Aboard the Commandante Pineres (eBook)

Dominica, The 11th World Festival of Youth & Students, Cuba July 1978, & the Caribbean Struggle for National Liberation

Gabriel J. Christian (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2016 | 1. Auflage
200 Seiten
Bookbaby (Verlag)
978-1-4951-7170-3 (ISBN)

Infos

'Aboard the Commandante Pineres, Dominica, the 11th World Festival of Youth & Students, July 1978 and the Caribbean Struggle for National Liberation' is a riveting memoir by Caribbean trial lawyer Gabriel J. Christian of his early years on the British colony of Dominica. Born to a civil service family of modest means in 1961, Christian had six siblings who were reared in a family led by a stern World War II British Army veteran, Wendell McKenzie Christian. Christian's mother Alberta, a former 4-H Club leader, Women's Institute secretary, and Red Cross volunteer, was the manager of the Workshop of the Blind and a strong proponent of economic self reliance by his family. Both of Christian's parents were part of the striving middle class in the post war Caribbean. It is a time of the Cuban Revolution, Pan Africanism and a surging Black Power movement, set amidst the strident calls for self determination by the youthful leaders of the British colonies in the Caribbean. Christian becomes a leader at his high school and President of the Dominica Federation of Students, a left leaning pro-independence organization allied to Rosie Douglas' Popular Independence Committee. Douglas, a well known 1960s Black Power radical in Canada, forges links between Dominica and the Cuban Revolution and arranges for the trip to the 11th World Festival of Youth & Students in Havana, Cuba. Christian makes that trip aboard the Cuban ferry Commandante Pineres, after first flying to Barbados and Jamaica. His visit to Cuba is transformative and the Eastern Caribbean's history is changed thereafter, with left leaning political changes taking place in Dominica and St. Lucia, and the Grenada Revolution erupting on March 13, 1979. This memoir provides a detailed and hitherto unknown insight into a dynamic time in Caribbean history by one who was there.

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The trip to the Cuban Revolution is at the center piece of this well documented memoir of the Caribbean independence movement by Gabriel Christian who participated in it as a young student leader. The trip to Cuba in 1978 provides Christian with a platform from which to observe and opine upon the social changes and political upheavals on Jamaica, Dominica, St. Lucia and the Grenadian Revolution made one year later on March 13, 1979. The Grenada Revolution is made, in part, by some of the delegates who represented Grenada at the 11th World Festival of Youth & Students and who befriended Christian. Christian is also a leader in the radical surge which removes Dominica's Prime Minister Patrick John following the May 29, 1979 riot and uprising on his own island. Invited by his Grenadian revolutionary comrades to celebrate the first anniversary of the Grenadian Revolution, Christian glimpses the first signs of the intolerance which ultimately dooms the Grenadian Revolution. Christian had been involved, in some form or the other, in the radical politics which shaped his youth from the relatively tender age of nine when news of the 1970 Trinidad Regiment mutiny during the Black Power surge in that sister English speaking island stirred debate in his household. After witnessing the rise and fall of Caribbean radicalism, and the efforts at post independence leaders to build just and prosperous societies Christian has had great exposure which allows some to comment with some wisdom. A practicing attorney in Maryland and US federal courts, Christian is an active civic leader in the Washington, DC metro area, the wider Caribbean and to his island Dominica, to which he remains committed. His memoir confirms the importance of democratic norms such as: free and fair elections, strict adherence to parliamentary procedures, rule of law, due process, a strong civil society, an independent judiciary, a dynamic private sector committed to social responsibility, an equality of opportunity society, and integrity in governance as key to the continued freedom and prosperity of the Caribbean people.

Textauszug

Why The Liberation Struggle?

Where history is not recorded in print or on stone, or otherwise memorialized for the ages, it disappears. The oral tradition only works as long as the witnesses to the events under consideration are still among the living. I had the good fortune to have been a witness to, and participant in the post-World-War-II liberation struggle by Caribbean people toward statehood, and toward a more profound sense of African and indigenous pride and heritage denied us by slavery and colonialism. We sought to better the lot of our people who had resided as mere cogs in the wheels of Western development and industrialization, producing natural resources such as oil, bauxite, sugar or bananas as the times and needs of our rulers demanded. Our own ability to produce technology and realize innovation in management and societal structure, were cramped by our lack of authority over our affairs.

Despite being holders of British passports, as well as loyal British subjects, we had no elected representatives in the British parliament, and our local parliament had only limited dominion over our internal affairs – with none over our foreign affairs. It was for those reasons I became part of that national liberation struggle.

This work is a personal memoir from the inception of my political awakening. I date that awakening from 1970 and the mutiny of the Trinidad & Tobago Regiment during the Black Power surge in that sister nation, which caused much debate in our home. I recall the days of the Black Power movement; the Dread War; the return of Rosie Douglas and the independence movement; the trip to Cuba aboard the Commandante Pineres and meeting Fidel Castro; the rise and fall of the Grenada Revolution; the rise of Eugenia Charles to power and the Operation Red Dog invasion plot to unseat her; my departure for the United States, and what followed afterwards, to include the untimely deaths of Prime Minister Rosie Douglas and Pierre Charles. Finally, I will discuss the efforts we have made in the mobilization of Dominica’s overseas communities to aid the development process on the island.

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The natural orientation of human beings tends towards freedom. In that respect, Caribbean people had a great history of rebellions against slavery and agitation in the cause of self-government. Jamaica had gotten Universal adult suffrage in 1944; Dominicans got the right vote in 1951. A semblance of democracy – at least the right to vote - was something that had come to the ordinary Dominicans only ten years before I was born in January 1961. The Caribbean of my generation was one in which change was hurtling along.

By 1959, the Cuban Revolution had taken place. That event was one of the most dynamic political changes ever to take place in human history. Under its gifted leader Fidel Castro, Cuba was to arise from the role of mere casino and tourist playground to a perch of respected leadership among the newly emerging nations.

With the advent of the Cuban Revolution, illiteracy was abolished, the savage fissures of race and class in a former slave state were lessened, and workers and peasants were given a place at the table of nationhood. The role of the Cuban Revolution in awakening Latin American and Caribbean people of my generation to their disabilities and to the possibility of another path forward to social justice and development was unparalleled. Even the United States was compelled to alter its foreign policies as a result. No longer was the Latin American/Caribbean region an untended and forgotten “backyard.” Rather, the people of that region gained a new voice in their affairs, demanded greater democratization amongst the political classes, demanded better health and education models, and demanded access to economic power. By 1962, U.S. President John F. Kennedy had initiated the Alliance for Progress to ensure that those needs of the majority of the Latin American and Caribbean people were met.

By the 1970s, the uprisings against the brutal Portuguese oppression of Africans in lands such as Angola, Guinea Bissau, and Mozambique gained our attention. We held marches and raised funds for the liberation movements in those countries. Additionally, we demanded the release of Nelson Mandela and for an end to apartheid before it became popular around the world. In the Caribbean, we were the first to protest against apartheid at an international forum, when British West Indian Federation Minister of Social Welfare, Dominica born, Phyllis Shand Allfrey, led a walk-out of the West Indian delegation to the International Labour Conference in Switzerland in 1960. Allfrey, born of an aristocratic local white family, had become a Fabian socialist during her time in London and had been associated with Aneurin Bevan and the left wing of the British Labour Party. Together with local Emmanuel Christopher Loblack, she founded the Dominica Labour Party in 1955.

The socialist advocacy of Allfrey, alongside that of trade unionist Emmanuel Christopher Loblack, was part of the foundation that radicalized my generation. Dominicans had long fought for freedom; the Carib natives had fiercely resisted colonization and enslaved Africans had fled the plantations on the island for the mountains in great number. Dominicans, therefore, had a long history of political activism, to include strident calls for Universal adult suffrage and self-government by the free colored leaders in the 19th and early 20th centuries. By the end of World-War-II, those calls for self-determination were surging across the Caribbean.

Dominica’s Phyllis Shand Allfrey, politician and author (1908-1986); a Fabian socialist and writer in London and active in British Labour Party circles before and during World-War-II, she returned home to found the Dominica Labour Party alongside trade unionist Emmanuel Christopher Loblack. She was the Minister of Social Welfare, and only female cabinet member, in the short lived government of the British West Indian Federation (1957-1961).

The first local to serve as Chief Minister of Dominica was Frank Baron. From Portsmouth, Baron was a successful businessman and fruit exporter. His time in office will be remembered for bringing Dominica into the British West Indian Federation, and starting the building of the Princess Margaret Hospital and Dominica Grammar School. Baron’s Dominica United Peoples Party, associated with the commercial and planter elite, was defeated in the 1961 general elections.

When the socialism inclined Dominica Labour Party took office in 1961 under agriculturist and poet Edward Oliver LeBlanc, opportunities for high school and college education expanded. The ordinary Dominicans now had a greater pride in their heritage, and a sense of nationalism soared.

Frank Andrew Merrifield Baron (1923-2016) was Dominica’s first Chief Minister (1959-1961).

Edward Oliver LeBlanc (1923-2004), Dominica’s first Premier and the architect of self-government and associated statehood.

Emmanuel Christopher Loblack MBE, (1898-1995) mason, trade unionist, and politician was the father of the Dominica trade union movement and co-founder of the Dominica Labour Party.

I was born on January 1, 1961 to Wendell M. Christian (1921-2011), fireman, and Alberta Christian, then a housewife and Red Cross volunteer. Our parents were hard working, of firm Christian faith, and ran the home with a firm no-nonsense approach. I had three brothers - Wellsworth, Lawson, and Samuel - and three sisters - Christalin, Esther, and Hildreth. Over time Christalin, the first of my siblings, showed evidence of developmental disability, and was taken out of school, where she had faced abuse. She became our mother’s constant companion at work, church, and play; she showered us with love and care when we were younger. All my other siblings went on to excel in professional accomplishments - Wellsworth became the first Dominican-born Chief Veterinary Officer; Lawson became a Civil Engineer; and Samuel became a General Surgeon. Among the girls, Esther became a Certified Public Accountant and Hildreth become an Environmental Scientist. Our parents drilled the importance of education into our heads with a relentless passion.

The Christian family at Delices, Dominica in 1947, the year Wendell Mckenzie Christian returned from his World-War-II Service in the British Army (Courtesy Henckell L. Christian, Gatecrashing into the Unknown (SPAT Press, 1993).

We did not grow up in a vacuum. A radical intelligentsia had erupted from the urban educated classes to which my family belonged. Our father, Wendell Christian, was born in 1921. His upbringing was nourished on the warm embers of Victorian era conservatism and the principles of thrift, education, and a strong Christian faith. The Christian family had its roots in Antigua. Both my father’s parents, William Matthew Christian and Beryl Christian (nee Jones) came from Antigua to Dominica in 1918. William Matthew was an officer in the Leeward Islands Police Force and was responsible for Dominica’s eastern district for many years. He was a kind policeman, and a skilled guitarist, whose good deeds benefited his eldest son Henckell Christian later in life. Due to the noble reputation earned by his father, who with integrity and respect for the locals, policed the eastern district of LaPlaine, Rosalie, Petite Savanne, and Victoria – as well as his own good work as an elementary school principal - Henckell Christian never lost an election in the east.

Our family in 1972. Front...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 30.5.2016
• Vorwort: Dr. Irving W. Andre, Dr. Cecilia Green
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Literatur ► Biografien / Erfahrungsberichte
• Themenwelt: Sozialwissenschaften ► Politik / Verwaltung
• ISBN-10: 1-4951-7170-1 / 1495171701
• ISBN-13: 978-1-4951-7170-3 / 9781495171703