Yards and resistance in Tobago

Dr Rita Pemberton

One of the greatest challenges posed by the history of Tobago is for researchers to find rational explanations for the invisibility of its people in accounts of the protest marches and rebellions across the Caribbean during the 19th and 20th centuries.

As a consequence, some have ignored the island in discussing resistance, while others have resorted to conjecture, ascribing the absence as due to religious influences, or an unflinching propensity to exist in poverty and hard times. The result is that the Tobago experience is not fully ventilated in the historiography of Caribbean resistance.

The fact is there is no mystery about the Tobago situation, and the real problem lies in the predominance of a particular perception of resistance, as an activity of large groups, which Tobago never possessed, which was confrontational in method and led to the formation of trade unions

The recognition that there were other forms of resistance which were non-confrontational in nature has provided an opportunity to examine resistance strategies in small island communities and those employed by individuals and small groups.

In seeking to understand the history of resistance in Tobago, it is necessary to examine some of its features which allowed the population to develop creative strategies to deal with the problems confronting them. It is clear that they did not sit idly by and accept the impositions with which they had been burdened since emancipation.

One facility through which resistance was expressed was the yard.

The yard is the piece of land which, either fully or partially, surrounds a house. It was, and still is, an essential feature of every household in Tobago. Yards have served multiple purposes in its history, and while the size of yards may vary, size does not diminish their role in island’s history and development.

Aside from size variations, there were two types of yard: the yards around the house and the culture yards.

Right after emancipation, the freed Africans wanted to establish control over their lives. For this to occur, in the prevailing environment where planter domination of the administration remained firm, it was essential for them to become established in their own spaces away from planter control.

There was wholesale resistance to planter control, which was reflected in the efforts to own land and the spontaneous growth of the village movement. Resistance was a refusal to accept plantation subjugation and instead promote the assertion of self. This made the surrounding land assume importance, for the yards became an important step in the quest for an independent existence.

Firstly, in strong resistance to planter attempts to continue to exploit the labour of the entire population, the freed Africans wanted neither their wives nor their children to labour on the estates.

The yard permitted the women to earn an independent income by rearing animals and birds, cultivating food crops and making items such as baked goods and candies for sale. These activities generated supplemental incomes for the family in defiance of both prevailing working conditions and wages. This practice continued into the 20th century.

It is to be noted that a main feature of the better-known resistance movements in the Caribbean, especially during the 20th century, was the hunger march. While there was poverty in Tobago, because it was a fully agricultural community, food was always available in the yard: hence there were no hunger marches in Tobago. The yards provided the first step in the resistance movement which was visible in-post emancipation Tobago.

The yard served as a pharmacy, through the stock of medicinal plants which were cultivated and were readily available to treat a variety of ailments. These included Christmas bush and rock sage for teas, soursop for insomnia, leaf of life for ear and eye problems, wild carailli and chandelier for coughs and colds, aloes for internal cleansing strains, pepper and seasonings for cooking, soosumber, roucou and the cotton plant. The yard was a means of preserving traditional healing practices which were dismissed as superstitious and useless and at the same time, resisting the exorbitant fees charged by exploitative doctors.

The yard was the keeper of family records, for the birth of each addition to the family was recorded by planting a tree. Child and tree grew together,r and while the property was cultivated, each child became an owner who was trained to nurture plants.

The yard also served as part of the island’s unofficial green thrust, generating a culture of growing and caring for trees in each succeeding generation. But each tree was a living certificate of one’s birth that provided each child with a stake in the island.

It was also a way of resisting planter monopoly of land and ensuring land could be passed on through the generations.

The yard was also a social centre for the community. Yard gatherings were common, as people congregated to tell stories, play games or discuss politics. They served as a unifying force in defiance of the attempts of the ruling class to keep them disunited.

The second type of yards were the cultural yards, which were to be found in communities across the island. For example, there was a big yard on Friendsfield Road and another between Logwood Park and Rockley Vale Road.

These were the spaces of cultural resistance, where the population gave expression to the culture that was subdued during and after enslavement. They served as centres where the island’s culture was expressed and preserved and practices passed on to the next generation. The yards came alive during the evenings and well into the night, when fingers on fiddles, hands on drums and melodious voices wafted across the night with sounds of resistance. Whenever there were weddings or funerals, the call of the bongo drums to “gimme way, gimme way bongo” summoned the support of the ancestral spirits as they demonstrated the cultural strength of the island and a refusal to accept that their culture was inferior to others.

The yards of Tobago demonstrated that it was possible for small groups and individuals to challenge the prescriptions of the ruling class without physical confrontation. They demonstrated too that resistance and protest could be ongoing processes and while they were considered obnoxious by the ruling class, they were not recognised as the resistance mechanisms they were. While some yard spaces have become absorbed into residential areas, the cultural practices they preserved have lasted to the present, and the culture yards have bequeathed a generation of musicians and cultural practitioners who continue to make positive impacts on the island’s culture.