REVISING THE ARENA AFFAIR
Trinidad Guardian
November 30, 1999
Page 21
Tomorrow marks the 300th anniversary of an event in Trinidad's history about which little is recorded and few people know - a bloody uprising against colonialism by the country's original inhabitants and the cruel reprisal by the governing authorities. It has become known as the Arena Massacre but as Guardian Features Writer LISA ALLEN-AGOSTINI reports, the descendants of the nation's first people are seeking to set the record straight and get the history recorded right.
|
MASSACRE OR UPRISING? |
|
On December 1, 1699, the Amerindian serfs who worked the encomienda (state farm) for the Catholic mission church at Arena, killed the priests in charge, desecrated the church and mutilated the ornaments of the church. The Indians took to the bush, ambushing the governor of the colony who had come to visit the mission that day. They killed him and his party and escaped into the Nariva Swamp, where 20 of them were tracked down and killed. The Amerindians were eventually cornered on the east coast of the island, and some 84 of the rebels were taken prisoner and brought back to St Joseph for trial. Amerindian revisionists say that the rebels were forced into the encomienda system - a barely disguised system of indentureship - stripped of their culture and religion, and that being forced on pain of beating to build a new church at Arena was the last straw. Others say that the priests and others who were killed in the rebellion were just evangelists, and didn't deserve to die. Both sides are remembering Arena on December 1. While the San Raphael church commemorates the passing of the Catholics who died for their faith, the Kairi Tukuienyo Karinya will hold a smoke ceremony at the site of the uprising in the Arena forest. |
In 1699, the Spanish colonial government in Trinidad quelled an Amerindian uprising in Arena, captured the rebels and tried them for their crimes, which included the murders of the governor of the island, several priests and their slaves. The captives were tortured until they confessed their part in what came to be known as the Arena Massacre, and 22 adult men of the lot were hanged in the public square of the capital. The bodies were then decapitated, dismembered and strewn on the roadside to serve as an example to any other rebels who harboured thoughts of standing up to the Catholic Church in the colony. The women and children who were implicated in the event were given as "body servants" to Spanish inhabitants of the colony.
It is telling that the event has gone down in the books as the Arena Massacre - a name weighted in favour of the Church, not the Amerindian rebels - and the priests who were killed are popularly known as the Arena Martyrs. Of the Amerindian side of the story, precious little is known.
A group of Amerindian activists hope to change that, by embarking on a series f public education exercises on the Arena Uprising, as they have termed the event which began on December 1, 1699 and concluded in a bloody execution at St Joseph on January 14, 1700.
"The history that is available to most people is inaccurate," says Amerindian shaman and activist, Ricardo Cruz. Cruz, 23, is one of the minds behind the commemorative activities which have been taking place across Trinidad since early November and will culminate next month in a discussion on who were the martyrs and who the murderers in this long-ago saga. Cruz and five others formed the Kairi Tukuienyo Karinya (the Hummingbird People of Trinidad), in an effort to pass on traditions, language and corrected history to the younger members of the Carib community. Young people have felt excluded from the workings of the Santa Rosa Carib Community, Cruz said, and wanted to form a youth arm in which they could discuss the things that were relevant to them outside of adult interests. The Kairi Tukuienyo Karinya stayed dormant for nearly a year after it was formed in October 1998, before the publication of a book on martyrs and murderers galvanised them into action.
"Basically the book sticks with reporting Amerindian incidents from the colonists' perspective," Cruz says. "It paints these people as being ungrateful and savage and lazy. We decided to have a series of events as to what really took place at that time, correcting the myths and misconceptions about Amerindians, and also to address the myth of Amerindian extinction in Trinidad."
His point about "Amerindian extinction" is well taken, since the group is so ethnically diluted and so politically voiceless that it is often taken to be non-existent. The active members of the Santa Rosa Caribs number about 30, Cruz says, but the wider group is much larger and non-affiliated Amerindians across the rest of the country add to the number.
"There are Amerindian people not just in Arima, but throughout Trinidad," Cruz asserts. This isn't reflected in the guidebooks, where Trinidad and Tobago's ethnic groups are listed without making mention of Amerindians, and without naming the Santa Rosa Carib Festival which is the high point of Amerindian cultural life in Trinidad.
The Santa Rosa Festival is celebrated annually by the Carib community in Arima, drawing hundreds to the Santa Rosa Catholic Church and the streets of the borough. It's the oldest continuous festival this country has, Cruz says, and "even if it is Catholic, it's at least something that Amerindian people can take pride in."
The Carib community has historically close ties with the Catholic Church, despite the Arena Uprising and the oppression which the Church visited upon the native peoples when it decided to set up shop on this island. The Kairi Tukuienyo Karinya is not averse to these ties, whatever the history behind them, and so far the group has had no negative response to its revisionist efforts. "We've gotten a good response, nobody has opposed us. The history is history, the truth is the truth, and you can't mask that or hide that. We haven't attacked the Church."
Fr. Michel De Verteuil, editor of the Catholic News, says that the Church, through Pope John Paul II, has repented for the atrocities it perpetrated in the name of faith. De Verteuil himself has no problem with the revision of the Arena affair. "It certainly is a challenge for us to look again at the whole strategy of evangelisation...there was a certain lack of respect for local religion and customs."
This archdiocese has not explicitly apologised for Arena and the other acts of violence against Amerindian people which resulted in the population dropping from 40,000 at the arrival of Columbus in 1498, to 4,000 in 1634. The merits of an apology are arguable, De Verteuil says. "I would focus more on saying, 'Never again'."