in a fog
Some say we lost, way off course, help we find we way back today
some say we lost
Lost, hopeless cause, help we, father, help we today.
Some say that we lost.

Long time they call it town
Town now turn upside down. Oh-oh
Paradise it seems so faint
Them Amerindians done turn in dey grave
Long time they call it town. Ah-ah
Town now seem upside down. Wo-oh
Paradise it seems so faint
Them Amerindians done turn in dey grave.

Some say that we lost [Paradise]
Some say that we live in [Paradise]
Some say, well if this ain't [Paradise]
Good God, where the hell is [Paradise?]
Some say that we lost [Paradise]
Some say that we live in [Paradise]
Some say, well if this ain't [Paradise]
Good God, where the Hell is [Paradise?]

Paradise, oh-oh, oh-oh, leh we go, oh-oh, to Paradise
Oh-oh, oh-oh, leh we go, oh-oh, to Paradise
Oh-oh, oh-oh, leh we go, oh-oh, to Paradise
Oh-oh, oh-oh, leh we go, oh-oh, to Paradise
Oh-oh, oh-oh, leh we go, oh-oh, to Paradise
Oh-oh, oh-oh, leh we go, oh-oh, to Paradise
Oh-oh, oh-oh, leh we go, oh-oh, to Paradise
Oh-oh, oh-oh, leh we go!

Ga coo ma kak coo ma kak eee ke aa kee zoe mama
aa kee o kee aa gaa coo ma ka co ma kak coo ma tae zoe
Ga coo ma kak coo ma kak eee ke aa kee zoe mama
aa kee o kee aa gaa coo ma ka co ma kak coo ma tae zoe
Unde Taino [ah taa tun Taino]
Taino [ah taa tun Taino]
Unde Taino [ah taa tun Taino]
Taino [ah taa tun Taino]...

Source: The lyrics posted on this blog are often transcribed directly from performances. Although it is my intention to faithfully transcribe I do not get all the words and I have a knack for hearing the wrong thing. Please feel free to correct me or to fill in the words that I miss by dropping me a message via e-mail. I'd be forever grateful. Thanks in advance!
..............................................................................................................................





A Note From The Gull


Thank you, 3CANAL! I love the use of the maracas. So few are the times when our First Nations people are remembered and mentioned in our songs. We are not all turning in our graves though. We are still very much alive. Without knowing it, perhaps even you, whether rootstock or scion, will ensure the continuation.

But even on a deeper level, beyond genetics, if you embrace what is life affirming and nurturing in ALL our cultures, you will amplify and return the love that this land shows to us. This is the only way in which we will become truly native. We will also be Amerindian and fully OF this place. We will be all First Nation people.

It is what I was thinking about when we did reworkings of the National Anthem.

--------------------------------------------
REWORKING #2
Submitted by Guanaguanare



What do we know of liberty?
Paralysed by hope and fear
Like slaves to alien destinies
We want to fly from here.

Shipwrecked, still we stand
Staring at these Amerindian seas
This won't be OUR land
Until we learn to see
In every creed and race, the aboriginal face
Of the spirit of this nation
Here, by this Trindian place will we be embraced
When we ALL bless this nation.

"Patria est communis omnium parens" - Our native land is the common parent of us all. Keep it beautiful, make it even more so.

Blessed is all of creation
Blessed be my beautiful people
Blessed be the day of our awakening
Blessed is my country
Blessed are her patient hills.

Mweh ka allay!
Guanaguanare

"Carib Identity, Racial Politics, and the Problem of Belonging."


Carib Identity, Racial Politics, and the Problem of Belonging.
by Maximilian C. Forte
Department of Sociology & Anthropology
Concordia University
April 2011
Reproduced with author's permission.

[For presentation at the conference, “Our Legacy: Indigenous-African Relations Across the Americas,” organized by the Race, Ethnicity and Indigeneity Program and the Centre for Feminist Research, York University, Toronto, Canada, 29 April-01 May 2011. The version that follows was intended for oral presentation.]

The resilience of Carib identity, in places such as Trinidad & Tobago, is something remarkable, not to mention the renewal, resurgence, and social revalidation of this identity. This resilience is remarkable not only when one considers a consistent pattern of European colonial military onslaughts, enslavement, expropriation of lands, and social marginalization, but also the cultural stigma historically attached to Caribness, such that even surviving Caribs, and persons with indigenous ancestry, often sought refuge in other identities, and some still do. Even if left at this the situation is clearly a historically complex one. What renders matters even more complex is the pattern of racial thinking imposed by European colonizers through all sorts of residential and labour segregations and legislation, that would control and delimit who was deemed to be indigenous. The introduction of foreign labour from Africa, the French Caribbean, and Asia, added to the administration of identities and the “rights” which the colonial administrations would allot to them, added to administrators' calculations of different racial valuations, with the aim of shoring up colonial dominance. Afterward, the rise of nationalism, independence, and the emergence of party politics organized along an ethnic divide between Trinidadians of East Indian and African descent, further cemented racial thinking. Then the recent, positive validation of Carib identity and history by leading elements of the wider society has taken place while leaving unresolved the question of where Caribs fit in within the large scheme of racialized divisions between the country’s two leading groups, East Indians and Africans. Thus “belonging” becomes a problematic issue, and here I will focus on the racialization of Caribness in order to highlight how Caribs “belong” to “the nation,” as well as the problem of who gets to be defined as Carib.

Race: A Non-Indigenous System of Categorization

In thinking about race and Caribness, I should probably start by talking about how racial thinking about Caribness emerged in the first place, since such thinking is not itself rooted in the indigenous cultures of the Caribbean. Ethnohistorians have already indicated the tendency of island Caribs to acquire European and African captives from Puerto Rico and other territories, and amalgamating them into their society, culturally adopting and assimilating them. By some accounts, the Caribs of early sixteenth-century Dominica were already to some extent a cosmopolitan mixture of peoples, yet all assembled under the label of Carib and all engaged in the lifeways associated with island aboriginals. From this early point, in other words, there is no evidence to suggest that race, and racial purity, were either indigenous concerns or part of a philosophy rooted in indigenous culture. This is not suggest that Caribs could or would not find various ways to exclude others; rather, it is that they did not exclude others on a basis that we could in any way identify as racial. In the case of Trinidad specifically (Tobago largely lies beyond the scope of my work, and remained a separate colony until the late 1800s), we see a similar pattern of intercultural and interethnic amalgamation, between long-time Spanish settlers and indigenous inhabitants, in an underdeveloped colony long neglected by Spain. While there is no doubt that the indigenous population acquired some of the cultural practices and beliefs of their Spanish cohabitants, what is most often remarked upon is the housing, dress, and material sustenance of the Spanish settlers, as barely distinguishable from that of the aboriginals. This Spanish-indigenous fusion became formed to the extent that even today, many of those who could be called Carib, and who in different situations identify themselves as Carib, go by the ethnic label of “Spanish” or “Payol” (from Español). By the end of the Spanish colonial regime at the end of the 1700s, with Britain's occupation of Trinidad, and the arrival of French Caribbean planters and their slaves, ideas of racial hierarchy, exclusion, and concerns with purity then came to the fore.

The Colonial Administration of Race

Under British domination in the nineteenth century, and administering a territory remade into one that was predominantly an African slave colony, quickly followed by emancipation and the importation of indentured labourers primarily from India, we clearly see in government records, and in the writings of the local elites that produced the first historical and social commentaries on the island, a definite concern with assigning particular “kinds” of people—racial kinds—to particular commercial crops, in particular zones of the island, and under very different labour regimes. By this time, most of the surviving indigenous communities had been relocated and confined to missions run by the Catholic Church. Africans and then Indians were assigned to the production of sugar, while aboriginals were engaged in the cultivation of cocoa, coffee, and root crops (primarily for local consumption). For the first four decades of British rule, Africans were enslaved. Amerindians on the other hand were free labour. Both were confined populations: Africans confined on sugar estates, and Amerindians confined to missions. After the late 1830s, Africans moved off the plantations and formed the basis for an urban work force. East Indians who replaced Africans were also assigned to sugar estates in south and central Trinidad, and as indentured labourers their labour was coerced—until the end of their indenture contracts, when most opted to remain in Trinidad and acquired plots of land as part of their contract. Yet another group of free labourers came with a large influx of Venezuelan mestizo and Amerindians from the 1870s to the 1920s, who blended in with local Amerindians, and local mestizos (the so-called Spanish people of northwestern Trinidad)--and who by that time had been divested of their collectively-owned mission lands.

There were thus specific colonial conditions under which “Carib” was allowed to exist, for a time: to Caribness were attached rights to collective, inalienable land; nominally free labour; residential exclusivity; and, of course, the prospect of Christian redemption. Under colonial administration, these rights were relatively unique, and second only to those of the small white population. In this crucible, where the British ranked and scaled peoples according to their material rights and economic obligations, race became the favourite way to normalize and naturalize, and to ideologize identity.

Colonial Exclusions: Purity and Liberty, Land and Labour

Under the colonial regime, who got what was determined according to a finely graded scale of racial identity. Those who were white, and closest to being white, could expect property rights and ownership of their own labour, unlike African slaves, and unlike indentured East Indians. The “inferior peoples” were lower—as in subjugated and subordinated—in material terms, and kept that way for as long as practical, with the added injury of ideologizing their condition as one inherent to their natural biological properties. Keeping the races “pure,” thereby more effectively and efficiently administering who got what, was a paramount concern among the white ruling class. With white purity came white liberty. Obscurity (i.e. “mixture”) meant a decline into increasing “inferiority,” until a perverse new “purity” was designated: blackness and utter dispossession. No wonder then women, as gatekeepers to the next generations of offspring, became so critical to racial theorists and colonial legislators.

When it became desirable to dispossess the Amerindians of lands that were theirs, and were inalienable, the colonial project became one of defining them out of existence, so that their lands could be put up for sale. No purity meant no Amerindians which meant no Amerindian lands. Residence in the Mission of Santa Rosa in Arima was determined by race: mixed-race offspring were no longer bound to the mission and could not in the future lay any claim to the mission lands. It mattered not that they were raised by Amerindian mothers, and may have identified themselves as Amerindian, what mattered was their “racial mixture.”

From this point, writers began to produce various theories/myths of Amerindian extinction in Trinidad, that worked to bolster and justify the dominant order based on expropriating collective lands, further private property ownership, and realigning northwestern Trinidad with the increased demand in the world market for cocoa. As their land became more valued by private interests supported by the state, and with increased labour competition from new influxes of immigrant labour, smudging the Amerindian out of existence became opportune.

One of the dominant myths of extinction, wrapped in terms of the then dominant evolutionism, had to do with extinction via miscegenation, a purely racial argument. No “pure” Amerindian equals no Amerindian. One of my favourite quotes in this regard comes from an historiographic text published in 1858 with a lot of material about Trinidad’s aboriginal population (specifically: De Verteuil, L. A. A. 1858. Trinidad: Its Geography, Natural Resources, Administration, Present Condition, and Prospects. London: Ward & Lock, p. 172):

“At present there cannot be above 200 or 300 Indians in the colony, so that the aborigines may be said to be almost extinct….finally sunk under the ascendancy of a more intelligent race….but I also coincide in opinion with some judicious observers, who trace the approximate extinction of those tribes to the marked presence manifested by the Indian women towards the negroes and the whites, by whome they were kindly treated, whilst they were regarded by their husbands, of kindred race, more as slaves and beasts of burden, than as equals or companions. As a consequence of those connections, there exists at present, in the colony, a certain number of individuals of Indian descent, but of mixed blood.”

Mixed blood. Approximate extinction. The liberation of their women. The preference for men of other races. There it is, neat and simple, all in one mythological package.

The Rule of Race: National Independence and Party Politics

With Trinidad's achievement of self-rule in 1956, and eventual independence in 1962, the country witnessed the organization of political support along ethnic lines, with two parties traditionally vying for power, one dominated by urban African-descended Trinidadians, and the other by more rural, East Indian-descended Trinidadians, locked for decades now in a virtual Cold War.

Long in power, the African dominated People's National Movement (PNM) cultivated patron-client relationships to ensure electoral support, and one of its clients was the Santa Rosa Carib Community in Arima, which it pushed toward formal incorporation and official recognition beginning in the mid-1970s. Members of the Carib community not only live in close proximity with Afro-Trinidadians, with Arima long a bastion of support for the PNM, but have also intermarried with them. This does not mean to say that one can never hear stigmatizing statements against Africans from members of the community, but then that would be true in an Afro-Trinidadian community as well. Those that seem most alien to members of the Carib community, especially the older generation, are East Indians—one going as far as scornfully referring to East Indians as “that other nation,” a strong statement which I had not before encountered in my time in Trinidad. Nonetheless, members of the Carib community have also intermarried with persons of East Indian descent.

To some extent, at least for some members of the older generation of Caribs (those over 50 years of age), “racial mixture” is a problem when it comes to asserting an identity as Carib. Commonly, they are forced to answer what is virtually an accusation, that they are not “pure.” For some, they take on the problem and accept its terms, repeating what are now the official rules of the society—the propaganda about racial purity—even while their everyday customary practice runs counter to the rules. What remains unsettled is Carib as a cultural identity, not a racial one, and it is extremely difficult to convince a Trinidadian audience that culture is not something that is “in the blood” and can be seen on one's face.

What Makes a Carib?

For most members of the older generation, a Carib is someone with proven ancestry to the Amerindians of Arima. Kinship matters foremost. Caribs are those you know as Carib, have always known to be Carib, and who were referred to by others as Carib. This seems relatively simple and unproblematic, except that it covers over the routine exclusions of those who were “too dark” to be considered “real” Caribs. It is still not uncommon to hear members of the community refer to someone, casually and informally, as a “true” or “pure” Carib, based entirely on that person's appearance. The concept of a “Black Carib” is a novel innovation for Trinidad, even if in St. Vincent it dates to the 1700s, and even though some members have Vincentian Carib ancestry.

One of the challenges of identity and belonging, taken up with greater vigor by the Carib community, is to realign Caribness with the practice, beliefs, and lifeways that mark indigenous belonging. This is a big challenge to the dominant way of understanding identity, one that may contribute to efforts elsewhere in the society to overcome race by transcending it. While some members of the community told me that a Carib is someone with a specific genealogy, others also held that Carib is something one feels, a sense of being rooted here, or being totally at home in the nation's forests, mountains, rivers, and beaches—where there is no other place that beckons.

Everyone Has Some Carib in Them

Rather than simply leave things at “Caribs are mixed with,” say, Africans, spokespersons for the Carib community have tried to take their discourse further, by flipping the direction of the narrative of mixture. Capitalizing on an institutionalized discourse of national identity, national belonging, and official depictions of Trinidad as a mixed, cosmopolitan, or creolized society, Carib spokespersons will not deny that they are an amalgam of the wider society's multiethnic influences—instead, they will assert that there is, as a result, “some Carib blood” in everyone else. The late Elma Reyes, a research and public relations officer for the Santa Rosa Carib Community wrote an extensive newspaper article that argued this very point. Carib Breweries, which appropriated the name of the people, and for a while even funded the Carib community, subsequently used this phrase as a marketing slogan. Culture is still objectified as race, as a biological essence, but at least the diminishing zone of exclusion around Carib identity is disrupted. Rather than argue in terms of “decline,” now the argument is about diffusion and dissemination, about the rural lifeways of many Trinidadians, East Indians and Africans, having been shaped and influenced by those of the Caribs, and thus perpetuated. Rather than extinction via miscegenation, this is survival via miscegenation. The problem remains one of arresting common, everyday, and taken for granted practices, and reassigning a Carib label to them.

Bibliography

Brereton, Bridget. (1981). A History of Modern Trinidad 1783-1962. London: Heinemann.

Bullbrook, J. A. (1960). The Aborigines of Trinidad. Royal Victoria Institute Museum, Occasional Papers No. 2. Port of Spain: Royal Victoria Institute Museum.

Bullbrook, J. A. (1940). The Ierian Race. (A lecture delivered at the meeting of the Historical Society of Trinidad and Tobago held in the hall of the Victoria Institute on Friday Evening 8:30 o’clock 3rd March, 1939). Port of Spain, Trinidad: Historical Society of Trinidad and Tobago.

Burnley, William Hardin. (1842). Observations on the Present Condition of the Island of Trinidad, and the Actual State of the Experiment of Negro Emancipation. London: Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans.

De Verteuil, L. A. A. (1858). Trinidad: Its Geography, Natural Resources, Administration, Present Condition, and Prospects. London: Ward & Lock.

Forte, Maximilian C. (2006). “Extinction: Ideologies Against Indigeneity in the Caribbean.” The Southern Quarterly, 43 (4), Summer: 46-69.

Hulme, Peter. (1992). Colonial Encounters: Europe and the Native Caribbean 1492-1797. London: Routledge.

Moodie-Kublalsingh, Sylvia. (1994). The Cocoa Panyols of Trinidad: An Oral Record. London: British Academic Press.

Newson, Linda. (1976). Aboriginal and Spanish Colonial Trinidad: A Study in Culture Contact. London: British Academic Press.

Ottley, C. Robert. (1955). An Account of Life in Spanish Trinidad (From 1498-1797). 1st ed. Diego Martin, Trinidad: C. R. Ottley.

Wood, Donald. (1968). Trinidad in Transition: The Years After Slavery. London: Oxford University Press
...............................................................................................................................
"Patria est communis omnium parens" - Our native land is the common parent of us all. Keep it beautiful, make it even more so.

Blessed is all of creation
Blessed be my beautiful people
Blessed be the day of our awakening
Blessed is my country
Blessed are her patient hills.

Mweh ka allay!
Guanaguanare

Naipaul Checks To See If His "Bitches" Are Listening...

Sweet little buttercup, I...

Our Lady Gaga of writers, Sir Vidiadhar Surajprasad Naipaul has a captive and predictable audience it seems. His latest depth charge, obviously meant to shake up the feminist lurkers and snoozing fans and haters alike, has proved successful. If one judges by the flurry and fury of comments [234 to date] in response to this article by Amy Fallon in The Guardian, UK, Naipaul has them properly schooled. I read it all shaking my head, caught between laughter and disbelief, thinking all the while, "Naipaul boy, yuh good. Shake mih han'."


"In an interview at the Royal Geographic Society on Tuesday about his career, Naipaul, who has been described as the "greatest living writer of English prose", was asked if he considered any woman writer his literary match. He replied: "I don't think so." Of Austen he said he "couldn't possibly share her sentimental ambitions, her sentimental sense of the world".

He felt that women writers were "quite different". He said: "I read a piece of writing and within a paragraph or two I know whether it is by a woman or not. I think [it is] unequal to me."

The author, who was born in Trinidad, said this was because of women's "sentimentality, the narrow view of the world". "And inevitably for a woman, she is not a complete master of a house, so that comes over in her writing too," he said.

He added: "My publisher, [See his publisher's response] who was so good as a taster and editor, when she became a writer, lo and behold, it was all this feminine tosh. I don't mean this in any unkind way."....

[See Julia Barclay's 'V.S. Naipaul can go eff himself and 'I don't mean that in an unkind way']


..."The comments were dismissed by the Writers Guild of Great Britain, which said it would not "waste its breath on them". Literary journalist Alex Clark said: "Is he really saying that writers such as Hilary Mantel, AS Byatt, Iris Murdoch are sentimental or write feminine tosh?"

Literary critic Helen Brown described them as "arrogant, attention-seeking".He should heed the words of George Eliot – a female writer – whose works have had a far more profound impact on world culture than his."

So I had fun going against my own better judgment and happily wasting my time reading the comments that followed the article. Although there were those who defended Naipaul, here is a sampling of some of the negative, shorter comments:

"Delusional and Sick. A waste of space, this man."

"Them writers. They all mental."

"Ah what a total tool. There is nothing which belittles one's own work quicker than arrogance."

"What era is this man living in? Does he ring a bell when he's writing so the servants can bring him tea?"

"Silly old fart. Really, nothing else needs to be said."

"This man has been a known mega-misogynist for years. Best to just ignore him."

"Extra, Extra! misogynistic, wife beating writer has sexist views!"

"Naipaul's work reveals him to be, at heart, a neo-colonial apologist. That his attitude to gender is just as unenlightened should surprise no one. All this proves is that being a very good writer and being a prize berk are not mutually exclusive."

I particularly enjoyed the Mongoose-like response from belairkid. It echoed Walcott's famous poetic drop kicking of Naipaul in 2008.

belairkid
4 June 2011 3:54PM
And so it came to pass
This Naipaul
did hark deep
then spit
-a century it seemed-
on Africa shamed
and India bowed
to the delight and plaudits
of the bookish right
and guilty admiration
of a conflicted left
Til eleven years straight
past the century's end
on Austen grave
he shot his bile
(you get the picture)
and de white peole dem vex now
and start to change de channel
and call naipaul
Naipul
teef, harogant, hungrateful triniboy
to the delight of the long sufering blacks
and proud Asia's relief

sufficiently bathetic for Naipauls surprising and well deserved fall methinks"


What do I think? Well I know that Libya is fighting down to the ground for its sovereignty against the purveyors of "democracy", that the price of eggs is going up in Trinidad and Tobago, that dementia is also on the rise and that blissful ignorance is the goal of many including myself [of late and with some success]. I'd like to say that we should really be more judicious about how we use our time and energies BUT I wouldn't overreact to anything that Naipaul says. I would not completely dismiss his views.

As I have said elsewhere, the man is entitled to his opinions, opinions which obviously reflect the limitations of his life experiences. His wife, or some female, probably still prepares and serves his meals and cleans his home even if she has a full-time job outside. Those tasks take real time and effort, time that the master of the house may devote to digesting the treasures of "Le Monde Diplomatique" with a cup of tea and biscuits. It is a possibility that he has not had the opportunity to meet many women in his lifetime who are interested in and as knowledgeable about the same subjects which occupy his attention...probably because they are too busy preparing his meals and running households for him and other men like him.

Also, the truly brilliant people of both sexes seldom get much exposure as writers, speakers, teachers. The world's screens and texts and airwaves are clogged mostly by attention-craving garbage heads, including many, if not most, world leaders.

What did Naipaul actually say anyway? He has no female equals? Did he say that he has no female betters?
.......................................................................................................................................
"Patria est communis omnium parens" - Our native land is the common parent of us all. Keep it beautiful, make it even more so.

Blessed is all of creation
Blessed be my beautiful people
Blessed be the day of our awakening
Blessed is my country
Blessed are her patient hills.

Mweh ka allay!
Guanaguanare

2010 - T&T in "Hindus in South Asia & the Diaspora: A Survey of Human Rights, 2010."

2011-06-21 HAF's recommendations and the list of references have now been added below the extract. Several of the HAF's references links were outdated so I tried to update them all, If you encounter any dead links, let me know if you need to see the source.

The Human Rights Report 2010 of the Hindu American Foundation, "Hindus in South Asia & the Diaspora: A Survey of Human Rights, 2010" is now available.

The executive summary begins:
"The human rights of Hindu citizens are consistently violated in eight countries and one state in India where Hindus constitute a minority: Bangladesh, Bhutan, Fiji, the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir, Malaysia, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and Trinidad and Tobago. This report documents the ongoing violations of human rights in these countries..." Read more.

I have extracted the section on Trinidad and Tobago and the recommendations of the pasted them below:
Hindus in South Asia and the Diaspora:
A Survey of Human Rights 2010


Republic of Trinidad and Tobago
© CIA World Factbook

Area: 5,128 square kilometers

Population: 1,228,691 (July 2010 estimate)

Religions: Roman Catholic 26%, Hindu 22.5%, Anglican 7.8%, Baptist 7.2%, Pentecostal 6.8%, Muslim 5.8%, Seventh Day Adventist 4%, other Christian 5.8%, other 10.8%, unspecified 1.4%, none 1.9% (2000 census). Almost all Hindus are of Indian descent. Ethnic groups: Indian (South Asian) 40%, African 37.5%, mixed 20.5%, other 1.2%, unspecified 0.8% (2000 census)

Languages: English (official), Caribbean Hindustani (a dialect of Hindi), French, Spanish, Chinese

Location: Caribbean, islands between the Caribbean Sea and the North Atlantic Ocean, northeast of Venezuela cdxxi


Introduction


Trinidad and Tobago got its first female Prime Minister in 2010. She is Kamla Persad-Bissessar, 59, who is of Indian and Hindu descent. She heads a five-party coalition called

Republic of Trinidad and Tobago 106 © Hindu American Foundation 2011

the People’s Partnership that came to power in May 2010 ousting Patrick Manning, whose People’s National Movement (PNM) had ruled the country for five decades, backed by citizens of African descent. The new Prime Minister said she would make the country a successful multicultural society. Citizens of Indian descent, who had been marginalized, browbeaten, and sometimes terrorized by criminal gangs, now look forward to their rightful place in this multi-ethnic and multi-religious society. In a symbolic and substantial decision, the new leadership gave TT $1 million for the celebration of the Hindu festival, Diwali, whereas the previous government, the previous year had given just TT $10,000. The biggest Hindu/Indian celebration, which costs nearly TT $15 million, thus got a major boost. As the new Attorney General Anand Ramlogan said, “People think of Trinidad as a predominantly African country… We want to rectify this mis-perception. The majority is of Indian descent.” Previously there was “discrimination manifest in subtle ways,” he said, one of which was the allocation of state funding.cdxxii

Legally, the Constitution of Trinidad and Tobago guarantees the right to equality of treatment and freedom of religious belief and observance. Furthermore, the government limits the number of foreign missionaries allowed in the country to 30 per denomination at any given time. In response to wariness of a repeated colonial experience, missionaries must meet strict entry standards and cannot remain in the country for more than three years per visit. There are no reports of forced religious conversion. The Government supports the activities of the Inter-Religious Organization (IRO), an interfaith coordinating committee for public outreach, governmental and media relations, and policy implementation. It also provides the prayer leader for several official events, such as the opening of Parliament and the annual court term.

Ministers, Members of Parliament, and public figures represent every religious group and denomination and the broad spectrum of religious beliefs in the country. Religious groups possess the same rights and obligations as most legal entities, can own land, and hire employees.

The Government subsidizes both public and religiously affiliated schools. It permits religious instruction in public schools, setting aside a time each week when any religious organization with an adherent in the school can provide an instructor. Attendance at these classes is voluntary and the religious groups represented are diverse. Parents may enroll their children in private schools for religious reasons. As a result, there are thriving Hindu, Muslim, and Christian schools. The Government established public holidays for every religious group with a large following. The Government also grants

Republic of Trinidad and Tobago 107 © Hindu American Foundation 2011

financial and technical assistance to various organizations to support religious festivals and celebrations, including Indian Arrival Day.

This report differentiates between religious and racial discrimination. Discrimination against Hindus and racial tension between Indians and Afro-Carribean are evident. However, it is difficult to distinguish specific religious persecution given that 90% of citizens of Indian descent are Hindu. To honor accuracy in documentation, this report attempts to resist conflation.

Despite legal protections and the value of religious pluralism, Hindus (as Indians) in Trinidad and Tobago experienced discrimination in political representation, resource distribution, and employment opportunities. Social persecution and a lack of religious freedom were also issues faced by Hindus, and Hindus have been disproportionately targeted for physical violence and harassment.cdxxiii With Kamla Persad-Bissessar heading the new government, it is expected that the socio-cultural-political dynamic will see positive changes in the country.

Dr. Eric Williams, the country’s first Prime Minister referred to Indians as the “recalcitrant minority.” The racial and religious animosity between black (Christian and Muslim) and brown (Hindu, Indian) was exacerbated over the years and manifested particularly in the media and government. Prominent Hindu leader and Secretary General of the Hindu Maha Sabha, Satnarayan Maharaj, said in 2006: “This year marks 50 years since Trinidad and Tobago attained the right to internal self-government (1956- 2006). Out of this 50-year period an Indian-based political party held power for six years. The People’s National Movement (PNM) ruled for 30 consecutive years without appointing a single Hindu as a government minister. The cry of rural neglect, alienation, marginalization and discrimination affected the political psychology of Indians as they lost hope of ever winning a general election.” In the book, “The Indian Struggle for Justice and Equality against Black Racism in Trinidad and Tobago (1956-1962),” the author H.P. Singh wrote, “The 1956 election was won by the PNM headed by Eric Williams on the institution of a resurgent Negro nationalism. Since then, Indians in Trinidad have been subjected to all sorts of humiliations, degradation and ignominy by PNM racialism.” cdxxiv

In August 2008, High Court judge Herbert Volney is reported to have remarked, “You must be from the Christian right and must be seen to be involved whether as Chancellor, pastor, singer of all the psalms in the incantations of religious fervour.” He claimed that for a judge to climb to the Court of Appeal, “you must know your

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benediction and must be known for your piety.” In a nation where Hindus constitute 22.5% of the population, such statements provide evidence for the Christian-supremacist administration and governance in the country in the past six decades. cdxxv

In July 2009, opposition MP Tim Gopeesingh charged that the government was carrying out a policy of political discrimination that was targeting one particular ethnic grouping, meaning Indo-Trinidadians.cdxxvi In August, in an editorial, an Afro-Trinidadian, Selwyn Ryan wrote a scathing article condemning Gopeesingh’s statement.cdxxvii Ryan lamented the imbalance in the medical profession and concluded that the lack of trust and discomfort of the Afro-Trinidadian community was a “very good reason why, in a society such as this, it was inadvisable to have a health system in which 80-plus per cent of the doctors are of one ethnicity.” Indo-Trinidadians form the bulk of the doctors in Trinidad and Tobago. Devant Maharaj, chairman of the Indo-Trinbago Equality Councl (ITEC), responded that the Ryan editorial was selective and did not answer the systematic discrimination against Indo-Trinidadians in the areas of nursing, state housing, military, police, public service, and elsewhere. He argued that the number of Indo-Trinidadian doctors had neither to do with discrimination or design, but because they were there based on merit and education.cdxxviii What led to this exchange was the overt discrimination in the awarding of the position of consultant urologist. Dr. Fuad Khan, an Indo-Trinidadian, said he was bypassed for a senior consultancy position last year for “a less experienced Nigerian doctor” who was working under a senior urologist. He said that senior urologist and another East Indian doctor “were forced out of the hospital.”cdxxix

Trinidad and Tobago is described as a “plural society” since the islands’ population consists of two major ethnic groups: Africans make up approximately 39.6% of the country’s population, and South Asians (East Indians) make up roughly 40.3% of the population. On October 22, 1970 the Trinidad Express newspaper reported a recent study which stated, “[O]f the 100 employees of the Central Bank of Trinidad and Tobago, 84 were Afro-Trinidadians, 10 were Indo-Trinidadians, 3 were of Chinese descent, 2 were of Portuguese descent, and 1 was white.” This unequal employment situation was still in evidence in 1989, when the Trinidad Express published statistics on June 25 showing that of the total number of persons employed in all government organizations, 29% were Indo-Trinidadians. In the police force, Regiment of the Defense Force, Coast Guard, and Port Authority, respectively, the percentage of Indo-Trinidadians was 25%, 5%, 16%, and 6%. It is also important to note that according to Census data, Indo-Trinidadians at the time made up 40.3% of the country's population, while Afro-Trinidadians made 39.6%.”cdxxx The same report pointed out that so far as

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professional positions were concerned, Indo-Trinidadians reached and surpassed the equity ratio in the areas of medicine and finance, “but that the criteria for employment and advancement in these two areas was clearly technical skill,” supporting Devant Maharaj’s argument above.

In October 2009, Maharaj filed a constitution motion against the State challenging the failure and/or refusal to appoint a new Integrity Commission. The motion was filed in the San Fernando Supreme Court. In his affidavit, Maharaj referred to several letters ITEC had written the President complaining about the unsatisfactory state of affairs and suggesting prominent persons who should be approached to serve on the Commission. Maharaj was concerned that the President maybe perceived as part of a political conspiracy to protect the ruling PNM from further investigation into allegations of corruption and other matters.cdxxxi

History/Background cdxxxii

The Republic of Trinidad and Tobago is an archipelagic state in the southern Caribbean. The country consists of two main islands, Trinidad and Tobago, and 21 smaller islands. Trinidad is the larger and more populous of the main islands; Tobago is much smaller, comprising about 6% of the total area and 4% of the population.

Originally settled by Amerindians of South American origin at least 7,000 years ago, Trinidad and Tobago was occupied by Arawakan-speaking and Cariban-speaking peoples at the time of European contact in 1498. A history of slavery and indentureship has left the country with a population of African, Indian, mixed-race, European, Middle Eastern, and Chinese descent. All these groups have left a significant impact on the country’s national culture.

Britain consolidated its hold on both islands during the Napoleonic Wars and combined them into the colony of Trinidad and Tobago in 1899. As a result of these colonial struggles, Amerindian, Spanish, French, and English place names are all common in the country. African slaves and Chinese, Portuguese, Indian, and free African indentured laborers arrived to supply labor in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Emigration from Barbados and Lesser Antilles, Venezuela, Syria, and Lebanon also affected the ethnic makeup of the country. Trinidad and Tobago elected for independence in 1962. In 1976, the country severed its links with the British monarchy and became a republic within the Commonwealth.

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Trinidad and Tobago is a democratic republic. The Head of State is the President, and the Head of Government is the Prime Minister. The President is elected by an electoral college consisting of the full membership of both houses of Parliament. The Prime Minister is appointed by the President.

Political parties are generally divided along ethnic lines, with the People’s National Movement (PNM) supported primarily by Africans and the United National Congress (UNC) drawing its constituency largely from Indians. In the recent past, there have been three elections in three years contested by these two ethnic-based parties. The party lines are not completely polarized along racial lines. In most recent elections, the PNM fielded Indian candidates for election, while the main financial backer of the UNC is an Afro-Trinidadian.

In 2002, the PNM won with 51% of the vote thereby, replacing Panday with Manning as Trinidadian Prime Minister. Recent elections in November 2007 were also won by the PNM under Manning. PNM continues to play racial politics. In one editorial, Satnarayan Maharaj said that the Ministry of Culture spent some $4.4 million on “Emancipation Day Dinner” while only spending some $800,000 on Indian Arrival Day – with “Emancipation” acknowledging the arrival and slavery of people of African descent. He also pointed out that despite the PNM being in political office since 1956, Afro-Trinidadians continued to agitate for affirmative action and preferential treatment. “From secret scholarships to changes in admissions criteria at the university, the affirmative action programme continues,” he accused. Worse yet, the PNM continues to play the race card in creating fear among Afro-Trinidadians. Prof. Cudjoe, who spoke at the Emancipation Day dinner, warned of “turbulent times” for people of African origin “because they are now a minority in this country…If ethnic trends in voting continue, it is likely that in the next ten years we might see that same pattern that has emerged in Guyana in which the dominant group will hold power in perpetuity.” The same Cudjoe, in 2006, said, “So that all the turmoil that we see in our society today not only represents a relentless struggle on the part of the East Indians to dominate the society; it also suggests that the agents of their group are prepared to utilise any means—be they legal, political, academic or religious—to achieve ethnic dominance.”cdxxxiii

In the 2010 elections, the People’s Partnership won 29 seats and the PNM 12. The election was called two years ahead of time. During the PNM regime Trinidad and Tobago experienced high rates of crime and public corruption.cdxxxiv

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Status of Human Rights, 2010

In the past, Hindus in Trinidad and Tobago faced a multitude of human rights issues, including physical attacks, temple desecration, economic/political discrimination, and the inequitable distribution of government funds. The country continued to experience a high rate of crime. As many as 485 murders and four kidnappings were recorded in 2010. In January 2010, there were 44 murders. Government was blamed for lack of purpose and attention in controlling this high rate of crime.cdxxxv

Religious Freedom

Temples/Festivals
There are over 300 Hindu temples in Trinidad and Tobago. There have been recent incidents of vandalism and desecration of Hindu temples. The following includes recent examples of discrimination towards Hindu festivals, religious practices and places of worship.

According to a UNHCR report, in May 2009, students of a nondenominational public school in south Trinidad participated in a Hindu prayer service. The students planted symbolic flags on the school grounds appealing for success in their examinations. The Ministry of Education ordered school authorities to remove the flags. The decision of the Ministry offended some students and teachers, who declared that they would boycott classes and stand guard around the symbolic prayer flags. The school principal eventually removed the flags. More than half of the 1,500 student body is Hindu.cdxxxvi

Although there are several Hindu temples in Trinidad, Hindu temples were non-existent on the small island of Tobago. Until recently, the Tobago House of Assembly refused to allow the Maha Sabha to construct a mandir (temple) on land bought on the island. Churches were funded and the Assembly promoted a gospel concert on the island while refusing to fund a kirtan (Hindu religious concert).cdxxxvii Letters to Editors complaining about the overt discrimination against Hindus had little impact on the racist and bigoted assemblymen.cdxxxviii After a five-year struggle, the first Hindu mandir in Tobago finally began construction in the summer of 2007, with a $250,000 grant from the National Commission for Self Help Limited (NCSH).cdxxxix

Hindus have also faced challenges with religious festivals, including yearly Diwali celebrations and Ramleela (religious performance in honor of revered Lord Rama). The largest Diwali celebrations are held each year at the Diwali Nagar, Chaguanas, in Trinidad. This event has grown from a modest affair to an international fixture in the

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Hindu calendar, attracting Hindus from around the world. Each night, over a 14-day period, thousands of Hindus and non-Hindus congregate at this famous location to enjoy and participate in pujas (sacred rituals), concerts, art, craft and social activities. In 2006 and 2007, however, the police refused to provide additional security unless they were paid. During the first few nights when the police stayed away, several vehicles were stolen and vandalized. It was only after protests by Hindus that security was increased.

Furthermore, during the past few years, Ramleela festivities have been the targets of violence. For example, in 2005, vandals desecrated religious items and destroyed tents, props and fences used in Ramleela celebrations, as well as the sacred jhandi (flag to mark the completion of puja or worship ceremony) at McBean Village, Couva. Consequently, many Hindus were afraid of attending the celebrations at McBean.cdxl

In several parts of country, Hindus have even been prevented from holding Diwali and Ramleela celebrations. Recently, the head of the Sugarcane Feeds Centre refused permission for workers to hold their annual Diwali celebrations. And in another instance, Hindu police officers were prohibited from celebrating Diwali at their workplaces in South Trinidad.

Hindus complained of the reduction in state funding of the celebration of Holi. The state reduced funding from approximately $12,500 (TT$75,000) in 2007, to $10,000 (TT$60,000) in 2008 and finally to $800 (TT$5,000) in 2009. The group returned the 2009 grant in protest.cdxli

General Violence

Violence directed against Indians and Hindus is also not uncommon. Indians and Hindus are verbally and physically assaulted by mobs of non-Indians from neighboring villages and from the northern urban areas of Trinidad where the population is predominantly African. For example, the Hindus of Felicity were recently attacked by Afro-Trinidadians from the adjacent village of Boot Hill. The Hindu residents of Felicity were unable to commute to work and schools after Afro-Trinidadians from Boot Hill blocked the main road with piles of burning debris and broken bottles.cdxlii

Social Persecution

Societal discrimination against Hindus is also prevalent in several areas, including the portrayal of Hindus in the media. Hindus fear a systematized attempt to degrade

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Hindus in the media and exclude them from areas of influence.cdxliii For instance, photographs in tourism brochures depict Trinidad and Tobago as a nation whose population is predominantly of African descent. Indians are rarely represented in advertisements in radio, television, or print media.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which annually publishes a list of employees for service awards, routinely discriminates against citizens of Hindu and Indian descent. Moreover, the process itself for award granting is prejudiced. The highest award for public service in Trinidad is entitled the “Trinity Cross.” In a June 2006 comment, Attorney Anand Ramlogan said, “The Trinity Cross was perceived as a manifestation or symptom of what was, in substance if not form, a Christian state that tolerated non-Christians. It was a powerful psychological reminder of the fact that we were merely ‘tolerated.’ The objection was not purely religious; it had a political and psychological dimension. It had to do with the sense of belonging and being able to identify with the newly adopted motherland far away from India.”

The Maha Saba, a Hindu organization, along with a Muslim group, instituted legal action against the State regarding the use of the title “Trinity Cross.” In reference to the case, Justice Peter Jamadar, stated: “This general prohibition against non-discrimination thus prohibits laws that differentiate between people on the basis of their inherent personal characteristics and attributes. Such discrimination undermines the dignity of persons, severely fractures peace and erodes freedom. Courts will not readily allow laws to stand, which have the effect of discriminating on the basis of the stated personal characteristics.”cdxliv Unfortunately, no action has yet been taken on the removal of the title “Trinity Cross.”

In October 2009, the ITEC drew the attention the Minister of National Security and the Chairman of the Equal Opportunity Commission regarding the denial by the police to allow the annual Jahajee Massacre Walk that was scheduled for October 25, 2009. The Jahajee Walk, held over the past five years without incident, commemorates the Jahajee massacre of October 30, 1884. The massacre, also known as the Hosay Riots, took place during the annual Hosay procession in San Fernando. The British colonial authorities fired on a large procession of indentured laborers who had been previously barred from entering the town. Some 22 Indo-Trinidadians people were killed and over 100 were injured in the attack by British police.cdxlv

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Institutional Discrimination

Institutional discrimination against Hindus and Indians in Trinidad and Tobago is rampant and includes economic/political discrimination, inequitable distribution of government funds, and prejudice in the education system.

The courts stepped in regarding the discrimination against two Hindu-Indian teachers. High Court judge Maureen Rajnauth Lee found that the Education Ministry had discriminated against two teachers, Vijesh Mahadeo and Vashti Maharaj. They had applied for teaching posts, but were turned down on the basis that they were not suitably qualified. Mahadeo discovered that two persons with the same level of qualifications were hired instead. In Maharaj's case, she failed an assessment for a higher teaching rank, but a colleague of hers was successful even though the person was less academically qualified. The Education Ministry did not even come to court to challenge the case against them.cdxlvi

Hindus have also faced discrimination in their attempts to obtain a broadcast license for a Hindu radio station. The Sanatan Dharma Maha Sabha of Trinidad and Tobago (SDMS) was finally granted the license to broadcast as Radio Jaagriti on 102.7FM after a seven-year long legal battle. SDMS initiated their application in 1999, and it languished for seven years while the government awarded another group a radio frequency for its station. On July 4, 2006, SDMS was victorious in its appeal to the Privy Council based on the government’s consistent refusal to award the organization a radio license. In a landmark 19-page judgment, Lord Justice Mance said, “In light of the exceptional circumstances” of the discrimination, the Privy Council would order Trinidad and Tobago Attorney General John Jeremie to do all that is necessary to ensure that a license is issued forthwith to the Hindu organization. The State was also ordered to pay SDMS's legal costs in all the courts.cdxlvii In September 2009, the decade old discrimination case ended with an award to the Sanatan Dharma Maha Sabha of almost $3 million. The compensation was ordered in a September 22 order by Justice Ronnie Boodoosingh, who said, “What this case showed was discrimination, plain and simple.”cdxlviii

Economic/Political Discrimination
Despite compromising approximately 40% of the population, Indians are severely underrepresented in government sectors jobs, including the Protective Services, the Civil Service, State Companies, Statutory Boards and Commission, the High Commissions and Diplomatic Missions, the Central Bank and Board, and executive membership at decision-making levels of the State. This began to slowly change following 2002.

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One report found that Indians were “heavily under-represented, except in areas where merit and technical criteria must prevail, as in the judicial and professional sectors, where Indians were more than adequately represented.” For instance, prior data from the Service Commissions Department indicated that there are only 18 Indians serving as department heads in the nation, compared to 87 non-Indians, and there are no Indians on the executive of the police service or army.cdxlix

According to one observer, the “Indo-Trinidadian community is witnessing a ‘shock and awe’ programme with this state-sanctioned policy that directs significant state resources to one ethnic group at the exclusion of other groups. The lowering of qualifications for state employment, house padding, the establishment of the University of Trinidad and Tobago, the elevation of criminal elements to community leaders…are all examples of the programme conceived to push the Indian out of the space that is shared in Trinidad and Tobago.”cdl

Inequitable Distribution of Government Funds
For several years, the Sanatan Dharma Maha Sabha (SDMS) has sought to secure lands from the Tobago House of Assembly (THA) and the Ministry of Planning, Housing and the Environment for construction of a temple without success. The Maha Sabha has lands in the Carnbee area, but the THA declared that temple construction is prohibited in residential areas. SDMS pointed out that there is a Christian Church about 150 feet away from the land it possesses. They also pointed out that in other residential areas such as Bethany and Four Roads Bon Accord churches have been built recently.cdli

The Trinidad and Tobago government frequently discriminates against particular ethnic and religious groups in the distribution of public funds. In a recent Joint Select Committee of Parliament meeting, chaired by Independent Senator Parvatee Anmolsingh-Mahabir, the National Social Development Programme (NSDP), a State agency, was exposed for its blatant discrimination against Hindus, Muslims, Catholics, and Anglicans, while favoring predominantly Afro-Trinidadian Christian denominations. The Indo-Trinbago Equality Council (ITEC) also alleged discrimination in the distribution of land to Hindu religious groups. According to the Indo-Trinbago Equality Council (ITEC), the Tobago House of Assembly allocated land to the Baptist Church in order to build a place of worship and gave $9 million to fund the Gospel Fest, while the Hindu community in Tobago continued to be marginalized.cdlii

In addition, millions of taxpayers’ dollars have been spent on St Peter’s Baptist Church,

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the Jesus Elam Ministries, Febeau Open Bible, Revival Time Assembly, Gospelfest, and other small politically affiliated churches, while Hindu celebrations, such as Ramleela, have been denied adequate funding.cdliii

Indo-Trinidadians believe that there is an ethnic agenda in the Government’s distribution of the largesse of the State, including the allocation of public housing under the National Housing Authority (Home Development Corporation) and the disbursement of compensation following natural disasters, disproportionately benefiting Afro-Trinidadians. For example, $36 million was provided to flood victims from Port City and Toco, who received immediate help, while nothing was provided for south or central farmers – almost 100% of them Hindus - who lost millions in flood damage.cdliv

Educational Discrimination
Discrimination against Hindus is also present in the educational system. Although Hinduism is the second largest religion in Trinidad and Tobago, there are no sixth-form Hindu secondary schools to prepare students for university, while there are eighteen Christian and two Muslim sixth-form facilities. Moreover, “certain denominational schools are forcing all students to study the religion of the school, without introducing the appropriate religious instruction for students of other religions…The Ministry of Education needs to correct these discriminatory practices, especially in the denominational school,” said David Singh, a community leader, in a letter to the Trinidad Guardian Newspaper.”cdlv

In many primary and secondary schools and colleges, Hindu children are prevented from practicing their religion and debarred from wearing Hindu clothing, rakshas (protective amulet), and other symbols. For instance, in March 2008, Hindu high school students were prevented from wearing the raksha, “a Hindu religious symbol consisting of a colored string worn on the wrist during the performance of sacred rituals and removed within seven days after the prayers,” and were forced to remove them by school security guards. The Ministry of Education later apologized to the students.cdlvi

And in October 2006, an Anglican School in Fyzabad, South Trinidad withdrew permission previously granted to students for celebrating Diwali despite it being a national holiday. Students were also banned from wearing rakshas.cdlvii

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Violations of Constitution and International Law

Constitution of Trinidad and Tobago

Trinidad is a democratic state that “acknowledge[s] the supremacy of God [and] faith in fundamental human rights and freedoms.” Chapter 1 of the Constitution recognizes an individual’s right to “equality before the law” and freedom of religion, thought, and expression. It also guarantees the “freedom of the press,” although it does not expand upon what this freedom entails. Furthermore, the Constitution states that Parliament may not “deprive a person of the right to a fair hearing,” nor deprive a person of the right “to be presumed innocent until proved guilty according to law.”cdlviii Despite these protections, Hindus continue to experience attacks on their places of worship, government sanctioned discrimination and societal abuse.

Violations of International Human Rights Law

Trinidad and Tobago signed the UN’s International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination on June 7, 1967 and ratified it on October 4, 1973. Its accession to the UN’s International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights took place on December 21, 1978. The Trinidadian government has repeatedly violated these UN Covenants, however, by failing to protect its Hindu and Indian citizens and discriminating against them on ethnic and religious grounds.

Conclusion and Recommendations

Trinidad’s Constitution provides for “equality before the law” and freedom of religion. However, Indians and Hindus have faced systematic discrimination and harassment/abuse. With the change in government in 2010 and an Indian/Hindu heading the new government, it is expected that pressure will ease on the Indian/Hindu population. However, it is incumbent upon the government to pay attention to enforcing civil and criminal laws and to protect all citizens. Trinidadian leaders should discourage racial and religious stereotypes and hate speech; recognize Hindus and Indians as equal partners in the rule and governance of the nation; and distance themselves from Christian fundamentalists promoting Christianization of the government and hatred against Hindus and Hinduism.


RECOMMENDATIONS
[Taken from the Executive Summary]

REPUBLIC OF TRINIDAD AND TOBAGO

The country is a multi-ethnic, multi-religious island nation with Hindu Indo- Trinidadians and Afro-Trinidadians accounting for most of the population. Roman Catholics and Hindus make up the largest religious groups.

The racial and religious animosity between Afro-Caribbean and Indo-Caribbeans has been exacerbated over the years. Hindus are frequently subjected to discrimination, hate speech, and acts of violence.

Indo-Trinidadians have been systematically denied government benefits and employment in public sector jobs. Hindu institutions and festivals are subject to acts of violence and are denied equal access to public funds.

A new government, headed by Kamla Persad Bissessar of Indian descent, took office in May 2010. It is expected that nearly six decades of discrimination against Indo- Caribbeans will come to an end.

HAF Recommendations:

1) The United States should encourage the current Trinidad government to abide by the country’s Constitution and guarantee safety and security to Hindus and Indo- Trinidadians.

2) The Trinidadian government should practice parity and equality in government response to and support of various ethnic and religious groups.

3) Trinidad must do more to protect Hindus from violence, hate speech as well as racial and religious stereotyping. Furthermore, the government must safeguard Hindu temples from attacks.

4) The Trinidadian government must prosecute Christian fundamentalists who promote hatred against Hindus and Hinduism.


REFERENCES

cdxxi “Trinidad and Tobago,” CIA World Factbook, https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/td.html

cdxxii Kaufman, J.E. (November 17, 2010). “In Trinidad, an ascendant Hindu culture celebrates Diwali,” ArtInfo, http://blogs.artinfo.com/inview/2010/11/17/in-trinidad-an-ascendant-hindu-culture-celebrates-diwali/

cdxxiii http://jahajeedesi.com/ References 173 © Hindu American Foundation 2010

cdxxiv Maharaj, Sat (March 30, 2005). “The success of Indians,” The Trinidad Guardian, http://legacy.guardian.co.tt/archives/2005-04-04/sat.html

cdxxv Maharaj, D. (August 4, 2008). Letter addressed to Prof. John La Guerre, Chairman, Equal Opportunity Commission, Trinidad and Tobago.

cdxxvi “Indians being discriminated against in T & T,” (July 20, 2009), Stabroek News, http://www.stabroeknews.com/2009/news/stories/07/20/indians-being-discriminated-against-in-tt/

cdxxvii Ryan, S. (August 16, 2009). “A gaseous mixture of racial hyperconsciousness,” Trinidad and Tobago Express, Article available within this blog post at Trin: http://trin.typepad.com/main/2009/08/the-selwyns-drs-in-denial-drs-ignoramus.html

cdxxviii Maharaj, D. (August 24, 2009). “The Selwyns: Doctors in denial? Doctors Ignoramus?” TRIN, http://trin.typepad.com/main/2009/08/the-selwyns-drs-in-denial-drs-ignoramus.html

cdxxix Rambally, R. K. (July 19, 2009). “Khan: I am a victim of discrimination,” Guardian, http://test.guardian.co.tt/?q=news/general/2009/07/19/khan-i-am-victim-discrimination

cdxxx Bissessar, A. M. (Spring 2009). “Challenges facing senior public servants in a plural society,” Enrepreneur, http://www.entrepreneur.com/tradejournals/article/198412913.html

cdxxxi Maharaj, D. (October 7, 2009). “ITEC President sues AG over Integrity Commission.”

cdxxxii “Trinidad and Tobago,” Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trinidad_and_Tobago

cdxxxiii Maharaj, S. (August 13, 2009). “Twisting the truth,” Trindidad and Tobago Guardian, http://www.caribdaily.com/article/191713/twisting-the-truth/

cdxxxiv Hutchinson--‐Jafar, Linda (May 22, 2010). “Election gamble may backfire on Trinidad’s Manning,” Reuters, http://www.reuters.com/article/2010/05/22/us-trinidad-elections-preview- idUSTRE64L1J620100522

cdxxxv “Murder with impunity,” (February 1, 2010). Trinidad and Tobago Guardian, http://test.guardian.co.tt/?q=commentary/editorial/2010/02/01/murder-impunity

cdxxxvi UNHCR, “2009 Report on International Religious Freedom --Trinidad and Tobago,” http://www.unhcr.org/refworld/country,,,,TTO,4562d94e2,4ae860ff67,0.html

cdxxxvii Sat Maharaj, “Ethnic Agenda in Caroni,” The Trinidad Guardian, November 30, 2006, http://legacy.guardian.co.tt/archives/2006-12-04/sat.html

cdxxxviii “Letters to the Editor,” (July 21, 2006). The Trinidad Guardian, http://www.guardian.co.tt/archives/2006-07-21/letters.

cdxxxix Cupid, Karl E. (April 19, 2007), "Tobago to Get Its First Hindu Mandir," Trinidad and Tobago Newsday, http://www.newsday.co.tt/news/0,55704.html References 174 © Hindu American Foundation 2010

cdxl “Trinidad Hindus win battle to broadcast FM radio station,” NRI Online, February 08, 2007, http://www.nriol.com/content/snippets/snippet1104.asp

cdxli UNHCR, “2009 Report on International Religious Freedom --‐ Trinidad and Tobago,” http://www.unhcr.org/refworld/country,,,,TTO,4562d94e2,4ae860ff67,0.html

cdxlii http://jahajeedesi.blogspot.com/

cdxliii Sat Maharaj, Trinidad Guardian, August 2006

cdxliv Answers.com., The Trinity Cross Judgment, http://www.answers.com/topic/peter-jamadar

cdxlv Julien, J. (October 25, 2009). “Jahajee walk deemed illegal by police,” Trinidad and Tobago Express, http://www.seiell.com/wordpress/2009/11/jahajee-walk-deemed-illegal-by-police/

cdxlvi “Discrimination against teachers Vijesh Mahadeo and Vashti Maharaj,” (May 3, 2009), http://trinidad-tobago.blogspot.com/2009/05/discrimination-against-teachers-vijesh.html

cdxlvii “Trinidad Hindus win battle to broadcast FM radio station,” NRI Online, February 08, 2007, http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:F4_q6yDGK1cJ:www.nriol.com/content/snippets/snippet1104.asp+Trinidad+Hindus+win+battle+to+broadcast+FM+radio+station,%E2%80%9D+NRI+Online,+February+08,+2007&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=ca&source=www.google.ca

cdxlviii Charan, R. (October 4, 2009). “Big bucks for Mahasabha,” Trinidad News, http://www.trinidadexpress.com/index.pl/article_news?id=161540088

cdxlix http://jahajeedesi.blogspot.com/

cdl Sat Maharaj, Trinidad Guardian, June 8, 2006
http://legacy.guardian.co.tt/archives/2006-06-08/sat.html

cdli Maharaj, D. (December 5, 2008). Letter addressed to Prof. John La Guerre, Chairman, Equal Opportunity Commission, Trinidad and Tobago.

cdlii Ramjeet, Oscar, “Trinidad Equality Council Alleges Discrimination in Land Distribution,” Caribbean Net News, December 3, 2008, http://www.caribbeannetnews.com/trinidad/trinidad.php?news_id=12621&start=40&category_id=17

cdliii Minutes of the Senate, Trinidad and Tobago, March 08, 2005, http://www.ttparliament.org/hansard/senate/2005/hs20050308.pdf

cdliv Sat Maharaj, “Ethnic Agenda in Caroni,” The Trinidad Guardian, November 30, 2006, http://www.guardian.co.tt/archives/2006-11-30/sat.html

cdlv David Singh, St. Augustine, Trinidad, in a letter to the Trinidad Guardian newspaper http://legacy.guardian.co.tt/archives/2003-04-22/letters.html

cdlvi “Raksha Ban at School,” Trinidad Express, March 11, 2008. http://www.trinidadexpress.com/index.pl/article_news?id=161291478; State Department International Religious Freedom Report on Trinidad and Tobago, 2008, http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/irf/2008/108541.htm References 175 © Hindu American Foundation 2010

cdlvii “Letters to the Editor,” The Trinidad Guardian, November 2, 2006, http://www.guardian.co.tt/archives/2006-11-02/letters.html

cdlviii The Constitution of the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago, http://www.constitution.org/cons/trinidad.htm

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"Patria est communis omnium parens" - Our native land is the common parent of us all. Keep it beautiful, make it even more so.

Blessed is all of creation
Blessed be my beautiful people
Blessed be the day of our awakening
Blessed is my country
Blessed are her patient hills.

Mweh ka allay!
Guanaguanare