The Dragon Can't Dance

The Dragon Can't Dance is a 1979 novel by Trinidadian author Earl Lovelace, set in a slum of Port of Spain. The novel centers on the life of Aldrick Prospect, a man who spends the entire year recreating his dragon costume for Carnival. Aldrick's interactions with other people who live in his neighbourhood (including Fisheye, a local hoodlum, and Pariag, a rural Indian who moves to the city to get away from his familial heritage) form the backdrop for their individual struggles for self-definition in a society dominated by its racial divisions and colonial legacies. The story culminates when Aldrick and Fisheye, along with a small number of followers, hijack a police van and take two police officers hostage. The events surrounding the hostage-taking, and the aftermath of the event lead the reader on a journey through the colonial psyche, and expose the deep seated problems of a society that still has not reconciled itself with its colonial past and racial divisions.

Recorded history of Trinidad began when Christopher Columbus came 31 July 1498 (Anthony, Michael: Profile Trinidad). Trinidad was inhabited by Amerindian peoples of the Arawak group, who had lived there for many centuries, and by Island Caribs who had begun to raid the island long before 1498 and had established settlements by the end of the sixteenth century. After its discovery by Columbus the Spanish began to settle on the island and the production of tobacco and cocoa began during the seventeenth century, but because they lacked the essentials for economic development and shipping, the capacity to develop a productive base was crippled; Spain failed to develop the productive industrial and commercial base necessary to maintain an empire.

"By 1783, the Spanish government had recognized that French planters, with their slaves, capital and expertise in the cultivation of tropical staples, would have to be attracted if Trinidad was to develop as a plantation colony. The result of this conviction was the Cedula (Decree) of Population, issued on 24 November 1783. The principal incentive that the Cedula offered was a free grant of land to every settler who came to Trinidad with his slaves with two stipulations: the emigrant had to be a Roman Catholic and the subject of a nation friendly to Spain. This meant that the settlers would be almost exclusively French for only French planters could fulfil the requirements of Roman Catholicism and alliance with Spain", thus a large French and slave population began to immigrate to Trinidad and the island's economy began to flourish.