The Late Elma Lathuillerie Reyes: Public Relations and Research Officer of the Santa Rosa Carib Community

Maximilian C. Forte, 2002, 2006

The late Elma Reyes, who passed away in 2000, first encountered the SRCC as a journalist in the late 1970s, and shortly thereafter became a full-time spokesperson for the SRCC as the group’s Public Relations and Research Officer. She authored a dozen newspaper articles on the SRCC, co-authored a chapter with British archaeologist Peter Harris (Harris & Reyes 1990), self-published a booklet on the SRCC (Reyes 1978), as well as a booklet that highlighted Carib cultural inputs into Trinidadian Christmas traditions (Reyes 1996). Reyes also prepared many of the SRCC’s documents. Almarales summed up Reyes’ contribution thus: “[she] devotes a lot of her time to helping the SRCC discover and preserve their culture and oral traditions and to carve a niche among the I.P. [Indigenous Peoples] of the world” (1994:30).

Reyes entered journalism in the 1960s. In that decade she lived twice in the United States, for two-year periods, living in the Bronx and Brooklyn, New York, where she wrote for the New York Courier. Back in Trinidad, Reyes became, as she explained, a tabloid writer covering local beauty pageants. She was also an avid aficionado of Parang music. A great deal of the framing and reinterpretation of the SRCC in terms of ‘the Amerindian contribution to the national foundation’, ‘Amerindians as the bedrock of the national heritage’, and in terms of Amerindians as possessing valuable ‘ecological wisdom’ and special ‘knowledge of alternative life-ways’, owes its origins to the promotional media work done by Reyes. She zealously promoted Trinidad’s Amerindians as the cultural cradle of an authentic, local, Trinidadian nationhood:

The only “roots” of this nation are those planted by the first nations, for all other aspects of our culture and survival systems are trans­plants, branches which were suc­cessfully “budded” to the main tree which existed long before their ar­rival. The denial of indigenous sys­tems and the contribution of the “first nations” in present day Trini­dad and Tobago can only be described as base ingratitude. [Reyes 1998]

From the late 1970s until the mid-1990s, Bharath and Reyes worked in close partnership. Reyes first met Bharath when he approached various newspapers to post an advertisement, and she became interested in the SRCC then, added to interest she had in Arima given her family connections. As a researcher for the SRCC, Reyes was criticised on occasion, either directly or in veiled comments, for being an “outsider” speaking for the Caribs—these episodes occurred before my time in Trinidad, and the details are rather unclear, apart from these general outlines. Both Bharath and Reyes recounted these criticisms. The closest I got to this debate was in a 1995 Op-Ed article of Reyes in the Trinidad Guardian, where she wrote:

I want to publicly inform that I have never promoted myself as a member of the Santa Rosa Caribs although I do have some Amerindian branches on my family tree. I became involved with their representative body AT THEIR REQUEST [capitalized in the original] due to the fact that I am related directly or indirectly to several of the families of the community, and was at that time a member of the work­ing press. My role has been that of research and public relations representative, and it is an insult to the intelligence and retained knowledge of the Santa Rosa Caribs and other indigenous people of the region for anyone to insinuate that the information I have been able to share did not emerge from them. [Reyes 1995]

Rising to Reyes’ defense, Almarales states, “she is in fact qualified to be a member of the community. Her ancestors were ‘peones’ from Venezuela” (1994:29), once more reaffirming this assimilation of Venezuelan immigrants into the Carib history.

Reyes’ work has not gone unacknowledged, at least at a formal level of recognition, a fact that added to her importance as a broker for the SRCC. In her home, I saw plaques and awards from the Arima Borough Council, Carib Breweries, and the United Sporting Organization for her “services in community development”. In addition, in 1972 she won the Best Children’s Illustrated Book award for her book on Trinidad’s heritage, Trini and Toby Heritage, as well as the National Text Book Competition.

Her closest contacts outside the SRCC were: Holly Betaudier, an Arimian who is nationally recognised as an ardent promoter of Parang; another friend of hers was the veteran Parrandero Paul Castillo, also responsible for promoting Parang nationally; and, the holder of the franchise for Trinidad’s arm of the Miss Universe pageant, Kim Sabeeney. This work, and the influence of these contacts, made their presence felt in the development of the SRCC.

Reyes’ work in community development with respect to the SRCC included the promotion of ‘Carib traditions’ to audiences of school children, still one of the primary and frequent classes of visitors that the SRCC receives. Moreover, Reyes, on the advice of Holly Betaudier, founded the Carib Fiesta Queen pageant which was held on some occasions in the early 1980s and which produced the SRCC’s long-standing Youth Representative, Susan Campo. According to Reyes, she realised after consulting with Holly Betaudier that, “we had to glamorize Carib culture in order to attract youths to the Carib community”, hence the adoption of the pageant. The Fiesta Queen, as in Campo’s case, won a prize which consisted of two airline tickets to Miami, courtesy of British West Indian Airways (BWIA), Trinidad’s international airline, so that she could meet with “youth groups” in Miami and visit a Seminole Indian reservation near Miami.

At one time, Reyes argued that the Caribs were “discriminated against”, scorned, and “ridiculed” because of the alleged cannibalism of their ancestors; furthermore, she argued that “because they’re at the bottom of the economic ladder,” and have no financial clout, they can be “ignored safely” by the powers that be. Given this perspective, Reyes inevitably compared the SRCC to other ethnic groups in Trinidad, especially in terms of the SRCC lacking state funding and support. As a result of highlighting this state of comparative disadvantage, Reyes militated to remedy this situation on a number of fronts. She was instrumental in establishing various connections and designing a variety of key projects for the SRCC. One of the first strategies envisioned by Reyes was to “co-opt” the services of the University of the West Indies and the Ministry of Culture and Community Development (Almarales 1994:15) for the purposes of, in the first case, research support for the SRCC, and in the second case, funding for the maintenance of Carib traditions as well as aiding its institutional development. As Almarales observed, she was successful in obtaining the support of the Ministry of Culture and Women’s Affairs which “has turned the spotlight not only on the local Carib Community but also on those of the other areas of the Caribbean by hosting two gatherings of I.P. [Indigenous Peoples]” (1994:30). In a 1981 interview with Banyan television, Reyes claimed that she had secured an agreement in principle from the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) to provide advice, expertise and technical assistance to the SRCC once it had successfully obtained land. Also, she claimed to have secured the interest and support of the Unit Trust Corporation and the Organisation of American States for sponsoring a 1993 indigenous gathering in Arima. Reyes worked with Bharath on the proposed Amerindian model village, which was meant to focus on cassava cultivation and processing, with the objective of making it a viable economic activity. SRCC members were to reside in the settlement. Yet, she argued, that this was “not a museum, but a ‘living thing’”, that could also act as a “tourist attraction”.

We see here a medley of internationalized discourses in the naming of the SRCC as “First Nations”, their alignment with international institutions which also serves to render them more ‘legitimate’ and ‘respectable’ as a means of making up for their lack of financial clout, and the association of the indigene with the environment. In telling language, Reyes drew on the international validation of the SRCC in the following manner:

For the benefit of the general public, and media persons who regard the com­munity as objects for the butt of their bigoted remarks, the Santa Rosa Caribs are part of the Caribbean Organization of Indigenous People (COIP) which has membership in Dominica, St Vincent (West Indies), Guyana (South America), Belize (Central America), and is in constant contact with representative organisations of the First Nations of the Western Hemisphere, and the World Council of Indigenous People. [Reyes 1995]

Reyes was possibly one of the first brokers to seriously inject these internationalized discourses into the reinterpreted self-definition of the SRCC, a fact that has helped to attract further interest from like-minded brokers in subsequent years. Reyes helped to foster the association between the Caribs and the internationalized discourse of environmental preservation. As she explained to newspaper readers, Amerindians “had formulated systems which allowed their usage of the assets nature provided without bringing about their destruction, and this is now ac­knowledged by every one of the major ‘rights’ organizations of what we are told is the ‘First World’” (Reyes 1998). Moreover, she argued that while “within recent years there has been a growing number of bodies which all claim concern for the prob­lems caused by misuse and abuse of the land and waters of Trinidad and Tobago”, she lamented that “not one of them has ever publicly acknowledged the wisdom of the people met by the colonists” (Reyes 1998). Some of Reyes’ later efforts would seek to build on this aspect of Amerindian contributions to local knowledge of sustainable living practices.

Reyes was also responsible for putting the SRCC in contact with the now largely defunct World Council of Indigenous Peoples (WCIP), as well as establishing contact with, and eventual membership in, the Caribbean Organization of Indigenous Peoples (COIP), established in 1988. Reyes’ contacts extended to St. Vincent and Guyana. Almarales also noted that “after consultation with Laureen Pierre of the Amerindian Research Unit of Guyana, she [Reyes] was part of the core group selected to organize a similar unit in the SRCC” (1994:29-30). Reyes was instrumental in contacting the Saskatchewan Indian Federated College on the campus of the University of Regina, Canada, and getting a scholarship awarded to Susan Campo for the 1992-93 academic year so that she could study Administration and Management of Amerindian Communities (Almarales 1994:29).

One of her latest efforts, starting in 1998, was to militate on behalf of the SRCC in urging Prime Minister Basdeo Panday to visit the SRCC in an official capacity and to grant an Amerindian Heritage Week, or Day at least—as she explained, “everybody has one”. As Reyes further propounded on this issue:

Each time a new holiday is proclaimed, some national or visitor asks the representative body of the Santa Rosa Carib Community about the possibility of their having a public holiday proclaimed as well. The answer is always no. What the organization wants, and has been requesting of every gov­ernment in power during the 20-plus years I have been associated with them is: Official proclamation of Amerindian Heritage Week; weather-proof directional arrows and signboard in the relevant places to aid persons who want to find the headquarters; and properly co­ordinated assistance in having projects and Programs instituted which will not only allow young persons within the community to have pride in, and want to be in­volved in the retaining of the tradi­tions and systems handed down from their ancestors, but to be able to properly share such knowledge with the wider society of Trinidad and Tobago and the many foreign persons who manage to make their way to Arima. [Reyes 1998]

In her last years, Reyes broadened her efforts and interests to include newspaper articles on Trinidad’s history and inter-ethnic relations. She was intent on establishing a Trinidad and Tobago Heritage Foundation as a non-profit body, and on creating a “Heritage Garden” to attract school children, featuring handicrafts and courses on self-sufficiency and survival using local materials. Her position as Research Officer of the SRCC was later filled by Beryl Almarales and the SRCC Secretary, Jacqueline Khan.

Reyes’ perspective did not endorse the view that Carib identity could be judged according to either ‘racial’ or cultural ‘purity’. Her view, then, was against the notion that Caribs had ever become extinct. Instead, as she often argued, the Carib had been amalgamated into the foundational basis of the Trinidadian national heritage. Moreover, almost all Trinidadians could claim to be Carib—she summed up her views thus:

The original inhabitants did not disappear without a trace, nor were they ‘wiped out’ by the superior fighting skills of Spanish colonists. What really happened is that succeeding groups of arrived people interbred with them so that if all persons with Amerindian ancestry within our nation were to raise a hand to be counted, the number would not only be formidable, but would be inclusive of people who ‘look’ white, African, Chinese, East Indian, and ‘ethnically mixed’. [Reyes 1995]

Carib identity, for Reyes, consisted of some ancestral linkage to the pre-colonial population added to knowledge of sustainable and ecologically sound lifeways. She was an avid proponent of the use of the ‘Carib’ label as a valid generic term, as well as the adoption of the designation ‘First Nations’.

In tribute to the late Elma Reyes, several of her freely distributed booklets and essays, offered as a means of formally representing the SRCC in her capacity as its Public Relations Officer, have been reproduced in the Documents section of this website.

References: 

Almarales, Beryl. 1994. The Santa Rosa Carib Community from 1974-1993. Bachelor’s thesis, University of the West Indies, St. Augustine, Trinidad. 

Harris, Peter and Elma Reyes. 1990. “Supervivencias amerindias en Trinidad and Tobago”. In Pueblos y políticas en el Caribe Amerindio, 55-64. Mexico City: Instituto Indigenista Interamericano. 

Reyes, Elma. 1998. “We Must Acknowledge the Wisdom of Indigenous People”. Newsday, Wednesday, 10 June:9. 

Reyes, Elma. 1996. The T&T Heritage at Christmas. Port of Spain, Trinidad: A Trini and Toby Heritage Publication. 

Reyes, Elma. 1995. “Carib Blood May Run in Your Veins”. Trinidad Guardian, Wednesday, 31 May:8.

Reyes, Elma. 1978. The Carib Community. Arima: Santa Rosa Carib Community.