On this Caricom Day, your Eyewitness remembers Barbados which has always been closest to us of all our fellow Caricom relations. Never mind that Guyanese Bench!! We shouldn’t forget that back when the Dutch decided to move out of the Essequibo River settlements to the coast and into Demerara because of the exhausted soils, they invited British planters from that island – who enthusiastically took up the offer. And then again when our freed slaves decamped our plantations after Emancipation it was mostly freed Bajans who replaced then initially. So there’s a Bajan in most of us – somewhere!! Just listen to those who drop their aitches – “H’s”!
Barbados has always been ahead of the game. While part of present-day St Kitts was settled by the British in 1623, Barbados had been wholly claimed as British in 1625. This marked the real beginning of the British Empire – and hence Caricom – in this neck of the woods!! Now, Barbados is only 166 square miles, but for quite a while back in those days was more valuable as a colony to the Brits than the American colonies! Sugar was then king…and Barbados was the home of the King until surpassed by Jamaica. And much later by British Guiana.
Barbados’s colonisation goes back so far that its earliest labourers were poor whites from Ireland and elsewhere. They were the first indentured labourers to the Caribbean – and included many who might’ve been kidnapped. These White Indentureds later worked alongside enslaved Africans in the sugar and tobacco plantations. These White Indentureds would become the “Redlegs” or poor whites who remain in Barbados to this day – but not so poor anymore!! Like the white convicts who were sent to populate Australia…and who’re ironically now so racist! Race was invented to distinguish the Redlegs from the African Slaves!
So man’s inhumanity to man was codified right there in Barbados when they adopted their Slave Code in 1661!! They patterned it on the earlier Spanish and Portuguese models and in turn was to be the model for the rest of the British colonies here and elsewhere. In fact what’s important as the slave form of labour became the norm, Barbados set the standard in so many ways. One was to actually boast about imitating all things British – even though the BRITS snickered at their pretentions – as can be gleaned from novels of the era.
But they’d already removed Lord Nelson’s statue from their capital last November – recognising that he was a staunch defender of slavery. And then became a Republic half a century after us!! But have they lost their slickness as lampooned by Lord Kitchener in “Tek yuh meat out me rice”??
…on coups
One of the legacies from our British pretentions was to smarmily smirk at those “Latin American types who were oh-so prone to coups and putsches!! After all, Charles I was beheaded in 1649, just before Barbados’s settlement. Then a couple of Lieutenants in the Trinidad army tried to overthrow their Oxford-trained Prime Minister Eric Williams in 1970! That petered out quickly enough as did the Black Power ideology that fuelled it.
But 20 years later, Trinidad again let down the “keeping up “our” British standards” side when Abu Bakr invaded TT Parliament with 100 followers and took PM ANR Robinson and other MPs hostage. Widespread violence and vandalism ensued, and when Abu Bakr finally surrendered six days later he was charged with treason. But amazingly, the Court of Appeals ordered him released and he was never rearrested – even though the Privy Council invalidated the amnesty given to them before they surrendered. Bakr remained free for 31 years, but is now dead.
May the 24 killed find peace.
…on Haiti’s tragedy
Meanwhile, Haiti, the first Caribbean Island to seize independence, continues its downward spiral. There are meetings on top of meetings but we’re nowhere closer to assisting our fellow Caricom citizens out of their morass. Gotta be wheels within wheels!
