Barrack yard warriors

y Extract from “Kambule, the Street Pageant”, by Eintou Pearl Springer

THERE WERE days of unrest in Port-of -Spain after the reading of the Emancipation Proclamation in 1834. It was the plan of the colonial administration to affect a gradual transition to “full freedom” by decreeing a period of four years paid labour for the enslaved who worked in the plantation house, and six years for field workers.

The majority refused to go back to the plantations. In an act of defiance, they streamed across the city — Belmont, Laventille, East Port-of-Spain and further — establishing their own living spaces. The settlements, makeshift and haphazard, came to be known as “barrack yards”.

The barrack yard was a difficult but interesting space. It emerged as a centre of cultural resistance and a melting pot for the various levels of society. The workforce of cleaners, cooks, washerwomen and groundsmen for the elite came from the yards, but the interchange went both ways.

For instance, the so-called “jacket men”, that is well-to-do mulattoes, and even members of the rich white upper class, maintained secret sexual liaisons with the jamette women.

Further, the yards became the centre of the Carnival, as they created costumes, calypsoes and practised the kalinda or stickfight. The jamette women were a potent force, as the ones who kept the community together, and as stickwomen, who were not afraid of standing next to the men in battle. Stick-fighters were viewed as defenders of the community.

The influence of Africa was particularly strong because of the presence of free labourers who came to TT after formal emancipation, in addition those Africans who were here during enslavement. Prof Liverpool points out that the concentration of Africans in the city was such that the areas they lived in were given names like “Congo”.

The Carnival was the mouthpiece of these people. Their masquerades represented the ultimate in cultural resistance, used for commentary and protest. Portrayals such as the baby doll, a serious social statement on the fact that white men would impregnate young black women and then turn their backs on them. Or the dame lorraine ball which laughed at the secrets of the elite through ridiculous and over-sexualised portrayals.

Consistently, the elite-owned media used the most uncomplimentary language to describe the jamette Carnival. Additionally, for decades various ordinances were passed banning holding of public meetings or dances, blowing horns, masking and of course the playing of drums. “The fact that all the ordinances pertaining to Carnival named only African instruments as undesirables is a clear indication of the racial groups the whites wished to control.” The tension eventually boiled over.

Between 1877-1880, the police arm of the administration led by Captain Baker forced the stickmen to hand in their bois, a terrible emasculation of these community warriors, and arrested many of them. His plan was to completely stop the masquerade.

In 1881, in an unprecedented show of unity, the warring stick-fight groups came together to defend their right to cultural expression.

The confrontation between police officers, stick-fighters and the community on Duke Street near All Stars panyard resulted in the retreat of the officers. Governor Freeling met with the community and promised that they would be allowed their celebration.

The TT Carnival was thus saved thanks to the determination of the very people who had been subjected to enslavement, poverty and more.

A lesson in the power of ordinary people that history will never forget.

D a r a Healy is a performance artist and founder of the NGO, the Indigenous Creative Arts Network – ICAN