Celebrating Caribbean Cultures!
Happy August and Happy Emancipation Day! August has arrived and I am excited to celebrate Caribbean Cultures this week as part of the Toronto Caribbean Carnival.
August 1 is an exceptional day because it is the day when we remember the end of slavery and the freedom that enslaved Africans received on August 1, 1834, when the Slavery Abolition Act was passed by the British Parliament, marking the end of slavery in states colonized by Britain. The day is celebrated across the Caribbean and the diaspora and has been a national holiday in many Caribbean countries since as early as 1893 in Jamaica, for example. Commemorating Emancipation Day is critically important to acknowledge the ways African peoples resisted and rebelled against enslavement. It also provides an opportunity for people to learn about the atrocities of slavery and the impact it has had on both African peoples and European colonizers. The residue of the cruelty and inhumane treatment of Black people impacted both the enslaved and the slave owners and their descendants.
This week we acknowledge and celebrate the vibrancy of Caribbean cultures. I want to acknowledge that the region was a rich place long before the arrival of Europeans. The Caribbean is a multi-racial, multi-lingual, multi-faith region and I like to say served as the world’s foray into multi-culturalism. The first people of the region are the Taino or Arawak peoples who traveled from South America to the Caribbean over 4000 years. It is estimated that the Taino people numbered almost 3 million and were the largest group in the region. Indigenous peoples are said to be extinct, believed to have succumbed to the diseases Europeans brought to the region, or from the cruelties of enslavement, but this is not true and contributes to their erasure from history and their invisibility in current communities. Tainos and other Indigenous peoples are found throughout the region today and the InterAmerican Development Bank estimates that Indigenous peoples comprise 10% of the population in Central and South America and the Caribbean.
While Taino are the original people in the region, European colonizers arrived in 1492, and the first enslaved Africans arrived in the Caribbean in 1619. Persons from India and China migrated to the Caribbean to work on sugar plantations as indentured workers in the 18th century following the abolition of slavery. Post-Emancipation Caribbean societies were difficult because the social hierarchy that privileged White Europeans remained in place. African peoples were not compensated as were some free Africans in the USA who received 40 acres of land and a mule per person following emancipation. Former slave owners, however, collectively received 22 million British pounds as payment for their loss of income due to the end of slavery. I know, the sheer hypocrisy of this is appalling. The lack of retribution paid to free Black people led to deep poverty and hardship because wages were kept low and the price to buy land was prohibitively high. And the compensation paid to Europeans helped them to amass financial fortunes that led to many of those families creating intergenerational wealth. Groups and governments across the Caribbean continue to call for reparations from the British government, which they ignore because the amount owed to Black peoples would bankrupt many European nations and insurance companies while implicating African and South American governments who helped to facilitate the trans-Atlantic slave trade.
Despite these glaring inequities, Caribbean peoples found ways to forge ahead and create communities and societies that provided their people with the resources to thrive. And Caribbean people are very resourceful while demanding equity and justice. One of the most striking examples of this is the creative sectors in the Caribbean. The arts and music industries have created the sounds of hip hop, soca, calypso, chutney, mento, ska, reggae, and dancehall that the Caribbean diaspora has helped to spread to the rest of the world. These are the sounds of the Caribbean that resonate with the sounds of the African drum and call and response, the Caribbean steelpan, and other sounds. The distinct sounds of these musical genres reflect the unique cultural heritage of the region, while also questioning and protesting the social conditions of the region’s people. For example, I like to say that reggae is protest music that is embraced by many social movements throughout the region and the world. Our music emanates from the hearts and souls of the people of the Caribbean and their lived realities.
Carnival in the Caribbean is a unique cultural celebration. Following the abolition of slavery, Caribbean peoples had more freedom to celebrate their cultures and traditions. Carnival was an important way to do this while also expressing new cultural identities by mixing Catholic Mardi Gras celebrations ahead of Lent, which is observed 40 days before the Christian Easter holiday with Canboulay, or stick fighting. Carnival allowed people to express their creativity and ingenuity in music, dance, and costume before the solemn period of Lent. As the popularity of Carnival increased, European colonizers tried to suppress the celebrations. For example, in 1831 Britain sent a captain to Trinidad to subvert carnival celebrations and he passed laws to ban Caboulay. Many persons challenged this, which led to protests and riots. Carnival is political and acknowledges the continued struggles of Caribbean people.
In Toronto, Carnival, or Caribana as it was named, started in 1967 to celebrate Canada’s centennial year. I remember my parents taking my siblings and me to the grand parade each year downtown on University Avenue. It was such a wonderful celebration and we loved watching the masqueraders, dancing to the music, and eating delicious Caribbean foods. The parade served as the meeting place of Caribbean peoples and communities and we always said people who we haven’t seen in some time, we will see them at the parade! As a young adult, I began to understand the enormous undertaking it is for the organizing committee and band leaders to mount Caribana each year, for many years without sufficient funding from the government and corporate Canada. Although hotels in downtown Toronto are fully booked months in advance, restaurants and other attractions are busy during the week and on the final weekend of the Carnival, Toronto’s Caribbean community had to fight for financial support to stay afloat and to keep the festival alive. The attempts to suppress the celebrations continue, and we continue to resist.
Wishing everyone a safe and joyous Emancipation Day and Toronto Caribbean Carnival!
Michelle
CEO