Dy­lan Ker­ri­g­an

Re­cent­ly, a tele­vi­sion news pro­gramme fea­tured a dis­pute over land in West­moor­ings. The dis­pute was this: mem­bers of a re­con­sti­tut­ed res­i­dents' as­so­ci­a­tion claimed own­er­ship over the land and want­ed to charge foot­ballers to use it, and de­vel­op it per their plans.

The foot­ballers-both res­i­dents and non-res­i­dents-who have been play­ing small-goal foot­ball there since 1989 main­tained it is state land that they brought back to life, and as it is state land, the as­so­ci­a­tion can­not charge them to use what be­longs to every­one. With­out fore­warn­ing, the res­i­dents' as­so­ci­a­tion be­gan to use heavy equip­ment to dig the land. The foot­ballers con­test­ed this with land sur­vey doc­u­ments from 1991 show­ing it to be state land.

The res­i­dents' as­so­ci­a­tion ig­nored this and re­fused to pro­duce their own doc­u­ments to prove the land be­longed to them. The Diego Mar­tin Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion told both sides to de­sist from do­ing any­thing to the land un­til the prop­er own­er­ship could be con­firmed. The foot­ballers agreed, on­ly to dis­cov­er soon af­ter that the res­i­dents' as­so­ci­a­tion ig­nored the re­quest and restart­ed their dig­ging. The dig­gers de­stroyed the foot­ball pitch and made it un­playable.

The po­lice be­came in­volved. On ar­rival they met a lo­cal coun­cil­lor di­rect­ing the dig­gers who de­clared he had the au­thor­i­ty do to what­ev­er he pleased with the land. This on­ly served to fur­ther in­flame the sit­u­a­tion, and both sides found them­selves in Four Roads po­lice sta­tion. Read as a cul­tur­al arte­fact with so­cial his­to­ry, these events tell us about pow­er, class and priv­i­lege in mod­ern-day Trinidad.

The phrase "Every creed and race find an equal place" has al­ways been one of our best sen­ti­ments. Yet life in T&T is not so sim­ple. We know not every class has equal po­lit­i­cal, eco­nom­ic and so­cial pow­er, or ac­cess to it. The rea­son, in ba­sic terms, is his­tor­i­cal. Pow­er in our lo­cal so­ci­ety is re­lat­ed to the his­tor­i­cal re­al­i­ties of trans­plant­ed pop­u­la­tions and the racial and eth­nic hi­er­ar­chy of colo­nial­ism these di­verse pop­u­la­tions en­coun­tered on ar­rival in the 18th, 19th and 20th cen­turies. Our var­i­ous groups and the in­di­vid­u­als they pro­duced de­vel­oped out of such struc­tur­al re­la­tions.

An­oth­er way to de­scribe that is to say that cer­tain groups in Trinidad and To­ba­go have had cu­mu­la­tive ad­van­tages over oth­er groups that have of­ten suf­fered cu­mu­la­tive dis­ad­van­tages. So for ex­am­ple, it is well agreed that an area like Laven­tille was not de­vel­oped with the same in­vest­ment and care as an area like Wood­brook.

It is much more than just race that de­ter­mined this. Class has al­ways been a cen­tral de­fin­er of so­cial, eco­nom­ic and po­lit­i­cal pow­er in Trinidad. Laven­tille was not de­vel­oped, be­cause it was a poor black area. Wood­brook was de­vel­oped, be­cause it was a mid­dle-class area. A sim­ple way to phrase this is that colo­nial­ism and post-colo­nial­ism trans­formed the stan­dards of liv­ing in Trinidad for some class­es more than oth­ers.

What has this got to do with the "land grab" in West­moor­ings? Well, let's break it in two. One of the pleas­ing things about small-goal foot­ball in Trinidad and To­ba­go is that the au­to­mat­ic sol­i­dar­i­ty of foot­ball and the lime that takes place around it pro­duces-for the most part-a func­tion­ing, non-leg­isla­tive, mul­ti­cul­tur­al space.

This is not to say there is a com­plete ab­sence of racial, eth­nic and class hi­er­ar­chies on small-goal foot­ball fields; rather, it means that most­ly-on an av­er­age day-racial and eth­nic ten­sion is sub­merged by group sol­i­dar­i­ty in a ful­ly func­tion­ing mul­ti­cul­tur­al foot­ball com­mu­ni­ty where foot­ball abil­i­ty, not race, class or eth­nic­i­ty, is the hi­er­ar­chal ethos. In this sense, small-goal is a pos­i­tive cul­tur­al prod­uct of our colo­nial past.

On the oth­er side, that some can ig­nore the re­quire­ment for le­gal doc­u­men­ta­tion of a piece of land be­fore they claim own­er­ship or seek rents for it, demon­strates a be­lief that they are not sub­ject to the same laws as their fel­low cit­i­zens. This is a re­flec­tion of hand­ed-down colo­nial in­equal­i­ties in the wider so­ci­ety. It is a neg­a­tive cul­tur­al prod­uct of our colo­nial past. That they can al­so reach out to those in pow­er like a coun­cil­lor to sup­port them is a re­minder of the nepo­tism and con­nec­tions his­to­ry has grant­ed some groups over oth­ers.

This is the neg­a­tive side of our mul­ti­cul­tur­al is­land; the "play­ing field of life" is not lev­el for every group, and in par­tic­u­lar, every class. There is an in­vis­i­ble so­cial struc­ture to our 50-year-old re­pub­lic. It plays out every day in mul­ti­ple ways. We all know it when we in­ter­act with it. In this sto­ry of dis­pute, this so­cial struc­ture sup­ports a small in-class-group, but pun­ish­es the cross-class group.

Who has the pow­er? The for­mer, who do not want to act with­in the law and play fair? Or the lat­ter, who are play­ing with­in the law, but have al­ready lost the use of their foot­ball field? The right to use the land is still to be de­cid­ed, but 50 years af­ter In­de­pen­dence Jeff Hen­ry's words fit well here and re­mind us how pow­er func­tions lo­cal­ly: "The colour of the rulers might dark­en; the eth­nic­i­ties might change, blur or merge, but the cul­ture of the pow­er struc­ture re­mains."

• Dy­lan Ker­ri­g­an is an an­thro­pol­o­gist at UWI, St Au­gus­tine