There is a nation of Trinidad and Tobago with a central core of culture in which all the races participate, and there is a significant percentage of the population which is of mixed race. But history has not succeeded in melting the peoples down entirely--either culturally or genetically--into one homogeneous block; and so, in Trinidad and Tobago, race is very much an issue, albeit an issue so subtle that it is not likely to assail the attention of the visitor.

Trinbagonians: Who are the Trinidadians and Tobagonians? The term "Trinidadian" will be used hereafter to refer to the combined peoples of the two islands, at the risk of causing offense to the Tobagonian sector of the populations. The relationship between the two parts of the country is a thorny problem yet to be solved, and reflected in the clumsy name that they continue to tote around. Groups in Trinidad and Tobago have been agitating for the adoption of a composite name--proposed are "Trinago" and "Trinbago"--which would suggest integration and allow "Trinagonian" or "Trinibagonian." In the meantime "Trinidadian" tends to be the most used umbrella term.

The first people, of course, to inhabit the country were Amerindians, who migrated from the South American continent, discovering the Caribbean centuries before Christopher Columbus. As elsewhere in the region they were all but exterminated in the onslaught of European colonization. There is a tiny handful of people in Trinidad calling themselves "Caribs," and there are many among T&Ters whose physical features suggest an Amerinidian admixture in their ancestry. The Amerindian strain has fed into the pool, but is no longer a distinct racial presence.

Most territories of the Caribbean bear the mark of one European culture, at most two. The European element of Trinidad and Tobago hails from no less than three main sources. Spanish, French and British have all, at one time, ruled these islands, and in addition to these three major groups of European settlers there were minority groups of Portuguese, Italians and others.

But the bulk of the people of Trinidad and Tobago today are the descendants of Africans and Indians brought to work in the sugarcane and other plantations, the Africans transported by force and enslaved, the Indians arriving under a system of indentureship not too far removed from slavery. Together the Indians and Africans constitute upwards of 80 percent of the population. Within the last century Trinidad has received, and continues to receive, immigrants from China and the Middle East who come as traders.

The ethnic groups that make up the population of Trinidad and Tobago all arrived, then, under different circumstances. They came from different roots, thousands of miles apart; they came for different reasons, and they came to different roles. Inevitably they continue to be different from each other in many ways.

Plantation legacy: Whites in Trinidad and Tobago remain a privileged minority, fairly aloof from the rest of the population. They live in affluent suburban settlements or on large inherited landholdings scattered around the country, and few still earn an income from large estates passed on by their forefathers--relics of the plantation system.

Whites are the traditional "aristocracy" of the society, who for centuries controlled the resources and reaped the benefits of all economic activity. Although today members of other groups have emerged to share the "commanding heights" of the economy with the old masters, whites remain the owners and managers of major business concerns--manufacturing, hotel industry, banking, the import and distribution trades.

Some whites work in education, in religious orders which function as the old "prestige" schools originally founded for white and mulatto children, and in the new private schools set up for the still predominantly light-skinned children of today's upper classes. All in all, the white Trinidadian is a white-collar worker. A white street cleaner, or chambermaid, or bus conductor would be a decided oddity. The recreational activities of white society in Trinidad and Tobago are the traditionally upper-class pursuits of water sports (yachting, boat-racing, windsurfing, swimming), lawn tennis, golf, cocktail and dining parties, or simply meeting at their exclusive clubs.

And it is whites who have kept alive in Trinidadian society European artistic traditions such as ballet and opera. The major national festival of Trinidad and Tobago--Carnival--has its origin in a European celebration (French, to be exact), and although it has been developed to its present state by the African population, white Trinidadians continue to participate in some measure in Carnival activities. Indeed, the most widely-acclaimed Carnival artist to emerge in recent times is a white man, Peter Minshall.

The diet of white Trinidadians families differs from that of the rest of the population for economic reasons, for example in terms of the balance of the various food groups. The poorer masses of the country consume a great deal of carbohydrate and fairly small amounts of the more expensive foods such as meat and dairy products. The diet of the people of Trinidad and Tobago is also greatly influenced by North American tastes, and this influence is more marked in households which can afford to buy the imported foods associated with American eating patterns.

But basic tastes in food preparation common to the bulk of the population are shared by whites, for a large element of what we see as the cuisine of Trinidad and Tobago emerged out of the kitchens of European settlers where African cooks combined their own inherited ideas about food with Spanish, French, Portuguese and British ways of cookery.

African echoes: Next in order of arrival were the Africans. Alienated from the land by the experience of slavery, the African population has tended to gravitate towards urban centers, though the population of Tobago is almost entirely African. (Tobago was a separate entity and developed apart from Trinidad until less than a century ago when the two islands were unified. The smaller island does not have the same history of multi-ethnic immigration).

Blacks engage in a wide variety of occupations, but shy away from agriculture. Black businessmen are also thin on the ground. The Afro-Trinidadian is a salaried worker--menial, semi-skilled and skilled. For years the Civil Service was monopolized by this ethnic group, which still occupies nearly the whole of its upper levels. There is also a class of black professional: doctors, lawyers and other university-trained people. The means of social mobility for the African population has always been educations, rather than the route of entrepreneurship, the pattern for other ethnic groups.

It was the Africans who forged the calypso-steelband-carnival arts, and they remain the chief proponents of this aspect of the vibrant Trinidad and Tobago culture.

It was they, too, who prefected the "lime," and this item has no translation because the concept belongs exclusively to this part of the world. To those who disapprove of the activity, liming loitering, as in groups of aimless men standing around at the street corners or sitting on a culvert watching the world go by. It means pointedly not doing anything too purposeful, or serious, or strenuous, whiling the time away in the company of cronies, talking or not talking, drinking or not drinking, playing all fours; going in a gang to the beach, to a party, to a cricket match...

The joie de vivre of the Afro-Trinidadian is proverbial, and the duty of enjoying all that is put on Earth for god's children to enjoy is taken very seriously indeed.

It is black Trinidadians who expound most readily upon the theme of how their "carnival mentality" is a barrier to the progress of their race, and how the other races are doing well because they are not given to spreading joy, etc...But the attitude of the Afro-Trinidadian to the life-styles of the other groups is ambivalent: it wavers between admiration and mild scorn for those who seem to spend so much time working and saving up that they miss out on living.

The staple of the black population is rice, acquired from the Indians. Whereas in the rest of the Caribbean, African people make extensive use of root vegetables and green bananas, in Trinidad and Tobago these take second place to rice. Blacks retain a taste for the salted meat and fish which were an essential part of the food rations given out to their enslaved ancestors on the plantation. Today salted beef and pork and dried codfish are mainly used as flavoring for other dishes--rice-and-peas, stewed peas, callaloo.

The family patterns of Africans in Trinidad and Tobago, as in the rest of the Caribbean, do not adhere too strictly to the official norms of marriage and the patriarchal family. Common-law unions are prevalent, and women have a great deal of authority in the context of the family. A large percentage of households are headed by women. Extended-family habits are still alive, mainly among the lower classes. Promotion into the growing middle class generally means adoption of the life-style beamed out from American television, which includes the restricted nuclear family pattern. The more affluent people become, the less use they have for the larger family.

New religions were developed by the African population on Caribbean soil. These religions combine elements of Christianity with African religious practices and beliefs. But Trinidad and Tobago is officially a Christian country, with the Catholic Church being particularly powerful, so the syncretic sects are severely frowned upon. Practically every known sect of Christianity claims a portion of the black populations: Roman Catholic, Church of England, Church of Scotland, Methodist, Seventh-Day Adventist, Pentecostal, and more. A recent development in Trinidad and Tobago is the "Black Muslim" movement, that is Africans turning to Islam, but in their own Muslim organizations, not as part of the established Indian Muslim community already present.

An indigenous population: The mulatto did not come, of course, as an immigrant arriving from distant shores, but as a racial type produced on Caribbean soil, being the offspring of African and European.

There are very many people of mixed blood in Trinidad and Tobago. But they do not, by and large, constitute a separate group. They are culturally, black Trinidadians. Within a "black" family complexions may range from black to palest brown, reflecting miscegenation somewhere along their ancestry. But there is a group of brown Trinidadians who have to be viewed as distinct from the mass. They are the heirs of the original "middle class" of the Caribbean--a privileged, carefully inbred social class.

This group a very strong sense of being an elite. It jealously guards its racial "purity"--members choose only mates of the same color or lighter. There is not much to distinguish them, in terms of life-style, from the whites. Indeed, in the popular mind, whites and upper-class mulattoes are lumped together under the loose label of "French Creoles," although many families in this class bear Spanish, Portuguese, Scottish, or English names. The designation "French Creole" has to do with the fact that in the 18th century whites and mulattoes were attracted to Trinidad from the French Caribbean by enticements such as grants of land, and soon became a powerful economic and political force in the century.

Eastern elements: The East Indian presence in Trinidad and Tobago is one and a half centuries old, but is already the largest single group in the Republic, claiming over 40 percent of the population. The majority of Indians still live in rural communities, and farming remains their chief occupation. With increased access to secondary and tertiary education, however, Indians have entered the clerical and professional fields once occupied almost exclusively by Africans. Small and medium businesses are owned mainly by Indians, and few Indian concerns have grown into major business enterprises.

Indians brought to Trinidad and Tobago a relatively intact and functional culture which adapted itself to the new environment and shaped the fabric of life in Indian communities for generations. Inevitably, the life-style of Indian Trinidadians has been and continues to be affected by the influences which prevail in the society, namely the culture of their African counterparts, as well as the essentially Western-oriented education system and mass media. But there remains a core of cultural traits which constitutes a distinctive Indian way of life.

A minority of Indians have been Christianized, notably by the Presbyterian Church. But the religions which the Indian immigrations brought with them, Hinduism and Islam, remain firmly in place. The majority religion is Hinduism, and both religions have very strong organizations which, like the Christian churches, set up their own schools. Eastern religions may be said to have gained, rather than lost ground, for today they enjoy an official recognition not accorded them during the colonial period. Marriage ceremonies, for example, were not recognized. In Trinidad and Tobago major Hindu and Muslim festivals like Phagwa and Divali are now public holidays.

Indian family organization in Trinidad and Tobago has been eroded somewhat by Westernization. The traditional status of the Indian is challenged by near universal education to secondary level and by the influence of the media. But extended-family networks are stronger than in the African population. Many Indians live in large, multi-generation households, of the type made famous by V.S. Naipaul, although the patterns which previously obtained in such households may not be operational today. But even where Indians split off into nuclear family households, there remains a strong bond of responsibility towards the larger family, which may include economic cooperation.

Indian food, of course, is quite distinctive. Among their standards are eggplant, a string bean known as bodi, tomatoes, green mangoes, potatoes, a variety of spinach known as bhaji, split peas, chick peas and pumpkin. A favorite seasoning is curry, in addition to other spices such as cumin seed, saffron and massala. Rice is basic to the Indian diet, and so is roti--a flat, supple bread that is eaten with vegetable or meat preparations.

Indian Trinidadians are as fond of the game of cricket as their African compatriots. A favorite form of recreation, too, is going to the cinema to watch movies from India. Indian music and dance are also greatly appreciated and there are highly accomplished Trinidadian Indian musicians, dancers and singers, some of whom are trained in the ancestral country.

Trading places: The Chinese and Lebanese came as traders, and remain largely engaged in commericial activity--small trading and big business. The Lebanese are a tightly-knit urban community, whereas the Chinese are scattered all over the country: the "Chinese shop" is an institution in rural communities.

Both groups are relative newcomers and tend to keep active links with their countries of origin, so that items of their material culture are ever present. In the home of a Chinese family one is likely to be surrounded by Oriental decorations and kitchen utensils. Because they are recent immigrants, Chinese and Lebanese cultures remain fairly closed--practiced "privately" while participating in the common culture of the country. But there is a greater level of integration on the part of the Chinese than the Lebanese and there has been some intermixture of Chinese blood with that of Africans and Indians; many people in Trinidad and Tobago bear no fewer than four different racial strains in their blood.

The mixing of races is part of the reality of Trinidad and Tobago, but what is the real nature of relations among the various peoples?

Status and stereotypes: Race relations in Trinidad and Tobago are defined by the old hierarchy of white down to black, and by the newer and more volatile current of mistrust which runs between the two largest groups in the country: the Africans and Indians.

Europeans constitute a very small minority in Trinidad and Tobago--less than 1 percent--but they retain their economic supremacy and attendant prestige. Today, the traditional attitudes towards white people have been reinforced by the impact of foreign (mainly American) media. Moreover, deep in the ethos of the Indian population of Trinidad and Tobago is the great esteem which their ancestral culture accorded the Aryan racial type of northern India.

Thus it is that the physical features of the Europeans are the yardstick against which Trinidadians evaluate beauty and worthiness in general. At the lower end of the scale of desirability lie dark skin and kinky hair; at the top, pale skin and straight hair. It stands to reason, then, that great approval also accrues to the physical features of the Chinese, the Lebanese, the light-skinned Indian, the mulatto (or "Spanish") and the "mixed" (provided one part of the mixture is light-skinned).

There are many manifestations of this race-color-scale of assessment. For years, a Trinidad and Tobago beauty queen was, by definition, a white or pale-skinned woman. The Black Power movement of the 1970s made some inroads into changing that tradition, and today it is more politic to choose a queen of the indeterminate khaki mix (not too pale, but not quite black, either) that is becoming the ideal physical type of Trinidad and Tobago.

When, for bureaucratic purposes, black Trinidadians are called upon to identify their race (e.g. in passport applications, I.D. documentation, census exercises), many choose to write the ambiguous "mixed."

Black men on the rise up the social ladder acquire light-skinned, straight-haired wives as part of the trappings of promotion, and certain high-visibility "women's job"--bank teller, air hostess--until recently were filled only by light-skinned types.

Class consciousness: Race relations are far from ideal. Trinidadians mix at school and at work, but not too much at play. "Integration" is involuntary--T&Ters interact when thrown together, not, generally, by choice.

Perhaps the maximum interaction among races is to be found at the top of the pile, where money and paleness of skin unite into one melange of whites, mulattoes, Lebanese and successful Chinese. The commercial giants who have emerged in the Indian population do not appear as yet to have been integrated socially into this set. This might be explained by one or all of a number of reasons. The Indian's base is rural, whereas the elite described above is urban. The Indian's cultural identification and sense of responsibility to family or clan do not predispose him to shift allegiance to another group.

Then there is what Trinidadians call their "middle-class," which in their vocabulary may stretch from professionals to civil servants to well-paid skilled workers (especially in the wake of the oil boom). This group, like the mass of the working peasant population, is largely African and Indian. There are practically no lines of communication between this block of the population (middle and lower classes) and the light-skinned upper class, and the current feeling between them is standard: the latter views the former with condescension and some apprehension, while the other views its superiors with a mixture of defense and resentment.

Racial stereotypes die hard, as do derogatory racial epithets. The African is a "nigger," the Indian is a "coolie"; but these two are the most extreme of racial insults. The names used for other ethnic groups are far milder in their import.

Chinese is abbreviated, almost affectionately, to "Chinee." Middle-Eastern people, who are mainly Lebanese, are casually lumped together under the term "Syrian." Mulattoes are described as "red" which is not as flattering as "fair" or "fair-skinned." Curiously, there are no traditional insult-words for whites: in the 1970s, the era of Black Power, Trinidadians adopted from Black America the term "honky."

Education and economy: Africans and Indians constitute the bulk of the population, and relations between them are uneasy. This fact does not preclude healthy relations at the personal level: firm friendships between individuals and families, communities in which the two races not only live side by side by actively cooperate, and the miscegenation which has produced a whole new race, the "Dougla."

But these exists a fundamental mistrust between Indians and Africans in the mass, a rivalry that dates from the Indian's arrival to replace the Africans as plantations worker in the wake of Emancipation. Each has traditionally accused the other of wanting to "take over" the country, and the two groups monitor each other's numbers with mindful apprehension.

Since the beginning of party politics in Trinidad and Tobago in the era leading up to Independence, major political parties have been formed along lines of race (Indian and African) and elections clearly perceived as a struggle for African or Indian supremacy. For the whole of this period--30 years--it is the African-based party which has held sway. Partly because of this, but also because the Indians suffered a serious lag in access to education under the colonial regime, the Civil Service has until recently been an African preserve. Indians, then, seemed excluded from the running of the country.

On the other hand, Africans perceive Indians as taking over the economy of the country, because Indians are so visibly engaged in business activity, ranging from the selling of vegetables by the roadside to ownership of the sophisticated hardware store, whereas Africans have chosen a different route to success, the way of education.

What has perhaps exacerbated relations in the past few years is that Indians have now caught up in education. With the increase in oil revenue, the incumbent government was able to dramatically increase educational facilities, notably at secondary level. This have given the Indians a new ubiquity which disturbs their African counterparts: the Indian who was once safely tucked away out of sight in the canefield, the rice patch or the family vegetable garden, is now turning up everywhere, in every kind of job. Africans feel upstaged, threatened and Indians feel their resentment. The situation produces foolish muscle-flexing on both sides.

The juxtaposition of two different cultures has been an inevitable source of friction. The original encounter between Africans and Indians was the classic case of "host population" versus immigrants with a foreign, therefore disturbing, culture which (as is the case in such situations) the immigrants showed no inclination to relinquish in favor of the culture of the hosts.

But, in additions, in Trinidad and Tobago the host population had no strong sense of its own cultural identity. The circumstances under which Africans had been brought from their ancestral land made cultural continuity very difficult. Africans from different cultures had been mixed together, languages forgotten, religions garbled--even the African's name was erased. Africans now practiced a new culture that was decidedly African-based, but the official, approved culture was European, and the way of life of the black population was not even seen as "culture." The attitude of the Afro-Trinidadian to his own culture was one of rejection, at best ambivalence. Salvation lay in being assimilated into the white man's culture.

The confidence of Indians in their own culture, the strength and the cohesiveness which this culture gave to Indian communities, the Indians' refusal to be assimilated, tended to be interpreted by the Africans as arrogance. Africans take a dim view of the Indian population's continuing emotional relationship with their ancestral land--Trinidad and Tobago has been brought to the brink of war by the spectacle of Indian Trinidadians cheering on a cricket team from India playing in Trinidad against a Trinidadian team! And Indian music on the radio and Indian movies on national television were until recently a great affront to the rest of the population; but this is changing, and it is in the area of culture that the Republic is experiencing a shift from confrontation to interpenetration.

Racial mosaic: The fact that the different ethnic groups of Trinidad and Tobago have some fairly distinct cultural traits does not pose any real threat to the concept of nationhood. "Cultural pluralism" is a term which has entered the vocabulary, and although race relations are not exemplary, Trinidadians set great store by their multi-ethnic image. At the heart of the mosaic, however, is a growing area of shared culture which makes it possible for T&Ters to coexist without major explosions of antagonism.

Creole conversation: There is, on the one hand, the shared language. In all the Caribbean territories Creole (or hybrid) languages have developed out of the meeting of European and African. They are the achievement, in the first instance, of Africans, who in each society developed a lingua franca which allowed communication between themselves and the Europeans, as well as among the Africans themselves. According to one theory, Africans transported to Trinidad and Tobago took their vocabulary of their European overlords and poured it into the mold of a standard West African syntax, retaining some words from their own languages. As Africans lost their own languages, what would have started out as pidgin for basic communication grew into a language capable of the whole range of expression.

The vocabulary of Trinidad and Tobago Creole is mainly English-derived but it also contains words which can be traced back to languages spoken in West Africa, among these Twi and Yoruba. But Trinidad also spoke French (and its Creole counterpart) for about one hundred years of its history, so there is in the everyday language a large stock of French vocabulary and French constructions using English words.

Trinidadians will say "It making hot," as the French say "Il fait chaud"; and the expression "It have" meaning "There is or are" is from the French "Il y a." T&Ters retain many French names for the native vegetation of the country--balisier (wild banana), pomme cythere (golden apple), pomme rac (otaheite apple), cerise (a cherry-like fruit). Damaging gossip is mauvais-langue; a female crony is a macommère; a term of endearment is doo-doo, from the French doux meaning "sweet"; and the spirits who people Trinidadian mythology have French-derived names: lajablesse, soucouyant, Papa Bois, lagahou.

Traces of Spanish in the everyday language are relatively sparse, given Trinidad's proximity to Latin America. Words for some of the dishes introduced by the Spaniards are derived from their language--pelau, sancoche, pastelle. And there is the terminology surrounding the activity known as parang (Christmas music) which is moving into the general vocabulary. Some fruits are called by their Spanish names--sapodilla and granadilla.

And today people in Trinidad and Tobago of every racial type use some Hindi words as part of their everyday speech. Non-Indians living in integrated rural communities have used Hindi expressions for a long time, and know a great many more of these expressions that the average Trinidadian. But today some Hindi vocabulary has become the common property of all.

Hindi has mainly provided words to do with food, cooking, clothes, religion and family. In the markets the Hindi beigun is steadily replacing "melongene" as the word Trinidadians use for eggplant. Indeed, the vegetables in Trinidad and Tobago are largely grown and marketed by Indians, so their Hindi names are passing into the vocabulary: bhaji, bodi, aloo. Some names of commonly-known Indian seasonings are geera, massala and amchar, and Trinidadians know that roti is baked on a tawa, and more and more people are becoming familiar with the cooking process known as chungkay. The orhni, the sari and the dhoti are articles of clothing familiar to all. Terms for all the two major religions practiced by Indian Trinidadians are household words--from Hinduism: Phagwa, Divali, Ramleela, puja, deya, Lakshmi; from Islam: Ramadan, Eid-ul-Fitr, Hussein. And Trinis know that the members of the Indian extended family (including grandparents and in-laws) are called names such as agee, bhowji and dulahin.

The Amerindians have also made some mark on T&T language, again in the form of words for food--cassava, balata, roocoo, tatoo--but also in the wealth of place names they have left behind. Trinidadians use the language of their Amerindian predecessors daily in every part of the country when they speak of Tunapuna, Mucurap, Guayaguayare, Naprima, Curepe, Tacarigua, Carapichaima, Maitagual and many others.

Indeed, all the place names bestowed by the various groups must be considered as part of the common language of the people of Trinidad and Tobago. English place names are not predominant--they are to be found in greatest concentration on the smaller island of Tobago: Scarborough, Roxborough, Plymouth. Spanish and French place names abound in Trinidad is itself a Spanish name. Some of the Spanish place names are San Rafael, Las Cuevas, Sangre Grande, Sangre Chiquito, San Fernando, El Socorro, Los Iros. Part of the legacy of the French language are place names like Blanchisseuse, San Souci, Matelot, Champs Fleurs, Lopinot, Petit Bourg and L'Anse Mitan. These are some of the ingredients that go into the common language--basically a Caribbean Creole, but given its distinctive character by the special blending of people that took place only in Trinidad and Tobago.

A common accent: Creole differs from Standard English in its syntax--the linguists have found a common syntax across Caribbean Creoles and have traced it back to the West African family of languages. The intonation of each Caribbean Creole is distinctive, and so is the pronunciation of individual sounds (specifically vowels) from Creole to Creole. So there is an unmistable Trinidad and Tobago "accent" common to all people, of every ethnic classification, and they use this accent even when speaking Standard English. What is significant is that older Indians sound markedly different from the younger generation Trinidadians: the full acquisition of the common language was not an instant process but one which has taken several generations.

A most interesting indicator of the extent to which Trinidad and Tobago Creole (or, strictly speaking, Trinidadian Creole) has been shaped by its polyglot population is the fact that the Standard Creole of the smaller island, Tobago, is not quite the same as that of Trinidad, and has been found to have striking similarities with Jamaican Creole. Tobago is at the southern end of the Caribbean chain of islands and Jamaica is pretty near the top--the two are separated by over 1,000 miles (1,600 km) of sea. But they are both different from Trinidad in that on both islands Africans constitute the majority of the population.

Rather than a separate, hermetic language, Creole can be seen as positioned at one end of a continuum which shades into Standard English at the other end. Where on the continuum Trinis pitch their language (i.e. whether they use pure Creole, pure English or some combination of the two) depends on situation, mood, topic, listener, level of education and class consciousness. And during the course of one conversation (or better still, one argument) speakers are liable to touch every part of the keyboard.

There is a certain amount of controversy over Creole, its validity, its propriety, whether it is a language or not, or just "bad English." But meanwhile everybody gets on with using it, including many who thin that they are talking English all the while. Since the vocabulary is mainly English, people can be vague about where Creole ends and where Standard English begins.

Creole is used actively or passively by all the people of Trinidad and Tobago. It is safe to say that the great majority of people do not fully possess Standard English and, for many of those who do, it tends to remain a language written rather than spoken. But Creole is inevitably one of the media through which people receive communication. It is the language of calypso, for example, and the calypsonian is one of the most influential and important communicators in the society.

Jean-Paul Sartre wrote in Black Orpheus: "The specific traits of a society tally exactly with the untranslatable expressions of its language."

To the extent that Trinidadians share a common code of communication not quite the same as any other, to the extent that they share their own set of untranslatables, they share a common culture, which encompasses all races within the society.

Food is another area where T&Ters share and share alike. There is a long-standing Creole cuisine which incorporates African and Amerindian elements with contributions from each of the European cultures (whose cooking is fairly different from the other).

The Chinese influence has also gone into the standard diet: every self-respecting cook can make chow mein, and delicacies such as wontons have become part of snacking habits.

The American fast-food industry is a feature of the landscape today, and has made all T&Ters (or children, at any rate) eaters of chicken-and-chips, hot-dogs and hamburgers.

But what makes the diet of Trinidad and Tobago distinctive among Caribbean diets is the addition of the Indian influence. Already mentioned is the preference for rice over what is called the "ground provisions" or root crops. The Indian roti is a real rival to American-style fast-foods, and standard snack-foods are Indian: channa, kurmah, polorie, bara (served as "doubles"). Curry is taken very much for granted as one of the everyday options for food preparation and there is a very high level of tolerance for hot pepper.

The merrymakers: There are three tangible areas in which shared culture has developed--language, food and music. T&Ters, of course, share a great many other institutions which are not necessarily of their own making but which also constitute common ground--cricket, American soap-operas and the latest in Western fashion.

The subjective characteristics which the people share, of course, harder to pinpoint. Are there any attitudes, values or behaviors which distinguish Trinidadians from other peoples? Is there "Trini" personality that cuts across race? Here we have rely, in part, on the image thrown back by other people's perceptions--how Trinidadians are seen, in particular by their sisters and brothers in the rest of the Caribbean.

There is, first of all, the perception of Trinidadians as a people whose lives are a permanent "fête" (this word for T&Ters brand of partying) and, the corollary of this assessment, that they are not terribly serious.

One cannot deny the element of hedonism in their make-up--T&Ters are not in the habit of apologizing for it. It has its source in the cultures of certain of the peoples who settled here, the Africans and the Latin peoples--Spanish, French and Portuguese, and it has been transmitted in the course of time to the whole population.

Trinidad and Tobago is the Caribbean country in which Carnival is th most highly developed. Indeed, there is nothing in the rest of the Caribbean with which to compare the Trinidad and Tobago Carnival. One has to go further afield, to Brazil, for example, another African-Latin culture, to find anything like its peer. Carnival in Trinidad and Tobago is a "season" which lasts for two to three months. It follows hard on the heels of the Christmas "season" which consists of a two-week run-up to Christmas Day peppered with parang, office Christmas parties, school Christmas parties and Christmas parties held by every self-respecting organization in Trinidad and Tobago, then a one-week binge stretching from Christmas Day to New Year's Day.

In addition, Trinidad and Tobago has full calendar of public holidays which, along with weekends, give scope for serious fêting and liming throughout the year. There are no fewer than 15 public holidays in Trinidad and Tobago, mainly long-standing Christian holy days to which have been added Hindu and Muslim days of observance, and dates commemorate events in the political evolution of the country.

It is perhaps more accurate to say that there are 13 public holidays, because the two days of Carnival on the road have never been declared official holidays. This is a curious carry-over from the colonial era, when the authorities and the upper classes viewed the street festival of the black mob with decided repugnance and wold not dream of dignifying it with official recognition. In an 1833 newspaper Carnival was described as: "the shameful violation of the Sabbath by the lower order of the population, who are accustomed at this time of year to wear masks and create disturbances on a Sunday." (Port-of-Spain Gazette, January 22, 1833).

Today Carnival has active government approval and sponsorship, but Carnival Monday and Tuesday are still officially working days for government employees. Suffice it to say that on these two days the state of that nation is such that it is only the essential services which actually keep on working. Hence there are 15 holidays.

Trinidad and Tobago stop work to celebrate: New Year's Day, Carnival Monday, Carnival Tuesday, Good Friday, Easter Monday, Corpus Christi, Eid-ul-Fitr, Labor Day, Emancipation Day, Independence Day, Republic Day, Divali, Christmas Day and Boxing Day.

Trinis earn the accusation of being unserious partly because they respond to hardship, repression and disaster with a determination to continue enjoying life. In 1970 Trinidad was the stage of a major popular upheaval, the Black Power movement. When the authorities imposed a dusk-to-dawn curfew for a period of time, Trinidadians gathered indoors before the mandatory hour and held all-night "Curfew fêtes." When the oil bubble burst and the economy crashed, bringing widespread retrenchment, unemployment, inflation, shortages, poverty--all the problems associated with the dire economic slump--a new kind of fête began to be advertised on the characteristic large posters that are always seen around the country proclaiming where the upcoming action is: people began to throw "Recession fêtes." Come hell or high water, Trinidad and Tobago will go down fêting. It is one way of coping with existence: who is to say that it is not a valid one?

For another feature of Trini personality which might contribute to a general impression of unseriousness is the decided irreverence of the Trinidadian, his refusal to be too impressed by anything or anybody, including himself. An important part of the tradition calypso is what is known as picong, or sniping satire against individuals and institutions great or small. In the calypso tent, no personage, no office, no august creation of human beings is sacrosanct. There is no telling where the calypsonian will strike, and he strikes with exquisite humor, on behalf of all--Trinis cheer and egg him on.

This function of the calypsonian has spilled over into the phenomenon of the weekly newspaper. Weeklies proliferate in Trinidad and Tobago today and are read far more avidly than the traditional dailies. A major part of the attraction of the weeklies is their practice of punching holes in public figures.

Constantly exposed to the wider world through the multiple arms of the media, Trinidad and Tobago has the highest density of newspaper production in the English-speaking Caribbean. For a population of just over 1 million, there are three dailies, a fluctuating number of weeklies, and innumerable periodicals put out by political and other organizations. Trinidad has three television channels, plus cable TV and 11 radio stations.

Trinidadians have always done a fair amount of traveling to other countries. Thus there is in the Trinidadians an almost metropolitan sophistication, with some of the negative attributes of metropolitan behavior.

The "Trickidadians": The experience of growing up in a multicultural setting, and the continuous exposure to international currents, make the Trinidadian an eminently flexible person, able to adapt to a variety of situations, able to continually absorb new experiences and learn new roles. Trinis sometimes are referred to as "Trickidadians" by other Caribbean people, for what may be perceived as chameleon behavior.

Their adaptive nature also reveals itself in a great capacity for imitation, and very successful imitation at that. An important aspect of what Carnival is about is the temporary borrowing of another persona--one may be, two days, a king or queen, a devil, a commando.