Where is The Will?

17, May 1999
'Like the caged birds, negotiating our way in the world, we have come to know only preferential treatment and guaranteed markets.'

'We negotiate with the international captains of industry always from a position of weakness. We go cap-in-hand and the results therefore are never in our favour or interest.

' Both CLR and Best have had a lot to say about "imperial schooling". The most enfeebling result of this particular indoctrination has been the cultural incapacity to embrace the will-power to design for ourselves and implement. Genuine education is a process that involves the engaging of native wit and creative intelligence in the interpreting of one's experiences within one's own ever changing environment.

There is the story of a goodly gentleman who grew accustomed going into the bush to collect mangoes that he would put into a paper-bag. On this particular occasion, it rained and the bush was wet so the paper-bag got soggy and the mangoes fell. He came out of the bush and proceeded to search for another paper-bag.

This goodly gentleman could be described as being guilty of "thinking in solid categories" as CLR certainly would have suggested. And the point is that it happens to the very best of us.

Caribbean grammar-school students have been known from time immemorial to top the university faculties around the Western world, ie Britain, Canada, USA, etc. They return to the Caribbean eminently qualified but with a sterility of vision that generates imitation rather than innovation.

We end up with a scenario whereby there are numerous intelligent people all around but nothing intelligent happens since no one seems to possess the will to function intelligently. We are schooled to be armchair regurgitators, sycophants and at best dilettantes rather than divergent thinkers.

Best surmises repeatedly that the poor performances of today's Afro-Trinidadian males in the school system is more about rejection of those educational factories than about the lack of acumen. Like CLR, Best knows that the biggest deterrent to Caribbean development lies in the inability of our "brightest sons and daughters" to be possessed of a native wit, a native way of seeing and doing. Notably to date no one has yet taken up Best on this specific observation.

However where this failing hurts the most is in the process of negotiating our way in the world. The caged bird seldom moves away even when freedom is suggested. It takes gargantuan courage to chart the seas of the unknown.

It is always so easy and comfortable to remain safe, that's the hallmark of salaried existence. The wage, you see, is the most effective form of mental and physical disciplining. It takes sometimes an exceptional Mandela-like strength and integrity of vision or most times simply the careless, daredevil adventurism of youth, whatever, but to make the required transformations, to "breakaway", we need like fresh air such unusual accidents of moment.

Like the caged birds, negotiating our way in the world, we have come to know only preferential treatment and guaranteed markets. We survive merely because we produce for export to satisfy the needs of epicentres far removed from the ambit of our control. Our own necessities have never been the "raison d'etre" of our production process. And we have been locked into that arrangement whether the "crop" is cocoa, sugar, bananas or oil and its by-products. We negotiate with the international captains of industry always from a position of weakness. We go cap-in-hand and the results therefore are never in our favour or interest.

Case in point is the present banana controversy. We are running around furious with the Americans for their criticism of the ACP/EU (African, Caribbean, Pacific countries/European Union) banana trade agreement that involves special treatment for Caribbean bananas in contravention of the WTO (World Trade Organisation) free trade regulations.

The Americans are selfishly seeking the interest of their own "Chiquita Brands" based in Latin America and they have a strong political lobby to ensure this. But the ACP/EU arrangements are as ridiculously wanting as are all preferential treatment agreements, yet we continue myopically to fight for it and cry and whine about American disregard for Caribbean economic survival.

Do we really expect them to fight each other in the interest of our betterment? Are we hoping to appeal to their conscience? That is pure wishful thinking. Not one single Caribbean leader has been divergent enough in perspective to see that our survival is nobody's business but ours and that we can ensure favourable arrangements only when we face the world as one single union.

Instead what we do is seek salvation in context of all the nonsensical concepts and relative buzz words such as "liberalisation", "structural adjustment", "privatisation", etc projected and promoted by the international captains of capital as they twist and turn in their self-seeking desire to interpret for us what "development" and "under development" mean.

So we either seek to appeal to conscience as with the bananas or to divest profitable enterprises, eg Flour Mills, TSTT, etc to get liquid cash to cover recurrent expenditure rather than strive to position ourselves astutely and strategically in the international market place. When we approach negotiating our way in such a manner what can we expect to get but utter crap. Where is the political will of our brightest sons and daughters to see differently?

e-mail: brenco@tstt.net.tt