Woman tells of how her mom’s death split family

Afeisha Caballero, who was a baby when her mother Lorraine Caballero died at the Red House during the 1990 attempted coup, yesterday broke down and cried as she testified before the Commission of Enquiry into the event. Her mother worked as a bookbinder at the Birth and Death Certificate Department at the Red House and was shot by Jamaat al Muslimeen insurrectionists when they stormed the Red House on July 27, 1990. She left behind three children, Akee, eight, Kalamo, five and Afeisha, nearly two at the time. Caballero, now 23, cried as she related to the commission how her mother’s death split her family and tragically affected everyone’s lives. She said she grew up calling her grandmother mummy and found out when she was eight how her mother was killed.

Her father, Daniel Mulzac, a Carib worker, became addicted to drugs after her mother’s death and could not provide for her, she said. “I felt my entire world had collapsed. To me I was living a lie. I would have liked to have known my mother,” she added. She said she never saw what her mother looked like because her grandmother burnt all the photos of her. “I found one once and she found it in my schoolbooks and destroyed it. She also stopped all my mother’s family from visiting at home,” she added. Caballero told the commission she wanted to know what caused the attempted coup.

“I want to know why my mother was killed. Why she wasn’t released.” Asked if she got the opportunity to speak to Bakr face-to-face what she would tell him, she replied: “Why did you kill my mother? “I know he would say he also lost people but sometimes I feel resentment towards him.” Caballero said she found out about her two brothers when she was 19 and went to live with them in Morvant. She cried when she recalled how her brother, Akee, who had joined the Muslimeen, was killed by the police one year later in 2009. She added: “Akee drove a PH car. I never asked him why he joined the Muslimeen because I was afraid of what the answer would have been. “If I know Muslimeen killed my mother and I want to join up with them, it would be for vengeance or something.

“He had a lot of hatred in him because of what happened  to mummy. “They kill my mother and we ain’t get nothing. We ain’t get no answers.” She said Akee got help from various masjids and helped take care of her and her son. She said Kalamo’s (her other brother) life was destroyed by their mother’s death. She added: “He has taken to alcohol and always laments the death of our mother. “He constantly talks about his own death and has given up on life.” Recalling her early life Caballero said her grandmother, a pensioner, took care of her but could barely send her to school on her meagre state assistance.

She said she went to school without lunch money and books and left school with only two ‘O’ Levels. Today, she said, she could not get a job with those qualifications. She said the baby’s father vanished into “thin air” after the birth of their son. Commissioner Eastlyn McKenzie, who said she knew her mother’s father from Tobago, congratulated Caballero for trying to make her life better. “Keep trying and keep fighting. You just have to believe,” she said. Commission chairman Sir David Simmons said: “Yours is a tragic situation and you have tried to overcome and that is something to be proud of.” Commissioner Diana Mahabir-Wyatt promised to seek assistance for Caballero and her son.