My New Blog: One Day for the Watchman (1D4TW)

I have been busy working on an offshoot blog, One Day for the Watchman, which is now live. “One day for the watchman” is a line from a Trinidadian proverb, about everyday being for thieves, but only one day is for the watchman, that one day which is the last day for the thieving, and it is usually meant to convey the idea that wrong doers will meet their end. One can read more of these proverbs, selected to suit the themes of the blog, under “Words of Wisdom.”

1D4TW will not be replacing or substituting for The CAC Revuew, but it will do some very different things. Posts that originally appeared here will remain, with some copied over to create 1D4TW. The themes of the 1D4TW will be broader and more political, allowing me to express and engage in issues and forms of writing that I sometimes produced here, but felt reluctant about doing so, or felt limited.

The key foci of 1D4TW are, as listed under the “about” section which is retitled “Wha’ yuh say?“:

• radical indigenism and cultural revival
• the international politics of indigenous struggle
• Caribbean cultural identity, creolization, difference, history, and autonomy
• the politics of independence and decolonization
• critique of imperialism, capitalism, and modernity
• politics after the state, the world market, and Western hegemony
• anarchy and autarky
• ways of life based on self-sufficiency
• rethinking human-animal, our impermanence

My thanks to Guanaguanare (also Guacara Dreamtime), Black Girl on Mars, and the late Dr. Roi Kwabena for the obvious inspiration for this new blog. Also, my thanks to thumbprints.co.tt’s Free Speech photo website featuring some amazing Trinidadian graffiti.

From Guacara’s post on “Le Roi” I will end with some of Roi Kwabena’s famous signature lines that appeared at the end of his email messages:

swim deep as manatee
levitate as a kolibri
chanting like a macaw
SINGING as COKI
blowing like sandfly

fly high like a condor from los iros to guayaguayare

wade as an anaconda
dig deeper than anteater

glimmer like the green horsewhip…

Apparently Not: My Apologies

As I am listening in, there is no live coverage of the Santa Rosa Festival on I95.5 FM, as indicated in the last post, based on past occasions. My apologies.

Caribs' Santa Rosa Festival - Live: This Sunday, August 24, 2008

For those of you interested in the Santa Rosa Festival of Trinidad's Carib Community, you can hear a live broadcast, streamed online, from Trinidadian radio station I 95.5 FM, this Sunday morning. For those of you on the eastern seaboard of the U.S., the time the event starts is at 9:00am, same for those in the Caribbean.Go to this link http://www.i955fm.com/default.aspx -- and click on Listen Live. Don't expect to see any mention of the Santa Rosa Festival anywhere on that page, they usually show none even if they carry the live webcast. The ceremony is fairly long, close to 3 hours, and is essentially a typical Catholic mass.The website for the Santa Rosa Roman Catholic Church of Arima, Trinidad can be accessed by clicking here.

"For Sale": Stolen Taino Artifacts from the Dominican Republic

Over the past few days I have been contacted by a certain "Lai Tran," writing from either Champs or Marseilles in France, advertising for sale a number of artifacts, all shown below, which appear to be Taino artifacts, though a couple of items may not be genuine originals. No prices were mentioned, nor was the name of the collectors. I was told that the items were taken by two collectors who lived in the Dominican Republic, who have a second house in Nassau, and they "built buildings, public roads and 2 private airports." They found some of the items themselves, and others were obtained from workers and farmers. Some items were collected from "known Dominican collectors and antique dealers in Nassau." The entire collection shown below is currently being held in France.

According to a knowledgeable correspondent, it is illegal to remove such items from the Dominican Republic, but there is little that can be done to get them back. In addition, there are lax controls in place to prevent travelers from leaving the country in possession of such items. According to this one source, what is shown below is the tiniest tip of an iceberg, and even a "vast percentage" of items held in storage at the Museum of Dominican Man have disappeared. In addition, it is alleged that dealers in Taino antiquities have found buyers among officials of the Dominican state.

Posting images of these items is one way to keep track of what has been removed, and a way of posting a "beware" notice to any potential buyers: we know that these items have been illegally removed, and your purchase will also be illegal.

This message has been forwarded to Taino colleagues working in museums in the U.S. as well representatives of the United Confederation of Taino People and the Taino Nation of the Antilles.

May the day come that colonial Indiana Jones figures stop raiding the Caribbean as if it were their private, personal, plaything to be raped at will.

"Name that Scientist!"

First posted at Open Anthropology:

Imagine, 2008, and some foreigner travels to Barbados, and right under Barbadian noses he picks up the “world’s smallest snake,” known to native Barbadians since there have been native Barbadians, and he proclaims — without a metal helmet, bible, and cross — that he has discovered the snake, and that he will name it. The man clearly has balls, because he also decided to name the creature after his wife. S. Blair Hedges then says the naming is to establish its “genetic profile.” Apparently now his aim is to drive his wife into a murderous rage.

While some local academics tried to hush up the very negative local reactions to this latest episode of scientific imperialism (it’s no surprise that they would do so, given their dependence on academic networks owned and controlled within the dominant seats of Western power), Barbadians are clearly right to be critical.

What kind of world is it where one people gets to name the world for the rest of the world?

What kind of world is it where words from one particular, dead, European language are granted exclusive dominance in the name of “science”?

The answer: it’s a 2008 world, hardly different from a 1492 world.

So name that scientist!

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Garifuna Resistance against Mega-Tourism in Honduras

A wonderful piece, from James Rodríguez's MiMundo.org, both for the beauty of the photography and the depth of sympathy for the struggle of a local Garifuna community against the invasion of tourist capital that has redefined their beaches as "wasted":

‘We have hundreds of kilometers of beaches that aren't developed, and it's a waste,’ said the then Honduran Tourism Secretary (IHT), Ana Abarca in 2001. ‘We want strong tourism. We are going after the sun and the beach.’

With a few adaptations, the dozens of Garifuna communities that populate the coast,

continue to subsist as their ancestors did: through fishing, hunting, the cultivation of yucca, beans, banana, as well as gathering wild fruits such as coconuts and jicaco (cocoplum). “Our culture is based upon establishing a harmony with our natural environment”, explains Teresa Reyes, a community leader in Triunfo de la Cruz village.

In what appears to be a renewal of old colonial enslavement and invasion, the Garifuna and their culture are now the target of development:

The neoliberal model for development, in which the Honduran structures of power base themselves in, has identified the Caribbean Coast, and in particular Tela Bay, as the perfect place to develop a mega-tourist industry: Beautiful “wasted” beaches – as described by former IHT secretary Abarca – populated by relatively few people (already perceived as exotic, easily persuaded, and who can offer entertainment as well as cheap labor) make up the perfect wish list for those within the structures of power.

The Garifuna are not passive in the face of continuous encroachments, and the state is probably underestimating the depths from which Garifuna resistance comes, having excelled at making resistance a central part of their history and culture:

Such struggle for the control of Garifuna territories began over 15 years ago. “Starting in 1992, the Marbella tourist corporation and other foreign investors, in complicity with local authorities and military personnel, began usurping property rights within the Triunfo de la Cruz community. Facing the risk of losing communal land titles, local and national organizations came together to expose the corruption and managed so suspend the fraudulent operations.” Today, the Marbella project remains at a standstill.

For the sake of foreigners to have the luxury of sinking their pink toes into Garifuna sand, the Honduran state has also disregarded the normal routes of negotiation and dialogue, resorting to force and intimidation on many occasions:

In recent years, Garifuna activists have been living under a state of siege receiving innumerable death threats, having homes burned down, and have had three community members assassinated. “We find ourselves in a what can only be conceived as a war-like situation” declares Lopez during an interview.

The state's tourism authority is planning to create a vast complex, occupying over three kilometers of beach, building a golf course (which is a source of environmental contamination), and engaging in deforestation, while trying to divide up communally held Gairfuna lands into individual plots whose deeds can be purchased.

It's a 2008 world after all, which is hardly different from a 1492 world.

“Here we will resist until our death. Only in coffins will they manage to get us out of here!” declares Santos Antonio Garmendia, who has lived in Barra Vieja since the early 1950’s.

International financial institutions, at the heart of the spread of neo-liberal development, are not far behind the state in aggressively implanting these tourist projects:

“International financial organizations are also playing a role in this conflict. The World Bank funds a land administration program known as the Program for the Administration of Lands in Honduras (PATH). Local organizations are afraid that this program is encouraging individual ownership of land at the expense of traditional communal land ownership practiced by groups such as the Garifuna. In the Tela Bay region in northern Honduras, this systemic problem is compounded by the Los Micos Beach & Golf Resort, a massive planned hotel complex funded in part by the Inter-American Development Bank.”

As one response, some of the Garifuna have banded together to offer an attractive eco-tourist alternative:

“We want a project that belongs to us. We don’t want outsiders to come and exploit us or remove us from our ancestral lands. We want to develop an eco-tourism industry which is ours and which will sustain our Garifuna cosmovision and respect the natural environment.”

For more information and to get involved:
OFRANEH: ofraneh@yahoo.com
Rights Action: info@rightsaction.org

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