Somewhere between the scorched policy papers and the bright plastic of campaign paraphernalia, we forget the women who did not raise their voices—but made themselves impossible to ignore. Angela Sarojanie Cropper was one of them. Economist. Lawyer. Environmentalist. Builder of institutions. The kind of woman who walked into a room and changed it, not by force, but by a clarity so unflinching it could feel like grace.
She stood for something almost unrecognisable in today’s public life: a belief in a culture not as entertainment or background music but as a moral compass.
Before the list of posts and prizes, we should let her speak. In 2007, addressing graduates of the Faculty of Humanities and Education at the University of the West Indies, she turned from celebration to scrutiny. She held up not a mirror to who we wished to be but to who we had become. Her speech reads now like prophecy.
Angela Cropper’s 2007 UWI Address:
Excerpts from the feature address delivered by Angela Cropper to Humanities and Education graduating students at the University of the West Indies, St Augustine, Trinidad, 2007.
“I intend this evening to try and crystallise facets of our way of being in T&T and the Caribbean–facets which I think all groups manifest, irrespective of their origins and rituals.
“These are characteristics of our Caribbean culture that unify us more than those things to which we often lay, though they may be present to different degrees in various societies …
“Culture of materialism
The first facet I want to draw out is our culture of materialism. This is our dominant ethic, not limited to the Caribbean. We are led along in this by others, and not having the confidence to formulate and position our own worldview in contradistinction, we allow this to become a dominant facet of our own culture, willingly adopted, not resisted.
Our capitulation is reinforced by the official endorsement that the monetary value of the product we generate is the ultimate measure of our progress, achievement, and development as a society. This measure is the dominant one in T&T’s 20/20 Vision.
“Here, in T&T, we have become part of the extractive mindset of the industrial order, with no concern about sustainability and little regard for inter-generational equity. We are scornful of the notion that humanity must harmonise its demands with Earth’s capacities. Our materialism is leading us to become disconnected from our physical place and from one another.
“Culture of individualism
Then, I want to draw attention to our culture of individualism: each person for herself, “me” at the expense of the “other,” a breakdown of the authority and stability of family, school, and community, and scant regard for the value of those relationships for creating and sustaining the social order.
“Culture of civic complacency
Third, our culture of civic complacency is evident in so many ways, perhaps because of our preoccupation with material progress, compounded by the culture of individualism. We take laissez-faire into new realms. What are the implications of this for our culture of democracy?
Caribbean societies can rise out of a complacent stupor and say enough is enough. We do have that capacity to rise up as a body politic, let our voice be heard, and rescue ourselves from our five-yearly caricature of democracy, but we do not often bestir ourselves to do so. There are, however, some blocks upon which to build a new culture of Caribbean citizenship.
“Culture of violence
Fourth is our culture of violence, which is emerging as a dominant characteristic throughout the Caribbean. Violence has been a long-standing aspect of political, family and gender relations in the Caribbean, but it is now becoming the routine means for dealing with even inconsequential conflicts; it is the tool of the culture of materialism, and it is fuelling a culture of criminality.
“Culture of corruption
Fifth is the culture of corruption. In T&T, we take pride in finding loopholes, circumventing regulations, and evading the law. Our Caribbean compatriots’ long-standing perception of the “Trickidadian” is not without some basis.
This facet of our culture reveals itself in some national gems: “no damn dog bark,” “all ah we tief,” “politics has its own morality.” These statements have become emblematic. No doubt they have their equivalent in other Caribbean countries.
“Culture of half-arsed-ness
And then there is the Caribbean tendency to do only as little as would get us by, to go for cosmetic rather than fundamental changes. Though we make many claims, it is perhaps only in the Arts and Sports that we can be said to have manifested a culture of excellence.
As an example of this, I invite you to look at our attempt to make the city of Port-of-Spain user-friendly to Spanish-speaking visitors as part of the campaign to woo the headquarters of the Free Trade Area of the Americas: you will see that some street signs have been rendered in Spanish, but they are very few and limited in range.
I had to coin a word to describe this tendency, which is not in the literature. I call it the culture of half-arsedness. We can find examples of this throughout the Caribbean.
“Culture of nihilism
The above facets all accumulate towards an absence of feelings, of value for non-material aspects of life and relationships, a disregard for moral principles, and an absence of soul. And I wonder if we are not seeing the setting in a culture of nihilism.
“We need a culture of caring and compassion just when we need to regain family and community relationships as pathways to healing, just when we need to reinstate a foundation of moral principles to guide personal, public, and political behaviour.
“To students: You have a big responsibility to decide which of our cultural attributes are worthy of sustaining. This selection process will have to be predicated on some framework of values in the larger context of the character of Caribbean society that we might work towards and the character of the global civilisation to which we would want to contribute.”
— End of Excerpt —
Angela Cropper offered no false comfort. She never did. What she offered was clarity. Cropper’s speech, both stinging and tender, reads like an urgent letter to a future that had already forgotten how to read. And it wasn’t just rhetoric. Her life was the footnote to that speech.
Angela Cropper was born in 1946 in rural Trinidad, one of 12 children. She was the first in her family to attend secondary school—Naparima Girls’ High, then UWI, where she studied economics with Lloyd Best, followed by law at Cave Hill.
Her reach was global: adviser at the UNDP, director at Caricom, co-chair of the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, executive secretary of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity.
In 2007, Ban Ki-moon appointed her deputy executive director of UNEP. But she never stopped listening to the Caribbean’s small, urgent voices.
In 2000, she founded the Cropper Foundation with her husband, John–an engine for cultural writing and independent thought. She mentored many, especially young women. Her manner was spare and disciplined. “Excellence”, she said, “should be a cultural imperative, not an anomaly.”
She knew loss. Her son Devanand died at 20. Three years later, her husband, sister, and mother were murdered in a robbery. She spoke little of it. Grief did not silence her work.
Even as cancer overtook her, she continued—advising, lecturing, refusing self-pity. She died in London in 2012, at her brother’s home, aged 66.
She left no slogans, no spectacle, just rigour, ethics, and a region better for her presence.
As another election approaches in T&T, let her life stand as a guide. Leadership is not noise or vanity. It is patience, precision, and restraint. She had power and chose to serve, a powerful lesson for those seeking power.
Ira Mathur is a Guardian Media journalist and the winner of the 2023 OCM Bocas Prize for Non-Fiction for her memoir, Love The Dark Days.
