Dy­lan Ker­ri­g­an

Car­ni­val in Trinidad is a cul­tur­al ob­ject. Its evo­lu­tion from the ear­ly 1800s to to­day re­flects our so­cial his­to­ry.For ex­am­ple, dur­ing the 1980s, state in­volve­ment in Car­ni­val in­creased as at­tempts were made to ex­pand the eco­nom­ic po­ten­tial of the fes­ti­val. Trinidad Car­ni­val was mo­bilised as a glob­al brand and in­dus­try plugged in­to the glob­al move­ments and forms of cap­i­tal ac­cu­mu­la­tion. Think "pro­duc­tion" in Chi­na and "en­ter­tain­ment" out of the all-in­clu­sive Las Ve­gas hand­book.

At the same time, there al­so de­vel­oped the mar­ket­ing of "cul­tur­al tourism" with its "au­then­tic­i­ty ver­sus change" nar­ra­tive. This helped to mask the ques­tion of who would now be­come the labour force sup­port­ing the new ser­vice cul­ture of the fes­ti­val.

The busi­ness mod­el changed from pop­ulist art form in the lead-up to In­de­pen­dence and in­to the late 1970s, from those of the likes of Bai­ley, Salde­nah, McWilliams and many oth­ers, to a more sala­cious and eroti­cised pret­ty mas com­mod­i­ty form (biki­ni-and-beads mas­quer­ade por­tray­als) by the late 1980s.

The eco­nom­ics of pret­ty mas re­flect the li­bido of Eu­ro-Amer­i­can cap­i­tal­ism–prof­it, mass pro­duc­tion, lux­u­ry, sex ap­peal, ser­vice ori­ent­ed. The high art aes­thet­ic that led some com­men­ta­tors to de­scribe mid-20th cen­tu­ry Trinidad Car­ni­val as a "the­atre of the streets" dif­fused in­to var­i­ous lay­ers of lo­cal cul­tur­al pro­duc­tion with each be­com­ing com­modi­ties for the "de­sir­ing ma­chine."

From the mid-1980s, band fees and the cost of in­di­vid­ual par­tic­i­pa­tion grew. As com­mod­i­fi­ca­tion of the fes­ti­val in­creased, ex­clu­siv­i­ty (par­tic­i­pa­tion based on the abil­i­ty to pay) over­came ideals of in­clu­siv­i­ty (par­tic­i­pa­tion root­ed in Car­ni­val as a na­tion­al com­mons ac­ces­si­ble to all).

The tim­ing of the shift cor­re­lates rough­ly to the up­surge in lo­cal petrol and nat­ur­al gas rev­enues, and T&T's in­ser­tion in­to glob­al flows of cap­i­tal and the cul­tur­al pol­i­tics of ne­olib­er­al­ism from the 1970s to 1990s. These pol­i­tics in­clud­ed: the up­ward re­dis­tri­b­u­tion of wealth, the mar­keti­sa­tion of so­cial life, and the cul­tur­al be­lief in in­di­vid­u­al­ism as the main in­di­ca­tor of per­son­al suc­cess or fail­ure.

The shift is al­so an ex­am­ple of what an­thro­pol­o­gists call "ac­cu­mu­la­tion by dis­pos­ses­sion"– turn­ing things once com­mu­nal in­to things pri­vate and for prof­it. Some of those whom the late Rex Net­tle­ford called "the peo­ple from be­low," and whom he con­sid­ered the le­git­i­mate au­thors and par­tic­i­pants of Car­ni­val dra­ma as a pop­ulist art form, were dis­placed and be­came Car­ni­val's low-paid, ser­vice-ori­ent­ed labour force.

Viewed through class and race, the late 20th and ear­ly 21st cen­tu­ry pret­ty mas Trinidad Car­ni­val might be de­scribed as a "gat­ed com­mu­ni­ty." An anal­o­gy for this is Car­ni­val Mon­day morn­ing. The street pa­rade be­gins at 11 am but the staff � the bar and food per­son­nel, crowd con­trol, se­cu­ri­ty, road­ies, and oth­er staff - all start gath­er­ing for 9 am.

In 2012, a large "all-in­clu­sive" Car­ni­val band of around 3,000 mas­quer­aders em­ployed around 300-400 staff a day. These staff mem­bers, de­pend­ing on their rank and role, got paid be­tween $250-$400 each day to ser­vice and work for mas­quer­aders who pay be­tween $3,500-$7,000 for this mas. (Dis­clo­sure: yes, I play pret­ty mas each year.) Seen in such a light, the so­cio-eco­nom­ic changes in Car­ni­val over the last 30 to 40 years de­scribe a more gen­er­al process of in­equal­i­ty and eco­nom­ic dif­fer­ence mak­ing in post-In­de­pen­dence Trinidad, in par­tic­u­lar, the ex­clu­sion of low-in­come groups from oth­er com­mu­nal spaces, in­clud­ing pol­i­tics, em­ploy­ment, na­tion­hood, par­tic­u­lar ur­ban ar­eas, se­cu­ri­ty, and so­cial mo­bil­i­ty.

Such so­cial bound­aries to Car­ni­val are by no means new. They were there from the be­gin­ning. Ac­cord­ing to Er­rol Hill, when the British ar­rived af­ter 1797, the ear­ly Eu­ro­pean Car­ni­val fes­tiv­i­ties found here echoed the ear­li­est record­ed pri­vate cos­tume balls or French planter f�tes, main­ly at­tend­ed by the Span­ish and those of mixed Eu­ro­pean and African de­scent, with the en­slaved ex­clud­ed.

Just like to­day, at those events the var­i­ous cos­tumes demon­strat­ed signs of mul­ti­cul­tur­al mix­ture, par­tic­u­lar­ly French, Span­ish and North African. Of course, the en­slaved were nev­er guests at these balls or those af­ter the ar­rival of the British.Yet this did not mean they were com­plete­ly re­moved from events. At the colo­nial Car­ni­val cel­e­bra­tions of the elites, at their grand plan­ta­tion balls, some were need­ed for house­work in­clud­ing drinks ser­vice, mu­si­cal en­ter­tain­ment, and food prepa­ra­tion.

So one sto­ry Trinidad Car­ni­val tells us is that any post-In­de­pen­dence promis­es and in­clu­sive na­tion­al rhetoric about its de­vel­op­ment as cen­tral to a new na­tion's growth weren't as lib­er­at­ing as they might have been. As larg­er glob­al process­es be­came em­bed­ded in the mas, cos­tume pro­duc­tion was out­sourced to Chi­na, while jumpin up with an all-in­clu­sive wrist­band be­came an all-ex­clu­sive ac­tiv­i­ty, re­flect­ing sim­i­lar class-based changes our so­ci­ety has un­der­gone more gen­er­al­ly.

�2Dr Dy­lan Ker­ri­g­an is an an­thro­pol­o­gist at UWI, St Au­gus­tine