Our Brittle Spaces

It was April 2001, and the first time Montserrat was going to try for a “single-constituency” election following the devastation of successive volcanic eruptions.

Four of the previous seven electoral constituencies no longer existed as viable spaces for human occupation, so nine House of Assembly seats were being contested in a single constituency system in the service of a population of 4,000.

On the helicopter ride over (the airport had been destroyed and we landed in an open space up north), I sat next to the venerable Howard Fergus (historian, poet, educator, Caribbean hero). Part of the conversation went like this: “So, do you plan to use voters’ ink to tell who voted and who has not?”

“This is not Trinidad, you know,” came the stern and immediate response. I looked out the window and tried hard not to laugh out loud.

By December that very year, 2001, following the dramatic collapse of the UNC in office, we experienced the 18-18 parliamentary split and the ensuing intrigues.

I had been to Montserrat before, on the heels of the devastating eruptions of 1996 and 1997. The latter episode brought death and unbelievable destruction.

I refer to the victims of 1997 almost every time I speak on the climate crisis (no, volcanic eruptions are not the result of climate change) due to our tendency as island folk to consider the presumed benevolence of the natural environment.

In 1996, one farmer had pointed to an open field and asked words to the effect: “Where else do you want me to go? I was born here. My home is here. The animals you see out there are mine. God won’t allow anything to happen to us.”

When I returned a year later, I asked about some of the people I had met and was told that this particular farmer had perished in 1997.

In 1998, I made it to the Montserrat Volcanic Observatory where I met with the lead scientist there at the time, one Dr Keith Rowley. I asked a completely inappropriate question about “adventure tourism” and was told in a sharp response: “That’s not advisable at the moment. We are still dealing with an active volcano.” (Yes, he has had practice in all this).

On July 27, 2022, all of this can help us come to terms with the brittleness of our circumstances. There have been the murders of 32 years ago that have been increasingly cloaked in mythologies rooted mainly in political preference.

There have been those who assigned to the killers noble cause, and to opportunistic looters and arsonists a flavour of grand design.

Raoul Pantin insisted, down to the very end, that the “active volcano” of 1990 helped provide a cover of validity to criminal intent and sparked the inferno of the organised violence we are currently experiencing.

The brittle public security “infrastructure” of the past, whatever the hubris and bluster of recent years, remains principally the same (look at how Monday’s fiery protests in Maraval unfolded seamlessly).

There also remain those who have either romanticised the criminality of 1990 or silently embraced it. I have tried to follow the public trail closely. Kept the Hansards. Read the papers. I see the posts on social media. I was there that day, you see. On the ground, dodging bullets.

There have since been paths to development we dared not fully engage in the face of eruptive violence in behaviour and in the rowdy debates we have been convening. The pursuit of national aspirations is increasingly reduced to crass, vulgar quarrels in the public space.

What, you might ask, does this have to do with Montserrat 1996 and 1997? I would suggest, almost everything.

There are the inherent natural and manmade vulnerabilities. A requirement to tailor and equip national institutions to attend to new realities – the “single constituency” as metaphor for the management of tribal loyalties.

The need for a full reality check regarding the prospects for emerging out of current crises intact. Recognition of small size as both asset and liability. The emergence of an honest civil discourse not led by charlatans and bigots or rooted in the belief of a failed race.

This would considerably clear the deck of this listing ship. Help us count, at least on the fingers of our hands, those people and things that can help keep us safe in the face of the oncoming pyroclastic flows. There are clouds of steam above the peak.

* Listen to it here: Wesley Speaks