𝗧𝗥𝗜𝗡𝗜𝗗𝗔𝗗 & 𝗧𝗢𝗕𝗔𝗚𝗢, 𝗙𝗢𝗟𝗟𝗢𝗪 𝗧𝗛𝗘 𝗬𝗘𝗟𝗟𝗢𝗪 𝗕𝗥𝗜𝗖𝗞 𝗥𝗢𝗔𝗗… 𝗢𝗥 𝗘𝗔𝗦𝗘 𝗢𝗡 𝗗𝗢𝗪𝗡 𝗧𝗛𝗘 𝗥𝗢𝗔𝗗? 🇧🇧🇹🇹
This is not Dorothy searching for Oz. This is Trinidad and Tobago searching for itself.
Our national anthem calls us to build a nation where every creed and race finds an equal place. That promise—not Oz—is the destination worth pursuing. Yet the road before us has become increasingly difficult to read. One decision, one alliance, one speech, one headline and one public statement at a time, another brick is laid until suddenly we discover we are no longer asking where the road begins, but where it ends.
My words are not wrapped in diplomatic silk. They are the language of someone trying to reconcile what is unfolding before her eyes with the nation she has loved all her life. I write as a citizen. I write from what I have read, what I have witnessed, what I have observed and what has entered the public record.
The Yellow Brick Road is my allegory because roads are never built in a single day. They are laid one brick at a time. Each brick may appear ordinary by itself, yet there comes a moment when we must step back and recognize that the road has been leading somewhere all along. That is the story I believe Trinidad and Tobago is now telling itself.
The road becomes visible
In recent months, I have watched Trinidad and Tobago move into an increasingly visible strategic relationship with the United States. Military cooperation expanded. Diplomatic engagement deepened. American naval vessels entered our ports for joint exercises and training. Radar and security arrangements became part of the wider regional conversation. Trinidad and Tobago was increasingly presented as a significant partner within the American security architecture of the Caribbean.
Then, during a United States Senate Foreign Relations Committee confirmation hearing, Chairman Jim Risch publicly thanked Trinidad and Tobago for what he described as its role in the arrest and extradition of Nicolás Maduro while discussing the nomination of Jennifer Johnson-Carroll as United States Ambassador to Trinidad and Tobago.
Whether one celebrates or questions that relationship is a matter of political judgment. The fact that it was spoken openly in a congressional proceeding is part of the public record.
Chairman Jim Risch — Opening statement, approximately 02:40
“And finally, Ms. Carroll, Trinidad and Tobago is a fellow democracy and a key U.S. economic, diplomatic, and security partner in the Caribbean. Trinidad has benefited from and actively participated in U.S. initiatives like the Caribbean Basin Trade Partnership and the Caribbean Basin Security Initiative. And most recently, Trinidad has played an active role in support of U.S. law enforcement efforts in the region, including the arrest and extradition of Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela. We are very grateful for this work. I look forward to hearing your thoughts on ways we can deepen our strategic relations with Trinidad if you are confirmed as ambassador.”
That statement stopped me. It did not arrive through anonymous whispers, partisan speculation or a rum-shop retelling. It was spoken in Washington during the formal introduction of a nominee selected to represent the United States in Trinidad and Tobago.
Politics is often revealed not only by what is declared at home, but by what is spoken without hesitation abroad. When language used in an American congressional hearing appears to reach beyond what citizens understood from their own government, questions are neither unreasonable nor unpatriotic. They become necessary.
The boats, the declarations and the alliance
We cannot separate that hearing from the wider sequence of events. Boats were attacked in Caribbean waters during United States operations described as part of the campaign against suspected drug trafficking. Our Prime Minister’s public declaration—supporting violent action against traffickers—was carried far beyond Trinidad and Tobago and became international news.
I watched the posture of our government become increasingly aligned with the hard power and aggressive vocabulary of the Trump administration. I watched Mrs. Kamla Persad-Bissessar become one of the region’s most emphatic advocates for American intervention against the drug trade by whatever means she considered necessary.
Then came the warships. Then the joint exercises. Then the radar systems. Then Nicolás Maduro and his wife were removed from Venezuela and transported to the United States to face proceedings in New York. Months later, Maduro remained in American custody while the political temperature in Trinidad and Tobago continued to rise.
These are not imaginary bricks. They are events, public declarations, diplomatic movements and official words. My interpretation lies in asking what they mean when placed alongside one another—and where the road they form may be leading us.
What began abroad is now being echoed at home
While international attention has focused on Trinidad and Tobago’s strategic importance, something equally consequential has been unfolding inside the country. The national conversation has become harder, angrier and more tribal. It is no longer simply political disagreement. To my ears, it increasingly echoes the grievance-driven, accusatory and permanently combative politics that have become familiar under MAGA America.
This is my reading of what I have observed, and I make no apology for saying so. The cadence is recognizable: political opponents described not merely as wrong, but as enemies; accusations repeated until they become the atmosphere; allegations bound together with race, criminality and national loyalty; social media used not simply to communicate, but to provoke, dominate and inflame.
Then came the verified social-media post issued under the Prime Minister’s official account.
It repeatedly reproduced a racist slur directed at the Prime Minister, alleged that political opponents and members of a “local drug mafia” intended to weaponize that slur during Emancipation Day celebrations, and anticipated a “round two” on Independence Day while returning to the government’s declared fight against the drug trade.
Those were not words whispered in a private conversation. They were published under the name and authority of the nation’s highest elected office.
Whether every allegation contained in that post is accepted, denied or contested is not the central point I am making. My concern is the political language itself. Whether personally typed by the Prime Minister or prepared by a communications team, it became part of Trinidad and Tobago’s national discourse the moment it was published through her verified account.
Authorship and accountability are not always the same thing. We may not know whose fingers touched the keyboard, but the public knows whose name stood above the words. A message published from the official account of a head of government carries the weight of that office and contributes to the tone from which a country learns how political conflict is now expected to sound.
Anger, frustration—and now disgust
Reading that post did not leave me merely disappointed. It left me angry, frustrated and, if I am being truthful, deeply disgusted that this is the tenor of leadership our children are witnessing. Trinidad and Tobago should not have to choose between defending an individual from racist abuse and questioning why the language of race is being repeatedly returned to the centre of the political stage.
Our anthem calls us to build a nation where every creed and race finds an equal place. That is not decorative language reserved for ceremonial occasions. It is supposed to be the moral covenant of the Republic. That covenant becomes increasingly difficult to protect when political life is framed through racial accusation, confrontation, retaliatory language and the widening division of citizens into hostile camps.
Emancipation Day carries the ancestral memory, survival, liberation and cultural dignity of African-descended people. Independence Day belongs to every citizen. Neither commemoration should be converted into another round in a political contest of racial insult, suspicion and grievance.
Leadership does more than administer the machinery of government. Leadership establishes the national tenor. It teaches the next generation whether disagreement requires thought, persuasion and evidence—or whether power now speaks through insult, insinuation and spectacle.
When I watch Prime Minister Mia Mottley of Barbados address regional and international audiences, I see Caribbean statesmanship grounded in preparation, intellectual discipline and measured persuasion. Her words may be challenged, but the office is not diminished by the vocabulary through which she chooses to defend them.
It therefore pains me to watch Trinidad and Tobago—whose Prime Minister is herself an accomplished attorney—descend into a political language that, in my view, diminishes both the dignity of the office and the aspirations of the nation she leads.
This is not a demand that leadership become emotionless, silent or antiseptic. It is a demand that power understand the influence of its own voice.
The story the bricks are telling
When I tell a story, I am not manufacturing a fantasy. I am threading together what I have read, what I have watched, what has been declared and what has occurred. Storytelling is one of the ways human beings comprehend a sequence of events that may otherwise be dismissed as isolated moments.
The Yellow Brick Road is therefore not an accusation that every brick was laid through one hidden plan. It is an insistence that citizens have the right to stand back, examine the emerging direction and ask what story the road tells when its pieces are placed together.
One brick is the deepening strategic alliance with the United States. Another is military cooperation. Another is the arrival of warships and security infrastructure. Another is the government’s unqualified rhetoric in support of violent anti-trafficking action. Another is the removal of Nicolás Maduro. Another is the Senate chairman’s public expression of gratitude to Trinidad and Tobago. Another is the increasingly racialized and combative language being issued from the highest political office at home.
No single brick must carry the entire argument. A road is not judged by one brick. It is judged by the direction in which all of them are leading.
Some will say that I am seeing too much. Others will accuse me of attaching meaning where none exists. But hard truths are often made to appear subjective precisely because the alternative would require us to confront them. My thoughts may not arrive sanitized into perfect diplomatic language. They speak to real observations, real emotions and a common unease shared by citizens who recognize that something consequential is happening to the political character of our country.
So no, we cannot play dead to catch corbeau alive. I will not pretend not to see the bricks simply because acknowledging them makes others uncomfortable. My responsibility, as I understand it, is not to offer comfort. It is to bear witness, to connect what I observe and to ask whether the Trinidad and Tobago we are becoming is still the Trinidad and Tobago we once promised ourselves we would be.
Endnotes and Source References
- United States Senate Foreign Relations Committee confirmation hearing concerning nominees for the United States Agency for Global Media, the International Monetary Fund and the United States ambassadorship to Trinidad and Tobago. The quoted opening remarks attributed to Chairman Jim Risch begin at approximately 00:02:40 in the linked hearing video.
- PBS NewsHour report concerning Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar’s public reaction to a United States strike in the Caribbean and her stated position on violent action against drug traffickers.
- References to the Prime Minister’s social-media language are based on a post displayed through her verified Facebook account. The allegations contained within that post are presented here as statements made by the Prime Minister’s account, not as independently established findings.
- This essay is political commentary. The interpretation connecting the cited events through the Yellow Brick Road allegory represents the author’s analysis of publicly reported events and official statements.
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