Declaring that the Crop Over Festival is more than about partying, Prime Minister Mia Amor Mottley has called on Barbadians to embrace the true meaning of the annual Crop Over festival.
She issued the call recently, while addressing the Digicel Ceremonial Delivery of the Last Canes and 50th Anniversary Tent held on Saturday, July 6, 2024, in National Heroes Square, The City.
Prime Minister Mottley dubbed herself as “a child of Crop Over”, given her involvement in various aspects of the festival over the years. She traced the origins of the festival, which date back to enslavement when the African ancestors had to find ways to celebrate the end of the harvest.
The Prime Minister insisted:
“Whatever else we do and wherever else this festival goes, we must never ever forget where it started, and why it started and how it started. We give thanks today that 50 years ago, even if for reasons that were not necessarily rooted in the right place to be an attraction for visitors coming as tourists, we ended up in the right place in building the spirit and reinforcing the identity of Bajan people. This festival is us; this is who we are.”
She continued:
“Along the way, we have meandered and changed and added to the point where there is a generation of Barbadians who do not know life before Crop Over…For them, life before Crop Over, as you heard earlier on this stage, was inconceivable.”
Prime Minister Mottley also reminded the audience that Crop Over was more than carnival and the onus was on Barbadians to ensure that it remained anchored in our history and the story of Barbados.
“That is why we don’t celebrate only in terms of fetes or jump-up. That is why having Spiritual Baptists integrated in this festival to give thanks in an image and with a group that no longer has to hide and be prosecuted but simply to praise their God in the land of their birth,” she emphasised.
(GIS).
