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Exulting at the Caroni Disaster
By
Stephen Kangal
Caroni

I rued the day that I would live to see in Vision 2020, “one large family”, where “every creed and race find an equal place” T&T, that fellow nationals would exult and sadistically celebrate at the swift and inhumane miscarriage of distributive justice that resulted in 9,000 Caroni workers being consigned to the roti line. These workers with little VSEP money in their hands now face should have been an avoidable bleak, unpredictable and traumatic future.

The perpetrators of this impulsively crafted, politically motivated, national disaster proceeded to act without any compunctions in the full knowledge that these docile, politically-betrayed, prasadum- eating workers will not retaliate with the traditional urban-based trade union militancy and disruption that could threaten or endanger the integrity of the cane, rum, citrus and buffalypso stocks of now defunct Caroni Ltd.

Etienne Mendez’s letter published in the Newsday (Aug. 23, p.4) seethes with undertones of sadistic delight. This is only the tip of the proverbial iceberg. If Mr. Mendez wanted to reflect upon and unnecessarily invoke as well as compare our sordid slave and indentured past, 1834 can only be conceptually or from a methodological perspective compared with 1845- not 2003.

Mr. Mendez needs to be informed that the indentures were conned by “arkatias” into believing that in 1845 they were coming to Chinidad to chalay chinee (strain sugar). That the British planters paid them 24 cents a day to fill the labour shortages that resulted from the abandonment of the sugar industry by the emancipated slaves.
These indentures that huddled together in cramped barracks with their rudimentary jahaji bundles, were debarred from accessing medical care at the POS Hospital on the presumption that they will contaminate the health of others. They needed a pass to travel outside of their indentured estates to visit their jahaji bhais and bhahins. If they received relatively superior rewards for their labour in post 1845 this resulted from the terms of their contract negotiated with the British Raj and not from the humanitarianism/favouritism of the Anglo-plantocracy. The superior treatment accorded to the indentures does not make the position of the slaves any more adverse in its own right or more worthy of empathy. The indentures came from a highly organised and civilised society albeit one that was highly socially stratified and regimented along caste lines. Their coming to the Caribbean may have motivated by a desire to escape the dehumanising effects of the caste system. They were quarantined in Nelson Island prior to being assigned to the designated estates. They were deemed unfit to land on the docks of POS.
Read the epitaph written by a very good Ph. D bearing friend of mine. It was sent to me as one whom he considers to be his Indo-Trini friend via an e-mail on the closure of Caroni and the throwing of 9,000 nationals on the roti line:
“…Inject no more of the fat of the land to a crippling beast…. Kiss them goodbye on emancipation day. Let them feel what it was like for the encumbered slaves who were put out of bread and board to live on an empty land before they came as mercenaries…”

In 1868 it took a visiting Canadian foreigner, John Morton and his wife Sarah to initiate the education of the indentures while the British colonial Government, the Catholics and Anglicans had already been according preferential status to the educational development of my African brothers resident in the urban suburban areas.

Mr. Mendez recounts the past very selectively. He will surely know that after the termination of their “bound coolie” status these same indentures understood the wealth creating potential of land and labour. Land, labour and capital were transformed and monetised by their innate spirit of entrepreneurship. They the indentures persisted in the sugar industry when others abandoned it as a symbol of slavery. They revered the earth as Dhart Mai. The indentures and their sons and daughters contributed immeasurably to national wealth and the economic viability of Trinbago.

They subsidised the food bill of the nation with their blood, sweat and ample tears. Hitherto this sacrifice has remained unappreciated and unsung if we are to judge by the letters and commentaries in the print and electronic media. But with Prabhuji as their omnipresent and omniscient witness and judge they will receive divine justice and good karma.

For Mr Mendez et al to insinuate that in 2003 the de-employment of 9,000 sugar workers who historically gave their best to King Sugar restores historical parity between the two major ethnic groupings is clearly sadistic and of deep concern to those of us who wish our society to develop a caring spirit that straddles the ethnic divide. The closure of Caroni has exposed the deep cleavages, antagonism and the ethnic polarisation of the nation.

Those of us who live in Caroni have been fossilised in a state of deep shock and trauma from solidarity with our dispossessed and victimised brothers/sisters who “just like that” on Emancipation Day were the innocent victims of a most inhumane, insensitive and retaliatory politically motivated debacle that we the people of Caroni will never forget.
Never!

Trinidad and Tobago News

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