More attention must be paid to August Monday Parade- E.G. Maduro
Recently social media was buzzing with the discussion about the load of responsibility being carried by controversial Minister for Education and Culture Honourable Myron V. Walwyn. The discussion was led with the suggestion that Education should be a stand-alone Ministry and Culture should be placed as the responsibility of one of the Junior Ministers of Government; Territorial At Large Honourable Archibald C. Christian or Honourable Marlon A. Penn (R8).
Education & Culture should not be separate
Speaking with this news site on this most recent discussion, Mr Maduro supported the staying together of the two units as one Ministry, noting that it is a very sensitive and technical subject.
According to Mr Maduro, he would; however, want to see the Ministry pay a keener attention to the August Monday Parade. “What we would need to do is, the Ministry of Culture would have to pay close attention to our festivals, our August Festivals. That’s where one of our biggest problems is coming.”
He said the August Monday celebrations are not a carnival, but rather a festival that has spiritual and religious connotations.
We cannot dictate culture
Maduro further said the August Monday Parade should be used to educate the people of the territory about the genesis of the people and where they came from to now make up the territory of the Virgin Islands (British).
“That is how the culture that we would have had would begin to evolve… culture is a very sensitive thing, it’s nothing to dictate… culture is something natural that we should allow to develop,” said Mr Maduro.
He spent some time reflecting on years gone by when Emancipation Festival activities saw paraders dressed in a manner depicting the various people who came to the Caribbean. “We used to have people performing like Indians, people from South America and things like that and a lot of our troupes were based on culture and the kids would behave in a way according to what they heard their mommies and daddies saying at home.”
“This is why we have people against the idea of people going out there and dressing too carelessly. I remember going to school and there was a troupe dressed like Indians and they had a little piece of thing in front of them and a little piece behind but that was how some of the Indians used to dress long ago.”
This he said was never seen as lewd dressing because it was purely cultural. “But what is happening today, our culture is changing with this festival. We are changing the festival to a carnival. In other words, we are changing it from something where we are thanking God for liberating us from slavery to the ability of drinking rum and have fun.”
“So it’s a very sensitive thing and I would hate to see it reach to a point where we are quarreling over the culture, let our culture develop,” insisted Mr Maduro.
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7 Responses to “More attention must be paid to August Monday Parade- E.G. Maduro”
Seems like you do not believe locals can do anything!!!!!! We ourselves degrade our own instead of build them up. When they do bad they get degraded and when they do good they still get degraded. And then we complain about non-locals as DPP, Gov., Police Commissioner, Prison Superintendent, etc.