Let the festivities begin as Barbados celebrates Crop Over, the island’s most popular festival, through Aug. 4. Crop Over, which dates back to the 1780’s when Barbados was one of the world’s foremost sugar producers, commemorates the end of the sugar cane season with a vibrant extravaganza of music and masquerade, heritage and culture. During the final three days of Crop Over, Spring Garden Highway is the heart of the festival. The entire stretch of road is converted to a bustling marketplace of arts and crafts, foods of all kinds, plus entertainment including steel bands, dance groups, folk performers, gospel singers and calypsonians. The grand finale, and a universally celebrated national holiday, known as Kadooment Day, takes place Aug. 4 with a colourful and lively parade of costumed dancers and fireworks. (http://www.visitbarbados.org/)
Today more than ever before, the ways of the Carib are to be laughed at and ridiculed; the dirty, heathen savages who are to be shunted away and have no rights but to die far away. The colonization of Barbados is one of the darkest events and evil stories of modern history. Four centuries ago Spanish and Portuguese slavers started to kidnap, kill and drive out the thousands of peaceful Indians found on the islands the Indians called Ichiroganaum. The exact location of the island was a carefully kept secret but Spanish and Portuguese sailors knew the island only as the barbarous island, “Los Barbados” where brutality and crime could be committed with immunity. The island lay just outside the Caribbean and far away from watchful eyes. Look out for this and other books by Gary and Angela Cole…
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