Loyal to country of their birth

THE EDITOR: I would like to first of all thank Mr Stephen Kangal for the various accolades that he bestowed upon me in the opening paragraph of his letter which appeared in your edition of Saturday August 10 under the heading “Confusing diversity with divisiveness.” I would like to assure Mr Kangal that I am not in the least bit confused about anything and am quite capable of distinguishing between one’s nationality and ancestral roots. My own roots take me as far back as April 10, 1923, the day on which I was born in a modest little board house on El Carmen estate in Santa Cruz valley, at the foothills of the Northern Range. I therefore consider myself to be a Trinidadian since, to the best of my knowledge, my foreparents originated in different countries, none of which I could possibly claim total relationship to.

Perhaps the reason for my not being able to understand the attitude of a great many locally born persons whose foreparents, several generations back, arrived from foreign lands, is because I have travelled extensively during my many years in the aviation industry, not only to Europe and North America but many countries on the South American continent, where just about everyone I came into contact with identifies him or herself with the country in which they were born and live. Brazil, for example, which has a population that is far more cosmopolitan than TT consists of Brazilians regardless of the colour of their skin, the texture of their hair or their features or stature, in spite of the fact that Brazil consists of descendants of persons from the four corners of the earth ranging in colour from midnight black to snow white.

As a matter of interest, in Venezuela where I worked for about one year between 1957 and 1958, I went into a Chinese restaurant in Macuto one night for dinner and got into conversation with the proprietor who, from all appearances, may very well have just arrived from China, since he did not speak any English and spoke Spanish with a Chinese accent. On enquiring as to whether he was Chinese, he seemed sort of taken aback and he quickly replied that both his parents were Chinese but that he was a Venezuelan. Perhaps it would be an enlightening experience for many of the citizens of the country, born of the third or fourth generation, to visit any of the countries in South America as well as other parts of the world and observe the sense of pride and allegiance that those citizens hold for the land of their birth. No Mr Kangal, I am by no means confused, unlike perhaps the majority of the inhabitants of this little speck in the Caribbean Sea, my country in which I was born and live.

MARTIN KAVANAGH
La Romaine