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
