There was a time when Gary Aboud and Fish­er­men and Friends of the Sea mount­ed a spir­it­ed and pub­lic cam­paign against the for­mer gov­ern­ment giv­ing per­mis­sion to dec­i­mate the man­grove at the end of Wright­son Road for the de­vel­op­ment of a cine­plex and in the be­gin­ning, he got some sup­port against the de­struc­tion of the nat­ur­al habi­tat of the blue hairy crab.

To me the is­sue was a se­ri­ous one, and I learnt a lot the day I spent "protest­ing" with Gary un­der that white tent he oc­cu­pied for the du­ra­tion. Now the com­plex we were protest­ing is ful­ly built and is ar­guably the most suc­cess­ful com­mer­cial en­ter­prise in this coun­try's his­to­ry, spawn­ing fur­ther de­vel­op­ment and ex­pand­ing through­out both is­lands and in­to the wider Caribbean.

And if Gary Aboud sticks to his guns (and know­ing him I ful­ly ex­pect him to) and he nev­er goes to that par­tic­u­lar com­plex or any of its spin-offs, chances are he would be the on­ly one in T&T to do so.

Why? Is it be­cause we don't care about the man­grove and the blue hairy crab? No, not par­tic­u­lar­ly. In fact, giv­en the choice, the av­er­age good-heart­ed Tri­ni would hope that both movies and blue hairy crabs could co-ex­ist in fun, lov­ing har­mo­ny; but if giv­en the choice of on­ly one, then things are go­ing to have to be tough for that crab.

We are no­to­ri­ous­ly self­ish when it comes to our con­ve­nience and our en­ter­tain­ment, and while we Tri­nis would shake our heads in tem­po­rary dis­may if (we) found out the very road to our favourite movies was ac­tu­al­ly paved with the shells of those blue hairy crabs, we would still go, be­cause we have been fed a di­et of the price of progress for so long that we have come to terms with it. We are good at ra­tio­nal­is­ing any­thing.

This is a coun­try that paved its largest nat­ur­al green city space to al­low for a two-day romp, and the most ar­dent nat­u­ral­ists and every ac­tivist of note could be seen on any giv­en Car­ni­val Mon­day and Tues­day jump­ing up and down and win­ing low on that bit of tar­mac, not in protest but in cel­e­bra­tion, not of the pitch or the blue hairy crab, but in our right to do so.

We protest the hunt­ing of wildlife, but eat more meat than any­where else in the west­ern world. To us tur­tles are sacro­sanct, sen­tient be­ings, while chick­ens– not so much; we eat them by the ton. Are we hyp­ocrites?

No, but we are a lit­tle bored and eas­i­ly mis­guid­ed with our good hearts and best in­ten­tions. A video of a swim­mer sav­ing an er­rant deer from drown­ing in Ch­agu­ra­mas goes vi­ral, while the 14 dead dog corpses that one has to pass along the way to the scene of the hero­ism are all but ig­nored, no mind­share giv­en to their plight.

Now this same deer seems to have been saved again in an­oth­er vi­ral video, beg­ging the ques­tion: why should we be sav­ing deer that seem in­tent on drown­ing them­selves?Am I heart­less? Far from it. I am the type of per­son that would fight for the deer and the dogs if you let me, but I know the coun­try I live in.

To get our right to jump in the Sa­van­nah, we con­ve­nient­ly ig­nore the mem­o­ry of one of the truck­loads of grav­el used to pave it be­ing dumped on top of a protest­ing Eden Shand, an­oth­er en­vi­ron­men­tal­ist who will be re­mem­bered more for his words and his works, not his suc­cess­es. This is Trinidad. Con­ve­nience and en­ter­tain­ment comes first.

It is the same sit­u­a­tion with the dis­put­ed Point Fortin High­way. Hav­ing spent some time with Dr Wayne Kublals­ingh, I want to say that as far as men of con­vic­tion go, I stand and ap­plaud him. And while I nev­er re­al­ly un­der­stood the nuts and bolts of his cause, as an ac­tivist I sup­port­ed him in his right to fight for it and made my­self avail­able in the strug­gle. And if Wayne was the lead cam­paign­er against that cine­plex, chances are, ten years lat­er his tent might still be there in the mid­dle of the high­way.

But there comes a time when you have to face the truth: that if the peo­ple want the "progress" that you are protest­ing against, you are go­ing to have to be pre­pared to lose. No one un­der­stands on whose be­half he is protest­ing and why; what they know is that they want the con­ve­nience of their high­way, and it will be built even if it has to built over him.

We are a peo­ple who have torn down his­toric struc­tures with nary a glance back at our his­to­ry. The hairy blue crab has lost again. Some­one needs to tell Wayne that the fight is over, that it is time to dis­man­tle that sym­bol­ic tent and move on.

Phillip Ed­ward Alexan­der

Via e-mail