A day or two ago, we heard a story about a revelation of things to come prophesied by a crazy man living in San Cristobal, the island made famous by the Barbadian novelist George Lamming. Although most of the island’s inhabitants descend from Africans who were enslaved and, to a lesser extent, Asians who were indentured, you find a mix of people in San Cristobal. San Cristóbal is a beautiful, paradisiacal place. San Cristobalians, who still carry EU passports, live off tourist dollars and euros.
Though poverty exists on the island, it is classified as a High-Income Country by the World Bank. Warfare, pogroms, famine, dictatorship, and legal segregation, which are common outside of the EU, are unknown to the people of San Cristobal. These things are unknown on the island, because San Cristobal, though located in the Americas, is within the bastion of the EU’s rule-based order.
A small, highly educated faction in San Cristobal, who rub shoulders with Caricom leaders, calls this colonialism. Most inhabitants, however, are usually unperturbed by the island’s legal status. They care about putting food on the table, boarding a cruise, doing online shopping in North American stores, and having enough money to party and enjoy carnival. They do, however, increasingly think that the educated faction has a point when they say San Cristobal should go politically independent, stand on its own feet, and join the Caricom…in the future.
This is the island where the crazy man lives. Locals refer to the crazy man as simply Crazy, as few remember his Christian name. Crazy is mad as a hatter, and like all such eccentric figures, he can sporadically utter stunning truths. Here is a truth that has the inhabitants of San Cristobal preoccupied.
Saturday, as most of the islanders were busy going about their business, some still fatigued from the night before, the news dropped: Trump caught Maduro! Everyone and their neighbor began asking, “What happened?” “You are lying!” “Could it be True?” “What's going to happen now?” “Trump says, the USA will run Venezuela.”
A crowd gathered, and a heated conversation ensued. Some lauded Trump for capturing the rogue who had caused so many Venezuelans sorrow and grief. Maduro, and before him Chavez, had transformed that Caribbean jewel with all the oil in the world into a country full of hungry people fleeing for their lives. Sister islands such as Aruba and Curaçao were being flooded with Venezuelans whom the authorities there could now send back. “Thank Trump and Jesus,” they exclaimed for ridding the region of Maduro, a drug lord who ruined so many American and Caribbean lives. Kamla Persad-Bissessar, the Prime Minister of Trinidad & Tobago, they said, was right to support Trump. She was now the Caribbean leader to look up to, not the Barbadian Prime Minister Mia Mottley, who cowardly said, “Venezuela is our friend. The United States of America is our friend. Such spineless foolishness.
Others involved in the conversation, however, contested what they considered the character assassination of Maduro. For them, the mustached strong man of Venezuela is a revolutionary in league with the deceased Maurice Bishop, Fidel Castro, Marcus Garvey, and Che Guevara. Trump, they insisted, is a convicted felon and a close friend of the notorious pedophile Jeffrey Epstein, who had no right to come after Maduro. Didn’t former Fox news star Tucker Carlson, who has a fan or two on the island, they averred claim that Maduro had “banned pornography, banned abortion, banned gay marriage, banned sex changes, and banned usury”. In their estimation, Maduro was a revolutionary with Christian values, the best combination. What’s more, he had openly pledged to support Caricom in their bid for reparations against what he called savage European countries. Being against Maduro is being against the ancestors who suffered and struggled and persevered, so that Caribbean people can fight today. Mottley was right to remain supportive of Venezuela. Kamla was another imperial lackey. Remember, they said, quoting the legendary Johnny Clarke, “they sold Marcus Garvey for rice and peas.” “How much did Trump pay Venezuelans to betray Maduro?
As the heated conversation discussing what had happened to Maduro, and how it should be interpreted, was about to reach boiling point, Crazy ran up to the crowd and sang in a melody borrowed from the Might Shadow’s Dat Soca Boat that “what happened is part of what is happening”. He repeated the lines and sang in such a way, like a mantra, that it caused the crowd to go silent. Then Crazy took the opportunity to explain that what happened to Maduro is connected to CECOT in San Salvador and the smaller slave plantations in the USA. “Plantations?” They corrected him, “those are prisons. Crazy snapped back, “No, they are prison industrial complexes, read a book. Prisoners are slaves who work on these former plantations for free or next to nothing. CECOT, according to Crazy, which currently holds 110.000 people detained, who are not allowed counsel or communication with family and friends, is the future in the present. “You have workers who will never again be able to procreate, who will work till they die and never see family and friends. He went on to say that many of the people being deported from the USA end up in CECOT, never to be seen again, replenishing the cheap labor force. “The Middle Passage all over again. “What does that have to do with us”, one man nervously blasted as though warding off an omen? “That depends on our future location” Crazy softly replied, “when Trump is finished deporting all those immigrants, and imprisons able-bodied poor Americans in slave plantations while the rest die of opioid overdoses, then good gentleman, then, the new indentured workers from the politically independent Caribbean and Latin America will be strangled with H2-A visas to pick oranges, play nanny, and do construction work. The New World order that Trump dreams of, a good gentleman, is one in which politically independent countries in the Americas supply cheap labor, jailed labor, natural resources, and open their markets to the USA. Don’t worry, though, the Americans will still vacation here in San Cristobal and in the Riviera. Trump plans to build on the rubble of Gaza. That is a new game.”
“Well, then, we are safe, being a tourist destination,” the man fumbled. “It all depends on our future location,…You think Trump can sink the Soca Boat!” Then Crazy departed, singing his Shadow-inspired rhyme, “What happened is part of what is happening.
Prof. dr. Francio Guadeloupe
University of Amsterdam/Royal Netherlands Institute for Southeast Asian & Caribbean Studies
Pedro de Weever, St. Maarten journalist and novelist.