LETTER: Masicka’s Appointment Is “Cultural Surrender” and Betrayal of National Identity

There are moments in the life of a people when absurdity is no longer accidental, when it is deliberate, dressed up as policy, and forced upon the nation with a straight face. The appointment of Masicka as “Cultural Ambassador” is not merely misguided; it is an act of cultural recklessness that exposes a leadership unmoored from its duty, its history, and its people.

Let us be clear from the outset: this is not about the man. This is about us, and more precisely, about those who presume to govern us. For in one careless stroke, Prime Minister Gaston Browne, ably abetted by E. P. Chet Greene, once entrusted with the stewardship of our Carnival and Daryl Matthew, the sitting Minister of Culture, have reduced the very idea of Antiguan and Barbudan identity to something transferable, disposable, and ultimately negotiable.

A Cultural Ambassador is not a trinket to be handed out in moments of political whimsy. It is a declaration. It answers a sacred question: who are we? And in this instance, the answer given by this administration is as damning as it is disgraceful, we are not enough.

What a signal to our young creatives that excellence at home is insufficient, that validation must be imported, that identity must be outsourced, that pride must be borrowed. This is not cultural exchange. This is cultural surrender. And let us not pretend this is harmless. Cultural dilution does not arrive with drums and warning signs. It seeps in quietly, decision by decision, concession by concession, until one day a generation can no longer tell the difference between what is theirs and what has been imposed upon them. At that point, they don’t innovate, they imitate.

And it is made worse by the deafening arrogance with which it has been executed. Gaston Browne, who should know better as the chief guardian of the nation’s sovereignty, has instead presided over its quiet erosion. Chet Greene, who once sat at the helm of Carnival, the very heartbeat of our cultural expression, now stands complicit in its dilution. And Daryl Matthew, entrusted with the portfolio of culture, has demonstrated a startling inability to distinguish between promotion and replacement nor between influence and identity. They have not merely erred. They have crossed the Rubicon of national betrayal.

For culture is not decoration. It is not optional. It is infrastructure of the soul, no less vital than law, no less foundational than land. Undermine it, and you undermine the nation itself. And yet, with astonishing carelessness, this administration has treated it as expendable, as though Antigua and Barbuda were so culturally bankrupt that it must now import representation. That is the logic of a colonized mind.

So does Antigua and Barbuda still believes in itself? Do we still hold that our voice, our rhythm, our story, born of struggle, shaped by history, and carried by our own people, is worthy of representation by Antiguans and Barbudans?  Or have we now reached the point where even that must be outsourced.

If this leadership cannot answer that question with clarity, conviction, and respect for the people they serve, then they have disqualified themselves from the privilege of governing. And the people, in whose name this insult has been committed, must respond where it matters most, at the ballot box.

For a nation that refuses to defend its identity will soon discover that it has nothing left to defend.

History is watching. And it will not be kind.

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