Ray­mond Ram­char­i­tar

I thought I was done with Car­ni­val 2013 last week but, like Michael Cor­leone, just when I thought I was out, they pulled me back in. It start­ed with press re­ports of the Can­boulay re-en­act­ment: it's be­ing tout­ed as fact and at­ten­dance is grow­ing. Then the CNC3 news on Feb­ru­ary 8 fea­tured the or­gan­is­er say­ing it was the "on­ly African thing in Car­ni­val," and it "re­minds African peo­ple they have some­thing to de­fend."

Since peo­ple might ac­tu­al­ly be­lieve this, I feel ob­lig­at­ed to present the facts about Can­boulay to­day, and ex­am­ine the Car­ni­val delu­sion more gen­er­al­ly next week. My main source is the Hamil­ton Re­port, com­mis­sioned by the Gov­ern­ment, pub­lished in the Trinidad news­pa­pers (Fair Play, No­vem­ber 16, 1881). The facts go like this:

1. The Can­boulay ri­ots were not about free­dom, "black re­sis­tance" or any pur­pose oth­er than crim­i­nal­i­ty. Many ri­ot­ers weren't even Trinida­di­an. The "bands," as they were called, were main­ly crim­i­nals from the oth­er is­lands. As John Cow­ley's book Car­ni­val, Can­boulay and Ca­lyp­so notes, no oth­er Car­ni­val cel­e­bra­tions in Port-of-Spain were mo­lest­ed by po­lice.

2. The ri­ots were not planned by the ri­ot­ers; they were in­sti­gat­ed by mid­dle-class Cre­oles. A few days pri­or, fly­ers ap­peared in Port-of-Spain say­ing Capt Bak­er had no au­thor­i­ty from the gov­er­nor to stop the bands. Mer­chants tes­ti­fied they were told of an at­tack on the po­lice days in ad­vance. This at­tempt at sub­vert­ing the po­lice was pre­cip­i­tat­ed by the sup­port­ers of two Cre­ole civ­il ser­vants who'd been pros­e­cut­ed for steal­ing from the Gov­ern­ment.

3. The Gov­ern­ment/po­lice were not "de­feat­ed" by brave African war­riors. The po­lice were am­bushed and the gov­er­nor was mis­guid­ed­ly mer­ci­ful–re­in­force­ments could have been sum­moned to fire on the crowd. Once the sit­u­a­tion got hairy, the towns­peo­ple (prob­a­bly in­clud­ing those who'd in­cit­ed the ri­ot) begged the gov­er­nor to in­ter­vene.

4. While the 1881 ri­ots were crim­i­nal, there were "dis­tur­bances" which more close­ly ap­prox­i­mate a "de­fence" of the Car­ni­val tra­di­tions in 1859, dur­ing Keate's ad­min­is­tra­tion.

5. As to the "African" na­ture of the ri­ots, this is the vilest false­hood of the whole re-en­act­ment. There was strong African race con­scious­ness in Trinidad at the time and sev­er­al dis­tinct groups of African ori­gin. Amer­i­can sol­diers who sided with the British dur­ing the War of 1812 lived in the Com­pa­ny vil­lages in south. About 6,000 Africans freed by British an­ti-slave ships, who had ar­rived be­tween 1841 and 1861, who had nev­er been slaves, and who pre­served their cul­ture, lived as a group apart from the Cre­oles.

From Ce­dros to Tu­na­puna lived the re­spectable Cre­ole work­ing class­es and peas­antry–teach­ers, ar­ti­sans and farm­ers. All these groups up­held Vic­to­ri­an val­ues, and were loy­al to Crown and Queen. (CLR James de­scribes them in Be­yond a Bound­ary.) They would have been ap­palled at be­ing iden­ti­fied with the ri­ot­ers.

In Port-of-Spain were the am­bi­tious mid­dle and up­per-class black and mixed-race jour­nal­ists, small busi­ness own­ers, clerks, and lawyers, who were ob­sessed with the colo­nial Gov­ern­ment and their own sta­tus. And be­low all these were the il­le­gal im­mi­grants who formed crim­i­nal gangs. To say any groups out­side the un­der­class saw them­selves as even re­lat­ed to the ri­ot­ers is mon­strous­ly ig­no­rant.

The in­tegri­ty of Hamil­ton's re­port aris­es–es­pe­cial­ly the bit about the mid­dle-class in­sti­ga­tion. Hen­ry Schuller Bil­louin, pub­lish­er of Fair Play (No­vem­ber 28, 1881), wrote that Hamil­ton had per­pe­trat­ed "a false and wicked in­crim­i­na­tion of the peo­ple and their rep­re­sen­ta­tives" who'd giv­en ev­i­dence.

He blamed Bak­er (whose wife and chil­dren were sub­se­quent­ly at­tacked in the streets) for over­step­ping his au­thor­i­ty: "In 1881 as in 1880 Cap­tain Bak­er's ac­tion was not on­ly in­ex­pe­di­ent, but il­le­gal," as he had "wan­ton­ly and il­le­gal­ly at­tacked in­of­fen­sive peo­ple."

But in Fair Play a year ear­li­er (Feb­ru­ary 12, 1880), you read: "Much praise is due to Cap­tain Bak­er for this sat­is­fac­to­ry re­sult (of putting out the bands' torch­es) as great prepa­ra­tions had been made by var­i­ous bands for their usu­al fights." The year be­fore (March 6, 1879), Fair Play had ed­i­to­ri­alised: "We are glad to see the una­nim­i­ty of opin­ion that now pre­vails with re­gard to the ne­ces­si­ty of putting down the bru­tal row­dy­ism and gross in­de­cence (sic) which for a long time past have made an abom­i­na­tion of our an­nu­al Car­ni­val sea­son."

The ex­pla­na­tion: not schiz­o­phre­nia, but hypocrisy. Bil­louin (like many Cre­ole ag­i­ta­tors) had no com­punc­tion about ly­ing to and about the Gov­ern­ment and us­ing the black un­der­class for po­lit­i­cal ad­van­tage. It wasn't the first or last time. In the ear­ly 1870s, there were re­ports of "Ed­u­ca­tion Dis­tur­bances" to protest the re­form the ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem, and Bil­louin was im­pli­cat­ed in in­cit­ing labour­ers.

Bil­louin ad­dressed the crowd in 1881 af­ter the gov­er­nor. And he was al­so pals with the fired Bor­ough Coun­cil mem­bers in 1898 who used the press (and ca­lyp­so­ni­ans) in the weeks pre­ced­ing to in­cite cit­i­zens to the Wa­ter Ri­ots in 1903.

So if the Can­boulay ri­ots are il­lus­tra­tive of a tra­di­tion, it's the one of the over-am­bi­tious, un­scrupu­lous Cre­ole mid­dle and up­per class­es us­ing the black un­der­class as blunt in­stru­ments. The PNM in­sti­tu­tion­alised this, us­ing the same (il­le­gal im­mi­grant) un­der­class­es as their 19th-cen­tu­ry prog­en­i­tors used them, as thugs and shock troops in the 1958, 1961 and 1966 elec­tions and dur­ing the first decade of the 21st cen­tu­ry.

Of course, one event can take on­ly so much re­spon­si­bil­i­ty. But the Can­boulay re-en­act­ment is part of a con­tem­po­rary pat­tern of de­lib­er­ate his­tor­i­cal dis­tor­tion for elec­toral ad­van­tage, and cre­at­ing so­cial chaos and di­vi­sion. The fun­da­men­tal "mes­sage" of the Can­boulay re-en­act­ment is in­ac­cu­rate and malev­o­lent. It is aimed at en­rag­ing the black poor, and fu­els the chaos we live in every day. It should be not be sup­port­ed by state funds, or en­dorsed by ed­u­ca­tion­al in­sti­tu­tions.