Race Relations in Colonial Trinidad

We have been thinking about Trinidad & Tobago quite often these days. Endeavoring to understand the historical background of Trinidadian society as described in the various works of novelists such as C.L.R. James, Edgar Mittelholzer, and V.S. Naipaul has sparked our interest again. Brereton's study, Race Relations in Colonial Trinidad, 1870-1900 provides a great introduction through its focus on race relations in the diverse Trinidad of the period. Trinidad, after all, was shaped not only by Indian indentured laborers but also by its resident Anglophone West Indians from other British colonies who, together with the population of free colored origin, French Creoles, liberated Africans, Portuguese, Venezuelan migrants, native Afro-Trinidadians, Chinese, and colonial officials, transformed Trinidadian society during the pivotal final decades of the 19th century. The central message of Brereton's study seems to be that the ethnic divisions, plus distinctions of class, color, and religion, were maintained as Trinidad's economy transitioned in the post-emancipation era. This helps explain the reasons why a Naipaul could see himself as a product of an internally divided colonial society lacking cohesion as its disparate parts enjoyed different relations with colonial authority and the dominant, elite culture. It also facilitates in understanding the class/caste structure of Trinidad explored in Mittelholzer's A Morning at the Office.

Brereton begins with an examination of 19th century Trinidad before 1870, covering the free colored population, emancipation, new village settlements of formerly enslaved people, and Indian indenture immigration from 1845 onwards. In the second half of the 19th century, new infrastructure appeared with railways in the 1870s and 1880s, additional roads and settlements, Port of Spain's urban expansion, and cocoa cultivation originally produced by small farmers before French Creoles dominated the industry. Some manufacturing and an incipient urban working class appeared, mostly in Port of Spain. Unlike sugar, most of the cocoa industry was locally owned but the Trinidadian economy lacked adequate diversification of exports. As a crown colony until 1924, most governors sided with sugar planter interests and did little about the harmful system of indirect taxation via import duties on basic foodstuffs, kerosene, clothes, and agricultural tools, which had a harmful impact on the masses. Reformers wanted government officials on the council to be elected by the population, but French Creoles and the governors resisted and continued to dominate government policy in the interests of the white planters. According to Brereton, French Creoles formed a closed group dominating import-export, cocoa, municipal government posts, the medical professional, and journalism.

For non-white, non-elite groups, things were, of course, quite different. Education was, despite schools established in all wards, rather limited for the lower classes. At best, they only received a limited education that would make them better workers while fees and exclusion of illegitimate children barred many Indians and poor black children from admission. Indeed, it was difficult for even middle-class Afro-Trinidadians to receive a secondary education, although a few, often of Barbadian origins, managed to receive scholarships into elite schools. Our C.L.R. James appears to be an example of this fortunate group. Others can be found in families of mixed-race French Creole origin, such as the Romains and Philips. Culturally similar to white French Creoles and benefitting from their education and connections, some even rose to high posts in government, with Michel Maxwell Philip becoming mayor of Port of Spain in 1867. This group's combativeness against discrimination in government may have brought them together with the small black middle class.

Former slaves and their descendants, to a smaller degree, also entered a middle class or middling status as skilled artisans, teachers, journalists, editors, lawyers, doctors, civil servants, and clerks. Again, helping elucidate the origins of C.L.R. James, primary school teachers were the nucleus of the black middle class and schoolteachers were highly regarded. Take the example of J.J. Thomas, a black teacher in second-half of 19th century. Thomas was the son of ex-slaves, received his early education at a a ward school, taught, entered civil service in 1867, wrote his Creole Grammar in 1869 and went on to master patois, French, Spanish, Latin and Greek. His famous Froudacity was an excellent reply to Froude's racist tract on the West Indies and a defense of the right for black West Indians to self-government. Even the father of George Padmore, H.A. Nurse, or Henry Sylvester Williams, attest to the intellectual and political achievements of Trinidad's black middle class. One could also add their literary achievements in intellectual journals and political activism, although some distanced themselves from the lower-classes and their musical or spiritual practices. 

For our interests in understanding the Indian population of Trinidad during the late 19th century, Brereton's study is of great utility. Indentured Indian labor was indispensable for the revival of Trinidad's sugar sector, but Indians also purchased crown land and gradually established themselves as landowners. Both white and black Trinidadians looked down on Indians from a Western/Christian perspective. Indians, according to Brereton, likewise disliked black Trinidadians, viewing them as "impure" So, geographical and occupational separation plus mutual contempt separated Trinidadians of African and Indian origin. These divisions appear to be the foundation for V.S. Naipaul's "shocking" experience of entering into Creole Trinidadian urban life during his youth in the 1930s. The complexity of Black-Indian relations in colonial Trinidad warrants much further investigation, but one cannot help being astonished by the heterogeneity of the Trinidadian population which had only become predominantly English-speaking among its black population by the late 1800s. Adding another element in South Asian indentured workers and their communities only contributed more to the overflowing pot of ethnic and social diversity that did not end well once conflict over resources between black and Indian groups grew in the 1880s and beyond.

With such an internally variegated subject colonial population, it is no surprise that the struggle for political offices to black Trinidadians or the right to elect representatives faced an uphill battle that, unsurprisingly, led to the type of independent political parties based on ethnicity or sheer opportunism and greed, brilliantly satirized by Naipaul's The Suffrage of Elvira. The Trinidadian society described by James in Minty Alley or the early novels of Naipaul belongs to a period after that encompassed in this study. Nevertheless, the developments in Trinidadian society between 1870 and 1900 appear to have established the framework for social and racial relations for the generations of the pre-WWII and postwar Trinidadian writers we know and love: James, Selvon, Naipaul. 

Cocolos in the Dominican Republic

Another interesting video on West Indian migration to the Dominican Republic.

Cyril Briggs and the African Blood Brotherhood

Ted Vincent on the African Blood Brotherhood. Essential history from the Pacifica Radio Archives on a key organization grappling with issues of race and class. Issues of the Crusader paper can be found online, too, for additional information Briggs and the ABB. Indeed, one satirical cartoon from their paper hints directly at conflicts with Garvey and the UNIA, bringing to mind similar debates between Marxists and noirists in a Haitian context during the 1930s and 1940s. Other episodes of the series includes a segment on Hubert Harrison and Harry Haywood.

Slavery, Emancipation, and Antigua

Again with the class writing assignments, this time on post-emancipation Antigua.

Natasha Lightfoot’s Troubling Freedom examines the process of emancipation in 19^th century Antigua, a small sugar colony where conditions for emancipated peoples permitted fewer options for flight from the plantocracy. Unlike Jamaica, Trinidad, or other British colonies in the region, the freed people of Antigua, because most of the arable land was under the control of sugar plantations, did not have easy access to developing into a peasantry. Nonetheless, Lightfoot’s use of a variety of sources, ranging from newspapers and planters’ records to colonial government documents and travelers’ accounts, suggests freed people envisioned freedom and fought for it, albeit in ways that were sometimes contradictory or reproduced patterns of inequality, as the experience of Barbudans during the 1858 riots demonstrates.

Lightfoot’s suggestive account of postemancipation Antigua places gender at the center. While building on the arguments of Mimi Sheller, Thomas Holt, and other scholars of emancipation in the Caribbean, Lightfoot challenges common readings of uprisings and revolts as male, undermining traditional notions of overt slave resistance as a masculine endeavor. The prominence of women in the 1858 uprising, for example, exemplifies the significance of women as historical actors in postemancipation Antigua. Furthermore, women’s prominence in markets, trade, and labor on the estates indicates the complex process of freedom as neither teleological nor complete. For instance, the work of Moravian missionaries and attempts to limit market activity and non-monogamous relations directly targeted women, as did the low wages and exploitation on plantations after the Contract Law of 1834. Black men, through ideas of domesticity and patriarchal family models promoted by missionaries, also contributed to the marginalization of black working women, buttressing Lightfoot’s introduction of her monograph as an unromanticized reading of resistance.

However, in spite of allusions to freed people’s belief in certain rights not explicitly promised by the state, Lightfoot does not delve deeper into the question of popular democracy Sheller intriguingly argues for in the case of Haiti’s piquets or Jamaica’s Morant Bay Uprising movements. Obeah, spirituality, consumption, leisure and women’s agency are well integrated into Lightfoot’s account, but perhaps discussion of collective organizations in free villages could have strengthened Lightfoot’s conclusions on the 1858 uprising as an expression of the masses while reinforcing the importance of women in the public sphere. Moreover, were there other forms of collective organizing or bargaining besides itinerant labor gangs, such as agricultural societies or cooperatives to work land held by free villages? These questions, particularly in the case of Antigua and Barbuda, raise so many pertinent issues regarding labor, race, and democracy that may hint at alternative conceptions of the state and society.

Moses Migrating

Sam Selvon's hilarious Moses Migrating, the last of the trilogy that began with Lonely Londoners, takes us back to Moses's roots in Trinidad. The comparison here is to Naipaul's The Mimic Men, in which a man from an island modeled on Trinidad, is similarly trapped between "homes" and mimicry. Here, however, Selvon playfully uses Carnival and mas as an extension of the critique of mimicry among West Indians. Moses, so obsessed with defending Brit'n, even in the face of racist immigration laws and Enoch Powell, plays Britannia for Carnival. Along the way, we learn more about the origins of Moses and Bob, his former white Friday from Moses Ascending, who may have more in common with Moses than he ever knew. Through the metaphor of playing mas, Lovelace's The Dragon Can't Dance is also an important Trinidadian reference, albeit one in which the Indo-Caribbean population of the island is more than just background to the plot, as we see in Moses Migrating. 

As one may expect in a novel based on dislocation and Carnival, up is down, white is black, and a changing Trinidad, appearing different to locals and tourists, reveal the problematic space in which people like Moses can inhabit, trapped as he is between colonial deference to the Mother Country and a world in constant movement, particularly the rise of Black Power, his own aging, and rootlessness. He barely recognizes Trinidad, had rarely left Port of Spain, thinks he is in love with a younger woman living with the same Tanty who raised him, but never finds the room for authenticity or honesty. Even his relationship with Galahad, a friend from the Lonely Londoner days, is not an authentic friendship as each lies or distrusts the other. Yet, with his characteristic wit, Selvon's balanced use of humor and satire allow for entertaining reading, despite the disappointing and pathetic end. In that sense, Moses could perhaps accompany the Indo-Caribbean narrator of The Mimic Men, Ralph Singh, in that London hotel with fellow transients. As Doris reminds him, his entire life is playing mas.

My Bones and My Flute

Mittelholzer's My Bone and My Flute is a well-written horror story that successfully transfers the reader back to Guyana in the 1930s. The narrator, Milton, bears an uncanny resemblance to Mittelholzer himself, and despite the dark themes and frightening suspense, there are moments when one cannot help but giggle because of the self-deprecating or absurd and self-referential references either made by Milton himself or some of the other characters. As for the horror genre within Caribbean literature, Mittelholzer is the main one who comes to mind for me, although Mayra Montero and a certain novel by the Marcelin brothers from Haiti also employ similar motifs and culturally or historically specific reference points for their mysteries. Mittelholzer did a better job with the genre than the Haitian brothers because his story is solidly within the confines of horror and does not take itself too seriously while The Beast of the Haitian Hills was all over the place. Both stories, to their credit, contain much of social import and reflect upon the rural-urban divides within both Guyana and Haiti (not to mention class and color) with some suggested morals for the reader. Much like Haiti, the slave revolutions of the past, really history in general, is never forgotten. 

With a Carib Eye

Edgar Mittelholzer's With a Carib Eye was published in 1958, a fateful year in the British West Indies, but also only 4 years before V.S. Naipaul's The Middle Passage: Impressions of Five Societies - British, French and Dutch in the West Indies and South America. While Naipaul's text is more ambitious and travels beyond the confines of the British colonies of the Caribbean, there are some rather fascinating parallels in how both Mittelholzer and Naipaul approach their region as "natives." Naipaul, coming from the Indian community of Trinidad, for example, does not depict Indo-Trinidadians as entirely creolized as Mittelholzer's text seeks to do. 

Both, however, linger on the Western character of Caribbean society, but for Mittelholzer there is no problem with "mimicry" of British or European cultures and norms. Thus, in a very surprising way, Naipaul's actually "right" in a sense that in the West Indies, the tragedy of the black man is to be recast in so many European moulds, but Mittelholzer accepts this as proof that the West Indies is "modern" and not primitive. One sees their ideological and biases play out in Naipaul's praise for calypso as a Trinidadian art form while Mittelholzer looks down on calypso, preferring to praise the accomplishments of West Indian artists, poets, and writers hampered only by economic conditions. 

This continues in their differing approaches to "modern" as defined in Trinidad, where Naipaul criticizes the notion that modernity in Trinidad's middle and upper classes equals consumption of overpriced Northern products while excellent Trinidadian coffee or furniture is cast aside and equated with the poor. One suspects that Mittelholzer is framing his travelogue in the tradition of J.J. Thomas's Froudacity (both are quick to distance themselves from Haiti and its alleged voodoo, not to mention Mittelholzer's eagerness to identify Barbados as an extension of England or brush aside the African and local influences in Saint Lucia's Creole-speaking population)) just as Naipaul embraces Froude and Trollope as a foundation for his self-distancing from the lack of wholly original or "new" societies legitimately rooted among the people. 

Of course, both Mittelholzer and Naipaul offer problematic views of the Caribbean culturally and historically, but how the two intersect and depart from each other and relate to their respective 19th century ideological forebears provide some interesting contrast on how two well-known writers of Trinidad and Guyana approached region, race, culture, and their sense of themselves in the world. A fine synthesis of Naipaul and Mittelholzer is likely to lead to a more holistic view of the West Indies and its people, one in which creolization and even, God forbid, African influences, are not incompatible with Caribbean modernity and the development of national cultures. Perhaps one could even suggest that time has sided with such a perspective as scholarship and Caribbean literatures point to a much needed nuance of complicated concepts such as  modernization, creolization, colonialism, and racial identity.  

The Middle Passage

After over a year since I first tried to finish Naipaul's The Middle Passage, I can confidently say this is my favorite of his travel writing. Much of the humor and social commentary in his description of the various Caribbean societies he visits is part of his satirical short stories and novels, for example. The "racial distribution" of jobs in Trinidad, for instance, is brilliantly satirized in his story about the black Grenadian baker pretending to be Chinese to have customers. Similarly, the dark themes about the Caribbean (slave past, centuries of oppression and violence) and the tragedy of the African in the New World (to be recast in so many images of the European powers). Indeed, much of Naipaul's ruminations on race and colonialism are better explored in some of his novels, particularly The Mimic Men, but it's intriguing to see where he was headed in his nonfiction writing before his later literary endeavors. Anyway, to give credit where it's due, Naipaul does understand the problem of race and the phenomenon of black skins in white masks for the West Indies, and there is less of the rampant Negrophobia than I remembered from a year ago. That said, I prefer his younger brother's travel writings on the West Indies over his, though both share a like-minded view on the matter. 

The "meat" of Naipaul's writing here, despite covering Guyana, Trinidad, Suriname, Martinique, Antigua, and Jamaica, is really the actual voyage (the titular middle passage) from Europe (coincidentally, picking up emigrants for Britain along the way, completing the cycle of uprooting), his time in Trinidad, and lengthy descriptions of Guyana, the Jagans, and its particular racial and political problems. His sojourn in Suriname is actually a tad less nuanced than that of Shiva Naipaul, and lacks Shiva's nuance in his descriptions of the "Bush Negroes," too.  On describing his native Trinidad, naturally, Naipaul is on top form, hinting at several of the ideas percolating in his mind for Mimic Men and future nonfiction on Trinidad. Unfortunately, Naipaul does not visit any Spanish-speaking Caribbean destinations, unlike Shiva Naipaul, who visited Puerto Rico, so it is far from a 'complete' portrait of the Caribbean during a moment of great change. But anyone interested in the British West Indies during this pivotal moment on the path to independence should read this. 

El Martiniqueño

A nice big band merengue based on "Sly Mongoose," exemplifying links between various styles of music in the Caribbean archipelago. Perhaps "Sly Mongoose" entered the Dominican Republic through West Indian laborers, or the appeal of calypso bands. Either way, it's an infectious song!

Placing Haiti in a Caribbean Context

One of the interesting aspects about being in Haiti is discussing Haiti's relationship with the Dominican Republic and other Caribbean nations with Haitian people, not Haitian-Americans. For instance, when the issue of Dominicans treating Haitian-Dominicans and Haitian migrants like slaves came up, some middle-class Haitians my mom spoke to were very silent. It was as if they were reluctant to reveal their true feelings about it and chose silence as the best option. One upper middle-class Haitian man who has family in Florida actually said something along the lines of, "Well, who could blame them" for Dominican animosity toward lower-class Haitians coming to the Dominican Republic without skills or money.

It seems that Haitians who go to the Dominican Republic for education do not face discrimination, at least according to that older Haitian man and a younger, educated Haitian doctor. Undoubtedly, classism and class privilege of some Haitians shields them from Dominican 'anti-Haitianism,' but even some of them opposed the high numbers of Dominican construction companies in Haiti after the earthquake. And those from poorer families in the smaller towns and countryside frankly told my mother and I that many of them end up going to the Dominican Republic to find work, even though it clearly pains them. Alas, if history were better taught in the Caribbean, I am sure Haitians would have a more critical stance on the Dominican Republic's treatment of marginalized Haitian labor, as well as how the Haitian state has profited from the exchange for decades.

It was interesting to hear from these Haitians about their travel experience in the Dominican Republic, too. Many had been to Santo Domingo, Puerto Plata, and Santiago. The young doctor told me that many Haitian women are in Puerto Plata, and one of their sources of income across the border is actually braiding hair. The roads in the Dominican Republic are better, too, so driving to Santiago or Santo Domingo is not a problem at all. I also had the fortune to meet a lower-class Haitian with education who lived in Santo Domingo for years. He spoke Spanish, Portuguese, English, and, naturally, Kreyol, with ease. He told me he had found work with a Brazilian embassy in the DR, and picked up Portuguese while there. Unfortunately, I did not get to interrogate him on what brought him back to Port-au-Prince or his thoughts on that recent discriminatory ruling against Dominicans of Haitian descent.

Besides the Dominican Republic, Cuba came up a few times. I met a Haitian doctor who trained in Santiago de Cuba. Of course, he spoke fluent Spanish so I tried my best to conjure my Spanish skills and fall back on Kreyol and English to ask him about the Cuban medical program in Haiti. It seems like Haitians get medical training and experiences out of it, while Cubans get a chance to leave Cuba. Indeed, the dormitories at the state hospital I saw once housed a Cuban medical team! Oh, and there are still many people of Haitian origin in Santiago, according to what he said. They seem to be proud of their Haitian heritage, according to Dr. Patrick Bellegarde-Smith, and the Haitian culture survives to some extent. Anyway, the Cuban medical teams have done excellent work in Haiti training doctors and already being on the scene when the earthquake struck. Alas, a US nurse told me that the Cuban-trained doctors are seen as better by the Haitian people than doctors educated in Haiti, just as white doctors were considered better than Haitian-American or African-American doctors by Haitians (according to a Haitian professor I spoke with recently).

Jamaica and the rest of the Caribbean also entered discussion a few times. Jamaica's influence looms large in Haitian music because of reggae (I heard a live reggae band perform at Yanvalou in Port-au-Prince), but also a brief discussion of tourism and Bob Marley with one young Haitian. I admire his love for Haiti and his own business plan (he wants to take in more clients and show them around Haiti, as well as study in the US to help himself and his country), but it sounds like there are lessons from Jamaica's tourist economy that should serve as a warning to Haiti. As for the rest of the Caribbean, Guadeloupe and Martinique came up because the guesthouse owner's parents lived in Guadeloupe for several years. Indeed, Haitians seem to be more easily integrated or accepted in Guadeloupe because of language, or so we were told. Maryse Conde's novels set in Guadeloupe reveal a more nuanced picture, but it sounds like Guadeloupe is a lovely island where many Haitians find work and better circumstances than in Haiti.