Brent Zephyrine

The process of se­lect­ing a new queen of the in­dige­nous Carib com­mu­ni­ty "will be a chal­lenge" if ad­e­quate fi­nan­cial pro­vi­sions are not al­lo­cat­ed to the suc­ces­sor of the late Valenti­na Med­i­na. So said pres­i­dent of the Carib com­mu­ni­ty, Ri­car­do Her­nan­dez Bharath, in an in­ter­view yes­ter­day. Med­i­na, 77, who had been ail­ing with can­cer for three years, suc­cumbed last Sat­ur­day, hav­ing served ten years as queen of the Carib com­mu­ni­ty in San­ta Rosa. Bharath said the queen, whose of­fice was for life, act­ed as the of­fi­cial rep­re­sen­ta­tive for the Carib com­mu­ni­ty and made ap­pear­ances at var­i­ous events, ful­filled the du­ty of com­mu­ni­ty con­sul­tant and func­tions as the chief pub­lic re­la­tions li­ai­son for both vis­i­tors and stu­dents.

He said at present, the post did not come with a stipend and be­lieved that some­thing ought to be done to pro­vide some re­lief in that re­gard. "If you want to give of that of­fice a kind of re­spect and dig­ni­ty, I be­lieve that some sort of as­sis­tance from some gov­ern­ment de­part­ment must be af­ford­ed to that per­son," Bharath said. He added that "it would be a chal­lenge to ap­point" a suc­ces­sor if stipends were not pro­vid­ed since it was nec­es­sary to as­sist the queen "in her day-to-day en­gage­ments, in prepa­ra­tion to at­tend func­tions and re­ceive vis­i­tors" among oth­er par­tic­u­lars. "We as­sist her with a lit­tle when we get our an­nu­al sub­ven­tions," he said.

"Apart from that, we de­pend on con­tri­bu­tions from vis­i­tors, school chil­dren, the sale of art and craft and the lit­tle in­dige­nous foods we do but it is not con­sis­tent, nor is it enough." Asked to out­line the pro­ce­dure for the elec­tion of a new queen, Bharath said where the "queen did not name a suc­ces­sor," the com­mu­ni­ty would meet and nom­i­nate can­di­dates who they felt were best suit­ed to car­ry out her func­tions. "If there is just one nom­i­na­tion (which is un­op­posed) and it is ac­cept­ed, that per­son will be made queen and where there is more than one nom­i­na­tion, then an elec­tion will take place and the ma­jor­i­ty will stand," he said. Bharath said the re­quire­ments for the new queen "will need to be a bit more ad­vanced" when com­pared to the past and more em­pha­sis would need to be placed on "the qual­i­ties of the per­son."

"In the past, you just had to look for some­one knowl­edge­able of the Carib tra­di­tions, de­vot­ed to the San­ta Rosa fes­ti­val and com­mit­ted to liv­ing a good life but to­day, it will re­quire some­one who can in­ter­act with the pub­lic," he said. Med­i­na's fu­ner­al ser­vice will take place to­mor­row from 2 pm at the San­ta Rosa Ro­man Catholic Church, Wood­ford Street, Ari­ma. Her body will lie in state at the Ari­ma Town Hall from noon to 1.15 pm, af­ter which there will be a pro­ces­sion through the streets of Ari­ma. Med­i­na will be laid to rest at the San­ta Rosa Ceme­tery where Bharath will per­form a spe­cial bur­ial cer­e­mo­ny. Mon­sign­or Chris­t­ian Per­reira of the Catholic Church will pre­side over the fu­ner­al ser­vice.