Caribbean Mutiny

Despite their deceptive tranquillity, the English-speaking islands of the Caribbean have been stirring uneasily for at least two years in the face of rising black militancy. On most of the islands, even the prosperous tourist meccas, unemployment rates are distressingly high. The targets of black resentment are usually the well-off white minorities. Last week, on the two-island nation of Trinidad and Tobago (pop. 1,100,000), this resentment erupted into widespread violence.

Tension began rising sharply nine weeks ago, when ten Trinidadian students were fined $33,000 by a Canadian court for wrecking a $1,000,000 computer center at Montreal's Sir George Williams University to protest discrimination against blacks. The episode caused great resentment on Trinidad. The islands' black Prime Minister, Eric Williams, 58, who led his nation to independence from Britain eight years ago, promptly paid the students' fines, but his gesture failed to appease the militants. Threatened with strikes by sugar, bus and postal workers, Williams declared a state of emergency and arrested 13 militants. A few hours later, a segment of the nation's 720-man army, nursing grievances of its own, staged a mutiny at its Teteron Bay headquarters, and rioting broke out in the capital.

Since the mutineers controlled the armory, the government sent out an emergency call for small arms to both the U.S. and Venezuela. The 2,800-man police force, the coast guard and about half of the army remained loyal.* Under its British-born commander, David Bloom, the coast guard blasted bridges and set off a landslide along the twelve-mile road between Teteron Bay and Port of Spain, thereby sealing off the mutineers from the capital. Loyal troops soon surrounded the Teteron Bay headquarters, but the rebels held some 30 soldiers and civilians as hostages.

Afro-Saxon Leaders. After three days of negotiations, the government agreed to sack an unpopular army commander, and the mutiny flickered out. Four persons were killed during the week; of the army's seven reported casualties, one had received a shot in the hand, another had sprained an ankle, and a third had suffered a case of "exhaustion and constipation."

There is little doubt that a tide of militancy is building up in other Caribbean countries as well. Many West Indians maintain that black power against black governments makes little sense. But militants dismiss their present leaders as "Afro-Saxons" and press for revolutionary change. In response, West Indian governments have resorted to a wide range of precautionary measures. The Jamaican government banned the works of Malcolm X. Bermuda canceled a schoolboy sports meet to avoid the danger of a racial incident, and Trinidad reportedly refused stopover privileges to one of her most illustrious native sons, Stokely Carmichael. This, as Carmichael modestly sees it, was the real reason for the uprising in Trinidad last week.

* At week's end, part of another Caribbean coast guard, that of Haiti, rebelled against the regime of President Francois ("Papa Doc") Duvalier and shelled the National Palace.

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