By Casan­dra Thomp­son-Forbes

A com­e­dy bit on To­ba­go, per­formed by up­com­ing co­me­di­an Kyle Her­nan­dez has been de­scribed as in­sult­ing, di­vi­sive, dis­taste­ful and dis­re­spect­ful by many To­bag­o­ni­ans. The two minute, forty-one sec­ond piece was part of a larg­er set, aired on lo­cal tele­vi­sion sta­tion WESN- Con­tent Cap­i­tal. The video which bore the sta­tion’s lo­go sur­faced on Thurs­day night.

Her­nan­dez’s set al­lud­ed to To­bag­o­ni­ans as be­ing unim­por­tant, un­at­trac­tive, prim­i­tive, il­lit­er­ate, hav­ing low self-es­teem and hat­ing Trinida­di­ans.

Her­nan­dez start­ed off the set by say­ing, “I want to bad talk To­ba­go for a lit­tle bit, what’s the deal with To­ba­go, like when we gonna stop like pre­tend­ing they are im­por­tant…To­ba­go not im­por­tant and I know you are prob­a­bly think­ing, hey Kyle that re­al harsh what you’re say­ing that for, but if some­body come up to you and say you have a To­ba­go face, won’t you be of­fend­ed?”

Dur­ing a sce­nario, Her­nan­dez mim­ic­ked and poked fun at the To­ba­go ac­cent in­sin­u­at­ing that they sound­ed il­lit­er­ate.

“They hate us, To­bag­o­ni­ans, I don’t know why… I don’t know how To­bag­o­ni­ans does talk, I learned to read at a young age, so it’s hard to get the ac­cent if you’re lit­er­ate.”

He al­so de­scribed one of T&T’s na­tion­al birds, the Cocrico, as a down syn­drome pi­geon.

“As a mat­ter of fact think about their na­tion­al bird, a Cocrico, how low your self-es­teem have to be to walk up to a down syn­drome pi­geon and be like that’s it, that’s the one, write it down.”

At­tempt­ing to end the set on a pos­i­tive note, Her­nan­dez said, he loved To­ba­go since he met his fi­ance on the sis­ter is­land, but made it clear she was not To­bag­on­ian be­cause she was “at­trac­tive”.

The en­tire per­for­mance was ac­com­pa­nied by a stu­dio au­di­ence laugh track.

How­ev­er, this did not sit well with many To­bag­o­ni­ans who turned to so­cial me­dia to vent their dis­plea­sure over the in­ci­dent, stat­ing that Her­nan­dez’s pitch was an in­sult to many To­bag­o­ni­ans and a failed at­tempt at com­e­dy. Many al­so not­ed that he had a my­opic view of the is­land.

Com­ment­ing on the sit­u­a­tion, THA Chief Sec­re­tary An­cil Den­nis in a Face­book post con­demned the state­ments, high­light­ing that the To­ba­go Bill was a trend­ing top­ic in the na­tion­al space.

“This asi­nine and high­ly of­fen­sive cha­rade is be­fore us at a time when this coun­try is on the cusp of re­defin­ing the re­la­tion­ship be­tween the is­lands. It is not on­ly in­sen­si­tive and fool­ish but re­flec­tive of the sim­i­lar or worst views held by many across the wa­ters.”

Den­nis called on To­bag­o­ni­ans to join him in strong­ly con­demn­ing Her­nan­dez’s ac­tion.

“If any­thing, dur­ing this pe­ri­od, the re­la­tion­ship and mu­tu­al re­spect be­tween the peo­ple of the two is­lands must im­prove; and this re­quires the young es­pe­cial­ly to be re­spon­si­ble and de­lib­er­ate about fa­cil­i­tat­ing such.”

Uti­liz­ing sev­er­al id­ioms or To­ba­go slangs, he turned to di­alect to send a warn­ing to Her­nan­dez and oth­ers with like think­ing.

“Nuh all skin teeth ah laugh; Joke for you is death for cra­paud; Nuh sit pon riv­er stone and bad talk riv­er; Laugh and cry does live in the same house; Rat­ta tongue does sell ih head; Cra­paud smoke yuh pipe; Car­ry yuh to­ry (apol­o­gy) gih dawg!” Den­nis wrote.

Min­is­ter of Ed­u­ca­tion Dr. Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly al­so joined the con­dem­na­tion via a Face­book post she post­ed, “I saw a video yes­ter­day… pu­port­ed to be a joke about To­ba­go. I hon­est­ly didn’t get it. What I got was an­noyed and ashamed. Maybe I don’t have the right sense of hu­mour; but with all that’s go­ing on in my coun­try, all the chal­lenges we face… it was hon­est­ly the last thing I need­ed to see”

To­ba­go West MP Sham­fa Cud­joe al­so added her voice on the is­sue.

“That act was down­right of­fen­sive, pro­fane, and asi­nine. There was noth­ing, ab­solute­ly noth­ing, fun­ny about those in­sults and at­tacks.”

She de­scribed the piece as a des­per­ate at­tempt to des­e­crate and di­vide the na­tion, but urged To­bag­o­ni­ans to stay strong.

“I am most heart­ened by the fact that these at­tacks have nev­er bro­ken us, and they nev­er will. We re­main bold, we re­main beau­ti­ful, and we al­so re­main hell­bent on iden­ti­fy­ing haters, at­ten­tion whores and im­be­ciles and deal­ing with them ac­cord­ing­ly and ap­pro­pri­ate­ly in re­al time.”

Mean­while, Area Rep­re­sen­ta­tive for Good­wood/Belle Gar­den Dr Faith B Yis­rael said, while the is­land was an­gry about the co­me­di­an’s “dis­re­spect­ful” com­ments, there were more im­por­tant is­sues re­gard­ing the is­land at stake, out­lin­ing that the main is­sue should be the To­ba­go Bill cur­rent­ly be­fore the JSC.

“We have to ask our­selves whether Kyle’s view of To­ba­go is unique? Or whether many oth­ers on the sis­ter isle se­cret­ly (or open­ly) have the same view about us…”

“The last cou­ple weeks has re­al­ly forced me to think crit­i­cal­ly about why the JSC on To­ba­go Au­ton­o­my would to take so long, the orig­i­nal Bills were sent to Trinidad by Mr. Orville Lon­don in 2016, present Bills that ob­vi­ous­ly do not rep­re­sent the wish­es of To­bag­o­ni­ans and they try to tell us that our wish­es are il­le­gal, etc when those in­ter­pre­ta­tions are com­plete­ly false and they ig­nore the sub­mis­sions of To­ba­go’s best and bright­est…” she said.

WESN has since re­moved the video from their so­cial me­dia page.