He arrived in the UK aged 12, but for the last 14 years Hall has been under threat of being sent back to Barbados – a country he doesn’t remember and where he has no surviving relatives

When Tony Hall was released from detention in 2012, his family rallied around to support him. One of his five older sisters said he could stay with her for a while. A nephew printed business cards and designed a website for him so he could advertise his services as a painter and decorator, to make the most of the vocational training he received while he served his prison sentence.

But for 14 years he has been unable to make use of the cards because of a Home Office decision that he should be deported. All this time he has been kept on a deportation list, which means he cannot work, rent somewhere to live, receive benefits or do anything that would allow him to start rebuilding his life. Instead, he remains on the edge of destitution, reliant on the kindness of family and friends to survive.

Descendants say theft from Portchester Castle reflects racism that has haunted ‘generation after generation’

The theft of a plaque in Hampshire that told the little-known story of African-Caribbean prisoners in 18th-century Britain reflects the enduring racism that has fuelled centuries of atrocities against Black and Indigenous Caribbean people, their descendants say.

Ronald Raymond McDonald, a professional drummer, was part of a delegation that travelled from Belize and elsewhere to Portchester Castle near Portsmouth last week to honour their ancestors: 2,500 men, women and children transported to Britain as prisoners of war in 1796.

Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara tells of the reality of prison, drinking whisky with his captors, and being painted by George W Bush

When Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara was pushed into the back of a police car on 11 July 2021, during the biggest protests Cuba had seen in nearly three decades, he expected to be in custody for “one, maybe two days”. Instead five years would pass before he was free, and only then after he’d agreed to exile.

“I remember that Sunday,” he says as he opens a beer in El Espacio 23, an art gallery in the Allapattah neighbourhood of Miami. “I was at my girlfriend’s. Friends started writing to tell me there were demonstrations in the streets. It felt like the day we all longed for had arrived – the end of the dictatorship – and I went out into the street.”

Modern politicians play on tales of empire to exaggerate what Britain left behind, but the monarch should consider a historical speech on imperial plunder

For us in the Caribbean, there is something surreal about Britain’s renewed nostalgia over empire. As Britain’s monarch prepares to visit the Caribbean, and at a time when we in the former colonies are demanding to have a serious reckoning with slavery and reparations, UK politicians are invoking a dumbed-down distortion of history.

Rewriting the facts: the Reform MP Robert Jenrick has argued that colonies owed Britain a “debt of gratitude” for the institutions empire bequeathed them. Jacob Rees-Mogg, a former minister in a Conservative government, has described British colonialism as “one of the greatest civilising, prosperity-creating forces the world has ever seen”. The opposition leader, Kemi Badenoch, has disputed colonialism’s contribution to Britain’s prosperity. Then there is Suella Braverman. The Reform MP suggested in July that rather than Britain paying reparations, former colonies should repay Britain for the investment and infrastructure provided under empire. This prompted Mia Mottley, the prime minister of Barbados, to call that proposition “asinine”. At best it is historical amnesia. At its worse it is an insidious misrepresentation of facts.

As violent spirits are unleashed in Sky’s Possession, observers see confident creatives reclaiming the island’s narratives in a form of ‘cultural reparation’

A woman opens a 300‑year‑old box, unleashing a violent spirit – it is the spirit of colonialism and oppression roaring back to life. It is a pivotal scene in Sky’s supernatural series Possession and symbolises a wider shift in Jamaica’s film industry, where directors are increasingly using the landscape to tell Jamaican stories – including those that confront enslavement, trauma and historical memory.

The series is about a biracial British lawyer who travels to Jamaica to investigate a multimillion-pound inheritance dispute, only to uncover a dark, vengeful spirit tied to the plantation’s brutal colonial past.

Jamaica’s minister of culture says UK has until November this year to file its case following referral by King Charles

A high-level United Kingdom appeals court has set a date to hear Jamaica’s petition for legal advice on its claim for slavery reparations from the UK, the Jamaican government has said.

Olivia Grange, Jamaica’s minister of culture, confirmed in a statement that a hearing had been provisionally set for the week of 8 March, 2027 by the London-based privy council, the final court of appeal for UK overseas territories and some Commonwealth countries.

Centuries of historical baggage surrounds this form of speech. But I’m vowing to overcome shame and connect with this part of my culture

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Recently, my sister sent me and my mum a graphic promoting a Jamaican Patois (or Patwa) class on Instagram, organised by British teacher and author Naia Lewis. It was unlike anything I’d ever seen before – Patois and other Caribbean Creole forms of speech are rarely treated as legitimate languages.

As a descendant of Caribbean migrants to the UK, I grew up surrounded by Patois, but had never practised speaking it. I wanted to go, but felt terrified of embarrassing myself. This week, I conquered that fear and explored why learning Patois and other Creole languages is so fraught and controversial across the diaspora.

Plans for a 200-room project on an unspoiled beach have pitted developers against the conservationists fighting for smaller-scale schemes to protect the island’s habitat

Visitors to Rocky Point in south-west Tobago are drawn to its sandy beach, fringed by coral reefs and dark rock formations and carpeted with the fruit-bearing trees found on Caribbean coastlines – almonds, sea grapes, coconuts, and the poisonous manchineel. The beach is part of Back Bay, a 500-metre swathe of land, and trekking through its undulating terrain, thickly covered in bush and shrubs, feels akin to walking through a rainforest.

But this still relatively unspoiled location is at the centre of a struggle between two opposing interests – those who see large-scale development as the most profitable path and those who believe smaller, incremental developments owned by the community would be best.

Dozens of CIA officers have been afflicted by debilitating symptoms over the past decade. Are they the result of ‘mass hysteria’? Or are they from attacks with an energy weapon and, if so, who is responsible? And has there been a cover-up?

Shortly after 1am one night in April 2019, a CIA officer on a work trip to London was jolted awake in his hotel room by the most intense head pain he had ever experienced. His body was soaked with sweat and he felt like his eyes were spinning in their sockets. He manoeuvred his way out of bed, hoping to make it to the bathroom to vomit, but found his sense of balance had deserted him. Eventually, he fell back into a fitful, shallow sleep.

The next day, arriving at the work meeting he had travelled for, the officer found he could not remember the names of colleagues in the room, people he knew well. As the meeting got under way, he could barely follow the discussion. Initially, he chalked it up to a terrible – if rather odd – case of food poisoning. But over subsequent weeks, worrying symptoms persisted: brain fog, loss of balance and increasingly harsh tinnitus.

Widespread blackouts have become increasingly common in Cuba since the US imposed energy sanctions in January. Outages frequently surpass 24 hours as the ageing grid fails. The Impulso theatre group has had to adapt as power cuts pose severe challenges for the performing arts

Black communities across the globe have large and complex vocabularies to describe race, shaped by their specific cultures and histories

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One thing you might not know about this newsletter is how much it is shaped by behind-the-scenes chat. The Long Wave team, and its broader family at the Guardian, is a mini-diaspora in and of itself – one that is constantly in conversation. Often, during our meetings, someone will mention what was assumed to be a quirk of their specific background, only to discover that it is replicated almost entirely across the board. This week, we spoke about the fact that in many of our cultures, there is not just one word for “Black”.

“Green”, “red”, “yellow”, “blue”, “wheat”. These are some of the words many tribes in parts of Sudan use to describe complexion. There is no “Black”. I tripped over my words trying to explain to colleagues what these colours denoted – each category is infused with so much cultural depth. In fact, in some cases, they are not even descriptions of complexion, but of features, of broad ethnic background, and even of attractiveness. “Green” means dark, but also implies a sort of uniformity of colour, an even hue, and therefore almost a comeliness. Yellow is lighter, and comes with an unstated connotation of beauty. Blue is the darkest, and is sometimes pejorative, but other times just a description. “Wheat” is the one most likely to be a compliment, a shade that does not diverge too sharply into light or dark.

In this month’s newsletter: for Caribbean scholars, the evidence of how deeply slavery shaped Britain’s wealth has never been in doubt. Plus, heritage walks in Manchester

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Welcome to this month’s Cotton Capital newsletter. I’m Ahmed Reid, coming to you from Jamaica, where I am programme manager for the Guardian’s Legacies of Enslavement team.

The recently published Register of British Slave-Traders, reported exclusively in the Guardian, lists 13,000 men and women who invested in and profited from the trafficking of more than three million enslaved Africans between 1563 and 1807.