My New Blog: One Day for the Watchman (1D4TW)

I have been busy working on an offshoot blog, One Day for the Watchman, which is now live. “One day for the watchman” is a line from a Trinidadian proverb, about everyday being for thieves, but only one day is for the watchman, that one day which is the last day for the thieving, and it is usually meant to convey the idea that wrong doers will meet their end. One can read more of these proverbs, selected to suit the themes of the blog, under “Words of Wisdom.”

1D4TW will not be replacing or substituting for The CAC Revuew, but it will do some very different things. Posts that originally appeared here will remain, with some copied over to create 1D4TW. The themes of the 1D4TW will be broader and more political, allowing me to express and engage in issues and forms of writing that I sometimes produced here, but felt reluctant about doing so, or felt limited.

The key foci of 1D4TW are, as listed under the “about” section which is retitled “Wha’ yuh say?“:

• radical indigenism and cultural revival
• the international politics of indigenous struggle
• Caribbean cultural identity, creolization, difference, history, and autonomy
• the politics of independence and decolonization
• critique of imperialism, capitalism, and modernity
• politics after the state, the world market, and Western hegemony
• anarchy and autarky
• ways of life based on self-sufficiency
• rethinking human-animal, our impermanence

My thanks to Guanaguanare (also Guacara Dreamtime), Black Girl on Mars, and the late Dr. Roi Kwabena for the obvious inspiration for this new blog. Also, my thanks to thumbprints.co.tt’s Free Speech photo website featuring some amazing Trinidadian graffiti.

From Guacara’s post on “Le Roi” I will end with some of Roi Kwabena’s famous signature lines that appeared at the end of his email messages:

swim deep as manatee
levitate as a kolibri
chanting like a macaw
SINGING as COKI
blowing like sandfly

fly high like a condor from los iros to guayaguayare

wade as an anaconda
dig deeper than anteater

glimmer like the green horsewhip…

Words of Wisdom from Guanaguanare

An anonymous blogger who goes by the name of Guanaguanare (the laughing gull), a person/bird who clearly is possessed of a great love for his/her island of Trinidad, has once again shared some wisdom with the rest of us in a recent posting that tries to explain the identity of Guanaguanare and in the process produces an Amerindian vision of survival, reconstitution and healing. Simple words really, but clearly heartfelt and very effective.

He/she/the gull writes the following:

"Why the Laughing Gull?
Guanaguanare, the happy, non-threatening seagull hovers over this blog. This seagull symbolises something of the resilient though besieged natural spirit of the islands and many of its inhabitants...an aboriginal presence...a retiring, gentler spirit that does not seek heavy baggage and leaves a light footprint. The name Guanaguanare is an Amerindian word for the laughing gull and you probably know that it was also used by the Amerindian cacique - Cacique Guanaguanare, who gave the Spanish the land on which they were to establish San Jose de Oruna or St. Joseph, the first capital of Trinidad.

From resources on Island Carib language, I created the site's rallying call:

Ahakutiwa, alëlekatiwa, akuyawatiwa!
We awake, we laugh, we return!

It is meant to give hope to all people who are mourning the loss of a better quality of life. On another level, it is also addresses people with Amerindian ancestry who do and do not publicly identify with this connection. We are still here, sleeping maybe, but not extinct.

Apart from its use to disprove the fact of a continuing Amerindian presence among us and in our veins, the extinction myth is also used to suppress so many other possibilities, to nip life itself in the bud. Someone decided that Hope is Extinct and people are despairing because they are beginning to believe the myths, that human kindness is dead, that the option of a simpler, less punishing lifestyle is a lost cause, that Trinidad and Tobago is going down the tubes, that law breakers and inconvenient human foetuses are better off dead, that all efforts to reverse the tailspin will amount to nothing.

The site belongs to everyone, all the spirits who fly through to contemplate or to leave their contributions to this conversation about Trinidad and Tobago. Even if you do not submit works, please visit to read and to leave your comments.

Looking forward to meeting you! Many blessings!

Mweh ka allay!
Guanaguanare"