5. What religious issue acts as a centrifugal force in

Trinidad and Tobago?

High unemployment, especially for youth, is a central problem, spawning others. Since the 1980s, crime is seen as a serious problem, especially violent property crimes connected to the sale and transshipment of illegal drugs. Some also blame cable television and the Internet for inculcating North American values and aspirations. In neighborhoods and villages, gossip exerts control, although one loses status for being "long eye" (envious), someone who minds the business of others.

An identification of nation, state, and ethnicity to construct a "non-ethnicity" where there are "Trinidadians" and then there are "others," that is, "ethnics." There is also the construction of ethnic and cultural difference to prove and justify contribution, authenticity, and citizenship.

Given ethnic diversity and ethnic politics, the salience of class is often overlooked or even actively denied. In fact, ethnicity and class work in tandem. Blacks and Indians have lagged behind other racial groups in earning power. Caste for Indians broke down with migration, but informal claims to high caste ancestry are still made at times.

Native Amerindians died upon contact with European diseases, were forcibly exported to the mainland to work in mines, and those who survived were subject to Spanish missions and labor schemes. The African slave population was small during Spanish rule. The Spanish Cedula de Población of 1783 attracted white and colored French planters who brought their African and African-descended slaves to cultivate sugar and cocoa leading to more slavery.