Pauulu Kamarakafego, The Black Beret Cadre and Black Power in Bermuda

To most people who know me I am the friendly neighborhood pissed as hell revolutionary native nationalist, fighting to the good fight against colonialism, imperialism and capitalism in North America. However, in another life I was born to a mixed-race couple on the tiny island nation of Bermuda, and was raised there. As such, even though I’ve long since left Bermuda, and have little in the way of plans to return (my calling in life takes me elsewhere) I’ve maintained a strong interest in Bermudian politics and history, and so it was with great interest that I happened upon the subject of today’s post by me!

A transnational, pan-African youth movement, Black Power in Bermuda sought freedom for Blacks from the island’s White oligarchy and independence from British colonialism. It was spearheaded by activists such as Pauulu Kamarakafego and the Black Beret Cadre. The Cadre maintained relationships with revolutionary organizations across the African Diaspora, such as the Black Panthers. Emerging in the late 1960s, the Movement witnessed the assassinations of Bermuda’s British Chief of Police and Governor (1972-1973).

In this interview with Jared Ball on Vox Union, Bermudian and Dr. Quito Swan discusses his work, Black Power in Bermuda and the Struggle for Decolonization.

Dr. Swan obtained his Ph.D. in African Diaspora History from Howard University in 2005, and joined the History Department as an Assistant Professor in 2006. He currently teaches courses on the global African Diaspora. His primary research interests include transnational and international Black protest and anti-colonial movements, Garveyism, Rasta, Diasporic protest music, Pan-Africanism, Black Power as an international phenomenon, and socio-cultural movements in the modern African Diaspora. He is also faculty advisor of Cimarrones, which is a student organization at Howard aimed at building relationships with African descended communities in the South and Central Americas and the wider Black world.

4 Comments to “Pauulu Kamarakafego, The Black Beret Cadre and Black Power in Bermuda”

julian 27 February 2011 at 3:35 pm #

I lived in Bermuda for my early childhood, and I wish that the schools had taught us about THIS stuff instead of colonial histories…
Rowland Túpac Keshena 27 February 2011 at 5:24 pm #

@Julian:

I was born in Bermuda and lived there until I went to university and I still go back regularly to visit the folks and my old friends. What school did you go to? I went to Warwick Academy during it’s transition from being a public to a private school, and they definitely didn’t teach us this sort of stuff in school.

I only knew about the Black Beret Cadre from my dad, who actually was a regiment conscript during the time of the assassination of the governor and spent about a month camped under the dining room table of Government House.

I think to this day, as African peoples in Bermuda still are the vast majority of the working class, and are greatly over represented in those segments of the population that live below the poverty line, that the Black Beret Cadre are the stuff of white Bermudian nightmares. That’s why they don’t teach in it in school (or much Bermudian history at all for that matter), and that’s why the whites get all up in arms whenever the comprador, black petty bourgeois government does anything that sounds even remotely like black empowerment.

If you ask me, Bermuda needs to have a Black Beret Cadre Ver. 2.0
Quito Swan 5 March 2011 at 10:42 pm #

Peace all, glad to see you all vibed off the works! Please stay in touch – Rowland I owe you a FB friend accept! Will do shortly! Looks like a powerful site you got going here. Hit me up at quito.swan@gmail.com.
sand 20 June 2011 at 11:06 am #

Escuchamos de Los Black Beret Cadre aqui en Cuzco! Estamos con su historia y lucha. El intelectual y la gente del pueblo reconose la lucha!