JC I hear you on the lack of pride for country where it concerns Caribbean people. Somehow though I can't hit that with to broad a brush. You making it sound like we just watless(worthless). I will agree as Contro made the point in another thread, we need to teach our own history to our people. And tell some good stories. For to long we're being taught someone else's history. In the story of course they are the champions and we are the victims. I have never heard one story of a Trinidadian slave rising up against the master. I know of the Maroons from Jamaica, Mr. Toussaint from Haiti but nothing from Trinidad. I think we have failed at telling our story to our people. No compelling story? Then nothing to be proud about.
The stuff Trinis proud about is how cool we are, nice people, good party, carnival, soca and calypso. And these are very very good and cherishable things. But none of that stuff significantly affects our GDP. 
I asked this before. Is the government offering any incentive for Trini professionals working abroad to come back home? Reverse the Brain Drain? My wife begging me to move back.
But we do preacher, but these house n!ggers who made up the teachin curriculum in the MOE was busy making a pay check and nothing else. precher , yuh also have to understand that trinidad was not a typical slave colony.
yuh must read the history of trinidad and tobago (by none other than, DR Eric williams). i read this book @ least four times and although he did not cover every aspect of what took place from the inception, he did however, give enough details to have a general idea of what went on initially.
breds, almost every country that had slaves, encountered revolts. in trinidad we had the comaboule riots, of which jouvert has it's origin. we also had the slave revolt where the slaves escaped and took to the laventille hills, and many more stories of uprising and decent, even in barbados with a slave name bussa.
yuh also have to understand why these things were not taught in our class rooms. trinidad unlike jamaica and other slave colonies were not taken good care of by the spaniards.
there were very little plantations, it was under developed, and we had no gold, which was the spaniards main focus, and we only had about 10,000 slaves on the whole island on cocoa plantations. it's only after the french revolution the spaniards decide to collaborate with the french, and they came in with their slaves to develop and establish trinidad as a bonafide plantation colony.
after the french came in and began governing in 1783, they brought in their citizens who were mainly plantation owners who brought slaves from gaudelope, martinique, st lucia, grenada, dominica and st vicent. these ppl did not have an affinity to trinidad, and were only there for profit.
in 1797 less than 15 yrs of governing trinidad, the french settlers under spaniard rule, lost trinidad to the british. the british then decided to develop trinidad as a model slave colony. they brought in more slaves, the bulk being from guyana, then grenanda, and st vincent. the french and spaniard plantation owners and settlers were allowed to stay, and were given tax incentives in return for sugar production.
from the inception, trinidad was in no way ah stable society, we suffered underdevelopment by the spaniards, exchanged hands twice, from the spaniards to the french and finally the british in 1797.
in addition to that, we also had an influx of indentured workers after the abolition in 1834-1838, and as early as 1834 they began bringing in indentured workers. the first were the protugues, then the french, who didn't cut it and the vast majority died from the harshness of the plantation, the weather and diseases, with the bulk of the survivors going back to portugal, with only ah remnant remaining which settled in trinidad.
they then brought in the chinese, who also didn't cut it on the plantation. a lot of them didn't come with their women so they found it hard to settle and left, finally the british brought in the indians in 1844 as indentured workers, which worked out in the end.
@ the turn of the century, trinidad was a very progressive society with a stable thriving economy, which began to attract immigrants from all the over the colonies, both investors and settlers alike, from grenada, st vincent, barbados, guyana martinique, syria, lebonon, jews from europe, and even ppl from the USA running from jim crowe's oppressive laws.
so yuh see preacher, we were not like jamaica or haiti who had hundreds of yrs to form a bond to the island, no! we didn't have ppl who had enough time to develop a strong affinity to trinidad, and most saw trinidad as ah place of refuge, and had their hearts else where.
even today, most trinis don't really have love for trinidad, even though they bask in the glory of being trini. but the love, patriotism and connection is not there.
coming back to the main topic. this was never about trinidad, but rather the former colonies who didn't stand a chance on their own.
i believe independence was ah huge mistake especially in the english caribbean. IMO we @ least needed to be groomed into it, not thrown. after all, if you want to make a comparison, it's like taking your 14 yr old son and putting him out there on his own with no money and no marketable skills, just a bag of clothes and a tooth brush, "make it how yuh could kid".
now tell me, in most cases, wouldn't this kid get off to a rocky start with little chance of being successful ? positive.
