?Pao­lo ker­na­han

Torn be­tween the cav­al­cade of Life Sport rev­e­la­tions and the shock­ing­ly di­min­ished pro­por­tions of Car­ni­val 2015 cos­tumes/Band-Aids, Trinida­di­ans scarce­ly have enough brain-space to con­tem­plate the an­niver­sary of the 1990 at­tempt­ed coup.

This epochal smear on our na­tion's his­to­ry whis­pered by with lit­tle recog­ni­tion. Not that there have been stir­ring at­tempts in the past to give mean­ing to this trag­ic and ter­ri­fy­ing oc­cur­rence.

This year how­ev­er bore the dis­tinct feel that as a peo­ple, our na­tion­al am­ne­sia is com­plete. 1990 will re­ver­ber­ate no more, gen­er­a­tions in wait­ing won't be­lieve the sto­ries if told, giv­en how dull of pas­sions we are, at least for any­thing oth­er than car­ni­val cos­tume de­bates.

In the still-smoul­der­ing days af­ter the in­sur­rec­tion­ists were de­tained and re­stric­tions eased in the cap­i­tal city, I drove through the ru­ins of Port-of-Spain. More than mere build­ings gut­ted by fire and cleared out by loot­ers, the de­struc­tion stretched far be­yond the phys­i­cal. As I pon­dered the lost lives and liveli­hoods, the wan­ton de­struc­tion and en­su­ing chaos I knew then that the coun­try would nev­er be the same. It pains me to ac­cept that on the day this opin­ion was formed in our wound­ed in­ner-city, I was both right and wrong.