Six Days That Shook Trinidad: The 1990 Coup Attempt with Eskor David Johnson

Strictly Facts: A Guide to Caribbean History and Culture

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Thirty-five years ago on July 27, 1990, Trinidad and Tobago experienced a shocking violation of its democratic foundations when Yasin Abu Bakr and the Jamaat al-Muslimeen stormed Parliament and the national television station, holding the Prime Minister hostage and declaring the government overthrown. This episode delves into a Caribbean coup that rarely makes the history books but lives on in the memory of Trinidadians who witnessed it. Writer Esker David Johnson joins us to share his personal connection to the event. Together, we uncover the economic and social conditions that fertilized the ground for this uprising, from Trinidad's oil-dependent economy to the marginalization of Afro-Trinidadian communities that Abu Bakr claimed to champion.
But the most fascinating aspect of this coup isn't just that it happened—it's what didn't happen afterward. Despite the violence, the hostage-taking, and approximately 30 deaths, the perpetrators walked free due to amnesty agreements signed under duress. This extraordinary lack of consequences created what Johnson describes as a "recalibration" of Trinidad's national identity, a wound in the country's relationship with justice that shapes crime and politics to this day. Through calypso, cultural memory, and comparative history, we trace the echoes of this event through Trinidad's later struggles and are reminded that memory, justice, and national identity are inextricably linked.

Eskor David Johnson is a writer from Trinidad and Tobago and the United States. His debut novel Pay As You Go was a finalist for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize as well as the the New York Public Library Young Lions Fiction Award. A professor of Fiction Writing at Stony Brook University, he lives in New York City. Also check out Johnson's recent piece on the coup, "Sisyphus in the Capital."

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Produced by Breadfruit Media

Chapters

1. Introduction to Strictly Facts (00:00:00)

2. Meet Writer Esker David Johnson (00:02:32)

3. The Economic Context of 1990 Trinidad (00:06:43)

4. The Coup: Timeline and Events (00:13:32)

5. Aftermath and National Identity Crisis (00:21:38)

6. Cultural Memory and Moving Forward (00:28:35)

7. The Caribbean We Could Have Been (00:39:20)