“The Race Leapt at Sauteurs”

Abstract

Introductionin march 2012, atop a hill on Balliceaux island St Vincent and Grenadines, Belizean-born Garifuna healer Lucia Ellis gave thanks for being alive. Balliceaux is an inhospitable place, devoid of fresh water, natural shelter and consumable plant life. In July 1796, British forces interned 4,776 prisoners on this desolate island, which was hours away from St Vincent even on a frigate. An epidemic swept through camp and only 2,248 prisoners were still alive by March 1797, when they were exiled to Central America. Lucia, like Garifuna people of Central America and diaspora today, descends from these survivors.1Lucia spoke during a pilgrimage to Balliceaux, which was organised by St Vincents Garifuna Heritage Foundation. The participants included Garifuna and Caribs from St Vincent and Grenadines, Belize, Honduras and United States, as well as non-indigenous Vincentians and academics from Caribbean, North America and Europe.2 Indigenous Vincentians shared stories of discrimination they endured St Vincent. I grew up Barbados, half an hour by plane from St Vincent. Legend has it that Africans from a wrecked slave ship bound for Barbados escaped St Vincent and became ancestors of today's Garifuna people. Nevertheless few Barbadians know of Garifuna or think much about Barbados's pre-colonial history as part of an indigenous system of life, yet Barbados and St Vincent share a genocidal history that forms a key basis of modern statehood. This essay is about Garifuna/'Carib' people between 1492 and late eighteenth century. Most of analysis centres on sub-archipelago of southeastern/Lesser Antillean islands that was their ancestral territory, known early colonial period as Carib bees, Charaibes, Caraibes and Caribes. 3 The Lesser Antilles' histories of enslavement and colonisation fit 1951 United Nations definition of genocide as an attempt to destroy, whole or part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group.*The late Michel-Rolph Trouillot observed that the word history offers . .. an irreducible distinction and yet an equally irreducible overlap between what happened and that which is said to have happened . . . The ways which what happened and that which is said to have happened are or are not same may itself be historical. s For Trouillot, a full grasp of a historical event's meaning requires exploration of its two-sided historicity, made up of the materiality of sociological process (historicity 1) [which] sets stage for future historical narratives (historicity 2).61 examine 'two-sided historicity' of three acts of annihilationist violence committed between 1493 and 1797 by (in order of occurrence) Spanish, French and British against indigenous Lesser Antillean people.I explore these three incidents as acts of genocide (historicity 1), as well as material for a genocidal historical narrative (historicity 2), which is a version of history that seeks to complete work of original act of genocide, even if that may not be intention of those who repeat narrative. These three encounters were part of imperial Europe's 'Carib archive', which transformed defeat of even smallest Carib contingent into a moment representing annihilation of Carib people in whole or part. The translation of military defeats into widely recognised symbols of racial annihilation helped colonial authorities to dispossess descendants of Caribbean aboriginal people of legal claims to redress or rights based on Carib ancestry.Taino activist Jorge Estevez condemned historians' 'paper genocide'. . . With stroke of their pens, legacy of my ancestors was wiped out.7 This paper illustrates that genocidal anti-Carib narratives survive because a diverse range of agents who engage publicly with past reproduce them - historians, of course, but also filmmakers, visual artists, poets and government officials. …