When I think of that time 30 years ago, af­ter that bloody Ju­ly, I re­mem­ber it like shuf­fling of cards, the num­bers: 27th day of the month. 112 in­sur­gents. 24 dead. 200 in­jured. 46 hostages.

Town loot­ed and ablaze and the com­mand dur­ing the state of emer­gency, ‘shoot to kill’. An Ex­press jour­nal­ist and I were walk­ing to­wards the po­lice es­cort bus along an emp­ty hot road in Port-of-Spain where bub­bling pot­holes looked like fes­ter­ing wounds, the army trained their guns at us as we waved our pass­es, shout­ed: “Me­dia, Don’t shoot.” We crawled in while in­sur­gents trained their guns at us from the roof of the Red House.

Af­ter the TTT broad­cast sig­nal was cut, NBS Ra­dio 610 and 100FM on Aber­crom­by Street was the on­ly con­duit of pub­lic com­mu­ni­ca­tion. Den­nis Mc­Comie led us af­ter he told Abu Bakr off as if he were a re­cal­ci­trant boy in a class­room. We played mu­sic and took calls con­tin­u­ous­ly for six days. It was my first job.

Apart from one BBC in­ter­view that I did on the roof of the sta­tion where I said in­flam­ma­to­ry things prompt­ing a call from the Ja­maat say­ing I need­ed to shut up, I did what we all did, play mu­sic to keep the sta­tion go­ing, fol­low the courage of the tech­ni­cal staff and an­nounc­ers, many who were there for the en­tire six days eat­ing stale piz­za, sleep­ing on damp floors of cock­roach in­fest­ed stu­dios. When I see a 1990 flame, I re­mem­ber the late her­culean prime min­is­ter ANR Robin­son who, wound­ed, tor­tured, shot called his army to ‘at­tack with full force’.

I get flash­es of my (now dead) friend Raoul Pan­tin: jour­nal­ist, play­wright and po­et, mid-week in Mara­cas bay bare­foot on scald­ing sand, a bot­tle of Carib in his hand, his heart ham­mer­ing with PTSD, rag­ing in the blaz­ing sun at the gra­tu­itous de­struc­tive vi­o­lence of 1990, re­liv­ing the trau­ma of it, fu­ri­ous at the freed dis­si­dents, the jus­tice de­nied to a na­tion. ‘Don't !@#% with me, don't !@#% with me.’ Sor­ry, Raoul, too late. You died. Your heart failed, but we know it was al­ready crushed. This coun­try broke you.

“Talk­ing heads,” he roared when I had an in­ter­view lined up, send­ing me in­stead to speak to the pros­ti­tutes in Curepe hold­ing chil­dren with dis­tend­ed bel­lies; to the coast­guard to see where drugs in­fil­trate; to Mor­vant to in­ter­view the third gen­er­a­tion of URP work­ers, the for­got­ten peo­ple in­side sheds and la­trines.

As a news­room ed­i­tor, he taught his re­porters the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of the fourth es­tate–to be mir­rors of so­ci­ety, ex­pose the truth, scams, watch­dogs of the abuse of democ­ra­cy, ad­vo­ca­cy for the voice­less, framers of po­lit­i­cal is­sues, that be­ing a pa­tri­ot and jour­nal­ist watch­dog are not mu­tu­al­ly ex­clu­sive.

Raoul, who in­tro­duced me to Derek Wal­cott and CLR James, taught me even af­ter 1990 about lov­ing this coun­try; its Eden­like land­scape, phos­pho­rane sun­light fil­ter­ing through palm leaves, to no­tice the arcs of the North­ern Range. This place where con­ti­nents min­gle in the faces of peo­ple–like so many Gau­guin paint­ings.

There was no African or In­di­an. French Cre­ole blood had long mixed with African, he said. ‘We are not ‘In­di­an and ‘African’, terms used by fas­cists to di­vide us, but a new world peo­ple. He was com­ing for the fas­cists, he said, but died be­fore he could, ill, crushed, hu­mil­i­at­ed, in penury but not be­fore he went on, re­porter to the last, to record on 1990 with ‘Days of Wrath’, a re­porter in his blood and bones. This and Den­nis Mc­Comie’s ‘Per­son­al Ac­count’ should be re­quired read­ing in schools.

I looked for the list of the names of the dozens of jour­nal­ists and me­dia work­ers keep­ing the flame of democ­ra­cy alive dur­ing 1990. No list. They are the erased peo­ple of our his­to­ry.

I spoke to high­ly re­spect­ed vet­er­an jour­nal­ist Do­minic Kaliper­sad, a hostage at TTT in 1990 who is known to have re­fused the of­fer to be sin­gled out for re­lease in an ex­change ne­go­ti­at­ed be­tween the then NAR gov­ern­ment and the Ja­maat. (“I am not leav­ing un­less every­one (his fel­low hostages) else leaves!”)

Lat­er Kaliper­sad learned that if he had agreed, the Ja­maat plan was to shoot him. A re­luc­tant in­ter­vie­wee and qui­et hero, Kaliper­sad says on re­flec­tion, he feels the anger echoed by every sin­gle hostage.

“We blame the at­tempt­ed coup for the rise in homi­ci­dal crime, for gangs, but how do we know the caus­es of crime for sure? Thir­ty years on and a Com­mis­sion of In­quiry lat­er I’m an­gry there hasn’t been of­fi­cial psy­cho­analy­sis of the 1990 coup at­tempt. Did it ma­ture us to the re­al­i­sa­tion that like our broth­ers of 1970 or­di­nary peo­ple do stand up and rail against in­jus­tice–not by over­throw­ing the democ­ra­cy as Abu Bakr did–but that vul­ner­a­ble mis­guid­ed young men were made to car­ry guns against the State?

“An­gry that both politi­cians and the pro­tec­tive ser­vices of the time ei­ther ig­nored or were obliv­i­ous to the signs that some ac­tion was im­mi­nent. An­gry that we botched up the le­gal process against the in­sur­rec­tion­ists. An­gry that no gov­ern­ment thought it their re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to take care of the hostages, af­ter the un­prece­dent­ed trau­ma. Sor­ry, Raoul Pan­tin who died trau­ma­tised. Sor­ry, Em­mett Hen­nessy who has nev­er re­cov­ered.

“An­gry that no gov­ern­ment has ever com­mem­o­rat­ed the day and let 1990’s his­to­ry to be lost to gen­er­a­tions. When I went to Japan, each town had its own mu­se­um, its his­to­ry. I want to weep when I see a cul­ture that re­spects its his­to­ry

“Jones P Madeira on­ly got an award last year, but he saved this na­tion. He was the con­duit be­tween Abu Bakr and the army. None of the hostages has been com­pen­sat­ed for any­thing. We have all been left rud­der­less.”

A damn­ing re­mem­brance from a stal­wart jour­nal­ist.

To­mor­row’s 30th an­niver­sary of the at­tempt­ed coup comes at a time of an­oth­er kind of war–com­mu­ni­ty spread of COVID-19 and elec­tion 2020.

It has con­vinced me that we will on­ly heal if the coun­try re­mem­bers jour­nal­ists like Kaliper­sad, who car­ried on writ­ing his sto­ry in a foetal po­si­tion with AK47’s point­ed at him, are on the right side of democ­ra­cy.

We can learn from them all to be bravest of sol­diers, in the mem­o­ry of all we’ve failed, the dis­pos­sessed, and the vic­tims of crime who die every day and may die if COVID-19 is not kept at bay. Learn if we don’t share the pow­er, the wealth and the knowl­edge, if we don’t sup­port jour­nal­ists to be ever vig­i­lant, it will be wrest­ed from us.

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