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As readers are aware, I take an empathetic side with those who are dealt blows in a society, which—although mitigated somewhat by the prodigious work of volunteers and the voluntary organisations—has a cruelly indifferent socio-economic structure compounded by unenlightened governance.
As recently as April this year, in connection with the indifference to the death of Kiss Baking van driver, Neil Ballai, (his van struck from behind on the highway) and to the paralysis of plumber Nathan Pierre (stray bullet), I emphasized there is very rarely any path to objective justice in our country.
Last week, following the murder of Che Mendez, another van salesman, his family was crying out for justice for him. This caused me to recall and re-examine the themes in renowned playwright, Arthur Miller’s, Death of a Salesman.
I have attended many theatres in Broadway and London as stage theatre and dance are among my strong cultural interests. I saw Death of a Salesman as a young man. It made a lasting impression on me.
In Miller’s play, Willy Lomax is a salesman not achieving much improvement in the quality of life of his family or himself, but that is only partly due to his troubled mind and anger. Miller portrays Willy as symbolic of the average working man who can be broken by toiling in an unfeeling system.
Death of a Salesman is such a theatre classic that it is often revived. In a review in 2012, sixty plus years after it was first staged, the prestigious Economist magazine described it as a work which shows “the ease with which an ordinary life can go gradually, imperceptibly, but then catastrophically off the rails”.
In our tiny island country, there is an ever-present risk to ordinary families that their lives will be suddenly upended by murder. This is an intolerable and unnecessary burden.
Murder after murder deals horrific blows to families like those of Che Mendez. What adds to the burden is the impunity with which these murders are committed.
It is intolerable and unnecessary that the Police and the courts can do so little to give us justice for the commission of murder or for alleged dangerous driving.
This lack of justice is reflected in the reported words of a sister of Mendez, Akai Webster. She described “a jolly, hard-working brother”, employed in cigarette van distribution.
“That was what he was about, making money and spending time with family,” she said. “So why did they have to kill him? They should have just taken the truck or money or cigarettes and go but ahhh. Crime is just ahhh…”
“Ahh” no doubt refers to the pain of loss and helplessness for which words cannot be found.
The murdered man’s sister then referenced the YouTube vlogger Chris Must List: “If he could get to the gangs and get to the source of what is happening now, how hard is it for the police to do the same thing?”
She concluded: “Right now, my mom and sister are having the worst time of their lives so the Police and the Government need to get on the ground… state of emergency, something.
“Why should we be thrown into grief by the hands of others? And while we could say let God deal with that, I want justice for my brother.”
The prevailing lack of objective justice wounds citizens in ways additional to the defective criminal justice process. Seeking state provided benefits at times of death or disability subjects citizens to another painful process in which the rules seem more partisan politically elastic than objective.
Many among the disdainful bourgeoisie will dismiss Ballai, Pierre and Mendez as “those people”, as if they represent an expendable class. Grounded, well-integrated commentators know otherwise.
Many of the salt of the earth among us, despite their best efforts, become victims of a socio-economic system that supports an oppressive status quo.
I frequently interact with a cross section of society. Barely two weeks before the Che Mendez murder, I had a warm in-person interaction with a niece of Che Mendez and her mother, members of a long established Paramin clan.
I know that they are real and undeserving of bourgeois indifference. More on that will be forthcoming.
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Martin G Daly SC is a prominent attorney-at-law. He is a former Independent Senator and past president of the Law Association of Trinidad and Tobago.
He is chairman of the Pat Bishop Foundation and a steelpan music enthusiast.
Very interesting read.