In the con­clu­sion of a two-part ex­plo­ration of the Black Pow­er Move­ment in T&T, Pe­ter Ray Blood speaks with var­i­ous peo­ple who were in­volved in the events of that time, like Raf­fique Shah, one of the sol­diers who was in­volved in a mutiny and Hin­du leader Ravi-Ji who was a young man at the time and speaks about the com­ing to­geth­er of the Black Pow­er ac­tivists and the In­di­an sug­ar cane work­ers.

Forty-five years ago, on April 21, ju­nior of­fi­cers and sol­diers of the T&T Reg­i­ment staged a coup. Among the lead­ers were lieu­tenants Rex Lasalle, Raf­fique Shah, Michael Barzey and David Brizan, Mau­rice No­ray, Ben Parkin­son, Win­ston Bac­chus and Carl Lai Le­ung. They held Camp Teteron in Ch­aguara­mas for over a week but were sub­se­quent­ly ar­rest­ed and charged for their ac­tions. Some of them served time in prison.

To­day a news­pa­per colum­nist, Shah, a Sand­hurst-trained of­fi­cer, was the youngest of­fi­cer in­volved in the mutiny. Rem­i­nisc­ing, he said yes­ter­day: "Be­side be­ing the youngest of­fi­cer at the time, it's iron­ic that I was the on­ly In­di­an of­fi­cer. Oth­er of­fi­cers were be­ing de­ployed to dif­fer­ent hot spots in the coun­try but I was the In­di­an of­fi­cer cho­sen to go and to shoot black peo­ple in Port-of-Spain."

Shah said his rea­sons to be­come in­volved and iden­ti­fy with the Black Pow­er move­ment were pro­found and over­whelm­ing. He said: "There were sev­er­al rea­sons be­hind my de­ci­sion. First and fore­most, most of the ju­nior of­fi­cers and pri­vate sol­diers had be­come mil­i­tant by then. This was the mood of the mo­ment. In that sense we iden­ti­fied with what the Black Pow­er move­ment was preach­ing to the mass­es. Re­mem­ber that this en­tire move­ment was glob­al at the time. We were in sol­i­dar­i­ty with the Black Pow­er move­ment in the States, as well as iden­ti­fied with the op­po­si­tion to the Viet­nam war and protest march­es in Paris and across Eu­rope. It was very glob­al.

"In ad­di­tion, in the in­ter­nal side of the army, we were trained to build a pro­fes­sion­al army; to make it the best in the world. But, there were se­nior of­fi­cers who had ab­solute­ly no train­ing in the mil­i­tary. There was a lot of frus­tra­tion among the ju­nior of­fi­cers who had been high­ly trained but had to take or­ders from se­niors who had no clue about the mil­i­tary. We were be­ing blocked by our se­niors to progress in our pro­fes­sion and this caused frus­tra­tion.

"Even­tu­al­ly, a small group of of­fi­cers and sol­diers agreed that we were not go­ing to al­low the gov­ern­ment of the day to use the sol­diers against the mass move­ment.

"When we got the or­ders on April 21, 45 years ago, to come in­to Port-of-Spain to crush the move­ment, we de­cid­ed that the on­ly way we had out was to mutiny. We were dar­ing enough, as well as young and reck­less, to take over the peo­ple's army which we did very ef­fec­tive­ly with­in a cou­ple hours. We held the camp at Teteron Bar­racks for ten days. Dur­ing that time we had the Coast Guard fir­ing up­on us but we didn't re­turn fire as that would have caused tremen­dous blood­shed on our hands. Hun­dreds of mil­i­tary per­son­nel would have died. We with­drew back to Teteron on our way to Camp Og­den. On the sec­ond day of the mutiny, Camp Og­den was burnt to the ground by the sol­diers. This had noth­ing to do with what was hap­pen­ing at Camp Teteron.

"The gov­ern­ment then ini­ti­at­ed talks with us with AG Karl Hud­son Phillip lead­ing the gov­ern­ment team. We re­quest­ed that Col Stan­ley John­son be re­lieved as head of the army, and Col Ge­off Ser­rette be re­in­stat­ed as head, as well as the re­lease of the po­lit­i­cal de­tainees. When Ser­rette was re­turned as the com­mand­ing of­fi­cer he ini­ti­at­ed talks to dis­arm us."

To­day, the Reg­i­ment is head­ed by Brig Gen­er­al Ken Ma­haraj and for­mer head Brigadier Carl Al­fon­so is now the Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty. Shah does see some im­prove­ment in the army and sol­dier­ing in our­na­tion. "Our army has grown larg­er and is bet­ter equipped than it was 45 years ago," said Shah. "But, is the army suit­able to the needs of the coun­try to­day? That re­mains an unan­swered ques­tion.

"I think that we, the coun­try, made some gains from 1970 in the sense that our pop­u­la­tion at large got more con­scious of their roots and cul­ture. The move­ment sparked an iden­ti­ty con­scious­ness among East In­di­ans, Mus­lims and Hin­dus, in that many of them re­turned to their roots.

"In 2015, the one thing I lament is that gen­er­a­tion of that time read vo­ra­cious­ly, was well in­formed, and ed­u­cat­ed them­selves. We lift­ed our­selves with­out at­tend­ing any class­rooms to ed­i­fy our­selves. To­day, the youth read less and there is less con­scious­ness. It's amaz­ing that with the In­ter­net and so­cial me­dia young peo­ple do not keep them­selves well in­formed.

"My gen­er­a­tion did what it had to do. It was a rev­o­lu­tion though not bloody and I am glad that it was not."

The arts and cul­ture of the na­tion al­so un­der­went a meta­mor­pho­sis dur­ing the Black Pow­er era. Be­cause the state and its agen­cies were the tar­get of protests, the voice of the peo­ple, the ca­lyp­son­ian, achieved greater vis­i­bil­i­ty. Pop­u­lar in­dige­nous mu­sic changed and there was height­ened aware­ness of so­cial and po­lit­i­cal ca­lyp­soes. Many bards, like Black Stal­in, Duke, Chalk­dust, Mae­stro, Broth­er Su­pe­ri­or and Ex­plain­er sang "black con­scious" songs but the "Peo­ple's Ca­lyp­son­ian" was Broth­er Valenti­no (Em­rold Phillip): His discog­ra­phy is im­bued with poignant dit­ties like Life is a Stage (1972); Bark­ing Dogs (1974); Dis Place Nice (1975); Stay Up Zim­bab­we (1979); and, Birds That Fly High (1982).

Still per­form­ing af­ter more than half a cen­tu­ry in the busi­ness, Valenti­no was too dis­traught last Fri­day to rem­i­nisce about his role in the Black Pow­er move­ment as his son was killed in a ve­hic­u­lar ac­ci­dent that same morn­ing.

Ravi ji, head of the Hin­du Prachar Kendra, dis­closed that he was scared dur­ing the time of the Black Pow­er move­ment. He ex­plained: "When the Black Pow­er hit the coun­try I was very very scared, hear­ing about these Africans com­ing to Cen­tral to join sug­ar cane work­ers. I sub­se­quent­ly felt some re­lief when Bhadase made a state­ment giv­ing the as­sur­ance that the marchers would not ac­tu­al­ly en­ter the cane­fields. Al­though I at­tend­ed school in Laven­tille at one time and was close to a num­ber of African peo­ple, I felt a bit in­tim­i­dat­ed and threat­ened."

He con­tin­ued: "Hear­ing of the march to Ca­roni I must ad­mit that I had a sense of con­cern. But, I was cu­ri­ous so I went to Ch­agua­nas to see the march. When I got there my fear dis­si­pat­ed some­what as, in­stead of see­ing mil­i­tant ag­i­ta­tors, I re­mem­ber what I saw were many thirsty, tired young peo­ple sit­ting around. At that time I was close to Ger­ald Bryce, an of­fi­cial then of the Black Pan­ther move­ment.

"Back then I was al­so a bit con­fused that the PNM gov­ern­ment would be hunt­ing black young peo­ple be­cause they sup­port­ed Black Pow­er as we thought that the Black Pow­er move­ment was a PNM move­ment. It was af­ter­wards that I re­alised that they were not one and the same, and that the move­ment was as much against the PNM as the tra­di­tion­al op­po­nents of the par­ty."

Af­ter the march to Ca­roni, Ravi ji left Trinidad for In­dia. He said: "When I re­turned in 1983 I re­con­nect­ed to the Black Pow­er move­ment. It's iron­ic be­cause I ac­tu­al­ly went to In­dia with two dashikis. Be­cause of Bryce I be­came clos­er to the Black Pow­er move­ment. One of the things I re­alised was the im­pact of the move­ment opened the way for trans­for­ma­tion be­cause there were ob­vi­ous changes in the em­ploy­ment prac­tices of the coun­try. In the banks you could have eas­i­ly dis­cerned change (by the eth­nic­i­ty of the peo­ple be­ing em­ployed)."

While Ravi ji be­lieves the Black Pow­er phe­nom­e­na had some pos­i­tive im­pact on our na­tion he doesn't think it caused a com­plete trans­for­ma­tion of at­ti­tudes and tol­er­ance be­tween the races.

He said: "I don't think that the Black Pow­er move­ment unit­ed In­di­ans and Africans, like let's say the na­tion­al foot­ball team did when we qual­i­fied for the World Cup in 2006. The po­lit­i­cal im­per­a­tive and its race com­po­nent is too strong and deep root­ed in our coun­try for a rev­o­lu­tion to make any sig­nif­i­cant change.

"I think the Black Pow­er move­ment was worth­while for the en­tire coun­try as it cre­at­ed some pos­i­tive im­pacts on our peo­ple. Africans came to re­alise that PNM was not the end-all of it, and In­di­an peo­ple re­alise that PNM would not be in pow­er for­ev­er. It cre­at­ed a sense of so­cial jus­tice."

Suni­ty Ma­haraj, jour­nal­ist and MD of the Lloyd Best In­sti­tute, said: "I had just done Com­mon En­trance ex­am and I re­mem­ber be­ing glued to the ra­dio lis­ten­ing to the news, es­pe­cial­ly when they were look­ing for Daa­ga and oth­ers for ar­rest. I lived in Bal­main, and was at­tend­ing school in Preysal, and the com­mu­ni­ties were large­ly In­do. Some of my teach­ers who were In­di­ans were get­ting in­volved and go­ing in­to Port-of-Spain to join the march­es. So, there was a re­al sense of the 'In­di­an-African unite' theme. It was an ex­cit­ing time.

"I was a cur­rent af­fairs junkie from child­hood. I used to read the news­pa­pers fer­vent­ly and I was a re­al news junkie. Schools were closed for the State of Emer­gency so we re­mained at home glued to the ra­dio. We all felt mixed emo­tions when Daa­ga was even­tu­al­ly cap­tured as there was a great sense of em­pa­thy for the lead­ers of the move­ment.

"That sense of en­er­gy emerged again in 1975 when there was the in­dus­tri­al un­rest when sug­ar and oil work­ers came to­geth­er to protest for bet­ter work­ing con­di­tions. I was on the side of the peo­ple, the demon­stra­tors and the pro­test­ers."