From Independence to Mutuality

This Independence finds us more dependent that ever. Dependent on First World countries for vaccines, dependent on government for hampers, dependent on the rich to help the poor, dependent on one another to be kept alive.

This dependency was in many respects a good thing. It challenged the mentality that pushed “I and I, I wanna rule my destiny” to ridiculous limits. The “I” was fast becoming the axis around which the world revolved.

We had to slow down at some point, and the coronavirus slowed us down.

We suddenly realised that we needed people more than planes. Borders were closed for more than a year, but we managed.

We needed not only our friends and family but strangers too – the mortuary workers and janitors, the supermarket attendants and street cleaners, the undertakers, and gravediggers. We remembered what Jesus tried to teach us: little people matter.

That little people matter was significantly lost in our post-independence developmental philosophy. Not wanting to sound like ‘neemakarams’, we admit the good done: the evolution of the oil and gas industry raising the standard of living of the average citizen; access to digital technology and decentralised university education; relatively peaceful coexistence among the races and religions, both due to and in spite of political leadership.

However, we lost sight of the poor and lapsed badly in collecting data concerning the poor. Our unemployment figures became a political football and fake news. We could not truly tell the size of the working poor nor the percentage of the indigent. The pandemic stripped all that away and lay bare the disparity between the ‘have’ and the ‘have nots’, the underdevelopment amidst the development.

Insufficient HDC houses have gone to the poor; who got houses often depended on who knew who and who voted for whom. Thousands of citizens have been waiting for 10, 15 and 20 years for their castle, for that is what a poor man’s house is, his castle.

The large majority of the poor have been left at the mercy of landlords, many of whom still want their pound of flesh in these distressing times.

Independence 2021 therefore calls us to look at the man/woman in the mirror and beckons us to redefine Independence in terms of mutuality and respect for the earth, recognising first of all the earth is nobody’s private property but God’s.

We should read today’s first reading (Deuteronomy 4:1–2, 6–8) as if addressed to us: “Now, Trinidad and Tobago, hear the statutes and decrees which I am teaching you to observe, that you may live, and may enter in and take possession of the land which the Lord, the God of your fathers, is giving you.”

The “statutes and decrees” tell us we cannot progress at the expense of our neighbour.

We once lived together, then we started living side by side. The pandemic is calling us to live together once again, which means taking the vaccine so that my neighbour may live.

They also tell us to care for the earth for climate change alone cannot account for the extensive damage and distress due to flash flooding. We have choked the earth, so she is coughing it up now.

And let us have a heart of justice, for giving each man/woman his/her due, in private dealings and public policy for “Justice is what love looks like in public” (Cornel West).