On The Map: October 2009

October 24, 2009

Oneika Russell of ART:Jamaica speaks to Annalee about On the Map

Annalee Davis, experienced visual artist, activist, designer tells us about a recent project, ON THE MAP, a documentary video project. For artists who are interested in venturing into making documentaries and some activist projects, Davis sets an example.

What is 'On the Map' about and what does it seek to achieve?

ON THE MAP is a thirty minute video project airing intimate discussions with undocumented Caribbean migrants who speak of life between the cracks. More specifically, it looks at the movement of people from Guyana to Barbados, revealing gaps between the official stand on Caribbean integration & the experience of unskilled Caribbean migrants, within the context of the CSME (The CARICOM Single Market & Economy).

The goals of ON THE MAP are:

1.To give a voice to the numerous voiceless and tell a contemporary story of intra-Caribbean migration.

2. To sensitise the public and policy makers to key social issues.

3. To contribute to conflict resolution at the community level while promoting tolerance, understanding & respectful coexistence.

4. To foster policy debates and political attention to the development of sound socio-economic policies under the integrative sheme.

5. To use my voice as a visual artist as a legitimate language to back chat to the state and engage in debate.

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October 16, 2009

On the Map to be screened at Real Art Ways Gallery, USA

click images to enlarge

October 13, 2009

Region can't turn back, says Carrington

HEADS MEET.From left, Deputy Prime Minister and Attorney-General of Barbados Freundel Stuart, Prime Minister of Antigua, Baldwin Spencer, Prime Minister of Trinidad and Tobago, Patrick Manning, Barbados’ Prime Minister David Thompson, Chief Justice of Barbados, Sir David Simmons, and CARICOM Secretary General Dr Edwin Carrington at yesterday’s opening of the convocation of the CARICOM Single Market and Economy.

Published on: 10/10/2009.

THE REGION HAS COME too far to turn back now from CARICOM integration.

CARICOM Secretary General Edwin Carrington said at the opening ceremony of the Convocation of the CARICOM Single Market And Economy (CSME) yesterday at the Lloyd Erskine Sandiford Centre, Two Mile Hill, St Michael, that it is time to get on with the business of building of a community which is 36 years old.

'Immigration crisis could strike T&T'

Aretha Welch awelch@trinidadexpress.com

Friday, October 9th 2009

Chief economist and director of research at the Central Bank Alvin Hilaire has warned that the immigration situation in Trinidad and Tobago could face some serious challenges, given the fact that this country's economy was still doing better than others in the region, and as such, workers from all over the region could begin flocking here.

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Few Caricom heads confirm attendance at CSME forum

Rickey Singh Bridgetown

Friday, October 9th 2009

JUST five Caribbean Community Heads of Government had confirmed, by yesterday, their participation in the two-day forum on the Caricom Single Market and Economy (CSME) that gets under way today in Barbados.

Among the confirmed, apart from Barbados Prime Minister David Thompson-host for the event-are the Prime Ministers of Trinidad and Tobago (Patrick Manning), Antigua and Barbuda (Baldwin Spencer), St Vincent and the Grenadines (Ralph Gonsalves) and Dominica (Roosevelt Skerrit).

PEP COLUMEN: Time to go beyond CSME

Published on: 10/9/2009.

THE People's Empowerment Party (PEP) extends a warm welcome to all Heads of Government, civil society leaders and technocrats of our Caribbean Community (CARICOM) who are in Barbados attending this weekend's Convocation on the CARICOM Single Market and Economy (CSME).

These regional leaders are expected to give careful consideration to the findings of an 'audit' which was recently carried out in all CARICOM states on the workings of the CSME. It is also anticipated that they will propose strategies for advancing the process of constructing a 'single economy'.

OUR CARIBBEAN: CARICOM CSME 'audit' forum on today

by RICKEY SINGH

SO, HOW MUCH PROGRESS has really been achieved by the member governments of the Caribbean Community to transform it into a fully integrated CARICOM Single Market and Economy (CSME) by a much revised target date of 2015?

A better understanding, if not a precise answer, should be forthcoming by tomorrow before the curtains are drawn on a two-day "CSME Convocation" that gets under way this morning at the Lloyd Erskine Sandiford Centre, Two Mile Hill, St Michael.

October 8, 2009

Carrington tells Mexicans: CARICOM ripe for investments

CARICOM Secretary-General Edwin Carrington told a business forum in Mexico last Friday that Mexicans establishing a business in any CARICOM Single Market and Economy member state would benefit from some key elements of the CSME.
He noted that with a functioning single market and a population of approximately 15 million, the region stands ready to welcome business enterprises.

Read full article

October 6, 2009

Bolivarian alliance for the peoples of Latin America (ALBA): South-South co-operation?

In the Diaspora

(This is one of a series of weekly columns from Guyanese in the diaspora and others with an interest in issues related to Guyana and the Caribbean)

D. Alissa Trotz

Alissa Trotz is editor of the Weekly In the Diaspora Column

Last week, I participated in a discussion in Toronto on the Venezuelan-led PetroCaribe and ALBA initiatives. PetroCaribe is a concessionary oil facility where a portion of the receipts from crude oil imports goes into a special fund to be used for social investment, and is available to 16 countries in the greater Caribbean. ALBA, created in 2004, is an integration arrangement that describes itself as a people-centred alternative to free trade integration models. St Vincent and the Grenadines and Antigua and Barbuda have signed statements of support while Dominica has acceded to ALBA. The 2008 summit was also attended by St Kitts-Nevis and Haiti.

October 2, 2009

Finally, the big CSME event

The Caribbean Community Secretariat has announced, at last, the dates for a long expected and overdue special consultation on the status of its flagship project, the Caricom Single Market and Economy (CSME).

The announcement on Monday said that it will take the form of a two-day "Convocation on the CSME" in Barbados on October 9-10 and will involve leading stakeholder representatives.

October 1, 2009

Crane clamps down on illegals

THE CRANE RESORT will conduct daily checks on all sub-contracted workers to ensure that they are legally documented to work in this country.

The new policy came into immediate effect yesterday after 20 workers were reportedly rounded up, interviewed and removed from the St Philip hotel by the Immigration Department last Friday.

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ORDER YOUR OWN COPY OF ON THE MAP

Email annalee@annaleedavis.com to order your copy of ON THE MAP.
We accept cheques or International postal orders included with your complete return mailing address and sent to Annalee Davis. Email Annalee for the mailing address.

You may also contact Annalee to schedule a screening at your school, university, artists' collective or gallery, community group, library, place of worship, private sector entity or government department. This can include a Panel Session which allows the issues raised by the film to be constructively discussed with the Director, invited Pannellists and the audience.

Statement

The Caribbean was the cradle of New World globalization. Our people all came from somewhere else, into the belly of the Americas.

Characterised by waves of migrant experience, the Caribbean became a place of confluence, transience and hybridity which for years romanticized the struggle to be whole, to become one Caribbean people. In spite of this ideal, we remain as fragmented as ever, locked into nationalist crevices, linguistic divides and exclusivist cultural legitimacy.

The repeated production of idyllic images of an eternal playground for tourists on the one hand, and notions of the region as fragmented, failed and chaotic on the other; mask a complex history, leaving Caribbeans ambivalent about a sense of self.

We must answer the question, both creatively and critically, what is the Caribbean? What image of ourselves do we wear and to what extent do these images represent who we actually are? What is the truth of our own lived realities and how do we speak to each other of this reality?

The challenge is to remove the mask created by the visitors’ gaze, to see through the rigid stereotypes, and to honestly reflect on our states of being.

My work exposes tensions within the larger context of a post-colonial history and the more recent experiences of post independence and 9/11. More personal explorations of home/land, longing and belonging, and creoleness, serve as cartographic meanderings of Caribbean space, and investigations of the self within that space; in an effort to discern the territory.

September 9 2007
St. George, Barbados

(complete text)

I am the complex Creole
My context is the Caribbean

An archipelago crocheted into a crossbreed
Of carnival, class and comess
Cognizant of Columbus
And the Commonwealth
That created these confused colonies
Correctly criticized for the callous treatment
Of the Amerindian
And the reconstitution
Of a Caribbean caste system

Several centuries later
My coronary artery crackles
When I think of the creatures
That created this cacophonous confusion

And although we collide
There is more chaos than community
Some feel like foreigners
As though uncharacteristic
Of these now ex-colonies
Our natural native islands

I celebrate the chorus of the Creole Chant

But I have a creed that I wear
Like a crest on my chest
My credentials are that I am created equally
Credible from my cranium to my coccyx

I cleave to no church, temple nor country
I sing the canticles
And practice a yoga
I chant
I breathe
I made my jappa and wrote a creed
I owned a crucifix
And acknowledge the crescent

I anoint myself with a communion of
Cinnamon, coffee and cumin
Cocoa, cotton and cane
It is with composure and compassion that
I conceive my compatriots as compatible
Whether Cuban or Guyanese,
Christian or Muslim, Hindu or Jew

I contemplate a Caribbean conservatory
That is a consanguineous conscious community
Confidently confirming a conglomerate
Who speak patois, Papiamento, Spanish and Creole

I celebrate the chorus of the Creole Chant

As a complex Creole
Confronting this crossroads of centuries
I cannot condone the corruption
Nor those who configure the conflict –
I outcast them from community

I contradict the unicursal way
And commemorate the cobweb we have become
I come to you
Not as a comedian
Nor as a clown
I come to you as a coalition
Of combustible matter
A civilized collective
Sometimes caustic, but never counterfeit
I am a cordless creator of culture
Conveying my codes
To a community that isn’t convinced
Of the credit of cultural producers

And now I wear coronet
A continuous circular

In my cipher
I chuckle
I weep

I celebrate the chorus of the Creole chant