Rest In Peace, Daniel Guerra.

Daniel Guerra, May You Rest In Peace.

The Prime Minister’s letter to Daniel
Wednesday, March 2 2011

“Dear Daniel,

What can I say as a mother, grandmother and Prime Minister about the way your young innocent life was so brutally taken? What can any of us who grieve offer by way of explanation for this senseless, heartless, heinous act? But as unanswerable as these questions are, as deep as our grief is, as overwhelmed by outrage as we have become, there must be an appropriate response to the evil and depravity among us. Daniel, your brief sweet light will continue to shine in our hearts and souls, guiding and inspiring us to right the wrongs, your untimely death my son must become the rebirth of an entire nation filled with outrage and burdened by a collective conscience that each of us must get involved and play our part in redeeming your memory and that of others who have suffered a similar fate, all victims of indifference, insensitivity and deferred responsibility.

Daniel, as your life touched all those who knew you with love and laughter, so too your tragic uprooting will instill in each of us a resolve to redeem your memory. We will become our brother’s keeper, our neighbour’s nurturing friend, our children’s guardian angels, always, all over. If we have failed you in life we can only redeem your memory by making sure your death becomes a beginning of the end of the brutality that stalks our nation. Today, and for a long, long time Daniel the way you were taken away from us will remain as a painful national conscience of our failure to individually and collectively do enough or anything at all. Daniel, you’re everyone’s brother, Daniel, you’re everyone’s son, Daniel, you’re my own deep personal grief but you’re my firm resolve to ensure your death brings to life an entire nation; a chain reaction of indignation and insistence that we will not endure this again.

Daniel, in your name, I proclaim not as Prime Minister but as a mother and grandmother, the Daniel Decree, a simple but powerful intention shared by the large majority of our nation’s good, loving, law abiding and decent citizens to actively join in a national movement to effect a permanent social change in Trinidad and Tobago. The Daniel Decree is a dedication to defend our nation’s children in your memory and others like you who have been so cruelly taken from us. I intend to invite all the NGOs and religious organisations in the country to convene a meeting with the Commissioner of Police, Chief of the Defence Staff and other security personnel in attendance which I will chair.

The purpose of this gathering will be to identify both social and crime fighting solutions and to create a catalyst for change. Daniel, I know nothing we do now can turn back history but it must turn around the future you were denied. That is all I can say and no more that I can offer in your sweet loving memory.

May God Bless you and your Mom and each grieving member of our national family.

And may God Bless the renewal of our national commitment and efforts now.”

Thank you, Prime Minister.
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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

While Our Beds Are Burning...

Every time that I look at this photo above of little Leah Lammy, I have been arrested inevitably by something that she communicates with that expression in her eyes, her smile and her body language. Although she is only a child, there is a maturity in the way in which she has folded her arms to look directly at us. Have you seen it also? I am always left with the impression that Leah has assessed me, has measured me from head to toe and is now calmly, and without any rancour, awaiting my response, challenging me, with something that suggests the amusement of the infinitely wise, to do something, anything, to prove her wrong.

Day before yesterday, yet another of our children went missing. I believe that it is their desperate need to believe that there will be a happy ending that is making the police class this disappearance as a "possible" abduction. I stand firmly with them in their optimism but I want those on the ground to act like raging pessimists in the urgency with which this latest assault is addressed.


Daniel Guerra is eight years old, just like Leah was when she was kidnapped a little over two years ago. Daniel disappeared, like Tecia Henry and Marina Henry, while running an errand, something it seems that no child in this country should henceforth be allowed to do unless accompanied by an adult. As I read about this case, I was thinking of the blow that must have struck Daniel's family and then rippled outwards through all the families in Trinidad and Tobago that have experienced and are still experiencing what Daniel Guerra's family is now going through. I am trying to imagine what Daniel is experiencing. I am thinking about what all the victims went through. It is understandable that many of us want to turn away from this suffering.

While we understand that suffering is part of life, this particular suffering is completely avoidable because it is brought on deliberately by the pure wickedness of some of our brothers and sisters. It is infinitely worse than anything that nature could throw at us.

Life is good. Do not for one second lose sight of that. It is what we human beings make of it that is often beyond comprehension.

Forgive me if I am rambling but there are many thoughts running through my mind and for some reason, I do not want to take the time to organise them before writing.

Last night I fell asleep thinking about Daniel. I could not say for certain that he is lost to us or that it is all a big misunderstanding and he is safe somewhere with people who actually feel that they are doing what is best for him, but I lay awake seeing Gasparillo in my mind on the map and wishing that I could follow him wherever he was being taken. I was as overwhelmed as those who are now searching for him.

Trinidad, as tiny as it is, is not as tiny as a little child in the company of the wicked. Where in the world could he be by now? To the west and to the south are exit points to Venezuela and where else after that? I could only pray that someone among that crew would be a hero and decide to do the right thing. As soon as I got up this morning, I ran to the Internet to see if he had been found. I wondered if his family slept last night.

And Leah's expression continues to haunt me.

I look at her face. She is above all the madness. She is not asking, "When will you find me?" She is saying, "When will you people find yourselves?"

"Me Today, You Tomorrow" - By Shadow. See lyrics.
Great Spirit, bless Leah and Daniel and all our missing persons wherever they may be.
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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