‘Consternation’ as Gonsalves is honoured as ‘Messenger of Chatoyer’

Opposition MP St. Clair Leacock says the honouring of Prime Minister Ralph Gonsalves as a “Messenger of Chatoyer” by a visiting Garifuna delegation has caused “consternation to many in our community”.

Leacock said that the recognition bestowed on Gonsalves during the National Heroes’ Day celebration has caused “consternation to many in our community, in the sense that the New Democratic Party, and specifically Honourable Anrhim Eustace, when he was the opposition leader, had gone at great lengths to recognise and put right their place in Yuromein, St. Vincent and the Grenadines history,” Leaock said.

He was referring to Eustace’s 2015 announcement that if the New Democratic Party (NDP) had won that year’s election that it would declare all Garifuna honorary citizens of St. Vincent and the Grenadines (SVG).

Eustace first made the announcement at a town hall meeting in New York on May 31, 2015. The NDP then detailed the proposal in its 2015 election manifesto.

However, Prime Minister Ralph Gonsalves, in his comments immediately following the announcement, opposed it and raised questions about whether Garifuna were going to come from Central America to take away people’s jobs, land and homes in SVG.


Speaking on NICE Radio, Leacock read from the NDP’s 2015 election manifesto in which the party detailed its policy of honorary citizenship for Garifuna.

He also spoke of the visit to SVG by a Garifuna delegation and the “perilous” trip he made with them to Balliceaux on board a speedboat.

About 5,000 Garifuna, Kalinago and Blacks were exiled to Balliceaux, a 323-acre island with no freshwater source, after their leader, Joseph Chatoyear, now a national hero in SVG, died in battle with the British in March 1795.

Over half of them died in the months that followed before they were further exiled to Roatan, and island off present-day Honduras.

“I remember sitting in the bottom of the boat because you could put your hand out of the boat and touch the water and the trip, though short, was challenging. It was tough,” Leacock said of the 2015 trip to Balliceaux.

“I, literally speaking, had to take my glasses off my face after the first waves had just covered it in salt water. You could hardly see. But I could see that further ahead if I wasn’t careful, those waves will knock the glasses off my face. That perilous I thought it was, ” he further recalled.

“And the coming off in Balliceaux and the going to the site and to commemorate our Garifuna brothers and sisters, who had fallen will always be etched in my mind as to how far and committed Eustace was in recognising, celebrating and revering, the Garifuna community.”

He also spoke of the public meetings that the delegation had held in Greiggs and Sandy Bay.

Leacock pointed out that the NDP’s 2015 manifesto spoke of a draft charter for the historical recognition and effective collaboration of the Garifuna people and the state of St. Vincent and the Grenadines.

“The Garifuna Charter, as it is called, has been crafted. It has effectively provided the foundational framework upon which the relationship between the Garifuna people and the state of St. Vincent the Grenadines is being built and consolidated.

The charter was signed on Aug. 6, 2015, by Eustace, Professor Wellington Ramos, vice president of the Garifuna Association, Inc., and Joseph Guerro, director of reparations, Garifuna Nation and director of arts and entertainment United California Association, Inc., and  Linton Lewis, a then NDP Senator and chairman of the party.

“I consider it most important that this history be repeated and these seminal decisions of the New Democratic Party be properly anchored and etched in the minds of the Vincentian community, that when the history is written, there has been no stronger commitment to Garifuna relationship in St. Vincent than that which occurred under the presidency of the Honourable Arnhim Eustace and nothing, but nothing can rub that out. Nothing!” Leacock said.

“Some of the histories and acting out of today are very, very painful to me and others in St. Vincent and the Grenadines.”

The NDP vice president said that out of the party’s policy on the Garifuna people came a stronger policy of creating a ministerial portfolio for diaspora matters.

“An NDP government will constitute a ministry of foreign affairs and the diaspora.  … In order to give firm recognition to the new reality of the importance and profile of diaspora matters, we will create and work with a permanent consultative body with diaspora representatives drawn from the USA, UK and Canada, along with local individuals to address current problems at home and abroad,” Leacock further stated.

He said there are “over 800,000 diaspora citizens which, had we made them honorary citizens of St. Vincent and the Grenadines would have, with one stroke, carried our population of St. Vincent and grenades from the X, the 100,000, it is now to near 1 million people.”

Leacock asked Vincentians to imagine what things would have been like now, 10 years later, with Garifuna “investing, visiting for holidays, coming back as visitors, buying into Vincentian society, what it would have meant for the economic well-being of St. Vincent and the Grenadines. “It is history that Ralph Everard Gonsalves indicated they were not welcome back as honorary citizens,” Leacock said and mentioned the PM’s comments about Garifuna coming to SVG to take away jobs, lands and homes “and made them feel very uncomfortable.

“That was the end of a real, meaningful political, historical correction, economic initiative and socio-economic development to merge our history with contemporary St. Vincent and the Grenadines.

“I do not want that to be lost on Vincentians, and I don’t want my effort to have gone to Balliceaux with that delegation to be ever forgotten. If there’s one thing I contributed to in the history of St Vincent and the Grenadines, which is Arnhim Eustace-Garifuna’s honourable citizenship initiative.”