Of all the days of commemoration and remembrance in this country, none carries as heavy a weight of trauma, loss and death as July 27.
Healing and closure still elude many of the people who lived through those six days of darkness that began at dusk on what was until then an uneventful Friday in 1990. An unthinkable horror began to unfold, starting with the bombing of the Police Headquarters and the storming of the Red House, the seat of T&T’s democracy, and other locations around Port-of-Spain.
Among the countless victims of that failed coup were the 24 people who were killed, most of them ordinary citizens going about their lives when they got caught up in the turmoil. They should not be forgotten. Among the fallen were Diego Martin MP Leo des Vignes, SRP Solomon McLeod, ASP Roger George, Estate Constable Malcolm Basanta, George Francis, Arthur Guiseppi, Helen Lavia, Lorraine Caballero and Mervyn Teague.
Many others were hurt, including some who sustained life-changing injuries. Once thriving businesses that were looted in the days following the insurrection did not survive.
Add to that the undocumented stories of citizens who experienced fundamental shifts in their lives because of July 27, 1990, mostly for the worse, and the extent of the hurt inflicted on this nation becomes clearer.
More than three decades later, while only a few physical reminders of those coordinated and brutal attacks on the national landscape remain, this is a nation saddled with mental and psychological consequences. Although a commission of inquiry was convened during the tenure of the People’s Partnership, there are still many unanswered questions and unresolved issues.
Consider, for example, the plight of Afeisha Caballero, who was just a year and a half old when her mother, parliamentary clerk Lorraine Caballero, was shot and killed during the insurrection. She believes the coup brought a generational curse on her family, as her father became a drug addict, her brother was killed by police, and her life has been an endless struggle.
Then there is coup survivor Marlene Andrews, a former parliamentary attendant, who, in a story she has shared in a display put on by the Office of the Parliament at the Red House, recounted the harrowing hours she spent hiding in the Red House before she managed to escape. She said she still often reflects on those who lost their lives.
Unfortunately, the answers that Afeisha, Marlene and others who suffered monumental losses so desperately need were never provided by coup leader Yasin Abu Bakr, who spent two years in prison facing trial for treason but was eventually released under an amnesty. Abu Bakr died last October, days after celebrating his 80th birthday, without ever apologising to this nation for the coup, although he did express regret that lives were lost.
Even so, T&T has managed, sometimes with difficulty, to move on from that assault on our democracy. The challenge all these years later is to keep in remembrance those events so that the hard lessons learned then are never forgotten. This is particularly important for the generation of T&T nationals not yet born in July 1990, or too long to remember, who have now grown into adulthood.
Those dark days must not be repeated.