Blog - Amilcar Sanatan

What Mango Thief and Wine Thief Have in Common: Our Culture, Carnival and Consent

Posted on January 17, 2018February 23, 2020 by amilcarsanatan

First, I would like to make it clear that I am not equating the theft of mangoes with the violation of women’s bodies. For reasoning sake, I am offering an example relevant to “our culture” (a term which has been circulating more frequently these days). “Our culture” is fluid, not fixed. Sadly, when this word […]

No Caribs, No Awaraks: Farewell Dr. John Campbell

Posted on January 13, 2018February 23, 2020 by amilcarsanatan

The repetition of history is pointless if it is taught as something ‘dead’, overly generalised and irrelevant to understanding our current social reality and the way we envision the future of our Caribbean nations. But Dr. John Campbell ensured that history was not a sleeping class or a pointless subject area. The first time I […]

Why Naparima Girls Are Closest To Heaven

Posted on July 2, 2017February 23, 2020 by amilcarsanatan

For Fariah Hyatali This is not a school on a hill, it is a school built within one. On my arrival I was made small against the giant rise of classroom and administrative buildings. The ninety-year old tamarind tree is the legacy of the yard. Currently, the Sarah Morton dormitory of the ancestral cohort of […]

Poetic Injustice: A Marxist Critique of Full Extreme

Posted on February 27, 2017February 27, 2020 by amilcarsanatan

In 2008/9, SALISES hosted “Is Calypso Dying?” forum at the University of the West Indies, St. Augustine Campus. Panelists included Singing Francine, Elizabeth Montano, Brother Resistance and Dr. Louis Regis. Dr. Regis’ contributions stimulated the most responses in his assertion that soca music did not explicitly express a political consciousness as calypso music had. Citing […]