CSME Network News

From the Trinidad and Tobago Express - A profound and deep sense of loss overcame me, and I have no doubt enveloped many throughout the Caribbean following the death of Rex Nettleford. What everyone understands is that he was a Caribbean champion; a man who fervently believed in the worth of the term, ’Caribbean person’ and gave it both intellectual meaning and depiction.

The entire Caribbean knows that, with Nettleford’s passing, the region has lost an essence-an essential ingredient of our own validation as a Caribbean civilisation-that was unique and is irreplaceable.

Rex Nettleford simply made Caribbean people more assured of themselves; more comfortable in their skins of whatever colour; and more confident that, despite the fact that they are a transplanted people, they had established a unique cultural identity equal to any in the world.

Nettleford was a Jamaican, but he was Caribbean too. As he said: ’The typical West Indian is part-African, part-European, part-Asian, part-Native American but totally Caribbean.’

He drew on that reality and his fervent belief in it to serve not only multi-ethnic Jamaica, but the wider multi-ethnic, multi-religious Caribbean, and to be a respected regional representative on the world’s stage including on the Executive Board of the United Nations Education, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO).

All who knew him in his several incarnations at the University of the West Indies, as Professor, as Vice Chancellor and as Emeritus Vice Chancellor, will testify to his great erudition; his capacity to argue passionately and convincingly; and to the breadth of his knowledge.

From his overarching position as Vice Chancellor of UWI, Nettleford knew, in his own words, that ’the world is changing as if in a contest with the speed of light’ and UWI had to produce skills ’so that its graduates can find firm place and sustained purpose in the ’knowledge society’ of the third millennium, even while maintaining standards and delivering education of excellence. The challenges of politics, economics, social development in the new global situation,’ he said, ’demanded no less’

It was a task to which he set his hand with determination as the University’s principal officer. But he also knew, as he put it, that the University had ’to place great emphasis on the exercise of the creative attributes of the mind.’

The University had to produce the skills that would make the Caribbean competitive in the global economy, but it had the ongoing responsibility too of nurturing thinkers, ideas-people, innovators-Caribbean people who, from the richness of their own cohabitation and intermingling, could contribute to domestic and global thinking on religious tolerance, international relations, ending racism, and solving conflicts.

Students from every Caribbean Community and Common Market (Caricom) country encountered Nettleford in one or other of his many roles in the University for decades.

They were inspired and motivated by him, and they admired him greatly. Therefore, it is not surprising that Caribbean people-in their separate states with their national flags and national anthems-are united in their sense of loss-a sense that the essence of the region’s single Caribbean soul is yet again diminished.

Rex Nettleford is to Caribbean cultural identity what Sir Shridath ’Sonny’ Ramphal, Alister McIntryre and the late William Demas are to the Caribbean’s political and economic identity as a region and in the region’s interaction with the global community. He belongs to a select group of Caribbean visionaries who the region’s people know, without doubt, championed them selflessly and faithfully and validated them in the world.

In the rebuilding of Haitian society-occasioned by the massive physical destruction of Haiti by January’s earthquake-Rex Nettleford would have been a perfect resource for Caricom’s PJ Patterson, Jamaica’s former prime minister, as he leads the regional argument not only for the rebuilding of Haiti, but also for the restoration of Haitian society socially, culturally and politically.

Nettleford was a dancer and choreographer-two disciplines he personally enjoyed and in which his creativity gave enjoyment to audiences throughout the Caribbean.

In these disciplines, he danced to many drums and he was spectacular in his performance. But, it is in the dance to the drums of his Caribbean life that he is a motivating force-Jamaican he was by birth and commitment, but Caribbean he also was by intellectual understanding, cultural recognition, and passionate embrace.

It would be to the Caribbean’s lasting benefit if from the shared sense of loss felt throughout the region, there could be a sustained revival of the drums of Caribbean union to which Rex Nettleford danced in his lifetime.