Submitted by Pachamama

As we approach the season before the silly season we can expect the regular public diatribes from officialdom as they seek to immortalize a constructed past and present an unmeasured guidance for their fairy tale visions of the future. The hard truth has been, is and will be that Barbados since 1627 has never been an independent country and may, never will be. We now know that the most influential factor in Barbados’ independence was the CIA pressure on Britain to relinquish its colonies worldwide, as evidenced by recent Freedom of Information Act disclosures. Right away we have to reassess claims about the ‘fathership’ of this so-called independence project. We also have to ask ourselves some other searching questions.

What kind of an independent country can be properly built on the bones of the indigenous peoples of this region in circumstances where, within the body politic, there is no recognition of the thief, genocide and character assassination of the Tianos, the Kalinagos and other indigenous peoples who lived on this here land for millennium before White people even knew the world was not flat. They descendant are still amongst us.

What kind of an independent country will allow 180 years to past after the most egregious crimes to be committed against African peoples, and indeed all of humanity, and for those crimes to be taken as a normal way of doing business, as though they never occurred. A business which initially ‘globalized’ the functions of corporations.

What kind of an independent country would want to establish a so-called ‘pantheon of national heroes/heroines’ drawn from 200 years but ignores 15000 years of continuous indigenous civilizations in Barbados and the Western Hemisphere. A ‘pantheon’ almost entirely made up of political figures, dominated by leading lights of the BLP/DLP and those who, with the exception of The Great Bussa, never even fired a bullet in anger at our colonial oppressors. This is what traitors are made of. These so-called national heroes of an independent Barbados as shopped by Hilary Beckles are no more than lovers of our oppressors. When will the real independent people like Crawford, a man who was way ahead of his peers, or T.T Lewis a White man who, for his time, was more progressive than all the Black politicians, come in from the wilderness imposed upon them.

What kind of independent countries do we have in the Caribbean when not one Island can issue a Sovereign Guarantee (SG) to secure none IMF/World Bank funding and must dutifully follow the dictates of the White colonial economic establishment that rules the world, still.

What kind of independent country could we be when George Belle and a cabal at the UWI could attempt to influence a national election by producing a poll at odds with the most advanced scientific methods available? This modern day, sophisticated, coup attempt was hatched under the very eyes of Hilary Beckles. The same Beckles who now continues to misguide us, and nobody goes to jail or as Bobby Clarke, famously use to say ‘nobody’s head was sent looking for their shoulders’.

What kind of independent university system do we have anyway that in more than 50 years it is yet to produce ONE single discovery in science or technology that has had a transformative impact on a country, an industry or even an individual business? Is it possible that our institutions of higher learning are incapable of breaking out of this type of mental enslavement, cultural domination?

What kind of independent country could this be when other people elsewhere are putting the finishing touches on the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement and the elites in Barbados and the Caribbean are clueless about the transformational impact it will have. Under TPP and its corporate courts, they will be coming to Barbados seeking ‘rent’ for all types of copy write and other alleged infringement of their property rights. Any Law of Barbados inconsistent with the wishes of this court will have to be rescinded or the country will face unprecedented sanctions. This represent a stupendous global power grab. All this is happening when Caribbean elites are more interested in who ‘foopping’ whom than strategic issues of sovereign and real independence.

What kind of an independent country do we have when an election could end in a virtual dead heat and there is no space for a national unity, national salvation or national reconstruction government. An ‘independence’ where a party with the smallest of margins could presume to rule under an anachronistic system and a maximum leader whose head is firmly located within a bygone Greco-Roman era. Or a political opposition where the only thing of importance to the leader is charting the shortest distance to Llaro Court.

What kind of an independent country would allow economic disparities to continue to mount in a mindless lurch toward perdition? An independence that can only be determined by outsiders. An independence that says we can never be self-sufficient in food production. An independence that says we must import poisonous foods and other untested technologies from ‘over and away’. An independence that says all the land has to be concentrated into fewer and fewer hands, especially if those hands are White and or foreign.

What kind of independent people will buy hotel properties, knock them down, built them back and then lease them to foreign interests for decades to come in a hope of boasting revenues in a dying industry? After more than 60 years of slavishly supporting a tourism industry, like the sugar industry before it, and yet we have a class of corporate elites who are as dependent on the taxpayers as the whole country is dependent on the new colonial master. We are in real trouble!

What kind of independence is this when our people from birth to death are engaged in a useless competition, either to see who will be born in a private hospital, who is going to Harrison’s College, who receives a Barbados scholarship or who will become Governor General? After nearly 50 years of independence, and before, these academic elites are largely useless in our pursuit for a better life and world. Something has to be wrong! After nearly fifty years of independence we are still engaged in these self-defeating distractions. We still feel the need to draw up under Elizabeth’s petticoat. This national need is buttressed by a landscape that represents White domination and our continued mental enslavement. This is further reinforced by a White elite which would stalwartly prevent any Prime Minister, in a supposedly independent democracy, from even saying the word REPUBLIC, publicly. That such a small White minority still has effective political and economic power demonstrates present realities. What kind of independence is this when Black elites are worse than the White elites, by any measure?

The emotionalism that will characterize this so-called Independence Day is unlikely to leave space for any serious appraisal about, who we are, where we have come from or where we are going, as a people. While the leaders of the political tribes will have occasion to gloat about pass glory and project fanciful dreams still ahead the real politique will be far different. Unfortunately, these pipe dreams or blatant lies will all be calibrated to engender a certain amount of the accustomed euphoria. We are afraid that as a country, as a region, as a world, we have entered a clearly predicted phased that nobody in Barbados or the Caribbean has properly prepared for. In these circumstances, 1960’s notions of independence are at best quaint.