IRA MATH­UR

Last week, Book­shelf ex­plored An­drea’s Jour­ney: From Free­dom Fight­er to True Lib­er­a­tion, the mem­oir of An­drea Ja­cob, a woman whose life was shaped by the Black Pow­er Rev­o­lu­tion of the 1970s in T&T.

We fol­lowed her sto­ry from her ear­ly years as a young teacher in south Trinidad to her in­volve­ment with the Na­tion­al Unit­ed Free­dom Fight­ers (NUFF) and her time on the run be­fore be­ing cap­tured by the po­lice.

Ja­cob’s mem­oir is a deeply per­son­al ac­count of her rev­o­lu­tion­ary spir­it, search for jus­tice and spir­i­tu­al trans­for­ma­tion. Ja­cob’s book sheds light on a crit­i­cal pe­ri­od in Trinidad’s his­to­ry when young peo­ple were dri­ven to ques­tion the in­equal­i­ties of their so­ci­ety and de­mand change.

As Ja­cob re­flects, “I wrote this for those who nev­er had a chance to tell their own sto­ries. For the ones whose voic­es were snuffed out too soon, leav­ing this world with­out say­ing what need­ed to be said.”

Her mem­oir speaks for her­self and her com­rades, who could no longer tell their tales.

This week, Book­shelf presents Dr Rho­da Red­dock’s re­flec­tions on An­drea’s Jour­ney: From Free­dom Fight­er to True Lib­er­a­tion.

De­liv­ered at the book launch on Au­gust 24, 2024, at the Na­tion­al Li­brary and In­for­ma­tion Ser­vices (NALIS) Au­di­to­ri­um in Port-of-Spain, Dr Red­dock’s analy­sis ex­plores An­drea Ja­cob’s sto­ry’s per­son­al and po­lit­i­cal weight, ex­am­in­ing how this mem­oir re­veals the up­heaval of a na­tion and the choic­es made in the face of those shift­ing re­al­i­ties.

Dr Red­dock, Pro­fes­sor Emeri­ta of Gen­der, So­cial Change, and De­vel­op­ment at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI) and for­mer Deputy Prin­ci­pal of the St Au­gus­tine Cam­pus, de­liv­ered these re­marks at the launch of An­drea Ja­cob’s mem­oir.

“It’s a plea­sure to have been asked to bring a few re­marks at the launch of this his­toric book. I must ac­knowl­edge An­drea Ja­cob and all the oth­er NUFF (Na­tion­al Unit­ed Free­dom Fight­ers) mil­i­tants and so­cial ac­tors of the 1970s who are present with us this evening.

I con­grat­u­late and thank An­drea for tak­ing the time and ef­fort to write this book and us­ing her re­sources to pro­duce it. This book is sig­nif­i­cant for sev­er­al rea­sons: it is a record­ing of her re­flec­tions on an im­por­tant his­tor­i­cal move­ment and mo­ment, pre­sent­ing some of her bi­og­ra­phy grow­ing up in south Trinidad, and it adds to our col­lec­tion of crit­i­cal bi­o­graph­i­cal doc­u­ments that en­rich our his­tor­i­cal canon.

This is a tale of youth­ful ide­al­ism, nec­es­sary for the changes we want to see in our so­ci­eties. An­drea and her col­leagues chose one path. For me, this book holds per­son­al as well as na­tion­al sig­nif­i­cance. The 1960s–1970s was when I came of age as a teenag­er and young woman. It was an ex­cit­ing and chal­leng­ing time. The world was in tur­moil with the civ­il rights and Black Pow­er move­ments in the US, where our own Stoke­ly Carmichael was a lead­ing fig­ure; the Women’s Move­ment; the con­sol­i­da­tion of the Cuban rev­o­lu­tion; the na­tion­al lib­er­a­tion strug­gles against colo­nial­ism in Africa and Apartheid in South Africa; and al­so the peace and an­ti-war move­ments in the Unit­ed States.

Our lo­cal Black Pow­er Move­ment, a con­fig­u­ra­tion of or­gan­i­sa­tions such as the UWI Stu­dent’s Guild, pro­gres­sive trade unions, and the Young Pow­er move­ment, had come to­geth­er to form the Na­tion­al Joint Ac­tion Com­mit­tee (NJAC), which led to what has been called the Feb­ru­ary Rev­o­lu­tion in 1970.

Lat­er in the 1970s, oth­er ac­tions emerged to ad­dress its per­ceived un­fin­ished busi­ness.

Bri­an Meeks de­scribes it in these words: “Such a pro­found po­lit­i­cal se­quence, how­ev­er, thrust­ing tens of thou­sands of young peo­ple in­to ac­tive po­lit­i­cal dis­course, could not sim­ply end by procla­ma­tion. Even as the ink was dry­ing on the soon-to-be-ig­nored agree­ment be­tween the se­nior of­fi­cials and their sub­or­di­nates, which end­ed the mutiny, oth­er de­ci­sions were be­ing tak­en a few miles away in work­ing-class dis­tricts of the west­ern sub­urbs of Port-of-Spain” (Bri­an Meeks, Nar­ra­tives of Re­sis­tance, 2000, 520).

Meeks de­scribed the com­ing to­geth­er of dis­en­chant­ed mid­dle-class and work­ing-class youth from ar­eas such as Wood­brook, St James, Laven­tille, Diego Mar­tin, San Juan, and, of course, south Trinidad, in­clud­ing Fyz­abad and Point Fortin. These were main­ly young men but al­so young women, such as my class­mate Jen­nifer Jones, her sis­ter Bev­er­ly, and An­drea her­self.

I was in­trigued by their rev­o­lu­tion­ary prin­ci­ples men­tioned in the book—”the peo­ple first, each oth­er sec­ond, and our­selves last” (Ja­cob, 2024:52)—and that women and their bod­ies were to be re­spect­ed.

As young peo­ple at that time, we were forced to think dif­fer­ent­ly, to ques­tion the colour and class dis­tinc­tions that per­pet­u­at­ed lo­cal in­equal­i­ties, to reval­i­date the neg­a­tiv­i­ty as­so­ci­at­ed with Africa and In­dia, and to re­assess our iden­ti­ties—who we were and what we rep­re­sent­ed.

We rethought no­tions of beau­ty and good cul­ture, chal­leng­ing colo­nial and pa­tri­ar­chal ideas about women’s place. Male and fe­male stu­dents, in­clud­ing some of my col­leagues, left pres­ti­gious schools to join the demon­stra­tions through NORS—the Na­tion­al Or­ga­ni­za­tion of Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Stu­dents.

Even the es­tab­lished Ro­man Catholic and An­gli­can church­es had to re­think their litur­gi­cal styles and re­spond to cri­tiques of their colo­nial and racist ideas and prac­tices. Lo­cal foods, once looked down up­on, were now le­git­imised. Bread­fruit was no longer “slave food.”

We could take our greasy brown bags of fried bake, bara, and roti to school. No one who ex­pe­ri­enced this pe­ri­od emerged un­touched or un­changed. Even Er­ic Williams had to ad­just some of his eco­nom­ic strate­gies in the name of Black Pow­er.

Along­side this, we al­so wit­nessed the grow­ing pow­er of a mil­i­tarised state ma­chin­ery, which was al­lowed to op­er­ate with rel­a­tive free­dom to con­trol po­lit­i­cal protests and “mil­i­tants in the hills,” per­ceived as a threat to the po­lit­i­cal sys­tem.

We were a gen­er­a­tion that be­lieved in the pos­si­bil­i­ty of so­cial change. We com­mit­ted our lives to a larg­er so­cial good, some­thing big­ger than our­selves—very dif­fi­cult for many young peo­ple to­day to un­der­stand. An­drea cap­tured our lifestyles grow­ing up, the mu­sic we lis­tened to, and the re­la­tion­ships we had in com­mu­ni­ties that of­ten crossed eth­nic bar­ri­ers.

She al­so high­light­ed the in­ter­na­tion­al in­flu­ences that cap­tured our imag­i­na­tion. The books she stud­ied in po­lit­i­cal ed­u­ca­tion class­es in the South were some of the same books I read at uni­ver­si­ty and owned un­til warned to get rid of them. She cap­tured the process­es through which a gen­er­a­tion of in­tel­li­gent, po­lit­i­cal­ly sen­si­tised mid­dle- and work­ing-class young women and men de­cid­ed to make sac­ri­fices—through the Young Pow­er move­ment, in­flu­enced by fig­ures like Michael Als, var­i­ous Black Pow­er or­gan­i­sa­tions, pro­gres­sive trade unions, demon­stra­tions, and study groups—all try­ing to make the world a bet­ter place. Her choice, along with those of her NUFF col­leagues, was di­rect ac­tion through armed con­flict, ex­am­ples we had seen in oth­er parts of the re­gion and the world but which can of­ten sow the seeds of its own de­struc­tion.

This book is im­por­tant be­cause it can trans­fer knowl­edge to gen­er­a­tions for whom this ex­pe­ri­ence is so dis­tant. It is sig­nif­i­cant in a so­ci­ety that al­ways dis­cuss­es a his­to­ry most of us do not know—a his­to­ry that is not taught in schools, not re­flect­ed in our pub­lic mon­u­ments, and not read about, as we are in­creas­ing­ly less of a read­ing so­ci­ety (un­less it’s on Tik­Tok and no longer than five lines).

This book is there­fore an im­por­tant piece of per­son­al and po­lit­i­cal his­to­ry that we should all know more about and un­der­stand.

In end­ing, I can­not help but re­flect on our sit­u­a­tion to­day, where so many young men, in par­tic­u­lar, have tak­en up arms—not for a so­cial cause or ide­al­is­tic un­der­stand­ing of so­cial change, but rather, I sug­gest, through a con­fla­tion of fac­tors in­clud­ing eco­nom­ic in­equal­i­ty, ab­sence of ro­bust so­cial sup­port sys­tems, so­cial degra­da­tion of ur­ban and rur­al com­mu­ni­ties, fail­ures of our ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem, warped no­tions of mas­culin­i­ty, and a nar­cis­sis­tic ide­ol­o­gy where in­di­vid­ual in­ter­ests su­per­sede so­ci­etal ones.

All of this pro­vides an open door to or­gan­ised crime and the glob­al nar­co-traf­fick­ing in­dus­try. Once again, we do not take time to un­der­stand why young peo­ple are do­ing this—why we are in an un­de­clared civ­il war. We sim­ply seek to shoot our way out of this, as we tried be­fore.

In re­la­tion to the NUFF mil­i­tants, Bri­an Meeks asked: “What would make a cross-sec­tion of fair­ly or­di­nary Trinida­di­ans, in­vari­ably car­i­ca­tured as fun-lov­ing, seek to sac­ri­fice fam­i­ly, nor­mal­i­ty, limb, and ul­ti­mate­ly life for a cause that was at best ill-de­fined or for a goal that was al­ways un­cer­tain?” (Meeks, 2000:56).

I would like to sug­gest that there are al­so deep and pro­found ques­tions we need to ask of mar­gin­alised youth and gang mem­bers in our so­ci­ety to­day.

–End of the pre­sen­ta­tion by Dr Rho­da Red­dock at the launch of An­drea’s Jour­ney: From Free­dom Fight­er to True Lib­er­a­tion

Ira Math­ur is a Guardian Me­dia jour­nal­ist and the win­ner of the 2023 OCM Bo­cas Prize for Non-Fic­tion for her mem­oir, Love The Dark Days.

Au­thor in­quiries: iras­room@gmail.com Web­site: www.iras­room.org