Trinidad & Tobago

This article performs a strange comparison to question the very applicability of the “burden of proof” to both subaltern mediums and scientists. I look at the problem of proof not only in the field of subaltern spiritual work, but also in the practice of petroleum geology and the history and philosophy of science. By tacking back and forth between “science” and “obeah” in the Caribbean, I hope to problematize the burden of proof that the trials of mediality have often sought to produce – from the experiments with witchcraft in early modern courtrooms to the Victorian trials of psychical research. Might there be other ways of understanding what is at stake in mediumship than the burden of proof?

In Trinidad and Tobago, at least ten known and named pre-Columbian languages were spoken by peoples of a variety of Amerindian origins. These languages include those from language families such as Carib, Arawakan and others. Except for Kalina/Kari’ña (Carib), lokono (Arawak), and Warao, most of the other languages once spoken here are now extinct, both here and elsewhere on the American continent.

Entangled Species: Conversations on Contemporary Art in the Caribbean provides a different view of the Caribbean through a personal lens showcasing the depth and variety of artists and art communities of the Caribbean.

Entangled Species, is the result of a fifteen-month research project by Sasha Dees (the Netherlands). Between November 2017 and May 2019, she visited 16 countries in the Caribbean (including, Barbados, Curacao, Dominican Republic, Haiti, and the Virgin Islands). Decolonization discourse and international politics are reflected in her encounters and conversations with artists, art professionals, and institutions in the Caribbean. Engaging anecdotes and conversations with artists and art professionals draw us into her journey. This publication reads like a travel book and serves as a toolkit; a Lonely Planet Guide to contemporary art in the Caribbean.

“In Entangled Species, Sasha has mapped out critical contemporary art, artists, funding bodies and art institutions from a genuine and personal interest in the art world. I enjoyed reading about her journey and her experience of writing and the art she encountered. I could also relate some of the examples in the book to my own experiences. The book helped me to better understand the Caribbean art landscape, its place in the world of art, and the implications of the differences between the two. As I read, I was forced to rethink and reaffirm career choices I made in the past. Reading the words of other Caribbean artists, motivated me as I felt the confirmation of their words and shared experience. Sasha Dees takes you with her as she reaches out to a wide range of artists and art professionals across the Caribbean. The people she speaks with are honest about their struggles and generous with their advice—illuminating a context and a region we need to better understand if we are to appreciate the art, the culture and the community of the Caribbean.” - Sharelly Emanuelson (Curacao), Artistic Researcher.

Published: 12 December 2021
Publisher: Art Agent Orange / Trendbeheer, Rotterdam (NL)
ISBN 978-90-830648-6-4
https://www.trendbeheer.com/sashadees/

Many studies have demonstrated the importance of terrestrial mammal fauna to ecosystem functioning and services. To date, however, few studies of mammal abundance in Trinidad and Tobago have been conducted. Our main objective here was to compare the relative abundance (RA) of agoutis (Dasyprocta leporina), an important bushmeat species, in a lowland, multi-use recreational forest surrounded by urbanization, with a former plantation that is now a protected nature reserve containing upland secondary forest. We hypothesized that coarse-scale factors such as hunting, elevation, proximity to paved roads, and vegetation density, would affect the relative abundance of these two agouti populations. As part of the first pilot survey of the ocelot (Leopardus pardalis) on Trinidad, using the same camera setup, we deployed paired camera-trap stations at 10 sites in the recreational forest, and five sites in the smaller nature reserve, along a 1 km2 grid of each study site’s trail system between 24 June and 6 November 2016. To test the relative importance of these key ecological factors on agouti relative abundance, we conducted simple linear regressions of each covariate. We found that hunting was significantly associated with lower relative abundance of agouti (p<0.05), whereas increases in elevation had a significant positive effect on relative abundance of agouti (p<0.05). Interestingly, we also found a significant inverse relationship between agouti abundance and the proximity to paved roads (p<0.05), i.e., agouti’s relative abundance was greater at shorter distances or closer to paved roads. We also found no relationship between vegetation density and agouti relative abundance (p>0.05). We concluded that hunting, elevation, and proximity to paved roads, all significantly impact the relative abundance index (RAI) of local agouti populations.

Featuring an interview with German Clement Govia (former owner of Govia's Roti Shop on Picton Street, Newtown - talked about here :-) http://www.socawarriors.net/forum/index.php?topic=32717.60;wap).

See also: http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~portwestind/research/archives/ferreira/oprepart2.htm

This paper challenges the widely-accepted view that politics in Trinidad and Tobago is driven by ethnic rivalry between the country’s Africans and Indians, or ‘ethnic politics’. The paper demonstrates how this interpretation distorts the historical and sociological record. It forwards a subtler and more historically consistent understanding of the place of ethnicity in politics and society, which is more complex, more fluid, and looser than the popular model posits. Finally, a suggestion for moving beyond the ‘African-Indian rivalry’ hypothesis is forwarded, distinguishing ethnic mobilisation from ethnic politics, and understanding ethnic mobilisation as a by-product of insecurity in a ‘half-made society’.

This book-length (263 pages) document is the result of my research into two key sources of information on landowners in Trinidad from 1782 to 1822.

- The first key source of information is a comprehensive list of landowners and occupants, dating back to the original Spanish land grants and occupancies in 1782, compiled by the first civilian governor of Trinidad under the British, Sir Ralph James Woodford.  He sent this document to the United Kingdom (UK) Secretary of State for War and the Colonies, Earl Bathurst, in 1814.  It provided the baseline of claims to land ownership in Trinidad that Woodford used in his efforts to regularize and improve land tenure in Trinidad.

- The second document is drawn from the submittal of Governor Woodford to the Colonial Department in 1822, to defend himself against charges of malfeasance levelled at him by the English allies of disaffected property owners in Trinidad.  It goes over some of the same ground as the 1814 submittal (including the original Spanish land grants and occupancies), but by comparing the two, one can figure out names that were abbreviated in one or the other document and trace developments in land ownership from 1814 to 1822.

Taken together, these two sources contain over 3,200 references by names to landowners during this period.  Since many names appear more than once, the number of unique landowners is less than 3,200.

I have created two comprehensive indexes, one by name and the other by location and then name, to help interested researchers quickly locate persons or places of interest to their research.  The indexes point to variant spellings within and between the documents for the same person, to help the interested researcher find all the instances of a particular person.

If you print the document out using the free Adobe Acrobat Reader, set the Orientation to “Auto,” print on both sides of the paper, and flip on the long edge.  The document is at high enough resolution that you can easily see all the writing by zooming in on any given page on your computer screen, if the printed page is not sufficient for your needs.

This article discusses the globalised commodification of Pretty Mas’ carnival in Trinidad and Tobago, focusing on the Bikini and Beads Mas’ form. It explains its links with the West Indian diaspora, since almost half the players in the carnival large bands are islanders who reside permanently in the country, and the other half are visitors mainly coming from the diaspora.
The corpus shows that tourism became an impactful target for the organisation of this category of Pretty Mas’ while explaining the discrepancies between the national and global debate regarding the Bikini and Beads form of masquerade through an ethnographic analysis. It also presents the different social and symbolic meanings perceived by local players and visitors or “travelling players” while playing in the same Bikini and Beads Mas’ bands. The article goes on to consider the economic capital imposed by the Bikini and Beads management and its different implications for local players. It also shows how the marketing law of supply and demand allows the Bikini and Beads all-inclusive bands to increase the price of their costumes, basing them on the purchasing power of foreign tourists’ currencies, rather than that of the local residents.

“Troubled genius” was how Ivar Oxaal referred to Dr. Rudranath Capildeo in a sensitive essay portrait, “Fragments of a Life” published in 1968. The phrase seems fitting, but Rudranath Capildeo’s story, successes, and failures are more than simply personal, they illustrate his times and his circumstances.

Capildeo was indeed a great man, not only of Queen’s Royal College, but of Trinidad and Tobago. Yet his greatness must be qualified; for he brought great tragedy to this country. Much, but not all, was of his own making.

Once a living language in Trinidad, Portuguese is no longer considered by its speakers and their descendants to be vital to their existence. The Portuguese speech community became vulnerable to language imposition from the wider society, and Portuguese itself has been fully displaced by English. The process of language death spanned two to three generations, resulting from the intertwining of psychological and social causes – particularly member core values, and the pressure of assimilation.

The Portuguese language survived in only a few Trinidadian families which are the products of twentieth century immigration, or in which each generation had at least one immigrant. An analysis of the community’s history and demographics serves to show unstable levels of immigration, as well as social mixing that took place through intermarriage. Linguistic change and loss ultimately resulted from such intermixtures, and the community was left exposed to the linguistic norms and values of the outer society, which it adopted to the neglect of its own.

Lexico-semantic and phonological analyses of the language spoken by creoles show evidence of language atrophy in progress, compared to the language brought by the Madeirans. The few lexico-semantic domains that remain are now disappearing. The informants exhibit varying levels of knowledge of the language. The analysis shows systematic linguistic changes, including regular patterns of reduction, as well as isolated changes at the individual level.

Within the contact situation, English was perceived as the language of power, prestige, and possibilities for advancement, which militated against language maintenance in the Portuguese community. The low social status of the original migrants was passed on to the language which was also locally devalued. Language attitudes, in combination with socio-historical factors, are the causes of the shift to English and of the death of Portuguese in Trinidad and Tobago.

Based on archival research and supplemented by ethnographic observations, this article critically revisits the history of La Divina Pastora, the Madonna of Spanish origin, in colonial Trinidad, focusing on how the spirituality and materiality of two statues of this Marian image intersected, competed, and reinforced each other: a fair-complexioned La Divina Pastora in northern Trinidad, created and patronized by the Catholic central authorities; and a dark-skinned, miracle-working La Divin/Sipari Mai in Siparia, formerly a peripheral Spanish mission in southern Trinidad. Tracing the trajectory of their lives and relations reveals the complexities of the ecclesiastical history of Trinidad, unearthing the contradictions and tensions between the patriarchal making and remaking of religious orthodoxy and the popular praxis of faith for day-to-day substantive issues needing medico-spiritual solutions. Unlike extant studies, addressing the two distinct statues representing the same Marian image, this article utilizes a holistic approach in order to appreciate why and how the Madonna at Siparia emerged, survived, and thrived as a shared empowering object, despite the colonial obsession with racial-cultural purity and regimes of the boundaries of belonging. The conflicts among the Christian communities were intertwined and thwarted the Catholic central authority’s attempts to exploit La Divin/Sipari Mai’s transgressive power to attract Hindus to the Church. The tangled conflicts also created conditions in which Hindu supplications for miraculous cures persisted and thrived, despite discrimination and repression by the Catholic authorities. The incessant interactions between Catholics and Hindu devotees in Siparia led to the combination of their originally divergent practices and worldviews and the transformation of the dark-colored Madonna from La Divina Pastora to La Divin/Sipari Mai, an alternative spiritual construction that represented various maternal/female bodies, each conforming to distinct religious traditions.

The Portuguese came to Tobago and Trinidad as early as the 17th century, including groups of Portuguese Jews, Catholics and Protestants. For over 140 years, from 1834 up to 1975, the ancestors of the modern Portuguese community in Trinidad and Tobago hailed mostly from the archipelago of Madeira. In a remarkably short space of time, the Portuguese community quietly and unobtrusively spawned a number of eminent sons and daughters of the soil, far out of proportion to its relatively small size and against all odds, and has contributed beyond its fair share to the progress of this nation. They remain small in numbers but great in influence and occupational status. The vast majority of Portuguese descendants have become inseparably interwoven with other ethnic groups, to form the total picture that is unmistakably and irrevocably Trinidadian and Tobagonian.

Typo on page 20: Alfred Gomes and Albert Gomes should be Alfred MENDES and Albert Gomes.

In the area of literature, Jean de Boissière claimed that the Portuguese of Trinidad created what little there existed that was genuinely of Trinidad in the Trinidadian literary scene (at that time, the 1940s). Portuguese Trinidadians such as Alfred MENDES and Albert Gomes, members of the famous Beacon group produced their works in English (not in Portuguese, which was the language of their parents and grandparents).

Many popular myths surround Patois (known to linguists as French Creole or French-lexicon Creole), one of which is that it is not a ‘real’ language, or that it lacks a ‘real’ grammar, or that it cannot be written, or that it is ‘simplified’ French. Patois may have many names: Patwa, Patuá, Creole, Créole, French Creole, Creole French, Kwéyòl and Kreyol, but the ones that do not befit the language are ‘patois’ with a common <p> or ‘broken French’. The term ‘broken French’ implies that speakers of Patois have never learned or been able to learn ‘good’ French, and ultimately that both the language and the speakers of the language are somehow inadequate and inferior to French and to the French. As no language is “broken”, this view, of course, is the very opposite of the truth. Both the European, African and mixed groups who contributed to the formation of Patois were in fact resourceful, and created a whole new language to meet the needs of its multilingual speakers, which came to include speakers of Indic and Chinese languages as well as Arabic.

In 2010 and 2011, female students at my field site in southern Trinidad experienced ‘mass possessions’ that closed down the secondary school. While Pentecostal-charismatic Christians figured African traditions (particularly ‘Obeah’) as atavisms that caused the events, observers also blamed the ‘possessions’ on salient markers of a twenty-first-century modernity – particularly the Internet, ‘science’, citizen insecurity, and illicit transnational networks. I argue that this seeming temporal disjuncture in causal narratives points towards some common problems with sovereignty that have marked representations of both African religions of ‘possession’ and (neo)Liberal politics. African spirit manifestation religions have often been characterised by the trope of slavery, as a relation of non-sovereign possession between spirit and human, while Liberal politics (or born-again Christianity) have ostensibly promoted a contrasting ideal of self-determination and national (or spiritual) sovereignty. While these seemingly opposed representations show how ‘spirit possession’ has shaped modern ideals of sovereignty through a racialised ‘labour of the negative’, I examine how practitioners of an African religion at my field site questioned these terms of (dis)possession at the school. These practitioners’ conceptions of ‘catching power’ suggest alternatives to both political models of sovereign ‘possession’ and anthropological models of ‘spirit possession’. I close by arguing that African religious practices of ‘catching power’ can provide a critical alternative to these racialised and gendered dynamics of ‘possession’, modifying the conceptual and geographic province of Foucault’s critique of Western political theories of sovereignty.

The word ‘democracy’ too often has been used to justify actions
which seriously contradict the democratic ideal. We wish to help restore a real, practical meaning – and value – to the word and the concept of ‘democracy’ because it is important to us in Trinidad and Tobago. Around the world, ‘democracy’ is regularly used to legitimate unpopular and repressive authority, used interchangeably with the ‘will of the people’ (embodied in the government or ruling party), ‘rule of law’, ‘majority rule’, ‘advancement of freedom’, or ‘end of tyranny’. Indeed, ‘democracy’ is so abused on all sides of the political prism that it seems to have little real meaning any longer. Unfortunately, the misuse of the word ‘democracy’ occurs not only for dishonourable reasons. It occurs also because of genuine misunderstanding and confusion by well-meaning people who have acquired simple, formulaic, but commonly expressed, understandings of democracy. The lack of clarity on what democracy precisely is, allows other less laudable – and occasionally sinister – goals to be advanced, sometimes unintentionally.

Chapter 7 of the book "Selected Issues and Problems in Social Policy: Studies in Caribbean Public Policy," edited by Deryck R. Brown is presented. It traces the emergence and the decline of the Left in Trinidad and Tobago. It also examines the role of the Oilfields Workers Trade Union (OWTU) in the organization of the labor movement in the country.

Since the growth of social media, human communication has become much more visual. This book presents a scholarly analysis of the images people post on a regular basis to Facebook. By including hundreds of examples, readers can see for themselves the differences between postings from a village north of London, and those from a small town in Trinidad. Why do women respond so differently to becoming a mother in England from the way they do in Trinidad? How are values such as carnival and suburbia expressed visually? Based on an examination of over 20,000 images, the authors argue that phenomena such as selfies and memes must be analysed in their local context. The book aims to highlight the importance of visual images today in patrolling and controlling the moral values of populations, and explores the changing role of photography from that of recording and representation, to that of communication, where an image not only documents an experience but also enhances it, making the moment itself more exciting.

The countries of the Commonwealth Caribbean are all self-governing, determining their own futures. But some 40 years after gaining independence from Britain, the question remains whether these countries are truly democratic and whether the parliamentary and electoral systems adopted, are well suited to the Caribbean experience. Meighoo and Jamadar answer these questions in the negative. A true democracy, they argue, is one where the Legislature has the authority and the strength to make the Executive effectively accountable and responsible to it and where the electoral system results in the true practical separation of the Legislature and the Executive.

Using Trinidad and Tobago as the model, Democracy and Constitution Reform in Trinidad and Tobago offers an overview of the constitutional reform process in the Commonwealth Caribbean. In these young, postcolonial democracies, where party politics have had a negative impact on the process of democratic reform, the authors review the historical, political and cultural motivations that have spawned the most recent debates on constitutional reform; and more particularly on the proposals for parliamentary and electoral reform. The book concludes with a review of past proposals and recommendations, and puts forward the authors’ own suggestions for reform.

At a time when most of the Commonwealth Caribbean is undergoing a process of constitutional debate and change, this book makes a valuable contribution to the discussion and provides a basis for the informed citizen, student or pundit to judge the process of reform.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS:

Kirk Meighoo is a member of the Democratic National Assembly and the author of Politics in a Half-Made Society: Trinidad and Tobago 1925–2002.

Peter Jamadar is a Judge of the Supreme Court of Trinidad and Tobago and the author of The Mechanics of Democracy.

Andil Gosine’s "Cane Portraiture" emerges from a set of conditions that aestheticizes the social history of indentured labourers in the Caribbean through participant-driven performances. The selection of sugar cane for the backdrop in these performances functions as an indexical reference to the cultural memory of Caribbean diaspora. It also emphasizes sugar’s problematic relationship to the history of indenture.

The document is a reproduction of the land transactions recorded by the colonial government of Trinidad for 16 Quarters (administrative regions of Trinidad), starting in 1810 and extending to the early 1860s.  The images were photocopied from the original ledgers in the Red House in Port of Spain by Geoffrey Barcant in the 1970s  or 1980s.  They provide documentation of land sales, transfers, and foreclosures by the colonial government and resale of lands in a significant swath of norther and central Trinidad during this period.

The Civil service is described as being a branch of governmental service in which individuals are employed on the basis of professional merit, or the body of employees in any government agency other than the military. It is closely linked to the governmental arm of government and thus ensuring that the political arm and the administrative arms don’t intersect is very important.  Control and accountability thus are two very important factors to ensure that the political-administrative dichotomy holds strong. Civil Service control has long since been an important part in the administration in the commonwealth Caribbean. Different controls and mechanisms are used within the commonwealth Caribbean. Diverse scholars the civil service and as such this paper seeks analyze these very mechanisms and the different points of views put forward by the different scholars.

In my research on school violence at a secondary school in Trinidad, I found that students and school personnel spoke often of ‘rank’. ‘Pullin rank’ is an emic term that refers to a hyper-exertion of authority and power, and as the name suggests, it refers to a social hierarchy. In this article, I employ this term as an explanatory framework for the various configurations of hegemonic masculinity that I documented during this qualitative research project. I discuss how masculinities intersect with school violence, not only among students and school personnel, but also on a structural level. By focusing on both direct/material and structural violence, my analysis reveals a spectrum of what I call ‘masculinist posturing’ that is in itself violent and perhaps contributory to violence. Masculinist posturing, as I employ it here, is qualified as both dispositional/ behavioral and structural. I posit that the instances of direct/material violence I witnessed are influenced by and nestled within a wider web of structural violence; a structural violence that has a neocolonial character to it. Thus the term: neocolonial hegemonic masculinity. The data provided in this article have been sourced from observations, semi-structured interviews, focus groups, and classroom discussions conducted over a 7-month period in 2010, with a 3-week follow-up in 2013.

Traditionally a navigating and migratory people, Portuguese settlers came to the Caribbean as early as the seventeenth century. The ancestors of the modern Portuguese community in Trinidad and Tobago hailed from the archipelago of Madeira, fleeing their homeland in search of an economic and religious haven from the 1840s onwards. They came neither to explore nor to conquer, had no history of land and slave ownership in the West Indies and they came without prestigious family names or old money. Yet within a few generations, struggles were overcome to push the community to the forefront of national life, in the areas of business, politics, religion and culture. Bound by language and traditions, the Portuguese were able to work together for their common good, the result of which was a proliferation of Portuguese businesses of various sizes and descriptions all over the country. Though few in number, the Portuguese contribution to their adopted homeland is of a significance beyond the small size of the community. Every migrating group has a tale to tell. For years, the tale of the Madeirans in Trinidad and Tobago and Luso-Trinidadians and Tobagonians has gone untold. Here is an attempt to tell their story in the context of culture and entrepreneurship.

I posit in this research that the common conception of Blackness in the West is flawed. Subjectivity must be considered – who gets access to contemporary spaces to speak on these topics? Who speaks the language we have chosen to communicate in, and who is left out? Crucially, the contextual position of the knowledge production and consumption of the sources we use for academic reference to Blackness and Black identity must be representative and inclusive. Thus, the purpose of this research is to aggregate non-western scholarship alongside knowledge produced by the diaspora in the west to highlight methods towards conceptions and discussions of Blackness which are not reductive.
The aim of this research project is to theorise a conception of Blackness which is not western centric. Blackness has a huge role in identity politics, and it has often been universalised. My research project illustrates that universality leads to the elision of important constituent factors through an intersectional discussion. Lived experience sourced from those with authentic rhetoric is used to provide a textural analytical element and serves both to ground and substantiate the more abstract concepts. This project zooms into Afro descended identity in a periphery location, Trinidad and Tobago; providing a narrative constituted outside of western academia. There will undoubtedly be overlap however, this research will locate the nuances and highlight those whose presence is often elided.

The 2007 General Elections in Trinidad and Tobago have re-affirmed the country’s “one-party dominant system” in which the People’s National Movement (PNM) has held power for 41 of the last 52 years, and have been elected to hold five more. Despite significant positive resources for democratic development in Trinidad and Tobago, one-party dominance has weakened Parliament, blurred distinctions between ruling party and government, and created vulnerability and powerlessness for dissenting minorities. These generic hazards have been exacerbated by Trinidad and Tobago’s history of Crown Colony government and the “resource curse”. Since 1986, the PNM’s dominance has been fragile, consistently supported by less than a majority of voters. Despite this, the Opposition has remained fragmented for rather petty reasons, as there exist no insurmountable ideological, policy, or ethnic-based differences between them. The major group which refused to join the other forces in 2007 represents a political “Third Tribe” in Trinidad which constitutes roughly 23 percent of the country, and has a significant electoral effect in six or seven specific Trinidadian constituencies. In conclusion, it is argued that Trinidad and Tobago requires the political will and maturity to emerge from the dangers of one-party dominance by creating a viable second political force.

Keywords: one-party dominant system; People’s National Movement; democratic development; resource curse; Crown Colony government; political sociology

The issue of linguistic distinctions in creole continua has been extensively debated. Are creole continua comprised of just an "acrolect" and a "basilect," or do they also comprise additional varieties? Studies of variation in creole continua have been typically based on directly observed linguistic data. This study argues that perceived sociolinguistic distinctions can offer one point of departure for establishing what linguistic components constitute creole continua. Following a protocol developed within "Perceptual Dialectology" (see, e.g., Preston 1999) this study describes perceived sociolinguistic distinctions via folk linguistic descriptors elicited by means of linguistic map-drawing and labeling tasks. The aim of this study is to investigate perceived language variation in the Caribbean island of Trinidad, where Standard English historically co-exists as an official language with creolized varieties of English, which the literature generally refers to as "Trinidadian Creole English." " The main finding of this study is that Standard English has a strong perceptual association with Trinidad's historic urban centers, while nonstandard varieties collectively referred to as "dialect" or "creole" are associated with the rest of the island. The study discusses indications that linguistic boundaries-largely parallel to ethnoracial boundaries-are perceived within the standard and non-standard part of the Trinidadian continuum. One major perceived linguistic criterion for differentiation within the non-standard part of the continuum is the presence or absence of Standard English elements. The saliency of "mixed" varieties suggests that a variety located halfway between Standard English and Trinidadian Creole English could be emerging. The study concludes that the urban-rural divide and ethnoracial distinctions constitute two salient social fault lines that future studies of language variation in Trinidad should take account of while searching the Trinidadian continuum for objectively verifiable linguistic boundaries.

This paper analyzes Trinidad and Tobago's relationship with the PRC in the political, commercial, military, and other spheres.  It examines the country's joining of PRC Belt and Road Initiative, the history of the relationship and Chinese projects in the construction, petroleum, telecommunications, retail and other sectors, including a series of major initiatives currently in the works including a major new drydock and industrial park facility.  It examines implications of China's advance for the region, and provides recommendations for US policymakers.

Many studies have demonstrated the importance of terrestrial mammal fauna to ecosystem functioning and services. To date, however, few studies of mammal abundance in Trinidad and Tobago have been conducted. Our main objective here was to compare the relative abundance (RA) of agoutis (Dasyprocta leporina), an important bushmeat species, in a lowland, multi-use recreational forest surrounded
by urbanization, with a former plantation that is now a protected nature reserve containing upland secondary forest. We hypothesized that coarse-scale factors such as hunting, elevation, proximity to paved roads, and vegetation density, would affect the relative abundance of these two agouti populations. As part of the first pilot survey of the ocelot (Leopardus pardalis) on Trinidad, using the same camera setup, we deployed paired camera-trap stations at 10 sites in the recreational forest, and five sites in the smaller nature reserve, along a 1 km2 grid of each study site’s trail system between 24 June and 6 November 2016. To test the relative importance of these key ecological factors on agouti relative abundance, we conducted simple linear regressions of each covariate. We found that hunting was significantly associated with lower relative abundance of agouti (p<0.05), whereas increases in elevation had a significant positive effect on relative abundance of agouti (p<0.05). Interestingly, we also found a significant inverse relationship between agouti abundance and the proximity to paved roads (p<0.05), i.e., agouti’s relative abundance was greater at shorter distances or closer to paved roads. We also found no relationship between vegetation density and agouti relative abundance (p>0.05). We concluded that hunting, elevation, and proximity to paved roads, all significantly impact the relative abundance index (RAI) of local agouti populations.

Die Arbeit beschäftigt sich mit dem System der Indentured Labour (deutsch: Kontraktarbeit) in Trinidad und Tobago und untersucht, was dazu führte, dass die Indentured Workers nach der Abolition der Sklaverei aus Indien in die Karibik kamen, unter welchen freiheitsbeschränkenden Umständen sie dort auf den Plantagen arbeiteten, was das Leben in einer fremden Kultur für sie bedeutete und warum das System letztendlich scheiterte.

In much of the southern Caribbean (i.e., Trinidad and Tobago and Guyana) ethno-political tensions between numerically commensurable populations of South Asian and African diasporic populations have structured narratives of post-Emancipation conflict and post-colonial
nationalism. In the typical story, the British imported South Asian indentured laborers to “save” the sugar plantations that ex-slaves had supposedly abandoned after Emancipation. Undercutting African laborers’ campaigns for higher wages, the introduction of South Asian indentured labor allegedly fomented racial tensions that persist to this day. In postcolonial Guyana and Trinidad and Tobago, therefore, the dominant axis of tension is between an “African” political party and an
“Indian” political party. This chapter challenges this narrative on a number of points by drawing on archival and oral histories from the rural fringes of colonial documentation in Trinidad (with some comparisons to
Guyana). I question the idea that strict racial segregation of Africans and Indians prevailed in the southern Caribbean until recently, by focusing on multi-racial labor movements and the production of products besides sugar (principally cacao and petroleum). I look at shared spirit worlds and practices of spiritual problem-solving documented by early to mid-twentieth century anthropologists to show how separable religions were not pre-existing objects, but had to be produced over the course of the twentieth century.

Geostatistical Analysis of Marine Traffic in the Gulf of Paria, Trinidad and Tobago
Amrika Maharaj 2017


The Gulf of Paria, which lies between Trinidad and Venezuela, is a busy shipping maritime environment representing a wide range of shipping activities. The industrial development of the Western coast of Trinidad, inclusive of transportation needs of existing oil and gas projects, transshipment of mineral resources, containerized and general cargo as well as passenger vessels, increases the potential for maritime risks. Risks associated with the shipping industry, gives rise to real concerns that could compromise the safety of navigation, security and the protection of maritime environment and human life.
Maritime transportation is the backbone of the international trade and global economy. It involves risks such as, fire, grounding, collision, loss of property and spillage of dangerous or pollutant substances. Aside from the risk to life, there are also potentially disastrous consequences for the environment and for economic activities dependent on the sea, such as, fisheries and tourism. Growth of the world fleet, both in number of ships and in tonnage, gives rise to an increase in the number of maritime accidents.
Due to the high density of vessel traffic in the Gulf of Paria, the congested waterways offer potential for collision. Therefore, conducting risk assessments within the waterway is important for a first step towards improvement in the safety of maritime navigation and this study offers the first such assessment for the area. Such studies have only been feasible since the introduction of Automatic Identification System (AIS) for shipping.
AIS was developed as a real-time navigational safety tool for collision avoidance and for supporting vessel traffic services in ports and harbours. Essentially, this new technology makes vessels identifiable to each other within the radar and adds data concerning the vessels status. However, the data has also found use in historical form and is used in this study as a source of vessel traffic within the Gulf of Paria data over a 6 month period.
Following an analysis of the AIS data available, maritime traffic within the Gulf of Paria is characterized and a geo-statistical analysis of the traffic is provided.  The study continues by developing an approach using GIS to highlight the risk to maritime navigation within the Gulf of Paria, combining geospatial vessel traffic information with risk likelihood factors, such as, confines of waters and obstructions that limits the manoeuvrability of vessels and chart quality. The resulting product is a spatial heat map indicating relative level of risk within the region.

Our article developed a new Indicator of Global Tolerance, and analyzed the performance of the practicing Roman Catholics in comparison to the national performances.

Based on the latest survey wave of the World Values Survey (2015) we first show how much religious tolerance or intolerance shapes public opinion in the individual countries of the world. We then ask ourselves whether or not active, practicing Roman Catholics, who attend Church Services each Sunday (in Catholic jargon the Dominicantes) are more or less tolerant than overall society concerning our chosen tolerance indicators:

1) disagree or strongly disagree: The only acceptable religion is my religion
2) agree or strongly agree: All religions should be taught in public schools
3) agree or strongly agree: People who belong to different religions are probably just as moral as those who belong to mine
4) trust completely or somewhat: people of another religion
5) meaning of religion: do good to other people

While practicing Roman Catholics in the Netherlands, Australia, Uruguay, South Korea, and the United States were really at the forefront of national tolerance development, practicing Roman Catholics in the Ukraine, Spain, Lebanon, Nigeria, and Belarus were among the laggards in accepting the values of religious tolerance among their fellow countrymen and countrywomen. Our article has also shown that there are vast differences in the sharing of religious tolerance values around the globe. For the 59 states of the world there are complete data. While e.g. in Sweden and the United States 30% or less of the population have no confidence in people with a religious denomination other than their own, these percentages in Algeria; Armenia; Yemen; Kyrgyzstan; Libya; Morocco; Mexico; Palestine (occupied territories); Peru; Romania; Tunisia; and Uzbekistan are over 70% each. Among the ten states with the lowest general religious tolerance, based on our five indicators, there are nine predominantly Muslim states.

According to our data, the religiously most liberal Catholic community in the world is found in the Caribbean state of Trinidad and Tobago, followed by the practicing Catholics in Australia, Brazil, the Netherlands and the United States. The worst results were reported in Peru, Lebanon, Mexico, Germany and Nigeria. It is also being mentioned that there are equally substantial ranges of examples of best and worst practice within the Muslim communities of the world.

The disappointing results for Germany both at the national level and at the level of the practicing Roman Catholics and the German Muslim community bode ill for the future capability of Germany to integrate the millions of refugees, which came to Germany since the beginnings of the European Refugee Crisis in the fall of 2015.

JEL Classification
A13 - Relation of Economics to Social Values
Z1 - Cultural Economics; Economic Sociology; Economic Anthropology
Z12 - Religion

The aim of this study was to evaluate support for current buggery/sodomy laws in three Caribbean countries—Barbados, Guyana and Trinidad and Tobago. To complete this task, data from the 2013 Caribbean Development Research Services (CADRES) ‘Attitudes towards homosexuals’ surveys were employed. The data analysis revealed that a majority of heterosexuals in the sample generally supported the maintenance and enforcement of the anti-gay laws, and the main predictors of said support were race, country of residence, religiosity, interpersonal contact and beliefs about the origins of homosexuality.