By Lula Strickland

November 27, 1997

Page 23

A Black Trinidadian priest is making waves on Mexico's Pacific Coast.

Princes Town-born Fr. Glyn Jemott, 51, has been co-ordinating the first "heritage conference" of the black and indigenous peoples of Mexico. He sees his role as co-ordinator as just another part of his commitment.

Thirteen years ago, Jemott arrived in the Afro-Mexican village of El Ciruelo to say a mass. It was a rude awakening.

"I came to do a mass in this village in 1984," he recalled wryly, "and I was invited to have dinner at the home of a young girl who was celebrating her birthday."

A drunken guest approached him and wanted to know who he was. "Padre Jemott" answered that he was the new priest. The man then touched the priest's wooly hair and said it was impossible for him to be the priest because blacks weren't good enough to hold such high positions.

"For 20 minutes he went on to tell me that 'we've never seen a black priest before' and he said something very significant, which I hope I never forget. He said we (blacks) are a common people, ordinary, we can't aim that high and I don't think he realized what he was saying," Jemott recalled.

Jemott attended primary school in New Grant and then Princes Town. He went to secondary school in San Fernando up to 1963. He worked as a student apprentice at the Texaco (now Petrotrin) refinery for a bit before joining the seminary at Mt St Benedict in 1966.

He did his first six years of preparation for the priesthood in Trinidad and then went to Rome for seven years. He returned to Trinidad two years before he was supposed to and taught at the seminary. In 1982 he returned to Rome and the same year he asked to go to Mexico as a missionary.

"Missionary work was not something unique … in Trinidad. A friend from Guyana was in Bolivia for a while, another in St Vincent. Some went to Jamaica and here I am in Mexico," Jemott said.

He had studied Spanish in secondary school but it improved while studying and living at the Mexican College in Rome for four years.

"I really enjoy being able to talk to people, think with people, in their own language," he says.

Jemott vowed to work to change that drunken guest's impression of blacks. Most people in El Ciruelo and the surrounding 24 villages felt the same way about themselves, he learned. That's when he set out to help bring black and indigenous people out of their deplorable mind-set.

"This (negative attitude) was coming to me over the years," Jemott said. "It gave me a sense of mission really. I don't consider myself the one to make changes but I was happy to feel that my being here could somehow or the other help people to change their syntax to "we can".

Over the years Jemott has seen many feel this way, like young people, children and older adults. When he got close to them, they told him that this village and others around here have always been under the heels of a few more wealthy, lighter-skinned Mexicans. "And you get the feeling that this is Mexico."

In 1991, a new self-image started to emerge. Progressive Afro-Mexicanos affiliated with the church, youth groups and others decided there was a need for black villages to search for their cultural identity, Jemott stated.

"We kept feeling that way again and again, so about five years ago, we decided to call a meeting of the villages to access their situations. About fifty-something people showed up!" Jemott laughed, remembering. "We were (pleasantly) surprised at the response."

The search for self-identity continued. In 1996 Jemott and designated village leaders started up the talks again. From those meetings and growing contact with people such as anthropologists coming into the area to study and the war being waged by the Indians in Chiapas, an "urgency" to unite emerged, Jemott said.

After much strategic planning, the first "Convention of Black Villages" was held in El Ciruelo in the spring of 1997. More than 300 people from 24 villages attended the historic three-day conference. The El Ciruelo community and others erected a large thatched shed for the occasion.

An especially intense part of the conference involved enlightening people to their black heritage and how their ancestors came to be in Mexico. Historian and lecturer Prof. Kande, originally from the Congo, talked to villagers about their African roots. He informed them that though their ancestors might have arrived in Mexico as slaves, Africans also visited the region in ancient times as explorers. Blacks on the Pacific Coast of Oaxaca, where the majority of the 600,000 reside, were brought to the coast during the 1500s by Spanish colonizers / enslavers to work the sugarcane plantations and the mines.

Jemott explained that postcard reproductions of a slave ship were put into people's hands, postcards donated by the Watts Cultural Centre of Los Angeles, California. "We asked people to look at this and think about it," Jemott said. "What does it look like and what does it say to you? Then we said this is how you were brought here."

There was silence, he said. They were dumbfounded.

"This is how we really came here?" they wanted to know.

People opened up and started talking frankly after that, Jemott said. They asked questions about themselves, their past and even criticized one another, in spite of military and Secret Service presence.

Since the convention, village representatives and other church members have had four meetings to evaluate their progress. One was planned for late October 1997 but was postponed due to storms from hurricane Paulina. The next major "Convention of Black Villages" is being planned for March 1998.

What were the effects of such an historic first meeting? The padre equates the experience to an African proverb: After the fiesta, after the party, the musicians have to carry their instruments. Meaning they came and had a good time but are they willing to do serious work.

"People said yes, but it's easy to say yes."

The assembly planned for next year will be "a deepening and expanding one" it is hoped, with the strengthening of village unity a high priority. "We hope the next convention will find some projects, such as a newsletter and a scholarship fund to send more children to school." Jemott said.

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