Si­mon Lee

We can­not re­turn to Eden (Raoul Pan­tin)

Promi­nent amid as­pects of this sto­ry (the "dis­cov­ery" of the Amer­i­c­as)...are the mas­sacres of in­no­cent peo­ples, the atroc­i­ties com­mit­ted against them and, among oth­er hor­rif­ic ex­cess­es, the ways in which towns, provinces and whole king­doms have been en­tire­ly cleared of their na­tive in­hab­i­tants...not a few peo­ple in­volved in this sto­ry had be­come so anaes­thetised to hu­man suf­fer­ing by their own greed and am­bi­tion that they had ceased to be men in any mean­ing­ful sense...

One of the lead­ing lo­cal lords, a cacique who went by the name of Hat­uey, had fled to (Cu­ba) from His­pan­io­la... "'They have a God whom they wor­ship and adore and it is in or­der to get that God from us so that they can wor­ship Him that they con­quer and kill us.' He had be­side him, as he spoke, a bas­ket filled with gold jew­ellery and he said: 'Here is the God of the Chris­tians.'" (A Short Ac­count of the De­struc­tion of the In­dies–Bar­tolom� de las Casas).

The Lloyd Best In­sti­tute of the West In­dies' pro­duc­tion of Raoul Pan­tin's play Hat­uey at the Cen­tral Bank Au­di­to­ri­um is a salu­tary re­minder of our cur­rent state of neo­colo­nial am­ne­sia, all the more pro­nounced at a time when the is­sue of repa­ra­tions for both First Peo­ples and the de­scen­dants of African slaves in the Caribbean seems to be falling on stony ground.

Rewrit­ten short­ly be­fore his death ear­li­er this year, this re­vi­sion of his first play, su­perbly con­cep­tu­alised and di­rect­ed by Rawle Gib­bons, right­ful­ly takes its place as a clas­sic of in­dige­nous the­atre, along with such dra­mas as Edouard Glis­sant's Mr Tou­s­saint and Den­nis Scott's Echo in the Bone. Tex­tu­al­ly, his­tor­i­cal­ly and myth­i­cal­ly it res­onates with the nar­ra­tives of oth­er in­dige­nous he­roes and hero­ines–Anacaona the Hayit­ian fe­male cacique hung for re­sist­ing the Span­ish; the Aguey­bana broth­ers of Puer­to Ri­co; Joseph Cha­toy­er Black Carib warchief of St Vin­cent and Ba­cu­nar and Hyari­ma of Trinidad.

To this First Peo­ples' ho­n­our roll we could add such names as Makan­dal (al­so burnt at the stake by French planters in St Domingue); lead­ers of the Hait­ian Rev­o­lu­tion Tou­s­saint l'Ou­ver­ture and Jean Jacque Dessalines; Nan­ny of the Ma­roons in Ja­maica, Tu­la who led a slave re­volt in Cu­ra­cao and many oth­ers who gave their lives con­test­ing an alien sys­tem of bar­bar­i­ty and ex­ploita­tion, mas­querad­ing as a project of progress and civil­i­sa­tion. The cur­rent pro­duc­tion of Hat­uey could not be more time­ly, com­ing as it does in the af­ter­math of a gen­er­al elec­tion, in which the racial di­vi­sions in­cul­cat­ed un­der colo­nial­ism were fanned to near con­fla­gra­tion point by those ig­no­rant of, or obliv­i­ous to our col­lec­tive re­gion­al his­to­ry. There is a les­son for us all in the shaman Tolmec's ad­mo­ni­tion to Hat­uey to rid him­self of bile (ha­tred) and his ad­vice that the way for­ward to true free­dom is through "the imag­i­na­tion."

Gib­bons has long es­tab­lished him­self not on­ly as a play­wright but as one of the re­gion's most in­no­v­a­tive di­rec­tors, com­mit­ted to shap­ing dra­ma through tra­di­tion­al and pop­u­lar in­dige­nous forms. His un­re­lent­ing, de­mand­ing di­rec­toral hand and cre­ative vi­sion were very ap­par­ent in the pro­duc­tion from the min­i­mal­ist stage set (plain cloth drapes and bam­boo poles) to the de­ploy­ment of ac­tors in the au­di­ence, as well as on­stage, ef­fect­ing the com­mu­nal par­tic­i­pa­to­ry mode char­ac­ter­is­tic of so many Cre­ole rit­u­als and fes­ti­val arts.

Nick­o­lai Sal­cedo, fast prov­ing he's a nat­ur­al lead­ing man suc­ces­sor to Wen­dell Man­war­ren, stamped his au­thor­i­ty on the ti­tle role from the open­ing scene–in his prison cell await­ing death at the stake for heresy. Still in his (cred­i­ble) war paint, his hau­teur, spit­ting de­fi­ance, con­tempt ('He's a man of God'–'You mean a man of blood') and fe­line move­ments were the per­fect foil to Che Ro­driguez's apolo­getic, plain­tive and al­most neu­rot­ic Fa­ther Do­minic Las Casas (in whom we recog­nise the his­tor­i­cal Bar­tolom�).

Hat­uey may ap­pear hot-head­ed, yet he is far more clear-head­ed than ei­ther Fa­ther Las Casas or his trib­al chief Tu­ma­naro, who's mis­guid­ed­ly giv­en up re­sis­tance for sur­vival. To Las Casas' as­sur­ance that the unau­tho­rised at­tack on Hat­uey's vil­lage will be dealt with in court and the "Pope him­self grieves at the treat­ment of your peo­ple", Hat­uey re­sponds "What do the Pope, Spain, law...have to do with me?" His to­tal re­fusal to be in­sert­ed in­to the re­al dom­i­nant nar­ra­tive (geno­cide), rather than that of Las Casas (sub­servient as­sim­i­la­tion) tilts the re­vised script more dra­mat­i­cal­ly in favour of the Taino, rather than the Span­ish.

Hat­uey dis­miss­es Tu­ma­naro as a trai­tor, in de­nial as much as Las Casas, about the fi­nal out­come of sur­ren­der ("Sur­ren­der to who? These crim­i­nals?"). To Tu­ma­naro's, "I have to find a way to keep our tribe alive...I'm learn­ing how to be­come a Chris­t­ian" Hat­uey's pis­tol shot re­tort cuts vi­cious­ly to re­al­i­ty: "Chris­t­ian? The on­ly Chris­tians I know are thiev­ing mur­der­ers." This rift be­tween the Taino lead­ers is rem­i­nis­cent of that be­tween Tou­s­saint l'Ou­ver­ture and Dessalines to­ward the end of the Hait­ian Rev­o­lu­tion; Tou­s­saint at­tempt­ing to main­tain a free Haiti as part of the French Re­pub­lic, while Dessalines was ruth­less enough to re­alise there could be no last­ing lib­er­ty with­out ut­ter­ly de­stroy­ing the French.

The sup­posed bal­ance of pow­er is un­der­mined not on­ly in the rhetoric of the two op­pos­ing par­ties but ki­net­i­cal­ly in their body move­ments and stage pres­ence. Hat­uey glides with the sin­u­ous si­lence of a bush habitu�, where­as in the scene which in­tro­duces the vac­il­lat­ing nos­tal­gic al­co­holic gov­er­nor Don Berrio and his op­por­tunis­tic prot�g� Bar­to­lo Las Ve­gas, there is lit­tle grace but plen­ty gar­ru­lous greed, fol­lowed by the dis­hon­ourable de­cep­tion of Las Ve­gas' at­tempt to re­vive his af­fair with Berrio's wife Nan­cia (a cameo by Francesca Hawkins, suc­cess­ful­ly sug­gest­ing the frus­tra­tions of a dis­ap­point­ed la­dy's suf­fo­ca­tion in a colo­nial nowhere).

In the sec­ond act Taino pow­er, draw­ing from its an­ces­tral roots and the spir­its of its nat­ur­al habi­tat is man­i­fest­ed in the char­ac­ters of the laugh­ing shaman Tolmec, and the mag­nif­i­cent spir­it of the Tain­os, an un­speak­ing yet im­mense­ly pow­er­ful pres­ence in his yel­low feath­er head­dress. These fig­ures' pal­pa­ble dig­ni­ty and wis­dom con­trast with the crass ma­te­ri­al­ism, men­dac­i­ty and bru­tal­i­ty of the Spaniards. While Las Casas ex­pos­es the hol­low hypocrisy of im­pe­r­i­al rhetoric ("We're here to car­ry out the pol­i­cy of the In­dies" "To rape, pil­lage and de­stroy.") and the bru­tal­i­ty of en­forced labour ("They don't know the mean­ing of work" "They work to pro­duce what they need. You're tor­tur­ing them to pro­duce what you need") the sav­age/civilised fal­la­cy is al­so ex­posed. Don Berrio per­pet­u­ates the stig­ma of sav­agery with his, "They drink hu­man blood, they're can­ni­bals" and yet Hat­uey re­calls the ini­tial meet­ing of Eu­ro­peans and Tain­os: "Who gave you wa­ter, fed you, re­paired your ships so you could go, but you didn't. Like a blood­thirsty jack­al you stayed for blood."

As the de­noue­ment ap­proach­es and Hat­uey dis­miss­es Las Casas just as he's ear­li­er dis­missed Tu­ma­naro, with the silent pres­ence of the Spir­it War­rior who leads Hat­uey from his cell to a meet­ing with Tolmec, the play shifts in­to an­oth­er di­men­sion–the world of the an­ces­tors and the fu­ture. Rather than Tu­ma­naro's de­featist yet doomed sur­vival, there is the prag­ma­tism of Tolmec's sug­ges­tion to the in­domitable war­rior Hat­uey: "You have to learn to fight an­oth­er way." Tolmec points out the re­al­i­ty that all the tribes and civil­i­sa­tions of the Amer­i­c­as ("The Aztecs and Mayas are crum­bling") are ca­su­al­ties of the times, that de­feat is in­evitable, yet to fight in a spir­it of ha­tred is to de­feat the true spir­it of the Taino, which is em­bed­ded in "all these is­lands, wa­ter­ways, swamps, man­grove..."

Tolmec, gig­gling like a Zen mas­ter who's con­tin­u­al­ly trip­ping an earnest acolyte, ad­vis­es Hat­uey; "Drain your­self of that bile which will de­stroy you...You have a weapon which is much more pow­er­ful, your imag­i­na­tion." In this fi­nal vi­sion be­fore his burn­ing, Hat­uey is unit­ed with his close trib­al com­pan­ions, their uni­ty ex­pressed in the dance they per­form as flames around Hat­uey's stake. Tolmec's prophet­ic words "On­ly imag­i­na­tion frees us" res­onate as Hat­uey like shape shifter Makan­dal dances away from the stake to re­join his fel­lows, leav­ing his corpse to be salut­ed by his for­mer neme­sis, gar­ri­son com­man­der Manuel de Or­te­ga.

This pro­duc­tion of Hat­uey is not on­ly a re­mark­able re­minder of one man's pas­sion­ate be­lief in and com­mit­ment to our en­ter­prise of the In­dies, a way of life with roots we've large­ly ig­nored, but al­so of the woe­ful­ly un­der-de­vel­oped state of our col­lec­tive imag­i­na­tion. Yet the qual­i­ty of act­ing and di­rect­ing along with the script it­self prove con­clu­sive­ly that for all our am­ne­sia, there are some who refuse to re­lin­quish those vi­sions of this place, these is­lands and wa­ter­ways, we can with imag­i­na­tion make our own. If you on­ly go to the the­atre once a year, be sure to see Hat­uey.

IN­FO

Hat­uey con­tin­ues at the Cen­tral Bank Au­di­to­ri­um Thurs­day Oc­to­ber 15 to Sun­day 18. Reg­u­lar show­time is at 8 pm.

The Sun­day show starts at 6 pm.

To book tick­ets or for more in­fo, please call the Lloyd Best In­sti­tute at 663-5463.

Tick­ets are priced at $200 (Stu­dents with ID $100). Tick­ets are al­so avail­able from Pa­per Based Book­shop at the Nor­mandie, St Ann's and at the Box Of­fice at the Cen­tral Bank Au­di­to­ri­um from 12 pm to 6 pm week­days, and be­fore show­time.