PORT-OF-SPAIN, Trinidad (AP) -- It's a brisk autumn night, but The Pelican
                  is red hot.

                  Salsa, soca, calypso and reggae fill the air, energizing a diverse crowd of
                  locals and visitors.

                  "They say we are the rainbow country," says a smiling Opal Douglass, who
                  has come to "lime" -- the ubiquitous "Trini" verb meaning "to hang out."

                  She's with her friends Ron, who is of African descent, Terence, whose roots
                  are in India, and others. "I myself am so mixed I can only say I'm
                  Trinidadian!" the 33-year-old insurance company worker shouts above the
                  music, then downs the rest of her Carib beer.

                  Hers is a happy, booming society where things are looking up.

                  ___

                  Leroy Clarke's dark, lined face breaks into a rueful grin at such talk.

                  "People existed here for a long time on this lie -- that we were some kind of
                  'rainbow society,"' the respected Afro-Trinidadian poet and painter says. "But
                  I tell you: This rainbow has teeth. Trinidad as a unified society is what we can
                  only dream of."

                  With eloquent anger Clarke recounts how successive Spanish, French and
                  British masters imported shiploads of African slaves to harvest sugar. How
                  after the abolition of slavery in 1834, the British brought indentured servants
                  from India.

                  After their terms, many Indians were given land, and that, says Clarke, is the
                  source of their widely perceived -- but difficult to quantify -- economic
                  domination of Trinidad.

                  Today, 40 percent of the 1.3 million Trinidadians are of Indian descent, and an
                  equal share are of African heritage. The rest are either mixed or hail from
                  Portugal, Syria and other places.

                  Clarke, 60, sits on a wood bench surrounded by dozens of his mural-sized
                  paintings in a display that occupies half the national museum building.

                  His words are harsh, but measured, and coming from a national institution they
                  carry some weight.

                  "The Afro-Trinidadian's disenfranchisement has never been redressed," he
                  says. "We are on the brink of something tragic, a tidal wave of psychic
                  disorder. Any little thing could spark such a convulsion, such a catastrophe. So
                  we cannot afford to go out in public and be ridiculous as some people have
                  been."

                  ___

                  He's talking about Prime Minister Basdeo Panday, the longtime political
                  firebrand who was finally elected to head the government, by a whisker, in
                  1995.

                  After 32 years of nearly all-black government in Trinidad, Panday's victory
                  was a cathartic coming of age for the Indians, and they intend to keep what
                  they have gained.

                  For many blacks, the loss of political power on top of their economic woes
                  was an almost unbearable humiliation.

                  Panday can't understand what the noise is all about.

                  In a recent speech he noted unemployment is down from 19 percent in 1995 to
                  about 13 percent and an economy that was shrinking then will grow around 5
                  percent this year.

                  The economy "has never been more prosperous; it has never been more
                  stable," he said.

                  And the potential is tremendous. With natural gas reserves of 20 trillion cubic
                  feet and probably more, Trinidad has attracted $4 billion of investment by
                  dozens of U.S. companies in the past five years. Every week seems to bring a
                  new factory opening.

                  Yet in its zeal to bring him down, Panday charged, the black-dominated
                  People's National Movement and the black-dominated news media have tried
                  "to whip up racist sentiments when any Afro-Trinidadian was fired or
                  removed from office, even though it was for corruption or other wrongdoing."

                  At a rally marking three years in power, Panday enraged his critics by openly
                  declaring war on the press: "They are out to destroy us. We must do them first
                  ... they must not be allowed to attack this government unfairly and escape
                  unscathed."

                  What Panday recommended was an advertising boycott, but many of his
                  supporters weren't splitting hairs. They began shoving, verbally abusing and
                  throwing drinks at reporters and cameramen on the scene.

                  ___

                  The next day, Therese Mills was a very worried woman. The editor of the
                  highly successful daily Newsday had just ordered security beefed up in the
                  newspaper's downtown building.

                  "There are lots of crackpots out there who could be influenced," she said. "I'm
                  afraid the result will be severe attacks on journalists and maybe even on press
                  houses."

                  "The country has become radically polarized," she added. "This never would
                  have happened before Panday. The prime minister seems out of control."

                  ___

                  Beri Singh is a man who speaks so quietly, with such meticulous enunciation,
                  that almost anything he says sounds reasonable and correct.

                  "Racism in this country has always existed, but we didn't let it out. It's too
                  dangerous. After all, you always have in every office black people and Indian
                  people working together. But now people are talking and talking all the time."

                  Then Singh, 60, offers this: "For years a black government ruled this country,
                  and that is why we were in decline. Now, with the Indian government, we
                  have had a few achievements."

                  Voicing a stereotype that is widely accepted among Afro-Trinidadians as well,
                  Singh adds: "The Negro people -- when they get a bit of money they just
                  spend it! The Indian people, they try to put together every coin, so that they
                  will be able to buy a little business or something."

                  That doesn't make Singh an Indian nationalist, though. He, too, feels
                  Trinidadian, and a recent trip to India drove that fact home. "My wife was
                  pleased to be investigating her roots," he says. "But as for me, to be perfectly
                  truthful, I did not like it. Too many people. Too many poor people. I was very
                  pleased indeed to be returning back home."

                  ___

                  It's more than Africans and Indians only. About 15 miles east of Port-of-Spain
                  lives the Akaloo clan -- a group of most embittered farmers.

                  About 15 years ago, they say, they were encouraged by government officials
                  to cultivate rice on 2,000 acres of remote swampland near the island's eastern
                  coast. They invested in roads and drainage, but because of environmentalists'
                  objections they were never given a formal lease.

                  The 16 farmers -- all Indo-Trinidadians -- voted for Panday in 1995, and hoped
                  his victory would pave the way for their legalization.

                  Instead they were soon expelled by police.

                  "We were employers, and now we are unemployed," laments Hashem
                  Hussein, 29, who relies on welfare to feed his family of four.

                  The issue was taken up by the media, and became something of a national
                  scandal, with allegations of corruption and unfairness raising a vocal lobby for
                  the farmers.

                  The Akaloos have little faith they'll get their land back, though. They're
                  convinced the problem is ethnic: They say fellow Indians want to ruin them
                  because they are Muslims, members of a minority within the Indo-Trinidadian
                  group.

                  "There's a conflict between the Muslim and Hindu," says Phiw Akaloo, his
                  colleagues nodding in consensus.

                  ___

                  "This is a place divided along lines of race," says Satnarine Maharaj, a leading
                  spokesman for the Indo-Trinidadian cause, sitting in the ramshackle offices of
                  his weekly newspaper, The Bomb.

                  "At the heart of the matter, it is a fight for space. But the tension must be
                  controlled. Otherwise it certainly could get very dangerous, very unpleasant."

                  He glances at a mirror strategically aligned in the corner of his office to afford
                  him a view of the guard and of anyone entering.

                  ___

                  On a hilltop about 1,000 feet above Port-of-Spain, a calypso band quickly
                  forms around an American who stops to admire the panorama.

                  Strumming on a rickety steel guitar, the bandleader improvises:

                  "Welcome, friend, to my beautiful land,

                  "I bet that you are a business man!

                  "And when I conclude my song and my dance

                  "We hope you'll please this calypso man!"

                  No tension here on this green hillside. Just $5 changing hands in a flurry of
                  smiles.

                   Copyright 1998 The Associated Press.