ABSTRACT

The problem addressed here is the putative resurgence of an indigenous community and traditions (in a region widely and long perceived as lacking either) within a context of extreme socio-economic change. Included in this process of change is the apparent crisis of official Creole nationalist ideology emerging within the conjuncture of the 1970 Black Power ‘Revolution’ in Trinidad which challenged the outward-oriented cosmopolitanism and inward-oriented provincialism of Creole Nationalist ideology. The crisis can also be seen as gaining further momentum in the 1980s (into the present) with the shocks engendered by neoliberal structural adjustment, plummeting social expenditure, high unemployment, the reworking of patron-client networks, the withdrawal of the state from a leading role in development, and the acute upsurge of racialism. The questions treated here are: Why is there a renewed interest in Carib (re)identification now? Is this an outcome of “de-hegemonization” in the centre of the world-system? The resurgent Carib Community, organized as a limited liability company and connected to the state via its leader, has read and sifted prevailing local and global trends in defining and establishing itself. This can be seen in terms of its position towards Creole/Trinidadian identity (and its demise), the ethnic segmentation of the society, and neoliberal developmentalism with state technocrats’ emphases on community development, self-reliance, and the improving of the balance-of-payments in part via marketing ethnic products and cultural tourism. The Carib Community’s ability to read and sift these trends also extends to its perception of, and relation to, the global organization and construction of aboriginality. This paper examines how the terms and processes of social incorporation are reworked in a context of heightened crisis, with special reference to the reworking of indigeneity as a multilateral enterprise involving the vesting of interest by numerous actors and institutions.