Strange things happen here

"We have lost our capacity for amazement."

I don't really have much to say for myself, since Luisa and Anon put my thoughts so eloquently.

I haven't decided how culpable I hold our local politicians in the importation of the violence. Actually before I visited the mainland I really did buy the line, we have to arm ourselves.

Somewhere along the journey I realised that teaching people to kill, just makes them better killers.

And since we don't produce guns ourselves, others really do help facilitate us killing ourselves and they are culpable.

Still we pull the trigger

The Place of its Quietude- Luisa Valenzuela

Not fear as expressed in other times. The fear is now behind closed doors, silent, barren, with a low vibration that emerges in fits of temper on the streets or conjugal violence at home.

Our life is quiet enough. Every once in a while a friend disappears, or a neighbour is killed, or one of our children’s schoolmates – or even our own children – falls into a trap, but that isn’t as apocalyptic as it seems; on the contrary, it’s rhymic and organic

White Fridays in Trinidad (cont'd)

May 2 1970

This was a most terrible night. The night that XX and YY annouced the arrest of – and - .
I just felt like the end. I saw a vista of nothing stretching away and away into the distance. I kept hearing the castrated Oxonian voice of YY more or less gloating that things seemed to be under control……. I kept feeling that the soldiers had been double-crossed, something I felt would happen since they started negotiations……

The scene returned to me, and other things; like the death of a colleague which had taken place soon after our accident. For some time everything seemed totally unreal, a grey nightmare filled with pain. My friend rang up one of his superiors telling him he was going to resign. We all genuinely felt it, and even today, the resolution is still in my mind… Except that I know there is no place to go… I phoned my girl and told her… She accepted with a tired sort of calm, since she at the present moment preferred me to be out of Trinidad… and I phoned another friend who thought that it was a bloody good idea and decided to leave herself. She is leaving.

All of which demonstrates one thing… My generation is not going to put up with any shit… But more important, my generation is already in a terrible state of despair, and believes that all idealism will soon come to ashes… This is dangerous, and we have to watch it least our talents be lost to the reconstruction…

Originally published in Savacou December 1970

White Fridays in Trinidad by Anonymous

April 9 1970

In the midst of all this there was the death and funeral of Basil Davis. He had been shot by a policeman outside Woodford Square during an altercation in which he was a third party.
The story is unclear. It seems that intervened in an incident between a policeman and a brother. Police claim that he drew an ice-pick; other "eye-witnesses" deny this.
Regardless of the details, he was automatically lionized. A Power funeral. No black clothes allowed.We had been brain-washed into associating black with grief… wear red instead.

The brother was borne from Port of Spain to San Juan cemetery (4.5 miles approximately).
A procession estimated by various people as 10 000, 15 000, 50 000 people. Whatever the figure it was dramatically large. The first martyr had been made.

And so the stage was set.

Occasional arson (perpetrators not clearly identifiable as Power), police gun shot finding targets, one fatally, tear gas, marching, marching and marching; trade unions expressing support and planning to march; Bhadase rumbling; Hochoy goes on leave; labour disputes suddenly settled by Govt; big award to cane farmers; construction workers get settlements; business firms frantically giving a few Black scholarships; Christmas work at Easter; marching, marching, meeting, meeting…

And God……remains silent.

I was in that march from Port of Spain to San Juan. I marched not out of any sentimentality, but because I realised that things had reached a new and tragic phase. After weeks of strain, of being told to look out for some major act of violence, of being constantly on call in riot squads, of being allowed to arrest, rough up, and more recently shoot people without much or any explanation given, the police were now cracking under the terrific mental strain, and were now prepared to justify their violence to themselves. This was only a short stage from the step when the only Power in place would be the power of the gun.

The place of its Quietude

The escalation of violence -One dead every twenty four hours, every eighteen, every fifteen, every twelve- ought not to worry us.

More people die in other parts of the world....

More, perhaps, but nowhere so close at hand as here.

The other Open Doors

Ironically "Open Doors" is the annual Open Doors publication and website is a statistical analysis of academic mobility between the U.S. and the nations of the world. It is a comprehensive, national data and information resource on foreign students studying at U.S. institutions of higher education, foreign scholars who teach and conduct research at U.S. doctoral granting institutions.

The latest report on Trinidad Migration here states the

Stock of emigrants as percentage of population: 27.7%

Emigration rate of tertiary educated: 78.4%


Despite the statistics, like the narrator of Bedside Manners, I have returned to my homeland.

Open Doors

I came across Luisa Valenzuela quite by chance. I picked up Open Doors in a second hand bookstore in Guatemala for Q30. That's less than TT$25.

I live in Trinidad and Tobago, and we are going through may turn out to be the prelude to civil war. Even as I read Bedside Manners the helicopters came buzzing pass my house with their search lights.

And so I write, with hope, - The place of its quietude

The Place of its Quietude

For those among us who believe we can save ourselves