As
the Caribbean’s most cosmopolitan society, Trinidad and Tobago has been
described by historians as a ‘segmented society’, notwithstanding 200 years of
‘miscegenation’, the inter-racial procreation of children. Interestingly, there
seems to be no positive word for mixed-race people in our language, as the
prefix 'mis' does not convey a plus. It conveys the idea that this was
something inherently bad.
There
are people in Trinidad and Tobago today who, in all honesty, describe
themselves as Indian or African. Others may confide that they are French
creoles, and if they know you really well, admit to a ‘touch of the tar brush’.
People refer to themselves as dougla, hackwi, cocoa panol and to each other as
red, dark, brownskin and half-Portuguese-Spanish-Indian-something.
All
this is the product of economies. Economies which commenced in the 1780s with
the slaves, their French creole and coloured masters, their coloured
descendants and their relatives. They had come under the Cedula of Population
of 1783 to establish a sugar economy. They met Spanish, Amerindian and
apparently black people here, some of whom were already of mixed heritage. The
Spaniards had come to these islands for pearls and gold, real and
imagined. The tribal people who
had been around all along and worked the first economy for the Spaniards, the
pearl diving economy, in the Gulf of Tears, now the Gulf of Paria. The Africans
were few then, as there was no gold to dig, thus hardly any economy to speak
of.
The
French, however, changed all that. The Cedula of Population, a legal guarantee
of entry to Trinidad as long as you were Catholic, set a precedent. The
British, who inherited it in 1797 under the articles of surrender, used it to
allow unlimited entry to the extent that British Prime Minister Canning could
describe the island a few decades later as an ‘experimental colony’.
Some
say the slaves were freed by England in 1834 so as to acquire the lands in the
Caribbean islands that had been won from France and Spain. These islands were
negotiated in pacts drawn up at the end of twenty years of war with France With
the slaves freed and the French and coloured planters broke, the British bought
the land and now had to experiment with importing labour. Chinese, Indians, Portuguese,
impoverished Europeans, some of them criminals on the run or the religiously
persecuted - various people found themselves in Trinidad and Tobago for the
purpose of economies. Sugar, cotton, tobacco, coffee and cocoa brought people
from all over the Caribbean to ‘la belle Trinidad’.
The
British had no problem with all this, and formalised a simple segmentation of
the society: from 1845, Indians
were put to work in the cane. The former slaves and the previously free black
people worked as artisans, labourers, gardeners, clerks, minor trades people or
did nothing at all. The Chinese couldn’t do the agricultural thing, neither the
Portuguese, so they made their way as shopkeepers, barkeepers, grocers and poor
clerks. The returning Amerindians cum Venezuelans were the ones that really
opened up cocoa, creating by the late 19th century a vibrant economy from which
the French creoles and others of all races profited enormously.
Thus,
stereotypes in British Trinidad were soon cast. In a simplistic sense, one may
say that Chinese had laundries, bakeries and restaurants. Portuguese had rum
shops and groceries, and so did some Indians and Chinese. White people was not
in that. More and more black and coloured people worked in government’s lower
levels, as train conductors, policemen, nurses, teachers, clerks, later as
lawyers and doctors.
In
the segmented society in the making, none of these people were sleeping only
with their respective segments. But in the eyes of the British administrators,
it did not really matter what was produced in a subjected people. As for the
French creoles, they married their cousins and updated their pedigrees. Later,
the Syrians and the Lebanese would do the same. It all had to do with
maintaining economies, and of course how one was socialised.
Two
powerful forces were present on the colonial stage of the segmented society:
the Afro-French Catholic culture of the older economies and the Indian culture
of the more recent sugar economy. They were segmented by colonial fiat and racial
prejudice on all sides.
It
worked quite well for the British administration. The economies flourished. The
Indians in the cane, the cocoa panols, Africans and some Indians in the cocoa,
over-the-counter trade with the Chinese, Portuguese, and the French and English
in commerce. Under the aegis of
empire, a belief system which was loyal to the throne and organised as
religion, civil law and with institutionalised force, was simply imposed.
Independence,
when it came in the second half of the 20th century, was not sought after for
patriotic, emotionally driven reasons. Like the freeing of the slaves in 1834,
the granting of independence was an economic choice. England could no longer
afford an empire. She had won the most terrible war ever fought for the
maintaining of western civilisation as we know it, and so had to get rid of the
colonies. Inheritors of the coloured reformists movement and black
intellectuals were allowed to take the country into an era of independence with
no resistance from Great Britain.
The
descendants of Indian indentured workers who were represented at the
independence talks in Britain became the opposition in the legislative, later
in the parliament. The segmentation of the society, created by men who wore
powdered wigs and buckled shoes more than 200 years ago, is to this day a
powerful political instrument.
Segmentation
only works if people perpetuate it. Otherwise, it vanishes, and integration
takes place. In history, we can see segmentation of societies having been
reversed and forgotten about it. The Greek slaves of antique Rome who stayed on
in Naples stopped being slaves and are today indistinguishable from other
Italians. In Germany, where sixty years ago segmentation was carried ‘ad
absurdum’ by the politicians, people don’t even know or care nowadays who is
Jewish and who is not. And whereas in Ireland religious segmentation is still
perpetuated, Catholics and Protestants live in greatest harmony in integrated
societies the world over.
If
a society, however, is segmented along racial lines like Trinidad’s,
segmentation becomes a handy tool for people seeking power. The absurd idea of
structuring a society along immediately visible physical features of its
members - and expecting the segments to behave accordingly - is a demonstration
of great historical tenaciousness in multi-ethnic societies.
Today,
some forty years after independence, we are still a segmented society, claiming
to be Trinidadians and Tobagonians in our more emotional moments. Mostly,
however, we describe ourselves with great sincerity as Indian, Syrian etc.
etc., even though we have not lived anywhere else but here for more than 200
years, four, five, six generations. Such is the power of the segmented society,
institutionalised by a colonial experiment many centuries ago.
Tribal
myths in the segmented society
Unresolved
issues have now produced in this year of grace 2000 an interesting phenomenon.
In ignorance, in pursuit of power and personal wealth, in self-aggrandisement
and in the seeking of control of economies, present-day leaders in the form of
politicians, trade unionists, calypsonians and social scientists create and
utilise tribal myths. Supposedly, this is the natural progression in a
segmented society - instead of resolving issues, myths become historical
reality.
“Tribal
myths emphasize not what men have in common, but what divides them,” remark ...
in their book ‘The Messianic Legacy’. “Tribal myths do not pertain to the
universal and shared aspects of human experience. On the contrary, they serve
to extol and exalt a specific tribe, culture, religion, people or ideology -
necessarily at the expense other tribes, cultures, peoples, religions or
ideologies. Instead of leading inwards towards self-confrontation and
self-recognition, tribal myths point outwards towards self-glorification and
self-aggrandisement. Such myths derive impetus and energy from insecurity,
blindness and prejudice.”
Tribal
concepts in a segmented society willfully create scapegoats. Having no real
internal core, segments invent an external enemy. Tribal myths reflect a
deep-rooted uncertainty about one’s inner identity.
Entire
populations in these islands are the product of the European wars and
revolutions of the 18th and 19th centuries. These arranged themselves into
productive economies in the conquered territories as segmented societies.
Ignorance
of our historic past is our greatest pitfall, as Trinidadian historian P.G.L.
Borde already lamented a century ago. Like in other former colonies, history
has been hardly studied in itinerary and far less, been passed on to the young.
The era of independence in Trinidad and Tobago seemed to mean the forgetting of
our past and the shared experiences of the last 200 years. This nationally
institutionalised amnesia has created a tremendous loss in the body politic of
our country, and unfortunately, where amnesia sets in, tribal myths soon fill
the gap.
Ultimately, history is about the present. We need
history so that we can organise our futures
