When Trinidad and Tobago Prime Minister, Dr. Eric Williams, declared in 1963: “Massa Day Done”, he was infact making a courageous declaration that we must never give up the struggle of resisting “Massa” the oppressor, and of seeking to liberate the oppressed.
Another powerful Caribbean voice resisting oppression was that of CLR James who, in 1938, wrote ‘Black Jacobins’. His courageous scholarship ensured that Toussaint l’Overture’s Haitian revolution (1791-1804), inwhich the slaves defeated the slave-master, would forever remain authentically recorded in scholarly history.
But the most powerful voice of all to denounce “Massa”, and to challenge the slave-master’s oppressionwith such matchless eloquence that even the echoes of his voice still drives fear into the hearts of the oppressors of the world, was the voice of Malcolm X.
The time has come for us to remind our peoples, Christians, Hindus, Muslims and others, that the US Government and Armed Forces, as well as such economic and monetary agencies as the International Monetary Fund, over which USA has control, have continuously functioned as “Massa” while oppressing all those who refuse to submit to their dictates. Europe has remained a faithful ally of the US “Massa”, evenwhile the French Emperor’s crown is shaking on his gilded head.
We write to explain that the major weapon used all this while by “Massa”, with which he wages economic and monetary war on the masses around the world, is inflation. It is more dangerous than nuclear weapons since it can be used to bring a people who oppose “Massa’s” oppression to their knees, and facilitate regime-change, without any need for military intervention.
We can see that times have changed; but the “ostrich” with her head buried in the sand cannot see it. “Massa’s” dogs can bark as much as they want, it will not prevent our caravan from moving on. There canbe no possibility of regime-change in Venezuela without an American-led military intervention; and the Americans do not dare to intervene militarily in Venezuela so long as Russia, Mexico and the Caribbeannations remain firmly opposed to it.
Just in case the American Ambassador and his local “ostrich” continue to misjudge this country (i.e., Trinidad and Tobago), as well as the rest of the Caribbean, a march of a hundred thousand or more to the US Embassy on Marley Street in support of this government’s courageous Venezuelan foreign policy may soon have to be organized.
Imran N. Hosein