Ray­mond Ram­char­i­tar

Viewed through the im­me­di­a­cy of the dai­ly press, post-in­de­pen­dence his­to­ry (1956�1986) un­folds with a star­tling clar­i­ty and co­her­ence. Dom­i­nant and re­cur­ring themes be­come clear, con­nec­tions and re­la­tion­ships be­tween ac­tors, events and ideas, ev­i­dent. A ma­jor cause of the crime epi­dem­ic of to­day, for ex­am­ple, is be­yond doubt.

No few­er than 15 ar­ti­cles over 20 years point­ed out that the small-is­lander in­va­sion of Trinidad cre­at­ed com­mu­ni­ties which seem de­signed to pro­duce crime. This cri­sis was ad­mit­ted to by Prime Min­is­ter George Cham­bers on the Guardian's front page of March 11, 1982.

The his­tor­i­cal prob­lem is that this fact was so ef­fi­cient­ly buried, and pro­tect­ed by a noise alarm (raise it, noise about "racism" starts), that no one will even voice it any more. And this leads to a larg­er is­sue, about what is re­mem­bered and what isn't: what Paul Ri­coeur calls "forced for­get­ting" which ap­plies to the In­di­ans' ex­pe­ri­ence in Cre­ole so­ci­ety, as I've de­fined Williams' reign.

http://www.guardian.co.tt/dig­i­tal/new-mem­bers