· August, 2006

Stories about Trinidad & Tobago from August, 2006

Trinidad & Tobago: Independence Day

  31 August 2006

“Does anyone really ‘celebrate’ our Independence as a nation?” wonders Elspeth Duncan, as Trinidad and Tobago observes the 44th anniversary of its independence from Great Britain.

Trinidad & Tobago: Santa Rosa Festival

  29 August 2006

Maximilian C. Forte offers a substanial analysis of the 220th anniversary celebrations of the Santa Rosa Carib community in Arima, Trinidad, complete with audio files from the live radio broadcast.

Trinidad & Tobago: Port of Stain

  28 August 2006

Walking through Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago's capital city, The Manicou expresses despair at the amount of litter in the streets, but has little hope that this will ever change.

Trinidad & Tobago: Reviewing the draft constitution

  28 August 2006

Jeremy Taylor parses Trinidad & Tobago's new draft constitution, and concludes that “there are some very strange things in this draft, which would have the effect of increasing the power of the country's political leader at the expense of the judiciary and the parliament.”

Trinidad & Tobago: Parliament TV

  25 August 2006

“I'm wholly in favour of wasting a TV channel on this, because it will show just how absurdly tedious parliamentary affairs have become,” writes Jeremy Taylor, reporting on Trinidad & Tobago's newly launched Parliament Television.

Caribbean: Exporting Carnival

  25 August 2006

“. . . it's interesting how these festivals have echoed, in a small way, the evolution of their original model in Trinidad, as a vehicle of solidarity, an assertion of identity, a gesture of defiance in a hostile environment,” says Jeremy Taylor, writing about the Carnivals “exported” by the Caribbean...

Trinidad & Tobago: Tourism truth

  23 August 2006

Asks Trinidadian Elspeth Duncan: “Can our ‘tourism truth’ continue to lie in pretty cliches, unchanging statistics and glossy, tropical images Photoshopped to seduce foreigners?“

Jamaica, USA: Harry Belafonte

  18 August 2006

Jeremy Taylor considers the career of Harry Belafonte in relation to the latter's Caribbean roots and political activism: “. . . people should be judged for what they are, rather than what they are not. In his own way, Belafonte identified with the Caribbean from early on. . . ....

Trinidad & Tobago: Men!

  18 August 2006

Attillah Springer has had it with the heckling and cat-calling to which women are subjected daily in Trinidad: “Why do men think that we need their reassurance? Why do they think that we want to know what base thoughts they are thinking. . . . .“

Trinidad & Tobago: CSME politics

  17 August 2006

Jamaican Francis Wade is disturbed at the Trinidad and Tobago opposition leader's efforts to politicise the Caricom Single Market and Economy and tries to discern the thinking behind it.

Trinidad & Tobago: 72 medals

  15 August 2006

The Manicou reports that Trinidad & Tobago has won 72 medals in the World Championship of Performing Arts in Hollywood, California, adding “I have to admit though, I've never heard of the competition before.”