CONTESTING THE PAST: NARRATIVES OF TRINIDAD & TOBAGO HISTORY

Author(s): BRIDGET BRERETON

Source: NWIG: New West Indian Guide / Nieuwe West-Indische Gids , 2007, Vol. 81, No.
3/4 (2007), pp. 169-196
Published by: Brill on behalf of the KITLV, Royal Netherlands Institute of Southeast
Asian and Caribbean Studies
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 BRIDGET BRERETON

CONTESTING THE PAST: NARRATIVES OF

TRINIDAD & TOBAGO HISTORY

INTRODUCTION

Historians and social scientists agree that nationalisms and national identities,
ethnicities and ethnic identities, are all constructed or "invented" at specific
historical conjunctures, and that the creation of narratives about the past is
nearly always an important aspect of this process. The recent (June 2006) dec-
laration by the Florida state legislature - that American history as taught in the
state's schools "shall be viewed as factual, not as constructed ... and shall be
defined as the creation of a new nation based largely on the universal principles
stated in the Declaration of Independence" - thus flies in the face of decades of
academic consensus about how "history" is written.1 Every past, every claim
to truth about the past, is open to interpretation. As Barry Schwartz (quoted
in Johnson 2003:17) has put it, "recollecting the past is an active constructive
process, not a simple matter of retrieving information. To remember is to place
a part of the past in the service of conceptions and needs of the present." All
postcolonial states, in particular, have undergone a process of national self-
creation, a process of identity formation involving "a recasting of history to
produce a usable past" as Howard Johnson (2003: 1) has said of Jamaica.
Nationalisms are invented, and their claims to historical continuity are
always expressions of ideological and political concerns, and this is equally true
of the construction of ethnicities and ethnic narratives. "Nations are imaginary
constructs that depend for their existence on an apparatus of cultural fictions,"
writes Timothy Brennan (1990:49). The same point is made by T.H. Eriksen
(1992:21, see also 22-33, 58-59, 142-44) in his examination of nationalism
in Mauritius and Trinidad & Tobago: "Historicism - the creation of historical

1. See J.L. Bell, History 101: Florida's Flawed Lesson Plan, on the History News
Network, http://hnn.us/articles/28095 .html.

New West Indian Guide / Nieuwe West-Indische Gids vol. 81 no. 3 & 4 (2007): 169-196

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170 Bridget Brereton

traditions justifying present prac

many contexts of ethnicity, as w
Anderson's (1983) seminal conce
nowhere more evidently true tha
are "colonially created," places wit
draw for images and "traditions"
the national space. In such countr
as a primordial community; it mus
newly created national symbols an
ible," lacking as they do the abilit
rich semi-mythical past" (Brennan
postcolonial states are typically "ch
is, after the formal establishment
All national narratives necessaril
ethnic, racial, and regional identit
ible histories that legitimate sp
Nevertheless, it is reasonable to
empirical evidence than others. M
in the words of Anthony Smith (
table entities 'out there' ... but n
fluid processes and attitudes, at t
accept that all national narrativ
structs, yet believe that not all h
Postcolonial states typically strug
rative, a single linear story which
presumably the intention of the Fl
the not so new nation they belong
by ethnic groups or local/regional
single narrative. Generally the kin
pendence by former colonies cente
ing in the attainment of formal na
internal divisions whether of ethn
(2005:159-71) has described this ki
merly Dutch colony in South Am
diverse than that of Trinidad & T
similar process in Jamaica, where
and her empire with a nationalist e
rized Jamaican historical narrative
while in Barbados, the minister o
2001:6) hoped that the earlier (199
show "there is a distinct Barbadia

2. See also Eriksen 1992:58-67, Nanto

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 Contesting the past: narratives of Trinidad & Tobago History 171

But the emergence of ethnic or regionalist narratives, especially

pluralist societies like Suriname, Mauritius, and Trinidad & Toba
inevitably destabilize the linear nationalist histories created around t
independence to counter the older colonialist versions.

Colonialist Narratives

Trinidad & Tobago may be said to have generated not one,

historical narratives during the colonial era (Brereton 1999:
was the normal British type of colonial or imperial histor
the conquest of the larger island from Spain in 1797, and t
smaller one from 1763, and the development of plantation
the oil industry by British capital and management. Of cou
tory focused on the deeds of British soldiers and sailors, g
officials, planters and entrepreneurs, and had a distinct le
of colonial government and constitution-making. This nar
said to have started with the publication in 1838 of E.L. J
first book-length study of Trinidad's past) and to have en
Carmichael's narrative which appeared in 1961 just bef
But it must be admitted that the British "imperial" narrati
(though to a lesser extent) Tobago is distinctly thin, not to
ison say with Barbados or Jamaica. No doubt this reflects T
into the British Empire (1797, compared with 1627 for
for Jamaica), its "foreign" (Spanish and French) character,
was never really an arena for heroic deeds of warfare once
captured - and that without serious resistance. Tobago cou
when she was "fought over" by various European powers, in
the imperial narrative tended to be stronger, and longer, for
Trinidad. The members of the Trinidad colonial elite who were most commit-
ted to the imperial narrative were, not surprisingly, the white Creoles of English
descent. During the middle decades of the nineteenth century, they engaged in
various "culture wars" with the more numerous elites of "foreign" (French,
Spanish, Corsican) ancestry, on issues such as religion and the position of the
Catholic Church, education, language, and legal traditions. Their aim was to
support the colonial government's program of "anglicization" and to stake out
a claim as the "natural" leaders of society in a British colony. We find them,
for example, organizing high-profile celebrations in 1897 of the centenary of
British rule, an event that was regarded with much more ambivalence by the
"foreign" descended elites (Wood 1968; Brereton 1999:581, 584).
But early there appeared a second colonialist history, which I call the
"French Creole" narrative. Trinidad was never a French colony (unlike
Tobago, which was under French rule from 1781 to 1793 and again briefly

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172 BRIDGET BRERE-FON

from 1802 to 1803), but immigrants fro

Corsica in the last quarter of the eightee
ble for developing the island as a plantat
their descendants became the main local
century. The French Creole narrative wa
the first of the ethnic histories, but cle
narrative) and counterhegemonic in so
distinct from, and often critical of, the
The French Creole narrative received
historical work by P.G.L. Borde, first pu
He wrote his history of Trinidad under
tion to the colonization of a Spanish isla
in history"), and thus to "revive the hon
Borde, an impoverished and "deserted"
was transformed into a prosperous and c
noble French settlers and their descenda
Borde as energetic, hard-working, cult
home and their estates carved out of th
of the prerevolutionary nobility; those
to command" because of slavery, and f
tocracy of skin which conceded nothing
blood." These were the people who, co
island," created a "flourishing agricultur
a few years (1783-1797). "We, who are th
Borde, "have a sacred duty to render ho
pioneers" (quoted in Brereton 1995:37
An important element in the French C
though the French settlers were not the
Trinidad, they did transform the island
slave-owning group. The French Creole v
it was exceptional: a mild, benevolent sy
managed their own estates in person wit
ness and firmness. The enslaved were
handed over to their masters for instru
comparison is far from imaginary, as the
masters." Slave children were raised in t
family, and life-long attachments were
of the French planters, "conditions wer
the slaves showed no resentment, no des
exceptionalism of slavery in Trinidad
about Brazil associated with the Brazilian
an especially long-lasting dimension of t
in Brereton 1995:42-43; Dos Santos G

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 Contesting the Past: Narratives of Trinidad & Tobago history 173

This narrative focused on the pioneering activities of the French dur

the years between the Cédula of 1783, which encouraged their immigra
to the Spanish colony, and the British capture in 1797. But it continued t
the story of the French Creoles after 1797, a story of oppression and ma
alization under the British regime. Under British governors, but especia
in the middle decades of the nineteenth century, an "Anglicization"
was embarked on, through which the pioneers of settlement and civiliz
were pushed aside: many lost their sugar estates to British capitalis
sank into genteel poverty; they were excluded from the legislature and
government posts; campaigns of persecution against Roman Catholic
"foreigners" were mounted. Through sacrifice and hard work, the F
Creoles endured these various kinds of oppression, and built up the
industry after around 1870 as the basis for their return to prosperity
the basis for Trinidad's solid economy in the late nineteenth century w
many other Caribbean islands were in deep depression. Through their sk
and hard work, they built up their cocoa estates and established busines
and emerged in the twentieth century as the true native, rooted in the i
aristocracy, playing a full role in the expansion of the island's comm
industry, and land development (Brereton 1998:32-70).
As Trinidad entered the period of decolonization and nationalism in t
mid-twentieth century, the French Creoles (and by now the term was g
erally applied to all locally born "Whites," not specifically to perso
French ancestry) considered that they were being again marginalized, if
actually persecuted and demonized, by the anticolonial party which for
the government in 1956 - the People's National Movement (PNM)
Eric Williams. His rhetoric of "Massa Day Done," his evident hostility to
"old" French Creole elite, his concern for the black majority who had v
for him, his attempts at redistributive justice, all destabilized the F
Creole narrative. Today - if it continues at all - it is a story of local Wh
being pushed to the margins of the nation, no longer even an economic
(overtaken by Syrian/Lebanese, Chinese, and Indian entrepreneurs), wit
political clout, without any cultural status, national recognition through
cial public holidays or "Arrival Days," or memorials to the pioneers. Per
it is, in fact, the end of the narrative: the disappearance of the French C
as a distinct group, the psychic if not physical eradication of local Whi
the national fabric. These themes are powerfully conveyed in a 2003
on the French Creoles of Trinidad, evocatively titled C'est Quitte (it's ov
a nostalgic lament for a disappearing elite (Ryan 1999:239-40).3

3 . The video C 'est Quitte : The French Creoles of Trinidad was made by Alex de V
a member of Trinidad's leading French Creole clan, in 2003. The French Creole na
is also reflected in many of Anthony de Verteuil's valuable books on Trinidad'
history.

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174 BRIDGET BRERETON

The Afro-Creole narrative

Both colonialist narratives were challenged, around the tim

as part of the search for a past which could help create a sen
a process which (as we have noted) was commonplace th
idly decolonizing world in the 1950s and 1960s. This was ge
of local intellectuals and academics, as well as foreign histo
ing of history in the former colonies became more profess
out of the hands of the gentry and the amateurs. In Trinid
leader in this process was both an academic and statesman:
Oxford-educated Ph.D. in history, founder of the PNM
the dominant politician in the country between 1956 and h
His History of the People of Trinidad and Tobago , first pu
an independence "gift" to the new nation, became the icon
fairly be described as the anticolonial, Afro-Creole narrativ
In his introduction to the 1964 edition, Williams (1964: v
nial nationalism, in India, Africa and elsewhere, has given
the rewriting of the history purveyed by metropolitan scho
that history where the metropolitan country has ignored o
very fact of National Independence, therefore, made this h
and Tobago mandatory." And in the foreword to the ori
tion, he stated that the book's primary objective was to en
to defeat the racial divisions caused by colonialism, to mak
nation. It was a "National History," a phrase he repeats seve
brief foreword, "a manifesto of a subjugated people ...
Independence of the united people of Trinidad and Tobago"
academic historian who was also a party politician and the
ter of the new nation (Williams 1962: viii).
This influential book, a brilliant, highly original, at
essay, is above all an anticolonial history. Its central theme
wrought on the two islands by four centuries of colonialism
and French, and the people's struggles to overcome that leg
fered from the "bankruptcy of Spanish colonialism" (the t
and then neglect and contempt from the British under the
tem. Tobago, after suffering from "a state of betweenity" (
6) when she was fought over in the seventeenth century b
fell into the hands of the British who were responsible
nomic decline in the nineteenth century, which in turn le
to Trinidad at the end of that century. At several points in
"pauses" the narrative to attack racist writings about Afric
and other intellectuals, and to demolish them. As he wrote
all the ethnic groups in the new nation had been "victims
dination, all have been tarred with the same brush of polit

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 Contesting the past: narratives of Trinidad & Tobago History 175

All have been maligned for centuries - the Amerindians as subhum

Africans as closer to the ape ... the Indians as savages ... the Chinese as
sive people and a negative element" (Williams 1964:278, see also W
1962:30-39, 86-121, 167-95).
But this was not only an anticolonial history; it was also the most i
ential expression of the Afro-Creole narrative of Trinidad & Tobag
The book projected the clear view that people of African or part-
descent - Creoles in local terminology - were the most important con
ent group in the nation, the core Trinidadians (for Tobagonians,
overwhelmingly African, were not seen as entirely part of that co
core Trinidadian culture was "creole culture," associated with that
the people who would, and should, inherit the political kingdom w
colonialists left were the Creoles. These assumptions, very often u
ined, were held by most Trinidadians of African or mixed descent; as
James (mentor, colleague and then political opponent of Williams) onc
it, they felt that Trinidad, "as part of the Caribbean, is predominantl
field of operation" (Singh 1993:102). In 1962, the Creoles constitu
single largest group in the national population, but the Afro-Creole n
was not the product of simple majority demography. Williams him
course, was of African descent (with some "French Creole blood" t
the party he led to power in 1956, the PNM, had a mainly Creole voti
though its rhetoric and literature were always nationalistic rather than
But the Afro-Creole narrative was not simply the product of party p
either. It came from a view of Trinidad's history which saw the desce
of the slaves, and of the free Blacks and "Coloureds," as the peop
had been in the island for the longest time, who had suffered from s
and endured the "ordeal of free labor," who had produced educated
in the twentieth-century fight for self-government and trade unionism
had forged the indigenous cultural forms of the island - and who enjo
moral and historical "right" to succeed the British in the governance
new nation.
This view of the country's history is clearly expressed in its iconic
The enslavement of the Africans is seen as the formative event in the two
islands' past, and, of course, Williams rejects the French Creole idea that
slavery was peculiarly benign and paternalist in Trinidad. After emancipation
in the 1830s, the central story was the struggle of the former slaves against
a racist and uncaring colonial state. Williams devotes considerable space
to demolishing racist views about Africans, and to defending the ex-slaves
from the attacks on them by nineteenth-century British writers. The chapter
that deals with indentured Indian immigration is titled "The Contribution of
the Indians": as late arrivals they made a "contribution" to the society but
were not part of its core, constituting group. While this chapter is a powerful
narrative of the degradation and oppression of the indentureds, it certainly

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176 BRIDGET BRERETON

offers no positive view of Indian cult

technological retardation in the suga
it approvingly quotes, at great length,
African-Trinidadian legislator C.P. Davi
nation of the whole narrative is the em
Creole voting base and a leadership whi
sively) African-Trinidadian, and its ach
1962. Among those achievements was
of "native forms of culture," calypso
songs - all forms associated primarily
1964:30-39, 86-121, 167-95, 242-77).
The Afro-Creole narrative, as expre
nationalist. Its message was that all the
new nation and must suppress their un
building. In a famous and much-quoted
can they build a society, can they build
There can be no Mother India ... no Mo
no Mother China ... no Mother Syria
an individual, can have only one Mot
is Mother Trinidad and Tobago, and
her children." Williams cautioned his fellow Creoles that "the Trinidad and
Tobago society is living a lie and heading for trouble if it seeks to create the
impression or allow others to act under the delusion that Trinidad and Tobago
is an African society" (Williams 1964:279). Yet the message that it was the
other ethnicities that would need to subsume their cultures into the national
- creole - matrix was clear enough. The very last words of his book are an
appeal to the people to work toward building the nation, because "this will
be their final emancipation from slavery, this will be their final demonstra-
tion that slavery is not by nature and that the humblest antecedents are not
inconsistent with greatness of soul" (Williams 1964:282). It was surely an
ethnic as well as a nationalist appeal; or, rather, they were the same in the
Afro-Creole narrative (Williams 1964:279, 282).
It seems fair to state that the Afro-Creole nationalist narrative, given
classic expression in Williams's iconic text, became the hegemonic narra-
tive of Trinidad & Tobago's past in the decades after 1962, the framework
for academic and non-academic works on the country's history (Brereton
1999:586-90).4 Outside the domain of history writing, there can be no doubt
that the cultural symbols of the new nation in this period were drawn pri-
marily from the African or Creole matrix. As the Norwegian anthropologist
T.H. Eriksen (1992: 122) put it in 1992, "every Trinidadian knows that public

4. I would include here my own general history of Trinidad (Brereton 1981), as well as
Donald Wood's (1968) classic on nineteenth-century Trinidad. See also Trotman 2006.

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 Contesting the past: Narratives of Trinidad & Tobago History 177

Trinidad is strongly dominated by cultural symbols and emblems associated

with black New World culture" (Eriksen 1992:122, 129, 147-50). Trinidadian
(but not really Tobagonian) national identity was closely linked with cultur
forms associated with Creoles; these were the forms which were recognize
as "authentic" and "national," by the state and by majority public opini
These forms, Afro-Creole rather than "African," were seen as the core, defi
ing culture of the nation: carnival, calypso, steelband music, Christmas and
Easter, Best Village and parang. They were relentlessly promoted by t
state in tourism-oriented propaganda as the national culture, as Raymo
Ramcharitar (2006) points out, making the core of nationalism a comp
associated primarily with an ethnic group (and, arguably, with a particular
political party which was in power without a break from 1956 to 1986
Moreover, Afro-Creoles by and large saw themselves as "more Trinidadian"
than anyone else, as people with a sense of stronger rights to the coun
- because of their prior "arrival" and longer "residence," because "thei
culture was promoted as national, because "their" party controlled the stat
It is the same in Suriname, where the Creoles refer to themselves as "
Surinamese" and use an ethnic denominator for the "others" (Hindusta
Javanese and others) (Oostindie 2005:72-73). The Afro-Creole historic
narrative helped to shape (and was shaped by) a hegemonic understanding o
what was Trinidadian, what was national, and what was "other."5

Challenges to the Afro-Creole narrative

Almost from the moment that Williams's iconic text appeared, but esp
from the late 1960s, there were efforts to interrogate and destabil
Afro-Creole narrative of the nation's history. It was a narrative which
to marginalize significant groups: the indigenous people (the "Car
Tobagonians, Indo-Trinidadians, and even the African (as opposed t
Creole) element in the national culture. In the processes of "culture
common to poly-ethnic states like Trinidad & Tobago, the past was cont
in order to make claims for the present and the fiiture. The alternativ
oppositional narratives which emerged generally developed in the doma
"public history" rather than in formal historiography, and academic hi
ans were not necessarily significantly involved in their generation. The
of this paper, which discusses four such alternative narratives, is conce
with this kind of public production of knowledge about the nation
rather than academic history writing. I should also note that I have
no attempt to study imaginative literature, especially novels, as sources
narratives of the nation; of course, I recognize the key role of this lite

5. See also Ryan 1999:229-31.

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178 BRIDGET BRERETON

in creating nationalisms, but that is an

popular music, especially calypso, as cr
ratives, the subject of a fascinating re

The Politics of Indigeneity

In virtually all accounts of Trinidad & T

that the nation has no indigenous po
er they were "Caribs" or "Arawaks,"
the nineteenth century and played n
ment. The literature of the nineteenth
the absence of the indigenes. Using t
amalgamation, writers of all persuasio
entirely lacking in the nation's plurali
forever. As the anthropologist Maximi
that "the only real Carib is a pure C
Carib" (Forte 2005 : 1 2 1 , see also 111
states which were colonial creations, la
ern" from the beginning of their colo
primordial past on which to draw for
this Trinidad & Tobago was different f
tinental mainland, which both have sig
have retained much of their cultures a
Since the early 1990s, mainly through
in Arima (an old town in northeastern T
concentrated in the late 1700s), the
Trinidad & Tobago society has come
a valid symbol in nation-building an
has been, in Forte's words (2005:133
in narratives of national history." To
helped to create "a sense of local prim
with antiquity." The wider society h
has accepted the "First People" (an in
deployed by the SRCC) as the nation
ancestors, even if not the biological an
This is a development which, by resto
tory, has given antiquity and chronolog
symbolized by the now popular trope
Carib can also be seen as the first to s
owy figure of "Hyarima," perhaps a

6. For imaginative literature, see Harney 19

with Trinidad & Tobago authors. For calypso

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 Contesting the Past: Narratives of Trinidad & Tobago History 179

in the mid-seventeenth century, can be enshrined as a hero of resistance; a

statue of him has been erected in Arima which bears a plaque calling him th
first national hero of Trinidad. The tragic episode in 1699, when a group of
Amerindians in the Spanish Capuchin Mission at Arena (now San Rafael
murdered the priests and then the governor and his suite, only to be hunte
down and killed, or captured, tortured, and executed, can be reinterpreted
an epic of resistance to colonial rule and forced conversion, rather than the
horrific murder of noble Catholic martyrs. A recent editorial in one of the
nation's leading newspapers describes the site of this event as "the forest in
Arena where 300 years ago, the First People of Trinidad made their last gre
stand against domination and injustice."7 The commemoration of 1992 (t
quincentenary of Columbus's arrival in the Americas) and 1998 (he sight
Trinidad and Tobago in 1498) also helped to fix the Amerindian/Carib a
central figure in the foundation of the national society.8
The SRCC has pursued the "invention of tradition" with considerable suc
cess since about 1990. "Traditional" festivals and practices connected to them
shamanistic ceremonies developed from several different sources - wh
Forte calls "global neo-shamanic transfers" - crafts, building technique
healing practices, and food culture have all been revived, invented, and mar
keted as authentic Amerindian/Carib folkways. Moreover, the SRCC leaders
have successfully forged international linkages with indigenous peoples in t
Caribbean and South America (especially Guyana), in Canada and the United
States, and globally, to strengthen the legitimacy of their identity as recogniz
aboriginal people. The use of "First Peoples/Nations" is a hallmark of th
globalizing process, similar in many respects to the globalization of various
"Diasporas" in recent years. The SRCC has also shrewdly developed stron
links with the political elite, enjoying an especially close affiliation with th
PNM, which is in power at the time of writing, but also with the two othe
parties which governed between 1986-1991 and 1995-2001. Partly for th
reason, partly because the individuals who self-identify as Amerindian/Car
are very few numerically, partly precisely because of their status as indigene
the people who were always here, the SRCC's activities and claims have n
been seen as a threat either to the nationalist narrative, or to the ethnic proje
whether Afrocentric or Indocentric. Certainly, however, they have succeed
in rewriting the Amerindian peoples into the national narrative of Trinidad
(Tobago is only marginally part of their discourse). This success is reflected
in a local newspaper editorial which recently declared "it's never too late to
pay tribute to the First Peoples of the nation. They were the ones who had

7. See the editorial in the Trinidad Guardian , September 23, 2006, p. 28.
8. De Verteuil 1995; Forte 2005:38, 133-42; Elie 2006; Norville 2007; Trinidad Guardi
2006, and the public lecture by P. Elie "The Arena 'Massacre': The Untold Story" given
Port of Spain, May 2007.

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1 80 BRIDGET BRERETON

bear the brunt of the initial bruising en

the peoples decimated in the largest num
by the 'discoverers'" (Forte 2005:181-9

The Tobago Narrative

Tobago's territorial extent and, especia

than Trinidad's, to which it was united
has always been marginal in the united c
economic and political development. The
with two brief periods of French rule, f
an "independent" colony, along with the
the Tobago narrative. Very important, to
nicity" (and therefore a separate narrati
and socially, the island is quite differen
overwhelmingly of African descent,
and mixed-race individuals; the few In
Trinidad. The poly-ethnic character of
in Tobago. Culturally, nearly everyon
majority Protestants (Anglicans, Meth
cultural mix is African-British, with vir
France, unlike Trinidad. Until recently,
based, peasant society. Though this has c
years or so, the value systems and cultu
peasant villages remain the core of the T
identity, certainly in the second half of t
largely in opposition to Trinidad, Tob
colonialism seems to be. The Tobago hist
primarily a narrative of "Tobago and
Trinidad." It has been constructed by
als and politicians, notably A.N.R. Rob
House of Assembly (1980) and later both
of Trinidad & Tobago, and C.R. Ottley, c
The narrative begins in the sevente
"fought over" (a favorite phrase) by sev

9. See also the editorial in the Trinidad Gua

interesting discussion of rather similar identity
Jamaican Maroons, see Bilby 2006, especially
10. The generic "Tobago narrative" that fo
Ottley 1969, 1973; Robinson 1971:3-44, 1986
17, 34-52; Premdas 1998:97-123; Ryan 199
"Case for the Tobago Nation," Trinidad Guard

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 Contesting the Past: Narratives of Trinidad & Tobago History 181

establish colonies there. It was considered a highly desirable prize, a

major naval engagements were fought in its waters; it was a signifi
tor in Great Power international diplomacy. So fierce was the co
that eventually the powers agreed to leave it as a "neutral" islan
Once it was ceded to Britain in 1763, a period of rapid developm
lowed. Sugar plantations were established, and the small island
major producer of the most important Caribbean staple. Its great pr
peaked in the 1790s and early 1800s, when the phrase "as rich as
planter" was proverbial in Britain. Perhaps surprisingly, the narrat
to downplay the fact that this short-lived "prosperity" was based on
enslavement of thousands of Africans. Soon after 1763, Tobago was
colonial "self-government," meaning a legislature which included an
Assembly, whose members were voted for by white, landowning, P
men. It retained this "representative" form of government from
1874 - at a time when Trinidad's legislature had no elected memb
Tobago, therefore, had been a rich island, fought over by the powe
enjoyed government by an elected legislature as a separate colon
points constitute the foundation of the Tobago narrative.
Sugar production began to decline well before emancipation in th
but it was especially in the decades between the 1830s and the 1
the sugar estates collapsed, the result of mismanagement by imp
British planters, neglect from the metropolitan government, and com
from other cane or beet producers. Tobago's prosperity was over
into the status of a wretchedly poor peasant island. Her elected Ass
abolished by Britain and she became a mere crown colony (which
had always been). The "final humiliation" came in the 1880s and
was "annexed" to Trinidad in two stages. The first stage (1889)
able because Tobago retained a subordinate legislature and some cont
finance in the newly created Colony of Trinidad & Tobago. But t
(1899) was the crowning blow: she became a Ward (administrativ
of Trinidad & Tobago, with the same status as the other Wards in t
island. And, as Robinson bitterly pointed out on many occasions
understood by virtually all Trinidadians as Tobago becoming a "ward
rior dependent) of Trinidad. (Even Williams, in his influential histo
that Tobago became a ward of Trinidad.)
After 1899, the narrative paints a picture of oppression and negl
from British colonialism, and from the legislature and elites in
Tobago's special needs were consistently ignored, the developme
infrastructure lagged decades behind Trinidad's (no electricity until
secondary school until the 1920s), her farmers received no help, sea
nications between the islands were grossly inadequate. Socially, Trin
regarded Tobagonians as country bumpkins, unsophisticated rus
civil servant to be transferred to Tobago was a dreaded exile (or pun

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1 82 BRIDGET BRERETON

The efforts of A.P.T. James, Tobago's el

& Tobago legislature between 1946 and
were ignored or treated with contemp
Williams claimed that this period of aby
the first PNM government (1956-1961
ments did make efforts to develop the is
a devastating hurricane in 1963. But, in
neglect, oppression, and "spite politics" d
Tobagonians when they voted for Rob
campaign for a "devolved" or subordin
began, as an alternative to full-fledge
ceeded in 1980 with the establishment
A measure of self-government and re
Tobago, though relations between the
national government did not run smooth
The counterpart to the narrative of ne
is the eulogy to Tobago's traditional v
expressions of island identity. Tobago w
face-to-face relationships, family or clan
affiliations matter far more than in urb
entrenched, "African" traditions of
impoverished peasants to survive and
ownership was a core value; so was hard
and teachers, close ties to extended kin,
peasant society made Tobagonians morall
rupt, clever "Trickydadians." This trope
society on which the values system was
late twentieth century - underpinned the
It also underpinned the Tobago narrative
essentially Trinidadian, hegemonic inter

The Afrocentric Narrative

It was, perhaps, the Black Power movem

first challenged the "orthodox" narrativ
supported it. In the political domain,

11. For a rare critique of the Tobago narrativ

Job (2005:88-90). He argues that the constant "
Assembly or Tobago's "independence" and "sel
was historically false, because it was a "racis
Assembly," and of no use to today's Tobagonia
ignorance, and poor leadership.

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 CONTESTING THE PAST: NARRATIVES OF TRINIDAD & TOBAGO HISTORY 183

PNM of being stooges of neocolonialism rather than heroes of the anticolo-

nial struggle for independent nationhood. In the cultural domain, they com-
plained that the PNM denigrated African elements in the creole mix, that the
hegemonic culture was "Afro-Saxon" rather than African. The movement
triggered a lively public discourse on values, ideology, and history (Eriksen
1992:177; Ryan 1999:229-31).
To create a full-fledged Afrocentric narrative of Trinidad & Tobago's
past presented peculiar difficulties which did not exist, say, in Jamaica.
First, there was demography: people of African descent were no longer in
the majority by the close of the last century; they were not even the single
largest group (Africans and Indians each constitute around 40 percent of
the national population). Second, the hegemonic Afro-Creole narrative did
foreground the Creoles, the descendants of the slaves and the free Coloreds/
Blacks, as the core of the national population and culture, even though it
was a mixed sort of culture which was celebrated. Third, even the Tobago
narrative, coming out of an island whose people are overwhelmingly
African, was based on an insular rather than an ethnic identity, underpinned
by a sense of Tobago uniqueness rather than negritude. Finally, unlike for
example Suriname with its distinctive Maroon community whose culture
remained strongly African, and whose unique sense of history and identity
was forged in their successful military struggle against slavery and the colo-
nial world, Trinidad does not have a past of heroic, violent slave rebellions.
Despite these difficulties, we can observe the emergence of an Afrocentric
narrative which makes claims distinct from those of the Afro-Creole one,
notwithstanding many inevitable similarities.
This narrative sees slavery as the formative experience of the nation's
past, and stresses the brutality of the institution and the massive damage it
wrought on the descendants of the enslaved up to the present. Of course, it
rejects the French Creole myth that slave-owners were benign and pater-
nalist and that the Trinidad experience was exceptional or special, just as
Afrocentric writers have done, say, in Brazil and Curaçao. Far from being
the basically contented and submissive subjects of benevolent masters, as
the French Creole narrative had it, the enslaved struggled constantly against
their subjugation. The enslaved were heroic rebels whose resistance, whether
violent or by other modes, was the prototype for later national struggles after
the end of slavery. The leaders of slave rebellions (where they could be iden-
tified) became the heroes of an epic story. Of course this has happened every-
where in the Caribbean and Brazil: Nanny of the Maroons and Sam Sharpe
in Jamaica, Bussa in Barbados, Kofi in Guyana, the Surinamese Maroon
leaders of the eighteenth century, Zumbi dos Palmares in Brazil have all
undergone this transformation into national heroes. Sandy, the leader of a
major slave uprising in Tobago in 1770, might be the closest equivalent for

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1 84 BRIDGET BRERETON

Trinidad & Tobago, and Tobago, unlike t

of several significant rebellions between
After the abolition of slavery in the
focuses on the struggles and sufferings
descendants. The ex-slaves received no la
- their owners received a large sum of
tion for loss of property - and the lo
stop them from purchasing state-owned
narrative is the idea that all the Indians
expiry of their indentures, allowing the
Africans were given no grants and were
buying plots with their savings. (This is
received free grants of land for only
the lands obtained by the Indians were p
deliberate efforts by the imperial and lo
massive psychological damage wrought b
Afro-Trinidadians entered the twentieth
landless, and barely educated.13
A major theme is the relentless effort o
African cultural and religious forms, and
successful) resistance by the people in th
The focus here is on those forms whic
than "creole." The heroic struggle of the
persecution resonates well with the Afr
members have always been overwhelm
African beliefs and rituals with element
were harassed by the authorities, stereo
sorcery) and devil worship. After 1917 t
law prohibiting any public Shouter wors
1951, the colonial anti-Obeah laws wer
nearly all poor and lacking much forma
preserve their faith, and triumphed ove
mate" religious denomination today. In t
took determination and strength on the
those days" (quoted in Ryan 1999:217). P

12. Dos Santos Gomes 2001:77-82; Johnson 2

For an interesting case study of how slavery h
see Thompson 2006.
13. Morgan Job (2005:52-53, 67-68) claims t
received grants of land, while Africans were
distribution of state land to Afro-Trinidad
"affirmative programme for Afro-Trinidadian

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 Contesting the Past: Narratives of Trinidad & Tobago History 185

whose beliefs after all are essentially syncretic (and therefore "creo
Orisha faith is important to the Afrocentric narrative. This faith is deri
Yoruba religion, and though in Trinidad some Christian and Hindu e
crept in, it is far more clearly a "neo-African" religion than the Sh
Even more than them, Orisha devotees were accused of practisin
and several were convicted and jailed for this offence under the col
they were all stereotyped as devil worshippers and sorcerers. Their
to preserve the faith through persecution and contempt to attain it
day legitimacy, according to a prominent (and high-profile) adheren
sents the explicit articulation of this African religious presence in
(quoted in Ryan 1999:219). Some leaders, especially a few highly
Afrocentric individuals who are now associated with the Orisha fait
it is time to purge its Christian and Hindu elements and to return to
African "purity," now that there is no need to hide or "mask" its b
rituals (Ryan 1999:216-21).
In general, of course, this narrative celebrates everything in the
culture past or present which can be seen as African: drumming an
stick-fighting and related forms of song and dance; calypso which
to be the direct descendant of West African song genres; and Canbo
traditional types of carnival bands and performances rather than th
ern Trinidad Carnival which is distinctly oriented now to the lo
classes and the tourists. The activists who have organized public cele
of Emancipation Day over the last twenty years (the Emancipation S
Committee) have chosen to foreground a "Kanbule" procession as th
element, championing an African identity for the nation by using
Koongo (Congo) derivation and spelling of what is more usually
as "Canboulay." (This was a noisy, torchlight procession of Afro-Tri
men, often featuring ritualized conflict between rival bands, w
staged on the Sunday night before Carnival Monday in the midd
of the nineteenth century, and was suppressed by the colonial auth
1881-1884.) The Afrocentric narrative rejects the trope of mixing a
tural fusion which is at the heart of the Afro-Creole one. The nationa
gans of "all ah we is one," or (to use the more formal English of the
national motto) "out of many, one people," do not resonate well
narrative; still less does Williams's appeal that there should be n
Africa (or any other Mother). As with Afrocentric intellectuals in B
Jamaica, the master narrative of mixture or metissage is replaced w
that puts Afro-Trinidadians and their cultural heritage firmly at the
the national history (Sansone 2001:88-89; Johnson 2003:15-16).
Trinidad & Tobago does not yet have, in my view, a fully d
Afrocentric narrative, clearly distinguished from the hegemonic A
one, though the elements for its construction are in place. No full-
Afrocentric history of the nation, comparable to that on Jamaica by

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 1 86 BRIDGET BRERETON

and Bennett, has yet appeared. Neverthe

have clearly entered the nation's public
it can translate into overt hostility to c
major ethnic group, Indo-Trinidadians
Association for the Empowerment of
Trinidad & Tobago body) has stated, at
the turmoil that we see in our society t
struggle on the part of the East Indians
gests that the agents of their group are p
legal, political, academic or religious - to
stitutes the essence of the conflict that w
It should be noted that few, if any othe
Tobago have publicly expressed such a
national commemoration of the abolition of the British transatlantic trade
in enslaved Africans, in 2007, will push the development of a specifically
Afrocentric narrative of the nation; at the time of writing (June 2007), there
is some indication that it will (Sherlock & Bennett 1998). 14
The emerging Afrocentric discourse has certainly not escaped criti-
cism. As far back as the 1970s, Nobel Laureate Derek Walcott (who lived
in Trinidad at that time) wrote a powerful critique of the tendency for "ser-
vitude to the muse of history" to produce a literature "of recrimination and
despair, a literature of revenge written by the descendants of slaves," or a
futile search for "songs of triumph, the defiance of the captured warrior, the
nostalgic battle chants and ... the great African pastoral" (Walcott 1998:46).
Walcott (1998:54) observed, surely thinking of Trinidad & Tobago, "because
we think of tradition as history, one group of anatomists claims that this tradi-
tion is wholly African and that its responses are alerted through the nostalgia
of one race," refusing to allow those of Asian (or other) ancestry the "same
fiction." More recently, at least one Trinidadian newspaper columnist writ-
ing in 1989-1990, who seemed to speak for the small local "white" commu-
nity, Jennifer Franco (quoted in Siewah 1994:703-6), frequently expressed
her dismay at Afrocentric claims of "the longer presence here, the more
meaningful contribution, the greater suffering," and hence greater "rights"
to the nation. "We have listened, and listened and listened to the story of the
struggle of the Africans," she complained; it was time to hear other narra-
tives, including that of the white Creoles. Another trenchant critique of the

14. For the statement by Selwyn Cudjoe, chairman of NAEAP, see the Sunday Express
(Trinidad), August 6, 2006, p. 7, and for commentary on it by Selwyn Ryan, see the Sunday
Express , August 13, 2006, p. 11. For developments linked to the 2007 bicentennial, see
Caribbean Historical Society 2007 and the public lecture "The Meaning of Freedom" by J.
Campbell at the University of the West Indies in St. Augustine, Trinidad, March 2007: both
present an Afrocentric narrative of Trinidad & Tobago/Caribbean history.

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 Contesting the past: Narratives of Trinidad & Tobago History 187

Afrocentric narrative has been the Afro-Tobagonian Morgan Job. And,

less to say, spokesmen for the emerging Indocentric narrative have atta
many of its elements both explicitly and implicitly as they constructed
own national epic (Siewah 1994:236-67, 295-96, 703-6; Walcott 1998:3
10; Job 2005:52-53,67-68).

The Indocentric Narrative

Trinidadians of South Asian descent now constitute some 40 percent of the

national population and are marginally more numerous than Afro-Trinidadians,
according to the last census. Their ancestors arrived between 1845 and 1917
as indentured laborers to "replace" the former slaves who, for the most part,
rejected field labor on the sugar estates for very low wages as a viable option
for free people. Gradually a small but growing group of educated, middle-
class Indo-Trinidadians emerged and began to articulate an Indian view of the
colony's development; certainly by the 1950s, a few such men were explic-
itly challenging the Afro-Creole, PNM-dominated narrative. H.P. Singh, in
his several pamphlets published around the time of national independence,
was probably the most trenchant of this group. But it was particularly in the
last quarter of the twentieth century that a full-fledged Indocentric narrative
emerged. The spread of education had produced a far larger group of highly
qualified Indo-Trinidadians than before, many of them well established in the
prestigious professions; their economic success, as landowners, businessmen,
and entrepreneurs, gave them considerable financial clout. Political leaders
and parties associated mainly with Indians became increasingly viable in
the 1980s- 1990s. These developments formed the background for a process
of ethnic revitalization from the 1970s, which in turn fed a parallel "Hindu
renaissance" in the same period. As Indo-Trinidadians in fact became more
and more "creolized" in their cultural practices, anxiety about a loss of ances-
tral traditions, and possible dilution of "racial purity," tended to increase.
Moreover, the Black Power movement of the late 1960s/early 1970s further
galvanized ethnic revitalization. Most Indo-Trinidadians opposed the move-
ment and rejected the label "black," which, most felt, subsumed their eth-
nic identity under a blanket term always primarily associated with people of
African descent. It seems clear that the rediscovery of African roots associated
with Black Power stimulated a similar process among the Indians.
Gradually a fairly clear Indocentric narrative of the nation's past emerged.
In one version, probably the dominant one, the story was that of all Indo-
Trinidadians, regardless of religion; for it should be noted that although most
Indians are Hindus, significant numbers of them adhere to Christianity or
Islam. A second version might more properly be called a Hinducentric nar-
rative, which stridently associates "Indianity" with Hinduism. Of course this

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1 88 BRIDGET BRERETON

has been influenced by the growing stre

of right-wing Hindu organizations in In
narrative is well summed up by one of i
Capildeo, when he stated in 1989 (quo
gion is the substance of Indian culture an
religion." As Selwyn Ryan has put it, th
umph of Hindu civilization in Trinidad (
because of its inherent superiority to al
It seems fair to say, however, that less
constitute (at present) the mainstream I
58; Siewah 1994:226).
This narrative begins with the period
1917).15 It insists that the vast majority
tricked, or forced to offer themselves t
volunteers (for, unlike the slave trade, i
ciple a voluntary process with fairly elabo
was so). Some were gullible and were tri
false promises, some were the victims o
rative goes. Clem Seecharan (1997:xxiii) h
native Guyana, what he calls "morose
which still claim local [Guyanese] Indi
edgement of the hard reality that - thou
part in many individual cases - the vast
erty, landlessness, debts, caste and gend
industry, and personal or family troubl
ships, whatever the paths that took the
the narrative paints a picture of horrifi
the kali pani (dark water) to Trinidad. Im
conditions on the journey are described
Passage - a comparison which, except on
epidemics devastated the passengers, c
evidence.16

15. The generic "Indocentric narrative" which

Singh 1993:18, 89-90, 98; Siewah 1994:224-
31, 60; Ryan 1999:7, 202, 211-13, 227-29, 2
159-60, 167, 188-99. A good brief summary of
"Indian Arrival Day," Sunday Guardian (Tr
Arrival Day (May 30, commemorating the fi
in 1845) produces many similar articles in the
holiday since 1995, when the 150th anniversar
16. For a recent fictional account of the arka
Indo-Trinidadian author Ron Ramdin (2004).

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 Contesting the Past: Narratives of Trinidad & Tobago History 189

Once arrived on the plantations to serve out their indentures, the na

continues, the immigrants faced appalling conditions of working
ing, "unremitting oppression, moral degradation and despair," as Seech
(1997:60) sums up the Guyanese version, which he describes as sim
and half-true at best. The indentureds worked long hours on the estat
minimal wages, bullied and harassed by the managers and supervis
victims of elaborate rules and regulations which saw many of them ja
trivial offences, like brief absences from work. As Simbhoonath C
put it, in a 1957 speech in the local legislature (quoted in Figueira 2
44, 167): "The poor East Indian labourers on the estates are the vic
over 100 years of suppression, oppression, and aggression ... people
blood is in Trinidad's soil, who have been transported from their hom
to work under subhuman conditions." The son of an indentured immig
himself (albeit a Brahmin and a pundit), Capildeo said in 1962, "I think
no finer men were forced to do more heinous labour than people w
to go and do indentured labour on the sugar estates" (quoted in Fi
2003:42-44, 167). The narrative of recruitment by fraud or force, a ho
voyage, and unrelieved oppression on the Trinidad estates, is well c
in a recent video by the local journalist Gideon Hanoomansingh, Le
Our Ancestors.17
Again an implicit comparison with the hardships of the enslav
easily be detected here, and an element in the Afrocentric and Indocen
narratives is the issue of "who suffered most," what Seymour Dresche
another context) describes as "competitive victimization." At its extre
kind of argument has led, mainly in the United States, to futile attem
"equate" the slave trade and slavery with the Nazi Holocaust, as if one
ever establish "a hierarchy of collective suffering or radical evil" (Dre
2001:112; see also Drescher 1999:312-38). In the Trinidad case, com
claims to ancestral agonies might be put forward. In the late 1990s
spokesmen rejected claims for "reparations" for African slavery, arguin
indentureship was just as damaging and brutal as slavery and that, if an
its victims suffered more - but Indo-Trinidadians did not use this pas
as an "excuse" for present failures, as (it was implied) Afro-Trinidadia
As Ryan (1999:223-29) correctly observes, this claim of equal or even g
"suffering" was "a polemical statement which had no basis in historica
but was part of a deliberate plan on the part of the Maha Sabha [Trini
leading Hindu organization] to rewrite Trinidad's history" to serve its
agenda. Interestingly, the National Joint Action Committee (NJAC), a
established moderately Afrocentric organization, recently claimed: "In

17. The video Legacy of Our Ancestors: The Indian Presence in Trinidad and
1845-1917 , by Gideon Hanoomansingh, was made in 2003 and has been shown
times on national television.

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190 BRIDGET BRERETON

ality, there was little - if any - differe

There was the same inhumane conditio
of thousands at sea. The East Indian
of physical brutality as the slaves. Pen
gings ... and even the loss of parts of
one might expect as part of the Indo
little basis in empirical evidence, is p
of NJAC; yet this organization has
and has tried ever since 1970, when
involve Indo-Trinidadians. The stateme
tioned (though unhistorical) polemic
and "equality" of the nation's two larg
Despite the sufferings of the indent
endured and overcame all the hardships
work, they "saved" the local sugar ind
had continued to depend on scarce and
a wider sense, they also "saved" the wh
their labor on the sugar, cocoa, and co
tantly) by their establishment of a thr
of the land, their culturally determin
agriculture, created a sturdy independ
rice, and a whole range of food crop
and meat. Indians made a tremendous contribution to Trinidad's economic
development in these ways. "They have contributed more than any other
group to the economic development of the country," stated H.P. Singh in
1962, "yet they are treated as pariahs" (Singh 1993:18). Moreover, Indians
achieved their successes in agriculture (and business) on their own: the idea
that all Indians received free grants of land after their indentures were up was
firmly (and correctly) rejected. As the Maha Sabha stated in 1998 (quoted in
Ryan 1999:74), "It is not government grants or State patronage which sus-
tained the Maha Sabha and the Hindu community. That Indian immigrants
were given land in lieu of a passage back to India has wrongly influenced the
thinking of many opinion leaders in Trinidad."
In 1917, indentured immigration to Trinidad ended, and at the start of
1920, the few remaining indentured workers had their contracts cancelled.
The Indocentric narrative continues with a story of more persecution and
discrimination, and further triumphs. Indians were oppressed by the colonial
authorities, by Christian missionaries who attacked Hinduism and Islam and
used unfair means to secure conversions, and, increasingly as the period of
decolonization got underway, by the Creoles who were beginning to domi-

18. See the untitled article by the National Joint Action Committee (Trinidad & Tobago)
in the Sunday Guardian (Trinidad), May 21, 2006, p. 24.

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 Contesting the past: narratives of Trinidad & Tobago History 191

nate the civil service and government. There was discrimination against
No state funds were given to Hindu schools until the late 1940s. Tradi
Hindu marriages were illegal until 1945; because pundits were not up t
recognized as civil marriage officers, couples marrying under religiou
would need to carry out a separate registration exercise to make th
legal. Few did, and as a result the vast majority of Hindu children wer
nically illegitimate, often to their disadvantage when propertied paren
intestate, as most did. In 1999 the Maha Sabha called for reparations o
two billion (local) dollars for the property losses suffered by generati
Hindu (and Muslim) Indians in this way. (Interestingly, the Indo-Trini
and Hindu prime minister then in power dismissed this call as "foolish
though a few Indocentric commentators took the call seriously.) Yet, d
the discrimination and oppression, despite the contempt of other Trinid
who saw them as heathen coolies, Indo-Trinidadians continued to endu
rise in the socio-economic scale. Through hard work, discipline, frugal
times to excess), strong family support, faith in their ancestral religion
a commitment to deferred gratification in the interest of the next gen
Indians achieved success in farming, business, education, and the
sions. And all this on their own, without the benefit of handouts, gove
patronage, or any favors. "No power on earth can stop the onward ma
frugal, hard-working and industrious people," wrote H.P. Singh in 196
certainly not the resentment of the "Negroes" when they saw Indians "
ting their place," leaving the cane fields and "climbing ever higher" (S
1993:89-91; Ryan 1999:202, 227-28).
With the accession to power of the PNM in 1956, and independe
1962, Indo-Trinidadians found oppression by the African-dominat
governments had replaced that by the British colonialists - only m
Discrimination was the order of the day. The state handed out its favo
its own clients, not to people who generally voted for opposition
Fundamentalist Christian missionaries, mostly from the United States (
trained there), launched crude and aggressive assaults on Hinduism, de
idol worship in their worldview. Yet Indo-Trinidadians outstripped all o
education and in the professions, and also did well in business. Politica
continued to elude them, until in 1995 an epochal event occurred: a part
on Indian voters, and led by a Hindu Trinidadian, Basdeo Panday, was a
form the government through the support of the two Tobago MPs. Not
ingly, this event triggered off a triumphalist discourse among most (ce
not all) Indo-Trinidadians. One can say that it marked a fitting climax
Indocentric narrative of Trinidad & Tobago history.
As we have already noted, a more extreme kind of Hinducentric nar
has also developed, especially in the last fifteen or twenty years. Perh
classic expression was a public lecture delivered in 1989 by Surend

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192 BRIDGET BRERETON

Capildeo, an attorney, politician, and

Brahmin Hindu clan. He told his audi

We [Indians] are like no other race. We ar

unto themselves. We regard ourselves as
is the eternal religion. We have been, a
unbroken thread of Indian civilization, wh
man ... So when you look at an Indian, in
remember that. An Indian is no ordinar
race ... The Indian mind does not submit t
Indian mind. Not even the Vedic gods of
legacy. That is our heritage. (Quoted in

After this remarkable opening, with it

"submit to slavery," Capildeo went on t
version of the Indocentric narrative: th
the sugar estates, Indian success in agr
of the Capildeo dynasty (which incl
the Indian/Hindu revitalization of the
from the "system of political negritud
in 1956. All in all, Indians "had not o
manner, but had laid the foundation fo
nation state." And what would happen
appeared or stopped doing what the
Bankruptcy will be the norm. Starvatio
will cease." But given the chance, "the
try to heights unimagined ... The India
educate and maintain the people of this
and ease" (Siewah 1994:259). 19 This kin
no doubt a type of rhetorical excess wh
a traditional carnival character - is not
Trinidadian worldview, but its expressi
into Afro-Trinidadian anxieties, and en
narrative in its turn.
In addition to the four counternarrat
ognizes that the smaller immigrant
Lebanese, and Portuguese, might also b
Whites might construct a sort of upda
one. The Chinese-descended communi
profile in Trinidad & Tobago, preferrin
ethnic claims, but high-profile, and hi

19. See also S. Capildeo, "The Stench of Hin

17, 2007, p. 11.

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 Contesting the Past: narratives of Trinidad & Tobago History 193

in October 2006 to mark the bicentenary of the first arrival of Chinese im

grants might change this. Two books were published to commemorate
event, and a program of lectures, art and photography exhibitions, cultur
performances, "dragon boat" races, and so on was organized over seve
months, culminating on the actual anniversary date in October. Meanwhil
a few prominent local Syrian/Lebanese clans have published books on thei
family history and on their ethnic associations.
The development of the Afro-Creole "master narrative" during t
Independence period, and the subsequent emergence of ethnic or regio
counternarratives from the 1970s onwards, have had the effect of suppress
or eclipsing an earlier, class-based interpretation of the nation's history. S
a narrative, associated especially with the country's emerging labor m
ment, and with left-wing writers generally, began to take shape during t
interwar years, and stressed cross-race alliances of the workers and the "p
gressive" middle stratum to achieve gains for the broad masses and to pus
for decolonization. In the same way that labor and socialist movements we
deflected or even defeated by the rise of the PNM in the mid-1950s, so the
of historical narrative associated with them was eclipsed by the Afro-Cre
master narrative. The class-based narrative remains significant in formal
tory writing, however, and may in the future achieve more public resona
than it has now. And a "gendered" narrative has certainly developed in th
academic historiography of Trinidad & Tobago, if not yet, perhaps, in
popular mind.20
Though these potential narratives are not likely to have the same em
tional or political resonance as the four I have considered, especially
Afrocentric and Indocentric ones, their possible emergence points to
salient fact: There are now many "authorized versions" of the country's p
all competing for inclusion in the canonical national history. The past is v
much alive and a key arena for contestation in the complicated, dyna
poly-ethnic society that is Trinidad & Tobago today.

20. Rennie 1973, Singh 1994, Reddock 1994, Mohammed 2003.

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BRIDGET BRERETON

University of the West Indies

St Augustine, Trinidad & Tobago
[email protected]

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