EVEN as revellers in Trinidad and Tobago were having their final fling Tuesday for Carnival 2003 in and out of Port-of-Spain, two Caribbean Community states were trying to woo “Trinis” and other Caribbean nationals to their shores for their own premier annual cultural festivals.

Representatives of Barbados’ National Cultural Foundation and the Barbados Tourism Authority were part of a delegation attending this week’s Carnival, armed with hundreds of T-shirts printed with the Barbados festival promotion theme: “Follow Me to Crop Over”, while Guyana’s culture minister, Gail Teixeira, has been exploring the possibility of joint marketing for Trinidad carnival and her country’s Mashramani festival next year.

Teixeira, who noted that carnival celebrations across Caricom, especially those in Trinidad and Tobago and Guyana, are normally held within a week to 10 days of each other, said that the aim is to attract visitors from each other’s country as well as the Diaspora.

Guyana has made significant strides in staging Mashramani and Minister Teixeira said the Government remains thankful for the initial assistance from Trinidad and Tobago through its Ministry of Culture.

Now, she feels, the time is appropriate for the two neighbours, separated by an hour’s flying time, to discuss a more “structured co-operation” with the airline and hotel industries, offering special packages for both events over a one-week period.

Trinidad and Tobago’s carnival has evolved over 200 years into what Trinidadians today boast is “the greatest cultural show on earth”, ignoring perhaps the chuckles such a claim provokes among Brazilians.

Barbados, on the other hand, has succeeded in transforming an old ‘Crop Over’ festival, rooted in its colonial plantation history, into its most popular national cultural event that extends from July into August.

For its part, Guyana is not known for the high-profile, star-studded performing artistes of either Trinidad and Tobago, Jamaica or Barbados and has been comparatively late in making its impact with Mashramani. But the country has developed great confidence in the annual February staging of Mashramani as its version of carnival.

Mashramani, its name rooted in the culture of Guyana’s indigenous Amerindians, one of its ‘six peoples’, was drawing to a climax with Republic anniversary celebrations on February 23 when Barbados was finalising its promotion for Crop Over this July.

As with so many other aspects of Guyanese life, Mashramani was to become immersed in party “politriks” following its incorporation into the annual celebrations of the anniversary of Guyana as a constitutional republic in 1970. It was originally launched as an independent initiative of the Jaycees group in the mining town of Linden to coincide with the country’s independence celebrations in 1966.

Racial polarisation was to prove an inhibiting factor in mobilising national support across ethnic/political boundaries for many years. Quite in contrast with, for instance, Trinidad and Tobago where carnival highlights a significant blending of that twin island republic’s cosmopolitan peoples and their cultural streams – though not without protests against excesses on and off stage.

Transforming Mashramani, therefore, into a genuine national cultural event by keeping far away from the politics of the dominant political parties – People’s Progressive Party and People’s National Congress – has evolved as an outstanding success story of the Guyana Ministry of Culture, Sports and Youth under the leadership of minister Teixeira.

The Mashramani Secretariat, Jaycees, private and public sector agencies and groups, the Tourism and Hospitality Association of Guyana, performing artistes and the general creative imagination and skills of the people have combined to help in the democratisation and popularity of Mashramani coming of age.

Minister Teixeira said in a telephone conversation with the Observer earlier this week that her Government’s allocation of G$10 million for Mashramani programmes, plus the contributions for prizes from the private sector have helped to popularise the festival.

“We put tremendous emphasis on making ‘Mash’, as we call it, a people’s festival,” she said, “and have succeeded in stimulating a greater sense of unity with themes being chosen in a most democratic manner and not imposed for narrow objectives.”

Mashramani has ceased to be a largely Georgetown affair, said the minister, who pointed out that the festival has attracted an increasing number of bands, songs and other competitions.

It has been etched into the consciousness of peoples of all races with popular participation in all 10 regions of Guyana, she said.

For this year’s Mashramani, the central theme was “United are we in 2003”, chosen from submissions from across the country, with approximately 60 per cent of entries received focussing on unity.

This spontaneous effort perhaps reflects the anxiety of the Guyanese people to rise above the suffocating racial/political divisions in their celebration of the festival that climaxes with parading of the bands and dancing in the streets following the annual flag-raising ceremony marking the anniversary of Guyana as a republic.

May be Barbados’s Crop Over T-shirt promotion that it took to Port-of-Spain this week could offer some inspiration for any joint packaged arrangement between Guyana and Trinidad and Tobago, while efforts continue to interest more than Trinis to Bajans’ Crop Over 2003.