Trinidad Black Power Revolution
Eight years after independence, unemployment was high and the commanding heights of the economy — banks, sugar, oil — remained largely foreign-owned. The protests drew on the international Black Power movement and on local grievance, and were triggered partly by the trial of Trinidadian students in Canada over a protest against racial discrimination. Marches of tens of thousands moved through Port of Spain, and a deliberate effort was made to link Afro- and Indo-Trinidadian workers. Eric Williams, the historian who had led the country to independence, declared a state of emergency on 21 April. Part of the Trinidad Regiment mutinied at Teteron Barracks in sympathy; the coastguard blocked their advance on the capital and the mutiny was contained. Williams survived, and his government responded substantively: a state acquisition programme took majority stakes in banks and in the sugar and oil industries over the following years, and the oil boom after 1973 financed the redistribution the movement had demanded.
- Year: 1970 CE
- Category: Social
