Neither biographical accounts nor the extensive photos of the funeral recall this moment. On the tarmac at Piarco, La Rose and the actor Errol Jones enshrined this moment of return by reading long passages from Aimé Césaire’s Cahier d’un retour au pays natal in English translation. This moment, in which James’ body arrives from London at Piarco Airport, the literal moment of arrival back into his country, seemed to James’ long-time friend and political comrade John La Rose to be the most symbolic. One photo shows James’ body being brought out by a file of O.W.T.U. Photographs of the event show the hearse in slow procession, the casket flocked with bromeliads and bird-of-paradise, and the umbrellas of the funeral attendees on their way to the graveyard. Among other details, biographers note that steel drum versions of the Rite of Spring and the International were played for the over one thousand people who attended. The funeral itself was divided between a “Ceremony of Return” held at the national airport, and a “Celebration of a Life” at the Trinidad Oilfield Worker’s Trade Union’s club, and included tributes by famous novelists and calypso singers. After a long continental displacement and a minor governmental controversy, the body of Cyril Lionel Robert James-or Nello, as friends called him-was buried in Tunapuna Cemetery, Trinidad, on the afternoon of Monday, June 12th, 1989.
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