Letters to the Editor
Newsday
THE EDITOR: As TT pauses once again to honour African Emancipation Day, we do so not just in reflection but with a sense of urgent responsibility. Emancipation must not be treated as a ceremonial event. Instead, it is in fact a living, breathing demand for cultural dignity, psychological repair, and structural inclusion.
The Emancipation Support Committee’s Emancipation Village at the Queen’s Park Savannah has, over the years, become a necessary institution and an evolving platform where African heritage is celebrated through commerce, art and public interdisciplinary dialogue.
This year, the layout was efficient, the calendar well curated, and the logistics commendable. The mechanics are clearly sound. Yet, one can argue that the tents, while functional, do not evoke the spiritual or cultural depth of an African village or a place of ancestral reverence. There is no symbolic immersion, no spatial storytelling, no architecture of memory.
This disconnect is as historical and psychosocial as it is aesthetic. We are a nation that rightly celebrates the divine through public religious holidays for Catholics, Hindus, and Muslims. Yet, there is still no formal recognition of African traditional spirituality beyond the African Emancipation Day holiday. This is not a call for a new holiday but on August 1, it is a call to reflect on the cultural amnesia this absence reveals.
Many African-descended citizens remain unmoored from ancestral names, tribes, and belief systems unlike their Indo-Trinidadian counterparts who benefit from deeper continuities of culture, language, and, now, even access to overseas citizenship from India.
This cultural fragmentation manifests in alienation, economic disinvestment, and generational disconnection from the African continent. It compromises our collective identity, and the sustainability of spaces like the Emancipation Village.
Dr Eric Williams once envisioned a post-colonial society above the lines of race and religion where our republic would be built by citizens with a sense of place, not origin; a national identity of Trinidadians/Tobagonians whose national identity transcended ancestral origin.
Indeed, he famously echoed, “Together, the various groups in Trinidad and Tobago have suffered, together they have aspired, together they have achieved. Only together can they succeed. And only together can they build a society, can they build a nation, can they build a homeland. There can be no Mother India, for those whose ancestors came from India…there can be no Mother Africa, for those of African origin. There can be no Mother England and no dual loyalties…The only Mother we recognise is Mother Trinidad and Tobago, and Mother cannot discriminate between her children.”
Far from contradicting Williams’s vision, we must be reminded that African Emancipation Day strengthens it by affirming African identity within a plural society. This celebration and tribute helps build the very unity Williams aspired to. A country unified not based on sameness, but on mutual recognition, historical justice, and shared nationhood.
There is also the continued need for the holiday as we are reminded that the legacies of slavery, cultural erasure, ancestral disconnection, and systemic inequity remain unresolved for many citizens.
This is precisely why the Emancipation Village must evolve not only in layout, but in mission. Not only in celebration, but in structure. Why should such a powerful cultural site exist only for one week? Why not envision it as a permanent African Village as a sacred civic and economic hub, open year-round, offering Pan-African education and training, craft industries and entrepreneurship, traditional wellness and mental health programmes, genealogy services for diaspora citizens, immersive exhibitions for cultural tourism, and countless other services.
We understand that this transformation cannot happen without strong governance. This is why the Ministry of Culture’s recent call for accountability and the Emancipation Support Committee’s assurance of its commitment to best practices were important. But good governance from the committee and other cultural institutions must grow beyond compliance and into the depths of clarity of vision, sustainability, entrepreneurship, and institutional trust.
There are two very recent instances where we have seen what happens when these are lacking. Our national hockey team’s missed opportunity to attend the Pan Am tournament due to administrative missteps and, notably, the National Carnival Commission’s recurring financial losses despite its cultural centrality to what is supposed to be our greatest cultural and tourism-focused festival, also serving as a foreign exchange earning product.
It is clear that business-as-usual models of cultural management are untenable. Strategic planning, diversified revenue generation, and robust governance are urgent and universally needed in our civic spaces. We must develop models that reduce over-reliance on the state and shift toward sustainability, strategic partnerships, and enterprise-driven approaches; without losing our soul.
Can we now start daring to design spaces of cultural leadership and not dependency?
JASON BROOKS
via e-mail
