So, early morning, way before dawn on Piccadilly Street in east Port-of-Spain, a woman in African costume climbs onto a stage and starts screaming to a mass of people: "De wite people an' dem did want to oppress black people!"Crowd screams: "Yeah!" "No!"Lady in costume: "Dey tell we we mussn' enjoy weself! Dey say we mussn' run wit burnin' wood-torch through a city make out of wood!"Fat man in crowd wearing a Phat Farm tee shirt: "Oh Gaarrrddd. De wite mastah wicked bwoy!"
Lady in Costume: "De wite man say we mussun fight and kill each edder! Jes becorse is Kahnaval!"Old man with grey mustache and black hair in crowd: "But who dem wite man feel dem is? Dis is we trah-dish-an!"Lady: "Dem say we is criminal and we does attack police!"Crowd: "Hooray! Defrock de police!"
To watchers of the indispensable Comedy Central series, Drunk History, this might seem like a scene from that triumphant tome of tele-visual art, or a particularly inspired Chappelle Show sketch. But they'd be wrong.Above is an approximation of the exordium for the Canboulay re-enactment scheduled to take place this Friday on the Greens on Piccadilly Street.
The organisers have it that (in 1881) the oppressive colonial police had oppressed the noble African warriors who merely wanted to run through Port-of-Spain with lit torches, and fight each other (they were called "the Bands"; we call them "gangs" today) in the spirit of anti-colonial violence and proto-ethnic nationalist zeal.
More, say the organisers, this was an act of heroism. This act–gangs of criminals colluding and attacking police officers in east Port-of-Spain–is a defining point of Carnival, or the nation's genesis, and must be re-enacted every year. And they've got the Government and a growing number of people to believe this. (The same government and people who bawl about crime and wonder why it seems unstoppable.)
I know what sane people are thinking: "Forget about Drunk History, this is Crystal-meth History." And really, the popular version of the Canboulay events is as much about history as Internet she-male porn is about gender studies. In previous years, I've cited official and unofficial documents to debunk whatever claim of historical accuracy this event proposes. The Hamilton Report on the Riots of 1881, Trinidad Legislative Council Paper 132 of 1893, the newspapers Fair Play, New Era and The Chronicle before and after the riots, and so forth. It's had no effect, so I won't repeat, I'll merely summarise:
1. The Canboulay riots were not about culture, freedom, or anything but criminals fighting each other and police.
2. The Canboulay rioters were criminals, many the dregs of the criminal underworlds of other islands.
3. The brutes were incited to riot by black and white Trinidadian provocateurs, and did not do it on their own.
4. The rioters were black, but had as much in common with the Trinidadian black middle or working classes as CLR James did with TUB Butler.
This much is available from official sources. Of course, official sources were, in the charming idiolect of Canbouliars and Carnivalists alike, those of "de wite oppressors." But as luck would have it, someone who actually rioted in 1881, Leonie John, was interviewed by a Guardian reporter, M Sellier (on March 2, 1934).
This is what the then centenarian (not a "centurion" as local journalists put it) said: "You should have seen the bands! The band called Maril-bone used to come down from Belmont, hundreds strong, and the people would flee in terror.... It was nothing for them to kill one or two and then flee to Cocorite where they would remain for days hiding.
"Ah! But you should have seen that Cannes Brulee night when we broke the lights and plunged the town into darkness.... I was one of those who took part in that Cannes Brulee and I remember belabouring the Captain (Baker) with blows from my stick while the others shouted encouragement. No one slept that night, we wanted to set fire to the town and everyone was waiting to see what would happen next."
All good healthy fun if you're an imbecile or psychopathic criminal. And apparently this is much like East Port-of-Spain on an average Monday morning, Carnival or no Carnival. But this (oral source) lines up with all the other historical reports–official and journalistic–to confirm that this was just violence and thuggery. But the state and Carnivalists disagree those facts.
And looking at way facts and history generally are deployed, it seems pretty clear that history in the hands of Carnivalists (and the Government) is like a fleet of Mack trucks driven by drunks. Say what you want about Americans, they actually found a way to combine these two urges (drunkenness and faking history) to make something useful, not to mention profitable and funny: Drunk History!
Now I know what some scholars are thinking: Trinis ent backward, we have a Drunk History tradition called rumshop talk. We hear it in newspaper columns, radio, Parliament, chambers of commerce, police press briefings (especially those that give statistics), and from the pulpit. The difference with the US is that Trinis don't seem to be able to tell the difference between rumshop talk and serious talk, or the difference between things to make you laugh and things to make you cry.
Re-enacting a riot where criminals attack police, and casting the criminals as the heroes in an area where police are shot at, at a time when secondary schools have their own Canbolay riots every week (and put them up on YouTube) ain't history, and it ain't funny unless you're stoned or drunk. But the Government and Canboulay folks might know something I don't.