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The Sonic Architects of a New Babel 141

begins to speak and tell us, his interpellated crowd of the fooled, that the
Almighty is the ultimate guard. This guard does not live in the sky, but in
our hearts. It is called Conscience.

Conscience people. Conscience must be your guide. Them politrickians
and false prophets [his term for political and religious leaders], and many of
them money man [affluent businessmen and women] don’t listen to their
Conscience. So you don’t listen to Them. Tell them a Me, the Shadowman
say so. Politrickian the Shadow exposing you tonight.

Though of a darker hue—owning several businesses and prime lands on
SXM and the surrounding islands—his millionaire family is part of the
money men who he so condemns. The SXMers who are cheering him on
know this, but they don’t seem to care. Wisely he doesn’t direct his vehe-
ment critique on the business classes or members of the political establish-
ment to which he is related. His criticism is mostly directed toward fringe
native politicians. To be more precise the Baines brothers, Carlton and
Clayton, who forward a politics of belonging that solely privileges the
locals—the term employed for the natives on the island who can trace back
their ancestry to at least three generations. The Baines are middle-class
businessmen who own considerable real estate. They also own a construc-
tion company that builds many of the mansions and hotels of the wealthy
newcomers.
Having returned from the Netherlands in the early 1980s with an MA
degree in education, and a radical politics based upon autochthony and
Black Power, the youngest of Baines, Clayton, decided to enter politics. He
presented himself as the political leader of the true SXMers. The island
was black and the descendants of the whites had to take a second seat. It
was time for the grandchild of a slave, which had undone himself of “Uncle
Tomism,” to rule. I was told that he would stand on a podium talking
Black Power accompanied by his pink skinned wife from the Netherlands.
Many wondered that if whites were so bad, why did he marry and have
children with one of them.
Except for a few scattered votes, undoubtedly cast by family and friends,

neither black nor white locals endorsed him. Let alone the newcomers.
Disillusioned and feeling discontented that the dominant political and
economic establishment did not hail him as an expert on how to manage
society and guide black redemption, Clayton and his older brother became
radicals. Financially stable they proclaimed that SXM culture and the true
SXMers were being socially exterminated by the newcomers. They had a
Marshall plan (their term) to save the country: all government tenders, all
licences, and all vacancies must first go to locals and thereafter the rest.