1930 - The Americas

The Americas

The Bahamas

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*Ivy Dumont, the first woman to serve as Governor-General of the Bahamas, was born at Roses on Long Island in the Bahamas (October 2).

Ivy Leona Dumont (b. October 2, 1930, Roses on Long Island, Bahamas) was the sixth Governor-General of the Bahamas.  She was the first woman in the Bahamas to hold this office serving from January 1, 2002 until November 30, 2005. She previously served as Education Minister from 1995 to 2000.

Ivy Leona Turnquest was born on October 2, 1930, at Roses on Long Island in the Bahamas to Cecelia Elizabeth (née Darville) and Alphonso Tennyton Turnquest.  After completing her elementary education in Roses and Buckleys settlements on Long Island, Turnquest continued her schooling at the Government High School on New Providence.  Attaining her Cambridge Junior Certificate in 1946 and her Cambridge Senior Certificate in 1947, Turnquest graduated in 1948. She furthered her studies at the Bahamas Teachers' Training College earning her training teaching certificate in 1951.  Around this same time, Turnquest married Reginald Dumont, a Guyanese immigrant who was working for the Bahamas Police Force on August 24, 1951.  She began working for the Ministry of Education and Culture as a student teacher and earned her full teaching certificate in 1954.

Upon receipt of her credentials, Dumont started her career as a classroom teacher.  In 1962 and 1963, she studied in the United States as a Fulbright scholar and then in 1965, earned a General Certificate of Education from the Teacher's Union Institute. From 1968 to 1970, Dumont attended the University of Miami, graduating with her bachelor's degree in education. Appointed as head teacher at that time, Dumont then moved into administration, serving as education officer and as deputy director of education, before completing her education career after 21 years in 1975.

Dumont then began working as the deputy permanent secretary of the Ministry of Works and Utilities in 1975. She continued her own education and enrolled at Nova University in 1976. Dumont graduated with a doctorate in public administration in 1978 and that same year left the Ministry of Works and began working for Roywest Trust Corporation/Nat West International Trust Holdings Limited as a training officer. She remained with Nat West for the next thirteen years, serving as an assistant manager, then personnel manager and group relations manager, before retiring in 1991.

In 1992, Dumont was appointed to the Senate as a representative of the Free National Movement (FNM). Simultaneously, she was promoted to the cabinet by Prime Minister Hubert Ingraham, to serve as Minister of Health and Environment. She held this post until 1995, when she was moved to the Ministry of Education and Training. That ministry and Dumont's post transitioned to the Ministry of Education in 1997. She retired from the cabinet in 2000, but retained her Senate seat. In 2001, when Orville Turnquest resigned as Governor-General to facilitate his son Tommy Turnquest's run for party leadership the following year, Dumont was selected as his interim replacement on November 13, 2001. She was confirmed as the permanent Governor-General on January 1, 2002, becoming the first woman to hold the post. She resigned from the post on November 30, 2005 and the following day was feted with a farewell ceremony commemorating her fifty-eight years in public service.

In 2007, the University of the West Indies conferred an honorary doctor of laws degree upon Dumont. After leaving public service, Dumont wrote her autobiography, Roses to Mount Fitzwilliam and remained active, speaking to public schools and encouraging youth to further their education.

Barbados

*Edward Brathwaite, a Barbadian poet and academic widely considered one of the major voices in the Caribbean literary canon, was born in Bridgetown, Barbados (May 11).

Edward Kamau Brathwaite (b. Lawson Edward Brathwaite, May 11, 1930, Bridgetown, Barbados) is a Barbadian poet and academic, widely considered one of the major voices in the Caribbean literary canon. Formerly a professor of Comparative Literature at New York University.  Brathwaite was the 2006 International Winner of the Griffin Poetry Prize,  for his volume of poetry Born to Slow Horses.

Brathwaite holds a Ph. D. from the University of Sussex (1968) and was the co-founder of the Caribbean Artists Movement (CAM). He received both the Guggenheim and Fulbright Fellowships in 1983, and was a winner of the 1994 Neustadt International Prize for Literature, the Bussa Award, the Casa de las Americas Prize for poetry, and the 1999 Charity Randall Citation for Performance and Written Poetry from the International Poetry Forum.  

Brathwaite is noted for his studies of Black cultural life both in Africa and throughout the African diasporas of the world in works such as Folk Culture of the Slaves in Jamaica (1970); The Development of Creole Society in Jamaica, 1770-1820 (1971); Contradictory Omens (1974); Afternoon of the Status Crow (1982); and History of the Voice (1984), the publication of which established him as the authority of note on nation language. ("Nation language" is the term coined by Brathwaite, and is now commonly preferred, to describe the work of writers from the Caribbean and the African diaspora in non-standard English, as opposed to the traditional designation of it as "dialect", which Brathwaite considered to be pejorative.

Born Lawson Edward Brathwaite in the capital city of Bridgetown, Barbados, Brathwaite started his secondary education in 1945 at Harrison College in Bridgetown. In 1949, he won the Barbados Island Scholarship to attend Cambridge University, where he studied English and History. In 1953, Brathwaite received an honors bachelor of arts in History from Pembroke College, Cambridge, and he also began his association with the BBC's Caribbean Voices program in London. In 1954, Brathwaite received a Diploma of Education from Pembroke College, Cambridge.  The year 1955 found Brathwaite working as an Education Officer on the Gold Coast/Ghana with the Ministry of Education. In 1960, he married Doris Monica Wellcome, a Guyanes graduate in Home Economics and Tropical Nutrition from the University of Leicester, while he was on home leave from Ghana.

While in Ghana, Brathwaite's writing flowered, with Odale's Choice (a play) premiering in Ghana at Mfantsiman Secondary School.  A full production of the play was later taken to Accra.  In 1962-63, Brathwaite crossed the waters again and found himself as Resident Tutor in the Department of Extra-Mural Studies in Saint Lucia.  Later, in 1963, Brathwaite made his journey to the University of the West Indies (UWI), Mona Campus in Kingston, Jamaica,  to teach in the History Department.

In 1966, Brathwaite spearheaded, as co-founder and secretary, the organization of the Caribbean Artists Movement (CAM) from London.

In 1971, he launched Savacou, a journal of CAM, at the University of the West Indies (UWI), Mona Campus in Kingston, Jamaica. That same year, Brathwaite received the name Kamau from Ngugi wa Thiong'o's grandmother at Limuru, Kenya, while on a City of Nairobi Fellowship to the University of Nairobi, Kenya.

Kamau Brathwaite spent three self-financed "Maroon Years", 1997-2000, at "Cow Pasture", his now famous and, then, "post-hurricane" home in Barbados. During this period he married Beverley Reid, a Jamaican.

In 1992 Brathwaite took up the position of Professor of Comparative Literature at New York University,  subsequently dividing his residence between Barbados and New York.

In 2002, the University of Sussex presented Kamau Brathwaite with an Honorary Doctorate.

In 2006, he was the sole person that year to be awarded a Musgrave gold medal by the Institute of Jamaica, with eight silver and bronze medals going to other recipients. 

*****

*Albert Beckles, a professional bodybuilder and a three time New York City Night of Champions winner, was born in Barbados (July 14).

Albert "Al" Beckles (b. July 14, 1930, Barbados) was born in Barbados but emigrated to London.  In the mid-1960s, he won several British regional titles before winning the 1969 and 1970 National Amateur Body-Builders' Association (NABBA) Mr. Britain titles. In 1971, Beckles joined the International Federation of BodyBuilding and Fitness (IFBB), earning the overall at the IFBB "Mr. Universe."

Beckles was one of the most active participants in bodybuilding history, having been in over 100 contests. In 1982, he won the Night of Champions competition in New York.

Beckles’ 13 forays into the IFBB Mr. Olympia competition yielded six placings among the top five, including coming second to Lee Haney in 1985.

In 1991, at the age of 61 years, Beckles won the Niagara Falls Pro Invitational.

*****

Belize

(British Honduras)

*Elmira Gordon, the first Governor General of Belize from its independence in 1981 to 1993, was born, Belize City, British Honduras (December 30).

Elmira Minita Gordon (b. December 30, 1930, Belize City, British Honduras) was the first Governor General of Belize from its independence in 1981 to 1993. Gordon is to date the only woman to have served as Governor General of Belize. She was also the first trained Belizean psychologist having received both a Masters and Doctorate Degree in psychology. She is one of the very few "double dames", having, in her case, been knighted in two separate orders: the Order of St. Michael and St. George and the Royal Victorian Order.

Elmira Minita Gordon grew up in Belize City and attended St. John's Girls' School and then St. Mary's Primary. She continued her education at St. George's Teacher's College and furthered her studies through a correspondence course from the College of Preceptors, Oxford, England. She began teaching at an Anglican school and was a missionary throughout Belize between 1946 and 1958. From 1959 to 1969, she was a lecturer at the Belize Teacher's Training College, after which, from 1969 to 1981, she was a Government Education Officer.

Gordon completed her postgraduate education at the University of Nottingham and University of Birmingham in England and the University of Calgary in Alberta, Canada.  Between 1977 and 1980, Gordon was in Canada where she served on the Educational Psychology Programme Planning Committee and was a member of the Toronto Leather Craft Club. She earned her master's degree in Educational Psychology and then a Doctorate in Applied Psychology from the University of Toronto, Canada, becoming the first trained Belizean psychologist.

She returned from her studies in 1980 and in 1981 was appointed Governor General of Belize. She succeeded James P. I. Hennessy, last Governor General of British Honduras, and became the first Governor General of Belize upon Belizean's gaining their independence.

Gordon was the first woman to be appointed as Governor General, or the queen's representative, of a Commonwealth realm.  She was promoted to both Dame Grand Cross of the Order of St. Michael and St. George (DCMG) and Dame Grand Cross of the Royal Victorian Order (DCVO).

Gordon was a member of the girl guides from 1946, and in 1970 became the District Commissioner of the Girl Guides for the Belize district. She became a Justice of the Peace in 1974 and a senior Justice of the Peace in 1987. Gordon received a lifetime membership of the British Red Cross in 1975, and in the Belizean Red Cross in 1981. In addition to her public works, Gordon was a master leather crafts artisan having won numerous prizes for her works.

*****

Bermuda

*Phyllis Edness (b. April 8, 1930), a Bermudian sprinter who competed in the women's 100 meters at the 1948 Summer Olympics, was born.

*****

Brazil

*Dolores Duran, a Brazilian singer and songwriter best known for her hit "A Noite do Meu Bem", was born in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (June 7),

Dolores Duran (b. Adiléia Silva da Rocha, June 7, 1930 Rio de Janeiro, Brazil – d. October 24, 1959) was a Brazilian singer and songwriter.

Adiléia Silva da Rocha debuted at age 10 on the radio. At age 16 she came up with the stage name Dolores Duran and became a crooner, working at nightclubs in Rio de Janeiro. In 1952, Dolores recorded her debut album, which featured songs like "Canção da Volta" (Aantonio Maria-Ismael Neto) and "Bom É Querer Bem" (Fernando Lobo). Her first composition, "Se É por Falta de Adeus", was written with Antonio Carlos Jobim and recorded by Dóris Monteiro. She wrote two other pop music classics with Jobim, "Por Causa de Voce", and "Estrada de Sol". Duran also wrote: "Fim de Caso", "Solidão", "Castigo", as well as "Pela Rua", "Ternura Antiga" and "Idéias Erradas", written with Ribamar. Dolores toured the former Soviet Union in 1958 with other Brazilian performers, and later spent some time in Paris on her way back to South America. She recorded her greatest hit, "A Noite do Meu Bem" a few days before she died. Duran died of a heart attack at age 29. She always had a weak heart and had already had a milder heart attack a few years before. After her premature death, Duran's fame increased, and singers like Lúcio Alves and Nana Caymmi dedicated full albums to her music.

*****

*Revolution broke out in Brazil against the rule of President Washington Luis (October 3).

*Brazil's three-week civil war ended in rebel victory as President Washington Luis resigned (October 24).

*Getulio Vargas became President of Brazil (November 3).

*The United States and Britain extended formal recognition to the new Brazilian government (November 8).

*****

Canada

*Art Dorrington, a professional ice hockey center who became the first black hockey player to sign a National Hockey League contract, was born in Truro, Nova Scotia, Canada (March 13). 

Art Dorrington (b. March 13, 1930, Truro, Nova Scotia, Canada) became the first black hockey player to sign a National Hockey League (NHL) contract when he joined the New York Rangers organization in 1950. Despite putting up very good statistics in the minor leagues, he was never able to make it to the professional ranks. Dorrington played for the Atlantic City Seagulls of the Eastern Hockey League. In the late 1990s, he created the Art Dorrington Ice Hockey Foundation, a program that teaches hockey to children from low-income families in Atlantic City.

*****

*Rosemary Brown, a Canadian politician who was the first Black Canadian woman to be elected to a Canadian provincil legislature, was born in Kingston, Jamaica (June 17). 

Rosemary Brown, (b. Rosemary Wedderburn, June 17, 1930, Kingston, Jamaica – d. April 26, 2003, Vancouver, British Columbia), was a Canadian politician.

Rosemary Brown was born in Kingston, Jamaica, in 1930, and moved to Canada in 1951 to study social work at McGill University in Montreal.  She proceeded to do a Master of Social Work at the University of British Columbia.

She served as a Member of the Legislative Assembly (MLA) in the British Columbia legislature as a part of the New Democratic Party from 1972 to 1986, making her the first Black Canadian woman to be elected to a Canadian provincial legislature.

In 1975, she became the first black woman to run for the leadership of a Canadian federal party (and only the second woman, after Mary Walker-Sawka), finishing a strong second (with 40.1% of the votes on the fourth and final ballot) to Ed Broadbent in that year's New Democratic Party leadership election.

After departing politics, Brown became a professor of women's studies at Simon Fraser University.  In 1993, Brown was appointed Chief Commissioner of the Ontario Human Rights Commission, and served until 1996. In 1995, she was awarded the Order of British Columbia and in 1996 was named an Officer of the Order of Canada. 

Brown was sworn to the Queen's Privy Council for Canada as a member of the federal Security Intelligence Review Committee, responsible for overseeing the actions of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, a role which she held from 1993 to 1998. She also served on the Order of Canada Advisory Committee from 1999 until her death in 2003.

She died of a heart attack on April 26, 2003, aged 72, in Vancouver, British Columbia.
Canada Post featured Brown on a Canadian postage stamp released on February 2, 2009.

On June 17, 2005, a park in Brown's former provincial riding of Vancouver-Burrard was dedicated to and named for her.

*****

Cuba

*Sandy Amoros, a Cuban left fielder in Major League Baseball for the Brooklyn and Los Angeles Dodgers  and the Detroit Tigers best known for his defensive play in the 1955 World Series which enabled the Brooklyn Dodgers to win their first World Series, was born in Havana, Cuba (January 30).

Edmundo "Sandy" Amorós Isasi (b. January 30, 1930, Havana, Cuba – d. June 28, 1992, Miami, Florida) both batted and threw left-handed. Amoros played for the New York Cubans of the Negro Leagues in 1950.  Dodgers scout Al Campanis signed him in 1951, struck by the small man's speed. 

Amorós, nicknamed for his resemblance to boxing champ Sandy Saddler, had a largely unremarkable Major League career. However, his defining moment with the Brooklyn Dodgers was one of the most memorable events in World Series history. It was the sixth inning of the decisive Game 7 of the 1955 World Series.  The Dodgers had never won a World Series in their history and were trying to hold a 2–0 lead against their perennial rivals, the New York Yankees.  The left-handed Amorós came into the game that inning as a defensive replacement, as the right-handed throwing Jim Gilliam moved from left field to second base in place of Don Zimmer.  The first two batters in the inning reached base and Yogi Berra came to the plate. Berra, notorious for swinging at pitches outside the strike zone, hit an opposite-field shot toward the left field corner that looked to be a sure double, as the Brooklyn outfield had just shifted to the right. Amorós seemingly came out of nowhere, extended his gloved right hand to catch the ball and immediately skidded to a halt to avoid crashing into the fence near Yankee Stadium's 301 distance marker in the left field corner. He then threw to the relay man, shortstop Pee Wee Reese, who in turn threw to first baseman Gil Hodges, doubling Gil McDougald off first. Hank Bauer then grounded out to end the inning.

Amorós' last season in the majors was 1960, after which he fell on hard times, largely because he came into conflict with Fidel Castro by refusing to take the manager's job at Castro's request for the Cuban National Team. He lost a $30,000 ranch he had owned for a number of years.

For many players, the collapse of the Cuban League had tragic consequences. The diaspora began. Amorós, for instance, returned to Cuba to find his property confiscated by the new Socialist government of Fidel Castro. Sandy could no longer leave Cuba for many years, during which time he became increasingly dependent on others for his needs. When he eventually was given permission to leave, the Dodgers put him on their roster for the few days he needed for his pension."

It was 1967 when Castro finally allowed Amorós to leave for the United States. After the Dodgers act of kindness of always looking out for those players considered part of the Dodger family, it became ironic Amorós would then move to Elton Avenue in the South Bronx not too far from Yankee Stadium where he made that famous catch in the 1955 World Series. Later that year, his wife divorced him.

Amoros lost touch with everyone in the Cuban community, especially all those individuals he thought were his friends. As a result of moving to the South Bronx, Amoros was immediately embraced by the local Puerto Rican community. There he became active in supporting Herman Badillo a politician who had been a borough president, United States Representative, and candidate for Mayor of New York City. He was the first Puerto Rican to be elected to these posts and be a mayoral candidate in the continental United States. A few years later Amoros wanted something else so, in 1977, he moved to Central Florida to live with his best friend, Victor Germain, from Puerto Rico who lived in the South Bronx and later moved to Tampa in search of a better quality of life for he and his family.

Amoros lived comfortably in Clair-Mel City, a section of Tampa, with the Germain family for many years attending functions in his honor as the man who made it possible for Brooklyn to win its only World Series title.

After receiving an increase in his pension from Major League Baseball, Amoros moved out on his own where he eventually developed an alcohol problem which later led to ill health (diabetes) and a life of poverty. He lost his best friend in 1986, then lost part of his left leg in 1987 to circulatory problems and gangrene where, at that time, old teammates and then the Baseball Assistance Program (BAT) gave him a helping hand.

Five years later, at the age of 62, Sandy died from pneumonia, in Miami, Florida.

*****

*Bernardo Baro, a professional baseball player who was elected to the Cuban Baseball Hall of Fame, died (June).

Bernardo Baró (b. February 27, 1896 – d. June 1930) was a Cuban professional baseball player player in the Negro leagues and the Cuban League. Primarily an outfielder, he also played some games as a pitcher or an infielder. He played from 1913 to 1930 for the Cuban Stars (West), the Cuban Stars (East), and the Kansas City Monarchs.

Baró played winter baseball in the Cuban League from 1915 to 1929. He led the league in batting average in 1922/23 with an average of .401. He ranks fifth all-time in Cuban League career batting average with an average of .311. In 1945 he was elected to the Cuban Baseball Hall of Fame.

*****
*Tata Guines, a Cuban percussionist on the tumbadora (conga drum) who was important in the first generation of Afro-Cuban jazz, was born in Guines, Cuba (June 30).

Tata Güines (b. June 30, 1930, Guines, Cuba – d. February 4, 2008, Havana, Cuba), born Federico Arístides Soto Alejo, was born in Guines, a poor town east of La Habana in the province of Havana in Cuba. He made his first drums out of milk cartons and sausages. By the 1950s, he was working with such top Cuban musicians as Arsenio Rodriguez, Luciano "Chano" Pozo, Bebo Valdes and Israel "Cachao" Lopez. In the late 1950s, he formed a band with the pianist Frank Emilio Flynn, forming a new band, Quinteto Instrumental de Música Moderna, later known as Los Amigos.

Güines moved to New York City in 1957, playing there with great jazz players such as Dizzy Gillespie, Maynard Ferguson, and Miles Davis at Birdland.  As a percussionist, he performed with Josephine Baker and Frank Sinatra. He returned to Cuba in 1959 after Fidel Castro came to power in the Cuban Revolution which he helped fund by contributions from his earnings as a musician.

For a while instrumentalists fell out of favor with the Cuban public and his popularity diminished. He again became popular in 1979 with his work in the Estrellas de Areito sessions, recording for Egrem, the Cuban state record company, which revived the old  descarga style. By the 1990s, he was considered an old master and frequently toured. He recorded with the young conguero Anga Diaz, his greatest stylistic progeny, on the 1995 record, "Pasaporte", which won the Egrem album of the year award, the equivalent of a Grammy in Cuba. Again in 2004, he played the congas on the Latin Grammy-winning Lágrimas Negras (Black Tears) with pianist Bebo Valdes and Spanish Flamenco singer Diego El Cigala. He worked with other young bands and recorded "Chamalongo", with the Canadian saxophonist Jane Bunnett, and played on the title track of Bebo Valdes and Diego El Cigala's popular 2003 album, Lágrimas Negras.

Tata Güines was known as the "King of the Congas".  He had a musical career that lasted six decades, one that helped popularize Afro-Cuban rhythms.

*****

*Students at the University of Havana held a demonstration against president Gerardo Machado (September 30).  Police blocked the streets and during the ensuing clashes, a student leader by the name of Rafael Trejo was killed. Trejo was later held up to be a martyr and a hero in Cuban history.

*The Cuban congress granted the request of President Gerardo Machado to suspend the constitution in and around Havana until after general elections on November 1 (October 4).

*Omara Portuondo Peláez, a singer and dancer whose career spanned over half a century was born in Havana, Cuba (October 29). She was one of the original members of the Cuarteto d'Aida, and performed with Ignacio Pineiro, Orquesta Anacaona, Orquesta Aragon, Nat King Cole, Adalberto Alvarez, Los Van Van, the Buena Vista ensemble, Pupy Pedroso, Chucho Valdes and Juan Formell. 

Omara Portuondo Peláez (b. October 29, 1930, Havana, Cuba) was a founding member of the popular vocal group Cuarteto d'Aida. Portuondo collaborated with many important Cuban musicians during her long career, including Julio Gutierrez, Juanito Marquez and Chucho Valdes. Although primarily known for her rendition of boleros, she she has recorded in a wide range of styles from jazz to son cubano. After 1996 she was part of the Buena Vista Social Club project, touring extensively and recording several albums with the ensemble.

Born on October 29, 1930 in Havana, Portuondo had three sisters. Her mother came from a wealthy Spanish family, and had created a scandal by running off with and marrying a black professional baseball player, Bartolo Portuondo.  Omara joined the dance group of the Cabaret Tropicana in 1950, following her elder sister, Haydee. She also danced in the Mulatas de Fuego in the theatre Radiocentro, and in other dance groups. The two sisters also used to sing for family and friends, and they also performed in Havana clubs. Portuondo and Haydee then, in 1947, joined the Loquibambia Swing, a group formed by the blind pianist Frank Emilio Flynn.

From 1952–1953 she sang for the Orquesta Anacaona, and later in 1953 both sisters joined (together with Elena Burke and Moraima Secada) the singing group Cuarteto d'Aida, formed and directed by pianist Aida Diestro. The group had considerable success, touring the United States, performing with Nat King Cole at the Tropicana, and recording an album for RCA Victor.  In 1957 the sisters recorded an album with the quartet. In 1958, pianist and composer Julio Gutierrez invited Portuondo to sing for his ensemble in a series of recordings bridging jazz and Cuban music for the record label Velvet. The result was Magia Negra, her debut solo album. Haydee left the Cuarteto d'Aida in 1961 in order to live in the United States and Omara continued singing with the quartet until 1967.

Portuondo sang (singing a duet with Ibrahim Ferrer) on the album Buena Vista Social Club in 1996. This led not only to more touring (including playing at Carnegie Hall with the Buena Vista troupe) and her appearance in Wim Wenders' film Buena Vista Social Club, but to two further albums for the World Circuit label: Buena Vista Social Club Presents Omara Portuondo (2000) and Flor de Amor (2004).

*****

*Cuban President Gerardo Machado suspended the Constitution for 25 days as rioting in Havana killed 7 (November 13).

Dominican Republic

*The President of the Dominican Republic Horacio Vasquez fled Santo Domingo as rebel forces led by General Rafael Trujillo, a person of African descent, toppled his government (February 26).

*****

*The President of the Dominican Republic Horacio Vasquez fled Santo Domingo as rebel forces controlled by General Rafael Trujillo, a person of African descent, toppled his government.

Rafael Trujillo, in full Rafael Leónidas Trujillo Molina, (b. October 24, 1891, San Cristobal, Dominican Republic - d. May 30, 1961, Ciudad Trujillo, near San Cristóbal, Dominican Republic) was the dictator of the Dominican Republic from 1930 until his assassination in 1961.

Rafael Leonidas Trujillo Molina was born on October 24, 1891, in San Cristobal, Dominican Republic, into a lower middle class family. His father was José Trujillo Valdez, the son of Silveria Valdez Méndez of colonial Dominican origin and José Trujillo Monagas, a Spanish sergeant who arrived in Santo Domingo as a member of the Spanish reinforcement troops during the annexation era. Trujillo's mother was Altagracia Julia Molina Chevalier, later known as Mama Julia, the daughter of Pedro Molina Peña, also of colonial Dominican origin, and the teacher Luisa Erciná Chevalier, whose parents were part of the remaining French descendants in Haiti.  Luisa's father (Trujillo's great grandfather), Justin Alexis Víctor Turenne Carrié Blaise, was of French descent, while Luisa's mother (Trujillo's great grandmother), Eleonore Juliette Chevallier Moreau, was part of Haiti's mulatto class. Trujillo was the third of eleven children.

In 1897, at age six, Trujillo was registered in the school of Juan Hilario Meriño. One year later he transferred to the school of Broughton, where he became a pupil of Eugenio Maria de Hostos and remained there for the rest of his primary schooling. At the age of 16, Trujillo got a job as a telegraph operator, which he held for about three years. Shortly afterwards, Trujillo turned to crime—cattle stealing, check counterfeiting, and postal robbery. He spent several months in prison.  Nevertheless, his time in prison did not deter Trujillo, as he later formed a violent gang of robbers called the 42.
Trujillo entered the Dominican army in 1918 and was trained by United States Marines during the United States occupation (1916–24) of the country. He rose from lieutenant to commanding colonel of the national police between 1919 and 1925, becoming a general in 1927. Trujillo seized power in the military revolt against President Horacio Vásquez in 1930. From that time until his assassination 31 years later, Trujillo remained in absolute control of the Dominican Republic through his command of the army, by placing family members in office, and by having many of his political opponents murdered. He served officially as president from 1930 to 1938 and again from 1942 to 1952.

In 1916, the United States occupied the Dominican Republic due to threats of defaulting on foreign debts. The occupying force soon established a Dominican army constabulary to impose order. Trujillo joined the National Guard in 1918 and trained with the United States Marines. Seeing opportunity, Trujillo impressed the recruiters and won promotion from cadet to general and commander-in-chief of the Army in only nine years.

A rebellion (or coup d'etat) against President Horacio Vasquez broke out in February 1930 in Santiago. Trujillo secretly cut a deal with rebel leader Rafael Estrella Urena. In return for Trujillo letting Estrella take power, Estrella would allow Trujillo to run for president in new elections. As the rebels marched toward Santo Domingo, Vásquez ordered Trujillo to suppress them. However, feigning "neutrality", Trujillo kept his men in their barracks, allowing Estrella's rebels to take the capital virtually unopposed. 

On March 3, 1930, Estrella was proclaimed acting president, with Trujillo confirmed as head of the police and of the army. As per their agreement, Trujillo became the presidential nominee of the Patriotic Coalition of Citizens (Spanish: Coalición patriotica de los ciudadanos), with Estrella as his running mate. The other candidates became targets of harassment by the army. When it became apparent that the army would only allow Trujillo to campaign unhindered, the other candidates pulled out. Ultimately, the Trujillo–Estrella ticket was proclaimed victorious with an implausible 99 percent of the vote. In a note to the State Department, American ambassador Charles Boyd Curtis wrote that Trujillo received far more votes than actual voters.

Competent in business, capable in administration, and ruthless in politics, Trujillo brought a degree of peace and prosperity to the republic that it had not previously enjoyed. However, the benefits of economic modernization were inequitably distributed in favor of Trujillo and his favorites and supporters. Moreover, the people of the country paid for the prosperity with the loss of their civil and political liberties. Haitians living in the Dominican Republic suffered acutely. Trujillo encouraged anti-Haitian prejudice among Dominicans, and in 1937 he ordered the massacre of thousands of Haitian migrants.

In spite of the harsh measures that Trujillo took to protect his power, domestic opposition continued to grow during the later years of his regime, and he also came under considerable foreign pressure to liberalize his rule. He began to lose support in the army, and this led to his assassination by machine-gun fire as he was driving to his San Cristóbal farm. Many of the supposed assassins, including Gen. J.T. Díaz, were subsequently captured and executed.

*****

*Radhames Aracena, a Dominican radio host, music producer and businessman who helped give birth to bachata music and thereby changed the musical landscape of the Dominican Republic during and after Rafael Trujillo's dictatorship, was born in Santiago, Dominican Republic (May 13).

Radhames Aracena (b. May 13, 1930, Santiago, Dominican Republic – d. December 11, 1999, Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic), was able to bring the traditional Dominican bachata from the brothels and saloons to every radio set in the country. Aracena created Radio Guarachita, one of the first radio stations to cater to bachata music, and subsequently began recording, producing and promoting bachata artists.
When he was in his early 20s, Radhames Aracena was already making a name for himself as a popular radio personality. By 1955, while still working as a radio host, Radhames opened a record store called Discos La Guarachita (diminutive of guaracha, a popular type of Cuban music) near one of the most popular streets of Santo Domingo.  He had been able to get local distribution rights for Pedro Infante's Mexican record company, Peerless, as well as some other Latin American record labels such as Panamerica de Discos, which controlled the catalog of the famous bolero singer Lucho Gatica. A few years later, he got distribution rights for RCA  and CBS.
After Trujillo's assassination in 1961, Radhames purchased recording equipment and licenses to launch a new radio station, and in 1964 he created Radio Guarachita. Radhames, along with DJs Cuco Valoy (who later became an internationally famous salsa and merengue singer) on Radio Tropical, and Jose Tabar Asilis (popularly known as Charlie-Charlie) on La Voz del Tropico, was amongst the first to give bachata any air time.
Striving to create the same sound quality for bachata as the records he was importing from overseas, Radhames began recording local musicians, and soon became one of the most important names in the bachata business. Radio Guarachita gave many legendary Dominican artists their first break.  Jose Manuel Calderon, Leonardo Paniagua, Blas Duran, Ramón Cordero and Edilio Paredes, are some among the host of traditional bachateros whose careers were launched by Radhames. Many popular merengue tipico musicians, including Tatico Henriquez, Dionisia "Guandulito" Mejia, and Fefita La Grande, also recorded important works with Guarachita.
Radhames Aracena died on December 11, 1999, at the age of 69, and his Radio Guarachita was closed after his heirs sold it to Dominican businessman Juan Lopez.

*****

*General elections were held in the Dominican Republic (May 16).  Rafael Trujillo was elected president unopposed when opposition candidates withdrew their names in protest, accusing members of the body overseeing the election of being appointed illegally.

*A hurricane struck the Dominican Republic, killing over 8,000 people and doing as estimated $15 million in damage (September 3).

Ecuador

*Guillermo Erazo, an Afro-Ecuadorian musician, singer, and marimba player better known as Papa Roncon, was born in Borbon, Esmeraldas, Ecuador (November 10).

Guillermo Ayovi Erazo -- Papá Roncón -- learned to play the marimba at an early age with the Tsachila people. He began to make himself known in the 1970s, first in his village, and then at national and international levels, with tours in the United States, Venezuela, Colombia and Japan. In 2001, he received the Premio Eugenio Espejo for his contribution to the Ecuadorian culture through the practice and teaching of the marimba and traditional dances. He also directed several films, including documentaries.

He was the founder of the school of traditional culture 'La Catanga', through which he taught dozens of children and youth to play and dance marimba in the province of Esmeraldas.

He was married to Grimalda for over 50 years, had 10 children, 14 grandchildren, and about 8 great grand children.

Guadeloupe

*Georges Dagonia (b. December 9, 1930, Guadeloupe - d. September 29, 2007) is a politician from Guadeloupe who was elected to the French Senate in 1977 .

Haiti

*Jean Dominique, a Haitian journalist and pro-democracy activist who was assassinated on April 3, 2000, was born in Port-au-Prince, Haiti (July 31).

Jean Léopold Dominique (b. July 31, 1930, Port-au-Prince, Haiti – d. April 3, 2000, Port-au-Prince, Haiti) was a Haitian journalist and pro-democracy activist. His station, Radio Haiti-Inter, was the first to broadcast news, investigative reporting, and political analysis in Haitian Creole, the language spoken by all Haitian people. He was assassinated on April 3, 2000, a crime for which the "intellectual authors" have been neither officially identified nor prosecuted.

Jean Dominique was born in Port-au-Prince to Léopold Dominique, a trader originally from Riviere Froide, and Marcelle (Pereira) Dominique. As a child, Dominique frequently accompanied his father on trips throughout the Haitian countryside, which led him to know and understand the lives and struggles of peasant farmers. Dominique’s elder brother Philippe was an officer in the Haitian army who, along with fellow officers Alix Pasquet and Henry Perpignan, was killed in an attempt to occupy the Casernes Dessalines and overthrow Francois Duvalier in July 1958. His eldest sister, Madeleine Dominique Paillère, was a well-known author and intellectual.

After completing his primary and secondary schooling at Saint-Louis de Gonzague,  Dominique began studying at the Faculté d’Agronomie at Damien in 1948, where he received his degree in 1951. Dominique then received a scholarship to study genetically-modified cacao and coffee plants at the Ecole Superieure d'Application d'Agriculture Tropicale in Paris. He returned to Haiti in 1955, and began to work as an agronomist in Bayeux in the Nord department with the Institut Haïtien de Crédit Agricole et Industriel as well as the Société Haitiano-Américaine de Développement Agricole (SHADA), primarily on sisal and rubber production. He worked alongside agronomist Edner Vil, who was subsequently arrested and killed by the Duvalier regime for promoting the rights of peasant farmers. Dominique, who had been working with the ti peyizan to defend their land rights against the chefs de section (local Duvalierist authorities) and wealthy landowners, was arrested a few weeks after his brother’s attempt to overthrow the regime, and he spent six months in prison in Gonaives. After his release, he was no longer permitted to work as an agronomist, and instead became a journalist.

In the early 1960s, after his release from prison, Dominique went to work as a program host and cultural commentator at Haiti's first independent radio station, Radio Haïti, interviewing writers and scholars. In 1972, he purchased the lease to the station from Ricardo Widmaïer and renamed it Radio Haiti-Inter. It was the first radio station in Haiti to broadcast political analysis, interviews, and investigative reporting in Haitian Creole, the language spoken by the entire population of Haiti, in addition to French, which was the language of the ruling elite.

During the 1960s, Dominique also founded Haiti's first film club at the Institut Français in Port-au-Prince, which he understood to be a way of subverting and resisting the political repression of the Duvalier dictatorship. In 1965, the film club was banned following a screening of Alain Resnais’ Night and Fog,  an anti-fascist film about the Nazi concentration camps. In 1961, Dominique co-directed and narrated Haiti's first documentary film, Mais, je suis belle (But, I Am Beautiful), an ironic film about Caribbean beauty pageants. Dominique remained a staunch supporter of Haitian cinema, and collaborated with Haitian filmmakers such as Rassoul Labuchin.

Dominique was married to fellow journalist Michele Montas, who became the co-director of Radio Haiti after Dominique’s assassination. He had three daughters by previous marriages: the writer Jan J. (J.J.) Dominique, Nadine Dominique, and Dolores Dominique Neptune. He also had a son, the novelist Denis Boucolon.

Throughout the 1970s, Jean Dominique used Radio Haiti to highlights aspects of Haitian culture rooted in its Creole-speaking majority and repressed for almost two centuries by its French-speaking elite. Dominique and Radio Haiti also reported increasingly on events that would challenge the regime of Jean-Claude Duvalier, often strategically and indirectly to circumvent the regime’s censorship laws. For example, Radio Haiti reported in 1972 for weeks, on the fall of the dictator of Nicaragua, Anastasio "Tachito" Somoza Debayle, as a proxy for talking about Duvalier. 

As the Haitian government relied on assistance from the United States, Duvalier had little choice but to comply with certain human rights rules and principles while Jimmy Carter was president. However, as Carter’s term came to an end, Duvalier’s opposition to the free press became more pronounced. In October 1980, he announced that le bal est fini (the party is over) for the independent press. Dominique, reading the writing on the wall, responded with one of his most famous editorials, entitled “Bon appétit, messieurs,” addressed to the journalists of the state press. “For you, the banquet shall resume. And you will not hear any discordant sounds, any noise that might disturb your appetites. You will not be distracted from your plentiful feast by the cries of the poor, the screams of the boat people devoured by sharks, the gunshots killing our cane-cutter brothers in Santo Domingo or in Nassau or La Romana ... No, you will not hear those discordant, disagreeable noises that might trouble your meal, that might prevent you from celebrating -- it will be only silence... So you may celebrate at ease, gentlemen! At ease! And in that profound silence: Bon appétit, messieurs!”

On November 28, 1980, shortly after Ronald Reagan won the United States presidential election, Duvalier cracked down on the independent press, human rights activists, and union leaders in Haiti. Duvalier’s militia, the Tontons Macoutes, ransacked and destroyed Radio Haiti’s studios. Nearly all of Radio Haiti’s journalists were arrested; some, including station manager Richard Brisson, were tortured. Most were released within days and then exiled. An order was issued for Jean Dominique to be killed on sight. He spent two months in asylum at the Venezuelan embassy, before he joined Montas in New York, where they married in 1983.

On March 5, 1986, less than a month after Duvalier's ouster, Dominique and Montas returned to Haiti, and were greeted at the airport by nearly 60,000 people. That October, Radio Haiti reopened with funds raised by ordinary Haitian people.

Through the late 1980s, as Haiti endured successive military coups d’état, Dominique continued to advocate for democratic participation, human rights, peasant rights, and for the removal of Duvalierist and Macoute elements from the government and the army. He devoted a great deal of airtime and analysis, for example, to the July 1987 massacre of peasant farmers by landowners and Macoutes in Jean Rabel. Haiti’s first democratic elections were scheduled for November 29, 1987, but were violently suppressed by the army, which slaughtered voters at Ruelle Vaillant and destroyed electoral bureaus throughout the country. Radio Haiti came under armed attack that day, as ordered by Williams Regala; Dominique and the other journalists stood on the roof throwing rocks and bottles as the army fired machine guns and grenades.

Dominique was an early supporter of the Lavalas movement and Jean-Bertrand Aristide, the parish priest and outspoken proponent of liberation theology. Radio Haiti covered the September 11, 1988, massacre in which attachés under the orders of Port-au-Prince mayor Franck Romain massacred parishioners at Aristide’s St. Jean Bosco church, and interviewed Aristide several times as a priest and as a presidential candidate, and, finally, after his victory in Haiti’s first democratic elections in December 1990.

When the military under Raoul Cedras overthrew the government of Jean-Bertrand Aristide in September 1991, Radio Haiti once more had to close and Dominique and Montas again went into exile in New York. During these years, Dominique published op eds and appeared on the Charlie Rose show to encourage a return to constitutional order in Haiti. He also collaborated with the American filmmaker Jonathan Demme on the interviews that would eventually become the documentary The Agronomist, and on an unfinished project on the History of Haitian Cinema. In June 1993, Dominique was part of Aristide’s entourage at the Governors Island meeting between the democratically-elected government in exile and the leaders of the military junta. Dominique returned to Haiti in 1994, after Aristide's return to power, and reopened Radio Haiti the following year.

In the final years of his life, Dominique concentrated on issues of state corruption and criminal negligence by the private sector. He investigated Pharval Laboratories, a pharmaceutical company, for selling cough syrup contaminated with diethylene glycol that was responsible for the poisoning of two hundred children, of whom sixty died. He also denounced the importation of medical-grade ethanol that was being sold as counterfeit clairin (high-proof undistilled sugar cane spirits), sickening and killing people who consumed it while undercutting the livelihood of Haiti’s sugar planters and distillers.

As a journalist who emphasized his own political objectivity and that of his staff, Dominique took pains to remain nonpartisan in his professional activities. He did, however, strongly support grassroots peasants’ rights groups, especially KOZEPEP whose leader, Charles Suffrard, was a close friend and collaborator of Dominique. Though as a private citizen Dominique was an early supporter of the Lavalas movement, he later investigated Aristide and other members of Fanmi Lavalas for corruption and misappropriation of government funds, and for betraying the promise of the twa wòch dife, the three cornerstones of the Lavalas movement: participation, justice, and transparency.

In a tense December 16, 1996 Face à l’Opinion interview, Dominique questioned Aristide about state corruption, particularly in his petits projets de la présidence.  Dominique also took on former police chief, Dany Toussaint,  for attempting to take control of the country’s security apparatus after the assassination of his rival for the position of Secretary of State for Public Security, Jean Lamy. As a result of this, Toussaint's supporters surrounded and attacked the radio station building. In February 2000, Toussaint’s lawyers Gérard Georges and Jean-Claude Nord openly made death threats against Jean Dominique and Michèle Montas on the airwaves of Serge Beaulieu’s New York-based Duvalierist radio station Radio Liberté. 

On April 3, 2000, at the age of 69, Dominique was shot four times in the chest and neck as he arrived for work at Radio Haïti. A station employee named Jean-Claude Louissaint was also killed in the attack. President Rene Preval ordered three days of official mourning, and 15,000 people, among them 10,000 peasant farmers, attended the joint funeral at Stade Sylvio Cator in downtown Port-au-Prince on April 8. On April 15, more than 5,000 peasant farmers from the Artibonite gathered in Pont Sondé to pay tribute, and the following day, Dominique’s ashes were poured into the Artibonite River at Passe Caneau, so that, in the words of Charles Suffrard, Dominique could continue to nourish each grain of rice the river reached.

In the years following Dominique's assassination, civil society and grassroots groups in Haiti held large public protests and sit-ins calling for justice for Dominique and Louissaint. International human rights organizations, including Amnesty International and Reporters Without Borders, launched years-long campaigns demanding justice for Jean Dominique.

There were several obstructions and irregularities in the investigation into the murders, originating in the police, parliament, and the executive branch. In 2000, supporters of chief suspect Dany Toussaint, some of them armed, threatened to set fire to the courthouse, and in 2001, Toussaint (then a sitting senator for the Fanmi Lavalas party) claimed parliamentary immunity from appearing in court, which the senate refused to revoke. The president of the Senate, Yvon Neptune, pronounced that a “little judge” could not summon a senator. The Minister of Justice at the time, Gary Lissade, had previously been Dany Toussaint’s attorney. The first judge in the Jean Dominique case, Claudy Gassant, was subject to repeated threats to his safety, and in 2002, Aristide refused to renew his mandate. In March 2003, Judge Bernard Saint-Vil concluded that a small group of low-level criminals were responsible for the murder, but that there was insufficient evidence to indict Dany Toussaint -- findings that Dominique’s widow Michèle Montas contested in an appellate court, demanding that the intellectual authors of the crime be found and punished. In December 2004, more than 75% of documents relating to the investigation disappeared from the Cour de Cassation (Haiti’s Supreme Court). In addition, several suspects and witnesses died under mysterious circumstances. In March 2015 Aristide’s former chief of security Oriel Jean was gunned down by unknown assailants, after which journalist Guy Delva released an interview in which Jean suggested that Aristide had ordered Dominique’s assassination. To date, the "intellectual authors" of the crime have never been brought to justice.

On Christmas Day 2002, there was an attempt on Michèle Montas' life in which her bodyguard, Maxime Seïde, was murdered. Amid increasing threats to the safety of Radio Haïti's journalists, the station closed for good in February 2003.

Jonathan Demme covered the life and death of Dominique in his 2003 documentary The Agronomist.

The Centre de Production Agricole Jean L. Dominique in Marmelade, in the north of Haiti, created in 2001 by former President René Preval in memory of Dominique, is an agricultural training center for coffee and cacao producers. A reforestation hub, it is also home to a cooperative of citrus growers, with a juice processing plant, while the bamboo trees on the grounds are used for the production of furniture.

*****

*Stenio Vincent, a COTW, was elected President of Haiti by the National Assembly (November 18). 

*****

*Gabriel Alix (1930–1998) was a Haitian painter. A native of Saint-Marc. Alix was a member of the Centre d'Art and painted still lifes, religious subjects, and animals.


*Roland Dorcely (b. 1930, Port-au-Prince, Haiti), a Haitian painter, was born in Port-au-Prince, Haiti.  Dorcely exhibited his works in the United States, France,Canada, and Colombia.  His works are displayed in the Paris Museum of Modern Art and in New York City's Museum of Modern Art.

*Nicolas Geffrard (1871–1930), a Haitian musician best known for composing La Dessalinienne, the Haitian national anthem, died. The piece was adopted in 1904 to celebrate one hundred years of Haitian independence. He spent part of his career working in Europe.

*Jacques-Enguerrand Gourgue, one of Haiti's most renowned painters of the 20th century, was born.

*****

A Port-au-Prince native, Jacques-Enguerrand Gourgue (b.1930, Port au Prince, Haiti – d. 1996) began painting at an early age and eventually had his works exhibited throughout Europe and the Americas.  His father was a French psychiatrist, and his mother said to be a Haitian vodou priestess. He typically painted scenes of rural Haitian life and vodou ceremonies. Gourgue, who had no formal training, often combined flowers, mountains, skeletal trees, peasants and their huts and vodou symbolism, in a personal style that managed to combine surrealism and naive art.

After a turbulent and troubled childhood, Gourgue came to Centre d'Art in Port-au-Prince in 1947. The following year his painting "The Magic Table" — an "unprecedented picture" — was exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and it is still part of its permanent collection. In 1949, at the age of 18, he won the gold medal of an exhibition commemorating the bicentennial of the founding of Port au Prince.

During the decades of the 1950s and 1960s, his style was greatly influenced by Pablo Picasso, in what is known as his "Spanish period". At that time, Gourgue moved to Madrid, Spain, where he married a Spanish woman and had a daughter. He exhibited his work throughout Europe and North America, achieving major successes. Several of his works have been auctioned at Christie's and Sotheby's of New York.

After his divorce he moved to his hometown, where he painted most of his later work, including a large mural that decorated the flag of Haiti in the Seville Expo of 1992. He remarried and had two children with his second wife. He died in 1996 due to a heart attack. 

*****

Jamaica

*In September 1929, Marcus Garvey founded the People's Political Party  (PPP), Jamaica's first modern political party, which focused on workers' rights, education,  and aid to the poor. Also in 1929, Garvey was elected councilor for the Allman Town Division of the Kingston and St. Andrew Corporation (KSAC). In July 1929, the Jamaican property of the UNIA was seized on the orders of the Chief Justice. Garvey and his solicitor attempted to persuade people not to bid for the confiscated goods, claiming the sale was illegal and Garvey made a political speech in which he referred to corrupt judges.  As a result, he was cited for contempt of court and again appeared before the Chief Justice. He received a prison sentence, as a consequence of which he lost his seat. However, in 1930, Garvey was re-elected, unopposed, along with two other PPP candidates.

*****

*****

*Marcus Mosiah Garvey, III, the son of Marcus Garvey and Amy Jacques Garvey, was born (September 17).

At the age of 32 in 1919, Garvey married his first wife, Amy Ashwood Garvey. Amy Ashwood Garvey was also a founder of The UNIA-ACL. She had saved Garvey in the Tyler assassination by quickly getting medical help. After four months of marriage, Garvey separated from her.

In 1922, he married again, to Amy Jacques Garvey, who was working as his secretary general. They had two sons together: Marcus Mosiah Garvey, III (born September 17, 1930) and Julius Winston (born 1933). Amy Jacques Garvey played an important role in his career, and would become a lead worker in Garvey's movement.

*****

*In Jamaica, Rastafarians hailed the new Ethiopian emperor Haile Selassie as the living God, the fulfillment of a prophecy by Marcus Garvey who was said to have declared, "Look to Africa, where a black  king shall be crowned, for the day of deliverance is near."  Members of the new sect withdrew from Jamaican society, called white religion a rejection of black culture, insisted that  blacks leave "Babylon" (the Western world) and return to Africa, and contributed to Jamaican culture (notably to the island's reggae music) but Rasta extremists would traffic in ganja (marijuana) and engage in acts of violence.

*****

*Una M. Marson had a first collection of poetry, Tropic Reveries, published.  Subsequent collections appeared in 1931, 1937, and 1945.

*****

Saint Lucia

*Derek Walcott, the 1992 recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature, was born in Castries, Saint Lucia (January 23).

Derek Alton Walcott, (b. January 23, 1930, Castries, Saint Lucia - d. March 17, 2017 Cap Estate, Saint Lucia), a Saint Lucian-Trinidadian poet and playwright, received the 1992 Nobel Prize in Literature. His works include the Homeric epic poem Omeros (1990), which many critics view "as Walcott's major achievement." In addition to having won the Nobel Prize, Walcott has won many literary awards over the course of his career, including an Obie Award in 1971 for his play Dream on Monkey Mountain, a MacArthur Foundation "genius" award, a Royal Society of Literature Award, the Queen's Medal for Poetry, the inaugural OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature and the 2011 T. S. Eliot Prize for his book of poetry White Egrets.

Derek Walcott was educated at St. Mary’s College in Saint Lucia and at the University of the West Indies in Jamaica. He began writing poetry at an early age, taught at schools in Saint Lucia and Grenada, and contributed articles and reviews to periodicals in Trinidad and Jamaica. Productions of his plays began in Saint Lucia in 1950, and he studied theatre in New York City in 1958–59. He lived thereafter in Trinidad and the United States, teaching for part of the year at Boston University.

Walcott is best known for his poetry, beginning with In a Green Night: Poems 1948–1960 (1962). This book is typical of his early poetry in its celebration of the Caribbean landscape’s natural beauty. The verse in Selected Poems (1964), The Castaway (1965), and The Gulf (1969) is similarly lush in style and incantatory in mood as Walcott expresses his feelings of personal isolation, caught between his European cultural orientation and the black folk cultures of his native Caribbean.  Another Life (1973) is a book-length autobiographical poem. In Sea Grapes (1976) and The Star-Apple Kingdom (1979), Walcott uses a tenser, more economical style to examine the deep cultural divisions of language and race in the Caribbean. The Fortunate Traveller (1981) and Midsummer (1984) explore his own situation as a black writer in America who has become increasingly estranged from his Caribbean homeland.
Walcott’s Collected Poems, 1948–1984, was published in 1986. In his book-length poem Omeros (1990), he retells the dramas of Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey in a 20th-century Caribbean setting. The poems in The Bounty (1997) are mostly devoted to Walcott’s Caribbean home and the death of his mother. In 2000 Walcott published Tiepolo’s Hound, a poetic biography of West Indian-born French painter Camille Pissarro with autobiographical references and reproductions of Walcott’s paintings. (The latter are mostly watercolors of island scenes. Walcott’s father had been a visual artist, and the poet began painting early on.) The book-length poem The Prodigal (2004), its setting shifting between Europe and North America, explores the nature of identity and exile. Selected Poems, a collection of poetry from across Walcott’s career, appeared in 2007. Aging is a central theme in White Egrets (2010), a volume of new poems.

Of Walcott’s approximately 30 plays, the best-known are Dream on Monkey Mountain (produced 1967), a West Indian’s quest to claim his identity and his heritage; Ti-Jean and His Brothers (1958), based on a West Indian folktale about brothers who seek to overpower the Devil; and Pantomime (1978), an exploration of colonial relationships through the Robinson Crusoe story. The Odyssey: A Stage Version appeared in 1993. Many of Walcott’s plays make use of themes from black folk culture in the Caribbean.

The essays in What the Twilight Says (1998) are literary criticism. They examine such subjects as the intersection of literature and politics and the art of translation.

*****

January 23

*Derek Walcott, the 1992 recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature, was born in Castries, Saint Lucia.

Derek Alton Walcott (b. January 23, 1930, Castries, Saint Lucia - d. March 17, 2017, Cap Estate, Saint Lucia) was a West Indian poet and playwright noted for works that explore the Caribbean cultural experience. He received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1992.

Walcott's first published poem, "1944" appeared in The Voice of St. Lucia when he was fourteen years old, and consisted of 44 lines of blank verse. By the age of nineteen, Walcott had self-published two volumes, 25 Poems (1948) and Epitaph for the Young: XII Cantos (1949), exhibiting a wide range of influences, including William Shakespeare, T. S. Eliot, and Ezra Pound.

Walcott later attended the University of the West Indies, having received a Colonial Development and Welfare scholarship, and in 1951 published the volume Poems.

In 1957, Walcott was awarded a fellowship by the Rockefeller Foundation to study the American theater. He published numerous collections of poetry in his lifetime, most recently The Poetry of Derek Walcott 1948-2013 (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2014), White Egrets (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2010), Selected Poems (2007), The Prodigal: A Poem (2004), and Tiepolo's Hound (2000).

The founder of the Trinidad Theater Workshop, Walcott also wrote several plays produced throughout the United States: The Odyssey: A Stage Version (1992); The Isle is Full of Noises (1982); Remembrance and Pantomime (1980); The Joker of Seville and O Babylon! (1978); Dream on Monkey Mountain and Other Plays (1970); Three Plays: The Last Carnival; Beef, No Chicken; and A Branch of the Blue Nile (1969). His play Dream on Monkey Mountain won the Obie Award for distinguished foreign play of 1971. He founded Boston Playwrights' Theatre at Boston University in 1981.

His first collection of essays, What the Twilight Says (Farrar, Straus & Giroux), was published in 1998.

Walcott's honors include a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship, the T. S. Eliot Prize, the Montale Prize, a Royal Society of Literature Award, and, in 1988, the Queen's Medal for Poetry. In 1992, Walcott became the first Caribbean writer to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature, and in 2015, he received the Griffin Trust for Excellence in Poetry's Lifetime Achievement Award. He was an honorary member of the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters.

*****

Trinidad

*****

*Sterling Betancourt, a Trinidad-born musical pioneer, inventor, and arranger who became a major figure in pioneering the steel pan in Europe and the United Kingdom, was born in Laventille, near Port of Spain, Trinidad.

Sterling Betancourt (b. March 30, 1930, Laventille, near Port of Spain, Trinidad) was born and raised in Laventille, near Port of Spain, Trinidad.  His father, Edwin, was a musician and a man of many trades trying to make ends meet. His mother, Stella Bowen, was a seamstress and a cleaner. At a very early age, Betancourt was involved with music with the Tambo Bambo family band and grew up experimenting with the steel pan, becoming a member of the Tripoli Steel band. He began his career in the 1930s and became a steel pan tuner and eventually leader of Crossfire, a steel band from the St. James area. He also played a large part in the development of steel pan in Trinidad,

Selected as a member of TASPO (Trinidad All-Steel Percussion Orchestra) to go to the Festival of Britain in 1951, Betancourt toured England and Europe with the band that year. He was the only musician of TASPO to remain on in England when the others returned to Trinidad on December 12, 1951. 

Betancourt together with Russell Henderson and Mervyn Constantine, who later on was replaced by Max Cherrie, followed by his brother Ralph Cherrie, formed the first steelband in the United Kingdom and performed all over London as well as in radio shows, jazz clubs and on the BBC.
  
In 1953, Betancourt was taught by Tony Kinsey to play the traps drums in order to form The Henderson combo.  Henderson, Betancourt and their group participated in the multi-cultural Notting Hill street festival organized in 1966 by Rhaune Laslett.  The appearance of the Henderson combo was a huge success and led to the growth in popularity of the festival and its Trinidadian musicality.

Betancourt also took steelpan to many other countries throughout Europe and Asia, including Switzerland, Hong Kong, Bahrain, Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Qatar, Morocco, Indonesia, Germany, Spain, France, Oman, Italy, Sicily, Sweden and Norway.

A 1976 performance Betancourt gave in a hotel in Zurich, Switzerland,  inspired some locals to form their own Swiss group, which they called Tropefieber ("Tropical Fever"), the first steel band in Zurich, followed then by many others.

In 1985 Betancourt's steel band, "Nostalgia", was born and continued with him as the leader, player and arranger until 2005.

The honors and awards that Betancourt received include: in 1993, Trinidad and Tobago’s Scarlet Ibis award; a University of East London Honorary Fellowship in 1996; a membership of the FRSA (Fellowship of the Royal Society of the Arts) for his commitment in promoting steelpan culture throughout the United Kingdom, and pioneering steelpan projects in English schools; and in the same year, the New York Sunshine Award.

Betancourt was appointed a Member of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire in the New Year Honours 2002 "for services to the steel band movement".  In 2004, Betancourt received a Fellowship of the Royal Society; in 2006, a Pantrinbago Pioneer award; in 2010, Pan Jazz Life Time Achievement award; and, in 2011, a Pan Trinbago Commemorative Plaque for Life Time Achievement.

In 2012, on the occasion of the Trinidad and Tobago Independence Jubilee celebrations, he was a recipient of one of the Arts awards recognizng citizens who made a positive contribution to the promotion and development of Trinidad and Tobago in the United Kingdom during the past 50 years, given at a gala dinner in London hosted by High Commissioner Garvin Nicholas.

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*Sterling Betancourt, a Trinidad-born pioneer, inventor, arranger and musician who became a major figure in pioneering the steel pan in Europe and the United Kingdom, was born in Laventille, near Port of Spain, Trinidad (March 30).

Sterling Betancourt (b. March 30, 1930, Laventille, near Port of Spain, Trinidad) was born and raised in Laventille, near Port of Spain, Trinidad.  His father, Edwin, was a musician and a man of many trades trying to make ends meet. His mother, Stella Bowen, was a seamstress and a cleaner. At a very early age, Betancourt was involved with music with the Tambo Bambo family band and grew up experimenting with the steel pan, becoming a member of the Tripoli Steel band. He began his career in the 1930s and became a steel pan tuner and eventually leader of Crossfire, a steel band from the St. James area. He also played a large part in the development of steel pan in Trinidad,

Selected as a member of TASPO (Trinidad All-Steel Percussion Orchestra) to go to the Festival of Britain in 1951, Betancourt toured England and Europe with the band that year. He was the only musician of TASPO to remain on in England when the others returned to Trinidad on December 12, 1951. 

Betancourt together with Russell Henderson and Mervyn Constantine, who later on was replaced by Max Cherrie, followed by his brother Ralph Cherrie, formed the first steelband in the United Kingdom and performed all over London as well as in radio shows, jazz clubs and the BBC.  In 1953, Betancourt was taught by Tony Kinsey to play the traps drums in order to form The Henderson combo.

Henderson, Betancourt and their group participated in the multi-cultural Notting Hill street festival organised in 1966 by Rhaune Laslett and, as noted in Ishmahil Blagrove Jr's Introduction to Carnival : A Photographic and Testimonial History of the Notting Hill Carnival:

"In line with the Trinidad carnival tradition of 'making a rounds' (where steel-pan players march in the streets)... led a procession that wove up the Portobello Road towards Notting Hill Gate and back again, like the Pied Piper gathering new revellers and participants along the way. ... Henderson and his group had inadvertently put an indelible Caribbean hallmark on the festival and word quickly spread to the other West Indian communities in England about what had taken place. News even reached as far as Trinidad, where relatives and friends were regaled with stories of the miniature Trinidadian-style carnival held on the streets of London.

The carnival became an annual event that grew with each year."

Betancourt also took steelpan to many other countries throughout Europe and Asia, including Switzerland, Hong Kong, Bahrain, Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Qatar, Morocco, Indonesia, Germany, Spain, France, Oman, Italy, Sicily, Sweden and Norway.

A 1976 performance Betancourt gave in a hotel in Zurich, Switzerland,  inspired some locals to form their own Swiss group, which they called Tropefieber ("Tropical Fever"), the first steel band in Zurich, followed then by many others.

In 1985 Betancourt's steel band, "Nostalgia", was born and continued with him as the leader, player and arranger until 2005.

The honors and awards that Betancourt received include: in 1993, Trinidad and Tobago’s Scarlet Ibis award; a University of East London Honorary Fellowship in 1996; a membership of the FRSA for his commitment in promoting steelpan culture throughout the United Kingdom, and pioneering steelpan projects in English schools and in the same year, the New York Sunshine Award.

Betancourt was appointed a Member of the Most Excellent Member of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire in the New Year Honours 2002 "for services to the steel band movement".  In 2004, Betancourt received a Fellowship of the Royal Society; in 2006, a Pantrinbago Pioneer award; in 2010, Pan Jazz Life Time Achievement award; and, in 2011, a Pan Trinbago Commemorative Plaque for Life Time Achievement.

In 2012, on the occasion of the Trinidad and Tobago Independence Jubilee celebrations, he was a recipient of one of the Arts awards recognising citizens who made a positive contribution to the promotion and development of Trinidad and Tobago in the United Kingdom during the past 50 years, given at a gala dinner in London hosted by High Commissioner Garvin Nicholas.

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*Geoffrey Holder, a Trinidadian-American actor, voice actor, dancer, choreographer, singer, director, and painter best known for his role as the villain Baron Samedi in the 1973 Bond--movie Live and Let Die and for his 7-Up television commercials of the 1970s and 1980s, was born in Port of Spain, Trinidad (August 1). 

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*Victor Pascall, a Trinidadian cricketer who represented the West Indies in the days before they achieved Test status, died in Port of Spain, Trinidad (July 7).

Victor S Pascall (b. 1886, Diego Martin, Trinidad – d. July 7, 1930, Port of Spain, Trinidad) was primarily as a left-arm spinner, but he was also regarded as a reasonable batsman. Pascall was related to the Constantine family.  He was the maternal uncle of Elias and Learie Constantine and may have been a coaching influence on the latter. At the time he played, critics considered him the best left-arm spinner in the West Indies.

Pascall was born in Diego Martin, Trinidad, at some time in 1886. His parents were Yoruba from West Africa who were brought to South America as slaves. According to family legend, Pascall's father, Ali, escaped as a child and sailed to Trinidad. Ali lived to be around 100 years old and maintained some African traditions in the family.

Pascall first played for Trinidad in 1906, making his first-class debut and taking a wicket in the final of the Inter-Colonial Tournament.  From 1909, he played regularly in the team and appeared in the Inter-Colonial tournament until 1927. In total, he played 24 times for Trinidad to score 513 runs at a batting average of 15.08 and take 102 wickets at a bowling average of 17.39. He twice played innings of over 50 runs and took more than five wickets in six innings. He first represented a combined West Indies team in 1913 when he took four wickets for 83 runs for West Indies against a Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC) team which was touring the region. Then in 1923, he was chosen as part of the West Indies team which toured England. Pascall played 19 matches on the tour and took 52 wickets at an average of 24.30. His best figures were five for 67 against Cambridge University and six for 77 against MCC at Lord's Cricket Ground. His final appearances for West Indies came in 1926. In 22 games for teams styled "West Indies" or "West Indians", Pascall hit 268 runs at an average of 10.31 and took 59 wickets at 25.20. In all first-class cricket, he hit 859 runs at an average of 13.63, with a top score of 92 against Barbados in 1922, and took 171 wickets at 20.09, with best figures of six for 26 against British Guiana, also in 1922.

In Trinidad, Pascall represented the Shannon team and was used as the third bowler. The Shannon club was made up of members of the black lower-middle classes, and contained several international players. The team played in a highly competitive manner and were passionately supported by their spectators. Shannon players took part in games in a serious manner and were not given to smiling on the field, but Pascall, while a formidable opponent, was more friendly. The people of Trinidad regarded Pascall with great affection, and he was a most charming person and a great popular favorite with all classes on the island.

Pascall died on July 7, 1930.

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*Ken Gordon, a Trinidadian businessman and politician, was born.

After attending Saint Mary's College in Port of Spain, Trinidad, Kenneth Gordon (b. 1930) went away to the United States and United Kingdom for further studies. He entered broadcasting in the early 1950s as a radio announcer for Radio Trinidad.  He later became chairman of a conglomerate. In 1986, he was appointed a Minister of Tourism under the National Alliance for Reconstruction as a senator.

He married three times and had four children.

He was instrumental in introducing the first private television station in the English Caribbean, CCN TV6, and Prime Radio, which is owned by Trindad and Tobago Express Newspapers Limited, in 1991. He was the chairman of that company until 2006, when he became chairman of the West Indies Cricket Board. On October 28, 2011, he was appointed Chairman of the Trinidad and Tobago Integrity Commission.

His autobiography, Getting it Write: Winning Caribbean Press Freedom, came out in 1999 from Ian Randle Publishers. 

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