36 Years Later, The Smoke of 1990 Still Chokes Us While the Government Chases Twitter Feuds

LETTER TO THE EDITOR: 36 Years Later, The Smoke of 1990 Still Chokes Us While the Government Chases Twitter Feuds

Today is July 27, 2026. Exactly thirty-six years ago today, the sirens screamed across Port of Spain, Red House bled, and the foundation of our democracy shattered. For those of us who lived through the 1990 attempted coup, the terror is not a static chapter in a history textbook. It is a living, breathing trauma. It is the memory of smoke blocking out the sun, the echoing crack of gunfire, the agonizing uncertainty of hostage situations, and the senseless slaughter of innocent citizens, police officers, and public servants who stood as the thin line between democracy and anarchy.

Yet, looking at the highest office in our land today, you would never know the calendar reads July 27th.

Instead of a solemn, dignified acknowledgment of the victims, the survivors, and the generational scars this country continues to carry, what do citizens get from Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar? Absolute, deafening silence on the trauma of 1990, contrasted sharply by a barrage of fragile, self-serving social media diatribes.

While a traumatized nation looks for statesmanship, healing, and a genuine commitment to ensuring "never again," the Prime Minister is busy weaponizing her official accounts to wage petty wars against independent media houses. It is a sickening display of misplaced priorities. The state cannot find the time to formally honor the broken lives and psychological wreckage left behind by insurrectionists, but it can find endless characters to scold journalists for reporting on the current bloodshed in our streets.

The irony is as thick as it is terrifying. The Prime Minister is using her digital pulpit to laud what citizens increasingly view as dictatorial overreach—prolonged States of Emergency (SOEs) and the heavy-handed abuse of police powers. How tragic it is that an administration so seemingly infatuated with the absolute control of emergency rule completely ignores the historical anniversary of the darkest constitutional crisis we ever faced. We are lectured to accept a modern, rolling police state as "progress," while the state actively erases the memory of the day our democracy almost died.

REMEMBER THEIR NAMES:

White official repports say there were 24 victims that perished, a full comprehensive register of all 24 individual names is sparsely archived in public summaries. Prominent documented fatalities from the siege and related violence include:

• Leo Des Vignes – Member of Parliament for Diego Martin Central, who was shot inside the Red House and later died at the hospital.
• Roger George – Assistant Superintendent of Police.
• Solomon McLeod – Special Reserve Police (SRP) officer / Police Headquarters sentry.
• Malcolm Basanta – Estate Constable / Police officer.
• Lorraine Caballero – Clerical Officer.
• Mervyn Teague – Government Broadcasting Unit employee.
• Arthur Guisseppi – Ex-policeman.
• George Francis – Chauffeur.
• Helen Lavia – Civilian casualty.

The perished are relagated to the backshelves of history, while the survivors of 1990—the workers trapped in Trinidad and Tobago Television, the parliamentary staff, the families of the slain—have been utterly abandoned by a political directorate that prefers PR spin over historical accountability. There is no national counseling framework for the generational trauma, no monument that truly captures the weight of our collective loss, and clearly, no empathy from a leadership insulated behind state security details. The survivors recount their stories and still re-live the horror:

Trinidad and Tobago has not healed from 1990 because our leaders refuse to let us. By burying the memory of the coup beneath a mountain of partisan propaganda and authoritarian chest-thumping, the government proves it cares only about power, not the people. We remember the terror, even if the Prime Minister chooses to forget it. And no amount of late-night social media deflection will ever wash away the blood of July 27th, or the ongoing betrayal of those who survived it.

Elder Citizen Of Trinidad & Tobago

-END-