Nona Aquan is new Carib Queen

A ZESTY and cosmopolitan New Yorker will become TT's new Carib Queen. Meet Nona Aqua, full name Nona Lopez Calderon Galera Moreno Aquan, 63.

She is a TT-born fine arts graduate and caterer from New York City, and direct descendant of a renowned old Carib King, Pablo Lopez.

Carib chief Ricardo Bharath-Hernandez announced her name on Wednesday night at a May Cross celebration at the Santa Rosa First People’s headquarters in Arima.

While she will soon be inaugurated into this ancient role, at the event she was very much the image of a modern woman, from her American lilt, bouncy curls, warm approachability and lively dancing with a burrokeet character.

Newsday asked what she hoped to bring to her role.

“I’m here to support Ricardo in his vision for the community. We have to come together because many have assimilated into a more Western culture. I, being abroad, it is good to come back to claim what is rightfully our own and to embrace Mother Earth.

“Indigenous people must come together as one because there is a saying that when the eagle and condor meet that means there are no borders just like before and people could move freely as one.”

She spoke about her background.

“I am living in New York, since 1965. I’m multicultural. My father is Chinese and my mother is Carib, Indian, Spanish, black and a whole lot of other things.”

Aquan did most of her schooling in the US.

“I have a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Rhode Island School of Design. I’ve done some catering. I have some clients.

“I am here to support the community and bring more togetherness, and to see what we could do for the young people, and support his (Bharath-Hernandez’s) vision."

She hoped to help local youngsters with creative arts.

Aquan said she was a mother of two grown sons, aged 40 and 38 respectively. “I am and a grandmother of a 20-year-old, a 10-year-old and one who is four.” She is a widow.

Told how well she looked as a grandmother of a 20-year-old, Aquan quipped, “Well my inner child is nine years old.”

Asked about her jump from fine arts to catering, she said the link had been food decorating.

Newsday asked if she was okay to serve as Carib Queen, despite living in New York. “Yes, because I travel a lot. I’m a phone call away, or a plane ride away.”

Aquan said she also connected to other communities, with links to native people (First People) communities in Manhattan and to a woman Hindu figure called Amma from Kerala, India, known as the Hugging Saint. Aquan said she embraced everyone’s beliefs.

Thanking the established Venezuelan community in Arima for doing the decoration’s for the day’s event, she said, “We all have to work as one.”

Earlier Bharath-Hernandez related the challenges the community had faced in finding a new queen after the sudden death last July of then Carib queen Jennifer Cassar.

Forty days after Cassar’s death, the community began the search for a new queen, an endeavour that Bharath-Hernandez said usually follows a spiritual path.

“Six names gained approval by the community.” However all but one declined and ultimately none were available. “When such happens, a greater power is at work.” In March, three more people were considered, out of which Aquan was chosen. He said Aquan, a great, great grand-daughter of Pablo Lopez, had graciously consented to be the community’s seventh queen. Bharath-Hernandez said she preferred to think of herself as “spiritual mother” to the Carib community. He expected her to be inaugurated in August.