Ian Isidore Smart, Ph - OAS



Ian Isidore Smart, Ph.D.

The Role of Cultural Diversity in the Development of the Americas

This is a study commissioned by the Unit of Social Development, Education and Culture of the Organization of American States under the following terms of reference:

Using the hemispheric reality as a foundation, preparing a study of the theme: “The role of Cultural Diversity in the Development of the Americas”. The impact of cultural diversity on the economic, social reality and development of the Americas should be measured/studied at the national, regional, hemispheric levels.

Including:

The Ministers of Culture of CARICOM (and associated members) have a mechanism of meetings and permanent consultations, taking that reality as a foundation,

1. What focus or foci have been given to cultural diversity?

2. What capacity does cultural diversity have in the construction of national identity?

3. How can ancestral cultural diversity be maintained while simultaneously allowing for the achievement of modernization/development?

4. What role has been given to diversity as a possible instrument/catalyst of development?

5. Do all (some) of the countries affiliated with CARICOM (and associated members) have regional or national cultural policies that include cultural diversity as an engine/catalyst for development?

6. What strategies can be implemented with the collaboration of International Organizations, the IDB and World Bank?

7. What quantitative and qualitative information supports the thesis of the document?

Introduction

The idea of diversity has tended to ground the traditional approach by academe to the Caribbean. As we move into the twenty-first century this approach has to be revisited. Our paper will begin with a review of the very concept of diversity as it applies to Caribbean reality. Having clarified this issue, the study will proceed. Since Carnival is so central to Caribbean culture, our study will be centered on the Carnival phenomenon and will respond specifically to the questions posed in our mandate.

Cultural diversity has been the basis of academic approaches to the Caribbean reality. The assumption is made that each of the islands and territories of the region has developed a peculiar, sui generis cultural tradition. This assumption has been diligently promoted by scholars and, therefore, uncritically accepted by the policy makers in the governmental, nongovernmental, and academic spheres of each of the nations and territories of CARICOM (and associated members). As a result, the man in the street of the region tends to view the Caribbean as a culturally very diverse entity. On the other hand, many are the voices of the practitioners of culture, which proclaim the cultural unity of the region. One such voice is that of Black Stalin, one of the renowned oral poets (griots) of Trinidad and Tobago. In his 1979 Kaiso, “The Caribbean Man,” Stalin declared:

Them is one race

The Caribbean man

From the same place

The Caribbean man

That make the same trip

The Caribbean man

On the same ship

The Caribbean man. (Quoted in Central American Writers 5)

Black Stalin’s view of the regional cultural reality is generally shared by the artists and intellectuals who are native to the region.

In 1948 the British colonial machine established a native university in the Anglophone Caribbean. It was called the University College of the West Indies and was sited in Mona, Jamaica. It was intended to be the West Indian University, serving all of the English-speaking islands and territories of the region. These included British Honduras (now Belize) and British Guiana (now Guyana), and they were all at the time British colonial possessions. The University of the West Indies still serves Belize, however Guyana has created its own institution of tertiary education, the University of Guyana. A CARICOM university has existed, then, for over a half century. The University of the West Indies is still a single entity with major campuses now in Barbados, Trinidad and Tobago in addition to the flagship campus in Mona, Jamaica. In spite of this basic manifestation of cultural unity, the majority of the very academics who staff the regional university appear to have accepted unquestioningly the cultural diversity paradigm as the preferred one.

In the United States, one nation under God, every one of the fifty states has its own system of institutions of tertiary education. The University of Maryland is quite distinct and different from the University of California, etc. etc. However, scholars routinely propose the melting pot (or at least the salad bowl) model as the appropriate point of departure for discussing the cultural reality of the United States. The various nations of Europe have moved towards a political unity expressed in the European Union. A French citizen who was born in 1860 and lived for eight-five years would have experienced in his flesh and blood three explosions of savage tribal conflict between the Gauls and the Germans, namely, the Franco-Prussian War, World War 1, and World War 11. This person’s grandchildren live in a world in which France and Germany have become merely units in an overarching European state. Clearly, French and German are still two quite distinct languages. Clearly, French and German cultural traditions are quite distinct. The cultural diversity paradigm would appear to be quite appropriate for a study of the European Union. However, the academy has tended to focus on the cultural unity rather than the cultural diversity of Europe.

In a watershed article, “African Philosophical Systems ( A Rational Reconstruction,” the Trinidadian scholar, Lancine Keita posits, “modern African thought is equipped, therefore, with a foundation on which new structures could be developed” (170). Keita has followed in the footsteps of Cheikh Anta Diop who was the most impressive of the twentieth century scholars to present arguments for the cultural unity of Africa. Keita cites also, for example, J. Olumide Lucas who “argues for religious, cultural and linguistic kinships between the Yorubas of West Africa and the ancient Egyptians” (177). The academy, which accepts so readily the cultural unity of Europe, rejects outright any argument for the analogous unity in Africa.

In May 2000, we had the privilege of being invited to speak at the University of Birmingham, England under the auspices of the Department of Spanish. We were politely but firmly chided for suggesting a profound kinship between contemporary Africans, such as the Yoruba, and the people of Ancient Egypt. We were deemed to be “romancing Africa,” to be unfaithful to the cultural reality. Our response on that occasion is instructive. We affirmed categorically the right of Africans (even those who happened to be born in the Caribbean or in the Diaspora) to speak authoritatively on things African. Statements of this kind are to considered privileged by non-Africans, whose most fitting response would have to be one of respectful and attentive silence.

Keita affirms in his article:

On the other hand, there is no historical evidence to show that there are any cultural affinities between Greek culture and that of, say, the Gauls and Vandals of Europe. Yet the philosophical writings of Descartes were inspired mainly by Greek thought and not by the traditional beliefs of the Gallic or Norman people. And there is nothing in Leibniz’ writings to suggest that the rationalism he espoused was derived from the lore and myth of the unlettered Vandals. (178)

Indeed, the romantic movement of the beginning of the nineteenth century was hailed as a vindication of the indigenous northern European genius vis-à-vis the Greco-Roman (Mediterranean) one. The latter is classical, whereas the former is romantic.

Keita continues:

And although there is no known evidence that there exists any relationship whatever between the purely indigenous belief systems of the pre-modern peoples of Europe [the romantic tradition] and classical Greek thought [the classical tradition, per se], all Europe claims the Greek heritage. One might venture to argue that classical Greek thought was accepted as the intellectual foundation of modern Europe thought mainly because it satisfied the criteria of philosophy, that is, that the Greeks were the first Europeans to articulate cogent and systematic theories about the nature of the world. (178)

The European scholar, Martin Bernal, published in 1987 (a decade after Keita’s article first appeared) the first volume of his groundbreaking work, Black Athena: The Afroasiatic Roots of Classical Civilization. On the first page of the main body of his text Bernal declares:

These volumes are concerned with two models of Greek history: one viewing Greece as essentially European or Aryan, and the other seeing it as Levantine, on the periphery of the Egyptian and Semitic cultural area. I call them the ‘Aryan’ and ‘Ancient’ models. The ‘Ancient Model’ was the conventional view among Greeks in the Classical and Hellenistic ages. According to it, Greek culture had arisen as the result of colonization, around 1500 BC, by Egyptians and Phoenicians who had civilized the native inhabitants. Furthermore, Greeks had continued to borrow heavily from Near Eastern cultures. (1)

One full generation before Bernal, in 1954, George G. M. James, a scholar from British Guiana (now Guyana) penned the powerful volume, Stolen Legacy, with the very explicit if somewhat cumbersome subtitle, The Greeks were not the authors of Greek Philosophy, but the people of North Africa, commonly called the Egyptians. James’s arguments are compelling. Although Bernal has declared explicitly that he was unaware of the work of James, Black Athena is beyond doubt the intellectual child of Stolen Legacy. Furthermore, there is reason to suspect that contrary to his written declaration, Bernal was indeed very aware of James’s work before he wrote Black Athena.

Bernal asserts:

Most people are surprised to learn that the Aryan Model, which most of us have been brought up to believe, developed only during the first half of the 19th century . . .. According to the Aryan Model, there had been an invasion from the north ( unreported in ancient tradition ( which had overwhelmed the local `Aegean’ or `Pre-Hellenic’ culture . . .. It is from the construction of this Aryan Model that I call this volume The Fabrication of Ancient Greece 1785-1985. (1-2)

It is not without significance that the “Fabrication of Ancient Greece” is exactly coterminous with the development of the “Enlightenment” and the establishment of “modernity.” We have argued that there is a profound connection between these phenomena.

Europe at the end of the eighteenth century had become outrageously wealthy as a consequence of the enslavement of Africans. Yet the “Ancient Model” affirmed unequivocally that these Africans (deemed by the framers of the United States Constitution to be three-fifths human) were the originators of civilization. The French intellectual Count Constantine Francis Chassebeuf de Volney was a contemporary of the framers of the United States Constitution. The Frenchman, however, understood the primacy of Africa, declaring in his work, Ruins of Empire:

There [in so-called “darkest Africa”] a people, now forgotten, discovered, while others were yet barbarians, the elements of the arts and sciences. A race of men now rejected from society for their sable skin and frizzled hair, founded on the study of the laws of nature, those civil and religious systems that still govern the universe. (Quoted in Amazing Connections 13)

Unwilling to give up the immense wealth generated by the greatest of crimes against humanity, the trans-Atlantic slave trade, Europeans opted to rewrite history. They, as Bernal put it, “fabricated Ancient Greece.” They called this process”enlightenment” and declared it the beginning of modernity. It was, in effect, obfuscation and the installation of white supremacy.

Keita sums up poignantly:

As was indicated in this paper, the origins of Greek thought were non-European, but latter-day European nationalism sought to ascribe an independent origin to Greek thought, hence, the concept of the Greek miracle. Greek thought, like the religious movement, Christianity, was important for European civilization in that it fostered cultural homogeneity over a culturally disparate group of peoples. Witness, for example, the significant fact that the heritage of the Greeks is maintained even in modern mathematics by the purely arbitrary usage of Greek letters as mathematical symbols. Europe claims the Greek heritage, but the concept of Europe was alien to the Greek mind. European philosophy is best seen, therefore, as an artificial construction serving the function of maintaining the cultural and racial integrity of those peoples who live west of Asia. (178)

Keita goes on to assert: “On the other hand, a stronger case can be made for important cultural links between the civilization of ancient Egypt and other African societies” (178). In the more than two decades since Keita first wrote his article the evidence has become overwhelming not only in support of the “African Origin of Civilization” but also of the “Cultural Unity of Africa.”

The cultural unity of Africa under girds the cultural unity of the Caribbean and especially that of CARIOM (and associated members). It seems utterly unbalanced to posit the cultural homogeneity of European peoples while downplaying or even downright disparaging the cultural homogeneity of people who number some five million and who speak the same language. In the introduction to his 1978 book, The Caribbean: The Genesis of a Fragmented Nationalism, the Jamaican scholar Franklin W. Knight states quite clearly:

The concept of the Caribbean endorsed in this book emphasizes cultural commonalities rather than political chronology, without neglecting the importance of the latter. In my view, the region comprises one culture area in which common factors have forged a more-or-less common way of looking at life, the world, and their place in the scheme of things. All of the societies of the Caribbean share an identifiable Weltanschauung, despite the superficial divisions that are apparent. The difference in belief, values, and attitudes of the Trinidadian and the Guyanese is perhaps no greater than that between the English and the Welsh, or the Castilian and the Andalusian. Moreover, the Caribbean peoples, with their distinctive artificial societies, common history, and common problems, seem to have more in common than the Texan and the New Yorker, or the Mayan Indian and the cosmopolite of Mexico City do in their respective nations of the United States and Mexico. (xi)

The time has come for us to put to rest forever the approach to the study of the Caribbean which privileges the concept of cultural diversity. This approach is posited on the Machiavellian principle of divide and conquer, divide et impera. The principle of unity in diversity is on the other hand one of those systems referenced by Count Volney as having been founded by Africans on the study of the laws of nature. It is one of the cardinal epistemological principles. Arguably the most important application of this principle is a passage “from a hymn to the god [Amun] that was written in Dynasty 19, probably during the reign of Ramesses 11, on a papyrus that is now in the Netherlands National Museum of Antiquities in Leiden” (Allen 182).

James P. Allen, a contemporary white American scholar, who is the curator of Egyptian Art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, has given the academy one of the most cogent presentations on the Leiden papyrus. Allen’s translation of the powerful passage is as follows:

All the gods are three:

Amun, Re, and Ptah, without their second.

His identity is hidden in Amun,

His is Re as face, his body is Ptah.

He goes on to declare:

This passage, the most famous in the Leiden papyrus, recognizes the existence of a single god (in the singular pronoun “his”) but accepts, at the same time, three separate aspects of the god: existing apart from nature (as Amun), yet visible in and governing nature (as Re), and the source of all things in nature (as Ptah). These lines have been regarded as the ultimate expression not only of Egyptian creation accounts but also of the entire 3,000-year history of Egyptian theology. (183)

The overwhelming majority of the citizens of CARICOM (and associated members) are of African ancestry. It is most fitting, therefore, that they, as the direct descendants of the discoverers of the civil and religious systems which still govern the universe, be the primary beneficiaries of the most fundamental of the systems bequeathed by their ancestors to all humanity. Rather than thwarting their aspirations to full development with the burden of cultural diversity, the academy must begin to promote the thrust toward full empowerment through the mechanism of a productive and liberating heuristic paradigm. This paradigm is cultural unity in diversity.

There is no better manifestation of the power of the unity in diversity principle than Carnival in CARICOM (and associated members). The Trinidad and Tobago Carnival is widely regarded as the most prominent of the Carnivals in CARICOM. However, Carnival is central to the cultural life of every single CARICOM nation. Most importantly, Carnival is the most significant engine of potential development for all of these nations individually and for the region as a whole.

Carnival as the Basis of the Cultural Unity in Diversity

Trinidadians and Tobagonians think of their Carnival as “we thing,” a sui generis national festival. And, they are right, but not for the reason which seems to be uppermost in their minds. They are right because the Carnival is “a black thing,” a festival that has its roots in the very mother of all festivals, the Wosirian (Osirian) mystery play that was celebrated annually in Kemet (Ancient Egypt) from the very dawn of history.

Approximately fifty years ago, the Mexican Nobel Laureate Octavo Paz wrote a fascinating analysis of his people and their culture, El laberinto de la soledad [The Labyrinth of Solitude], which contributes significantly to our understanding of human festivals. Paz is the embodiment of what Knight called the “cosmopolite” Mexican from the capital city. And, true to Knight’s analysis, even as he expounded on the fiesta as a national cultural phenomenon, Paz seems to have been blissfully unaware of the fact that the native peoples of Chiapas view their Carnival as the most beautiful and representative festival.

Every CARICOM nation has a Carnival, which it tends to view as its special festival. Some of these Carnivals might be considered reconstituted festivals developed on the Trinidad and Tobago model. Such would be, for example, the St. Vincent Carnival, the Jamaica Carnival, the Antigua Carnival, and the Virgin Islands Carnival. Others such as the Guyanese Mashramani and the Barbados Crop Over are harvest festivals not related to the festival, which evolved within the Christian calendar. The Carnivals of Haiti, Panama, Cuba, and Colombia were in fact evolved in concert with the Catholic tradition, as was the Trinidad and Tobago Carnival. However, the historical trajectories of these festivals have been independent of each other. Grenada has now moved its Carnival to the summer period in order to facilitate tourism. The Grenada and Trinidad and Tobago Carnival are intimately connected. The most significant manifestation of this connection is the fact that the Kaiso King of Trinidad and Tobago (and indeed the world) is The Mighty Sparrow, who was born in Grenada.

Just as the native peoples of Chiapas view their Carnival as a sui generis festival, a similar sentiment would be expressed by nationals of Barbados, Guyana, the Virgin Islands, Grenada, St. Vincent, and Jamaica with regard to their respective Carnivals. We have argued in our book, Ah Come Back Home: Perspectives on the Trinidad and Tobago Carnival that the festival is the mother of all festivals and it is fundamentally a Pan-African festival. This would explain why so many different groups of peoples of the Americas see Carnival as their own thing.

Speaking of the festival of Our Lady of Guadalupe, a national festival for Mexicans, Paz declares:

Durante los días que preceden y suceden al 12 de diciembre, el tiempo suspende su carrera, hace un alto y en lugar de empujarnos hacia un mañana siempre inalcanzable y mentiroso, nos ofrece un presente redondo y perfecto, de danza y juerga, de comunión y comilona con lo más antiguo y secreto de México. El tiempo deja de ser sucesión y vuelve a ser lo que fue, y es, originariamente; un presente en donde pasado y futuro al fin se reconcilian. (42)

[In the days that precede and follow December 12, time stands still. It takes a pause and instead of pushing us towards a tomorrow that is always unreachable and deceptive, it offers us a perfected present, redolent of dancing and revelry, of communion and of feasting in the spirit of Mexico’s most ancient and secret traditions. Time ceases to be a sequence and becomes again what it was in the beginning and ultimately always is: a present in which the past and future are finally reconciled with each other.]

Festival time is sacred time. It is time outside of time. The renowned African scholar Cheikh Anta Diop reports in The African Origin of Civilization that his ancestors from the Nile Valley, who created humankind’s earliest civilization, established in 4236 B.C. (or 4241 B.C.) “Humanity’s most ancient historical date.” For we know “with mathematical certainty” that by this year “a calendar was definitely in use in Egypt” (100). It gave us a year of 360 regular days with a period of five days outside of time. Precisely during those five days time stood still; it ceased to be succession, a flow, and returned to being what it always was and still really always is, an eternal nunc [now] where past, present, and future converge wondrously.

Kimani S. K. Nehusi discusses these five days in his essay, “The Origins of Carnival: Notes from a Preliminary Investigation,” in Ah Come Back Home. Paz focuses on the reconciliation aspect of this magical time, the eternal nunc, for he understands the basic contradiction of the human estate. We are spiritual beings existing on a material plane. We essentially seek to reconcile this fundamental dilemma, to make sense of our existence. This is what the Wosirian mystery play was about, as will be explored later on in the essay.

Patricia Alleyne-Dettmers, a Trinidad and Tobago born scholar currently based in Germany, studied a particular masquerade band of the 1996 Notting Hill Carnival, the best known of the reconstituted Trinidad and Tobago style Carnivals of contemporary Britain. Allyene-Dettmers’ study is entitled “Beyond Borders, Carnival as Global Phenomena: ‘Going Bananas, Food for the Devil,’” and is one of the contributions to the volume, Ah Come Back Home. In her study she explores brilliantly the idea of reconciliation, seeing it as a fundamental form of homecoming, taking the idea of home, the book’s major focus, to a new level of meta-discourse. Indeed, Alleyne-Dettmers introduces the concept of “meta-masking,” a process by which the reconciliation of which Paz speaks is achieved. The masquerade band on which her presentation is based, “Going Bananas, Food for the Devil,” was brought out for the 1996 Notting Hill Carnival by two London-based artists, Julieta Rubio, a mestiza-white woman born in Colombia, and her husband, Charles Beauchamp, a white man born in London. These two Europeans proved to be keen students of the Carnival tradition and grasped the centrality of reconciliation as metaphysical homecoming, as Alleyne-Dettmers argues with compelling cogency.

Alleyne-Dettmers focuses on the Carnival as global phenomena. In a section of her essay entitled “Globalization, Meta-Masking, and Cultural Identity” she makes the following assertions.

This constant needs to define localness, place, to construct a new identifiable space and its resultant reformulation of cultural or, indeed, other identities mirror another process, what I have described, in “Jump! Jump and Play Mas” and in “Ancestral Voices. Trevini - A Case Study of Meta-masking in the Notting Hill Carnival,” as meta-masking. Initially this concept was applied with respect to the Trinidad and Tobago Carnival. This is a process which combines both historical, and sociological analyzes that track Carnival from its inception as a small folk festival of Africans of various ethnicities—who had under the demoniacal pressures exerted by the brutal chattel slavery imposed on them by barbaric Europeans forged a common way of life—to the grand professionalized, media-directed national event that it is today. With this approach, I have been able to demonstrate that Carnival, first and foremost, always reflects contemporary Trinbagonian society in the larger universe of the contemporary world . . .. When applied to the global Carnival context in Britain, meta-masking is a novel concept, which relates to the power of Carnival to express, define, and explore national and indeed other identities, if only in play. At every level the process of meta-masking involves a movement away from the historical fragmentation and cultural denigration of the colonial legacy, a history of departure, towards the ongoing quest for cultural wholeness, an arrival, a coming home, as we termed it in “Ancestral Voices” (203). This encompasses a re-capitulation and re-appropriation even a re-evaluation—in terms of symbolic representation (through masquerade)—of many different historical, cultural, social, linguistic, and ethnic frameworks, which assist in unfettering that unique capacity of the diasporic person to move beyond cultural dislocation and ethnic marginalization, to a point of acceptance and triumphant conclusion, a new sense of coming home . . .. Consequently, this political and mental decolonization produces reconciliation to one’s situation, healing, transcendence, ethnic empowerment, and finally a sense of cultural wholeness. This “sense of cultural wholeness,” as I have pointed out before, facilitated by meta-masking, accentuates a notion of cohering, forming, metamorphosing, but moving always towards a dynamic unfolding.

Finally, we should note that this chapter highlights the notion of cultural identity as becoming rather than being. It focuses on the phenomenon as a dynamic process and production, underscoring its shifting, mobile nature as diasporic subjects negotiate between and are mediated by time, culture, experience, and history. (139-40)

Alleyne-Dettmers presentation is heavily theoretical. Meta-masking is defined as a principle of cohering, reaffirming disparate elements. It is then coterminous with the principle of unity in diversity. And, according to Alleyne-Dettmers, it is the principle, which continues to energize the Carnival festival. However, the scholar with principled fidelity to the academy ends the passage cited with a typical postmodern intellectual’s act of faith:

Our approach thus contradicts the idea of cultural identity as a form of re-discovery of an authentic/essentialist self fixed in time and space. We eschew the essentialist approach to cultural identity. (139)

Contemporary scholarship has tended to develop into a belief system, a veritable lay religion. Our opening section argued that the belief in the cultural diversity of Africa and the Caribbean is a veritable dogma of the mainstream academy. Just as firmly held by the academy is the rejection of “essentialism.” The eschewing of essentialism appears to apply only to scholarship on non-European cultural phenomena. The idea of a romantic movement, the idea of the classics is founded on an essentialist approach to cultural identity.

The theme of order versus disorder is another one that Paz develops in his essay as an aspect of that reconciliation of contradictions. Indeed, the fundamental interplay of opposing elements is highlighted in Paz’s choice of language. He speaks of the celebration of an eminently religious feast as a transcendental moment redolent of dancing [danza] and revelry [juerga], of communion [comunión] and feasting [comilo-na].

Paz reports on a conversation he once had with a local mayor who complained about an abysmally low annual municipal budget of three thousand pesos (these must have been the old-time pesos that were almost on par with the United States dollar). The conversation went in part as follows:

“Somos muy pobres. Por eso el señor Gobernador y la Federación nos ayudan cada año a completar nuestros gastos”. “¿Y en qué utilizan esos tres mil pesos?” “Pues casi todo en fiestas, señor. Chico como lo ve, el pueblo tiene dos Santos Patrones.” (43)

[“We are very poor. That’s why the state governor and the federal government help us every year to meet our expenditures.” “And on what do you spend the three thousand pesos?” “Well, almost entirely on festivals, sir. As small as you see it our little town has two Patron Saints.”]

And Paz comments:

Esa respuesta no es asombrosa. Nuestra pobreza puede medirse por el número y suntuosidad de las fiestas populares. Los países ricos tienen pocas: no hay tiempo, ni humor. . . . Las masas modernas son aglomeraciones de solitarios. En las grandes ocasiones, en París o Nueva York, cuando el público se congrega en plazas o estadios, es notable la ausencia de pueblo: se ven parejas y grupos, nunca una comunidad viva en donde la persona humana se disuelve y rescata simultáneamente. Pero un pobre mexicano ¿cómo podría vivir sin esas dos o tres fiestas anuales que lo compensan de su estrechez y de su miseria? Las fiestas son nuestro único lujo; ellas sustituyen, acaso con ventaja, al teatro y a las vacaciones, al “week-end” y al “cocktail party” de los sajones, a las recepciones de la burguesía y al café de los mediterráneos. (43)

[That reply was not at all startling. The number and level of lavishness of our popular festivals can measure our poverty. There are few of them in the rich countries: there is no time, no inclination . . .. Mass gatherings in the modern world are really assemblies of loners. On the great occasions, in Paris or New York, when crowds gather in squares or stadiums, what one notices is that there is no sense of being a people; one sees couples and small groups, never a vibrant community which simultaneously absorbs and makes whole the individual person. But how would a poor Mexican make it without those two or three festivals in the year that make up for his hard times and his misery? Festivals are our only luxury; they substitute, and perhaps to our advantage, for the theater and vacations, the “week end” and the “cocktail party” of the Anglo-Saxons, the receptions of the bourgeoisie and the coffees of the Mediterranean people.]

Neuse’s research uncovers the importance of festivals in Kempt. Be that as it may, many people, even natives of Trinidad and Tobago, have expressed concern about the waste of human and material resources that the celebration of Carnival involves. Paz in the quote above presents the problem, which he will go on to discuss in depth. The mayor of an impoverished municipality spends all of his scarce monetary resources on festivals. In the spirit of Judas’s perverted logic, many would complain that these resources could have been put to better use, feeding the poor, redressing the balance of payments problem, investing in infrastructure, etc. etc.

Ransford W. Palmer, a Jamaican-born scholar who chairs the Department of Economics of Howard University in Washington, D.C. presents in Pilgrims from the Sun the cruel irony of the emigration of peoples from CARICOM (and associated members) from their sun-drenched paradise to the urban centers of the North. Paz had presented an insightful critique of the culture of this North. Millions, if not billions, of our precious foreign exchange are consumed by the sun people of those islands on the pseudofestivals of the North.

Cleverly manipulated by the mass media propaganda mill, baneful victims of what Fidel would term “teleagresión” [teleaggression], CARICOM people flock to Orlando, to Los Angeles, to the theme parks of the North, forsaking their indigenous festivals. Many who have completed the absurd “pilgrimage” have excitedly joined in such organized pseudofestivals as the Macy’s Christmas Parade, the New Year’s Eve assembly at Times Square, the Orange Bowl Parade in Pasadena, or even the Disney World and Disneyland experience, only to come away sorely disappointed, utterly depressed by the artificiality, the devastating emptiness, the total lack of “spirit.” It is clear that the economic situation of CARICOM nations would greatly improve if the leadership, intellectual and otherwise, would do more than muse on these matters.

Paz masterfully uncovers the core problem, those assemblies of celebrating humanity never coalesce into a community; they are just agglomerations of individuals. And Paz does not find the mayor’s position to be surprising. If the leadership in Trinidad and Tobago had the insight of that minor Mexican mayor there would be a clearer national understanding of the Carnival and a corresponding clearer national policy towards it. One that would generate a sense of ownership over this significant element of the tiny nation’s cultural patrimony. According to the perverse logic of white supremacy, poor people, Mexicans as well as other Original World natives, waste money on festivals. Poor Africans throughout the Americas-from Rio de Janeiro, to Panama, to Barranquilla, Colombia, to Port-au-Prince, to New Orleans-have traditionally centered their cultural, social, and economic life on the Carnival.

The potential for economic development through Carnivals in CARICOM is, then, tremendous. It is clear that the various national governmental apparatuses have begun to be aware of this potential. They know that Carnival is a genuine festival. With a fuller understanding of the history of the festival this knowledge will lead to empowerment. The unity in diversity paradigm will clear the way for such a fuller understanding. For sociologists studying have provided the data on this African-ancestored population throughout the Americas is instructive. Joyce Jackson, for example, reports on the African Americans who play Indian mass annually in New Orleans. Nina de Freidmann reports on the African Colombians who play mass in the Barranquilla area. And John M. Likspi describes a similar practice across the border in Panama. The Carnival of Rio is of such a lavish scale as to astound all observers and must clearly consume much if not all of the resources of the participants, who in many instances are jobless Africans

The Paz-like understanding of Carnival leads to the economic empowerment of the people over their cultural patrimony. The concept of “sustainable development” has been fully endorsed by the transnational money elite, thereby canonizing and considerably sanitizing the notion of economic empowerment of Original World peoples over their natural resources, including their cultural patrimony. The route to be taken towards “sustainable development” is clearly one that would make the Carnival the center of a cultural tourism. Such a tourism would be analogous to the ecotourism that has recently become the rage. Just as home economics was at one time renamed human ecology, so too a cultural phenomenon like the Carnival can be considered to fit under the rubric of human ecology. And on this basis an authentic “humanoecotourism” could be developed. This would be a tourism that, for a change, would be fully controlled by the native peoples of the Original World.

The Caribbean cruise is a particularly significant example of the exploitation of Carnival by the corporate interests of the North. Through the mechanisms of the mass media, a need has been created for the Caribbean cruise. This need has spread like a cancer, first to the African American population and now even to the “pilgrims from the sun.” The Carnival motif has been used as a lure. So, irony of ironies, “pilgrims from the sun,” has now decided that a Caribbean cruise is an absolute necessity. CARICOM born residents of the North now go back home, their return to the native land mediated by the corporate interests of the North. Their experience is organized within the matrix of a pseudofestival in such a way that these corporate interests keep ninety-nine cents of every dollar spent. And these very dupes, these hapless “pilgrims from the sun” who would consider themselves blessed to spend upwards of six thousand dollars on a ten-day, cruise-ship, transnational-orchestrated “return to the native land” for their family would begrudge the spending of one thousand dollars annually for a spouse to enjoy the authentic experience of “coming back home for the Carnival.”

Carnival as an African Festival

E. A. Wallis Budge, the British Egyptologist whose work is about a century old, has given the scholarly world much information on and insight into the cult of Osiris (Wosir) in his two volume book, Osiris and the Egyptian Resurrection. Budge reports that the centerpiece of Kemetic devotion to Wosir was the annual mystery play that was performed principally in the holy cities of Abydos and Dendera up in the south of Egypt. Budge gets his information, he tells us, from “The second portion of the inscription on the stele of I-kher-nefert . . . [which] describes briefly the principal scenes in the Osiris play which was performed at Abydos annually” (II 5). Budge continues:

I-kher-nefert himself played a prominent part in this “Mystery play,” and he describes his own acts as follows:—

“I performed the coming forth of Ap-uat when he set out to defend his father.”

From this it is clear that in the XIIth dynasty Ap-uat was regarded as the son of Osiris, and that he acted the part of leader of Osiris’s expedition, which was represented by a procession formed of priests and the ordinary people. (II 5)

Budge’s interpretation of the document on which he is reporting is convincing; it is a document of stage directions. The play is an annual religious ritual of singular importance in the life of the community. The king, Pharaoh, participated along with the priests and other officials as well as the common people; and it involved the movement of all the participants in procession through a public space.

Ap-uat walked in front, next came the boat containing the figure of the god and a company of priests or “followers” of the god, and a crowd of people brought up the rear.

“I drove back the enemy from the Neshmet Boat, I overthrew the foes of Osiris.”

The boat of the god was then attacked by a crowd of men who represented the foes of Osiris, and, as the god was defenseless, Ap-uat engaged them in combat, and beat them off, and the procession then continued on its way in the temple. (II 5-6)

The ritual is clearly a dramatic reenactment, a commemoration, of certain transcendent events in the life of the founding “god” or hero. There is a warrior theme. In fact, the presentation reminds us of those presentations of war scenes that Carnival bands like Tokyo and Casablanca used to put on in the Savannah and even in the streets of Port-of-Spain during the Carnival in the 1950s.

Budge further reports that

I-kher-nefert played the part of leader of the search party, and their wanderings probably occupied three days, during which the sham fight between the followers of Osiris and the followers of Set was repeated at intervals, and great lamentations were made. All these events were represented by the words “great coming-forth,” which to every Egyptian bore the most solemn significance. (II 6-7)

Budge has unearthed what could be seen as a template followed closely by the Africans who created “we thing,” the Trinidad and Tobago Carnival. At Carnival time stickfighters would roam the island in bands spurred on by shantwells, lead singers of the call-response kalinda (warrior) songs, to the rhythm of tambour bamboo. The shantwell was the captain, playing a role analogous to I-kher-nefert’s. Indeed, the band is still the fundamental organizational unit in the Carnival. However, as Pearl Eintou Springer, a Trinidad and Tobago based scholar and poet, has poignantly lamented in the piece she contributed to Ah Come Back Home, the Carnival band is not what it used to be: “HE [the I-kher-nefert type] is also disappearing from the bands themselves, pushed out by a mass of vibrant, energetic, orgiastic female flesh” (32). The wanderings of the small bands of the “long-time” Carnival would begin weeks before the official Carnival days. Kaiso singers even after they were no longer exclusively shantwells singing laways maintained the urge to wander, to take to the road like I-kher-nefert.

Skipping forward three or more millennia, Budge reports on a street processional dance to music in which people played roles wearing disguises. This was the spring festival for Auset (whom the Greeks called Isis)-Wosir’s faithful companion-in Rome.

At the head of the great procession came men who were dressed to represent a soldier, a huntsman, a woman, and a gladiator. Men dressed as magistrates, philosophers, fowlers, and fishermen . . . followed these. Then came women wearing white raiment and garlands of spring flowers, scattering blossoms as they went . . .. After these came a mixed multitude . . .. The musicians and a choir of youths followed these. (II, 296-97)

He had reported on another festival for Auset, which opened on November 10, and which “commemorated the murder of Osiris and finding of his body by Isis” (II, 296).

The element of theater that was central to the ancient Kemetic festival continues on after many millennia in the Roman one. Conventional wisdom affirms that the modern-day Carnival was derived from a Roman pre-Lenten festival, a bacchic saturnalia that the new Way reinterpreted into the Christian world order. The once pagan festival was stripped of its bacchanalian excesses, being converted into a decent Christian celebration of one final indulgence (hopefully not too, too licentious) in carnem [meat or “the flesh”], a fond farewell to “the flesh” in its literal and symbolic sense prior to the carnem levare, literally the taking away (removal) of flesh, that would be the forty days of fasting, abstinence, and general penance for sins that Lent represents.

The evidence would suggest that this original Roman pagan festival was really an African religious one, and one that has its roots in the mother of all festivals, the Wosirian mystery play. Nehusi’s essay corroborates this interpretation, presenting, indeed, even more compelling data and commentary. We argued in a second essay contributed to Ah Come Back Home that is was not the European French who exerted the greatest influence on the Trinidad and Tobago Carnival but rather the speakers of French Creole, an African language.

It is clear, too, that all of the contemporary New World Carnivals are closely related. Nina S. Friedemann, for example, reports on the aggressive self-assertion that characterizes the traditional Carnival celebrations in the region of Barranquilla, Colombia, especially in the central tradition of the groups of Congo dancers and mas players (to use the Trinidadian equivalent) who come out on the streets for the Carnival. In fact, as John M. Lipski reports, the Congo groups are found in neighboring Panama as well and the high point of their cultural life is precisely the Carnival season.

The fact is that, like Carnival, most popular culture throughout the world has an African base, and that this base is necessarily what the post-modern theorists would label a “meta-form.” So-called “pop” music is nothing but watered down African-American oral literature.

The fact is that the most vibrant cultural energies in the Americas are those provided by Africans, from go-go, to salsa, to reggae and Kaiso, to blues and jazz. Even the very, very “American” form, the Broadway musical is of African-American origin. The quintessential Argentine cultural expression, the tango, less than one hundred years ago was simply another Negro (“nigger”) dance.

Carnival is as Alleyne-Dettmers presents it a “meta-masking” phenomenon. It is the engine of unity in diversity, of reconciliation. Olaogun Adeyinka, a Trinidad and Tobago born scholar now based in Toronto, focuses in his contribution to Ah Come Back Home on the reconstruction element of Carnival. He cites Gordon Rohlehr, a Guyanese scholar now based in Trinidad and Tobago, who has written one of the definitive books on the Trinidad and Tobago Carnival. In his work, Calypso & Society, Rohlehr telescopes the confusion, which reigned in nineteenth-century Trinidad:

In the confused post-Emancipation period, the problems of identity and status must have been acute. How was status to be determined in a society where groups of Yorubas, say, fresh from Africa as indentured workers, or taken off slave ships, were living alongside creolized Blacks of French, English or Spanish background, East Indian indentured workers and a dozen or more fragmented ethnic groups, all experiencing severe problems of language in their relation to the power structure? Clearly in that mêlée, the man who was recognized as a possessor of the word and as a spokesman for the group occupied a position of supreme importance. Such a man would have been the chantwel of the Calinda bands. (52)

Adeyinka sees the festival as a “Carnival of hope … a Carnival of emancipation, commemoration, reconstruction, reassembling, and creativity which had its sacred ‘ritual beginning,’ as Errol Hill, in The Trinidad Carnival, so aptly writes, in the Canboulay reenactments and remembrances.”

Citing the data presented by Rohlehr, Adeyinka highlights the steady influx of immigrants from other Caribbean territories, such as Barbados, Grenada, Dominica, St. Vincent, Venezuela, Curacao. “Between 1838 and 1931 approximately 100,000 British West Indian migrants settled in Trinidad, the heaviest influx (665,000) occurring between 1871 and 1911”(8). Between 1841 and 1867 this Carnival of emancipation, commemoration, reconstruction, reassembling and creativity was also freshly nourished by the arrival from Africa of “3,383 ‘recaptives’ from Sierra Leone, 3,510 from the Kru coast near Liberia, and 3,396 from St. Helena” (7). Add to this social, political, linguistic, religious, and cultural maelstrom, Yoruba-speaking Africans with their “Orisha worship . . . [and] their songs, chants, liturgy and dirges,” forming new relationships, as Rohlehr points out, with “the Kongos, Hausas, Igboes, Rada and Gurunsi” (16-17).

Adeyinka concludes:

Post emancipation nineteenth century Carnival in Trinidad developed inside a cauldron of massive social, economic, political, linguistic, religious, and cultural unrest. We, indeed, have already paid some attention to the linguistic situation. There were major problems of adjustment, intragroup conflict and violence among the various African ethnic groups fighting for space and ascendancy. Rampant poverty, malnutrition, diseases, and atrocious living conditions prevailed. And the European puppet masters pulled the strings of discord and coercively implemented their policies of divide and rule, white supremacist indoctrination that included religious conversions, and an oppressive, Orwellian regimen of “control, censorship and containment.” But Africans fought back with the powerful spiritual, political, cultural, creative, and artistic tools at their disposal. The many insurrections that occurred during the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries, including the Canboulay riots of 1881, bear graphic testimonies to their determination not to surrender to the onslaught. (120)

The Carnival phenomenon proclaims the principle of unity in diversity with respect to the significant question of language. The academy basing itself on the sacrosanct assumption that language defines the culture has comfortably posited the division of the Caribbean into disparate cultural groups reflecting the European languages imposed by the colonizing powers. Thus the academy speaks confidently of a French Caribbean, a Spanish Caribbean, an English Caribbean (CARICOM for the most part), and a Dutch Caribbean.

None of those who declare confidently that Carnival as it is known in Trinidad and Tobago came from the French has ever tried seriously to sustain that the “French” in question was unambiguously French, that is, European “French.” Such a postulate would be rejected as patently preposterous. Even though those who declare confidently that Carnival came from the French have not evinced any real propensity for in-depth, holistic, historical analysis, they should at least be expected to apply a little common sense. Common sense indicates that in the context of the discussion of Carnival the “French” referred to is not really “French,” but more precisely what linguists term a French-based Creole language.

Creole is one of those marvelously ambiguous terms, its protean fluidity transferring from English to French to Spanish to Portuguese, and to all of the Creoles or creolized varieties associated with these European languages. So that “Creole” has as many mutually incompatible referents as créole or criollo or crioulo (Nor must it be forgotten for a moment that in the Caribbean there exists a well-established Portuguese-based Creole language, it is the Papiamento of the Dutch controlled islands- Caribbean reality is, indeed, most marvelous). The term, then, belongs to the magical realm of poetry in which a word can mean “A” and “non-A” at the same time; it can have two diametrically opposed referents. Trinbagonians, for example, all know that the term “Creole” can refer to white people or to black people. Take, for example, the sentence: “That French Creole prefers to lime with Creole women, he can’t stand Indians or other French Creoles.”

It can be reasonably argued that the term “Creole” is most fully applicable when it is acknowledged to be exactly coterminous with “African.” It can be reasonably argued that the French-based Creole referred to in discussion of the Trinidad and Tobago Carnival is a fundamentally African language. Thus the “Creole” referred to in such discussion is always the African Creole as distinct from the European one. This is true even when “Creole” is used in conjunction with “French.” Not only is Trinidadian French Creole an African language, but it follows that so too are Haitian Creole, Papiamento, and the many forms of English Creole-especially the Creole called pidgin that is the current lingua franca in West Africa. Our second essay in the collection, Ah Come Back Home examined certain French Creole kaisos from nineteenth and twentieth century Trinidad and Tobago Carnival showing them to be samples of popular oral poetry that can be considered a valid expression of Negritude.

Trinbagonians think of their Carnival simply as “we thing.” The book, Ah Come Back Home argued that the Trinidad and Tobago Carnival has never ceased to be a manifestation of the quintessential African festival, the mother of all festivals. Trinbagonians can then rightly claim their festival as “we thing” only because it is a “black thing.” It is, in fact, the most representative and the greatest Pan-African festival.

Conclusion

The cultural diversity model has been the preferred one in the Western intellectual establishment’s approach to the Caribbean. The study proposes, however, replacing this with the unity in diversity model. The study further suggests that the unity in diversity model is the key to unlocking the rich potential of the Caribbean.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Allen, James P. Middle Egyptian: An Introduction to the Language and Culture of Hieroglyphs. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000.

Allen’s book makes accessible to the contemporary scholar the impressive contributions of the renowned Egyptologists. The book is composed of twenty-six lessons presenting a comprehensive treatment of the grammar of Middle Egyptian. Thus it is an indispensable tool for any scholar interested in learning this the real classical language. In addition there are extremely insightful essays on the culture of the Kemet.

Bernal, Martin. Black Athena: The Afroasiatic Roots of Classical Civilization. 2 vols. New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 1987, 1991.

These are lengthy tomes of painstaking scholarship. However, reading them proves to be a fascinating experience and an indispensable one for every humanist.

Budge, E. A. Wallis. Osiris and the Egyptian Resurrection. 2 vols. 1911. Reprint. New York: Dover, 1973.

Budge tends to be frowned on by contemporary mainstream Egyptologists. However, his work is very popular among nonconventional Afrocentric scholars.

Davis, Kortright. Emancipation Still Comin’: Explorations in Caribbean Emancipatory Theology. Maryknoll, New York: Orbis, 1990.

Davis, an Episcopalian priest, is a Caribbean intellectual who is a faculty member in the School of Divinity of Howard University. He was born in Antigua and is one of those Caribbean intellectuals intent on developing a theoretical presentation representative of the region.

Diop, Cheikh Anta. Civilization or Barbarism: An Authentic Anthropology. Trans. Yaa-Lengi Meema Ngemi. Eds. Harold J. Salesmson and Marjolijn de Jager. New York: Hill, 1991.

_____ The African Origin of Civilization: Myth or Reality. Editor and Translator Mercer Cook. New York: Hill, 1974.

Diop, born in Senegal, is the veritable dean of modern Afrocentric scholarship. His scholarship is impeccable.

Friedemann, Nina S. de. “Perfiles sociales del carnaval en Barranquilla (Colombia).” Montalb(n [Universidad Católica “Andrés Bello”, Caracas] 15 (1984): 127-52.

Friedemann was one of the first Colombian anthropologists to study the Barranquilla Carnival.

Hill, Errol. The Trinidad Carnival: Mandate for a National Theatre. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1972.

Hill is a Trinidad and Tobago born scholar and Emeritus Professor at Dartmouth College. His work on Carnival is now three decades old, but it is still useful reading.

James, George G. M. Stolen Legacy: The Greeks were not the authors of Greek Philosophy, but the people of North Africa, commonly called the Egyptians. 1954. Reprint. San Francisco: Richardson, 1985.

James was born in British Guiana (now Guyana) but came to America to develop as a scholar. He was trained in Latin and Greek. He unfortunately died within a year of the publication of his book. The book went largely unnoticed by the mainstream academy until it was reissued in the 1980s as part of the burgeoning interest in Afrocentrism. James’s book is simple, the style somewhat schematic. It is, however, a most powerful contribution to knowledge.

Keita, Lancine. “African Philosophical Systems: A Rational Reconstruction.” The Philosophical Forum 9 (1977-78): 169-189.

Keita was born in Trinidad and Tobago. He attended Queens Royal College and then “went away to study.” He holds the Ph.D. in philosophy and taught for many years at Howard University. He is, clearly, one of the first scholars trained in the mainstream academy to apply the insights of Cheikh Anta Diop to research in philosophy.

Knight, Franklin W. The Caribbean: The Genesis of a Fragmented Nationalism. New York: Oxford University Press, 1978.

Knight was born in Jamaica. He is very much a mainstream historian, being one of the first African-ancestored scholars to be granted tenure at The Johns Hopkins University. Knight works within the established paradigm. However, as a Caribbean man he is keenly aware of the strong bonds that unite all the peoples of the region.

Liverpool, Hollis “Chalkdust.” Rituals of Power and Rebellion: The Carnival Tradition in Trinidad and Tobago 1763-1962. Chicago: Research Associates/Frontline Distribution, 2001.

“Chalkdust” is one of the leading kaisonians in contemporary Trinidad and Tobago. This book is his Ph.D. dissertation in history from the University of Michigan. Since it is essentially a dissertation, Liverpool’s work is exhaustive and unimaginatively “correct.” However, it is a rich source of vital information about the Trinidad and Tobago Carnival.

Llerena Villalobos, Rito. Memoria cultural en el vallenato: Un modelo de textualdad en la canci(n foclórica colombiana. Medell(n: Centro de Investigaciones Facultad de Ciencias Humanas U. de A., 1985.

This work provides invaluable insight into the cultural reality of a Caribbean people from Colombia.

Puerta, Laurian, ed. Carnaval en La Arenosa. Barranquilla, Colombia: Fondo de Publicaciones de La Universidad del Atlántico, 1999.

This is an important collection of essays on the Barranquilla Carnival. The work manifests the commitment of the Universidad del Atlántico, the regional university, to the cultural and economic empowerment of the people of the nation.

Rohlehr, Gordon. Calypso & Society in Pre-Independence Trinidad. Tunapuna, Trinidad: N.P: 1990.

Rohlehr is a Guyanese intellectual who is Professor of English at the University of the West Indies, Saint Augustine. His is the most thorough analysis of the development of the Trinidad and Tobago Carnival.

Smart, Ian Isidore. Amazing Connections: Kemet to Hispanophone Africana Literature. Washington, D.C: Original World Press, 1996.

This work takes Diop’s watershed thesis into the realm of Hispanic studies. It argues that Hispanidad (“Hispanicity”) is essentially an African product, having come into being under the tutelage of Moors, that is, black-skinned people who came from Africa and Northeast Africa, professed Islam, and had Arabic as their official language.

_____. Central American Writers of West Indian Origin: A New Hispanic Literature. Washington, D.C.: Three Continents Press, 1984.

This work blazed a trail which is yet to be followed by the academy.

_____. Nicol(s Guill(n, Popular Poet of the Caribbean. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1990.

This is the only Afrocentric Pan-Caribbean study of the work of the National Poet of Castro’s Cuba.

_____ and Kimani S. K. Nehusi, eds. Ah Come Back Home: Perspectives on the Trinidad and Tobago Carnival. Washington, D.C: Original World Press, 2000.

Smart is from Belmont, Port-of-Spain. He teaches Spanish at Howard University. Nehusi was born in Queenstown Village, Essequibo Coast, Guyana. He is director of the Afrika Studies Centre at the University of East London. The contributors to this groundbreaking collection are all both highly trained and experienced in several relevant fields. Some are practicing academics; all are long-standing initiates and intellectuals of the beloved festival. The resulting work is not merely informative, but also authoritative, challenging, and stimulating. It is the only published book to present Carnival as the ultimate Pan-African festival.

Van Sertima, Ivan. They Came Before Columbus: The African Presence in Ancient America. New York: Random House, 1976.

Van Sertima is a Guyanese scholar who has distinguished himself in the mainstream academy. He has taught at Rutgers University for many years. His work is nothing short of spectacular. It is absolutely required reading for anyone interested in understanding Latin America.

Warner-Lewis, Maureen. Guinea’s Other Suns: The African Dynamic in Trinidad Culture. Dover, Massachusetts: The Majority Press, 1991.

Warner-Lewis was born in Trinidad and Tobago. She holds the Ph.D. in linguistics and teaches in the Department of English of the University of the West Indies, Mona. Her book “is a social and cultural history of a unique kind: it captures the African experience in the Caribbean through the Yoruba language - in song, prayers, dirges, humour and philosophy.”

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