Kali­fa Clyne

Pic­cadil­ly Street, Port-of-Spain, was filled with hun­dreds of peo­ple wait­ing to see the an­nu­al Can­boulay re-en­act­ment host­ed by the Na­tion­al Car­ni­val Com­mis­sion (NCC) ear­ly yes­ter­day morn­ing.The crowd, which chair­man of the Up­town Car­ni­val Im­prove­ment Com­mit­tee (UCIC) Vi­jay Ram­lal es­ti­mat­ed to be about 2,000 was the largest crowd the event has drawn in its 14 years.

The street was dark ex­cept for the lights pro­vid­ed by the NCC and the light em­a­nat­ing from the hands of ac­tors hold­ing flam­beausAt al­most ex­act­ly 5 am, the ear­ly morn­ing si­lence was pierced by the beat­ing of drums and the shuf­fling of feet as ac­tors made their way to the cen­tre of the street in tat­tered cloth­ing, with sticks in hands.

While these ac­tors in­ter­act­ed with each oth­er, clear­ly an­gry with the lo­cal au­thor­i­ties, the French bour­geoisie at­tend­ed the Gov­er­nor's ball on a plat­form a few feet away, aware of the feel­ings of the mass­es but ig­nor­ing them all the same.The per­for­mance moved for­ward as sev­er­al in­di­vid­ual Port-of-Spain res­i­dents, in­cit­ed the oth­ers to wage a war, their is­sue be­ing the re­fusal of the po­lice and the Gov­er­nor to al­low their stick­fight­ing tra­di­tions in their cel­e­bra­tion of Car­ni­val.

The play un­fold­ed, telling the sto­ry of the vi­o­lent clash with the po­lice that fol­lowed as well as the ne­go­ti­a­tions with then Gov­er­nor San­ford Freel­ing.The crowd re­spond­ed with en­thu­si­as­tic ap­plause, a few were spot­ted with tears in their eyes fol­low­ing the emo­tion­al piece of street the­atre.

Young chil­dren sat on the road, be­neath met­al bar­ri­cades, un­able to tear their eyes away as stick­fight­ers bran­dished their wood­en weapons to use against the lo­cal law en­force­ment.When the per­for­mance end­ed, the pre­vi­ous­ly sub­dued crowd came alive as a pro­ces­sion of tra­di­tion­al Car­ni­val char­ac­ters made its way across the street, pass­ing stands erect­ed by the NCC.

Ba­by dolls de­mand­ed mon­ey from sev­er­al "child fa­thers" thrust­ing in­fant dolls at men and ac­cus­ing them of fa­ther­ing their chil­dren, dame lor­raines danced across the street, shak­ing ex­ag­ger­at­ed body parts while twirling del­i­cate look­ing para­sols.Moko Jumbies fol­lowed, danc­ing and do­ing tricks with their stilts forc­ing the crowds eyes to the sky as they play­ful­ly jumped and waved to the sound of Su­per Blue's Fan­tas­tic Fri­day.

These were fol­lowed by whip-weild­ing jab jabs and blue dev­il­sOne blue dev­il at­tempt­ed to give a dol­lar back to a child but the child re­fused, ask­ing the blue-paint­ed young man to leave.Ram­lal said in an in­ter­view af­ter­wards that this year pro­vid­ed the biggest crowd the re-en­act­ment had gained since its be­gin­ning.He said even though Can­boulay had not been ad­ver­tised, the an­nu­al re-en­act­ment drew the largest crowd ever.

He said it was un­for­tu­nate there was not enough ac­com­mo­da­tion for the crowd."This area be­hind the bridge is where Car­ni­val in Trinidad start­ed and now it's all over the world."Ram­lal said the com­mit­tee was ap­peal­ing to the NCC and the Tourism De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny to ad­dress the is­sue of bet­ter fa­cil­i­ties.This year's re-en­act­ment fea­tured au­then­tic stick­fight­ing by the Bois Acad­e­my, dance by Michael Mort­ley and capoeira by Sekhet Amunwah..

Can­boulay his­to­ry

In post-eman­ci­pa­tion Trinidad the Car­ni­val cel­e­bra­tions of the peo­ple of­ten in­clud­ed vi­o­lent clash­es be­tween stick­fight­ers.In 1880 Cap­tain Arthur Bak­er set out to end as­pects of the cel­e­bra­tions by the res­i­dents of Port-of-Spain, par­tic­u­lar­ly stick­fight­ing and the car­ry­ing of torch­es as he felt it was a threat to pub­lic or­der.

In 1881 stick­fight­ers who had pre­vi­ous­ly fought against each oth­er, unit­ed to do bat­tle against the po­lice in an ef­fort to de­fend their tra­di­tions.The po­lice and the stick­fight­ers fought and the stick­fight­er gained vic­to­ry in the skir­mish.Then Gov­er­nor of the is­land, San­ford Freel­ing, then con­fined the po­lice of­fi­cers to their bar­racks in an at­tempt to douse the high emo­tions and re­sent­ment of the peo­ple.

The peo­ple were al­lowed to have their cel­e­bra­tions with the promise that vi­o­lent dis­tur­bances would be cur­tailed.