Maroc - NEWSDAY.CO.TT - A la Une - 06/Jan 08:40

A celebration of violation

THE EDITOR: On January 4 and 5 I noticed the Venezuelan neighbours across the road climbing their stairs with heavy feet. They work seven days a week. Every one of them, with only Christmas Day off. On the morning of January 5 I saw the young Venezuelan woman. Quiet sadness in her body. Contained. Unspoken. That is grief moving through the nervous system before language catches up. The Trinidadians and Venezuelans crowing about “victory” have no idea what they are cheering. They confuse noise with strength and collapse with triumph. They have never carried sovereignty in their bones, so they do not recognise it when it is being torn away. No one wants their country invaded. Not with bombs. Not with sanctions. Not with “rescue” that reeks of ownership and American hegemony. Those who understand history feel this immediately in the gut. Those who do not, celebrate. What exactly is the American government claiming to have liberated Venezuelans from? Their own sanctions. Over 20 years of them. Sanctions that caused starvation. Sanctions that forced more than eight million people to flee their homeland just to survive. Sanctions that pushed Venezuelans into countries where they do not speak the language and are abused, trafficked, exploited, and broken – including right here in TT. Sanctions that left those who stayed behind surviving by their fingernails in deep poverty. Is that the victory? TT has not lived through the same scale of imposed suffering as Venezuela, Haiti, or Jamaica. Most people here have never been forced into a sustained fight-or-die struggle for sovereignty. That does not mean there was no resistance here. Our resistance took different forms. Stick-fighting emerged as a direct challenge to French and British colonial control. Supporters of the early steelpan movement were beaten, reviled, criminalised, and crushed by authority. Black women were forced to cover their heads, and from that coercion came the headwraps that later became symbols of cultural pride. Early trade union protests were met with bullets. People were cut down by the colonial power for organising and refusing silence. That history lives in us and it is from that our fierce independence in all forms originate, often in the wrong-and-strong attitude. These are remembered every dawn of Carnival in the Canboulay when flambeaux burn, drums thunder, and the population gathers to witness. It is real. It is powerful. And it deserves respect. But it is not the same as a nation being starved, sanctioned, bombed, and invaded into submission. Understanding that distinction matters. So tell me again, what is being celebrated with the American invasion? The return of colonial dominance under a different flag? History does not forget these moments, even when crowds do. C HIDALGO via e-mail The post A celebration of violation appeared first on Trinidad and Tobago Newsday.