ELIZ­A­BETH GON­ZA­LES

To­ba­go Cor­re­spon­dent

Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine has de­fend­ed the de­ci­sion by the THA to fea­ture a Jab Mo­lassie Car­ni­val char­ac­ter at the World Trav­el Mar­ket, say­ing peo­ple should not be ashamed of their cul­ture on an in­ter­na­tion­al stage.

This choice has raised eye­brows and drew crit­i­cism across To­ba­go.

A vi­ral video that sur­faced a week ago cap­tured the Jab Mo­lassie walk­ing around the World Trav­el Mar­ket in Lon­don, which took place from No­vem­ber 6-8. The char­ac­ter star­tled at­ten­dees with a screech­ing scream and what ap­peared to be sali­va hang­ing from its mouth, leav­ing many amused and oth­ers cu­ri­ous.

Since then, hun­dreds, in­clud­ing for­eign par­tic­i­pants at World Trav­el Mar­ket, have tak­en to so­cial me­dia to com­ment on the video. Yes­ter­day, the po­lit­i­cal leader of the Pro­gres­sive De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Pa­tri­ots, Wat­son Duke, called on the THA to apol­o­gise for what he deemed as a dis­play that did not ac­cu­rate­ly rep­re­sent the cul­ture and his­to­ry of To­ba­go. Duke said he was con­cerned.

“Nowhere in the his­to­ry of coun­tries that have at­tend­ed the World Trav­el Mar­ket have we seen peo­ple por­tray­ing prim­i­tive men, unso­cialised in the age of AI, dis­play­ing a char­ac­ter scream­ing in the ears of vis­i­tors,” Duke said.

THA Mi­nor­i­ty Leader Kelvon Mor­ris was al­so crit­i­cal of the Jab Mo­lassie when he spoke at a news con­fer­ence on Thurs­day. He al­so said it did not ac­cu­rate­ly de­pict To­ba­go’s cul­ture and her­itage.

But yes­ter­day, Au­gus­tine de­fend­ed the de­ci­sion. He said it had been tak­en out of con­text.

Speak­ing to the me­dia fol­low­ing the launch of the To­ba­go Day cel­e­bra­tions, Au­gus­tine said, “I have re­viewed the video and the ex­ist­ing crit­i­cisms. I have ques­tioned whether we should al­so ex­clude this char­ac­ter from lo­cal Car­ni­val cel­e­bra­tions based on the con­cerns raised. If peo­ple have an is­sue with it here, how do we han­dle it when vis­i­tors come for To­ba­go Car­ni­val or the na­tion­al Car­ni­val? We can­not be ashamed of some­thing abroad and pa­tri­ot­ic about it at home. We need to de­ter­mine whether it is worth cel­e­brat­ing or not.”

Au­gus­tine said the THA in­tends to ex­tend an in­vi­ta­tion to the per­son who ini­tial­ly shared the video at the Trav­el Mar­ket to learn about the ori­gin and im­por­tance of the Jab Mo­lassie char­ac­ter to Trinidad and To­ba­go’s his­to­ry. “That char­ac­ter does not rep­re­sent the bib­li­cal Sa­tan. In­stead, it sym­bol­is­es the protest against the en­slave­ment of peo­ple of African de­scent. It is a much more com­plex con­ver­sa­tion, one that re­quires cul­tur­al ex­perts to tru­ly un­der­stand and ap­pre­ci­ate it,” he ex­plained.

The Chief Sec­re­tary al­so ques­tioned why those who par­tic­i­pat­ed in Car­ni­val had not tak­en is­sue with the char­ac­ter be­fore, con­sid­er­ing their cur­rent crit­i­cism of the same char­ac­ter on an in­ter­na­tion­al stage.

He ar­gued that To­ba­go must es­tab­lish a dis­tinct iden­ti­ty be­yond its sun, sand, and sea of­fer­ings.

“If we on­ly pro­mote pic­tures of Pi­geon Point or Pi­rate’s Bay, then we are not con­sid­er­ing tourism and how to dif­fer­en­ti­ate our­selves based on our nat­ur­al com­pet­i­tive ad­van­tage. This, too, must be part of the con­ver­sa­tion,” Au­gus­tine said.