hyphenated cultures: ethnicity and nation in trinidad. phd dissertation, florida international...

FLORIDA INTERNATIONAL UNIVERSITY

Miami, Florida

HYPHENATED CULTURES: ETHNICITY AND NATION IN TRINIDAD

A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the

requirements for the degree of

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

in

COMPARATIVE SOCIOLOGY

by

Teruyuki Tsuji

2006

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UMI Number: 3249720

Copyright 2006 by

Tsuji, Teruyuki

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To: Interim Dean Mark Szuchman College of Arts and Sciences

This dissertation, written by Teruyuki Tsuji, and entitled Hyphenated Cultures: Ethnicity and Nation in Trinidad, having been approved in respect to style and intellectual content, is referred to you for judgment.

We have read this dissertation and recommend that it be approved.

& Barry Levme

thony P. Maingot

Terry Rey

Kevin Yelvington

ix Stepick III, Major Professor

Date of Defense: November 8, 2006

The dissertation of Teruyuki Tsuji is approved.

Interim Dean Mark Szuchman College of Arts and Sciences

Dean George WalkerUniversity Graduate School

Florida International University, 2006

ii


© Copyright 2006 by Teruyuki Tsuji

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iii


DEDICATION

For my parents, whose patience, understanding, and support enabled me to complete this

dissertation.

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

First of all, I wish to thank Dr. Alex Stepick, the chair of my dissertation

committee. Without his gentle but firm guidance, the completion of this dissertation

would not have been possible. Throughout the project, he always placed great confidence

in my ability to complete the dissertation with excellence. I also extend thanks to the

committee members for their support, patience and constructive critiques. I drew

inspiration from Dr. Anthony Maingot, my first academic advisor at FIU. This project

would not have started without his advice. My debates with Dr. Barry Levine both within

and outside the classroom constantly expanded my theoretical knowledge and developed

my critical thinking. Dr. Terry Rey was particularly helpful in designing the research

methodology and formulating the theoretical approach to ritual practices of minority

diaspora communities in the Caribbean, which became a major issue of this dissertation.

Dr. Kevin Yelvington’s advice based on his long-time commitment to the issues of ethnic

relations in Trinidad and the wider Caribbean was a great impetus for this dissertation.

Finally, but by no means least, I want to express my appreciation to people of

Trinidad and Tobago, who allowed me to come into various aspects of their lives and

who shared with me their knowledge and experience. I cannot name and express my

gratitude to each one of them here. Countless Trinidadians became concerned in this

project and motivated it as significant sources of access to wonders of ethnicity in

Trinidad. This dissertation was about and because of their tolerance toward cultural

“others.” The inspiration I drew from and the questions that occurred through

communication with Trinidadians will be life-long assets as an anthropologist beyond the

project of this dissertation.

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ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION

HYPHENATED CULTURES: ETHNICITY AND NATION IN TRINIDAD

by

Teruyuki Tsuji

Florida International University, 2006

Miami, Florida

Professor Alex Stepick IE, Major Professor

This dissertation attempts to unravel why and how postcolonial Trinidad has

displayed relative stability in spite of the presence of the factors that have produced

conflict and instability in other postcolonial societies.

Trinidad’s distinctive social formation began in the colonial period with a unique

politics of culture among the landowning European groups, Anglican English and French

Creole. Contrary to the materialist assumption of landowners’ class solidarity, the

development of Trinidad’s plantation economy into two crops, each controlled by a

separate European ethno-religious faction, impeded the integration and subsequent

ideological domination of European-Christians. Throughout the nineteenth century

neither group dominated the other, nor did they fuse into a single ruling class. The

dynamics between them both generated recurring conflict while simultaneously creating

mechanisms that limited conflict.

Based on original in-depth fieldwork and historical analysis, the dissertation

proceeds to demonstrate that Trinidad’s unique intra-class conflict within the dominant

European population has produced hyphenated, as opposed to hybridized cultural

elements. Supplementing the historical analysis with empirical examinations of

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contemporary j'wter-religious rituals and post-colonial politics this dissertation argues that

social integration is inseparable from the question of inter-cultural mixture or articulation.

In Trinidad, however, the resulting combination of distinct cultural elements is neither a

“plural society” (M.G. Smith 1965; Despres 1967) nor an integrated totality in the

structural-functionalistic sense (R.T. Smith 1962; Braithwaite 1967). Moreover, Trinidad

does not conform to the post-structural framework’s depiction of the social linkage

between power and culture. The concept of cultural hybridization is equally misleading in

the case of Trinidad. The underlying assumption of a monolithic European population’s

cultural hegemony and post-structural analysis’s almost exclusive focus on the inter-class

politics of culture seriously misrepresent and misunderstand Trinidadian cultural and its

associated social and political relations. The dissertation examines this reflexive

influence of culture not as an instrument of the powerful few but as an autonomous force

that reproduces social divisions, yet restrains conflict.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE

INTRODUCTION...............................................................................................................1Ethnicity as a Political Phenomenon: “Ethnopolitics” in Trinidad......................... 6“Peace in Feud” in Trinidad..................................................................................11Exchange of Ethnic Gifts: The “cultures” that unfold in politics..........................16Endnotes................................................................................................................ 25

I. A NOTE ON METHODOLOGY......................................................................... 27Coming to Know “Trinidad (Trinidadian) Culture” ............................................. 27Anthropological Fieldwork................................................................................... 36Reflections on “Being There”: “Them” as an Indispensable Element of “Us” 42Endnote................................................................................................................. 46

H. THEORETICAL ORIENTATION....................................................................... 47The Preceding Discussions-Critical Literature Review ...................................... 47“Plural” but a “Society”-the “Wonder” of Cultural Mixing................................ 47The “Precariousness of Power”: The Demystification of Cultural Mixing.......... 51Essentializing Cultural Mixing..............................................................................55

The Argument-(Re-)contextualizing Cultural Mixing.......................................... 60The “Culture of Ethnicity’-Distinct Concepts of Culture at Work...................... 60Cultural Mixing in Trinidad-Hyphenation of Cultures........................................ 66Endnotes...................................................................................... 77

III. RETHINKING COLONIAL CATEGORIES: THE CULTURAL POLITICSAMONG THE DOMINANT.................................................................................79Spanish Trinidad-Antecedent Conditions............................................................. 81A “French colony in all but name” ........................................................................81Free Coloreds: “Middle Class” in a Plantation Society.........................................86

“Trinidad in Transition’’-Cleavages in Social Field............................................91The Crown Colony System: Relative Autonomy of Colonial State..................... 92Fraility in the “Sovereignty of King Sugar”: “Ethnicized” Plantation Economy ..98

Struggle for Representation-Ethnic Conflict among the “Dominant”................109Questioning the Unquestioned: Anglicizing the Colony.....................................I l l“Disestablishment”: Institutionalization of Incomplete Cultural Hegemony 116Politics of Group Worth: Language and Education.............................................123

“Legacies”from the “Formative Years”............................................................134Endnotes...............................................................................................................143


IV. CARNIVAL: CULTURES OF RESISTANCE...................................................150From Negue Jardins to Jamettes: The “Other H alf’ ...........................................155“Resistance” Polymorphic-Cultures of Resistance.............................................166The Meaning of Carnival: A Culture out of Cultures of Resistance....................176Endnotes...............................................................................................................189

V. MOTHERS: THE CULTURAL MATRIX.........................................................192La Divina Pastor a and Soparee Ke Mai..............................................................195Mother: A Bone of Contentions...........................................................................197“Purity”: Sine Qua Non for “Mixing” ................................................................ 208The Avoidance of a Homogenizing Idiom of Community................................. 214

Kali M ai.............................................................................................................. 222Nests of “Transformist Hegemonies”: A Chain of “Another Construction” 229Legitimation of Ritual Practices: Individual in Collective................................. 238

Mothers: The Hyphenating Force o f Distinct Imaginations............................... 255Endnotes.............................................................................................................. 260

VI. NATION BUILDING AS CULTURE MAKING.............................................. 266Nation as a Cultural Hybrid: From “Mothers” to a “Mother”......................... 268The Origin of Ethnic Consciousness: “No set ah money” .................................. 273The Nationalization of Memory: “A man who doh know his history”............... 280

Nation Building as “Educational Process”: “To Educate is to Emancipate ”....286Denominational Schools: An Epitome of “Cultural Imperialism” ..................... 290State as “Normative Order”: “Elementary Democratic Right”........................... 295

Village: The “National Community in Microcosm ”........................................... 308University of Woodford Square.......................................................................... 308Meet the People Tour: “Village as a Schoolhouse”............................................ 312Peasantry as a Cultural System: Quest for “Culture of Resistance” ................... 313Better Village Programs: Nation as a Web of Villages...................................... 320Villages-Hyphens of Cultures............................................................................ 327

Resistance o f Culture-Distinct Narratives o f Nation: A “Mother” and“Mothers”........................................................................................................... 336Endnotes...............................................................................................................350

CONCLUSION: Ethnicity and Nation in Trinidad........................................................ 355The Formation of the “Culture of Ethnicity” in Trinidad....................................358Culture of Ethnicity in Trinidad: “Integrative Separation”................................. 365Trinidad: A “HypheNation”................................................................................ 368Endnotes.............................................................................................................. 382

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LIST OF REFERENCES................................................................................................ 383

VITA ............................................................................................................................. 406

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LIST OF TABLES

TABLE PAGE

2-1. Distribution of the Population by Place of Origin in the Post-emancipationPeriod, 1851-1921................................................................................................ 71

2-2. Distribution of the Population by Race/Ethnicity, 1946-2000............................... 71

3-1. Changes in Population: Before and After the Enforcement of Cedula dePobulacion............................................................................................................ 82

3-2. Number of Free Colored Population before Emancipation................................... 87

3-3. Comparative Demographic Strength of “Free” Populations...................................87

3-4. Land Granted to Free Coloreds: 1783-1812...........................................................89

3-5. Slaveholdings by White and Free Colored in 1824................ 89

3-6. Sources of Immigrant Revenue and Distribution of Indentured Laborersduring Cocoa Boom.............................................................................................104

3-7. Land Use by Crop in Pre-Emancipation Trinidad................................................107

3-8. Population by Religious Affiliation in Colonial Trinidad, 1851-1946................121

3-9. Religious Affiliation (Christian Denominations) by Place of Origin in 1891......122

4-1. Population in Port of Spain and its Suburbia in the late nineteenth century.........168

4-2. Increase of Number of British West Indian Nationals in the GreaterPort of Spain, 1851-1891 ..................................................................................173

4-3. Religious Affiliations of the Population in the Greater Port of Spain inl891....173

6-1. Racial Groups and Literacy of the Population in 1946........................................ 293

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INTRODUCTION

Most former colonial societies assume a cultural, racial, and religious melange as

a ramification of the historical settlement of workers for plantations or other modes of

colonial production from different parts of the globe. In these societies, the culture of

ethnicity developed in close correspondence with commodification of labor. The colonial

elites, under the aegis of the colonial political authority, constantly produced a discourse

that essentialized the putative cultural traditions and tied them to particular racial

attributes to make them a substantive social fact. The fixed distances between reified

cultural essences constructed, retained and justified strict labor control and the assumed

cultural hegemony of the colonial elites. This resulted in an ethnic division of labor that

subsequently produced mutually exclusive material interests of ethnic groups. In these

societies, this structural condition inherited from the colonial period set the context where

electoral national politics became “ethnicized.”

Trinidad and Tobago—the southernmost twin-island sovereign state in the

Caribbean—conforms to this generalization. The political parties have mobilized and

organized their supporters along ethnic lines. As a result, since the introduction of

electoral politics with independence, national politics have remained the most evident and

thus most reported cause of inter-ethnic conflicts. Nevertheless, compared to many other

postcolonial nations, Trinidadian society has treaded a relatively less destructive path.

The ethnic divisions and competition in the political arena has not undermined the

political system or society in general. Though occasionally inflamed in response to

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political events, inter-ethnic tensions have always abated without consuming and

destabilizing the nation.

This dissertation examines the correlations between the enduring ethnic divisions

and apparently cohesive national society of Trinidad and Tobago. The politicization of

ethnicity (or ethnicization of politics) intensified, not suppressed, the colonial reification

of cultural essences as “natural” attributes to particular ethnic groups. As a result, the

society remains ethnically divided. However, at the same time, the Trinidadian nation has

assumed relative cohesion despite the acute influence of ethnicity in political public space

that causes severe disruption in many other postcolonial nations and societies with similar

structural traits. Ralph Premdas (1996) writes, “Below the surface of Trinidad’s political

peace existed an antagonistic ethnic monster waiting its moment to explode” (p. 3). If so,

what controls this “ethnic monster”? Are ethnic relations as volatile and tense in Trinidad

as he presumes?

This dissertation addresses these questions. In so doing, I raise an objection to

previous studies that force students of multiethnic societies to make an “either/or” choice

in understanding ethnicity and nation. Many scholars share what may be called a

modernist view that nation and nationalism are inevitable outgrowths of modernization

and industrialization, and that in the process the preexisting ethnic and cultural

heterogeneity and ideological diversity are necessarily subsumed under the emergent

homogeneous national culture and common ideology of substance. For example, using

Durkheim’s thesis on the division of labor and the associated “organic solidarity of

society,” Ernest Gellner (1964,1983) sees nationalism as a political need of modem

societies all of which are unavoidably stratified and diverse. Similar to Durkheim’s view

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of religion and education, Gellner sees a common language and a unified national

educational system as indispensable for (reproducing a homogeneous national culture

that creates/preserves cohesiveness within a nation. Karl Deutsche (1966) assumes the

increase of “social communications” attendant upon modernization and industrialization

facilitates the formation of “complementary habits” and symbols that will integrate the

once-isolated “parochial” alignments of individuals from different social, economic, and

political positions into a “people” with a common “nationality.” Benedict Anderson

(1983) argues that such “social communication” has become more intense with the rise of

reading publics that have been engendered by the spread of the technology of “print-

capitalism.” The new genres, including newspapers and novels, which portray a nation as

a homogeneous and dateless entity, has mediated communications between the members

of the political unit who have no face-to-face interactions, while disseminating a

symmetrical “image” of the nation among the masses. Despite some disagreements, all

these theorists believe that national identity will eventually replace pre-modem senses of

affiliation, including ethnic identity (see also Hutchinson & Smith, 1994).

Walker Connor (1972,1978,1987)1 has articulated what are perhaps the most

powerful counterarguments to this modernist view that either ignores the question of

ethnicity or at best treats the matter of ethnic identity as a minor obstruction to effective

nation-building and state-integration. He attacks the definition of “nation” as an “artifact”

or “instrument” to be constructed and appropriated that in the functionalistic approaches

to “nation” from Durkhemian consensual or Marxian camps leads to equating “nation”

with “state.” Connor insists that the scholars should concentrate their attention on the

affective dimensions of ethnicity that he believes are not assimilated mechanically. The

3


equation of nation and state overlooks the fact that the incorporation to the same political

unit and the intensification of social communication render once-isolated primordial

collectives comparable and create intergroup competition that lead to the reification and

“ideologization” of “otherness,” rather than their being subsumed into a homogenized

cultural form that comes to characterize a nation-state. Politically driven, “other-defined”

ethnic groups are transformed into a “self-defined” nation. In other words, ethnic groups

are “potential nations” or a group of “people not yet cognizant to a larger ethnic element”

(Connor, 1994[1978], pp. 102-103). Connor isolates this relation between nation and

ethnicity in his own term, “Ethnonationaiism.”

In contrast to the modernists who understand pre-modem ethnicity (identity with

his/her ethnic group) as being dissolved by the rise of national identity and culture,

Connor sees ethnicity and nation as mutually reinforcing, not mutually exclusive.

However, by considering a nation as a development of an ethnic group, his definition

denies what may be called a “multi-ethnic nation” (for Connor, it is appropriate to call it

a “multi-ethnic state”). In short, for both sides in the debate—modernist or

primordialist—ethnicity and nation remain diametrically opposed when a multiethnic

society is examined.

In opposition, I argue that Trinidad is a “multiethnic nation.” The solidarity of

Trinidad’s nation paradoxically is based upon a unique form and manifestation of

respecting cultural differences. Being ethnically different is not inconsistent with sharing

what Trinidadians in this study frequently dub “Trinidadian (or Trinidad) culture.” That

Trinidad has succeeded as a nation, at least in the minimal sense of reproducing itself and

not falling into the self-destructive violence and social disorder characteristic of many

4


former colonial nation-states, is because of its peculiar “culture of ethnicity” (Yelvington,

1993) that combines ethnic divisions with national unity.

Therefore, the focus of this study is not on formal institutions, such as the state

apparatus, in mediating ethnic conflict. As Perry Mars (1995, p. 167) has pointed out with

reference to the experiences of West Indian nations, coercive forms of arbitration by the

postcolonial states, in most cases intensified interethnic conflicts. However, I doubt the

applicability of Mars’s generalization that the “monopolized capacity of state to affect the

course of interethnic relations has impaired the potential generation of democratic forms

of interactions,” to Trinidad and Tobago (p. 184). Instead, I hypothesize that there is

something innate to Trinidadian culture of ethnicity that has simultaneously both

prevented the post-independent state from “monopoliz[ing] the capacity to affect the

course of inter-ethnic relations” and restrained inter-group confrontations. Following

Victor Turner et al., it may be called the Trinidad’s “cultural mode of conflict

suppression” (Swarts, Turner, & Tuden, 1966, p. 37).

The following argument refutes various previous approaches to Trinidad that

presumed the predominance or hegemony of a particular cultural influence, generally

colonial, Western Europeans. Reflecting the unique balance of power, Trinidadians have

a peculiar “culture of ethnicity” that operates in two ways: “intentionally”

separating/contrasting one putative cultural origin from/to another as a diacritical ethnic

symbol; and “organically” integrating them into an overarching structured culture—

“Trinidadian culture.” This “doubleness” is critical in theorizing about ethnicity and

“nation” in Trinidad, because it frames often-unstated Trinidadian presumptions about

how the Trinidadian world is and should be.

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Since it was “ethnicized,” electoral politics have remained “one of the principal

arenas” where the “culture of ethnicity” publicly unfolds (see Geertz, 1973, p. 312). The

major political actors have served to remind and reinforce this structure of meaning

through dramatization in elections ritualistically held with public audiences. In the

remainder of this chapter, I examine Trinidad’s “ethnicized” politics based on the

assumption that it is the most visible and striking manifestation of this “culture of

ethnicity.”

Ethnicity as a Political Phenomenon: “Ethnopolitics” in Trinidad

Local political leaders did not seek the development of political organizations in

close alignment with particular ethnic groups. In fact, ethnically oriented political parties

contradicted the nationalistic political orientation of Eric Williams, the first leader of the

PNM and prime minister, who remained in office until his death in 1981. He stated:

We of the PNM . . . have been able to incorporate into our People’s National Movement people of all races, colours and from all walks of life, with the common bond of a national community dedicated to the pursuit of national ends without any special privilege being granted to race, colour, class, creed, national origin or previous condition of servitude. Some of our most active and most loyal PNM members are indistinguishable in colour from our M assa. . . Your members of the PNM must understand once and for all that you misunderstand your Party and you do a great disservice to your national cause if you think that every white person or every Indians is anti-PNM or that every black person is pro-PNM. You shall know them not by their colour or their race but their fruit (Williams,1956, cited in Sutton, 1981, p. 216).

Beyond Williams and the PNM, all political parties and their leaders have always

professed to be broadly based, and have consistently attempted to mobilize voters and

resources across ethnic lines. Nevertheless, however much they have aspired to clear their

6


parties of the influence of ethnicity, Trinidadian structural conditions set the context.

Ethnicity is firmly embedded in the society, and political actors have felt compelled to

employ strategies centered around ethnic mobilization (Horowitz, 2000[1985], p. 311—

312). An entire body of literature describes the structure in which national politics of

Trinidad and Tobago became—and has remained—ethnicized despite the intentions of

the leading political actors.2

In Trinidad, immigrants were incorporated into the unified stratification system

according to their putative racial and cultural traits (Yelvington, 1993). This entailed the

creation of an ethnic division of labor and residence, under which the settlers with

different cultural origins eventually framed distinctive and exclusive economic and social

activities and relative claims, and in turn reinforced their sense of ethnic affiliation

(Hintzen, 1989, pp. 4—5). In the late 1930s, marked by worsening economic hardship,

political mobilization climaxed with trade unions emerging as the vehicle for expressing

the grievances of the working class. As representatives for different economic sectors and

occupations, the trade unions had already assumed the character of ethnically based

organizations (Ryan, 1972). In the trade union movement in the 1930s, however,

ethnicity played little part in the upsurge of political consciousness among the working

mass. The leaders employed the ideology of anti-imperialism as a “mobilizing idiom”

(Hintzen, 1989, p. 38), and they welded the ethnically divided trade unions together

through general strikes that achieved large-scale political mobilization. Thus, the trade

union’s political campaign postponed ethnic groups’ claims for liberation from the

colonial domination. Once decolonization began, however, anti-imperialism and colonial

domination became ineffective as a template for political mobilization. As the focus

7


shifted to domestic contention about control of transferring state apparatus, the leading

political actors realigned themselves along ethnic lines to secure the support of the largest

voting bloc. In Trinidad, as in other former plantation societies, it was difficult for

indigenous political elites to mobilize the electorate across ethnic boundaries that

embodied conflicting socioeconomic interests (pp. 38-39). The political institutions

introduced by the British only served to reinforce the reflection of ethnicity on political

organization. Given the ethnically divided residential patterns, which shared more or less

the same boundaries with electoral political constituencies, the single-seat electoral

district system has rendered party alignments ascribed, and election outcomes predictable

(Horowitz, 2000[1985]. p. 314). In short, the national politics of independent Trinidad

was bound to ethnicize despite the intentions of leading actors because of the structural

socioeconomic conditions whose roots reach to the colonial period.

The PNM came into power shortly after it was founded, in the elections for the

seats of the Legislative Council in 1956. The colonial authorities, openly interfering with

the election, gave the PNM a parliamentary majority in order to avoid a deadlock that

could potentially prevent significant political decisions (Ryan, 1972, p. 162). What is

crucial, however, is not how the PNM came to power, but what enabled the PNM to

retain state control for 30 years (until it was defeated in 1986 by the NAR’s coalition of

opposition parties). According to Hintzen (1989), the PNM has been an urban-based

political organization under the leadership of educated middle-class Afro-Trinidadians,

and it has consistently employed various forms of patronage to ethnically mobilize

election victories and the longevity of the PNM regime. Accordingly, while serving as

the ruling party, the PNM had never undertaken “de-ethnicization” of the public political

8


space; if anything, it deliberately retained its ethnicized character (p. 90). Ivar Oxaal

(1982) stated, the mobilization of the East Indian population, first through “pseudo-party”

religio-cultural organizations and then by political parties, was a “gift from the god” to

the PNM in their struggle for mass support (p. 88 see also Horowitz, 2000[1985], p. 306).

It is possible that the mass support derived from the ethnic alignment is a prerequisite for

being competitive in Trinidadian elections, and gaining the control of the state.

In the mid-1960s, dining research into the correlation between ethnicity and

politics when asked how long it would take until the racial factor became negligible in

political affairs, a respondent answered: “It is ‘bout to come in 10 years” (Bahadoorsingh,

1971 [1966], p. 71). This prediction was echoed in a follow-up study in the late 1970s, in

which roughly two-thirds of the informants shared the view that the “achieved” would

replace the “ascribed” attributes as criteria of class and social status (Ryan, Greene, &

Harewood, 1979, pp. 50-51). Nevertheless, more than two decades later it remained

unrealized. In the results of the past general elections, there is no clear indication that

ethnic consciousness will shortly reduce its significance as a determinant of voters’

behavior (Yelvington, 1993, p. 11). In Trinidad, ethnicity has been, and is most likely to

remain, the most critical determinant in political organization and mobilization. The

political leaders, who “represent” particular ethnic communities, have desired power to

attain, confirm or reinforce a claimed comparative group-worth. During my fieldwork in

Trinidad, I frequently heard the cliche: “It [ethnic conflict] is made by politicians.” The

implication was that the relations between different ethnic groups would be

unproblematic if they were free from the influence of institutional politics. Curiously

9


enough, the political actors interviewed for this research, including the former and current

members of Parliament, shared this “common sense”: “Politics [is] to be blamed.”

Extant studies have thoroughly analyzed the mechanism by which ethnicity has

become politicized in Trinidad. The structural conditions formed during the colonial

period set the context wherein the introduced electoral party politics became

“ethnicized,” despite the aspirations of the leading local political elites to retain the

influence of ethnicity in the public political space. Politically derived—and politically

driven—ethnicity becomes a major cause of political and social instability. Trinidad is

not deviant from the generalization of the politicization of ethnicity (or ethnicization of

politics) that is prevalent in the political development in former colonial societies.

A question still remains, though. Although similar structural conditions bring

about the politicization of ethnicity in many postcolonial nations, it has different

consequences in different societies. The variations may result from varying types of

political system onto which ethnicity is transcribed. However, this dissertation

hypothesizes that differences in ethnicity have produced various outcomes when

politicized. Drawing on Jack Alexander’s description of racial consciousness in Jamaica

(1977), Kevin Yelvington (1993) observes that ethnicity is a cultural—thus not

universal—phenomenon characterized with a particular mode of racial/cultural

differentiation and ideology about “mixing,” which developed reflecting sociohistorical

specificity. This dissertation seeks to identify Trinidad’s “culture of ethnicity”

(Yelvington, 1993, p. 10) on the assumption that it has simultaneously caused and

contained interethnic conflicts due to how it has historically taken form and was

institutionalized.

10


“Peace in Feud” in Trinidad

The general election in November 1995 threw Trinidad and Tobago into

confusion and threatened violence. The election allocated the same number of

parliamentary seats to the two major political parties, the People’s National Movement

(PNM) and the United National Congress (UNC). Neither of these Trinidad-based

political parties—popularly viewed as representative of die two largest ethnic groups of

the population, Afro- and Indo-Trinidadians, respectively—could secure the majority in

the House of Representatives, which consequently granted the casting vote to the

National Alliance for Reconstruction (NAR), a minority party.3 The drama concluded

without violence and produced a coalition between UNC and NAR: Trinidad’s first

“Indian” government under “Hindu” leadership. The general election of December 2001

furthered the division between the Afro-4 and Indo-Trinidadian5 communities when PNM

and UNC divided the elected seats, with no third party winning any seats and eliminating

any chance of either party of establishing a ruling majority. Pending another election, the

president, who was considered of “African” descent, appointed the leader of PNM, the

“African” party, as the interim prime minister. This appointment was widely interpreted

as a re-affirmation of racial and ethnic affiliation as the most critical criterion in the

distribution of political rewards. It was also perceived that “Afro-Creoleness”-a racial

/cultural attribute of Affo-Trinidadians (or simply Africans)-was the most valuable

attribute for political decision-making. The foreign media devoted an unusually large

amount of coverage to a gloomy prediction of Ralph Premdas, a concerned local social

scientist, that Trinidad and Tobago might join the list of the countries stricken with

prolonged ethnic conflicts, such as Fiji and Guyana.6

11


Such a negative forecast was neither new nor unique. In Trinidad, there has

always been a fear of the consequences of centering ethnicity in the public political space.

In the late nineteenth century, J.A. Froude, an English traveler and writer, advised his

fellow colonists to “withdraw of themselves before they are compelled to go” when they

completed “England’s duty,” that is, to “set up a constitution with a black prime minister

and a black legislature.” For Froude, it seemed unnecessary for “Englishmen. . . [to

whom] the world [was] open, where they [could] live under less degrading conditions” to

cling on to this small and outlying colony that would eventually become another “Hayti

[that] allow[ed] no white man to hold land” (Froude, 1892, pp. 88-89). The violent

political transformation that led to the birth of the first black republic—Haiti—occurred

almost a century earlier. In Trinidad, however, the region’s largest fiee colored

community, which chiefly spoke in French-derived Creole, had constantly evoked Haiti’s

terrifying memory among the colonizers. In the closing decades of the century, the

island’s politics seemed to be developing into such a worst-case scenario. The affluent

and educated colored middle class became influential political actors through their efforts

to organize and mobilize the working-class Afro-Trinidadian population. The colonizers

must have considered taking Froude’s advice when in 1903 angry Afro-Trinidadian

urbanites thronged around the Parliament, protesting the Legislative Council’s

deliberations concerning an increase in the water rate.7

Similarly, when England started to prepare to “withdraw of themselves” from

Trinidad in the 1940s, the colonists considered the last of “England’s duty” to be

restraining the influence of ethnic competition in the political arena-the putative

obstruction to the smooth transference of political power. The local political elites, who

12


served on the Franchised Commission on electoral participation reform, also feared that

the intensification of ethnicity would eventually break Trinidadian society into factions.

A related concern was the paralysis of the proposed self-government system reflected in

the colonists’ and some native politicians’ attempt to exclude the majority of the Indo-

Trinidadian population from the political process by requiring high qualifications for

voter eligibility (Samaroo, 1998, p. 123).

Despite the thoughts of some members of the Franchised Commission,

unrestricted adult suffrage was introduced and minority groups were constitutionally

promised at least access to national politics. Ethnicity was not the major mobilizing idiom

in the maiden election in 1946 (Ryan, 1972). Nevertheless, its influence emerged

gradually and finally came to dominate party organization and voting patterns by the time

of independence in 1962. In the decades since independence, national politics followed

the predicted racial cast with a “black prime minister and [predominantly] black

legislature,” and as feared by the colonists more than a century ago, electoral politics has

developed under the strong influence of ethnic consciousness. In spite of this history and

the dire predictions from imperial writers, colonial officials, and indigenous political

elites, Trinidad and Tobago have not devolved into ungovernable ethnic strife. Unlike

Haiti, Guyana, and Fiji, Trinidad’s social dramas have not concluded with conflicts that

disestablished civil society.

V. S. Naipaul, a Trinidadian man of letters and a Nobel laureate, notes in the

chapter on Trinidad of his novel-cum-travelogue, The Middle Passage (2001): “In the

Negro-Indian conflict each side believes it can win. Neither sees that this rivalry threatens

to destroy the Land of Calypso” (p. 81). It is not difficult, on first reading, to understand

13


the contradiction he describes. Should both Afro- (“Negro”) and Indo-Trinidadians

(“Indian”), as Naipaul observes, believe their superiority over the other, they must fight

to the end, a battle that would likely dismember Trinidad—the “Land of Calypso.” The

paradox is that Naipaul does not believe that either of these ethnic groups considers their

confrontation a fundamental threat to the order and cohesion of the nation. In Trinidad,

similarly contradictory views are routinely expressed in daily conversation. An Indo-

Trinidadian voiced his dissatisfaction when interviewed, saying “They [Afro-

Trinidadians] benefit most ‘cause they control everyt’ing,” whereas an Afro-Trinidadian

informant retorted, “You kidding? Drive the Beetham Highway.8 You’ll know who’s

benefiting most when you see how many big business places have Indian names. Singh,

Bagaloo. . . whatever you name it.” Yet, these seemingly divisive conversations, more

often than not, conclude with both sides of the ethnic divide agreeing, “It [the inter-ethnic

relation] won’t get worse,” or “We get along after all.”

Trinidad and Tobago has endured several phases of crisis, or “social dramas,”

where, as described by Victor Turner (1982), the prime societal divisions and oppositions

are activated that produce inter-group confrontation (pp. 9-10). Yet, an apparently

contradictory folk “theory” has developed in, and permeates, die minds of people of

Trinidad who have indeed lived through a number of intense social dramas that

seemingly fundamentally threatened the nation and the state. The interviewees adduced

instances of political events that concluded with a propitious “last act” (p. 10) as evidence

to support their theory. An aged informant, who claimed his “Indian” origin, spoke of the

abortive attempt of coup d ’etat by a group of militant Muslims in 1990. After he detailed

what happened with gestures and expressive language (as if he were present at the scene),

14


he underscored how quickly the society would return to normal after grave occurrences,

such as the occupation of the parliamentary building in which three people died.9 He

added that a rum shop in his neighborhood was open, despite a curfew, and was swarmed

with people who drank while watching the “game between looters and the shooters” on

television. Whereas a middle-aged woman, who described herself as “mixed,” told me

“whatever happens, Trinidad will be fine.” She witnessed two groups of supporters,

representing the two major political parties, in the midst of the heated campaign for the

above-mentioned 1995 national elections. She explained, “They were supposed to be

hostile.” Nevertheless, she saw them “liming” 10 together in a rum shop in the suburban

town of Tunapuna. This was amazing even to a Trinidadian, for Tunapuna is located in

the heart of the so-called “East-West Corridor,”11 which has been the arena where those

political parties have showdowns in every election, because of the ethnically mixed and

fluid composition of its population. The reliability of their folk theory of eventual conflict

suppression has increased over the years: it has been tested through each social drama.

The polity works because of the series of past conflicts that have shaped the modem

Trinidadian polity (see Gluckman, 1982[1956], p. 160). The result of the events

following the 1995 national elections added additional supporting evidence for such the

folk theory of Trinidadian polity: although the representatives of the political parties

continued to exchange invective, the reelection was held peacefully, and the “losers” as

well as the “winners” accepted the final results as legitimate. Inter-ethnic tension almost

immediately abated without consuming and destabilizing the nation.

15


Exchange of Ethnic Gifts: The “cultures” that unfold in politics

A Hindu pundit in Couva recommended that I head for a small village, called

Waterloo. For the last 20 minutes of driving, the thick curtains of sugarcane, which loom

on all sides, blocked my sight. The canes are waiting to be harvested in the coming month

of April. Vacant lots, which interrupt the cane’s curtain on and off, have been turned into

impromptu cricket fields for school children. The rapid development of the past few

decades has made this area, popularly called “Central [Trinidad],” the most densely

populated region in the island. With rapidly growing settlements sprouting up, it is

difficult to imagine the time when the “Central” was buried in neglect between the

urbanized “North” and the industrialized “South.” Nevertheless, the stereotypical image

of the locality as “agricultural” and “Hindu Indian” seems to fit Waterloo. According to

the latest census, roughly 90% of its 5,000 or so residents are Hindu. Virtually all are

employed on the nearby Waterloo Sugar Estate, now part of national Caroni (1975) Ltd.

A towering soot-covered sugar distillation factory occupies the central space of the

village. Right beside die plant, fluttering multi-colored jhandis epitomize the history and

life of this community.

One day in May 1995, one of the national cremation centers located in this village

was unusually crowded with “people from town,” which is how the villagers refer to

visitors from Port-of-Spain. The statue of a Hindustani, whose name was Siewadass

Sadhu, would be unveiled in the presence of the honored guests, including then-President

Noor Hassanari and the First Lady. The appearance of these “people from town,”

including several members of the Parliament, was in stark contrast to the appearance of

the statue, which was “welcoming these visitors. . . in the most humble posture in the

16


Hindu tradition with his hands in the Namaskaar position, head bowed” (Sunday Express,

May 28,1995, p. 4). According to the plaque on the pedestal, this “typical” Hindustani

pursued his long-cherished dream. In October 1947, after a revelation, Sadhu started

constructing a Lord Shiva Martdir (Hindu temple) somewhere in the cane field that was a

part of the Waterloo Sugar Estate. Before long, however, the political authorities

demolished the Mandir, and fined and imprisoned Sadhu. The two-week imprisonment,

however, was not harsh enough to stop him from chasing his dream. “You break down

my Mandir on land, but you cannot break it down in the sea. I will build a Mandir in the

sea” (p. 4). Having said that, Sadhu carried all the materials to a site offshore in Waterloo

Bay, about 500 feet from the site of the cremation center where the statue

commemorating his devotion stands. After his death in 1971, the temple was turned into a

shrine open to the public, but before long it started deteriorating and eventually collapsed.

In 1995, the 150th anniversary of the first official arrival of East Indian indentured

workers, the “Temple in the Sea” was reconstructed, and the statue of its original erector,

17Siewadass Sadhu, now known as “Dharmaveer, ” was installed by the ruling “African”

party.

In six months after the unveiling ceremony of the statue, the electorates cast their

votes in the general elections. As noted above, this election gave birth to the government

coalition led by the first-ever “Hindu” Prime Minister. A former Member of Parliament

observed, “There appeared to be a sentiment among some Afro-Trinidadians that

suggested that they had the divine right to political office. Most Indo-Trinidadians felt

that it was their time now and they should be given a chance” (Trinidad Guardian, March

17,1996, cited in Ryan, 1996, pp. 334-335).

17


The Indo-Trinidadian victory left Afro-Trinidadians “stunned, tearful and

traumatized” (Ryan, 1996, p. 335). They might have felt insecure without the control of

state apparatus, the “divine right” and probably most effective means to confirm their

status and avert potential threat from groups in rivalry (Horowitz, 2000[1985], p. 217).

On the other hand, many Indo-Trinidadians believed that “their time” had come:

We are too easily prepared to sell our birthright and that of our fellow men for a mess of pottage from the tables of the new oligarchy. Some will sell for a jacket and tie and a ministry, some for a wig and gown, some for a seat in the Senate, some for a little contract here and there. Our detractors say we are the victims of a curse, which like a virulent plague threatens to engulf the entire community (Sunday Express, February 25,1996, cited in Ryan, 1996, p. 520).

In spite of Afro-Trinidadians’ fears and Indo-Trinidadians expectations,

surprisingly this “Indian” government began with a series of initiatives that favored the

Afro-Trinidadian community. First, it granted favors to the community of

Spiritual/Shouter Baptists, an “African” religious sect. Second, the “Indian” government

passed legislation to institute a new national holiday, called Spiritual/Shouter Baptist Day,

on March 30. Third, it granted the sect a portion of nationally owned land, which enabled

it to execute its long-cherished plan to build educational and religious facilities, and

perform religious rituals with an island-wide congregation (Hemy, 2003, p. 73). Finally,

the Indo-Trinidadian leaders appointed two Afro-Trinidadian public figures as the

government’s senators: Archbishop Barbara Burke, who was a leader of the National

Congress of Elders (an organization of Spiritual Baptist faith), and Dr. Daphine Phillips,

a social scientist known for her research into racial issues. Moreover, Dr. Phillips was

named as the junior minister in the Ministry of Culture and Women’s Issues. Later,

during a cabinet reshuffle, she was promoted to the Minister of Community Development

18


and Culture, a critical governmental agency for cultural and religious matters, and the

rumored channel of ethnic patronage.

The donation to the Spiritual/Shouter Baptists was not a singular favor. The first

“Hindu Indian” government consistently granted special treatment to the sect. In July

1999, toward the completion of his first term, Prime Minister Basdeo Panday tabled the

“Orisha Marriage Bill,” intending to “amend the provisions for the solemnization and

registration of Orisha Marriage.” In the second reading of the bill in the House of

Representatives, Panday stressed the significance of its enactment by comparing the

historical subordination of Spiritual/Shouter Baptists to those who had professed to non-

Christian denominations, Hinduism and Muslimism, the major components of Indo-

Trinidadian community. He proclaimed:

I know how they [Spiritual/Shouter Baptists] feel because I, too, have been a victim of the denial of the right to be classified as legitimate. If you look at my birth certificate, you will see in the column labeled “sex,” there is the word “boy.” And in the column that is tended for name, there is the word “illegitimate.” My mother’s name is there because I imagined they could not avoid that. Under the column of “father’s” name, there is dash— blank. . . I, like hundreds of thousands before and after me, the prodigy of Hindu parents, who are married according to Hindu rites, as they call them . . . being a country boy myself. They were married “under bamboo.” That is how they termed Hindu marriage. . . their children were bastardized at birth. The Hindus were not alone. The marriages were also condemned, as bastards, as illegitimate and, like their Hindu bastard brothers and sisters, were not entitled to the property of their fathers upon intestacy. . . It is amazing. . . nay horrendous that no one on the Government since the advent of the PNM in 1 9 5 6 ... could have noticed that a large section of our population of African descent, the victims of that abomination known as slavery were outside the pale of cultural legitimacy, crying out to be part of the nation of Trinidad and Tobago, where every creed and race were supposed to find an equal place. Such was the fate of the Orisha, that is, until this day. But from this day it will be no more (House Debate,Friday, July 30,1999).

19


Frances Henry (2003) maintains that the preferential treatment of the Spiritual

Baptist community provided the “Indian” government with “a considerable amount of

mileage” (p. 167). Nevertheless, we must remember Hintzen’s (1989) argument of the

difficulty in maintaining a cross-racial and class mobilization of votes in Trinidad.

“Gifts” to a rival ethnic group carry the danger of destabilizing one’s own ethnic base,

which Hintzen and others argue is the sine qua non for success in ethnicized electoral

politics. In fact, less than a month after the above parliamentary address, Panday was

confronted with what he called “widespread criticism” that he was giving preferential

treatment to Afro-Trinidadians to the detriment of the Indo-Trinidadian community

(Taitt, 1999, p. 21, cited in Khan, 2004b, p. 18). Satnaryan Maharaj, the secretary-general

of the Sanatan Dharma Maha Sabha, repeated this criticism later in an interview for this

study, in which he branded Panday’s actions as “inverse racism”:

[I heard that there is a criticism against the governance of the former Prime Minister Panday and his UNC within the Indo-Trinidadian community. Is it true?] Yes. It is a part of truth. I met the prime minister many times and I told him we have suffered INVERSE RACISM. In India too, the Hindu people are discriminated against by Hindu government there. If you go to India, you will find that the trip to Mecca annually is subsidized by the Indian government, but there are no subsidies to go to Hindu place of pilgrimage. A certain majority is thus backward. We call it inverse racism. Mr. Panday has given such impression. In many respects, he denied us what was rightfully ours.

Maharaj elsewhere defined Waterloo as the village that “has the strong links with

sugar industry and our past” {Trinidad Guardian, April 6,2005). Today, it still stands in

the middle of the constituency, Caroni East—the quintessential stronghold of the

“Indian” party, so it is unimaginable that it could be taken over by the “African”

counterpart. It is equally improbable that the majority of the electorate in the

20


constituency, called Port-of-Spain East, where the church of Senator Archbishop Barbara

Burke stands and which contains a significant chunk of Spiritual Baptists would ever

register a majority in favor of the “Indian” party. Why then do the political leaders in

power run through this “gift exchange” focused on these “typical” ethnic constituencies

even though it may put them at a disadvantage in upcoming elections?

Seemingly, the chain of gift exchange was severed when Patrick Manning, the

leader of PNM, returned to the head of the government after the election in September

2002. Shortly after being restored to his old job, Manning removed jhandis that his

predecessor, Basdeo Panday, had installed in the yard of the official residence.

Hindustanis usually fly jhandis, small multi-colored triangular flags, on the end of

bamboo poles after rituals, called puja, near the places where they are held. Each color

symbolizes the presence of different deities (e.g., a red jhandi represents Hanuman,

yellow represents Lakshmi and Durga, and black represents Kali) (Jha, 1985, p. 8). Most

significantly, for a devout Hindu Indo-Trinidadian, they are hung in honor of

god/goddess; thus, once erected, the jhandi cannot be removed by anyone but

god/goddess him/herself.

As expected, the removal of jhandis by the leader of the “African” party attracted

immediate and harsh criticism from the Hindu Indo-Trinidadian community, for they are

irreplaceable symbols of ethnic identification. According to a local paper, an

“emotionally charged” Panday voiced in the presence of the UNC supporters at a political

meeting, “I accuse the selected Prime Minister of Trinidad and Tobago of the worst kind

of bigotry. How else do you explain the destruction by Manning of the jhandis which

were on the premises of the residence?” Manning explained why he removed the jhandis:

21


“I am Christian, Anglican, and the religious practices associated with the jhandis are

inconsistent with my own religious beliefs.” However, the most arresting element is that

Manning requested “a Hindu pundit. . . [to] properly observe. . . die rituals” before he

carried away the jhandis, instead of insisting that the official residence was public and

thus ethnically neutral. Memorably, Brother Noble Khan, the then President of the Inter

religious Organization (IRO), to which the Maha Sabha and other Hindu associations

were affiliated, made a statement in response: “Prime Minister Patrick Manning’s

removal of several jhandis from the Prime Minister’s residence was reasonable, [because]

as far as we know, it was handled properly, and within the protocol of the Hindu faith.”13

What implication does this “mimesis” of the reified Hindu culture by the leader of the

“African” party, who professes Anglicanism, have in the multi-ethnic alliances and

coherence of Trinidadian society?

As Clifford Geertz (1973) writes, the “political process of all nations are wider

and deeper than formal institutions...; some of the most critical decisions concerning the

direction of public life are not made in parliament and presidiums; they are made in the

unformalized realms of what Durkheim called ‘the collective conscience’” (p. 316).

There is the prevailing assumption that the “collective conscience” regulating inter-group

relations is hardly likely to take form in societies that are as heterogeneous as Trinidad. It

is considered that the persistence, or (reproduction, of the putative different ethnic

cultures necessarily disturbs the formation of such an overarching culture, or even though

it comes into being, the “collective conscience” easily fragments into many small cultures.

Actually, in Trinidad, the ethnicization of politics (or politicization of ethnicity)

has “stress[ed], ideologize[d], reif[ied], modif[ied], and sometimes re-create[d] the

22


putative distinct and unique cultural heritages of the ethnic group that it mobilizes”

(Rothschild, 1981, p. 3). For example, Steven Vertovec (1995) states, “Trinidad Hindu

culture was made an object in itself so as to articulate a shared ethnic in the face of

potentially intensified patterns of ethnic inequality and resource competition” as political

contentions built up (cited in Baumann, 1996,1997).

However, as described above, the exercise of the acquired power by the state-

holders has been confined, because political leaders, once they came in office, feel

constrained to be involved in another conceptual praxis of culture. For example, Panday

defended himself against the “widespread criticism” among Hindu Indo-Trinidadians of

his commitment to the Spiritual Baptist community:

Trinidad and Tobago is a most difficult land to govern because of its highly plural nature. What is more, unlike some other plural societies, people are forced to live in conditions where they cannot avoid one another. We are forced to interface with each other every day whether we like it or not. No matter how we have tried to paper over the cracks over the years, it takes situations like this election and the result of this election to expose the paper cracks for what they really are. That kind of division and divisiveness in our society have been, in may humble view, the singular most debilitating factor in this society. It has been the underlying cause of all our problems (Trinidad Express, January 7,1996, cited in Ryan, 1996, p. 521).

This remark as the leader of the country is discordant with his repeated public

deployment of the culture concept as the leader of the “Indian” opposition. Trinidad’s

political elites employ a conceptual framework that equates culture with specific ethnic

community as an idiom for mass mobilization in elections and a template for political

redress in their representation for the minority in Parliament. However, once they gain

office, political leaders, irrespective of their ethnic affiliation, start operationalizing a

different culture concept, one that is negotiable in social processes within Trinidad’s

23


setting of a plural society. Their most critical strategy to gain state power-the public and

political usage of cultures reified as diacritical symbols of exclusive ethnic collectives-is

regulated by the structure of meaning-a culture. Despite the inflation of interethnic

tension after the 1995 general elections, those who lost accepted the results as legitimate

(though the exchange of invectives continued). During the term of office, the “Indian”

government continued to give preferential treatment to the “African” religious group in

the face of opposition from their “own” ethnic community. There must be a certain

meaning that the rulers and ruled attach to the authority relationships. Only based on this

meaning, the “rulers (the “Indian” party under the “Hindu” leadership) [could] claim that

they [had] legitimate authority to issue commands... In the same way, the obedience of

the ruled (the followers of the “African” party) [was] guided to some extent by the idea

that the rulers and their commands constitute[d] a legitimate order of authority” (Bendix,

1977).

24


Endnotes

1 This dissertation refers to these studies that are reprinted in Connor, 1994.

2 The discussion in this section is indebted chiefly to the following accounts: Oxaal (1982); Y. K. Malik (1971); S. D. Ryan (1972); B. Brereton (1981); P. C. Hintzen (1989).

3 In the 1995 General Election, NAR won two parliamentary seats for both of the two constituencies that Tobago contains.

4 “Afro-Trinidadians (or Afro-Trinidadian people)” refers to the people of African descent who are nationals or citizens of Trinidad and Tobago. They are also simply designated as “Africans,” or “(Afro-) Creoles.” The origin of Afro-Trinidadians was diverse, including the west coast of African continent, neighboring West Indian islands and South American continent, and the United States.

5 “Indo-Trinidadians (or Indo-Trinidadian people)” refers to the people of Indian descent who are nationals or citizens of Trinidad and Tobago. A majority is the descendants of those who settled in Trinidad (and lesser extent in Tobago) as indentured laborers from various parts of the Indian subcontinent, which is now divided into India and Pakistan. Today, they are also called simply as “Indians” or “East Indians.” In this dissertation, however, the term Indo-Trinidadian is employed as more inclusive of the indentured laborers with South Asian origin who made Trinidad as their permanent home instead of repatriating upon the completion of their contract.

6 “Trouble in paradise,” BBC News, May 1,2002

On March 23,1903, while the Legislative Council debate was in progress, angry demonstrators against the bill crowded around the Red House and began creating a disturbance outside. The Riot Act was read, enabling the police to subdue the riot and impose order by using coercive methods. The incidents, popularly called “Water Riots,” resulted in the destruction of the Red House by fire and die loss of 18 people, including innocent passers-by (Anthony, 1997, pp. 604-605).

8 The Beetham Highway is a major highway in Trinidad that runs from Barataria into downtown Port-of-Spain. It was named after former Governor Sir Edward Betham Beetham, who presided between 1955 and 1960 (Anthony, 1997, p. 48).

9 On July 27,1990, a group of Muslims, calling itself “Jamaat al Muslimeen,” broke in the parliamentary chamber of the Red House, while a house debate was in progress and held hostages the members of parliament, including the then prime minister, A. N. R. Robinson. After their surrender on August 1, the Muslimeen activists, led by Imam Yasim Abu Bakr (Lennox Phillips), were taken into custody and charged with murder, treason, and kidnapping. However, they claimed that the agreement signed by the acting president in parliament while they held the hostages had offered them an amnesty in exchange for release of the hostages. On June 30,1992, the high court decided that the

25


amnesty was valid and all the charges against the Muslimeen intruders were dismissed (Anthony, 1997, pp. 164-165).

10 If I, at the risk of depriving it of dynamic and complex feature, assign a term to it, “liming” can be defined as a loosely structured small-scale gathering or party. Eriksen has done an insightful, heuristic study of the issue (Eriksen, 1990).

11 This term was coined by Lloyd Brathwaite, a Trinidadian political scientist. The “East- West Corridor” is the densely-populated suburban area in northern Trinidad, which stretches from the capital city, Port-of-Spain, 15 miles east to Arima. The major towns in the “Corridor” are Barataria, San Juan, St. Joseph, Curepe and Tunapuna.

12 Dharmaveer means “Hero of Dharma” (Sunday Express, April 7,2002, p. 26)

13 All the citations in this paragraph come from the articles by Phoolo Danny-Maharaj, a correspondent of Trinidad Express, including “Pundit removed jhandis, says Manning,” “Panday on removal of jhandis: PM guilty of bigotry,” and “PM’s removal of jhandis reasonable, says IRO president.” They are available at the online archive without dates of their first appearance (http://www.trinidadexpress.com/index.pl/archives).

26


http://www.trinidadexpress.com/index.pl/archives

CHAPTER I

A NOTE ON METHODOLOGY

Coming to Know “Trinidad (Trinidadian) Culture”

I have to start this note on methodology of this dissertation with a description of

my relations to the subjects of study—Trinidad and people of Trinidad. I originally

became involved in Trinidad and Tobago not as a social scientist intent on conducting

field research. In September 1994, approximately six years before I started graduate work

at Florida International University, I arrived in this West Indian nation as a foreign

service officer for the Government of Japan. For the following three years, I lived in

Trinidad as a political and economic analyst-cum-attache to the Japanese Embassy in

Port-of-Spain. The experience in Trinidad during this period decisively affected this

dissertation’s methodology and development of my subsequent formal research.

Prior to my arrival in Trinidad, I had a three-week fieldwork experience in

Jamaica. There for my master’s thesis, which I earned from Tsukuba University in Japan,

between March and April in 1993 I conducted interviews with and participant

observation among those who professed Rastafarianism in Kingston and towns on

Jamaica’s northern coast. As a much less experienced researcher, during this initial

experience in the Caribbean, my attention remained fixated on Jamaica’s homogeneity

and specifically the overwhelming presence of African descents and their cultural

contributions. Both Trinidad and Jamaica were former British colonies, where the

extensive plantation economy and slavery played significant roles. Based on this

27


simplistic picture, I had constructed a stereotype of Trinidad as a cultural domain of

predominantly African traditions similar to Jamaica.

I was bom and raised in Japan whose society and nation are usually depicted as a

seamless cultural whole. When an American looks at Trinidad, he may see a country that

in terms of ethnic heterogeneity reminds him of the United State, perhaps only more so.

When I looked at Trinidad, I saw a country that ethnically could not be more different

from my place of origin. Given Japan’s constant obsession with ethnic purity and a

popular conception that the putatively invariable cultural homogeneity has formed the

considerable cohesion of Japanese society, Trinidad forced me to consider how this

apparently segmented society—-Trinidad—could possibly stay together given all the

visible divergence.

My speculation started the moment that I landed on the island. Having just been

passed through immigration by an Afro-Trinidadian officer at the airport, I met an Indo-

Trinidadian chauffeur that the Japanese Embassy sent to meet me. While driving to the

Embassy, I saw a group of older Trinidadians chatting while drinking at a rum shop, a

long orderly line at the counter of a Chinese take-out joint, school children in uniform

walking hand in hand, another bunch of youngsters engaged in an after-school cricket

match at an open space. All of these groups appeared to be racially and ethnically mixed.

For the next three years, racial and ethnic diversity was far more commonly visible than

homogeneity.

On my third day in Trinidad, I left my hot and stuffy hotel room to take a walk at

the Queen’s Park Savanna, a few minutes away from my hotel. I found a group of men

who seemed to be around my age playing rugby. Trinidad was formerly a part of the

28


British Empire. However, I did not expect that players of this English-origin sport would

be visible in Trinidad. As I looked in on their training session, one of the players

approached. As he realized that my English skills were minimal, he rephrased his

questions over and over. Apparently having concluded that it was impossible to carry on

a conversation with me, he finally resorted to a minimalist linguistic approach: “Tuesdays,

Thursdays, 5 o’clock.” From the following Tuesday until I left Trinidad three years later,

I was a member of the Caribs Rugby Football Club (CRFC), which was a Port-of-Spain-

based club with more than 150 associates. It is one of the oldest sports clubs in Trinidad

and had been originally established by a group of Irish immigrants in 1929. Like many

other social clubs in Trinidad, according to an “old boy” (the term for members who

retired to play rugby), the CRFC used to be an exclusive association in terms of race and

class, but by the time I joined, it had become a microcosm of Trinidadian society that

reflected more or less its ethnic composition. The Club had Afro- and Indo-Trinidadians,

Chinese, “White” in a Trinidadian inclusive sense of people of European descent (e.g.

local-born English, Scottish, Irish, French, Portuguese), and those who could or wanted

to identify themselves as “mixed.” And, then it had one new Japanese member, me.

Reflecting the enduring correspondence of race/ethnicity with class in Trinidad, the

members’ socio-economic status also varied. It seemed, however, that the transformation

into a multi-ethnic association was neither a result nor an effect of the deconstruction of

racial/ethnic distinctiveness. Contrary to the poststructuralist assumption that ethnicity is

merely an interpretative construction, ethnic distinctions at CFRC were existential “facts”

that the members of the Club never questioned. In my observation, the boys of the Club,

took for granted that race and ethnicity were significant determinants for their and

29


everyone else’s thoughts and actions. However, the unquestioned acceptance of ethnic

classifications did not necessarily divide this microcosm of Trinidadian society into

exclusive social subgroups. I was all the more intrigued by how all these people could

have stereotypes of each other yet get along so well and closely. For example, jokes that

targeted particular ethnic groups and their cultures were a constant component of team

banter. Rather than provoking tension, however, these interactions apparently contributed

to harmonious interethnic interaction.

After the first rugby practice for me in Trinidad, I tagged along with the boys to

the clubhouse that was within walking distance of the Savanna practice field. The

clubhouse had a drinking bar, which was the largest room in the facility, where after each

training session the boys regularly had a “liming (or lime)”—a Trinidadian word for a

small and casual gathering. The clubhouse also had a multi-purpose space partitioned and

usually used as a locker room, and a small shower facility. Having made sure that all the

boys had completed to dress and begun liming around the bar, I started taking a shower

alone, probably because I assumed that my phenotypic uniqueness would draw their

attention and I tried to avoid becoming a target of mockery. When I was almost done

with my shower, three Afro-Trinidadian boys walked into the shower room. I did not

mean to avoid them, but I started to walk in the opposite direction. One of them asked in

a deep, menacing voice, “Don’t you like Nigger?” This question caused my instant

reflection and regret for what I had done. At the same time, an idea flitted through my

mind: This is my first and last day in this Club. However, it was a racial joke that was

intended neither to cause the tension nor to exclude me. It rather marked the beginning of

our communication and actually incorporated this Japanese rookie who was unique and

30


yet becoming part of the Club’s social relations. That first day, they anglicized my

Japanese name, Teruyuki to Teny, a name I adopted and have continued to use both in

Trinidad and wherever English is the dominant language.

I was the first Japanese player in the Club’s history. Once I joined the Club,

nevertheless, I was instantly incorporated into their social web as a racially and culturally

distinct Japanese under the pre-set broadly-defined Trinidadian ethnic category—“Chinee

(i.e., Chinese).” Occasionally, I became the target of their racial and ethnic mockery.

Trinidadian friends of mine expected me to behave and act stereotypical ly as a

“representative” of the assumed Japanese culture. This tendency seemed particularly

acute in Trinidad where the presence of Japanese and Japanese culture had been almost

nonexistent. However, being ethnically unique did not become a reason for anybody

including myself to be excluded from human relations in the Club.

The intimate ties with the boys enabled me to experience various aspects of social

life in Trinidad invisible and unknown to those who normally work and live in the

foreign and upper-class enclave neighborhood represented by diplomatic corps. I played

“mud mas(querade)” with boys for the “Jour O’uvert (the opening feast of annual

Carnival)” each year. To repeat, the members of the Club varied not only in race and

ethnicity, but also in class. As a reflection of the enduring correspondence between

race/ethnicity and class, Afro-Trinidadian boys tended to originate or live in

underprivileged areas. My first visit to Lavantille Hill—allegedly the most poverty- and

crime-stricken area in Port-of-Spain—was on an invitation from an Afro-Trinidadian

member who was in the “shower-room encounter” mentioned above. I soon realized that

within the Club there was more tension over class differences than racial/ethnic ones.

31


Also, the distinction in occupation and the resultant various working patterns was

reflected the differences in what and with whom the members did and spend time beyond

the activities in the Club. Being a stranger in between, a privileged non-Trinidadian,

allowed me to freely mobilize more easily across class boundaries. My cross-racial,

ethnic and class interactions became more active after I moved from Westmoorings, an

exclusive residential area where I lived in the first two years, into St. Ann’s, an area of

more racially mixed residents with various socioeconomic statuses.

Liming is open-ended and spontaneous. It starts with a small gathering of friends,

but eventually it extends with this original group as a core or fuses with other cores

forming a bigger group. It is not unusual that you lose your friends with whom you start

liming, and end up with other friends or those with whom you just become acquainted.

Therefore, when as I began to lime beyond the clubhouse, I was able to both deepen my

intimacy with and extend my connections beyond the members of the Club. As

experienced in the relations within the Club, my peculiar ethnicity did not deny me

access to these ordinary gatherings. As a result, those with whom I made friends through

liming were so diverse in race, ethnicity, and gender. They included Chinese and Indo-

Trinidadian girlfriends who gave me access to more ethnically exclusive gatherings and

to experience some putative ethnic traditions. The regular participation to liming

significantly influenced the development of my perspective of this unique multi-cultural

society. Through these experiences Trinidad further grabbed my interest and curiosity.

In their new home, immigrants work to reconstruct their putative cultural

traditions with their “cultural baggage” and through appropriation of accessible materials

and resources. The members of the diplomatic corps usually move to the next assignment

32


every three to five years. Nonetheless, despite their status of sojourners, not immigrants,

the officers of Japanese Embassy, throughout their tenure of service, continued to work

assiduously to construct and retain an imagined Japanese community with reified

Japanese cultural essences. Their affluent financial status advanced their project to

protect putatively “pure” Japanese traditions in the middle of this remarkable Caribbean

cultural melange that historically has really had no cultural input from this East Asian

country. Census data from the early 1980s indicates that roughly 350 Japanese nationals

resided in Trinidad. They chiefly worked in the island’s oil and steel industries. By the

mid-1980s, as the oil boom expired almost all of the Japanese left the island. Up to the

time of my arrival, the number of residents of Japanese descent had reduced to less than

20, and the officers of the Embassy and their family members formed the absolute

majority of Trinidad’s Japanese community. Because of the limited availability of

material and symbolic resources for the reconstruction of imagined community, the

Japanese in Trinidad were desperate to spend as much time as possible in Miami, New

York and other major North American cities, the closest locations where they could “(re-

)Japanize” themselves. For instance, the long weekend of annual Carnival celebration

was not an occasion for my colleagues from Japanese Embassy to bring themselves into

contact with, and to present their own “otherness” to ethnic “others.” Rather than

participating in Carnival, Japanese Embassy officials were more likely to dash to North

America. While in Trinidad, the incoming Embassy officers, such as myself, were

expected not only to be part of this imagined Japanese community in exile, but also to

enrich it by importing “purer” essential aspects of Japanese culture.

33


In fact, my irresistible and unfailing desire to “mix” into the amazing cultural and

racial potpourri of Trinidad actually conflicted with social and cultural forces embodied

in Japanese Embassy. However, I eventually realized that I did not need to confront this

conflict while in the clubhouse with boys, or in other contexts with Trinidadian friends of

mine because of the significant difference in their ways of ethnic identification and their

modes of cultural differentiation from Japanese co-workers. Both groups similarly

considered ethnic distinctions as an objective fact and the “purity” of the assumed

cultural traditions was essential to their construction of both self and others. My

colleagues at the Embassy made efforts to retain their putative cultural “purity” by

restricting their exposure to ethnic others. Japanese Embassy officers felt it both

appropriate and important to retain social isolation so that they could maintain their

cultural purity. When they stereotyped racial and cultural “others,” they intended to fix

the distance between “us” and “them” in order not to “mix” that they thought would

cause the dissolution of their putative cultural “purity.” In contrast, the boys of the Club

and many other Trinidadian friends of mine saw my stereotyped otherness as an

indispensable asset to “mix” with them and as meaningful only when my and their social

mixing occurred. In short, they did not share the assumption that “mixing” and “purity”

constituted exclusive categories. Racial jokes prevailed both among Trinidadians and

Japanese with whom I daily interacted. However, this different in mode of cultural and

ethnic differentiation rendered them not only different but also antithetical functions.

The Trinidadian staff of the Embassy—the “locals (or local staff)” according to

how the Japanese officers called them—seemed to have honed a skill to be consistent to

the both distinct ethnic identifications and modes of cultural differentiation they

34


experienced within and outside of the context of the Japanese diplomatic corps. A Hindu

Indo-Trinidadian male chauffeur, Steve who originated in Central Trinidad, invited me to

spend time with his family and friends of his as a way out of the dilemma that I

occasionally experienced in-between. His guidance to a world of Hindu Indo-Trinidad

was critical. I also played rugby with quite a few Indo-Trinidadians and I observed no

visible discrimination against Indo-Trinidadian members. However, the activities of the

Club centered on Port-of-Spain in which Afro-Trinidadians were predominant. Besides,

rugby was generally more popular among Afro-Trinidadians than Indo-Trinidadians. As a

result, while I was in Trinidad, Afro-Trinidadians always surpassed Indo-Trinidadians in

the club’s membership. In addition, those who are bom and raised in Port-of-Spain, and

particularly when (s)he is not of Indian descents, Indo-Trinidadians and their cultures

undeniably embody the most distinct local form of “otherness.” For example, the boys of

the club and other friends of mine in Port-of-Spain used a term “South” in their quotidian

conversations. I eventually learned that “South” meant more or less “outside of Port-of-

Spain.” In their usage, it was less a geographical term than a figurative mark to

distinguish those who have distinct (and sometimes lower) cultures from (than) the ones

they learned in the life in Port-of-Spain. The major residents of, and thus those who have

kept the “South” as culturally distinct space are Indo-Trinidadians. They occasionally

expressed strong desire to learn and mingle with those in the “South.” Particularly, the

boys of the Club and other male Trinidadians, who were from Port-of-Spain and were

ethnically distinct from Indo-Trinidadians, frequently verbalized their sexual desire

toward Indo-Trinidadian women. When I told one of them that I had started dating a

girlfriend from “South,” he automatically concluded that she was a “beautiful” “Indian”

35


although he had never met her before (my girlfriend actually did not identify herself

“Indian” but “mixed”). “South” would have remained inaccessible for me if my

Trinidadian social relations remained confined to those in the rugby club and other

friends from Port-of-Spain.

Anthropological Fieldwork

When I returned to Trinidad as an anthropologist in 2002,1 brought with me the

ideas and knowledge that I had received from this almost four-year residential experience.

Although they are often dismissed as “pernicious” (Malinowski, 1953, cited in Bernard,

1998), the research project for this dissertation would not have even started without the

preconceived ideas and knowledge. To begin with, the questions I posed to myself while

living in Trinidad, such as how remarkable ethnic differences were managed to hold

together the society, ushered me into the graduate program at FIU. I also was able to

locate several initial interviewees based on my personal connections that I had built

during this period of residence. I acknowledge that preconceived ideas are not necessarily

beneficial. Therefore, in order to make my preconceived ideas contributory, I strove to be

a “disciplined subjective” (Erickson, 1967, cited in Bernard, 1998), fully aware of own

experiences and values and seeking to transcend potential biases during the field

research.

This dissertation is based on the findings and data collected from fieldworks done

in different time blocks between 2002 and 2004: March/April 2002, February/April 2003,

July/August 2003, and May/June 2004. Trinidad has been a sovereign state with Tobago,

a sister islet, since 1962. However, for this dissertation, I conducted the fieldworks only

36


in Trinidad because of the following reasons. As a reflection of the distinct patterns of

development of plantation economy, Trinidad and Tobago had assumed different

demographic and cultural compositions by the time of annexation in 1889. For example,

along with the decline of the island’s sugar production, the inflow of laboring immigrants

stagnated in Tobago from the late 1840s onwards (Anthony, 1997, p. 565), which

coincided with arrival of indentured workers in Trinidad from South Asia. Since then,

Tobago has been configured as a relatively homogeneous society with predominantly a

population of African origin.1 This is not to say that Tobago currently exhibits only a

negligible extent of heterogeneity, or that the influence of this adjacent island upon

Trinidad’s human relations is not worth examining. It is hypothesized, however, that

social processes and events throughout the nineteenth century affected the subsequent

(reproduction of interethnic relations. On this premise, this dissertation attempts to

examine the cultural context of ethnic relations by linking data from historical analysis

and research in quotidian social interaction. Accordingly, ethnographic data presented in

this study was collected exclusively in Trinidad, which is a historical intersection of more

diverse races and cultures, including Indo-Trinidadians.

Along with many other contemporary writers, Anthony Giddens (1979) has

argued that social actors and structures cannot be considered as separate from each other.

Every social action involves structure, and all structures involve social action. Actors and

the social structures are interwoven in on-going social interactions. In order to describe

the complicated relations between actor and structure as closely as possible, I believe it is

necessary to tailor a research approach that captures this duality. Thus, the following

discussion has been built through a continuous dialogue between an in-depth micro

37


inquiry, which allows us to describe how human actors create, maintain, or assess the

objective conditions, and a broad macro perspective by which we can understand how

such structural conditions orient the actions and thoughts of individuals and groups. The

materials for this dialogue were accumulated applying the following ethnographic

methods: First, personal interviews were conducted. The interviewees were chosen

through a combination of two nonprobability sampling methods: purposive and snowball.

I selected several interviewees in advance on the basis of my preconceived knowledge of

the population and the nature of the research purpose. Based on their social roles and

statuses that seemed influential to interethnic relations in Trinidad, I concentrated my

interviewing on leaders and those who got involved to ethnic-based organizations and

religious and actors of governmental institutions. For this dissertation, I conducted a total

62 personal interviews (counting the same informants with whom I interviewed twice).

The interviewees included: the personnel of the Roman Catholic Church (including the

Archbishop of Port of Spain, 10 parish priests, 2 principals of Roman Catholic schools,

and 15 lay members, some of whom were assigned administrative positions in affiliated

churches), of Hindu organizations (including the Secretary-General and executive

members of the Sanatan Dharma Maha Sabha of Trinidad and Tobago, 5 Sanatanist

Hindu pundits, 2 non-Sanatanist pundits, 2 leaders of Kali Mai temples and 10 lay

Hindustanis), in addition to 2 Presbyterian reverends, 3 Anglican bishops, and 2

Methodist priests. I also interviewed current and former members of the House of

Representatives and Cabinet members, political party organizers, musicians, journalists

of local newspapers, intellectuals (including 5 lecturers of the University of the West

Indies). The samples snowballed as each of these initial interviewees suggested others.

38


Although it is frequently dismissed as ad hoc, I applied the snowball-sampling method

because I expected it to help me locate informal but critical intercultural and interethnic

networks. Actually, this sampling process revealed the regular communications of

individuals beyond their “official” religious and ethnic affiliations. For example, I located

four out of five Sanatanist Hindu pundits for interviews with the introduction from two

Indo-Trinidadian friends of mine who were Presbyterian and Catholic, not Hindus.

The interviews were decidedly open-ended with a short interview schedule with a

few key questions and minimal control on my part. This decision was based on my

experience with informants during my feasibility study. In the course of the feasibility

study, a number of potential respondents expressed their discomfort with being

“interviewed.” Even when they seemed to have spoken “off the cuff” in a casual

exchange about their thoughts on the topic, informants frequently changed not only the

content, but also their manners of speaking once I “officially” asked for their permission

to start interviewing them. As a polite way of declining my request, some of them

encouraged me to interview someone else; these in turn were socially renowned

individuals such as university professors, politicians, and the like. Although I knew that a

higher level of skills was demanded for the effective application of more open-ended

interviewing, I tried to use an unstructured interviewing technique in order to make

informants as comfortable as possible so that they could express themselves freely. Based

on the assumption that a person’s positions in history and society were the significant

determinants of his/her ethnic identification and perspective of inter-ethnic relations,

upon interviewing, I tried to collect the interviewee’s personal information while

maintaining her or her confidentiality. The questionnaire varied according to the

39


positionality of the informants, including sex, age, ethnic identity, religious affiliation,

and socio-economic status. All the informants, however, were asked the following

questions during interviews:

• How do you see the relations between ethnic groups in Trinidad?• Please tell me briefly your opinions about different ethnic groups (for example,

when an interviewee identified him/herself an African, I asked how they thought about Indian, Chinese or else).

• Do you have friends/relatives from different ethnic/religious groups from yours? (If yes) How did you know them?

• Have you observed religious services different from your denominations? (If yes) How did you think?

• What do you think as unique about the culture of Trinidad?• What do you think necessary in the development of the culture of Trinidad in

future?• What is the greatest problem confronting the people of Trinidad?• What kind of changes will ensure a more fair political and economic system?

Although significant information was collected through the personal interviews,

participant observation was preferably employed as a synthesis of various data-gathering

methods, including casual conversations and questionnaires. In addition to field notes,

memorandums that I jotted down on the spot served as significant source of information.

In particular, statements from people with whom I had chats were frequently as valuable

as ones that came out of the more formal interview process. As a part of approximately

100 hours of participant observation, I was present at religious services and ceremonies

of different religious denominations and sects as well as cultural and political events.

Among other participant observation, however, the most extensive observations were

carried out on the occasions of: the Hindu feast of Soparee Ke Mai and Catholic

procession of La Divina Pastora, which were held at a Roman Catholic Church in the

Parish of Siparia in 2002 and 2003; 4 weekly Kali Mai pujas at the Kali Matat Devi

Mandir on Pasea Road in St. Augustine between May and June 2004; and Jour Ouvert,

40


the opening feast of Carnival in Port-of-Spain in 2002. Except for the Jour Ouvert, which

was an event open to the public, all observations for this study were conducted with the

verbal consent of relevant personnel, for example the Parish Priest of Siparia Church, the

leader of the Mandir and the like.

I also constantly worked to situate what I learned from these micro approaches in

wider sociohistorical contexts reconstructed through unobtrusive techniques. A

considerable amount of the data came from secondary sources in historical and social

scientific studies. In order to increase the validity of data, secondary sources were

crosschecked against their original sources as much as possible, or against studies that

dealt with the same temporal and spatial contexts (e.g. Wood, 1968[1986]; Brereton,

1979,1983,1988; Besson & Brereton, 1992; de Verteuil, A., 1984,1987,2000; Look-Lai,

1993; Besson, 2001). It was also supplemented with the data collected through examining

archival records. I conducted the historical content analysis at the National Archives of

Trinidad and Tobago, the Main Library of the University of the West Indies (the West

Indian Collection in particular), the Naparima College Library, Mt. St. Benedict

Monastery and the Archbishop’s House archives. These included travelogues by the

European visitors and novels based on their trips to Trinidad and the wider Caribbean

(e.g. de Verteuil, L. A., 1858, 1884; Trollope, 1968[1859]; Underhill, 1970[1859]; Hearn,

1970[1860]; Froude, 1892; Thomas, 1969[1890]), the back issues of major newspapers

(especially those from the second half of the nineteenth century up to the 1930s),

brochures and magazines (particularly literary magazines such as Trinidad and Beacon,

fliers and pamphlets for cultural events such as Carnival and the Prime Minister’s Trophy

Best Village Competition), and documents of the colonial and independent governments

41


(e.g. official censuses, and immigration reports). I also employ fiction such as novels,

poets, essays and songs, as significant sources of ethnographic and historical information,

although I only use these when the “facts” in them are confirmed by other non-fictional

sources.

The following chapters attempt to meld these diverse sources to support my

central thesis of Trinidad being a unified society and culture based upon presumed

essentialized ethnic differences.

Reflections on “Being There”: “Them” as an Indispensable Element of “Us”

My experiences with the “boys” of the Club were repeated throughout my

participant observation: ethnicity was always presumed essential and based upon

essences, yet somehow these differences seemed to unite rather than divide the apparent

others. The fundamental principle of participant observation places the researcher in the

midst of whatever he or she studies. In their implicit consent to symbolic interactionism,

field researchers try to understand various meanings by being a part of the interactions

from which they have emerged. The experience, however, creates a question is:

Supposing social reality is, as symbolic interactionists argue, defined by “inhabitants of

the settings,” is it altered by researchers; that is, the noninhabitants of such a signifying

process? The researcher’s participation may shift the attentions of people being studied

away from their usual conduct; it may transform the subject’s ordinary behaviors and

consequently make the process being observed no longer “typical.” In other words, the

presence of researchers produces a “new” reality. Here researchers are trapped in a

dilemma. The closer they approach the research subject in order to get a more “accurate”

42


understanding, the more difficult it may become for researchers to grasp what Max

Weber calls “actual existing meanings.”

To avoid this pitfall, conventional textbooks of research methods advise

researchers to “go native” (Jorgensen, 1989, cited in Bernard, 1998, p. 137). However,

this strategy is problematic not only because it is naively conceived to be feasible to

become a subject being studied, but also because it is presumed that social researchers

cannot remain “others” to grasp “actual existing meanings” in their contexts.

The pastor and laity of Catholic Church in Siparia generously allowed me to be

part of the “Coolie Fete.” I worked alongside a number of church congregants during its

preparation, management, and cleanup. This made it possible for me to simultaneously be

a participant observer of and observing participant in this annual ceremony. One of my

assigned tasks was to look after a small souvenir stand that was set up in a comer of the

“Parish Hall.” Pilgrimage-related goods, such as bottles of olive oil, bundles of candles,

and various images of a protective goddess, known as La Divina PastoralSoparee Ke

Mai, were sold at this stand. I had opportunities to hold brief conversations with a

number of pilgrims who stopped at the shop before or after making their devotions.

My presence at Parish Hall, the site of a Hindu pilgrimage, obviously irritated an

American anthropologist who seemed to be conducting a formal anthropological

observation of the event. For this anthropologist, I must have been too conspicuous. I did

not blend into the setting. To make matters worse, I did not even try to “go native.” His

irritation peaked when he tried to take pictures of Hindu devotees in procession. By then,

the Parish Hall had been jammed with hundreds of pilgrims. As he jostled his way

through the crowd, he struggled to take a picture of them. However, it seemed impossible

43


for him to take one from which I was excluded. At one moment, I was at the souvenir

stand, and then a few minutes later at the request of church personnel I led devotees in the

Hall by the entrance. I also gave a hand to church members standing at the statue’s side. I

was everywhere. Whichever direction he turned his camera, I was within the frame of the

pictures. He must have viewed me as a distortion or anomaly in the “reality” of this

event. At this point, a question arises in my mind: Who constructed the reality that he

thought was altered by my presence? Was it defined by the “inhabitants of the settings”?

He defined the reality that he tried to protect. I was an “other” who was completely

inconsistent with the frame of his picture—his assumed reality. However, I believe that

his camera could not grasp a critical aspect of this religious phenomenon, and perhaps

much wider cases of intercultural and interreligious phenomena in Trinidad.

Around midnight on the first day of “Coolie Fete,” church members with whom I

worked asked me why I did not join the throng. I responded, “I don’t want it, ‘cause I

don’t know how to do it.” All the church members in the Hall laughed off my hesitation

as nonsense. One of them said, “So what? Who cares? Do it, Chinee-boy!” “Here. Come

here.” A female member standing by the statue let me cut into the procession. There was

not much time to watch and leisurely learn how others enacted. However, I appeared not

to be alone in my ignorant attempt to “mimic.” Although I saw myself as an obvious

foreigner, a young Indian couple waiting behind me asked me how to make a devotion. I

said to them, “No. I will just do it as they do.” The mimicry, however, was not an easy

task, for the ways and means of making the pilgrimage were multifarious; the difficulty

was in “choosing” which religious expression to emulate. Finally my turn came. I kept

casting a side-glance at what other pilgrims did while I was making devotion. When I

44


completed it somehow, a church member said to me, “She will give you a hand however

you did your prayer. You’ll see. You’ll see.”

This attitude of church members is closely related to how this interreligious

phenomenon has historically developed. This religious field has been constructed and

maintained around this particular statue not by excluding different competing definitions

of reality. My observation is that Hindu devotees do not intend to convert to Roman

Catholicism. In colonial setting, inasmuch as they desired, they would have never been

regarded as “true” members of the Catholic community. Hindustanis have been part of

this religious field remaining as complete “others.” At the same time, their existence as

“others” has constituted a critical source of divinity for the goddess of Roman Catholics.

My devotion to the statue was simply one among millions of actions of “others” that have

reinforced power of the statue. He might try to blend himself in. Yet it is not so easy for

social researchers to identify what they are blending into. Furthermore, the inherent

dynamics of this interreligious phenomenon become revealed to me insofar as I remained

as “other.” In the colonial setting peculiar to Trinidad, the reification of “own” culture

was made possible with the inclusion of “others” as a postulate. The students of culture

who urge the subjectification of the (reformation of culture in his ideological preference

are blind to this historical circumstance.

45


Endnote

1 According to the 1891 Census o f the Colony o f Trinidad, the first census taken after the island’s annexation to Trinidad, the total inhabitants of Tobago numbered 18,353, out of which 17,867, or 97.4%, were the immigrants from the neighboring British West Indian territories. The majority of them were imported into Tobago in order to make up for the labor shortage caused by the emancipation (pp. 26-27). Along with the ultimate collapse of the island’s sugar industry, the influx of laboring immigrants became stagnant in Tobago from the 1840s onward (Anthony, 1997, p. 565).

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CHAPTER n

THEORETICAL ORIENTATION

The Preceding Discussions-Critical Literature Review

“Plural” but a “Society”-the “Wonder” of Cultural Mixing

Explaining the social integration of Caribbean societies is by no means a new

issue. Since the early nineteenth century, the question of whether an orderly society

would evolve out of the remarkable potpourri of races and cultures concerned colonial

administrators, imperial writers, and others. From the late 1930s onwards, the same

question formed the foundation of West Indian social sciences. Not only has the question

persisted, but the underlying premise—established by scholars of Caribbean society—

that the formation and maintenance of a coherent social system could only be achieved

through the assimilation (and therefore elimination) of underlying ethnic cultural

differences. The theoretical frameworks of West Indian societies thus became centered on

the commensurability of cultural distinctiveness constructed according to the colonial

racial-typological taxonomy. In other words, the local political leaders and nationalist

intellectuals who were desperate for multi-racial and cultural reconciliation shared with

colonial predecessors the same assumption of the prior existence of fixed and self-

contained cultural origins, which necessarily produced the models in which “purity” and

“mixing” formed exclusive categories. In this connection, it is important to note that the

leading Caribbean social scientists were usually educated abroad. Once back on West

Indian soil, the conflict-consensus theoretical dichotomy, which was dominant in English

and U.S. universities for most of the twentieth century, intensified its ideological

47


character and became inextricably entwined with the postcolonial projects of nation

building. The conflict-consensus approach forced the scholars to make an “either/or”

choice: cultural differences would either produce conflict or they could be erased or

repressed and consensus would be possible.

M. G. Smith, a Jamaican-born anthropologist, emphasized the uniqueness and

idiosyncrasy of Caribbean cultures. Smith referred to Fumivall’s concept of “plural

society.” Fumivall had argued in his comparative analyses (1948) of Southeast Asian

colonial societies that (post)colonial societies (which he referred to as the “Tropics”)

should be examined as a distinct societal form with unique structural features. In the

Tropics, he observed, a “medley of people. . . mix but do not combine” (p. 304).

Although they lived “side by side” within a single political unit, each communal group

preserved its peculiar cultural traits, values, and lifestyles. Consequently, interactions

between individuals from different cultural alignments were limited to “buying and

selling” material goods and services in the “market-place,” which Fumivall conceives to

be the sole “common system to all tropical dependencies,” which is, in turn, dominated

and controlled by the Western value of rationality (p. 304-305). Fumivall regarded

culture as merely the context within which the primacy of economic forces disintegrates

the “common social will,” whereas Smith thought that cultures themselves segmented

Anglophone Caribbean societies into “distinct components” (Smith, 1965, p. 83). In West

Indian “plural societies,” including Trinidad, common values and norms would not come

into being. For each “cultural section,” under what Smith called “sectional moralization,”

“normally [sought] to define a negative, extrasectional and disvalued pole in contrast to a

positive, intersectional and esteemed one” (p. 195). Even though they occurred,

48


intersectional activities were likely to result in negative and violent consequences (Smith,

1967, p.x).

What is more important than some of their disagreements1 is that Smith confirmed

Fumivall’s conclusion that one group must necessarily “dominate” the rest of the

population in order for ethnically divided societies to maintain social cohesion (Smith,

1965, p. 83). In Trinidad, viewed through Smith’s theory of plural society, domination-

subordination is a “structural necessity” in the relations between constituent groups

because their cultures were incommensurable. As a result, creating a common “social

will” is well nigh impossible.

This “cultural pluralism” has come under severe criticism. By definition, in order

to persist, society must contain continuous intergroup actions that logically result in

shared values and norms. From this standpoint, the conception of society as a “patchwork

of not-yet-sown together fragments” (Safa, 1987, p. 116, cited in Munasinghe, 2001, p.

22) is a contradiction. Leo Kuper (1969, p. 462) asked: “In what way can these societies

be both plural and societies? Indeed, if they are plural, can they be societies?” A forcible

aggregation of individuals or groups does not necessarily constitute a “society” per se. A

society should also be a “moral community” whose coherence is preserved by a shared

set of values and norms (Smith, 1967, p. 233). From this standpoint, M. G. Smith’s plural

society model was a “successful failure,” for, paradoxically, it confirmed the validity of

this basic assumption. R. T. Smith, a leading disputant of this group, argued that

populations from different sociocultural sections had, whether they liked it or not,

eventually come to share a homogenized set of values and norms through the common

colonial experience of participation in a single economic and occupational system (Smith,

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1970). In English-speaking colonial societies, the Europeans created cultural and racial

diversity through the forceful displacement and domination of subordinate populations.

Ethnic diversity was subsumed under a “common cultural orientation” based on the

putative moral and cultural superiority of “things English” (Smith, 1967, p. 234). Cultural

diversity might have persisted only as “subcultural patterns” or “residuals” beneath an

overarching ethnocentric, European colonial value consensus. This consensus was

undermined by societal institutional cleavages (Smith, 1970; Braithwaite, 1975).

Contrary to a Parsonian or functionalist assumption that social and economic

unity produces harmony, the Caribbean’s material conditions, such as a unified

occupational or political system, have resulted in the intensification of ethnic

identification rather than accelerating the process of assimilation. Therefore, the answer

from the consensual camp on the question of social integration requires further

development in order to understand how such a consensus is formed and maintained

(Lukes, 1977, p. 63). We need a more convincing explanation regarding how the

Caribbean’s, and in particular, Trinidad’s, integrative cultural wholeness has emerged

and persisted despite the disparity in power and status of the bearers of the distinct

cultural elements. In this connection, the cultural pluralism perspective obviously has a

point. Trinidad’s late development as a sugar-producing plantation colony entailed

placing heterogeneous groups onto the island in a short period of time. Since then,

conflict between these immigrant groups has stymied the development of Trinidadian

society in its different phases. Cultural pluralism has undoubtedly directed our eyes to the

faction or division, activated or revitalized in conflicts along ethnic, rather than class,

lines (Braithwaite, 1975; Smith, 1984). Yet, due to its excessive emphasis on the

50


uncompromising and divisive nature of culture, the cultural pluralism approach gives us

no choice but to conclude that the dominant-subordinate relationship must prevail for a

culturally diverse society to retain its integration.

From the viewpoint of cultural pluralism, Trinidadian society is plural in the sense

that internal fragments are barely articulated by force (M. G. Smith, 1965; Despres, 1967).

Others insist that society cannot remain plural once it becomes a society (Smith, 1970;

Braithwaite, 1975). Trinidad, however, has exhibited a relatively high level of social

coherence while retaining its internal cultural pluralism. Trinidadian society is both

“plural” and a “society.” The various sociocultural groups have preferred neither the

preservation of traditional lifestyles nor the smooth convergence of putative differences

into a coherent whole. They continue to live side-by-side, interacting with, rather than

seeking to be isolated from, each other. They connect across sociocultural boundaries

without necessarily fusing (Crowley, 1956; Drummond, 1980; Khan, 2004a, 2004b).

Such cultural mixing remains a “miracle begging for analysis. Because it first occurred

against all odds, between the jaws of brute and absolute power, no explanation seems to

do justice to the very wonder that it happened at all” (Trouillot, 2002, p. 189).

The “Precariousness of Power”; The Demystification of Cultural Mixing

Another group of students, led by George Beckford, views the features of colonial

societies, which were divisive but integrative, as contrasting but not as antithetical. They

regard “divisive integration” as a structural trait common to all the societies that emerged

from plantations under “brute and absolute power.” In English-speaking Caribbean

societies, including Trinidad, the constituent groups were incorporated into a unified

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caste-like stratification and occupational system in which merits were unequally

distributed according to a group’s racial-typological (i.e., “ascribed”) attributes. The

cultural distinctiveness of individual groups closely corresponded to noncultural or

material aspects of human life and hence remained far from being subsumed under a

general cultural orientation. In order to preserve and reproduce this hierarchical system,

the landowning class, in tandem with colonial authorities, restricted communications

among the subordinate groups through carefully designed projects (Beckford,

2001 [1971], p. 142). This ethnic division of labor survived even the formation of a

nation-wide market-oriented economic system. By emphasizing the component groups’

relations to the colonial mode of production, the “plantation society” model echoes

Fumivall’s pluralism, although it emphasizes further the exploitative relations in a

plantation society. At the same time, in its stress on the hierarchical order of

stratification, this approach is a materialist’s revision of the moral community model. In

focusing on the linkage of the cultural and symbolic to the material dimension the former

is viewed as merely a mechanical reflection of the latter, this approach explains how the

apparently incompatible forces of social integration and cultural divisions have coexisted

while mutually reinforcing to each other in (post)plantation societies.

With the poststructuralist turn in theories since the late 1960s, the interplay

among symbolism, power, and social class has drawn renewed attention. Colonial and

postcolonial societies are unquestionably hierarchical. In most cases, however, the

dominant class does not sustain their relative privilege solely by coercive force. In order

to make their position less vulnerable, those who acquire power usually seek to make it

“consensual,” in the sense that those who do not have power consider those with power to

52


have legitimately acquired and maintained it (Alexander & Seidmen, 1994, p. 9). This

active reciprocity, as brilliantly analyzed by Max Weber (1978) and George Simmel

(1950), is inherent in power relationships, including the most oppressive and violent

forms of subordination, such as slavery. The more the system becomes hierarchical and

exploitative, the more powerful entities are pressed to reinforce it with what appears to be

the compliance or voluntary adherence of the powerless. Far from simply being a

mechanical reflection of the noncultural aspects of social life, culture and symbol play

central roles in this reciprocal process of legitimatization by (re)constructing the idea that

creates either active or passive cooperators and acceptance-seekers among the

subordinate sections of society. An aggregate of individuals coercively held together by

political-economic domination develops into a society, or a more coherent “moral-

political bloc,” when this ideological domination is attained simultaneously (Gramsci,

1971; see also Alexander & Seidman, 1994, pp. 8-9). Structural approaches, whether

consensus- or conflict-oriented, share the underlying premise that ideological

incorporation is a prerequisite for social stability. Vitriolic Marxian attacks on

“conservative” functionalistic approaches also assume that subordinate groups have

internalized the normative principles fabricated by the powerful to legitimize their claims,

so that modem society endures irrespective of its immanent “contradictions” (Scott,

1990, p. 86).

The functionalist and Marxian views of ideological incorporation as absolute

make it difficult to explain the feature of West Indian and Trinidadian society as both

integrative and divisive. Accordingly, in their parting from the more “deterministic,

fatalistic, and mechanistic” Marxism (Gramsci, 1971, p. 226), neo-Marxian critiques

53


have focused on the uncertainties of consensus and conflict, the assumed potential, but

not necessarily realized, subordinates’ rising against the dominant norms. According to

Antonio Gramsci, cultural leadership is never entirely secure no matter how much the

powerful aspire to make it so. The dominant ideas girding hegemony are frequently

questioned by the powerless because the idealized consciousness articulated by the

dominant classes is in fact inconsistent with the subordinated classes’ “real

circumstances” of exploited material conditions. This renders hegemony permanently

incomplete, and the constituent groups are ipso facto engaged in a perpetual cultural “war

of position” (p. 243). For Gramsci, such a “war,” which is due to the gap between the

material and ideological forms of domination, is far from negative; it is a rare opportunity

where “rational consciousness” develops leading to what he conceives to be a more equal

and just social life. In some sense, the “discovery” of the precariousness innate to power

structure has demystified the “wonder” of cross-cultural mixing. Power is still “brute” but

not “absolute,” due to the permanent insecurity of cultural leadership. Culture had been

seen as merely a reflection of material conditions; it is now the key avenue to shake or

even to break the iron “jaws of power.”

The “discovery” of the precariousness of power has made it difficult to continue

assuming that unequal material conditions would necessarily result in either complete

assimilation or permanent separation of putative cultural differences. Even in a power-

saturated colonial setting, the incomplete cultural domination must have made possible a

wide range of consequences out of cross-cultural encounters. Nevertheless, students of

culture have not adequately addressed or explained the results from cross-cultural

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encounters, in part because they have glossed over contextual variation, i.e. historical

contexts, demography and preexisting social norms.

Essentializing Cultural Mixing

Inspired by Edward Said’s Orientalism (1983) and other commentaries, students

of culture have accused the classical anthropological approach to culture of having binary

blinders that divided culture into opposing self-contained parts. Ingold (1993) denounces

anthropologists’ concept of culture as a “distancing device, setting up a radical

disjunction between ourselves, rational observers of the human condition, and those other

people, enmeshed in their traditional patterns of belief and practice” (p. 212; emphasis in

original). Another “abolitionist [of culture concept]” (Ortner, 1995) advocates even

“writing against culture,” which she considers merely an “essential tool for making

other” in anthropological discourses (Abu-Lughod, 1991, p. 138). In response to the

accusation of being complied in a colonial construction of alterity, students of culture

have attempted to deconstruct this “fictitious distance,” and to this end, they have sought

to subjectify the cultural (reproduction with a denial of the functionalist reasoning of

cultural distinction. In this process, human agents, either powerful or powerless, have

become fully capable of (re)producing culture and symbol as purposive instruments

either from scratch or through selection and appropriation of the available strands (e.g.

Handler, 1984; Clifford & Marcus, 1984). In consequence, “culture is everywhere.

Immigrants have it, business corporations have it, young people have it, women have it,

even ordinary middle-aged men have it, all in their own versions” (Hennertz, 1996, p. 30,

cited in Brumann, 1997, p. S9). In this mode of thought, there is no “shared” “structured”

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culture. If it were identified in a putatively heterogeneous social field, such a culture

would only be “a myth, a fabrication, a mystification—the collective misrepresentation of

someone’s particular interests” (Shalins, 1999, p. 402). The traditional anthropological

quest for and depiction of a structured culture has become conceived as “politically

incorrect” with a consequent “paralyzing fear of structure” among the students of culture

(p. 399).

Those of this academic-cum-political persuasion have called for a shift of

scholarly attention from the putative cultural “purity,” which they view as the foundation

of “anthropological mystique,” to an analysis and understanding of “mixing.” When

Mikhail Bakhtin, a major figure referred in this recent celebration of cultural mixing,

brought it to public attention: “Hybridity i s . . . itself a hybrid concept” (Young, 1995, p.

21). The Russian linguist assumed there were two distinct processes and consequences of

linguistic hybridization. On the one hand, Bakhtin hypothesized, having “co-exist[ed]

within the boundaries of a single dialect, a single national language, a single branch, a

single group of different branches,” “various ‘languages’” mixed and eventually formed a

new language, which would be irreducible to the “historical as well as paleontological”

origins (Bakhtin, 1981, pp. 358-359). According to him, this “organic hybridization”

advanced beyond human consciousness and intentions, and thus remained “mute and

opaque,” though “profoundly productive [and] pregnant with potential for new

worldviews” (p. 360). As is often the case, however, the originally distinct worldviews,

expressed in different “utterances,” “styles,” and “languages,” would not amalgamate, but

remained separate and competing. Bakhtin contrasted this intentional and directional

“novelistic hybridization” with “organic hybridization” in which the initial differences

56


merge and coalesce into an alternative language or worldviews. They are set against each

other or “dialogiz [ed]” in “conflictual structure which retains a certain elemental,

organic energy and openendedness” by the intentional hybridization (p. 361). Robert

Young (1995) comments upon Bakhtin’s conceptualization of hybridity:

Bakhtin’s doubled form of hybridity therefore offers a particularly significant dialectical model for cultural interaction . . . . Hybridity . . . involves an antithetical movement of coalescence and antagonism, with the unconscious set against the intentional, the organic against the divisive, the generative against undermining. Hybridity is itself an example of hybridity, of a doubleness that both brings together, fuses, but also maintains separation (p. 22).

As the concept became “commonplace and pervasive,” this indecisive

“doubleness,” which Young conceives as central to Bakhtin’s conceptualization, has gone

out of Bakhtin’s hybridity. The colonial discourse, which reduced racial and cultural

differences to reified essences, was highly politicized. Thus, the “intentional,” “divisive,”

and ‘‘undermining’’ movements within hybridization are necessarily “politicized and

made contestatoiy” (Young, 1995, p. 21). Those who privilege its intentional aspects

have reduced Bakhtin’s “doubled form of hybridity” into a juncture of resistance against

ideological incorporation and cultural domination. In this transition, “mute and opaque”

(post)colonial subordinate subjects have been transfigured altogether into “novelists” or

“artists,” who are up to contestatory activities. In contrast, they have abandoned the

unconscious and unintentional “organic hybridization” as politically incorrect and thus

unacceptable, similar to functionalistic explanation of cultural (trans)formation. As a

result, the emergent “in-betweens” from continual dialogues between different

worldviews have turned into an arena of war of position, where only permanent, mutual

superimposition takes place without producing an alternative “shared culture.”

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Homi Bhabha (1994[1984], 1994[1985])3 translated Bakhtin’s “doubleness” of

hybridity into a generic constitution of the colonial representation. On the assumption of

the incommensurability of the putative cultural differences, the colonized must be

assimilated to the extent that their actions and thoughts become predictable and, in turn,

governable. At the same time, the colonizers must maintain insurmountable distinctions,

which keep the colonized (usually lowly) “others,” because the colonizers’ presumptive

hegemony was premised on the “ascribed” and thus unvarying distance between

cultural/racial differences. Because the colonizers ultimately were concerned with

governing the “others,” these tendencies to assimilate while avoiding mixing were not

antithetical, though contrasting (Khan, 2004b, p. 42). Thus, colonizers forced the

colonized simultaneously to become governable subjects through imitating “things

European” while the colonized were refused the option of completely assimilating. The

colonized had to remain as plebeian “others.” Due to the tensions within this project, the

colonizers were never able to completely impose a fixed image of the subordinate others.

The creation of a fixed subordinate other was destined to fail because the colonizers

constantly denied the colonized the opportunity to be considered culturally and socially

identical to the colonizers, yet the colonizers pressured the subordinate groups to become

less “other” and more like the colonizers. According to Bhabha, the colonizer and

colonized were identical in the sense that both were similarly “caught up in [this]

ambivalence of paranoiac identification,” characterized by the juxtaposition of “desire”

and “repulsion.” Bhabha laid the foundation for counterarguments to this totalizing

analysis of colonial discourse based on simple opposition between the colonizer and the

colonized. His concept of “ambivalence” has remained a powerful warning against the

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facile reductionism of colonial discourse instrumentally constructed and employed

exclusively by the colonizers (Bhabha, 1994; see also Young, 1995, p. 161).

However, particularly from the early 1990s, Bhabha has become committed more

to the “question of agency” (1994[1992]). He came to see the emergent “interstitial

intimacy” (1994, p. 13) caused by the ambivalent colonial discourse as a way for the

colonized potentially to carry out a “strategic reversal of the process of domination”

(1994[1992], p. 112). In the postcolonial moment, he expects such an interstices—a

“hybrid displacing space” (1994) or “Third Space” (1994[1989]) in his terms—to set the

stage for the formerly colonized to transform the “meaning of the colonial inheritance

into the libratoiy signs” through “re-articulation or translation” (Bhabha 1994[1992], p.

38). Bhabha’s major concern has shifted from “doubleness” to the cognitive processes

and subjective signifying practices in order to emphasize cultural hybridization as a

“critical moment of political change” (Young, 1995, pp. 22-23; Papastergiadis, 1997, p.

274).

If the effect of colonial power is seen to be the production of hybridisation rather than the noisy command of colonialist authority or the silent repression of native traditions, then an important change of perspective occurs . . . enabling] a form of subversion, founded on the undecidability that turns the discursive conditions of dominance into the grounds of intervention [emphasis in original] (Bhabha, 1994[1985], p.l 12).

The revaluation of mixing began as a critique (or reflexive deconstruction) of

cultural essentialism. As a reminder, Said (1983) presented the concept of “worldliness,”

by which he rejected a semiotic interpretation of culture with no close reference to the

particular sociohistorical context (p. 35). However, the deconstruction of the traditional

“we/them” distinction has generalized “worldliness” into a new polarized framework

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with alternative distance between those who represent and those they represent. The

refusal of structural approaches to culture (i.e. cultural pluralism and moral community

models), which are regarded as being inattentive of political variables, has led to

excessive emphasis of previously ignored “culture of resistance.” In this perspective,

wherever and whenever it occurs (e.g., a sugar estate in a colonial West Indian island or a

ghetto in a contemporary North American metropolis), the powerful are always absorbed

in retaining or reinforcing their relative position through ideological incorporation, and

the powerless are necessarily busy waging against the powerful with their “weapon of the

weak” (Scott, 1989) or “art of resistance” (Scott, 1992). “Culture [has] evaporate[d] into

a war of position” (Werbner, 1997, p. 3).

The Argument— (Re-)contextualizing Cultural Mixing

The “Culture of Ethnicity”-Distinct Concepts of Culture at Work

The Caribbean had so long remained outside the focus of anthropological

attention: the previously sought cultural “purity” left no trace. With the theoretical turn

toward mixing and hybridity, however, the Caribbean has been reconceived as a

“laboratory” or “frontier” where distinct cultural origins encountered each other and

subsequently mingled, interbred and conflicted. The concepts, such as creolization and

syncretism, which originated in or were refined by the Caribbean experience, have

obtained the status of a “master trope” not only in Caribbean scholarship but in general

anthropological discourse. Yet, there is a difference between the original

conceptualization and the recent application of these terms. When Melville Herskovits

(1958) dealt with the notion of syncretism and Edward Brathwaite (1971) introduced the

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concept of creolization, their concepts were not envisioned as applicable beyond the

Caribbean. However, once these concepts gained academic currency, they have come to

be employed across a variety of contexts without considering the particular conditions of

history, demography, and social norms that produced the specific mixing (Price & Price

1997; Trouillot, 2002). It has become impossible to fiee the discussion of cultural mixing

in the Caribbean completely from ideological and political sensibilities of the disputants

(Trouillot, 2002, p. 189). This is especially so in the case of the English-speaking

Caribbean, where the theory of cultural mixing advanced under the influence of the

politics of independence and nationalism in the late 1940s. Since then, leading West

Indian intellectuals and political elites have aspired to build a nation through a “total

break. . . with the consciousness of the past” (Patterson, 1982, p. 258, cited in Price &

Price, 1997, p. 5) that remains tainted by the horrible experiences of slavery and

colonialism. With the increasing interest in “cultures of resistance,” this ideological and

political preference for “pastlessness” has swept away contextual variances.

Unequivocally, since the colonial period the objectification of ethnicity has

remained the most significant mode of ethnic identification in Trinidad. The introduction

of electoral party politics facilitated this process because the government became a

primary means to protect or improve comparative ethnic status in Trinidad, as in most

former colonial societies, where no other institution than politics had developed as a

competing actor in the allocation of reward and prestige. This view of culture as an

ideological construction for political redress is not irrelevant at all. Viranjini Munasinghe

(2001), for example, has written compellingly about inter-ethnic relations in Trinidad

from this perspective. She maintains that the conflict between the Afro- and Indo-

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Trinidadian communities must be viewed as their “struggle” with reified and objectified

forms of culture as instruments in a battle for relative sociopolitical status. Like many

other former colonial societies that were ethnically diverse, indigenous political elites in

Trinidad were forced to fulfill seemingly incompatible goals. While negotiating their

right of otherness with distinct ethnic segments, political leaders also had to integrate

these distinct “other” groups into a single social, political, and cultural entity or “nation.”

To complicate the process, not all subordinate “others” were treated equally. The

inherited colonial social discipline, or “ideological frame” in Munasinghe’s terminology,

has always afforded a privileged position to “Affo-Creoleness,” the putative cultural

heritage of Afro-Trinidadians. In contrast, it has devalued, though not denied, the

contribution of Indo-Trinidadian cultural traditions to the emergent homogenized

“Trinidadian culture.” For Munasinghe (2001), the “Afro-Trinidadian control of the state

and cultural representation of the nation” (p. 5) had been perceived as unquestionable.

She suggests that the conflict between these “historically subordinate ancestral groups” in

post-independence Trinidad be viewed as a “war of position” through which Indo-

Trinidadians constantly challenge the Afro-Trinidadians hegemony that consigns them as

outsiders, or at best, second-rate citizens of the nation of Trinidad (pp. 2-5,191-192).

This present study neither undervalues the objectification of ethnicity as a mode

of identification nor de-emphasizes the aspect of culture as human production being

reified and appropriated for a politics of identity. When I began field research in

Trinidad, I had considerable sympathy for this conceptualization of culture. Prior to my

departure for the fieldwork, I wrote a paper for a graduate seminar entitled “Politics of

Cultural Articulation in the Caribbean,” which focused on ethnic confrontations in

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Trinidad as “cultural politics.” Some of my findings indeed support this line of argument.

Nevertheless, throughout my fieldwork, I became aware of the conflict between the

recent anthropological conceptualization of culture, which Munasinghe relies on, and the

folk conceptual praxis of culture that I observed in Trinidad. Christoph Brumann (1999)

remarks on this “significant gap”:

If anthropologists like it or not, it appears that people—and not only those with power—want culture, and they often want it precisely in the bounded, reified, essentialized and timeless fashion that most of us do now reject [emphasis in original] (cited in Sahlins, 1999, p. 403).

As illustrated in the Introduction, the signifying practices of the political and

religious leaders of ethnic communities-the putative spearheads in “cultural struggles” in

Munasinghe’s study-are also constrained by another conception of culture. With their

excessive attachment to an interpretation of Gramsci’s thesis that emphasizes the relative

autonomy of culture from human actions (Alexander & Seidman, 1994, p. 8),4 those who

focus on the “culture of resistance” tend to undervalue another important aspect of

culture: a regulating force over power that has been central to functionalistic analyses (p.

8). By assuming that a capacity of signification is also inherent in the powerless mass,

these writers have drawn a distinction between themselves and classical Marxian view of

culture as simply a fabrication of the dominant few. Nonetheless, they have trouble

explaining the process wherein whatever (reproduced reflexively constrains the

subsequent signifying practices—not the “culture of resistance” but “resistance of

culture.” This is not to reduce human actions to the totality of “social facts.” However,

culture is not only a “weapon” or prize in a war of position, but culture also orders and

restrains the war while being built into actors’ perceptions (Sahlins, 1999, p. 413).

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This “significant gap” is due partly to enduring assumptions: the “prior” existence

of pure, fixed and self-contained antecedents; and the incommensurability of those

cultural origins. The focus on the precariousness of power has shifted our attention from

a culture to cultures. The ruling passion to unearth the “culture of resistance” has first

dismissed as politically incorrect the “organic hybrid” conception of culture, which was

indistinguishable from a structuralist concept of “Creole.” Many scholars have

abandoned the notion of an alternative “shared culture,” which Bakhtin viewed as a

possible outcome from the unintentional interbreeding of different worldviews.

Nevertheless, contrary to the recent scholarly works in this line, Trinidadians whom I

worked and lived with and communicated did not feel forced to choose between “a

culture” and “cultures.” They conceptualize culture as homologous with a particular

ethnic collectivity. Yet, at the same time, in their perception, the essentialized differences

in objects, practices and worldviews are commensurable, constituting an overarching

culture, which they frequently dub “Trinidad (or Trinidadian) culture.”

Gerd Baumann’s works (1996,1997) suggest this simultaneous operation of

distinct concepts of culture, though they have come from research in a different context.

Baumann recognizes that the residents in Southall, a suburban town in western London,

necessarily handle the antithetic discourses of culture because of Southall’s multiethnic

environment. What he terms “dominant” discourse reduces cultural and ethnic

differences to reificatory essence, but it is always in competition with the “demotic”

counterpart, which questions and disengages the equation of culture with a particular

ethnic community (Baumann, 1997, pp. 215-216). Baumann demonstrates with

ethnographic portraits that “Southallians” have developed a “dual discursive

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competence” in order to choose from competing discourses according to environment and

audience (p. 216). The existence of the competing conceptual praxis does not necessarily

eliminate the dominant equation. For Baumann, however, this dual discursive

competence renders the ties between culture and community a constant object of question,

review, and debate that may lead to the formation and reinforcement of multiethnic

alliances (p. 216).

However, contrary to Baumann’s thesis, I hypothesize here that the conceptual

praxis of culture that serves such a function in Trinidad, neither “questions” nor

“disengages” the dominant equation of culture with ethnic community. In colonial

Trinidad, as in many other colonial societies, the putative differences between racial-

typological attributes allowed for the emergence and persistence of a power-saturated

system of stratification. In such circumstances, cultures became reified as entities as

though they had definite substantive and invariable contents. In the process of cultural

reification, ethnicity became an existential “fact of nature” (Berger & Luckmann, 1967,

pp. 106-107)—an “objective”—and thus an autonomous discipline that ordered the

social field (Comaroff & Comaroff, 1992, cited in Baumann, 1996, p. 19). As will be

demonstrated in the following chapters, in Trinidad, an alternative conceptual praxis of

culture has developed as an effect of multiethnic alliances based on this “given” and thus

“unquestionable” equation of reificatory cultures with ethnic communities. The resulting

concept of culture has reflexively reinforced them and formed new alliances, not because

it “dissolves” (as Baumann assumes), but because it “hyphenates” distinctive reificatory

cultures and thus ethnic communities, the putative “possessors” of those cultures. In

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Trinidad, the different concepts of cultures are not in conflict, but are mutually

reinforcing.

Concerning the ethnic “gift exchange,” which is illustrated in the Introduction,

Francis Henry (2003) has written, “Providing benefits to these [“African”] religions

demonstrates that the [“Indian”] government is willing to ensure the equality of all its

citizens without recourse to ethnicity” [emphasis added] (p. 167). However, it should be

noted that the political leaders have exchanged “ethnic” symbols. The Temple in the Sea

and its erector, Siewadass Sadhu, were chosen as the focus of preferential treatment by

the “African” government because they were assumed to personify the Indo-Trinidadian

community. Equally, the “Indian” administration singled out the Spiritual Baptist

community in general and Barbara Burke’s congregation in particular as a recipient of an

“ethnic” gift, because they were the putative bearers of paradigmatic Afro-Trinidadian

culture. The gift exchange would be meaningless if the equation of reificatory cultures

with ethnic identity were disengaged.

Cultural Mixing in Trinidad-the Hyphenation of Cultures

In Trinidad, as in other colonial societies characterized by a plantation economy,

the culture of ethnicity developed in response to commodification of labor. The colonial

elites—the landowning class under the auspices of colonial administration—constantly

reified cultural differences and tied them to specific racial attributes to make them

objective “facts.” Once they were essentialized as “ascribed” and thus presumably

“invariable” attributes, the putative racial/cultural differences formed “fixed” distances,

based on which the presumptive hegemony of colonizers was constructed and retained.

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This reification of cultures resulted in an ethnic division of labor that subsequently

formed a mutually reinforcing relation with cultural essentialism that argued that each

ethnic group was fundamentally and inalterably distinct (Yelvington, 1993).

Nevertheless, it is disputable that the colonizer’s objectification of ethnicity

successfully “fixed” the image of colonized “others.” The resulting forms of

fundamental distinctions between colonizers and colonized did not necessarily conform

to the generalization frequently accepted by the existing studies of colonial societies that

focus exclusively on the elite’s governing ambition with the associated self-conscious

rational “divide and rule” strategy. The “failure” in the colonizer’s fixation of cultural

distances was not only caused by “resistance” on the part of the subjugated population

against their objectification of ethnicity. It must be remembered that colonialism was also

nationalism. T also encouraged the urge to homogenize these reified cultural essences

into a coherent sociocultural wholeness. Through sexual relations and mimetic

appropriation and exchanges of cultural essences attached to “others,” the colonial elites

thus repeatedly transgressed the racial and cultural boundaries that they inscribed and

were desperate to retain as impermeable. The culture of ethnicity is a historically

negotiated creation of these competing impulses to differentiate cultures and assimilate

them into a single national culture. Trinidad’s particular demography and political and

economic development have affected the negotiations between the two forces of

colonialism—the reification and the homogenization of cultures—and produced a unique

“culture of ethnicity.”

To be fair, Munasinghe (2001) does not ignore the “resistance of culture.” She

considers that the “ideological frame,” which took form under the Victorian control of the

67


colony, took Afro- and Indo-Trinidadians to the cultural “war of position” in post

independent Trinidad. It seems problematic, however, that Munasinghe owed her point of

departure to Brackett Williams’ “general model of plantation society” (1991). Having

observed Guyanese society, Williams initially subscribed to the leading voices of the

“moral community” model in terms of how the presumed superiority of “things English”

came to be accepted by members of society through their participation in a unified

occupational system in plantation societies. Williams argued, however, that this premise,

or what she called “social discipline,” caused a “war of position” that impeded the

formation of the assumed “common cultural orientation” in the years following

independence. Still, this “war” is not the process of “challenge and riposte” (Harlow,

1986, p. xi, cited in Comaroff & Comaroff, 1992, p. 235) against the supremacy of the

dominant ideas of the European ruling classes; rather, it is a struggle among the

historically subordinate ethnic groups over “who ranks second” to the elite. In such a

struggle, therefore, “things English” not only enjoy a privileged position, but they are

also considered the criteria by which the competing groups are judged and eventually

assigned their ranks (Williams, 1991; Kelly & Kaplan, 2001). Williams also reiterated the

basic assumption of the “plantation society” model that claims that the shared social

discipline has remained influential and has not disappeared in the transformation of the

colonial mode of production.

As Williams (1991) notes, “[hjistorically, economically, and culturally Guyana

shares much with other British Caribbean Islands” (p. 34). Trinidad and Guyana

undeniably share sociohistorical and structural traits. Both became a part of the British

Empire around the beginning of the nineteenth century; both became sovereign states in

68


the 1960s. Both Guyanese and Trinidadian societies contained significant number of

people of East Indian origin (Hintzen, 1989). Nevertheless, this study questions the facile

application of Williams’ “general model” to Trinidad, particularly in the consideration of

“cultural struggle.” Due to distinct contexts of their formative process, what Munasinghe

calls the “ideological frame” and Williams “social discipline” assumed a different form in

Trinidad than Guyana and thus affected differently the course of subsequent cultural

politics in Trinidad.

The island of Trinidad has already made a significant contribution to the debates

over cultural mixing and resultant (de)reconstruction of the concept of culture

(Yelvington, 1993). The British West Indian post-emancipation era, beginning in 1838,

was generally characterized by the planters’ desperate efforts under the patronage of the

colonial government to secure a dependable and affordable source of labor. This was

particularly the case in Trinidad, where the development of the sugar plantation economy

coincided with the abolition of slavery. Many immigrants and contract workers came

from neighboring British possessions,5 West Africa, Portuguese Madeira,6 and the United

States.

However, an influx of workers began with the introduction of indentured labor

system in the mid-nineteenth century. Until then, while attempting various strategies to

alleviate the labor shortage, the colonial government remained opposed to any systematic

labor importation, assuming that the inundation of alternative workforce would deprive

the former African slaves of a potential livelihood (Laurence, 1994, pp. 4-5). It gradually

became evident, however, that immigrant workers would have little impact on freed

slaves as the former slaves deserted estates to become peasants in the remaining

69


agricultural districts or domestics in urban areas. Likewise, it became impossible for the

colonial authorities to disregard the increasing demand for a large-scale labor importation.

In the succeeding nearly three quarters of a century under the indentured system, a large

number of contract workers were brought from China7 and the Indian subcontinent to

Trinidad. Chinese settlers found themselves unfit for intensive agricultural labor in a

tropical environment and consequently deserted (they were almost complete gone by the

1870s) (Look-Lai, 1993, p. 103), whereas East Indian laborers were, as an English writer

put it, “convenient creatures” (Froude, 1892) who satisfied the planters’ need for reliable

labor. Over the entire period of indentured system, which ended in 1917, a total of

140,369 laborers were brought from various parts of the Indian subcontinent for Trinidad

(Look-Lai, 1993; Laurence, 1994). Contrary to the underlying assumption that they were

sojourners who would be repatriated upon the completion of their contract, a major

portion of time-expired indentured workers made Trinidad their permanent home.8 In

nearly a century since the abolition of indentured system, some significant

transformations have occurred in the demographic and cultural make-up of Trinidad.

According to the censuses, the proportion of those who identify themselves as “mixed or

colored” has constantly risen. Equally important, the number of Indo-Trinidadians, or

those who claim their “East Indian origin,” has also increased, which has made them as

of the 1990 Census the largest ethnic group, surpassing the formerly predominant Affo-

Trinidadians. For all these shifts, the demographic and cultural composition of

Trinidadian society has remained heterogeneous, reflecting the patterns of settlements

during the period up to the abolition of indentured system (Tables 2-1 and 2-2 below).

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Reproduced with

permission

of the copyright owner.

Further reproduction prohibited

without permission.

1851 1861 1871 1881 1891 1901 1911 1921N N N N N N N N

Trinidad 40,627 46,936 56,692 69,307 86,941 134,639 165,529 186,287Trinidad (with Indian Parents) N/A N/A 4,545 12,800 24,641 38,714 59,353 84,066India 4,169 13,488 22,880 36,020 45,577 47,677 50,585 37,341British West Indian Colonies 10,800 11,716 13,707 24,047 24,648 42,373 47,802 47,044Other British Colonies 12 N/A N/A N/A 113 152 287 983United Kingdom 729 1,040 954 1,062 943 1,385 1,020 1,389Africa 8,097 6,035 4,256 3,035 2,055 1,212 475 177China N/A 461 1,400 1,266 1,006 832 1,113 1,334Other Foreign Countries 4,915 4,301 4,779 5,150 5,655 6,745 7,109 7,094Not Described 260 461 425 441 30 170 97 198Total 69,609 84,438 109,638 153,128 200,028 273,899 333,552 365,913Table 2-1: Distribution of the Population by Place of Origin in the Post-emancipation period, 1851-19219

1946 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000N % N % N % N % N % N %

White European Origin 15,283 2.7 15,718 1.9 11,383 1.2 9,946 0.9 7,250 0.6 7,034 0.6African Origin 261,485 46.9 358,558 43.3 398,765 42.8 430,864 40.8 445,440 39.6 418,268 37.5East Indian Origin 195,747 35.1 301,947 36.5 373,538 40.1 429,187 40.7 453,070 40.3 446,273 40.0Syrian/Lebanese 889 0.2 N/A N/A 993 0.1 911 0.1 930 0.1 849 0.1Chinese 5,641 1.0 8,361 1.0 7,962 0.9 5,562 0.5 4,310 0.4 3,800 0.3Mixed or Colored 78,775 14.1 134,748 16.3 131,904 14.2 172,285 16.3 207,560 18.5 228,089 20.5Other N/A N/A 8,304 1.0 5,141 0.6 2,913 0.3 1,720 0.15 1,972 0.2Not Described 150 0.0 292 0.0 1,385 0.2 4,055 0.4 4,830 0.43 8,487 0.8Total 557,970 100.0 827,957 100.0 931,071 100.0 1,055,763 100.0 1,125,130 100.0 1,114,772 100.0Table 2-2: Distribution of the Population by Race/Ethnicity, 1946-200010

In the nineteenth century, the settlement of the “medley of people” was not

followed by the emergence of an eclectic cosmopolitan society (Brathwaite, 1975, p. 2).

Like older colonies in the region, economic interests produced an influx of immigrants

from die different comers of the world. Upon arrival, settiers were incorporated into the

unified stratification system under the colonial mode of production according to their

racial and ethnic background. To understand the form, nature, and relationships among

the immigrant groups in Trinidad, I return to the initial question on which Brackett

Williams formulated her “general model of plantation society”: “What were the social

and historical conditions under which ethnically identified groupings of individuals came

to share common geographical space and to participate in a single economic and

sociocultural order?” (Williams, 1991, p. 128) Cultural mixing is “generated within

certain kinds of power relations, rather than as prescriptive, predicting a priori what those

relations out to be” (Khan, 2004b, p. 5).

In the next chapter, thus, the argument begins with the reexamination of the

formative process of “European” communities and their assumed cultural leadership in

colonial Trinidad. In the studies that focus exclusively on the interclass politics of culture,

a parallel to the monolithic descriptions of those who resisted is the monolithic portrayal

of those who represented and dominated (Stoler, 1989). Despite their insistence that

intercultural relationships are politicized and made contestatory, these observers assume

that no politics is involved in the formative process of a “dominant culture,” much less in

the case of colonial societies, and is characterized by an acutely unequal distribution of

power. More often than not, they conceived the dichotomy of colonizer and colonized to

be given, rather than as dynamic social categories that need to be examined in terms of a

72


particular context (p. 136). The European landowning class established, seemingly

uncontestedly, its cultural leadership through their material advantage. Chapter 3

demonstrates that these assumptions of a singular European “dominant culture” were not

only insufficient as a point of departure, but also seriously misleading in the case of

Trinidad.

Chapter 4 argues that subordinate groups of the working class found a fertile

ground for cultural mixing in the interstices of the social field, with particular reference

to Carnival, the annual pre-Lenten festivity in Trinidad. Carnival has historically received

much academic attention. In response to the quest for culture as means of political redress,

scholars have shifted their gaze from the ordering and regulating “functions” of this

particular form of ritual to its potentialities to be a “critical moment of political change.”

Carnival has become a palpable example of “heteroglossia” (Bakhtin, 1981), which opens

a “third space” (Bhabha, 1994) or “free zone” (Scott, 1990) where the subordinate social

subjects carry out a “strategic reversal of the process of domination” (Bhabha, 1994).

Indubitably, Carnival in Trinidad has remained a “moment of political change.” In the

decades since emancipation, archival evidence demonstrates that it developed from a

festival of the Catholic landowning population into a celebration predominantly of the

working-class masses of African origin. If phrased with reference to Bhabha, the freed

slaves’ intentional “re-articulation, or translation” transformed the meaning of Carnival, a

colonial inheritance, into the “liberatory signs.” This aspect—that the former slaves’

reification of a “culture of resistance” forced open interstices between the iron “jaws of

power”—has been emphasized at the expense of other important dimensions of the

development of Carnival in Trinidad.

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The decades following emancipation, which witnessed the transformation of

carnival, coincided with the intensification of an intraclass/intercultural “war of position”

between the Anglican and Catholic elite communities. The transference of the colony

from Spain to England not only shifted the political apparatus, but also hierarchized

European cultures. In fact, the incoming colonizers worked to refashion “European-ness”

around the presumptive superiority of Anglican-English cultural practices, objects, and

values. In resistance to the debasement of their relative status, the Catholic elites,

particularly French Creoles, worked to defend Carnival even after it intensified its

character as a festive occasion for Afro-Trinidadian urbanites. In the second half of the

nineteenth century, Carnival developed as a polymorphous and multivocal “culture of

resistance.”

Chapter 5 questions the assumption that East Indian immigrants, and, later, Indo-

Trinidadians, had remained outside the dynamic interactions between cultural “sections”

or “segments.” The indentureship retained the institutional separation of East Indians

from the rest of the society by connecting them with distinct governmental agencies,

legislations, and social services (Brereton, 1979, p. 177). Yet, the labor regimentation

was already loosening in the late 1860s, despite the planters’ hopes for maintaining the

system. At the same time, contrary to the anticipation of the host society, an increasing

number of time-expired indentured laborers became permanent residents. In response, the

religious leaders, and those who were economically ascending, began working to

establish a cohesive Indo-Trinidadian community based on a new construction of

“Indian-ness.” This refashioned “Indian-ness,” however, although similar to “European

ness,” was not a “direct translation” of their culture of origin, but a “unique cultural

74


configuration.” It should be noted in this connection that East Indian immigrants were not

homogeneous, but were a demographic and cultural mosaic. Due to this internal diversity,

the reification of homogeneous “Indian-ness” as a “culture of resistance” in opposition to

the putative Christian cultural domination created distinct politics of culture within the

imagined Indo-Trinidadian community. The leaders of the community, who led the

struggle against the assumed European/Christian cultural domination, had a privileged

religion to be as a diacritical symbol that epitomized “Indian-ness.” Accordingly, as a

confluence of multiple “wars of position,” religion has also remained a “porous ground of

mixing” however much the religious elites aspired to render it a pure and exclusive “icon

of Indian-ness” (Khan, 2004a, 2004b).

Decolonization for Trinidad, as in other former colonies, meant not merely a

reification of geographical territory and the associated political apparatus, but it also

entailed a cultural process that usually required a radical change in “cultural forms or

mechanisms that groups involved in an overall web of relationships [could] use in their

formal and informal dealings with one another” (Wolf, 2001, p. 137). This is not to say

that all the members of the society began thinking and acting in exactly the same way by

accepting a new common postcolonial cultural form. However, it is assumed following

Eric Wolf (2001) that “such common forms must exist if communications among the

constituent groups of a complex society is to be established and maintained” (p. 137).

Eric Williams, the first leader of independent Trinidad, aspired to deconstruct the

“colonial culture” and replace it with an alternative idea that would enable a conflation of

racial-typological differences of cultures (Williams, 1991, p. 20) Williams shared the

colonists’ assumption of the incommensurability of cultures. Yet, contrary to the colonial

75


administrators, who sought to reduce internal diversity through interbreeding, Williams

attributed the putative negativism associated with particular cultures to the hierarchical

assessment of, not the distances between, different cultures. Williams thus made a

persistent commitment to construct and socialize a new tradition of “Trinidadian-ness,”

which would take the place of the discipline that he believed had divided and

hierarchized cultures in Trinidad. At odds with an “instrumentalist” assumption (i.e.

Hobsbowm & Ranger, 1983), however, the populace did not automatically accepted this

new “tradition” of elite-led reification. Chapter 6 examines the culture and social

integration of Trinidad from Williams’s struggle for and “failure” in the reification of an

alternative concept of culture.

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Endnotes

1 Smith criticized Fumivall’s argument for being based on a simple dichotomy: the colonial power, characterized by “a common civilization derived from Greece and Rome under the vitalizing impulse of Christianity,” in contrast to the colonized whose “social relations were customary, not legal, authority was personal based on Will not on Law” (Fumivall, 1948, p. 3). By revising the concept so as to include societies other than the “Tropics,” Smith attempted both to extend the range of its applicability and to avoid the reductionism that obscured variations within the colonized. For more detailed examination of the differences in theoretical standpoint between Smith and Fumivall, see Meigoo, 2001.

2 In response to this critique, M. G. Smith (1975) later introduced the concept of “incorporation,” in order to shift attention to processes away from static and invariable binary relations. Yet, this substitute concept ended up highlighting, rather than reducing, the problematic assumption in the earlier version of cultural pluralism that sociocultural sections are fundamentally separate, self-contained, and thus isolated. For the presumed process was unilateral in the sense that only the “subordinate” sections would change in response to and eventually be “incorporated” into the dominant or “host” section (Robotham, 1991, p. 40).

This dissertation refers to Homi Bhabha’s works, reprinted in The Location o f Culture (1994).

4 It is actually difficult to generalize Gramsci’s perspective on the relation between culture and human actions. For example, by the concept of “resistance” he meant a more passive and unconscious articulation. Nevertheless, the recent research on colonial societies, inspired by Gramsci’s vision of culture as a site of political struggle, tend to reduce his concept of resistance to a conscious defiant action free from cultural restraint (Kaplan & Kelly, 1994). Comaroff and Comaroff (1991, pp. 19-27) suggest that this is due partly to the fact that Gramsci has been read largely through writings of the Raymond Williams (cited in Comaroff & Comaroff, p. 126). For closer review of Gramsci’s conceptions, see T. J. Jackson Lears (1985), in addition to Kaplan and Kelly’s (1994).

5 Because of the demand for slave laborers, the importation of African laborers continued after the abolition of the slave trade in 1805. This doubled the number of slaves to nearly 20,000 by the 1820s (Besson & Brereton, 1992, p. 308). The waves of laborers from neighboring West Indian domains continued after Emancipation: over 10,000 between 1839 and 1848, and another 65,000 between 1871 and 1911 settled in the island (p. 308).

6 Trinidad received several waves of Portuguese immigrants from Madeira and Cape Verde between the mid-1830s and the late 1850s. Still, due to the lack of their experience in agricultural production in a tropical climate, in addition to the harsh treatment by the former slave-holding owners, there was high mortality among Portuguese settlers, which

77


in consequence caused the rest of them to withdraw from the estates (Ferreira, cited in Besson & Brereton, 1992, pp. 263-265).

7 It is alleged by several sources that some Chinese had started settling in Trinidad in the first decade of the nineteenth century. According to Look-Lai’s documentation, there were twelve Chinese residents in Trinidad as early as 1812. However, it was after the introduction of indentured system when Trinidad started receiving a considerable number of Chinese immigrants. According to Annual Reports of the Colonial Land and Emigration Commission (1853-1873), there were eight shipments of contract laborers from China between 1853 and 1866. The breakdown is as follows: 988 arrived with three (3) ships in 1853,467 with one (1) ship in 1862, 593 with two (2) ships in 1865 and 597 with two (2) ships 1866 (Look-Lai, 1993, p. 292).

8 As indicated in an official report of immigrants, out of 129,224 indentured laborers with East Indian origin, who settled between 1851 and 1908, only 15,394, or 11.9 percent, returned to India (Sanderson Report, Vol. 1 ,1909, pp. 63-64, cited in Smith, 1963, p. 22).

9 Compiled from the Censuses o f the Colony o f Trinidad and Tobago, 1891,1901,1911, 1921, and 1931.

\

10 Compiled from the Census o f the Colony o f Trinidad and Tobago 1946 and Censuses o f the Population o f Trinidad and Tobago 1960,1970,1980,1990, and 2000.

78


CHAPTER IH

RETHINKING COLONIAL CATEGORIES: THE CULTURAL POLITICS

AMONG THE DOMINANT

This chapter reexamines the formative process of “European” communities and

their cultural leadership in colonial Trinidad. In the studies that focus exclusively on

interclass politics of culture, a parallel to the monolithic description of those who resisted

is the monolithic portrayal of those who represented and dominated (Stoler, 1989).

Despite their insistence that intercultural relationships are politicized and made

contestatory, these observers of the “politics of culture” school tend to assume that no

politics is involved in the formative process of “dominant culture,” much less in the case

of colonial societies, so characteristic of an acutely unequal distribution of power. More

often than not, they conceived the dichotomy of colonizer and colonized to be given,

rather than as dynamic social categories that need to be examined in terms of a particular

context (p. 136). Similar to the British-ruled Malaya and Dutch-ruled East India in the

Stoler’s study (1989), in nineteenth-century Trinidad,

[cjolonial cultures were never direct translations of European society planted in the colonies, but unique cultural configuration. . . the European populations . . . were based on new constructions of European-ness; they were artificial groupings—demographically, occupationally, and politically distinct. . . Colonizers themselves . . . were neither by nature unified nor did they inevitably share common interests and fears; their boundaries—always marked by whom those in power considered legitimate progeny and whom they did not—were never clear (p. 137).

The European landowning class established, seemingly uncontestedly, its cultural

leadership through their material advantage. Cultural politics developed during, or after

79


the completion of, the internalization of the idea (i.e., worldview or discipline) that is an

exclusive fabrication by the powerful. These assumptions of ready-made European

“dominant culture” were not only insufficient as a point of departure, but also seriously

misleading in the case of Trinidad. The following characterization opens Donald Wood’s

Trinidad in Transition (1986 [1968]):

Trinidad was a conquered colony. When apprenticeship ended in 1838 there were still people living who could remember the capitulation of the last Spanish Governor in 1797. The Roman Catholic settlers, both white and coloured, found themselves whether they liked it or not, under an alien Protestant flag.. . . Thus from the beginning of British rule the free classes were divided by religion and language, and in this way Trinidad was different from older established British colonies in the Caribbean (p. 1).

When England conquered Trinidad in 1897, it was an island with diverse groups

with distinct statuses, and racial and cultural origins, and the society, though it was

divided and stratified, was based on certain limited agreements. The English arrived on

the island less as a colonizer than as a reformer of the existing social arrangements

(Brathwaite, 1975, p. 2), which had retained an uneasy symbiosis among the constituent

groups. The British reformation of Trinidad, beginning from the dawn of the nineteenth

century, caused a struggle among the free landowning classes for power and relative

status. It is a mistake to assume that a seamless “European-ness” marked by general

Christian values was formed in an extemporaneous fashion based on common material

interests. The interests of Trinidad’s dominant classes did not arise from a single,

integrated economic base. The point is not to contradict the undeniable fact that a sharp

line existed between colonizers and colonized, but to draw attention to the relatively

neglected fact that such a division was more dynamic than has been assumed (Staler,

1989, p. 155). The discussion contradicts that the facile assumption of cultural hegemony

80


and the presumed dominance of the assimilated European-Christian values deserve closer

examination.

Spanish Trinidad—Antecedent Conditions

A “French colony in all but name”

For almost three hundred years following its “discovery,” the island of Trinidad

remained a colony of secondary importance in the Spanish Main. It was a supplier of

Amerindian laborers to, and a port for trade ships bound for, other parts of the Americas.

Similar to other Spanish colonies, governors were appointed, and an administrative body,

cabildo, was instituted. Nonetheless, Trinidad was left nearly undeveloped with few

Spanish settlers. Spain had no intention of abandoning this colony to other European

powers, though. Its location just off the coast of the South American continent rendered

Trinidad strategic. Due to constant threats of attack from other rising European powers,

particularly England, the Spanish government was compelled to man this formerly nearly

deserted island from the mid-eighteenth century onward. Having failed to attract fellow

countrymen, the Spanish government set out to promote the settlement of “foreigners” in

a codified form—the Cedula de Pobulacion, published in 1783. A variety of incentives

brought an immediate result. The total number of inhabitants, which had been fewer than

3,000 before the issue of the Cedula, doubled within a year, and reached nearly 20,000 by

the end of the eighteenth century. More important, however, this late eighteenth-century

mass immigration produced the demographic and cultural make-up peculiar to Trinidad,

which would influence the subsequent development of its society (see Table 3-1 below).

81


First, the Cedula resulted in the emergence of a heterogeneous European or

European-descended land-owning class, the majority of which was French-Creole. The

Spanish government was not alone in feeling the escalating influence of the British

Empire in the region. Planters in neighboring French territories were searching for a

refuge where they could pursue economic prosperity without foreign political and

ideological restraints (Besson & Brereton, 1992, p. 52-53; Anthony, 1997, p. 503-504).

This need was accentuated as the dominance of England over France was established in a

series of wars in the Caribbean and in Europe. In this confluence, an “open-door policy”

(Wood, 1986 [1968], p. 32) actualized. When the English Navy arrived on the island,

French Creoles amounted to roughly 95% of the island’s white population.

In contrast to the Spaniards who had been concerned mainly with exploitation and

trade, French Creoles were interested in the development of a plantation economy and

plantations presumed a large labor force, viz. African slaves Moreover, the Spanish

government in Cedula guaranteed these new settlers a free distribution of land based on

the number of slaves they owned. Prior to the publication of the Cedula, the island’s

slave population was only 310, or 11.2% of the total population, but it increased to

10,009 (56.5%) by 1797, and reached to 19,709 (69.2%) by 1802. As indicated in Table

3-1, almost all the slaves were speakers of French-derived Creole.

White Colored Slave Amerindian TotalBefore 1783Spanish-speaking 126 295 310 2,032 2,763

1784Spanish-speaking 335 765 260 1,495 2,855French-speaking 384 633 2,097 3,114

82


1797Spanish-speakingFrench-speaking

1502,250

2004,700

3009,700

1,127 1,77716,650

1802Spanish-speakingFrench-speakingEnglish-speaking

5051,093663

1,7512,925559

19,709 1,166


462727

1,182

1,6831,3583,043

N/AN/AN/A


450617938

2,1542,1501,594

15,291655 2,604

18,7132,577

Table 3-1: Change in Population: Before and After the Enforcement of Cedula de Pobulacion1

Defending their vested material interests, traditional Spaniards in Trinidad

adamantly objected to the settlement of “foreigners.”2 The Cedula was nonetheless

implemented and sustained in the years to come under Spanish government. In spite of

differing material interests, Roman Catholicism unified the two major factions of the

population—traditional Spanish-speaking inhabitants and the new French-speaking

settlers—into a loosely bound society. As was underscored in the first article, the Cedula

allowed the “foreigners, natives of nations and states, in friendship with u s . . . [to]

establish themselves in the island of Trinity [so long as] they profess the Roman Catholic

religion — [W]ithout this indispensable condition they cannot be admitted to settle

there.” It was further stressed that the various arrangements and regulations contained in

the Cedula were intended exclusively for “foreigners who are admitted agreeable to” this

first condition, namely being Roman Catholics (Campbell, 1992, pp. 323-324).

83


The capitulation of the Spanish colonial authorities in 1797 was immediately

followed by a large-scale influx of planters with their African slaves both from

neighboring English territories and England itself. Because the incoming colonial

government agreed not to shut the door of Trinidad to “foreign” settlers, however,

French-speaking immigrants continued to come to the island after the British conquest.4

As a result, almost three decades after the capitulation, the English had still not

established majority in the total white population. In the same period, French-speaking

element not only comprised roughly one-third of the white population, but also made up

the majority of the total population, counting coloreds and blacks along with whites.

English-speaking whites and African slaves from English colonies in the region did not

surpass the French community until the mid-nineteenth century.

The inflow of English-speaking settlers led to the increase of Anglicans

(adherents to the Church of England) in Trinidad. Moreover, a mass of immigrants from

the British West Indies, who started settling after the Emancipation in 1838, dramatically

swelled the number of Anglicans in the island.5 Some historical records indicate, however,

that the number of Roman Catholics continued to grow at a greater rate than Anglicans

even after the island was conceded to England. This was due in part to Spanish-speaking

Catholic refugees from the Main, particularly nearby Venezuela (Wood, 1986[1968], p.

33). In terms of the scale, however, the surge of Catholics had more to do with the

conversion of African slaves, who were brought to Trinidad by French-speaking planters.

For a few decades after annexation of the island, the English colonial authorities

encouraged the Roman Catholic Church to expand its missionary works among the

enslaved population in Trinidad. During this time, the missionary work of the relevant

84


denominations could not be done without the acquiescence of slave-owners. Because the

majority of planters were Catholic French Creoles, the colonial government delegated the

“domestication” of the slaves to the Roman Catholic Church.6 As such, Catholicism in

the slave population increased throughout the first quarter of the nineteenth century. By

the time of abolition in British Empire, including Trinidad, roughly 20,000 out of the

22,359 French-speaking free blacks7 had been baptized and received into Roman Catholic

Church in Trinidad (Harricharan, 1983, p. 55).

The British conquered a Spanish colony. Rather than negotiating the future

development and operation of this Spanish colony with the Spanish government,

however, England had to contend with another source of power. E. L. Joseph (1970

[1838]) notes that “Trinidad was a French colony in all but name. . . [as of] 1838, Creole

French is more the language of the people here than either English or Spanish, although it

has been a British possession more than 40 years” (pp. 165-166). The religious and

cultural influence of French Creole astonished another imperial writer two decades later

(Trollope, 1968 [1859], p. 232):

As Trinidad is an English colony, one’s first idea is that the people speak English; and one’s second idea, when that other one as to the English has fallen to the ground, is that they should speak Spanish, seeing that the name of the place is Spanish. But the fact is that they all speak French. . .Whether a Parisian would admit this may be doubted; but he would have to acknowledge that it was a French patois. And the religion is Roman Catholic. The island of course did belong to France, and in manners, habits, language, and religion is still French.

After more than half a century following its secession, the cultural influence of French

Creoles in this former Spanish colony was deemed so prevailing that some erred in

believing that it officially “belong[ed] to France,” although the historical record does not

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support this claim. Trinidad was conquered by England less than two decades after the

issue of the Cedula. It would be a mistake, however, to assume that this West Indian

island was easily re-colonized in the years following the English conquest within a

simple social framework that divided society into two factions based on material and

ideological domination. And it should be stressed that what made control of Trinidad

“under the Protestant flag” difficult was less the “non-white” “pagans” than the “evils

[that] the Cedula left behind” (Joseph, 1970 [1838], p. 166), namely, French Creoles,

and, to a lesser extent, Spaniards, and their cultural imprint, particularly Roman

Catholicism.

Free Coloreds: “Middle Class” in a Plantation Society

Apart from the prevalent influence of French Creoles and their symbolic

elements, another structural condition of Trinidadian society antecedent to the England’s

re-colonization deserves attention. Immigration in the late eighteenth-century included a

high percentage of coloreds. England conquered an island where the number of free

coloreds surpassed of the white population. As mentioned above, Trinidad remained open

to “foreign” settlers, which resulted in a constant increase of the total number of free

coloreds and its proportion of the entire residents until Emancipation (Table 3-2).

Comparing Trinidad to other British West Indian territories, as in Table 3-3, further

highlights the scale of Trinidad’s colored population (Table 3-3).

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1797 1802 1813 1819 1825N % N % N % N % N %

Whites 2,151 12.1 2,261 7.9 2,896 7.6 3,716 9.3 3,310 7.8

Free Coloreds 4,476 25.3 5,275 18.5 8,102 21.3 12,485 31.2 14,983 35.4

Slaves 10,009 56.5 19,709 69.2 25,717 67.7 22,854 57.2 23,230 54.9

Amerindians 1,082 6.1 1,232 4.3 1,265 3.3 850 2.1 727 1.7

Total 17,718 100.0 28,477 100.0 37,980 100.0 39,905 100.0 42,250 100.0' 1,1 ■ 1 ■' » II

Table 3-2: Number of Free Colored Population before Emancipation

Freedmen as % of free

population

Freedmen as % of non

white population

Barbados (1825) 23.6 6.0Grenada (1826) 82.4 13.7Guyana (1829) 67.7 8.4Jamaica (1820) 48.5 8.8St. Kitts (1826) 57.3 11.3Trinidad (1825) 81.9 39.2Table 3-3: Comparative Demographic Strength of Free Populations9

The colored population significantly affected the development of intergroup

relations in Trinidad not only because of its relative numbers, but also because of the

unique socioeconomic status that the majority of coloreds held. First, a large portion of

the colored population who settled in Trinidad during this period held a legal status equal

to white immigrants, although racial stigmatization remained. The Spanish government

enticed the colored population—chiefly in French territories—to settle in Trinidad with

an offer of civil equality with whites (Campbell, 1992, p. 53). One of the provisions of

the Cedula pronounced:

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After the first five years’ establishment of foreign settlers on the said island, they shall, by obliging themselves to continue therein perpetually, have all the rights and privileges of naturalization granted to them, and to the children they many have brought with them, as well as those that may have been bom in the island, in order to be admitted in consequence to the honorary employments of the public, and of the militia, agreeable to the quality and talents of each (Campbell, 1992, p. 325).

Second, and more important, these free colored settlers were a propertied class

with land and slaves. At their settlement, free coloreds were granted land just as their

white counterparts, although free coloreds received much less land than whites.

According to another provision of the Cedula, which detailed the distribution of land to

new settlers,

The free negroes and mulattoes who shall come to settle in the said island, in quality of inhabitants and chief of families, shall have half the quantity of land granted to the whites, and if they bring with them slaves, being their own property, the quantity of land granted to them shall be increased in proportion to the number of said slaves, and to the land granted to said negroes and mulattoes, this is, one half of the quantity granted to the slaves of whites; and their titles shall be equally legal and granted in the same manner as to whites (Campbell, 1992, pp. 324-325).

This scheme of free distribution was not continued after Britain’s conquest of the

island. Because successive governors made grants at their own discretion, ignoring the

agreement between the Spanish Government and the “foreign” settlers, subsequent

distributions fluctuated. Yet, according to Campbell’s documentation, free coloreds

received at least 5% of all the land distributed during 1783 and 1812 (Campbell, 1992, p.

67) (Tables 3-4,3-5). Although the scale of land handed down to the free colored

population could not compare to those to white planters; for the former, whose status was

unsecured, it was an indispensable asset not only as commercial property, but also a

political safeguard for the legal rights granted to them (p. 91).

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1783-1797 Governor Chacon

1805-1812 Governors Hislop

& Monro

Approximate Total Carreaux

Granted42,090 carreaux 26,453 carreaux

No. of Free Colored Grantees

26 17

Amount of land granted to free

coloreds1,726 carreaux 1,599 carreaux

Proportion to Free Coloreds 4.1 6.0

Table 3-4: Land Granted to Free Coloreds: 1783-181210

Owners/Crops Sugar Cocoa Coffee Cotton Total N. of Slaves

Coloreds 45 21 23 32 2,202

Whites 206 82 32 7 13,013

Table 3-5: Slaveholdings by White and Free Colored in 182411

Finally, as in other British territories, some free colored settlers found homes in

urban areas, but others, with their legal ownership of land, formed independent

communities in agricultural districts. By 1811, approximately 52.9% of the colored

inhabitants were free coloreds residing in agricultural districts; by 1825, the percentage

had reached 65.2% (Campbell, 1992, p. 68). The majority of these rural-residing coloreds

were concentrated in Naparima, which became one of the earliest and productive sugar-

growing areas after the British conquest (Anthony, 1997, pp. 396-397). By the mid-

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1810s, free colored proprietors owned 35.1% of 91 estates and 30.1% o f2,856 slaves in

Naparima(p. 108).

Trinidad’s free coloreds, the “people of mixed ancestry,” were the same as those

in other British West Indian islands in a biological sense (Curtin, 1955, p. 43). It is

widely agreed that the related difficulty in identifying themselves as belonging to either

of the pure racial groups contributed to the psychological insecurity among the colored

population in general. According to Phillip Curtin (1955), slave societies, which were

sharply segmented along racial lines, did not allow coloreds to remain in-between. In

response, coloreds tended to overemphasize socially legitimized European heritage and

rejected their African origin, although white elites refused to accept them into their circle

(pp. 43-46). Thus, their fluctuating status did not lead to the emergence of an

intermediate group. Their continuous dependence on “things European” divided British

West Indian societies into two contrasting parts—“European Jamaica” and “African

Jamaica” in Curtin’s study—even after legal discrimination against coloreds disappeared.

This sort of generalization, in which racial irreducibility caused indeterminacy or

parasitism in their identification, does not really account for the nature of the free colored

community and its relation to other sociocultural groups in colonial Trinidad.

Undoubtedly, they were not freed from this psychological insecurity due to their in-

between status after they fled to Trinidad, where race was a similarly decisive criterion

for identification. They were, however, distinguishable from the colored of older British

colonies, where plantation societies were founded by white settlers who later fathered a

colored population through interracial sexual unions (Campbell, 1992). Unlike these

traditional slave societies, in Trinidad their legal status and economic foundation,

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together with their demographic strength, allowed free coloreds to create a separate and

independent community.

Nevertheless, it would be hasty to conclude that Trinidad’s free colored settlers

constituted a “ready-made middle-class” (Powrie, 1988 [1956], p. 93). As Campbell

pointed out, if Trinidad had remained a Spanish colony, the colored population might not

have become a coherent class for itself. They came to form a strong identity in face of the

colonial reformation under Victorian rule, which made their legal and economic status,

granted by the Spanish government, uncertain (Campbell, 1992, p. 71). Jean Baptiste

Philip (1987 [1824]), an acknowledged spokesperson for colored planters of Trinidad,

wrote that the “free colored population of Trinidad have always possessed grounds for

pretension, to which no other coloured colonists could aspire” (p. 16). What made

Trinidad’s free coloreds not only economically viable but also a politically conscious

group based on the acquired “grounds of pretension,” however, was the British conquest

of the island. In return, the emergence of the “middle-class” in its initial stage

considerably affected the subsequent course of British re-colonization and the formation

of intergroup relations in Trinidad.

“Trinidad in Transition "-Cleavages in Social Field

Therefore, there was certain cohesion among the heterogeneity of Spanish

Trinidad. French-speaking settlers, both white and colored, were determined to migrate to

this underdeveloped Spanish colony while giving up all interest in wherever they came

from because the Spanish government compensated them with the free grant of new

property and ensured their civil equality. In return, the Spanish government required

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these settlers to observe the Spanish laws and administration, and above all, made

affiliation to Roman Catholicism a prerequisite for any other arrangements.

Material factors clearly had a significant influence on the formation of social

relations and the discipline that regulated them in colonial settings. Inasmuch as we are

indebted to the neo-Marxian perception of the social linkage between culture and power,

it would be advisable to examine the intricate development of the “dominant” culture in

colonial Trinidad. First, Trinidad had no experience with the practice of colonial

assembly or any form of legislature that to any extent represented the local landowning

class independently of colonial power. Second, the base of Trinidad’s plantation

economy remained multicultural, or more precisely, polarized between the two staples-

sugar and cocoa. Each of these points must be examined in detail, because they could

serve as a reminder of the facile assumption of “cultural hegemony” and the presumed

dominance of monolithic European-Christian culture in this plantation society.

The Crown Colony System: Relative Autonomy of Colonial State

On arriving in Trinidad, English planters began to press the home government for

the introduction of English civil law with a House of Assembly modeled after those in

older British colonies (Williams, 1962, pp. 67-69; Magid, 1988, p. 37). The request from

Spaniards and French Creoles for the provisional continuation of the cabildo was not

acceptable to the British government, for it would enable the Spaniards and French

Creoles to retain their influence on the critical issue of colonization. On the other hand,

demographic traits of Trinidad rendered an autonomous legislature as requested by the

English settlers also undesirable to English colonial authorities.

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The existing landowning class was not only diverse, but more important, English

planters were a minority in the heterogeneous elite community. In this circumstance, the

introduction of the representative principle of self-government would result in the

Catholic domination of legislature (Williams, 1962, p. 68). Colonel Thomas Picton, the

first British governor of the island, viewed the heterogeneity of planter class as an

obstacle to the practice of the colonial assembly in Trinidad. However, his letter of

recommendation to the Secretary of State suggests that he considered an elective

legislature would lead to “ruinous consequences” if introduced in the colony, because of

another reason (Picton, 1802, cited in Williams, 1962, p. 69):

An Elective Assembly will unavoidably introduce a question [that] cannot fail to generate the seeds of lasting fermentation, in a country composed of such combustible material.

One of the objects, first and more important to determine, will be the right of voting, and it may be thought expedient, as in the old Islands, to exclude the Free People of Colour; here by far the most numerous class in the Colony and of whom many possess considerable property.

This distinction will render them at all times dissatisfied with the situation and liable to be affected in their loyalty by every prospect of change or amelioration. Of two things one will necessarily happen, they must be either formally rejected, or openly acknowledged. Disaffection is the natural consequence of the former; the latter may have an ill effect in its consequences on the same class in the neighboring islands.

Leaving a Popular Elective Assembly out of die question, the difficulty disappears. There will be no necessity of any legal humiliating distinction. Equal laws and severe police will secure good order and a permanent foundation.

For Picton, the most “combustible material” was the “Free People of Colour.” In

the case of Trinidad, the grant of assembly would have implications that had never been

experienced in the older colonies. That is, the foundation of a parliamentaiy body, in

which only European white population could serve, connoted the exclusion of the largest

portion of free land-owning class from political decision-making. Moreover, for free

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coloreds in Trinidad whose civil equality was ensured by the Articles of Capitulation, this

meant deprivation of the rights they already had (Campbell, 1992, p. 83). In 1810, in the

final decision of the British government, the secretary of state gave the existence of a

large-scale free colored community as the prime reason why Trinidad should be a Crown

Colony under direct supervision from London (Liverpool, 1810, cited in Williams, 1962,

p. 70):

The class of free people of colour in these Colonies, as far as even their numbers extend, has grown up gradually. They have thereby in some degree been reconciled to the middle situation which they occupy between the whites and the slaves. But in the Island of Trinidad the free people of color at this time form a very great majority of the free inhabitants of the Island and the question would arise according to the proposed system whether in establishing, for the first time, a popular government in that Colony, we shall exclude that class of people from all political rights and privileges. Such an exclusion we know would be regarded by them as a grievance and it may be doubted how far it would be consistent with the spirit of the capitulation by which their privileges were to be secured and the their situation certainly not deteriorated from that which they enjoyed under the Spanish Government

It can be inferred from Picton’s epistle and this notice of final decision that

bestowing a self-governing constitution including free coloreds was “out of the question”

for colonial authorities. Colonial officials from home, and, in particular, English settlers

from established plantation societies, stared in wonder at the people of color who

presented themselves in public with civil equality in Trinidad. What frightened the

English most was that the majority of Trinidad’s free coloreds were French-speaking. It is

important to remember that a decade of violence gave birth to the region’s first “black”

sovereign state, Haiti, where a large portion of Trinidad’s free colored originated. Haiti’s

independence occurred in 1804, only two years before Trinidad’s official annexation.

Although writing a letter of recommendation to London in a careful phrasing, Picton

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elsewhere labeled the French-speaking coloreds a “dangerous class” and advised that

they be “gradually. . . got rid of [through] adoption of appropriate measures” (C.O.

295/2,1802, cited in Millett, 1985 [1970], p. 109). In the late 1860s, more than half a

century after the annexation, then Governor Gordon agreed with Picton when he viewed

the free coloreds of French West Indian origin as “impulsive, fickle, and profoundly

treacherous in all social relations,” and spat “it is impossible to trust them” (C.O.

295/247, Gordon to Granville, cited in Brereton, 1979, p. 89).

This fear that political equality of free coloreds, particularly French-speakers,

would necessarily disrupt society was likely to be a common notion among English

nationals. In the late 1850s, the English novelist Anthony Trollope still believed that the

West Indian territory would be captured sooner or later by “Negroes [who were a] servile

race, fitted by nature for physical work, and apparently. . . fitted for little less” (Trollope,

1968 [1859], p. 63), and “mulattoes [who were] deteriorated from the black man in one

respect, and from the white in another” (p. 77). For this devout Protestant writer, what

made the population of Trinidad a “worse hash. . . than Jamaican” was the fact that these

people of color “[were] French in language and habits, and Roman Catholic in religion”

(p. 211). He offered the following prayer for the island’s English nationals: “[M]ay

Providence defend my friends there from such an assembly as would be returned by

French Negroes and hybrid mulattoes!” (p. 233) In The English in the West Indies (1892),

J.A. Froude joined Trollope when he strongly upheld the “maintenance of authority of

English crown”; otherwise, he believed, the colony would become another “Hayti”:

If, for the sake of theory or to shirk responsibility, we force them [people of color] to govern themselves, the state of Hayti stands as a ghastly example of the condition into which they will then inevitably fall. If we

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persist, we shall be sinning against light—the clearest light that was ever given in such affairs. The most hardened believer in the regenerating effects of political liberty cannot be completely blind to the ruin which the infliction of it would necessarily bring upon the race for whose interests they pretend particularly to care (p. 81).

According to C. S. Salmon (1888), an adamant advocate of a self-governing Caribbean

confederation, it was impossible for many English at that time to “see the British black

man having any political rights, however minute, without bringing forward this black

republic [Haiti] as a warning” (p. 90). Indeed, this former colonial secretary devoted the

better part of his book to a denial of what he called “Haytian Mystery,” which partially

indicates how widespread such a fear was in English policy concerning overseas

territories.

The antecedent conditions to re-colonization, particularly the existence of a free-

colored community as a relatively independent “middle-class,” made it difficult for the

incoming colonial power to grant political autonomy to this new possession. As a Crown

Colony, governors ruled the island on behalf of the home government, supported by

Executive Council and Legislative (Brereton, 1979, p. 24).12 Local planter communities

repeatedly pressed London to introduce a self-governing body with elected members

drawn from local inhabitants. However, Trinidad remained a Crown Colony until 1925,

when a partially elected legislative system was introduced (p. 24). Throughout these

years, the British Government had justified the “maintenance of the authority of British

Crown” as the only representative of the mass population, and the champion of popular

interest against the oppression of land-owning class (p. 25). It is undeniable that there

was always a gap between such the rhetoric and the reality in the colonial setting. As

discussed, behind this official justification was the fear of and contempt for the free

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colored and black communities. In truth, those who needed the political protection most

had no direct access to it, whereas landowners were in a better position in affecting the

decision-making process. Brereton concludes that the Crown Colony system in Trinidad

came to be “autocratic” and “oligarchic” in the end, because

these English gentlemen by and large shared the planter’s general political and social views. There was no need for the Governors to assert his ‘autocratic’ powers, except in very exceptional cases. For the planter- merchant community, the Governors, and the British officials were agreed, on the whole, on what should be the general lines of policy (p. 24).

It is nonetheless arguable that the Crown Colony system in Trinidad ultimately

became an instrument exclusively for planters through which they could achieve their

material concerns. By 1875, all existing assemblies of British colonies had been

abolished, except for those in Barbados and British Guiana (Watson, 1979, p. 151).13

However, in spite of some local differences, such as how long they had existed as a

legislative body, colonial assemblies were a significant force in the emergence and

maintenance of the “planter-merchant community” in these territories, adjusting and

integrating intra-class interests (Brereton, 1979, p. 25). The assembly system had been

characterized by repeated feuds between governors and the legislators, for the latter

frequently adopted policies against the interest of the home government (Watson, 1979,

p. 87).14 This was an important reason why London moved to abolish colonial

assemblies. A series of confrontations with the Mother Country provided opportunities

for the planter-merchant community to increase its internal cohesion. Accordingly, it is

not unimportant that Trinidad had no experience with an assembly or any form of

autonomous legislature that represented the landowning class. In the above quotation,

Brereton assumes a smooth one-to-one linkage between economic and political (or

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administrative) interests after Trinidad came under the direct oversight of England. Yet,

from the beginning of British re-colonization, Trinidad’s landowning class was divided

into two factions, Catholic Creole and Anglican English, along ethnic lines. The lack of

an assembly, which was supposed to perform a function to adjust distinct material and

symbolic interests among European population, somewhat checked the emergence of a

single hegemonic planter-merchant community. Due to the ethnic fissure of the

landowning class, the “planter-merchant community, the Governors, and the British

officials” did not necessarily agree on the general lines of policy, contrary to the

assumption above. In consequence, in Victorian Trinidad, the colonial state, whether

willingly or unwillingly, assumed a degree of autonomy, necessitated to arbitrate not only

distinct class interests, but also distinct interests within classes.

Frailty in the “Sovereignty of King Sugar”: “Ethnicized” Plantation Economy

Among other metaphors, “King Sugar” has appeared most frequently in writings

on British West Indian history. As B.W. Higman (1999) explains, this anthropomorphic

model illustrates how a single commodity so ruled the political economy of British

plantation colonies that the monarchy rejected alternative paths of political development

(pp. 171-172). Among the British West Indian colonies, the “King Sugar” metaphor

serves no better description than in Barbados. The English began to settle in Barbados as

early as 1625. Mass immigration quickly transformed this Eastern Caribbean islet into a

densely populated colony, which entailed the subdivision of arable land into a chain of

small plots. As a result, the agricultural activity of these early settlers was diversified

with various staples, such as cotton and coffee, which were relatively suitable to small

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farming. However, the cultivation of these traditional crops fell into crisis when prices

fell. The coinciding rise in the price of sugar turned the landowners’ attention to the

cultivation of sugar cane (Beckles, 1990, p. 20).15 In due course, traditional crops, which

were perceived to be less profitable, were almost abandoned, leading to the emergence of

a monoculture of sugar in Barbados. As a result, family-owned (and thus small-scale)

farms were rapidly combined into a few metropolitan-based corporate estates, which had

better access to capital and technology (Higman, 1984, p. 44; Galloway, 1989, pp. 80-

81). Simultaneously, inexpensive and abundant African slaves gradually replaced the

European contract workers who had been dominant. Eric Williams (1970) has

summarized the process of sugar-centered socioeconomic revolution in Barbados in a

single phrase: “Sugar had been enthroned” (p. 12). As a seventeenth-century lobbyist in

London stated, in the colony of Barbados, sugar was obviously “a kind of magnetic force

. . . in the center to which all things tend” (cited in Williams, 1970, p. 119). The sugar

barons domination of society intensified, even when sugar production fell off in

Barbados, because attempts to solve the problem meant a further concentration of

landowning, rather than diversification or modernization of the industry (Higman, 1984,

pp. 44-45,50-52).

The loyalty of West Indian planters to this “King” struck visiting English

nationals: “Men there are generally tolerant of opinion on most m atters. . . But do not try

their compliance too far. Do not advise them to give over making sugar. If you give such

advice in a voice loud enough to be heard, the island will soon be too hot to hold you.

Sugar is loved there, whether wisely loved or not. If not wisely, then too well” (Trollope,

1968 [1859], p. 107). Such a strong attachment to sugar was found in Trinidad as well.

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Indeed, the interest in sugar was reflected in the colonization policies under the British

rule. However, in the confluence of structural conditions, sugar-centered socioeconomic

reform could not be carried out in the British Trinidad.

The development of the sugar industry in Trinidad began in earnest with the

arrival of French-speaking planters under the Cedula (Brereton, 1981, pp. 17-18;

Anthony, 1997, p. 553). The incentives to colonization included in the Cedula brought

immediate results. New estates opened up one after another throughout the islands, which

quickly filled up with the equipment and slaves.16 The production of sugar increased at an

enormous rate, and sugar cane became the chief crop of the island by the mid-1790s

(Brereton, 1981, p 17; Anthony, 1997, p. 553-554). The British conquest further

accelerated the expansion of the industry, because the planters secured access to the then

largest market for sugar. Nevertheless, the leap in production during the first few decades

was not followed by the emergence of monoculture of sugar. Although sugar cane

became the dominant crop, the island’s agricultural activity remained relatively

diversified. To put it more precisely, the parallel expansion of the cocoa17 industry

maintained the multicultural base of Trinidad’s plantation economy. The island’s total

production of cocoa grew from 258,390 pounds in 1799 to 1,506,445 pounds in 1819, and

reached 3,695,144 pounds by 1827 (Fraser, 1891, pp. 211-212; Anthony, 1997, p. 141).

Considering the extent and duration of its influence, sugar was the undisputed commodity

also in Trinidad’s plantation economy, whereas cocoa “played second fiddle” (Wood,

1986 [1968], pp. 7-8). Nevertheless, the rivalry between sugar and cocoa was an

enduring quality of colonial Trinidad.

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There were other West Indian territories whose plantation economies exhibited

similar or even higher levels of diversity. In Jamaica, for example, the varied geographic

and climatic features resulted in the cultivation of different crops with various forms of

farming, which made its economy less dependent on sugar (Higman, 1984, p. 54).

Trinidad was distinguishable from such West Indian colonies because the industry of the

two major staples, sugar and cocoa, developed in close correspondence with ethnicity. As

mentioned earlier, French-speaking planters laid the foundation of the sugar industry in

Trinidad. In the early years of British rule, there was a division of labor between the

agricultural-oriented French planters and the commercially oriented English settlers

(Brereton, 1981, p. 18). However, the English had gradually come to dominate the sugar

industry, not merely in trade and distribution but also in cultivation and refining. From

the late 1830s onward, the island’s sugar estates were gradually concentrated in hands of

British corporations and individual proprietors. At the same time, the majority of French-

Creole planters were forced out of sugar production as they lost ownership of the estates

(p. 35). By the last quarter of the nineteenth century, the industry was almost completely

under British control. To the contrary, cocoa remained a non-English crop. Similar to

sugar, cocoa production became an established industry in the late eighteenth century

with the settlement of French-speaking planters. However, sugar production had been

anglicized, whereas cocoa production remained a predominantly Catholic and particularly

French Creole enterprise for much of the nineteenth century.18 Having noticed its

competitive quality, English Governor Ralph Gordon proposed in 1818 that the growth of

cocoa be promoted in Trinidad (Williams, 1962, pp. 78-79). However, cocoa, which was

less labor- and capital-intensive, and presumably a less profitable crop, did not appeal to

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the majority of English planters. As a colonial official stated in an almanac of Trinidad,

“[T]he cultivation of cocoa was peculiar as an article of English production” (Hart, 1866,

quoted in Besson & Brereton, 1992, p. 316).19 In sum, the polarization of commodities

was more or less along sociocultural group boundaries: sugar represented the interests of

the English, particularly those who were expatriates, whereas cocoa symbolized the lives

of a loosely-bound group of mostly Catholic “Creoles.”20

Due to this ethnicization of commodities, the multicultural base of the plantation

economy had critical implications for the development of intergroup relations in

Trinidad. Sugar could never become a “magnetic force;” the interest in sugar did not

form a monolithic plantocracy. The fact that the island was almost completely

uncultivated until the beginning of the nineteenth century had constructed an image of

Trinidad as a cornucopia among English colonizers.21 The majority of English planters

migrated into Trinidad, tempted by a myth of fertility, which was constantly enriched

with the sorts of “information,” from older colonies where the exhaustion of soil had

already caused serious decline. For them, there was no question that Trinidad would

become nothing but a sugar-producing colony. Hence, they pressured the colonial

government to adopt the colonization policy favoring their interests (Brereton, 1981, p.

94). However, unlike Barbados, where it was pushed ahead by, and recursively

reinforced, a unanimous plantocracy that was white in race and Anglican in religion

(Beckles, 1990, pp. 26-27), the sugar-centered socioeconomic reform caused sharp

cleavages within the landowning class in Trinidad. This cleavage is most clearly shown

by the conflict over labor.

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Sugar cane is a labor-intensive crop—it is so vulnerable that it does not become

profitable unless extreme care and attention is given throughout the months of plant’s

growth (Galloway, 1989; Sandiford, 2000). This entails a large labor force. Due to the

late development of the sugar industry on Trinidad, sugar planters on Trinidad had been

pressed to solve the labor shortage from the beginning. In fact, sugar production had

stagnated after its peak in 1805, reflecting the drop in the island’s slave population that

was caused by the ban of the slave trade in 1806 (Higman, 1984, p. 59). The recovery and

expansion of Trinidad’s sugar industry required the resumption of a constant flow of

indentured laborers. However, this scheme of labor importation had been controversial

from the beginning; those who benefited from it were almost exclusively sugar planters

and it was a costly enterprise requiring a large subsidy from colonial public funds. A

minority of the indentured laborers had found new homes in the cocoa estates, but the

number was always limited. By 1863, there were only a few indentured laborers assigned

to two cocoa estates (Look-Lai, 1993, p. 107). According to K. O. Laurence (1994, p.

288), a regulation that obliged them to offer medical service to employed laborers on a

regular basis did not allow the majority of cocoa estate owners, which were usually

located in remote areas, to benefit from the arrangement. As late as 1891, in the height of

the cocoa boom, there were 3,875 indentured laborers (5.52% of the island’s total East

Indian population) working in cocoa estates, as compared to 27,003 (38.45% of the

island’s total Indian population) in sugar estates (Comins, 1893, Appendix, p. v.). With a

later amendment of the hospital regulation, the number of indentured workers employed

by cocoa estates increased considerably. However, the distribution of laborers had

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become more biased in terms of the tax burden for the operational costs of the indentured

system (Table 3-6).

Sources of Immigrant Revenue Distribution of Indentured Immigrants

TotalImmigration

Revenues

TotalExportDuties

Duties on

Sugar Estates Cocoa EstatesSugar and byproducts

Cocoa

1895 34,989 23,052 10,614 11,911 N/A 5791896 39,313 27,200 17,809 8,859 N/A 5391897 42,583 32,707 24,343 8,045 N/A 5211898 29,731 18,946 10,636 8,020 8,768 4501899 26,885 19,297 11,650 7,329 8,680 4721900 35,518 25,826 12,727 12,694 5,860 3971901 N/A N/A N/A N/A 6,613 4461901/02 38,325 30,890 N/A N/A 6,954 5361902/03 41,710 31,486 18,202 12,799 6,624 7701903/04 38,683 29,004 18,887 9,576 7,076 1,0041904/05 40,762 31,060 21,527 9,674 7,758 1,0761905/06 36,672 26,009 15,557 10,083 8,659 1,2451906/07 34,589 23,858 19,499 4,014 7,873 1,0781907/08 50,069 39,967 19,971 19,065 9,266 1,6631908/09 47,082 33,883 16,530 16,357 8,142 1,7361909/10 43,413 33,384 19,004 13,596 8,276 1,7161910/11 38,567 26,063 16,019 9,322 7,329 2,1241911/12 36,281 24,822 14,944 8,579 7,822 2,1511912/13 30,664 18,470 10,861 6,741 6,709 2,0571913/14 42,751 30,549 19,322 10,049 6,864 1,9321914/15 49,888 32,994 24,254 7,668 7,119 1,6131915 N/A N/A N/A N/A 6,154 1,2161916 62,437 53,490 36,809 13,887 4,693 8261917 8,599 52 36 15 N/A N/ATable 3-6: Sources of Immigrant Revenue and Distribution of Indentured Laborers during Cocoa Boom22

“Arima tonight, Sangre Grande tomorrow night” (Anthony, 1997, p. 142). Today,

one of the surviving folk songs of cocoa farmers hints at how busily they rushed from

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estate to estate in the various districts where they labored. Sangre Grande is a village that

originally emerged with the establishment of several large-scale cocoa estates during the

1880s (Anthony, 2001, p. 264). In 1891, however, there were only five indentured

laborers residing in one of those estates. The landowners of estates located in Sangre

Grande must have depended on seasonal workers from estates in Arima where there were

1,220 indentured laborers in the same year (Comins, 1893, Appendix, p. v.). When the

fact that only bumpy roads connected these two major cocoa-producing districts in those

days is taken into account, it becomes less difficult to imagine that the cocoa industry

suffered from a chronic labor shortage even during the booming years. As Laurence

(1994) points out, heavy pressures from the planters who were not concerned with sugar

was one of the critical strains on the enforcement and expansion of the indentured scheme

in Trinidad, distinguishing it from other major recipient of indentured laborers, such as

British Guiana, where economic interests other than sugar barely developed (p. 433).

Another ramification of the ethnicization of commodities was that the

socioeconomic power of the English community over the entire society remained

relatively frail, which reflected fluctuations of the sugar industry. In general, the second

half of the nineteenth century witnessed the decline in the production of sugar in the

British West Indies. As cheaper sugar from other West Indian territories with more

modem manufacturing processes, and from Europe out of beet sugar, came to the fore,

the competitive power of Trinidadian sugar went from bad to worse in the late nineteenth

century (Galloway, 1989, pp. 3-4). Nevertheless, sugar planters in Trinidad took

effective measures to improve their position in the crisis. As in eighteenth-century

Barbados, they tended to find their way out of the difficulty by further concentrating land

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tenure and investing in the labor force, rather than in the technology of the production

process. Indeed, sugar cane was grown in Trinidad with outdated methods and techniques

in the middle decades of the nineteenth century (Brereton, 1979, p. 18).

It is probable that the fertility myth still lingered in their minds. While looking at

vast lands covered with thick forests, they did not doubt that a bright future lay ahead of

them under the auspices of the colonial administration (Wood, 1986 [1968], p. 15). An

abundant labor force by itself does not make sugar cultivation a profitable undertaking

unless it is combined with systematic control of land tenure. Thus, sugar planters

appealed to the colonial government to tighten control of public wastelands, namely

Crown lands. It was expected that strict management of the Crown lands would enable

them both to reserve clusters of land for later use in the expansion of industry and to keep

a major portion of “free” workers (i.e., time-expired indentured laborers) in the estates,

preventing the latter from turning into self-sufficient peasants (Wood, 1986 [1968], p. 92;

Brereton, 1979, p. 16). As J. J. Thomas, a local colored intellectual, asserted later, there

was great faith among the sugar planters that “sugar-growers alone should be possessors

of lands” in Trinidad in particular and the British West Indies in general (Thomas, 1969

[1889], p. 84). This exclusionism actually hindered the production of other crops.

Statistics demonstrate a steady increase in the acreage of cocoa cultivation after the

British conquest (see Table 3-7). However, in effect, many French-speaking cocoa

planters were forced to settle in the interior region despite their preference for estates

closer to the west coast—for convenience of transportation—because sugar planters were

given priority (Anthony, 1997, pp. 141-142).

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1808 1824 1832

Sugar Cane 13,976 22,425 27,724

Cocoa 9,369 10,380

Coffee 1,903 1,200

Cotton 1,740 669 146

Total Cultivated Land 32,873 62,347 66,148

Table 3-7. Land Use by Crop in Pre-Emancipation Trinidad

Yet, in addition to the estrangement within the dominant class of landowners, the

uncertain prospects of sugar industry always put the colonial administration in a delicate

position. As the century advanced, it became more difficult for colonial authorities,

whose chief concern was favorable and stable colonization, to continue adopting the

policies in favor of the sugar industry. When its expansion slowed in the mid-nineteenth

century, the sugar industry was incapable of absorbing the increasing number of free

agricultural workers, many of whom ended up squatting in the Crown lands. As late as

the 1860s, the colonial leaders did not have any options but to relax the regulations on the

alienation of the Crown lands so that other planters other than sugar planters could own

or expand their properties. Strong opposition from sugar interests against this

deregulation was not effective: The Crown lands were continually alienated; the annual

sales reached an average of 6,800 acres during the 1890s (Brereton, 1979, p. 139).24 In

addition to the deregulation of Crown land sales, the plan for a national railway system

was constantly revised to include the major cocoa producing districts (Anthony, 1997, p.

142).25

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The sugar industry was in decline from the late 1860s. More important, however,

the late-century depression paralleled the expansion of cocoa production. After a few

decades of moderate production, cocoa production gradually increased after the 1840s.

Between 1840 and 1870, yields per annum more than doubled to 8.4 million pounds. The

sharp rise in the demand for cocoa, and the corresponding development of new

technology to manufacture chocolate in Britain accelerated Trinidad’s cocoa production

after the 1870s. The annual average output jumped to 23 million pounds by the 1890s,

and reached 50 million pounds by the 1910s (Laurence, 1994, pp. 397-398). This inverse

relationship between the sugar and cocoa industries at the turn of the twentieth century

narrowed the socioeconomic distance between constituent groups by lowering the relative

position of the English community and bolstering the prominence of other groups. The

expansion of the cocoa industry enabled the French-Creole elites who owned the major

cocoa estates to regain social and economic status (Wood, 1986 [1968], pp. 7-8).

The cocoa boom created an opportunity for disadvantaged groups, such as former

slaves and indentured laborers, to gain a relatively decent livelihood. Cocoa is distinct

from sugar cane because its cultivation requires less land, labor, or capital. This enabled

less fortunate groups to participate in the production of cocoa not only as contracted

workers but also as landowners (Brereton, 1981, pp. 93-94). In fact, the largest portion of

the Crown lands that was alienated to this layer of the society was allocated for the

cultivation of cocoa. According to the Immigration Report, by 1920, the Indian

population of predominantly ex-indentured workers owned 94,438 acres (20% of the

arable land in Trinidad); 58,078 acres (61.5%) was used for growing cocoa (Look-Lai,

1993, p. 234).26 Although Trinidad’s cocoa industry rapidly decayed from the 1920s

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onward,27 it had a significant impact on intergroup relations by integrating these

emerging socioeconomic groups into a wider society.

In Trinidad, as in other West Indian territories, sugar-centered social reform was

attempted. Still, King Sugar had never been enthroned; its “sovereignty” (Lewis, 1983, p.

13) remained precarious. Concerning Spanish government and French-speaking settlers

in the post-Cedula Trinidad, Eric Williams (1962, p. 42) has described their symbiotic,

though unwelcome, relationship: “The Spanish Exclusive could be maintained only

inclusive of France.” The actors were now different, but the rules the relationship within

the free class did not change after the jurisdiction of the island was transferred from

Spanish to English government. The Protestant English Exclusive colonial regime could

be sustained (barely) only inclusive of the Catholic French and Spanish communities that

dominated the production of cocoa.

Struggle fo r Representation-Ethnic Conflict among the “Dominant”

Harry Hoetink (1967) wrote of Spanish colonies in the Americas:

Spanish political thought, with the support of the [Roman Catholic]Church’s prevalent philosophy, acted to preserve a fixed social hierarchy and to maintain the status quo of the different sections of society.Although individual transfers from one section to another might be frequent, such transfers were always to be seen as exceptions, to be administratively handled in such a way as to maintain die desired stability of society (p. 11).

More recently, Brackett Williams (1991) argued that the West Indian colonies constituted

a similar “moral-political bloc” sustained by the mutually reinforcing relationship

between material and ideological domination (p. 201). There were cultural and religious

divisions among European settlers in the Caribbean territories, as reflected in the repeated

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transference of their dominium between different colonial powers. Nevertheless,

according to Williams, the symbolic distinctiveness eventually combined under an

overarching contention regarding the superiority of Christianity over non-Christian forms

of religious expression and underlying common material interests.

In this respect, Trinidad is distinguishable from other West Indian colonies; for

instance, British Guiana’s experience provided Brackett Williams with material for her

formulation of a “general model of plantation societies” (Williams, 1991; see also Kelly

& Kaplan, 2001). In Guiana, Anglicanism held a position of “prevalent philosophy” from

the initial stage of British colonization. Under much less competitive circumstances, the

Church of England increased its adherents since its pastors landed with the British Navy

in 1781.28 Since 1796, the year in which this vast portion of the South American

continent was officially ceded to the British government, the Anglican Church enjoyed

the title of “Established Church” without interruption until British Guiana became the

independent state of Guyana in 1966. Likewise in Trinidad, Anglican military chaplains

began their missionary work immediately after its conquest. However, Roman

Catholicism, the major religious affiliation of the pre-Capitulation settlers, was so

pervasive that it stymied the English elites’ plan to consolidate the acquired political and

economic status with cultural hegemony. The British (re)colonization of Trinidad was

characterized by conflicting relationships between “political thought” and “prevalent

philosophy,” rather than their unconditioned union.

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Questioning the Unquestioned: Anglicizing the Colony

The first provision of the Articles of Capitulation, which was concluded upon

British conquest in 1897, emphatically stated that whatever belonged to his “Catholic

Majesty. . . [would be] transferred to his Britannic Majesty in the same manner and

possession as has been held heretofore by his said Catholic Majesty’'’ (Campbell, 1992, p.

334; emphasis added). Throughout the remaining provisions, the Articles reiterated that

the transfer of authority over the island would not coerce the existing population into

changing their lifestyles. Some attributed the relatively accommodating tone of the

Articles to British “generosity” (Joseph, 1970 [1838], p. 197). Still, whether they liked it

or not, the newly arriving colonists must have accepted such “generous” agreements in

light of the antecedent conditions inherited with annexation. Consequently, however, the

Articles cosigned “minor” and “foreign” statuses to the English-speaking settlers. In

particular, a clause that guaranteed the “free exercise of religion. . . to the inhabitants”

(Campbell, 1992, p. 335) implicitly conceded the dominant ideological status of the

Roman Catholic Church and its major patron, the French Creoles.

In the first few decades of British rule, the colonial administration maintained a

harmonious relationship with the Roman Catholic Church. Each governor attended the

major functions hosted by the Catholic Church as the “vice-patron,” a title that was ill-

matched to Protestants; all ecclesiastical appointments were contingent upon his approval

(Wood, 1986 [1968], p. 197). As mentioned earlier, the membership in the Catholic

Church increased under cordial protection of Governor Woodford. In addition, the

completion of the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception in 1832 reflects the favorable

relationship between the Church and the colonial authorities during this period

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(Harricharan, 1983, p. 78). The colonial funds under British rule not only enabled the

Roman Catholic Church to survive chronicle financial difficulties by covering clergy

stipends, but they also underwrote the consecration of Cathedral of the Immaculate

Conception—the “Mother Church” for Trinidadian Catholics (Wood, 1986 [1968], p.

190). In England, the Catholic Relief Act of 1778 partially relaxed the restrictions

imposed on the activities of Catholic institutions. However, it was not until 1829 were

Roman Catholics conferred full civil rights (Mullett, 1998). For E. L. Joseph (1970

[1838]), who visited from England (where the strong anti-popery sentiment was still well

pervasive), the “religious toleration” in Trinidad deserved special mention:

At the capitulation of the island, the inhabitants stipulated for a free use of their religion, which in almost all cases was of Rome. On the other side, the religion of the conquerors was Protestant, which, of course, was allowed: both religions were protected, but neither had the power of persecuting others, hence in few parts of the world was more religious toleration to be found than in Trinidad (p. 240).

However, the relationship between the two major European communities entered

into a crisis with the issue of the so-called Ecclesiastical Ordinance of 1844. Some

measures had been taken toward the institutional reinforcement of the Anglican Church.

For instance, in 1824, the region’s most established Anglican Diocese in Barbados placed

the Church of England in Trinidad under its jurisdiction (Harricharan, 1983; Wood, 1986

[1968]). However, such actions had never caused a visible intergroup conflict, for they

neither intended to interfere with the activities of the Catholic Church, nor resulted in a

marked increase of the membership in the Anglican Church. On the other hand, the

Ecclesiastical Ordinance instantly incurred the wrath of, and met with severe criticism

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from, the Catholic community, because it designated the United Church of England and

Ireland as the “Established Church.”

Louis A. A. de Verteuil (1858), an acknowledged spokesperson of the Catholic

French-Creole community, demonstrated the “injudicious[ness]” (p. 174) of the

Ecclesiastical Ordinance. He justified the Catholics’ grievance, because the Church of

England had come to receive stipends that were disproportionate to its “minority” status

through the unequal allocation of public funds:

The majority of the population is Catholics in several of the British West Indian islands. . . but, in every one of them, the Church of England has the lion’s share. In Trinidad, where the catholic religion is now, and has, since the capitulation, always been supported from die general funds of the colony, the church o f45,000 catholics cost the colony £ 4,500, and that of 17,000 episcopalians,29 £ 5,500, besides extra allowances. For the last thirty four years the catholic bishop had been in the receipt of £ 1,000 per annum as his stipend: our present governor,. . . has, by the advice of a protestant committee, and with the aid of an irresponsible council, reduced that sum to £ 500 sterling (p. 403).

De Verteuil then emphasized that the Ordinance reflected the biased view toward

Roman Catholicism held by the Legislative Council, which was “overrepresented” by

Anglicans and “interfered” with by the Bishop of Barbados as an ex officio member (De

Verteuil, 1858; see also Wood, 1986 [1968], pp. 192-193; Anthony, 1997, p. 18).

Moreover, he attempted to rebut Anglicans’ stereotyping of Catholics as being “morally

debased” by referring to the census data30 on the distribution of crimes according to the

offender’s religious affiliation:

Church of England—2,473 offenders; yearly average, 369; members,17,000; ratio, 2.95 per cent [It] gives the largest number of offenders,viz., 2.95 per cent, which is attributable to the influx of the dregs of the old colonies. [On the other hand] the Roman Catholic church gives 0.82 per cent., or three and a half times less than the Established Church.. . . the Catholic church labours in this colony under many disadvantages; its

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members are scattered all over the colony, and they, on an average, receive a far less share of attention that the other sects, in consequence of the paucity of ministers. What might not be the results, did the Catholic church receive that share of support to which it is entitled by treaty, and by the precedent of years,—a support which the above statistical facts prove it well deserves, but which our rulers dispute, or at best, dole out with a reluctant hand (De Verteuil, 1858, p. 202).

According to the stipulated objectives, this Ordinance was to “establish the better

regulation of duties. . . [for the] effectual performance [of the Church of England] in the

colony of Trinidad” (cited in De Verteuil, 1858, p. 191). Nonetheless, it was felt, at least

by Catholic elites, that what the Ecclesiastical Ordinance really proposed was more than

the organizational reinforcement of die Anglican Church. From an early stage of

colonization, the British colonial administration, under heavy pressure from the English

planter community, began several institutional reforms. The plantation economy had been

restructured with sugar as the focus of development; in the legal reform English laws

would replace the remaining Spanish laws. The Anglican-English community now urged

the colonial authorities to support the Church of England with the issue of Ecclesiastical

Ordinance in order to reinforce their political and economic status by transferring the

ideological frame of reference from Roman Catholicism to Anglicanism. In short, the

Ecclesiastical Ordinance was intended to complete a “moral-political bloc.”

To “anglicize” die colony was merely a claim for the “rightful” position for

Protestant English settlers, whereas for the pre-Capitulation French- and Spanish

speaking Catholic inhabitants constituted an infringement of the vested rights. The

erosion of the former social arrangements meant degrading their relative status. Roman

Catholicism was not merely one of many religious sects at the time. Because the Spanish

government defined this West Indian colony as a Catholic domain with the Cedula,

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Catholicism had functioned as the “plausibility structure” (Berger, 1990[1967]), which

enabled meaningful actions between distinct groups of population. According to the first

religious census, the percentage of its adherents had fallen to two-thirds of the total

population by the middle of the nineteenth century. However, Roman Catholicism had

penetrated throughout the island in the form of basic institutions that regulated both

formal and informal realms of everyday life, even those of non-Catholic residents. An

alternative Anglican-oriented social discipline that English elites schemed to infiltrate

into the populace was little more than an idealized consciousness that bore no relation to

what a petition described as “well-known circumstance of social life” in Catholic-

dominated Trinidad. Yet, the distance between the Ecclesiastical Ordinance and the

“well-known circumstance” of Catholic institutions made the institutional structure,

which had been built-in and then taken for granted, objectified, and made it available for

question and review. In fact, the Ecclesiastical Ordinance caused close examination of the

basic institutions, such as education and marriage, and for that reason, triggered a “war”

over cultural leadership between Catholic French Creole and Anglican English. It was an

intraclass conflict within the European dominant groups over whose norms and values the

institutional structure would be recast. It is a mistake to assume that this “war of position”

between the incoming colonizers and the “colonized” colonizers was automatically

settled into a single coherent plantocracy with share material interest in opposition to

subordinate working class.

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“Disestablishment”: Institutionalization of Incomplete Cultural Hegemony

In the 1840s, upper-class Anglicans still could persuade the somewhat hesitant

colonial administration31 to entitle the Church of England as “Established Church” by the

economic power based on the growing sugar industry. From the late 1860s, however,

sugar production began to decline, whereas the cocoa industry began expanding. This

weakened the voice of Anglican-English community, and considerably improved the

economic status of Catholic elites, as cocoa became a more significant source of revenue

for the colony (Wood, 1986 [1968]; Feheney, 2001). This synchronous but symmetrical

development of plantation staples made it difficult for the colonial authorities to continue

to “buck up” the English section of the upper-class and to maintain the “official” status of

the Anglican Church in the face of the tough resistance from the French-Creole Catholic

community.

However, the mid-1840s coincided with the decline in the influence of the

Catholic Church over the entire society. By then, French Creoles no longer constituted a

majority of the island’s white population (see Table 3-1). The total population had

constantly increased, while the percentage of Catholics declined sharply, due chiefly to a

large influx of non-Christian immigrants, particularly Hindustanis. The first group of East

Indian indentured laborers landed at Trinidad in 1845, only a year after the proclamation

of the Ecclesiastical Ordinance. In contrast, the ratio of Anglicans to the total inhabitants

was not affected negatively by this large inflow of new settlers, because its membership

absorbed Anglican immigrants from nearby British possessions (see Table 3-8 below). In

these circumstances, the Ecclesiastical Ordinance required the French-Creole Catholic

elites, more than Anglican-English counterparts, to make concessions to distinct

116


socioeconomic and cultural subordinate “others” in order to defend their symbolic status,

given French-Creoles’ lack of close ties with the English colonial political authority.

Roman Catholics in Trinidad have been a mosaic of people with diverse racial,

economic, and social status. Although referred to as French-Creoles, the diversity among

Catholics was more evident than any other Christian denominations (see Table 3-9

below) and actually became a cause of intradenominational conflicts. For instance, the

1820s were marked by cleavages between the white Catholic administration and its free-

colored parishioners. Although there had been no explicit racial segregation, certain

discriminatory pastoral practices against them were not unusual in Catholic chinches

(Campbell, 1992, p. 289). Strong discontent was first voiced in Naparima where there

was a concentration of influential free-colored families. When the colored elites’

campaign for the reform of Catholic institutions spread from Naparima to Port-of-Spain,

it assumed a more radical appearance: a separate Catholic chapel and school for the

colored congregation were constituted under the leadership of a colored priest (pp. 289-

292). The Ecclesiastical Ordinance exerted great pressure on the administration of the

Catholic Church, which had up that point stood firm against the coloreds’ initiative, to

listen to their demands for reform. Archbishop Louis Gonin conducted an investigation

of the indictment from a colored parishioner against French Dominicans for racial

discrimination. The request of Rome certainly motivated him to take such action. The

voice of the colored community must have become too loud for Catholic elites to neglect.

But it is equally important to notice that a rare, lengthy report on a racial issue in the

Catholic institution was published based on the inquiry by Archbishop Gonin, who was

well known for his strong attitude toward Anglicization in the final phase of the

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negotiations between the Catholic Church and the colonial administration (Feheney, 2001,

pp. 32-33).

In Trinidad, at different times in the pre-Emancipation period, the Nonconformist,

i.e. non-Anglican protestant, churches had already begun proselytizing. They had no

theological and clerical ties with the Catholic Church; if anything, the Nonconformist

missionaries occasionally expressed strong animosity toward Catholic institutions. In his

letter to the headquarters church in Glasgow, Rev. Alexander Kennedy33 of the Greyfriars

Church of Scotland deplored the spread of immorality and rudeness among “the black

and coloured population” in Trinidad due to “indiscriminate baptism by the

predominating denominations.”34 Although he did not explicitly refer to it, it is clear that

his criticism was directed toward the Roman Catholic Church, rather than the Church of

England, because the former almost monopolized the mission to “black and coloured

population” at that time (Rawlins, 1998).35 Moreover, in the early decades of the

nineteenth century, there was in fact a movement in favor of forming an “anti-Roman”

alliance between Anglicans and Nonconformists in Trinidad under the initiative of the

London-based Church Missionary Society (Harricharan, 1983, pp. 105-106).

Nevertheless, the Ecclesiastical Ordinance became a watershed in the relationship

between the Nonconformist churches and the Catholic Chinch. Given that almost all the

inhabitants were Catholics, the Articles of Capitulation affirmed free exercise of faith and

rites only for the Catholic Church. In other words, any other denominations that were

“neither a Catholic nor a Protestant of the Church of England. . . could not claim the

protection of the law referred to” (Joseph, 1970 [1838], p. 240). In reality, Wesleyan

Methodists had been the target of persecution by the British colonial administration,

118


which believed that their faith would make people of color less submissive, orderly, and

devout.36 However, other Nonconformist denominations, such as Presbyterians, also

protested the Ecclesiastical Ordinance along with Roman Catholic Church; for the

Nonconformist churches, the Ordinance was nothing less than intimidation against the

“free exercise” of their faith. The disparity in power and status between them was

obvious; their theological disagreements had not disappeared. In spite of these frictions,

an alliance emerged between the Roman Catholic Church and the Nonconformist

churches, particularly Wesleyan Methodists and Presbyterians. A local newspaper

reported that one of the first public meetings protesting the Ecclesiastical Ordinance was

well attended at the Greyfiiars Church of Scottish Presbyterians shortly after its

proclamation (cited in Wood, 1986 [1968], p. 196).

In 1870, after three decades of struggle, the Ecclesiastical Ordinance was repealed.

The Catholic Church retained the recognition of its social importance and the great

esteem for its hierarchy. However, this was not a simple restoration of pre-Capitulation

Trinidad where Catholic elites enjoyed a hegemonic position. In Trinidad before the

arrival of the Protestant English, a challenge to Catholic authority was unthinkable. The

Ecclesiastical Ordinance rendered it “thinkable” and brought it into question. The

Anglican-English community failed to homogenize the society; Trinidad had never been

thoroughly anglicized. In this legitimating process during the second half of the

nineteenth century, however, the extant institutional structure was also forced to change

under anglicizing pressure, and the Catholic Church was urged to revise the way it

exercised cultural leadership. Beginning in the late 1820s, with the departure of Ralph

Woodford from the governorship, the Catholic Church was forced to raise money.

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Although the salaries of archbishops and a part of stipends for clergies were covered by

public funds, the financial need became more pressing as relations with the colonial

political authority became tenser after the issue of the Ecclesiastical Ordinance. In a

petition sent to the colonial authorities in 1867, Archbishop Gonin denounced the

disparity between the salaries of the Anglican and Catholic clergymen and called for the

equalization (Feheney, 2001, p. 45). Gonin’s request was partially granted; but, under the

system that had been instituted following the revocation of the Ecclesiastical Ordinance,

all Christian denominations came to receive a subsidy for stipends, which was now

allocated “according to the number of their congregation” (De Verteuil, 1884, pp. 172—

173). De Verteuil put this in the following way: the “[D]isestablish[ment] of [the

Anglican Church] placed various Christian communities existing in the island the same

footing” (p. 173).

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Further reproduction prohibited

without permission.

1851 1891 1901 1911 1921 1931 1946N % N % N % N % N % N % N %

All Religions 68,600 100.0 200,028 100.0 255,148 100.0 333,552 100.0 365,913 100.0 412,783 100.0 557,970 100.0

Christian Denominations

Anglican 16,246 23.7 47,095 23.5 65,682 25.7 90,045 27.0 96,029 26.2 101,724 24.6 135,312 24.3

Baptist 448 0.7 3,942 2.0 4,885 1.9 5,562 1.7 6,494 1.8 8,753 2.1 12,182 2.2

Jehovah’s Witness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 672 0.1

Methodist 2,508 3.7 6,326 3.2 7,644 3.0 12,383 3.7 12,477 3.4 13,257 3.2 14,048 2.5

Moravian . . . . . . 719 0.4 1,633 0.6 7,069 2.1 6,775 1.9 6,649 1.6 7,152 1.3

Pentecostal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 728 0.1

Presbyterian 1,017 1.5 3,363 1.7 5,853 2.3 8,562 2.6 10,778 3.0 7,480 3.5 20,074 3.6

Roman Catholic 43,605 63.6 73,590 36.8 88,419 34.7 106,113 31.8 121,424 33.2 142,862 34.6 192,500 34.5

Seventh Day Adventist . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 886 0.3 1,681 0.5 3,400 0.8 6,816 1.2

Non-Christian Denominations

Hindu 2,694 3.9 55,186 27.6 68,902 27.0 85,087 25.5 88,300 24.1 93,889 22.8 126,345 22.7

Muslim 1,016 1.5 8,638 4.3 10,478 4.1 14,087 4.2 17,698 4.8 20,992 5.2 32,615 5.8

Table 3-8: Population by Religious Affiliation in Colonial Trinidad, 1851—194637

Roman Church of Wesleyan _ . . Moravian andCatholic England Methodist Pre»by<‘ ™«” “tber .denominationN % N % N % N % N % N %

Trinidad 59,441 68.47 20,887 24.06 2,100 2.41 904 1.04 3,393 3.91 95 0.11

British West Indies 5,126 15.52 22,464 68.02 4,018 12.17 428 1.29 364 1.1 624 1.9

UK and other British Possessions 189 18.23 486 46.87 39 3.76 268 25.94 39 3.76 15 1.44

India and their descendants 2,258 39.45 1,712 29.91 54 0.94 1,622 28.34 36 0.63 42 0.73

Venezuela 2,901 98.46 38 1.29 5 0.17 1 0.04 1 0.04

Africa 1,433 70.21 506 24.79 19 0.94 15 0.73 65 3.18 3 0.15

Foreign West Indies 953 77.23 176 14.27 54 4.38 26 2.1 10 0.81 15 1.21

China 285 31.18 606 66.3 3 0.33 13 1.42 7 0.77

Portugal 585 84.17 35 5.04 5 0.72 60 8.62 10 1.44

Other Foreign Countries 407 57.73 171 24.26 28 3.97 26 3.69 24 3.4 49 6.95

Not Stated 12 44.44 14 51.86 1 3.7

Total 73,590 54.44 47,095 34.84 6,326 4.68 3,363 2.49 3,942 2.92 851 0.631 1 11 1 n»

Table 3-9: Religious Affiliation (Christian Denominations) by Place of Origin in 1891

Politics of Group Worth: Language and Education

As noted above, the entitlement of the Anglican Church as the “Established

Church,” the “official” spiritual benefactor, was followed by a close examination of basic

institutions whose legitimacy had thus far rested almost exclusively on Roman

Catholicism. It is a matter of speculation why education became the first target for reform,

and consequently prompted an acrimonious debate. According to the 1851 census, in the

total population of 68,609, only 6,471 (9.4%) could both read and write, and another

3,442 could read (cited in Wood, 1986 [1968], p. 213). The colonial administration

attributed this low literacy rate to the churches’ exclusive control of elementary education.

In fact, at the time, the operation and management of these denominational schools were

outside the jurisdiction of colonial authorities, although they were subsided by public

colonial funds (p. 212). A unified public school system independent of denominational

influence would facilitate the popularization of education, particularly in the subordinate

groups. In 1851, Governor George Harris presented a plan for educational reform to the

Legislative Council, which combined theory with practice by advising that in-school

“instruction be secular—that is that no directly doctrinal teaching be given in religion”

{Port o f Spain Gazette, April 4,1851, cited in Campbell, 1996, p. 10), and that “the entire

management and control of the schools. . . be vested in the Board of Education [as the

representative of colonial administration]” (Williams, 1962, p. 199).

However, what pushed the colonial administration to popularize and secularize

the island’s education was not only the necessity to improve the inhabitants’ literacy.

Governor Harris arrived in Trinidad in 1846. At the height of tension between the two

major Christian denominational groups over the Ecclesiastical Ordinance, he felt the need

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for a homogenized set of values and nonnative principles. “[Rjace was freed but a society

has not been formed” (cited in Campbell, 1996, p. 7). This statement—and his effort to

establish public schools throughout his career—indicates that Harris viewed education as

the most effective means to this end.

Curiously enough, theories of nationalism in modem industrialized societies

render a great help in understanding this situation. According to Earnest Gellner (1991),

for a modem society that constantly diversifies under the force of industrialization,

“[cjulture i s . . . the necessary shared medium, the life-blood or perhaps rather the

minimal shared atmosphere, within which alone the members of the society can breathe

and survive and produce [I]t must be one in which they can all breathe and speak and

produce so it must be the same culture” (pp. 37-38). Gellner follows Governor Harris and

his administration when he maintains that “only nation-size educational system . . . under

the state control” can effectively produce and circulate an assimilated culture (Gellner,

1964, p. 158). However, Gellner’s thesis on the “assimilated culture” as a prerequisite for

nation building does not refer to the most important question: “Whose culture becomes

the formula for homogenization?” (Munasinghe, 2001, p. 221) This is curious because

Gellner and many other scholars who agree that nationalism is a modem phenomenon,

have regarded this question as unnecessary when analyzing “arbitrary pre-industrial

empire . . . under one ultimate political sovereign,” much less a society of “colonial

type. . . separated by seas,” where a diffusion of power to multiple local cultural units

was not possible (Gellner, 1964, p. 159). In such a society, for Gellner, there existed no

difficulty in selection of a single language on which the effective production and

dissemination of “assimilated culture” depends (p. 162). For usually “under the colonial

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regime, the language of administration was the language of the ruler, and the status of the

language denotes the status of the group that speaks it” (Horowitz, 2000 [1985], p. 219).

Likewise in Trinidad, English had been the language of administration after the

transference of its control from the Spanish to British government. English was spoken in

the Legislative Council; official notices and proclamations were issued in English.

Though politically dominant, the status of this language of the ruler remained unsecured,

far from a symbol of domination in the mid-nineteenth century Trinidad. As described in

the travelogues quoted earlier, the French-derived Creole prevailed as a lingua franca

that ruled everyday transactions. Besides, the close ties of the language with Roman

Catholicism—the most “prevalent philosophy” (Hoetink, 1967)—prevented the

deterioration of the status of the group who spoke it regardless of the forfeiture of

political and economic powers. For colonial authorities and Anglican-English elites, the

limited currency of their language, together with the lower symbolic status of the Church

of England, denoted the fraility of their group worth. The establishment of secular public

schools was inseparable from their claim for official status for the English language,

which reflected the desire for a tangible demonstration of English cultural preeminence in

society. Governor McLeod, Harris’s predecessor, stated: “The difference of language and

religion make it more imperative that the system to be adopted should be one under the

control of the government, not only with the view to make it accessible to all parties and

creeds, but to cause the language spoken to be that of the country to which the colony

belongs” (cited in Campbell, 1996, p. 221).

In Trinidad, therefore, educational reform involved answering the question:

Whose values and symbols—Anglican English or Catholic French Creole—would

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occupy the central position in a general normative principle to mold and inculcate

students in classrooms? The records do not indicate that Governor Harris intended to use

education as a step toward “Anglicizing” the island; rather, they are evidence of his view

of religious morality as an indispensable condition for social order, and a degree of his

sympathy with the contribution made by the Catholic Church in this realm (Campbell,

1996, pp. 222-223). However, for Catholic French-Creole elites in intense rivalry with

Anglican-English counterparts, Governor Harris was indistinguishable from other

colonial authorities who labored to abolish state-supported denominational schools as a

part of their project of Anglicization.39

At first, the Catholic Church was tolerant of the public schools under the

archbishopric of Richard Smith, who attempted to avoid further discord with the colonial

administration (Wood, 1986 [1968], p. 236). However, from the late 1850s onwards, the

mood of the Catholic community hardened. In an attempt to establish what it called

“secondary education for all creeds,” the colonial administration opened the Queen’s

Collegiate School in 1859 (Anthony, 1997, p. 462). In the context of nineteenth-century

Trinidad, this “secular” Collegiate was considered “synonymous with Protestantism,” and

thus nothing but another apparatus for anglicizing the populace. In a sense, for Catholic

French-Creoles, this was a graver threat than the public primary schools to their relative

status. In colonial Trinidad, like any other colonial society, education was not a field

open to all. It was rather the principal system of classification, in which the allocation of

status and privilege was strictly controlled. This reproductive function of inequalities was

more acute in secondary than primary-level education. Compared with the primary

schools, either public or denominational, which had opened their gates to a wider range

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of population, the Collegiate was essentially for the affluent, and thus whites and a few

exceptional coloreds, though in principle it was not racially exclusive (Campbell, 1996, p.

16). For French Creoles now uncertain about their group worth under British control, it

was unacceptable that a secondary school, from which the symbolic sources of their

status and privilege—that is, religion and language—were completely excluded, was

established with “public” funds. The Catholic Church immediately dispatched a

delegation to Rome to seek advice and financial assistance in founding a comparable

Collegiate for Catholic children. In consequence, in 1863, members of the French Order

of the Holy Ghost Fathers arrived in the island, and they established the Collegiate of the

Immaculate Conception, alias St. Mary’s College (Anthony, 1997, p. 505).

In the mid-1860s, the Catholic Church and French-Creole elites further stiffened

against the government’s policy on education. Since the late 1840s, the Holy Office in

Rome had not been tolerant to states that urged “Godless” (i.e., secular) education and

deprived Catholic bishops of their jurisdiction over schools and colleges. At the same

time, the Vatican had instructed archdioceses to found separate schools exclusively for

Catholic children while discouraging them to attend secular schools (Feheney, 2001, p.

89). Archbishop Louis Gonin, who arrived in Trinidad in 1864, familiarized himself with

these shifts in the approach to education in Rome. More important, as regards the effect

on social relations in Trinidad, Archbishop Gonin had been bom in France and grown up

on the French island of Mauritius (Wood, 1986 [1968], p. 235). In order to act upon the

instructions from the Holy See, he handed over the major parishes, including Port of

Spain, to the French Dominicans, while ousting Irish priests, who had been dominant up

till then (and moderate in their attitude toward the public schools), relocating them to

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minor parishes in the countryside (Feheney, 2001, p. 89). Although most of the island’s

Catholic clergies had invariably been predominantly of British or Irish origin from the

late 1840s onwards,40 all the prestigious parishes were in the hands of French—or at least

non-British—priests by the end of the 1860s (pp. 25,90). In 1867, with the support and

encouragement of French-speaking priests, Archbishop Gonin sent a petition to the

governor, in which the Catholic Church officially requested first “the abolition of the

Ward School system and the introduction in its place a system of state-aided

denominational schools under clerical management;” second, “the division of the Board

of Education into two branches or committees, one Catholic and the other Protestant,

containing equal numbers;” finally, the allocation of public funds toward the maintenance

of Catholic College of Immaculate Conception (p. 128).

In 1869, at the request of Governor Hamilton Gordon, the secretary of state sent

Patrick Keenan, a British educational officer, to Trinidad in order to inquire into the state

of the island’s educational system. Keenan was a Roman Catholic; moreover, he was

educated in government-aided denominational schools in Ireland, an English semi-colony

that had a large Catholic population similar to Trinidad’s (Anthony, 1997, pp. 205,324-

325). In addition to his expertise as an experienced educational administrator, Lord

Granville, the then Secretary of State for Colonies, chose Keenan reflecting his strong

desire to placate Roman Catholic elites in Trinidad (Feheney, 2001, p. 119). Contrary to

expectations, however, in his report, Keenan’s report advised that the ward schools be

abolished and replaced by state-endowed denominational schools. He also suggested a

board of 12 members (6 Protestants and 6 Catholics) replace the existing Board of

Education (p. 122). In short, Keenan’s report basically met the main part of Archbishop

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Gonin’s requests. As Governor Gordon summarized, for the colonial authorities, “it [was]

impossible to peruse [Keenan’s] report without a sensation of the deepest

disappointment” (p. 120).

Keenan’s report pushed Governor Gordon and his allies into making difficult

decisions. It brought to light the wide gap between the ideal, which Lord Harris had in his

mind with its initiation, and the reality of the ward schools, which suffered from lack of

supervision, chronic poor attendance, and financial difficulties (Campbell, 1996, p. 14).

On the other hand, for Gordon, it was obviously impossible to carry to enact Keenan’s

recommendations without modification, as the recommendations implied a complete

reversal of Harris’s scheme of public schools, which could trigger fierce criticism from

the English community. The Education Ordinance of 1870 was the result of Gordon’s

search for equipoise between English and French-Creole, the Church of England and the

Catholic Church, and the colonial authorities and the archbishop. On the one hand, the

Ordinance endowed state-aided denominational schools with a degree of “autonomy”:

clerical control over the selection of teachers, free access of ministers to afford religious

instruction in schools, and authority of the managers to permit the school facilities to be

used for clerical purposes (De Verteuil, 1884, pp. 174-175; Feheney, 2001, p. 129). At

the same time, it reaffirmed the authority of the colonial administration over educational

institutions. First, the colonial authorities used the Ordinance to elaborate upon the

stringent conditions under which denominational schools would be entitled public aid.

Then, while expanding the presence of Catholics in education policy making, Gordon

simultaneously reinforced his and the colonial government’s jurisdiction over resolutions:

expansion of the Board of Education with 29 members, one-third of whom were

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Catholics, and establishment of new executive committee of 8 (4 Anglicans and 4

Catholics) with himself as president (Feheney, 2001, p. 129).

Having observed the prevalence of the French language among Catholic children,

Keenan, the inspector of education, came to consider it unrealistic to completely exclude

French language and customs from education. For instance, in his report, he denounced

the Board of Education for appointing to the school in Maraval a non-Catholic principal

who could not understand a single word of French patois,41 where “English [was] entirely

unknown among the vast majority of the pupils” (cited in Anthony, 2001, p. 157).

Although Keenan strongly supported the idea of making English the official language of

Trinidad, he suggested the possibility of the program in which French- and Spanish

speaking pupils could learn English through their own language (Campbell, 1996, p. 230).

Of the secondary schools, Keenan wrote:

The fact that such prominence is given to French in the system of instruction; that the community who conduct it are a French order; that half the professors are Frenchmen; that nearly half the pupils are the children of French families; and that the discipline and ceremonials of the school are founded upon French models, have all contributed to inspire the designation of the “French College” by which the institution is popularly known. Indeed, the fact that the college is a Catholic college would be quite reason enough to suggest to the people to call it the “French College” just as they call a Catholic church the “French church.”

In an English colony it would seem only natural to expect that a great public school like this, advancing a claim on Governmental consideration for its support, and appealing for the popular favour to its success in turning out intelligent and enterprising citizens, should be conducted on what are recognized as English principles—that is, that the language, the tone, and the social atmosphere of the school should be English. To a certain extent I sympathise with such an expectation. . . But I cannot close my eyes to the difficulties of—and even the objections to— a sudden metamorphosis.

Would it be rational to attempt extinguish the instincts of vernacular speech in the vast majority of the children? Would it be philosophical to fail to cultivate the mind, and fill it with stores of

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knowledge, in the language most natural to it? I do not, therefore, condemn the college because it is so French in its character; nor do I venture to advise the suppression of the French element; but, at the same time, I think that, without being made less French, the college be made much more English than it is (cited in Williams, 1962, pp. 205-206; emphasis added).

As a representative of the colonial power, Gordon felt that any system that would

subordinate the language of the ruler to vernacular tongues was out of the question. On

the other hand, it was evident that the complete exclusion of French cultural and

symbolic elements was impractical. Therefore, Gordon granted the Catholic Church’s

request for the state aid for the College of Immaculate Conception. However, in terms of

primary-level denominational schools, he demanded that all the existing colleges,

including the College of Immaculate Conception, cease their existence as institutions

independent of the state system if they were to receive subsidies (Campbell, 1996, pp.

28-29; Feheney, 2001, p. 129). This meant that state-aided secondary schools, regardless

of the sponsoring faith, must become affiliated with die Queen’s Collegiate School, the

sole secular public college at the time. Gordon took considerable action to make this plan

work despite the anticipated resistance from the Catholic community. First, Gordon

instituted the “College Council,” an umbrella organization in charge of the management

and operation of the government’s college with an equal commitment from the Catholic

community. What seems more important was, however, symbolic rather than

instrumental. Gordon had an ordinance passed to change the name of the “Queen’s

Collegiate School” to that of “Royal College of Trinidad” (De Verteuil, 1884, p. 176);

moreover, he performed the inauguration ceremony for this “new” College. From its

initial foundation as the Queen’s Collegiate, it has never been moved to either different

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structure or different site. Through changing the name, and performing an initiation

ritual, Gordon attempted to create a clear break from the past and attach a new meaning

to this symbol, the Collegiate School, over which two denominational groups had

political battles. For Catholics, it was nothing but an example of coercive Anglicizing

policy; for Anglicans, it represented a “triumph over the Catholic community” {Port o f

Spain Gazette, July 11, 1868, cited in Wood, 1986 [1968], p. 234). In his speech at the

opening ceremony, Gordon emphasized the secularity of what was now the Royal

College of Trinidad, and the affiliation to which would neither compromise the autonomy

of symbols nor lower the symbolic recognition of Anglican-English or Catholic-French-

Creole group’s worth:

We are met here to day to inaugurate the new Queen’s Royal College, an institution by which the benefits of education will I trust be secured to Protestants and Roman Catholics alike, without the slightest compromise of the religious principles of either, The Queen’s Collegiate School, of which this College is in some sort an out growth, and development was founded with the same object; but, successful as it has been in other respects, it cannot be said to have altogether attained this. St. Mary’s College was founded by private enterprise with a different view, and to meet the wants of those who objected to the Collegiate School. . . I determined to endeavour to effect the establishment of a college where combined study might be carried on in those branches of education with respect to which no objection to such a course was felt, and to support with government aid and bring under the government’s supervision those establishments where such branches of education in which a separate training was deemed necessary were taught. . . I had, when last in England some anxious conference with the highest ecclesiastical authority of the Roman Catholic Church in England on the subject, and came to a complete understanding with him on the subject. . . He expressed a strong preference for a totally separate education, but candidly admitted the objections to such a course in a small and not very wealthy island; and he drew a wide distinction between combination for all purposes, and for some only. . . On this understanding the plan now carried into effect is based {Trinidad Gazette, July 11,1870).

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As Gordon stressed, denominational schools were not allowed to remain as an

isolated and self-contained educational apparatus, but this did not mean their assimilation

into a seamless institution. In short, the colonial authorities gave up attempting to fuse

different values and symbols on which distinct educational institutions had functioned

into a homogenized, “anglicized” system. Instead, the Catholic Church and other

Christian denominations were invested with a sort of symbolic sovereignty in the field of

education, which was secured but also confined by the authority of colonial state. De

Verteuil (1884) emphasized later that it was not the subordination of one symbol to

another; instead, Catholic and Anglican symbols were equally “connected,” while

remaining separate, with the state.

With the object of promoting secondary education, he [Governor Gordon] established, in the place of the Queen’s Collegiate School, a college, called the ROYAL COLLEGE OF TRINIDAD. The management of the college was vested in a council, styled the COLLEGE COUNCIL, with power, among other things, to declare any school of secondary education to be a school in connection with the colony, such aid to consist of a fixed salary to the principal or conditions, to the pupils. This was a liberal scheme, showing respect for the rights of the tax-payer and deference for the religious sentiments of the people, who had no more reason for refusing to participate in the advantages afforded by the Government (p.463; emphasis in original).

This is the basic principle of the so-called “dual system” of education, which has

persisted to the present, albeit through various changes. The shift in the colony’s

educational policy did not end the struggle between the two major Christian

denominational groups over this critical institution in the light of comparative group

worth. However, the nature of intergroup conflict over education differed before and after

the transition to the dual system with the Education Ordinance of 1870. The feud between

the Roman Catholic Church and Anglican Church became concerned less with the

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fundamental religious issues, and more with practical details, such as allocation of funds,

within the dual system. At that point, the principles of religious equality and autonomy in

the field of education came to be the unquestioned basis for conflict.

“Legacies”from the aFormative Years”

Donald Wood (1986[1968]) periodized Trinidad’s history and identified the

second half of the nineteenth century (especially the three decades that began with

the1840s) as its “formative years.” Put differently, he conceived this specific time block

as a “watershed,” or “critical juncture” that is referred to as a “period of significant

change, which typically occurs in distinct ways . . . and which is hypothesized to produce

distinct legacies” (Collier and Collier, 1991, pp. 29-31).42 How “critical” is a

hypothetical critical juncture is determined in terms of specified historical “legacies” (p.

33), or the distinct outcomes that remain influential in the subsequent development of a

given society. What “legacies” did Trinidadian society inherit from the “formative

years”?

Contrary to a simplistic material model derived from Marx and later Marxian

perspectives, the polarized development of the plantation economy more or less along

ethnic boundaries hindered the integration of cultural and religious distinctiveness into a

seamless homogeneous “European-ness,” characterized by a general Christian ideological

domination. Significantly, the island’s capitulation created the apparent disparity in status

between the English and French Creole communities. Upon acquiring political power, the

English established ascendancy over the pre-capitulation landowning class. Yet, the

domination of the Roman Catholic Church was undeniable as a supplier of spiritual need

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to more than two-thirds of the total inhabitants. This constant and acute inconsistency in

their statuses did not allow the main actors in conflict to either annihilate or disregard the

opponent (see Simmel, 1964[1955]; Weber, 1964; Lenski, 1984). The continual intra

elite division prevented the formation of a “moral-political bloc.” Reflecting this intricate

balance of power and status the dominant “social discipline” (Williams, 1991) or

“ideological frame” (Munasinghe, 2001) emerged neither as an instrumental construction

of either group, nor as a hybrid that was irreducible to either cultural tradition. Rather, the

dominant cultural conception came to be perceived as an overarching principle that

“hyphenated” the objects, practices and worldviews of the contesting European “ethnic”

groups that while remained—or allegedly remained—autonomous and separate

throughout repeated conflicts and compromises. This point has not received adequate

scholarly attention in the thesis of interclass politics of culture.

No matter how far observers distance themselves from a more materialistic

deterministic approach, the origin of a dominant “social discipline” or “ideological

frame” has never been a matter of their concern, much less in the analysis of an intensely

power-saturated social system such as plantation colonial societies. It is usually

considered unnecessary to study the formative process of the “dominant” culture or

“colonial consciousness” (Staler, 1989), for it is self-evident to these theorists that class-

consciousness based on shared material interests led to the assimilation of different

symbolic interests among European population into a harmonious coherent whole without

serious conflict. In this line of thought, politics over cultural leadership comes about

either during, or after the completion of, the internalization of culture as an exclusive

instrumental construction of the powerful onto and then into the powerless mass. This

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premise of ready-made cultural hegemony, on which both Marxian and neo-Marxian

approaches tend to rest, obscures the critical features of the politics of cultural

articulation in nineteenth-century Trinidad.

The nineteenth-century conflict, which induced “sociation” (Simmel, 1950), was

intercultural and specifically religious rather than interclass in character. Accordingly, it

produced discourses on cultural/religious pluralism. It is irrelevant whether the

anglicizing pressure rendered the behavior of Catholic elites more permissive (Wood,

1986 [1968], p. 254). Primary sources have demonstrated that there was no clear

distinction between Catholic and Anglican leaders or white congregants in their intolerant

manner to racial and theological others (Brereton, 1979, pp. 98-99). It is more relevant to

consider that Catholic elites moved to form and retain “alliances” with racial and

religious others for the sake of their own status and power given the Catholics’ lack of

close ties with the colonial political authority. However, it is worth noting that the public

discourses from Catholic elites underwent a radical change in this process. The necessity

to retain the “anti-Ordinance” alliances obliged the interlocutors representing Catholic

elites to make their discourses more inclusive. For example, the leaders of Catholic

institutions started explicitly employing the term, “People’s Church” in their petitions,

protestant notes, and the like (De Verteuil, 1858). This title, which intentionally set the

Catholic Church against the Anglican Church as the “Established Church,” would have

been pointless without the presumed alliance with the racial and socioeconomic

“others”—e.g., free coloreds and blacks—that accounted for almost 80% of the “Catholic

community.” As their attack on the Ecclesiastical Ordinance continued, the spokesmen

for the Catholic community made the definition of “People” whom they claimed to

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represent more discursive. They frequently presented themselves less as a representative

solely of their own denomination and more as a defender of cultural and religious

pluralism. Having warned that the Ordinance would disturb the existing “greatest

harmony. . . among different classes,” De Verteuil continued in his book, Trinidad

(1858):

They [Colonial authorities] contend that the habits and feelings of the inhabitants must be purely British, and consider it as a taint in those who, though not the less loyal to their adopted government, do not exhibit them; thus making no allowance for the inborn predilections of ancestry, or of fatherland, and acting in a manner to inspire the people with an aversion to those very habits, and an alienation from those feelings (pp. 174-175; emphasis in original).

In the second edition of his book (1884), released after the abrogation of the

Ecclesiastical Ordinance, De Verteuil, who was by this time a member of the Legislative

Council, further advanced his theory on cultural and religious diversity. It deserves to be

quoted at length:

Heterogeneous as this population is, and has always been, the greatest harmony long prevailed among the different sections of which it was composed—a result which should be attributed to the liberal policy of the local government, and which, if it did not originate at the Colonial Office, was certainly sanctioned there. Equal protection was afforded to be really and truly a paternal rule. No distinction was drawn between those who were of foreign origin and those of British birth or descent; and I daresay no essential difference of feeling prevailed. But there always had existed in the colony a party desirous to upset this sate of things, and to establish a purely British—i.e., Protestant—ascendancy. They were, for many years,too much in a minority to cause any uneasiness Whenever [such] anattempt has been made to establish a spurious aristocracy of nationality, the result has invariably been disunion, jealousy, and disappointment. But should they rest content with the traditions of our own colony, they may find that even in their own days such attempt, though successful for a time, was eventually defeated, although carried on by men superior to them in position, in talent, and, above all, in personal influence. Let us toil together in peace, and side by side; it will be for the advantage of all (pp. 155-157).

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I have no intention to quote these statements as a neutrally objective medium.

Trinidad was not exceptional in the sense that the white European population

monopolized, or at least had much better access to, the means of producing, selecting and

appropriating discourses. In fact, the language in celebration of cultural and religious

diversity clearly took note of discord with De Verteuil’s glorification of Christianity over

non-Christian religious expression in the same volume:

It may be well for those who have imbibed the truths of the Gospel, who bask in the sunshine of Christian civilisation, and who relish the savoury fruits of the tree planted by their forefathers, to pretend or assume that Christianity has done its work, and must now give precedence to other systems or institutions resulting from, and better adapted to, the progress of ages; but those who pause to consider the progress of humanity in general under the reign of Paganism and Idolatry, or even of Islamism, who witness the supernatural results of Christianity, particularly in its taming and civilising influence on the wildest and most ignorant tribes, are induced to regard it as the chief, because the most powerful and the surest, agent in procuring tranquility for nations, and rendering them prosperous and happy. I am bound to say that all the agencies, which impart natural justice, mutual assistance, equality in the advantages and burdens of man,&c. — all are the fruits of Christianity. For it cannot be denied that Christianity has snatched the world (De Verteuil, 1884, p. 27).

Also, De Verteuil seems to have had no hesitation when he wrote elsewhere concerning

East Indian immigrants: “Encouraged by all means the emigration of these poor creatures

to a land of freedom and Christianity, where their social and moral condition becomes

vastly improved” (p. 24). Considering their continuous parallel employment of the terms,

such as “Heathen Gentoos” (p. 172) and “Pagans,” it is doubtful that the leaders of the

Catholic Church intended to render their discourses on diversity to include non-Christian

groups. In brief, what upper-class Catholics tolerated was “Christian” heterogeneity.

However, if a discourse is inherently multivalent (Pocock, 1973; Verdery, 1991),

it is advisable to reconsider the assumption that the development of the ideological frame

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in colonial Trinidad is reducible to an intelligible bifurcation between two clear-cut and

opposing sections (Christian and non-Christian). One verbalizes a certain idea and feeling

in a format with one’s willingness to commit oneself to the responses and reactions of

others to one’s words and intentions. This makes human interaction possible. Language,

however, does not necessarily convey what an interlocutor attempts to signify. Nor does

it always directly execute one’s power and influence. Verbalization thus potentially

involves speakers and writers in consequences more than those intended (Pocock, 1973, p.

32). At this point, discourse “acquires its own properties and autonomies beyond the

utterances that bear it,” and as a consequence, opens a discursive field where no one,

including the speaker, can execute effective control over what was said (Verdery, 1991, p.

9, cited in Munasinghe, 2001, p. 18n). In this connection, the idea of cultural and

religious pluralism, which would potentially compromise Catholic elite’s relative status

and power, was expressed repeatedly (and overtly) through different channels by Catholic

elites, a part of white European community. After an intense struggle with the Anglican-

English community, the Catholic Church could preserve their relative symbolic status in

the society. However, the discourse that Catholic elites selected and utilized in this

process of legitimation—regardless of their intentions—subsequently limited their

capacity to act. The maintenance of acquired legitimacy was conditioned upon the

institutional ability and will to defend sectarian and denominational diversity among the

Christian community in general, rather than the claim of sole authenticity or superiority

of Roman Catholicism.

The verbalization of the French-Creole’s political act with words and phrases,

which were so comprehensive and thus available for interpretation in various strategies

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by others, set a limit to the future exercise of power by Christian elites in general, and

particularly the leaders of the Catholic Church, the historically largest religious group in

Trinidad (Pocock, 1973; Verdery, 1991). The internal differences within the European

population do not deny the existence of a general contention of the superiority of

Christian over non-Christian and non-European values and expressions. Nor does it mean

that resistance of non-Christian non-Europeans against the Christian European was

missing from die relations between distinct worldviews. However, the unique balance of

power rendered such a general contention relatively unstable and vague, and resistance

became polymorphous and multivocal.

Emancipation caused a flood of former slaves into urban centers from estates

throughout the island. This development was almost simultaneous with the

commencement of mass immigration from the Indian subcontinent under the indentured

labor system. Since then, these two groups, former African slaves and East Indian

indentured laborers, formed the lowest layers of the society. These new classes emerged

under acute intraclass/intercultural conflict between Catholic French-Creole and

Anglican-English sections of European population. To reemphasize, there was severe

discrimination against these racially and culturally estranged colonial subjects. However,

when these subordinate groups claimed the right of equal participation in the process of

cultural articulation (referring to the French-Creole-elite-created discourse on cultural

autonomy and equity), the European population could not exert effective control over the

symbolic field in favor of their own interests.

De Verteuil (1858) characterized colonial Trinidad as having “the greatest

harmony. . . among different colours and classes” (p. 174). Such a view has been

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severely challenged by close inquiries on the intergroup relations in the nineteenth

century. Bridget Brereton (1979) demonstrates that colonial Trinidad was rather “a

segmented society, a society in which there were several sections, whose members

interacted at certain levels and in certain activities, but were conscious of belong to

definite and separate groups. The lines of demarcation between the sectors . . . were lines

of race, religion, nationality, and class” (p. 205).

Yet, there seems to be some room for reconsideration in her conclusion that these

sociocultural segments “met ‘in the market place’; but in private life and in social

relationships they operated as self-contained entities” (Brereton, 1979, p. 206). The

assumption that Brereton shares with the disputants of cultural pluralism enables her to

attribute the order and cohesion of colonial Trinidad to nothing but “material and

ideological domination of subordinates by imperial power and local upper- and middle-

class” (pp. 206-207). As demonstrated throughout this chapter, the emergence of the new

working class following emancipation and the introduction of the indentured system

concurred with the intensification of conflict between the most influential landowning

classes, Anglican English and Catholic French Creole. Due to the persistent conflict

among members of the dominant class, the “lines of demarcation” remained definite.

However, at the same time, this intraclass ethnic conflict at the top of social echelon was

a recurring hindrance to the assimilation of the existing “lines of demarcation.”

Undeniably, divisions and conflict, rather than the “greatest harmony,” marked colonial

Trinidad. Nevertheless, under the unique balance of power, the repeated conflicts became

the occasions not for a particular group to establish or reinforce its domination, but rather

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for segmented groups to cross the lines of demarcation (see Simmel, 1950; Simmel,

1964[1955]).

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Endnotes

1 This table is compiled from the data in various resources: Mallet, 1802; Frazer, 1891, pp. 119,149; Williams, 1970, p. 110; Ottley, 1974, pp. 153-154; Brereton, 1981, p. 15; Millett, 1985 [1970], p. 105; De Verteuil, 1987, p. 12; Pearse, 1988 [1956], pp. 5-6

2 After the decree was issued, the two white planter classes, traditional Spaniards and newly arrived French-Creoles, would have been at odds with each other over the proprietorship of land. Because Trinidad was not a matter of concern for the Spanish government, the Spanish settlers rearranged the boundaries of their properties as they wished. Upon the arrival of the French-speaking settlers, the Spaniards claimed the major part of the island, even though it had been left uncultivated for centuries. In 1785, Governor Chacon issued a decree declaring that the colonial state would solve the land issue, which had resulted from the irregular occupation of Crown lands by a strict interpretation of the laws of Indies (De Verteuil, 1987; Anthony, 1997, pp. 12-13). This meant that the Spanish government dismissed the Spaniards’ claims and defended the French planters’ rights of proprietorship.

3 There was a small number of English-speaking settlers in Trinidad before the conquest. The number of English-speaking whites and colored increased to 1,262 by 1803, a year after the formal annexation of the island (Mallet, 1802).

4 In the 1810s, Trinidad received quite a few French-speaking refugees from the wars in Spanish territories (Wood, 1986 [1968], p. 32). The majority of these refugees were returnees, who re-migrated to Spanish territories when the island fell into British hand.

5 In 1806, the slave trade to the newly acquired colonies, including Trinidad, was banned. Although African slaves continued to be imported illegally until the final abolition of slavery, it was on a small scale, which resulted in a significant decline in the population of African slaves. However, the island’s black population started increasing again with the arrival of immigrants from other British West Indian territories. During a decade from 1839 to 1848,, over 10,000 people immigrated to Trinidad. Another 65,000 settled on the island between 1871 and 1911 (Besson & Brereton, 1992, p. 308).

6 Governor Ralph Woodford explained and justified his reasoning in the following terms: “The Negroes have been generally baptized in that Faith and those that have been taught at all have learnt the Prayers of the Roman Church, the Institution of which as well as the well-supported and well-exercised authority o f the Sponsors in Baptism are by far the best calculated to make an impression upon the educated Negro” (cited in Harricharan, 1983, p. 56).

7 “According to an abstract published by an order of House of Commons and reported in the Port of Spain Gazette in 1831 the slave population of Trinidad was 24,452 . . . As has been shown, elsewhere the slave population at the time of the Abolition was 22,359 in Trinidad” (Colony o f Trinidad Census Album 1948, pp. 12-13).

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8 Compiled from the data from F. Mallet, 1802; Millett, 1985 [1970]; and Campbell,1992.

9 Compiled from the data from Campbell, 1992, p. 59

10 One (1) carreau was equivalent to 3.2 acres (Campbell, 1992, p. 100).

11 These numbers do not include the owners who had fewer than five slaves (Campbell,1976, p. 29; Campbell, 1992, p. 119, also cited in Munasinghe, 2001, p. 49)

12 Louis de Verteuil (1984, pp. 207-208) described the organization of Crown Colony:

Trinidad is a “crown colony,” under the control of the Colonial Office, the government of which is administered, locally, through a resident Governor, assisted by an island executive, and a legislative council.

Executive Council—It consists of the Colonial Secretary, the Attorney-General, and the Commander of the Forces, under presidency of the Governor. It is a mere consultative body, which the Governor calls together on important occasions in order to have their opinion, which he may follow or not, as he pleases.

Legislative Council—This council consists of the Governor, as president, and fourteen members, of whom six are “official” and eight “non-official.” The official members are the Colonial Secretary, the Chief Judge, the Attorney-General, and the Protector of Immigrants. The nonofficial members must be British-born subjects; they are nominees of the Crown, and chosen from among the most respectable inhabitants of the colony. The legislative council discusses and adopts such ordinances and measures as are introduced or proposed by the Governor, or any members of the council. To become law, all measures passed by the council must receive Her Majesty’s sanction. The legislative council discusses also and votes the estimates for each following year. The items may be ranged under two heads, viz.; the fixed and the un-fixed establishment, are laid before the board as a mere matter of form, and are not submitted for discussion. Members however, may propose alterations in the shape of resolutions, which are transmitted to the Colonial Office for consideration.The unfixed establishment is regulated every year. All motions for money must come through the Governor. There are regular meetings of the board on the first day of each month, or on the day following, should the first be a Sunday, and at any other time the Governor may thing proper to call the members specially together; and the board is to sit from day to day until the standing business is disposed of; the president and eight members to form a quorum. In the absence of His Excellency, the senior member presides. The sittings are public, and the proceedings reported in the

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newspapers of the colony. The Governor is invested with extensive powers; and as he has the uncontrolled appointment of all officers who are not on the fixed establishments, he can suspend and dismiss them without referring to the Colonial Office. All others he can suspend from office— even the members of council—until Her Majesty’s pleasure is made known. He may require the attendance at the Council-Board of all the members, and exact that of the official section. The chief judge being by position the only independent member of this section, the Governor may be said to have the command of the votes of the officials; and he can, with a little stratagem and his own casting vote, form a majority on any important question he wishes to carry or oppose. He has also the control of the public funds; and the receiver-general, it seems, is justified in paying out any sum of money on the Governor’s warrant. By royal instructions he is not authorized—except in urgent cases—to order the payment of any sum of money above £ 200, without special authority from the secretary of state, and previous sanction by the board. He can also veto any measure passed by the legislative council.

13 Barbados had representative government throughout its history because of the gradual extension of suffrage to the elite amongst the free coloreds. In the twentieth century, with the transfer of political power to the people’s representatives, the island moved to eventual independence in 1966 (Watson, 1979, p. 151). On the other hand, in the case of British Guiana, when the Dutch territories were put under British control, the British government guaranteed that the inhabitants could keep the political and economic rights they had enjoyed before. As a result, Guiana retained some elected representatives under its unique Anglo-Dutch form of Crown Colony government (p. 151).

14 Governors often had difficulty in persuading members of the assembly to pass the annual revenue bill. And the assembly sometimes wanted to introduce laws to which the governor, on behalf of Britain, objected. Such laws were sometimes tacked on to the revenue bill, giving the governor no choice but to accept them or to lose his taxes. Thus the assembly system made the business of administrating the British islands more complicated, although it undoubtedly safeguarded what the plantation owners thought were the traditional liberties of Englishmen (Watson, 1979, p. 87).

15 According to Beckles (1990, p. 20-21), the rise in the price of sugar was brought about by the sharp decline of the production in Brazil, the largest supplier of sugar at the time. Barbados’s less mountainous topography and moderately humid climate were also significant factors, thereby making the rapid conversion to sugar in Barbados possible.Up to this time, sugar cane had been grown in small quantity as a feed grain.

16 The importation of equipments and slaves were also encouraged by the exemption of various duties. For example, Article III stated, “Every white immigrant, male or female, would receive four fanegas and two-seventh of land and in addition half of that quantity

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for each slave introduced by him” (Williams, 1962, p. 41). These incentives were further liberalized by a decree of January 1786. The amendments included, “the exemption from duty on the importation of Negro was extended from ten year, and made perpetual, and the duty of 5 per cent which the settlers were to pay after ten years was for ever abolished.” Moreover, in order to attract new settlers to the production of sugar, rather than other historical staples, one of the provisions “allowed [settlers] to establish refineries in Spain with all the privileges and freedom from duties . . . when the cultivation of sugar had become fully expanded in Trinidad” (p. 42).

17 “Cocoa” is an anglicized derivative from cacao, an Amerindian word (Hart, 1866, cited in Besson & Brereton, 1992, p. 316). Nowadays, in Trinidad the former is generally used to describe the fruit and the latter is reserved for the tree (Anthony, 1997, pp. 85-86,141).

18 The cacao tree is alleged to have been brought into Trinidad by the Spanish settlers as early as 1525, and the cultivation had grown at a rapid rate afterwards. As the quality of product earned a wide reputation, Trinidad’s export of cacao had favorably increased in response. However, in 1727, cacao estates were destroyed by a “blast” according to archival evidence. It is still unclear what the “blast” was due to the lack of further explanation. About thirty years later, some Aragonese Capuchin monks, who settled mainly in southern part of the island, introduced different variety of tree. The cocoa industry was gradually reestablished mainly by French Creole planters, and Spanishspeaking agricultural workers, called peons or cocoa panyols, who migrated from Venezuela with advanced techniques of cultivation (Shepard, 1927; James 1927).

19 According to Hart (1866), Trinidad is “the only colony throughout the wide extent of the British Colonial Empire producing the materials for this wholesome and palatable beverage” (cited in Besson & Brereton, 1992, p. 316).

20 Later in the nineteenth century, the term “French Creoles” came to refer to not only French-speaking but all locally bom white populations.

One emphasized how fertile Trinidad’s soil was: “We do not expend more than one- third the labor in weeding our canes than they do it in Caribbean isles. Often in our rich soil, the ratoonsare allowed to shoot up and ripen with little or no assistance from the hoe” (Joseph, 1970 [1838], pp. 90-91). Another account remarked that 50% more sugar could be extracted from Trinidadian sugar cane than from sugar cane grown in other territories (Williams, 1962, p. 75).

22 Compiled from the data in Laurence, 1994, pp. 530-531

23 Higman, 1984, p. 701, also cited in Munasinghe, 2001, p. 47.

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24 Until 1868, when an ordinance liberalized its sale, a small portion of Crown lands had been alienated. How quickly the Crown lands were transferred in this period is highlighted by the fact that only 3,423 acres had been sold between 1847 and 1867 (Look-Lai, 1993, p. 346).

25 In 1897, the railway line reached Cunapo in order to transport the produce from the Sangre Grande. The Caparo Valley line was extended from Jemingham Junction to Tabaquite in 1898, and was extended to Rio Claro in 1914 (Anthony, 1997, p. 42)

The breakdown of the rest of the lands owned by Indian fanners was as follows: sugar cane 13,100 acres, rice 7,662 acres, peas 5,724 acres, ground provisions 5,258 acres, com (or maze) 3,677 acres, and coconut 929 acres (Look-Lai, 1993, p. 234).

After it reached its peak in 1921, when more than 75 million pounds of cocoa were produced, Trinidad’s cocoa industry entered a serious recession, due to unfavorable market prices and the spread of an epidemic (Anthony, 1997, p. 142). The level of production and export of cocoa during this “golden age” (Brereton 1981) has never been equaled.

28 According to “A Brief History of St. George’s Cathedral,” on the official web page of Anglican Archdiocese of Ottawa (available at:http://www.ottawa.anglican.ca/guvana/intro 01 .html. Christianity was first introduced to Trinidad by Moravian (and later on) Lutheran missionaries. However, their missionary activities did not produce the expected outcome. After vying among European colonial powers, including England, France, and Netherlands, Trinidad became British territory.

29 The term is used interchangeably used with “Anglican.” The denomination that developed from the Anglican Church in the Americas is generally called “Episcopalian.”

30 De Verteuil did not indicate the source of the census data.

31 For example, Governor Henry McLeod, who gave final approval for the Ecclesiastical Ordinance, was notorious for his firm attitude against the Catholic community. On the other hand, it is also alleged that he hesitated in actual enforcement. In addition, in a letter to the colonial secretary, Governor McLeod expressed his opinion that the relative unpopularity of the Anglican Church was not due to a lack of administrative support, but rather because of “its [Anglican’s] drab and cold service as compared with the counterpart of Catholic Church, which was homier and more fervent” (C.O.295/136, cited in Wood, 1986 [1968], p. 191).

32 The elite free colored planter resistance had been centered in the Naparima since 1816. In Port-of-Spain, from late 1825, the collective protest had been organized and led by Fr. Francis DeRidder, the first and only colored Roman Catholic priest at that time. For further description of the events, see Campbell, 1992, pp. 275-314.

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http://www.ottawa.anglican.ca/guvana/intro

33 Rev. Alexander Kennedy founded the mission of the Greyfiiars Church of Scotland in Trinidad around 1836.

34 Grayfriars o f Trinidad 1837-1987: Historical Sketch o f the Congregation o f Greyjriars Church o f Scotland, Port o f Spain, Trinidad, to mark the 150th Anniversary, 1987, pp. 10-11.

35 In addition, Rev. Kennedy had held assemblies for propagation at the Trinity Cathedral, the headquarters of Trinidad’s Anglican Church for a while after his arrival in 1836 (Rawlins, 1988).

36 In 1817, Governor Woodford stood firm against the Wesleyan Methodists by closing down their chapel in Port of Spain and imprisoning the newly appointed minister, while giving courteous protection to the Roman Catholic Church (Harricharan, 1983, p. 56). In the same year, 276 Wesleyan Methodists were counted, of which 267 were coloreds and blacks. In spite of harsh persecution by the colonial administration, the composition of the Wesleyan Methodist Church would remain much the same. In 1826, it had 210 members, of which 118 and 88 were free coloreds or blacks and slaves, respectively (Findlay & Holdsworth, n.d.).

37 Compiled from the Censuses o f the Colony o f Trinidad, 1891,1901,1911,1921,1931, and 1946.

38 Census o f the Colony o f Trinidad, 1891

39 Among other colonial administrators, Charles Williams Warner was perhaps the most powerful to appear in the nineteenth century. As Attorney-General, the highest legal post in the colony, Warner had urged “Anglicization” of Trinidad from the mid-1840s onwards. He had openly expressed his favor of making Trinidad as English as possible. His reform was centered on giving full ascendancy to English institutions, particularly in the field of education, and to the Anglican church (Wood 1986[1968]: pp. 210—211,217; Anthony, 1997, pp. 601-602)

40 J. M. Feheny (2001) has a table showing the number of “Roman Catholic Clergy by Nationality in Trinidad, 1821-1863” (p. 25).

41 Maraval is an early district of settlement about two miles to the northwest of the current capital city of Port-of-Spain. It was a scenic valley, but by the time of the island capitulation it had been transformed by French-Creole settlers who were granted lands soon after the issue of the Cedula de Pobulacion into a progressive district of estates. Even after it grew to be a populous and developed, the district remained isolated to the extent that the population spoke the original French-derived Creole Patois (Anthony, 1997, p. 368).

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42 Ruth Berins Collier and David Collier have developed path dependence as a theoretical framework from a simple description of historical trajectories by connecting production of an institutional path with the self-reproduction of that path through increasing returns (Collier & Collier 1991, p. 30; see also Schwartz, 2000, pp. 3-4).

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CHAPTER IV

CARNIVAL: CULTURES OF RESISTANCE

The clubhouse of the country’s oldest sports club was overflowing with people

impatiently waiting for the beginning of the most important time in Trinidad. The contest

for this year’s Carnival King and Queen in Grand Stand at Queen’s Park Savanna was

being broadcast live on television. In 1946, Princess Elizabeth declared opening of

Trinidad’s Carnival:

It is my wish and command that from now onward for the next 48 hours let the revelry and merriment prevail amongst you. Cast all your troubles to abandon and take on the mask of mirth and jollity and may not one sad moment mar your happiness and enjoyment of this, our Carnival.1

Since this West Indian colony was granted self-government in 1946, the formal

announcement of the beginning this annual event “in imitation o f’ the manner and words

of Princess Elizabeth has been the first and foremost duty of the Carnival Queen,

“Trinidad’s Queen” in other words, who is “crown[ed]. . . to rule in jollity and renown”

(Duke-Westfield, 1998, p. 30).

Those who gathered at the clubhouse, however, were wholly occupied not with

the announcement but with getting ready for the imminent Jour Ouvert.2 “Don’t come put

you on anything nice and clean.” Taking friend’s advice, I showed up wearing the most

well-worn and shabby T-shirts in my drawer. On arrival, however, I instantly realized

that I was still a long way from how I should have gotten ready. A number of large

containers and buckets in the yard were full of mud. “Where they come from?” To my

question, one of the members of the club replied, “They came from back hill. I spent a

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whole afternoon to gather them.” People were now determined to “dress down” by

slathering it all over their faces and bodies. Those who were still not satisfied with how

shabby and seedy they looked applied a final coat of multicolored paint on their already

slick skin. It seemed as if they were contesting with one another to dress down. Now I

realized why Jour Ouvert is alternatively called “mud” or “dirty” mas(querade).

When it turned two in the morning, we marched out in droves to the streets. A

steel(pan) band was walking at the head of our procession. The streets were already

crowded with countless groups of “mud (wo)men” and onlookers. Their half-naked

appearance (with mud and paint) made it difficult to distinguish the socioeconomic and

racial background of the revelers. Policemen on horses were looking down at us with

expressions of seemingly mixed feelings. They might have held contempt for those who

indulged in horseplay or felt bitter about not being able to participate in the unfolding

spree. Nothing seemed to prevent the masqueraders from doing what they pleased. They

were wining? singing, shouting, and making noise with car wheels, hubcaps, empty

bottles of beer and rum, cans, or whatever was in their hands. The throng of mud men

paraded all around the town until dawn.

While looking up at the sky’s first daylight, my Trinidadian friend exclaimed with

a painted and mudded face, “Ah, this is the best part [of Carnival]!” Literally, Jour

Ouvert “open[s] the day” for the mas that continues for the next two days until Ash

Wednesday (Hill, 1988[1972]). Those who also take part in the “pretty” or “clean mas,"

as it is called in contrast to the “dirty” or “mud mas” (Osugi, 1999), return to the streets

(after washing away the mud and paint) “dressed up” with colorful and fancy costumes.

In setting Jour Ouvert against the pretty mas, more than a few Trinidadians are prone to

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strongly favor this “subordinate” part of the Carnival. According to the one of the “old

boys” (an aged member of the club), the pretty mas has been “too commercialized.”

Although commercialism has always played an important part of Carnival from the

nineteenth century, it is also obvious that a recent steep rise in the cost of paying for the

pretty mas with a designated costume has made it difficult for many to enjoy the “major”

part of Carnival. Today, Jour Ouvert is widely conceived to be a place and time wherein

they can satisfy their nostalgia for something they believe is lost, often referred to by

such terms as “freedom,” “pleasure,” and “ecstasy.”

Nineteenth-century historians and writers assured us that the Jour Ouvert was an

occasion in which people lost themselves in rapture over “freedom” (Hills, 1988(1972];

Osugi, 1999). In the late 1840s, Charles Williams Day, an English traveler and writer,4

found “gangs of negroes,” who bore a close resemblance to the mud men of nowadays,

among the masqueraders:

I had seen the Carnival at Florence, at Syra in Greece, and in Rome; and was now about to witness a negro masquerade, which, from its squalid splendour, was not urtamusing, cheapness being the grand requisite. The maskers parade the streets in gangs of from ten to twenty, occasionally joining forces in procession. The primitives were negroes, as nearly naked as might be, bedaubed with a black varnish (cited in Pearse, 1988(1956], p.24; Anthony, 1997, p. 181).

When he came upon the scene in which one of the black masqueraders was “padlock[ed]”

with a chain pulled by another and “thrown down on the ground,” Day considered that

they reproduced their lot under slavery (Pearse, 1988(1956]: 24). Whether or not he was

acquainted with Day’s description of Trinidad Carnival, a social commentary by L. M.

Fraser, a former Port of Spain Police Chief, from the early 1880s, hints at the probable

connotations of the demeanors of the black masqueraders:

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In the days of slavery whenever fire broke out upon an Estate, the slaves on the surrounding properties were immediately mustered and marched to the spot, horns and shells were blown to collect them and the gangs were followed by the drivers cracking their whips and urging with cries and blows to their work. After Emancipation the negroes began to represent this scene as a kind of commemoration of the change in their condition (cited in Hill, 1988[1972], p. 23).

Fires broke out in sugar estates often. Some planters set fires to clear away the

pre-planting fields, and ridding the pre-harvesting fields of rats or other pests that caused

serious damage to the canes. However, buffeted by a gust of wind, the fires sometimes

spread over canes that were not ready for harvesting (Galloway, 1989, p. 91). The slaves

must have wished that the whole field burned to the ground because it would have freed

them, if only temporarily, from cruel working conditions. It is also possible that one of

them might have set the fire in the first place. However, the worse was yet to come. In the

case of fire, slaves were chained and forced to fight the fire with one hand, and to grind

the burned canes before they were spoiled. Their faces and bodies became soot-covered

from their work, which made them look as pitch-black as the “gangs of negroes” who

made their already black skin blacker by overlaying it with varnish or molasses (Hill,

1988[1972], p. 24).5 According to the nineteenth-century writers, the mud men of today’s

Jour Ouvert may be viewed as “descendants” of black masqueraders who used to be

engrossed in celebrating their won “freedom” with “pleasure” and “ecstasy” in the years

following Emancipation.6

This chapter demonstrates that subordinate groups of the working class found a

fertile ground for cultural mixing in the interstices of the social field, with particular

reference to Carnival, the annual pre-Lenten festivity in Trinidad. Carnival has

historically received much academic attention. However, in response to the quest for

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culture as means of sociopolitical redress, scholars have recently shifted their gaze from

the ordering and regulating “functions” of this particular form of ritual to its potentialities

to be a “critical moment of political change.” One theory holds that, once politicized,

carnivals become an occasion for the subordinate section of the populace to construct

either an ephemeral or enduring “world inside out” (Bakhtin, 1964), or “world turned

upside down” (Hills, 1972), through their signifying practices. Carnival in nineteenth-

century Trinidad has provided scholars with material to satisfy this argument.

Yet, this aspect—that the former slaves’ reification of a “culture of resistance”

forced open interstices between the iron “jaws of power”—has been emphasized at the

expense of other important dimensions of the development of Carnival in Trinidad.

Indubitably, Carnival in Trinidad has remained a “moment of political change.” In the

decades since emancipation, archival evidence demonstrates that it developed from a

festival of Catholic landowning population into a celebration predominantly of the

working-class masses of African origin. However, as described in the previous chapter, it

should be kept in mind that the decades following emancipation, which witnessed the

transformation of carnival, coincided with the intensification of intraclass/intercultural

“war of position” between the Anglican and Catholic communities. The transference of

the colony from Spain to England not only shifted the political apparatus, but also

hierarchized European cultures. In fact, the incoming colonizers worked to refashion

“European-ness” around the presumptive superiority of Anglican-English cultural

practices, objects, and values. In resistance to the debasement of their relative status, the

Catholic elites, particularly French Creoles, worked to defend Carnival even after it

intensified its character as a festive occasion for Afro-Trinidadian urbanites. In order to

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unravel public or hidden politics of Carnival, a close scrutiny of the sociohistorical

conjunctures in which it has developed is an indispensable point of departure (Stallybrass

& White 1986). Therefore, I will attempt to describe how Trinidad Carnival developed

under the “contradictory pressures” (Cowley, 1996, p. 12) from conflicting sociocultural

forces, and that accordingly it has produced unique consequences, which cannot be

reduced to only class struggle (Hill, 1988[1972], p. 5; Besson, 2001, p. 48).

From Negue Jar dins to Jamettes: The “Other Half”

On August 31, 1834, the first Emancipation Day, the governor of Trinidad asked

his aide, Colonel Hardy, for his opinion on whether or not martial law should be

proclaimed in Trinidad. Hardy instantly replied: “Martial Law! Against whom?” Having

recognized that the crowd in celebration all over the streets in Port of Spain consisted of

“only old men, women, and children, poor ignorant people,” he doubted if martial law

was necessary.7 According to the conventional definition, martial law is the suspension of

ordinary laws, rendered necessaiy under such circumstances as war and rebellion.8 At

different points in the history of British West Indies, it played a significant role in

displaying colonial power by silencing voices of freedom and equality. In Trinidad, as in

other English territories of the region, martial law was a public reminder that

insurmountable distinctions in power and status existed between sociocultural groups.

Such a boundary was first inscribed between those who were called to service, including

whites and free coloreds, and those who were not. The former were further divided into a

series of ranks. In Trinidad, where the colored community was the largest part of the free

population (cf. Table 3-2 in Chapter 3), colonial administration defined the militia as a

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rare chance to make the distinction in status between whites and free coloreds: the latter

were not given officer ranks (Campbell, 1992, p. 24-26) and were usually segregated in

their own units (Curtin, 1955, p. 47). Nonetheless, when the militia in Trinidad is viewed

from a different perspective, the question that Colonel Hardy posed becomes less self-

evident than it appeared to be. Note a portrait of the militia in pre-Emancipation Trinidad:

In the month of December, Martial Law was yearly proclaimed and during its continuance the officers and men of the Militia were obliged to appear in uniform, and all the routine of Garrison duty, drills, parades, guards,&c., were strictly carried out. The period of Martial Law coinciding as it did with Christmas Holidays, was in those days a time of great gaiety and festivity. The houses of the more wealthy inhabitants were thrown open, and there was a constant succession of dinners, balls and suppers. There was, however, one drawback attending this custom.... [DJuels had been as frequent in Trinidad as they used once to be in Ireland, and this is easily accounted for by the mixed nature of the population and the long years of exclusively military rule (Fraser, 1891, p. 53).

The following excerpt from a Proclamation in 1824 reconfirms that the initial purpose for

which martial law was founded in this island did not fit for a conventional understanding:

In the days of fathers, West Indians, in imitation of their countrymen, in Great Britain, indulged in the barbarous customs of those times and made the holy festival of Christmas one continuous scene of noisy mirth, revelry and inebriety. Martial law was then obviously necessary to control the white population and prevent a total relaxation of military discipline (Port o f Spain Gazette, Special Centenary Issue, December 29,1824, cited in Besson & Brereton, 1992, p. 121).

Christmas was a time of rejoicing not only for festival-oriented Roman Catholics

but also for Anglican-English residents. The system of militias was initially created in

order to “control [the] white population,” who indulged themselves in “mirth, revelry and

inebriety” during the Christmas season. In response, the militia was ritually called into

service every December 23 (and lifted January 8 every year) (Fraser, 1891, p. 53).

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However, this ceremonial enforcement of martial law during Christmas holiday produced

an unintended consequence. The Proclamation continues:

The times since then have changed. The noise, the mirth, the revelry, and the inebriety are now found chiefly amongst the slaves and lower classes.Martial Law has ceased to be necessary for the purposes for which it was originally instituted, but it has become necessary under the new and perilous circumstances in which we are now placed {Port o f Spain Gazette, Special Centenary Issue, December 29,1824, cited in Besson &Brereton, 1992, p. 121).

Due to its ritualistic nature, the martial law period was when intergroup boundaries were

openly transgressed while at the same time reinforced. Masters were called up for the

service; in a gesture of support, their families attended the militia’s parades. In the

meantime, empty plantation houses were frequently left open to the slaves. Similar to the

social events held by their masters, slaves had fun in a “constant succession of dinners,

balls, and suppers.” We can reconstruct from several available documents how Christmas

was celebrated on estates in pre-Emancipation Trinidad. An English plantation owner

portrayed a scene on a Christmas morning after he was “awoke by salutes of arms” in a

letter to his father in London in 1823:

[A]s soon as day broke all the [negro] children were brought to the house to say their catechism and sing psalms, which to me was very pleasing sight. . . . At nine o’clock while at breakfast, the whole of the negroes came dressed in the gayest clothes to wish us a Merry Christmas, and a piece o f beef and an allowance of flour and raisins and children. They then began dancing and the whole house is made free for them for three hours and they are enjoying themselves in the hall etc. (cited in De Verteuil,1998, pp. 103-104).

A “negro festival” repeated on the New Year’s Day:

[DJancing is again the principal order and I have been three hours engaged in fitting the whole of the men with two suits of clothes each viz. a hat, a woolen cap, a woolen shirts, linen shirts, blue cloth jacket lined with flannel, blue trousers and a pair of duck trousers, the Manager’s wife

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supplying the women and children with hats, handkerchiefs, two shirts, blue wrapper and blue petticoat, with a linen gown, the boys suppliedaccording to their ages With this supply they all seemed mostdelighted but I have been more delighted than they can imagine to see the whole of them go in procession, of their own accord, to the graves of their departed Masters and Mistresses and strew flowers over their graves and say their prayers for the response of their souls, this they also did over the grave of our poor lamented friend R. B., which is close to the others. This shows that their hearts are as capable of fine feelings as our own (cited in De Verteuil, 2000, p. 104).

From another description of Christmas day, it can be inferred how its celebration was

performed in reversed and normally prohibited ways. Another English planter described

what she witnessed at a party to which she was asked in an invitation from slaves written

“in the very same way as if one lady wrote to another” (Carmichael, 1833, vol. I, p. 285):

We had a cold dinner at three o’clock, that our negroes might have the sole use of our kitchen and oven; which were soon filled with good things—hot and cold roast fowls, pork roasted and soused, and plenty of pies, both of meat and fruit; cakes. . . and fruit in every variety. Mr. C.[the owner of this estate] gave them some wine and porter; besides which, they had bought some. I went about nine o’clock, and found them all well dressed. The prevailing costume was think muslin, and some had coloured slips on. Shoes were not universal; but many had handsome necklaces and ear-rings. Their head handkerchiefs were gracefully put on; and the whole was managed with an attention to politeness and decorum, that was certainly very creditable. The music consisted of four female singers, one drum, and three women with [calabashes] hollowed out, so that a few stones may be put in them; this they flourish up and down, and rattle in the same way as a [tambourine]. There was no drinking or fighting; they supped very late, and kept it up until near sun-rise; and danced the next night, as long, and as merrily elsewhere (pp. 288-289).

While slaves were preparing variety of dishes in the master’s kitchen, a “cold

dinner” was served to planters and their guests. The slaves, who were nicely dressed and

elegantly ornamented, had fun in dancing to music until dawn in the manner that was

“very credible.” Similarly in Jamaica, slaves were not only allowed but also “encouraged

to celebrate. . . Negro festival.” According to Philip Curtin (1955), during the Christmas

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holiday in Jamaica, “[plantation discipline relaxed throughout the island, and slaves

were allowed to visit from one estate to another” (pp. 26-27). However, contrary to

Jamaica, where the relaxation of plantation discipline necessitated the call of the militia

(p. 27), in Trinidad, a ceremonial enforcement of martial law originally designed to

prevent the elite class from being immoral had conversely provided a limited but

enriched stage of festive inversion.

The reversal was not a process wherein planters unilaterally “allowed” their

slaves to behave in normally prohibited ways. In the following excerpt from a column

from a local newspaper, a retired French-Creole landowner describes a scene of elites’

merrymaking during the month-long Carnival season in pre-Emancipation Trinidad:

At the time carnival flourished, the elite of society was masked or disguised. The favorite costume of the ladies was the graceful and costly “mulatress[sic]” of the period, while gentlemen adopted that of the garden Negro, in Creole, negue jardin, or black field slave. At carnival time our mothers and grandmothers have even danced the belair to the African drum whose sounds did not offend their dignity ears, and our fathers and grandfathers danced the bamboula, the ghouba, and the calinda...[emphasis in original] (cited in Hill, 1988[1972], p. 11).

Slaves celebrated Christmas in imitation of the master’s style, whereas planters, by way

of entertainment, found pleasure in doing African-origin dances to the beat of African

drums. In so doing, they did not play a Negro in a general sense nor even a house negro

(i.e., domestic slave, who usually had closer and more frequent daily contact with them).

Instead, landowners disguised themselves as a negue jardin (field slave), who was from

the furthest socioeconomic body, with a “costly” costume (Osugi, 1999, pp. 41—42).

Nineteenth-century Trinidad was a plantation society characterized by strict

regimentation of labor, which necessarily limited and skewed the quotidian expressions

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of signifying practices. Yet, labor regimentation, a decisive factor of the course and

consequence of cultural mixing, was not actualized universally in the same conformation

and with the same intensity. Despite the planters’ constant efforts to make it conform to

the “ideal type,” the administration of laborers was always within the limitations imposed

by particular circumstances, including types of crops cultivated, economic efficiency, and

the landowners’ political power. There was always much more “latitude” for the slaves to

manipulate than intended by the aimed administration of labor force (Trouillot, 2002, pp.

195-196,200-201).

Before the rapid expansion of the landholding of English nationals from the 1830s

on, French Creoles still controlled the major portion of the plantations. Unlike English

settlers, what brought French Creoles to Trinidad was not their pursuit of economic

interests (Wood, 1986[1968], p. 24). The majority of French-speaking elites, who poured

into the island tempted by the Cedula of 1873, were Emigres, who had few options

regarding their destinations. Gerard Besson (1992, p. 52) cites a description of French

Creole elites in those days:

In fact the French inhabitants of the islands considered themselves as brothers, jointly responsible to each other and hardly coming to care for a nationality which they would probably never employ for long. Also they were more attached to the islands where they had established themselves, to the islands in which they were united by memories and interest, than to a mother country which they had left with no thought of returning.

To the contrary, English planters always had “home” to return to. This difference

in circumstances resulted in the emergence and maintenance of distinct life-styles

between these landowning classes. Anthony Trollope’s travelogue (1968[1859j)

compared between French and English planters:

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[A]n Englishman differs greatly from a Frenchman. Though our English, as a rule, are much more given to colonize than they are; though we [English] spread ourselves over the face of the globe, while they have established comparatively but few settlements in the outer world; nevertheless, when we leave our country, we almost always do so with some idea, be it ever so vague, that we shall return to it again, and again make it our home. But the Frenchman divests himself of any such idea. He also loves France, or at any rate loves Paris; but his object is to cany his Paris with him; to make a Paris for himself, whether it be in a sugar island among the Antilles, or in a trading town upon the Levant. . . the Frenchman is the wiser man. He never looks behind him with regret. He does his best to make his new house comfortable. The spot on which he fixes is his home, and so he calls it, and so regards it. But with an Englishman in the West Indies—even with an English Creole—England is always his home (p. 99).

Trollope’s praise for the extent to which “Frenchmen” had adapted to any

circumstance, i.e., “creolized,” is highlighted in his book that is full of sarcastic and

libelous statements about them. However, what Trollope does not describe here is how

troublesome it was for a French Creole to “make Paris for himself’ in this remote “island

among the Antilles,” where the availability of material and symbolic resources for that

project was limited. As a result, the emergent “French-ness” was a new “imagined”

(re)construction, not direct interpretation, of French cultural origins, inclusive of

“other’s” elements available for appropriation and adaptation. Moreover, archival

evidence shows that the majority of pre-Emancipation male French settlers were

bachelors.9 This caused a serious shortage of women within their community, so that the

desire of French-Creole male for people of color as a sexual partner had constantly run

strong, and in some cases, they actually cohabitated with colored or Amerindian women

(De Verteuil, 1987, p. 12). In Trinidad under Spanish rule, it became the fashion among

French-speaking planters to have a colored mistress. A group of colored ladies was asked

to fancy-dress balls, where young French-Creole men chose a mistress from among them

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(Besson, 1992, p. 57). We have also learned from historians’ documentations that calypso

(kaiso),10 which is a form of expression indispensable to contemporary Carnival in

Trinidad, developed as a divertissement for their own festivals from the ability of black

slaves to compose and sing extempore under the encouragement and auspices of French-

Creole slaveholders (Cowley, 1996, p. 15).

The ritualistic festival inversion was not an exclusive phenomenon, but it was

more common among French-Creole landowners and slaveholders. The above-quoted

accounts of Christmas-day celebrations coincidentally came from the same plantation

district, La Reconnaissance Estate (more or less consistent with the area currently called

Diego Martin), though at different times in the early nineteenth century. The English

planter, who provided the first account, was “determined to keep. . . and [actually]

succeeded [the described custom of slave’s celebration of Christmas],” in light of the

“happiest effect resulting from it” when he purchased the plantation from the former

French-Creole owner (cited in De Verteuil, 2000, p. 104). The owner of the estate, who

invited Mrs. Carmichael to the Christmas party, “fled [from Haiti] with his family to save

his life and came to Trinidad. The whole of his negroes voluntarily followed him; and his

people upon his estate.... He soon erected a habitation for himself and family and houses

for his negroes.... He laid out the cocoa land in the form of a general officer with his

epaulettes” (cited in De Verteuil, 2000, pp. 102-103).

However, the English conquest of the island marked a watershed. The change of

the colony into a Protestant-English domain was not merely a change of political

apparatus. It also meant a shift in the social definition of “European-ness” or “White

ness.” Under Protestant-English rule, whiteness now became a right or attribute that

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should be claimed or protected deliberately, from which French Creoles could not

automatically benefit. French Creoles were colonizers who were colonized. This shift in

status pressured them into retaining their race and culture as independent of “other’s”

elements as much as possible. First, their strong sexual desire toward, and actual sexual

unions with, racial others was carefully concealed behind their obstinate refusal of

anyone who was actually or assumed to be “tainted by Negro blood” into their family

circle (Brereton, 1981, p. 118). St. Hilarie Beggorat,11 a French-Creole slave holder who

was well-known for his active patronage to early calypsonians, was also notorious for his

adamant effort to replace the existing Spanish slave code, which was considered “far

more human than any one known to the British colonies” (Joseph, 1970[1838], p. 216),

with the one similar to the Code Noir,12 which was famous for its thoroughness

(Anthony, 1997, pp. 49-50; Anthony, 2001, p. 78). For French Creoles, more than for

English settlers, their interlocked, though separate and hierarchical, relations with low-

others must have been carefully restricted in the domestic sphere, preventing them from

being overt. This caused French-Creole landowners to form and maintain their estates as

a sociocultural system that was closed to and independent of the rest of the society. To

cite a reconstruction:

The stranger, however thoroughly he made the tour, would have met only the polished charm of his well mannered host and hostess. He would hardly ever have penetrated the privacy of the family; the inner sanctuary was reserved for the cousinage, the brothers, the sisters, the children—for above all, the French Creole was private; to survive they had long ago created a world within a world, closely guarded by the tenets of their religion and the retention of the French language and in her mother’s household not even the servants were allowed upstairs after lunch. A most exclusive entity, the French Creole family (Besson & Brereton, 1992, p.59).

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In the decades after Emancipation, freed African slaves streamed into urban

centers. As mentioned earlier, this emigration was followed by the emergence of an

extensive slum in Port-of-Spain. Concurrently, however, a large number of French-

Creole landowners, both white and colored, migrated into quarters of Port-of-Spain,

abandoning their estates and turning to such professions as medicine, law, and civil

engineering (Brereton, 1998). The difference in living conditions between them was

evident. By the early 1860s, the area had assumed the characteristics as “an unsanitary

and crowded slum” (Goodenough, 1976, p. 120). In 1881, the year of “Canboulay Riot,”

the Chronicle, a local newspaper, described it as a “dismal and struggling neighborhood”

(cited in Goodenough, 1976, p. 120).13 Nevertheless, the quarters of jamettes, composed

mainly of former slaves, known as “barrack-yards,” and of French-speaking upper- and

middle-class residents, called “jacket-men”, were far from isolated to one another. A

wide ditch, popularly known as the “Dry River,” physically isolated barrack-yard

communities, but “[sjeven bridges established] a communication... with the neighboring

districts” (De Verteuil, 1884, p. 271).14 Andrew Pearse (1988[1956], p. 39) reminds us:

Its members [the inhabitants of a barrack-yard] were not only constantly confronted with the display of cultural standards of the higher social ranks, and thus aware of their distance from them, but paradoxically closely associated with them, especially through the women who were servants and often the predominant influence in the lives of the children. On the other hand, middle-class men would seek liaisons with the women of— and on the fringes of—the jamette world and some of them became patron of yard bands and even stickmen themselves, or “jacket-men” as they were called on account of their superior class which was suitably marked in their dress.

An apt illustration, albeit fictitious one, comes from C. L. R. James’s 1929

novelette, Triumph.15 James described how the socioeconomic life of a barrack-yard was

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busy with daily traffic of human and symbolic capitals with more affluent neighbors.

Moreover, his account notes that barrack-yard life was marked by material, psychological,

and sexual interdependence, not unilateral subordination of those in the barrack-yard to

those outside of it. The interaction with the “other half’—how the term ofjamette was

occasionally defined (Hills, 1988[1972])16—continued providing both sides with

materials workable for ritualistic symbolic inversion and “prototypes” to mimic. The

settlement in a new milieu, from an estate to a barrack-yard, was followed by the

adaptation of new prototypes for imitation, which were constantly imported from

hyphenated others. The matrix of cultural mixing changed from plantations to urban

quarters; Africans turned from negue jardins (field negroes) into jamettes (lower

working-class folks). These entailed the Carnival conversion of the “originals” to imitate

from landowners and slave drivers to politicians, policemen, entrepreneurs, and

highbrows, who formed the “other half’ of their lives:

[Pjracticing for the Carnival, rival singers, Willie, Jean, and Freddie, porter, wharf-man, or loafer in ordinary life, were for that reason ennobled by some such striking sobriquet as The Duke of Normandy or the Lord Invincible, and carried with dignity homage such as young aspirants to literature had paid to Mr. Kipling or Mr. Shaw (James, 1929, cited in Grimshaw, 1992, p. 29).17

The indeterminate and equivocal “ambivalence,” unearthed through Bhabha’s

psychoanalytic approach, also characterized the identification of colonial subjects in

Trinidad. For Bhabha, colonial discourse did not regiment the colonizer and colonized

into isolated entities, but it did place them in parallel ambivalent paranoiac

identifications—they strongly desired what they feared and tried to distance it. As

mentioned in the Introduction, however, Bhabha has transformed such “intimate

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interstices,” which developed beneath actors’ consciousness in the interaction between

“hyphenated”—connected as separate—colonial subjects into a moment of challenge and

resistance of a dominant cultural leadership. He expects this slippage, or “hybrid

displacing space,” to eventually deprive “the imposed imperialist culture, not only of the

authority that it has for so long imposed politically, often through violence, but even of

its own claims to authenticity” (Bhabha, 1994[1991], p. 63).

Bhabha’s psychoanalyses deconstructs an overtotalizing view of colonial

representation based on the assumption that colonial discourse was an instrumental

construction of normative principles with which the colonizers thoroughly dominating the

colonized (Young, 1995, p. 161). However, the application of a psychoanalytic approach

ends up essentializing the relationship between colonial subjects without reference to the

sociohistorical particulars of the society (Pickering, 2001, p. 171). In Victorian Trinidad,

French-Creole elites’ unsecured status as a colonized colonizer had thrust and kept them,

more than any other European community, into the “ambivalence of paranoiac

identification,” where they were always drawn by the antithetic urges of desire and

repulsion. This decisively conditioned the course of the development and resulting

character of Trinidad’s Carnival.

“Resistance” Polymorphio-Cultures of Resistance

In pre-Emancipation Trinidad, Carnival was not a spatial and temporal domain

“publicly” open to people of color. The custom of feasting Shrovetide, which is

considered the prototype of today’s Carnival, was first introduced by Spaniards and was

later enriched with various forms of divertissements brought by French-speaking settlers

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(Cowley, 1996, p. 23). For many years, Catholic families of the planter class visited each

other (for lunches and dinners) between Christmas and Ash Wednesday. They also found

delight in music in concerts and balls late into the night. Other days, they took excursions

to the river for fishing or to the mountains for hunting, taking plenty of food and drink

(Borde, 1982 [1883]). When Ash Wednesday approached, French-speaking whites went

on procession with a line of decorated lorries and carriages that were “accompanied by

musicians playing such instruments as the violin, guitar, quarto, bandol, mandolin and

chac-chac or maracas” (Carr, 1929, cited in Besson & Brereton, 1992).18 Trinidadian

Carnival was a Catholic festivity of the dominant class with European origins.

Yet, this street procession started taking on a different appearance in the late

1830s. By the mid-1840s, lower-class blacks and coloreds thronged to public streets

while masked and, at times, holding flaming torches, along with middle- and upper-class

masqueraders. As the century advanced, the “gangs of negroes” became more prominent

and finally dominated the parade, ousting white nobles from the leading roles. Coarse

“canoes on wheels” (Wood, 1986[1968], p. 247) pushed adorned carriages out of the

streets; tunes of violins, guitars, quartos, and the like were drowned out by “drumming on

the abominably monotonous tum-tum” and “singing. . . accompanied by the

simultaneous clapping of the hands” (Day, 1852, cited in Cowley, 1996, p. 47). The

second half of the nineteenth century was marked by a sharp increase of the population in

Port of Spain, due to the arrival of former slaves seeking domestic jobs, and the influx of

new settlers from neighboring British islands. The population in Port of Spain and its

adjacent wards, which was 18,980 in 1861, jumped to 23,561 in the succeeding decade,

and reached 42,682, or 28% of island’s total population, by early 1880s (Table 4-1)

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(Brereton, 1979, p. 114; Liverpool, 2000, p. 253-4; Besson, 2001, p. 67). This explosive

population growth resulted in the emergence of a large slum in the eastern outskirts of the

capital city. Trinidadian Carnival had turned by degrees into a celebration of the lower-

class urban populace of African origin—Jamettes, a word of French-Creole patois for

those who lived outside the “diameter” of a decent, respectable society (Wood,

1986[1968], p. 245-246). In parallel, street battles became repeated scenes in “Janette

Carnival” every year up to the late 1880s. Once the island plunged into the Carnival

atmosphere, the trained “stickfighters,” who represented different Carnival bands, started

wandering the streets during the night, picking fights with each other. These battles

occasionally developed into violent clashes between jamettes and the police who tried to

remove them from the streets. The so-called “Canboulay Riot,” which took place during

the Carnival of 1881, actually resulted in bloodshed (Wood, 1986[1968], p. 247).

1881 1891Male Female Total Male Female Total

Borough of Port of Spain 15,324 16,534 31,858 15,457 18,580 34,037

St. Ann’s Ward Union

St. Ann’s Ward 467 405 872 510 548 1058

Laventille Ward 2,201 2,241 4,442 4,247 4,933 9,180

Cimaronero Ward 622 427 1,049 652 489 1,141

Aricagua Ward 1,315 955 2,270 1,153 992 2,145

Santa Cruz Ward 1,166 1,025 2,191 1,431 1,205 2,636

Total 5,771 5,053 10,824 7,993 8,167 16,160

Total Whole Island 83,716 69,412 153,128 108,420 91,608 200.028"PT™Table 4-1: Population in Port of Spain and its Suburbia in the late nineteenth century

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Nonetheless, it is worth noting that there was a transition period in this shift in the

Carnival formation. The following excerpt from a local newspaper describes what a

Carnival was like in this transition period:

The streets are thronged by parties and individuals in every variety of national and fanciful costume, and in every possible contortion and expression of ‘the human face divine.’ Some are gay and noble—some are as ignoble as rags and uncouth habiliments can make them . . . . Now we observe the Swiss peasant, in holiday trim, accompanied by his fair Dulcima—now companies of Spanish, Italians, and Brazilians glide along in varied steps and graceful dance . . . . But what see we now?—goblins and ghosts, friends, beasts and frightful birds—wild men—wild Indians and wilder Africans. Pandemonium and the savage wilds of our mundane orb are pouring forth their terrific occupants. It would seem as though the folly and madness and fitful vagaries of the year had been accumulated in science and solitude to burst forth their exuberant measures and concentrated force in the fantastic revels of the Carnival (Trinidad Standard, February 5, 1845, cited in Wood, 1986[1968], p. 244).

A series of bodies representing low-others, such as a “goblin,” “ghost,” and

“beast,” formed a masquerade along inseparably with respective “friends.” In the

Carnival of 1847, a correspondent from another local paper observed that white persons

paraded wearing black masks at the side of black masqueraders with “white flesh-colored

masks” who were “droll in the extreme” (cited in Cowley, 1996, p. 32). These indicate

that the interactive festival inversion, which had been carefully concealed, was now

transposed to the public sphere. This development would never have occurred without

another critical impetus.

When the disguised and masked lower-class blacks crowded the streets along with

other sociocultural groups, there was still tolerance, or at least indifference, on the part of

the English community. In the above-cited article from the English-language newspaper,

the reporter could not help applauding their “exuberant measures and concentrated force

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in the fantastic revels,” although shuddering at the sight of the Carnival parade filled with

“savage wilds.” The same year, another local newspaper carried a well-disposed

comment, praising its diversity just like the culturally relativistic media of today: “never

within our memory has the conduct of all classes of the people been so correct—so free

from any sort of offensive demeanour or license, as during the present Carnival” (cited in

Cowley, 1996, p. 35).

The contempt of the Anglican-English community was traditionally directed less

to people of color than to French Creoles, who had been mingling with them. In 1826, in

a letter to his friend in London, an English administrator showed his displeasure at

Catholics who indulged in the feasts with lower-class folks:

I wish. . . you had been here in the time of the Carnival; you have no idea of the gaiety of the place in that season. Ovid’s Metamorphoses were nothing compared to the changes that took place in the persons of the Catholics of Trinidad. High and low, rich and poor, learned and unlearned, all found masking suits for the Carnival. A party of ladies, having converted themselves into a party of brigands, assailed me in my quarters and nearly frightened me out of my wits (cited in Pearse, 1988[1956], p.15).

What struck this English administrator with fear was a “party of ladies” who

became reduced, though temporarily, to “brigands.” The demeanor of black

masqueraders was not a central concern to English community, though they were far

from acceptable. For Protestants, the blame was directed at the Roman Catholic Church

that had failed in “remedying [such] evils produced by slavery” (Underhill, 1970[1859]),

and French Creoles, the major patron, who now came to be absorbed in the gaiety with

lowly others “in public.” Protestant residents always perceived shadows of Roman

Catholic Church and French Creoles behind the masks on the faces of, in the melodies

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played by, and behind the trenchant satire expressed by black masqueraders, who

repeated follies day after day. Donald Wood wrote: “Carnival was both ‘foreign’ and

‘Roman Catholicism’” (1986[1968], p. 244). Put differently, what enabled Protestants to

make the self-indulgent and licentious manners of black masqueraders in a “foreign”

festivity barely understandable and thus criticizable was Roman Catholicism and French

Creoles, which were assumed to have always lurked behind. For example, it can be

inferred from his lengthy description of their ritual expression that Rev. Charles Day was

fascinated to some extent with the creative signifying practices of “primitive” black

masqueraders, though they terrified him (Cowley, 1996, p. 47). On the other hand, Day

showed no hesitation in the least when he disparaged elsewhere the Catholic priests who

“encourage[d]. . . pandemonium [in Carnival]. . . under the guise of religion [in order to]

keep up their influence over their flock” (Day, 1847, cited in Cowley, 1996, pp. 40-41).

From the early stages of British rule, several measures had been taken in order to

control this Catholic-origin “pandemonium.” However, it was not merely an accident that

the colonial authorities started taking more coercive actions towards Carnival in the mid-

1840s, when the Ecclesiastical Ordinance worsened the relationship between Anglican

and Catholic communities. “Notices” or “Proclamations” prohibiting the “masking in the

open streets” (Port o f Spain Gazette, Februaiy 17,1846, cited in Cowley, 1996, pp. 36-

37) that once were issued occasionally became routine during Carnival every year. In

1849, the Ordinances were issued thereby allowing the colonial administration to use

police force whenever necessary, and restricting the masquerade, which previously lasted

for weeks, to merely the two days preceding Ash Wednesday (Cowley, 1996, p. 49;

Wood, 1986[1968], p. 245). As the authorities repeatedly emphasized, though in different

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phrases, the objectives of these regulations were to remove threats and quell fear

regarding public safety. Indeed, nowhere in any of the Notices, Proclamations, and

Ordinances announcing new repressive regulations on Carnival was a direct reference

made to Catholic institutions or French Creoles. Instead, they were filled with words of

censure against Jamettes.

By the late 1850s, Trinidadian Carnival had developed not as French Creoles had

planned, though they professed themselves to be the original architects of the festival.

French-speaking whites and coloreds disappeared from the street procession. The

extravagance of Carnival had reached an extent to which the influence of Catholic priests

became insufficient to restrict it (Wood, 1986[1968], p. 246). The black masqueraders,

who meandered with wooden sticks and the like during a Carnival while making piercing

noises and screams, must have been a public nuisance equally to both the Catholic and

French-speaking community. The French-Creole citizens became a laughingstock or a

target of mockery for jamettes as often as their English counterparts. In addition, during

the same period, the composition of the jamette underwent a dramatic change, which

made it a culturally and religiously distant entity from French Creoles. Census data shows

that a large portion of the lower-class urban populace were neither bom in Trinidad nor

affiliated to Roman Catholicism. The chief cause of the increase in the population in Port

of Spain was the influx of immigrants from nearby British West Indian islands, a large

portion of whom were not Catholics but Anglicans (Tables 4-2 ,4-3) (see also Besson,

2001, p. 67; Liverpool, 2001, pp. 253-254).

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1851-61 1861-71 1871-81 % 1881-91 %Borough of Port of Spain 596 1124 4830 97.63 788 8.06

St. Ann’s Ward Union:St. Ann’s Ward -41 18 57 33Laventille Ward 7 98 970 2062Cimaronero Ward -15 -5 -11 25Aricagua Ward -7 -7 101 58Santa Cruz Ward 15 1 28 81Total -41 105 1145 168.88 2259 123.92Total Whole Island 916 1991 10340 75.44 9133 37.98Table 4—2: Increase of Number of British West Indian Nationals in the Greater Port of- . ____ ________.->c\Spain: 1851-189120

Roman Catholics Church of EnglandMale Female Male Female

Borough of Port of Spain 6,768 9,604 5,966 7,014

St. Ann’s Ward Union:St. Ann’s Ward 354 369 110 137Laventille Ward 1,466 1,821 1,999 2,321Cimaronero Ward 199 241 62 35Aricagua Ward 369 454 243 195Santa Cruz Ward 1,073 986 88 62Total 3,461 3,871 2,502 2,750

Total Whole Island 36,101 37,489 24,882 22,21373,590 47,095

Table 4-3: Religious Affiliation of the Population in the Greater Port of Spain in 1891

Nevertheless, the most organized opposition to the coercive actions of the colonial

administration toward Carnival was from upper- and middle-class French-Creole

communities (Cowley, 1996, p. 56). During the Carnival of 1858, there was a clash

between police and masqueraders, predominantly the residents of the area called “French

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Shore.” Governor Robert William Keate sent troops to support the police force (Wood,

1986[1968], p. 245). The French-Creole community quickly condemned this oppressive

behavior, which resulted in many arrests and casualties among the masqueraders. A local

paper, run by French-speaking coloreds, denounced Governor Keate’s administration for

its action:

It is sought, say the advocates of this iniquitous and silly proceeding, to make this Colony English in its manners, habits and customs. The absurdity of this assertion appears upon its face, and requires no keenness of perception to discover it. As well might our ruler desire to make this community English in habits of thought, nay in language, or better still in religion. (Trinidad Sentinel, February 25,1858, cited in Cowley, 1996, pp.54-55)

Moreover, in 1861, during the increasing tension between colonial authorities and

working-class blacks concerning Carnival, the same paper championed the “prescriptive

right to mask” in its resistance to colonial administration’s prohibition of masking in

public streets, while also being apprehensive about the escalation of violence on the side

of jamette bands (cited in Cowley, 1996, p. 57; emphasis added).

By the mid-nineteenth century, the middle-class colored community, like the

European white upper-class, had subdivided along cultural lines. Although the traditional

French-speaking and Roman Catholic element still formed the greater part of the island’s

colored population, the number of the “English-Negro mixture” (Powrie, 1988[1956])

was rapidly increasing through migration and miscegenation. The 1850s and 1860s

corresponded with the acceleration of Anglican-English-centered cultural

homogenization with ecclesiastical and educational reforms, which had caused

differentiation in the comparative group worth between these culturally distinct colored

sections, which were rated equal in the matter of mixed parentage. This was reflected in

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their distinct attitudes toward this annual festival between French-speaking and English-

speaking colored sections. In opposition to the English-speaking counterpart, who openly

considered Carnival to be grotesque paganism (Pearse, 1988[1956]; Powrie, 1988[1956]),

the further obscuration of their group status caused French-speaking coloreds to publicly

criticize the colonial administration’s repressive measures toward jamettes and their

Carnival formation. While there was not a constantly close and favorable relationship

between French-speaking white and colored communities, Anglicization was a serious

menace to group worth for both French-Creole whites and French-speaking coloreds. The

above-quoted comment from the colored middle-class community is in almost perfect

agreement with the incisive criticism of De Verteuil, the most resonant voice of the

Catholic French-Creole elites, upon the on-going Anglicization in the volume published

in the same year. For the purpose of comparison, let me cite it again:

They [Colonial authorities] contend that the habits and feelings of the inhabitants must be purely British, and consider it as a taint in those who, though not the less loyal to their adopted government, do not exhibit them; thus making no allowance for the inborn predilections of ancestry, or of fatherland, and acting in a manner to inspire the people with an aversion to those very habits, and an alienation from those feelings (De Verteuil,1858, pp. 174-175; emphasis in original).

It can be surmised that the conceived coerciveness of Anglicization was embodied

in attitudes and behaviors of Governor Keate, among other colonial authorities, most

distinctly for upper-class elites. In the revised edition of the volume that came out in 1884,

De Verteuil wrote:

I regret to say that [Governor Keate] allowed himself to be guided by coterie [sic.] influences—a most dangerous mistake in a mixed community like [Trinidad]. Governors should always keep free from such influence, lest they should, by acting partially create antagonism (De Verteuil, 1884, p. 401).

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Though it had already changed into a ritual expression beyond colonial elite’s control, the

elimination of Carnival had to be stopped to prevent the further decline of their symbolic

power. Symbolic politics for group status motivated French Creoles, both white and

colored, to protect Carnival as their own tradition, and the Archbishop of Port-of-Spain,

willy-nilly, to continue observing his custom of driving through for inspection of the

festival until the end of the 1860s (Wood, 1986[1968], p. 247), It is critical, though often

overlooked or underestimated, that Carnival in nineteenth-century Trinidad was an active

moment of challenge and resistance available not just to the lower-class masses, but also

for Catholic, particularly French-speaking, elites and middle-class.

The Meaning of Carnival: A Culture out of Cultures of Resistance

The development of Carnival in Trinidad is beyond the explanatory power of

structural approaches, whether consensus- or conflict-oriented, to ritual, ceremonial and

festive expressions. For structural functionalists, the first and foremost concern is what a

given ritual does for society at large. With research interests that he shared with James

Frazer (1996[1898]) and Emile Durkheim (2000[1912]), Max Gluckman examined the

function of ritual. In a certain form of ritual, he wrote, people are “allow[ed] to behave in

normally prohibited ways, [and] to [give] expression, in a reversed form, to the normal

rightness of a particular kind of social order” (Gluckman, 1982[1956], p. 116). This ritual

enactment of conflict consequently maintains and revitalizes the established social order

by providing a sort of stage where people enact “rebellion” or “resistance.” Gluckman

called a ritual that fulfills this socially integrative function a “ritual of rebellion.”

Conflict-oriented Marxist thinkers (for example, Guha, 1984) basically agree with this

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view, but they reject structural-functionalists’ legitimatization of it. As a provider of a

catharsis, which is temporal but regularly repeated, in which the subordinate groups are

allowed to express latent discontent or antagonism within authorized pre-set rules, rituals

help the powerful few avoid actual threats to their domination. For structural approaches,

whether it emphasizes a “positive” or “negative” role of rituals, what appears to be

conflict due to independent defiant action is actually “built in[to]” an established system

of social order (Gluckman, 1982[1956], pp. 109-136).

In the anthropological tradition, many contemporary writers have developed

“modernist hybrid theories” and made heuristic gains on various frontiers (Werbner, 1997,

p. 2). For one, Victor Turner’s (1982[1967]) exploration of anti-structural properties of

“liminality” allowed subsequent generations to notice that hybrid symbolic beings may

be capable of challenging the unquestioned of a local cultural order. “Liminality,” neither

within nor without society, “breaks. . . the cake of custom and enfranchises

speculation. . . a certain freedom to juggle with the factors of existence” (p. 103).

However, in poststructuralist turn, for all their outstanding contributions, modernist

hybrid theories came under criticism that they could reduce signifying practices and ritual

expressions to a “scripted” and thus “purposive” strand of a holistic structure of social

order. According to the critics, the focus on structure, either consensus- or conflict-

oriented, ends up as an “untenable essentialism” due to their equal negligence of social

and historical contexts (Scott, 1990, p. 178). James Scott, such a critic, writes:

[a] complex social event such as Carnival cannot be said to be simply this or that as if it had a given, genetically programmed, function. It makes far greater sense to see Carnival as the ritual site of various forms of social conflict and symbolic manipulation, none of which can be said, prima facie, to prevail. Carnival, then, may be expected to vary with culture and

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historic circumstances and is likely to be serving many functions for its participants (p. 178).

Despite this apt statement, however, his call for a more refined look on

sociohistorical particulars remains unheeded throughout Scott’s own argument, and

accordingly, he ends up providing another “untenable essentialism.” Like Bhabha, Scott

has drawn from Mikhail Bakhtin in formulating his “postmodern” hybrid theory of

Carnival. In Rabelais and His World (1968), Bakhtin wrote, “Carnival celebrates

temporary liberation from the prevailing truth of the established order; it marks the

suspension of all hierarchical rank, privileges, norms and prohibitions” (also cited in

Stallybrass & White, 1986). The liberation is neither scripted nor intentional. The

signifying practices of masqueraders are autonomous of “all that is finished and polished,

to all pomposity, to every ever-made solution in the sphere of thought and world outlook”

(Bakhtin, 1968, p. 3, cited in Stallybrass & White, 1986). Their speeches and actions,

therefore, liberate the population of Carnival from the tension of ordinary lives

completely, though temporarily. Similar to Bhabha, Scott translates Carnival, a virtual

conflation of otherwise distinct societal categories, into a “free zone” where the

unprivileged elaborate and hone their “art of resistance.” Comparable to Bhabha’s “Third

Space,” the powerless “plans” the strategic reversal of, and actually challenges, a

dominant cultural discourse with those acquired “undominated” narratives and deeds in

and from a “free zone” (Scott, 1990, pp. 172-182; emphasis in original).

Trinidadian Carnival is not necessarily deviant from this generalization. Certainly,

since it was first introduced, this festival has been the most extensive showcase of various

forms of social conflict and symbolic manipulation in Trinidad. In Scott’s phrasing, “it is

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virtually impossible to dissociate camivalesque from politics” (p. 181). Negue jar dim ’

and jamettes ’ agencies were obviously beyond a “designated” or “pre-set” channel of

ritual expression and thus constituted a powerful force of social transformation, which

was somewhat independent of structural determinism. It is difficult to think of their

autonomy in free zones, such as Christmas, New Year’s Day, and Carnival celebrations,

as being exercised toward “aligning] with French sentiment” (Cowley, 1996, p. 32).

Instead, in the face of repressive colonial authorities, jamettes must have adamantly

defended the limited spaces and times in which they could drown in revelry their sorrows

and distress from daily lives. The creative faculty of both negue jardim and jamettes in

their disguising—satire and mockery—occasionally threatened the privileged and

powerful classes, and actually forced concessions from them. However, Scott’s

preferential or even exclusive treatment of “intentional” to “organic” model, out of

Bakhtin’s doubled form of hybrid, prevents us from assuming varied developments of

this “politics” in and over Carnival. Did negue jardim and jamettes, the subordinate

section of Carnival formation, “necessarily” intend to win an “ambiguous political

victory wrested from elites” (p. 178)? Were their ritual planning, assembly, and

expression, in response, merely “political disguises” “conceal[ing] their [real] intention”

(pp. 178, 181-182)?

From the beginning of the pre-Emancipation period, the symbolic practices,

objects, and worldviews of the main actors of Carnival formation—Catholic elites and

their slaves—had intertwined, though they remained “dialogized,” so closely that it is

virtually impossible to separate them into isolated parts. After emancipation, liberated

Africans flocked to the public streets with their bodies and faces covered in molasses and

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varnish. One theory holds, however, that French-Creole landowners and their families

entertained themselves earlier than that by imitating slaves whose bodies and faces

became pitch-black from working in a sugar estate on fire—“Came Brulee” or

“Canboulay” (Hill, 1988[1972], p. 24). If today’s “mud (wo)men” are really their

“descendants,” they are supposedly imitating black masqueraders who celebrated their

freedom by imitating their masters who had imitated themselves (Hill, 1988[1972], p. 24;

Osugi, 1999, p. 41).

As the nineteenth century advanced, the colonial authorities became irritated at

jamettes who became more aggressive each year. During Carnivals the streets filled with

jamette bands led by warlike stickfighters. In Port-of-Spain in 1881, and in San Fernando

and Princes Town in 1884, the long-standing discord between jamettes and the police

force developed into large-scale violent clashes that resulted in a large number of injuries

and arrests (Anthony, 1997, p. 97). However, allegedly, the attack by the stickfighters

was seldom directed against the upper- and middle-class white or free colored population

(Hills, 1988[1972]; Osugi, 1999). A Trinidadian writer has reproduced a scene of

stickfighting on the street in the late 1850s from archival sources:

Most of the prominent stickmen appeared gorgeously arrayed in a gown and a long cap as Pierrots armed with long whips. They walked through the streets proclaiming themselves champions and looking for some rival with whom to have a fight. When they met, they went through a most harangue which ended in an exchange of whip lashes. These lashes were supposed to be friendly, each champion being well padded but often a lash would fall on a tender spot, whereupon angry passions would arise, the whip was exchanged for the Bois which was carried by the boy who acted as his page and real battle took place. This was joined in by the followers of both, and the scenes of the midnight revels were repeated (Inniss, 1932,p. 12).

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Stickfighters roamed the streets seeking “rivals” representing other jamette bands. Well

into the twentieth century, stickfighting came to assume more clearly the form and nature

of a “competition”:

They sang in competition from seven in the evening until far into the early morning, stimulated by the applause of their listeners and the excellence and copiousness of the rum; night after night the stickmen practised their dangerous and skillful game, the “pierrots,” after elaborate preface of complementary speech, belaboured each other with riding whips; while mimic warfare was transformed into real, and stones from “the bleach” few thick (James, 1929, cited in Grimshaw, 1992, p. 29).

As suggested in some documents, in pre-Emancipation Trinidad, “[djuels had

been as frequent. . . as they used once to be in Ireland” among the free classes (Fraser,

1891, p. 53). A Catholic priest noted in his diary: “At a certain time duels were very

frequent — There have been many men killed in this spot which is know as the

zombie’s ear because they say during the night they see ghosts” (Abbe Masse, on April 1,

1881, in Masse, 1988, vol. IQ, p. 164). If these illustrations were built on facts, jamette

stickmen might have imitated their precursors, white “duelists who repeatedly scuffled in

public, later in their “dangerous and skillful games.” Moreover, the colonizers, not the

colonized, who always used overt acts of violence as means of exerting control.

Reflecting historical events, and shifts in socioeconomic conditions, sailors and soldiers

appeared, and imitation guns, tanks, and fighting planes came to replace sticks, chains,

and whips in “mimic warfare,” and, among the listeners and spectators were still jacket-

men, who applauded performers imitating and singers ridiculing them, and stickmen

named after public figures fighting each other. In this way, the cyclical festive inversion

between estranged socioeconomic bodies has historically produced a chain of imitations,

or “another constructions” (Nandy, 1983), which were “almost the same but not quite”

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(Bhabha, 1985[1994]) with the putative cultural/racial origins without resultant cultural

fusion implied by theorists of cultural hybridity. It is worth reexamining how “conscious”

the population of Carnival formation, both powerful and powerless, were of this process

of cultural mixing that repeats it own cultural origins.

Although masqueraders, singers, and stickmen’s intentional dialogization

politicized this inevitable conflation of distinct worldviews, the resulting politics has not

necessarily concluded with the reversal of the existing cultural order. Nor does it

necessarily develop into a permanent “war of position,” producing no alternative stable

cultural form. There remains the likelihood that a shared structure of meaning emerges

out of the politics of cultural mixing. In short, under sociohistorical particulars, an

“intentional” hybrid may result in an “organic” hybrid.

Scott (1990, pp. 179-181) turns to Emmanuel LeRoy Ladurie (1979) as one of the

best accounts of the conjuncture between Carnival and revolt. Ladurie drew our attention

to the “synthetic” relations between the leaders representing two distinct social

echelons—nobility and peasantry:

Even in Romans, division did not exclude synthesis. Paumier and Guerin were mortal enemies; still they commuted intellectually through a Carnival folklore which constituted their “code,” linguistically speaking.They played contradictory roles in the Carnival, but it was the natural element for them both. Despite their rivalry to the death, they were cultural brothers (p. 370).

LeRoy Ladurie then suggests that, among sixteenth-century Romans, the Carnival ceased

to be a reproducing mechanism of common “code” enabling their intellectual

commutations. Along with the intensification of class-consciousness, it turned into a site

of conflict, and provided the lower crust of social echelon, the peasantry and the “small

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property-owning sector” (p. 14), with ways and means to attain their material goals

through social revolution. In response, he suggests, the preexisting interclass “cultural

brotherhood” was disrupted.

In this respect, Carnival in nineteenth-century Trinidad was different. From the

mid-1840s onwards, the colonial administration’s measures against this annual

“pandemonium” became more coercive. Masking in public was prohibited; the spatial

and temporal extent of street processions had been gradually restricted. These “attempts

made on the part of local authorities to eliminate” the annual Carnival celebration “very

swiftly politicized” it. However, although the colonial authorities shuddered at its

licentiousness, and actually took some measures of restriction, they always hesitated to

extinguish the festival. Rather, as a local English newspaper noted at the time, Anglican-

English elites could do nothing but “pray for the natural death” of Carnival (cited in

Wood, 1986[1968]; Pearse, 1988[1956]; Powrie, 1988[1956]). The ambivalent attitude of

colonial authorities toward Carnival was epitomized with the “Canboulay Riot” of 1881.

A Catholic priest summed the development of the event in his diary (cited in De Verteuil,

1988, pp. 144-145):

This year the Chief of Police who is a truly Herculean man, at the moment when all the negroes were out, wanted with the help of his agents to negroes who did not pay any attention. He unsheathed his sword and threw himself then in the middle of a band. A terrible mix-up followed.Several police were overwhelmed with blows and thrown on the pavement and the negroes themselves received some bad blows.... The disorder was growing. The Governor was notified in all haste and came to pacify these miserable black fellows so exasperated by the badly contained conduct of the police in their regard that they were pulling to pieces everything that they came across and had already broken half the glass windows.

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Immediately after the occurrence, Governor Sanford Freeling moved to improve

relations with the masqueraders. He convened an urgent meeting of the Executive

Council, in which it was agreed to attribute the turmoil to the actions taken by the police

force and to dismiss the Chief of Police. Governor Feeling then agreed to make a highly

concessionary speech in the Market Place in downtown Port-of-Spain, the very scene

where the police and jamette bands collided (Cowley, 1996, p. 88). The same diary

continues (in De Verteuil, 2000, pp. 145-146):

At the announcement of the arrival of the Governor the noise ceased. The bands [of jamettes] approached and the Governor harangued them. [In his speech] He appealed to their past wisdom every year at the same time. He told them that there had been a misunderstanding between the police and themselves and that alone had been the cause of the disorder. He engaged them to amuse themselves as they did formerly promising them his protection and assuring them that they would not be disturbed any more.The disorder ceased immediately and all the negroes shouted in eager rivalry: “Long live the Governor.”

Why did the colonial administration fail to put an end to Carnival? Why did the

colonial authorities, as an official report on “Canboulay Riot” stated later, choose to “re

establish a relationship based on mutual consent between the populace in its Carnival

formation and the authorities”? (cited in Brereton, 1979, p. 29 and Cowley, 1996, p. 9) In

answering these questions, it must be remembered that Carnival was not a culture but

cultures of resistance in nineteenth-century Trinidad. It was a “free zone,” where distinct

socioeconomic sectors simultaneously pursued different political goals. As argued in

previous studies (e.g. Brereton, 1979; Liverpool, 2001), due to its structure and

anonymity, Carnival became an opportune site for former slaves and lower-class

urbanites to liberate their historically suppressed speech and aggression. Given its unique

nature, allowing those who are subordinate to assemble and make threatening gestures

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and narratives against the governors of their daily lives, Carnival undeniably organized

jamettes into a politically conscious and culturally distinct collective. At the same time,

however, Carnival, along with religion and education, remained a valuable symbolic

capital, from which upper- and middle-class Catholic residents claimed their

sociocultural group worth in the face of Anglicization. As a local historian points out, it is

a mistake to conclude that French-Creole elites had completely disappeared from the

scenes of the street procession. Some available documents hint at their continuous

presence either as spectators or as providers of indispensable material of celebration, such

as masks and costumes (De Verteuil, 1984). More important, after they had withdrawn

from the leading roles in its formation, the upper- and middle-class French-speaking

population continued protecting Carnival as their own tradition from the repressive

measures by the colonial authorities. In a sense, Trinidad’s Carnival, a “free zone” that

was a possible moment of resistance for the subordinates, was retained by an

“unintended” alliance with a segment of those whom they “resisted.” The French-

speaking upper- and middle-class pro-Carnival lobby immediately expressed their strong

support to Governor Freeling’s management of the “Canboulay Riot.” Meanwhile, on

Monday night, the day following the Riot, the Governor’s House was surrounded with

jamette bands to pay a “friendly visit.” Cowley (1996. pp. 88-90) cites a description:

The Maribones and other amalgamated bandes [sic] repaired to Queen’s House where orders had been previously given to the sentries at the gate for their admittance, and in fact that of all masquers who might present themselves. His Excellency and his Lady, Capt. Ogilvy and other gentlemen and ladies who were present, came out on the balcony as soon as the bandes came up, and before them stick-exercises were gone through, the mens’ drums beating as they never were before, extempore songs sung (in Creole, of course) in praise of his Excellency, composed on the spur of the moment by the improvisatore [sic] of the party. His

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Excellency, who with those around him seemed to enjoy the whole things hugely (it being evidently a strange sight to himself and lady, and I believe to the gallant Captain) threw our money to the men, who vociferously cheered him on this evidence of hi [sic] liberality and of their success in amusing him and party. His Excellency acknowledged their cheers by bowing to them, on which cheers and hurrahs made the usually quiet Governor’s Garden ring. At the close of the stick-fight, the players were one and all, by order of His Excellency, treated to refreshments to which they did frill justice, after which they retired, pluming themselves inordinately on having, as one expressed himself, “Nous halla baton douvant Governour”l an event I believe without precedent since Trinidad was Trinidad.

Reflecting an ideological preference that has dominated the post-structural

anthropological approach to rituals, Trinidadian Carnival has also becomes a palpable

example of “heteroglossia” (Bakhtin, 1981), which opens a “third space,” or “free zone”

where the subordinate social subjects carry out a “strategic reversal of the process of

domination.” As demonstrated, in the decades since Emancipation, Trinidadian Carnival

developed from a festival of the Catholic landowning population into a celebration

predominantly of the working-class masses of African origin. Indubitably, Carnival in

Trinidad has remained a “moment of political change” since then. However, the

overemphasis on the freed slaves’ intentional “re-articulation, or translation” of Carnival

into a “liberatory sign” has seriously undervalued other dimensions of the Carnival

formation.

The intra-class “ethnic” conflict within the landowning class significantly affected

the development of Carnival in Trinidad, which is now referred to as a representative of

the “national culture” of contemporary Trinidad. As symbolic politics between European

ethnic groups intensified, the colonial administration, urged by Protestant English elites,

started taking repressive measures against the Carnival that they regarded as the most

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visible exemplar of Catholic cultural practice and values. In order to prevent further

degradation of their relative status, French Creole elites reified and ideologized this

annual festivity as the foundation for their claim to a symbolic recognition of status.

However, as demonstrated in this chapter, cultural practices, objects and worldviews of

those who formed the Carnival celebration—French Creole landowners and their

slaves—had been joined, though essentialized as “ascribed” traits of each of these

economically estranged groups. By the time when it was ideologized as the symbolic

capital on which the French Creole elites attempted to protect their ethnic status, cultural

and symbolic elements attached to African slaves had been inextricably interwoven in the

Carnival. By the same token, when bands of jamettes dominated the street procession,

French Creole’s cultural practices and objects had become constitution configured the

practice, deeds and behaviors of these lower-class black urbanites. From the mid

nineteenth century, French Creole elites and working-class black urbanites had reified

and ideologized this same cultural practice for their distinct “wars of position,” which

placed these economically and politically estranged groups in an unconscious “alliance”

against the colonial cultural homogenization process— “Anglicization.” Carnival in

Trinidad had thus developed as a confluence of polymorphous “cultures’ of resistance”

beyond the instrumental construction of a specific interest and ideology. In the

intersection of “wars of position”, despite the concurrent rise in class-consciousness, the

“intimate interstices” between otherwise distinctive socioeconomic bodies not only

remained but were also reinforced without turning into a “free zone” (Scott, 1990) where

the subordinate groups carried out a “strategic reversal of the process of domination”

(Bhabha, 1992[1994]). The unintended “alliance” drove the colonial administration to

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give up the elimination of this “foreign” culture, and to compromise by hyphenating it as

“ethnic” culture. This conclusion of the nineteenth-century politics over camival-neither

subversion nor suppression but hyphenation (though still hierarchical)—has subsequently

imposed certain restrictions on this most extensive “free zone.” This in part enabled the

upper- and middle-class population to return to the street not only as spectators but also

revelries for Jour Ouvert and mas procession as early as the late 1880s.22 The “functions”

of Trinidadian Carnival are not understood without the examination of this particular

context in which it developed, set by a demographic structure, and political and economic

development in nineteenth-century Trinidad. Because of the way it developed, Carnival

in Trinidad has remained to date the most extensive ritual that simultaneously reconfirms

the separation and integration of reified ethnic cultural essences.

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Endnotes

1 Cited in a souvenir brochure, Trinidad Carnival and Calypso: What's on 1961, Carnival Development Committee, Trinidad and Tobago, 1961, p. 16

Jour Ouvert is variously spelled as J ’ouvert, J ’ouvert and Jouvay. It literally means “daybreak,” or “open of the day.” In Trinidad, it marks the beginning of the Carnival celebration before dawn on the Monday morning of the week in which the Christian observance of Lent will begin (Allsopp & Allsopp, 1996, p. 317).<3

In Trinidadian term, the expression of “to wine” describes movements of the waist to the music particularly at Carnival time. In her Ph.D. dissertation (submitted to New York University in 1999), Molly Ahye maintains that this expression is one of the examples reflecting the influence of Dionysus/Bacchus (god of wine, of grape, and of generation) over the development of Trinidadian Carnival (Sunday Express, June 19,1999, p. 19).

4 Day stayed in Trinidad during his five-year excursion of the West Indies around the late 1840s. His travelogue was published with the title, Five years ’ residence in the West Indies (Anthony, 1997, p. 181).

5 In his description of the masquerade in Martinique in 1888, Lafcadio Hearn wrote in Two Years in the French West Indies (1970[1890], p. 210), “Morasses Negro wore nothing but a cloth about his loins; his whole body and face being smeared with an atrocious mixture of soot and molasses. He is supposed to represent the original African ancestor.” Molasses is a thick dark sweet liquid that is extracted from raw sugar canes when they are being made into sugar. It is called treacle in British English.

6 L. M. Fraser’s statement cited in the text continues as follows: “[T]he procession of the ‘cannes brulees’ used to take place on the night of the 1st of August, the date of their emancipation. . . . After a time the day was changed and for many years past the Carnival days have been inaugurated by the ‘cannes brulees’” (cited in Hill, 1997[1972], p. 23). However, as Hill argues, no document has been located to support the fact that the celebration of cannes brulees moved from August 1 to the beginning of the annual pre- Lenten festivity, and insofar as it is correct, to explain why and how it was possible (Hill, 1997[1972], p. 24).

7 An excerpt from Lieutenant Colonel Copadosa’s Six Years in Trinidad, published in 1845, reprinted on Newsday Historical Digest, August 26,2001, p. 4

8 In Trinidad, Martial Law was initiated along with the establishment of the Militia in 1800, immediately after the first English Governor Thomas Picton took his office (Cowley, 1996, p. 16)

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9 According to Captain F. Mallet’s Descriptive Account o f the Island o f Trinidad (1802), the first census taken after the English Capitulation, the ratio of female to male within white population as of 1797 was approximately 60% (Men 994: Women 590).

10 According to Allsopp & Allsopp (1996), calypso is a “popular satirical song in rhymed verse, now mostly associated with Trinidad, commenting on any recognized figure(s) or aspect(s) of Caribbean social life, and more often performed by a male singer with much body gesture and some extemporization directed at any body in the audience” (p. 131). It is alleged that the original term, kaiso (differently spelled as caiso, cariso, kaipso), literally meant “continue,” and was a common phrase used by the audience in urging singers on or in backing a contestants in the nineteenth century (p. 131,324). The term calypso was derived from kaiso around the 1930s, influenced by the name of the amorous nymph of Greek mythology, plus an anglicized shift in pitch pattern (p. 132). Recently, kaiso is intentionally applied to distinguish a song, which retains a rhetorical recitative nature, sung in the minor key, with eight lines to the stanza, from the recent development from calypso to soca (p. 324).

11 St. Hilaire Begorrat was a French planter from Martinique who settled in Trinidad in 1785. He was not only an island’s largest slave owner, but also most influential public figure in post-cedula Trinidad, serving as Chief Magistrate in the administration of Governor Jose Maria Chacon (whose regime ended on the island’s capitulation to England in 1797). Under the governorship of Ralph Woodford (1813-1828), Begorrat served as Chief Justice and was responsible for several coercive amendments to regulations for the regimentation of slaves (Anthony, 1997, p. 49).

12 French Government originally issued the Code Noir in 1685 in order to regulate every detail of the relationship between masters and slaves. Its elaboration and thoroughness set an example to follow for codification of subsequent slave laws.

13 For more documentation concerning historical development of the area, see Me Cree (1997).

14 One of the best descriptions of socioeconomic life of barrack-yard in the early twentieth century comes from “Barrack Rooms” (1931) by James Cummings, who had “lived in one all his life” in the area (p. 2In). To quote some depictions:

How miserable and disgraceful it is to see the agglomerated mass of human souls known as the working class overcrowded in those Ten by Twelve feet boxes, known as “barrack rooms.” Their state of living can be seen in their faces, their bodies, and even their gait. There seem to be an expression of care-worn fatigue on their countenances. They are so dull and uninteresting. It is as though the sun never threw its healthful ray on their faces. The reason for their unhealthy aspect few seem to care about.(p. 21)

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Gossip is the half-mark of these people. The District Court is material evidence of the immorality which prevails among them. And the sad thing is that an immoral life is almost inevitable to a young girl who is reared in such surroundings. Here prostitution is bom and here, too, prostitution flourishes. In some of the yards many sleepless nights are passed through the gaming, liquor-drinking and prostitution of some the neighbours, (p.22)

15 ‘Triumph” first appeared on the first issue of Trinidad (1929). The present study refers to the one reprinted in Grimshaw, 1992, pp. 29-42.

16 Jamette, or dja(n)met, was derived from diameter, a French term for diameter, in the sense of a line dividing the upper and middle-class from the lower half of the social circle. By the late nineteenth century, the term had referred to a low and disreputable class, particularly the dwellers of urban slums. However, it has come to be applied specifically to women, or “yard-women,” who resided in the barrack-yard while retaining a relationship to the more affluent population in neighboring districts through prostitution and domestic jobs (Allsopp & Allsopp, 1996, p. 194). See also Attillah Springer’s “Carnival Woman: The jamette roots of jam and wine” on Trinidad Guardian, February 5,2001, Section II, p. 31

17 For example, Liverpool (2000) has more thorough documentation of signifying practices in the barrack-yards.

18 Chac-chac (or chak-chak, shack-shack) is a small, dried gourd (similar to a small calabash) containing pebbles or hard seeds, with a stick fixed through it by which it is held and rattled. It forms a musical instrument in pairs (Allsopp & Allsopp, 1996, p. 145).




22 For the subsequent course of development of Trinidad’s Carnival, see Michael Anthony’s Parade o f Carnivals o f Trinidad 1839-1989 (St. James: Circle Press, 1989).

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CHAPTER V

MOTHERS: THE CULTURAL MATRIX

The previous chapter demonstrated that the incorporation of the emergent

working-class of freed black slaves assumed a mode of neither assimilation nor

exclusion. Cultural practices, objects, and relative worldviews continued to be reified as

attached to particular racial and ethnic groupings, and then appropriated as markers (or

criteria) for the maintenance and reinforcement of socioeconomic distances. However,

against the ideal type of plantation society, the politically and socioeconomically

estranged bodies were closely connected through repeated mimetic appropriations and

exchanges of cultural elements that “belonged” to the “others.” Carnival celebration not

only survived but also developed in the second half of the nineteenth century despite the

concurrent rise of class-consciousness because both French-Creole elites and middle-

class and the black masses reified and ideologized this same cultural practice for their

own politics of difference and identity. In so doing, these subjects of distinct classes were

unconscious about the cultural “hyphenation”—the “mixing” of their “pure” cultural

practices and worldviews—and formed an unintended “alliance” against cultural

homogenization built around English symbols, values, and norms (i.e., Anglicization).

This chapter disputes a current thesis that East Indian immigrants (later Indo-

Trinidadians) had remained outside the dynamics of intergroup relations that set the

context in which the “culture of ethnicity” developed in colonial Trinidad. In fact,

indentureship had retained the institutional separation of East Indian workers from the

rest of the society by connecting them with distinct governmental agencies, legislations,

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and social services (Brereton, 1979, p. 177). However, in the context of late nineteenth-

century Trinidad—unstable sugar production and the ever-intensifying competition for

cultural leadership within the Christian section of the population—imposed limitations

upon the employer’s control of indentured laborers and their quotidian culture. In the

1860s, labor regimentation under indentureship was already loosening, and, at the same

time, an increasing number of time-expired indentured workers became permanent

residents, contrary to the anticipation of the host society (see Chapter 3). The latitude in

the institution always allowed for a degree of mobilization among East Indian

immigrants, causing interactions and conflicts with the preexisting sociocultural groups

within a few decades after their settlement.

In examining the incorporation of Indo-Trinidadians in the host society, the

discussion that follows will revolve around Indo-Trinidadian religious practices, because

non-Christian “Indian religions”—Hinduism and Islam in Trinidadian context—have

functioned since the days of colonialism as the most significant point of reference in

Indo-Trinidadian politics of identity—as a symbol for Indo-Trinidadian’s self-

identification as well as a marker of differentiation for the rest of the population. This

does not mean that the role of other cultural heritages is negligible. For instance, Hindi as

an “ethnic” lingua franca of East Indian immigrants, which evolved out of local and caste

dialects, still survives in daily conversations (Vertovec, 1992, pp. 93-94). Even when it is

not understood verbatim, Hindi, in various forms of media, such as books, music, and

imported films, evokes and reinforces a sentiment of affiliation as “Indian.” At times,

Indo-Trinidadians refer to Hindi as too intricate a language to learn, thus verifying the

sophistication of their cultural origins. Yet, in contemporary Trinidad, religious rites and

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ceremonies are the most critical occasions of the reproduction and teaching of this

ancestral language. In Trinidad, “Indian religion” embraces not only language but also

much of what is recognized as Indo-Trinidadian cultural practices and symbols. Thus,

religion has been a shared representation of “Indian” alterity within and without the Indo-

Trinidadian community (Khan, 2004b, p. 14).

The following discussion is not intended to contradict, but to complement,

existing studies that concentrate on the Indo-Trinidadian elite’s reification of “Indian

religion” and their cultural politics against the colonial objectification of ethnicity and

cultural homogenization. In the closing decades of the nineteenth century, religious

leaders and those who were economically ascending began to establish a cohesive Indo-

Trinidadian community. To this end, Indo-Trinidadian elites, who struggled against the

assumed European/Christian cultural domination, privileged and reified religion as a

diacritical symbol for group organization and mobilization. This refashioned “Indian-

ness,” however, was not a direct translation of their culture of origin, but a unique

cultural configuration that reflected the sociohistorical specificity of colonial Trinidad.

East Indian immigrants were not homogeneous, but constituted a demographic and

cultural mosaic. Due to the internal diversity, the elite-led reification of homogeneous

Hinduism as a “culture of resistance,” in opposition to the pressure of assimilation into

Christian-centered social discipline, caused another politics of culture within the

imagined Indo-Trinidadian community. Hinduism had been constantly reified as a

naturally given cultural essence of Indo-Trinidadians, as well as a confluence of multiple

“wars of position” where the effective display of power was constrained. Thus, “Indian

religion” has also become a “porous ground of mixing,” however much the religious

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elites aspired to render it a pure and exclusive “icon of Indian-ness” (Khan, 2004b, p. 14,

224). This chapter demonstrates that religion has served not only to separate Indo-

Trinidadians from, but also to join them to, other ethnic collectives. “Indian religion” has

never made Indo-Trinidadians culturally isolated, but connected them to the society as a

culturally distinct “race.”

La Divina Pastora and Soparee Ke Mai

It is two in the morning. There is no sign that the number of pilgrims is thinning

out. Indeed, the procession line is becoming longer. It now meanders through the Parish

Hall1 and reaches so far into the dark outside that I cannot see its end. When the pilgrims

finally arrive at the feet of the statue, they linger. In spite of the endless line behind them

and the hours that everybody has been waiting, nobody urges anyone to hurry. Those in

the queue wait patiently for their turn. This is one of the oldest Catholic churches in

Trinidad. Each year on Holy Thursday and Good Friday before Easter, ten to fifteen

thousand pilgrims, according to a rough count by a lay member of the Church, flock to

and pray passionately at the feet of the statue of the virgin and the tutelary deity, La

Divina Pastora. Some are dressed in worn and unclean uniforms, and look like they came

directly from work. The countless cars parked thickly along the roads suggest that many

others went out of their way to pay their special devotion.

However, the pilgrims flocking around the statue, and anxiously awaiting their

turn to make a devotion for whatever brought them here tonight, are not Catholics, but

overwhelmingly Hindustanis. The ritual is hardly ritualized. Some take off their shoes

before approaching the statue; others do not. When they approach the statue, some touch

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her feet, but others kiss the statue’s toe. While offering a prayer, some close their eyes

without saying anything, others whisper. In spite of the variation in the ways of devotion,

a sort of integrated atmosphere still permeates the pilgrimage. Apart from the feet that

everyone is in a Catholic church, the unfolding scenes performed by the pilgrims are

distinctly, visibly Hindu. Many, for example, have their young sons’ hair cut in front of

the statue in the belief it brings fertility. Even two female pilgrims have their hair cut in

response to other pilgrims’ requests. Barbers have set up hundreds of stalls lined on both

sides of the streets that surround the church. The majority of pilgrims carry bags frill of

offerings. They leave bundles of candles at the feet of the statue after holding them up or

turning them around as if to draw a circle; some pilgrims showered the statue with grains

of rice, which fall into fee box underneath. According to one of fee pilgrims, half a bottle

of olive oil is poured into an oil-drum set up by a pedestal because of its effectiveness for

“curing sick.” I also observe several women put oil on their foreheads or hair before

leaving fee Hall. It is suggested that wishes beyond “curing sick” are fulfilled by this oil.

The ritual intensifies in its “Hindu” color as fee night progresses. After midnight,

drums pierce fee solemn atmosphere as a group of Hindu men march into fee Hall

beating tassa drums of various forms and sizes.2 The following morning—Good Friday

and fee second day of fee celebration—many pilgrims are “formally” dressed wife dhoti,3

kurta,4 and a tika mark on their foreheads.5 Later, a humbly dressed Hindu pundit arrives.

He sits in a comer of fee Hall on a chair offered by a church member until fee last

devotee leaves. Quite a few families stop by fee pundit on fee way out, asking for a

prayer. After touching or kissing fee pundit’s toe, after similarly having kissed fee toe of

fee Catholic statue in conformity wife Hindu custom, they placed money offerings in a

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plastic bag on the floor. Apparently, the Catholic statue and the Hindu pundit constitute

equally significant parts of the devotional pilgrimage.

The countless beggars who fill up the playground of the adjoining Boys Catholic

School eagerly wait for a “share” of offerings from the pilgrims. One of the church

members explains, “You can’t see so many poor on any other days, including Siparia

Fete [when the Catholics make the procession], ‘cause they know that the Hindus give

away much more than we [Catholics].” Although it appears chaotic, the scenes are far

from disorderly. The beggars never try to rush into the Parish Hall, though sometimes the

excited ones come by the door and stretch their hands toward the pilgrims. After

completing their rituals of devotion, the pilgrims leave the Hall through a side door and

give away food, soft drinks, a variety of sweets, or whatever they have brought.

According to a Catholic church member, there were quite a few pilgrims who gave

money to the beggars last year. “However,” she added, “they [the beggars] are not

necessarily poor. They often play poor.”

The pilgrimage continues until dusk of the second day. As the line of the

procession begins to shorten around two in the afternoon, the beggars who previously

crowded the yard diminish as well. By then, both the box under the feet of the statue and

the oil drum are full to the brim with rice and olive oil.

Mother: A Bone of Contentions

Fr. Cornelius O’Hanlon, a Curate of the Catholic Church in Siparia, explored the

origins of La Divina Pastora in Siparia in the baptism registers written circa 1871: “p]t is

impossible to give the correct date when the statue came here.”6 It is widely agreed that

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the statue was originally brought to Trinidad via Venezuela after it first “migrated” to the

New World as the “shepherd” of the missionary work of Aragonese Capuchin monks.

There is, however, no agreement as to how and when it arrived. One story says that the

statue was brought to Trinidad in 1730 by a group of Capuchin monks fleeing an

Amerindian revolt in Venezuela (Comins, 1893; see also Goldwasser, 1996, p. 214),

whereas another story claims that one of the priests took the statue with him when he

visited Trinidad to spread the Gospel in 1784 (Osugi, 1999, p. 181).

Nor is there confirmation of when Hindustanis first found power in this deity and

began their pilgrimages. In his diary, Fr. Abbe Masse,7 the successor of Fr. O’Hanlon,

left an earliest account of the Hindustani pilgrimage in 1884:

All along the way yesterday, the eve of the feast, I met pilgrims of all colours going towards the sanctuary. They were counted in thousands.... The road is very difficult and extremely uneven. Among the vehicles which try to come to Siparia, several broke down on the road.One cab tumbled into a ditch; many horses took fright and refused to go further. All eventually though arrived at Siparia...

Siparia is a very small village lost in the forest, with about 130 inhabitants who live in miserable huts with roofs of timite palm. There is no hotel, just two or three ajoupas8 where provisions and drinks are sold.The pilgrims sleep under the night sky. The presbytery is barely more comfortable. A hammock, or a mattress on the floor, or a carpet, are the choices I have to offer the visiting priests. All day long the pilgrims come to prostrate at the feet of La Divine—French, English, Spanish (whites and coloureds) Portuguese, Chinese, Indians mainly pagans (cited in De Verteuil, 2000, pp. 225-226).

It is not difficult to imagine that Catholics were amazed and terrified when the

Hindu “pagans” began attending the Siparia chapel, appealing to their own Catholic

patron, La Divina Pastora. Fr. Masse continues detailing the demeanor of Hindu

devotees:

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A band of coolies arrive. They sing all night long. At dawn they go to bathe and then come to the chapel. They have brought two cocks which they wish to offer to the Virgin. To make this offering they got to the foot of the altar with the cock which they put beside them. After prostrating themselves several times and saying their prayers in a loud voice with arms extended, they go to the back of the church, untie the cock and set it free in the church. The old sacristan then captures the cock, which the cure will soon eat.

Without precautions being taken they would have set the church on fire with the numerous candles they were lighting. The lamps, though there were huge numbers of them, were not sufficient: the oil spilled all over the floorboards. They were disputing among themselves, jostling to obtain the oil, which was burning in front of the Virgin. The coolies have a noisy devotion. They pray at the top of their voices, but then they are distracted. When they prostrate themselves with their forehead on the floor, it seems sometimes that they will split their skull, so hard do they hit their head against the planks (cited in De Verteuil, 2000, p. 226).

Alfred Mendes, a noted Trinidadian writer, described the Hindu pilgrims in the La

Divina Pastora Church in a short story published in the early 1930s. This story by this

Christian writer tells us, if only indirectly, how shocking and terrifying it was for Roman

Catholics in the latter half of the nineteenth century, when interactions between distinct

sociocultural groups were much more limited than they were to become by the end of the

twentieth century.

[W]e entered the church. There was, I felt, some mistake when we entered.What I saw I could not believe. I still do not believe in what I saw at that moment and all the succeeding moments. If you entered a lunatic asylum and heard no insane scream, no senseless speech, no battering of head against hard partition, you would stop and wonder if you really were in a lunatic asylum. If you entered a Christian church and could hear only the hullaballoo of Hindustani chatter, the pattering feet of children and theshrieks of babies, you would wonder if you were in a Christian church__And as for the evidence of my eyes, —it was the most incongruous, most amazing sight I had ever seen. Almost every pew in the church was filled with East Indians. The aisles were congested with little groups gesticulating and hotly engaged in choruses o f conversation—on what topics I do not know. Shrewd guesses might suggest the blackeye pea crop, the village feud, or perhaps how Mulemeah was raped by Sookdeo (Mendes, 1932, cited in Munasinghe, 2001, pp. 196-197).

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Until the 1870s, reports from various sources of the “paganism” of Hindu faith

and rites excited public repugnance. A surviving leaflet published by a Catholic priest

excoriates a fire ceremony, in which the half-naked “coolies [were] running through fire

[toward] idols and devils.” With a splash headline, “Betting + Notice + Betting,” the flyer

underscores the ceremony’s depravity by stressing that “five dollars with be given to any

Coolies stopping for five minutes in a burning fire. If he cannot, he will lose same sum”

(cited in Newsday Millennium Special, January 1,2000, p. 20). Under pressure from a

part of the Christian community, the colonial administration prohibited the fire-walking

and hook-swinging ceremonies that were occasionally conducted throughout the island

(Jha, 1985; Vertovec, 2000, p. 68). The attitude of Catholic authorities toward the

Hindustani pilgrimage in Siparia similarly reversed the initial tolerance of the late

nineteenth century. In 1917, a parish priest, who could no longer tolerate “pagans” having

their way in a Catholic church, put up a notice banning the “Coolie Fete at Siparia” and

declared that he would not hesitate to resort to force if the warning was not followed

(Goldwasser, 1996, p. 229; De Verteuil, 2000, p. 226; Osugi, 1999, p. 195). In the 1920s,

another priest locked out Hindu devotees with a notice in five languages (Boodoo, 2000,

p. 69).

Although by the time of my field research it had become a cliche among Hindus

and Catholics that this unique interreligious cooperation has been possible because “We

are all tolerant,” tolerance has not always predominated. The development of this ritual

has not always been marked by love of one’s same (i.e., fellow Trinidadians) but

different (Hindus v. Catholic) neighbors. It is rather characterized by the occasional

intensification of tension and visible conflict between Catholics and Hindus over this

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“goddess,” La Divina Pastora. Catholics, who have taken accession and presumed

possession of her for granted, have neither offered her to others, nor have they

encouraged others to “borrow” or appropriate her. The early twentieth-century Catholic

priest who locked the door must have hoped that his action would be enough to prevent

Hindu pilgrims from “desecrating” her. Even present participants remain uncertain of the

limits of racial and religious harmony. A church member indicated that some Catholic

church members remained by the statue all night as the Hindus performed their

devotions: “W ell. . . we keep eyes out for her [so as nothing wrong to happen on her].”

The comment suggests certain wariness and continuing, albeit underlying, intergroup

tension. Some local “facts” continue to reflect and fuel mistrust. A female church

member recounted that a Hindu had broken into the chapel in the middle of the night

because he could not resist the temptation to peep inside the dress of La Divina Pastora.

This “unfaithful” and “rude” Hindustani, according to her, lost his sight as punishment.

Nevertheless, this interreligious ritual has persisted. The Catholic-Hindu conflicts

in their “symbolic interests” have not necessarily led to the “monopolization” of the

administration of the symbolic “capital” embodied by La Divina Pastora, a rare and

valued source of power (Bourdieu, 1972). Hindustanis successfully resisted the early

twentieth-century Catholics’ attempts to trample their “paganism.” When the Catholic

authorities kept Hindus on the wrong side of the chapel’s door, the Hindu pilgrims

threatened to bum the chapel down. The Catholic priest subsequently opened the door

and let them in (Boodoo, 1993, p. 387). I do not believe, however, that the Hindu’s

persistent desire for spiritual rewards and associated resistance are the sole causes of the

subsequent tolerance and sharing of La Divina Pastora’s symbolic capital. Equally

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important was the context of the struggle, which encompassed other sociopolitical forces

in Trinidadian society.

First, as demonstrated in the previous chapters, the second half of the nineteenth

century witnessed a fierce conflict, not just between Christians and Hindus, but even

more importantly between Catholic and Anglican authorities in die colony. Although we

do not know precisely when the Hindu devotees began to make pilgrimages to Siparia’s

Catholic Church, if large scale pilgrimages had already started in the early 1860s, as Fr.

O’Hanlon attests in a baptism record (McNeal, 2002, p. 76), it would have been within

the context of conflict within the Christian community. After the issue of the

Ecclesiastical Ordinance and the reduction in state subsidies, the Catholic Church

confronted a severe monetary crisis. The situation was graver in minor rural parishes,

such as Siparia, which was still a “small village in the forest” (Fr. Masse, 1884 cited in

De Verteuil, 2000, p. 226) at least two to three days travel from the central and northern

parts of the island where most sugar estates were located.9 Even after the colonial

administration agreed to raise its subsidy to the Catholic Church, Siparia continued to

face financial difficulties (Feheney, 2001, p. 45).

In the second edition of his book, De Verteuil (1884) described Siparia in the

mid-1880s, the same period when Fr. Masse reported the surprising Hindu pilgrims:

[The Mission of Siparia] had then a resident padre or priest, a corregidor,10 and a schoolmaster. The present condition of the Mission is far from affording the same pleasant aspect, its population being reduced, cultivation neglected, houses in a dilapidated state; no school. . . . Siparia is now completely neglected (p. 314).

Nevertheless, the construction of a new chapel and presbytery proceeded in

Siparia during this period in crisis. Siparia was promoted from a “Mission” to “Parish” by

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1835, but it did not always have a resident priest in the nineteenth century. Occasionally,

a priest visited from the major southern parishes to celebrate mass. At that time, the

parish had a crude thatched building, which was a chapel-cum-lodging. In the 1850s, Fr.

Kunes, a Belgian parish priest, began construction of a new presbytery, which was

completed by his successor, Fr. O’Hanlon. Moreover, during his tenure, Fr. O’Hanlon

began construction of a new chapel. According to the current parish priest, Fr. Doyle,

then-Archbishop Louis Gonin donated $312 toward the cost of erecting a new church,

and the rest was raised through the “contributions of devotees.” There is no

documentation of who these “devotees” were, but it is possible to infer that they included

a significant number of Hindus. Given that this coincided with the reduction in the state

subsidy, the offerings from Hindu devotees, who started regular pilgrimages around the

same period in spite of poor conditions in which a “cab tumbled into a ditch” and “horses

refused to go further” (Fr. Masse, 1884, cited in De Verteuil, 2000, p. 226), must have

substantially contributed to the erection of the permanent Catholic church. For the parish

of Siparia, seemingly buried in complete oblivion by the central authorities of the

Catholic Church, abundant donations from Hindu pilgrims must have been nearly

irresistible.

Second, the enormous offerings from the “pagans,” however, became a recurring

cause of conflict within Catholics in Siparia. Siparia was founded during the period

between 1756 and 1758 as an Aragonese Capuchin mission for not just native but also

nonnative Indians, who had been displaced from the Orinoco delta (Leahy, 1980, p. 100).

The first extensive census after England’s conquest, conducted in 1797, indicates that the

Siparia had 140 residents, including 139 Amerindians and one “white” (Mallet, 1802).11

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In Mallet’s compilation, the “white” was not identified, but he was undoubtedly the

“Spanish” “Capuchin priest” in charge of the mission (Anthony, 2001, p. 300). Before

long, Siparia was incorporated under British rule (De Verteuil, 1884, p. 314). However,

Governor Ralph Woodford, who was sympathetic toward Catholic institutions, left

Siparia open to Spanish Royalists who sought refuge from the Venezuelan War of

19Independence. This increased its population to nearly 500, the majority of whom were

Spanish-speaking Catholics (De Verteuil, 1884, p. 341).

The confluence of these historical accidents preserved a Spanish Catholic

presence after the establishment of English Anglican colonial control and Siparia’s

physical isolation from Trinidad’s population centers. Moreover, this has preserved an

assumed (and actual) cultural “otherness” of this southern village. Aisha Khan (1993)

discussed how the “Spanish” and their cultural/ethnic features have developed as the

unique intermediate category characterized by “ambiguity” and “indefiniteness” and thus

resistant to assignation to any fixed position in the black-white spectrum of race/color in

Trinidadian society (p. 181). For Trinidadians in general, Siparia has remained a secluded

place, representative of literal and figurative cultural “Spanishness.” Among other

“Spanish” cultural legacies, “P a ra n g a type of festival music, still spices religious

services at the parish church and forces you to steep yourself in what is (for Trinidad) a

somewhat “exotic” atmosphere. According to a member of the La Divina Pastora Church

choir, Parang means, “wandering without decid[ing] where to go.”13 It might be a

reflection of the “indeterminacy” that Khan conceives to be attributed to “Spanishness.”

From the viewpoint of the descendants of the “original” settlers in Siparia, who

claimed having inherited the title to the statue of La Divina Pastora as a part of

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“Spanish” cultural tradition, this was nothing but encroachment by the French- and Irish-

dominated Catholic authorities. Indeed, the Catholic Church and the “Spanish” residents

in Siparia came to run counter to each other over La Divina Pastora, while the Coolie

Fete became more active each year. For instance, in 1892, the collision of Catholic and

“Spanish” interests developed into a legal matter. According to a baptism record, police

captured a group of “Spanish,” who broke into the church with the intention of carrying

off La Divina Pastora (Osugi, 1999, pp. 191-192).14

Third, conflicts within the Hindu community further complicated the

circumstances of La Divina Pastora. As will be discussed below, from the late nineteenth

century onwards, the Indo-Trinidadian population had become further mobilized with the

increased number of time-expired indentured laborers. The religious leaders and Indo-

Trinidadians of the economic elite started working to standardize and integrate diverse

cultural traditions into an authorized system of symbols that would function as a common

idiom for organization and mass mobilization. Under strong Brahman leadership, the

Hindustanis’ devotion to a statue of a “Catholic” virgin became viewed as heterodox and

subordinate to this newly constructed and purified Hinduism. For instance, during the

entire two days of Coolie Fete I observed, only one Hindu pundit turned up. This aroused

my curiosity. Contrary to pujas or other ceremonial and ritual occasions, which usually

are community-based, this annual event seemed a rare opportunity for pundits to earn the

respect of, and sizable donations from, the 10,000 or so Hindu pilgrims who made the

pilgrimage. To my question why he had been alone in this occasion, this pundit answered

curtly, “They don’t like it.” I pressed him further, “Who doesn’t like it?” He replied, “Big

men,” by which he meant the orthodox Sanatanist leaders, who tend to regard the

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pilgrimage to Soparee Ke Mai as an aberration, if not the target of overt censure. An

“orthodox” Sanatanist pundit expressed this attitude when interviewed by a local

newspaper: “The La Divina worship is not related to Hinduism in any way. The Hindus

who go worship the Catholic saint do so out of superstition, not out of an identity with

any Hindu goddess.... The Hindus who go to worship the [sic] La Divina in the Siparia

R.C. Church are not real devotees of Hinduism” (Trinidad Express, April 5,1985, p. 3,

cited in Vertovec, 1992, pp. 220-221).

None of the five Sanatanist pundits interviewed for this research openly expressed

contempt for Hindu pilgrims to the La Divina Pastora Church. Some of them considered

it a favorable phenomenon demonstrating Trinidadians’ general religious tolerance. At

the same time, however, they gently but clearly refused to accept the Soparee Ke Mai

feast as a part of “their” tradition and custom. One of the interviewed pundits repeated

more or less the same view of the faith in Soparee Ke Mar. “[It is] their freedom [to make

annual pilgrimage to Siparia]. This is a free country. But we don’t do that. [For] it is more

like a superstition We, no one take good care of women than Hindu. But it is a

wrong belief. Hindus don’t believe in the mother that way.”

It should not be overlooked that conflicts occurred between the preexisting

sociocultural groups and East Indian indentured laborers within a few decades after their

settlement. The real and putative antipathy between groups of the working class on the

assumption of incommensurability of cultural variances justified planters’ and colonial

administrators’ practice of strict labor regimentation for the sake of social stability. As a

result, an ethnic division of labor took form, which continued to break up workers into

self-contained and incommunicative “sections.” This has been the underlying premise for

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scholarly analyses of ethnic conflict from the perspective of cultural pluralism (Khan,

2004b, p. 167). When applied to colonial Trinidad, however, this “ideal type” of

plantation society, which cultural pluralism relies on, needs to be revised. As Michel-

Rolph Trouillot (2002) argues, no matter how strong the planters’ hopes for this ideal

type was, the actual control of labor was always within limits imposed by circumstances,

including economic efficiency of production and the employer’s political power (p. 201).

It has been documented that non-Christian religious practices were tolerated unless they

inhibited the scheduled operation of estates, particularly in the late nineteenth century.

Employers were allegedly even supportive at times of the religious activities of

indentured workers by providing materials necessary for worship (Tikasingh, 1980, p.

134, cited in Vertovec, 1992, p. 111). A shared view of indentured laborers as merely

temporary visitors might have caused such toleration or even hospitality. In addition, to

follow Trouillot (2002), the employers’ approval of the laborers’ religious activities

might have been a reflection of the state of sugar production in the second half of the

nineteenth century, which imposed considerable limitations on the effective execution of

the planters’ power due to their dependence on indentured laborers.

However, the latitude in the institution of indentured servitude, which allowed

laborers’ cultural expression and a certain degree of mobility, would not have brought

about an interaction between distinct symbolic interests and spiritual needs. In this

connection, the various meanings connoted by symbol of Mother and the implicit politics

of heterosexuality, which were innate to distinct religious traditions, both served common

interests and caused conflict between them. The conflict over the Mother in Siparia

clearly intensified the opposition between religious and ethnic collectivities that had an

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interest in this symbol. At the same time, however, distinct cultural practices, symbolic

elements, and relative worldviews, which would have otherwise remained separate, were

brought into the “contemporaneousness” (Moore, 1975)—the same temporal and spatial

limits (Simmel, 1964[1955], p. 26). Conflict over the same statue, which connoted

distinct imaginations, caused “disavowal,” which Freud defined as a partial

acknowledgement of the otherness that was denied, but may also be desired. There was

no conflict; there was no compromise between the weight of the unwelcome perception

and the force of counter-wish (Freud, 1977, p. 353). In the contexts of this southern

village, which the restrained “desire for possession or subjugation,” was forced to be

“satisfied through combinations and events other than fight.” Consequently,

“[divergence and harmony became inextricably interwoven, and the content of the

animosity actually developed into the germ of future commonness” (Simmel,

1964[1955], p. 27). Despite its exclusive focus on conflictual aspects of intercultural

encounters, cultural pluralism has never reflected upon the social significance of conflict

as a form of interaction that possibly leads to the merging of distinct imaginations and

interests (p. 13).15

“Purity”: Sine Qua Non for “Mixing”

The leaders and laity of the Catholic Church were under contradictory pressures.

They could not display their power to prevent Hindu’s cultural ingression; whereas they

had to keep their own symbolic domain and religious practices sanctified from Hindu’s

“spurious” cultural influence. The Catholics thus took several measures to protect the

putative “authenticity” of their objects, practices and worldviews. Throughout the

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nineteenth century, Hindustanis still participated in the pilgrimage in the chapel on the

second Sunday after Easter along with Catholics. According to Osugi’s analysis (1999, p.

195), however, the Hindustanis’ pilgrimage (the Coolie Fete) was separated from the

Catholic rite (currently called the Siparia Fete) in the early 1910s, which witnessed the

increasing public repugnance toward Hindu’s “paganism.” Since then the Coolie Fete has

been held on Holy Thursday and Good Friday. This temporal separation was followed by

a change of spatial arrangements. For the duration of the Hindu feast, the parish priests

moved the statue from the altar where it was ordinarily enshrined. It was first transferred

to the presbytery. Then in 1960, at the request of Fr. Powers, the parish priest at that time,

the statue was transferred to the yard of the adjoining Boys Catholic School on Hindu’s

feast days (Goldwasser, 1996, p. 229). The statue reached its present location in the

Parish Hall when it was decided “a few years ago” by Church personnel to move out of

the schoolyard because of the “insecure[ityj” caused by beggars crowding the premises.

Hindu pilgrims affectionately call the statue “Soparee Ke Mai,nX6 which is now

widely interpreted as the “Mother of Siparia.” In the early 1870s, Fr. O’Hanlon noted,

For the East Indians the Black Virgin is really “Suparee,” the name of a seed which is used in their religious ceremonies, and also the name of a powerful saint in India. . . they refer to her as “Supaiee-Ke-Mai,” rather than to “La Divin” (cited in Marie-Therese, 1976, p. 56).

Fr. Masse also wrote in his diary in 1883 about a “young pagan coolie” who prayed

wholeheartedly for a cure of a sore on his leg at the feet of the statue while calling her

“Siparie-Maie” (cited in De Verteuil, 2000, p. 260).

The difference between “La Divina Pastora” and “Soparee Ke Mai” is much

more than nominal. Hindustanis have not unilaterally viewed the statue as a distinct self.

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They worship her as the Hindu mother, not the Catholic mother. Catholics do not see the

Soparee Ke Mai as the same as La Divina Pastora. Almost all the laypersons I

interviewed underscored that the statue becomes “their mother” on the days of Coolie

Fete. To my question why the crowd of Hindustanis does not bother her, a middle-aged

congregant of the Church answered: “NO. No problem at a ll.... ‘Cause, you know, they

call her Soparee Mai. They come meet THEIR mother. Suparee or Soparee. . . not sure if

I pronounce correctly, anyway, it is their mother.” An aged female member had similar

views:

Hindu people know she is a part of Catholic. They said, they know Jesus had a mother. They consider her their mother, too. They meet her and ask her whatever they need. In return, whatever she asks, they bring whatever she ask to, oil, candle, clothes.... She becomes their mother on the day... that day is Holy Thursday. They really believe that she is Siparia Mai.[So, you do not really matter if they come see her?] Oh, no. Oh, no. That believe . . . that she is there for them these days. Don’t criticize it.Shouldn’t criticize it.

Today, the members of the Catholic Church in Siparia spend the day prior to the

Hindu pilgrimage preparing. Even though Fr. Doyle, the current priest of the Church,

took a sympathetic stance toward the event, he was not actively involved in the ritual. He

only made two brief appearances during the two-day celebration. The ritual, from the

beginning to end, was organized by the congregants. How the members worked indicated

that they were the “experts.” They barely gave their hands a rest, and wholeheartedly

carried on with their assigned responsibilities. The preparation by the Church members

for the Coolie Fete was done toward a single goal: The transformation of “our Mother,”

La Divina Pastora into “their Mother,” Soparee Ke Mai, a Hindu goddess, by the statue’s

secession from the Catholic ordinary. The preparation is still intended to protect the

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putative “authenticity” of Catholic faith and ritual practice from the ingression of the

assumed “spurious” cultural elements.

After the statue was removed from the top of the altar, where it is usually niched,

the female members changed the statue’s dress to one tailored for this particular occasion.

Then they adorned the dress with jewelry and ornaments, and applied makeup and

cosmetics to the statue. Besides the spatial arrangement, the dress performs a critical

symbolic role in this transfiguration of the statue. Fr. Masse noted the statue’s dress in his

diary of the 1880s:

Like all the Spanish Virgins that of Siparia is dressed. O’Hanlon does not worry about his own clothes, worried himself less again with that of the Blessed Virgin. She has worn the same dress for several years. It is not because they were lacking. Her wardrobe is well furnished I can assure you. No year passes without her being offered several blouses, shirts and dresses. Among the last named there were some very pretty ones. I had the dirty dress buried and replaced it by another new one (cited in De Verteuil,2000, p. 254).

Fr. O’Hanlon’s strong desire to make the statue resemble the Holy Virgin in

Rome with a “dress of very good taste” (p. 254) seems not to have crystallized.

Afterwards, the statue’s dress had only been changed when the devotees donated

materials for new clothes. Thus, the dressing of the statue had not been done ritually. The

turning point came in the late 1960s when an “old Indian lady” manifested herself in the

dream of Ms. R., one of the “older heads” of the Church, who had been in charge of

tailoring, cleaning, and changing the statue’s dresses for 36 years. She then started

putting this dress on the statue every Easter Sunday morning following the feast days of

“Soparee Ke Mai.” Ms. R. explains the circumstances in which she decided to tailor the

“second dress”:

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The first year. . . no following year, she [La Divina Pastora] asked me to change her clothes. I came to the church here. In dream, you know? And she was in the yard standing like an old Indian lady. And she called me,“Hey gal! Come.” I go. “They invited me a party. You think I could go with this dress . . . clean enough?” I saw nothing wrong with the dress. I said, “Yeah! You could go like that!” I saw her. The dress was clean. She said, “Oh, right.” She walked for a while and continued to go heading to church. But turned around and called me back. I said, “What’s wrong?”She said, “Gal! I don’t feel well about my dress, you know?” “What’s wrong? Nothing wrong with it.” “You think I could go see my son like this?” Now when I watched the skirt underneath, the oil was falling.Because the Indians really pour the oil on her dress. So the oil was falling.When she showed me it, I said, “All right. Right. Right. I will fix that for you. I fix that for you.” I came to Father.... Father Powers at that time and told him what happened. “What you think? What’s your opinion? You are priest, so you should guide me or tell me what I should do.” Father Power asked me back, “Can you?” I said, “Yes! I could make the second dress.” I went home. Oh, before that, I stopped by the nun’s home. I told her that she asked me for my favor and I could do it for her. She told me, “You know you could do it. So do it.” So I decide going to do it. I said, “Sister, if somebody ask you to come meet at a party, you go with such a home dress? You will get a nice dress, clean dress to go, right? She is the mother come and ask me for my favor. I said, “I am going to do it.” Easter Sunday morning. . . beautiful sunrise! With a dirty dress, she wouldn’t be happy about it. If she ask me to do it, I am going to do it. Make the second dress.

Over the years, the statue’s dress has come to be changed more frequently.

Currently, Ms. R. does it seven times a year. The Hindustanis’ feast of the Soparee Ke

Mai, however, was the first occasion when the statue started wearing special clothes.

Before she had the same dress throughout the year. The dress, stained with the olive oil

showered by the Hindu pilgrims, was taken off; a clean dress was placed on the statue on

Easter Sunday morning for the Catholic celebration. The dress for Hindu feast is not

reused; it is either thrown away or “givejn] to anyone who wants it as a souvenir.” The

function of the statue’s dress as a symbolic marker of its distinct identities was reinforced

when Ms. R. undertook the ritualistic change before the Hindu feast on Holy Thursday

morning. It may not be a coincidence that the ritual changes of dress began during Fr.

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Powers’s tenure, when the statue was moved out of the chapel for the duration of the

Hindu feast.

When the Hindu pilgrimage was over, the statue was restored as La Divina

Pastora through the same activities in reverse order. In order “not to disturb the masses,”

the statue was left as it was in the Parish Hall from the evening of Good Friday to the

morning of Easter Sunday. Church members return the statue to the altar Sunday

afternoon. Then Ms. R. removed the statue’s dress, from which the “olive oil [that Hindu

devotees showered] was falling” and dressed the statue with a freshly tailored and clean

dress, with which “she [La Divina Pastora] was happy to go see her son.” By changing

the dress, Ms. R. and other Church members skillfully bestow distinct identities on the

statue.

In Ms. R.’s dream, the “Mother” manifested herself as a “young Indian gal [with]

dark skin [and] thick straight black hair reaching the lower part of her back.” On the other

hand, the dark-brown color of her face and hands, which are only the body parts that were

not covered by the dress, implies her “African” origin. Also, her slender and plain facial

form bears more resemblance to European descendants. As some Church members and

Hindu pilgrims similarly answered questions about her ethnic identification, she is

“nobody” but “anybody.” This irreducibility of her identity to any single racial/ethnic

stock is addressed by the role of dresses in categorizing her as Soparee Ke Mai at one

time and La Divina Pastora at another. This also indicates the potential of the statue to

become more than these two entities.

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The Avoidance of a Homogenizing Idiom of Community

The notion that West Indians have honed the capacity through their experiences in

the migratory process has produced a large amount of scholarly work. In order to act in

an orderly manner under contexts increasingly assuming different aspects, people must

have altered their identities according to a given situation. This requires that a certain

amount of space, or what Abrahams calls “play” (Abrahams, 1983; Burton, 1997), should

be immanent in the mechanism of identification. This “play” enables them to manipulate,

adapt to, or even slip through the different circumstances. In diverse societies, such as

Trinidad, this “migratory process” is, though much more ephemeral, a daily occurrence.

Even in quotidian life, people encounter “others” with distinct interests, on their way to

work, school, club, grocery, and the rum shop around the comer. In their focus on

subjectivity of agency, the existing studies (e.g., Newman, 1973; Carnegie, 1983;

Carnegie, 2002) view such a skill, enabling them to successfully “play the game”

(Newman, 1973, p. 293, cited in Maingot, 2002, p. 121) as “strategic flexibility,”

(Carnegie, 2002, pp. 106-111) a prerequisite for living in diverse Caribbean social

contexts.

This contextual identification has been also the requirement for La Divina

Pastora to display power and stir the feelings of awe and respect among followers. In

order for the statue to have awe-inspiring power, La Divina Pastora had to respond to the

diverse wishes and demands of one visitor after another. To comply with those

expectations, which were not merely various but also occasionally conflicting, she was

forced to adjust herself to contexts and audiences. However, for La Divina Pastora, as for

West Indians, it has not been possible to change her identities strategically with unlimited

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freedom. The “play” element of the statue’s identification is clearly constant human

production. In this respect, it was appropriate for Stephen Glazier (1985a) to conclude

that the intentions of the concerned agencies—in this case, religious practitioners—

determine the formation and orientation of ritual change. This has made the religious

field “anything but mechanical” (p. 60). It is, however, difficult to agree with Glazier

when he continues, “it [the product] is as carefully orchestrated as a symphony with the

religious leader [or congregants] as its conductor” (p. 60). It is wrong to assume that

religious leaders, the laity, or pilgrims make their choices voluntarily. Following Peter

Berger (1990[1967]), it should be understood that the presumed power of the statue and

the activities of the church members and the devotees are dialectically related, “even

when this fact is not present to their consciousness” (p. 96). The devotees perceive

themselves as entirely dependent on the versatile nature of the statue, enabling the statue

to “contend with opposing and competing forces” (Abrahams 1983: xvi.), which they

have created by their own hands. That is why, as Berger (1990[1967]) points out, the

irresistible power and attraction of La Divina Pastora have assumed certain

independence from church members’ activities that produced it (p. 96). The numerous

dresses, which allow for the manifestation of distinct selves according to contexts and

audiences, have been tailored and put on by church members. However, as Ms. R. told

me with emotion, all the “talents,” “health,” and “strength” with which she has thus far

been capable of “serv[ing] him, my Lord” were given by the “Mother [La Divina

Pastora].”

It might not make sense to reduce the source of power that this statue has come to

hold to a single cultural origin. It is not because there are so many stories, myths, and

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legends that the task becomes laborious. Rather, it is because the religious field around

the statue’s power has taken shape through constant interactions and exchanges. It has

thus assumed a form of “micro-community with a nascent religion that was, in a real

sense, its own” (Mintz & Price, 1976, p. 23-24). While changing her dress on Easter

Sunday morning, Ms. R. told me in a triumphant tone, “Last year, a young Indian couple

unable to have a baby came see her asking she blessing. They come back this year with a

lot of offerings in return and told me that they were blessed for a child. She is really

great.” Such “other’s” stories about “our” Mother reinforce the devotees’ belief in the

assumed power of their own mother. This “religious field” has developed and maintained

its cohesion by the symbol, which has been separated and restored whenever conflict

occurred. According to one account, several estate owners, who fretted at the East Indian

indentured workers who came back exhausted from their week-long pilgrimage, got

together and placed a similar brown-skinned statue as a substitute in a nearby village that

they named “Siparia Hill.”17 This substitution, however, was not have become attractive

enough for Hindu devotees to shift their site of pilgrimage. It must have been because

such a complete separation, which led to the emergence of another independent religious

field, would deprive her of the assumed power by suffocating her flexible identification.

The awe-inspiring power of Soparee Ke Mai and La Divina Pastora has been embedded

in the interactions and exchanges with those who belong to a putatively different cultural

origin (and their practices and worldviews) from the very beginning.

Having witnessed Hindu devotees imploring the “Catholic” Virgin, one would be

more confident in Emile Durkheim’s (2001 [1912]) thesis that religious rite and faith

contribute to societal and group cohesion by eventually transforming a “multitude of

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minds” into “collective representations” (p. 18). On the other hand, following Antonio

Gramsci (1971), one would probably translate the phenomenon into his political

vocabulary as a strategy taken by the subordinate “folks” for the “war of position.” Either

interpretation of religion, as an integrative force or as a possible source of social

transformation, though suggestive, does not sufficiently explain the phenomenon. What is

missing from both functionalistic approaches is the perspective on the historical

formative process of a given ritual. The simultaneity of manifold conflicts has not

permitted any one actor to monopolize this rare symbolic capital. Also, it placed the

concerned groups under the contradictory forces of integration and separation, leading to

the emergence of the shared religious field, where they are linked while remaining

separate. Afterwards, a “war,” or conflict, per se has remained a critical occasion wherein

“Mother(s)” displayed and renewed her assumed divine power, thereby or because those

conflicts were eventually suppressed. Past conflicts and a degree of antagonism have

maintained and reinforced both in-group and out-group solidarity with those who were

kept as separate others within the unified symbolic field. A “collective representation”

among distinct groups has remained because the “minds,” without assimilating, remained

multiple. Although paradoxical, the Soparee Ke Mai!La Divina Pastora feasts have been

a socially integrative force in Trinidad because they have provided means and spaces

wherein differences are repeatedly produced and confirmed instead of leading to a

collective affirmation toward a unified belief and a unified symbol.

In an effort to transcend the traditional dichotomy of idealism and materialism,

Pierre Bourdieu (1990) constructed a generalized “theory of economy of practices,”

which is applicable to “all practices” (p. 209). He argues that there is no critical

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difference between symbolic practice and any other form. The human practices are, for

Bourdieu, fundamentally “interest-oriented” and thus competitive for whatever the goods

in limited supply. Given this line of thought, La Divina Pastora has been what Bourdieu

termed symbolic “capital”; she is the object of struggle between Catholics and Hindus as

a rare and valued resource of symbolic power. However, the occasional Catholic-Hindu

conflicts have not led to the “monopolization” of this symbolic capital. The problem is

that his thesis takes the incompatibility of symbolic interests for granted. What if the

value of a given symbolic capital itself is lost through monopolization? What would one

do if the monopolization of religious goods and services stunts the growth of the

“religious field” constructed around them? La Divina PastoralSoparee Ke Mai feasts are

a case in point. While she stares at the Catholics with a loving look on her face at one

time, she eagerly listens to what Hindus say—not as a sole mother but as multiple

“mothers.” If monopolized by either group, she would lose a significant source of her

power: contextual identification.

There was not the separate Coolie Fete when Hindu followers performed their

pilgrimage along with Catholic adherents of La Divina Pastora on the same day. The

intensification of contestation over distinct symbolic interests led leaders and the laity of

the Catholic Church to separate the days of the Hindu feast from the Catholic procession.

Beginning from a single point in history, the statue started leaving the altar where it was

ordinarily enshrined for unusual locations, including the presbytery, the playground of

the adjacent Boy’s Catholic School, and the Parish Hall, where it received the audience of

Hindu pilgrims during the Coolie Fete. The ritual of changing her dress has delineated a

dividing line between the two identities of the statue, the protective deity for Roman

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Catholics and the demigoddess for Hindustanis. Therefore, the Catholic Church and its

adherents have reproduced and made use of contrasts and oppositions, refusing the fusion

of a distinct worldview into their own.

In the novelette quoted above, Alfred Mendes (1932, cited in Munasinghe, 2001),

observing Hindu devotees who ardently thronged around the statue, imagined that he

would “look down upon the figure of Christ and play with the fancy of its miraculously

rising up and using the cross as a weapon for striking the idolaters out of the house of

God” (p. 197). From this remark and elsewhere in the story, Munasinghe reads the

prevailing ideology as implicitly refusing the participation of Indo-Trinidadians to, and

devaluing the contribution of their ideas and objects to intercultural fertilization, in this

palpable plural society. The congregation of this particular church and Christians in

general viewed the Hindu devotees to the statue of La Divina Pastora unfit to be “true

Christians” (Munasinghe, 2001, p. 197). Yet, Munasinghe, along with Mendes, may be

mistaken in thinking that annual Hindu pilgrims craved to be Catholics. This researcher

understands that Hindu laypersons making devotions in the Catholic Church, which was

the site under the putative Afro-Trinidadian and Christian cultural domination, were

equally mindful of retaining the coherence of their own worldview. For both Hindu and

Catholic devotees to the statue, Soparee Ke Mai is not simply a “mistaken identity” (p.

196) of La Divina Pastora, but a separate and “authentic” Mother.

Despite the “dialogical” division and separation (Bakhtin, 1981), which precluded

their fusion into one seamless system, this case of collision between different points of

worldviews has not become “politicized and made contestatory” (Young, 1995, pp. 21-

22). Under the circumstances, where it could not exert power to prevent Hindustanis’

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digression, the Catholic Church adopted measures to keep its own symbolic domain and

religious practices sanctified from the “spurious” cultural influence. Even though they

were originally introduced to sanctify the Catholic self of the statue from the other, those

artifices for the ritualistic conversion came to constitute a “hyphen” linking distinct

religious systems, when they became absent from their consciousness. The Coolie Fete

and Siparia Fete, reflections of different worldviews, are separate but hyphenated,

forming a single ritual process. At this point, “others” assumed a new implication. The

“others”—Hindustanis for Catholics and vice versa—have come to serve as the essential

source of legitimation for each group’s own ritual performance in celebration of their

own Mother.

An elderly Hindu devotee in his late 70s from Quinam Beach, 20 miles south of

Siparia, explained why he kept making the pilgrimage to Soparee Ke Mai for the last 34

years: “Simple. The more you devote [to] others, the more you receive later.” As I drove

on my way to Siparia early in the morning of Holy Thursday, a soft but persuasive voice

from the radio drew my attention: “All the donations [made by Hindu pilgrims] must be

returned to Hindu community.” It was Satnarayan Maharaj, the Secretary General of the

Sanatan Dharma Maha Sabha, the religiocultural organization that professes to represent

the whole Hindu Indo-Trinidadian community. He then implied that the Roman Catholic

Church should not line its pocket with money earned by decent Hindustanis, and that it be

made available for the development of the Hindu community. A church member

informed me that the Maha Sabha had been making similar claims since the early 1990s.

However, I could not find consistency between Mr. Maharaj’s claim of cultural struggle

and the pilgrims who patiently waited in a long line on a hot night for their turn to offer

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whatever they could afford. Nor do I think that Maha Sabha’s belief is congruent with the

interests of the pilgrim who proposed at the souvenir stand that a portable size of the

statue’s image be sold so that he can “ask for her [La Divina Pastoral Soparee Ke Mai’s]

protection and instruction any time while carrying it in [his] wallet.” There may be

nothing more detrimental to the interests of Hindustan pilgrims than severing their

connection with others by “returning the donation.”

The olive oil, donated by the Hindu devotees, was given to the Catholics during

their procession to La Divina Pastora two Sundays away from the Coolie Fete. It used to

be taken directly from the oil drum in which Hindustanis poured half a bottle of oil. A

church member believes that the practice was discontinued a few years ago in order “to

avoid the trouble” made by Catholics who rushed and scrambled for this particular alms.

On the feast day of La Divina Pastora, hundreds of thousands of tiny plastic containers of

bottled oil were delivered instead. However, it does not matter how it is delivered.

Catholics once vied for the oil and still treasure it because of the taken-for-granted fact

that it reached their hands via her [La Divina Pastora] from “others.” On the other hand,

Hindu devotees assume that oil brought home on the occasion of Coolie Fete possesses

power for “curing the sick” because they know that half a portion donated to her

[Soparee Ke Mat] from the same bottle will find its way into “other’s” hands (see also

Osugi, 1999, pp. 223-224). Without being shared, the meanings, which have made Hindu

and Catholic devotions to the statue “powerful” and “beneficial” as pilgrims perceive,

would disappear. This dynamism would be overlooked if interreligious relations were

reduced to a simple bifurcation between dominant and subordinate and if the ritual

performances are viewed as conscious defiant actions. Nor is the view of this

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combination of distinct religious traditions as a syncretic whole helpful in understanding

this dynamism.

Kali Mai

“It’s same Mother. She’s the same she.” When I mentioned the name of Soparee

Ke Mai in the middle of the interview, she responded at once. The interviewee is

affectionately called “Tanti” by her followers. She is the leader, or “mother,” of a Mandir

(Hindu temple) in honor of Kali (Mai), which is variously described as the “black

Mother-goddess” (Naipaul, 1983, p. 155), or goddess of destruction. However, at first

sight, one will have difficulty accepting a view of Kali as identical or interchangeable

with Soparee Ke Mai. Both are dark-skinned goddesses, but their outlooks are in striking

contrast. Unlike the appearance of Soparee Ke Mai, which makes her apparently an

amiable and self-effacing personality, the figure and posture of Kali must convey the

impression that she is aggressive and bellicose. Kali’s half-naked brawny figure was

partly covered with her hair, hung in wild and disheveled locks, which differs remarkably

from the slender physique of Soparee Ke Mai, carefully concealed with a thick long

white dress. As opposed to a garland with colorful flowers around the neck of Soparee Ke

Mai, the necklace that Kali wears is made of skulls or heads of devils she has slain. Kali

is dressed in a skirt also made of the heads and arms of demons, which seem to have been

liquidated by her with the various weapons in her hands: a spear, bow, cutlass, and

machete, all stained with blood. Kali holds up a freshly severed head, from which blood

drips down to a bowl in her another hand. One theory holds that Kali must drink all the

blood of the evildoers she conquers, because they would return to life whenever their

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1 fiblood touches the ground. Kali’s bloodshot eyes and long tongue stuck out from her

mouth, and hint that she is still thirsty for blood. She stands on Lord Shiva, her consort

according to a Hindu epic, who is cadaverously recumbent, in the middle of wasteland

frill of rotten corpses and skulls. Tanti’s casual identification of these seemingly antithetic

Mothers, Soparee Ke Mai and Kali Mai, caused me to connect them during my

attendance at weekly services held in her Kali Mata Devi Mandir.

The Mandir is situated in the small village of Pasea, surrounded by agricultural

fields. This is not a traditional plantation district, but an assortment of small intensive

farms of various crops in the suburbs, which are a less than an hour’s drive away from

Port-of-Spain, and forms part of the island’s most dense residential area, St. Augustine.

From the main highway, a narrow but well-paved road leads to the temple in a cul-de-sac.

In front yards of houses lined up on either side of the street are multicolored jhandis and

pedestals for murtis (sculptures of a god/goddess), which indicates that this community is

predominantly Hindustani. Nonetheless, this particular “Hindu” temple seems not to have

really blended with its surroundings. In addition to countless jhandis, square-shaped flags

and yellow pennants decorate the Mandir. A line of cars and taxis parked in front of the

temple indicates that it receives many visitors from afar, in contrast with traditional

orthodox Hindu temples that are usually community-based. By the main gate of the

temple, there are three goats tethered to a shrub and five cocks caged or kept in baskets.

Every Sunday morning, when a weekly service is performed at this temple, this tranquil

and idyllic Hindu community is transformed. It becomes filled with visitors from all over

the island. Some are accompanied by these sacrificial “offerings.” And it rings with a role

of drums and resounds with the chanting voices of pundits and piercing cries of devotees.

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When I asked her permission to participate in a regular Sunday service, Tanti

advised me to come at 8:30 in the morning. Yet, the service seemed to have begun when I

arrived at seven o’clock. A familiar notice to Hindu temples near the entryway welcomes

visitors: “No footwear allowed.” The Mandir has two main parts. On the left side, there is

a spacious covered temple with church-like pews, where the visitors wait for the puja

while engaging in small talk. There is a kiosk, selling images of various deities, snacks,

and soft drinks, and some partitioned rooms usable for dressing or lodging. In an

adjoining large kitchen and washing area, a number ofpujaris (or poojaris—assistant

like personnel of the temple) were busy with preparations for the puja. On the right side,

there is an open-air ceremonial space, where numerous visitors were in the midst of

devotions when I arrived. There were different forms of deities enshrined in the

numbered pedestals, representing stages of the spiritual elevation of Kali Mai. The

figures of “lower” deities rest on separate counter-like pedestals that stand facing each

other, whereas those who embody the four highest stages, Saraswali, Lakshmi, Durga,

and Kali, sit in a floored and ventilated sanctum, called “Mother’s Room,” as if these

deities welcome the visitors.

The individual devotion seemed highly ritualized. It was performed following the

numbers assigned to each deity. No stage was skipped. The uniformity is also

recognizable in how the devotees offer a prayer. The set of offerings, including a variety

of fruits, flowers, and grains of rice, saffron, and coconuts, is made to every single deity

(although some gods/goddess received additional offerings, such as packets of cigarettes

and bottles of puncheon rum19). The temple prepares these offerings in advance for the

visitors’ needs, but at the same time, the devotees constantly give a fresh supply of these

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items as donations to the temple. There were some deviations from the worshippers. No

visitors passed by any one god/goddess, but there were differences in terms of the

intensity of their payer to a specific god; the level of devotion could be inferred from the

time and offerings dedicated. A middle-aged male devotee with his son lingered in front

of Hanuman; a young couple in Hindu attire who seemed to be surrounded by relatives

proceeded with their prayer in the presence of Rama and Krishna. A girl in her mid-teens

with her mother remained long in the sight of Krishna. While she was praying intently,

one of her sisters continued dancing with disheveled hair. According to a devotee, these

differences are due to a type of “problem” or “sick” that (s)he currently faced and

suffered. The same devotee summarized: “All of them [deities] have different special

power [to a particular problem or sick].”

The session of individual devotion was immediately followed by the “collective”

Kali Mai puja. At nine o’clock, it began with a short prayer offered in Tamil Hindi by a

cult-head pujari in front of the visitors who were now seated in the pews. After the

prayer, the devotees moved en masse to the outdoor ceremonial space following the

pujaris. Contrary to the individual devotion, the puja was conducted under the strict

guidance and supervision of pujaris. The head pujari occasionally rebuked other

subordinate pujaris or even visitors for doing something inconsistent with standardized

ceremonial practices. More than the same items that the devotees earlier offered

individually, the pundits now presented a few coconuts that they smashed with a machete

in the presence of each deity. Coconut milk was gathered in a bucket on ground.20

What drew my attention was, however, continuity from the session of individual

devotion to the collective puja: both were oriented ultimately to personal symbolic

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interests and spiritual needs, not the collective cause. It was clearly demonstrated when a

visitor or a group of visitors, who was in need of the “special power” of a particular form

of deity, stepped forward from the crowd and asked for prayers for their personal

“problems” or “sickness.” As a pujari indicated in a subsequent interview, the role of

pujaris was to “help,” or offer “assistance” or “guidance” for patients and devotees who

suffer, so that they could be “properly” diagnosed and cured. During the entire process of

puja, pujaris stayed close to the devotees in need. Those pujaris, who seemed to be

specialized for the task, continued to beat thin and flat drums, called tappu. The beat of

this special drum seemed to provide a rhythm that helped some devotees to quicken theirty |

pace to reach an ecstatic state. The Mandir and temple personnel essentially provide a

means for the devotees to establish and retain direct personal access to divine power.

The animal sacrifice does not deviate from this framework: it is performed for an

individual, not a collective, cause. The offering of animals is nothing more than a sign of

how serious a problem they are facing and how eagerly they want to revolve it. When a

devotee came forward for a prayer to a specific deity, taking an animal with him/her, one

of the pundits, who seemed to specialize in this task, cut off the heads of goats or cocks

with a single stroke of his cutlass. The pujaris immediately picked up the headless and

00still twitching bodies and threw them in a large plastic barrel.

The “individualism” came further to the fore in the later stages of worship. Up to

this point, the head pujari and other pujaris, who were all male, had guided the puja.

However, when the ritual reached the concluding stages in the elevation of Kali Mai,

Tanti took it over. Until then, she did not even appear in the scenes of worship. During

the reception to the highest forms of Kali Mai (.Kali Mata, Kali-Bhairoo, Kali-Devi, and

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Dharti Mata), Tanti gradually unifies with “Mother.” Her dark skin and long hair made

her look alike a popular image of Kali Mai.

In the meantime, as if by common consent, visitors started forming a long line in

order to obtain “instructions” or “prescriptions” for their problems. In this direct

exchange with her, called jharay, the devotees consult with the Mother concerning their

problems and sicknesses. The issues were diverse: They ranged from medical to financial

to academic to domestic. The pujari later asserted, “Mother does not discriminate

between types of problems.” Having listened intently what the devotee said, the Mother,

who now identified herself with the leader, provided each “patient” with a personalized

prescription. She did it while tapping on or pouring water over the supplicants’ forehead,

and combing down their body with a bundle of twigs from a neem tree.23 Meanwhile, a

young pujari, a son of the leader, stayed close to her while jotting down the Mother’s

words that came out from Tanti’s mouth. For example, the Mother gave the following

instructions to a pregnant Indian girl in her late teens, who was crying throughout:

My child, I help you, my child. I give what you want. And everything all right. You will have a very good child. No worry. Come to my temple do puja, make devotion. Prachar dhar must be thrown for me, my child....

The Mother then had a conversation with a middle-aged Indian, who begged her to heal

some disorder:

Ah, you have a lot of problems, my son. Bad sick. Very bad sick. This child is very sick. No one can cure he. Talk to me, my son. [Facing to a jpujari] He needs nine-week devotion. He have to do a puja for me my child.... I will cure he. Get this child better. [While stroking his back with a sprig and then sprinkling water his head] I will get this better, my son.He has to do puja for myself and my sister, Mother Ganga, Pujari....

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Half an hour or so after the jharay started, a pujari called me, “Chinee! Chinee!

Come Chinee!” When he let me cut in the line of patients, the Mother started prescribing

for the particular needs of this graduate student in the middle of fieldwork:

I will give you all the KNOWLEDGE you need, my son. I pray for you for something better in your life. I will give you all information you need. I get you knowledge — You have to come to my temple and do puja for me and Ganesh. Then I will give you knowledge. All knowledge. All knowledge you need. [Facing to a pujari] Pujari, you have to organize a puja for him. ...24

Toward the end of the consultation, the Mother called in a middle-aged Indian

man, attended by his relatives and friends, who had been outside the premises of the

temple. The man and his attendants did not even step into the site of the temple before

they received a special prayer. They had waited in a car parked outside until the moment

when asked for the prescription from the Mother. Two of the five attendants went back to

the car to help carry the man to the main gate. Their behavior suggested that they did not

wish to expose themselves to something assumed to reside in the temple.

The Mother provided patients with medications, which varied depending on the

type and gravity of the problem and the sickness. They may have involved sindur

(vermilion), bhabhut (ashes), saffron, or some leaves of the neem tree, which were

folded in a piece of paper. According to a pujari, the devotees take them home as their

“protection” or “guard.” Following the completion of their jharay with Mother, the

devotees received further explanation from pujaris concerning what they had to do for

healing and resolution before heading home.

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Nests of “Transformist Hegemonies”: A Chain of “Another Construction”

An English writer once compared Hindu immigrants to a Christian saint: “Like

Rachel, the coolie had brought their gods to their new home” (Froude, 1892, p. 75). As

with La Divina Pastora, when Kali found her way to this far West Indian island has

remained a matter of conjecture. It is however known that at some early point of their

settlement indentured workers took her into Trinidad and other West Indian destinations

from southern India, where rituals in honor of Kali were popular. Donald Wood (1986

[1968], p. 150) has reconstructed a puja that is believed to have executed in honor of Kali,

in which a “goat [with] garlands of red flowers and surrounded by pans of washed rice

and bottles of molasses and rum was beheaded to the sound of drums. . . on Christmas

morning, 1855.” It was only a decade after the first group of East Indian indentured

arrived in the island.

However, it can be inferred from the accounts from that era that Kali was revered

in a manner distinct from a puja as performed in modem Kali Mai temples. A local paper

dated in the same year carried a following close description of a puja that was performed

to propitiate Kali:

From a small circular spot the grass had been carefully cut away.On this spot were placed a lump of live wood embers, two or three small garlands of red flowers, chips or shavings, and two bottles, one containing molasses the other rum, a sharp glittering cutlass—in pans with plenty of water—rice very carefully washed—oil—and, lastly, a fine young male kid.

Everything being made ready, one man begins to beat the drum— another leads forward the kid (previously well washed)—another sealed one plantain leaf, sets the fire a light, mixes a portion of the rice in a saucer with oil, molasses, spirit, and a powder I could not distinguish, but which I was told was similar to increase; as he mixes this, he feds the fire with oil and chips—then the kid being brought to him, the horns, nose, breast, neck were touched with some kind of paint, a very bright red—

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while he goes on attending to the fire and burning by degrees the mixture of rice, & c., which he had been so carefully preparing, the others place the garlands round poor kiddy’s neck, and try to make him eat some of the clean white rice spread for him on a plantain leaf—for some time he refuses, frightened by the noise and flames—they put it in his mouth, bend his head to it, and at last let him alone, and vociferate. Left to his own will, kiddy sees the rice and smells, and eats—unlucky moment! No sooner had he positively commenced than the Coolie with the cutlass (which he had taken up and held ready for use) makes one little swing, and the kid lie headless. The head was placed on the fire, which was then sprinkled with the blood, in which also the surrounding Coolies dipped their fingers and touched their foreheads and breasts—the executioner bent over the head and appeared to be repeating some prayers—they were very short, however, and on concluding them be looked exultingly around—and all was over [parenthetic comments in original] {Port o f Spain Gazette,October 15, 1855, p. 1).

In those days, Kali Mai puja was community-based, organized under traditional

Brahmin leadership, and usually performed for the sake of an entire community. This

implies that the ritual performance of Kali Mai worship has undergone significant

changes to reach its current state, which is less community-based and more of a public

event designed to satisfy individual symbolic interests and spiritual needs. A confluence

of contradictory forces brought about changes in Kali Mai worship in Trinidad.

“Hinduism. . . may be called a commonwealth of varying sects and beliefs” (Jha,

1985[1974], p. 5). The majority of East Indian immigrants came from the northern part of

the Indian subcontinent, particularly Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. Despite this geographical

concentration in the origins of indentured workers, the sectarian and doctrinal mosaic of

India was replicated in the religious landscape of this West Indian colony (Vertovec,

1992; Vertovec, 2000). In the early phase of indentured period, the limited mobility of

workers, together with dialectal barriers, entailed the emergence of separate microcosms

fashioned around gods/goddesses, priests, and devotees who shared a place of origin

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(Vertovec, 1992, p. 110). However, in the closing decades of the nineteenth century,

religious leaders started working to integrate the competing heterogeneous traditions into

codified symbols of orthodoxy.

In India, the caste and religious systems have traditionally retained self-contained

symbolic and territorial enclaves in mutually reinforcing relationships. The variety of

religious traditions could not have been assimilated into an integrated orthodoxy without

the drastic deterritorialization attendant upon migration to Trinidad. The shared living

sphere eventually developed an “ethnic” lingua franca among East India immigrants

(Vertovec, 1992, pp. 93-94). On the other hand, it was impossible to restore caste system,

which was a highly parochial phenomenon, allowing for an extensive reengineering of

Hinduism in Trinidad. At the same time, the general social belief concerning the

superiority of Christianity over non-Christian religious expressions spurred Hindu

religious elites to realign Hinduism as a competing plausible structure in their struggle

against subordination in the colonial classification system.

When they became permanent residents of Trinidadian society and their

communities became more visible, the Christian community began to exert more pressure

on those who professed non-Christian faiths to reduce their alterity. The major Christian

denominations, which had been generally passive in proselytization of East Indians,

began to establish missions to convert this rising group of working class. In 1891, after a

hiatus of several years after the first attempt in the mid-1880s, the Anglican Church

restored its mission with Hindustani-speaking priests (Brereton, 1979, p. 184). The

religious census from that year indicated the demotion of Anglicanism from the second to

third largest religious affiliation—following Hinduism (see Table 3-8 in Chapter 3). On

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the other hand, a militant mission of Fr. Marie-Francois Ribon, a Catholic priest, was

established in the 1870s to oppose “paganish” religious expression, such as animal

sacrifices and fire-pass festivals of Hindustanis who resided in Port of Spain and its

suburbs (Brereton, 1979, pp. 184-185).

Equally important, Trinidad was a destination for missionaries of Arya Samaj, an

Indian-based Hindu reformist movement from 1910 onward. The movement was bom in

1875 as a reaction to the Western influence that was making deep inroads into Indian

society and culture. The founding Swamis appropriated the fundamental values from the

Western worldview, and were ruthlessly critical of then-current Hinduism, while at the

same time maintaining the superiority of Hinduism, which had so long been degraded

because of its loss of “true” textual Brahmanism. In order to retrieve the original

greatness of Hinduism, Arya Samaj called for equality among Hindustanis by refusing the

caste system and advocating a monolithic faith centered on Vedas and the renunciation of

idolatry of minor godlings (Forbes, 1984, p. 20, cited in Khan, 2004b, p. 138; Vertovec,

1992, pp. 57-58). It was an attempt to turn Hinduism into a more systematic religion with

an organized priesthood, church, and missionaries (Nandy, 1983, pp. 24-25). The

advocates believed it was possible to identify in ancient Hinduism the elements that were

equal to the valued Western traits. This “alternative construction of the West” (p. xiii)

was an equal or even graver menace to the ascending leaders of Hindu community in

Trinidad. For the teaching of the Arya Samaj missions had turned the West into a

reasonably manageable influence within the traditional Hindu worldview. As a result, it

attracted economically mobile Hindustanis who were distancing themselves from

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“primitiveness” of Hinduism. Yet, the number of followers remained small (Khan, 2004b,

pp. 138-139).

Under the “transformist hegemony” (Gramsci, 1971), which constantly devalued

non-Christian religious representations and denied the source of their contribution, all

aspects of Hinduism were forced to reconstruct themselves. As a reaction to Christian

assimilation, Brahman religious elites strove to recast Hinduism to serve as a competing

plausibility structure for the demonopolized religious system (Berger, 1990 [1967], p. 49)

and a “diacritical symbol” to mobilize the Hindu population in their struggle for the

political redress in a multicultural society (Vertovec, 1992; Vertovec, 2000). The

codification of Hinduism and the public exhibition of authorized knowledge through

repeated ritual performances were seen as acts of resistance to the Christian transformist

hegemony. However, this reconstruction of Hinduism, compelled by the dominating

social discipline, established another transformist hegemony within the Hindu community.

The homogenization of heterogeneous Hindu traditions was not a symmetrical process

wherein all imported elements were equally valued. Some intellectual, metaphysical, and

ritualistic traditions were appropriated, whereas others were devalued as inconsistent and

denied their contribution to the authentic system of symbols.

In the estate, indentured East Indians lived and worked closely with people they

had never encountered before their migration to Trinidad. These included former African

slaves,26 colored and white overseers, and owners of the estates. However, jealousy and

antagonism was based on the differences between East Indian workers; the “otherness” of

those strangers was not yet the subject of comparison. As an official report on the

immigrant workers observed in the late 1870s, “most of the disturbances that occurfred]

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on the estates [were] between the people themselves” (cited in Look-Lai, 1993, p. 122).

On the other hand, the influx of immigrants from the Indian subcontinent always included

9 7a certain number of Muslims. The main demarcation was drawn not between Hindus

and Muslims, but along the their place of origin (i.e., northern or southern India) (Wood,

1986 [1968], pp. 139-140). Those who migrated “from Calcutta,” the major embarkation

of northern India, “to Caroni, Trinidad’s major sugar-producing district (LaGuerre,

1985[1974]), always represented themselves as part of the absolute majority of the

Indo-Trinidadian community. Nevertheless, during the entire period of indentureship,

there were a sizable number of workers who came from southern India.29

To an inspector of immigrants, “Calcutta and Madras people [did] not seem to

agree, and outbreaks between them sometimes [took] place” (cited in Look-Lai, 1993, p.

122). This was less because localized dialects prevented their proper communication than

because there was a strong proclivity among “Calcutta people” to connect general

phenotypic traits of “Madrasis”—their darker complexion—with a lower caste (Ryan,

1972, p. 22; Wood, 1986 [1968], p. 140). This racial prejudice was older than the

indentured system. However, when it was transposed into a West Indian colonial setting,

it began to assume a new implication. Irrespective of the disparity in their ascriptive

statuses in India, they now worked equally as indentured laborers under the same

working conditions. The indentured system made them comparable. Nonetheless, their

relative distance continued to be used as a criterion of differentiation by the dominant

“Calcutta people”; equally important, this criterion was appropriated as a reference point

for classification by landowners and colonial authorities. Subsequently, this

differentiation became a stereotype in Trinidad: “The difference in the people is almost as

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great as the difference in the language; the coolies from Calcutta providing valuable,

steady laborers, while those from Madras are for the most part useless” (Gamble, 1866, p.

33, cited in Look-Lai, 1993, p. 123). In his report to the colonial government, a

stipendiary magistrate explained that estate owners tried hard to avoid being allocated

indentured workers of Madras origin because they were idle and often breached their

contracts, whereas those from Calcutta gave great satisfaction to their employers (C.O.

295/210, Walker to Newcastle, September 15,1860, cited in Wood, 1986 [1968], p. 140).

The caste system was a localized phenomenon in India, which precluded its replication as

an institution in Trinidad. Nevertheless, a stereotype that linked place of origin and

“ascribed” traits with culture was translated within the existing system of merit and

reward distribution of plantation society. The oldest tourist guide observed the influence

of caste system in Trinidad:

There is no doubt that Hindus coming to colonies like Trinidad, far away from the land of their birth, would like, if they could, to lessen the burden of Caste, but they either dare not, or cannot do so. The mere fact of crossing the ocean plunges any man, whether the Brahman or Sudra, into depths of degradation, but the relative distance between them remains the same. This is an important point, for there is a general impression that the Brahman and the Sudra (I merely take these by way of example), sink to the same level, which is by no means the case. They fall an equal distance, but the one still continues to be immeasurably the superior of the other [bracketed note and emphasis in original] (Collen, 1888, cited in Besson & Brereton, 1992, p. 217).

Brahman religious elites reengineered Hinduism, assimilating heterogeneity

through appropriation. In so doing, they placed doctrinal and ritualistic traditions

associated with those of southern Indian origin at both a practical and ideological

disadvantage. In particular, religious practices such as animal sacrifices or fire-passing

ceremonies, which came to be attributed to southern India and were considered

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representative of Hindu paganism (according to Christian-centered social discipline),

were selectively excluded from their appropriations.

A small pantheon of Sanskrit deities, which compellingly personified the

Brahmans’ symbolic status, subordinated a variety of local gods/goddesses, particularly

those that were equated with ritual expressions that had been labeled illegitimate. In this

transformation, it was necessary to reconstruct the celebration of Kali. Kali was not

peripheral in the quotidian religious activities of Hindu immigrants. More precisely, as

noted earlier, there was the extant (and replicated) “commonwealth” of diverse Hindu

traditions without a standardized criterion, called “orthodoxy,” which stratified

gods/goddesses. In his travelogue, for instance, Charles Kingsley (1892) presents a

lengthy description of the oldest Hindu temple, where Kali was ensconced as a

representative deity, along with Mahadeva (Shiva), who has formed Hindu trimulti with

Brahma and Vishnu (p. 300). Kali was consecrated in a community-based ritual that was

performed for the sake of a given community as a whole under traditional religious

leadership, along with any gods/goddesses that would be subsumed later into the

(reconstructed Hindu orthodoxy as legitimate.

In the codified symbols of Hindu orthodoxy, however, Kali was given a “rightfid”

position. She took up the subordinate and supportive roles as a consort of Shiva, a male

figure. Since then, Kali has remained a merciful mother, or a critical source of Shakti, in

the Sanatanist orthodoxy. Yet, with the newly assigned status, she does not fly into a fury

causing destruction on the living. This implies that Kali is no longer subject to ritual

performance for propitiation. Well past the beginning of the twentieth century,

community-based Kali puja continued to be executed, albeit much less frequently, in

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villages predominantly of Hindu Indo-Trinidadians. For example, in his autobiography, V.

S. Naipaul (1983) recounted a village “ceremony of sacrifice to KalF in the early 1930s.

The villagers, who could not afford to have their cattle vaccinated, used the ritual to

protect them from epidemic. “On the appointed day the goat was garlanded, its head cut

off, and its blood sprinkled one the altar before the image of the goddess” (p. 551). By the

1950s, however, Brahman priests had receded from the scenes of Kali Mai puja. In a

village located in central Trinidad, Morton Klass (1960) found Kali as the “sole deity that

was honored in a community-based puja” which involved the immolation of animals and

was organized by the “council of elders” (pancheyat) in order to ensure the protection of

the entire village against an epidemic (p. 172). Around the same period, Arthur and

Juanita Niehoff (1960) were present at a rite with animal sacrifice, in which a “man. . .

possessed by a deota [went] into a trance, perform[ed] a frenzied dance, and beat on a

special drum made only for the purpose” (p. 126). However, both Klass and the Niehoffs

noted the absence of Brahman priests and Hindu laities, who claimed a higher caste

origin, from the ceremonies they observed, and found that villagers felt that Shakti rituals

were exclusively a “low caste practice” (Niehoff & Niehoff, 1960, p. 126).

With their experience in an elaborate priesthood, Brahmans had “monopolized the

sacred knowledge of rituals and Sanskrit texts, so that ritual knowledge replaced purity as

the legitimation of [their] status” (Van der Burg & Van der Veer, 1986, p. 517, cited in

Vertovec, 2000, p. 53) in Trinidad, like other West Indian destinations, where the caste

could not serve as a formula for classification. In the early 1950s, this Brahmanization of

Hinduism culminated in the integration of competing Sanatanist associations30 into the

Sanatan Dharma Maha Sabha under the strong initiative of Bhadase Sagan Maharaj, a

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trade union leader of sugar workers. The Sanatan Dharma Maha Sabha has worked to

standardize ritual procedures and then introduce these standard rituals into all the temples

with which it was affiliated. Likewise, it has constructed Hindu denominational schools

in which the homogenized and authorized knowledge of orthodoxy was taught through

trained teachers and self-published literatures (Vertovec, 1992; Vertovec, 2000).31 As a

result, Hindu rituals have intensified their character as a tutoring, or “world-constructing”

activity, whereby the collective group identity is internalized by the practitioners through

connections with the present, rather than a “world-maintaining” instrument reminding

them of their identity through connections with the past (Khan, 2004b, pp. 110,151-152,

see also Berger, 1969). By repeating a ritual as a collective enterprise organized

according to their own tutelage, pundits have attempted to clarify the remaining

pragmatic and ideological ambivalences and realign the ritual as the occasion in which

they exhibit their reified culture to articulate a shared ethnic identity. This emphasis on

rituals as tutelage is reflected in Sanatanist pundits’ insistence on proper actions in rituals,

while striving to expunge flexible and spontaneous dramas caused by innovative

creations (van der Veer 1996, p. 144, cited in Khan, 2004b, p. 151).32

Legitimation of Ritual Practices: Individual in Collective

The aspiration to discover, assert and point out the significance of Afro-Caribbean

traditions dominated the anthropological research on “Caribbean” religions. In this

inclination, roughly speaking, two approaches have formed the mainstream (Osugi, 1999,

pp. 65-67). With the publication of Melville Herskovits’s trailblazing study, The Myth o f

the Negro Past (1941), the “place of New World Negro peoples [became]. . . a central

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issue for scholars” (Mintz, 1964, p. 43). Some students, taking their lead from Herskovits,

have claimed religion and related aspects of culture as the clearest representation of the

“survival” of “Africanisms,” and thus a sign that African slaves and their descendants

have never been culturally deprived. It was not merely by chance that Afro-Caribbean

religions started attracting scholarly attention in the 1940s, which witnessed the rise of

West Indian nationalism. It was a political manifestation in decolonizing societies where

those of African origin were the major component to locate and value the surviving

“African” culture.

Inspired by scholars such as George E. Simpson (1970 [1965]), another group of

students concentrated their attention upon the experience of possession, which is

prevalent among “magico-religious sects.” Given the fact that the denominations in their

examination have historically attracted a lower-class section of the population, this

approach views the experience of possession as either a catharsis of depression and

anxiety, derived from daily lives marked by acute material inequality, or an “altered state

of consciousness” (Bourguignon, 1985) with temporal investment of power to the

powerless. The following quotation from a study of Spiritual Baptist sects in Trinidad, for

instance, epitomizes the main claim of this school:

The domestic who thirty minutes earlier was submissive to the whims of her British mistress is, under possession transformed into a god; the unemployed laborer is master of an audience of several hundred people.The transition is often an almost direct role reversal from passive impotence to central importance, dominance, power, and recognition (Mischel & Mischel, 1958, p. 254).

Reflecting the reflexive critique of culture concept, these distinct anthropological

approaches converged on the shared assumption of religion as a possible instrument

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thereby achieving social and political justice. In the process, the “survival” of the putative

“West African” cultural tradition, in the face of assimilation under duress, has come to be

interpreted as an effect of conscious “retention” or even strategic “adaptation,” not

“persistence.”33 On the other hand, possession has come to be regarded as a conscious

(not liminal) and regular (though temporary) experience of empowerment, and thus seen

as transgression and a possible means for subversion (Glazier, 1985b). In this

poststructural shift from culture to politics of culture, one has came to consider ritual

change as a product of the practitioner’s conscious agency under “leadership and decision

making” in response to a transformation of political and economic conditions (Rogers,

1978; Glazier, 1983, 1985a, 1985b). Glazier (1985b) encapsulates this perspective that he

conceives to “inform future researchers” of Caribbean religions, which “had their origin

as ‘religions of the oppressed’”:

The relationship between religion and the quest for social justice in Caribbean societies is every bit as complicated as it was thirty years ago when Simpson and Bourguignon began the fieldwork.... Many changes have taken place in these societies and many Jamaicans, Trinidadians, and to a lesser extent Haitians have experienced unprecedented upward mobility. This has been especially true in Trinidad thanks, in part, to the recent oil boom. One of the goals of my eight years of research among Trinidad’s Spiritual Baptists has been to examine the consequences of affluence for a religious group whose primary appeal previously had been among the poor and disenfranchised (p. 284).34

Although it arose from the concern with Afro-Caribbean religious acts, this emphasis on

religion as an instrument for sociopolitical justice has affected the understanding of ritual

change in Indo-Caribbean religious traditions. For instance, Kusha Haraksingh (1987)

regards the change in religious traditions and the institution of caste as examples of

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“cultural versatility . . . thereby demonstrating that Indians were prepared to devise new

approaches for new circumstances” (p. 73). He continues:

Cultural resilient and adaptation might indeed be regarded as the most outstanding as well as the most persistent form of resistance among Indian workers. It permitted a definition of otherness which amounted to defiance, both in the insulation and consequent feelings of solidarity which that engendered, as well as in the divergent concepts of status and rank which were implied (p. 73).35

Apparently, the contemporary Kali Mai puja is in stark contrast with the orthodox

ritual performance as instruction in the “authenticated” Hindu culture. The consensus is

that whether one is saved or not depends on the person and his or her morality. The

emphasis on the supplicant’s direct connection with divine forces causes spontaneity,

fluidity, and the resultant diffused sense of collective during the celebration of Kali Mai.

These are the very features that Sanatanist priests desperately tried to remove from their

own rituals. The devotees submit highly private issues to the deotas, from healing a

physical and/or mental disorder, the solution of financial difficulties, success in academic

endeavor, to the arbitration of a lover’s quarrel. When I attended, quite a few visitors left

the temple when they completed their individual devotions before the “collective” Kali

Mai puja began. Before heading for home, a middle-aged Hindu Indo-Trinidadian

follower answered my question:

[What in this particular temple has attracted you?] Here you are free what you want. She [the Mother] no discriminate your problem. She help you whatever your problem. Sick, money. . . She listen. Listen and give answers. Years ago, she cured my sick. [While pointing to another Hindu lady, who seemed to be a close friend of hers] And she listened to her and cured her sick, too. Last 2 0 . . . almost 20 years, this is my favorite place to worship . . . . Usually, come early and do puja and then go home and relax. I go other temples, too. But I like here. I like here ‘cause I can do what I like.

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My observation is, however, that the ritual practices of Kali worshippers assumed

the characteristics, which pose serious problems to the widely circulating view of them as

devoid of religious rubrics and as trasngressive of the orthodoxy. The personal

connection with divine forces is the common denominator that underlies all actions

during the ritual. Yet, belief on the individual level is affirmed only if it is associated with

the devotee’s full commitment to the moral community, which is constructed and

maintained through ritual obligations comparable to those imposed by the Hindu

orthodoxy for their tutorial ritual performance. Within the same system of practice of

Kali Mai puja, which places a priority on a personal connection with divine force, there is

also an insistence on discipline and self-control.

First, the visitors to the temple are required to undergo a preparatory purification

through fasting. Some of them have given up certain habits altogether, such as drinking

alcohol, smoking cigarettes, or eating meat, since they turned regular visitors. Otherwise,

the visitors must refiain from those habits at least for three days prior to their audience

with the Mother. While giving her ready consent to my attendance at weekly services,

Tanti reminded, “You have to be clean. You have to know what have to do to see Mother.

You have to be pure. Do no drink rum, eat meat, no fight with gal, NO!” According to a

devotee, the visitors must also show restraint in sexuality. Sexual intercourse during the

period of purification is considered an act of violation, which may preclude their dialogue

with gods/goddesses. The devotees’ effort to sanctify themselves continues until the end

of their worship to the Mother. The idea and aesthetic of sanctification are enacted and

reinforced by behavioral commitments, such as taking off their shoes and leaving all

belongings made of leather at the entrance. The temple personnel and followers are in

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agreement concerning the significance of preparatory purification without which dialogue

with the Mother and other relative deities will not be effective; moreover, a disturbance

might be caused.

Great importance is also attached to the routinization of devotional practice.

Although showing some tolerance toward what she called “one-time visitors,” Tanti

emphasized that the devotion to the Mother has to be continuous. Through the medium,

the Mother and other deities tell the devotees what should be done to release themselves

from sufferings. On a prescription, the devotees are supposed to celebrate a puja for a

particular god/goddess who is conceived to have “special power” potent in their problems.

According to the type and seriousness of their illness or problem, supplicants are required

to perform a “special puja," including animal sacrifice. Tanti thought of the supplicant’s

relationship with deities as being based on a “promise,” and suggested that a punishment

might be inflicted on the devotees otherwise:

Different people have different problems. Some people want child. Some people want knowledge. . . like you. Some people want a job. They want a good home. Older people did puja. Younger children don’t. That is problem. You tell the mother your problem. The mother tell you what to do through it. A lot of people don’t want to come the temple and get involved to God. But if your grandfather used to do puja, YOU have to do puja. And your children will do puja. It must go on and on from generation to generation. So if you do not do it, it is a trouble . . . big trouble. You make promise. Must keep your promise.

Tanti and pujaris usually advise the supplicants to continue visiting the temple

weekly for at least for the nine weeks following their initial audience with the Mother.

Tanti drew my attention to the rationale that the devotional practice must be routinized

according to “Mother’s convenience,” not supplicant’s. As a judgment upon other Kali

temples, Tanti asserted,

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They call up the mother everyday. They ask her power everyday. Wrong.Sunday morning we do puja. Call for the mother. Every Sunday now we have service. We do all different kinds ofp u ja . . . . Ganesh, Shiva puja,Mother Ganga puja. Dee Baba. . . . Some temples do puja everyday. It’s no right. The Mother come see us Sunday morning. Sunday morning is right time for that.

Perhaps, animal sacrifice and spiritual possession, among other elements of

contemporary Kali worship, are widely viewed as most apparent representations of its

heterodoxy, and have fed the popular view of it as demonic and superstitious. For these

ritual performances are considered the clear enactment of the principle that the relation

with the god/goddess is personal. However, practitioners emphasize that these ritual

moves do not necessarily proceed at the actor’s will and produce the expected results,

although they are performed for the sake of the actor’s personal well-being. As a part of

the special puja for urgent problems, the supplicants procure animals, such as cocks and

goats, as offering to deotas. The offered animals are always “tested” if they are “ready”

to be accepted by the deities before immolation. In my observation, the head pujari first

poured water from a brass vase over the head of animals and then laid burning incense on

the tips of their noses. A shiver represents purity of animals. According to an interviewed

pujari, the shiver means that “the Mother [and the relative deities] approve them,”

whereas a failure to tremble suggests that there is “something wrong with a goat [or

cock].” In a puja I attended, the head pujari would not sacrifice a goat that “failed” to

shudder (despite repeated tests), and instead sacrificed a goat prepared by the temple.

Tanti summarized the event later in an interview after the service: “She [the Mother] no

like it.”

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Like the rite of sacrifice, the experience of possession, in my observation, seemed

to represent an enactment of supplicant’s acceptance of reality presented by the Mother

and other relative deities. The attitudes of those in possession were not homogeneous.

Nevertheless, they all lost control over their own bodies. One ran back and forth while

clenching his fists, whereas another suddenly fell down and had convulsions while lying

on the ground. The possessed were guided to take a “test,” like the offered animals, to

confirm the purity that made their experience “real.” When the possession began, the

head pujari brought up a piece of lit camphor on a brass plate, and put it in on open palm

and then tossed it into the open mouth of the supplicants in possession. The pujari then

leaned the head of the possessed backward so that the burning flame became visible to

other attendants—as though putting the sanctity of the possessed under the collective

judgment of the moral community. According to William Guinee (1992), in his fieldwork

among the Kali worshippers, the pujaris sometimes flicked the possessed with a whip for

the same purpose of testing.

The Brahman priests have regarded Kali worshippers’ practice of animal sacrifice

and spiritual possession as spurious also because “illegitimate” forms of deity play

central roles in these ritual practices. Kali is not the sole deity that receives animal

sacrifices and manifests in possession-mediums during a weekly Kali Mai worship.

Ecstatic manifestations of several other demigods/goddesses, such as Dee Baba, Ganga

Mata, Katerie, Munish Prem, and Naagura also occur.

Of these demigods/goddesses, Dee Baba, usually abbreviated to Di by the

followers, most frequently appeared along with Kali during my observation. In the 1950s,

Klass (1960) observed that Hindustanis consecrated Di as the “first owner” of any

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property, who possibly affected the well-being of the current occupants, and thus must be

placated through proper devotions. To honor this genius of the land, the male head of

household conducted a yearly puja, in which a cock was sacrificed along with a series of

offerings, including rice, cigarette, rum, and so forth (p. 177). This Di puja, involving

animal sacrifice, was “always performed at any Kali-puja, before the main part of the

ceremony [began]. . . with only immediate members of the family present (p. 178).

However, Klass recognized the villagers’ conflict between the obligation to maintain this

family custom and growing feeling against the practice, which had been defined as

illegitimate according to the prevailing “orthodoxy.” According to Klass, this was most

evident among those who affiliated to the “Siwala congregation,” a local reformist

movement under a group of Brahman swamis (p. 177). It is not difficult to imagine that

this dilemma was much stronger among those in the milieus with the multitude of

religious systems, or a firmly established Brahman-defined orthodoxy, as compared with

those observed by Klass in a tight agricultural community predominantly of Hindu

population.

When I interviewed an aged Hindustani, he asserted, “You can stop people to do

it, but problems are still there. . . there were troubles to settle.” In the imbalance caused

by the decline of “unauthorized” religious practices and the spiritual needs that they had

fulfilled, Di puja performance became professionalized. The father of the interviewee,

who was the son of an indentured Madrasis, was one of the professionals who “solve[d]

problems,” “cure[d] sick,” and “settle[d] a trouble” with his “special power.” “Patients,”

or “people in need,” did not necessarily reside in the same village. In many cases, word-

of-mouth brought them from afar. However, they usually suffered from either physical or

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mental disorders of such seriousness that they could not visit his father. The interviewee

recalled escorting his father in “long-way travel” to patients in the early 1940s. The

special power enabled his father to communicate with a “spirit” or “force” that possessed

human mind and body. In correcting my misconception, the interviewee repeatedly

stressed that the possessing spirit was “not always evil”; it may have been a “gift.” Thus,

his father first had to unravel how and why a force haunted a person, and inasmuch as it

was undesirable evil kind, then to sooth and finally “take it out” through Di puja. There

was only an elusive division between one who has such power and patients. When a

patient was gifted and could put the possessing force under her/his control, she/he may be

able to discharge the same duty as his father used to do. The interviewee had merely a

dim memory of the details of the ritual process of Di puja. He believed that it was partly

because his father usually held the ritual alone with a patient. However, scenes of “blood

sacrifice” always remained in his memory. His father performed them in any “serious

cases,” which happened several times a year. Before his eyes, the father beheaded an

animal, such as goat and hog, with a single stroke of a cutlass, like pujaris in a modem

Kali temple. He then took the blood of the slain animal and laid it on patient’s brow while

reciting something in Tamil. Through a long chain of rituals, which was a few days long,

his father finally “cured people’s sick.” At his home, on the other hand, the interviewee’s

father performed a rite on every Friday night “to keep his power.” Around 10:00 pm, he

and his mother sat facing to each other in a small prayer room, which was not separate

from the rest of the house. The room was shrouded by incense; there was lit camphor on

his palm. It did not take long before Di manifested himself in his father and started

presenting oracles. His mother listened intently and jotted down the words that came out

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of his father’s mouth, as does a pujari during the jharay in the weekly service at the

contemporary Kali temple.

Di was a protective village god in rural northern India. In Trinidad during the

early indentured period, there was an individual Di for each village. However, with the

establishment of individual homesteads of Hindustanis as they turned smallholding

farmers and other occupations, the Di puja came to be performed by individual families

for their own property (Vertovec, 1992, p. 113). Eventually, increasing numbers of

Hindus withdrew from traditional agricultural villages and streamed into residential areas,

in either city centers or suburbs. In the environment where the ritual for the propitiation

could not be regularly conducted, the Di became a more elusive spirit, occasionally

appearing to affect the living. The more Hindustanis became dispersed and mobile, the

more the Di puja became individualized, and problems in need of spiritual succor became

more individualized as well. In response, the “special power” to communicate and make

peace with Di became a personal faculty, as in the case of the interviewee’s father.

There is no statement of Di in the Vedas. According to a Sanatanist pundit in the

interview, “It’s more like magic. Folk magic. You know, Obeah? Same kind a black

magic.... [Therefore, Di] is not part of any Hindu puja rituals.” In the Sanatanist Hindu

orthodoxy, according to the same pundit, a god/goddess is a pure spirit omnipresent in the

entire universe and yet its appearance assumes certain forms, reflecting different stages of

reincarnation. By making use of murtis, the statuary images of gods/goddesses, the

Sanatanist Hindus aspire to cultivate their ties with divine forces through devotional

practices, called Bhakti. Although their names prevail and their power is deemed

effective among Hindu laities, localized spirits or demigods, such as Di, are elusive and

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amorphous. In fact, to the best of my knowledge from the field research, neither pictorial

nor statuary image of Di can be found in any orthodox Sanatanist temples. Within the

Kali temple, however, the murtis of Kali, Di, and other unofficial demigods sit on altars,

together with orthodox deotas, and are ready to establish bonds with the followers

through their devotional practice. Therefore, in a sense, the Kali temple has restored all

these deities in conformity with the principle and conception of the orthodoxy, enabling

the followers to (reestablish associations with them through relative devotional practice,

not individually and surreptiously, but collectively and overtly.

The visitors to the Kali temple were predominantly Hindu Indo-Trinidadians. This

was inferred from their phenotype and traditional Hindu attires. However, in contrast to

community-based Sanatanist temples, it appeared that all the visitors were not necessarily

acquainted with one another. While most visitors did greet and chattering, some groups

of visitors isolated themselves from the rest, sitting silently. I remembered what the

leader said in the interview prior to this observation: “We have lots of lots of one-time

visitors. . . They come ask for help. Then never come back.” More remarkably, a sizable

number of visitors were neither Hindu nor Indo-Trinidadian. The ratio of non-Hindus to

the total supplicants varied between weekly pujas I attended. However, according to my

rough count, some 5 to 10% of approximately 150 attendants at the services were neither

Hindu nor Indo-Trinidadian. In a puja, I asked a middle-aged man and woman about their

backgrounds, and they answered that they were a married couple between an “Afro-

Creole” and a “Dowg/a” (a Trinidadian term for a mix of Afro- and Indo-Trinidadians36)

and usually attended a Catholic church in Arima. They appeared nervous, because it was

the first weekly service they attended. They made it clear that the Hindu laity and temple

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personnel were in no way hostile; in fact, they were amazed at how welcoming “Indians”

were when they first attended a few weeks ago, which encouraged them to visit this

second time. Another group of visitors, a young Afro-Trinidadian couple with the wife’s

mother, said they had traveled more than two hours from Point Fortin, the island’s most

southern town. They planned to return to Point Fortin immediately after the worship to

the Mother was completed, enabling them to attend an evening service at their “home

church”—a Spiritual Baptist church in their neighborhood. The family had visited this

particular temple previously on several occasions “when necessary.” While I was giving

them a lift to the highway—where they could pick up a southbound maxi-taxi after the

service—the husband corrected the misconception that Kali Devi Mata Mandir only

provided merely Hindustanis with spiritual succors: “[Why are you coming to this Hindu

temple?] The point is, how strong you believe. Believing. You truly believe it, I mean

believe strong, it works. The mother help everyone . . . also Chinee like you if you

believe strong.... Of course, we go our church first. But, when you have second opinion,

you’ll be more confident what to do.”

The constant presence of non-Hindu, particularly Afro-Trinidadian, visitors has

also been attributed to a resemblance between the rituals of Spiritual Baptist or Orisha

worship and Kali Mai puja. For example, spiritual possession and rites of sacrifice are

critical elements for both Kali Mai puja and some African-derived worship services. The

apparent affinities in the structure of their ritual performance are assumed to have

facilitated mimetic appropriation and borrowing of symbolic elements between the Indo-

and Afro-Trinidadian-dominated sects (Crowley, 1957, p. 822; Houk, 1995, pp. 86-90).

More scholars have come to view this “alliance” as a reflection of their shared material

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reality. In fact, if Kali worship has attracted the lower-class segment of the Indo-

Trinidadian population, so have African-derived religious sects, such as Spiritual Baptist.

In the Kali temple, the experience of possession is not the exclusive right of religious

leaders, but open to devotees and pujaris of lower ranks, irrespective of their secular

status or social roles. Besides, the ritual possession is not necessarily under the control of

the religious leaders. As a result, although it is basically under the guidance of the head

pujari, the ritual process is repeatedly “interrupted” by devotees, including “one-time

visitors,” and lower-rank pujaris who go into trances. Placed under the shared material

conditions, and similarly restricted access to the authorized religious knowledge and

institution, both subordinate groups have exchanged ritual assistance to each other,

though they belong to different cultural origins.

Equally significant, though, are the practitioner’s beliefs and actions, which are

fashioned around the foundation that the relationship between devotees and divine beings

is personal and direct, that have rendered the celebration of Kali Mai a “porous ground of

mixing” (Khan, 2004b, p. 228). It must be recalled that the ritual performance of Kali

Mai puja has undergone a definite change, which would not have occurred without the

symbolic contentions within the Hindu community induced by the hegemonic reification

of the “orthodoxy.” In the first half of the twentieth century, the far-reaching

Brahmanization of Hinduism coincided with the diversification of socioeconomic milieu

of Indo-Trinidadians. Quite a few time-expired indentured laborers left the estates to

become peasants. These smallholding farmers started cultivating various crops according

to the condition and location of the land they occupied. Meanwhile, a sizable number of

Indo-Trinidadians abandoned agricultural production altogether and streamed into

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principal cities and suburbs, seeking domestic work or other types of jobs. The

diversification of socioeconomic circumstances in which Hindustanis found themselves

entailed the diversification and personalization of their symbolic interests and spiritual

needs. In reverse, the means of salvation were homogenized and concentrated into fewer

hands, and ritual performances became larger in scale, increasingly abstract, and intended

as extroverted public statements. As a result, the immediate and specific spiritual needs

of the Hindu laity were dominated by metaphysical and supra-individual causes that the

religious elites prioritized in their struggle to improve the status of Hindu community as a

distinctive ethnic collective. However, contrary to the expectations of Brahmin religious

leaders, this hegemonic reification of Hinduism has not resulted in a complete

replacement of heterogeneous traditions with a codified system of orthodoxy. Antithetic

to the Sanatanist ritual performance, which became more homogenized and collective in

time, the celebration of Kali Mai was transformed from a community-based to individual-

oriented ritual. This relative decentralization of symbolic interests and means of salvation

has enabled the Kali temples to act as sanctuaries in which the Hindu laity, as well as

those who profess non-Hindu religious traditions, could retain and develop a relationship

with deities that have historically represented the immediate matters of their lives.

The subsequent development of Kali Mai worship is related to the ritual change

triggered by the Brahmanization of Hinduism. As noted earlier, the first Kali temple

emerged in the 1950s, and the celebration of Kali Mai experienced resurgence in the

1970s, which involved the sudden erection of temples throughout the island. The students

of contemporary Kali Mai worship in Trinidad agree that the recent rapid expansion of

the practice was much influenced by the congregation in Guyana (e.g., Guinee, 1992;

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Vertovec, 1992; McNeal, 2003). At the same time, it should be noted that these decades

witnessed great progress in the Brahman’s hegemonic reification of Hinduism. The 1950s

were marked by the foundation of the Sanatan Dharma Maha Sabha, which is currently

the most vocal Hindu organization in the country; the 1970s opened with the so-called

Black Power Movement, in reaction to which the Maha Sabha strengthened its political

character and further stressed Hinduism as a reified entity that could be possessed and

used for political redress. In order to fortify their political footing, the Maha Sabha, along

with the political party it supported, aimed to reinforce the traditional ties with those in

agricultural districts. Moving in the opposite direction, some Kali temples, including the

Kali Devi Mata Mandir, moved from sugar-producing areas to suburban towns; other

temples were built in the suburbs. It was as if the temples were following Indo-

Trinidadians as their lives were changed by the rapid economic expansion of the time,

while the Maha Sabha were chasing after the Indo-Trinidadians who seemed forever one

step ahead of the elite’s efforts to establish hegemony over them.

Nevertheless, this does not necessarily mean that Kali Mai worship turned

transgressive. In contrast to the condemnation from the orthodox, the leaders and

followers of the Kali temple have aspired to provide their religious practices with the

fabrics, which are conceived to have traceable traditions in India, as desperately as the

Sanatanist priests. The temples were constructed and kept sanctified through heavy ritual

obligations that separated the visitors from their spurious ordinary selves. They then

restored the celebration of Kali and other local deities, which had tended to be more

problem-oriented and individualized, to a collective and routinized church-like devotional

service. In several interviews, Tanti repeatedly stressed how consistently their devotional

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practices have been reconstructed in line with Kali Mai worship in India. She emphasized

that her late husband, the former leader of the congregation, was so concerned to emulate

“real” Kali temples that he visited in India:

My father from India. He came to Trinidad. Before in Waterloo. He built a Kali temple in Waterloo. When he died, my husband carried it here. My husband saw dream. The Mother told him to build a Kali temple. Then he’d been India. He saw and learned Kali temples there. He loved it so much. He decided to take over his father’s tradition. He started a small one here. And work hard and the temple started becoming bigger and real.

Two weeks after this interview, Tanti started on her first journey to India in order

to “learn more ‘bout the Mother and the way of puja there.”

The contention concerning the superiority of Christian values compelled non-

Christians to reform their religious practice to exercise more consistent social discipline.

The outcome was neither mass conversion to Christianity nor preservation of indigenous

ways of worship as a sign of resistance, but a modernized and Westernized Hinduism.

However, this reactionary hegemonic reification of Hinduism produced an “alternative

construction” (Nandy, 1983) that enables one to be true to both the reified Hindu

orthodoxy, which is a necessary medium for status generation and improvement, and to

the other self defined as illegitimate by the Trinidadian reified Hindu orthodoxy. Through

the ritual change, Kali Mai worship became equipped with the fabrics for legitimacy,

including logic and modus operandi comparable to the orthodox ritual performance,

while retaining the rationale of personal and direct access to the god/goddess, which is

viewed as the vital channel of their salvation. This has allowed Hindustanis to visit the

Kali temple, either regularly or temporarily, without alienating themselves from the

Hindu “community” with reificatory and biologistic culture, designated by Trinidadian

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cultural classification. By the same token, non-Hindu visitors feel blessed with “special

power” of the Hindu Mother and other deities, which are conceived as the “possession”

of Hindu community, without being a member of it.

Mothers: The Hyphenating Force o f Distinct Imaginations

Tanti identified Kali Mai with Soparee Ke Mai: “They manifest in different

forms, but the same she.” These Mothers are also identical for Sanatanist priests, but in

the sense that the practice and conscience relative to these Mothers are equally influenced

by extraneous (and thus spurious) cultural elements. On the one hand, scores of

Hindustanis annually travel to a southern village to make a devotion to a statue of virgin

that sits in the Catholic Church, the very domain under the putative cultural domination

of Christians and Afro-Trinidadians. On the other hand, with its principle of personal ties

with divine forces, and exchangeable forms of ritual expression, the Kali temples have

lured and accepted visitors irrespective of their “true” religious origins. For the Maha

Sabha and the affiliated pundits, who have striven to render Hinduism to function as an

“icon of Indian-ness,” the devotions to Soparee Ke Mai and Kali Mai are mindless of

unreflective mixing, and thus obscure the defining bounds of the reified form of

Hinduism. From their orthodox viewpoint, this means nothing but the dilution and loss of

identity as “Indians” (Khan, 2004b, p. 228).

However, my observation is that the devotees to these Mothers are far from

careless about the ingression of cultural elements, which are conceived to be inconsistent

with, and thus potentially threatening to, their own worldviews. The members of the La

Divina Pastora Church were thoughtful about the incursion of the incompatible elements,

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though they did not term them as “pagan” any more. Their wholehearted preparation for

the annual Coolie Fete involved the attentive inscription of several dividing lines, which

separate the “Mother” that Hindustanis (and some non-Catholics) profess from their own

“Mother.” When a group of Hindu devotees marched into the Parish Hall while beating

tassa drums in the small hours of the first night of the Coolie Fete, an Indo-Trinidadian

Catholic priest whispered to me: “We share the Mother, but we don’t do that.” This short

statement ruled out some cultural substances and their bearers as spurious and thus

intolerable. Neither have the Catholics allowed them, nor have Hindustanis desired, to

transcend the cleavages, which have rendered Soparee Ke Mai “almost the same [with La

Divina Pastora], but not quite” (Bhabha, 1985[1994], p. 86). The shared consent to this

difference trusts the devotees of Soparee Ke Mai and La Divina Pastora to “mix” without

detriment to their cultural “purity.” This is why the reflections of two different

worldviews, Coolie Fete and Siparia Fete, can remain operational side by side, forming a

unified symbolic field.

The Brahman religious leaders have attempted to establish “purity” out of

countless imported traditions through selecting the substantive content that they regard as

congruous with authorized religious tenets. At the same time, in multiethnic Trinidad,

there always exists another struggle to keep the obtained “purity” from omnipresent

foreign cultural influence (Khan, 2004a, p. 119). From the perspective of Sanatanist

priests, the leaders of the Kali temples and their followers have evaded these obligations.

However, their hegemonic reification of Hinduism has indirectly transformed or

prompted the transformation of Kali Mai worship into a ritual performance with the

authorized religious fabrics, which enable Kali worship to claim its legitimacy as a “true”

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constituent of Hinduism. Kali worship is a menace to the Sanatanist priests, because it

has developed into a mode of ritual performance that enables its practitioners to “mix”

without the loss of cultural “purity.” During the interviews, Tanti often reproached

Sanatanist pundits under the auspices of the Sanatan Dharma Maha Sabha. Remarkably,

though, her criticisms were aimed at their exclusive and irreconcilable attitudes toward

cultures that are putatively possessed by others, rather than at their dominant

administration of Hindu symbolic field. Tanti asserted:

I don’t know why some religion don’t like other races and religions. I don’t know why — I don’t racial. Everyone. Negro, Chinee White . . . Martinique people.37 We don’t have no race in our temple. Hindu alone?NO! Everyone. But some Hindu temple for Hindu alone you know that?We have all kind a people. Because all people have problems. You agree?People need. Some people don’t like other races. Sat Maharaj and all that kind people . . . they only have Hindus. Other races don’t go them.Maharaj, pundits. We have no caste. In India we have caste. But not here.Not in Trinidad. My father didn’t like caste. Everybody is one. Why they don’t like other races. I don’t know why. I t ’s not culture. Maha Sabha and they don’t do culture [emphasis added].

Tanti’s statement in favor of “mixing” represents a clear note of discord with her

desperate effort to render her religious practice more “real,” which means a closer

reification of its putative “pure” origins in India. However, there are the two distinct

concepts of culture in practice. One is “culture,” the reified possession of ethnic groups,

or communities, defined on quasi-biological bounds. In this conception, culture is an

entity circumscribed with clear boundaries that has definable substantive contents and

takes on the character of an instrument that people “have” and “make use o f’ (Baumann,

1997, pp. 209-210). This is the culture that Catholics have desperately protected from the

ingression of “pagans,” and the Maha SaWia-affiliated Sanatanist priests and the Kali

worshippers have equally sought to (reconstruct. However, there has been another

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conceptual praxis of “culture,” which hyphenates the essentialized cultural and ethnic

traditions. Tanti believes that “Maha Sabha don’t do [the] culture” in this sense.

These conceptions of culture remain irreconcilable in some societies, and in the

worst cases, preclude them from surviving. In Trinidad, however, both conceptions have

historically developed as sine qua non for each other. The multitude of cross-cutting

sociocultural cleavages have rendered Trinidadian society tangibly plural with distinctive

and putatively autonomous “cultural sections.” Yet, they have also prevented conflicts

from disintegrating the society, and thus repeatedly brought about negotiations that move

the society toward the formation and strengthening of interethnic alliances. Ethnic groups

have been forced to compromise with each other, and to form alliances to retain the

putative “purity” of their own cultures. Eventually, one concept reduced cultural and

ethnic differences to exclusive essences, whereas the other viewed culture as negotiable

and mixing; they became inseparably interwoven and set a limit to each other. Contrary

to a recent academic abstraction of culture as hybrid, neither Soparee Ke Mai nor Kali

Mai is a “perpetual changing process of ‘meaning-making’” (Baumann, 1997, p. 211) or

a “permanently... emergent culture” (Korom, 2003, p. 13). Those concerned with these

phenomena have shared certain meanings that render the apparently inconsistent qualities

of “mixing” and “purity” attainable without contradicting each other. In their perception,

“mixing” represents less hybridization than hyphenation, which links cultures as they are

granted possession, and thus never puts the bearers in an either/or situation. Soparee Ke

Mai has never required the pilgrims to convert to Catholicism. Kali Mai fed a “second

opinion” to a visitor who primarily professes Spiritual Baptist faith. This “one-time

visitor” deemed this “opinion” “helpful” and “powerful,” because it was initiated by the

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Mother, which belongs to the “other,” just as Catholic and Hindu pilgrims conceive the

olive oil in their hands to be effective for sickness. Mothers, not a Mother, are the

embodiment of the distinct conceptual practices: culture and cultures.

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Endnotes

1 The Parish Hall is a multipurpose facility of roughly 900 square feet, which is, according to a Church member, “used for community.” It is situated between the main Chapel and the adjoining Boy’s School as though it divides/connects them. The inside of the Hall is painted plane white, and there is usually no religious object.

Tassa drums are a North Indian-derived percussion, which is currently found within Indo-Caribbean community. Tassa. is a generic term of various forms of drums, which are usually played in ensemble, typically comprising four or more people, including dhols (massive bass barrel drums), tassas (smaller kettle drums) and jhanjhs (cymbals). In Trinidad, tassa drums became popularized with the development of the Muslim festivals, such as Muharram, or “Hosay.” Today, tassa drumming is also performed at Hindu weddings, in which it is often accompanied with lively dancing by women (Manuel,2000, p. 10).

3 Dhoti, also called Panche, is the traditional outfit for men in India. It is usually white in color, although colorful texture is at times used in Trinidad. It is rare to see Indo- Trinidadian males wear this piece of unstitched item of clothing in daily occasions beyond ceremonial and religious occasions. According to a Hindu devotee, it is wore in a very complex manner so that he “had to learn from his grandfather.”

4 Kurta, or kurti for women, is a traditional item of clothing worn in northern India. It is a loose shirt-like dress for both sexes falling somewhere below the knees of those who wear it. Women might put on as everyday wear, but it is worn in formal occasions in the case of men.

5 Tika, or tilaka (also spelled as tilak), is a mark worn most often by (married) women, priests practicing Brahmanism on the forehead in ceremonial and festive occasions. It is made of sandlewood paste, ashes, clay and like substances (Vertovec, 1992, p. 173).

6 “What I heard about Siparia’s ‘La Divina Pastora,’” Catholic News, May 5,1962, p. 4

Abbe is the title in French that was commonly used for a priest who “engaged in parochial work” (Leahy, 1980, p. xiv).

8 Ajoupa is an Amerindian-style thatched housing, which prevailed in Siparia at the end of the nineteenth century (Anthony, 2001, p. 301).

9 Siparia remained remote even after the national railway connected Siparia to the capital city of Port-of-Spain via San Fernando in 1913. Only after the extensive road-building program of the 1920s did the isolated villages of Trinidad’s Deep South, including Siparia, finally become accessible (Anthony, 1997, p. 282).

10 Corregidor is the term for “magistrate” in Spanish colonies.

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11 According to the same source (Mallet, 1802), the breakdown of Amerindian population in Siparia at that time was 50 adult men, 49 adult women, 26 boys, and 14 girls.

12 It is alleged that Abercromby agreed to leave Siparia as a base of Spanish and Catholic institutions at the request of the last Spanish Governor in Trinidad, Jose Maria Chacon. Ralph Woodford was the longest-serving British governor in the history of Trinidad. He arrived in 1813 and remained in the position until his death in 1828.

13 Taylor (1977) writes: “Parang is a distinct part of Trinidad culture which dominates Christmas celebrations” of the island (p. 19). It is a religious song in Trinidad Spanish dialect, sung particularly at Christmas in rural areas, accompanied by cuatros, mandolins, and improvised musical instruments, such as box-bass (Allsopp & Allsopp, 1996, p. 429). In Port-of- Spain, Parang is performed almost exclusively during the Christmas season for entertainment. Etymologically, Parang was derived from Spanish term parranda, which means, “party” or “spree” (American Heritage Larousse Spanish Dictionary, 1986, p. 381).

14 For more in-depth content analysis and documentations, see Chapter 4 in Osugi (1999, pp. 171-228).

15 For George Simmel (1950,1964[1955]), a Marxian interpretation of conflict is unsatisfactory. The “subsumption” of either phenomenon, conflict or order, under the counterpart was merely “arbitrary as well as useless,” so long as they are considered incompatible (Simmel, 1964[1955], p. 14). Simmel suggests that either consensus- or conflict-oriented approaches had serious limitations in their applicability to empirical cases due to binary conceptions of order and conflict. He asserted:

[Contradiction and conflict not only precede [the] unity but are operative in it at every moment its existence. Just so, there probably exists no social unit in which convergent and divergent currents among its members are not inseparably interwoven. An absolute centripetal and harmonious group, a pure “unification,” not only is empirically unreal, it could show no real life process, (p. 15; emphasis added)In the 1950s, students from the school of structural-functionalism incorporated

Simmel’s fundamental principle in dealing with social conflict. For instance, Lewis Coser (1970[1956]) reiterated the principle in much more accessible language:

[N]o group can be entirely harmonious, for it would then be devoid of process and structure. Groups require disharmony as well as harmony, dissociation as well as association; and conflicts within them are by no means altogether disruptive factors. Group formation is the result of both types of processes. The belief that one process tears down what the other build up, so that what finally remains is the result of subtracting the one from the other, is based on a misconception (p. 31).

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In the anthropological tradition, Max Gluckman argued that the dynamism of intergroup encounters in urbanizing areas would not become sufficiently explicable until the “integrating” and “balancing” “functions” of social conflict was taken into careful consideration (Gluckman, 1946,1982[1956]; see also Eriksen, 1998, pp. 27-28). Nonetheless, despite their theoretical genealogy from Simmel, we cannot help feeling that these thinkers have sometimes rendered Simmel’s thesis an instrument convenient to classic functionalistic understanding of society. For example, as discussed in chapter 3, in his well-known concept of “ritual of rebellion,” Gluckman conceives a particular form of ritual wherein the dominant group “allows” the subordinates or powerless to enact “rebel” within carefully designed rules (Gluckman, 1982[1956], pp. 109-136). If this line of argument is followed, social conflict may be reduced to merely a purposive mechanism set up exclusively by dominant section of society. It should be noted that Simmel stresses the “simultaneity” of conflict and order and views social stability as “balancing among conflicting forces in interaction” rather than a “system as a set of functionally interconnected components, moving by graduated stages through culturally defined equilibria” (Swartz, Turner, & Tuden, 1966, p. 3).

16 There are various spellings. During the fieldwork, I saw at least the following three different spellings: Suparee Ke Mai, Siparee Ke Mai, and Siparia Mai.

17 “What I heard about Siparia’s ‘La Divina Pastora,’” Catholic News, May 5,1962, p. 4

18 “The Power of Shakti,” Trinidad Guardian, May 5,2002, p. 21

19 Puncheon rum is “over-proof,” usually containing more than 75 percent alcohol, which forms a base for a variety of punches, grogs, and festive drinks.

20 One theory holds that a coconut is smashed instead of animals that used to be immolated (Guinee, 1992).

During the puja in Kali temple, thin drums, which are made of goatskins, are beaten (McNeal, 2003, p. 246) When a drumhead loosened from beating, the drummers, pujaris who took this part, went to backyard, and heated it by aid of a fire to tighten the head making the pitch higher.

22 After the service, sacrificed animals were “cleaned by temple personnel who packed the meat. The supplicants who offered animals brought the meat home. According to a Hindu devotee, whose father used to practice Di puja at home, slain animals must not be brought away from the spot where they were sacrificed, and thus were cooked and eaten.

23 Neem is a deep-rooted tree categorized into the mahogany family Meliaceae, and is native to native to India and Burma, growing in tropical and semi-tropical regions.

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24 These “prescriptions” by the Mother were transcribed from field tapes recorded at Kali Devi Mata Mandir on June 6,13,20,27 and July 4,2004.

25 Sindur is blood-red powder usually smeared on the forehead and at the parting of the hair of Hindu married women.

26 The majority of African workers had withdrawn from major sugar-producing districts. By 1872, East Indian indentured laborers amounted to 75.3% of the entire plantation adult work force. The percentage had reached 87% (out o f26,858 total workers) by 1895. However, Look-Lai (1993, p. 117-118) draws attention to the fact that a considerable number of African workers remained on the estates despite the ever-decreasing percentage, during these years. In Trinidad, the numbers of “estate residents” of African origin (as opposed to African sugar workers in general, including both residents and nonresidents) were 3,308 in 1876,2,462 in 1889, and 1,682 in 1917.

27 According to an estimate published in an immigration report in 1874, at least 49,860, or 15.4%, out of 323,877 migrants, who departed from Calcutta for the sugar colonies to 1870, had been Muslims (Geoghegan Report, 1874, p. 72, cited in Look-Lai, 1993, p. 124). According to data complied from reports by immigration agent by K.O. Laurence (1994), of the indentured immigrants who arrived in Trinidad between 1874 and 1917, 0.01% were Christians, 14.0% were Muslims, and 85.03% were Hindus (pp. 110-111).

28 John La Guerre (1985[1974]), entitled From Calcutta to Caroni, has edited the papers presented to the first-ever local academic conference on Indo-Trinidadians held on the University of the West Indies (St. Augustine Campus) in 1974.

Up to 1870,4,992 departed Madras, including the French ports of Pondicherry and Karikal, for Trinidad, which accounted for roughly 12% of the total indentured migrants. This included 28,030 adult men, 9,280 adult women, and 5,209 children (Look-Lai, 1993, p. 277). Several waves of immigrant workers followed from southern India thereafter:323 in 1872,1,372 in 1905, 1,175 in 1910,489 in 1911, and 906 in 1916 (Laurence,1994, p. 524).

30 Since the early 1880s, the Sanatan Dharma Association had worked to consolidate Hindu religious practices. In 1932, a group of conservative Hindus established a rival organization, the Sanatan Dharma Board of Control (Vertovec, 1992, pp. I l l , 119-120).

31 See also Parsrum Maharaj’s “History of the Maha Sabha,” available at the Web site of the Sanatan Dharma Maha Sabha of Trinidad and Tobago(http://ethnonet.gold.ac.uk/illustrations/ch7illustrations/71mahasabha/historvms.html~).'VJ According to the censuses, the number of those who profess “other Hinduism,” than “Sanatanist Hindu,” has increased. For instance, in 1980, there were 4,611 “other Hindus” as compared with 258,306 “Sanatanist Hindus.” As of the 1990 Census,

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http://ethnonet.gold.ac.uk/illustrations/ch7illustrations/71mahasabha/historvms.html~

however, the number of “other Hindu” increased to 157,168, whereas that of “Sanatanist Hindu” dropped to 109,873. Prior to the 2000 Census, Parsuram Maharaj, an executive member of the Sanatan Dharma Maha Sabha, contributed a commentary to a local newspaper entitled “Census 2000-Who is a Sanatanist Hindu?” (Newsday, April 25, 2000, p. 10). In the article, Maharaj suggests that the results of the 1990 Census did not really reflect the “fact” by writing, “The vast majority of Hindus in Trinidad and Tobago are Sanatanist Hindus. Unfortunately, most Sanatanist Hindus only identify themselves as Hindus and do not know what the term Sanatanist implies.” After all “precepts of the Sanatanist Hindu” he enumerated in what follows, Maharaj concludes the commentary with a simple definition of Sanatanist: “In summary if a Hindu performs or believes in puja, Sri Krishna, Sri Ram, Lord Hanuman, and other avatar, and planting jhandis then that Hindu is a Sanatanist Hindu.”

33 Herskovits has remained a source of inspiration for the students with the perspective of Caribbean religion and related aspects of culture as “survival” or (re)invention of traditions. However, Herskovits himself was more cautious of translating them merely as an outcome of conscious defiant actions, while drawing academic attention equally to what he referred to as “cultural imponderables”—elements of culture that “are carried below the level of consciousness” (Herskovits, 1945, cited in Simpson, 1973, p. 160).

34 Glazier (1985b) is a report on a symposium that was held as part of the annual meeting of the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion on November 5,1983. At this symposium in honor of G. E. Simpson, Erika Bourguignon, Merrill Singer, and Claudia Rogers presented papers concerning “Religion and Social Justice.” Incidentally, Glazier refers to religious practices discussed in the symposium, such as Spiritual Baptist (Trinidad), Espiritismo (Puerto Rico), and Vodun (Haiti), as “religions of the oppressed” in Vittorio Lantemarri’s term (1971). However, Simpson did not necessarily focus on the aspect of magico-religious acts as possible means for social change. His studies were concerned with their “functions” that contributed to the stability of a power-saturated social system. To quote, for example, his research on Vodun in Haiti (2001[1970]):

Magico-religious acts [of peasants] are techniques which assist one in obtaining certain desired objectives in a difficult world. To the extent that they “work,” or rather, to the extent that the peasant believes they are effective, they prevent him from utilizing other types of action to solve his problems.

[I]t is interesting to note that aggression (magical or otherwise) is seldom directed against those who have been responsible for much of the peasant’s plight, namely, the members of the elite. The overwhelming majority of the peasants doe not expect to improve their social positions materially. They would like to be come Grand Dons, that is, large landholders, but as a rule they do not look forward to becoming educated men, or even town residents. Under peasant conditions (which they do not expect to change soon) they prefer to live on the land if that is at all

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possible, and they have accommodated themselves to the station of peasant. There has never been a genuine revolt of the peasants against the government.... Placing the blame for mishaps on enemies and directing magic against them provides an opportunity for the release of aggressive impulses. One feels that he is doing something about his troubles. The activity keeps him occupied and relieves tensions even if he gets poor or no results. If the results are good, so much the better. Vodun ceremonies and magical acts perform, therefore, a mental hygiene function for the individual, and thereby contribute to preserving the status quo (pp. 579- 580).

35 In this connection, it is worth noting that Morton Klass calls for more careful attention to the distinction between the concepts of “retention” and “ persistence” in the preface for the reissue of his East Indians in Trinidad: A Study o f Cultural Persistence (1988[1961], pp. xxix-xxxi). He redefines persistence in his usage to distinguish himself from the writers who use the term as synonymous with retention. To quote Klass,

[I]n the text I speak of persistence—rarely of retention - but for some writers both then and now the terms are interchangeable. They were not for me then, nor are they now. Retention, as the term is traditionally used, refers to the continued presence of traits - discrete items of some particular cultural inventory... In effect, one runs up a total: group A has retained eighty percent of their ancestral traits while group B exhibits only thirty percent and so has clearly undergone much more “cultural change.”

Persistence, at least in my view, is a much more fluid concept, reflecting a deep structural continuation, whether or not surface features... are replaced. The term draws one’s attention to the perceptions, concepts, and assumptions that underlie social relationship, motivate decision and change... I would... argue that the retention/persistence debate was and remains an important one because of the profound difference reflected in it on the nature of culture itself, (p. xxx)

36 Dougla (occasionally spelled douglah) is a term for the “mixed” offspring of “African” and “Indian” parents (Segal, 1993, p. 96; Allsopp & Allsopp, 1996, pp. 200-201). Concerning the identity politics over this particular category in Trinidad, see, for example, Segal, 1993 andReddock, 1994.

37 One of the weekly services that I attended received a group of teenage visitors from Martinique. French West Indian territories of Martinique, Guadeloupe, and Cayenne received a small fraction of indentured laborers from India (and China). Concerning Hindu religious practices, including Kali Mai worship, derived from southern India, in Martinique, see Horowitz (1961) and Horowitz and Klass (1963).

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CHAPTER VI

NATION BUILDING AS CULTURE MAKING

This chapter aims to elucidate Trinidad’s particular “culture of ethnicity” and to

consider the effect it has upon social integration. I will concentrate on cultural

management and engineering attempted by political leaders who worked in cooperation

with nationalist intellectuals in post-independence Trinidad.

The notions of cultural management and engineering are founded on the idea that

culture and society can be “created” from “scratch” or through the selection of existing

strains of culture that are “tamed” to serve social needs and facilitate social reform.

However, in opposition to this premise the “ideologists of nationalism” (Fallers, 1961),

attempts to “create” a new culture often met “resistance” from pre-formed cultural forms

and social relationships that strive to preserve themselves (Wolf, 2001, pp. 135-137).

Eric Williams, the first prime minister of independent Trinidad and Tobago, also deemed

decolonization less a transference of geographical territory and political apparatus to the

inhabitants than a process of cultural transformation in which the enduring “colonial

culture” of “divide and rule” was replaced with an alternative concept of culture and

ideological frame. To quote Williams,

On August 31,1962, a country will be free, a miniature state will be established, but a society and a nation will not have been formed. After August 31,1962, the people of Trinidad and Tobago will face the fiercest test in their history-whether they can invest with flesh and blood the bare skeleton of their National Anthem, “here ev’ry creed and race find an equal place.”

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The inherited area of land and political apparatus would remain the “bare skeleton[s]”

until they were filled with “flesh and blood”—a “national culture” that would serve as a

legitimizing symbol of nation and constitute the foundation of the consensus among

culturally distinct constituent groups (Fallers, 1961, pp. 677-678; Mazrui, 1972, p. xiv).

Contrary to the colonial administrators and imperial writers who sought to reduce

internal diversity through interracial breeding, Williams ascribed the putative

incommensurability of cultures to the hierarchical assessment of—not the distances

between—different cultural origins. Nonetheless, colonial discourse and Williams’s anti-

colonial nationalist discourse shared the same assumption of the “prior” existence of

fixed and self-contained “pure” antecedents according to their racial-typology of cultures

(Puri, 2003, p. 48). Based on this assumption, which also underlay the cultural pluralism

that they opposed (e.g., M. G. Smith, 1965), Williams and nationalist intellectuals fixed

the beginning of “cultural liberation” leading to exchange and cross-fertilization of

cultures—and, eventually, to the evolution of a “national culture”—with the

independence of state institutions. In consequence, those in the elite-led reification of

culture largely ignored the existing meanings and mechanisms, which were shared and

thus enabled the interactions between ethnic collectives. Insofar as they noticed the

existence of such meanings and mechanisms, the political leaders and intellectuals

refused to accept them as components of an emergent “national culture” because they felt

“shared” meanings and mechanisms only existed to justify colonial domination and mode

of production.

Yet, as demonstrated in previous chapters, ethnic groups, although constantly

differentiated with reified cultural essences, were simultaneously connected through

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borrowings and exchanges with “other’s” cultures. My observations have led me to

believe that Trinidadians have never been inattentive of the ingression of cultural

elements considered “foreign” to their own practices and worldviews. Thus they have

constantly inscribed boundaries separating “them” from “us” to preserve the putative

authenticity of cultures that “belong” to ethnic collectives with which they claim to

affiliate. However, their reification and ideologization of cultures—and setting them

against each other—have not necessarily been “political and contestatory” (Khan,

2004b). The interactions between putatively distinct cultural origins led to the

incorporation of oppositional “ethnic attributes” into an emergent integrative whole as

separate, rather than the exclusion of them as “foreign.” Williams’s projects to “create” a

new culture threatened this “culture of ethnicity”—a historical construction with repeated

conflicts and compromises that enabled many Trinidadians to “mix” without detriment to

the putative “purity” of their ethnic heritages.

Nation as a Cultural Hybrid: From uMothers" to a aMother ”

On August 31,1962, the first independence day of Trinidad and Tobago, Eric

Williams published History o f the People o f Trinidad and Tobago. However, in Trinidad,

a historical recipient of diverse groups of immigrants, the definition of “People” was not

self-evident. In his book, Williams enumerated all the putative cultural and racial

“origins” from “Amerindian Ancestors” to migrants in chronological order of their

settlement, including Spaniards, African, French, English, Portuguese, Chinese, East

Indian, Syrian, and Lebanese. In his conclusion, these putative cultural origins, which

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became essentialized according to racial-typological attributes, were integrated into a

single extended family with one and the sole “Mother”:

There can be no Mother India for those whose ancestors came from India.. . There can be no Mother Africa for those of African origin, and the Trinidad and Tobago society is living a lie and heading for trouble if it seeks to create the impression or to allow others to act under the delusion that Trinidad and Tobago is an African society. There can be no Mother England and no dual loyalties; no person can be allowed to get the best of both worlds, and to enjoy the privileges of citizenship in Trinidad and Tobago whilst expecting to retain United Kingdom citizenship. There can be no Mother China, even if one could agree as to which China is the Mother; and there can be no Mother Syria or no Mother Lebanon. A nation, like an individual, can have only one Mother. The only Mother we recognize is Mother Trinidad and Tobago, and Mother cannot discriminate between her children. All must be equal in her eyes (Williams, 1962, p.279).

This myth of race and culture contradicted the then-current theories of Caribbean

societies. It first denied the premise of cultural pluralism: that the putative cultural

differences would remain incommensurable, and thus domination was constitutive of

human relations in a multiethnic society. Williams’s sympathies lay with the disputants

from the structural functionalistic standpoint who assumed that a shared set of cultural

values and normative principles would eventually integrate the “sections” or “fragments”

into a single “moral community.” However, Williams also denied the thesis that the

shared “cultural orientation,” which would form the foundation of the emergent

“community,” emerged through the unilateral assimilation of the “subjugated cultural

elements” into “predominant counterparts”—“ things English” in the case of Trinidad. In

a sense, Williams’s narrative had already adumbrated the theory of “creolization (or

“Creole society)” that was put forth later by Edward Brathwaite. For Brathwaite (1971),

as for Williams, the “interculturation”—neither “assimilation” nor “acculturation”—

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would produce a “new parochial wholeness” in which all the concerned elements played

“contributory parts . . . not in separate [but] nuclear unites” (p. 311). The resulting

alternative culture would assume the “Creole authenticity” (ibid.) in and of itself, far

from being “mimicry” of “things English.”

There were, however, some significant differences in the theses of Braithwaite

and Williams. First, Williams did not believe that it would be possible (or even desirable)

that the putative cultural differences would fuse to the extent that they became irreducible

to original forms. Although it was critical of the preceding theoretical approaches, the

“Creole society” model viewed it as axiomatic (or aspired to) that there would be an

eventual “fusion of ethic stocks” (Vasconcelos, 2000[1925], p. 5) for the evolution of a

stable society. For Williams, who was the acknowledged critic of colonialism that

involved forcible assimilationism, it was not an option to search for the “fusion of ethnic

stocks.” At the same time, he did not consider the putative cultural differences, in and of

themselves, as the obstacle to social integration. He ascribed interethnic antipathy and

resulting social disunity to the imposed and socialized colonial “culture,” which had

prioritized “things English,” and divided and ruled the remaining “cultures” separately in

a static hierarchy.

Second, Williams would disagree with Braithwaite, who demonstrated that the

intersectional “interculturation” (i.e., “creolization”) (Brathwaite, 1971,1974) had

proceeded against all odds in the context of power-saturated plantation societies.

Williams believed that distinct cultural elements and symbolic interests were stratified in

the colonial setting, which remained a recurring cause of inter-ethnic conflicts and thus

an obstacle to cross-cultural fertilization. Above all, for Williams, this hierarchy of

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cultures and symbols must be leveled to bring about the interactive formative process.

Otherwise, the inherited racial and cultural heterogeneity would never produce the

“Mother” full of the “fecundity of combination,” but would remain the “most powerful

centrifugal force” to incite jealousy and antipathy, and induce fights among “children”

(Williams, 1969, p. 18). In other words, he never considered what would come out of the

“fecundity of combination.” As long as it occurred through interactions between the

“equalized” cultural origins, the resulting combination would be beneficial, whatever its

form.

Thus, Williams’s narrative of race and culture was distinct from those of the

leading Caribbeanists of the day, who assumed that the “fusion of ethnic stocks” was

requisite for the development of integrated social system from a palpable cultural

potpourri such as Trinidad. Williams envisioned the “Children of Trinidad and Tobago”

(Williams, 1962, cited in Sutton, 1981, p. vii)1 as different. In his address entitled

“Caribbean Man,” given at an annual convention of the PNM, he remarked:

“Them is not one race” . . . “Them is several races,” juxtaposed, bringing in from outside what they all proceed to modify, but not integrating the various strands. “Them is all the races.” But if there is a national territory, if there is a flag, if there are trappings of a national state, what is lacking after the centuries is a nation, one and indivisible, presenting one united from against all outside forces impeding our development. If it is like “baying at the moon” to preach this for the Caribbean area, whatever that area may be, it is eminently practicable to work for it in Trinidad and Tobago alone. (Williams, 1994b, p. 83)2

“Children of Trinidad and Tobago”—a sample of the “Caribbean Man”—consists

of “several races” but they form a single “moral community.” By prefiguring the

alternative overarching culture above cultures, Williams attempted to avoid the either/or

situation—assimilation with Anglo conformity or permanent segregation controlled by

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domination—set by the prevalent theoretical fiameworks. “Children of Trinidad and

Tobago” would be allowed to claim their equal affiliation to this new, single, and

“authentic” “Mother” without detriment to their otherness. For “Mother [would] not

discriminate between her children,” regardless of their distinctions according to

“ascribed” traits. A new culture, which was similarly overarching, neither divisive nor

stratifying, but integrative and equalizing, would enable a nation as both “singular” and

“plural.”

However, Williams’s narrative of nation raises other questions: How would it one

attain a culture as a reflection of consensus among diverse groups without forcing the

groups to abandon their claims for “natural” differences? How can one convince the

people to be both “ethnic” and “national”? Of course, these issues are not peculiar to

Williams. In former colonial societies with diverse racial and ethnic make-ups, the

transition to a sovereign nation-state is understood as the process by which distinct and

self-contained communities are incorporated into a single societal system. The process

also entails the problems of political organizations, but it assumes a cultural aspect that is

concerned with the creation of new “cultural forms or mechanisms that groups involved

in an overall web of relationships can use in their formal and informal dealings with one

another” (Wolf, 2001, p. 137). The members of the society will not necessarily start

thinking and acting in exactly the same way by accepting them. However, such common

“cultural forms” are viewed as requisite for “communications among the constituent

groups,” leading to the attainment of a measure of consensus (p. 137; see also Fallers,

1961, pp. 677-678; Deutsch, 1966, pp. 96-98; Mazrui, 1972, p. xiv). Like other leaders

of postcolonial societies, Williams believed that his first priority was to “create” such a

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culture that would render diverse peoples communicative, and realign their customs and

habits in the direction of new and modernizing endeavors (Mazrui, 1972, p. xv).

In the above-quoted “Caribbean Man” speech, Williams drew the “particular

attention to [the two bodies of] texts” from the then popular calypso with the same title.

They summarize the principles of his approach to cultural engineering (Williams, 1994b,

p. 1):

I say no set ah money Could form a unityFirst of all your people need their identity

Look a man who doh [don’t] know his history Can’t form no unityHow could a man who don’t know his roots Form his own ideology?

The Origin of Ethnic Consciousness: “No set ah money”

The first body of lyrics summarizes Williams’s ascription of the prevailing ethnic

consciousness, and the rumored and actual interethnic antipathy, to structural economic

inequality. As noted above, Williams’s major concern was not the inherited cultural

differences themselves, but the hierarchy that embodied them. Thus, the question was

what originally created—and subsequently retained—the stratification of cultures and

symbols that which ranked their putative bearers and constrained them into exclusive

ethnic enclaves. This question had concerned Williams much earlier than he began

pursuing a political career.

In the mid-1940s, Williams, as a fledgling scholar, locked horns with Frank

Tannenbaum, an accomplished anthropologist, over the origin, consequence, and

implications of slavery in the Americas. This academic battle, which went down in the

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history of Caribbean scholarship, was triggered when Tannenbaum contributed a short

review article of Capitalism and Slavery, the masterpiece that established Williams as a

preeminent historian. Tannenbaum was not the sole reviewer who made an unfavorable

commentary (Palmer, 1994, pp. xiii-xiv). Nevertheless, his criticism received Williams’s

most immediate and persistent rebuttal. Williams’s emotional reaction was not due to the

noticeably hostile tone of Tannenbaum’s critique, but because Tannenbaum’s comment

touched on the core of what came to be known as the “Williams thesis.”

Capitalism and Slavery, which was first published in 1944, was an expansion of

Williams’s doctoral dissertation, “The Economic Aspects of the Abolition of the West

Indian Slave Trade and Slavery.” Williams consistently sought to deny the widely

accepted view among British historians concerning the abolition of slavery in the British

Empire, specifically, that the humanitarian agitation of British abolitionists ended

slavery. Williams’s thesis was that capitalism’s economic self-interest not only

established and maintained but also abolished the West Indian plantation system and its

slavery. He demonstrated that the growth of the anti-slavery campaign was concurrent

with the ascendancy of an industrial middle-class whose economic interests were

different from the older mercantilist class who had resisted the manumission. Williams’s

attached a degree of importance to both humanitarianism of the abolitionists—the

“Saints” in his cynical sobriquet—and slave revolts. However, he felt it was the shift in

the ruling elites’ economic interests that finished off the slavery (Williams, 1943a,

1994[1944], 1947; see also Oxaal, 1982, pp. 74-75).

“Properly, the emphasis of Eric Williams’s Capitalism and Slavery is upon

slavery and not upon the Negro.” Tannenbaum’s critique (1946a) continued:

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Slavery as an institution has its own special features, independent of the race enslaved, and may vary but little, regardless of who the slave is. This broad fact, that the institution takes precedence over the race most affected by it, has another and equally important feature, namely, that the cultural setting within which a problem develops has a reach beyond the people affected by it (p. 247).

This statement had adumbrated Tannenbaum’s Slave and Citizen: The Negro in the

Americas (1946b), in which he demonstrated possible variations in the consequences of

slavery according to the “cultural setting” where it was instituted and operated. Latin-

American counterparts were recognized as moral human beings under the Spanish legal

code framed within the Christian conception of freedom and equality, whereas those who

were enslaved remained “chattel” in the British Empire where masters and churches

persistently denied slaves the opportunity for baptism and marriage (pp. 67-69).

However, Tannenbaum believed that even in such a “hostile” environment, where a

sequence of laws were enforced with the intention to divide and rule, the cultural setting

frequently produced unintended consequences, including symbiotic human relations

between economically estranged colonial subjects. For Tannenbaum, as long as slavery

was an institution, its development and outcome must have been reflected not only

economic interests, but also values and norms of those in its operation, both masters and

slaves (Tannenbaum, 1946a, 1946b, 1960).

Williams attacked Tannenbaum’s thesis for being “plain silly” (Williams, 1955, p.

31) “romanticism” (Williams, 1960, p. 65). The colonial powers ended up relying on

black slavery, and later an indentured system with an East Indian (and, to a much lesser

extent, Chinese) workforce in Trinidad and Tobago, due only to the comparative

economic advantage price-wise, not their suitability for the servitude. Therefore, “Negro,

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or the [East] Indian. . . [would] not achieve moral status until he [achieved] economic

and political status” (Williams, 1955, pp. 31-32). According to Williams (1969), in

“Trinidad in 1911” (chapter 1), the year of his birth,

[t]here was no question that the Indian occupied the lowest rung of the ladder. . . Cribb’d, cabin’d and confin’d in the sugar plantation economy, from which other racial groups had succeeded in large part in escaping, the few who did escape to the Mecca of Port-of-Spain were concentrated on the outskirts of the town in a sort of ghetto popularly known as “Coolie-Town” . . . a bustling suburbs of the capital—which tourists interested in Oriental scenes and ceremonies were advised to visit in order to see “the Son of India in all his phases of Oriental primitiveness.” (p. 21)

The Indo-Trinidadian’s replication and preservation of the “Oriental scenes and

ceremonies” was conceived here to be nothing more than a reflection of their lower

economic status. In order to discard traditional customs that epitomized “Oriental

primitiveness,” Indo-Trinidadians must disengage from their traditional ties with the

colonial mode of production, which prevented their upward socioeconomic mobilization,

and in consequence their “rationalization.” Racial and ethnic consciousness and the

creation of enclaves based on it was the effect of institutions that indicated economic

interests of the dominant capitalist class (William, 1994a, p. 19). Unless the system of

national economy was transformed into a “more democratic one” (Williams, 1974,

quoted in Sutton, 1981, p. 247) that was independent from the metropolitan control, the

colonial subjects would not have become “citizens” who were allowed to act of their own

volition. As a result, individuals would maintain their affiliation to particular ethnic

collectives, and there would be continual antagonism between those groups.

Despite his rejection of Tannenbaum’s thesis, Williams had not always adopted

an economic deterministic stance regarding ideology and social relations. Having

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attended Queen’s Royal College, the colony’s best secondary school, he won the lone

Island Scholarship, which enabled him to enroll at Oxford University (Oxaal, 1982;

Palmer, 1994; Boodhoo, 2001). At Oxford, away from the colonial setting, his academic

excellence did not exempt him from facing prejudice both as a “Negro” and “colonial.”

Under the circumstances, Williams must have reached the conclusion that ideology and

consciousness would remain influential long after their origin—the economic

“substructure”—faded away. This motivated him to change his major from economics to

history, and to choose slavery and the slave trade in the British Empire as the topic of his

doctoral thesis (Williams, 1969, Chapter 2; Boodhoo, 2001). By the time of his debate

with Tannenbaum, his concern over the autonomous nature of ideology had deepened. In

the article, “Laissez Faire, Sugar and Slavery” (1946) and some review articles3

published prior to Capitalism and Slavery, Williams repeated his economic deterministic

explanation of history. However, in developing his dissertation into Capitalism and

Slavery, Williams added a new chapter on slaves and their revolts,4 and moreover in the

book’s conclusion he called for academic attention to the autonomous nature of ideology:

“The idea built on these [economic] interests continues long after the interests have been

destroyed and work their old mischief, which in all the more mischievous because the

interests to which they corresponded no longer exist” (Williams 1994a, p. 211).

Nevertheless, what he regarded as a “principle for examination” came to carry

less weight with Williams. The more he became concerned with national politics, the

more he inclined toward economic determinism. By disengaging their relative lower

socioeconomic status from their invariable “ascribed” traits, the view that ethnic

consciousness was only a reflection of the colonial mode of production wrested people of

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color from their inferiority complex and convinced them of the possibility of upward

mobility. In a sense, Tannenbaum’s cultural analysis was a trailblazer for more recent

counterarguments to the totalizing view of plantation society and slavery as static systems

that configured the same outcomes universally. However, it was even more difficult for

Williams to accept a thesis that suggested possible moral affinities between masters and

slaves in the colonial milieu of plantation society. Williams asserted in front of hundreds

of schoolchildren invited to the “Youth Rally” held on Independence Eve: “It is your

Nation, even more than the Nation of your parents. You are the future; we are at best the

present, at worst the past.” The same view circulated with the publication of History o f

the People o f Trinidad and Tobago (1962, Forward): “Division of the races was the

policy of colonialism. Integration of the races must be the policy of Independence. Only

in this way can the colon of Trinidad and Tobago be transformed into the Nation of

Trinidad and Tobago.” It must be remembered that for Williams, nation should not be in

the past to be discerned; it was in the future to be “constructed” with the complete

departure from colonial past.

The theoretical difference between theses of Capitalism and Slavery and Slave

and Citizen was possibly reinforced by the divergent careers that these exceptional

thinkers pursued afterwards. At the first international conference on Caribbean studies,5

Tannenbaum (1960) made comments on Williams’s presentation, and repeated his

claims:

One of the unexpected results of slavery has been to turn the Negro into a career of European culture, not only in the West Indies but in Brazil,Central America, and the United States. The Negro has in the areas he occupies taken over his former master’s language, religion, social custom, food, clothes, and habitation. He has done it with different degrees of

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exactitude and depth. But in most instances, his cultural orientation is European rather than African, and his political and social orientation is modeled upon the cultural forms of his former masters . . . The point is that slavery and its consequences cannot be described in the simple terms of economic determinism or a theory of divide and rule. The physical contact between the two races, whatever their formal or legal definition, had consequences that changed both the Negroes and the whites (p. 60).The presence of slave produced a slave society. But the emphasis ought to be on society as well as on slavery; perhaps more on society than on slavery. For time has shown that it was the societal elements that has proven permanent while the slavery has proven temporary [emphasis added] (pp. 60-61).

[Such] inevitable by-products of slavery, and there are many more, are the fruits of so many differing currents, attitudes, beliefs, and practices and are so intimately related to the nature of man and the physical and social universe in which he lives that they are not to be explained by simple theories of economic determinism or doctrines of malice of forethought to divide and rule — Man’s passions and prejudices are part of the substance of life itself and in some form they are inescapable. Man is in duty bound to struggle against both and to alleviate the pain and sorrow they bring. But he is also bound to recognize that in some form they are part of life itself and he who would escape from conflict absolutely would also escape from life itself. Heaven can only be aspired for in the next world—after death (pp. 61-62).

For a decade after they began their debate, some dramatic shifts occurred in

Williams’s surroundings. Williams returned to Trinidad, and decided to go into politics,

abandoning his academic career. The conference, held in December 1956, occurred a few

months after Williams came to power as the leader of the People’s National Movement

(PNM). For Williams, in transition from vita contemplativa as a preeminent historian to

vita activa as a hoped-for political leader, it became even more difficult to have sympathy

for Tannanbaum’s conclusion that slavery reflected the cultures of both masters and

slaves, and, consequently, its influence would remain permanently constitutive of

“societal elements.” Williams, contrarily, insisted that every trace of colonialism could be

eradicated through “technology” tamed to serve social needs, primarily through an

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extensive restructuring of the national economy. The putative racial and cultural

differences would become communicable when they were disengaged from class

distinction. Until those “ascribed” attributes became perceived as the inconsequential

criteria of socioeconomic status, the people would continue to resist subordinating

familiar ethnic identification in favor of generalized and thus elusive group consciousness

of nation.

The Nationalization of Memory: “A man who doh know his history”

Economic development, with its planning and projections for the restructuring of

the mode of production and industrial relations, is a present- and future-oriented

preoccupation. Political development, however, frequently includes an “obsession with

the past” (Mazrui, 1972, p. 20). Williams wrote History o f the People o f Trinidad and

Tobago, a 300-page book with abundant documentation, in less than a month, while

being swamped with the official duties of the first prime minister of the country during its

birth. He suggested that he felt compelled to complete the task with the following

nationalist ardor:

This book originated in a personal conviction that it would be an unfortunate handicap in the field of international relations and a great mistake in respect of affairs and domestic relations, if Trinidad and Tobago were to enter on its career of Independence without a history of its own, without some adequate and informed knowledge of its past. . .The aim in writing. . . was n o t. . . conformity with scholastic canons. The aim was to provide the people of Trinidad and Tobago on their Independence Day with a National History, as they have already been provided with a National Anthem, a National Coat of Arms, National Birds, a National Flower and a National Flag (Williams, 1962, Forward).

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Along with the transference of territory and sociopolitical institutions to a new

nation-state, history must be reformulated into a sequence of events that builds

teleologically to independence (Carnegie, 2003, pp. 140-141). History o f the People o f

Trinidad and Tobago was intended to realign the sociopolitical processes, events, and

ideological struggles of the past within the newly defined bounds of sovereign state of

Trinidad and Tobago, and to promote the “People” as the principle author of the revised

national history (p. 141).

It should be noted that the following principles set the course for Williams’s

realignment and application of history toward the formation of national consciousness.

First, history was once narrated exclusively from an imperial standpoint. Due to this

“misrepresentation” in the past, the course o f historiography for the “Nation of Trinidad

and Tobago” must be more selective. Therefore, the new history aimed at correcting a

preexisting error, or balancing the one-sided information by providing selective

“counterinformation” about either more elevated aspects of the colonized or degraded

features of the colonizers, rather than increasing the sum total of knowledge (Mazrui,

1974, pp. 20-21). In Trinidad, since its inception in 1932, the Historical Society of

Trinidad and Tobago had published documents, arranged public lectures, and held

exhibitions relating to the economic, social and political development of the island.

Following his return to Trinidad, Williams assumed the presidency of the Society and

reactivated this organization (Historical Society of Trinidad and Tobago, 1956). The

major activity of the Society under the leadership of Williams was to publish reference

books of colonial archives. In the 1950s, the two bibliographies “selected and edited by

Eric Williams” came out: Documents on British West Indian History, 1807-1833 (1952)

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and British West Indies at Westminster, 1789-1823 (1954). These titles exemplify this

quest for balance in historical explanations. In the introduction to Documents on British

West Indian History, Williams explained the contribution that it was expected to make:

A former classmate of the editor, now a teacher at Queen’s Royal College, the government secondary school in Trinidad, remarked, when shown some of the documents in page proof, that he never know that Viscount Castlereagh, whose policies have to be studied in the history curriculum, had ever held the post of Secretary of State for the Colonies. It is the editor’s hope that these documents, by throwing additional light on such statesmen as Castlereagh, Canning, Liverpool, Huskisson and other leading figures of this period of British history, will contribute materially to increasing their interest for West Indian students and, thus to vitalising the study and teaching of history in the West Indies (p. v).

Williams, in Capitalism and Slavery (1994[1944J), named “such statesmen as

Castlereagh, Canning, Liverpool, [and] Huskisson” as “leading figures” of the

nineteenth-century Britain in the sense that they were “consistent defenders] of West

Indian claims” on slavery and sugar production. In spite of occasional budgetary

assistance from colonial administration, the Historical Society of Trinidad and Tobago

was fundamentally a voluntary association of historians, ethnographers and librarians.

There is no historical record that indicates the conversion of the Society into a

governmental agency. However, when Williams became the leader of the PNM and

elected as the colony’s premier, the status of the Historical Society became equivocal,

and the division between its activities and government’s cultural policies became

indeterminate (the Historical Society started to hold meetings at White Hall, the official

residence of the Premier after 1956) (Historical Society of Trinidad and Tobago, 1956).

Williams’s realignment of history also rested on the shared West Indian

intellectual view of a “sense of pastlessness” as constitutive of the Caribbean folk thought

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(Price & Price, 1997, p. 5). While Derek Walcott (1974), a Nobel laureate St. Lucian

writer, asserts, “In time, the slave surrendered to amnesia [and] that amnesia is the true

history of the New World” (p. 4, cited in Price & Price, p. 5), Jamaican-born sociologist

Orlando Patterson (1982) notes:

The most critical feature of the West Indian consciousness is what Derek Walcott calls “an absence of ruins.” The most important legacy of the slavery is the total break, not with the past so much as with a consciousness of the past. To be a West Indian is to live in a state of utter “pastlessness” (p. 258).

These and other Caribbean writers have showed possible ways toward salvation

from the “state of utter pastlessness.” For example, Edouard Glissant (1981), a

Martiniquan writer, calls for the “struggle against a single History, and for a cross

fertilization of histories, that would at once repossess one’s true sense of time and one’s

identity” (p. 159, cited in Price & Price, 1997, p. 5). Williams apparently conceived one

of his major tasks was to “provide” the people of Trinidad and Tobago, “who doh know

his history,” with “[their] true sense of time.” His edition of Documents on British West

Indian History (1952) was a part of this effort:

In times of crisis, and especially in the world crisis of today, people have an instinctive and overwhelming desire for some conception of historical development and its application to contemporary questions. This is true to the world at large and to a lesser extent of the Caribbean, where there is an almost total lack of a historical sense. It is hoped that this book will have some value for those who are trying to get some picture of the past which will help to explain the problems of the present (p. v).

Having been trained as a historian, he “strugglefd] against a single History.”

Capitalism and Slavery was a most compelling presentation of “another History.”

However, due to the two principles in his historiography—the quest for balance through

counter-information, and the total lack of historical sense among the target population—

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Williams ended up replacing a “single History” with another equally generalizing “single

History” at the conclusion of his struggle as a political leader, not a historian. In the

epilogue of History o f the People o f Trinidad and Tobago, Williams asserts:

The fist advantage is the fundamental underlying unity of the society of Trinidad and Tobago. A foreign student, with all the impetuosity of youth rushing in where angels fear to tread, may talk glibly of an Indian village in Trinidad not being West Indian, and predict that the Indians will never be assimilated. It is certain, however, that he did not have to paint his white face black or brown to ascertain this, as a compatriot of his had to do in respect of his native country. The fact the matter is, however, that in Trinidad the Negro, the Indian, French and Spaniards, English and Portuguese, Syrian and Lebanese, Chinese and Jew, all have messed out of the same pot, all are victims of the same subordination, all have been tarred with the same brush of political inferiority. Divergent customs and antipathetic attitudes have all been submerged in the common subordinate status of colonialism. All have been maligned for centuries (Williams,1962, p. 278).

Although they were attached to distinct cultural origins, and they settled with

distinct statuses at different points in histoiy, “all the races” were equally “victims of the

same subordination, [and] tarred with the same brush of political inferiority.” Their

“[divergent customs and antipathetic attitudes [had] all been submerged in the common

subordinate status of colonialism” (p. 278). In this respect, for example, “Portuguese

indenture was hardly distinguishable from African slavery, and Indian indenture differed

from Portuguese only in its greater intensity and in the larger numbers involved” (p. 279).

Williams concluded that “[t]ogether the various groups in Trinidad and Tobago have

suffered, together they have aspired, together they have achieved. Only together can they

succeed” (p. 279).

This brings us to a famous articulation of nation by Ernest Renan, a nineteenth-

century French historian:

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Nation is a soul, a spiritual principle. Only two things, actually, constitute this soul, this spiritual principle. One is in the past, the other is in the present. One is the possession in common of a rich legacy of remembrances; the other is the actual consent, the desire to live together, the will to continue to value the heritage which all hold in common (Renan, 1882, p. 27, cited in Hutchinson & Smith, 1994, p. 17).

This paradox of “remembrance” and “amnesia” also characterizes Williams’s struggle to

create a culture enabling a nation as “singular” and “plural.” On the one hand, in order to

mark a clear end of the history of colonialism, he called for a collective “amnesia” from

colonial past, which he conceived as a source of excessive primordial attachment that had

restrained people’s “rational” actions and thoughts. On the other hand, he expected that

the “shared” experience of subordination under colonialism would underlie the

prospective unity of “all the races” with diverse cultural origins. As Renan suggested, if

they are to serve as bonds of unavoidable internal diversity of the nation, the “rich legacy

of remembrances” must be possessed “in common.” As a political leader of Trinidad, the

assumed “sense of pastlessness” among Trinidadians (West Indians as well) was

“advantageous” to the eventual (re)possession of the “common” past, which was, for

Renan, the requirement for nation: an elusive collectivity. By stressing common

“pastlessness,” which could and should be filled in with redefined common past of

subordination, Williams attempted to achieve seemingly distinct and conflicting goals.

Although encouraging the masses to (reestablish their self-confidence by appealing to

their ethnic heritage, Williams had to restrain them from ethnic exclusivism and direct

them to common loyalty to a large political unit. The “Land of Beginning”—a phrase,

which Williams’s occasionally used as a synonym for “Trinidad,” represents his

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definition of “People”: those who would share the newly invented “origin,” one and only

“Mother,” through remembrance and amnesia.

Nation Building as uEducational Process”: “To Educate is to Emancipate”

Williams consistently gave “education” the highest priority throughout his

political career. School education was, of course, an important aspect, but I wish to draw

attention to a wider meaning for “education.” In Williams’s application, education had

the comprehensive sense of the sociologist beyond the specialized pedagogical sense of

schooling. Berger and Luckmann (1966) might have defined education in this sense:

The transmission of the meaning of an institution is based on the social recognition of that institution as a ‘permanent’ solution to a ‘permanent’ problem of the given collectivity. Therefore, potential actors of institutionalized actions must be systematically acquainted with these meanings. This necessitates some form of “educational” process (p. 74).

Williams urged the expansion and equalization of educational opportunities

through the extensive school-building project, and making secondary school free. He

believed the popularization of education, the putative source of social mobility, would

break down the remaining ethnic divisions of labor and economic status, which he

thought to have historically incited sentiments of exclusive ethnic affiliation. As

important as this “quantitative” effect of education, Williams emphasized education as

the “technology” of cultural engineering and identity-formation. Carlton Gomes (1974),

the Minister of Education and Culture in his administration, spoke for Williams in this

respect:

Education when viewed in its qualitative aspect must be seen in the light of what goes on within the schools. For the real purpose of all the building efforts of the Ministry of Education and Culture must be to assist the

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pupils and students and in fact the whole society to develop a responsible attitude toward work, stability in relation to others, adaptability to change, the ability to think objectively, and a sensitive approach to culture beyond the limits of specialization (p. 71).

Education meant first to disengage the populace from the colonial ideological

framework, which they had internalized (and thus were unconscious of). This would

enable the people to “think objectively” and criticize their inherited “living culture” for

having so long segmented them into primordial and exclusive ethnic collectives.

Education was then to inculcate an alternative culture that reflected altered values and

norms, by which now atomized individuals with “rationality” would be recombined into a

new governable whole.

Some of the projects that the Williams-led PNM government urged after the mid-

1950s had been previously called for—and partly implemented—by colonial

administrators. In 1914, the colonial administration created the Education Commission.

Its inquiry into schools produced a comprehensive report with proposals, some of which

were actually put into practice and resulted in modifications and adjustments of the

education system in the following decades. For instance, English experts of pedagogy

were invited as the Directors of Education, and revised the curricula to make it more

consistent with the socioeconomic needs of the colony. Consequently, more practical

subjects, such as science and agriculture, began to be taught in the primary and secondary

schools (Campbell, 1996, p. 166). The educational reform gained momentum in the late

1930s, when protracted economic depression inspired militant labor movements

throughout British West Indian territories, including Trinidad.6 In response to social

unrest, the colonial government appointed the West India Royal Commission, alias the

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“Moyne Commission,” “to investigate [its] social and economic conditions.” The

preliminaiy report of the Commission, published in 1940, denounced the appalling

poverty and called for urgent actions in education and social services, such as public

health and housing {West India Royal Commission 1938-9 Recommendation, p. 3).7

In 1950, Williams published Education in the British West Indies, in which he

summarized his perspective on educational reform in the colony.8 On the one hand, he

endorsed what English colonial education experts had done and the major part of

proposals from the Moyne Commission. However, there were decidedly different

motivations between the colonial technocrats, whose reforms were confined within the

existing colonial framework, and Williams, for whom educational reform was a measure

to deconstruct that framework itself (Campbell, 1997, pp. 65-67). For example, the

Commission advised that literary curricula and textbooks in primary schools be adapted

to the social environment and local socioeconomic needs (West India Royal Commission

1938-9 Recommendation, p. 11). The localization of school curricula would also form a

core of Williams’s educational reform, but he believed the adjustments should be made in

not only primary schools, but at “all levels” (Williams, 1994c, p. 53). However, contrary

to the colonial experts who favored it from a pedagogical perspective, Williams was less

concerned with improving children’s reading skills. His call for the “Westindianization”

of school curricula was aimed at popularizing the knowledge of West Indian affairs in

order to establish a sense of being an integral part of a single community (Campbell,

1997, pp. 66-67).

As discussed in Chapter 3, the nineteenth and early twentieth-century colonists

were equally concerned with the prevalence and infiltration of certain cultural values and

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normative principles, and conceived education to be the most effective means to this end.

The colonialists, however, attempted to transmit the pre-set Anglican-English cultural

values, whereas Williams had no clear definition of what was to permeate the populace

through education. Thus, the schools were where cultural values and norms were not only

transmitted, but also molded. It should be noted that Williams devoted a short but

independent chapter in the Education in the British West Indies (1994c), to the

“educational revolution in Mexico” as the “most significant and instructive example” for

the future educational reform in British territories (pp. 24-28). Just as the nationalist

intellectuals and technocrats emphasized in post-revolutionary Mexico, Williams

considered education as the most significant mechanism to root out the old colonial order.

He quoted the following statement from a Mexican scholar, and not only supported it, but

also stressed its applicability to British West Indian societies:

It is a school that wants Mexico for Mexicans and that seeks to stimulate an appreciation of the value of Mexican ideas, Mexican institutions,Mexican accomplishments, and Mexican culture. It seeks to accentuate those aspects of Mexican life that give individuality and character as a nation. In short, it insists that Mexico is no longer a colonial province to be exploited at will by foreign nations and ideas but rather that Mexico is a sovereign power with cultural attributes worthy of recognition (p. 26).

Williams closed the chapter with the slogan, which “epitomised Mexico’s

philosophy of education”: “To educate is to redeem” (p. 28). Having been rephrased in

conformity with its own historical context, this was adopted as the precept for the

educational reform that he sought to achieve in Trinidad. It frequently accompanied

Williams’s statements and writings on educational reform since he employed it in his

famous “Massa Day Done” speech on the eve of independence:

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Massa [Master] believes in the inequality of races. Today, as never before, the PNM has held out to the population of Trinidad and Tobago and the West Indies and the world the vision and the practice of interracial solidarity which, whatever its limitations, whatever the efforts still needed to make it an ordinary convention of our society, stands out in sharp contrast as an open challenge to Massa’s barbarous ideas and practices of racial domination. Massa was determined not to educate his society.Massa was quite right; to educate is to emancipate [emphasis added] (Williams, 1961, quoted in Sutton, 1981, p. 215).

Again, “education” for Williams represented the comprehensive “educational

process,” inclusive of the creation of a new culture, or a new set of “institutional

meanings,” and “impress[ing them] powerfully and unforgettably upon the

consciousness” (Berger & Luckman, 1966, p. 74) of the people—“to educate [was] to

emancipate.”

Denominational Schools: An Epitome of “Cultural Imperialism”

Williams viewed the schools under the then-current system of management as

unable to serve as the principal site of this “educational process.” By classifying

schoolchildren into religious enclaves, for Williams, the denominational schools were

simply an impediment to the process. Williams, in Education in the British West Indies,

had already drawn attention to the issue:

[T]he educational system of the British West Indies has certaincharacteristics which need special treatment The British West Indiancommunity is a religious community, and all proposals for educational reform have to take note of the fact that large numbers of school are church owned (Williams, 1994c, p. 41).

Although there were several peripheral modifications, the foundation of the dual

system of education—the autonomy of denominational schools—had remained almost

intact since its inception with the Educational Ordinance of 1870 (see Chapter 3). As a

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consequence, the schools had come under the control and management of more than 15

separate denominational boards, directly reflecting the island’s religious and sectarian

diversity (Ryan, 1972, pp. 232-233). Moreover, the late 1940s and early 1950s coincided

with the further diversification of educational system due to the competition from non-

Christian denominations, namely Hindu and Muslim, in addition to traditional school-

owning Christian groups.

The colonial government had made several important revisions to the dual system,

particularly after the mid-1930s.9 The Moyne Commission recommended the further

expansion of governmental jurisdiction over denominational schools: “[I]f salaries are

paid by the Government, complete control in staff matters should be assumed by

Government; and new schools provided wholly from public funds should be in all

respects administered by Government” (West India Royal Commission 1938-9

Recommendation, p. 12). However, the Commission’s major concern was to answer the

increasing demand for popular education against the concurrent decline in revenue in the

colony (due to the economic depression). In short, the management of schools had to be

streamlined. Therefore, the denominational influence on education was not a major

concern for the Commission and colonial authorities as long as they improved schools’

financial efficiency. On the contrary, as part of their response to increasing requests from

upper-class members of the society on “moral” instruction, they suggested that the

“existing facilities for religious instruction in Government schools. . . be maintained”

(West India Royal Commission 1938-9 Recommendation, p. 12). S.A. Hammond, an

English education advisor in charge of implementation of the Moyne Commission’s

proposals in Trinidad, was also skeptical about the complete elimination of

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denominational influence while calling for some reforms within the dual system to

decrease “administrative inconvenience and untidiness.” Moreover, Hammond believed

that the separation of religion from education would be “against the feeling of the West

Indian population” (Hammond, 1947, cited in Campbell, 1997, p. 63).

Williams called for the reform of the dual system for different reasons. First, the

historical advantage of Christian groups in the denominational control over education

would continue limiting the access of non-Christian minorities to this critical resource for

upward social mobility (Williams, 1969, p. 22). Although there had been several efforts

toward educating the East Indian immigrants since the late 1860s, those who benefited

from the achievements remained a small minority, and thus their relative deprivation was

evident in Trinidad when its independence was close at hand. In 1921, when the first

census was taken after the end of the system of indenture, over 87% of Indo-Trinidadians

10 years old and above were illiterate (Census o f the Colony o f Trinidad and Tobago

1921, p. 19). By 1946, this had dropped to 50.6%, but Indo-Trinidadians still accounted

for 73% of the colony’s total illiterates. This level is particularly notable in comparison

with other groups, for example, the Chinese, who started settling in the island almost

concurrently with East Indians (Census o f the Colony o f Trinidad and Tobago 1946, p.

18; see Table 5-1 below). The acute disadvantage in educational attainment had evidently

been an obstacle to their socioeconomic mobility. In the same year, out of 195,747, the

total Indo-Trinidadian population, only 216 (0.1%) were in the “official and professional”

occupations, including 1 “civil engineer,” 1 “postman,” 1 “police officer,” 7 “civil service

officer[s],” 12 “court officer[s],” and 109 “teacher[s]” (p. 21). Addressing the low

educational attainment among the non-Christian population due to their limited access to

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educational opportunities, Williams concluded that schools under a strong

denominational influence of management would not contribute toward dissolving ethnic

division of labor and correcting existing group-based inequality in material living

conditions.

Racial/Ethnic Group

White African EastIndian Syrian Chinese

Mixedor

Colored

Racenot

stated

AllRaces

Total in Group 15,283 261,485 195,747 889 5,641 78,775 150 557,970

% of Total Population 2.7 46.9 35.1 0.2 1.0 14.1 . .. 100.0

Population 10 Years and Over 12,467 201,353 132,363 608 4,514 55,431 139 406,875

Literate Persons 10 Years and Over 12,030 181,494 65,153 520 3,834 50,351 89 313,471

Illiterate Persons 10 Years and Over 385 18,932 66,775 83 654 4,710 24 91,563

Illiterate Persons as % of Total Persons 10 Years and Over

3.1 9.5 50.6 13.8 14.6 8.6

1̂0

... 22.6

Table 6-1: Racial Groups and Literacy of the Population in 194610

In his memoirs, Williams (1969) affirmed that the “social qualifications”

necessary for upward mobility were “colour, money and education in that order of

importance” (p. 26). As a civil servant who “lacked all three [qualifications],” his father,

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Henry Williams, was well informed on how crucial education was as the way to

transcend the inherent disadvantages of the first two criteria He thus started urging Eric,

his first son, to study from a tender age. Writing about his father, Eric Williams later

stated that nothing but academic success for his son became the dream of his own (p. 30).

When his son was awarded a tuition exemption for secondary education, Henry

determined to send his son to “public” Queen’s Royal College, not the Catholic-affiliated

St. Mary’s College, although the Williams were known as a pious Roman Catholic

family. Williams stressed that his “father drew a distinction between religion and

education” (p. 31). In order to attain his long-standing goal, Henry chose the state school,

which he believed would provide his son with the best environment for learning despite

the expectations of his church and relatives. It is not beyond speculation about the extent

to which his father’s selection of school for Williams irrespective of religious affiliation

affected his later anti-clerical approach to education. At least, Williams realized that

education was vital to the advancement in socioeconomic status, and as in his case, he

was sure that educational attainment would enable the majority of Trinidadians, who also

lacked the first two “qualifications”—“color” and “money”—to be upwardly mobile.

Thus, to provide the maximum number of people with the opportunity to achieve similar

“greatness Trinidadian-style” (p. 30), a clear distinction must be drawn between religion

and education.11

Equally important, Williams showed great concern about the absence of

institutional uniformity in the educational system, because he conceived it to be the

“breeding ground of disunity” (Williams in 1955, cited in Oxaal, 1982, p. 105).

Considering that denominational and racial lines more or less overlapped, he believed

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that the “differences of race, religion and nationality inherent in the demographic

structure of Trinidad” would be “accentuatefdj,” so long as the denominational schools

remained the major provider of educational opportunity (Williams, 1969, p. 22). As

mentioned above, the classrooms were not only the settings where pre-set cultural value

and norms were transmitted. They were, rather, the locus where institutional meanings

were created. In order to serve this function, the schools must be “public,” by which

Williams meant irreducible to any of the putative cultural origins. For Williams, no better

example of the lingering influence of the “policy of colonialism” could be found than in

education under the segmented denominational management: “As colonialism drew

politically to a close in 1962, Trinidad and Tobago found itself with an education system

which bore all the characteristic features of cultural imperialism. There was no national

outlook in education and no unified control” (Williams, 1974, quoted in Sutton, 1981, p.

247).

State as “Normative Order”; “Elementary Democratic Right”

Williams never doubted that this type of educational reform would benefit the

entire society. Nor did he question the authority of state to pursue this “elementary

democratic right” in the face of opposition from denominational groups:

The educational system. . . must safeguard the superior right of the community as a whole to control the general trend of education. This does not in any way mean that the religious sentiments of the people should not be scrupulously respected. This is not a question of religion but an elementary democratic right (Williams 1994c, p. 41).

Nowhere in PNM’s Political Manifest for the 1956 General Elections was

Williams’s resolute anti-clerical stance reflected. Instead, it stated, “The giving of

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religious education shall be compulsory in all schools maintained or assisted by

Government,” while endorsing “the maintenance of the right of the citizen to send his

child to a schools of his own choice” (PNM Political Manifesto, 1956, p. 8, cited in

Boodhoo, 2001, p. 115). It was the first election that PNM contested shortly after its

official launch. Moreover, Williams and his allies confronted negative campaigns from

the business community and denominational groups, the Catholic Church in particular,

who were nervous about the PNM’s populist programs. The victory in the election

despite these disadvantages assured, at least it seemed to Williams, that his government

was authorized to urge educational reform in conformity with his proposition: the

establishment of unified “godless” management of education.

Having failed to win a majority of parliamentary seats in the following election of

the West Indian Federation in 1958, Williams sought to legitimate his power to push the

project by appealing to an “independent” authority. In 1959, the government appointed an

education committee, composed entirely of local experts, with an Afro-Trinidadian ex

school teacher as chairman. As expected, the committee, alias the Maurice Committee,

submitted a report with recommendations that confirmed the fundamental principle of

Williams’s education reform: the ascendancy of governmental control over

denominational groups. On the shared assumption that the decentralized denominational

management of schools would sustain “an unfortunate divisions of plural and parallel

societies in Trinidad and Tobago” {Education Report o f Committee on General

Education 1960, p. 48-49), the committee advised that denominational schools be placed

under the jurisdiction of unified educational boards, consisting of both denominational

and state authorities and, ultimately, the Ministry of Education and Culture. It also

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suggested that the government be authorized to use the denominational school building

for a national purpose and to require the denominational boards of management to adapt

their schools to meet the standards set by the government (Ryan, 1972, p. 233-234;

Campbell, 1997, p. 104). The report recommended making these conditions a prerequisite

for denominational schools, both at primary and secondary levels, in order to receive

state aid.

The PNM government immediately sent a proposal, based on the Maurice

Committee report, to the Legislative Council. There was no explicit statement in the

proposal concerning the repeal of the system, but the proposed reforms would necessarily

overrule the foundation of the dual system that had stood for a century: the autonomy of

the denominational groups. Nor was there an assertion that proposed the nationalization

of all existing schools, and yet they would be placed under the government’s supervision.

The proposal did not suggest a prohibition on the erection of new denominational

schools, only that it must be done in compliance with the government’s guideline. Under

the proposed system of management, the denominational groups would cease to be

independent actors in the field of education. From the viewpoint of the denominational

groups, this was synonymous with the abolition of the dual system (Ryan, 1972, pp. 233-

235).

The response of the Catholic Church was immediate. Count Finbar Ryan (1960),

the Archbishop of Port of Spain, presented the “irreducible minimum” conditions to

which the Church was prepared to concede (pp. 12-13):

First, while prepared to cooperate as far as possible with the “Proposed Machinery of Administration” . . . the Catholic Church cannot cede its ownership nor the right of direct control and management of Her

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primary and secondary schools. The existing system may be modified and its working clarified, but the authority of the Church. . . must be retained and safeguarded.Second, in Catholic schools, no books, lessons, nor apparatus to which the competent Catholic Authority formally objects may be introduced and imposed; nor in non-Catholic schools may Catholic teachers or children be compelled to use them.

Third, no teachers, including especially head-teachers, to whom the competent Catholic Authority objects on grounds of faith and/or morals, shall be appointed to Catholic schools. . .Fourth, the pluralist composition of the pupil-body in Catholic schools and colleges is a natural and largely inevitable consequence of the pluralist composition, national, racial, linguistic, and religious, of our Trinidad and Tobago society. B ut. . . disproportionate mixing of Catholic and non- Catholic children, must as far as possible be avoided, and the clerical Manager’s right to supervise the entry of non-Catholic pupils and their conduct after admission must be recognized, as well as his right to demand their withdrawal should their creedal or moral influence be injurious.

The Catholic Church successfully defeated the English colonialists’ campaign to

abandon denominational schools by appealing to sympathetic governors and home

government in the late 1860s, which resulted in the establishment of the dual system.

Afterwards, whenever a modification or adjustment that touched the foundation of the

dual system was attempted, the Roman Catholic Church nipped it in the bud as the largest

provider of education. The Church was now ideologically opposed to the educational

policy of the elected government of an independent state. The Church’s stance was

simple: Religion was an integral part of education; it was impossible to separate one from

the other. In the early 1890s, the relevance of in-school religious instruction reemerged as

the main subject of debate between the denominational groups and the colonial state. The

Archbishop stressed the Catholic viewpoint of the matter in one of the earliest issues of

Catholic News, a weekly newspaper that the Archdiocese started as an advertising

medium in 1892:

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[Religious] Instruction may, and should form part of Education but can never take its place. Yet this is what the Secularists advocate, and, could they have their way, would force upon the community — Education as understood by men at least as wise, and certainly as sincere, as any of then- opponent, is the training of a child to youth and manhood to do his duty in that state of life to which God has called him; in other words to be a good citizen and is a system based upon religious principles and sound morality (Catholic News, May 20,1892, p. 1).

In the mid-1940s, in a letter to the Secretary of State for the Colonies, Archbishop

Finbar Ryan wrote that Catholic parents had never been satisfied with the then restricted

religious instruction, which was after-school and extracurricular (Campbell, 1997, p. 66).

The Catholic Church felt no reluctance to cooperate with the government in its effort to

render schools the place where racial harmony would be taught. However, as opposed to

the PNM’s proposal, Archbishop Ryan emphasized that it should and could best be

achieved by “accepting] the supra-national ideal given the Catholic Church by its

founder Jesus Christ.” To decide whether or not to conform to this “Catholic principle”

was the responsibility of the family, not the state: “The State and the teachers it employs

exist to supplement the insufficiency of the family and the Church” (Ryan, 1960, pp. 7-

8). Archbishop Ryan concluded: “We trust that a Government which professes to be

democratic will modify the recommendations in a manner satisfactory to the Catholic

Church and Catholic parents” [emphasis added] (p. 15).

Toward the end of 1960, the government announced a “complete accord” with the

Catholic Church, the representative of the denominational groups in the negotiation for

the government’s proposal on education. However, it was in fact the government’s

capitulation to the denominational groups (Ryan, 1972, p. 236). With the conclusion of

the Concordat,12 subtitled “Assurances for the preservation and character of

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denominational schools,” the government accepted almost all the “irreducible minimum”

terms presented by the Catholic Church. First, the government not only assured the

denominational groups of their proprietary rights and direct control of the schools they

owned, but also promised not to make any modifications that would lead to the

condemnation of denominational schools in the future. Second, the curriculum and text

materials used in denominational schools fell under the final control of the government.

Also, the authority to appoint, retain, promote, transfer, and dismiss teachers of the

denominational schools was vested in the Public Service Commission, the government’s

agency, as was the case with other civil servants. However, the denominational boards of

management were granted veto power over the introduction of texts and apparatus, the

revision of curriculum, and the placement of teachers that they conceived to be

inconsistent with their “moral and religious grounds.”

Third, it appears that the denominational groups fully agreed with the

government’s proposal in terms of the recruitment of pupils. The government

successfully integrated the admission policy of the denominational secondary schools

under its authority with the Common Entrance Examination (CXC) in place of separate

procedures and criteria according to denominational groups. Eighty percent o f the first

form intake of the denominational secondary schools had to be composed of successful

candidates in the CXC. Williams and the exponents of unified system of national

education considered that this was a great advance toward the integration of the school

system (Ryan 1972, p. 237). To quote Williams’s parliamentary address:

I cannot think of another country like this where the picture is what we present here in Trinidad and Tobago . . .. There are 59,076 Roman Catholic children in the schools of the country. Would you like to hear

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how they are spread out? In Roman Catholic schools—44,634; Anglican schools—5,710; Hindu schools 5,679; Roman Catholic children in Moslem schools—1,153; in Presbyterian schools—625 . . .. One in every four Roman Catholic children in the country is not in a Catholic school. . .

What other denomination shall I give you: Hindus? The total school population in the Hindu schools is 19,045. Of those only 14,928 are Hindus, about 80 percent. There are 1,239 Roman Catholic children in Hindu schools; 454 Anglican; 500 Presbyterian; 1,527 Moslems, and so on . . .. Anglican schools have 29,905 children, of whom 17,753 are Anglicans; 5,710 Roman Catholic; 3,313 Hindu; 832 Moslem; 835 others;404 Baptist. All mixed u p__

However, it should be noted that the denominational groups were left free to

choose the remaining 20% from those who passed the CXC. In light of the limited

availability of secondary schools in the early 1960s, this meant that the PNM’s scheme

for popular education was seriously compromised (Ryan, 1972, p. 237). Moreover, the

principle that the 20% quota must be filled with the “candidates who passed the CXC”

has not been necessarily observed. There has always been room for the principals of

denominational schools to retain some control over admission. The government could not

exert its power to the intended extent over the internal organization of denominational

schools, including teachers, staffs, or pupils. Campbell (1997, p. 85) reminds us that an

immense gap remained between the assumption of final authority in law and its use in

practice after the Concordat of 1960.

Of all the provisions in the Concordat, from the standpoint of denominational

groups, the following proviso was probably the most important agreement:

In denominational schools (unless the Denomination concerned otherwise gives its consent) the religion of the particular denomination which owns the school will be taught exclusively and by teachers professing to belong to that Denomination. In Government Schools all recognized religious denominations will have access through their accredited representatives during the times specified in the time-table for the teaching of Religion to the pupils belonging to their faith. Pupils attending the schools of a

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denomination not of their own faith will not be compelled to take part in the religious exercises or lessons of that denomination.

The denominational groups not only retained the right to designate their own

religious faith to be taught exclusively in the schools that belonged to them, but also

gained access to pupils of their own denominations for religious instruction in

government schools. Thus, the government reconfirmed the symbolic autonomy of the

denominational groups, which had been the foundation of the dual system, and gave up

resisting the traditional ideological stance of the Catholic Church that education and

religion were inseparable. The colonial administration had excluded religious instructions

from government schools since 1849. After the transition to the dual system, the

Education Ordinance of 1890 allowed denominational groups to give religious instruction

as extracurricular at both government and state-aided denominational schools. In 1949,

under the pressure from not only the denominational boards but also upper- and upper-

middle class communities with who were apprehensive about an increase in crime, the

Legislative Council, now composed of elected members, lifted all restrictions on in

school religious instruction (Campbell, 1996, p. 228). The elected government not only

failed to reverse this, but also was compelled to reaffirm the autonomy of denominational

groups.

Perhaps with the impending critical election in 1961, in which the electorate

would cast a ballot for the first ruling party at the time of independence, Williams had to

give in to the Roman Catholic Church, to which almost one-third of the populace

belonged. The primary concern of the Catholic Church was clearly to retain its

commanding position in education. However, it should be also noted that the PNM’s

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proposal for reorganizing the educational system met with strong opposition from the

Indo-Trinidadian community, particularly the Hindu population. This was an ironic twist.

In fact, denominational rivalry of the major Christian churches, together with apathy and

ignorance, were undoubtedly prime causes for the East-Indian population to lag behind

other immigrant groups in terms of educational attainment and social mobility (Campbell,

1997, p. 84; Munasinghe, 2001, p. 222). Since the 1860s, the Canadian Presbyterian

Mission dedicated itself to educating and christening this “neglected” portion of populace

in the programs of colonial authorities and the major Christian denominations. The

Mission’s efforts did improve Indo-Trinidadian’s literacy, and turned out a number of

Indo-Trinidadian secondary school graduates and professionals, such as teachers and

clergymen (Campbell, 1997, p. 46). However, the number of those who benefited from

the Mission’s efforts remained small. First, such a limited effort could not reach the entire

Indo-Trinidadian population, which had already grown to one-third of the total

population by the end of the nineteenth century and continued to increase (see Table 3-8

in Chapter 3). In addition, because there was no legal protection against coercive in

school proselytization until the early 1930s, Indo-Trinidadian parents had hesitated in

sending their children to a Christian school. Considering the general socioeconomic

status of Indo-Trinidadians at the time of independence, the main component of the

PNM’s reform, such as the establishment of a fully state-controlled system with free

secondary schools would benefit Indo-Trinidadian community most. Nonetheless, Hindus

were now the foremost parliamentary defenders of the dual system.

Various non-Christian religious bodies started to appear in the late 1920s. Under

the aegis of these groups, private schools for non-Christian children were built

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throughout the island (Campbell, 1996, pp. 189-190). At the same time, Hindu and

Muslim leaders started demanding that Indo-Trinidadian children in primary schools be

protected from the proselytizing intentions of Christian churches. To satisfy the Indo-

Trinidadian communities, the colonial authorities incorporated a formal “conscience

clause” into the Education Ordinance of 1933, ensuring the legal right of parents to have

their children exempted from religious instruction in any school (pp. 227-228). This

assured, at least legally, symbolic autonomy and equity of non-Christians within the

Christian-centered denominational system of education. More important, toward the end

of the 1930s, the colonial government began financial aid to Hindu and Muslim schools,

whereas no stale aid had been given to new Christian school building since 1902 (p. 228).

Unlike the establishment of the legal protection against proselytization, this meant a

major modification of the dual system itself, which was anticipated to affect the limited

allocation from public funds to denominational schools as a whole. Neither of these

measures met open resistance from Christian denominations, including the Roman

Catholic Church (pp. 179-180). It is however plausible that the dual system, though it

was founded originally to defend the vested claim of Christian denominations, prevented

the Catholic Church and other school-owning churches from exerting power over the

participation of non-Christian groups in the system. It was by the sheer organizational

effort of the Sanatan Dharma Maha Sabha that a sudden increase in the number of Hindu

primary schools occurred in the 1950s. It is, however, worth noting that the conflict

between the state and the Catholic Church facilitated the incorporation of those Hindu

schools into the dual system. Today, the Maha Sabha is the most active proponent of the

I ̂Concordat that confirmed dual management of schools. To repeat, in the mid-nineteenth

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century, the colonial authorities intended to replace denominational schools by secular

ward schools with the establishment of unified state control. If this scheme was attained

as intended, earlier and wider socioeconomic advancement of Indian population might

have been attained. After all, the Catholic Church forced its claim of the vested rights on

the colonial administration, and won its compromise as the abolition of the ward schools

and institution of dual system. Ironically however, the persistence of dual system that

hyphenated state and denominational schools as equal and autonomous actors had left

room for the future participation of Hindu and Muslim schools as independent

competitors in education. The dual system had formed the grounds for non-Christian

communities as well to claim symbolic autonomy and equity.

Williams imported philosophy, lyrics, and a series of measures from Mexico on

the assumption that shared structural and historical traits made them applicable to

Trinidad. Behind the comparison of Trinidad with Mexico, Williams had a strong

expectation that his country would follow in the footsteps of this postcolonial forerunner,

which successfully reduced the long-standing influence of the Roman Catholic Church

over education after the Revolution. Because it was stipulated as the fundamental

principle in Mexico’s 1917 Constitution, education has remained under full-state control

and without denominational interference in Mexico. This is not the place to detail the

social history of education in Mexico. My point is to emphasize that the distinct state-

church relationship in colonial Trinidad constrained the course of educational reform

within certain limits after independence and produced a different outcome.

In Mexico, the Catholic Church was the “Established Church” since its clergy

arrived with Spanish conquerors in the early sixteenth century. Afterwards, Spanish

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colonization proceeded under the mutually reinforcing relations between Roman

Catholicism and Spanish political thought. The history of Mexico following

independence was characterized by the state’s struggle for curtailment of the extensive

influence of the Catholic Church. Under the echoes of the French Revolution, nineteenth-

century Mexican nationalists were concerned that the Catholic Church, which had

dominated the major institutions and owned almost half the land, would continue acting

as if it were a state within the state. Beginning in the 1830s, the Mexican government

issued a series of laws that limited the power of Catholic Church and reduced its status.

The reform faced obstinate resistance from the Church, which developed into violent

confrontation. The 1917 Constitution marked the completion of a century-long process of

subordination of the Catholic Church.14

As discussed in Chapter 3, the conflict between state and the Roman Catholic

Church in Trinidad began at the outset of British colonization. English colonials issued

various laws with the intention of reducing the influence of the Catholic Church.

However, nineteenth-century socioeconomic conditions forced the colonial state to bow

to the Catholic Church with the disestablishment of the Anglican Church and the

Educational Ordinance in 1870. At that point, the authority of the colonial state over

religious institutions was constrained. It became embedded in a social discipline that the

autonomy of denominational groups would not be subordinate to political will. Since

then, the colonial state could retain its authority through enactment of this agreement.

When Williams viewed the anti-clerical reform of education as an “elementary

democratic right,” he conceived the state to be a superior and independent actor with the

power to coordinate and organize every aspect of public life, and assumed that the

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colonial state was consistent with this conception. Some writers have concluded that the

PNM-led educational reform “firmly entrenched [the culture history and element of Afro-

Creoles] as national culture,” but excluded—or marginalized at best—the “Indo-

Trinidadian counterpart, as it was intended” (Munasinghe, 2001, p. 223). This line of

interpretation equally underestimates the critical aspect of the state as a normative order,

beyond merely an apparatus, mindless of the historical particulars of colonial Trinidad,

which both caused and suppressed state-church conflict. It is thus arguable whether

Williams’s scheme toward “Godless education” was synonymous with the “program for

cultural homogenization” centered on Afro-Creole cultural elements and symbolic

interest (Munasinghe, 2001, p. 223). More important, even though it was indeed the

prime objective as Munasinghe assumes, Williams’s execution of power to attain what he

conceived an “elementary democratic right”—secularization of the educational system—

was confined by the “institutionalized meaning” agreed between the colonial state and

denominational groups almost a century earlier.

This is not to say that Williams had no effect upon the development of the

educational system. Like English colonials after the mid-nineteenth century, he rendered

the reform of dual system “questionable,” which lent momentum to the “re-

institutionalization” of the system with non-Christian denominations as components. In

other words, contrary to his intention, Williams’s reform reinforced the legitimacy of

denominational groups as providers of education. In a few years following independence,

the power relations between the state and denominational groups underwent acute

change. The rapid expansion of the oil industry enabled the government to urge an

extensive school building project that sharply dropped the share of denominational

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schools at the primary level and made the government the foremost provider of secondary

education. Meanwhile, the number of teachers, who were trained in the government

teachers colleges, had surpassed in number the graduates from the denominational

groups’ controlled colleges (Campbell, 1997, p. 83). Against this background, the

government introduced the Education Act of 1966, which authorized it to inspect the

state-aided denominational secondary schools. Regardless of this reversal of position (of

the government vis-a-vis denominational groups), the government would not interfere

with the internal organization of denominational schools. In particular, the issues directly

concerning the denominational characters, such as appointment of teachers and staffs,

remained under effective control of denominational boards of education (p. 84).

Moreover, reflecting the decline in the financial power of denominational groups, the

public expense of repairing or rebuilding denominational schools continued to swell. By

the late 1970s, the government had come to provide more than 90% of the cost, and

occasionally undertook the full cost. Nonetheless, the government agreed with

denominational boards to put them under what was referred to as the “Joint

Management,” which allowed those schools to retain the name of the denomination with

which they were affiliated, and continue giving the in-school instruction of religious faith

exclusively of their own (pp. 90-93).

Village: The “National Community in Microcosm ”15

University of Woodford Square

On the day before independence, Williams delivered one of his most famous

addresses, when he spoke to neither politicians nor the business community, but to

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schoolchildren, and stated what is, perhaps, his most famous phrase: “You cany the

future of the country in your schoolbags.” However, this speech at the “Youth Rally”

connoted another important theme of his educational reform. Williams said:

Your Rally here today is a good demonstration of our mixed society, some of you halve ancestors who came from one country, some from another, others from a third. Some of you profess one religion, some another, others a third or fourth. You in your schools have, like the nation in general only two alternatives. You learn to live together in peace or you fight it out and destroy one another. The second alternative makes no sense and is sheer barbarism. The first alternative is civilised and is simple common sense. You the children, yours is the great responsibility to educate your parents, teach them to live together in harmony [emphasis added].16

For Williams, “education [was] to emancipate” the populace from the ideological

framework, or consciousness, that was a reflection of colonial mode of production. This

meant that education was not for school-age children alone. Williams conceived adults to

be an equivalent—or even more important—subject of education, for they had

internalized a consciousness through their longer existence in colonial environment, and

would continue to reproduce it. This assumption underlay his aspiration to found a

“University” that specialized in adult education. Williams (1994c) saw this “University”

having the following functions:

[T]he university should aim at producing not bachelors of arts but intelligent and useful citizens. The emphasis should be not on university standards but on improving the lot of the people. The goal should be not to give the adult a better place in the labour market, but to give him a more competent understanding of his environment a greater capability in his work. The university can perform no greater service to the British West Indian community by educating the future voters and legislators, and by giving them a grasp of their economic and social problems and relations of these to “culture” [emphasis in original] (p. 92).

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Beyond a curriculum that stressed adult education, the proposed university would

be distinguished from the established institutions of higher education in the metropolitan

countries in another way. According to Williams (1946), “[the wished-for university]

should put on overalls, leave the campus, and reach out into every home in the

community” (cited in Campbell, 1997, p. 61). In 1948, the first campus of the University

College of the West Indies was established in Jamaica (Trinidad would become the site of

the second campus in 1960). However, from Williams’s perspective, this residential

university, which primarily served students representing academic elites in its affiliation

to the University of London, was “incongruous with West Indian life and culture” (cited

in Campbell, 1997, p. 61).17 Thus, Williams launched a separate “university,” which

fulfilled the required functions: to target adults, being free and open to public, and

mobile. This university came to be known as the “University of Woodford Square.”

Woodford Square represented a turning point in Trinidad’s history from colonial

to postcolonial. Located in the heart of Port-of-Spain, Woodford Square is surrounded by

vestiges of British colonization. First, it bears its name in honor of the longest-serving

British governor. It adjoins the “Red House,” which now serves as the country’s

parliament building but was originally erected in the early 1840s to house colonial

administrative offices. At lunchtime, solemn music is heard from the daily service at the

Trinity Cathedral, which has been the “mother church” for the island’s Anglicans since

its completion in 1823. On the other hand, the square has also served as a symbol of anti

colonialism. In 1903, it was used as an assembly hall for people protesting the Legislative

Council, which was deliberating over a proposed increase in water rates. In 1955, the

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status of the Square as a symbol of anti-colonialism firmly established when “students”

filled it for Williams’s first “University lecture.” A “student” recalled that night:

Regional Secretaries, activists, voluntary workers, members of the Women’s Council, the marshalling of intellect, of rain and brawn, the Artisan class, the shoemakers, the tailor, the apprentice, the journeyman, the housewife. . . they were there, and the domestics by their thousands and the laboring class and the band-leaders and steel banders and metal workers were there on the grand opening night of the longest day of the year, 1955 (cited in Sail, 1987, p. 50).

In the next 10 months, Williams gave no fewer than 50 lectures in University of

Woodford Square and its regional “colleges” in principal towns, including San Fernando,

Tunapuna, Couva, and Fyzabad (Cudjoe, 1993, pp. 398-402). Though his lectures

occasionally turned philosophical, Williams’s extraordinary eloquence drew a large body

of “students” every time, and held the rapt audiences’ attention regardless of the poor

conditions of the venues (p. 397). In addition, his brilliantly crafted lectures on issues

such as slavery and colonialism enabled the masses to link their present with the past, and

their personal problems with public issues. As a result, Williams created a sense of

attachment to a single common community among the populace. Surrounded by large

excited audiences, Williams became very positive about the accomplishment of his public

education scheme with this itinerant “university”:

The University of Woodford Square has for the past twelve years been a centre of free university education for the masses, of political analysis and of training in self-government for parallels of which we must go back to the city state of ancient Athens. The lectures have been university dishes served with political sauce. They have given the people of Trinidad and Tobago a vision and a perspective; they have given them an understanding of their own problems in the context of the larger world of which they form a small part; and they have reinforced their own aspirations by placing them in the context of the world struggle, past and present, for human freedom and for colonial emancipation. They have taught the

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people, what one French writer of the eighteenth century saw as the greatest danger, that they have a mind (Williams, 1969, p. 133).

Meet the People Tour: “Village as a Schoolhouse” 18

As of independence, however, those who Williams believed had attained the

“mind” were predominantly urban dwellers. Given this fact, Williams felt it necessary to

expand his lectures throughout the length and breadth of the island after independence.

Thus, in March 1963, he initiated what became known as the “Meet the People Tour.”

Within about a year, Williams literally “met the people” in 239 districts across eight

counties, and received notes of request firsthand from representatives of rural

communities (Williams, 1964, cited in Sutton, 1981, p. 218).

In their pioneering ethnography of Trinidad, Melville and Frances Herskovits

(1947) described life in Toco, a small fishing village in the northeastern part of the island,

in the late 1930s:

{Tjhere is no electric light, no running water, no sewage system. A small phonograph, a bicycle, a sewing machine are all items of luxury; there areonly three or four radios [A]n automobile, owned by a Chinese, couldbe hired when available and in working order, and there were a few privately owned cars, though, except in dry weather when some of the larger ‘traces’ are traversible, they could be used only on the main road. It is a village where standards of living are low, and where diversions are few (p. 24).

The Herskovits’s fieldwork in this isolated village coincided with the beginning

of a series of socioeconomic reforms, based on the proposals of the Moyne Commission.

However, the new development and social welfare programs were basically urban-

focused, which created an immense infrastructural gap between urban and rural areas by

the time of independence. When Williams visited Toco about a decade after the

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Herskovits’s fieldwork, the village was probably not much different from the above

description. For Williams, who had been raised in Port-of-Spain and subsequently

educated in metropolitan countries, the tour was the first time he had seen how the people

lived in remote rural communities (Williams-Connell, 1993, cited in Cudjoe, 1993, p.

382).

A sequence of public works followed the beginning of the Meet the People Tour,

which significantly improved the material conditions of rural communities. This not only

brought the level of their development closer to that of urban centers, but it also inspired

a sense of being an integral part o f Trinidadian nation among villagers. When I visited

Toco almost half a century after Williams’s call, an aged resident caretaker of a Catholic

church described his experience of “meeting” the Prime Minister so vividly it sounded as

if it had happened recently. Pointing toward the main street in front of the church, he

said, “This one . . . this street was first paved ‘cause he came u s Waited, waited,

waited so long and then finally. . . from afar, he showed up riding a black shining car!

He was like thunder. He was like thunder.” This indicates how the event was memorable

to those who resided in this secluded community. As suggested in his narration, Williams

might have appeared as a savior who would rescue them from neglect in the “way behind

God’s back” (Williams, 1964, cited in Sutton, 1981, p. 219).

Peasantry as a Cultural System: Quest for “Culture of Resistance”

Through public lectures, which were now extending to rural districts, Williams

believed he had successfully disengaged the populace from “colonial culture.” However,

as suggested earlier, this “educational process”—“education as emancipation”—would

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not be completed until those who had been stripped of “colonial culture” were filled with

an alternative set of values and normative principles, and combined into a single entity.

At the time of independence, Williams was still in search of what would constitute this

new cultural orientation.

Williams contributed a short review article of the Herskovits’s Trinidad Village

shortly after it came out (Williams, 1947). On the one hand, he held a good opinion of the

book, particularly its contribution to the unearthing of the remaining “Africanisms”

expressed in various forms (p. 548; see also Williams, 1969, pp. 38-39). However, he

voiced strong dissatisfaction with the authors’ suggestion of prevailing cultural pluralism

in rural Trinidad:

[T]his book will convey certain wrong impressions to the reader who donot know Trinidad The discussion of race relations between Negroesand Indians, the emphasis on the ‘negative attitude’ of antipathy among Negroes toward Indians, the stress on ‘the slight degree of cultural interchange’ between the two races, suggest a racial antagonism which does not exist in fact (Williams, 1947, p. 549).

When he wrote this review, Williams was teaching at Howard University in the United

States. There is no documentation that he visited any of the remote rural villages,

including Toco, prior to this commentary. Nevertheless, he was confident that surviving

cultural “origins” had lived side by side in a positive manner, contrary to the thesis of

cultural pluralism. Behind this faith, there was an enduring view of the Caribbean

peasantry that he shared with his contemporary writers.

Legal emancipation did not bring about an immediate and/or extensive social

transformation, because the European landowning class tried every possible means to

continue to control land and labor that were the source o f their supremacy and privileges.

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Nonetheless, the peasants were determined to abandon the dependent status of plantation

laborers for independent small-scale farming. Despite limited access to vital resources—

not only capital but also the technical knowledge that was available to the large-scale

corporate estates—the free peasant class continued to expand, and eventually eroded the

centuries-old plantation system (Williams, 1947, p. 932). This “counter-plantation

system” (Acosta & Casimir, 1985, p. 35) is the most common focus among the students

of Caribbean peasantry (Figueroa, 2001[1969]). As Arthur Lewis (1936) states:

There are thinkers in the West Indies who would like to see the entire economy of the West Indies transformed from plantation to peasant production. When we examine the role which the peasantry has played in the West Indies it is easy to understand the grounds on which such hopes are based (p. 36).

It was not just a coincidence that studies of peasantry in the Caribbean based on

this assumption—or driven by this “hope”—produced a number of publications during a

few decades, beginning in the late 1930s, when the region witnessed the rise of anti

colonialism. To nationalist intellectuals, the peasants represented the major challenge to

the European planter class. Their transformation from plantation laborers to peasants was

assumed to have weakened the grip of landowning class over the entire society. The

peasants started planting crops suitable to diverse conditions of land, which led to the

long-run diversification of the colonial economy. The peasants’ mobility and flexibility

were considered the crucial element in establishing a stable economy. In his dual

economy model, which earned him a Nobel Prize, Lewis advised that whatever elements

hindered the flexibility of a labor market should be removed in order for (post)colonial

West Indian territories to realize stable economic development.19 He never denied the

economic efficacy of the plantation system as a mode of agricultural production;

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however, considering that West Indian sugar industry was in a moribund state, Lewis

deemed it vital to have a fully developed peasantry as a store of an “unlimited supply of

labor” for modem industrial sectors (Lewis, 1954; Marshall, 1985; Acosta & Casimir,

1985). This ideological preference has dominated research, which is reflected in the

application of the term “peasantry” in the Caribbean scholarship (loosely defined as

“nonplantation agricultural labor”) (Fraser, 1981, pp. 335-336).

Williams agreed that the potential of the peasantry represents a genuine prospect

for the materialization of favorable economic development independent of metropolitan

influence:

What, then, of the prospects of a diversified economy? In the absence of natural resources, any industrial development of any importance can at once be ruled out. The one-crop economy, with its reliance on imported food, is one of the most fatal legacies of the ‘peculiar institution’ and the plantation system. A diversified economy and the plantation system are incompatible. The importance of encouraging a system of peasant proprietorship has always been recognized. Such a system would render the islands less dependent on imported food; by concentrating on such crops, essentially the small farmer’s crop, as cocoa (formerly in Trinidad), coffee (formerly in Puerto Rico), tobacco (formerly in Cuba), the islands would be left less at the mercy of the vicissitudes of sugar [notes in bracket in original] (Williams, 1941, p. 531).

In the case of Trinidad, similar to African slaves who turned peasantries,

[t]he Indian cane farm er. . . cultivating cane on a small plot of land which he had been allowed to buy in exchange for a return passage to India, represented a challenge . . . to the traditional method of production. . . in the West Indies. To that extent the indentured Indian immigrant, the last victim in the historical sense of the sugar plantation economy, constituted one of the most powerful social forces for the future in the struggle for the establishment of a proper social structure and modem industrial relations (Williams, 1962, p. 121).

However, for Williams, the matter did not end here. Beyond their contribution to

the restructuring of the colonial mode of production and stable economic growth, he

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attached even more importance to the sociocultural impact of the peasantry. The peasants

desperately tried to exhibit their individuality through economic activities outside the

plantation regimen. From the perspective that mode of production was the primal

determinant of social relationships and the form of social thoughts, Williams considered

the peasant bearers of a culture distinct from the one that had been imposed under the

plantocracy. For Williams, as for many other West Indian intellectuals in the

corresponding period, the Caribbean peasantry represented the “counter-plantation

system”; however, it was not only in an economic but also in cultural sense. In his thesis,

the peasants were the putative creators and bearers of a “culture of resistance” in the face

of colonial culture—a misrepresentation of colonizer’s interests. Villages were viewed as

collectives of modem, rational, and “naturally distinguished” individual peasants, who

had liberated themselves from the hegemonic culture of their own conscious motions. As

a result, in villages, diverse cultural elements had been stocked in the original, or nearly

original, forms, while interacting in physical proximity. Reflecting on the apparently

“equalized” political and economic relationship among peasants, the interactions between

distinct cultural elements would produce a unique way of being and thought through

“interculturation” and “cross-fertilization,” not assimilation:

The system of peasant proprietorship is therefore not unjustified on economic grounds. From the social point of view, it has even stronger justification. The plantation system lacks the social stability whichinevitably accompanies peasant proprietorship Today the Negro willwork his own land, where he refuses to work for low wages. ‘The small colono,’ writes a Puerto Rican, ‘is the romantic figure of individualism in an industry controlled by a handful of corporations or powerful partnerships.

If he has a watch, the little fanner will hardly use it, accustomed as he is to telling the time by the length of the shadows. Of course his wife improves her own wardrobe, his daughters follow the European fashions

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and use the latest make-up. Nevertheless these people are far from being ridiculous. They are sometimes fine people, naturally distinguished, whatever their origins. . . (Williams, 1942, pp. 50-51).

Williams further differentiated the peasants as the bearers of distinctive cultures,

in contrast to middle-class coloreds, like himself, who resided in urbanized centers. He

believed that the following comparative description by a black Haitian writer was true for

the Caribbean in general, including Trinidad:

“[A]n enormous difference exists between the peasant majority, whose life is essentially bound up with the cultivation of file land according to methods that are ancient and obsolete, and the small minority engaged in business, industry and public office in the cities. Their economic interests are apparently divergent. One produces, the other buys either to consume or to resell. They dress differently—one is rigged out in cotton and goes barefooted while file other is attired in the latest European style. Finally their mentalities are distinct; whereas one group is hardly emerging from a primitive condition, the other is prey to all the trouble heritage of the western civilizations. Such an immense difference exists between these two categories of Haitian society that they seem to belong to two different worlds.”

The middle class elite in the Caribbean is Christian or free- thinking, while the masses still cling to ancient beliefs and rites, as the “voodoo” of Haiti, the “shango” of Trinidad, the “pocomania” of Jamaica.... The main aim of the Caribbean colored middle class is to forget their African origin (Williams, 1942, p. 66).

Cultural engineering for the new nation is a hybrid concept. In the first place, it is

based on the post-Enlightenment European idea of social Telesis, in which planned

human actions, using the power of education and the scientific method, could direct the

evolution of human society. But in this case, the major sources for cultural engineering

are traditional folk cultures (Fallers, 1961, p. 677-678). As Mazrui (1972) put it, the idea

of cultural engineering toward identity-formation in a new state includes “indigenizing

what is foreign, idealizing what is indigenous, nationalizing what is sectional, and

emphasizing what is [traditional]” (p. xvi). Thus, those who equate the nation-building

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with the creation of new culture—what Fallers calls the “ideologists of nationalism”—

must deal with the following questions (Fallers, 1961, p. 678), if rephrased in the case of

Williams: How it was possible to inspire Trinidadians to retain—or recast, if necessary—

their own cultural heritages as symbols of identity and self-esteem without encouraging

ethnic exclusivism? In other words, cultural management and engineering requests the

target population to be “modem” without being “Western” (p. 678).

On the estates, former immigrant groups were segregated and stratified, so were

their cultural elements and symbolic interests. Under such circumstances, the cross-

cultural interactions, even though they occurred, had not produced a common cultural

orientation. On the other hand, in urban centers the middle-class elites, such as those who

came to occupy colonial administrative positions or work for foreign-owned enterprises,

had (willingly) reproduced the internalized ideological flame that privileged “things

English” as “forget[ting] their cultural origins.” Williams drew the inference that peasants

in rural villages, unlike the residents on estates and urban dwellers, had acquired the

talent of bridging the aesthetic dualism between the new modes of cultural expression

and older artistic experiences of traditionalism (see Mazrui, 1972, p. xvi). In villages,

independent of the both plantation- and urban-based colonial modes of production, folk

traditions had been preserved, and coexisted while interacting peacefully.

The Meet the People Tour was, in Williams’s words, “an unforgettable

experience” (Williams in 1964 in Sutton, 1981, p. 211). Apparently the life in villages

exhibited to Williams the aspects that were consistent with his preconceived idea of a

peasant culture. He must have been certain that he would find a prototype of the “Nation

of Trinidad and Tobago.” To quote his recollection of the Tour:

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The school children were present everywhere in large numbers, forming guards of honour or singing patriotic songs in their school choirs, or putting on local dances, and one of the most memorable experiences of the tour was the feeling and sincerity with which children all over the country, whatever their racial background, sang “God Bless our Nation” and lifted up their voices taking pride in our liberty. This is one of the best and surest foundations on which we can build for the future and highlights the fundamental difference between the generations to come and the generations that preceded the achievement of our Independence.(Williams, 1964, quoted in Sutton, 1981, p. 218)

You find it in many places, but by and large what is coming up is the person, irrespective of his origins, like the child, irrespective of his religious affiliation in respect of a school, being selected as the village spokesman, as the chairman of the village organization. He comes forward. . . [Tjhere is a mixing up that is emerging in respect of the community centers and village organizations, which differentiates Trinidad and Tobago from a lot of other places in the Caribbean area. . . A certain loyalty is developing towards the village and the people are coming together and the village is understanding that it is an important link in the national chain, it is itself the national community in microcosm, it is itself a part o f the larger community and the greater the solidarity at village level the more established and stronger is the community at national level. . . [emphasis added] (Williams, 1965, quoted in Sutton,1981, p. 222).

Better Village Programs: Nation as a Web of Villages

The individual families, as the smallest economic units, settle wherever it suits

their socioeconomic interests and needs. A group of households eventually develops into

a village. Active interactions between neighboring villages lead to the formation of a

larger geographical community. As time goes by, this community will become part of a

much larger physical unit. A nation must have emerged as a consequence of this

cumulative process, which had been hampered in Trinidad by colonialism that divided

and ruled the immigrant groups along their racial and cultural distinctiveness. Based on

this premise, Williams envisioned the nation as if it were a single web of villages, which

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were, to his eyes, multicultural complexes in which ethnic differentiation remained but

was equalized. The passage of time would have to strengthen intercultural links within

each village, while increasing their numbers and reducing their isolation so as to create

interdependence between these villages.

The “Better Village Program” was the result of Williams’s extensive tour. For

instance, in recognition of the landlessness of the farmers, the government accelerated the

distribution of crown lands. According to records, only one and three applications for

Crown land were approved in 1959 and 1960, respectively (Craig, 1974, p. 37). In

contrast, the Cabinet granted no fewer than 7,700 applications a year after the tour

launched (Williams, 1964, cited in Sutton, 1981, p. 221). At the same time, under the

"yaauspices of locally operating foreign corporations, the government allocated millions of

dollars to the improvement of infrastructures, including the construction of access roads,

low-income housings, and electrification. These improvements and land grants fixed

landless and unemployed population in rural regions, which simultaneously enlarged the

existing villages and gave birth to new ones.

Of all the measures taken, however, Williams urged the government to carry out

the following programs “on a priority basis” (Williams, 1964, quoted in Sutton, 1981, p.

222). First, the government proceeded to construct the “Community Centers” in the

selected villages. The Community Center had the same importance for Williams as the

construction of government schools (expecting the government schools would eventually

replace traditional denominational schools as the major provider of education). He

considered it essential to institute a “public facility” (p. 222)—which was for him

synonymous with racially and culturally neutral—in order to either reinforce or create

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cultural integration. In his address at the opening ceremony of a Community Center,

Williams summed up its intended functions:

The first one is to integrate the village—everybody comes out to it.You never could accommodate all the people who turn out on the particular night that the community center is being opened; it might not be a night, it might be three o’clock in the afternoon and the place is packed up. Everybody puts down what they are doing and comes there. . . . It integrates the village. It promotes, it expresses village solidarity...

And in the second sense, it integrates the village into the nation and gives the village an opportunity to feel that it belongs and an opportunity to develop or to accommodate some part of a national programme which the village could not possibly have accommodated without the community center. . . In one or two regrettable cases—after all if it happens in Quebec or in Alabama, how could you expect Trinidad and Tobago suddenly to see the light in three years—in one or two regrettable instances there is too much emphasis on one particular section of the community (Williams, 1965, quoted in Sutton, 1981, p. 221).

In the conclusion of the same address, however, Williams stressed that the

Community Center was merely an instrument that would be a waste without villagers’

active involvement:

The Government is merely helping in something in the physical sense, but the something is taking place, the integration is the conscious and spontaneous work of the people of the village themselves... They have a role to perform in making it their duty to bring together through a study, through emphasis, through discussion of the cultural trends brought in by the ancestors of people from many parts of the world; studying those, interpreting one to the other, bringing them together and all strengthening this curious product, this curious hybrid that we have produced here in Trinidad and Tobago from Africa, from Asia, from Europe (Williams,1965, quoted in Sutton, 1981, p. 223).

This was the motivation for Williams’s desperate effort to develop the centerpiece

of the Better Village Program, which was the annual “Best Village Prime Minister’s

Trophy Competition.” The Competition was expected to provide the villagers with an

opportunity to “strengthen curious [cultural] hybrid [of the elements] from Africa, from

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Asia, from Europe” within their own communities. It was assumed that it would then

“translate villages and community programmes into meaningful national activity,” and

“create the atmosphere for the promotion and crystallization of a national culture, by

fusing the diversities of separate cultures” (Best Village Trophy Competition 1975

Souvenir Brochure). Having started as a handicraft contest in 1963, the fields of the

competition continued to increase in the subsequent years: “Folk Concerts” (including

dance, music, and literature) in 1964, “Steel-band Music” in 1965, and “Farm production

and Food” in 1966 (Best Village Trophy Competition 1969 Souvenir Brochure). By the

early 1970s, the themes for competition further expanded to include “Miss Best Village

Queen Contest” and “Environmental Sanitation” {Best Village Trophy Competition 1974

Souvenir Brochure).

“Better Village Programs”—the comprehensive scheme of Williams’s

commitment to rural communities—have been compared with the social engineering

programs of rural settlement and production, like ones tried in African states (e.g.,

London, 1991).21 In Seeing Like a State (1998), with case studies of Tanzania and

Ethiopia, James Scott unravels the underlying logic behind large-scale attempts to

redesign rural life and production “from above” in newly independent countries. To quote

Scott,

Legibility is a condition of manipulation. Any substantial intervention in society. . . requires the invention of units that are visible. The units in question might be citizens, villages, trees, fields, houses, or people grouped according to age, depending on the type of intervention.Whatever the units being manipulated, they must be organized in a manner that permits them to be identified, observed, recorded, counted, aggregated, and monitored. The degree of knowledge required would have to be roughly commensurate with the depth of the intervention. In other

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words, one might say that the greater the manipulation envisaged, the greater the legibility required to effect it (p. 183).

The colonial states preferred extensive plantation agriculture to smallholder

production because of its efficacy as unit of taxation, labor regimentation, and political

control (p. 183). The “stateless spaces,” which were neither plantations nor urbanized

centers under close surveillance and control, were always a constant threat, both

figuratively and practically, to colonial authorities (p. 189). Ironically, this was also true

for postcolonial states. Such stateless spaces and their inhabitants, who frequently

became forces of social reconstitution, were now regarded as the epitome of

primitiveness, irrationality, and disorder against the modernity and order that newly

independent states are eager to establish (pp. 187-189). According to Scott, the

comprehensive rural (resettlement programs that often follow the independence of

colonial states are intended to transform distinct and autonomous ecological, social,

economic, and political spaces into integral part of “state space,” in order to convert them

into a more readily “legible” and “manipulable” domain. This has been described either

as “civilizing process” from the standpoint of the state center, or as “domestication” when

seen from the bottom (p. 184).

In Education in the British West Indies, Williams had already articulated the

outline of his rural-oriented community development programs. I have previously

discussed how Mexico’s “educational revolution” had given a general orientation to

Williams’s policy on educational reform. However, of all the programs that contained the

“revolution,” he considered the “Cultural Mission as the “most distinctive contribution..

. to the theory and practice of modem education” (p. 26). In post-revolutionary Mexico,

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various missions were organized to imbue nationalist ideals in the selected sectors of the

society. The rural agricultural community and the working class in urban centers were

high priorities. This was not only because they still held the major portion of the

population in the 1820s, but also for the protagonists of Mexico’s anti-colonial

revolution, those in rural villages, which had been farthest from the preceding political

thoughts appeared as tabulae rasae that would become easily saturated with their ideas

and values. Indeed, in the following decades, most of the organized cultural missions left

the modernized capital city for secluded villages throughout the country. Composed of

individuals with varied types of expertise, such as agriculture, construction, mechanics,

and music, the cultural missions

[promoted] the rehabilitation and improvement of rural communities,[raised] their economic standard of living, [brought] the level of their development closer to the accepted living standards of our times, and [improved] them as social units so that they may become integral parts of the Mexican nation (p. 26-27).

In light of the British West Indian social milieu, Williams viewed this rural cultural

mission as the “most important” and suitable among all sorts of cultural missions

organized in Mexico (p. 26).

Shortly after independence, Williams started his tour around rural districts with

the aid of sympathetic schoolteachers, as though he were conducting a rural cultural

mission. Similar to the heralds in Mexico, he focused on villages in remote parts of the

country (Wong Sang, 1999, p. 19). There was at that time—and to some extent still

today— a stereotyped view of rural communities as an embodiment of “primitiveness”

and “irrationality” in Trinidad. According to J. O. Stewart (1973), in the early 1970s there

was a popular classification that divided the society into the following three major zones.

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The first zone was the urban centers marked by commercial activities; the second zone

was the heavy industrial area where petrochemical or other industrial plants were located.

The third zone was the rural districts, situated outside these classifiable parts and usually

characterized by agricultural production, called the “bush” and perceived as distant not

only physically but also socioculturally (pp. 66-67). Stewart recognized a strong

predisposition among urbanites, particularly those who were in Port of Spain, to

emphasize what a great distance separated these “culturally backward bush-dwellers”

from those in “civilized” cities (pp. 67-68). However, contrary to the leaders of post

revolutionary Mexico, Williams did not regard die inhabitants of villages as those in

which urban-centered nationalism would be unilaterally instilled. Although they were

clearly inspired by cultural missions in Mexico, and probably encouraged by the

commitment of African state leaders to rural communities, the Meet the People Tour and

the resultant programs were not designed to civilize or domesticate the dwellers of the

“bush.” On the contrary, Williams thought of the “undomesticated” and “uncivilized”

rural communities as the potential antithesis to old colonial order. The underlying logic

actually clashed with the acknowledged lower symbolic status of villages and their

residents. Joyce Wong Sang (1999), a founder and major organizer of the Best Village

Competition, has suggested that the aforementioned stereotyping created a negative

attitude toward the Competition among urban-based artists:

Several well known artists at the time [at the inception of the Competition] were offended that Williams did not see fit to start this cultural exercise with them at the forefront. Instead he went to the lowly villagers. . . .Imagine, culture for the peasants! Many stayed away, feeling that if these artists condemned it, it was below their station (p. 21).

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Williams’s “Better Village Program” was neither an extensive “villagization” to

make rural community legible, nor “cultural missions” to instill specific prepared values

and norms of modernization. He aspired to build the nation of Trinidad and Tobago upon

villages, not in reverse.

Villages-Hyphens of Cultures

In contrast to other West Indian territories, colonial Trinidad witnessed a steady

growth of the free peasant class. In the post-emancipation period, in defense of the

planter’s interests, the colonial authorities sought to inhibit the exodus of agricultural

00laborers from estates through various measures. Nevertheless, within a decade

following emancipation, Trinidad’s planters could command only 19% of the labor force

(Bolland, 1993, p. 111). The relative availability of land and the lower population

density, as compared with smaller territories in the region such as Barbados, made it

difficult to control the labor market in Trinidad (pp. 111-112). The development of the

peasantry gained further momentum when time-expired indentured laborers made this

West Indian island their permanent home. In contrast to British Guiana, where their

counterparts remained mainly estate residents through reindentureship, the free Indo-

Trinidadian peasant class grew rapidly. By the early 1870s, those who held free status

had accounted for more than 60% of the total Indo-Trinidadian population on the island.

Off-estate residents came to represent more than 30% of the free Indo-Trinidadian

peasants, more than four times their counterparts in British Guiana (Look-Lai, 1993, p.

222). As demonstrated in Chapter 2, the measures taken by the colonial administration

from the mid-1860s—the introduction of “land-for-retum-passage commutation

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program,” under which free grants of land were made in exchange for the return passage,

and the relaxation of Crown land purchase regulations (pp. 229-239) (see Chapter 3)—

produced more Indo-Trinidadian peasant proprietors in Trinidad. The immigrant Report

in 1876 contrasts the patterns of post-indentured settlement between Trinidad and British

Guiana as follows: “In Trinidad the facilities for evasion not only abound but are

especially tempting; small settlements swarm in every direction, creole as well as coolies

— In Demerara23 the situation is totally different” (cited in Look-Lai, 1993, p. 224).

However, contrary to the nationalist’s “hope,” more than a scholarly assumption

(Lewis, 1936, p. 36), the peasants had not necessarily developed as a “mode of

resistance” (Mintz, 1989[1974], p. 146) against the colonial plantation system. First, the

villages did not take form autonomous of the plantation economy. As the major provider

of employment opportunities, the estates remained an integral part of the village

economy. In the years of crisis beginning in the late nineteenth century onwards, the

plantations encouraged independent small-scale farmers to grow cane as a part of their

effort to cut down on production costs. The decentralization of sugar production caused

the free peasant class to swell, and gave birth to new villages that retained close ties with

estates (Look-Lai, 1993, pp. 235-236). The interdependence between estates and villages

was more evident in cocoa production. In the late 1860s, the owners of cocoa estates

began to compete with sugar planters for free peasants. In addition, as discussed in

chapter 3, cocoa estates were not simply a provider of employment, but were built by this

symbiosis between estate owners, the “labour of black and peon peasants,” and (later)

Indo-Trinidadian proprietors. Brereton (1979, p. 140) cites a local newspaper of the day:

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They may make use of the said land in growing provisions for their own use and benefit for six years—but during the said period they shall plant cocoa trees . . . and at the end of that period [the subscriber] will resume the said land, paying them for the said cocoa trees at the rate of 36 cents for every five year old tree and so in proportion.24

After Emancipation, the plantations must have “developed] a variety of relations

with the rural people, no longer being confined within the slave system—as supplier of

occasional employment, buyers of food crops, miller of cane grown by the small cane

farmers, and through sharecropping or similar contractual relationships” (Fraser, 1981, p.

334). Peter Fraser (1981) calls for the deconstruction of the “Active” “sterile dichotomy”

that reduced the “history of rural society in the Caribbean to a struggle between the

plantation and the peasantry,” through “restoring some of the complexities of the past”

(p. 319). Based on the findings from his research on Indo-Trinidadian peasants, Bonham

Richardson (1975, p. 251) similarly draws scholarly attention to “interdependence”

between estates and adjacent villages, which he conceived to be mandatory for

understanding of “Trinidadian livelihood”:

Large scale estates and peripheral villages have had symbiotic economicrelationships since emancipation The overworked West Indiandichotomy of “peasant” versus “plantation” may be useful in pointing out Caribbean economic inequities, but it has little explanatory value in terms of historic or contemporary Trinidadian livelihood. The typical Indian resident of rural Trinidad has never exploited a single agricultural niche; he has been a mobile human element in an interlinked plantation-village system.

Equally important, and related to the plantation-village continuum, it is

misleading to view peasants as free from the ethnic division of labor that characterized

the socioeconomic life of plantation. When they acquired free status was not the only

factor that distinguished Afro- and Indo-Trinidadians, historically the major constituent

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groups of the peasant class. On the estates, under the peculiar mode of production with its

strict ethnic division of labor, Afro- and Indo-Trinidadians generally acquired different

skills and developed distinct working patterns. Both groups came to share the stereotype

that linked the differences in their “acquired” traits to “ascribed” racial and ethnic

attributes. These laid the foundation for Afro- and Indo-Trinidadians to recast the ethnic

division of labor, albeit expressed in different forms, after they settled in villages. For one,

they were reflected in their selection of occupations. Even though both Afro- and Indo-

Trinidadians continued engaging in agricultural production within the “plantation-village

system,” the different modes of production expressed themselves in the ways and means

of retaining their associations with estates.25 The pre-formed ethnic divisions of labor

were also later translated into the variations in interoccupational and physical mobility

between the two groups (Stewart, 1973).26 This enduring or reproduced ethnic division of

labor became a recurring source of intergroup conflict, but, as Steward documented, it

also prevented the occasional feuds from developing into outright confrontations in the

tight physical proximity of villages. The rural communities retained their cohesion not

because the inhabitants disengaged themselves from primordial ethnic attachments and

came to share a common and culturally neutral mode of production as Williams and other

local intellectuals presumed or “hoped.” Actually, the integration of villages was

premised on ethnic divisions.

When they received Williams’s visit on the Meet the People Tour, villages

assumed the appearance of the settlements stretching discursively along a network of

roads without clear geographical centers (Craig, 1973, p. 54). This does not mean that

villages had developed disorderly without a sense of community. A village was not

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simply a geographical unit, but an elusive concept defined in the local cultural contexts

with reference to various lines of demarcations more than physical vicinity. Williams and

his aide in the state center did not regard it as problematic to classify the rambling

continuum of communities into villages with clear boundaries. According to the premise

of peasant culture, which their village-centered nation-building relied on, a village would

assume the same character wherever in the island it was located and whatever

demographic composition it had. Williams viewed “colonial culture” as a reflection of a

colonial mode of production and social relations. Based on the shared alternative mode of

production autonomous of die plantation order and labor regimen, the peasants should

have acquired a new consciousness that enabled the fusion of ethnic differences. Even

though the racial/cultural distinctions remain without fusing, they were now positively

communicated in any village regardless o f its location and demographic composition.

A critique of the 1946 Census of the West Indies “recommended that more care

should be given to the selection of sub-districts in such a way as to enable to the

population of villages and localities which have no statutory boundaries to be known”

(cited in Population Census 1960 voL I, part A, p. 10). In following this advice, however,

the subsequent 1960 Census encountered many difficulties trying to identify the

boundaries o f villages. As a result, census takers inscribed borders that relied on

geographical and topographical conditions, such as rivers and coastal lines, and extant

infrastructures, including roads, bridges, railways, and plantations. Where they were not

available, they drew an “imaginary line” to distinguish one village from another

(Population Census 1960, vol. L, part B, p. vi). In consequence, the “boundaries. . .

recognized were largely arbitrary (Population Census 1960, vol. I, part A, p. 11). After

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independence, these arbitrary lines of demarcation, without much revision, were fixed for

administrative and political purposes, despite the fact that they were often forced to

reconsider the boundaries in light of the “general description. . . by their inhabitants, as

disclosed by the addresses given to enumerators by respondents” (p. 11). Villages had

been defined ambiguously, according to the shared cultural perception among the

inhabitants, but were replaced by those “invented” as per physical proximity.

As significant, the government urged the establishment of the so-called “Village

Councils” as governing bodies over these newly defined physical blocks and recipients of

on-going community development projects (Craig, 1974, pp. 53-55). There was certain

acknowledgement of the laws and regulations, which had an impact on living conditions

in rural areas, such as one concerning land tenure. However, rural communities had

remained detached from central governmental agencies throughout the colonial period

until the first elected self-government sought to incorporate them into a national political

system (Smith, 1963, pp. 63-64). This is not to say that there had not been any political

machinery before then. Villages had voluntary organs, which were variously named, took

various forms, and fulfilled various functions according to a given demographic structure

and sociocultural context For example, in a village predominantly of Indo-Trinidadian

residents, the concept o f panchayat, or the Council o f Elders, was imported from India,

which had served judiciary and constabulary functions. Composed of members who were

chosen by disputants, and supported by the remaining members who were independent

representing neither side, this court-like mediating machinery was adaptable to

intercultural feuds (pp. 65-67). The replacement o f these voluntary organizations by

standardized village councils not only clarified village boundaries but also transformed

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the authority of village polity from a subtle balance between ethnic groups to a system of

legal rationality. This incited interethnic conflicts, leading to the continuous subdivision

of loosely bound communities into small-scale villages. By 1970, the number of villages

reached 457 (Craig, 1974, p. 53) in Trinidad, whose rural population was roughly

400,000 (Census o f the Population o f Trinidad and Tobago 1970).

Villages were microcosms of the national community. However, interethnic

communications had been possible in villages with figurative ethnic boundaries and

mechanisms as sine qua none, which secured the autonomy of the putative cultural

“purity.” Williams was blind to the local compromises when he witnessed interethnic

alliances during the tour. Once returning to Port-of-Spain, he launched die Best Village

Competition in order to further cross-cultural flows of human and cultural capitals

between “cultural sections.” Yet, the Competition was instituted with the geographically

defined villages as the units of the contest, disregarding boundaries that the villagers

conceived to have allowed them to preserve the autonomy and authenticity of their

distinct symbolic interests. The villages competed under a standardized set of rules and

regulations, and were judged and ranked according to uniform criteria, which reflected

the assumption of peasant/village culture as universal. For instance, according to the rule

for the competition in the category of folk dance, the participating villages, irrespective

of their ethnic composition, were uniformly required to present a program within 85

minutes that consisted of 12 different dances chosen from the following list (Best Village

Competition 1967 Souvenir Brochure)'

• African dances such as shango, bongo, kalinda, cannes bridles, nation dances such as holicord, mandig, ibo, temne, chamba, chrrup, congo, juba, etc.

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• Spanish influenced dances such as joropo, castillian, manzanares, paseo, sebucan (maypole), galleron, merengue, burroquite, etc.

• French influenced dances such as the bele, pique, grand bele, etc.• Indigenous dances such as limbo, carnival, calypso, king sailor, fire man, marico,

saga ting, botay, arawak and carib dances, etc.• National dances such as reel, jig, lancers, marzuka.• Indian dances: nagara, harrichand, jarroo, kholatum, holi, gatea, dances based on

ramleela, somarie, etc.

The Competition was organized and administered by a governmental agency,

called the National Cultural Council, which was established on the initiative of Williams.

As the president of the Council, and the leading “field organizer,” J.D. Elder, a

Trinidadian-bom and foreign educated anthropologist, took pride in its achievement in

his article contributed to commemorate the 10® anniversary of the Competition: “[The

Best Village Competition] dramatize[d]. . . the inter-cultural mixture and cross-cultural

fertilization” (Elder, 1972, p. 82). The feat was most perceivable to him in die

development of choreographic skill for folk dance contest:

[W|e have noted the deliberate fusing of East Indian and African derived folk dances and folk song to create novel items for the Festival Concerts. Much more than this is the frequent switching of roles between East Indian and Negroes as actors and performers of song and dance on the stage....

What is articulated in this novel approach is a positive consciousness of need to project inter-ethnic mixing, mutual understanding and cooperation among the villagers. Actors o f Negro descent costumed in traditional East Indian garb performing East Indian items of dance and song were very common in the 1971 shows and were well received by the audiences. Through the medium o f culture the people were drawn together (p. 83).

Observing the rule, the performers from a village predominantly of Afro-

Trinidadians attempted to imitate stereotyped Indo-Trinidadian dances and songs, and

vice versa, which assured Williams, and the advocates o f the Competition, such as Elder,

of the “progress towards a national cultural movement with roots in the folk arts” (p. 83).

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The favorable increase of the number of participants since its inception bolstered their

confidence. Elder estimated that over the period of 10 years ending in 1972, “[w]ith an

average population of 3,000 souls per village, some 500,000 villagers, directly and

indirectly, would have been affected and influenced. . . by the Best Village Cultural

Movement” (p. 82). These numbers accounted for almost half the total population of the

day, if this estimate was accurate.

Nevertheless, other facts contradicted these positive evaluations. According to

Susan Craig (1974), the participation of Indo-Trinidadians to the Best Village

Competition remained small from the beginning. For example, in the Competition of

1972, Rio Claro and Mayaro, historically the largest Afro-Creole communities, had no

Indian performers in their presentations. Also, despite their demographic make-up, which

featured an Indo-Trinidadian majority, Siparia and Penal had only one and two

participants of East Indian origin in the same year (pp. 75-76). Williams launched the

Best Village Competition with the expectation that it would become the opportunity for

distinct cultural origins (and thus ethnic groups that putatively “possessed” those origins)

to interact The absence of Indo-Trinidadians from the Competition meant failure. Even

though a degree of cross-cultural fertilization materialized, it was far from the expected

“Creole authenticity” Williams hoped for, because it had no input from the ethnic group

that represented more than a third the population.

As a result, in 1974, Elder introduced a new category to the contest, called

“Village Integration” (Craig, 1974, p. 75). According to a newspaper report, Williams

was dissatisfied with the extent to which ethnic groups mingled in their performances,

and ordered the field organizers to “instruct villages to integrate their music, dance and

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drama to include all ethnic groups” (Trinidad Guardian, May 25,1974, p. 1, cited in

Craig, 1974, p. 76). At the same time, the organizers changed the rules of the folk dance

contest. The participating villages were now allocated 34 instead of 85 minutes; the

variety of dances they had to present was reduced from 12 to 8 types. More important,

however, in the 1974 contest, the “Local folk interpretation—based on harvesting (such

as cocoa dance), sugar cane, rice planting, fisher folk etc.” was added to the old list, cited

above, as a “mandatory” dance {Best Village Competition 1974 Souvenir Brochure). It

can be inferred from the inclusion of a dance “based on harvesting” as obligatory that the

field organizers of the Competition, along with Williams, still viewed die “shared” mode

of production as a potential integrative force of distinct ethnic traditions. Moreover, at the

request of Williams, Elder and other field organizers started visiting villages ahead of die

Competition to offer “two to three weeks crash courses” of dance and dram a in order to

supply the villagers with various models of “folk” cultures that they were instructed to

use when they iashioned their script, choreography and performance.27 Defined by

physical proximity, and not on “general description by their inhabitants,” “villages” in

competition never exhibited die expected level o f cohesion, nor produced the putative

“folk” cultures.

Resistance of Culture-Distinct Narratives of Nation: A “Mother” and “Mothers”

Jose Vasconcelos, the first Secretary of Public Education in Mexico,2* was the

leading exponent of the Cultural Mission scheme, and was noted for his authorship of La

Raza Cosmica (2000[1925]). Among the numerous statements regarding the interracial

conciliation by native intellectuals, this book evoked an immediate and animated debate

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throughout the Americas and beyond. Vasconcelos intended it to be a flat refutation of

and departure from, rather than a reconciliation to, European and North American

contempt for the admixture of the putatively distinct racial stocks based on the social

evolutionism of the day. He wrote,

It can be readily stated that the mixture of similar races is productive, while the mixture of very distant types, as in the case of Spaniards andAmerican Indians, has questionable results At any rate, the mostoptimistic conclusion that can be drawn from the facts here observed is the even the most contradictory racial mixtures can have beneficial results, as long as the spiritual factor contributes to raise them (p. 5).

Irrespective o f phenotypic and genotypic differences, the human race must have

shared an “aesthetic monism” (p. 44) that could serve as the common “spiritual factor,”

enabling the mixture of distinctive races and the evolution into a single “beneficial”

entity. For Vasconcelos, the consummation from the “most contradictory racial mixtures”

between “Spaniards and American Indians” would not be a degraded race, but the

superior “cosmic race,” in which all the original stocks dissolved while hybridizing their<*Q

best elements. This famous ode to mixed racial heritage aspired to triumph over the

assumed incommensurability of cultural differences through the “fusion of ethnic stocks”

(p. 19) categorized according to the colonial equation of race and culture.

Williams valued and actually replicated a part of the educational reforms

undertaken by revolutionary Mexican government in which Vasconcelos had played the

leading role. However, as mentioned previously, Williams imagined the “Children of

Trinidad and Tobago,” the expected outcome of “educational process,” as distinct from a

“cosmic race.”30 They could remain “plural” in terms of “natural” attributes but, at the

same time, constitute a “singular” peoplehood—as though they composed a family.

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Contrary to Vasconcelos, Williams did not, or more precisely could not, view “fusion of

ethnic stock” as the solution, so he required performing distinct and seemingly

conflicting tasks. An attempt was made to accumulate as diverse a sum of the putative

cultural origins as possible. This entailed the essentialization and reification of cultures as

the “possession” of particular ethnic collectives. At the same time, this commitment must

concur with a different form of exercise in demonstrating that those reified “ethnic”

cultures exhibited variability and commensurabi lity sufficient to form a single “national”

culture.

In 1948, Williams established the Trinidad and Tobago Folklore Society, and then

patronized the foundation and administration of the Ethnographic Society of Trinidad and

Tobago from the early 1950s (Elder, 1972, p. 79). Under his premiership from the mid-

1950s onwards, a number of governmental bodies and offices that concerned culture were

established: Division of Culture in the Ministry of Education and Culture; a Cultural

Adviser and Officers under the Division of Community Development; a National

Cultural Council, etc. (Craig, 1974, pp. 74-75); in addition, in the early 1970s, the

government o f Trinidad and Tobago became the major patron of “Folklore Research and

Archives Project” of the University of the West Indies (Braithwaite & Elder, 1969). As

stated by J. D. Elder, who chaired this Project, these various efforts for locating folk

“cultures” were ultimately to “collect, classify, index and archive” them, and to “analyze

and interpret. . . [their] implications for national identity” (p. 1). Elder’s lecture series,

entitled From Congo Drum to Steelband (1969), using the findings from “Folklore

Research and Archives Project,” exemplified this simultaneous pursuit o f “cultures” and

a “culture.” After the fashion of Ruth Benedict’s Patterns o f Culture, he opened the

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lecture with the presentation of a “fairly exhaustive list of musical ‘types’ in Trinidad. . .

the ethnic group among whom it is found predominantly and the institution which

supports it” (pp. 8-10).31 Then, in what follows, he detailed how steel pan, carnival and

calypso, the putative symbols of “national” culture, had developed as “a result of cultural

mixture of Europe, Asiatic, and African strains” (p. 20).

As summarized in the beginning of the chapter, there were theories that convinced

Williams and the intellectuals who sympathized with his cultural practices that their

simultaneous pursuit of “cultures” and a “culture” were compatible and would cause no

crisis of dividing purpose. The relative distances did not make the putative cultural

origins incommunicable and unmixable. The consciousness and social relationship,

which reflected the colonial mode of production, had made them antipathetic and thus

incommensurable. Also, the colonized, irrespective of their racial and cultural

backgrounds, were uniformly deprived of a historical sense due to their displacement

from origins. In the colonial setting, due to this absence of awareness o f a common

history, constituent groups of immigrants had never shared an implicit sense of “cultural

ideals” (Trouillot, 2002, p. 196)—what Mintz (1971) calls “target cultures”; accordingly,

their imagination for cultural creation and appropriation had neither crossed group

boundaries nor thus shaped the context o f creolization (Trouillot, 2002, p. 196).

Consequently, Williams and nationalist intellectuals hypothesized, there was no “cultural

form and mechanism” that the groups involved used in their formal and informal dealings

with one another before the departure from colonialism (i.e., political independence). It

must be remembered that the dominant narrative of nation in postcolonial Trinidad was

not a denial of die existing explanations of the “colonial” society—either permanent

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segmentation into cultural sections or integration by fusion of distinct cultures. Rather,

having accepted cultural pluralism and the Anglo-conforming moral community model as

apt accounts for colonial Trinidad, the political leaders and intellectuals projected the

“liberation” from “mimicry” of “things English,” and the development of a “medley of

people” into an integrative cultural hybrid. And what would make them possible were,

for Williams, the designed application of “technology” that would tame “cultures” to

sociopolitical needs based on the transcendent authority of the state and its political

ideology. The political intention (and intervention) would be able to deflect the relations

between cultural traditions from cultural pluralism, and bring about intersectional

exchange and “cross-fertilization,” eventually evolving into the “moral community.”

Elder reminded the audience of this respect in his lecture on steel pan (1969):

[IJt was not until Government itself had set itself the task to recognise panmen publicly that anything like lasting peace between people and panmen emerged. This is as true about Carnival and calypso as it is about steelband. All through the history of carnival, calypso and steelband, private support and recognition were comparatively ineffectual in convincing those who sang calypso or played mass, or beat steel, that they had a place in the national scheme of things. But when Government sponsored the calypsonians, recognized them and treated them as it did the “higher-ups,” things began to change the bitterness of class-hatred began to disappear. As if the hostility and aggression created in the days of Cannes Brulees by the deeds of men like Baker and Brierely could only be expiated by remedial step taken by men at the level of the administration(pp. 20-21).

He continued elsewhere (1972):

The rational for the new form the Cultural Movement took after 1962 lay in the feet of National Independence. Once political status had been achieved by the people, new concepts of what culture is had to be evolved and a national culture relevant to the historical experience of the composite ethnic groups inhabiting the land had to emerge. Moreover, the people themselves not foreigners, were made the agents of this process.

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Cultural liberation, like political and economic self-determination, are the concomitants in a country that had wrung its independence from the colonial system. The Cultural Renaissance of 1962 involving the folk is in essence a true indicator of spiritual freedom for the people (p. 81).

Williams’s reform of the educational system and village-oriented development

programs were the social experiments that tested exactly this hypothesis. He urged the

drastic and highly controversial reform of a dual system, whereby the government would

become the major provider of educational opportunity and subordinate the

denominational schools to its control. By turning them “public”—independent of and

superior to all the denominations and sects in his sense—Williams attempted to render

“classrooms” a pivotal site where a “culture” would be generated from the assemblage of

“cultures”-children with diverse religious backgrounds. On the other hand, Williams

thought of a “village” as a ready-made setting, in which such an overarching culture—a

shared “meaning” (Berger & Luckmann, 1966) or “cultural form and mechanism” (Wolf,

2001)—had already started taking shape through interaction between “equalized” cultural

elements. To “dramatize” and accelerate “on-going” cross-cultural fertilization, as

exemplified by the program of dance contest for the Best Village Competition, he sought

to “collect, classify, index and archive” as diverse a sum of the putative cultural traditions

as possible in a “village,” just like putting children who represented different

denominations and sects together in a classroom.

However, these attempts did not produce the intended consequences. Against

Williams’s “modem” conception of state, the “elementarily democratic” actions to place

the denominational schools under the unified management of the government were forced

to compromise in the face o f opposition from denominational boards of education. The

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denominational schools have retained respectable autonomy and had discretion for the

matters relative to their creed, such as selection of teachers and textbooks, which was for

Williams the area that most required reform. Also, contrary to the nationalists’ rosy

evaluation, the Best Village Competition was neither well supported nor attended.

Despite Williams’s designs, fewer dances, dramas, and choruses—intended to show the

depth of social integration in “villages” while taking in diverse cultural elements—were

performed. A “national” culture, which was envisioned in accordance with political

needs, was not accepted uncritically either as a new “tradition” or as a “meaning and

mechanism” that would order their intercultural dealings—well before a group of

anthropologists called for “writing against culture” as an overpowering “social fact,”

referring it to as a misrepresentation, fabrication, or “invented tradition” (e.g., Hobsbowm

& Ranger, 1983).

Franz Fanon (1963) had anticipated the difficulties that Williams’s intellectual

appropriation of “cultures o f the people” would confront. The brunt o f his criticism was

borne first by the “cultural estrangement,” which he conceived to have characterized

colonialism:

[CJolonialism is not simply content to impose its rule upon the present and the future of a dominated country. Colonialism is not satisfied merely with holding a people in its grip and emptying the native’s brain of all form and content. By a kind of perverted logic, it turns to the past of the oppressed people, and distorts, disfigures, and destroys it (p. 210).

However, he then requested the students o f colonialism to “go further” and delve into a

“dialectical significance” caused by “[this] work of devaluing pie-colonial history” (p.

210). According to Fanon, the cultural estrangement during the colonial period produced

a “psycho-affective equilibrium” (p. 210) among the colonized native intellectuals, which

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was responsible for their obsession with the past. As their aggressive response to the

colonialist theory of pre-colonial barbarism, the native intellectuals tended to be

desperate for indications that there was nothing in their past to be ashamed of—much as

Williams looked for as diverse a sum of the putative cultural traditions as possible, in as

close to their “original” forms as possible, with the aid of anthropologists and

ethnologists.

Yet, the claim to national culture was beyond the “rehabilitat[ation] ” of cultural

origins. At the same time, the traditional cultures, “extracted from the past to be

displayed in splendor” (p. 217), must be “collected, classified, indexed and archived” so

they could contribute to the legitimatization of their nation. Fanon pointed out that this

entailed the simplification and abstraction of the “national” past, which characterized

nationalist historicism. It assumed that there was an identifiable moment when the

diverse temporalities of cultural histories converged into an immediately understandable

present (p. 224)—as Williams’s allegory of nation, which may have been entitled the

“Land of Beginning,” fixed the date of “cultural liberation” and the dawn of their

interminglement at 1962, concurrent with political independence. In this process, the

illegibility of cultures, or what Fanon referred to as the “zone of occult instability where

people dwelljed]” (p. 186), was removed from, or turned into a readable part of, the

narrative of nation (see also Bhabha, 1994, p. 152). A “true” national past, presented by

Williams to fill up the people’s “pastlessness,” was therefore represented in the reified

form of realism and stereotype, so the “national culture” imagined as the legitimating

symbol o f their nation was becoming “less and less attached to the ever-present reality of

the people” (Fanon, 1963, p. 233).

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Williams and allied scholars appropriated “folk” cultures divorced from their

context or, more precisely, they presumed that locally specific ethnic cultures could be

taken out of their particular contexts and at least some elements, such as the ethnic dances

in the Best Village Competition, could be appropriated by other ethnic groups. Similarly,

in his educational reforms, Williams maintained that cultural differences could be easily

presented and overcome in the classroom and thus eventually produce a hybrid

Trinidadian cultural form. For Fanon, the nationalist bricolage that Williams attempted

was destined to fail because of its irrelevance to the actual history or contemporary

experiences of the people. Fanon suggested that there should be another form of

“national” culture, whose “vigorous shoots. . . [had] already [sprung] up” in consequence

of the “whole body of efforts made by a people in the sphere of thought to describe,

justify and praise the action through which that people has created itself and keeps itself

in existence” (p. 233-234). In contrast to Williams’ and other West Indian intellectuals’

“national” culture imagined in “empty time” with only a history of colonial domination,

Fanon’s conception of a pre-formed “national” culture is historically articulated as a

“dialectic of various temporalities” through frequent and repetitive actions (Bhabha,

1994, p. 152). This pre-formed “national” culture usually “abhors simplification” (Fanon,

1963, p. 224) centered on the historical institution of the state (see also Harney, 1996, p.

17). In other words, Fanon implies that Williams’s attempts to establish a unified history

of Trinidad focusing exclusively on colonial subordination simplified and obscured the

cultural differences among Afro-Trinidadians and Indo-Trinidadians and even Europeans.

In Williams’s nationalist historicism, for example, “emancipation” gained a

broader meaning beyond the specific historical fact of abolition of African slavery. As

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exemplified by the tag line of his educational reform— “to educate is to emancipate,”

Williams applied the term in the comprehensive sense of liberation of all inhabitants of

Trinidad and Tobago from the subjugation to colonialism and the domination by

metropolitan centers. In fact, for Afro- and Indo-Trinidadians, emancipation was a

significant shared historical experience for group-level identity. Yet, the event has meant

differently to Afro- and Indo-Trinidadians. Emancipation denotes the liberation from

their bondage to the plantation’s labor regimentation for those of African origins,

whereas it marked the beginning, not the end, of their servitude for the descendants of

East Indian indentured laborers, who settled in the island to relieve the labor shortage

caused by the abolition. To repeat, Williams did not intend to eliminate the cultural

differences. However, in order to “equalize,” if not homogenize, the putative cultural

origins, he attempted to detach them from the historical contexts that stratified them, and

to attach them to a common “national” past of colonial subordination. The particular

conditions of history, as Williams assumed, had hierarchized cultural objects, practices

and relative consciences of immigrants, but at the same time, they had become the

grounds for claiming the “purity” of “ethnic” cultural traditions. Williams’s nationalist

abstraction of history swept away “inner times” (Harris, 1981, p. 24) on which

Trinidadians had (re)produced, differentiated and reified the putatively “authentic”

cultures.

These cultural differences certainly were based in colonial subordination, but they

had come to have strength and meaning more complicated than simply subordination to

Europeans. These Trinidadian ethnic cultures had come to have a strength that resisted

Williams’ homogenization project Instead of cultural resistance to European colonization

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and associated subordination, the kind of Trinidadian culture that Williams tried to create

is better described as resistance of cultures. That is, the cultural factions created during

the colonial period of Afro-Trinidadians, Indo-Trinidadians, along with European Creoles

were distinct, as Williams presumed, but were also connected in ways that Williams did

not recognize. Trinidadian culture did not need Williams’ project of homogenization.

They had already established forms of interacting that produced a precarious but enduring

and perhaps surprising unity that belied the fears of instability that seemingly all

observers had of Trinidad’s fete after decolonization. Fanon (1963, p. 217) argued that in

colonial and postcolonial societies, such as Trinidad, the effort to create a homogenous

culture through a simultaneous pursuit of a past by re-writing history and a present by

creating a unified national culture created “serious ambiguities” because the unified

national history and culture could never be entirely consistent with the specifics and

complexities of a particular society’s cultural diversities and interactions. An apposite

description, though fictitious one, of the “serious ambiguities” comes from V.S.

Naipaul’s Suffrage o f Elvira (included in Naipaul, 2002b). In Elvira, an imaginary village

in southern Trinidad,

Everybody, Hindus, Muslims, and Christians, owned a Bible, the Hindus and Muslims looking on it, if anything, with greater awe. Hindus and Muslims celebrated Christmas and Easter. The Spaniards and some of the Negroes celebrated the Hindu festival of lights.... Everyone celebrated the Muslim festival of Hosein. In fact, when Elvira was done with religious festivals, there were few straight days left (p. 69).

The candidates who contested for a seat of County Council “preach[ed]... the unity of

races and religions” as a part of their “political platform” in this village, where “things

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were crazily mixed up” (p. 69). Hindus, Muslims, and Christians shared much more than

simple narratives of cultural difference implied.

For Michael Anthony, another Trinidadian man of letters, in Green Days by the

River (1973), Afro- and Indo-Trinidadians do not need Williams’ and other nationalist’s

anti-colonial discourse to build and retain a cross-ethnic “cultural form and mechanism.”

In Pierre Hill, another imaginary village, the personae in Anthony’s allegory do not cease

to be “ethnic” in order to form and conform to a common singular cultural form. Rather,

a culture is built on compromises between given ethnic groupings and reified cultural

differences as their “ascribed” traits or “possessions.” For instance, Ghidaree, an Indo-

Trinidadian, is described as having a strong attachment to the land and expertise in flora

and tillage, which are the putative “ascribed” features of “Indians.” However, Ghidaree

apparently easily adapts himself to Pierre Hill, a community with “Africans” as the

dominant population. Ghidaree even marries an “African” girl. The story revolves around

cultural compromises between Ghidaree and other characters in their effort to establish

and retain relationships with cultural others, in spite of occasionally experienced

dilemmas and associated anxieties over presumed essential cultural differences (Harney,

1996, pp. 40-41).

Williams and cultural pluralists both presumed that colonial Trinidad was riven

by fundamental, essential cultural differences. Cultural pluralists, such as M.G. Smith,

tended to believe that these differences were insurmountable and would continue with

independence, undermining Trinidadian solidarity and making the establishment of a

stable nation-state difficult if not impossible. Williams was more optimistic. He believed

and implemented a project of the new independent Trinidad nation that would create a

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social and cultural convergence under the construction of a new “authenticity.” He

referred to it as the unified “Mother (of Trinidad and Tobago)” that encompassed all the

constituting ethnic factions. Accordingly, the colonial boundaries between different

cultural sections were to be tom down so that Trinidad could achieve national integration.

Yet, I argue, that the concrete histories of cultural differences and interactions

across those differences could not be easily overcome by simply imagining a new unified

Mother culture. In colonial Trinidad, constant interactions and repeated conflicts across

ethnic boundaries rendered the Trinidadians conscious subjects of history with implicit

attentiveness to cultural ideals and the facts of power relations (Trouillot, 2002, p. 196).

In colonial Trinidad, ethnic groups were distinct, but they had also developed “hyphens”-

links across their divisions. Williams failed to recognize these pre-formed links and

sought to establish new relations across ethnic boundaries. Trinidadians in fact lived in

culturally distinct but not in culturally isolated ethnic communities. They interacted

substantially across ethnic boundaries and in the process became conscious subjects of

history and keenly aware of power relations. Colonial whites ruled, but particular ethnic

groups could have limited power in particular contexts, such as specific villages or

religious institutions and they could interact with other ethnically subordinate groups in

those contexts away from the eyes of the colonial masters. Since the colonial period,

Trinidadians thus have maintained and reified various “mothers,” i.e. ethnically distinct

cultural heritages, but concrete social relations meant that Trinidadians historically, in

some sense, “shared mothers” outside of their particular putative ethnic origins.

Trinidadians have not shared a single homogeneous culture, but have shared a meaning

that they are distinct.

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The dominant discourse of nationalism created by Williams and intellectuals,

such as J.D. Elder, who were sympathetic to Williams’s cultural practices, claimed that

inter-cultural negotiation only began with the political independence of the state. This

position was unconscious of or even ignored as politically incorrect the already existing

colonial history and context-dependent intergroup relations and specific compromises

that particular ethnic communities had achieved. Williams described villages as “national

communities in microcosm” where, he believed, the distinct ethnic factions had already

created an exemplary unified, hybrid culture that had not occurred in plantations and

urban centers under strong influence of colonial mode of production. Williams’s

conception emphasized the villages’ unity, rather than the more complex relations that, as

I argue, actually existed and in which ethnic factions remained socially and culturally

distinct but interacted across these boundaries. The villages thus contained various

“Mothers” rather than the singular Mother that Williams believed a unified Trinidad

needed. Ironically, Williams’s effort to construct new cross-ethnic interactions alienated

those who were already interacting across the boundaries while perceiving those

boundaries as “natural” facts, and even threatened the continuation of the existent cross-

ethnic relations. As such, Williams’s project had the potential to undermine, rather than

build, the Trinidadian solidarity he sought.

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Endnotes

1 Quoted from Williams’s address at the “Independence Youth Rally” held at Queens Park Savanna on August 30,1962. The manuscript of the address is available on the official Web page of the National Information System of Trinidad and Tobago (NALIS) at http://www.nalis.gov.tt/Independence/IndepYouthRallv.htm.

2 This was the address to the 21st Annual Convention of People’s National Movement (PNM), which marked the 25th Anniversary of the foundation of the party, held on September 28, 1979. The speech was entitled “The Caribbean Man” after the same title of the then hit calypso sung by Black Stalin. The text later became available in a booklet,The Making o f the Caribbean Man (Williams, 1994b), from which this study cites.

For example, in his review of The Sim is My Undoing by Marguerite Steen (1941), Williams unreservedly criticized scholars, including his mentor Reginald Coupland, known for their demonstrations that British abolitionists played a vital role in emancipation. According to Williams, Steen’s writing, albeit fictitious, “sheds more real light on the African slaves trade than the works of... all academicians,” and is “of value to all those who feel... that it is time to correct the misconceptions so sedulously propagated in the past about Negro slavery and its importance for Western civilization” (Williams, 1941, pp. 525-526).

4 According to Colin Palmer in his “Introduction” to Capitalism and Slavery (1994a), Williams added this chapter “when the manuscript was already in page proof.” He noted that this new chapter contained some “‘wonderful’ information on the role of the slaves in furthering the cause of emancipation” (p. xvi). In a letter to his editor, Williams reasoned on his writing the chapter: “As I read over the manuscript, it struck me that I had dealt with all aspects of the problems for over two centuries, but the people who are the objects and basis of the movement I had left untouched. I therefore laid myself open to the devastating criticism that my history was old style, because my eyes were glued entirely upon those above” (p. xvii). This chapter, as Williams stressed, made this line of critique difficult, but at the same time, it was somewhat incompatible with the rest o f his argument in the book, which centered on slavery as economic institution and economic interests as the determinant of emancipation.

5 The conference was held in Puerto Rico in December 1956 as a part of the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. The presented papers have been compiled and published as a book entitled Caribbean Studies: A symposium (Rubin, 1960).

6 For a more detailed description and comparative analysis, see Nigel Bolland’s On the March: Labour Rebellions in the British Caribbean, 1934-39 (Kingston, Jamaica: Ian Randle, 1995), and The Politics o f Labour in the British Caribbean: the Social Origins o f Authoritarianism and Democracy in the Labour Movement (Kingston, Jamaica: Ian Randle, 2001).

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http://www.nalis.gov.tt/Independence/IndepYouthRallv.htm

7 Although the official report with the full findings of the Commission was not published until 1945, some recommendations were immediately implemented, including the expansion of financial aid to the territories though the Colonial Development Welfare Act of 1940 (Basdeo, 1983).o

This dissertation cites Education in the British West Indies, reprinted in 1994 (Williams, 1994c).

9 The dual system of education had gone through several important revisions, some of which had reinforced governmental control over denominational schools. For example, the aforementioned secular civic appointments, called the directors of education, was originally set up for the sake of expansion of state intervention into denominational primary schools. Despite resistance from the denominational boards, the directors of education gradually raised their voice in the realms of denominational schools in areas such as selection of teachers and curriculum formulation.

10 Compiled from the data on Census o f the Colony o f Trinidad and Tobago 1946, West Indian Census 1946, and Census Album o f the West Indian Colonies 1948.

11 For biographical description of Williams, refer to Williams, 1969; Cudjoe, 1993; and Boodhoo 2001, for instance.\ 0 Here referred to the Concordat o f1960 reprinted in the Sunday Guardian on September 15,1991. It is also available on the official web page of the National Information System of Trinidad and Tobago (NALIS) at http://www.nalis.gov.tt/Education/Education Concordat.html.

13 Education is the most frequently discussed topic in bi-weekly column of Satnarayan Maharaj, the secretary-general of Sanatan Dharma Maha Sabha of Trinidad and Tobago, in the Trinidad Guardian. The official Web page of Sanatan Dharma Maha Sabha of Trinidad and Tobago (athttp://ethnonet gold.ac.uk/illustrations/ch7illustrations/71 mahasabha/indexJhtml) has listed the revised Concordat of 1960. In one of his columns, while criticizing a governmental proposal for substantial revision of the Concordat, Maharaj explained the significance to retain the Concordat as follows

[This proposal for education reform] seems to ignore the vast technological changes which have taken place since Eric Williams arranged the Concordat with the Roman Catholic Church. The Concordat was a compromise which Count Finber Ryan head of the local Catholic Church demanded to prevent Dr. Williams from imposing an education system similar to that in all communist countries at the time.... [The proposal] is a glimpse into the past, not a vision for the future. Events have long overtaken the ambitions of state control hidden in this [proposal]. Our children deserve better” (Trinidad Guardian, April 23,2003).

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http://www.nalis.gov.tt/Education/Education

http://ethnonet

14 The first major confrontation between the church and the state occurred during the presidency of Benito Juarez (1855-1872). The so-called “Juarez Law” of 1855 was intended to reduce the Roman Catholic Church’s traditional ecclesiastical privileges. President Juarez adopted a new constitution in 1857, which authorized the Mexican government to confiscate all properties held by the Church and empowered the state to decide what buildings could be used for religious services. These triggered the civil war between the Mexican government and the Catholic Church between 1857 and 1860s. For a historical sketch, and thorough description and analysis of educational policies in postrevolutionary Mexico, see Patience A Shell’s Church and State Education in Revolutionary Mexico City (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2003).

15 The discussion in the following section is inspired by and indebted to the introduction to Osugi (1999). I think it unfortunate that the circulation of Osugi’s heuristic study has been limited because it is published only in Japanese.

16 Williams’s address at the “Independence Youth Rally” held at Queens Park Savanna on August 30,1962.

17 The UCWI had contained the “Extra-Mural Department” for continuous adult education from its inception. However, for Williams, it was not insufficient and ineffective (Campbell, 1997, p. 68).

18 Williams (1994c) quoted the following phrase from anonymous “Mexico’s foremost educator”: “Sometimes we refer to the whole village itself as the schoolhouse” (p. 25).

19 This line of interpretation remains dominant in the Caribbean scholarship today. For example, Brereton (1992) underscores that the ex-slave peasants, including “squatters” who occupied portions of Crown Lands, “contributed significantly to the opening-up of the island [of Trinidad] and to the development of its economy” (p. 174). The argument in what follows is neither to contradict nor to undervalue this sort of contribution made by peasants, but to call for more attention to the fact that the nationalist’s view of peasantry as resisters to the colonial mode of production has ignored other dimensions in the development of the peasantry.

20 The corporations that agreed with Williams’s call for financial help included Texaco, Chase Manhattan and others (Craig, 1974, p. 38). A committee, comprising nominees of the government and representatives of these enterprises, was formed.

21 London (1991) writes, “Eric Williams decided on ‘borrowing from Africa’s soul’ by adopting what has since been called the ‘Nkrumah’s Village Model.’ He decided to go to the people in the villages. His strategy was to make personal tours under a program designated ‘Meeting the People of Trinidad-Tobago’” (p. 253). According to his note, London has taken these quotations from a PNM’s publication, Everybody's Magazine. However, the historical content analysis for this study could not locate any proof to

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demonstrate that Williams’s “Meet the People Tour” was modeled on Kwame Nkrumah’s policy toward rural villages.

For example, according to Marshall (1993, p. 100), the planters pressurized the Legislative Council to take strict legal actions against squatters, such as imprisonment and fine, while refusing their cooperation to surveys of Crown land that would lead to its subdivision.

23 Demerara was one of the oldest British settlements and well-known sugar-producing district in the Americas. It was originally a Dutch colony, but was ceded to Britain in1815. In 1966, when British Guiana became a sovereign state of Guyana, Demerara came to be one of three counties along with Berbice and Essequibo. Today, Demerara is used as the generic term for a type of raw cane sugar, which originated in the colony of Demerara.

24 Brereton quotes this description from advertisement on Trinidad Chronicle, dated on December 7,1872.

25 In 1899, the number of independent cane farmers run to 6,696, with 2,826, or 42%, being Indo-Trinidadians. By 1916, a year before the abolition of the indentured system, Indo-Trinidadians stood at 11,014 against 8,214 Blacks (Annual Immigration Report o f 1917, cited in Look-Lai, 1993, p. 236).

Stewart (1973), particularly in chapter 2, provides a detailed description of the ethnic differences in the modes of production observed in rural villages.

27 From the interview with Carlton Francis, a field organizer of the Best Village Competition, in Clevon Raphael, “Where Are They-Carlton Francis: Francis Wants To Resurrect Our D-E-D Folk Dances,” in Independent, June 2,2000, p. 18

The Secretary of Public Education (later renamed to the Secretary of Education) is the head of the Secretariat of Public Education (Secretaria de Educacion Publica, SEP, in Spanish). This has been a discretional appointee of the Mexican president and formed the federal executive cabinet. Vasconcelos had remained in the position until 1924.

29 However, by the 1940s, Vasconcelos had abandoned his perspective of a “cosmic race” as a “silly notion.” In a lecture he made in 1944, Vasconcelos said, “[P]erhaps one of my most notorious mistake was the idea that I drew from my adolescence in the tropics, the idea that proclaimed my faith in our mixed race and potent future” (cited in Miller 2004, pp. 40-41).A A

I could not locate any statements and writings from which it was inferable whether Williams was familiar with Vasconcelos’ conception of “cosmic race,” or that his policies toward education and culture were affected by the idea.

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31 The list contains 23 “types” of music: “Congo,” “Rada,” “Shango,” “Yarraba,” “Big Drum,” “Bongo I,” “Bongo II,” “Sings,” “Pass-play,” “Sankies & Trumpets,” “Bele I,” “Bele n,” “Bele HI,” “Reel Dance,” “Reel Engage,” “Work Songs,” “Chanties,” “Quesh (Creche),” “Veiquoix,” “Fandang,” “Parang,” “Road March,” “Kalinda.” Elder notes place of origin, play style, and “function” for each of these much “types.” The list goes as follows:

SHANGO-Yoruba groups in Trinidad. 3-4 drums and sticks, shak-shak. Chantuelle and chorus.Function: Music for the rites of cult of Yoruba origin (Orisha work).Includes hymns, litanies and invocations; items associated with the immanence of particular orishas or deities (“power”). Music helps to induce and to support spirit possession.

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CONCLUSION: ETHNICITY AND NATION IN TRINIDAD

Most former colonial societies have been historically configured as constituting a

cultural, racial, and religious melange of apparently incompatible cultural differences

with attendant ethnic and class divisions. In these societies, postcolonial party politics

mirror these divisions with political parties organized along ethnic lines. However,

politics does not “invent” ethnicity. Rather, politically derived—and then politically

driven—ethnicity becomes a recurring cause of not only political but also social conflict

and instability (Yelvington, 1993, pp. 11-12). Trinidad does not deviate from this

generalization. The structural conditions inherited from the colonial period set the context

in which electoral politics and party organization became, and remain, “ethnicized”

despite the efforts of the leading political actors to limit the influence of ethnicity on the

emergent public political space. Thus, in post-independence Trinidad national politics has

been the most evident—and therefore the most reported—cause of inter-ethnic conflicts.

Moreover, there is no indication that either politics or society will be “de-ethnicized.”

The influence of ethnic consciousness is likely to persist into the foreseeable future.

Nevertheless, compared to many other postcolonial nations, Trinidadian society

has treaded a relatively less destructive path. Hie ethnic divisions and competition in the

political arena has not undermined the political system or society in general. Though

occasionally inflamed in response to political events, inter-ethnic tensions have always

abated without consuming and destabilizing the nation.

As summarized in the Introduction, previous studies (e.g. Despres, 1967; Ryan,

1972; Hintzen, 1989) have analyzed the mechanism by which ethnicity has become

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politicized. The politicization of ethnicity, however, has different consequences in

different societies. The variations may be explained by the differences among the types of

political institutions upon which ethnicity is superimposed. In this dissertation, however,

the hypothesis is that differences in ethnicity produce various outcomes when politicized.

Thus, this dissertation reverses the common view that ethnic division produces social

instability. Instead, I argue that Trinidad’s ethnic separation actually is the key to

understanding Trinidad’s comparative social and political stability. Trinidadian society

can be considered as having “peace in feud” (Gluckman, 1982[1956]). As Yelvington

(1993) observes, ethnicity is not a universal but a cultural phenomenon that reflects the

historical specificity of the discourse of race and culture and the ideology surrounding the

“mixing” between the putative racial and cultural differences. This dissertation has

sought to unravel Trinidad’s “culture of ethnicity”: peculiarities that have simultaneously

caused and restrained inter-ethnic conflicts.

In Trinidad, as in other colonial Caribbean societies bom out of plantation

economies, the origin of the culture of ethnicity lies in colonial elites’ establishment and

maintenance of labor regimentation. In accord with the colonial plantation’s

commodification of labor, colonizers reified cultural differences as objective “facts,” and

tied them to specific racial/ethnic collectives (Yelvington, 1993, pp. 9-10). Their

presumptive hegemony was constructed upon presumably fixed distances between the

“ascribed”—and thus “invariable”—cultural essences of distinct groups of plantation

workers. This produced an ethnic division of labor that was subsequently reinforced with

a cultural essentialism that argued that each group was fundamentally and inalterably

different. In other words, as in many colonial societies, ethnic identification in Trinidad

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occurred in the context of the objectification of ethnicity, characterized by individual-

and group-level reification of cultural uniqueness (Yelvington, 1993, p. 10). The

introduction of electoral politics encouraged this process, as the government became a

primary means to protect or improve comparative ethnic status, a process shared by other

former colonial societies where politics occupied the commanding position in the

allocation of resources and prestige (Horowitz, 2000[1985], p. 217). The putative cultural

distinctiveness established by the colonial elite to advance their material interests thus

became a fundamental social fact, with an accompanying ideology that employs ethnicity

as a diacritical symbol and idiom for political mobilization.

The objectification of ethnicity has remained the most significant mode of ethnic

identification in Trinidad since the days of colonialism. Yet, the objectification of

ethnicity did not necessarily create a form of identification between colonizers and

colonized, conforming to an “ideal type,” based on the elite’s rational “divide and rule”

strategy that emerged from their ambition to govern. Nor do I argue that the subjugated

population has significantly “resisted” the colonial and postcolonial elite-led

objectification of ethnicity. Rather, the ambivalence of the colonial discourse itself not

only reifies cultural differences as fixed and invariable, but also encourages the impulse

to homogenize these reified cultural essences into a coherent social whole that somehow

transcends and unifies the presumably fundamentally different ethnic factions. For

whatever reason, perhaps sexual or other desires for racial and cultural others or the

assumed “White man’s burden” to “create a new race (thus culture),” colonial elites

repeatedly transgressed the racial and cultural bounds through not only sexual

intercourse, but also a mimetic appropriation that borrowed part of the cultural essences

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attached to “others.” As reflected in the ethnography of the previous chapters, people

from different cultural groups married across cultural lines, appropriated, even if

temporarily, religious symbols of other ethnic groups, and employed other groups’

expressive culture (such as the music and dance of carnival), while they continued to

argue that each cultural group was fundamentally distinct and had a unique cultural

essence. The central component of the “culture of ethnicity”—a mode of cultural

differentiation and ideology about cultural mixing—is thus a historically negotiated

creation of the impulses to differentiate cultures and to assimilate them into a single

national culture.

The Formation of the “Culture of Ethnicity” in Trinidad

This emphasis on discursive constructions does not deny the role of capitalism as

the determining force of colonialism and material violence in the process of colonization

(Young, 1995, p. 167). Colonialism was also a “determining, law-governing process,”

which was attached to an economic and political system (p. 166). The instrumentalist

approach, as opposed to the cultural approach adopted in this dissertation, focuses on the

ability of individuals to objectify cultures—choosing and appropriating from a repertoire

of ethnic heritages—in order to forge their own identities to attain some pre-set goals

(e.g., Cohen, 1969; Hall, 1993). In so doing, in the instrumentalist approach, the

individual quest for ethnic identity becomes conceptually disengaged from its

institutional underpinnings and glosses over contextual variations. It neglects the wider

social, political, and cultural environment in which elite competition takes place

(Hutchinson & Smith, 1996, p. 9). Trinidad’s particular demography and political and

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economic development have affected the negotiations between the two forces of

colonialism—the reification and the homogenization of cultures—and produced a unique

“culture of ethnicity” enabling “peace in feud.”

A majority of the existing studies of colonial society contains a class-based

analysis that tends to be inattentive to, or underestimate the significance of, diversity

within the “European” community and its influence on the development of ideology

about culture. Recently, students of colonialism are more careful not to describe the

subordinate population as monolithic, and they have come to pay more attention to intra

class conflict in the subjugated section of the society (e.g., Williams, 1991; Munasinghe,

2001, Puri, 2004). Nevertheless, the “European” community (i.e., the dominant class) still

tends to be depicted as a seamless, homogeneous whole with only superficial differences.

Class-based analyses assume that the consensus of values and belief patterns among the

European population was achieved without significant conflict and that the European

colonial elite presented a united front against working-class segments. As discussed in

Chapter 3, however, the British (re)colonization of Trinidad from the beginning of the

nineteenth century was marked less by a consensual “European” community than by

intra-class elite struggle for cultural leadership between the Anglican-English (incoming

colonizers) and the Catholic-French-Creole elites (colonized colonizers, in a sense). The

change of the colony into an Anglican-English domain was not merely a change of

political affiliation. It meant a shift in the social definition of “European-ness” or

“whiteness.” Under Victorian rule, whiteness now became a right or attribute that could

be claimed or protected and one from which French Creoles did not automatically

benefit. Catholic elites presented strong resistance to “Anglicization”—the reform of

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social arrangements consistent with Protestant English cultural values. Moreover, in

contrast to older English colonies, “King Sugar” did not reign supreme. Trinidadian

economic production was polarized into the production of the two major crops—sugar

and cocoa—and each was associated with a different elite “ethnic” faction. Cocoa

represented the livelihood of the French-Creole-Catholic residents, whereas the

production of sugar was rapidly “anglicized.” Each was cultivated, manufactured, and

marketed with distinct and competing modes of labor, capital, and land tenure. Thus, the

development of the plantation economy was more divisive than convergent and

contrasted the differences in values and symbolic interests between the French-Creole

and English communities in Trinidad.

The relationships between these European ethnic groups were characterized by

their constant status-inconsistency (Weber, 1978; Lenski, 1984). With the transfer of the

island from the Spanish to the Victorian government, political power and authority

became attached to Anglican-English elites, whereas in the decades following the island’s

capitulation the majority of the inhabitants remained affiliated with Roman Catholicism,

and communicated in French-derived Creole. The inconsistency of relative group status

did not enable these ethnic groups of the landowning class to remain isolated or self-

contained, nor did it allow them to assimilate their opponent and establish hegemony.

Also, the contrasting developments of sugar and cocoa in the late nineteenth century

compelled the colonial state to make cultural compromises. Instead of privileging only

English nationals in the matters of vital institutions (particularly education and religion),

the state legitimized the continuance of French-Creole Catholic schools and churches.

The “primordial” groupings and the French-Creole cultural traditions were hyphenated as

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“ethnic”: neither excluded as “foreign” nor completely assimilated (i.e. Anglicized) (see

Alexander, 2001). As exemplified by the disestablishment of the Anglican Church as the

official church and the institution of a dual system of education in 1870, differences in

cultural practices and the relative worldviews between the European ethnic groups, were

not, or at least were not perceived to be, assimilated, but integrated with autonomy and

“purity” of the reified ethnic heritages as sine qua non.

The intra-class ethnic conflict within the landowning class had a major effect on

the development of Carnival, which is widely considered the exemplar of the “national

culture” of contemporary Trinidad. In the intensification of symbolic politics between

European ethnic groups in the mid-nineteenth century, the colonial administration, urged

by Protestant English elites, started taking repressive measures against the Carnival as the

quintessence of a Catholic—and thus “foreign”—cultural practice. By the 1850s, French-

Creole elites had withdrawn from the processions as increasing numbers of lower-class

black urbanites—-jamettes—thronged the public streets during the days of celebration.

Nonetheless, Catholic elites—both white and colored—professed to be the original

founders of this annual festivity, and reified and ideologized this cultural practice as the

foundation for their pretensions to symbolic recognition of status. As demonstrated in

Chapter 4, the reified cultural practice, objects, and worldviews of African slaves had

been inextricably interwoven into this annual festival, which had become the symbolic

capital on which the French-Creole elite attained satisfactory ethnic status.

Nineteenth-century Trinidad’s plantation society was marked by labor

regimentation. However, the identities of colonizer and colonized did not necessarily

conform with the ideal type of a class-based framework that considers the

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commodificaiton of labor as successfully having limited and skewed the quotidian

expressions of signifying practices of working-class populations. In addition to the

objectification of ethnicity, which entailed the reification of cultural practices, behaviors,

and relevant consciences as “innate” attributes of specific ethnic collectives, these reified

cultural essences became the objects of mimetic appropriations, exchanges, and

inventions. Borrowing and exchanges happened daily. However, in pre-Emancipation

Trinidad, the Carnival celebration was the quintessential time and space in which such

exchanges took place most perceptibly. Ritualistically repeated, the cultural practices of

the formative population of carnival, both French Creole landowners and their slaves,

eventually formed a signifying system that was operated by a “flow of desire” and not

necessarily controlled by their intention and rationality (Young, 1995, pp. 166-167). In

the years following Emancipation, masqueraders of freed African slaves flooded the

public street dining Carnival. However, a “gang of negroes,” who daubed their faces and

bodies with molasses and varnish, and dueling stickfighters did not sever, but actually

extended these mimetic appropriations, as well as the borrowing and exchanges of reified

cultural essences. As noted in Chapter 4, Carnival in nineteenth-century Trinidad was not

a culture, but multi cultures, of resistance. French-Creole elites and lower-class black

folks reified and ideologized this cultural practice for their distinct “wars of position.”

These economically and politically estranged groups unconsciously formed a united front

against the cultural homogenizing process. In consequence, the historical construction of

the local signifying system, in which separation and joining occurred simultaneously,

remained unquestioned, and survived in the concurrent rise of class-consciousness within

working-class segment without turning into a “free zone” (Scott, 1990) where the

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subordinate groups carried out a “strategic reversal of the process of domination”

(Bhabha, 1994 [1992]). Toward the end of the nineteenth century, this unintended

“alliance” drove the colonial authorities to give up the elimination of this “foreign”

culture, and to compromise by hyphenating it as an “ethnic” culture. Because of the way

it developed, Carnival has become the most extensive ritual that simultaneously

reconfirms the separation and integration of reified cultural essences.

Chapter 5 criticized a popular misconception that the incorporation of East-Indian

immigrants in the host society was a process outside these dynamics of inter-group

relations that formed the “culture of ethnicity” in Trinidad. The indentureship retained the

institutional separation of East-Indian immigrants from the rest of the population by

connecting them with distinct governmental agencies, legislation, and social services.

However, in the second half of the nineteenth century the context of the development of

plantation economy imposed limitations upon the control of labors and their signifying

practices. Due to Trinidad’s late entry into the international market as plantation colony,

the development of sugar production was barely viable even with the planters’

dependence on indentured laborers. In the closing decades of the century, sugar

production in Trinidad (and the wider West Indies) began to decline. Concurrently, the

boom in cocoa production began, which simultaneously reduced the Trinidadian national

economy’s reliance on sugar and facilitated the transformation of time-expired indenture

laborers into permanent residents (as tenured peasants). Thus, within a few decades of its

introduction, the labor regimentation around indentureship was already weakening which

allowed workers more latitude than is assumed by theories of cultural pluralism (e.g. M.G.

Smith 1965,1984). East-Indian immigrants were not only able to retain and reconstruct

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their heritages among themselves, but also to enter the negotiations between the

acknowledged “otherness.” The formation of Soparee Ke Mai and La Divina Pastora

feasts is a quintessential case in point.

The statue of La Divina Pastora, the patron saint of the Catholic Church in Siparia,

came to gain the respect of Hindu devotees. From the mid-1860s on, Hindu pilgrims have

annually visited this remote parish in southern Trinidad and prayed at the feet of this

statue of the Virgin. The leaders and lay members of the church have been neither

tolerant of nor inattentive to the ingression of a visibly “foreign” and spurious cultural

influence. The repeated attempts to stop the Hindu pilgrimage failed in the face of strong

resistance from Hindu devotees. And the sizable offerings from Hindu pilgrims were far

from negligible for Siparia, a small rural parish with chronic financial difficulties. Thus,

to protect the putative “purity” of its own faith and ritual practice, the Church first

separated the date of Hindu pilgrimage from the day of Catholic feast. This temporal shift

was followed by a change in spatial arrangements. The leaders of the Church relocated

the statue for the Hindu feast days. Furthermore, since the 1960s, the dress of the statue

has been ritually changed to a freshly tailored dress each year for this particular occasion.

The church members endowed the statue with different identities—Catholic and Hindu

—by physically moving it and changing its dress; in other words, by separating the statue

from the ordinary.

It would be wrong, however, to assume that this process of “integrative

separation” was always under the control of Roman Catholics. Hyphenated, and then

customarily repeated, the legitimacy and the putative “purity” of the reified ritual

practices and the relative worldviews came to qualify each other and assume a form of

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“micro-community with a nascent religion that was, in a real sense, its own” (Mintz &

Price, 1976; also cited in Glazier, 1985a). The presumed power of the statue—La Divina

Pastora for Catholics and Soparee Ke Mai for Hindustanis—and the activities of the

church members and devotees are dialectically, but unconsciously, related. Catholics and

Hindustanis perceive of themselves as entirely dependent on the versatile nature of the

statue, enabling the statue to “contend with opposing and competing forces” that they

have created. The annual worship of Soparee Ke Mai and La Divina Pastora repeatedly

confirm the putative “purity” of the ritual practices, but at the same time they integrate

those reified cultural essences. Like Carnival, these rituals work in “binate operation”—

the processes of separating and joining are qualified only against each other (see Young,

1995, pp. 26-27).

Culture of Ethnicity in Trinidad: “Integrative Separation”

Today, few scholars who address the question of cultural mixing and social

integration fully endorse either the “plural society” camp (e.g., M. G. Smith, 1965;

Despres, 1972) or the “moral community” camp (e.g., R. T. Smith, 1962; Braithwaite,

1975). In Trinidad, the combinations of the various putative ethnic origins have assumed

characteristics, however, that are not reducible either to a “plural society” or to an

integrative totality in structural functionalist sense. The “cultural sections” embodied in

different ethnic groups continue to live side-by-side, interacting with rather than seeking

to be isolated from each other. They connect across sociocultural boundaries without

necessarily fusing.

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As an alternative, the concept of such a relatively coherent symbolic and social

world with enduring internal diversity has resulted in the increasing currency of the term

“cultural hybridity.” This alternative is a critique or reflexive deconstruction of cultural

essentialism. However, as it has gained academic currency, hybridity has become so

generalized and abstract that it is often unreflexively applied, regardless of the specific

conditions that have produced particular mixings across different contexts. The refusal of

structuralist approaches to “culture” (i.e., cultural pluralism and moral community

models)—that are considered to undervalue the importance of political variables

(Horowitz, 2000 [1985])—resulted in a school of authors who emphasize previously

ignored “cultures of resistance” (e.g., Munasinghe, 2001). In this perspective, the

powerful are depicted as always absorbed in retaining or reinforcing their relative

position through ideological incorporation and cultural domination, whereas “mute and

opaque” (Bakhtin, 1981; see also Young, 1995) (post)colonial subjugated subjects have

been transfigured into “artists” who are fully capable of the objectification of culture, and

necessarily up to the “strategic reversal of the process of domination” (Bhabha,

1994[1994]). As a result, societies become in a sense either culturally revolutionary (i.e.,

a strategic reversal is accomplished) or counterrevolutionary (i.e., where elites remain in

control), or permanently revolutionizing under mutual superimpositions of

representations This is not surprising, as there is a proclivity among social scientists to

stretch the gap between theorizing and empirical evidence. More often than not, we end

up overgeneralizing empirical findings. Recent research in cultural mixture tends to

relegate the questions of the how, when, and why of hybridity to the back burner as it

emphasizes only the existence of mixing. In the process, hybridity as an interpretive

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contempt has become the antithesis of its original intention. Although it may de-

essentialize the ethnic cultural components of a particular society, it generally ends up

essentializing cultural mixing by depicting it as a universal. The mixing that appears to be

empirically geographically widespread—and is assuredly the case in Trinidad—is elided

as it does not theoretically fit.

In Trinidad, the cultural combinations that emerged historically and persist do not

conform to the cultural hybrid model. The multitude of cross-cutting sociocultural

cleavages has historically rendered Trinidadian society tangibly plural with distinctive

and putatively autonomous “cultural sections” (Simmel, 1955; Coser, 1956; Gluckman,

1982 [1956]). As demonstrated in previous chapters, however, this peculiar social

structure has also prevented conflicts from fracturing the society, and when ethnic

tensions have arisen, society has repeatedly responded with the formation and

reinforcement of interethnic alliances. Ethnic groups are forced to compromise with each

other and form ethnic “alliances” in order to retain the “purity” of their own cultures.

Distinct cultural practices, objects, and worldviews embody diacritical symbols that

maintain historical ethnic boundaries, yet individuals and individual praxis constantly

transgress those boundaries. Contrary to a recent academic abstraction of culture as a

hybrid, the continuous separation and dialectical contrast of cultures are not necessarily

“contestatory and politicized” (Young, 1995; Khan, 2004). As exemplified by the feasts

of Soparee Ke Mai and La Divina Pastora, the combination of cultures is neither a

“permanently emergent culture” (Korom, 2003) nor a “perpetual changing process of

‘meaning-making’” (Baumann, 1997). It operates based on certain shared meanings that

render the apparently inconsistent qualities of “mixing” and “purity” attainable. In the

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perception of Trinidadians, “mixing” represents less hybridization than hyphenation that

joins “pure” cultures as they are granted possession, and thus never puts the bearers in an

either/or situation. In the culture of ethnicity in Trinidad, “purity” and “mixing”—both

critical qualities to participate in multi-ethnic social life—have become values that are

defined and enacted only against each other, rather than constituting a dichotomy. This

has enabled ethnic Trinidadians to claim—and, in their conception, enact—“purity”

without admitting “mixing.” The concept of cultural hybrid, which attaches excessive

importance to political variables and emphasizes human agency toward cultural

signification, has recast the dichotomy that it originally attempted to deconstruct, because

of the enduring assumption of a “prior” existence of pure, fixed, and self-contained

antecedents (Young, 1995, p. 25). In short, in the concept of cultural hybrid, “pure” and

“mixing” remain poles apart. The Trinidadian culture of ethnicity operates

simultaneously in two ways: “intentionally” bringing different cultural elements in

contrast with one another; and “organically” integrating them into an overarching

structured culture that Trinidadians usually dub “Trinidad (or Trinidadian) culture.”

Trinidad: A “HypheNation”

This “doubleness” is critical in theorizing about ethnicity and nation in Trinidad.

Other studies of Trinidad (and other societies) (e.g. Despres, 1967; Munasinghe, 2001)

frequently assume that ethnicity and nation are constituted as mutually exclusive

categories—the more individuals become “ethnic,” the less they can become a “nation.”

Instead, I argue that Trinidad has succeeded as a nation, at least in the minimal sense of

reproducing itself and not falling into self-destructive violence, because of this

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“doubleness” characteristic of the “culture of ethnicity” that combines ethnic separation

with national integration. In Trinidad, to be ethnic is to be national.

According to Daniel Segal (1989), different notions of Africans and East Indians

prevailed in colonial Trinidad, and were based on different principles of subordination,

though both groups occupied equally low social positions. To Europeans, Africans, who

had origins in the “Dark Continent,” were devoid of anything worth being called culture.

Their blackness represented a “blank” that could be filled in with civilization (i.e.,

European culture). Blacks were inferior, but this blankness enabled them to adopt

Western values and norms that could possibly make them respectable citizens (Segal,

1989, pp. 111-112). In contrast, East Indians were inferior not because of their lack of

culture but because of their possession of a lesser culture. Segal writes, “Possessed of

languages, religions, and customs which were regarded as inferior cases of what

‘Europeans’ possessed, the immigrants from India and their descendants could not

similarly be partially ‘European’” (p. 95). From the perspective of colonialists the

presence of an inferior culture rendered the “relationship between ‘East Indians’ and

‘whites’ a matter of either/or: a person was either, say, a Hindu or a Christian” [emphases

in original] (p. 95) (see also Segal, 1993).

Viranjini Munasinghe (2001) maintains that the dominant national discourse in

postcolonial Trinidad has appropriated this contrast between colonial stereotypical

notions of Africans and East Indians. To form an integrative society, the putative cultural

origins must be mixable and thus commensurable with one another. The assumed lack of

culture would make Afro-Trinidadians adaptable to and miscible with cultural elements

with distinct origins, specifically those from Europe. In contrast, the colonial postulate

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that Indo-Trinidadians were saturated with “distinct” and “invariable” cultures laid the

foundation for the view that they are unable to be a “contributory part” of a “new

parochial wholeness” that would acquire “Creole authenticity” or “Trinidadian” purity

(pp. 84-89).

In fact, Eric Williams and allied intellectuals constantly questioned the validity of

research findings that they regarded as overemphasizing the persistence and

incommensurability of Indo-Trinidadian cultural elements. In History o f the People o f

Trinidad and Tobago (1962), for example, Williams criticized Morton Klass’s

ethnographic account, East Indians in Trinidad, as biased toward Indo-Trinidadian

resistance against assimilation, and insisted that Indo-Trinidadians were equally capable

of mixing as Afro-Trinidadians because of their equal subordination to colonial

domination (pp. 280-281; see also Klass, 1988 [1960], p. xxix). By the same token,

Arthur and Junta NiehofFs East Indians in the West Indies (1960) became a target of

criticism. Daniel Crowley (1963), a lecturer of the University of the West Indies, sided

with Williams in his stress on Indo-Trinidadian’s “similarities” with, rather than “minor

differences” from, the rest of the population:

Trinidad East Indians who believe that their total culture is distinct from that of other West Indians are espousing a myth best dispelled by visiting India. Their racial nationalism is a part of the death throes of the attenuated culture brought by the indentures, although it is currently a powerful political weapon. The Niehoffs appear to be justified in describing the Indians as a subculture in the larger West Indian society, and in predicting its retention of many Indian traits in religion, language, diet, family structure, attitudes, and values. But in stressing minor differences rather than major similarities, they unwittingly do a disservice to the West Indian people now struggling to make a viable from the most diverse biological and cultural strains on earth (p. 158).

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The dominant nationalist discourse that gave prominence to the miscibility of

cultures (i.e., the potential for creolization) conflicted with the Indo-Trinidadian leaders’

campaign to (re)define or to (re)construct their cultural heritage particularly religion, as

an icon of “Indian” purity. Munasinghe (2001) claims:

Throughout their cultural and political activity [Indo-Trinidadian] leaders [have] challenged the implicit claim that East Indian ethnic identity was necessarily antithetical to Trinidadian national identity and sought to introduce what they believed to be East Indian elements alongside hegemonic Afro-Caribbean elements withi n the symbolic space of the nation” (p. 5).

In their effort to realign their cultural origins as diacritical symbols that

distinguish themselves from other groups (particularly Afro-Trinidadians), Indo-

Trinidadian leaders have hardly ever challenged the implication that the putative cultures

of Afro-Trinidadian and European descendants are commensurable, changeable, and

mixable enough to form a “Creole” culture and society. Having accepted and emphasized

this colonial postulate and the stereotypical notion of Indo-Trinidadians as having been

saturated with “incommensurable” and “invariable” culture, Indo-Trinidadian leaders

attempted to redefine “Trinidadian-ness,” in which their ethnic heritages are

(re)incorporated as autonomous entities separate from Afro- and European-Creoles and

their “Creole” cultures (Munasinghe, 2001, pp. 276-278).

Supporting Homi Bhabha’s arguments (1990,1994), Munasinghe questions the

theory of a nation as a horizontal and homogeneous “imagination” (Anderson, 1983). Her

critique of the stability of nationalist narrative has made a vital contribution to the theory

of ethnicity and nation in Trinidad. However, I argue that this alternative discourse,

which the Indo-Trinidadian leaders presented, is intended as the antithesis of the

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dominant nationalist discourse, so it is equally founded on an abstract and

overgeneralized “common” past that is just as reified and stereotypical as Williams’s

allegory of the nation: the “Land of Beginning.” Thus, the “Indo-Trinidadian culture,”

imagined for cultural politics in order to gain symbolic recognition of equal status, has

become ironically “less and less attached to the ever-present reality of the people” (Fanon,

1963, p. 233).

The realignment of Hinduism as an “icon of Indian-ness” (Khan, 2004b, p. 14)

began in the closing decade of the nineteenth century. The religious landscape of East

Indian settlers in Trinidad spanned a wide range of traditions, so much so that it would be

accurate to characterize it as a “mosaic.” The elite-led objectification of culture entailed

the displacement of inequality among East Indians and an associated hegemonic

homogenization of diverse ritual practices and faiths into a cohesive and readable system

of symbols a Trinidadian Hindu “orthodoxy.” Nonetheless, before the Indo-

Trinidadian religious and political leaders undertook the homogenization of Hinduism,

East Indian immigrants had already undertaken to reconstruct their traditions through

interactions with, and ritual assistance from, a different “cultural section,” in other words,

Catholics. As typified by the interactions between Catholics and Hindus in Siparia, the

participation by local Indo-Trinidadians in mimetic appropriations and exchanges of

ritual assistance created an Indo-Trinidadian “community” with a religion of its own. In

this “community,” Hindu or Catholic “purity” can be claimed only based on “mixing”

with the other. Meanwhile, as the Christian-centered colonial discourse sought hegemony,

the Brahmin-led homogenization of Hinduism was not symmetrical. The extant elements

were not equally valued and objectified as “appropriate,” “authentic” components of the

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intended orthodoxy. As examined in Chapter 5, however, the Hindu elite’s bricolage of

folk traditions produced unexpected “alternative constructions.” For example, the

construction enabled Hindus who profess Kali Mai to be true to both the reified Hindu

orthodoxy, which is a necessary medium for status generation and improvement, and to

the local Hindu ritual outside of the Hindu elite orthodoxy. Through the ritual change,

Kali Mai worship became equipped with the fabrics for legitimacy, including a logic and

modus operandi comparable to orthodox ritual performance. In so doing, it retained the

rationale of personal and direct access to the god/goddess, a vital channel of salvation for

many lay Hindustanis. This has allowed Hindustanis to visit the contemporary Kali

temple without alienating themselves from the “pure” Hindu “community” designated by

Trinidadian cultural classification. Likewise, non-Hindu visitors feel blessed with

“special power” of the Hindu Mother and other deities, which are conceived as the

“possession” of Hindu community. Using the metaphor of Eric Williams, Trinidadians

have shared “Mothers,” not a singular “Mother.” The Trinidadian sense of affiliation to

the same community has been based on the assumption that they are ethnically distinct,

and are not a single set of homogeneous cultural values and norms. The “rational”

dialectical readings between the polarities of “purity” and “mixing,” which underlie elite

discourses of nation—either nationalist’s metadiscourse or minority oppositional

discourse—-have contradicted the “national culture” that has historically been based on

the mutually inducing and reinforcing relations between these qualities.

I revisited Siparia one week after the “Coolie Fete.” After interviewing the priest

at the church, I proceeded to drive back to Port-of-Spain. I decided to stop over in Penal,

another major town of the County of St. Patrick. Penal had been an integral part of the

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Parish of Siparia until 1962, when it became independent with the erection of a new

chapel. The church was recently rebuilt on a compound that included a Roman Catholic

Girl’s School, Holy Faith Secondary School (Anthony, 2001, pp. 199-200). Today, the

Chapel and the school sit atop a hillock, which makes their humble but solemn

appearance visible as one approaches the town. When I arrived at the compound, all the

students seemed to have left for home. It was deserted and quiet. Fortunately, I came

across the principal who kindly guided me all around the facility. A standard color and

architectural design gave the two main components, the Chapel and schoolhouse, the

appearance of seamless continuity. One building, however, was distinct from the rest of

the complex. It is a gray concrete block structure with a dome sheathed with zinc. It was

called the “Cultural Centre,” which this school and majority of Trinidadian Catholic

schools had equipped for “celebrat[ing] festivals and cultural events not Catholic.” She

continued:

Phagwa} Do you know Phagwa? A Hindu festival. That’s one of the most favorite festivals of girls . . . . Well, not just students, but also teachers enjoy that every year. . . I know you like it, too. This is a Catholic school, but you know that we now have a lot of students with different faiths. We celebrate all Trinidadian cultures. We have prayers and all that Catholic in the Church. And other events not Catholic we do in the Cultural Center.

Trinidad’s nationalist bricolage has produced a jumble of cultures. As intended by

Eric Williams and other proponents of a unified educational system, the introduction of

the Common Entrance Examination (CXC) with the maintenance of religious-based

schools resulted in interreligious mixing of pupils in state-aided denominational schools.

Williams argued that his mixing “secularized” the educational system and he called the

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mix of children with distinct religious origins in the same classroom a “national

community” in microcosm.

Yet, as I have argued, this forceful integration simultaneously engendered a

process of separation. The Cultural Centre at Holy Faith Secondary School, standing

between the Chapel and the schoolhouse, marks the separation and figuratively prevents

the dilution of the assumed purity of ethnic cultures. The Cultural Centre embodies the

sharing that evades cultural hybridity, a hybridity that the management of Catholic

School conceives as “spurious.” Nonetheless, at the same time, this inscription of

boundaries is not intended to reverse the process of integration by excluding “spurious”

elements. Rather, the separation of church and classroom from the Cultural Center aims

to retain the assumed authenticity, or “purity,” of each ethnic heritage within the

emerging integrative whole.

The ideology of cultural mixing has been institutionalized in Trinidad. In terms of

the incorporation of Indo-Trinidadians into the host society, it should be noted that the

nineteenth-century intra-class conflict and the resulting cultural compromises between

European “ethnic” groups—Catholic-French Creole and Anglican English—were over

differences in religious values and ritual practices that included religious-based education.

As described previously, religion has functioned as the irreplaceable point of reference

for marking and maintaining the boundaries of Indo-Trinidadian’s “alterity.” Beginning

in the late nineteenth century, leaders of the Indo-Trinidadian community have worked to

reengineer and endorse Hinduism (and Islam, although it is not discussed here2) as a

symbol of “pure” Indian-ness. As a result, in the Trinidadian context, race and religion

have formed the “articulated discourse” (Khan, 2004b, p. 5) in which “these categories

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are meaningful and possess agency only in conjunction with one another” (p. 225). In

short, Hinduism (and, to a lesser extent, Islam), among other ethnic heritages, has been

acknowledged as an “ascribed” attribute, and thus served as a synonym for “Indian” race.

The “hyphenation” does not mean the equal valuation of all the primordial identities and

cultural elements. Stigmatization undoubtedly remains. However, contrary to assimilation

or hybridization, the Trinidadian solution contains the dynamics for relative reevaluation

that allows fluidity and transferability between the ethnic collectives, possibly leading to

the neutralizing of the negative qualities of their cultural traditions and symbolic interests

(Alexander, 2001, p. 245). Indo-Trinidadians, and their primordial qualities, had

undeniably been stigmatized more than other Trinidadian ethnic groups as a “polluted”

form of civic competence. Yet, it was the “institutionalized meaning,” crystallized

through the disestablishment of the Anglican Church and fundamental elements of the

dual system of education that restrained the powerful Christian community from exerting

unlimited coercive cultural power. The institutionalization of the meaning—“integrative

separation” (or “separative integration”)—particularly in the domains of religion and

faith-based management of schools enabled Indo-Trinidadian leaders to claim the

symbolic recognition of equal status and participation as an autonomous component in

Trinidad’s multicultural civil society as less contradictory.

Although the Indo-Trinidadian community acquired symbolic recognition and,

eventually, a role in national electoral politics, this new status also restricted Indo-

Trinidadian’s “cultural politics” to those that reflected Trinidad’s ideology of cultural

mixing. In this connection, it is significant that Sanatan Dharma Maha Sabha, the

acknowledged largest representative of Hindu Indo-Trinidadian community, was a

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founding organization and a most active promoter of “The Inter-Religious Organisation

of Trinidad and Tobago” (hereinafter called the IRO), along with the Roman Catholic

Church. According to Fr. Cyril Paul, an executive of the Organization,3 the IRO was

originally formed as a voluntary “religious association” under the initiative of the major

religious groups, which “feared of the intensification of ethnic strife and domination of

certain group” after the outbreak of the “Black Power” movement in 1970.4

When I interviewed him, Brother Noble Khan, the then-president of the IRO,

invited me to the organization’s annual general meeting the following week. The

affiliated organizations take turns in hosting the annual general meeting. In 2003, when I

conducted my field research, the meeting was held at a temple owned by a Hindu

organization. In this temple, like other Hindu temples, the devotees who come for

worship sit directly on a floor. A note by the entryway alerts: “No shoes allowed.” The

temple had an auditorium-like prayer room, and a stage with a podium from which a

pundit usually preaches surrounded by numerous murtis of various gods/goddesses.

When I arrived at the temple, a group of young ascetics were in the midst of preparing for

the meeting. Some of them were arranging chairs in rows; the others were covering the

murtis on the stage with large white cloths so that they would be hidden from the

audience. By the entrance, a young pundit was about to remove the “shoes-off” note. He

took it off from wall, and flipped it over. I asked, “Do I have to take off my shoes?” The

young monk answered aloofly, “No. Don’t need to. You come for the meeting?

Christians are coming today for the meeting, too.”

The meeting was opened with the following prayer, which is “elaborated as

consistent to all creeds of the affiliated groups,” according to Rev. Paul. The same prayer

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is offered in state-aided denominational schools that now accommodate students who

profess more than their own denominations.

Praise be to you, Almighty God, Creator of the Universe and all that is in it;

We thank you O Loving God for the opportunity which you are giving us to increase our knowledge

May Your Divine Grace enable us to study hard and use what we learn for the good of our fellow citizens;

We pray that you will free us from selfishness, lust, greed, anger and hatred;

Warm our hearts with love, fill our minds with understanding and strengthen our will in the face of difficulties;

Help us O Merciful God to make our beloved country of Trinidad and Tobago the kind of place you want it to be, a place where human dignity is respected, where equal rights are accorded to all citizens, where hard work is encouraged and rewarded and where You O God, reign supreme

When the meeting was over, the same group of ascetics restored the temple-from

a venue of the IRO conference to a place of Hindu worship: the chairs were removed; the

murtis were uncovered. Having made sure that the last attendee had left the temple, the

pundit replaced the shoes-off sign on the wall. To this anthropologist, the temple used for

the meeting had remained a Hindu domain all the time, as had the “Parish Hall” in the

Catholic Church in Siparia where Hindu pilgrims paid homage to Soparee Ke Mai.

However, by covering/uncovering murtis, and turning back and forth the shoes-off note,

the leaders of the temple realized the sharing that evaded “mixing,” as did the parish

priest and lay members of the Siparia Church through changing spatial and temporal

arrangements along with the dress of La Divina Pastora.

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Ethnicized electoral party politics is one of the principle arenas where this

“culture of ethnicity” publicly unfolds. In Trinidad, the regime legitimation essential to

the maintenance of the acquired control depends neither on ethnic mobilization strategies

nor on quantitative parliamentary domination. As Hintzen (1989) and others have

demonstrated, the social structural traits inherited from colonial period do no allow the

political actors to represent the masses across ethnic boundaries. As “representatives” of

ethnic communities, the political leaders have unconsciously dramatized and reinforced

the process of “integrative separation” through electoral campaigns ritually held with

public audiences. Following elections, the repeated exchange of ethnic gifts has

simultaneously confirmed the separation (and, thus, authenticity) and the integration of

ethnic communities and their cultural practices. To realize this goal, the gift that is

exchanged must visibly represent putative ethnic attributes, such as the Spiritual Baptist

community rewarded by the Indo-Trinidadian government or a pious Hindustani who

lived and died in a typical Hindu Indian constituency being honored by an Afro-

Trinidadian government. The gift exchange would be meaningless if the equation of

reificatory cultures with ethnic identity is disengaged. An “African” prime minister who

professed Anglicanism called on a group of Hindu pundits and asked them to “properly

observe the rituals” to remove jhandis installed by his “Hindu” predecessor from the

official residence. Shortly thereafter, in an official statement, the IRO approved that the

Prime Minister “[had] handled [the issue] properly, and within the protocol of the Hindu

faith.” In the Trinidadian context, such an act of “imitation” maintains the coherence

between ethnic collectives by repeatedly authenticating, rather than homogenizing, the

acknowledged alterity. Contrary to the popular scholarly emphasis (e.g. Premdas, 1993,

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1996) on its negative, disruptive, or dysfunctional aspect, the “ethnicized” politics in

Trinidad have been a ritualistic mode of conflict that constrains inter-ethnic conflicts

because of the “culture of ethnicity” reflected in Trinidadian politics and associated

national culture.

Munasinghe (2001) argues that the Indo-Trinidadian presentation of the

oppositional discourse is to “redefine national culture.” Criticizing the hegemonic

nationalist discourse of nation, which prioritizes miscibility of cultures, Indo-Trinidadian

leaders demand that Trinidad’s national image incorporate the principle of difference,

which would enable them to participate in Trinidadian nation as bearers of “pure”

cultures. Munasinghe phrases this with metaphors: “Constructing a ‘Tossed Salad’ from a

‘Callaloo’” (p. 268). “Callaloo” is the name of a popular national dish, a thick soup in

which “a number of distinct ingredients are boiled down to a homogeneous mush” (pp.

21-22). Like “melting pot” and “Creole” in North American and Caribbean contexts,

respectively, the term “callaloo” is employed as analogy of assimilation. The leaders of

the Indo-Trinidadian community attempt to demonstrate that the Trinidadian nation is

less a “callaloo” than a “plural society”—a “tossed salad”—marked by the “moral-

political bloc” fashioned around Afro-Trinidadians and their “Creole” cultures. My

observation is, however, that the Trinidadian nation does not fit either of these metaphors,

which are based on the polarities of “purity” and “mixing”; thus they fail to grasp the

specificities of how Trinidad culture is enacted. A Trinidadian friend of mine, though,

informed me that the term “callaloo” might be differently defined. Showing me a recipe

for callaloo, she told me, “Well, how hard you to melt t’ings, the bush is still bill chunks.

380


Okras are still whole at times . . . not melted down to the bush. But, they are the best part

of the soup, you know?”

381


Endnotes

1 In India, Phagwa (also known as Holi) celebrates the Hindu New Year, heralding the arrival of spring. And in Trinidad, Phagwa, held on the first day of the full moon in the month of Phagun (usually between mid-February and early March), marks the beginning of the Hindu religious year. The festival is the reenactment of the legendary epic of Holi (Holika), the witch burned and sacrificed for Prince Prahalaad. The Hindu organizations begin preparations on Visant Panchumi, exactly 40 days before the festival (Vertovec 1992: 210-211). Phagwa has also become a communal event in which non-Hindu Trinidadians participate. The participants throw purple liquid or powder on each other with a spirit that is simultaneously naughty and merry.

2 For the role of religion in Into-Trinidadian’s transnational identity particularly from the perspective of those who follow Islam, please refer to, for example, Aisha Khan’s

Juthaa’ in Trinidad: Food, Pollution, and Hierarchy in a Caribbean Diaspora Community” in American Ethnologist (Vol. 21, No. 2; pp. 245-269), more than her studies cited in this dissertation.

3 Rev. Cryl Paul of the Presbyterian Church of Trinidad and Tobago (who has served the Church in Tunapuna since 1997) currently presides the IRO.

4 The “Inter-Religious Organisation of Trinidad and Tobago (Incorporation) Act, 1973” (passed in the House of Representatives on August 17,1973) incorporated the IRO as a religious association. Beyond an annual general meeting, a number of committees are regularly convened to discuss a range of social issues, including education, health care, criminal justice and the like. The regular meeting is held on the second Tuesday of each month at alternating venues.

382


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September 3,1969

1992

1994

1994-1997

1998-2000

2000-2006

VITA

TERUYUKITSUJI

Bom, Kyoto, Japan

B.A., Foreign Language (English)Kyoto Sangyo University Kyoto, Japan

M.A., Area Studies(The Latin American and the Caribbean Focus) Institute of Area Studies University of Tsukuba Tsukuba, Japan

Economic/Political Analyst and Attache Embassy of JapanPort-of-Spain, Trinidad and Tobago, W.I.

Economic/Political Analyst and Attache Embassy of Japan Kingston, Jamaica, W.I.

Ph.D. Candidate in Comparative Sociology Florida International University Miami, Florida

Teaching AssistantDepartment of Sociology and Anthropology Florida International University

Research Assistant Immigration and Ethnicity Institute Florida International University

Adjunct Professor Miami-Dade Community Miami, Florida

Adjunct ProfessorDepartment of Sociology and Anthropology Florida International University

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PRESENTATIONS AND PUBLICATIONS

Tsuji, T. (2007). Trinidad. In R. T. Schaefer et al. (Eds.), Encyclopedia o f Race, Ethnicity and Society. Thousand Oaks, CA.: SAGE Publications (in press).

Tsuji, T, Ho, C., & Stepick, A. (2007). From “Personal Access” to “Corporate Victory”: The Struggle for the Development of Social Capital among West Indian Immigrants in South Florida. In A. Stepick, S. Mahler, and T. Rey (Eds), Immigration, Religion, and Civic Engagement. Piscataway, NJ.: Rutgers University Press (in press).

Tsuji, T. (2007). Review of Callaloo Nation: Metaphors o f Race and Religious Identity among South Asians in Trinidad by Aisha Khan (Durham: Duke University Press, 2004). Transforming Anthropology (in press).

Tsuji, T. (August, 2006). Mothers: The Hyphenating Force of Distinct Imaginations. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Sociological Association (ASA) in Montreal, Canada.

Tsuji, T. (April, 2005). HypheNation: Culture and Ethnicity in Trinidad. Paper presented at the 3rd Graduate Student Conference of Latin American and the Caribbean Studies at University of Miami in Miami, Florida.

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