​I en­joyed two won­der­ful Car­ni­val days of cathar­sis with the Bel­mont Ex­ot­ic Styl­ish Sailors (DBESS). Ac­cord­ing to one dic­tio­nary mean­ing, cathar­sis, a noun, is the process of re­leas­ing, and there­by pro­vid­ing re­lief from, strong or re­pressed emo­tions. That be­ing said, play­ing in a band such as DBESS, which reg­is­tered this year in the TTC­BA (T&T Car­ni­val Bands As­so­ci­a­tion) mi­ni band cat­e­go­ry, is a change from pre­vi­ous years when they were in the small band cat­e­go­ry.

​This shift pro­vid­ed a unique op­por­tu­ni­ty to ex­plore the par­al­lels be­tween Car­ni­val and sport. The rea­sons for DBESS shrink­ing from the small to the mi­ni cat­e­go­ry mir­ror the re­al­i­ties of the sport­ing ex­pe­ri­ence. As sport and Trinidad Car­ni­val evolve in the con­tem­po­rary world, tra­di­tion­al ap­proach­es, val­ues, and norms are no longer main­tained, nur­tured, or cul­ti­vat­ed. The con­tem­po­rary world has lit­tle time and pri­or­i­ty for the “old”. Era­sure and ap­pro­pri­a­tion seem to be the in­ten­tion. Era­sure of what is old and in­con­ve­nient.

​Why is it deemed nec­es­sary to erase his­to­ry and tra­di­tion for the con­tem­po­rary to thrive? I call it the neo-colo­nial im­pulse; aca­d­e­mics call it the neo-colo­nial strat­e­gy. It in­volves the com­mod­i­fi­ca­tion of cer­e­monies and sym­bols while si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly eras­ing the lived, of­ten mar­gin­alised ex­pe­ri­ences of oth­ers.

​What makes Trinidad Car­ni­val unique is our in­dige­nous mu­sic —ca­lyp­so, so­ca, and the steel­pan (the on­ly per­cus­sive mu­si­cal in­ven­tion of the 20th cen­tu­ry)—and our tra­di­tion­al mas char­ac­ters. Yet, con­tem­po­rary T&T seems hell-bent on what makes Trinidad Car­ni­val unique. This is the lega­cy of Eu­ro­pean colo­nial­ism and its suc­ces­sor, neo­colo­nial­ism.

​In the case of the Olympic move­ment, we see the era­sure of in­dige­nous sport­ing cul­tures to al­low Eu­ro­cen­tric and West­ern cul­tures to thrive. We al­so see the In­ter­na­tion­al Olympic Com­mit­tee’s (IOC) un­wa­ver­ing and of­ten in­con­sis­tent as­ser­tion of po­lit­i­cal neu­tral­i­ty. The IOC pun­ish­es ath­letes and Na­tion­al Olympic Com­mit­tees, such as Haiti, yet finds “good rea­sons” not to pun­ish FI­FA boss Gi­an­ni In­fan­ti­no for his “Board of Peace” ap­pear­ance.

​The IOC stat­ed it would take no ac­tion against its mem­ber In­fan­ti­no for a pos­si­ble breach of po­lit­i­cal neu­tral­i­ty rules re­gard­ing his align­ment of FI­FA with US Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump’s Board of Peace. Even though, when asked about In­fan­ti­no’s con­duct, IOC pres­i­dent Kirsty Coven­try said it would look in­to a pos­si­ble breach of neu­tral­i­ty. The Olympic mem­bers’ oath re­quires one “to al­ways act in­de­pen­dent­ly of... po­lit­i­cal in­ter­ests.”

Yet, on Feb­ru­ary 12, the IOC banned Ukrain­ian skele­ton ath­lete Vla­dyslav Heraskevych from com­pe­ti­tion for wear­ing a hel­met that fea­tured im­ages of fel­low Ukrain­ian ath­letes who had been killed in Rus­sia’s in­va­sion of his home na­tion.

​Sim­i­lar­ly, Haiti’s 2026 Win­ter Olympic uni­forms, de­signed by Stel­la Jean, fea­tured hand-paint­ed trop­i­cal fo­liage and a red rid­er­less horse sym­bol­is­ing re­silience and her­itage. Orig­i­nal­ly de­signed to ho­n­our rev­o­lu­tion­ary leader Tou­s­saint Lou­ver­ture, the de­sign was al­tered to re­move his im­age fol­low­ing IOC reg­u­la­tions re­gard­ing po­lit­i­cal sym­bols.

The cur­rent is­sues fac­ing the IOC and Olympic move­ment have their gen­e­sis in colo­nial­ism and neo-colo­nial­ism. Judg­ing in Olympic sports and car­ni­vals has his­tor­i­cal­ly mixed tech­ni­cal cri­te­ria with sub­jec­tive as­sess­ments. That sub­jec­tiv­i­ty leaves room for bias, whether con­scious or not.

Ac­cord­ing to Ap­ple chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer (CEO) Tim Cook, cuf­flink lead­ers are di­vorced from and iso­lat­ed from re­al peo­ple who are work­ing and from the prod­ucts of their com­pa­ny. Maybe that’s the prob­lem: both the IOC and Trinidad Car­ni­val are suf­fer­ing from too many cuf­flink lead­ers.

Ed­i­tor’s note: The views ex­pressed in the pre­ced­ing ar­ti­cle are sole­ly those of the au­thor and do not re­flect the views of any or­gan­i­sa­tion in which he is a stake­hold­er.