By G. A. Dwyer Astaphan
.jpg)
BEARING the responsibility of securing a little island like St.Kitts or Nevis isn’t easy. It has never been.
Well before the 15th century, Europeans had had good access over land to China, India and other Asian lands from which they were able to spread their influence and extract valuable raw materials and goods such as silk, spices, precious metals and opiates.
But after Constantinople fell in the year 1453 to the Ottoman Turks, access to Asia became difficult. (Trust me, I won’t bust up your head or mine with a lot of history, but there are a few bits and pieces which we ought to be aware of).
Of course, Europe’s rabid thirst for conquest continued unquenched, so people had to start thinking outside the envelope.
And that is how Christopher Columbus and his brother, two Italians from Genoa, developed a plan in the year 1485 to get to India by sea, travelling westwards.
Once armed with their plan, the Columbus boys had to find a financier. They went to businessmen and rulers in Italy, Portugal and England and were turned down. However, they persevered, and eventually King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain agreed to back them, and on 3rd August, 1492, a three-ship convoy, led by Christopher Columbus himself, set out from Spain on a westward path in search of India.
First port of call was the nearby Canary Islands to stock up and do some repairs for the journey, and Columbus set out from the Canaries on his westward quest for India on 6th September.
On 12th October, one of his men spotted land. It was an island known to its inhabitants as ’Guanahani’, located in what was later to become known as The Bahamas.
In his journal, Columbus noted that there were scars on the bodies of many of the island’s inhabitants, received as a result of attacks from inhabitants of nearby islands. He described the Guanahanis as peaceful and friendly, and stated that “they ought to make good and skilled servants, for they repeat very quickly whatever we say to them”.
He did not see in their peaceful, friendly nature as platform for what could have developed into a a peaceful, friendly, equitable and mutually beneficial relationship. Instead, he saw it as an open door for exploitation and subjugation, with him and his imperial principals on the giving end.
That first encounter on Guanahani would also have been instructive for Columbus, in that he would have learned that there were other islands nearby, and he would have learned about the inhabitants of those other islands. How they looked, how they lived, and so on.
The bottom line here is that Columbus found himself in this archipelago which later became known as the West Indies, and he, and other European invaders were able, with relative ease, to take whatever they felt that they needed, such as:
- cheap (even free) labour under conditions of indenture, slavery and colonialism;
- raw materials, which they would ‘refine’ into, for the most part, unhealthy products which they would ship back to the islands for the inhabitants to buy;
- brain power which they would lure from the islands to the metropolis to maintain the status quo; and
- the fundamental rights, the hopes, and the patrimony of the inhabitants of the islands.
And for the pillage and plunder suffered by the inhabitants of these islands over the centuries were, the ‘reward’ was a package of metropolitan practices and cultures that destroy human bodies, minds and souls, and destroys generations and civilizations.
Columbus brought things that the Guanahanis had never seen before. Like servitude. Imagine people coming to your island, your country, and telling you that they are now in charge of you and of everything in your country, and that you will now serve them, and live, according to their rules, and as best you can, live like them.
And after they have exhausted their desire to rule over, dispossess, dismantle, oppress and repress you through the machinery of government, constitution, virtual deification of their monarchs and wholesale indoctrination to their culture and rejection of your own, they turn, as the centuries pass beyond blatant slavery, indenture and colonialism, to a new game plan, but playing the same game of keeping you on your knees, open and vulnerable to the destructive winds that blow from them to you, such as rabid materialism, self-centredness, gimmicks and gadgets, fast-changing fashions and fads, fast food, demeaning entertainment, disrespect, guns, drugs, and violence, and so on.
If you haven’t fathomed my rambling yet, let me bring you to my point: the major influences on anti-social behaviour, crime and the general decimation of humanity in our little Federation have been imported by ruthless ‘them’, and swallowed, hook, line and sinker by gullible ‘us’.
A quick case in point would be Haiti, the first independent Black nation in the western World, which over 200 years later, still cannot catch itself, riddled as it is with disgusting external interferences and influences, HIV/AIDS, drugs, vicious and widespread crime, and incredible poverty, and so on!
And were all of the millions of lives lost to violence in Africa due to the use of machetes, knives, guns and ammunition made in Africa?
Were the lives of Paulie, Magilla, Raffique, Mini-Dread, Jusan, Izom and Sugars, to name just a few of our own sons, blown away by guns made here, or did those things happen because of a phenomenon with its genesis within our borders?
The hurricane of decadence and destruction that has blown relentlessly and mercilessly over these islands since 1492 has blown against easily penetrated shores and welcoming, unsuspecting people. Guns were used to take and maintain control, and today, guns have us out of control!
Robert Bradshaw tried to put his foot down in the 1960’s and 1970’s, as he tried to secure our coastlines and our minds. But he was roundly ridiculed, both at home and at the source of the destruction.
And even while he was alive, an additional source came into play: the destructive component of Jamaican culture.
Can we really come to terms with our national security issues without factoring in these things?
I don’t think so.
I want St.Kitts & Nevis to go to war! A war against these invaders and their agents in our midst who are continuing the process of destruction of our psyche and civilization. Invaders who bring guns, drugs, and satanic lifestyles to our shores, and their friends and many others amongst us here who swallow the crap.
You see, Dear Reader, in the past, civilizations were usually destroyed by invading armies. Today, civilizations are being destroyed by invading lifestyles and the props used to maintain those lifestyles. Our TVs, DVDs, I-Pods, Laptops and Cell Phones, and your ‘hero’ and ‘role model’ are more likely to destroy us than any invading army. Under the trappings of being modern conveniences and gadgets, they, uncontrolled as they generally are, make our borders and our brains porous.
In times of indenture, ’they’ could have been blamed. But can we still blame ‘them’ today? Don’t we have minds and a culture of our own? Are we ashamed of who and what we are? Is Marcus Garvey crying long tears in his grave as he looks at us and sees that we did not take heed when in a visit here in 1937 he warned us not to become a nation of jelly-fish, a people without backbones?
Do you think that people like Columbus, Drake, Rodney, Captain Morgan, Queen Isabella, Queen Mary, and their heirs and successors in fact might still be marvelling at the incredible success of their mission, even centuries later?
Until Next Time, Plenty Peace.
