18 “untitled” *** mark chatarpal is a student at the university of toronto. with a love for his home country guyana and a strong belief in the teachings of political activists cheddi jagan and dr. walter rodney, mark has kept strong connections with his home, family and friends. he believes that where ever in the world he is, and regardless of the path he carves out for himself, he will always be guyanese with a fighter’s spirit. *** i am the village boy who walked bare feet on colours of white, red and brown. i am the youth who fished within the curvatures of essequibo and takatu. i am that man who is lost in the oblivion of every villagers dream. amber williams-king art 91 tamsin & tia: 18x24, acrylic and gold marker on canvas caribbean quilt | 2011 9 “remembering our leaders” a copper etching of dr. cheddi jagan and dr. walter rodney, two essential figures in the history of guyana and the caribbean. how have they as historical figures shaped the contemporary caribbean landscape? what role does this history play in the diaspora? in the diaspora, certain histories are excluded from our everyday life; this etching attempts to look at the process of remembering one's history. 2010 tiffany gurprasad is a practicing artist and a dean's list scholar at the university of toronto majoring in visual studies and caribbean studies. her work has been featured in various exhibits such as "deconstruction" at hart house and the visual studies annual show, "eyeball". in 2010, tiffany curated the group show "tracing sources" at the university of toronto art centre. focusing mainly on the caribbean diaspora, tiffany has worked extensively with painting, installation and intaglio printmaking. etching on copper 6 x 17 ..... 164 “the blonde woman’s kitchen” sharifa patel sharifa patel is a third year student at the university of toronto. she is majoring in history and caribbean studies and minoring in english. she is particularly interested in the historical effects of colonialism on women and how they persist today. so it was in the past. where pink faced babies nuzzled up to the breasts of slave women. to take the milk meant for slave babies. blonde mothers: pushed their babies into the arms of dark eyed women. so it is now. women who travel thousands of miles; women who cross seas leaving their babies alone. crying babies. babies with far away mothers; mothers forced to work in the blonde woman’s kitchen. mothers forced to care for the blonde woman’s children. the blonde woman. the blonde woman’s child. the blonde woman’s child is nursed by a woman who crosses seas. the blonde woman’s child is held by a woman from the south. the blonde woman’s child feeds off the affection meant for the children of the far away women. those children, far away, cry for the far away women. the blonde woman, caught up in feminist theory. theories to liberate woman. give women the ability; equal pay for equal work. feminist theory. to save the women of the world. to teach women from across seas and from the south how to liberate themselves from their male oppressors, and work diligently in a blonde woman’s kitchen. tammy ronique williams – from the ground up 67 “from the ground up” as a child, instinct never quite gave me the understanding i needed to know the difference but as i grew, i flourished with the wisdom of my forefathers. wisdom once branded, shoveled and burned alive, by ignorance now interred in plots once ploughed with the bones. i want to feel that when you look at me, you will see deeper than the scars entrenched in my body. those which after generations, have still managed to descend into my genealogy. i want to feel that my potential will not be dwarfed for that of a little melanin, for the fact that i inherited the structure of my ancestors. i was clueless then, not realizing that along with the features encrypted in my dna, came the blemishes of a bleeding past which would always seem to aggressively control me. i want not to feel the remnants of pain’s years stinging through your eyes to feel that you are not threatened by the knots of my kinky hair, nor the dirt caked and pounded into my flesh over time. i want to feel it is okay to hang my head over the railing hair blowing in the wind to be able to open my eyes under the caribbean waters without your whips suppression to run free forgetting years of shackles and bare-bottomed lashes i want for you to know that man cannot take or repress the undaunted spirit rattling like a snake quiet, but coursing inside of me a movement which will continue to thrive to be celebrated. “catch a fyah” amber williams-king 2 guyana’s ethnic security dilemma: positing an alternative reading duane edwards 4 haiti and cuba: trans-caribbean conversation and cross border movements monica espaillat lizado 17 “immigrant skies” amber williams-king 31 the seasonal moral contract: the legitimization of the abusive treatment of caribbean workers in ontario cecilia saez 33 theories of haitian mobility and their relationship to the dominican sugar industry juliana ramirez 43 usa’s crusade on the haitian black pig population & its toll on haitian peasantry and agriculture sarah taluy 51 aids in haiti: situating the incidence and prevalence of aids in structural violence samra hasnain 64 puerto rico: sterile breeding grounds for coercion and uniformed consent susan g. enberg 75 art amber williams-king 90 the pervasive silence of enslaved women and the dichotomy of white woman as property and proprietor chantal mcfarlane 93 pum pum rule jamaican dancehall: an analytical response to the inability to recognize female sovereignty in dancehall leslie fullerton 100 deconstructing ideas of violence and homophobia in jamaica sharifa patel 117 insecurity in security: national security in the context of tourism and domestic sustainment in the caribbean melissa sobers 129 the dismantlement of the netherlands antilles: how autonomy is more viable than independence cameron wathey 142 from democratic socialism to a neoliberal agenda: a jamaican case study raquel brown 154 extraction, exploitation and degradation: a brief environmental history of western investment in jamaica thomas mccarthy 171 monsanto and caribbean agricultural politics mark chatarpal 184 “requiem” amber williams-king 216 “as the snow melts before the sunbeam: writing the “inevitable” extinction of the indigenous peoples of the americas” nasha mavalvala 217 collage: cuba and jamaica tammy williams 227 ..... 15 “metamorphoses” tiffany gurprasad tiffany gurprasad is a practicing artist and a dean's list scholar at the university of toronto, majoring in visual studies and caribbean studies. her work has been featured in various exhibits such as "deconstruction" at hart house and the visual studies annual show, "eyeball". in 2010, tiffany curated the group show "tracing sources" at the university of toronto art centre. focusing mainly on the caribbean diaspora, tiffany has worked extensively with painting, installation and intaglio printmaking. “metamorphoses” is an installation based on the guyanese myth of the old higue. with this myth as a reference point, i used brooms and sugarcane as my materials to contrast the historical and contemporary gendered violence within guyana. the piece is installed as to hang from the ceiling, hovering slightly off the floor to create a swaying effect. the piece creates a strange and haunted atmosphere, reflecting the way myths such as the old higue are embedded in our histories and serve to create and expel emotions such as fear and anxiety. ..... 142 egungun (cuba ritmo) kwanza msingwana kwanza msingwana has traveled widely in africa and the caribbean. as an observer of political, religious, cultural and artistic trends in africa and the caribbean, he is keenly aware of life in those spaces. kwanza is a percussionist, poet, and storyteller. he has performed for such notable persons as archbishop desmond tutu and nelson mandela. he has also performed with poets reg e. gaines (from new york), u of t alumnus dr. afua cooper, and david robeson – grandson of paul robeson. kwanza is co-author of a collection of short stories entitled only mountains never meet (1994). he is currently finishing a master’s degree in teaching at oise/ut. i heard the egungun/ just above the arbo de carolina/ may be they was dancing/ or merely appreciating the rhythms of the orisa that pervade the terrain/ strong ties/ these rhythms/ that snake their way/ like dambala/ to the land of olodumare and obatala/ tega sikio/ as my people would say/ tune your ear/ i heard voices/ and they were countless/ from those haunted weather beaten walls that surround habana/ bear witness/ silently/ to too many an atrocity/ i stared at ubiquitous eyes/ that saw everything/ like those of olorun/ grant us safe passage/ o great spirit/ on our ways/ elegua/ shango/ whirling and prancing/ fancy step stepping in the middle/ with ogun perched on his broad shoulders/ while the rhythms of the bata/ okonkolo/ iya/ and itotele/ percolated above/ as sonorous kongas and tumba shook beneath/ emanating tremorous bliss that washed over us like ocean waves/ o feet please don’t fail me now/ i pray/ purify us/ o/ oshun/ with your waters/ and bless us with abundant love/ we who search and search/ seeking/ wisdom and guidance/ pray the wisdom of orunmila/ and yemaya’s riches/ like salt/ tastify our days with rhythm/ dance/ and good vibrations/ nourish our souls/ and/ pray/ o shango/ that your strength shall follow and guide us always/ asé. preface 1 it is with great pleasure that we present to you the 2nd edition of caribbean quilt. our first edition is now part of the collection at ivey library at the university of toronto as well as the university of guyana. this year‟s publication features over 20 pieces from over 20 authors. these authors are truly remarkable people: they include undergraduates, performers, teachers, phd candidates, even aspiring professors. moreover, many of the papers within this journal will be presented at this year‟s cerlac conference held at york university. some were selected not simply by us as student editors, but by professors who made a concerted effort to have their student‟s best work showcased. aside from our caribbean focus, describing a unifying theme is something we purposefully avoid, though critical thinking is certainly fuelling this little enterprise. maybe the best phrase that sums up this edition is “these systems are not our own.” „systems‟ as a signifier of the contemporary fixed economic, political, cultural (all good students are now supposed to say „social‟) state of affairs may leap from the page more than the rest of the above words. „systems‟ sound omnipresent, totalitarian, menacing and conspiratorial. most of the pieces found here are not in disagreement: they stress the structural or institutional limitations of the present “post-colonial” situation, and see continuities with the old rather than blindly accepting the self-congratulating, utopian “new world”. the first sixteen to seventeen essays, poems and pull-outs can be roughly broken down into 4 comprehensive regional sections, they should not be read as independent of one another but rather as interrelated and overlapping. the first section focuses on guyana, the second haiti, the third jamaica and the final, the french and spanish caribbean. the pieces after these relate to issues of female agency during carnival, gendered and racial oppression in slave societies, migration, tourism, and the environment. any type of subversion today is hard to come by and is often doomed from the outset. that is why “our” (in “these systems are not our own”) may be more necessary than ever, the carving out of a “we” however small as a response to a vast totality, a type of micro challenge, if you will. little carssu has grown and with it a community; a “we” has taken shape that along with the creation of this journal, has been deeply fulfilling for those involved. editors, kevin de silva, mark chatarpal 28 “on the 32c(ulture) of eglinton” *** savitri persaud is currently a master’s student at the women and gender studies institute at the university of toronto. her research analyzes the intersections between gender, violence, disability, and modernity in guyana. *** bathurst forest hill village posh boutiques litter clean streets bottega bertalucci, segal, tilli rose chartreuse, saffron, carmine silks of haute couture made for blue eyes alone throngs of spas fester with the privileged bissa, chakra, franco’s nip, tuck, pluck sun-scorched skin coloured hands knead white and wrinkled crocodile patches sun ripened apricot mist veils the stench of burnt flesh trophy wives in downward dog at the village yoga not a love handle in sight thank you forest hill institute of aesthetic plastic surgery luxury sedans choke narrow streets mercedes, porsche, audi gleam as daylight kisses candy cherry paint foiegras tickles and tingles the tongue hoodwinked by prices bistro grande, fusian, il mulino a pinnacle of conspicuous consumption eglinton west station the divider of worlds on the same stretch of road caribbean quilt | 2011 29 oakwood little jamaica west indian stores marked by vivid tricolours rasta flex, trea-jah records, zion’s rasta green, yellow, red flags billow through the breeze of ground spices and fresh hassar barber and beauty shops crowd corners discount barber, just incredible, wisdom’s loud gaffin’ and cackles resonate throughout dimly lit streets mary-jane floats from mouth to mouth nose to nose a voyage of bliss to heightened highs mouse-like squeaks of russet fenders clinging to lemons pierce ears kia, toyota, hyundai struggle buggies outfitted “in dem rims and tings” crisp aroma of randy’s fills the air of tuesday dripping brown grease saturates whiteness i meant white napkins an artery clogs, a pancreas gives out just a toonie away scrutinize toronto’s multicultural mosaic, nay, its bento box on the “better way” city of opportunity ceteris paribus it is with great pleasure that we present the 3rd edition of the caribbean quilt. this journal began with the hope of facilitating a space, outside the classroom, where students could express their ideas as well as engage in discourses that they felt were important in regards to the caribbean and its diaspora. this volume strives to continue to facilitate and contribute to these discussions. with over 20 pieces, this year’s publication features the work of undergraduate, masters and phd students all engaged in challenging, at various levels, the histories, realities, and varying narratives that colour and layer the caribbean region. the pieces that have been published in this issue were hand selected by us as student editors and were also acquired by the recommendation of our professors – who take every opportunity to showcase their student’s most outstanding work. while each of these pieces stand on their own merit, they are interrelated and overlapping and have been organized in a manner to illustrate this fluidity. despite the regional similarities between some of the pieces, we sought to thematically knit the topics together in ode to our proverbial quilt. each piece of work illustrates the complex and dynamic dialectical relationships that exist between individuals, institutions, and the hegemonic discourses therein. each stitch that binds one piece to another should be viewed in terms of its complimentary or extensive nature on the topic. with that being said, this edition encompasses a wide range of topics from unearthing racial conflicts, uncovering various forms of systemic violence and spaces of vulnerabilities, the polemics of autonomy and neoliberalism, to the niches of agency, and those to yet be recognized. the dialectical relationship was one that inspired us in piecing together this edition of the journal. we are reminded that the agents in the equation of a relationship actively set that partnership on a new course by colliding with the substance and structure by which it operates. this collision between the partners will inevitably perpetuate, elucidate, challenge, or redefine the very fabric it was once made of. carssu and its publication of the caribbean quilt have continuously made a conscious effort to honour the last three verbs. the pieces of work in this edition inevitably seek to do the same. we are incredibly proud to have watched carssu and the caribbean quilt grow and flourish in its short years. we are equally humbled in having inherited a tradition and a medium by which we can inquire and challenge the discourses that may stifle or enamor us. it is deeply fulfilling to be able to be a part of this process. editors, samra hasnain, alayna balkaran, sarah taluy 222 ….. the caribbean studies student union is comprised of every student enrolled in a caribbean studies course. carssu supports these students by giving them a space to share their life experiences, to discuss the implications of the themes they learn in the classroom, and to apply their skills and talents. carssu works closely with the caribbean studies department, its faculty and its professors to ensure that the program continues to grow. by hosting engaging events we hope to reaffirm the caribbean studies program as an important part of the academic discourse. each event is an opportunity to educate someone about the importance of the caribbean in global history and politics. each social is a chance to lime with new found friends. jo d i arhurton: assu representative r ac hel blaize: executive at large r aq uel brown: finance mark c hatarpal: co president kev i n de silva: co president kev i n edm onds: executive at large nareg h galoustian: internal affairs l yd ia gill: external affairs t i f fany gurprasad: technical director l esl ie ann fullerton: executive at large s am ra hasnain: executive at large jo n athan hoo: executive at large darren jordan: executive at large c h antal mcfarlane: academic assistant s h arif a patel : executive at large s u zie watson: communications t am m y ronique williams: events coordinator 1 carssu, thank yous, table of contents, introduction 2 leslie ann fullerton anglo blackxons & indo anglo saxons 3 duane edwards wilson harris & alienation 4 mark chatarpal tears of my heart 5 tiffany gurprasad 'metamorphoses' 6 savitri persaud old higue 7 kevin edmonds pullout 8 minustah white paper 9 mahavish mahmood rara 10 daniel troup haiti and state power 11 tammy williams affirmative action 12 chantal mcfarlane maroons 13 monica silberberg jamaican bauxite 14 connor doyle rastafari and marley 15 susan enberg vieques 16 kwanza cuba ritmo 17 naregh galoustian paths to decolonization 18 jessica zlotnik gender, resistance oppression 19 sharifa blonde woman's kitchen 20 alayna balkaran female calypsonian 21 ana caribsave 22 tammy williams tourism as neo-colonialism 23 khaled musa circle of interest 24 liane chance stay 25 pooran indentureship & slavery appendix 26 cover art & about us historyitem_v1 trimandshift range: all pages trim: fix size 5.750 x 8.250 inches / 146.0 x 209.5 mm shift: none normalise (advanced option): 'original' 128 d:20120326190811 594.0000 5.75x8.25 blank 414.0000 tall 1 0 no 771 340 none up 3.6000 -3.6000 both alldoc currentavdoc uniform 18.0000 right qite_quiteimposingplus3 quite imposing plus 3.0c quite imposing plus 3 1 0 224 223 224 1 historylist_v1 qi2base caribbean quilt | 2011 6 letter from the editor the caribbean studies students union, otherwise known as carssu, is proud to be launching its first ever academic journal which is premised on what we like to call, the caribbean quilt. it is true that a tropical region such as the caribbean is seldom thought of in relation to any type of blanket. yet we believe the “quilt” to be relevant to the publication of this journal for a number of reasons. firstly, the caribbean is historically a space of massive diversity; this includes its flora and fauna and the history, peoples, cultures, and experiences that have defined its complexity and dynamism. in our canadian political discourse, specifically in toronto where ‘multiculturalism’ and ‘cultural identity’ are commonly referred to, we have a tendency to collectively forget that ours is not the only time and place where these issues have been taken up in some way. the caribbean has thrown a wrench into the ideology surrounding the virginity or purity of cultures, as a space it has historically complicated the idea of identity by being a site of hybridity, as well as a testing ground for (and against) european modernity. worrisome to mention for some, it has also been ground-zero for european colonialism in the americas – specifically hispaniola, present-day haiti. as a result, it has been home to many of the modern world’s historically marginalized, most populously in the form of indigenous peoples, enslaved peoples, and indentured labourers. one of our primary aims with this journal was to stitch together as much of this diversity as we could in our content, making this a key component to our “quilt.” another involves not limiting our approach to one in which only the social science essay gets its due. to engage a broader audience and to acknowledge and respect different forms of expression, we have included poetry, paintings, photographs as well as the standard essay. our theoretical canvas is certainly less heterogeneous and serves as the overall fabric for our project. as a union we are pedagogically committed to interdisciplinary work and to a type of thinking which is largely critical of dominant discourses related to politics, economics, history, and even sport. this means that, at the very least, the lens letter from the editor 7 through which we are examining certain phenomena is not one in which power is meant to be reinforced or praised. through adopting a critical approach, we hope to come up with more thorough and meaningful responses to the questions affecting the caribbean and the diaspora. we have found it necessary to examine issues with as much of a focus as possible on the inequalities, forgotten histories, inconvenient truths, and unsettling experiences that remain outside the purview of the popular. an alternate name to this journal may very well be “displaced.” it opens with the experience of a young haitian student in an unfamiliar setting, and continues with poems and pieces that, through no concerted effort or attempt, echo (to the careful reader) the underlying theme of displacement. this lack of an attempt to abide by a “definitive” theme simply for the sake of doing so however makes this journal all the more special, and all the more organic. the caribbean quilt is not simply the weaving together of material, but of the actual people who contributed to this edition. because many young caribbean scholars and students often find themselves isolated from one another, the enterprise of creating this journal was one in which we simultaneously hoped to develop and sustain linkages between very bright minds in the university, linkages which up until now have never existed. lastly, the quilt relates to the climate we find ourselves in, that is, outside of the caribbean. some of the contributors were born there, some have simply been, others have never even set foot in what they nostalgically refer to as “home” (i should include myself in this latter category). for whatever reason however, many contributors still identify as caribbean first and canadian second, finding their experience in the great white north to be difficult, and having their own identity in a constant state of flux and tension. the launch of this journal is thus partly aimed at giving their voices a home, however rudimentary. editor kevin de silva, carssu march 2011 :::::: 93 the pervasive silence of enslaved woman and the dichotomy of white woman as property and proprietor chantal mcfarlane chantal noelene mcfarlane is an undergraduate student at the university of toronto majoring in caribbean studies and english. her present area of focus includes 18th century british literature and the racial underpinnings of such work in their representation of the caribbean. she hopes that at some point her fascination with the history of the caribbean and her love for literature will allow her to author her own understanding of this indefinable archipelago. . valerie martin’s property is a historical fiction that gives a representation of the white female consciousness during the time of atlantic slavery. the theme of gender is blatantly brought out in this text; it acts as the crux for the novel. gender during the time of slavery should not be conflated with a contemporary understanding of it. during this era black women were virtually viewed as unsexed, by whites, except when it came to pleasing white masters or overseers sexually. this paper will look extensively at the relationship that exist between the main protagonist manon guadet and sarah, her house slave, essentially dissecting the black-white dynamics as portrayed by valerie martin. its main tenet will be looking at what sabine broeck calls the ‘ungenedered-gendered’ response between black and white women during slavery. it will use lucille mathurin mair’s analysis of women during slavery to support the claim that the vast difference between, how the white female body and black female body are received is one that is based on the institution of slavery. the main criticism of the text will revolve around what i perceive to be the blatant silencing of the black female and how manon is read as property and proprietor. valerie martin, in property, makes known the life of manon gaduet; in louisiana during the height of plantation slavery in america. manon, the main protagonist, fulfills her role dutifully as wife while having an aloof almost voyeuristic stance within slavery. she is seen as orbiting the edge of slavery never a full participant as is iterated through her sexual encounters with her husband. manon states emphatically “i offered neither encouragement nor resistance; i was there and not there at the same time”.1 this act of being on the 1 valerie martin, property (new york: vintage, 2003), 56. chantal mcfarlane| the pervasive silence of enslaved women 94 periphery but at the same time embodying the centre is one that becomes analogous to white women’s conceptualization of slavery. they were at once there and not there, however, this dichotomous spatial characterization becomes problematic as the white woman, in manon’s regards, loses all form of agency during this period which was not necessarily so. lucille mathurin mair’s historical study of women, concentrates on women in jamaica during slavery. her findings can be used to characterize the lived reality of women in america at the time. property is representative of most of mair’s claims. mair states that white women existed at two levels that of the “delicate beings, requiring masculine protection and as good creatures ... then, there was as well the level of their own actual existence, which often fell short of the idealized perfection.” 2 the positioning of the white woman as these delicate beings has made them property in the sense, however on the level of their own existence they are also proprietor. they traverse the delicate balance of owning and being ‘owned’. the title of the novel, property, speaks unequivocally to the ownership of slaves on a very literal level as well as more subtle to the ownership of manon by her husband. the various kind of owning based on an outright ownership and that of the implicitly owned is a theme that one should be very critical of in the novel. the subject of property and gender is one, as lucille mathurin mair states, where the husband “took instant and complete possession of all” the wife’s “personal property”3 and to an extent herself. the immediate ‘possession’ (possession here does not imply complete ownership) that is taken of the white woman’s person should not be conflated with the fact that it was the very being of the enslaved that was made property, the institution of atlantic slavery stretched to consume every morsel of the enslaved africans’ identity. the conflation of the idea of what it means to be property based on the novel is reminiscent of elizabeth fox-genovese’s within the plantation household. genovese viewed the ‘kinship’ between white and black women in plantation housing as one that was mutually intertwined “where they shared a world of physical and emotional intimacy.”4 the intimacy that is characterized by genovese is one that is mutual 2 lucille mathurin mair, a historical study of women in jamaica 16551844,(kingston: uwi press, 2006), 117. 3 mair, historical study 151 4 elizabeth fox-genovese, within the plantation household, (london: the university of south carolina press), 101. caribbean quilt | 2013 95 however in this ‘mutuality’ the black woman has to be complicit whether she wants to or not. thus the concept of mutuality changes meaning as enslaved woman is openly compromised. the mutuality of their interactions has to be weighed based on the fact that the enslaved woman always played a secondary role, as in property where it is clearly laid out that sarah is the slave and manon is married property which gives her quite a significant leverage. the stringent conditions between black female and white female relation during the time of slavery is blatantly represented in valerie martin’s work. it elucidates the very concept of “property” as evidenced by its title and how this notion transcends both black and white experiences to make it an all encompassing one. this however gives rise to the criticism that the idea of property is one that is suspect to gradation. that is, in respects to understanding that both sarah and manon are constructed as property, sarah is more ‘owned’ than the latter. the novel opens with an epigraph from an a.b.c. of halifax dated 1832. martin only incorporated a snippet of the entire thing which continues: “property which is considered the most valuable by the owners of it, is a nice thing; and for the right thereto, to be called in question by an unphilosophical set of political mountebanks, under the influence of supernatural agency or deceit, is insufferable.”5 the need to keep one’s property beyond everything else is shown in property which takes away from the mutuality of kinship between black women and white women, as it is manon who has sarah hunted to bring her back to slavery. the epigraph in full highlights this, however the snippet that martin gives fails to incorporate the fact that the very idea of property is very contentious as shown above. what is most problematic in property is that manon will be read as property as well as sarah, the distinction between the two needs to be made explicit which the novel quintessentially fails to do. this coupled with sarah’s evident silence becomes more problematic. the pervasive silence that is used to embody sarah’s character is one which shows a distinction between her and manon and reinscribes the historic muteness of the black female as performed by historians. 5 herbert aptheker, american negro slavery, (columbia: columbia uni. press, 1963), 302 chantal mcfarlane| the pervasive silence of enslaved women 96 property received the orange prize for literature in 2003; a statement by ahdaf souief is that the novel “looks at the relationships of power and ownership among people living in a system which is manifestly evil”6 this characterization of the novel is one that is in its understanding almost a universal truth. souief fails to acknowledge that the lens through which the relationship is being looked at is overtly one sided. this consideration is essential in analyzing the novel. it is clear that martin constructs the character of manon to be an almost shrewd unfeeling woman living under the shadow of her husband whose joy for life has been sapped by the sheer understanding of slavery. this understanding is contentious as manon partakes in the “manifestly evil” system with hardly a regard for her slaves, her joy for life is sapped not by the realities of slavery but by the fact that she does not love or respect her husband in any light. the voyeuristic stance that she takes does not mean that she is opposed to the happenings. the opening of the novel has her peering through her proverbial spy glass and watching the perverted homoerotic violence that is being perpetrated against the young boys who are enslaved, her statement “i couldn’t watch anymore” does take away from the fact that such violence was carried out constantly and her role is of a participant especially in her treatment towards sarah. sabine broeck cast a critical eye on the relationship that exists between manon and sarah. broeck uses the poignant scene in the text where manon sucks the milk from sarah’s breast. she states “the slave literally, in this scene, becomes an un-gendered breast to fulfill the white woman's dreams both of power, and of the physical comfort of body nurturance — which seems to be an ingenious textual signification on the hundreds of scenes of black mammies feeding white babies in american cultural memory, nursing them into masterhood”7. this understanding that sarah is suckling manon into masterhood is pivotal to the understanding of the text. as it is directly after this that manon becomes master, losing her husband and being a widow. broeck further elaborates that “the gendered subjectification of the white woman — her freedom as an agent of her own desire — is literally sucked from the black woman's body, contingent on the desubjectification, and thus the de-gendering of 6 valerie martin, property (new york: vintage,2003), 7 sabine broeck, “property: white gender and slavery,” gender forum an internet journal for gender studies 14 (2006) caribbean quilt | 2013 97 the enslaved human being who has become her serviceable flesh, as it were.”8 the changing of manon’s own agency is prefigured in this. through this act the novel unfolds where manon is no longer property but proprietor. manon projects her future through this act, “i could see my husband in his office, lifting his head from his books with an uncomfortable suspicion that something important was not adding up. this vision made me smile.”9 manon’s vision is complete at the death of her husband “he was dead ... i smiled wanly at my altered reflection”10, her altered reflection shows that she no longer answers to the quintessential gendered norms of the antebellum of the south but has now embodied the true position of white master. fox-genovese states that “women were bound to each other in the household, not in sisterhood, but by their specific and different relations to their master.”11 this bond is reflected throughout property. sarah and manon are indeed bounded; however the links that keep them to the master, who has remained nameless throughout the entire text except for his initials after his death, is not the same. their bond is also cut with manon’s “altered reflection.” sarah’s petit marronage is nullified in this text as it becomes hinged on the loss of manon. valerie martin’s work is groundbreaking as it taps into the white female psyche at the time without the wanton need of glorification or the need to position the white woman as all innocent. what becomes detrimental to the development of the novel is the pervasive silence that is sarah’s existence. valerie martin is indeed positioning this novel as a break from the abolitionist female spectra at the same time the quietening of sarah fully takes away from her female agency; it undermines the enslaved african females’ ability to construct any form of resistance. notably throughout this narrative is the reoccurrence of walter, sarah’s son. walter stands in as the clear hybridization of the new world of new peoples. he is virtually represented as a “creature” that is only capable of loud “babbling” noises. the fact that sarah does not speak and walter is the only person who does gives the idea 8 broeck 9 valerie martin, property (new york: vintage,2003),76 10 martin 134 11 elizabeth fox-genovese, within the plantation household, (london: the university of south carolina press), chantal mcfarlane| the pervasive silence of enslaved women 98 that the only form of communication capable from the enslaved is incoherency. the most readily identifiable symbol in property is manon’s “spyglass” this spyglass represents several things at once; the fact that as readers we will always be distant from the actual event based on the fact that it is in the past and the relationship that manon tries to have with slavery. valerie martin establishes that perspectives are relative as is evidence by the shattering of the glass. “the spyglass was dismantled and lay in pieces on the carpet” (134, martin) the dismantling of the spyglass represents the shattering of manon’s distance from the actuality of slavery, her coming into being master of her slaves and her removal from the role of property. according to broeck manon’s “need” for sarah goes beyond that of the need to be served and assert herself as a propertied female and more of a way to celebrate her “trans-aggressive sexual freedom” which could only be previously explored through her voyeuristic spyglass. i am not suggesting that this text is polemical however its very structure borrows from that of the construction of history wherein only the voice of the privileged is heard. the author’s need to enlist the unpitying stance of the protagonist is commendable however the tension that arises from sarah’s silence is left to question. the only time that she speaks is at the end of the novel, which signifies the fact that her thoughts need not be elaborated on as it is not profound enough to be transcribed. property subtly acknowledges historic understandings of being owned and the varying degrees of being property. caribbean quilt | 2013 99 works cited aptheker, herbert. american negro slavery. columbia: columbia uni. press. (1963) broeck, sabine. “property: white gender and slavery” in gender forum: an internet journal for gender studies 14. (2006). (web) bynum, victoria. unruly women: the politics of social and sexual control in the old south. london: the university of north carolina press (1992). fox-genovese, elizabeth. within the plantation household: black and white women of the old south. london: the university of north carolina press (1988) hawks, joanne v. and sheila l. skemp. sex, race, and the role of women in the south jackson: university press of mississippi (1983) martin, valerie. property. new york: vintage books (2003) ..... 59 the haitian carnival & rara: avenues for political & religious assertion by haiti’s poor mahavish mahmood celebrations and festivals have a wide-ranging participation from, and impact on, the general haitian populace and its politics and culture. haitian festivals such as the rara function as a space for assertion and as a means of self-identification by the poor in a nation overwhelmingly controlled by political and religious elites. these carnivals are sites of traditional and popular aspects of haitian culture (such as vodou) and are inserted and celebrated as both festivity and as a proclamation of personal, popular politics. vodou is then placed into the national discourse where it is employed to combat the entrenched power structure of the roman catholic church. through transgressive costumes and musical lyrics, the lower-class attempts to reclaim some of its lost power from traditional haitian power-brokers; these brokers can be the oppressive government of the day or the roman catholic church. haitian festivals and carnivals therefore serve two primary oppositional functions, firstly as a subversive political force, and secondly as a counter-cultural religious force that resists the norms and mores heavily endorsed by the roman catholic church. the haitian carnival with its wide reach and unstoppable momentum provides a meaningful political voice in a nation where the ability to be heard is often solely controlled by elites. averill states that the “haitian carnival is thoroughly permeated with political meanings” and that it has a “seemingly powerful role in haitian history.”1 he declares that the carnival with its parades, music, and costumes, is infused at every turn with both tacit and explicit political messages. thus the carnival serves as an ideal medium for political expression. this is in part due to the fact that it is a widely attended event with a large number of eager participants therefore political messages have a perfect opportunity to be heard throughout the country.2 the carnival is a unique celebration where participants are “swept up in collective enthusiasm” with the 1 gage averill, “anraje to angaje: carnival politics and music in haiti,” ethnomusicology 38, no. 2 (spring-summer, 1994): 217. 2 ibid. caribbean quilt | 2012 60 excitement, the anonymity, and the pressures of the crowd often becoming a very serious force.3 numerous haitian governments have understood the power of haitian carnivals and festivals and have sought to stealthily insert themselves within this space. in 1964, the carnival was actually themed “papa doc for life,” referring to the vote on extending jean-claude duvalier’s reign until the end of his life. the haitian carnival was used as a political stage with the playing of “campaign theme songs” to sway the vote for the “president-for-life” campaign.4 time and time again the political elite have tried to intrude into the haitian carnival’s political and cultural sphere. in 1995, at a roots music festival, averill notes how a concert avenue became the scene of a photo-op for aristide.5 aristide’s government entered this realm through what in other nations would be a fairly innocent act, via the sponsorship of the festival by the ministry of education and culture.6 by firmly entrenching themselves in this subversive space, the government attempted to extend its reach and control on the haitian public in one of the few avenues available for political and cultural freedom. the introduction of leading politicians in popular carnivals points to the significance that such carnivals can have in garnering political influence and legitimacy. music is a central aspect in haitian carnival; there are musicians on every street playing to receptive ears, providing an excellent means through which to transmit diverse political thoughts and ideas. averill states that “[t]he powerful appeal of music – its engagement with human emotions – is the reason it serves effectively as an instrument of politics and a medium of power.”7 he goes on to say that music both “creates” and “evokes” memories and that with political lyrics accompanying the music, the emotions attached to the message are sure to remain in mind.8 the powerful associations that music creates in hearts and minds greatly contribute to its function as a source for amplifying political thinking and sentiment. as averill argues, it has to have the “potential … to 3 averill, “anraje to angaje: carnival politics and music in haiti,” 219. 4 averill, “anraje to angaje: carnival politics and music in haiti,” 229. 5 gage averill, a day for the hunter, a day for the prey: popular music and power in haiti (chicago: university of chicago press, 1997), 208-209. 6 ibid. 7 averill, a day for the hunter, a day for the prey: popular music and power in haiti, 19. 8 ibid. mahavish mahmood | the haitian carnival and rara 61 set human emotions in motion.”9 with music playing at every corner and enthusiastic listeners abounding, countless political connections and memories are made. political leaders have always been aware of the potential of music to have a disruptive influence and power amongst the general public. during the haitian carnival of 1990 for example, the ruling haitian military was at first unsure if the popular group boukman eksperyan’s songs, “ke-m pa sote,” “my heart doesn’t leap” or “i am not afraid,” was supporting or condemning their regime. when the song became a rallying cry for opponents of the military’s reign however, the group’s political allegiance and the effect of its influence became quite clear and thus dangerous.10 the haitian military rulers of the 1990s were surely not the first who were aware of the political power of music. during the presidency of françois duvalier, in order to mark the occasion of his first haitian carnival in power, he had song writers draft lyrics to popular music which spoke of the supposed esteem that haiti’s poor held him in.11 the government of haiti even created its own types of “mini-carnivals” in the form of koudyays (from the french “coup de jaille” or a “gushing/surging event”). in these koudyays, governmentsponsored singers sang about the greatness of the political figure of the day, hoping to both inspire civil society and to scare away opponents of the leader.12 the music of the carnival has been, and continues to be, a powerful force that the political elite of haiti are eager to control and co-opt for their own ends either by inserting themselves into carnivals or by creating their own versions of revelry which disseminate state-approved political messages. the carnival also serves as a backdrop for other forms of artistic expression which are often more overt in their political content. from murals, to costumes, to plays, the carnival with its cultivation of the subversive and provocative is the ideal space for disseminating unflattering thoughts about the political elite. during the rara festival (which takes place around the same time as easter) 9 averill, a day for the hunter, a day for the prey: popular music and power in haiti, 20. 10 michael d. largey, “politics on the pavement: haitian rara as a traditionalizing process,” the journal of american folklore 113, no. 449 (summer, 2000): 242. 11 largey, 246. 12 largey, 247. caribbean quilt | 2012 62 ochans, or “militaristic musical salutes” that often refer to military leaders, are also used as political performance pieces.13 according to mcalister ochan is not merely a festive exhibition but a “traditionally sanctioned negotiation of power and status between classes,” a type of “ritualized moment of political patronage…through a performance of loyalty and homage … a monetary demand [too].”14 in this example, this particular festival performance has clear political implications at the local level, with the exchange of money for political support featuring prominently. costumes from the rara festival are seemingly based upon french courtly styles from the 18th century, parodying in earnestness and mocking the historical politics of their island nation.15 the most prominent counter-cultural force during carnival is vodou; with its foundation in african spirituality it presents a serious threat to the hegemony of the catholic church in haiti. vodou is mostly practiced by the rural-poor and festivals such as rara allow their religious beliefs to enter into the mainstream.16 as previously mentioned, political leaders such as papa doc duvalier commissioned lyrics to popular songs in order to appeal to the lower classes. one of the ways this was done was by having vodou-inspired imagery and themes within the lyrics, showing the government’s strategic understanding of the importance of vodou to the general haitian population.17 the roman catholic church has repeatedly attempted to erase vodou from haiti. in the 1930s the roman catholic church had an ongoing mission “to combat fetishism and superstition,” and was fully backed by the elie lescott, then the president of haiti, along with the government of the united states. 18 the presence of religious syncretism which itself was a result of the cultural mixing in the atlantic world, was a way for haitian slaves to retain a connection to their african roots.19 where class hierarchies 13 elizabeth a. mcalister, rara!: vodou, power, and performance in haiti and its diaspora (berkeley: university of california press, 2002), 51. 14 mcalister, 52. 15 susan elizabeth tselos, “threads of reflection: costumes of haitian rara,” african arts (usa) 29, no. 2 (spring, 1996): 61. 16 michael d. largey, vodou nation: haitian art music and cultural nationalism (chicago: university of chicago press, 2006), 194. 17 michael d. largey, “politics on the pavement: haitian rara as a traditionalizing process,” 246. 18 kate ramsey, “without one ritual note: folklore performance and the haitian state, 1935-1946,” radical history review 84 (fall 2002): 23-24. 19 largey, vodou nation: haitian art music and cultural nationalism, 76. mahavish mahmood | the haitian carnival and rara 63 are correlative with racial structures the ideal that is strived for is europeaness. vodou’s roots in africa and its embrace by lower classes is then an acceptance of their “africaness,” serving as an affront to those in power. the roman catholic church as a european religious institution positions itself as the savior of the masses, however, these masses continue to choose to hold on to their own spiritualties. this offense by the poor, namely to enthusiastically accept vodou into their lives, and even worse, to merge it with christian symbols, serves as a way to undermine the roman catholic church’s power within the country. by actively deciding for themselves their faith and how they choose to practice it, the poor of haiti challenge traditionally powerful forces in their country. a festival such as rara which incorporates two different religions undermines the singular hold that the roman catholic church has on the haitian people. rara is “explicitly religious” as people patronize african deities, perform rituals, and pay homage to the dead.20 nevertheless, according to mcalister, the outright religious purpose of rara is not revealed for fear of antagonizing those in power.21 mcalister also claims that is through the bright colours and loud sounds of the festival that rara’s religious core is kept hidden.22 a 1995 mural of aristide, a former priest, shows him between “the rooster of ogou and a beckoning jesus,” reflecting the religious dichotomy of the haitian people.23 as “afro-creole religious imagination is enveloped inside a roman catholic one,” the lower classes of haiti assert certain aspects of their cultural identity in secret.24 by combining vodou with christian imagery and symbols, the poor insulate themselves from outright condemnation and instead they themselves function as cultural agents by shaping religion in haiti. the springtime festival of rara in particular is a festive celebration by and for the people, with both the rural and the urban poor joining together to perform rituals and pilgrimages to sacred places amidst a relative freedom from usually oppressive 20 mcalister, 7. 21 ibid. 22 ibid. 23 karen mccarthy brown, “art and resistance: haiti's political murals, october 1994,” african arts 29, no. 2 (spring, 1996): 57. 24 mcalister, 11. caribbean quilt | 2012 64 conditions.25 according to mcalister, the rara celebration is one of the rare times when the lower classes of haiti are free to congregate and travel in relative safety; rara is then an actual physically safe place, or rather a safe time, for the poor.26 the revelry in the countryside combined with hidden vodou religious undertones allow for a certain amount of freedom of speech and assembly.27 rara is genuinely a cultural expression of the poor with the elite often hiding away, especially at night during loud celebrations; this unwittingly gives rara celebrants an open avenue for expression.28 the actual activities of rara such as the parades are an authentic declaration of cultural identity by the lower classes, with local bands festively competing against one another in drive-by performances throughout the countryside.29 in sum, festivals such as rara allow for a time of relative physical and cultural freedom for haiti’s poor. carnivals and festivals, while not traditionally thought to be powerful spaces for assertion by the oppressed, nevertheless play an important role in nations such as haiti. when traditional places to voice one’s politics and culture are controlled by the wealthy elite and the well-connected, people are forced to look for other mediums of expression. music, artwork, and performance pieces in haitian carnival provide a small avenue for political speech. amongst loud music and the revelers, political thoughts are slyly expressed. however, the governments of the day are well aware of the power of this politicized space, and have done their best to instill their own political values in this arena. politics is not the only sphere being challenged in such festivals however. powerful cultural players such as the roman catholic church are also confronted through the insertion of vodou rituals and imagery in festivals such as rara. rara masks its central religious beliefs with widespread music and revelry and by incorporating christian symbols into the festival. though the roman catholic church has attempted to eliminate vodou from the hearts and minds of the haitian people, haitians have done their utmost to protect this part of their cultural identity by combining it with christian themes as a way to insulate their persecuted beliefs. 25 mcalister, 3. 26 mcalister, 4. 27 mcalister, 7. 28 ibid. 29 mcalister, 5. mahavish mahmood | the haitian carnival and rara 65 carnivals and festivals are a crucial means of declaring political and cultural thoughts and ideas by haiti’s poor. they serve as a relatively safe place where they can state and celebrate their own beliefs, always of course, under the watchful gaze of elites. caribbean quilt | 2012 66 works cited averill, gage. a day for the hunter, a day for the prey: popular music and power in haiti. chicago: university of chicago press, 1997. --“anraje to angaje: carnival politics and music in haiti.” ethnomusicology 38, no. 2 (spring-summer, 1994): 217-47. brown, karen mccarthy. “art and resistance: haiti's political murals, october 1994.” african arts 29, no. 2 (spring, 1996): 46-57. largey, michael d. “politics on the pavement: haitian rara as a traditionalizing process.” journal of american folklore 113, no. 449 (summer 2000): 239-54. --vodou nation: haitian art music and cultural nationalism. chicago: university of chicago press, 2006. mcalister, elizabeth a. rara!: vodou, power, and performance in haiti and its diaspora. berkeley: university of california press, 2002. ramsey, kate. “without one ritual note: folklore performance and the haitian state, 1935-1946.” radical history review 84 (fall 2002): 742. tselos, susan elizabeth. “threads of reflection: costumes of haitian rara.” african arts (usa) 29, no. 2 (spring 1996): 58-65. ..... 202 stay: migration and the caribbean liane chance liane chance was born in georgetown, guyana and migrated to barbados at age 11 and toronto, canada at 13. she has completed an honours bachelor of arts at the university of toronto, with a double major in history and equity studies. liane has a particular interest in the educational experience of young caribbean immigrants in toronto and hopes to commence graduate studies related to the subject in the future. twentieth and twenty first century migration patterns have seen a large scale emigration from many caribbean countries into canada, the united states and the united kingdom. this dispersion and settlement of caribbean people into highly industrial parts of the world can be long-term, permanent or temporary. the primary motive for caribbean migration has been the intent to improve economic circumstances, therefore migration out of the region persists when the perception of opportunities abroad outweigh the real opportunities at home.1 migration rates from the caribbean remain high and are steadily rising which indicates that the crumbling economic and social structures which sustain such rates continue to degrade.2 as a result, caribbean countries continue to experience the loss of highly skilled men and women to more industrialized parts of the world. therefore, the inability or failure to stem heavy outflows of labour hinders caribbean development.3 recent trends have seen governments attempt to harness the financial wealth of their diasporas with the hope that the large number of residents abroad can set into motion and sustain a series of development initiatives.4 in jamaica, such strategies have involved tapping into the community abroad as well as encouraging emigration to create a larger capital remitting base.5 however, the framework for jamaican diasporic development, which patsy lewis 1 ransford w. palmer, “caribbean development and the migration imperative,” in in search of a better life: perspectives on migration from the caribbean ed. ransford w. palmer (new york, connecticut, london: praeger, 1990), 6 2 barbara j. merz, “diasporic engagement in the caribbean,” in diasporas and development ed. barbara j. merz et al. (cambridge massachusetts: harvard university press, 2007), 190 3 palmer, 15 4 merz, 204-211 5 patsy lewis, “training jamaicans for export: a viable development strategy?” unpublished paper. (2003), 165 liane chance | stay: migration & the caribbean 203 calls “training-for-export,” is problematic. to achieve any positive benefits for the caribbean, people need to remain in the region. the solution seems simple but its implementation involves the cooperation and integration of elements of the caribbean population both within the region and abroad. development initiatives which involve or are spearheaded by the diaspora must follow a structured and logical plan. encouraging migration out of the region is counterproductive, therefore the caribbean must think regionally, rather than nationally, to implement tactics to improve the economic, social and political factors which push people out. thirdly, the place of skilled return migrants must be examined. caribbean governments have known about the problem of emigration since the 1960s. the united kingdom had been the traditional recipient of caribbean migrants from 1948, but political shifts in britain restricted caribbean migration in the 1960s. as high unemployment and slow development plagued newly independent governments they encouraged the migration of unskilled labour to canada and the united states, countries that had liberalized their immigration laws.6 the benefits of this strategy were lower unemployment levels, social stability, population control due to lower birth rates and remittances from the receiving countries to provide benefits for young and older family members.7 as the caribbean moved into the latter decades of the 20th century and the first years of the 21st, migration and the attitudes toward the trend have been characterized by much continuity and little change. between 1965, when immigration first began to increase, and 2000, the caribbean region had seen over 12% of its labour force migrate to more developed countries such as the united states and canada.8 countries such as jamaica and guyana experienced far higher rates of emigration with jamaica losing 85% of its educated labour force in the same period.9 understanding that migration is an intrinsic and sustained caribbean character trait and also aware of the value of remittances sent back by residents working and living 6 ralph henry and kim johnson, “migration, manpower, and underdevelopment of the commonwealth caribbean,” in migration and development in the caribbean: the unexplored connection ed. robert a. pastor (boulder, colorado: westview press inc, 1985), 279. 7 henry, 279 8 lewis, 166 9 patsy lewis, 166 caribbean quilt | 2012 204 abroad, caribbean governments have entertained the idea of making migration work to their advantage.10 however, the present framework for the distribution of remittances contributes to unequal benefits for residents of the caribbean. development strategies rooted in the diaspora must operate within an equitable framework. compared to the anglophone caribbean, migration in cuba had long been an instrument of national policy and was relied upon to accumulate capital for the state and also to create blocs of influence in other parts of the world.11 however, in cuba government sanctioned migration is a controlled policy which eventually results in the repatriation of skilled labour.12 recent trends attributed to “political and geo-strategic shifts” in the “international trading environment,” have had a hand in altering the way caribbean governments have perceived emigration.13 lewis’ observation of the jamaican government’s view of migration places it in a similar framework to that which robert pastor and rosemarie rogers identified as cuba’s migration policy. in lewis’ analysis emigration was considered beyond its obvious effects of draining labour and enterprise from the country and reworked by the government to see the outflow of people from the country as a “potential tool.”14 lewis’ work did not identify a governmental strategy for the repatriation of labour but it did posit the remittance of capital from educated migrants as a salient strategy to bring foreign capital into the country. however, if diasporas are to be utilized as a development strategy the capital sent back must flow in ways to benefit the entire country. currently, remittances, other than those sent by regulated temporary workers, go directly to the intended recipient, there is no benefit to the country as a whole because the capital is used to better 10 robert pastor and rosemarie rogers, “using migration to enhance economic development in the caribbean: three sets of proposals,” in migration and development in the caribbean: the unexplored connection ed. robert a. pastor (boulder, colorado: westview press inc, 1985), 321; elizabeth thomas-hope, caribbean migration (barbados, jamaica, trinidad and tobago: university of the west indies press, 2002), 160 11 pastor, 321 12 pastor, 321 13 lewis, 169 14 lewis, 169 liane chance | stay: migration & the caribbean 205 the circumstances of that recipient.15 also important is the fact that remittances can serve to reduce governmental responsibility to citizens’ welfare because beneficiaries may accrue enough capital to bypass public services in preference of private ones.16 they can also contribute to further emigration from the receiving country as it provides improved access to education. generally, remittances are unequally accessed by receiving populations therefore its overall poverty reducing effects are questionable if the current framework continues because the practice has a high number of individual beneficiaries.17 recent tabulations of remittances flowing through official avenues have indicated that the countries in the caribbean receive anywhere from 100 million to 1.4 billion dollars in remittances every year.18 the actual amount of capital, however, is rarely ever the amount received by the recipient. according to research done on the topic of fair value, a transaction can cost up to 25% of the amount being sent due to factors such as commissions, exchange rates and transaction fees.19 in their articles, robert pastor, rosemarie rogers and wilbert bascom suggest that the caribbean region establish remittance banks to take over the position of money transmission businesses.20 this would have the effect of actually giving caribbean governments a certain amount of capital earned from transmitting remittances at a better and more competitive rate. the recipients would continue to receive money from their relatives while governments would have the ability to take the capital accrued and reinvest it into development schemes as well as ease balance of 15 wilbert o. bascom, “remittance inflows and economic development in selected anglophone caribbean countries,” in migration, remittances and small business development ed. sergio diaz-briquets et al. (colorado: westview press inc., 1991), 77 16 merz, 206 17 admos chimhowu et al, “the socioeconomic impact of remittances on poverty reduction,” in remittances: development impact and future prospects ed. samuel munzele maimbo et al (washington, dc: world bank, 2005), 94-95 18 merz, 190 19 norbert bielefeld and antonique koning, “international remittances: delivering fair value,” in remittances: development impact and future prospects ed. samuel munzele maimbo et al. (washington, dc: world bank, 2005), 194 20 bascom, 90-91; pastor, 333-336. caribbean quilt | 2012 206 payment debts in the region.21 ultimately, a caribbean remittance bank would encourage the development of the country or region by stimulating the economy enough to provide incentive for labour to remain or return to the country. the strategy patsy lewis identified in her essay was that of “training-for-export” programs. as mentioned above, the jamaican government as with others in the region does not infringe on the rights of their people to migrate but the result has been that the country has long suffered with the emigration of its skilled labour.22 it must also be noted that the type of emigrating labour is subject to a hierarchy where highly skilled labour is considered intrinsic to development, while cheaper labour emigration was encouraged to ease unemployment rates.23 in a strategy which prioritized elizabeth thomas-hope’s theory that migration builds and recreates the caribbean, the jamaican government “advocated” its “training for export” strategy.24 the idea was to invest in the training of nurses and teachers with the intent that eventually these women, and to a lesser extent men, would migrate abroad and remit capital to the sending country, jamaica.25 however, lewis was hard-pressed to find the wisdom in this strategy, especially since the statistics indicate that caribbean governments spend far more on education than they recover from remitted capital.26 “training for export” and other development strategies which incorporated education or training turned out to benefit the economy of the receiving country while the sending caribbean country struggled to cope with the loss of labour and a dubious return on investment.27 the strategy of 21 pastor, 334-335; michele reis, “the modern to late period in the caribbean diaspora,” in caribbean transnationalism: migration, pluralization and social cohesion ed. ruben gowricharn. (lanham: lexington books, 2006), 52 22 patricia y. anderson, “migration and development in jamaica,” in migration and development in the caribbean: the unexplored connection ed. robert a. pastor (boulder, colorado: westview press inc, 1985), 120. 23 anderson, 121 24 thomas-hope, caribbean migration, 160 25 lewis, 175 26 elizabeth thomas-hope, “return migration and its implications for caribbean development,” in in migration and development in the caribbean: the unexplored connection ed. robert a. pastor (boulder, colorado: westview press inc, 1985), 167; lewis, 169. 27 ralph henry and kim johnson, “migration, manpower and the underdevelopment of the commonwealth caribbean,” in migration and liane chance | stay: migration & the caribbean 207 “training for development” rings counterproductive to any strategy that is to empower the caribbean region since skilled labour is integral to the development of the region. the issue remains providing skilled caribbean people with enough incentive to remain in the region. the concept of the brain drain has long accompanied discourses on caribbean emigration. the drain has been the result of unfavourable economic climates and it has also contributed to this effect. instead of focusing on creating incentives to return, countries such as jamaica, have encouraged labour to leave because of the purported level of remittances their absence brings.28 caribbean countries uphold their citizen’s right to migrate freely but have historically oriented migration outside the region rather than taking an active role to foster intraregional migration. as an alternative to sending trained individuals outside of the region, lewis examined propositions to allow the free movement of these individuals from country to country.29 intraregional migration of nurses and teachers would have the effect of keeping labour within the region by deploying these men and women to countries which experienced chronic shortage of teachers and nurses.30 palmer also views intraregional migration as a plausible and desirable alternative to flows outside of the region. he argues that the caribbean as a region needs to expand and diversify its productive industries and implement a “common market agreement” which does not restrict labour flows.31 in short, caribbean countries need to form a structured economic bloc to move beyond single market economies in order for the region to decrease its vulnerability to the vagaries of the economic market.32 palmer’s prescriptions are not new ideas, as the idea of integration and diversified economies has been debated and attempted in the region on previous occasions, the most recent incarnation being the formation of caricom.33 development in the caribbean: the unexplored connection ed. robert a. pastor (boulder, colorado: westview press inc, 1985), 281 28 lewis, 169 29 lewis, 178 30 lewis, 178 31 palmer, 13-14 32 palmer, 14 33 peter wickman, “factors in the integration and disintegration of the caribbean,” in introduction to caribbean politics ed cynthia barrow-giles, (ian randle publishers, 2002.) caribbean quilt | 2012 208 freedom of movement policies were being considered in the early 1990s but were waylaid by countries that feared being overrun by migrants who wished to access the better economic conditions of that society.34 the saliency of integration as a way to retain migrants in the region is impossible to ignore, and the re-examination of the strategy by caribbean governments bodes well for the development of the region’s economy for the purposes of retaining labour. in her article on the developmental impacts of return migration on the caribbean, elizabeth thomas-hope surmises that it is difficult to tabulate the effect of the return migrant on the development of his or her country. although the return may involve the influx of foreign capital, talent and skilled labour, thomas-hope argues that foreign lifestyles and products also return. this has the effect of stimulating the consumption of foreign products because the orientation of caribbean households to foreign markets is sustained.35 thomas-hope also argues that the short-term effects of return migration, which include the investment of capital into ventures such as housing or short-term participation in the labour force, often masquerade as positive indicators of development.36 thomas-hope’s pessimistic analysis ignores the other side of the return movement however, namely the growing amount of people whose intentions to return are focused entirely on the development of the region. in their article on return migration to grenada, joseph rodman and dennis conway highlight the nostalgic and nationalistic factors which propel migrants settled abroad to return.37 many of these migrants have been educated abroad and seek to impart their skills to effect development within their countries.38 therefore it follows that the caribbean region must provide a framework which supports return migrants who have either business or education initiatives which serve to improve the region by creating employment or providing specialized skills to the labour force. 34 wickman, 246 35 thomas-hope, “return migration,”172 36 thomas-hope, “return migration,” 172 37 dennis conway and joseph rodman, “the nexus and the family tree: return migration to grenada and transnationalism in context,” in the experience of return migration: caribbean ed. robert b. potter et al. (aldershot, england, burlington, vermont: ashgate, 2005), 101 38 conway, 101 liane chance | stay: migration & the caribbean 209 migration created the caribbean and migration recreates the caribbean.39 it is the constant force that the region cannot ignore, however it should not be viewed as a solution to socioeconomic issues in the caribbean. although not addressed in the above analysis, migration accounts for the weakening of family structures as migrants sacrifice familial ties to provide monetary support for spouses, parents and children back home. some migrants also face alienation, racism and prejudice as they navigate the maze of a foreign society. migration will always occur but it is imperative that the region implement more insular techniques to address its weaknesses and rely upon caribbean people, ideas and initiatives to create better opportunities for future generations and also to retain and regain its people. 39 thomas-hope, caribbean migration, 160 ..... 143 paths to decolonization in the french caribbean: aimé césaire and frantz fanon naregh galoustian naregh galoustian is a 4 th year student majoring in history and political science. he previously studied french and russian literature in italy. his current focus is on the intersections between the intellectual and political history of the caribbean and latin america, especially in terms of nation, race and citizenship. he strives to explore the shared experiences found in history in order to connect diverse and apparently divergent areas. he is currently working as a project manager at an international media development organization focusing on human rights. abstract: in the caribbean, national independence traditionally meant formal decolonization. however, the french caribbean opted for integration rather than separation from france. did martinique and guadaloupe accept the persistence of colonialism by refusing to gain sovereignty? although it might seem so, the decision to be integrated within the french departmental system in 1946 stemmed from a longer political history of competing ideas regarding citizenship. in order to better understand this choice and its limits, historical and cultural developments will be explored by referring in broad terms to the thought of two martinicans: aimé césaire and frantz fanon. the french caribbean has experienced polarized paths to decolonization: haiti with its abolishment of slavery and selfproclaimed „black‟ republic in 1804, and martinique and guadeloupe voting for full integration into the french administrative system of departments in 1946. whereas the first example points to a forceful and drastic decolonization precognizant of the „natural‟ path to independence featuring most of the caribbean countries in the 20th century, the second appears instead as consent to prolonged colonialism. however, the latter choice is more complicated than it might indeed appear. in fact, it is the result of a long struggle between races corresponding to social classes upholding or not the concept of civic nationhood promoted by the french revolution, which emerged as the founding principles of french republicanism. the push for integration called for egalitarianism and rejected the hierarchical and racist colonial legacy of plantocracy. nevertheless, this particular political evolution in the french caribbean was not harmless. on the contrary, it originated from a series of caribbean quilt | 2012 144 controversies and dilemmas (while producing its own controversies), embracing not only the same proponents of departmentalization, but also those who had never considered such an option as a viable decolonization path. concepts of race and nation in relation to colonization and decolonization are still current, and were notably present in the intellectual works of great figures such as aimé césaire and frantz fanon: two martinican „rebels‟ fighting against colonization who embraced different conceptions of decolonization. in order to understand the political evolution experienced by martinique, an exploration of its pre-1946 society is necessary.1 besides having the same features of caribbean colonial societies such as an extractive economic schema founded on slavery, labour exploitation, as well as persisting racial social differentiation, the role of the metropolitan state as a mediator of social conflicts was peculiar to the french caribbean. social dissent regularly erupted on the onset of the sugar plantation working seasons, and always resulted in violent repression on the part of the authorities. however, the french state, especially after the abolishment of slavery in 1848, while still preserving the economic and political interests of the békés (white elite), increasingly played a mediating role in ensuring a „social‟ peace between conflicting parties. playing such a role was made possible by the widening gap between the political outlook embodied in the old plantocracy (based on strict racial differentiation) and the republican political discourse (based on the egalitarian principles of the french revolution). the very struggle between reactionary conservatism and republican democracy that marked french political history since the great revolution until vichy – a struggle which could be argued still exists today in the form of civic versus ethnic nationhood – was the dialogical opposition between the creole elite and the centre‟s government, as well as between the elite and the local discriminated population. whereas the conservative creole elite leaned on political autonomy from the métropole to assert its own socio-political influence over the caribbean territories, the supporters of a more equal society upheld the civic nationhood principles that the french republic embodied. this peripheral opposition of visions indeed translated in their attitude toward the centre: one stressed autonomy from it, the other, for inclusion. therefore, the departmentalization 1 for the historical review of pre-1946 martinique, see alain-philippe blérald, la question nationale en guadeloupe et martinique, (paris : l‟harmattan, 1988). naregh galoustian | paths to decolonization in the french caribbean 145 choice that the martinicans overwhelmingly voted for does not appear that paradoxical based on the above rationale. all the more that this choice was made apparent in the immediate aftermath of world war ii, that is, after the vichy regime had tangibly expressed its social „revolutionary‟ approach in the caribbean. this was done through an overt racial politics of coercive imposition of french white supremacy in all aspects of life, including in institutional, economic and cultural realms. even the black middle class‟ status, which had managed to carve out its own social and economic space in the caribbean, was undermined during this period, hence the need for a more „inclusive‟ stance toward the centre so as to prevent such threats from emerging again. the factor of mimicking french values determined social exclusion or inclusion and animated the choice of departmentalization, as a way to attain egalitarianism according to a civic meaning of citizenship and to fully reject the colonial social relationship based on purely racial supremacy. this willingness to be included into the colonizer‟s administrative state system and its civic egalitarian foundation did not arise, however, without first attempting to culturally assert the importance and the value of being „black‟. aimé césaire‟s négritude movement can, in part, be interpreted this way. this literary and broadly cultural movement that césaire initiated as a student in paris during the 1930s with other french „colonized‟ nationals, such as damas and senghor, is generally seen as the attempt to construct a universalistic black consciousness, regardless of local peculiarities defining a given nation.2 it went far beyond the „negrophilia‟ which featured prominently in france at that time, with culturally simplistic denotations defining blackness (i.e. “inherent rhythm” etc.).3 the african ancestry of the former slaves as a shared legacy, and the historical subjection to the eurocentric socio-political and economic order produced by colonization, were both pointed to as defining features of black identity. in order to counteract and confront the white „construction‟, négritude‟s proponents claimed that a „nègre‟ construction had to be carried out. the aim of such a construction was threefold: not only to refute the claimed inferiority of the black vis-à-vis the white, reject 2 pierre bouvier, aimé césaire et frantz fanon : portraits de décolonisés, (paris : les belles lettres, 2010), pp 59-75. césaire‟s poetical „manifesto‟ is cahier d’un retour au pays natal (1939) 3 david macey, “frantz fanon, or the difficulty of being martinican” in history workshop journal issue 58, 2004, pp 212, 214 caribbean quilt | 2012 146 the colonial social relationship, but also to eventually neutralize such an opposition in view of a universalistic notion of citizenry. the latter aspect was obviously considered to be more utopian than actually feasible. however, building the foundations for a black legitimacy and equality in terms of political rights and peculiarity in terms of cultural identity, detached from the inherent racial eurocentrism, was certainly a pressing and useful enterprise. this attempt of defining „negritude‟ however triggered many criticisms among black intellectuals, particularly by frantz fanon. not only was négritude seen as a white-derived exercise to define what white was not, but it was also deemed useless in that it did not effectively attempt to define what a caribbean identity meant. fanon pointed to blacks who had been „assimilated‟ by whites, embracing their set of values, therefore implying their own inferiority. in some ways, he was attacking the very social milieu from which he derived. for fanon, cultural attempts to define blackness followed the white set of values and were also too naïve in their promotion of a primordial black pureness before colonization had tarnished it. this critique was made stronger as it specifically referred to the general inability to achieve true independence from the colonizer by having opted for integration. fanon‟s black skins white masks was published in 1952 after the departmentalization of martinique, and the experience of a growing cultural and institutional assimilation, otherwise seen as a persisting colonization by its critics. fanon certainly was not seeking to define a specifically martinican national identity but rather he believed that decolonization could only be possible through a social revolution, lest a replication of colonial patterns and practices continue. fanon of course famously held that resorting to violence could be used as a vehicle to achieve this.4 in this view, the natural agent for change was the proletarian class, both rural and urban, because as discriminated and oppressed subjects, they were untouched by the white assimilationist trend of conformism. however, fanon was not the only one criticizing the effects of assimilation, as the leading proponent of departmentalization, césaire, rejected the move favoring more autonomy. dealing directly and locally with martinican politics, by acting both as mayor of fort-de-france 4 claudia wright, “national liberation, consciousness, freedom and frantz fanon” in history of european ideas, vol. 15, no. 1-3 (august 1992), p432 naregh galoustian | paths to decolonization in the french caribbean 147 (1945-2001) and deputy at the national assembly (1946-1993), césaire in contrast to fanon had a greater stake in the political evolution of departmentalization. he chose first to leave the communist party in 1956. he did so following the soviet repression in hungary, but his political act was directed especially against the lack of attention that the communist party was dedicating to the increasing problem of national identity. the french centralizing state asserted even further its institutional trends of harmonization of all its departments by denying cultural peculiarities. if this trend was felt already as a threat to particular metropolitan regions such as corse or even bretagne, the „nègre’ césaire considered it even more dangerous to the caribbean peculiarity of martinique. martinique as a product of colonialism and a multi-ethnic polity (clearly not predominantly white), geographically distinct and distant, was still treated without any cultural exception. french assimilation tended to override all distinctions by offering a strict eurocentric model of education and consumption. moreover, the paternalist attitude of the french government was expressed by the exclusively economically oriented perspective on martinique, a strategy which did not take into consideration cultural autonomy. giscard d‟estaing‟s discourse well exemplifies such attitudes, which reflected the republican and gaullist right that upheld the principle of the french state‟s centralizing uniformity, flattening all forms of peculiarity.5 economic subsidization that did not actually promote economic self-sustainability further deepened a dependency, reminiscent of colonial patterns of centre-periphery relationships. although such trends towards assimilation were increasingly felt as a continuation of colonialism, césaire never outright supported independence, as he did not consider martinican national consciousness sufficiently mature. what he opted for instead was a political language leaning towards more autonomy in the sense of regionalization and decentralization. his support for the socialists through his parti progressiste martiniquaise (ppm) is evidence of such an autonomist discourse in contrast with conservative assimilation or radical independence. however, after mitterrand‟s 5 a-p. blérald, la question nationale en guadeloupe et martinique, p120. « naturellement, la poursuite du développement économique et social, c‟est la tâche prioritaire à laquelle la france, avec ses citoyens des antilles et de la guyane, s‟est désormais consacrée. » caribbean quilt | 2012 148 election in 1981, he chose to „freeze‟ the autonomous discourse by supporting the socialist government in its quest for economic development for martinique in his famous “discourse on moratorium”.6 the separation between the poet of négritude and the pragmatic politician was obvious, albeit coherent in that césaire supported greater equality by demanding greater peculiarity within the same institutional framework. such a perspective was not one echoed by fanon, who had, as already mentioned, a more radical understanding of the relationship between the colonized and colonizer. not only did fanon refuse to support a „nègre‟ definition of national consciousness (as it hinted to an inverted racism instead of embracing a „creole‟ identity), but he also rejected the normative hope for civic universalism through revolution. this perspective derives from his own work as a psychiatrist, where he had the opportunity to test the psychological maladies of colonized patients, undermined in their very essence by the colonial legacy of social organization. they had been „alienated‟, not only by the arrival of the colonizers, but also by their persistent disguised colonization through cultural assimilation, for example. the very act of speaking an imposed language was a submissive act confirming an unbalanced relationship, obliterating all forms of indigenous expression.7 for fanon, the only way to remedy this alienated state was to reject the colonizing element, and that could only have been possible through liberation, not simply nationalistic but also mental. whereas fanon supported revolution, even a violent one if necessary, césaire rejected it as merely a heroic moment which had to be followed by realistic calculations regarding political and economic survival.8 was césaire himself so assimilated that he upheld the french „white‟ discourse of black martinicans‟ inherent inability to survive? although one could claim that he was pragmatic 6 william f.s miles, “metaphysical considerations can come later, but the people have children to feed” in french politics, culture & society, vol. 27, no. 3 (winter 2009), p2 7 c. wright, “national liberation, consciousness, freedom and frantz fanon” in history of european ideas, p429 8 justin daniel, « aimé césaire et les antilles françaises : une histoire inachevée ? » in french politics, culture & society, vol. 27, no. 3 (winter 2009), p33 naregh galoustian | paths to decolonization in the french caribbean 149 in his approach regarding the feasibility of independence, this question nonetheless remains open to interpretation. it has been argued that french departmentalization as a path to decolonization appears more complex and rational than a mere unwillingness to gain political independence. the peculiar relation between the french state and its colony, and the relation between white elites and the larger population, made the possibility for integration more likely than in other caribbean contexts. the revolutionary tradition of france and the struggle between two opposing concepts of nation also facilitated the equation of egalitarianism with decolonization. the discourse of négritude, chanted by césaire, derived from this need to express this equality between whites and blacks by stressing differences. once able to express such differences, it was easier to uphold egalitarianism within the institutional framework of the french state. the very need to express this egalitarianism within the same context hints at the hegemony of white minority oppression over a black majority under colonialism. departmentalization however, resulted in a renewed, disguised cultural assimilation/colonization by an increasingly centralizing state. local peculiarities were discarded in the name of a uniform state, where euro-centrism remained the founding cultural assumption to the detriment of uniquely caribbean identity formations. tensions between a departmentalization which called for more autonomy and the preconditions of economic development necessary to sustain such autonomy are significant in understanding césaire‟s political actions. fanon challenged such solutions to decolonization by stressing the inherent alien and alienating impact of the colonizer. regarding race, the construct of négritude was set along the white construction of the other, and eventually pointed at a reversed racial stance, without considering the unique, multi-ethnic and social experience of caribbean peoples. the assimilation‟s results threatened the birth of an independent self-consciousness as it was an institutionalized continuation of colonialism. for fanon, in order to gain meaningful independence, the only solution was national and mental liberation from the colonizer. what emerges from these two different intellectual discourses on race and nation is the complex and multilayered nature of colonial contexts, where more than one solution are provided as possible paths toward decolonization. caribbean quilt | 2012 150 works cited blérald, alain-philippe. la question nationale en guadeloupe et en martinique. paris : l‟harmattan, 1988. bouvier, pierre. aimé césaire et frantz fanon : portraits de décolonisés. paris : les belles lettres, 2010. césaire, aimé. cahier d’un retour au pays natal. éd. dominique combe. paris : puf, 1993. daniel, justin. « aimé césaire et les antilles françaises : une histoire inachevée ? » in french politics, culture & society, vol. 27, no. 3 (winter 2009), pp 24-33. fanon, frantz. peau noire, masques blancs. paris : le seuil, 1965. macey, david. “frantz fanon, or the difficulty of being martinican” in history workshop journal, issue 58, 2004, pp 211-223. miles, william f.s. “metaphysical considerations can come later, but the people have children to feed” in french politics, culture & society, vol. 27, no. 3 (winter 2009), pp 63-75. wright, claudia. “national liberation, consciousness, freedom and frantz fanon” in history of european ideas, vol. 15, no. 1-3 (august 1992), pp 427-434. caribbean quilt | 2013 92 sienna: 11x14, acrylic and oil marker on canvas panel :::::: 33 the seasonal moral contract: the legitimization of the abusive treatment of caribbean workers in ontario cecilia saez migrant seasonal farm workers have become a staple in the food production industry across rural ontario. under the seasonal agricultural workers program (sawp), more than 15,000 caribbean workers arrive in ontario each year to address the labour shortage (faraday, 2012). despite the "structural necessity" of importing labour (basok, 2002), the legal conditions that surround farm workers leave them susceptible to abuse and completely dependent on their employer (rosemblum, 2000). under the intersection of current federal and provincial laws, these programs are "entrenching and normalizing a low-wage, low-rights 'guest' workforce on terms that are incompatible with canada’s fundamental charter of rights and freedoms, human rights, and labour rights" (faraday, 2012, p.5). throughout this paper i will argue that the institutional construction of caribbean workers as temporal and non-canadian labour, has allowed abusive working conditions to be legitimized and normalized. some of the historical and social factors that underlie the differences in the treatment of canadian workers versus caribbean workers in canada will be explored. furthermore, this paper will emphasize how the mistreatment of migrant workers is embedded within canada's laws, which leads to an understanding of immigrants as "cheap, flexible labour" (basok, 2002; sharma, 2001). underlying the "cheap" labour principle, this paper will also critique the "liberal and state-centered view of morality" applied to caribbean workers (bagchi, 2008, p. 200). following this argument, this paper will emphasize how the creation of a new category of "non-canadians" allows employers to strip migrant workers of most of the "human, civil and other 'rights' of citizenship available to 'canadians'" (sharma, 2001, p. 419). historically, canada's legislation has advanced to become a pillar of moral justice; the inclusion of the canadian charter of rights and freedoms in the constitution indicated the commitment to the protection of human rights, freedom and equity. despite the legal advances to protect human rights, many of the regulations have cecilia saez the seasonal moral contract 34 drawn a clear distinction on who is under the protection of the charter of rights and who isn't. this binary code of rights reflects how "moral order 'is an organized system of rights, obligations and duties in a society, together with the criteria by which people and their activities are valued" (harre, 1983; as quoted by krebs and denton, 2005. p. 633). reliance on "temporary" workers has increased tri-fold in the last two decades (faraday, 2012); and this reliance on foreign workers has allowed the canadian state to "cheapen the labour" in order to stay 'globally competitive' (sharma, 2001, p. 419). the differential treatment of caribbean seasonal workers is emphasized through legislative reforms that maintain "racist and nationalist" (sharma, 2001, p. 419) discourses that perpetuate the status quo of "foreigners" being unprotected from canadian law. under international agreements, caribbean seasonal workers are hired to work for up to eight months each year in ontario to meet planting and harvesting needs (brem, 2006). unlike skilled-worker immigration programs, seasonal workers are denied the possibility of applying for canadian permanent residency (faraday, 2012). the seasonal agricultural worker program was drafted to legally import foreign workers into canada to meet the "temporary" seasonal needs of agricultural producers during peak harvesting and planting periods, when there are traditionally shortages of qualified canadian workers (rosenblum, 2009). despite the "temporal need" of foreign labour, statistics show that between 70% and 80% of caribbean workers come back to canada year after year to work with the same employer (faraday, 2012). a survey revealed that six hundred seasonal workers participate in the sawp for seven to nine years, while nearly a quarter participate on the program for more than 10 years; some keep returning for more than 25 years (faraday, 2012). by law however, seasonal workers regardless of "their longterm attachment to the canadian labour market, [...] do not acquire any rights to apply for permanent residence" (faraday, 2012, p.15). the inability of caribbean labourers to become canadian residents leaves workers under the 'temporary' category, permanently (basok, 2012). social movements have challenged the notion, advocating that if they are "good enough to work here, they are good enough to stay" (faraday, 2012). however, low-skill workers' characteristics seem to caribbean quilt | 2013 35 evoke strong negative moral judgments based on the perceived threat that foreigners take jobs away from canadians (sharma, 2001). according the sawp programme, only those who have worked in agriculture and are responsible for the economic wellbeing of their households, while having experienced difficulties in finding other viable sources of subsistence within their country qualify as an ontario seasonal worker (basok, 2002; brem, 2006). these criteria indicate that the workers selected for the program are skilled to work in food production in canada for most of the year, but do not have the prerequisites necessary to apply under an immigrant program that would allow them and their families, to apply for canadian residency. under any other immigration category, individuals have the possibility to apply for residency after two or more years of canadian employment. additionally, under most categories, immigrants enjoy the protection of the laws served to ensure job security, health and safety regulations of canadian citizens from the moment they arrive into canada (faraday, 2012). the reality of caribbean workers is much different under the rules governing the seasonal worker program. while in canada, migrants work seven days a week, averaging ten hours a day to a staggering 15 hours during harvesting season; workers are not entitled to vacation pay and are not eligible to overtime pay regardless of the hours worked (brem, 2006). workers earn slightly above the ontario minimum wage, a quarter of their salary is taken by income tax, c.p.p., e.i. and other costs associated with their transportation (brem, 2006; faraday, 2012). despite their contribution to canadian taxes and other work related programs, the money discounted from their pay cheques is not reflected in the benefits they receive (basok, 2002). furthermore, due to the widespread lack of information available to seasonal workers, most workers are not aware of their rights and do not claim the benefits accessible to them (brem, 2006). work insecurity is a prevailing issue affecting migrant workers. under the program, farm owners can send workers back to their countries indiscriminately; getting sick or challenging the bosses are seen as acceptable reasons to fire workers. if employment is terminated and the employee was not requested by name, the worker is responsible for covering relocation costs (basok, 2002; brem, 2006; faraday, 2012). critics of the legislation guiding cecilia saez the seasonal moral contract 36 migrant worker employment, argue that the program provides little protection to the employee and assigns a great deal of authority to the employer, leaving the worker in a state of work insecurity and uncertainty (brem, 2006; faraday, 2012). the rules that apply to foreign labour are in opposition to the laws erected to protect canadian workers from exploitation and from physical and emotional distress. by identifying seasonal workers as "non-canadians", who would otherwise endure dire working conditions in the caribbean, their exploitation in canada is perceived as "a lesser evil" and thus, normalized and accepted. the institutionalization of regulatory measures that uphold differential treatment towards low-skilled workers in an effort to meet canadian labour market's demands is not a novel notion. between 1881 and1885, large numbers of chinese immigrants were brought to canada to work on the construction of the canadian pacific railway (cpr). as soon as the railways were completed, the federal government moved to restrict chinese immigration (ibid.). lester (2002) argues that canadians felt threatened by "asiatic people in general, allowing only that they had their uses as cheap labour" (p. 204). to this day, much of the same discourses are maintained at governmental levels. in 2008, robert ford, at the time a councilor for an etobicoke ward, said "[t]hose oriental people work like dogs. they work their hearts out. they are workers non-stop. they sleep beside their machines. that's why they are successful in life. [...]. i'm telling you, the oriental people, they are slowly taking over" (ford, 2008). expressions of foreign workers as individuals with an inherently higher level of resilience, that can work under conditions not acceptable for canadians, has served to create the binary discourse of who is deserving of human rights and who is not within the canadian work force. hence, the discourses that led to the creation of a new category of "non-canadians" have been propagated at different levels of government. in a parliamentary debate on migrant workers applying for jobs that students and unemployed canadians could enjoy, mp h.w. danforth claimed: we need this labour…and these people are used to working in the heat. they are used to working in agriculture, and they are satisfied with the pay scale… canadians do not want to work this job-many of them do not, and have expressed this feeling in no uncertain terms-then i say that the producers of this nation are entitled to offshore competent labour from caribbean quilt | 2013 37 wherever it may come... if these people are willing to work under the conditions prevailing in canada today and produce crops for canadian consumers (as quoted by sharma, 2001). this passage reflects the fact that addressing the abusive conditions of the farming industry is not a priority; the solution is to find "other" people that would accept these conditions. sharma (2001) argues that "parliamentary practices [...] reproduce the ideologies of racism and nationalism that help to hold in place commonsensical notions about the 'natural' superiority/inferiority of differentiated groups of people (p. 432). resembling the importation of migrant workers to deal with the labour shortage for the construction of the cpr, the seasonal farmers program is a "temporary" worker program that attempts to respond to the lack of readily available manual labor in the canadian agricultural sector. sharma (2001) argues that "much of this 'shortage' is qualitative" (p. 433) not quantitative since foreign workers are recruited for jobs canadian citizens turn down because they are able to find employment that renders better pay, better living conditions and does not confine them to a specific employer for a set amount of time (sharma, 2001). in her book tomatoes and tortillas, basok argues that temporary workers are a "structural necessity" to the development and maintenance of the food production industry (2002, p. 12). additionally, the author argues that the existence of the agricultural industry as we know it relies on "unfree workers", who are physically tied to their work at all times and who are unable to decline the demands of employers (basok, 2002). in the documentary entitled "el contrato" (2003) ("the contract") min sook lee, follows a mexican worker through his journey to canada, showing the abusive reality that workers endure while employed in ontario farms. the film shows how farm owners housed ten men in a very small apartment, leaving the workers to share one bathroom and providing them with only the bare living essentials (lee, 2003). from the point of view of canadian employers however, caribbean workers are better off in canada than in their home country, transforming the abusive living conditions experienced in canada as "better standards of living" (anonymous, national film board, 2003); thus, acceptable to foreign workers. cecilia saez the seasonal moral contract 38 underlying the difference in perception for canadian workers versus non-canadian "temporary" workers, are the laws governing the immigrant seasonal program which differ greatly from those applied to protect "canadian" workers. for example, under the sawp program in ontario, farmers have to provide workers with "acceptable" housing accommodation. however, the laws that guide the standards are bleak and very little control is exercised over the farm owners (brem, 2006). scholars have criticized the municipal timing of housing assessments as they happen before the workers arrive, leading to the invisibility of the conditions under which migrants actually live in (basok, 2002; brem, 2006). it is the legalization of "unfreedom" that serves as the back bone of the seasonal program contract (basok, 2002),a condition deemed illegal if applied to "canadian" workers. guided by economic principles of "cheap labour", the maintenance of the "non-canadian" discourses have been necessary to craft laws that allow for the differential treatment. the research conducted for this study has not reflected a sense of moral conflict from ontario farm owners based on migrant working conditions. on the contrary, employers understand the work opportunity they provide as "aid from the rich to the poorer states for rescuing the [...] desperately poor" (bagchi, 2008, p. 1). after exploring the conditions forced onto foreign workers, one must question why caribbean workers keep coming back year after year if they endure such abusive working conditions in canada. the answer to this question is reflected on the selection criteria of the sawp, as well as the conditions that keep the workers from defending their rights. according to brem (2006), the opportunity to earn canadian wages provides caribbean workers with a viable approach to deal with the rising unemployment and underemployment from their developing country (brem, 2006, p. 6). the poverty experienced makes foreign workers ideal candidates to participate in the sawp, making them the most vulnerable population within the canadian labour market and the least resistant to abusive situations (sharma, 2001). if a worker is "good", then under the 'naming' practice, an employer can 'request' a specific worker to return the following harvesting season "so long as they remain satisfactory to employers" (brem, 2006, p. 4). however, due to the institutionalization of caribbean quilt | 2013 39 abusive practices, the workers are, for the most part, unable to voice their concerns (basok, 2002). for seasonal workers of the program, the implication of complaining or refusing to do what is asked implies being sent back or being "blacklisted" from the program (basok, 2002; brem, 2006). faraday (2012), argues that this systematic deportation does not allow workers to fight their cases in court, which places employers above the judicial canadian system. the fear of deportation prevents workers from making official complaints while in canada (brem, 2006). in order to make "canadian" wages, seasonal workers are forced to leave their families behind for extensive periods of time. basok (2000) argues that caribbean workers’ "traditional morality" illuminates how the cultural repertoires of gender can emphasize the importance of males working to provide for their families despite abusive conditions. while working in canada for most of the year, workers are bound by intense and inescapable proximity since workers live together and work together; the factory like settings of most greenhouses leave the workers with little to no alone time (basok, 2001). the constant surveillance of supervisors and other workers, increases the feelings of being observed and leads to conformity to the rules. there is no "canadian" moral obligation towards foreign workers because nations do not act as moral entities. however, the canadian state works at shaping people's consciousness around the boundaries of who is deserving of the laws enacted to protect workers. the organization of the category of immigrant workers normalizes the denial of rights and employment entitlements for people under the "temporal", "non-canadian" category. the development of a binary discourse that clearly distinguishes between the rights of canadians and non-canadians delineates the development of a twofold code of morality. it is this, the institutionalization of a new category of "noncanadians" (sharma, 2001) that legitimizes sawp abusive regulations. according to fiske (1992) "different types of relationships and social institutions are guided by different principles of care and justice, different sets of rights and duties, and different criteria for moral evaluation which are reflected in different kinds of moral judgments" (krebs and denton, 2005, p. 634). the view of caribbean workers as "others" and the financial drive to make profits legitimizes the systematic abuse of workers. in this cecilia saez the seasonal moral contract 40 period of globalization and neo-liberalism, the laws that guide the importation of "cheap labour" allows canada to offer a competitive market for national and international business that have seen the agricultural industry soar at the hands of caribbean workers. in this seasonal contract, hard work is expected from caribbean workers for the opportunity to enjoy what is perceived as a "better" opportunity than that of their homeland employment. the lack of financial resources in their home country forces seasonal workers to abide by the rules and to return to canada year after year. seasonal employment allows workers to go back to home with some hard-earned money in their pockets and they do not return because they agree with the working conditions, they return because they have no choice. caribbean quilt | 2013 41 work cited basok, t. (2002). tortillas and tomatoes: transmigrant mexican harvesters in canada. montreal: mcgill-queen's university press. brem, m. (2006) migrant workers in canada: a review of the canadian seasonal agricultural workers program. retrieved november 26th, 2012 from www.nsi-ins.ca bagchi, a. k (2008) immigrants, morality and neoliberalism. institute of social studies. oxford: blackwell publishing ltd. faraday, f. (2012). made in canada: how the law constructs migrant workers’ insecurity. george cedric metcalf charitable foundation. website accessed on november 16th, 2012. granatstein, j.; hilmer, l.; mcleans n. (1999) struggling for justice: how canada tried to bar the "yellow peril". toronto helwig, c. & jasiobedzka u. (2001). the relation between law and morality: children's reasoning about socially beneficial and unjust laws. child development.72(5),1382-1393. doi: 10.1111/14678624.00354 keung, n. (2012, september 17). abuse of migrant workers ‘endemic’ in canada, new study says. the toronto star. retrieved from http://www.torontostar.com krebs, l. & denton, k. (2005). towards a more pragmatic approach to morality: a critical evaluation of kohlberg's model. british columbia: simon frazer university lee, m. s. (director). (2003). el contrato [documentary]. canada: ontario. lu, v. (2008, march 06). ford rebuked for asian comments. the toronto star. retrieved from http://www.torontostar.com makenzie king, w. (1935). the diaries of william lyon mackenzie. national archives of canada. accessed november 10th, 2012. cecilia saez the seasonal moral contract 42 merrill, l. and miró, r. (1996). mexico: a country study. washington: gpo for the library of congress. retrieved november 10th, 2012 from http://countrystudies.us/mexico/ sharma, n. (2001) the social organization of migrant workers in canada. pietropaolo, v. (2009). harvest pilgrims : mexican and caribbean migrant farm workers in canada. toronto: between the lines. vessels, g., & huitt, w. (2005). moral and character development. presented at the national youth at risk conference, savannah, ga, march 8-10. retrieved november 19th, 2012, from http://www.edpsycinteractive.org/ ..... 82 “on affirmative action” tammy ronique williams born in moscow russia and raised in kingston jamaica, tammy ronique williams is a third year student at the university of toronto. she is pursuing an honours bachelor's degree in english and caribbean studies, with a minor in russian. she hopes to someday become a published author. so… you want to take my picture? put it on your website? class yourself among they that honour diversity? you want to exotize my tongue, tug at my hair, then boast images of my black skin in your track bottoms and throw back tees as if i am any more than a minority? i’ll pass cuz i’d much rather not sit in to fill in the blended shades of your acceptance packages. i don’t want to be your one in few little island girl, your affirmative action friend. i can’t promise to take you on wicked cool adventures through my ‘local’ mind portraying a jamaica more exotic than i know! tammy ronique williams | on affirmative action 83 i am not your june plum, don’t pick at me for grasping my mother-tongue it’s b-a-s-i-c-a-l-l-y, not basically and when the time comes i speak patois not broken english. you think you know me ‘cause you can hum the tune of i shot the sheriff? or ‘cause at her hotel gift shop, your friend bought you a t-shirt made in china, jamaica, no problem? i don’t live in a tree, or in a hammock on the beach, neither do i know any monkeys. can’t wrap your brain so you want to wrap your fingers around the tight curls of my mane, since i’m jamaican and marley’s hairstyle and mine aren’t the same? my friend said i’d get a job if i took black, gold and green off my resume, i asked her what the hell else i was suppose to say. centuries of hot whips, blood, tears, sweat, milk, sugar, gold, cotton, silk and suddenly i don’t possess the skills? canadian on appropriation, you point your fingers, turn your nose and clutch your chanel, only you seem not to realize, you’re an immigrant yourself. ..... 191 tourism as a neo-colonial phenomenon: examining the works of pattullo & mullings tammy ronique williams the caribbean is a region deeply rooted in mass exploitation; it is commonly associated with single-crop agricultural production for north american and european markets (sugar, bananas, nutmeg etc). despite its geographic and demographic diversity, polly pattullo suggests that its historical background (moulded by slavery, colonialism and the plantation) is reflected in its people: the indigenous (and now almost extinct) amerindian, european colonizer, settler and adventurer, african slave, indentured east indian, labouring chinese and portuguese, as well as the small-town merchant arab and jew (pattullo, 5). in the midto-late 20th century, as territories particularly in the english speaking caribbean became politically independent, there arose new industries and service sectors, one of the most important being tourism. while it may have then seemed a solution to the economic woes of many states, this essay will argue that this sector, in its very nature, has perpetuated the legacy of colonialism, so much so that it may be conceptualized as a „neo-colonial phenomenon.‟ according to gmelch, neo-colonialism takes power from the local and regional levels and concentrates it in the hands of foreignowned companies. this relates to the topic under study in that the „economic freedom‟ which was expected to have taken shape after independence did not in fact materialize. in other words, economic power did not simply fall into the hands of the majority of caribbean people. instead, what many scholars call “a new form of colonialism” took shape; this is regionally exemplified in industries such as tourism. small scale tourism existed in the region up until the 1960s, though it was particularly geared towards “famous and rich americans and europeans” (mullings, 99). bryden states that “it was in the 1900s that a steady stream of travel journals, tourist guides and handbooks for the caribbean began to emerge.” this is referred to in aspinall‟s pocket guide, published in 1907, from which he quotes: caribbean quilt | 2012 192 every year our beautiful and historic possession in the west indies attracts an interesting number of visitors from england, who find in them a refuge from the rigour and fogs of winter. to our american cousins, these colonies have long been profitable hunting grounds for health and enjoyment. (bryden, 99) while the notion that tourism in the caribbean emerged recently is false, bryden claims that “it is certainly in the postwar period that it reached any significant size as an industry in most of the commonwealth caribbean” (bryden, 99). the mid-twentieth century however saw the rise of modern, conventional tourism. this form of tourism can, to a large extent, be characterized by undifferentiated products, origin-packed holidays, spatiallyconcentrated planning of facilities, resorts and activities and the reliance upon developed markets such as the united states, canada and britain. (duval, 10) during the 1950s and 1960s, many transformations facilitated the development of mass tourism in the caribbean. one was the introduction of the jet aircraft which made travel from wealthy markets such as north america and europe much easier. it was also during this period that many british colonies began to move towards political independence, encouraging the need to take control of economic development (duval, 10). a focus on tourism meant that some islands could break away from existing colonial dependency arrangements through other sectors; tourism during this period then was a means of diversifying and modernizing the economies of the caribbean. the 1960s were described as „the booming years‟ for tourism in the region. in fact, islands such as st. vincent, grenada, st. lucia, monsterrat, antigua, the bahamas as well as the turks and caicos, cayman islands and virgin islands had growth rates ranging from 10 to 24%. while tourism flourished in these islands, the management of the industry was largely in the hands of expatriates, especially large hotel proprietors. while small scale, locally owned businesses existed since the industry‟s very inception, they were outnumbered by foreign owned businesses. overall, the success of tourism could be seen in the stronger and larger economies of jamaica, barbados and trinidad and tobago (duval, 11). in the 1970s, tourism began to direct „a measure of respectability‟ and caribbean government involvement began to grow. holder states that “in terms of the overall economic tammy ronique williams | tourism as a neo-colonial phenomenon 193 contribution that tourism activities made in the caribbean, approximately us$1.7 billion was generated from foreign exchange as early as 1978” (duval, 12). tourism would continue to become a mainstay in most caribbean islands over the next twenty years. in 2000, “despite the recognition of the volatility of tourism, especially in fragile third world economies and cultures, the region had become even more dependent on tourism” (pattullo, 8). pattullo explains that “by the turn of the 21th century, all caribbean territories were in the tourism business, (and) politicians had proclaimed it „the engine of growth‟”. it became associated with power and prosperity and was referred to as “the tool which would carry caribbean peoples into „development‟ and „modernism‟ and out of the periphery of the world“(pattullo, 6). though the tourism industry has had positive effects on the caribbean, the region has retained patterns reminiscent of its colonial past. this is demonstrated in the way in which (like other regions of the third world) a dependency on foreign investment, foreign aid and the export of raw agricultural products maintained the shape and character of these societies. bell, who duval quotes in an effort to analyze this pattern, states that “the political structure of the region and the introduction of „sensitive political psyches‟…often conjured up suspicions of neo-colonialism as some economic ties to former colonial nations were not „cut off‟ completely.” this he said was “especially felt through tourism, the hedonistic face of neocolonialism” since most tourists were from affluent western countries (duval, 11). in other words, many caribbean states, while no longer legally bound to mother countries, were unable to develop independently due to persisting economic disparities and linkages, even in sectors such as tourism. melanie k. smith in her book issues in cultural tourism attempts to wrestle with the question of whether or not tourism is a new form of imperialism. she argues that tourism is “dominated by western developed nations, rendering host nations dependent and subservient to its needs” (smith, 62). therefore, tourism reinforces an unequal balance of power between the west and host nations, so that many locals, especially in poorer areas will never have the opportunity to leave their homelands and instead, are often condemned to lives of servitude in the tourism sector (smith 62). it was recognized during the booming years of tourism that caribbean governments could not afford to fund the sector, thus, “helping to make it all happen were the „men in suits‟ – ranks of consultants, caribbean quilt | 2012 194 diplomats, international tourist industry officials, lending agencies and development banks” (pattullo, 6). the governments relied heavily on international bodies such as the world bank which financed the building of large hotels in the 1970s. the united nations also supported the emerging sector, and an organization for economic cooperation and development (oecd) publication reported in 1967 that tourism was a „promising new resource for economic development.‟ following this, between 1986 and 1990 the third lomé convention, which pattullo argues “enshrined europe‟s „special‟ relationship with states in africa, the caribbean and the pacific”, also recognized the „real importance of the tourism industry‟ and gave a broad range of financial backing (pattullo, 6). this „special relationship‟ itself proved another way in which the region‟s ties to former colonial rulers still continued economically and were not completely severed as duval suggests. the idea that tourism “made economic sense for both tiny under-productive islands as well as for larger, more diversified debtladen economies such as jamaica or the dominican republic” was supported by institutions such as the international monetary fund (imf) and the world bank. these institutions supported caribbean tourism: the imf through its structural adjustment programs (saps) and the world bank through financing studies and providing loans for environmental and technical assistance projects (pattullo, 6). the reliance of caribbean governments on trust agencies incurred a substantial debt, putting the region at the mercy of lenders. thus many islands were forced to make great changes in their social and economic structures to suit their first world counterparts. mullings in her article caribbean tourism: trouble in paradise? suggests that since “the islands could not finance tourism projects without diverting resources away from the other sectors that were also being developed,” caribbean governments would have to depend on foreign investment to build hotels and infrastructure. it was also established that in creating a tourist market, certain provisions would have to be put in place, such as linkages with foreign airlines and tour operators (mullings, 100). during the 1960s and 1970s, many islands, in an effort to appeal to foreign investors, offered hotel incentives that reduced import duties as well as income taxes. incentives like these often included provisions for the duty free importation of equipment and raw materials, income tax relief as well as hotel profits and dividends. while islands were successful in this regard, tourism nevertheless seemed to be a more profitable tammy ronique williams | tourism as a neo-colonial phenomenon 195 prospect for foreign investors rather than for the islands which subsidized their ventures (mullings, 100). mullings makes reference to the fact that foreign ownership levels were lower on larger islands, yet higher on smaller ones. by mid-1980s, the industry was largely dominated by multi-national corporations such as the sheraton, the hilton, and other large hotel companies. by the 1970s it became clear that only a small number of these hotel chains would create the kind of linkages which would generate local development. while these hotels contributed somewhat to the provision of local employment, much of it was in “labour intensive, relatively low paid jobs such as housekeeping and food preparation.” the earnings host governments received from these forms of employment was miniscule when compared to potential earnings lost with the repatriation of the wages by expatriate managerial staffs and high import bills acquired by hotels under „centralized purchasing systems.‟ (mullings, 100) in his book ecotourism, david a. fennell (73) quotes a passage by hills and lundren which serves as a stark example of metropolitan dominance over developing countries in the caribbean: on arrival in a caribbean island between plane and hotel, the tourists could well have passed through a terminal building presented by the people of canada and have been driven along a road either built or improved “thanks” to canadian aid, on behalf of the canadian tourists of course. at the hotel you will likely be greeted with rum punches, the first of the few local products to be encompassed by the package. at your first meal, a menu perhaps designed in toronto, chicago or miami will provide you with a selection of food imported for the greater part from north america-good familiar, homogenized, taste-free food, dressed up with a touch of local colour. this quote, in its somewhat sarcastic tone, speaks to the idea of the caribbean as grounds for a warmer, perhaps „not so north-american, north american vacation.‟ in other words, elements of local culture are lost as a result of heavy foreign influences in the tourism sector, so much so, that tourist vacations become nothing but a little, more „colourful‟, version of home. the all-inclusive hotel, described as the solution to tourists‟ fears of crime and harassment, also seems to stifle local development. mullings in her article suggests that “because all expenses are precaribbean quilt | 2012 196 paid, few tourists in these packed holidays ever venture outside of the hotel complexes to directly purchase goods and services from locals in the surrounding communities.” in fact, tourists are reminded that tips are unnecessary “therefore closing-off even this opportunity for money to leak into the local community” (108). this „cash free vacation‟ then has resulted in a growing concentration of foreign earnings in the hands of a few (usually foreign) hoteliers as well as the decline in opportunities for local service providers (indirectly involved in tourism) to export their services. this has, in essence, disadvantaged local taxi drivers, craftsmen, vendors and even farmers for whom tourism was once a means of securing their livelihood (mullings, 108). now, the hotel provides many of these goods and services as a part of a pre-packaged deal. moreover, pattullo states that the primary institutions of the tourism industry such as airlines, tour operators, travel agents and hoteliers are largely owned, controlled and managed outside of the region: “sometimes, through vertical integration, they are corporately linked, controlling every ounce of the tourist‟s holiday.” (21) this very arrangement relates directly to the economic past of the caribbean, in which western „parent‟ countries externally controlled their affairs. in his book behind the smile: the working lives of caribbean tourism, george gmelch suggests that tourism “reawakens memories of the colonial past and so perpetuates resentments and antagonisms.” in the 1970s, many intellectuals criticized foreign influence in the caribbean as “demeaning and a recolonization by other means” (35). authors such as polly pattullo believe that from its very beginnings, there were echoes of the system of slavery in the dynamics of the tourist industry which was met by the “the languid behaviour of black hotel employees [evoking] the passive resistance practiced in slavery.” (64) pattullo proposes that many of the tourism industry‟s issues are rooted in slavery and colonialism through “this folk memory lingering in the shadow of every encounter: that black people have served white people for hundreds of years and that before they did it for wages, they did it under servitude.” an example she gives speaks directly to the case of jamaica where the best jobs in jamaican hotels had been reserved for white americans, leaving blacks with only menial jobs. she states unabashedly: “the predominantly white american tourists brought their own racist attitudes and behaviour on holiday with them, and jamaicans often found themselves unwelcome on the beach or in hotels, treated as dehumanized tammy ronique williams | tourism as a neo-colonial phenomenon 197 curiosities and exotic objects in the tourist literature.” in other words, tourism began to marginalize caribbean peoples in their own homelands. (pattullo, 64) in countries such as barbados where a majority of the locals are black and most tourists are white, gmelch identifies that dynamics of race influence many interactions between them, in that, “racism or expectations of it based on the country‟s colonial history sometimes complicates interactions.” a case he uses as an example refers to black workers in managerial positions in the industry. he describes a scenario in which: an unhappy guest went to the front desk to lodge a complaint. the hotel manager, a black man, just happened to be at the desk when the visitor approached, loudly demanding to see the manager. the manager said “yes, that‟s me.” the visitor refused to believe that a black man could be the manager of a luxury hotel and when he repeated that he was the manager, the visitor left in a huff. (gmelch, 27) he also refers to a case where an american tourist walked directly up to two hotel barmen and asked “how do you guys feel about waiting on white people? does it bother you? (ibid.) an antiguan staff member at a restaurant, in a letter to a local newspaper, wrote about poor working conditions, asking “how are we to work right through the day from 7am until 3:30pm with only one meal on an empty stomach; are we slaves?” (pattullo, 64) it must be noted that connections with slavery, similar to the above notions, are still made in the workplace today, particularly as it relates to matters of servitude. in the 1990s, professor of history at the university of the west indies at cave hill, hilary beckles, analyzed the relationship between the white business elite, the state, and the citizenry at large. he claimed that tourism was the “new plantocracy”, and added, “the new financial tourism base means that the state has become the overseer”. he goes on to say that “[t]he feeling is that black people are more marginalized now, that there is a return to colonialism. because whites own all the land, commerce, and all have major duty free outlets and now the sea ports the same group is in control. in tourism, blacks have no status in decision making”. (patullo, 65) caribbean quilt | 2012 198 prominent jamaican writer, olive senior, draws a close comparison between colonialism and tourism in her poem, “meditation on yellow.” in doing this, senior divides the poem into two parts; the first addressing colonialism in relation to the groups of peoples brought to the region for plantation work and in the second, conveying the perpetual exploitation of locals in the face of neocolonial tourism. the very rhythm of the poem captures the labour intensive nature of local work while maintaining the repetition of servitude to a „new group of people‟ in a very familiar way: at some hotel overlooking the sea you can take tea at three in the afternoon served by me skin burnt black as toast (for which management apologizes) but i‟ve been travelling long cross the sea in the sun-hot i‟ve been slaving in the cane rows for your sugar i‟ve been ripening coffee beans for your morning break i‟ve been dallying on the docks loading your bananas i‟ve been toiling in orange groves for your marmalade i‟ve been peeling ginger for your relish i‟ve been chopping cocoa pods for your chocolate bars i‟ve been mining aluminum for your foil. (14) with the use of the pronoun „i‟, senior speaks collectively of the freedom that was expected with the caribbean‟s independence from formal colonialism. instead of its realization however, there has been a replacement of a new form of colonization, in part through the tourist industry. she continues: tammy ronique williams | tourism as a neo-colonial phenomenon 199 and just when i thought i could rest pour my own – something soothing like fever-grass and lemon – cut my ten in the kitchen take five a new set of people arrive to lie bare-assed in the sun wanting gold on their bodies cane-rows in their hair with beads – even bells (14-15). while tourism has become one of the most significant contributors to the gross domestic product of most caribbean countries, it must be deduced that this industry has retained its roots in the colonial past. this is directly attributable to the nature of the region‟s relationship with metropolitan states, which remains glaringly unequal. caribbean quilt | 2012 200 works cited bryden, john m. tourism and development: a case study of the commonwealth caribbean. cambridge university press, 1973. duval, david timothy. tourism in the caribbean: trends, development, prospects. new york: routledge, 2004. fennell, david a. ecotourism. new york: routledge, 2008. gmelch , george. behind the smile: the working lives of caribbean tourism. indiana: indiana university press, 2003. jamal, tazim and robinson, mike. the sage handbook of tourism studies. sage publications, 2009. mullings, beverly. “caribbean tourism: trouble in paradise?” in tracey skelton (ed.) introduction to the pan-caribbean. london: hodder arnold, 1964. pattullo, polly. last resorts: the cost of tourism in the caribbean, jamaica: ian randle publishers, 1996. senior, olive. “meditation on yellow” in gardening in the tropics. toronto: mcclelland and stewart, 1994. smith, melanie k. issues in cultural tourism studies. new york: routledge, 2009. 77 baseball as an intersection of popular culture and north american exploitation in the dominican republic tiffany gurprasad *** baseball in the dominican republic has come to signify not only an expressive form of dominican patriotism, but an outlet for economic relief. although the sport is intertwined with a history of american occupation and dominance, baseball in the dominican republic contrasts that of the american game. as with many other caribbean countries such as cuba and puerto rico, dominican baseball was developed in the sugar refineries and sustained by cuban, west indian and haitian labourers1. dominican talent has and continues to be channeled out of the country and into north american teams through recruitment academies, providing young athletes the narrow possibility of an escape from poverty. “outside of the united states, the dominican republic produces more professional and major league players than any other country.”2 it is this disproportion between all-star success and dominican unemployment that creates an intensity which fosters young men to depend on baseball. the constant recruitment and extraction of dominican players into north american leagues can be compared to the historical and contemporary consumption of the caribbean as a whole, a site of temporality where goods and bodies exist only for consumption.3 1 alan klein, sugarball: the american game, the dominican dream (new haven: yale university press, 1991), p16. 2 alan klein, 2. 3 mimi sheller, consuming the caribbean (london: routledge, 2003), p26. american dominance not only penetrates and stifles baseball within the dominican, but also exploits dominican athletes that enter the mlb (major league baseball). baseball is a caribbean quilt | 2011 78 vital expression of dominican nationalism, inseparable from the country’s history and politics, but it is also inextricably intertwined with north american exploitation. this tension between culture and politics is a fundamental element of dominican baseball. baseball was introduced to cuba in the late nineteenth century, after the country shifted its economic dependence from spain to the united states.4 a combination of cubans and americans were responsible for the development and integration of baseball in the dominican republic. cuban exiles from the ten-year war brought baseball to hispaniola, and the sport was further popularized by americans who invented the game and were increasingly present as symbols of power in the nation.5 the influence of us hegemony both politically and culturally is seen in the way soccer, a spanish import to the dominican republic, was overshadowed by baseball.6 although the first official teams and players were from wealthy families, “baseball culture” in the dominican was fuelled by its presence in the sugar cane fields. “the dominican was the preferred destination of men and women from the british west indies and from puerto rico prior to the turn of the century, and after 1910, of haitians and less so of residents of the former english colonies.”7 these immigrants replaced dominican labourers on sugar refineries when dominican peasants refused to work for the wages offered.8 the game of baseball was played in such refineries, diverting labourers during slow harvests and fostering a strong sense of community and identity; it also created its own cultural legacy. as the popularity of baseball increased, refinery managers offered cash payments to cane-cutters to field good teams, which began competing on a high level.9 4 rob, ruck, the tropic of baseball: baseball in the dominican republic (london: meckler, 1991), 2. 5klein, 16. 6ruck, 6. 7teresita martinez-vergne, nation & citizen in the dominican republic, 18801916 (chapel hill: university of north carolina press, 2009), 86. 8 martinez-vergne, 86. 9klein, 151. intense rivalry and competition also surged throughout the cities, with the two most popular professional teams, leones del escogido and tigres del licey. tiffany gurprasad – baseball as an intersection of popular culture and north american exploitation in the dominican republic 79 licey blue and escogido red acted as the two most authentic representations of baseball and rivalry in the sport, encompassing the essence of dominican baseball. “more than twenty thousand paid to attend the championship games in 1921 at a time when santo domingo’s population was only a bit over thirty thousand.”10licey and escogido are so deeply rooted in dominican nationality they have come to represent the two dominant cultures of masculinity in the nation. according to antonio de moya, there is a dominant “rebellious” street culture of “tigueres” that is contrasted to the dominant “courageous” household culture of the “leones.”11 while professional baseball in the dominican experienced a rollercoaster of success and decline from 1921 through 1950, amateur baseball never ceased to fade, signifying that dominican passion in baseball is not “mediated by money or international acclaim.” baseball has historically brought together the population as a game that transgressed race and class, linking together athletes, families, fans and villages. 12 politics were firmly entrenched in dominican baseball in 1936, with trujillo “combining licey and escogido and sponsoring the best ballplayers of the north american black leagues to create an invincible machine of a team.”13 10ruck, 12. 11 antonio de moya, “power games and totalitarian masculinity in the dominican republic,” in interrogating caribbean masculinities ed. rhoda reddock (kingston: university of west indies press, 2004), p80. 12klein, 23. 13ruck, 37. the merger of the two teams into the single ciudad trujillo, the costs of bringing top players from foreign countries, along with trujillo’s underlying political stake in the game caused interest in professional baseball to wane. after baseball’s decline in 1950, the era of “beisbolromantico” made its mark on the dominican republic. the term “beisbolromantico” was established to describe the specific quality of dominican baseball, from the immediacy of the game to the fervent, emotional connection of fans and players. the ‘romantico’ quality was able to develop because dominican baseball was at first overlooked by americans. players and teams from the sugar refineries, specifically san pedro de macoris, largely fed the popular professional teams. caribbean quilt | 2011 80 amateur baseball plays a significant role in dominican history; san pedro de macoris has gained local and international recognition for its teams and players. “beisbolromantico” is genuinely expressed through amateur play in the sugar refineries where “life remained a struggle, and the harder it was the brighter looked the path lit by baseball.”14 from the mid-fifties onwards, major league baseball became a magnet for dominican players, which not only affected the prosperity of dominican athletes and their families, but dominican baseball as a whole. the extraction of the top players from the amateur leagues to professional leagues, and then from professional leagues to the mlb, immensely affected the competitiveness of the dominican game. “1947 onwards marked racial integration in american baseball with players such as jackie robinson and larry doby opening up the field of organized baseball for latin american players.” however, after 1955, when north america began taking a special interest in dominican players, dominican baseball became increasingly dependent upon the mlb and therefore the (north) american game. 15 the development of professional leagues in the dominican republic created an intense relationship between dominican and american baseball. according to alan klein, “the number of dominicans playing professional baseball in north america began as a trickle in the late 1950s, and then grew to 49 between 1955 and 1980 and to hundreds in the 1980s.”16 with the dominican winter league changing seasons to correlate perfectly with north america’s summer league, the mlb found opportunities to harness the raw talent they witnessed in the dominican game. “overall, a third of the two-hundred ball players in the toronto organization come from the dominican republic or elsewhere in the caribbean.”17 14klein, 32. 15 adrian burgos jr, playing america’s game: baseball, latinos, and the color line (berkeley: university of california press, 2007), p180. 16klein, 35. 17ruck, 62. latin america and the caribbean’s contribution to north american baseball was seemingly inexhaustible, and “by the end of the 1960’s, no fan of the game could have doubted the impact that the caribbean basin tiffany gurprasad – baseball as an intersection of popular culture and north american exploitation in the dominican republic 81 was making on major league ball.”18 in turn, dominican athletes saw major league baseball as the “personification of the american dream of opportunity, upward social mobility, and success.”19 unfortunately, the motivations behind scouting latin american ball players were the cheap wages they would be paid in comparison to their american counterparts. “with increasing disparity, in 1975 majorleague organizations gave us-born players selected in the amateur draft an average signing bonus of $65,000 while signing bonuses for foreignborn latin americans averaged $5,000.” 20 many latin american ball players enter north american baseball in positions of vulnerability, and with few economic opportunities available back home, many have no option but to settle for low wages. major-leagues in north america are more than willing to take advantage of this situation, offering foreignborn players inferior wages in comparison to americans. the dominican-american baseball superstar alex rodriguez was selected from an amateur draft and signed with a bonus of $1.3 million us. he recognizes the benefits of us citizenship and the sharp financial disparity, quoted as saying “ i’m really grateful i was born and raised in the united states...i’m sure i would have been a top prospect in the dominican, but maybe i would have gotten $5, 000, i would have been on a much tougher road.”21 baseball academies were set up in the dominican republic as institutions that produce and maintain players for north american major leagues, “the first academy was built just north of santo domingo by the toronto blue jays in 1977.” 22 18ruck, 101. 19 samuel regalado, viva baseball! latin major leaguers and their special hunger (urbana: university of illinois press, 1998), p2. 20burgos jr, 232. 21burgos jr, 233. 22klein, 42. the baseball academy acts to lure in boys and young men with the prospect of the “american dream” and a chance at signing with an mlb team. before the dominican government intervened in the practices of these academies in 1984, boys as young as thirteen were being recruited, separated from caribbean quilt | 2011 82 their families, underpaid, and denied education.23 the academies commoditize young athletes and take advantage of dominican talent while undermining baseball in the nation they are based in. mimi sheller writes, “the caribbean has been repeatedly imagined and narrated as a tropical paradise in which the land, plants, resources, bodies, and cultures of its inhabitants are open to be invaded, occupied, bought, moved, used, viewed, and consumed in various ways.”24 from this perspective, the mlb indulges in the caribbean’s colonial past, extracting talent from the dominican without regard for the country itself. for north american major leagues, the dominican is a site imagined outside of their modernity where players can be funneled solely for the success of their various teams. klein compares baseball academies in the dominican to colonial outposts: “it finds the raw materials (talented athletes), refines them (trains the athletes), and ships abroad the finished product (baseball players).”25 hence, perceptions of the american dream often came with harsh realities for the majority of players that migrated north to play baseball. the pressure from back home to succeed, the hardships of displacement and settlement along with sudden american acculturation were all consequences of baseball migration. issues of orientation to a new culture and the perceived grandeur of american capitalism were often overwhelming for latin american players. 26 the processes of migration for dominican players to the mlb still to this day place them in vulnerable positions, where language barriers, racial discrimination, isolation from a traditional community-orientated space and pressure to perform all amalgamate to work against the athlete. “latin players rarely landed in a town that held vestiges of spanish-speaking culture, and this disadvantage set them apart from other new-comers to the united states.”27 23 klein 43. 24sheller, 13. 25klein, 42. 26relagado, 61. 27samuel relagado, “sammy sosa meets horatio alger: latin ballplayers and the american success myth,” in baseball and the american dream, ed robert elias (london: m.e. sharpe, 2001), p74. this is summed up in the 2008 film, sugar, where tiffany gurprasad – baseball as an intersection of popular culture and north american exploitation in the dominican republic 83 miguel santos is recruited after his second year of high-school to the minor leagues in america. sugar intensely captures the narrow, burdensome path baseball creates into the western world for dominican players, the struggle of adjusting to american culture and the everlooming machine of the mlb that commodifies latin american and caribbean players.28 accustomed to racially inclusive leagues in the caribbean and latin america, players who migrated to american baseball were largely unprepared for the level of discrimination and racism entrenched in american society. latin american players of roberto clemente’s era (mid 1950’s) “often perceived american racism as a minor inconvenience in their quest for glory, and were constantly warned by older, experienced players of the pitfalls ahead.” since leagues in the dominican and other latin american countries were racially inclusive, entering a culture where ‘integration’ was a new idea would also firmly shape the experience of latin american players. 29 players were racially contrasted to their american counterparts, having any mistake or shortcoming blamed on ethnicity. latin american ball players, whether afro-caribbean or hispanic-caribbean, were stereotyped as being hottempered and lacking mental alertness.30 the polarization between americans and latin americans still exists and constantly reminds latin american players of their presence in “america’s game.” clemente was quoted as saying, “there’s a collective mentality in the united states that hispanics aren’t worth much;”31 this is taken up further in the film sugar, where fans angrily call dominican-born miguel “sugar” santos a “fucking puerto-rican.”32 28sugar. dvd. directed by anna boden. 2008; usa.journeyman pictures, 2008. 29relagado, 70. 30ruck, 83. 31relagado, 204. 32sugar, 2008. the racism born out of refusing to recognize cultural difference further isolates players who enter the mlb, alienating them from a sense of belonging in the society. “the racial components compounded latin american ballplayer’s struggle to adapt to other facets of american culture and the inability to communicate in english magnified their already isolated caribbean quilt | 2011 84 circumstances.”33 this alienation is also laced within the constant pressure of being replaced by other desperate, foreign-born players or falling short of american expectations34 the association between baseball and the american dream needs to be re-thought when considering the role of dominican (or any caribbean/latin american) players. while the notion of the american dream sets up america as “the land of opportunity where sufficient dedication and hard work guarantees individual mobility and success” . migration through baseball for dominican and latin american born players is loaded with social inequalities that actively position ball players to be exploited by the mlb. 35, the dream needs to be seen in light of the persisting entanglement of racial, social and economic inequalities. young men in the dominican republic are heavily influenced by the appeal of massive financial gain that american baseball offers, which is starkly contrasted to the reality of impoverishment and unemployment in the nation. “many dominican boys see baseball as their only escape, and the inordinate pull of the sport over them is strengthened by the astounding success that the best dominican players have achieved in north american professional baseball.”36 33relagado, 75. 34sugar, 2008. 35 robert elias, “a fit for a fractured society,” in baseball and the american dream, ed. robert elias(london: m.e. sharpe, 2001), p6. 36klein, 58. the systematic dependence on american baseball for autonomy fosters the importance of baseball in the dominican republic, not only as a marker of national pride, but as an economic outlet for young men and their families. once athletes migrate, the immense pressure of baseball as an alley out of poverty along with cultural alienation often leads to young dominican athletes abandoning their “american dream” of baseball stardom. the lack of education that is systematically perpetuated through early recruitment in baseball academies gives ballplayers little economic opportunity if they wish to pursue a different path. for the baseball organizations, “signing players at an early age is cost-efficient since players are more expensive tiffany gurprasad – baseball as an intersection of popular culture and north american exploitation in the dominican republic 85 when they are more seasoned.”37 “most of the baseball players from the united states graduate high-school, whereas in the dominican republic they rarely get through the sixth grade.”38 baseball is an integral part of the dominican republic’s culture, used both as a national pastime and as a tool of resistance against american hegemony. for many dominicans, the game is seen as an expression of their superior athletic capacities in the sport. this contrast of dominican and american players shows the severe vulnerability dominicans are subjected to within the major-leagues. unlike the majority of their american counterparts, baseball is often the only option for dominican players. 39 during the american occupation, dominicans fraternized and resisted through representing the dominican flag in baseball games. baseball is not viewed as a facet of american imperialism in the dominican republic; it is instead valued for its dominican diversity and quality. the history of baseball tied with sugar refineries and the west-indian “cocolo’s’” contributions to the sport are all nostalgic elements that serve as the foundation of the dominican game. however, dominican baseball challenging american dominance is complicated by the nation’s dependence on north american major leagues. institutions like the mlb and their associated baseball academies take advantage of the lure of the american dream and exploit hopeful boys and young men. migration to north america to play in the mlb is riddled with instability for dominican players, negatively shaping their lived experience and settlement as members of the diaspora. the role of the dominican republic in american baseball cannot be denied, whether through the large amount of players who contribute to the major league teams or the help that dominican’s winter league provides to its minor league players.40 37klein, 93. 38klein, 80. 39ruck, 26. 40ruck, 111. although both countries hold onto baseball as a defining quality of nationality, fans in the united states divide their loyalty between baseball, football and variety of other games while in caribbean quilt | 2011 86 d.r, baseball is a year round sport.41 baseball exceeds the title of national pastime because it signifies much more, such as the success of young prospective athletes, families dependent on their son’s baseball careers, memories of intense political turmoil with licey and escogido, beisbolromantico, and the american dream. the saturation of politics into baseball during the trujillo reign and american occupation allowed the sport to take on a specifically dominican reality and retain meaning, surpassing sheer recreation and leisure. a complex web of transnational relationships is formed between caribbean players and north american leagues. to what extent do dominican players represent dominican baseball and how do these representations fit into the american game? north america and the dominican republic share an intrinsic relationship through baseball that maintains a constant, yet unequal, exchange of memory, culture and people. 41gare joyce, the only ticket off the island (toronto: lester &orphen dennys, 1990)p,2. bibliography burgos jr., adrian. playing america’s game: baseball, latinos, and the color line. berkeley: university of california press, 2007. de moya, antonio. “power games and totalitarian masculinity in the dominican republic.”in interrogating caribbean masculinities, edited by rhoda reddock, kingston: university of west indies press, 2004. elias, robert. “a fit for a fractured society.”in baseball and the american dream, edited by robert elias, london: m.e. sharpe, 2001. joyce, gare. the only ticket off the island. toronto: lester &orphendennys, 2002. tiffany gurprasad – baseball as an intersection of popular culture and north american exploitation in the dominican republic 87 klein, alan. sugarball: the american game, the dominican dream. new haven: yale university press, 1991. martinez-vergne, teresita.nation & citizen in the dominican republic, 1880-1916. chapel hill: university of north carolina press, 2009. relagado, samuel. “sammy sosa meets horatio alger: latin ballplayers and the american success myth.” in baseball and the american dream, edited by robert elias, london: m.e. sharpe, 2001. regalado, samuel. viva baseball! latin major leaguers and their special hunger. urbana: university of illinois press, 1998. ruck, rob. the tropic of baseball: baseball in the dominican republic. london: meckler, 1991. sheller, mimi. consuming the caribbean. london: routledge, 2003. sugar. dvd. directed by anna boden. 2008; usa.journeyman pictures, 2008. 55 continuities in capitalism: exploitation of indentured and migrant labour *** kevin de silva is a third year student at the university of toronto. he is completing his undergraduate degree in political science and caribbean studies, winning in 2010 the united network of indocaribbean toronto youths (u.n.i.t.y.) scholarship. he is a member of the caribbean studies students’ union, and is chief editor of caribbean quilt. he has also contributed to the stabroek news in guyana on issues concerning environmental politics and diaspora. *** “indentureship” is a legal, contractual agreement which defines a particular, temporally structured relationship involving capital interests and labour. the practical, historical results of such a contract required of labour its submission and unwitting acceptance of a subaltern state, ensuring the dominance of capital. in short, indentureship was a conceived as a legal compulsion demanding economic operationalization with punitive measures for those who resisted. if one accepts the practical implications of indentureship in these terms, one implicitly assumes a moral or normative position, that is, one automatically understands such a system to be reprehensible, exploitative, and “wrong.” this position however is easy to take: since the period of indenture is in the caribbean over, and since diasporic labour populations have been constituted under nation-states as “freemen” contemporarily, with the benefit of hindsight, a seemingly “clearcut issue” becomes fodder for arm-chair criticisms of past practices, institutions, and norms. yet the capitalist framework which underpinned this system still readily persists with only reticent moral condemnations of it. destroying temporality, that is, viewing indentureship as a past phenomenon in its character, destroying regionalism, that is, viewing features of indentureship only in the purview of a quintessentially caribbean quilt | 2011 56 caribbean experience, and destroying the nation-state as a level of analysis (ignoring flows of labour divorced from any meaningful origin elsewhere globally) all become central in viewing history as a continuing, discursive process, rather than merely a sum total of dead events irrelevant to the present age. this paper will argue that indentured labour, though nonexistent in the caribbean today and less apparent in the rest of the world, continues structurally in the form of migrant labour. the intention of this argument is to re-infuse and expand normative considerations beyond any nationalist or cultural limitations. similarities between the two processes seemingly detached from one another can be brought to light by analyzing firstly persisting economic modalities then secondly persisting social modalities in the cases of the caribbean, india and the united arab emirates. persisting economic modalities: contrasting pre & post indenture india basdeo mangru describes indian government policy during the period of indentured emigration as “largely influenced by the laissezfaire theory of administration… [with] minimum government interference in the pursuit of individual economic interests and few restrictions on the movement of goods, labour and capital.”1 the indian government policy today, adapted formally in 1991, is one that stresses this continuance of the laissez-faire attitude in neo-liberal terms: freeing up markets, the redirection of government expenditure away from public services in favour of infrastructure which in turn is meant to guide and regularize capital movement, as well as privatization, competition and the promotion of foreign direct investment. this economic schema, aside from myths which stress the newness and uniqueness of it and its “globalization” presently, can be found in its earlier incarnations during the 19th century: “nineteenth century globalization involved increasing transfers of commodities, people, capital and ideas between and within continents. the most straightforward measure of integration is simply the growing volume of these international flows.”2 kevin de silva – continuities in capitalism: exploitation of indentured & migrant labour 57 india itself has historically been home to what is termed “surplus labour” (that is, a large swath of the population which, because of the inability of the land to accommodate more people”3) requires their literal outflow in the form of migration and economic operationalization. the latter point refers to the lack of an ability to compete agriculturally within the nexus of capitalist accumulation against capital-intensive foreign goods (such as british textile outputs in the 19th century). hence, a once agrarian population is pressured onto the labour market to satisfy the demands of industrial production elsewhere off of the hinterland. although indebtedness was prevalent during the time of indentureship with “the ownership of…land passed to money-lenders; and as the traditional cultivators lost their land, the number of landless peasants increased,”4 contemporary india also suffers the ills of indebtedness as a tool of economic, and in turn, social control. migrant labour may at a glance seem to imply a type of “freeness” due to its spatial dimension; however “neo-bondage” compels workers into an equally subaltern state as the historicized indentured worker since they are not in a position to bargain in favour of what they deem reasonable payment for their work. neo-bondage specifically refers to the practice of a jobber “tying in prospective labourers through loans/ advances given during the lean season before the start of the seasonal employment relation.”5 this effectively means that throughout the actual period of work, labourers are paid a minimal amount with the promise of the full amount to be doled out at the end of the campaign. here, an obvious problem can be anticipated: that is in practice, labourers often do not receive accurate payment for their productive output, specifically through employers consciously manipulating the numbers to be paid to workers. moreover this veiled practice leads to another problem since only a minimum amount is paid during the period of seasonal employment, indebtedness may, and often does accrue without the labourers knowledge, forcing him or her to stay on even longer in order to simply pay off their debt.6 walter look lai notes a central push factor for migratory indentureship from 1860 to 1879 was geographic as well as environmental, that is, “intense famine caused by crop failures or the caribbean quilt | 2011 58 ravages of nature (drought or floods)”.7 these events seem, wrongly of course, relegated to the historical sphere, yet noting the continuing harshness of the indian landscape becomes imperative to understand the phenomenon of migrant labour today. look lai in the historical record notes famines in regions such as bengal, bihar, and orissa, places which contemporarily are persisting sites for mass droughts, occurring as often as once every five years.8 the ilo points out that since agriculture is largely dependent on “precipitation and distribution of rainfall” recurrence of drought “reduces the purchasing power of [a] large segment of the population;”9 again leading to the need for migration. related to the reality of famine here is of course impoverishment, and the pre-indenture period was unfortunately not the only time in which poverty in india was rampant. it has been calculated as recently as 2004 that 27.4% of india (more than a quarter of india’s population) is under the poverty line.10 the central argument favouring categorizing indentured labour as a uniquely exploitative phenomenon is its legal implications. on the one hand, the institutionalization of ‘unfreedom’ in the form of a contractual obligation became socially normalized for labourers, in other words, coercion or exploitation did not seem at the time necessarily evident or apparent. since the relationship was in its scope theoretically an agreement between two “equal” parties, an interpretation of “unfreedom” might have been felt, but not clearly discerned or understood by those involved. nevertheless a contemporary interpretation of such a practice adamantly posits not only exploitation, but a relationship in many ways reminiscent in character to that of slavery. in order to expand this normative position it becomes necessary to situate terms such as freedom and unfreedom differently, outside of legal parameters exclusively. neo-bondage, although not in any way related to the law, can be interpreted as a means of ensuring a cycle of subordination within a new framework, namely the market-system. this is not to say that during the indentured period the market did not exist, but it was coupled by many forms of pre-capitalist behaviour; the use of corporal punishment to discipline the workforce is but one example. kevin de silva – continuities in capitalism: exploitation of indentured & migrant labour 59 by stringently regulating the pay cycle of employees, as well as manipulating the sum total of money owed to the worker and coercing them into longer work cycles, neo-bondage in the form of indebtedness can be seen as promoting a type of “unfreedom” even when such a relationship is neither legally impelled nor implied. in other words, the market as well as the underground economy (which is merely a reflection of the former’s existence) is its own enforcing mechanism demanding strict labour control and subordination. weber’s analysis of capitalism as an “iron cage” is part of this reading surely, but in a more concrete sense labour movement itself is determined not so much by the law as it is by the demands of capitalist production, demands which in a very real sense enforce subservient social roles to those apart of its lowest rung. persisting social maladies: comparing the historical caribbean to the modern uae plantation society can be described not only capitalist but also as a “total institution”.11 this categorization takes the plantation as a space of seemingly effective hegemony in the form of hierarchical and authoritarian structures that over-arch and over-lap, subordinating docile bodies to its rule. in the case of the indentureship period, it in many ways was a continuation of the period of slavery in a new disguise, with the same economic imperatives at the base of the system. haraksingh for example states “the assumptions and premises of slavery continued to inform management attitudes.”12 take a large factory in look lai recounts the description of a british writer, edward jenkins: manchester, or birmingham, or belfast, build a wall around it, shut in it's people from all intercourse, save at rare intervals, with the outside world, keep them in absolute heathen ignorance, and get all the work you can out of them, treat them not unkindly, leave their social habits and relations to themselves, as matters not concerning you who make money from their labor, and you would have constituted a little community resembling to no small degree, a sugar estate village in british guiana13 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/manchester http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/birmingham http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/belfast http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/guyana caribbean quilt | 2011 60 the freedom of movement, something which may be overlooked and understated, was for the indentured worker severely limited as s/he was expected to stay on the estate at all times. the consequences of disobeying this rule were “floggings and beatings” as well as “arbitrary fines and court sanctioned imprisonment.”14 the limiting of space and saturation of the labourer with ceaseless work, hardship, and suffering must have created a culture somewhat adapted to severity. nevertheless, the restriction of space also entailed the institutionalizing of a perpetual psychological torture for individuals who certainly must have had a yearning for their freedom. according to haraksingh, the driver also played a central role in the domination of the indentured worker, but not exclusively by physical means. the driver was able to command production because of his close ties to the “manager’s ear” forcing indians to act compliantly, and also because of his ability to dole out tasks with varying degrees of difficulty, in turn “enhancing their earnings.”15 look lai notes that subjugation was further enhanced by the low wages indian workers received (“in 1871…about 40% of male indentureds did not earn as much as $1.20 a week”).16 this fact though seemingly detached from political/social control, was, in my view intimately tied to it. that is, maintaining low wages forced indians to continue their servitude and labour for subsistence, with death following by both starvation and poverty if they did not accede to the dominating planter class. beating so-called “difficult” labourers, disallowing or preventing access to legal means of compensation, dwellings which were cramped and putrid, a lack of proper nutrition and sustenance as well as the continuation of poverty generally were all inherent features of indentured life in the 19th the uae, now one of the most developed countries in the world according to the hdi (human development index), has risen as a world leader in finance as well as “development” for three primary reasons: oil, construction, and migrant labour. the government, pragmatically realizing that oil, because of its finitude needs to be instrumentally used as a means to an end in order to avoid a potential boom-bust cycle, has century. with such a brutal historic record taken into account, it becomes instructive to contrast these realities with the contemporary case of migrant work in the united arab emirates. kevin de silva – continuities in capitalism: exploitation of indentured & migrant labour 61 invested instead in longer-term mass construction projects. already many of these spectacular sites have garnered attention on the world stage: its man-made islands the palm jumeirah, its indoor ski resorts, the burj dubai, now the tallest man-made structure in the world, as well as a whole host of other hotels, skyscrapers and tourist attractions such as its own, unique version of disneyworld and even louvre museum. yet, as is often the case with postcard imagery, the shining, glittering exterior of any metropolis or nation-state superpower hides it’s structurally related, opposite actuality, its grimy, sordid underbelly. during the indentured period, it was reported that when the reality of the confined journey was realized by those boarding the ship, many desperately committed suicide by jumping into the hughli river.17 such circumstances are unfortunately not relegated to history’s dustbin. the bbc in 2005 reported the case of arumugam venkatesan, a migrant worker who hung “himself from the ceiling fan in his room in his labour camp” due to inhuman living conditions.18 one can imagine many more cases that are unreported, a testament to labour camps with “85 men in a nine-roomed house…bedrooms sleep[ing] eight, sometimes 12 people…bathrooms…squeezed into cupboards and shared by 25 men.19 the horror however is intensified in that these labour camps are often nowhere near the locations in which actual work takes place, but are instead situated in the desert sand, where the “wind fills the air with sand and dust that choke the lungs and sting the eyes.”20 a strong parallel between the historical plantation and the contemporary case of the uae is the stifling of resistance and the disallowance of labour unions. according to human rights watch migrant workers “comprise nearly 90 percent of the workforce in the private sector…and are denied basic rights such as freedom of association and the right to collective bargaining.” 21 this inconceivable dismissal reveals the true concern of the emeriti government: to create a society mirroring a combination of las vegas and singapore, a site of concentrated capital physically embodied in a completely bourgeois class. here the goal is the capitalist utopia, the dominating and hegemonic ideological and economic concern of the neoliberal era. human rights watch highlights elsewhere “unlawful recruiting fees, caribbean quilt | 2011 62 broken promises of wages, and a sponsorship system that gives an employer virtually complete power over his workers.”22 again, although no formal legal provisions are utilized to ensure subservience, these “extra-legal” means do entail severe exploitation. nor is there a need for an enforcement mechanism of subjugation when one must cope already with “sweltering humidity…well above 32 degrees centigrade [perpetuating]…heat related illnesses”, and employers “failing to pay for electricity, garbage and sewage collection in labour camps” as well as threatening deportation for striking.23 though courts have formally called for the implementation of certain labour standards to be followed by employers, their refusals to acquiesce with such declarations are themselves commonplace practices in the united arab emirates. in his book, in defense of lost causes, slavoj conclusions žižek argues that the present neoliberal period is giving rise to a “growing apartheid,” a widening separation between labour and its connection to a nation-state which would ensure at least an elementary level of legal protection against outside abuse. slavery as well as indenturship are in my view early forerunners of such a thesis. the modern phenomenon of the export-process zone, or “fenced-in factories” outside any clear political jurisdiction are signifiers of transportable, interchangeable, and heavily guarded islands of freefloating capital. they impose, symbolically and literally, a type of purgatory onto a labouring citizenry that possess political rights only in an illusory sense, since they are, after all, owned and controlled by foreign agents, and not meaningfully connected to and protected by the polity they were born into. žižek notes: “since, sometime very soon, the urban population of the earth will outnumber the majority of the rural population, and since slum inhabitants will compose the majority of the urban population, we are no way dealing with a marginal phenomenon.”24 some questions emerge: is such a pattern sustainable? what will happen to migrant labourers in countries such as the united arab emirates after the “boom of building” subsides? can we not view kevin de silva – continuities in capitalism: exploitation of indentured & migrant labour 63 slavery/indentureship and migrant labour as related institutionally, as “historical bookends” within the same overall capitalist schema? in order to even attempt to answer these questions fully one must, to restate, destroy temporality. one should not read history as detached or distant, meaningless and dead. one should instead trace its continuities, its changes and the cloaks its “movers” have adapted in charting a specific course. if indentured labour can be read as a cloaked “slavery,” then, as this paper has argued, migrant labour certainly can be read as a continuation of indentureship. notes 1 mangru, basdeo. "indian government policy towards indentured labour migration to the sugar colonies." benevolent neutrality: indian government policy and labour migration to british guiana, 1854-1884. london: hansib pub ltd, 1987. 162. 2 guillaume daudin, matthias morys and kevin h. o’rourke. "globalization, 1870-1914." university of oxford department of economics discussion paper series (2008): pp. 2. 3 bisnauth, dale. "chapter three: crossing the kala pani." settlement of indians in guyana, 1890-1930 . peepal tree press ltd., 2001. pp. 38. 4 ibid. pp. 39. 5 lerche, jens. "a global alliance against forced labour? unfree labour, neoliberal globalization and the international labour organization." journal of agrarian change, vol. 7 no. 4 (october 2007): pp. 439. 6 ibid. 7 look-lai, walter. "chapter 2: push factors and migration trends in india and china." indentured labor, caribbean sugar: chinese and indian migrants to the british west indies, 1838-1918. the johns hopkins university press, 1993. pp. 25-26. caribbean quilt | 2011 64 8 salve, dr. w.n. labour rights and labour standards for migrant labour in india. <http://www.ilo.org/public/english/protection/condtrav/pdf/rdwpaper22a.pdf>. pp. 7. 9 ibid. 10 patnaik, utsa. "poverty and neo-liberalism in india." centre for economic studies and planning, jawaharlal nehru university (2006): pp. 17. 11 beckford, george. "plantation society: toward a general theory of caribbean society." savacou (1976): pp. 8. 12 haraksingh, kusha. "control and resistance among indian workers." dabydeen, david. india in the caribbean. hansib/university of w blication, 1987. pp. 67. 13 look-lai, walter. "chapter 5: life and labour on the plantations: the indians." indentured labor, caribbean sugar: chinese and indian migrants to the british west indies, 1838-1918. the johns hopkins university press, 1993. pp. 121. 14 ibid. 15 haraksingh, kusha. "control and resistance among indian workers." dabydeen, david. india in the caribbean. hansib/university of w blication, 1987. pp. 69. 16 look-lai, walter. "chapter 5: life and labour on the plantations: the indians." indentured labor, caribbean sugar: chinese and indian migrants to the british west indies, 1838-1918. the johns hopkins university press, 1993. pp. 132. 17 indo caribbean: news views and information. indian arrival in the caribbean. may 2003. <http://www.hansib-books.com/root/icn3.pdf> 18 bbc news | south asia. migrants' woes in dubai worker camps . 10 february 2005. <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/4249223.stm>. 19 ibid. kevin de silva – continuities in capitalism: exploitation of indentured & migrant labour 65 20 world socialist website. the plight of the uae’s migrant workers: the flipside of a booming economy. 9 november 2007. <http://www.wsws.org/articles/2007/nov2007/duba-n09.shtml>. 21 human rights watch. "uae: address abuse of migrant workers." 28 march 2006. <http://www.hrw.org/en/news/2006/03/28/uae-address-abuse-migrant-workers>. 22 —. uae: exploited workers building ‘island of happiness’. 2009 may 2009. <http://www.hrw.org/en/news/2009/05/18/uae-exploited-workers-building-islandhappiness>. 23 world socialist website. the plight of the uae’s migrant workers: the flipside of a booming economy. 9 november 2007. <http://www.wsws.org/articles/2007/nov2007/duba-n09.shtml>. 24 žižek, slavoj. in defense of lost causes. new york, london: verso , 2008. pp. 424. 221 cover art for main edition: c l et us henriques (c. 1927-1976) river’s edge 1968 oil on board 94 x 109 cm national collection of art, guyana image courtesy of the national gallery of art, castellani house, georgetown, guyana image edited & print kev i n de silva , ham ilton choi ..... 49 stabilizing haiti: mission accomplished? a review of the work of minustah 2010-2011 kevin edmonds, deepa panchang, marshall fluerant, rishi rattan “the writing of the white paper has proved to be an invaluable experience in learning about how powerful institutions and actors respond to the criticisms of their brutality. the united nations has not acknowledged any of its misdeeds, and has absolved itself of any negligence or human rights abuses. the writing process allowed me and the team to connect with numerous grassroots haitian groups…and be a part of an ongoing struggle to hold yet another occupying and anti-democratic force accountable for their wrongs in haiti” -kevin edmonds link to the white paper in its entirety: http://isites.harvard.edu/icb/icb.do?keyword=healthroots&pageid=icb.page462433 ***the executive summary here first appeared in tectonic shifts: haiti since the earthquake, edited by mark schuller and pablo morales. introduction on february 23, 2004, the caribbean community (caricom), an organization of caribbean countries and dependencies that included haiti, requested that the united nations (un) security council (unsc) address the worsening unrest in haiti, which was supported and financed by the us, france, and others.i caricom asked the council, of which the u.s. and france are permanent members, to authorize an international military force to assist the haitian government in maintaining order.ii the security council rejected the petition. however, within 5 days of the request, democratically elected haitian president jean-bertrand aristide was removed against his will from haiti by a u.s. military airplane. in an event eerily familiar to the us occupation of haiti in 1915, 1,000 u.s. marines were on the ground in haiti within 24 hours. by april, at the request of interim president alexandre boniface, the unsc established the mission des nations unies pour la stabilisation en haiti (minustah), which included the deployment of 6,700 caribbean quilt | 2012 50 soldiers. by the end of the year, several independent human rights organizations including amnesty international had documented numerous, violent abuses of human rights against haitian civilians.iii in addition to offering a “secure and stable” environment, minustah was charged with “restructuring and reforming” the haitian national police (hnp), disarming rebels and paramilitary forces (whose arms were largely provided by u.n. member-states like the u.s.)1, supporting free elections, and promoting and protecting human rights.iv according to the standard of insecurity that is used to justify minustah’s continued presence, the levels of violence in several neighbouring caribbean states (which are much higher than that of haiti) could warrant international stabilization efforts in jamaica, trinidad and the us virgin islands (see table). yet, for political reasons, this is not the case. even the us department of state remarked in march 2011 that “despite grinding poverty, inadequate policing, and lax gun laws, some studies have shown haiti to have a lower homicide rate than many of its neighbors in the caribbean and latin america.”v it is ironic that in brazil, the national leader of minustah, levels of civilian violence are far greater than in haiti by a rate of more than three hundred percent. country population murders rate per 100,000 haiti 9,600,000 795 vi 8.2 per 100,000 brazil + 189,953,000 50,113 vii 26.38 per 100,000 jamaica 2,600,000 1428 viii 54.9 per 100,000 trinidad 1,300,000 472 ix 36.3 per 100,000 us virgin islands 100,000 66 x 60 per 100,000 table 1: data from 2010 + data published on brazil’s murder rate by the brazilian ministry of justice from 2008 1 the paramilitary rebel army which crossed over the dominican border was largely made up of former members of le front pour l'avancement et le progrès d'haiti (fraph) – the death squad involved in mass killings during the 1991 coup against aristide. guy philippe, a former member of the haitian armed forces had been trained during the 1991 coup by us special forces in ecuador. other leaders such as emmanuel "toto" constant and jodel chamblain, were both former tonton macoutes and leaders of fraph. according to a 1996 un human rights commission report, fraph had been supported and financed by the cia. kevin edmonds | stabilizing haiti: mission accomplished? 51 it is thus becoming increasingly difficult to justify the continued presence of minustah in haiti. a detailed analysis of minustah’s actions documented in the available situation reports during the post-earthquake phase reveal that the force is engaged in little more than policing activities related to crimes against persons and property work which falls under the domain of the hnp, and which hnp could better carry out with more resources and training. analysis of minustah’s record leads to a concurrent conclusion to that of a large portion of the haitian population – that the force should develop a plan for withdrawal from the country. minustah’s pre-earthquake human rights record from 2004 to 2010, several independent legal and human rights organizations published reports supporting haitian civil society charges that minustah not only failed to protect rights as outlined by its mandate, but also directly violated human rights of haitian citizens. in 2005, the research organization center for global justice, in collaboration with the human rights program at harvard law school, found that minustah had neither initiated a disarmament program, nor protected civilians particularly supporters of fanmi lavalas, the political party of ousted aristide from murderous paramilitary attacks and extrajudicial killings. furthermore, they protected, both directly with personnel and indirectly through lack of investigation, haitian national police members who were carrying out extrajudicial killings.xi by mid-2005, minustah itself was carrying out attacks on civilian communities without involvement of the haitian national police. in a july 2005 assault on cite soleil, a port-au-prince slum, minustah targeted a single alleged gang leader and five of his associates, but ended up using 22,000 rounds of ammunition, killing upward of 70 people. the final death toll is unknown as minustah deemed the mission a success and did not seek to enumerate the civilian deaths.xii two years later, human rights lawyers were still documenting similar violent military strikes. they concluded that minustah’s actions violated their charter and international law as well. however, the minustah mandate included a clause that essentially gave perpetrators of crimes immunity from the haitian justice system.xiii in addition to physical violence, sexual violence committed by members of minustah has run rampant and gone caribbean quilt | 2012 52 unpunished.xiv most notably, in 2007, 114 sri lankan soldiers were repatriated for transactional sex with underage haitian girls. because of the de facto immunity from the haitian legal system, the u.n. recommended prosecution in sri lanka. to date, no prosecution has occurred, and despite u.n. threats to the contrary, sri lanka remains a part of the minustah mission.xv this history tarnished minustah’s reputation to the point where it began to be perceived as an occupying force. minustah’s post-earthquake human rights record protection failures and direct violations since the earthquake, haitians have faced heightened threats to security, life, and health, as millions experienced conditions in makeshift displacement camps. gender-based violence, which has affected women in hundreds of camps, has gone virtually ignored by minustah. the force has taken only few, name-only, measures to address it, and even in instances where patrols are sent to camps, most troops can barely communicate with camp residents enough to react appropriately. xvi forced evictions from camps have also affected hundreds of thousands of idps, with nearly no protective action by minustah despite domestic and international law that classifies these evictions as illegal. xvii compounding these protection failures was the actual introduction of cholera into the country by minustah troops, the subsequent cover-up, failure to investigate, and lack of proper response to the growing epidemic.xviii counter to its mandate to assist in free and fair elections, minustah also played a role in propping up a u.s.-supported but illegitimate presidential election which oversaw the exclusion of a majority political party and a large part of the population.xix in addition to these main areas of concentration are a number of other issues related to minustah’s involvement in haiti. one, for example, is minustah’s complicity in the les cayes prison massacre which occurred on january 19, 2010, when the hnp stormed the facility to put down a riot related to deteriorating conditions. although the incident led to the death of 19 unarmed inmates and injury of 40 others, minustah effectively helped the hnp orchestrate a cover-up.xx another telling incident is the death of jean gérald gilles, the sixteen-year old boy who was found hanging inside a minustah base in cap haïtien on august 17, 2010.xxi kevin edmonds | stabilizing haiti: mission accomplished? 53 despite suspicions that he was murdered on the base, minustah has refused to investigate.xxii minustah has also developed a record of responding to peaceful popular protests in violent ways by gassing students and idp camps,xxiii assaulting journalists, shooting at childrenxxiv, and killing peaceful protestors.xxv given that these protests were often targeting the presence of minustah itself, the mission’s unprovoked, violent responses only provide further examples of its failure to build a positive relationship with the haitian people and its suppression of the democratic process. lack of security coordination minustah’s failure to coordinate their activities with other governmental, domestic, and international organizations has either duplicated or understaffed critical positions, siphoned money from groups documenting abuses and protecting citizens, and created fatal mistakes in military operations. despite being made aware of this issue since its inception, minustah fails to devote personnel and money toward more efficient coordination. despite designating a non-military security force, unpol, to haiti, minustah’s failure to coordinate with community leaders in post-earthquake haiti has left internally displaced persons “at the mercy of landowners and gangs.”xxvi the lack of sufficient translators to accompany missions exacerbates minustah’s inability to effectively document abuses and communicate with the very people they are charged to protect. such a lack of commitment to understanding the on-the-ground reality of haitian civilians is unconscionable given that the un has been present in haiti in one form or another for almost 20 years. conclusion in sum, minustah’s human rights record constitutes violations of not only its own mandate but also of human rights enshrined in haiti’s constitution and in international treaties legally binding in the country. these include the failure to protect, or direct violations of, the right to housing, the right to security of person, the right to water, the right to health, and a number of other civil, political, social, and economic rights. nor has minustah made progress in building up haiti’s own capacity for protection and caribbean quilt | 2012 54 promotion of human rights. despite its record, the mission has been rewarded with consistent renewals of its mandate over the past seven years. while some may claim that minustah’s departure from the country could create a security vacuum, this is based on the false assumptions (as demonstrated here) that minustah is effective in its duties, and that haiti experiences inordinate levels of violent instability in comparison to its caribbean neighbors. minustah’s failure to uphold its mandate and the force’s consistent violation of human rights have made it a significant threat to the haitian people. in light of the collected evidence, and in support of the frequentlyissued demand from haitians, the humane solution is for minustah to develop a timetable for withdrawal from the country, and for international resources to be re-routed to support humanitarian relief and capacity-building for those still suffering the effects of the earthquake, the cholera outbreak, and decades of pernicious foreign policy. minustah’s $865 million per year would be better spent on cholera treatment and water infrastructure than on soldiers and bullets. kevin edmonds | stabilizing haiti: mission accomplished? 55 endnotes i farmer, paul. who removed aristide? london review of books 26(8):28-31. 2004. u.n. security council. the question concerning haiti letter dated 23 february 2004 from the permanent representative of jamaica to the united nations addressed to the president of the security council (s/2004/143). official record. new york. 2004. iii amnesty international. amnesty international calls on the transitional government to set up an independent commision of enquiry into summary executions attributed to members of the haitian national police. london, england. 11 nov 2004. iv upr. (2011, march). haiti's renewal of the minustah mandate in violation of the human rights of the haitian people. universal periodic review: submission to the united nations . retrieved may 2, 2011 from institute for justice and democracy in haiti: http://ijdh.org/projects/universal-periodicreview-upr v bureau of diplomatic security. haiti 2011 crime and safety report. united states department of state. https://www.osac.gov/pages/contentreportdetails.aspx?cid=10560 vi bureau of diplomatic security. haiti 2011 crime and safety report. united states department of state. available at https://www.osac.gov/pages/contentreportdetails.aspx?cid=10560 vii julio jacobo waiselfisz. mapa da violência 2011. sao paulo, instituto sangari, ministry of justice, 2011 available at http://www.sangari.com/mapadaviolencia/pdf2011/mapaviolencia2011.pdf viii mark wignall. why has jamaica’s crime rate fallen? the jamaica observer. february 3rd, 2011. available at http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/columns/why-has-jamaica-scrime-rate-fallen_8329778 ix in the shadow of the gallows: trinidad debates the death penalty. the economist. february 10th, 2011. available at http://www.economist.com/node/18114940 x daniel shea. homicides in v.i. virgin islands daily news. january 13th, 2011. available at http://virginislandsdailynews.com/news/homicides-in-v-i1.1089794#axzz1rc9aesqx xi harvard law student advocates for human rights & centro para la justicia global, keeping the peace in haiti? an assessment of the united nations stabilization mission in haiti using compliance with its prescribed http://ijdh.org/projects/universal-periodic-review-upr http://ijdh.org/projects/universal-periodic-review-upr http://ijdh.org/projects/universal-periodic-review-upr http://ijdh.org/projects/universal-periodic-review-upr http://ijdh.org/projects/universal-periodic-review-upr http://ijdh.org/projects/universal-periodic-review-upr http://ijdh.org/projects/universal-periodic-review-upr http://ijdh.org/projects/universal-periodic-review-upr http://ijdh.org/projects/universal-periodic-review-upr http://ijdh.org/projects/universal-periodic-review-upr http://ijdh.org/projects/universal-periodic-review-upr http://ijdh.org/projects/universal-periodic-review-upr http://ijdh.org/projects/universal-periodic-review-upr http://ijdh.org/projects/universal-periodic-review-upr http://ijdh.org/projects/universal-periodic-review-upr http://ijdh.org/projects/universal-periodic-review-upr http://ijdh.org/projects/universal-periodic-review-upr https://www.osac.gov/pages/contentreportdetails.aspx?cid=10560 https://www.osac.gov/pages/contentreportdetails.aspx?cid=10560 https://www.osac.gov/pages/contentreportdetails.aspx?cid=10560 https://www.osac.gov/pages/contentreportdetails.aspx?cid=10560 https://www.osac.gov/pages/contentreportdetails.aspx?cid=10560 https://www.osac.gov/pages/contentreportdetails.aspx?cid=10560 https://www.osac.gov/pages/contentreportdetails.aspx?cid=10560 https://www.osac.gov/pages/contentreportdetails.aspx?cid=10560 https://www.osac.gov/pages/contentreportdetails.aspx?cid=10560 https://www.osac.gov/pages/contentreportdetails.aspx?cid=10560 https://www.osac.gov/pages/contentreportdetails.aspx?cid=10560 https://www.osac.gov/pages/contentreportdetails.aspx?cid=10560 https://www.osac.gov/pages/contentreportdetails.aspx?cid=10560 https://www.osac.gov/pages/contentreportdetails.aspx?cid=10560 https://www.osac.gov/pages/contentreportdetails.aspx?cid=10560 https://www.osac.gov/pages/contentreportdetails.aspx?cid=10560 https://www.osac.gov/pages/contentreportdetails.aspx?cid=10560 https://www.osac.gov/pages/contentreportdetails.aspx?cid=10560 https://www.osac.gov/pages/contentreportdetails.aspx?cid=10560 https://www.osac.gov/pages/contentreportdetails.aspx?cid=10560 https://www.osac.gov/pages/contentreportdetails.aspx?cid=10560 https://www.osac.gov/pages/contentreportdetails.aspx?cid=10560 https://www.osac.gov/pages/contentreportdetails.aspx?cid=10560 https://www.osac.gov/pages/contentreportdetails.aspx?cid=10560 https://www.osac.gov/pages/contentreportdetails.aspx?cid=10560 https://www.osac.gov/pages/contentreportdetails.aspx?cid=10560 https://www.osac.gov/pages/contentreportdetails.aspx?cid=10560 https://www.osac.gov/pages/contentreportdetails.aspx?cid=10560 https://www.osac.gov/pages/contentreportdetails.aspx?cid=10560 https://www.osac.gov/pages/contentreportdetails.aspx?cid=10560 https://www.osac.gov/pages/contentreportdetails.aspx?cid=10560 https://www.osac.gov/pages/contentreportdetails.aspx?cid=10560 http://www.sangari.com/mapadaviolencia/pdf2011/mapaviolencia2011.pdf http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/columns/why-has-jamaica-s-crime-rate-fallen_8329778 http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/columns/why-has-jamaica-s-crime-rate-fallen_8329778 http://www.economist.com/node/18114940 http://virginislandsdailynews.com/news/homicides-in-v-i-1.1089794%23axzz1rc9aesqx http://virginislandsdailynews.com/news/homicides-in-v-i-1.1089794%23axzz1rc9aesqx caribbean quilt | 2012 56 mandate as a barometer for success, mar 25, 2005 available at http://www.ijdh.org/haiti(english)(final).pdf xii international tribunal on haiti, preliminary report of the commission of inquiry, first inquiry october 6-11, 2005 (2006), 5 http://www.ijdh.org/article_international-tribu.n.al.htm xiiixiii upr. (2011, march). haiti's renewal of the minustah mandate in violation of the human rights of the haitian people. universal periodic review: submission to the united nations . retrieved may 2, 2011 from institute for justice and democracy in haiti: http://ijdh.org/projects/universal-periodicreview-upr xiv information of minustah rape and sexual assault taken from the following: a) u.n. troops face child abuse claims, bbc news, nov. 30, 2006, available at http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/6195830.stm b) stephanie busari, charity: aid workers raping, abusing children, cnn, may 27, 2008, available at http://edition.cnn.com/2008/world/europe/05/27/charity.aidworkers/ c) u.n. faces more accusations of sexual misconduct, washington post, march 13, 2005, available at http://www.washingtonpost.com/wpdyn/articles/a30286-2005mar12.html d) ansel herz, haiti: looking more like a war zone, ips news, march 30, 2010, available at http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=50855. e) athena kolbe and royce hutson, human rights abuses and other criminal violations in port-au-prince, haiti: a random survey of households, the lancet 368 (2006): 864-73. f) save the children, no one to turn to: the underreporting of child sexual exploitation and abuse by aid workers and peacekeepers, (2008), available at http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/bsp/hi/pdfs/27_05_08_savethechildren.pdf. xv upr. 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(2011, march). right to housting. universal periodic review: submission to the united nations . retrieved may 2, 2011 from institute for justice and democracy in haiti: http://ijdh.org/projects/universal-periodicreview-upr and vanishing camps at gunpoint: failing to protect haiti’s internally displaced. july 14, 2010. international action ties. http://ijdh.org/archives/13424 and international action ties, vanishing camps at gunpoint: failing to protect haiti’s internally displaced, (july 14th, 2010) xviii walton da, ivers lc. responding to cholera in post-earthquake haiti. n eng j med 2011: 364: 3-5 jan 6, 2011. and cravioto, a., & al., e. (2011, may). final report of the independent panel of experts on the cholera outbreak in haiti. retrieved may 6, 2011 from un news: www.un.org/news/dh/infocus/haiti/un-cholera-report-final.pdf and chin cs, sorenson j, harris jb et al. the origin of the hatian cholera outbreak nejm 2011; 364:33-42. jan 6, 2011. and upr. (2011, march). haiti's renewal of the minustah mandate in violation of the human rights of the haitian people. universal periodic review: submission to the united nations . retrieved may 2, 2011 from professeur renaud piarrouxoctober 2010 xix jake johnston, mark weisbrot. haiti’s fatally flawed election. center for economic and policy research. february 2011 and haiti presidential candidates denounce electoral fraud. bbc news. november 29th, 2010 xx sontag, d., bogdanich, w. escape attempt led to killings of unarmed inmates. new york times. may 22, 2010. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/23/world/americas/23haiti.html?ref=ameri cas&pagewanted=all xxi gomes, t. death of haitian youth sparks new protests against minustah. september 14, 2010. brasil de fato, translation reprinted in lo-dealla. http://lo-de-alla.org/2010/09/death-of-youth-sparks-protests-againstminustah/ xxii center for economic and policy research, what happened to gerard jean gilles?, september 24th, 2010, available at: http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/relief-and-reconstruction-watch/whathappened-to-gerald-jean-gilles xxiii kim ives, as minustah gasses students, cep sets new elections for november 28th, haiti liberte, (may 26th, 2010) http://www.chrgj.org/press/docs/haiti%20sexual%20violence%20march%202011.pdf http://www.chrgj.org/press/docs/haiti%20sexual%20violence%20march%202011.pdf http://www.chrgj.org/press/docs/haiti%20sexual%20violence%20march%202011.pdf http://www.chrgj.org/press/docs/haiti%20sexual%20violence%20march%202011.pdf http://www.chrgj.org/press/docs/haiti%20sexual%20violence%20march%202011.pdf http://www.chrgj.org/press/docs/haiti%20sexual%20violence%20march%202011.pdf http://www.chrgj.org/press/docs/haiti%20sexual%20violence%20march%202011.pdf http://www.chrgj.org/press/docs/haiti%20sexual%20violence%20march%202011.pdf http://www.chrgj.org/press/docs/haiti%20sexual%20violence%20march%202011.pdf http://www.chrgj.org/press/docs/haiti%20sexual%20violence%20march%202011.pdf 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http://www.transafricaforum.org/files/haiti_report.pdf http://ijdh.org/projects/universal-periodic-review-upr http://ijdh.org/projects/universal-periodic-review-upr http://ijdh.org/archives/13424 http://ijdh.org/archives/13424 http://ijdh.org/archives/13424 http://ijdh.org/archives/13424 http://ijdh.org/archives/13424 http://ijdh.org/archives/13424 http://ijdh.org/archives/13424 http://ijdh.org/archives/13424 http://www.un.org/news/dh/infocus/haiti/un-cholera-report-final.pdf http://www.un.org/news/dh/infocus/haiti/un-cholera-report-final.pdf http://www.un.org/news/dh/infocus/haiti/un-cholera-report-final.pdf http://www.un.org/news/dh/infocus/haiti/un-cholera-report-final.pdf http://www.un.org/news/dh/infocus/haiti/un-cholera-report-final.pdf http://www.un.org/news/dh/infocus/haiti/un-cholera-report-final.pdf http://www.un.org/news/dh/infocus/haiti/un-cholera-report-final.pdf http://www.un.org/news/dh/infocus/haiti/un-cholera-report-final.pdf 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http://www.un.org/news/dh/infocus/haiti/un-cholera-report-final.pdf http://www.un.org/news/dh/infocus/haiti/un-cholera-report-final.pdf http://www.un.org/news/dh/infocus/haiti/un-cholera-report-final.pdf http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/23/world/americas/23haiti.html?ref=americas&pagewanted=all http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/23/world/americas/23haiti.html?ref=americas&pagewanted=all caribbean quilt | 2012 58 xxiv center for economic and policy research, minustah: securing stability and democracy from journalists, children and other threats. (october 18th, 2010) xxv al jazeera english, haiti cholera protest turns violent, (november 16th, 2010), available at: http://english.aljazeera.net/news/americas/2010/11/201011151655241542 28.html xxvi international action ties, vanishing camps at gunpoint: failing to protect haiti’s internally displaced, (july 14th, 2010) edmonds.pdf page 58 caribbean quilt | 2011 76 “coconut drive” this is my first painting. i decided on this scene because it reminded me of my childhood visiting mayaro, trinidad. the swaying coconut trees and hills remind me that my childhood is only an ocean away. pooran bridgelal was born and raised in trinidad and now lives here in toronto with his wife judy and their son levi. he’s currently finishing his degree at the university of toronto. he is an avid collector of rare books and maps. :::::: 2 “catch a fyah” amber williams-king historical propaganda stolen memoranda bloodied baptizer genocide disguiser violence infester silenced ancestor grave-yard ships drowning lips sunken voices phantom noises beaten drums timely hums roaring hunger swallowed thunder rebel armour sage and farmer maroon runnah badman gunnah amber williams-king| catch a fyah 3 sistah sistah mistah mistah ghetto guerrilla slum-born attila stone slinger sword swinger spirit fightah freedom writah hope ignitah spark a lightah son and daughtah blood and fyah set the world ablaze! caribbean studies students’ union university of toronto new college student centre 40 willcocks street mailbox 343 toronto, ontario m5s 1c6 students.carssu@gmail.com caribbean quilt volume iii 2013 sponsors: caribbean studies students’ union caribbean studies program, new college arts and science students union acknoweldgements we would like to dedicate this volume to our professors in the caribbean studies department, especially professor trotz, professor itwaru and professor newton for their unwavering guidance and their unfailing support with every aspect of this journal -theirs are the shoulders we stand upon. we would also like to thank the caribbean studies department for funding our project. 30 “5:30 in negril” *** born in moscow, russia and raised in kingston, jamaica, tammy ronique williams is a second year student at the university of toronto, where she is pursuing an honours bachelor's degree in english and caribbean studies, with a minor in russian. she hopes to someday become a published author. at 5:30 in the evening, the colours of the day are swept to the westernmost end of the island jamaica creating an array of (carefully) blended shades. *** circle of interest khalid musa i claim i’m not a poet but i can feel it in my bones i say i don’t carry pain but u can hear it in my tone first they enslaved us, then when we fought for change our minimum wage was just change i’m from a land of poetry, literary, literally so don’t try to belittle me hundreds of years have passed, independence at last but when they left, they made sure that our economic state had crashed and here i thought i was gonna get severance before they passed here comes the world bank to make things fair with so much restriction, might as well give me the money and cut off my air no oxygen, we’re left in our own country like hostage-men now we are here in the modern day where you can c slavery in a modern way where the islands are commodified to cater to tourist’s desires in everyway where my counterpart n i are seen as racialized hypersexual objects where our job is to please and serve outsiders like royal subjects poverty is @ an all-time high, unemployment is @ an all-time high, and misery is @ an all-time high i’m left with my physical frame just to get by the question i have left to ask is how long will it take til it’s all gone bye? i never said that i’m a poet but i can feel it in my bones i never said i carry pain but u can hear it in my tone about us the caribbean studies student union is comprised of every student enrolled in a caribbean studies course. carssu supports these students by giving them a space to share their life experiences, to discuss the implications of the themes they learn in the classroom, and to apply their skills and talents. carssu works closely with the caribbean studies department, its faculty and its professors to ensure that the program continues to grow and encourage critical thought. by hosting engaging events we hope to reaffirm the caribbean studies program as an important part of the academic discourse. each event is an opportunity to educate someone about the importance of the caribbean in global history and politics. each social is a chance to lime with new found brethren. the 2010-2011 executive team has worked incredibly hard to make this year a fulfilling one. with your help and the help of all our friends and partners, next year will be even better. join us on our journey. leonicka valcius – president anastasia deonarinesingh – internal affairs coordinator claire-helene heese-boutin – operations coordinator kevin de silva – academic advisor steven straker – technical director jodi arthurton –assu representative lydia gill – external affairs coordinator suzie watson – communication coordinator krystle bovell – events coordinator chantal persad – executive at large shari deonarinesingh – executive at large :::::: 117 deconstructing ideas of violence and homophobia in jamaica sharifa patel sharifa patel is currently a graduate student at mcmaster university, pursuing her masters in gender studies and feminist research. she completed her bachelors degree at the university of toronto with a major in caribbean studies and a minor in english and history. homophobia in jamaica is a topic of international debate. from internationally known dancehall artists who sing about murdering or threatening physical violence onto homosexuals, to the media images of the political violence that is played out on vulnerable bodies, the representation of jamaica as a violent, homophobic space is continually reproduced and perpetuated both domestically and on a global level. undoubtedly, violence and homophobia share a malevolent relationship in jamaica and this paper does not seek to deny that reality. instead this paper will interrogate this popular narrative and investigate jamaica’s violent, homophobic history and how it has been reproduced. the organization of this paper is twofold: i will examine the historical roots of this issue in jamaica, the proliferation and portrayal of this homophobic narrative on an international scale while also investigating how this violence is played out on the bodies of supposed sexual deviants. jamaica is not a uniformly homophobic or violent place nor are these attributes innately part of jamaican culture. these issues stem from a much deeper history of social, political and economic factors that the jamaican citizenry must grapple with. jamaicans continue to be denied the ability to create meaningful conversations with their government, and in order to cope with this issue of powerlessness the populations must turn to different means, including violence, to reclaim their political autonomy. ideas of acceptable sexual practices cannot be divorced from the legacy of colonialism. moreover, ideas regarding sexuality and its norms differ between time and place and thus, what is permissible in one space may not be so in another. for instance, since jamaican history saw the mass migration (predominantly forced migration) of peoples from africa, india, china, the middle shariifa patel| violence & homophobia in jamaica 118 east and europe, sexual practices of their place of origin were complicated in a country with such a diverse population. the colonial administration, however, regulated sexuality through different arms of the state apparatus including law and the religious doctrine. the colonial ban on sodomy was not limited to same-sex intercourse but rather all non-procreative sexual activity was deemed evil and sinful.1 the nineteenth century colonial law, the offenses against the person act, stated under unnatural offenses and the section outrages on decency condemned anyone who engaged in buggery or committed “acts of gross indecency with another male” to imprisonment and hard labour.2 this law remains intact today prohibiting sexual relationships between same-sex individuals and there is no indication of its amendment.3 colonial law serves as a strong influence for current homophobic sentiments in jamaica and has remained embedded in these existing laws. to reduce homophobia and violence in jamaica to simply a part of jamaican culture disregards how foreign influences and laws have shaped the current circumstances of sexual deviants in jamaica. the colonial government did not only use law to repress sexual deviants but also used religious infrastructure in order to manipulate enslaved peoples. the enslaved populations were often forced to accept christian doctrine and forfeit their belief systems for christ.4 if enslaved peoples were caught practicing a religion other than christianity these bodies could be subjected to torture until they at least appeared to comply5 with the church. while religions in the caribbean remain syncretic and often serve as an instrument of resistance, in arguments against sexual deviance, the bible is 1 suzanne lafont. “very straight sex: the development of sexual morés in jamaica” journal of colonialism and colonial history 2:3 2003 2offences against the person act. jamaica. http://www.vertic.org/media/national%20legislation/jamaica/jm_offences_ag ainst_the_person_act.pdf 3 current prime minister portia simpson miller suggested during her campaign that the buggery laws should be revised and that she would allow homosexuals to serve in her cabinet. since then the laws have remained further discussion on the topic has been limited. 4 isaac julien, the darker side of black. 1993. 5 many enslaved peoples participated in christian religious practices while simultaneously practicing religions from their place of origin or developing religious hybridities that appropriated different aspects of different religions. caribbean quilt | 2013 119 constantly quoted.6 sodom has become a key point of reference for those who wish to find a religious basis for assaults on sexually deviant communities.7 the word “sodomite” has become synonymous with homosexuality and we see that this word has continually been used to show contempt, scorn, and hatred throughout dancehall music.8 what is particularly interesting about dancehall music is the way in which it has glorified conservative sexuality (or heterosexuality), as it encourages sexual practices that defy modest conventions. dancehall music graphically describes the act of sexual intercourse often including descriptions of the body and genitalia. this musical form then has completely rejected colonial regulations of sexuality as it pertains to heterosexual sexual relationships while simultaneously appropriating the colonial legacy of homophobia and violence. violence in jamaica cannot merely be dismissed as innately part of jamaican culture. this type of analysis contributes to a racist continuum that places jamaica in the ‘uncivilized’ global south where violence can be written into the narrative of the country without reflection on how this violence has come into being and how it is reproduced. the western world has made the whole country of jamaica into a crime scene; our television screens were plastered with images of tivoli gardens going up in flames when the united states extradited christopher ‘dudus’ coke.9 tivoli gardens became jamaica. it became a country ravaged by crime and violence; the international community saw populations that rallied in the streets to support a criminal. it is these types of images that repeat in western media without any recognition of how the bodies seen on our television screens are fodder for political warfare.10 the western media has given no airtime to the real situation in jamaica. garrison communities such as tivoli gardens are poverty ridden and they have been stripped of the ability to actively, and peacefully, participate in political processes.11 the governments, 6 julien 7 julien 8 see beenie man “that’s right” and mr. vegas “no sodomite” 9 cnn may 24, 2010 10 tivoli gardens was a jlp enclave and christopher ‘dudus’ coke had close ties with former prime minister bruce golding. lewis 11 obika, gray. “rogue culture or avatar of liberation: the jamaican lumpenproletriat.” social and economic studies, vol. 52, no. 1 (march 2003) shariifa patel| violence & homophobia in jamaica 120 in conjunction with dons in garrison enclaves, have turned these spaces into warzones and have broken their ability to create cohesive communities.12 jamaican dons are well connected to the government and they are able to coerce and threaten their communities into going to war for their territories. donald “zeeks” phipps, a don in matthew’s lane, is a good case in point. he had extensive political connections, including a half brother who is a parliamentarian representative in central kingston.13 when he was arrested in 1997, his supporters shut down the city for two days.14 our television screens do not include the history of these populations and how they have come to these circumstances. they do not include how the government has pushed its populations into these violent circumstances and used dons in these communities to carry out their control. instead the western media homogenizes jamaica as a uniformly violent space placing these violent images in countries that do not face the same realities. by using this medium jamaica becomes the other of the west, a space that is poor, violent, and homophobic. violence in jamaica is real. there is no doubt that it has one of the highest murder rates per capita in the world.15 indeed this violence is played out on the bodies of the most vulnerable in jamaica making women, children and sexual deviants in working class communities most susceptible. the international community is very aware of jamaica’s high homicide rates but the issue requires further interrogation as to how this situation emerged and why it continues to plague jamaica’s youth. the revolving international dialogue insists that violence is a characteristic distinct to jamaican society. this notion must be deconstructed and a more critical analysis of jamaica’s current circumstances in conjunction with its colonial history must be called into question. it is true that we cannot reduce jamaica’s current situation to solely a product of its history but we must examine how it cannot be detached from that history. colonial rule in jamaica ushered in spectacular violence and enslaved bodies became the site for sadistic brutality. the 12 lewis 13 "the americas: bubba, bobo, zambo and zeeks; crime in the caribbean;" the economist 373, no. 8400 (nov 06, 2004): 60-42. http://search.proquest.com/docview/224018010?accountid=14771. 14 ibid 15eric goldschein. “the 20 mosts homicidal countries in the world.” business insider. dec. 1 2011 caribbean quilt | 2013 121 mutilations of enslaved bodies were public displays for all to see16 and by making a spectacle of these bodies in public spaces we can see how violence can then be exercised to demand compliance. public violence produces a society that constantly remembers the threat of violence and uses the display of mutilated bodies to regulate society. even subsequent to the abolition of slavery many draconian colonial laws remained intact and in the 1960s there was even intensification on corporal punishment: in 1963 serious crimes became punishable by flogging and hard labour17 and the 1965 regulation law elaborated on colonial laws as it permitted the use of the “cat-o-ninetails” and the tamarind switch in prisons. colonial administration and the inheritors of the jamaican government followed colonialism's institutionalized violence. jamaica’s current situation then is based on a trajectory of violence. this history of violence has never been reconciled. bodies continue to be mutilated in public spaces and the threat of violence still looms heavy on jamaica’s citizenry. as in the colonial era, violence continues to be a means to regulate bodies. violence has become a government strategy, exercised by gangs in working class communities, to suppress popular resistance.18 it also has to be looked at as a means for citizens to cope with their inability to produce meaningful dialogues with their government. there is a difference between politics and governance: governance refers to the bureaucratic and fiscal systems of the state. 19 politics affects state activities, and influences concepts of liberty and the how political life is carried out.20 even though jamaica has a ‘democratically’ elected government, democracy is not major feature of jamaican politics and this must be modified to take into consideration contrary practices.21 16james bewer stewart. venture smith: the business of slavery and freedom (massachusetts: university of massachusetts press, 2010) 87 17 obika gray. radicalism and social change in jamaica 1960-1972 122 18 obika gray. demeaned but empowered. (mona: university of the west indies press, 2004) 4 19 rupert lewis. "party politics in jamaica and the extradition of christopher “dudus” coke." the global south 6, no. 1 (2012): 38-54. http://muse.jhu.edu/ (accessed november 23, 2012) 20 ibid 21 gray. demeaned but empowered. 4 shariifa patel| violence & homophobia in jamaica 122 there is a severe disparity between jamaica’s working class communities and their government because of their inability to influence the decisions their government makes. the 1980s saw the jamaican government formulate agreements with the world bank and the international monetary fund which ushered in structural adjustment programs (saps) in order to reduce national debt.22 the most disenfranchised populations suffered most under saps as the government cut funding for social services and subsidies.23 the jamaican population, particularly women, had to find new avenues of generating income including migrating without their children in order to send remittances back home.24 much of the blame for the increasing violence in jamaica was placed on women for leaving their homes without structure25 but we must consider how women were forced to search for the financial security that their government denied them. dons in garrison communities were known for their liaisons with government personnel; if a don could coerce their community to vote for a certain party, that party would allocate funds to that don’s community.26 dons became powerful in that they could provide the enclave with some social welfare but it came with violent repercussions.27 the jamaican government neglected the basic needs of jamaica’s youth enforcing idleness on them. this enforced idleness translated into gang rivalry as they defended their neighbourhoods in working-class communities.28 youth were caught in a state of powerlessness, unable to have any control over the decisions being made by their governments. power over themselves, and other bodies for that matter, could only be appropriated through violence and exerting force over other human beings. with that said vulnerable bodies could then be targeted, including homosexual communities. their bodies could become the site for power to be regained. the rise of garrison communities and donmanship placed certain members of these partisan populations in positions of great 22 beverley mullings. “neoliberalization, social reproduction and the limits to labour in jamaica” singapore journal of tropical geography. no. 30 (july 2009): 175 23 mullings 180 24 ibid 25 ibid 26 mullings 181 27 ibid 28 gray 5 caribbean quilt | 2013 123 power. in some cases they have become even more powerful than the government personnel with whom they were once affiliated.29 the gun trade was a lucrative business so it was to their advantage for the dons to be thoroughly embedded in these operations. it was highly gendered work that reinforced hyper-masculinity as guns were not only synonymous with a man’s strength but the spaces in which they were traded were male dominated.30 in hyper-masculine spaces, homosexual men can find themselves othered and violence becomes a means to express manhood and power. lesbian women have not been excluded from such abuses. jamaican lgbt rights activist and poet stacey-ann chin describes how she was sexually assaulted by several men because of her sexual preferences.31 she explains that these men did this in attempt to exercise their masculinity and her body became the seat where this could occur.32 men in working class communities sought to regain power and vulnerable bodies have become the conduits with which this power could be expressed. the transnational community has become increasingly aware of the violence in the area and lgbt rights groups have lobbied in canada, the united states and the united kingdom to keep dancehall artists who sing homophobic lyrics from entering countries. the stop murder music coalition was able to keep beenie man out of miami and he was also pressured to give a public apology.33 dancehall artists’ ability to reach global audiences projects the image of jamaica as a homophobic space to the international community. canada’s national post published an article named “jamaican ‘murder music’ doesn’t belong in canada,”34 implicitly saying that murder music belongs and should stay in jamaica. the article then states that “akim larcher…originally from st. lucia… moved here a few years ago to escape the anti-gay violence that he says is too prevalent in caribbean culture.” there is implicit racism not only in this 29 ibid 30 ibid 31 stacey-ann chin. national equity march. 2009 32 ibid 33 serwer, jesse. "the great dancehall freeze-out of 2010." the village voice,2010http://search.proquest.com/docview/613371080?accountid=1477 1. 34 “jamaican ‘murder music’ doesn’t belong in canada.” national post.. canwest mediaworks publications incept. sept. 22, 2007 shariifa patel| violence & homophobia in jamaica 124 statement but in the article: the caribbean becomes a space where homophobia can exist because it is simply a part of the culture – a culture separate from that of its close western neighbour. articles such as this share the negative connotation that homophobia in jamaica only becomes a hard-edged problem when it is exported to the western world. however, if homophobic artists remain in jamaica and continue to preach for violence against homosexuals then it is seen as a non-issue as it is viewed as a conventional feature of the culture and society. homosexual bodies in jamaica can be subject to violence that homosexual bodies in the western world are able to avoid simply because of their geographical location and the support systems that lay therein for lgbt communities. what we see then is that the caribbean, and more specifically jamaica, gets glossed over as a uniformly homophobic and violent space as it is often reiterated that jamaica is the “most homophobic place is the world.”35 jamaica has become an archetype of caribbean homophobia on the international scene and dancehall music where violent and homophobic lyrics has gained popularity, with increasing global recognition. songs such as “boom bye, bye” by buju banton and the more recent hit “chi chi mon” by tok have echoed in the global community and caused much backlash from lgbt rights groups internationally36 because these songs promote the murder of homosexuals. t he focus of homophobia has been placed solely on jamaica with little recognition that similar homophobic sentiments exist elsewhere in the caribbean but since dancehall is used as a medium to communicate homophobia to an international audience this has enabled jamaica to be a focal point of international debate concerning the correlation of violence and homophobia. dancehall music, however, becomes the only voice of the jamaican citizenry, disregarding the voices that do not hold the same position. the dancehall scene is dominated by “rude bwoys” who overtly practice and uphold macho ideals. dancehall music expresses the violence that is real in working class communities and those who participated in the violence in these communities are also present in 35 “the most homophobic place on earth.” time world. april 12, 2006. even if one place “the most homophobic place on earth” into google, the first page of links name jamaica. 36 jesse caribbean quilt | 2013 125 the dancehall itself. now it is debated whether the dancehall is a space controlled by males or females,37 but what is important for this argument is that it is a space that reproduces homophobic music and that it is surely not a safe space for sexual preferences outside of heterosexual affairs. even in these spaces, however, deviation from heteronomativity still exists. more recently, men in the dancehall scene are taking on an image that deviates from an accepted heterosexual aesthetic. these men may dye their hair blonde, shape their eyebrows and wear fitted pants.38 they take to the dance floor more frequently instead of staying on the peripheries.39 these men take on an image that would conventionally be understood as homosexual, however these men are generally accepted,40 and indeed welcomed, in the dancehall. so even in a space that is globally understood as extremely hostile to homosexuals, there is room for sexual deviation and certain ambiguities. the dancehall then has the ability to juxtapose the hyper-masculine ‘rude bwoy’ with the male dancer who appropriates the physical attributes that conventionally defy heterosexuality. this image of a completely homophobic jamaica must then be deconstructed because inconsistencies and interruptions do occur in the narrative. those who create these interruptions specifically should not be forgotten and overwritten by the international community. the international community glosses over the caribbean as uniformly and innately violent, producing narratives for jamaica and drowning out the voices of jamaicans. in so doing, jamaica as a whole becomes violent and homophobic without any recognition of those who work to reconcile these issues within the country. sexually deviant populations do exist in jamaica and their presence within the country deserves recognition. when jamaica becomes a space that is understood as inherently violent, the autonomy of this portion of the population is completely stripped away. institutional organizations such as jflag do extensive work to resolve this issue of homophobia in jamaica and they deserve recognition as both jamaicans, and citizens who demand sexual autonomy. in jamaica 37 see carolyn cooper “lady saw cuts loose” 38 nadia ellis. "out and bad: toward a queer performance hermeneutic in jamaican dancehall." small axe 15, no. 2 (2011): 7-23. http://muse.jhu.edu/ (accessed march 5, 2013). 39 ibid 40 i have come across one song that is not supportive of men who take on this aesthetic: “bun a tight pants and a square-front shoe” by trinity chris shariifa patel| violence & homophobia in jamaica 126 institutional groups, such as jflag, work to mediate between civilians and the state, and often work to correct human rights violations.41 there needs to be an acknowledgment of the interruptions in the trajectory created by those who transgress sexual norms and these interruptions return agency to the jamaican public. homophobic violence in jamaica does deserve international attention but the trajectory of violence and homophobia must be analyzed responsibly. the jamaican citizenry is active and has not passively accepted the circumstances that their government has produced. vulnerable bodies have indeed become the sight for political violence, but further research is required to truly deconstruct this problem as it relates to jamaica’s history and jamaica’s place in the global economy. jamaica is not uniformly homophobic or violent; these issues have a history that needs to be recognized and the international community must consider that to divorce jamaica from the true issues that plague their political structure is to turn jamaica into a violent space. this view can have dangerous consequences and can very easily produce a discourse based on racist understandings of jamaican culture. it is in this way that jamaica can then be associated with a culture of violence to which its citizenry will continue to be subjected. 41 lewis caribbean quilt | 2013 127 works cited chinn, stacey-ann. national equity march. 2009 cnn. may 24, 2010 ellis, nadia. "out and bad: toward a queer performance hermeneutic in jamaican dancehall." small axe 15, no. 2 (2011): 7-23. http://muse.jhu.edu/ (accessed march 5, 2013). goldschein, eric. “the 20 mosts homicidal countries in the world.” business insider. dec. 1 2011 gray, obika,. “rogue culture or avatar of liberation: the jamaican lumpenproletriat.” social and economic studies, vol. 52, no. 1 (march 2003) hope, donna p.. "passa passa: interrogating cultural hybridities in jamaican dancehall." small axe no. 21 (2006): 125-139. http://search.proquest.com/docview/195805048?accountid=14771 “the most homophobic place on earth.” time world. april 12, 2006. julien,isaac. the darker side of black. 1993. “jamaican ‘murder music’ doesn’t belong in canada.” national post.. canwest mediaworks publications incept. sept. 22, 2007 jesse, serwer. "the great dancehall freeze-out of 2010." the village voice,2010 http://search.proquest.com/docview/613371080?accountid=14771. lafont, suzanne. “very straight sex: the development of sexual morés in jamaica” journal of colonialism and colonial history 2:3 2003 mullings, beverley. “neoliberalization, social reproduction and the limits to labour in jamaica” singapore journal of tropical geography. no. 30 (july 2009): 175 shariifa patel| violence & homophobia in jamaica 128 offences against the person act. jamaica. http://www.vertic.org/media/national%20legislation/jamaica/jm_offe nces_against_the_person_act.pdf stewart, james bewer. venture smith: the business of slavery and freedom. massachusetts: university of massachusetts press, 2010. 90 the maroon communitarian dilemma: navigating the interstices between resistance and collaboration *** robert connell earned his bachelor of environmental studies degree with honors and a minor in political science from york university in 2009. he is currently a phd student at the university of california, berkeley in african diaspora studies. his research focuses on conflicts over resource extraction and sovereignty rights between maroons and the jamaican state in the 21st century. his corollary research interests include indigeneity and indigenous struggle, development studies, ethnic multiplicity in the african diaspora, global environmental politics and ecological economics. this paper is a synopsis of the original from the arrival of the first african slaves in the spanish colony of hispaniola in 1502 to the abolition of slavery in brazil in 1888 (the last slaveholding state of the americas), a powerful act of resistance stalked the slaving powers. slaves, most often as individuals or in small groups but sometimes in great numbers, sabotaged and rejected the slave system by fleeing their bondage, an action known as marronage. the english word maroon, denoting an escaped slave and the french word marronage, the act of becoming a maroon, descends from the spanish *** cimarrón, often explained as a term for wild, escaped animals, suggestive of the slaves being viewed on par with livestock by their masters, although the word may also be a derivative of the spanish marrano, meaning wild boar (higginson, p.4). whatever the roots of the term, marronage denied the colonists the use of the former slave’s labour, while setting an example of resistance for their enslaved contemporaries. the first recorded act of marronage in the new world caribbean quilt | 2011 91 happened in hispaniola in 1502 when an anonymous slave, part of the very first contingent of africans to be transported to the new world, ran off into the hills with the taîno natives shortly after arriving in the colony (price, 1973, p.1). the odds were stacked heavily against these maroons; in most cases the state employed considerable resources for preventing marronage and re-capturing or killing those that did escape. horrific examples were often made of those who were caught. in suriname, captured maroons often had to suffer having their tongues cut out, castration (price, 1983, p.10) and the amputation of their legs in an effort to prevent further escape (price, 1988, p.7). it should be noted, however, that in the oral traditions of the samaraka maroons of suriname there is more focus on the crushing day-to-day horror and humiliation of being a slave rather than the brutal responses of the colonists to insubordination (ibid., p.10). that is, it was the entire structure of the slave system that the africans were attempting to fight and escape from, rather than specific injustices happening therein. this essay will begin with a historical analysis of the jamaican maroons, highlighting the pivotal moments in their struggle to show how their community emerged and threw off their enslavement, culminating in the treaties of 1739. the tenets of these treaties challenge the conventional view of the maroons as freedom-fighters because they transformed the maroons into a slave-catching rural police force for the british. grounded in socio-philosophic analysis, i will interrogate maroon motives for signing the treaties by applying descriptive ethics, the study of people’s beliefs about morality. i will argue that the maroons, through their doctrines of exceptionalism and the autonomist goals of their leadership, exhibited an ethically communalistic outlook that served to drive them apart from the africans that remained enslaved; a situation that was further exacerbated by the latter’s creolization. i will explain that although dissent did exist within the maroon ranks, this opposition was ultimately impotent at creating a united, island-wide struggle of all africans against the slave system. in the end the maroons would do little more to undermine the slave state once their collective freedom robert connell – the maroon communitarian dilemma: navigating the interstices between resistance and collaboration 92 was secured within it, thus suggesting an essential difference in motive (if not ferocity) from the haitian revolution1 marronage was a direct response to slavery, the most dehumanizing of social relations, driven by the slave’s yearning for freedom. slaves ran away to be reunited with family, escape a punishment, out of anger after receiving a punishment, to flee habitual sadism and excess driving or to take temporary leave of work with the intention of eventually returning. indeed the maroons were “both the offspring and antithesis of plantation slavery” (bilby, p.89). the physical act of flight was only the first dangerous step in a long journey towards freedom. after absconding a maroon had to find sustenance, shelter and ways to prevent their recapture, often with little or no equipment in unfamiliar terrain. while some maroons would escape to a region where slavery had been abolished, like fredrick douglass or harriet tubman who fled north from southern u.s. slavery, or built new lives isolated and alone, such as esteban montejo . 2 the nuclei of the maroon communities were formed when the english invaded what was then the spanish colony of santiago in 1655. in jamaica the slaves used the confusion of invasion to abscond into the mountainous interior (edwards, p.230). even though the literature makes no mention of marronage in jamaica before the english invasion it stands to reason that it did at least occasionally occur given that the spanish had been importing africans since the 16 , the maroons of jamaica organized themselves into communities on the peripheries of slaveholding society. th 1 the haitian revolution was a struggle in which african slaves rose up, emancipated themselves and overthrew the entire colonist class, thus creating the first successful slave revolution in history. see james, p.263-65 for a synopsis of haitian leader toussaint l’ouverture’s revolutionary constitution. 2 esteban montejo was a cuban slave who escaped his plantation and lived in the wild alone for several years until emancipation (thompson, p.59). century. r.c. dallas (xxix) was of the opinion that the spanish would have soon fallen victims to their own slaves had the english invasion been forestalled much longer, although he did not elaborate on this allegation. bev carey speculated that runaway african slaves linked up with refugee taînos in the rio grande valley as early as the 1520’s caribbean quilt | 2011 93 although she offered no source for this information (carey, p.62). regardless, the english had the foresight to acknowledge as early as the first year of their occupation that “of the blacks there are many, who are likely (sic) to prove as thorns and pricks in our sides” (campbell, p.19). indeed from the beginning of the english invasion to the treaty of 1739, jamaica descended into a conflagration of desperate guerrilla warfare. a typical maroon assault employed complete surprise; the maroons would silently descend upon the plantations from the hills and jungles, kill any whites they found, plunder the estates for arms, food and other supplies, and carry off the slaves, thereby boosting their numbers and military capabilities (ibid., p.26). slave revolts and breakouts also swelled the ranks of the maroons, particularly incorporating those ex-slaves who had the wherewithal and organizational skills to destroy their enslavers from within the plantation (patterson, p.256). the maroons became adept at camouflage, stealth, and reconnaissance to the point where an entire community could flee and remain hidden even as incoming english forces overran their settlements (campbell, p.38-39). conversely, the english initially proved quite incompetent at guerrilla-style combat and foolishly tried to emulate the open warfare of renaissance europe with all its pomp and pageantry. making themselves easy targets, they would march up to john crow summit or the blue mountains in neat lines wearing their eye catching red coats while beating drums, although by the 1700’s, after many painful lessons, they too became accustomed to guerrilla tactics (ibid., p.40). the initial forty years of the 18th century became a crescendo of maroon uprisings in jamaica. the first maroon war is generally thought to have commenced in 1722 (although it is the opinion of the author that this is misleading since there had been a consistent period of at least low level war between the english and some maroon group or another since they took the island) as the planters expanded into the northeast coast coming into close proximity with the windward maroons, based in the parishes of st. mary and portland (patterson, p.260). the windwards, having been relatively quiet up until that point, can trace their roots to a band of spanish affiliated maroons under the robert connell – the maroon communitarian dilemma: navigating the interstices between resistance and collaboration 94 command of the rebel-slave juan de serras and famous leaders like nanny and quao. the leeward maroons had coalesced in the parishes of st. james and st. elizabeth and elected cudjoe as their leader (ibid.). numerous sorties were sent out against both maroon tribes, of which the windwards were far more aggressive. the vast majority of them failed however and only served to enrage and encourage the maroons, emboldening them enough to actually seize and hold plantations (campbell, p.79). the greatest british failure was the defeat of a large force of professional soldiers sent to attack the windwards. they were forced to retreat in a disorganized panic and virtual state of mutiny. the soldiers were so fearful of the maroons that they refused to advance and may have even destroyed their own supplies so as not to be forced to do so (patterson, p.267). the psychological impact of fighting a shadowy enemy with a fierce reputation was taking its toll; the colony at this point was teetering on collapse, not to mention bankruptcy, and the fear of an island-wide maroon-slave insurrection was now frighteningly real in the minds of the colonists (campbell, p.77). the tide was soon to turn for the maroons, however. a tragedy ensued in 1734 when british captain stoddard skilfully snuck up on nanny town, headquarters of the windward maroons, and destroyed it killing many inhabitants (edwards, p.232). the british also began setting up garrisons in the interior of the country to harass the maroons (campbell, p.58). a major maroon offensive focused directly on military forces guarding the capital, spanish town, was repulsed and the maroons attack force had to scatter back to the hinterland (edwards, p.233). after these events, a period of relative calm returned to the island during the mid to late 1730s. the maroons, having experienced rout and repulse, returned to the less extravagant guerrilla tactics of hitand-run and fleeing in the face of colonial sorties (ibid.). in 1737, the british government enlisted miskito natives of honduras, themselves masters of guerrilla warfare, to help suppress the rebels, thus putting the maroons on a permanent defensive stance (ibid., p.235). with the loss of nanny town the less aggressive leewards, under the leadership of cudjoe, became the greater maroon force. sensing an opportunity to end the destabilizing war, british colonel guthrie was given permission to form a treaty with the caribbean quilt | 2011 95 maroons in 1739 (patterson, p.271). greeting guthrie with submission and fawning, cudjoe agreed to a treaty that granted the leeward maroons freedom and a sizeable portion of the interior of jamaica, known as the cockpits. in exchange, guthrie stipulated that escaped slaves fleeing to the leewards must be returned to the whites and that the maroons must help suppress internal and external threats to the colony, while abrogating a significant portion of maroon juridical power to the colonial government (ibid., p.272). from all accounts the windward maroons (and even high ranking members of the leeward maroons) were disgusted by this treaty, but with cudjoe tolerating no dissent in his own camp and threatening to ally with the british against the windwards, windward leader quao had little choice but to sign a similar treaty (ibid., 274). thus concluded 84 years of almost continuous warfare between the planters and the maroons3 i will now re-examine the above historical narrative using descriptive ethics to determine the values that guided the maroons in their struggle and their agreement to sign the treaties. i will argue that although the unforgiving circumstances of the war played a part in the maroon acceptance of the treaty terms, the maroons agreed to collaborate with the slave power because the key maroon leader and decision maker at that time, cudjoe, was guided by a generally communitarian ethos. this overrode any of cudjoe’s solidarisitic feelings toward the still-enslaved africans and led him to find peace with the slave system, provided the community’s needs were met with a guarantee of their own security and freedom. i will utilize philosopher nigel dower’s definition of communitarianism as an ethos in which one’s ethical duty is limited to those with whom one shares a meaningful relation, such as sentiment, shared tradition or convention . despite an arguably ignoble ending to the war, which ultimately did little to change the slave system and in the short term actually strengthened it with the inclusion of a new capable ally, the jamaican maroons proved themselves to be masters of sustained guerrilla warfare. 3 the eight month trelawny town war of 1795-1796 was a conflict that paled in comparison to the previous war in terms of scale and was a catastrophic defeat for the trelawny maroons in particular (they were deported from jamaica) and the prospects of a renewed maroon resistance struggle in general (see campbell, p.209-249) robert connell – the maroon communitarian dilemma: navigating the interstices between resistance and collaboration 96 (dower, p.25). as applied to a social philosophy, communitarians deny the existence of obligations outside the defined group and would therefore tend to reject the principle of solidarity and universalist consciousness; in other words, communitarianism engenders an “us first” mentality. i will briefly investigate some mitigating factors that may have informed the maroon acceptance of the treaty terms noting that without the direct testimony of maroons alive during those days this path of investigation will be limited. a few scholars have offered their theories: mavis c. campbell (p.31) suggests that perhaps cudjoe and many of his maroons were simply war-weary and longed for an end to the fighting, even at a steep cost, while alvin o. thompson (p.295, 316) argues that guerrilla warfare in such conditions was an ultimately unsustainable activity, especially given the military resources of the slave states, which could count on other colonies or the mother country for reinforcements. while the maroons almost certainly did consider their difficult military situation when choosing to make peace with the british, i propose that a communitarian ethical outlook was of paramount importance to maroon decision-making in those critical moments. at face value it seems puzzling that after fighting so adamantly for their own freedom the maroons would aid in the denial of it to people who were in the exact same position they themselves were once in. historical analysis illustrates that in the early days of the jamaican maroon war, long before the treaties, the group that would become the windward maroons seemed quite content to keep to themselves in the as-of-yet unsettled areas of jamaica, only lashing out in their militant manner after expanding settlements encroached on their territory (campbell, p.33). in fact the early windwards were so notorious for their bad treatment of the runaways that tried to seek refuge in their community that some slaves were reported to have gone back to the plantations, preferring to live with their masters over the maroons (patterson, p.258). it was only after the maroons were trespassed by the colonists and were experiencing shortages of arms and basic necessities that they took a kinder disposition toward the slaves (ibid.). caribbean quilt | 2011 97 similarly, the attacks against the plantations were not necessarily for the purpose of ending slavery, although the liberation of slaves was a result of these assaults. in order to sustain their guerrilla war the maroons needed to raid plantations for arms, sustenance, and to maintain or increase their numbers, particularly through the taking of enslaved women for procreation. unfortunately none of the literature examined in this study appears to deal with the issue of consent in these situations. further research is needed. beyond returning runaway slaves as per the treaty terms, the maroons were known to keep them as well (campbell, p.198-99). furthermore, any children sired with their slave women took the status of the mother (dallas, p.126-27). even when the maroons could have joined one of the many slave revolts that happened in the years between the treaties and emancipation, they still chose to remain loyal to their agreement with the colonists. note the maroon assault on the rebels of the st. mary slave revolt of 1760 in jamaica, in which the maroons took their agreement with the colonists seriously enough to hunt down and kill tackey, the revolt leader (edwards, p.242-44). in order to understand how a communitarian ethic could have come about amongst the maroons i will now examine their lore and mythology. the oral history of jamaica’s maroons gives us some striking clues. kenneth bilby (p.247-8) reports that the maroons see themselves as a “chosen people”, with god granting them the super-human ability to put up the tenacious fight they did against their enslavement. furthermore, the jamaican maroons describe themselves as separate and even somewhat spiritually opposed to the descendents of the slaves, whom they call “the other side of people” or obroni (ibid., 291). campbell also speaks of the maroon disdain for the slaves (campbell, p.204). in the maroon creation story there is a myth that nanny, the celebrated chief sorceress of the windward maroons and “mother” of all maroons, had a sister (the “mother” of the rest of afro-jamaica) who accepted her lot in life as a slave thus making her an object of contempt in the minds of the maroons (bilby, p.110-111). the mentality that nonmaroon africans “chose” to stay in slavery is evident in their oral traditions (campbell, p.204). since maroon spirituality preached maroon exceptionalism, and spirituality gave the maroon leadership its robert connell – the maroon communitarian dilemma: navigating the interstices between resistance and collaboration 98 ideology and courage in the face of the colonists, it is of little surprise that a “chosen people” mentality would inhibit any sense of solidarity with the obroni (campbell, p.3-4). this schism still exists today. as for other possible schisms, eugene d. genovese (p.36) argues that the maroons were primarily concerned with restoring an african past whereas the increasingly revolutionary creolized africans wanted full emancipation. the “africanness” of the maroons and the increasing creolization of the slaves was thus another source of tension between the two groups (ibid., p.54). genovese (ibid., p.55) also argues that maroons in general cared primarily for their own autonomy and illustrates his point by citing the case of the haitian maroons during the revolutionary period who allied with the whites and afro-europeans to wage war against the recently freed blacks who were trying to solidify their authority. the maroons did this out of a wish to protect their autonomy from any centralizing power, even a black revolutionary one. it is important at this point to note the dissent against the treaties within the maroon ranks and evidence that the leadership was out of step with at least some of their populace. cudjoe had two of his officers executed and another two banished for rebelling against the treaty and attempting to spark a slave uprising (patterson, p.273). i will further examine that case shortly. it is also known that windward chief quao only begrudgingly signed the treaty from a position of strategic weakness and after having been threatened by cudjoe. it is rumoured that nanny also disapproved of the 1739 treaties, although like quao, she was forced to concede (thompson, p.305). yet, even though dissension to the treaties did exist to one degree or another amongst the maroons, it remains unclear as to the rationale behind that dissent. was it a solidarisitc dissent born out of a yearning for all africans to be free of bondage? was it distrust of the colonists? the war involved trickery and deceit and some maroons may have feared that peace negotiations were simply some kind of ruse. indeed the treaties involved the stationing of european officers in the maroon settlements, a situation that must have seriously unnerved individuals who had fought merciless battles against the colonists for much of their lives. was dissent against the treaties a matter of honour? nanny had reportedly vowed to fight the colonial enemy to the death and was enraged at the prospect of caribbean quilt | 2011 99 having to break that vow (bilby, p.262). there is a jamaican maroon tale of the warrior ojedu (alias opong, kwaku or welcome) who was so embittered by the peace treaties that he left his people forever (which may be an allusion to suicide). in fact the legend of ojedu may refer to whole groups of maroons rather than a single person (ibid.). given the horrors of the slave system, and the fact that many maroons and their loved ones were themselves tortured and brutalized by the enslavers, cooperation with the europeans must have been an agonizing choice for many of the warriors. the likeliest case of solidaristic opposition to the treaties, suggesting the existence of a desire for a unified struggle of all africans against slavery was the case of cudjoe’s rebel commanders who rejected the treaty by attempting to ferment an island-wide revolt in response to it (patterson, p.273). it stands to reason then that a mix of distrust, honour and solidaristic opposition to slavery added fuel to the discord surrounding one of the most momentous choices in maroon history. the above examples suggest that while a communitarian ethic did exist, it was not all-encompassing and stood in conflict with a more solidaristic ethic, which may have indeed prevailed if not for communitarianism being a particularly prevalent characteristic of cudjoe’s leadership. in spite of this, it is worth noting genovese’s (p.57) paradox that even though the maroons essentially accepted the slave system, thereby inhibiting revolutionary action among the slaves, they simultaneously sent “revolutionary shock waves though the slave quarters” by exposing the lie of european racial superiority through the example of their very existence. i will conclude by quoting the astute observations of the brazilian historians joão josé reis and flávio dos santos gomes (andrews, p.225) on the subject of maroon resistance: let them be celebrated as heroes of freedom[;] but what we celebrate in this volume is the struggle of men and women who, in order to live in freedom, weren’t always able to act with the certainty and coherence normally attributed to heroes. robert connell – the maroon communitarian dilemma: navigating the interstices between resistance and collaboration 100 bibliography andrews, george reid, 2000. review of liberdade por um fio: história dos quilombos no brasil. journal of social history, 34(1), p.224-227. bilby, kenneth m., 2005. true-born maroons. gainesville (fl): university press of florida. campbell, mavis c., 1988. the maroons of jamaica, 1655-1796: a history of resistance, collaboration & betrayal. granby (ma): bergin & garvey. carey, bev, 1997. the maroon story. gordon town (jamaica): agouti press. dallas, r. c., 1803. the history of the maroons, from their origin to the establishment of their chief tribe at sierra leone. 1st vol. london: longman. dower, nigel, 2007. world ethics: the new agenda. 2nd ed. edinburgh: edinburgh university press. edwards, bryan, 1796. observations on the disposition, character, manners, and habits of life, of the maroon negroes of the island of jamaica, and a detail of the origin, progress, and termination of the late war between those people and the white inhabitants. in price, richard, ed. maroon societies: rebel slave communities in the americas. garden city (ny): anchor books, 1973, p.230-245. genovese, eugene d., 1979. from rebellion to revolution: afroamerican slave revolts in the making of the modern world. baton rouge (la): louisiana state university press. higginson, thomas wentworth, 1998. black rebellion: five slave revolts. ny: da capo press. caribbean quilt | 2011 101 james, c.l.r. the black jacobins: toussaint l'ouverture and the san domingo revolution. new york, ny: vintage books. 1963. patterson, orlando, 1973. slavery and slave revolts: a sociohistorical analysis of the first maroon war, 1665-1740.” in price, richard, ed. maroon societies: rebel slave communities in the americas. garden city (ny): anchor books, 1973, p.246-292. price, richard, 1973. introduction: maroons and their communities. in price, richard, ed. maroon societies: rebel slave communities in the americas. garden city (ny): anchor books, 1973, p.1-31. price, richard, 1983. to slay the hydra: dutch colonial perspectives on the saramaka wars. ann arbor (mi): karoman publishers, inc. price, richard, 1988, ed. introduction. in j.g. stedman. narrative of a five years' expedition against the revolted negroes of surinam. baltimore (md): johns hopkins university press. thompson, alvin o., 2006. flight to freedom: african runaways and maroons in the americas. kingston (jamaica): university of the west indies press. :::::: 51 usa’s crusade on the haitian black pig population & its toll on haitian peasantry and agriculture sarah taluy sarah taluy is a graduate of the university of toronto. she completed her hon. bachelors of arts in 2013 with a specialist in caribbean studies, a major in international relations and a minor in spanish. currently, sarah is pursuing a masters degree at the london school of economics and political science (lse) in international development and humanitarian emergencies. in the future, she aspires to contribute to improving haitian relations with the rest of the caribbean and take part in research that she hopes will bring about real development in her country and positively affect the lives of haitians. on january 12th 2010, a surrounding city of port-au-prince (pap) was hit by 7.0 magnitude earthquake. in the end a staggering 300,000 casualties had been reported and millions were displaced. the event was perhaps the most catastrophic calamity to strike haiti, since its “discovery” in 1492. the earthquake further exacerbated the hardships of day-to-day lives of haitians suffering from isolation and imperialistic policies. the fact that an earthquake had such a devastating impact on the country was closely linked to the weak and inefficient infrastructure but more importantly for the purposes of this paper to the ineffective and poor peasantry. the agricultural sector in haiti in the 1950’s employed about 80% of the population and by the 1980’s, declined to 66% of the population.1 therefore, it is safe to say that a majority of haitians were heavily reliant on agriculture. however, haiti’s agricultural production has suffered dramatically as a result of the implementation of free trade prescriptions and the introduction of economic liberalization policies under the auspices of institutions like the international monetary fund and world bank, which ultimately limited the ability of the haitian state to govern and help its own population. those in the countryside continue to suffer the most from these decisions that prohibit government subsidies or any such aid. this setback coupled with the american led slaughter of the haitian native pig, also known as creole pig, the cochon planche or the black 1 richard a. haggerty, haiti: a country study, country studies (washington: gpo for the library of congress, 1989). http://countrystudies.us/haiti/54.htm caribbean quilt | 2013 52 pig, in 1982-3 completely destroyed the composition of the agricultural system in haiti. as a result, poverty in rural haiti has drastically intensified and consequently there has been an exodus from rural areas to the capital. this led to the overcrowding of pap and the building of unstable structures directly causing the death toll in the january 2010 to be of astronomical proportions. in order to understand the over-population of port-au-prince and the high number of casualties from the 2010 earthquake, i will argue that us foreign policy in the early 1980’s towards haiti, had stunted the agricultural development in haiti by destroying the fundamental fabric of the peasantry systemthe haitian black pig, and ultimately further entrenched the maladies of the poverty stricken countryside. haiti, part of the island of hispaniola, was the first black colony to forcefully attain independence from the french forces of napoleon bonaparte. this was remarkable because, at a time where french armies were defeating all major european forces, they suffered a defeat by enslaved forces that were not as well trained and armed. on january 1st 1804, the efforts of toussaint l’ouverture and later jean-jacques dessalines among others came to fruition and haiti was declared a free republic. haiti’s independence has been stifled since its inception. haiti was forced to pay france 90,000,000 francs as repatriation and a guarantee not to be invaded by french armies. thereafter, haiti also experienced several us military occupations. it has been 208 years now since the independence of haiti and unfortunately the majority of these years have been plagued by dire poverty, violence, and corruption. the causes of these misfortunes have varying sources from internal to external roots and most of the times, a combination of both. haiti’s government and politics have been marred by violence and corruption and it appears that although government regimes may have switch hands, so did the intensity of violence and poverty. haiti was invaded and occupied by the united states of america (usa) from 1915-1934 due to a period of intense political violence and a us fear for its corporations in haiti. in the late 1950’s, perhaps the most notorious government of haiti took office: the duvalier regime beginning in 1957 with francois duvalier and ending with the overthrow of his son jean-claude duvalier in 1986. it is during the tenure of the second repressive and brutal dictatorship that the black pig disaster occurred amidst increasing liberalization. it would be a mistake to think that it was only while the duvaliers were in power that the haitian peasantry had been sarah taluy| usa’s crusade on haitian black pig population 53 neglected. “the haitian state has always been authoritarian from dessalines to the two duvaliers, haiti has known nothing but dictators” and most, neglected its peasants and instead, worried about maintaining power more than anything else.2 prior to the duvalier era, paul magloire ruled haiti. magloire had put a tax on coffee, haiti’s main export, which had raised the coffee price by 16% in 1953 and by 1955-56 it had increased to 27% thus putting the fate of the peasantry in the stock exchange market where any price decrease would directly affect the cultivators.3 in the mid 50’s discontent towards the magloire regime grew to unprecedented heights and led him to free haiti in 1956. an election ensued in 1957 but high priority matters were not given to the rural parts of haiti, only the cities mostly port-au-prince were paid attention to; michel trouillot observed that even though the agricultural sector accounted for the largest portion of the gnp, they were marginalized during the election, and were not even recognized as the backbone of the haitian economy and thus, the peasantry’s efforts were negated.4 françois duvalier, like magloire, put a tax on another of haiti’s export crops, sugar. the tax collected on sugar grew to 37% in 1969 and instead of the government re-investing in the agricultural sector in order to generate growth and improve the agricultural and irrigation systems, the redistribution of wealth was divided between three useless parts of haitian society the “parasites, individual gains, and buying sympathisers.”5 duvalier was thus pocketing the profits from the hard labour of the peasants and to bribe the allegiance of people to remain in power and rule through a system of fear and extreme brutality where even women, children and elders were not spared from the violence pursued by his loyal army the tonton macoutes. although after the duvalier period violence slightly decreased, the neglect of the agricultural sector persisted and its’ depreciation continued. as previously stated, haiti’s main source of employment post-independence was within the agricultural sector. in clr james’ black jacobins, the leader of the revolution saw very early the importance of agriculture in the development of haiti; “toussaint saw early that political power is only a means to an end. the 2 michel-rolph trouillot, state against nation: the origins and legacy of duvalierism (new york: monthly review press, 1990). 164 3 ibid. 143 4 ibid. 147 5 trouillot, 154 caribbean quilt | 2013 54 salvation of san domingo lay in the restoration of agriculture…. toussaint addressed himself to this from the first days of his command. work is necessary, it is a virtue, it is for the general good of the state.”6 by the 1980’s, although the percentage of peoples employed in the agricultural sector had declined, it was still the major employer, accounting for some 66% of the population.7 the haitian peasantry organized in a very novel manner, one that differed from other economic systems, this unique system was known as kombit.8 kombit is a practice relying on agriculture and the sharing rather than selling of services and goods; there is no money involved in these exchanges and the system is based on the community gathering to harvest and then sharing the products.9 the typical kombit will have a planter announce the harvest day and invite the neighboring community to come and help in the cultivation process, there, the tasks will be divided depending on gender and capability, and all while working, chants of encouragements can be heard alongside jovial conversation.10 the haitian kombit promoted self-sufficiency encouraged the consumption of locally produced and exchanged goods, but not the exportation of goods.11 this practice was very well described in jacque roumain’s novel gouverneurs de la rosée where the protagonist manuel led a kombit to reunite the town and helped in finding water to assist in the cultivation of crops. the practice of kombit, a promoter of unity and cooperation, was what had saved the town from drought, division amongst families, and more poverty. laurent dubois writing on jacques roumain’s masters of the dew, stated that the novel’s crux is to promote haiti’s rural population by putting it at the centre of a story rather then on the sidelines; dubois argued that roumain tried to make a connection between the elite world of haiti, which he belonged to, and “the core foundation of his country: the farmers and families of the countryside” this goes hand 6 c.l.r. james, the black jacobins, second edition (new york: vintage books edition, 1989). 155-56 7 haggerty. 8 roland berthold, kombit a haitian agricultural and economic system, http://www.haitimega.com/agricultural_products_and_practiceskombit_a_haitian_agriculture_and_economic_system/85543180715950112/ article_86195166922211328.jsp (accessed 2012 -04-04). 9 ibid. 10 berthold. 11 ibid. sarah taluy| usa’s crusade on haitian black pig population 55 and hand with clr james’ argument concerning toussaint and his promotion of agriculture previously mentioned.12 apart from the kombit, haitian peasants also cultivated land under a system known as méteyage or dimouatyé. in this system the peasantry would turn over half of their produce to their landowner and the other half would remain for personal use.13 dimouatyé is similar to the notion of renting a piece of the land but more often then not, the amount of land being rented is not specified and no concrete contract is signed, however, if the landlord was to take his land back, he would be responsible to pay the tenant farmer the cost of cultivation if it had already occurred.14 this system provided haitian peasants with the liberty to choose what they wanted to cultivate and also allowed for a monetary-free exchange that enabled many of those affected by poverty to engage in a system of collateral exchange.15 although haitian peasants were highly neglected and used very basic tools such as the hoe, the machete, the sickle, the digging stick and the fork, this method of collateral exchange, along with state support would have been beneficial to adequately meet the demands of this local system.16 the haitian black pig was the peasant’s most valued asset it served as a local banking system, had a central role in vodou ceremonies and was also an important source of protein.17 pigs were a promising investment for peasants as by killing or selling them they were able to meet their household obligations, finance their children’s schooling, healthcare, baptisms, funerals, weddings, and other unexpected expenses and also protected them from the city 12 laurent dubois, haiti: the aftershocks of history (new york: metropolitan books hentry hold and company,llc, 2012). 309 13 serge larose, l'exploitation agricole en haiti: guide d'etude (montreal: centre de recherche caraibes, university of montreal, 1976). 43 14 larose,,14 15 dubois, 269 16 larose,49 17 paul farmer, "swine aid," in the haiti files: decoding the crisis, ed. james ridgeway, 130-133 (washington d.c: essentiaal books, 1994). 130 and patrick bellegarde-smith, haiti: the breached citadel (toronto: canadian scholar's press inc., 2004). 47 and franz c. m. alexander, "experience with african swine fever in haiti," annals of the new york sciences, june 1992: 251-256. 255 caribbean quilt | 2013 56 loan sharks.18 the creole pig was also very cost efficient since it needed no care, roamed freely, ate whatever they found and during famines would live off their grease.19 in religious vodou ceremonies the sacrifice of a haitian black pig was very important, this practice dates back to the ceremony that took place before the first slave revolt led by boukman where at “morne rouge, a mountain overlooking le cap, boukman gave the last instructions and after voudou incantations and the sucking of the blood of a stuck pig he stimulated his followers by a prayer…”20 it was believed that the blood of the black pig sealed contracts during vodou rituals.21 aside from religious and economic purposes, because the caring of the black pig was so minimal, they thrived under the worst circumstances and when there was a famine; their meat could be used as source of protein for the peasants and haitian population itself. it is believed that 50% of the protein intake of haitians was satisfied by the black pig, explaining the traditional dish of the fried pieces of pork known as griots.22 in 1978, african swine fever (asf), an incurable and fast spreading disease that affected pigs causing hemorrhagic fevers and in a short amount of time leads to death, began flourishing across the americas.23 the disease was caused by an atypical dna virus that easily spreads through a host tick called tampans. for example, when pigs are in close contact with each other, these tampans spread and pullulate and thus, infect them through the sucking of their blood.24 asf was endemic to the southern and central parts of africa but has 18 farmer, 130-133 (washington d.c: essentiaal books, 1994). 130 and rod price, haiti family business. london: latin american bureau (research and action) limited, 1985.47 19debora mackenzie, "haiti, le retour du cochon," pyepimanla, http://www.pyepimanla.com/decembre-2008/articles/haiti-le-retour-ducochon.html (accessed 02 4, 2012). 20 c.l.r. james, "the san domingo masses begin," in caribbean slavery in the atlantic world: a student reader, ed. hilary mcd. beckles verene shepherd, 946-960 (kingston: ian randle publishers limited, 2000). 947 21 mohamed larbi bouguerra, pour sauver le cochon noir d'haiti, http://www.pyepimanla.com/decembre-2008/articles/haiti-le-retour-ducochon.html (accessed 01 21, 2012). 22bellegarde-smith, 207. 23 food and agriculture organization of the united nations, "recognizing african swine fever: a field manual," fao corporate document repository, 2000, http://www.fao.org/docrep/004/x8060e/x8060e00.htm#ch2 (accessed 03 31, 2012). 24 ibid. sarah taluy| usa’s crusade on haitian black pig population 57 been known to infect swine in europe in rare occasions. it was through infecting pigs in europe that this virus spread to the caribbean region. in 1978, pigs in the dominican republic, 2/3 of the island that haiti shares, ate contaminated (asf) pig wastes from the meals that had been served aboard a flight arriving from europe. (asf virus cannot spread to humans so the meat of an infected pig will not cause a human to be sick).25 from the dominican republic, asf spread to cuba and haiti. once asf was detected in the americas, the usa led an investigation into the haitian pigs and found that a small number of pigs had been infected however; many appeared to be resistant to the disease because not many infected pigs actually died as the disease predicted.26 haiti’s native pig was a small but robust descendant of the european pig of the xvii century whose diet consisted of whatever it found in the area.27 after discovering that some haitian pigs were infected with asf, the usa chose to protect its own pig industry and funded the $23 million programme pour l’éradication de la peste porcine et pour le dévelopment de l’évlevage porcine (peppadep) which would serve to exterminate and restock the swine population.28 usaid and the haitian government had thus promised to compensate the peasants for the slaughter of their pigs, whether infected or not, through the importation of new pigs. the reimbursement plan did not prove as efficient as the eradication program had been. many haitians did not get reimbursed and those that did quickly realized the inefficiency of the newly brought pigs.29 haiti being only an hour and a half flight away from usa’s florida could not escape the american asf pillaging. the usa did everything in its power to protect its own self-interests, without a care about the adverse effects it would have on the haitian peasantry. they had to make sure that their own farmers would not stand to lose with the spread of asf and thus convinced the haitian government to slaughter its domestic pig population that stood at 1.3 million in 1981. thus, by 1984, there remained no haitian black pigs on the island.30 the us agency for international development aid (usaid) had argued that the only way to successfully eradicate asf 25 mackenzie. 26 farmer, 130 27 mackenzie 28 farmer, 130 29 dubois, 325 30 farmer, 130-1 caribbean quilt | 2013 58 was to kill all of the pigs and as laurent dubois argued, this was perhaps the first time that the haitian government efforts towards any policy aimed at rural haiti was so successful because this brutal attack on the peasantry and its native pig had devastating effects in innumerable facets of haitian life. the killing of all of the haitian pigs was not necessarily the best solution because asf specialists recommended pinpointing the asf infected animals and only slaughtering those infected.31 during the period when asf was present on the island, the usaid funded peppadep and had international veterinarians come and train local haitian veterinarians in order to carry out the mass slaughter. one of the veterinarians who helped in the detection and eradication process franz c.m. alexander admitted that out of the slaughter of 34,488 pigs, only 2% had been infected by asf.32 with that being said, would it not have been simpler to test the pigs and kill those who were infected instead of devastating a whole population? unfortunately, the usa chose eradication rather than preservation of the black pig and thus, the former represented the best option. the usa believed that if asf reached their country they would stand to loose $560 million while eradicating asf would only cost them $300 million a year for a decade therefore, the swine population in the neighboring island, hispaniola, had to be dually annihilated to make sure that the us did not get infected.33 the eradication of asf and the haitian pig population affected many different sectors of haiti. not only was the main source of protein completely demolished but the possibility of maintaining avenues of fast cash had also disappeared. immediate signs of concern appeared just two months after the usa had declared haiti free of asf on august of 1984.34 in the 1980’s and early 1990’s the school year began in october and in october of 1984, school registration had plummeted some 40-50%; those businesses which provided books, cloth and uniform makers, school supply stores as well as other businesses felt the economic slowdown.35 religious rites in vodou had to be altered because there were no more black pigs, causing a high demand for black pigs to preserve 31 bouguerra. 32alexander, 255 33 mackenzie 34 farmer,131 35 ibid. sarah taluy| usa’s crusade on haitian black pig population 59 culture and respect rituals.36 the loss of the pig had wider repercussions outside of the financial and nutritional realm, as peasants now had an excess of mangoes previously used to feed the pigs. in order to perpetuate more cash flow the mangoes were sold at the market and mango trees were used to make charcoal – as an attempt to replace the loss of the pig with a new type of business. 37 haiti had already begun to suffer from deforestation and the use of mango trees to sell as charcoal further aggravated the situation. as an alternative to the breeding of the haitian pig, peasants began breeding goats, which also thrived in haiti however; the goat also further inflamed the deforestation problem since they feed on small shrubs and any vegetation and thus would hinder any attempts of replanting trees.38 the problem of deforestation is enormous in haiti, in 1923, haiti’s forests made up 60% of the country and recently, in 2006 it was said to stand at only 2%!39 this massive decrease has been the source of numerous deadly landslides and has caused the deterioration of the soil leading to lower agricultural yields.40 the usaid funded peppadep had planned to compensate the haitian peasants and to re-stock haiti with new pigs and of course, went directly to its own swine farmers and exported 500 iowa pigs to haiti.41 this species did not fare very well in the hot and poor environment. this newly introduced pig excluded the peasants from the pig industry because iowa pigs required a significant amount of money to maintain and subsequently breed. 42 these pigs were pink and thus were called grimmelle but they were also more fragile than their predecessors earning them the name the “white princess;” these pigs required a wheat and vitamin based diet, regular baths, cement floors, veterinary interventions, and to make matters worse, they did not yield as many piglets as had been promised and the litters did not come often.43 the new pigs brought conflicts to many towns because of the situation of those who had 36 alexander, 255 37 mackenzie, 38 ibid. 39 library of congress – federal research division, "country profile: haiti, may 206," 05 2006, http://lcweb2.loc.gov/frd/cs/profiles/haiti.pdf (accessed 04 04, 2012). 10 40 ibid. 41bellegarde-smith, 207 42 ibid.132 43 farmer, 208 caribbean quilt | 2013 60 pigs and those who did not.44 in dokay, a town in haiti, for example, a priest known as father alexis had attempted to redistribute the pigs and piglets but was unsuccessful because they required too much maintenance, around $120-$250 was necessary per year for the upkeep of the pig and this was both an inconceivable and unrealistic demand as the average peasant lived on less than a dollar a day. 45 the persistent lack of government initiatives to improve and protect rural haiti coupled with the eradication of asf and the haitian pig, as well as the increase of deforestation and the erosion of soil had drastic ramifications for agricultural employment. it was hardly surprising then, that by 2006 agriculture employed 46%, of the country, the service sector now employed 44% of the population and there stood a 32.7% unemployment rate.46 four years later, the agricultural sector only employed 38.1% of the population and unemployment rose to 40.6%.47 the decline in agriculture caused haiti to import most of its foodstuffs most notably from the usa where in 2005, 35% of its imports were from the usa.48 it also led many to migrate to the cities of haiti most notably in port-au-prince as well as abroad to the usa and canada where new york, florida, boston and montreal where noticeably large diasporic community of haitians began to settle. in port-au-prince, this further aggravated an already tense situation because of the over population of the city, in 2006, of a population of about 8.3 million, 1.5 million lived in the city port-au-prince.49 as haiti’s population continued to augment so did the population in pap and this caused great danger because many of the houses in haiti were built on unsuitable lands such as hillsides and these houses were also poorly constructed. the overpopulation of pap and the poor infrastructure of the capital city is the reason why the january 2010 earthquake had such a devastating effect to the lives of the citizens and to the infrastructure of the city. again, in the face of such great calamity the government 44ibid.133 45 ibid. 46 consulat général d’haïti à montréal, l'economie haitienne 2006 (montreal, 2006). http://www.haiti.org/images/stories/pdf/leconomie_haitienne.pdf 47 cia.gov, the world factbook, 04 3, 2012, https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/ha.html (accessed 04 4, 2012). 48 library of congress,10 49 ibid. sarah taluy| usa’s crusade on haitian black pig population 61 proved unable to help its own people and in the end it had to look abroad for aid. the us and haitian governments’ cooperation in the early 1980’s to eradicate asf is another example of the haitian government’s inability to put the interest of its population ahead of the interests of entities such as the usa. the usa led intervention to control and eliminate the asf virus which further entrenched and devastated the already fragile and poor peasantry and haitian economy. although the agricultural sector of haiti has decreased to an unprecedented low, hope may be restored if the government were to put its interest first, like the usa does so often, and begin a program to combat deforestation and replenish the soil of nutrients. those who remain in the agricultural sector have been given some hope by the introduction of a new black pig by a group of french scientists.50 these scientists bred some of the native pigs of guadeloupe with another european breed and their offspring have been thriving in the environment of haiti, and more importantly, they are black therefore the cultural sacrifice in voodoo ceremonies can now resume.51 however, the resurfacing of the black pig in haiti cannot be the only solution to the declining peasantry. the haitian government must begin to prioritize the development of rural haiti if it wants to avoid the pressures of overpopulation in cities leading to catastrophes like the 300,000 deaths in 2010 in pap. it is imperative for a government to take a stance like toussaint’s and initiate an agricultural program that will put the majority of the population first instead of continuing to work towards the interest of a few and only seeking to enrich themselves while in power. the question still remains however, when will the haitian government stop betraying its population and actually govern responsibly? for any improvement depends strongly on the willingness of the government to work responsibly and respect its population to achieve any real change. 50 mackenzie 51 ibid. caribbean quilt | 2013 62 work cited alexander, franz c. m. "experience with african swine fever in haiti." annals of the new york sciences, june 1992: 251-256. bellegarde-smith, patrick. haiti: the breached citadel. toronto: canadian scholar's press inc., 2004. berthold, roland. kombit a haitian agricultural and economic system. http://www.haitimega.com/agricultural_products_and_practiceskombit_a_haitian_agriculture_and_economic_system/855431807159 50112/article_86195166922211328.jsp (accessed 2012-04-04). bouguerra, mohamed larbi. pour sauver le cochon noir d'haiti. http://www.pyepimanla.com/decembre-2008/articles/haiti-le-retourdu-cochon.html (accessed 01 21, 2012). cia.gov. the world factbook. 04 3, 2012. https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-worldfactbook/geos/ha.html (accessed 04 4, 2012). consulat général d’haïti à montréal. l'economie haitienne 2006. montreal, 2006. http://www.haiti.org/images/stories/pdf/leconomie_haitienne.pdf dubois, laurent. haiti: the aftershocks of history. new york: metropolitan books hentry hold and company,llc, 2012. farmer, paul. "swine aid." in the haiti files: decoding the crisis, edited by james ridgeway, 130-133. washington d.c: essentiaal books, 1994. food and agriculture organization of the united nations. "recognizing african swine fever: a field manual." fao corporate document repository. 2000. http://www.fao.org/docrep/004/x8060e/x8060e00.htm#ch2 (accessed 03 31, 2012). haggerty, richard a. haiti: a country study. country studies, washington: gpo for the library of congress, 1989. http://countrystudies.us/haiti/54.htm james, c.l.r. the black jacobins. second edition. new york: vintage books edition, 1989. sarah taluy| usa’s crusade on haitian black pig population 63 james, c.l.r. "the san domingo masses begin." in caribbean slavery in the atlantic world: a student reader, edited by hilary mcd. beckles verene shepherd, 946-960. kingston: ian randle publishers limited, 2000. larose, serge. l'exploitation agricole en haiti: guide d'etude. montreal: centre de recherche caraibes, university of montreal, 1976. larry e. sullivan, r. burke johnson, cynthis calkins mercado and karen j. terry, ed. reagan doctrine. thousand oaks: sage publication, 2009.http://go.galegroup.com.myaccess.library.utoronto.ca/ps/i.do?id =gale%7ca11860822&v=2.1&u=utoronto_main&it=r&p=aone&sw=w (accessed 03 31, 2012). library of congress – federal research division. "country profile: haiti, may 206." 05 2006. http://lcweb2.loc.gov/frd/cs/profiles/haiti.pdf (accessed 04 04, 2012). mackenzie, debora. "haiti, le retour du cochon." pyepimanla. http://www.pyepimanla.com/decembre-2008/articles/haiti-le-retourdu-cochon.html (accessed 02 4, 2012). mohammed-ali, kathleen. "“vive chef coumbite!” the new masters in post-emancipation haiti." building communities. http://scholar.library.miami.edu/emancipation/culture3.htm (accessed 04 4, 2012). prince, rod. haiti family business. london: latin american bureau (research and action) limited, 1985. "reaganomics revisited." academic onefile. national review. 02 14, 1992. http://go.galegroup.com.myaccess.library.utoronto.ca/ps/i.do?id=gale %7ca11860822&v=2.1&u=utoronto_main&it=r&p=aone&sw=w (accessed 03 31, 2012). trouillot, michel-rolph. state against nation: the origins and legacy of duvalierism. new york: monthly review press, 1990. :::::: 17 haiti and cuba: trans-caribbean conversations and cross border movements monica espaillat lizardo monica espaillat lizardo received her honours b.a. in history and equity studies from the university of toronto in june 2013. in september 2013 she began working towards her phd at the university of toronto’s department of history. she is interested in the study of colonial and postcolonial history, particularly caribbean, latin american and african histories. she hopes to focus her current studies on the creation and policing of gender, race and citizenship within contentious latin american border zones (haiti-dominican republic, mexico-united states) from the nineteenth century onwards. this essay will explore the interconnected histories of haiti and cuba: their migrations, ethnography, culture, politics, and music. in the twentieth century, important historical actors from both of these caribbean nations collided with, interacted with, and informed each other. while this essay will look at the parallel histories of both countries, it will attempt to do so through a haitian perspective, though the fluidity of their histories often escapes such confinement. the noirisme and negrismo movements centered and praised african influences, and the communist movements highlighted economic iniquities and promoted class struggle. the glaring omission in these movements was the question of gender and the position of women within the haitian and cuban patriarchal states. academic work examining these particular histories through a consciously gendered perspective seems to be lacking. for this reason, this historical examination will include the voice of martha jean-claude. her story provides a useful and interesting frame from which we can explore the interconnectedness of haitian and cuban histories, as her own journey includes cultural, political, and musical travel between the two countries. the radical and transformative movements of twentieth century haiti were not singular. ethnographic and political movements occurred in parallel to similar movements in cuba. historically, haiti and cuba have similar tales, although the specific contexts vary. the twentieth century histories of the two nations have been characterized by an exchange of exploitable labor from haiti to cuba, but the connections do not end there. while haiti had jean-price mars, cuba had fernando ortiz. when haiti expounded noirisme, cuba offered negrismo. while haiti shook off u.s. caribbean quilt | 2013 18 occupation in the 1930s, cuba removed the shackles of the machadato.1 both countries skirted around possible communism in the mid-twentieth century, and by the end of the 1950s and early 60s, both countries had experienced tremendous political change. when jacques roumain was creating haitian peasant novels, cuban author alejo carpentier was preoccupied with lo real maravilloso. while misogyny was deeply entrenched in haitian culture, cuban machismo was privileged. while haiti claimed martha jean-claude by birth, cuba claimed her by love. the creation of a deeply nuanced, context-dependent, and coded oral culture served as a survival strategy for slaves within haiti and cuba and throughout the caribbean. the creation of this oral culture was driven by multiple factors of great historical, social and political significance. this oral culture served multiple purposes, such as providing a conduit of communication and unity amongst the different african ethnic groups being sold as chattel. it thus allowed slaves to re-center the margins. slave oral culture created an insider-outsider dynamic, in which slaves positioned themselves on the inside and colonialists were purposefully excluded. this defiant orality was in and of itself an important socio-political institution, and remains so today. slave oral culture remains as important today in ‘postcolonial’ caribbean spaces as it was historically. these oral cultures, forged from experiences of struggle and agency that elude the static narratives of victimization, serve as the foundation of numerous contemporary musical and cultural movements. these movements foreground and politicize the narratives of the marginalized and disenfranchised masses. in haiti, the codified oral culture draws from and informs the religious practice of vodou observed by most haitians. vodou was transported across the atlantic and recreated, accounting for new social relations, in colonial saint-domingue. the violently relentless suppression of vodou, both in saint-domingue and post-independence haiti, has proved unsuccessful because of the decentralized nature of the religion and its history as an oral tradition. oral culture in haiti has become politicized through prevalent vodou-informed musical traditions, which have been 1 jules benjamin, “the machadato and cuban nationalism, 1928-1932,” the hispanic american historical review 55, no. 1 (1975): 66-91. monica espaillat lizardo| cuba and haiti 19 transformed into popular cultural expressions that posit peasant traditions as the “soul of the nation.”2 in this way, vodou and transgressive musical expression are linked. although the tiny elite sector of haitian society has maintained governmental and economic power, they hold what michael d. largey terms “dominance without hegemony.”3 the insider-outsider dynamic has allowed the masses to remain on the inside, controlling and defining their own culture against elite-imposed ideologies. bodily social memory “is enacted through musical performance in ways that allow an individual to move beyond imagining the nation through print-capitalism.”4 musical culture allows the masses to move beyond merely “read[ing] the nation; they can see, hear and participate in it.”5 through popular cultural expression the masses can lay as much claim to historical and political production as do the elite, the academics, and the politicians. the daily, the mundane, the human, the governmental, the international, and the political converge in popular cultural expression. thus, cultural expression becomes political, and a divide between low and high politics loses relevance within haiti. 1791 is an important year in the migratory connections between haiti and cuba. as revolution, revolts, and violence intensified in colonial saint-domingue, a wave of french settlers accompanied by their slaves relocated to cuba.6 these new settlers primarily occupied the guantanamo province on the eastern part of the island.7the pull to cuba would again intensify about a century later. this time, haitian braceros made up the migratory population as cuba’s sugar economy, driven by u.s. demand, required cheap 2 gage averill, "haitian dance bands, 1915-1970: class, race, and authenticity," latin american music review 10, no. 2 (1989): 215. 3 michael d. largey, vodou nation: haitian art music and cultural nationalism (chicago: university of chicago press, 2006), 9. 4 largey, 16. 5 sue tuohy, “the sonic dimensions of nationalism in modern china: musical representation and transformation,” ethnomusicology 45 (2001). in largey, 16. 6 susan hurlich, “creole language and culture: part of cuba's cultural patrimony, 1998” bannzil kreyòl kiba socio cultural project, http://www.walterlippmann.com/docs140.html. 7 hurlich. caribbean quilt | 2013 20 exploitable labor.8haitians faced extreme racial discrimination that manifested itself in pay rates, living conditions, and the broader social context. the condition of the haitian braceros was “not much better than slavery.”9 as cuba’s economy faltered in the 1920s and further collapsed in the 1930s, the already deplorable conditions of haitians worsened.10 the discrimination against haitians, fueled by racial whitening policies being undertaken in cuba, was defined by the “three icons of fear: revolution, religion and sexuality.”11arguably, the greatest of these was the first, the fear of cuba facing a haitian style revolution. as the cuban economy further destabilized, both cuban and immigrant laborers began to protest, leading to largescale repatriations of haitians. in the 1930s alone, approximately 38,000 laborers were forcefully repatriated to haiti, being given no time to sell or gather their assets.12 it is worth noting that the communist party of cuba, which would later ally itself with haitian communists, opposed these anti-immigration and specifically antihaitian measures.13 today, haitian culture and language still has a deep influence on the province of guantanamo, which “has been historically the most important region for haitian residents”.14 a study by cuban sociologists in the 1980s estimated that approximately 45,000 haitian descendants and approximately 4,000 native haitians lived in the province.15haitian culture has definitely left its mark upon cuba in more general ways as well. cuba’s national language is spanish, but the second most commonly spoken language is kreyòl.16 1991 saw the formation of the association of haitian residents and descendants, and in 1998 a 8 marc c. mcleod, “undesirable aliens: race, ethnicity, and nationalism in the comparison of haitian and british west indian immigrant workers in cuba, 1912-1939,” journal of social history 31, no. 3 (1998): 600. 9 hurlich. 10 mcleaod, 603. 11 mcleod, 600-601. 12 mcleod, 599. 13 mcleod, 605. 14 hurlich. 15 hurlich. 16 hurlich. monica espaillat lizardo| cuba and haiti 21 kreyòl library was opened in havana, attesting to the huge impact haiti and haitians have made on cuba.17 cuba’s acceptance and elevation of haitian culture within its own borders seems at odds with its earlier policies of population whitening. it seems incongruous that, in the late twentieth century, cubans were not only embracing but also actively creating space for haitian cultural expression when previously everything haitian had been so thoroughly devalued and demonized. arguably, this radical shift has much to do with the parallel ethnological movements occurring in haiti and cuba in the 1930s and 1940s. these movements sought to realign their respective nations with their african influences and elevate the expression thereof. elizabeth a. mcalister posits that there are three contributing factors resulting in the “emergence of contemporary constellations of black popular expressions.”18 these are (1) the displacement of european models of culture and of europeans as universal subjects (2) the present dominance of the usa as the center of global cultural production and circulation (3) and the decolonization of the third world and the construction of decolonized sensibilities and subjectivities.19 all three factors can be found in what gage averill has termed the “haitian renaissance [where] indigenous movements looked deeper into the culture of the countryside for inspiration.”20 it is important to note that while mcalister’s three factors of black popular expression hold up within the haitian context, they privilege the elite’s reactionary shift towards peasant culture coinciding with the u.s. occupation of haiti. that is to say, african-influenced popular expression amongst the non-elite masses predated its recognition and legitimization by the elites in state institutions and rhetoric. before haitian elites denounced the very european models of culture and civilization to which they had so fervently clung as markers of superior status, haitian peasants were already honoring and reveling in african-derived traditions. once u.s. racism 17 hurlich. 18 elizabeth a. mcalister, rara! vodou, power, and performance in haiti and its diaspora (berkeley: university of california press, 2002), 195-196. 19 mcalister, 195-196. 20 averill, 215-218. caribbean quilt | 2013 22 destabilized haitian hierarchies of color, class, and status, the elites needed to embrace, under the alibi of decolonization, an afrohaitian culture that haitian peasants and the non-elite masses had already embraced. it was during this “haitian renaissance” that jean price-mars espoused the view he held in his 1928 work ainsi parle l'oncle, which urged for vodou musical traditions to be integrated into elite institutions.21 this ideological shift stressed haiti’s deep connection and immense debt to africa.22 price-mars is often cited as the father of haitian noirisme. noirisme, an intellectual movement that expanded on cultural indigenisme, took a racialist view of culture and politics while asserting the primacy of african thought and traditions over those of a “stagnant old” europe.23political subscribers of noirisme, driven by an adherence to color politics, “advocated the total control of the state apparatus by black representatives of the popular classes.”24from the noirisme tradition emerged a group of thinkers originating from outside the elite upper classes, the griots.25 the griots held a romanticized belief in the inherent virtue of the masses. their belief was placed in the “beggar, the unwashed, the peasant with calloused feet who descends from the mountains with his garden produce.”26 the black peasant was the purest citizen, and to these citizens they wrote: “you are the pillars of the edifice;/disappear,/and everything will collapse like a house of cards.”27 while haitian elites, intellectuals and political thinkers were realigning their focus towards africa, exponents of afro-cuban culture were busily constructing a parallel movement of their own. price-mars provided littérature indigene for haiti while fernando ortiz provided his own investigations into indigenous afro-cuban 21 averill, 215-218. 22 david nicholls, "ideology and political protest in haiti, 1930-46." journal of contemporary history 9, no. 4(1974): 3-5. 23 nicholls, 4, 5, 10. 24 matthew smith, "vive 1804!: the haitian revolution and the revolutionary generation of 1946." caribbean quarterly 50, no. 4 (2004): 26-27. 25 nicholls, 6. 26 nicholls, 6. 27 quoting la revue indigene, 1927, 71-72. in nicholls, 7. monica espaillat lizardo| cuba and haiti 23 culture.28 arguably, ortiz’s investigations of afro-cuban culture did not celebrate or elevate the importance of africa in the same way the works of price-mars did. the work of cubans nicolás guillén and alejo carpentier do carry clear admiration for the african connection in cuba and throughout the caribbean.29the parallel movement of “afro-cubanism in the hispanic caribbean also contributed to the haitian revival”, and the work of alejo carpentier served to merge the parallel haitian and cuban movements.30 his work praised afrocuban traditions and further extolled the virtues of haiti’s african past and the similarities between afro-cuban and afro-haitian traditions.31 carpentier, a novelist, musicologist, and musician in his own right, produced in 1946 what remains to this day the most extensive and influential study of cuban musical history, la música en cuba (music in cuba). carpentier explores cuban musical traditions from the sixteenth to the twentieth century, covering european elite traditions as well as afro-cuban folk music. before publishing la música en cuba, carpentier took a trip to haiti that influenced all of his subsequent publications along with his entire approach and style. it was “only after his visit to haiti [in 1943 that he began] to publish the works” for which he is now famous.32 his short sojourn in haiti shifted his focus from cuba alone to the wider caribbean, including haiti specifically. viaje a la semilla (1944) and el reino de este mundo (1949) were inspired by his admiration for haiti and his belief that “haiti [was] the musical cornerstone of the antilles.”33the musical and political potential of haiti captivated carpentier. a self affirmed communist and supporter of the 1959 cuban revolution, carpentier helps represent a particular brand of communism deeply influenced by the romanticism of the noirisme and negrismo movements. haiti’s history arguably features 28 alejo carpentier and timothy brennan, music in cuba (1946. reprint, minnesota: university of minnesota press, 2001), 34. 29 david nicholls, from dessalines to duvalier: race colour, and national independence in haiti (cambridge: cambridge university press, 1979), 157-158. 30 carpentier, 159. 31 carpentier, 33-34. 32 carpentier, 34. 33 carpentier, 33. caribbean quilt | 2013 24 proponents of a type of communism that borders on the spiritual, in stark contrast to the anti-religious and suppressive communist regime of post-revolutionary cuba. because haiti and cuba experienced the romanticism of noirisme and negrismo respectively, it is interesting to view the ‘spiritual’ sector of haitian communism juxtaposed against the anti-religious communism of castro’s cuba. while in both haiti and cuba religious belief was largely seen as incompatible with communist practice, this was not the case for haiti’s jacques roumain, who founded the haitian communist party in 1934.34roumain was a fervent supporter of the peasant classes and their cultural institutions; he claimed to respect religion and religious practice, vodou included.35 roumain’s interest in vodou was so great that it would eventually lead him to publish le sacrifice du tambour-assôtôr (1943), which recorded the vodou songs and practices of the particular celebration that served as the baptism of the assôtôr drum.36 roumain conceptualized the importance of vodou as a “vehicle for conserving the folk tradition of the masses.”37 roumain’s close political and personal ties to the cuban negrismo poet nicolás guillén further speak to his political alignment with the peasant and afro-haitian masses.38 while communism is now considered largely incompatible with religion, this was not always the case. the work of josé carlos mariátegui, one of the main founders of latin american communism, relates his view of communism as an “ethical, political and spiritual concept.”39 his understanding of communism was imbued with a deep romanticism, and he unapologetically equated communist revolutionary emotion with religious emotion. as mariátegui succinctly states, “the revolutionaries’ power is not in their science but in their faith, their passion, their will. it is a 34 nicholls, “ideology,” 14. 35 nicholls, “ideology,” 12, 15. 36 benjamin hebblethwaite and joanne bartley, vodou songs in haitian creole and english, (philadelphia: temple university press, 2012), 53. 37 nicholls, 12. 38 matthew j. smith, red & black in haiti: radicalism, conflict and political change, 1934-1957 (chapel hill: university of north carolina press, 2009), 51. 39 michael lowy and mariana ortega breña, “communism and religion: josé carlos mariátegui's revolutionary mysticism,” latin american perspectives 35, no. 2 (2008): 71, 74. monica espaillat lizardo| cuba and haiti 25 religious, mystical, spiritual power. it is the power of myth. revolutionary emotion is a religious emotion.”40 however, there was no room in socialist cuba to conceive of communism as taking part in any spiritual or religious fervor. as cuba transitioned into soviet style marxism, “a single system of free secular public education” was created, and all religious schools were forcibly closed.41 the declaration of an atheist cuban state resulted in extreme discrimination against all religious adherents. this discrimination was formalized in 1975 and would remain institutionalized until 1992 when cuba transitioned from state atheism to secularism.42 where do martha jean-claude’s narrative and voice fit in the historically multi-layered connection that haiti and cuba share? the story of jean-claude can be understood as a microcosm of the historical, cultural and political connections between the two nations described above. jean-claude, born in 1919 on haitian soil, has been cited as one of the most influential artists from the time her career began in the 1940s to the time of her death in 2001.43 jean-claude’s career began in earnest in 1942.from the outset her vodou informed music elucidated her communist leanings and her commitment to rallying for the disenfranchised masses. ten years later, her association with communism and her subversive work would land a pregnant jean-claude in haitian prison. following the publication of her anti-government play, anriette, and her husband’s involvement in a housing redistribution project aimed at providing homes for economically marginalized haitians, president paul eugene magloire ordered her immediate arrest.44 released from prison only two days before going into labor, jean 40 lowy, 73. 41 aurelio alonso, “religion in cuba’s socialist transition,” socialism and democracy 24, no. 1 (2010): 152. 42 alonso, 153-156. 43 "singer martha jean-claude dead at 82." the haiti support group . www.haitisupportgroup.org (accessed november 19, 2012). 44 “singer martha jean-claude dead at 82."; gage averill, a day for the hunter, a day for the prey: popular music and power in haiti (chicago: university of chicago press, 1997), 69. caribbean quilt | 2013 26 claude realized the grave danger she faced and she self-exiled to cuba to join her husband in 1952.45she migrated under duress to a political climate where her own politics could be voiced. haitians and cubans alike affectionately knew jean-claude as mamita, because of her unwavering loyalty to the peasant masses.46 she described her goal as such, stating that she wished to “sing the song of the peasants that is what’s in my heart. i learn toward these people. my songs are what one calls protest ballads.”47 jean-claude was never hesitant to define her work – in acting, screen writing and musical performance – as overtly political, and as she saw it, “[i]t’s natural that i struggle for social justice.”48 in 1959, jean-claude was quick to side with the revolutionary cause and effectively became an ambassador of the cuban revolution throughout the caribbean and the world. although jean-claude was in communist-controlled cuba and free from the immediate violence of the duvalier regime, her songs and artistic expositions attest to her commitment to her people struggling under the violent father-son dictatorship. mamita sang songs honoring those who suffered under the regime, and in 1974 she worked to produce the documentary simparele, a staunchly anti-duvalier piece.49 jean-claude is both narrator and participant in the documentary, which tells the story of haiti through a multitude of art forms.50the film gives an extremely emotional portrayal of the 1791-1804 haitian revolution, and largely revolves around afrohaitian culture, primarily the practice of vodou as an important socio-political catalyst for change. louise diamond and lyn parker 45 averill, a day for the hunter, 69. 46martha jean-claude en haiti . film. directed by juan carlos tabio. havana : instituto cubano del arte y la industria cinematográficas (icaic), 1987. 47 “singer martha jean-claude dead at 82.” 48 “singer martha jean-claude dead at 82.” 49sun sentinel (fort lauderdale), “martha jean-claude, 82, legendary haitian singer,” november 17, 2001. http://articles.sun-sentinel.com/2001-1117/news/0111160886_1_haiti-and-cuba-haitian-communist-ruled-island. 50 louise diamond and lyn parker, “simparele the heartbeat of a people,” jump cut: a review of contemporary media 19 (1978): 20-21. monica espaillat lizardo| cuba and haiti 27 suggest that simparele “bridges a gap that has existed in marxist ideology between political praxis and spiritual consciousness.”51 this intimation is a powerful one in light of discussions of the spiritual communism that existed within haiti. jean-claude, like roumain and mariátegui, served as part of a radical tradition that challenged the assumptions of a secular, non-religious, and non-spiritual communism in latin america and the caribbean. as a “powerful exponent of indigenous music,” martha’s great success is important because of the positive gender repercussions it has affected within haitian popular institutions.52as political singer manno charlemagne states, “martha jean claude was the raisin [roots] movement. she had to endure a lot. to be a woman singing in those days [1940s-1950s] in haiti, she was called a puta, a whore. but she is a monument.”53 the success of jean-claude as a powerful and politically assertive female entertainer promoted the advancement of haitian women in the musical world, and she provided the “model of many haitian female folkloric singers to follow.”54 because of her connections to both haiti and cuba, her success challenged the institutionalized patriarchy and machismo of both states. a self proclaimed “famn de zil (woman of two islands)”, jean-claude successfully deepened the already existing conversation between haiti and cuba. when the duvalier dictatorship fell in 1986, jean-claude returned to her native haiti. the film martha jeanclaude en haiti, under the direction of cuban carlos tabio, captures jean-claude’s return to her homeland after almost 40 years of exile. in a touching show of affection for her land and her people, jeanclaude requests that the crowds gathered at her arrival let her fulfill the promise she had made of kissing the ground when she returned to haiti. with the crowd’s dispersal, mamita kneels on the ground and puts her lips to the haitian soil for which, as her music clearly showed, she had been longing. the last scene of the documentary captures well the life and public career of jean-claude. as she dances amongst crowds of haitians in an outdoor venue her lyrics boldly protest: 51 diamond, 21. 52 averill, a day for the hunter, 57-58. 53averill, a day for the hunter, 69-70. 54 averill, a day for the hunter, 65. caribbean quilt | 2013 28 bolívar y pétion en el mundo de la verdad van a cita a américa por una nueva convención, tengo mucha fuerza me siento muy fuerte, bolívar le dijo a petión a esa no le pasara igual igual que en panamá américa esta de pie,…cuando repica el tambor me montan los negros grandes, dessalines me monta, toussaint también me monta, vamos cabalgando por toda las américas, me da fuerza todo eso…intervención, marinos hambre y dictadores, nos hacen pagar un jamón no sabemos el gusto del jamón, boukman toco el tambor comunicando al continente de la gran asamblea que nos convertía en un sola patria, tengo mucha fuerza, me siento muy fuerte, dijeron que mi pueblo estaba muerto, yo les dije que no era cierto lo convirtieron en zombi, el 7 de febrero comió mal.55 when the popular haitian musical group boukman eksperyans spoke in 1995 about the political and social commitment of “mizik rasin,” they said: "rasin is the next reggae. there is spirituality and there is politics. we're talking about a revolution."56this succinct observation captures many of the threads that weave through this essay. by referring to another caribbean musical-political movement, jamaican reggae, boukman eksperyans illustrated the migratory potential of these movements and the trans-caribbean and transnational political conversations that emerge from musical traditions. their quote highlights the sociopolitical importance of cultural expression, and the politically transgressive and revolutionary potential of a defiant oral culture expressed through popular music. it also alludes to previous conversations about spiritual communism, where the revolution to uplift the marginalized masses is dependent on and driven by a spiritual connection to the people and the cause. caribbean oral traditions and popular musical expressions are mini-revolutions, serving as constant reminders of the transformative potential of these historically rooted weapons that allow the masses to re-center the margins. 55martha jean-claude en haiti. 56schreiner, claus. "bouyon rasin: first haitian roots music festival live” tropical music. http://www.tropical-music.com (accessed december 3, 2012). monica espaillat lizardo| cuba and haiti 29 works cited alonso, aurelio. “religion in cuba’s socialist transition.” socialism and democracy 24, no. 1 (2010): 147-159. averill, gage. “haitian dance bands, 1915-1970: class, race, and authenticity.” latin american music review 10, no. 2 (1989): 203-235. http://www.jstor.org (accessed november 12, 2012). averill, gage. a day for the hunter, a day for the prey: popular music and power in haiti. chicago: university of chicago press, 1997. benjamin, jules. “the machadato and cuban nationalism, 1928-1932.” the hispanic american historical review 55, no. 1 (1975): 66-91. http://www.jstor.org (accessed november 19, 2012). carpentier, alejo, and timothy brennan. music in cuba. 1946. reprint, minnesota: university of minnesota press, 2001. diamond, louise, and lyn parker. “simparele the heartbeat of a people.” jump cut: a review of contemporary media 19 (1978): 20-21. hebblethwaite, benjamin, and joanne bartley. vodou songs in haitian creole and english. philadelphia: temple university press, 2012. hurlich, susan. “creole language and culture: part of cuba's cultural patrimony.” bannzil kreyòl kiba socio-cultural project. http://www.walterlippmann.com/docs140.html (accessed november 19, 2012). largey, michael d. vodou nation: haitian art music and cultural nationalism. chicago: university of chicago press, 2006. lowy, michael, and mariana ortega breña. “communism and religion: josé carlos mariátegui's revolutionary mysticism." latin american perspectives 35, no. 2 (2008): 71-79. http://www.jstor.org (accessed november 11, 2012). martha jean-claude en haiti. film. directed by juan carlos tabio. havana: instituto cubano del arte y la industria cinematográfica (icaic), caribbean quilt | 2013 30 1987. mcalister, elizabeth a. rara! vodou, power, and performance in haiti and its diaspora. berkeley: university of california press, 2002. mcleod, marc c. “undesirable aliens: race, ethnicity, and nationalism in the comparison of haitian and british west indian immigrant workers in cuba, 1912-1939.” journal of social history 31, no. 3 (1998): 599623. http://www.jstor.org (accessed november 11, 2012). nicholls, david. “ideology and political protest in haiti, 1930-46.” journal of contemporary history 9, no. 4 (1974): 3-26. http://www.jstor.org (accessed november 11, 2012). nicholls, david. from dessalines to duvalier: race colour, and national independence in haiti. cambridge: cambridge university press, 1979. schreiner, claus. “bouyon rasin first haitian roots music festival live.” tropical music. http://www.tropical-music.com (accessed december 3, 2012). “singer martha jean-claude dead at 82.” the haiti support group. www.haitisupportgroup.org (accessed november 19, 2012). smith, matthew. “vive 1804!: the haitian revolution and the revolutionary generation of 1946.” caribbean quarterly 50, no. 4 (2004): 25-41. http://www.jstor.org (accessed november 12, 2012). smith, matthew j. red & black in haiti: radicalism, conflict and political change, 1934-1957. chapel hill: university of north carolina press, 2009. sun sentinel (fort lauderdale), “martha jean-claude, 82, legendary haitian singer,” november 17, 2001. http://articles.sunsentinel.com/2001-11-17/news/0111160886_1_haiti-and-cubahaitian-communist-ruled-island (accessed november 4, 2012). ..... 67 haiti and the false promise of state power daniel troup daniel troup is a fourth year undergraduate student in the university of toronto’s peace and conflict studies program, operating out of the trudeau centre at the munk school of global affairs. his academic interests include latin american politics and society, political economy, and critical theories of international relations. born and raised in the niagara region, he currently resides in toronto. since the devastation of january 12, 2010, haiti, more than any other caribbean nation, has commanded the world’s attention. despite the wave of humanitarianism following the earthquake, poverty and political instability have persisted in the country. for years critical scholars have attributed haiti’s dismal socio-economic conditions to the involvement of international powers, particularly the united states. it is argued that the foreign policies of leading western countries, whether they are considered predatory or simply misguided, have impeded the establishment of meaningfully autonomous governance in the country. such analyses establish the haitian state as central to understanding the plight of the haitian people. while it can certainly be argued that the haitian state’s lack of autonomy from external influence is the chief source of the country’s condition, this essay will argue that the state is unlikely to be a source of solutions. this argument has implications for efforts to improve conditions within the country as it runs contrary to orthodox political strategies which emphasize the pursuit of state power. this paper will first examine the contradictions of haiti’s independence by providing a brief historical overview of the external interventionism and internal authoritarianism which has constrained the freedom of the haitian people. secondly, the presidency of jean-bertrand aristide will be presented in order to illustrate the continued constraints which effectively prevent the state from responding to the wishes and demands of the haitian people. next, the earthquake, the international response to it, and the country’s recent flawed elections will be discussed. this will be followed by an examination of the haitian state in theoretical context, which will outline the impediments to future leftist governance in haiti proposing the development of political strategies aside from the pursuit of state power. all of this will be presented in caribbean quilt | 2012 68 support of the argument that the haitian state, though nominally independent, is subject to domestic and international constraints which prevent it from serving as an effective channel for the change which has been historically pursued by the haitian populace. as a result, those seeking progressive change, pro-poor economic policy, and greater social equality, must resist the temptation to centre their political activity on the pursuit of state power. the contradictions of haitian independence it is difficult to ignore the sad irony that, after being the second colony in the americas to attain independence, haiti’s postindependence history has been one of foreign intervention and domestic authoritarianism. while space constraints prohibit an exhaustive account of this history (which can be found in the work of numerous scholars including laurent dubois) this section seeks to provide an historical overview highlighting key instances of foreign intervention and authoritarianism.1 the san domingo revolution, led by toussaint l’ouverture, spanned from 1791 to 1803 and culminated with the founding of the haitian republic.2 the success of the revolution is particularly notable because it was undertaken by an enslaved populace, unlike the elite-led revolutions of latin america which would follow decades later. unfortunately, the struggle for substantive independence in haiti did not end with the revolution, and colonial domination continued under other names. as peter hallward argues, “the deeply subversive success of haiti’s revolution provoked both at home and abroad a counter-revolution that in many ways continues to this day.”3 haiti’s experiences in the decades following its independence revolved around two simultaneous processes. first, the successful consolidation of economic and political power on the part of haitian elites which began following the assassination of the revolutionary leader jean jacques dessalines, whose plans for the country were deemed to be intolerably radical.4 secondly, haiti’s 1 laurent dubois, haiti: the aftershocks of history, (new york, new york: metropolitan books, 2012) 2 clr james, the black jacobins: toussaint l’ouverture and the san domingo revolution, (toronto, ontario: vintage books, 1989) 3 peter hallward, damming the flood: haiti and the politics of containment, (new york and london: verso, 2010), 12 4 ibid, 13 daniel troup | haiti & the false promise of state power 69 international debt, which continues to haunt the country to this day, began to be established.5 it was not until the twentieth century, however, that haiti was faced with an occupation by the united states.6 concerns about german influence in haiti combined with the desire to establish regional hegemony informed the wilson administration’s decision to dispatch three hundred thirty soldiers to the country in july of 1915.7 this began an occupation which would last until 1934 and cost thousands of haitian lives.8 this intervention demonstrated the linkages between us business interests and the behaviour of the us government which has remained an integral component of us-haitian relations. the occupation was preceded by the united states’ insistence on the establishment of a us administered customs receivership which would require the haitian government to effectively surrender its sovereignty.9 frustrated with haitian recalcitrance toward the idea of surrendering their own sovereignty, roger farnham, a banker working for the us government, stated that there were two potential leaders who would be acceptable, but they required us intervention to attain power.10 with the intervention of 1915 and the subsequent occupation of the country, the united states signaled its willingness to usurp haitian sovereignty in the interests of us capital. upon ending the occupation in 1934, the united states left power to a small group of haitian elites backed by a us trained military force.11 these forces governed the country until 1957 when françois duvalier, reinforced by his own militia, rose to power in fraudulent elections.12 duvalier appointed his son as his successor, 5 ibid, 12 6 this is not to suggest that the us was removed from haitian politics in the eighteenth century. numerous naval interventions, for example, occurred to “protect american lives and property” between 1857 and 1892. hans schmidt, the united states occupation of haiti 1915-1934, (rutgers university press, 1995), 31 7 ibid, 67 8 ibid, 102 9 ibid, 60 10 farnham was the vice president of national city bank of new york, the vice president of the banque nationale in haiti, and president of national railway of haiti. he was brought in to consult for state department. ibid, 48. regarding the potential leaders, see; ibid, 61. 11 paul farmer, haiti: after the earthquake, (new york, new york: publicaffairs, 2011), 130 12 ibid caribbean quilt | 2012 70 and jean-claude duvalier ruled the country from 1971 to 1986.13 while not beholden to traditional elite interests and less connected to us power than the preceding governments, the rule of the duvalier’s was certainly not consistent with any reasonable definition of freedom for the haitian population.14 terror was systematically employed via the notorious tonton-macoute, and the initially populist rhetoric of françois duvalier belied the concessions to foreign-owned extractive industries established during the family’s rule.15 the systemic violence of the duvalier governments combined with declining prospects in the agricultural sector further contributed to the exploitation of haiti’s workforce by precipitating significant migration to urban areas, providing a surplus labour supply for internationally owned factories.16 washington’s approach to the duvalier administration further illustrated the intent of the us government to control haiti and its people regardless of the human costs. this was explicitly stated by john f. kennedy’s secretary of state dean rusk. when considering the possibility of a replication of the cuban revolution in haiti, rusk admitted, “we ourselves cannot in good conscience say that this could be worse for the haitians however damaging to us and cause of freedom in the americas.”17(sic) essentially, the united states committed itself to championing freedom in the americas according to its own terms, even if it meant tolerating a dictatorship. as we shall see, defending freedom on american terms has been a consistent feature of ushaiti relations even after the cold war. 13 ibid 14 many elites actually fled the country; ibid. president john f. kennedy appeared sympathetic to a 1963 effort by the dominican republic to depose duvalier; stephen j. randall and graeme s. mount, the caribbean basin: an international history, (new york, new york: routledge, 1998), 98. there was contestation within kennedy administration regarding whether to accept the duvalier regime. stephen g. rabe, the most dangerous area in the world: john f. kennedy confronts communist revolution in latin america, (university of north carolina press, 1999), 50 15 it has been said that the tonton-makout “became the living symbols of duvalierist coercion.” eric caple james, democratic insecurities: violence, trauma, and intervention in haiti, (berkeley and los angeles california: university of california press, 2010), 58. regarding concessions, see; randall and mount, the caribbean basin, 98 16 eric caple james, democratic insecurity, 64-65 17 rabe, the most dangerous area in the world, 50. presumably “freedom” in the context of the cold war was understood to mean anything but communism. daniel troup | haiti & the false promise of state power 71 jean-bertrand aristide and the lavalas movement following the expulsion of jean-claude duvalier from haiti in 1986 the military re-established direct control over the country.18 the military government aligned itself with the united states and accelerated the neoliberal privatization programs prescribed by washington and the leading international financial institutions, but struggled to establish stability despite a willingness to use authoritarian measures to repress social mobilizations.19 the heavy handed tactics of the military ran contrary to the united states’ ostensible commitment to democracy and by 1990, “the time had come to replace a pro-democratic military with a pro-military democrat.”20 these plans would be foiled, however, by the victory of a popular priest named jean-bertrand aristide and his supporters in the lavalas movement which had been mobilizing for years prior to the 1990 election.21 aristide’s populist rhetoric and impoverished support-base raised fears amongst haitian elites and us government agencies which quickly expressed concerns regarding plans to increase the minimum wage and amend the country’s foreign exchange policies.22 this us reaction to aristide’s election demonstrated that its stated commitment to democracy was qualified by a stronger commitment to open markets and the political status-quo.23 needless to say, the election of jean-bertrand aristide marked a moment of hope for a haitian public which had endured decades in fact centuries of poverty and repression, but a successful coup perpetrated against the aristide government in 1991 crushed this optimism and marked an era of renewed social conflict.24 following the coup, aristide began appealing to the united states government in order to facilitate his return to office. his endeavour was ultimately successful, but came at a great cost. the us government was reluctant to allow a leftist and supposedly erratic leader to return and potentially challenge the socio-economic 18 hallward, damming the flood, 16 19 ibid, 29 20 ibid 21 ibid, 19 22 ibid, 37 23 william robinson argues that this has been a central component of us foreign policy in general in promoting polyarchy: globalization, us intervention and hegemony, (new york, new york: cambridge university press, 1996) 24 hallward, damming the flood, 39-40 caribbean quilt | 2012 72 status-quo. nevertheless, as haiti became an increasingly severe political headache for the clinton government, the united states facilitated aristide’s return in september 1994 on the condition that he agree to amnesty for the coup perpetrators, the development of a us trained haitian police force, and the establishment of a neoliberal structural adjustment program.25 essentially, in order to return to power, aristide was forced to compromise many of the core principles of the lavalas movement. as a result, the matter of how to judge aristide’s post-coup governance has been a topic of debate within the haitian left and among critical scholars.26 regardless of how one interprets aristide’s governance, however, it is important to recognize that these constraints were externally imposed and precipitated by the reactionary capacities of haiti’s elites. therefore, aristide’s return to office provides a stark illustration of the limits put on the haitian state even when a leftist occupies the presidency. following a period of political competition, aristide agreed to step aside in order to allow rené préval to run in the presidential election of 1996.27 préval assumed office with an overwhelming electoral victory, albeit with a low voter turnout, and occupied the presidency until the 2000 elections which saw the return of aristide.28 after results showed an overwhelming victory for aristide and the lavalas party, aristide’s political opponents and the us government began disputing the results of the election. as peter hallward puts it, “the haitian people had again misunderstood the true meaning of democracy. they had failed to choose the leader that the great powers had chosen for them.”29 but the united states did not take military action, nor was there an immediate coup. instead, the us began employing familiar economic tactics in order to undermine the aristide government, including the suspension of aid to the country.30 the human costs of such a decision should be selfevident, but the action also reveals the extent to which indebtedness and aid dependence has effectively served as yet another constraint on the haitian state. this time aristide was constrained not just by 25 ibid, 50-51 26 for a perspective critical of the duvalier government, see; alex dupuy, the prophet and the power: jean bertrand aristide, the international community, and haiti, (lanham, maryland: rowman and littlefield publishers, 2007). for a perspective more sympathetic to aristide, see; hallward, damming the flood 27 hallward, damming the flood, 62 28 ibid, 63 29 ibid, 78 30 ibid, 82 daniel troup | haiti & the false promise of state power 73 the conditions placed on his 1994 return, but the external crippling of the government’s ability to fund anything that could come close to satisfying the wishes and demands of the lavalas constituency. this effectively manufactured an escalation of internal opposition and discontent toward the aristide government. the difficulties faced by aristide culminated in yet another coup on february 29, 2008. the particularities of the event vary greatly depending on which account one is presented with, and these debates are beyond the scope of this paper. what is not disputed is the fact that the events of february 29 included an international component, with the united states facilitating the exit of aristide out of the country.31 immediately following aristide’s departure, canadian, american, and french military forces began arriving to reinforce the american forces already present at the port-au-prince airport, again illustrating a willingness to exert direct military influence over the country if necessary.32 following aristide’s ouster, the country was governed by gérard latortue and following the 2006 elections, rené préval. these governments engaged in their own struggles in a political climate largely defined by the lingering consequences of aristide’s removal from power.33 needless to say, with aristide unable to return to the country, any haitian government would have struggled to establish legitimacy in the eyes of a significant portion of the haitian population. it was not until january 2010, however, that haiti would again attract the attention of the world’s dominant media outlets and most influential polities. the earthquake on the twelfth of january, 2010, haiti was struck with a massive earthquake and series of aftershocks which devastated the capital port-au-prince and the less populated surrounding areas. an earthquake of such magnitude would likely cause death and injury in any populous area unfortunate enough to be impacted, but the scale of the death and destruction witnessed in port-au-prince revealed the extent to which the event was a human-made as well as natural disaster. first, it is necessary to address the matter of urbanization in port-au-prince, a city which has been entirely unable to accommodate the number of citizens within it. this urbanization was 31 ibid, 234 32 ibid, 235 33 ibid, 250-316 caribbean quilt | 2012 74 precipitated in large part due to the decimation of haitian agriculture as a result of trade liberalization, particularly the reduction of agricultural import tariffs following the ouster of jeanclaude duvalier.34 haiti was self-sufficient in rice, poultry, sugar, and pork production in the 1970s, only to become the largest importer of us foodstuffs in the caribbean and the fourth largest importer of subsidized us rice in the world.35 in a striking moment of candor following the earthquake, bill clinton admitted that while the trade policies advocated by successive us administrations including his own, “may have been good for some farmers in arkansas,” they have entailed horrible consequences for the haitian people.36 this realization has apparently not prevented clinton from continuing to champion the same failed neoliberal development model which brought about the circumstances he now laments. with the haitian government’s capacity to fulfill its administrative duties further reduced by the earthquake’s destruction, the international community staged a military intervention which was uncritically portrayed as a purely humanitarian endeavour by most media outlets. what was less reported in the mainstream press was the shift of governmental power to the interim haiti recovery commission, a coalition composed of seventeen voting members including the united states, brazil, canada, france, the international monetary fund, the world bank, and the inter-american development bank.37 essentially, the institution responsible for administering haiti’s recovery was composed of a greater number of international voting members than haitian voting members.38 the united states and its allies used this opportunity to directly “manage” haitian politics until it was deemed appropriate for the country to be ruled by its own citizens and according to the democratic mandate of the haitian people. this direct control was quickly coupled with the establishment of what observers have called “a democratic façade” 34 alex dupuy, “disaster capitalism to the recue: the international community and haiti after the earthquake” nacla report on the americas vol. 43 no. 4 (2010): 16 35 ibid, 17 36 ibid, 14 37 ibid, 15 38 ibid daniel troup | haiti & the false promise of state power 75 with the general election on november 28, 2010.39 this election was marred by woefully inadequate infrastructure, accusations of widespread fraud, and a turnout of one quarter of the country’s eligible voters.40 the low turnout is largely attributable to the banning of fanmi lavalas, which continues to be associated with aristide and remains the country’s largest political party.41 consequently, the election was actually a demonstration of the lack of democracy in what remains an internationally dominated haiti. however, this did not prevent the united states, caricom, and the oas from celebrating and validating the results which were followed by a runoff election.42 michel martelly eventually emerged victorious in the march 20, 2011 elections which saw an even lower voter turnout than was observed in november.43 the undemocratic nature of this electoral process has been recognized by haitian activists who have described the process as a “selection” rather than an election.44 regardless of the terms one prefers to use, the haitian state has yet to remove itself from the elite domination and foreign control which has been a defining feature of its history since the original haitian revolution two centuries ago. understanding the haitian state the preceding historical overview of haitian political history has sought to establish an historical basis for the application of state theory to the case of haiti. it will also allow for an examination of the strategies of the haitian left in the context of an immensely constrained state. above all, it has endeavoured to support the notion that the horrendous socio-economic conditions existing within haiti are primarily attributable to the social counterrevolution dating back to the era of toussaint l’ouverture which has prevented the haitian state from effectively serving the interests of the majority of the haitian people. the forthcoming sections, however, will critique the orthodox leftist response to this condition. 39 roger annis and kim ives, “haiti’s election debacle: a coup legacy” nacla report on the americas vol. 44 no. 1 (2011): 23 40 ibid, 22-23 41 ibid, 23 42 ibid, 24 43 kim ives, “michel martelly: aristide’s weak imitator,” the guardian, march 22, 2011, accessed february 23, 2012, http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/mar/22/haitijean-bertrand-aristide 44 annis and ives, “haiti’s election debacle”, 23 caribbean quilt | 2012 76 given that a weak and dependent haitian state is the source of much of haiti’s troubles, it is understandable that the haitian left and its international allies would campaign for a substantively independent haitian state. but this prescribes precisely what history suggests haiti cannot have. state theorists have endeavoured to establish an abstract and critical understanding of the modern state, and the findings of this field of scholarship can assist in understanding haiti’s experiences and possible future trajectories. within the marxist tradition, there has been a division between instrumentalist and structuralist theories of the capitalist state, both of which posit that the capitalist state can only be understood in relation to the dynamics and distribution of social forces, particularly class forces, within society.45 recent developments in state theory have drawn on the contributions of these two perspectives while attempting to transcend some of the reductionist tendencies inherent in both frameworks. bob jessop has developed a particularly nuanced theory of state power which he calls a strategic-relational approach. this approach argues that the capacity of a state to effectively pursue a particular course of action is determined by the balance of relational political forces operating under a given state-form which privileges certain political strategies over others.46 while delving into the details of this theoretical proposition is beyond the scope of this paper, such a perspective underscores the need to dispel any notion that, once captured, state office in and of itself can effectively precipitate radical social change. put differently, the state is not separate from the social dynamics it supposedly presides over. as poulantzas argued, “the state is a social relation.”47 in the case of haiti, this implies that so long as haitian elites retain such disproportionate control over the country’s economic resources, and so long as their influence is backed up by powerful international allies such as the united states, the haitian 45 clyde w. barrow, “the miliband-poulantzas debate: an intellectual history” in, paradigm lost: state theory reconsidered. eds. stanley aronowitz and peter bratsis, (minneapolis, minnesota: university of minnesota press, 2002) 46 bob jessop, state theory: putting capitalist states in their place, (university park pennsylvania: pennsylvania state university press, 1990), 149. the concept has been more recently developed in jessop’s state power: a strategicrelational approach, (malden massachusetts: polity press, 2008) 47 jessop, state power, 118-119 daniel troup | haiti & the false promise of state power 77 state will be unable to effectively pursue the interests of the country’s impoverished population. the structural constraints on the haitian state can manifest themselves in various ways that have been witnessed throughout the history of haiti and other countries of the global south. first, there is the possibility that the state will be directly controlled by elite actors themselves. second, the state can be under a military force closely associated with upper class groups. what is more important to recognize, however, is that the state does not need to be under the direct control of economic elites in order to serve their interests. a genuinely leftist government may feel compelled toward moderation so as to prevent a reactionary response by domestic or international forces. finally, if the state does take actions which challenge the essential interests of those with sufficient economic power, the effectiveness of this action risks being undermined by a reactionary response which can take the form of a capital strike, international economic sanctions, or a violent coup. ultimately, given the immense inequality in social power within haiti, compounded by the demonstrated willingness of the united states and its allies to intervene in the interests of international and haitian capital, the state is not likely to be an effective channel for significant social change. implications for the haitian left recognition of the structural constraints on the haitian state can lead to an understandable degree of pessimism. recognizing the constraints placed on the haitian state, and writing before the devastating earthquake of 2010, alex dupuy concedes that “the best that the popular democratic movement can hope for during the next five years would be to create the conditions for a stable and functioning minimalist democracy. such an accomplishment could in turn allow for the continued struggle to enlarge the democratic space so that the people can become selfactualizing agents and democracy will cease to be the privileged domain of the wealthy and powerful few.”48 while dupuy’s skepticism regarding the prospects for progressive change is warranted, such an approach entails two problems. first, if the social constraints influencing the state are considered, even if haiti were to become a more stable procedural democracy, this would not ensure that the state could act in accordance with democratic demands. secondly, there is nothing to suggest that the haitian population will 48 dupuy, the prophet and the power, 22 caribbean quilt | 2012 78 limit its demands to minimalist democratic procedures, as they are understandably more concerned with remedying the horrendous material conditions that so many citizens are forced to endure. instead, what is needed is the pursuit of social change outside of the state. this entails an erosion of elite dominance in haiti through social action which directly confronts economic arrangements which perpetuate inequality. the actions of land reform groups in brazil and south africa provide an example of such political activity.49 of course, such strategies entail their own challenges and also risk precipitating a reactionary response. they are distinct from state-centric political strategies, however, insofar as they seek to directly influence the social conditions of society, as opposed to attempting to influence the state which is a reflection of these conditions. given the role played by international actors it also seems necessary for the haitian left to continue efforts to internationalize their approach by appealing to others in the global south as well as those within the core industrialized states. ultimately, the biggest obstacle to the implementation of pro-poor governance in haiti is the state’s ineffectiveness as a force for change combined with its demonstrated effectiveness in reinforcing statusquo power structures. this can serve to explain why the haitian state has been such an important contributor to the subjugation of the haitian people, but has repeatedly failed to aid their political emancipation. conclusion since the declaration of the haitian republic following the country’s revolution, the haitian people have struggled to establish a substantively independent state which serves the interests of the majority of its citizenry. throughout the twentieth century the united states continually exerted its influence over the country to the detriment of most haitian citizens. this process has continued 49 there are numerous books addressing these cases, two recent titles are; gabriel ondetti, land, protest, and politics: the landless movement and the struggle for agrarian reform in brazil, (university park, pennsylvania: pennsylvania state university press, 2008). elke zuern, the politics of necessity: community organizing and democracy in south africa, (madison, wisconsin: university of wisconsin press, 2011). such strategies are undoubtedly being pursued in haiti on a smaller scale, and this paper argues that they are likely to be more efficacious than those grounded in the pursuit of state office. daniel troup | haiti & the false promise of state power 79 following the major earthquake of january 2010. that the united states has knowingly pursued policies to the detriment of the haitian people should not be controversial, as prominent us government figures occasionally admit it themselves.50 while it is true that the haitian state’s lack of autonomous capacity and continual subjection to elite control has been a significant contributor to the country’s ills, this does not validate a political strategy grounded in the pursuit of state office on the part of those seeking progressive change. it is up to the haitian left to develop a strategy which avoids and transcends the pursuit of state power. such a task faces its own significant obstacles but is as necessary as it is unenviable if the ambitions of the haitian revolution and the generations which followed are to be realized. 50 recall the aforementioned quotes from dean rusk and bill clinton. caribbean quilt | 2012 80 works cited annis, roger, and kim ives. “haiti’s election debacle: a coup legacy” nacla report on the americas vol. 44 no. 1 (2011): 22-24. barrow, clyde w. “the miliband-poulantzas debate: an intellectual history” in, paradigm lost: state theory reconsidered. eds. stanley aronowitz and peter bratsis. minneapolis, minnesota: university of minnesota press, 2002. dubois, laurent. haiti: the aftershocks of history. new york, new york: metropolitan books, 2012. dupuy, alex. the prophet and the power: jean bertrand aristide, the international community, and haiti. lanham, maryland: rowman and littlefield publishers, 2007. dupuy, alex. “disaster capitalism to the recue: the international community and haiti after the earthquake” nacla report on the americas vol. 43 no. 4 (2010): 14-19. farmer, paul. haiti: after the earthquake. new york, new york: publicaffairs, 2011 hallward, peter. damming the flood: haiti and the politics of containment. new york and london: verso, 2010. ives, kim. “michel martelly: aristide’s weak imitator.” the guardian. march 22, 2011. accessed february 23, 2012. http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/mar/22/ haiti-jean-bertrand-aristide james, clr. the black jacobins: toussaint l’ouverture and the san domingo revolution. toronto, ontario: vintage books, 1989. james, eric caple. democratic insecurities: violence, trauma, and intervention in haiti. berkeley and los angeles california: university of california press, 2010. jessop, bob. state theory: putting capitalist states in their place. university park pennsylvania: pennsylvania state university press, 1990. http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/mar/22/haiti-jean-bertrand-aristide http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/mar/22/haiti-jean-bertrand-aristide daniel troup | haiti & the false promise of state power 81 jessop, bob. state power: a strategic-relational approach. malden massachusetts: polity press, 2008. ondetti, gabriel. land, protest, and politics: the landless movement and the struggle for agrarian reform in brazil. university park, pennsylvania: pennsylvania state university press, 2008. rabe, stephen g. the most dangerous area in the world: john f. kennedy confronts communist revolution in latin america. university of north carolina press, 1999. randall, stephen j. and graeme s. mount, the caribbean basin: an international history. new york, new york: routledge, 1998. robinson, william i. promoting polyarchy: globalization, us intervention and hegemony. new york, new york: cambridge university press, 1996. schmidt, hans. the united states occupation of haiti 1915-1934. rutgers university press, 1995. zuern, elke. the politics of necessity: community organizing and democracy in south africa. madison, wisconsin: university of wisconsin press, 2011. :::::: 75 puerto rico: sterile breeding grounds for coercion and uniformed consent susan g. enberg susan grace enberg is currently completing her undergraduate degree. she has pursued majors in peace, conflict, and justice studies, and latin american studies. she has completed a minor in caribbean studies. susan has focused intensely on human rights abuses committed by the u.s. and canadian governments, abuses embedded in those countries’ foreign policies. she received an honourable mention for her essay, "the japanese problem," on japanese internment camps in canada during world war ii, and has been published as a g8 civil society analyst. her essay on the sixty-three year u.s. naval occupation of vieques, puerto rico, was published in carssu’s caribbean quilt 2012. susan is pursuing graduate studies in documentary media and international human rights law. ”it is without being confuted that the degenerate blood of the country is controlled largely by the number of degenerate women; that in the lower strains of humanity the degenerate women reproduce to full natural capacity…” -harry h. laughlin, eugenical sterilization in the united states (pp. 440-441) puerto rican women have consistently constituted the highest prevalence of sterilized women in the world.1 many scholars question whether or not a negative eugenics campaign has been waged on the island by u.s. and puerto rican biomedical researchers, scientists, and public health officials in order to reduce and even potentially eliminate the puerto rican population,2 a 1 bonnie mass, “puerto rico: a case study of population control,” latin american perspectives, issue 15, vol. iv, no. 4 (fall 1977):78. 2 act 116 came into force as law 136 on the island of puerto rico in may 1937 authorizing both state-sponsored and voluntary eugenic sterilization. dorothy roberts, killing the black body: race, reproduction, and the meaning of liberty (new york: vintage books, 1997), 94; jennifer a. nelson, “’abortions under community control’: feminism, nationalism, and the politics of reproduction among new york city’s young lords,” journal of women’s history, vol. 13, no. 1 (spring 2001): 168; laura briggs, reproducing empire: race, sex, science, and u.s. imperialism in puerto rico (california, u.s.a. berkeley and los angeles, 2002), 123-128; marsh j. tyson darling, “eugenics unbound: race, gender and genetics” (presentation, gender and justice in the gene age: a feminist meeting on new reproductive and genetic technologies, new york, u.s.a., may 6-7, 2004) : 6, accessed 15 february 2013, susan g. enberg| puerto rico: sterile breeding grounds 76 practice referred to by mass as “birth genocide.”3 by looking specifically at the bioethical issues of uninformed consent and coercion with respect to female reproductive sterilization, this essay will argue that puerto rican women’s body sovereignty—the right of women to govern the physical borders of their own bodies—has indeed been violated in some instances, constituting a crime against humanity. notably, it will be revealed that some puerto rican women suffered enforced or coerced tubal ligations, commonly known in puerto rico as “la operación,”4through a process of uniformed consent. lastly, it will be argued that puerto rican women who have suffered reproductive abuses are not without avenues to redress. there are a great many conventions within the body of international laws that do offer sanctions against such abuse of women’s reproductive capacities and thus could be utilized in the fight against sterilization abuse. ultimately, a class action suit by puerto rican victims against those who have committed such abuses would provide litigation proceedings with greater clout, would have the potential to garner far greater international attention and support from other women’s groups, and could also enhance women’s collective sense of courageousness. statistical data on rates of female sterilization in puerto rico according to a 2002 study by the organization engender health, “222 million women of reproductive age around the world are protected from unintended pregnancy by sterilization – 180 million using female sterilization” and the highest incidences of female sterilizations currently occur in latin america and the caribbean.5 the prevalence of women sterilized worldwide was highest in puerto rico at 45.2% as of 2002,6 whereas the prevalence http://www.gjga.org/inside.asp?action=item&source=documents&id=62&detail =print 3 bonnie mass, “puerto rico: a case study of population control,” latin american perspectives, issue 15, vol. iv, no. 4 (fall 1977): 79. 4la operación, videorecording, directed by ana maria garcía (1983; puerto rico: latin american film project, 1983), dvd. 5engender health. “sterilization incidence and prevalence”from chapter 2 in contraceptive sterilization: global issues and trends (2002): 17. 6ibid 30, 48. caribbean quilt | 2013 77 of male sterilization on the island is a mere 3.5%.7what this tells us is that in puerto rican society it is considered acceptable and even preferable to sterilize women and ultimately taboo to sterilize puerto rican men. negative eugenics mass argues that female reproductive sterilization in twentieth-century puerto rico constituted a negative eugenics campaign, a racially-motivated program aimed at controlling and reducing unwanted births in a society.8citing gordon (i974) and chase (1977) in her article, “puerto rico: a case study of population control,” she helps us to understand the basic insidious concept of negative eugenics: influenced by the social darwinists, significant members of the american ruling class developed theories of heredity which often concluded that the fittest in society be encouraged to breed selectively and that the “dysgenic,” or less than fit, be weeded out so that the entire “human stock” be improved to the extent that the “aristogenic” individuals with perfect genes would abound.9 these beliefs became increasingly entrenched in the united states and “by 1930 laws against miscegenation had been enacted in 24 states, while 30 states as well as two canadian provinces had laws calling for the sterilization of ‘criminals,’ the ‘feeble-minded,’ and the ‘insane.’”10when looking back on history we find much solid evidence that racially-motivated negative eugenics campaigns were very active in the u.s.,11 thus it is not unusual that scholars might 7ibid 31. 8bonnie mass, “puerto rico: a case study of population control,” latin american perspectives, issue 15, vol. iv, no. 4 (fall 1977): 67. 9ibid 66-67. 10 bonnie mass, “puerto rico: a case study of population control,” latin american perspectives, issue 15, vol. iv, no. 4 (fall 1977): 67; disturbingly, laughlin lumps single mothers in with the insane, as they must be insane to consider raising a child without a man to support them: see harry hamilton laughlin, eugenical sterilization in the united states (chicago: psychopathic laboratory of the municipal court, december 1922). 11see generally nancy ordover, american eugenics: race, queer anatomy, and the science of nationalism (minneapolis, minnesota: university of minnesota press, 2003); laura briggs, reproducing empire: race, sex, science, and u.s. imperialism in puerto rico (california and london: university of california press, 2002), 145-147. see also harry hamilton laughlin, eugenical sterilization in the susan g. enberg| puerto rico: sterile breeding grounds 78 make the case that as a colony of the u.s., similar programs had been enacted in puerto rico. indeed, in 1937 the puerto rican government followed the example of the mainland and passed law 13612to enact a eugenics program, inclusive of both state-directed and voluntary sterilization, as well as the establishment of a state-run sterilization board.13significantly, the law of sterilization was passed precisely when women’s source of labor was deemed necessary to sustain the workforce.14 puerto rico was an island of sterile breeding grounds for coercion and uniformed consent with respect to female reproductive sterilization. after atrocities committed by the nazi scientific community came to international attention, negative eugenics campaigns were reframed by politicians and biomedical communities under the umbrella of malthusian theory which “sold well on the mainland – it identified the cause of third world poverty not as the history of colonialism but as ignorant women and too-large families, and it found the solution in suburban american-style domesticity and liberal democracy.”15however, rodriquez-trias makes an important ethical distinction between birth control and population control; she upholds that while birth control denotes choice and is reversible at will, population control is “more of a social policy instituted with the thought in mind that some people should not have children, or should have very few children.”16with this in mind, it becomes clear that negative eugenics campaigns are not entirely different from population control programs although the former denotes more coerciveness and insidiousness. while negative eugenics sought an ethnic or class-based cleansing of societies, population control united states (chicago: psychopathic laboratory of the municipal court, december 1922). 12la operación, videorecording, directed by ana maria garcía (1983; puerto rico: latin american film project, 1983), dvd. 13 bonnie mass, “puerto rico: a case study of population control,” latin american perspectives, issue 15, vol. iv, no. 4 (fall 1977): 68; johanna schoen, choice & coercion: birth control, sterilization, and abortion in public health and welfare (chapel hill & london: the university of north carolina press, 2005), 205. 14la operación, videorecording, directed by ana maria garcía (1983; puerto rico: latin american film project, 1983), dvd. 15laura briggs, reproducing empire: race, sex, science, and u.s. imperialism in puerto rico (california and london: university of california press, 2002), 147. 16la operación, videorecording, directed by ana maria garcía (1983; puerto rico: latin american film project, 1983), dvd. caribbean quilt | 2013 79 programs after world war ii were rhetorically packaged as essential for controlling the spread of cold war communism and poverty.17u.s. endorsed notions of overpopulation in puerto ricomeant that population control initiatives were seen as a solution to both of these problems and thus garnered wide support from “government officials, teachers, newspaper editors, social workers, nurses, hospital administrators and some physicians…who relentlessly promoted birth control, surgical sterilization, and small families.”18 women workers needed: operation bootstrap in addition, demands for more industrial workers at the onset of operation bootstrap helped to promote issues of controlled family size, as many of bootstrap’s workers were puerto rican women.19cordero-guzman adds particular clarity by stating “bootstrap’s pillars were low wages, the lack of trade barriers between the island and the mainland, a policy of population control, 20and section 936 of the u.s. federal tax code, which leaves relatively untaxed the profits earned by puerto rican subsidiaries of u.s. companies.21 thus, u.s. foreign policy can be directly tied to women’s reproductive agency and state measures at population control in puerto rico. unquestioningly, the overall socio-economic and physical health of puerto ricans suffered due to the exploitive tendency of the u.s. administration and investors that overtook massive tracts of rural lands, critical to the very survival of traditional puerto rican agriculturalists, in order to establish capital intensive heavy industries which employed relatively few22therefore “creating an excess population.”23however, as early as the 1930s the u.s. blamed 17laura briggs, reproducing empire: race, sex, science, and u.s. imperialism in puerto rico (california and london: university of california press, 2002), 112. 18ibid 122. 19ibid 122. 20my emphasis. 21hector r. cordero-guzman, “lessons from operation bootstrap,” nacla report on the americas, vol. 27, issue 3 (november-december 1993): 1. 22manos a la obra, videorecording, directed by susan zeig and pedro angel rivera and cinema guild (1983: city university of new york and centro de estudiospuertorriqueños, 2005), videorecording. 23la operación, videorecording, directed by ana maria garcía (1983; puerto rico: latin american film project, 1983), dvd. susan g. enberg| puerto rico: sterile breeding grounds 80 overpopulation for puerto rican poverty and denied any culpability. “clearly omitted from defense of an official birth reduction policy was the economic situation of a colonized economy based on the extraction of resources which increasingly turned puerto rico’s working population into a marginal and surplus labor force.”24 yet many of the industries created under operation bootstrap subsequently uprooted from puerto rico during a period of high inflation in the mid-1970s, leaving many puerto rican islanders bereft of the means to support their families.25 a great number of puerto rican women had been sterilized to serve the needs of industry in puerto rico, and their wombs too were now bereft. what must be understood is that the u.s. controlled puerto rican government, puerto rican elites, and the puerto rican biomedical community had vested interests to become a more ‘progressive’ society like their colonizer to the north. these groups sought to control population growth by transgressing the sovereign borders of puerto rican women’s reproductive capacities. one consequence was that women’s bodies were at times abused to meet the dual goals of improving the socio-economic lot of the puerto rican people and of absolving u.s. corporate interests for the part they played in creating depressed socio-economic conditions on the island. women’s wombs were to be controlled if puerto rico’s socioeconomic situation was to improve. the question was whether or not puerto rican women were perceived as capable of controlling their own sites of reproduction. racial derogation of puerto rican women derogatory notions of women were prevalent in the u.s. in the early twentieth century. johnson for one wrote, “women physically, they are only babies in intellect and self-control. we say 24bonnie mass, “puerto rico: a case study of population control,” latin american perspectives, issue 15, vol. iv, no. 4 (fall 1977): 69. 25manos a la obra, videorecording, directed by susan zeig and pedro angel rivera and cinema guild (1983: city university of new york and centro de estudiospuertorriqueños, 2005), videorecording; bonnie mass, “puerto rico: a case study of population control,” latin american perspectives, issue 15, vol. iv, no. 4 (fall 1977): 69-70, 73; la operación, videorecording, directed by ana maria garcía (1983; puerto rico: latin american film project, 1983), dvd. caribbean quilt | 2013 81 to these children ‘you shall be virtuous or you will be damned,’”26 while ordover upholds that the sterilization of women can be seen as a “punitive measure” meant to punish “poor people of color (who) cannot be trusted to regulate their own fertility.”27with regard to puerto ricans, nelson shares how “in 1932…cornelius rhoads, a u.s. physician who worked in the san juan presbyterian hospital under a rockefeller foundation grant, advocated the elimination of puerto ricans in a private letter”28 that was subsequently leaked then published.29 to add fuel to the fire, the u.s. appointed governor of puerto rico, james r. beverley, stated that, “the problem was not merely the quantity but also the quality of the puerto rican population.”30these derogatory and racist notions of puerto ricans were prevalent within biomedical institutions in both the u.s. and in puerto rico and became embedded in institutional policies. mass cites presser (1973: 38) who states that “the joint committee for hospital accreditation…refused recognition to puerto rico’s hospitals unless a ten percent limit of sterilization (in proportion to all hospital deliveries) was agreed upon.”31such policies provided an unethical opening in the puerto rican biomedical field that resulted in a great number of coerced sterilizations of puerto rican women authorized through processes of obtaining uninformed consent. the derogation of puerto rican women as being unable or unwilling to make sound decisions concerning their own body sovereignty, as well as violations of this sovereignty through biomedical practices of coercion and of obtaining what i have called uninformed consent to enforce female sterilization are highly disturbing. 26alexander johnson, “race improvement by control of defectives (negative eugenics),” annals of the american academy of political and social science, vol. 34, no. 1, race improvement in the united states (july 1909): 27-29. according to johnson “feeble-minded” women were often those who gave birth out of wedlock and subsequently considered to be “habitual tramps". 27nancy ordover, american eugenics: race, queer anatomy, and the science of nationalism (minneapolis, minnesota: university of minnesota press, 2003), 133. 28jennifer a. nelson, “’abortions under community control’: feminism, nationalism, and the politics of reproduction among new york city’s young lords,” journal of women’s history, vol. 13, no. 1 (spring 2001): 168. 29ibid 168. 30ibid 168. 31 bonnie mass, “puerto rico: a case study of population control,” latin american perspectives, issue 15, vol. iv, no. 4 (fall 1977): 73. susan g. enberg| puerto rico: sterile breeding grounds 82 uniformed consent can include (but is not limited to) medical practitioners failing to divulge the full scope of what will happen during a tubal ligation procedure, failing to divulge whether or not the procedure will be reversible, neglecting to ask women if they would like to have the procedure done but rather asking the question to the women’s husbands, asking women to sign forms under duress or while medicated, using coercive measures such as telling women that they must be sterilized before the hospital will agree to admit them to a maternity ward, that women will be denied welfare payments unless they agree to sterilization, and most insidiously, performing the surgery without telling women at all.32 u.s. concerns over population growth and usaid to stem the growth in 1966, the u.s. government began to send funding to puerto rico for their family planning programs,33 and “from 1968 to 1972 usaid increased its budget for birth control to latin america to $100 million, however it reduced sorely needed healthcare assistance by the same amount.”34jumping forward to 1974, u.s. foreign policymakers were greatly concerned that “population or growth imbalances will produce disruptive foreign policies and international instability,” and that slow development in poorer countries would hinder u.s. economic aspirations while, at the same time, would require u.s. food aid. notably, the u.s. government had hoped to discover whether technological innovations could help to “ameliorate” the effects of population growth.35we might assume 32see generally, bonnie mass, “puerto rico: a case study of population control,” latin american perspectives, issue 15, vol. iv, no. 4 (fall 1977); and la operación, videorecording, directed by ana maria garcía (1983; puerto rico: latin american film project, 1983), dvd; and johanna schoen, choice & coercion: birth control, sterilization, and abortion in public health and welfare (chapel hill & london: the university of north carolina press, 2005). 33aaron segal with the assistance of kent c. earnhardt. politics and population in the caribbean: special study no. 7. rio piedras, puerto rico: institute of caribbean studies, university of puerto rico, 1969: 109. 34la operación, videorecording, directed by ana maria garcía (1983; puerto rico: latin american film project, 1983), dvd. 35henry a. kissinger, “national security study memorandum 200: implications of worldwide population growth for u.s. security and overseas interests” (memorandum, washington, d.c., 1974), accessed 15 december 2012, caribbean quilt | 2013 83 that these ‘technological innovations’ in part refer to reproductive sterilization and other methods of birth control.36 coerced sterilization, uniformed consent, and la operación according to the chicago committee to end sterilization abuse (cesa), “probably one of the most insidious u.s. population control programs in the third world has been in puerto rico, which has the highest incidence of sterilization in the world.”37schoen states that “with the inclusion of sterilization in federally funded family planning programs in the late 1960s, it not only became significantly easier for health and welfare officials to make sterilization available as a form of permanent birth control, it also became much easier to coerce women into accepting sterilizations they might not have chosen on their own.”38thus u.s. federal funding toward female sterilization can be seen as a coercive means to a calculating end: to control the number of births of puerto ricans in puerto rico. mass articulates that, “during the late 1930s, fifty-three clinics opened, and sterilization, labeled ‘la operación,’ was used as the major means of controlling puerto rico’s population growth.”39ana maría garcía’s film, la operación, sheds critical light on the issue of puerto rico as a laboratory of the u.s. with respect to the development of birth control methods.40notably, garcía provides http://www.druckversion.studien-vonzeitfragen.net/nssm%20200%20executive%20summary.htm 36my note. 37the chicago committee to end sterilization abuse, “sterilization abuse: a task for the women’s movement,” the cwlu herstory website archive (1977), accessed 28 march 2013, https://www.uic.edu/orgs/cwluherstory/cwluarchive/cesa.html 38johanna schoen, choice & coercion: birth control, sterilization, and abortion in public health and welfare (chapel hill & london: the university of north carolina press, 2005), 215; the chicago committee to end sterilization abuse, “sterilization abuse: a task for the women’s movement,” the cwlu herstory website archive (1977), accessed 28 march 2013, https://www.uic.edu/orgs/cwluherstory/cwluarchive/cesa.html 39bonnie mass, “puerto rico: a case study of population control,” latin american perspectives, issue 15, vol. iv, no. 4 (fall 1977): 69. 40la operación, videorecording, directed by ana maria garcía (1983; puerto rico: latin american film project, 1983), dvd. susan g. enberg| puerto rico: sterile breeding grounds 84 concrete examples of coerced female sterilization and uniformed consent in puerto rican society by enabling the voices of affected puerto rican women. the documentary brings to light how many puerto rican women could not afford nor easily obtain non-surgical birth control methods when they became commercially available, how some were offered sterilization as the only method of birth control, or were told by medical practitioners that having more children would be dangerous to their health. thus many women opted for tubal ligations, offered for free in a hospital setting (due to the federal funding mentioned above), or for a one-time fee at private clinics.41 pressuring women’s reproductive agency even further, husbands were told by medical practitioners that vasectomies were not reversible. puerto rican men were also concerned that they might become sexually dysfunctional if sterilized. 42thus male resistance to the procedure directly or indirectly pressured their female partners to have the operation. many of the women portrayed in garcia’s film attest to choosing sterilization because of their impoverishment. with respect to this, søren holm in häyrey et al. states that, “in extreme poverty it is not the case that you cannot get your wants satisfied; it is the case that you have no legitimate way of satisfying those basic organic survival needs. if you want to go on living you have to do something.”43as puerto rican women both desired and felt pressured to control family size, sterilization in the absence of other safe, affordable, and easily accessible options seemed a pragmatic choice. however we must provide thoughtful consideration to holm’s words of wisdom: “being poor means that you are likely to accept offers that people who are not poor would not accept, and this raises the issue of whether being poor leaves you open to exploitation, whether we can say poverty coerces…”44 la operación provides testimonials from women who were told by medical practitioners that their tubes would be tied–a procedure perceived as reversible by many women−however some of 41ibid. 42ibid. 43søren holm, “is bioethics only for the rich and powerful?” in mattihäyry and tuijatakala and peter herissone-kelly and gardarárnason, eds.,arguments and analysis of bioethics, vol. 214(amsterdam, new york, ny: value inquiry books series, 2010), 32. 44ibid 24. caribbean quilt | 2013 85 these women discovered after the surgical procedure that their fallopian tubes had been tied and cut rendering them permanently sterile.45many other puerto rican women were coerced into signing consent forms under duress − in the absence of their husbands, while in labour, or immediately after giving birth.46this practice clearly constitutes what i have called uniformed consent, and given the circumstances under which consent forms were signed must be seen as both coercive and enforced. institutionally, some puerto rican hospitals had policies that either formally or informally mandated doctors to pressure mothers who had just given birth to have tubal ligations,47 while some had policies to turn women away from the maternity ward unless they agreed to sterilization after giving birth.48in 1947, at the presbyterian hospital, it was an unofficial policy “to turn away women in labour for their fourth delivery unless they agreed to sterilization.”49however, briggs reinforces the notion that to be medically unethical is a judgment call to be made by the biomedical community alone, despite the repercussions suffered by victims of such practices. it is precisely this type of apathy that reinforces the authority of governments and medical communities that implicitly or in complicity support and commit such reproductive abuses. conclusions this author has not found enough evidence in the form of primary documents to support the argument that a systematic negative eugenics program was launched against the population of puerto rico with an objective of racial genocide. however, eugenic thought and rhetoric abounded for much of the twentieth century, as did systematic population control policies aimed specifically at women’s bodies in puerto rico. puerto rican women’s bodies were deemed as the sites of reproduction to be controlled, 50a western 45la operación, videorecording, directed by ana maria garcía (1983; puerto rico: latin american film project, 1983), dvd. my emphasis in italics. 46ibid. 47laura briggs, reproducing empire: race, sex, science, and u.s. imperialism in puerto rico (california and london: university of california press, 2002), 157. 48ibid 158. 49ibid 157. 50johanna schoen, choice & coercion: birth control, sterilization, and abortion in public health and welfare (chapel hill & london: the university of north carolina press, 2005), 201. my emphasis in italics. susan g. enberg| puerto rico: sterile breeding grounds 86 notion that was insidiously reinforced in the pages of puerto rican textbooks.51population control policies consequently opened the door for unethical practices and abuses by the medical community especially once usaid affirmed that they would economically compensate puerto rican physicians for sterilization procedures of puerto rican women. limited options for safe, affordable birth control in puerto rico throughout the twentieth century must also be considered. with choices constrained, it is not unusual that puerto rican women often chose reproductive sterilization. the tragedy is that puerto rican women often believed that they could have their tubes untied in the future should they desire to have more children. in cases of reproductive abuse, puerto rican women can turn to the body of international laws such as the convention on the elimination of all forms of discrimination against women,52the american convention on human rights,53article 12 of the universal declaration for human rights,54 the covenant for civil and political rights,55 the united nations declaration on the rights of indigenous peoples,56 the international covenant on economic, social and cultural rights,57 the beijing declaration and platform for action,58and lastly, the convention on the prevention and punishment of the crime of genocide59 in the event that the burden of proof can show without doubt that an insidious negative-eugenics campaign was waged against the peoples of puerto rico. 51la operación, videorecording, directed by ana maria garcía (1983; puerto rico: latin american film project, 1983), dvd. 52kelsey collier-wise, “bearing witness: looking for remedies for forced sterilization of indigenous women,” law students for reproductive justice, p. 16, accessed 28 march 2013, http://lsrj.org/documents/awardsgrants/collierwise_forced-sterilization_indigenous_women.pdf 53ibid 18. 54ibid 19. 55kelsey collier-wise, “bearing witness: looking for remedies for forced sterilization of indigenous women,” law students for reproductive justice, p. 18, accessed 28 march 2013, http://lsrj.org/documents/awardsgrants/collierwise_forced-sterilization_indigenous_women.pdf 56 ibid 19-20 57ibid 20. 58ibid 20. 59ibid 19. caribbean quilt | 2013 87 notably, legal precedence against enforced sterilization of women has been set by peru through the inter-american commission for human rights (iachr).60 to this end, i would recommend that puerto rican women who have become victims of coercive or enforced sterilization join forces with other women’s organizations around the world that have solid experience in such litigation, such as women from the chicago women’s liberation union.61 indeed, puerto rican women have every right to have their voices heard in an international legal environment such as the iachr. in addition, there is substantial reasonto seek justice for the bioethical transgressions of women’s bodies through the processes of coercion and uniformed consent that have resulted in permanent sterility. it is imperative for women to remember that those who fight for their rights today help to ensure future protections for women around the world. with respect to reinforcing women’s rights and body sovereignty, legal precedence accounts for much. ordover questions, “who has paid, and who will continue to pay, the physical and political consequences of these configurations?”62 women’s must answer, ‘not us!’ 60organization of american states, “inter-american commission for human rights,” accessed 28 march 2013, http://search.oas.org/en/iachr/default.aspx?k=sterilization&s=cidh 61the chicago committee to end sterilization abuse, “sterilization abuse: a task for the women’s movement,” the cwlu herstory website archive (1977), accessed 28 march 2013, https://www.uic.edu/orgs/cwluherstory/cwluarchive/cesa.html 62nancy ordover, american eugenics: race, queer anatomy, and the science of nationalism (minneapolis, minnesota: university of minnesota press, 2003), 215. susan g. enberg| puerto rico: sterile breeding grounds 88 work cited briggs, laura. reproducing empire: race, sex, science, and u.s. imperialism in puerto rico. california and london: university of california press, 2002. chicago committee to end sterilization abuse (the), “sterilization abuse: a task for the women’s movement,” the cwlu herstory website archive (1977).accessed28march2013.https://www.uic.edu/orgs/cwluherstory/cw luarchive/cesa.html cordero-guzman, hector r.”lessons from operation bootstrap.” nacla report on the americas, vol. 27, issue 3 (november-december 1993). darling, marsh j. tyson “eugenics unbound: race, gender and genetics” (presentation, gender and justice in the gene age: a feminist meeting on new reproductive and genetic technologies, new york, u.s.a., may 6-7, 2004). accessed 15 february 2013. http://www.gjga.org/inside.asp?action=item&source=documents&id=62&d etail=print engender health. “sterilization incidence and prevalence” from chapter 2 in contraceptive sterilization: global issues and trends (2002): pp. 17-48. holm, søren. “is bioethics only for the rich and powerful?” in mattihäyry and tuijatakala and peter herissone-kelly and gardarárnason, eds. arguments and analysis of bioethics, vol. 214.amsterdam, new york, ny: value inquiry books series, 2010, pp. 23-35. johnson, alexander. “race improvement by control of defectives (negative eugenics),” annals of the american academy of political and social science, vol. 34, no. 1, race improvement in the united states (july 1909): 22-29. kelsey collier-wise. “bearing witness: looking for remedies for forced sterilization of indigenous women.” law students for reproductive justice. accessed 28 march 2013. http://lsrj.org/documents/awardsgrants/collier-wise_forcedsterilization_indigenous_women.pdf kissinger, henry a. “national security study memorandum 200: implications of worldwide population growth for u.s. security and overseas interests.” memorandum, washington, d.c., 1974. accessed 15 december 2012. http://www.druckversion.studien-vonzeitfragen.net/nssm%20200%20executive%20summary.htm caribbean quilt | 2013 89 la operación, videorecording. directed by ana maria garcía. 1983. puerto rico: latin american film project, 1983: dvd. laughlin, harry hamilton. eugenical sterilization in the united states. chicago: psychopathic laboratory of the municipal court, december 1922. manos a la obra. videorecording. directed by susan zeig and pedro angel rivera and cinema guild. 1983. city university of new york and centro de estudios puertorriqueños, 2005: video recording. mass, bonnie. “puerto rico: a case study of population control,” latin american perspectives, issue 15, vol. iv, no. 4 (fall 1977): 66-82. nelson, jennifer a. “’abortions under community control’: feminism, nationalism, and the politics of reproduction among new york city’s young lords,” journal of women’s history, vol. 13, no. 1 (spring 2001): 157-180. ordover, nancy. american eugenics: race, queer anatomy, and the science of nationalism. minneapolis, minnesota: university of minnesota press, 2003. organization of american states, “inter-american commission for human rights,” accessed 28 march 2013. http://search.oas.org/en/iachr/default.aspx?k=sterilization&s=cidh roberts, dorothy. killing the black body: race, reproduction, and the meaning of liberty. new york: vintage books, 1997. schoen, johanna. choice & coercion: birth control, sterilization, and abortion in public health and welfare. chapel hill & london: the university of north carolina press, 2005. segal, aaron with the assistance of kent c. earnhardt. politics and population in the caribbean: special study no. 7. rio piedras, puerto rico: institute of caribbean studies, university of puerto rico, 1969. ..... 14 “tears of my heart” mark chatarpal mark chatarpal is currently studying at the university of toronto. he is co-president of the caribbean studies students’ union, and co-editor of the caribbean quilt. with a love for his country guyana, mark has maintained strong connections with his home, family and friends. in addition to his studies, mark does small-scale community based development in guyana and roriama, brazil. these tears of my heart i wipe over you droplets falling upon your tattered green dress your body still scornful laughs echo that dreadful hacking sound muffled groans piercing the rhythmic drip-dropping drip-drop into bottomless cups helplessly, i watch as your remains are auctioned watching as they look away watching as they ignore the glossy eyes of your malnourished children these tears! chemically induced ponds these harpy-high kaleidoscopic showers i shed over you as i walk away 20 jean rhys’s wide sargasso sea and the case of postcolonial haunting *** kathleen hemingway is currently in her third year at the university of toronto mississauga where she is specializing in english and majoring in history. she has spent the last five summers working as both a counsellor and a teacher at an arts camp. kathleen is particularly interested in ideas of translation and post-colonial as well as transnational literature. the “grand narratives” of history are dominated by stories of victory and heroism, tales of conquest and the “spread of civilization.” what these “grand narratives” fail to tell are the stories of the conquered, the losers of history. these stories remain in the periphery of the historical narrative, mentioned only here and there in passing; a cargo jettisoned from a slave ship or the cackling laughter of the mad creole woman in the attic. the “histories we choose to remember and recount” (bhabha 57) provide a one-sided, often eurocentric view of the state of the world. as a result they push “minor” cultures and people further and further into the margins until they become little more than a footnote. postcolonialism aims, as homi bhabha puts it, for a “radical revision” of this fact. by tearing down the binary oppositions which structure the current historical and literary narratives, postcolonial theory allows for the emergence of the “projective past” or haunting of the present by an unsettled past and the “split narratives” that accompany it (bhabha 57). the postcolonial narrative acts to represent cultures that have been marginalized through colonization as it “bears witness to the unequal and uneven forces of cultural representation” (bhabha 46). in other words, the postcolonial acts as a centrifuge pulling the peripheral narratives back to the centre. the result, *** caribbean quilt | 2011 21 suggested in bhabha’s essay “freedom’s basis in the indeterminate” and exemplified by jean rhys’s wide sargasso sea, is that postcolonial literature serves as both “action and agency” (57): action being the “radical revision” (46) of the historical narratives, and agency—a more complex representation of the marginal cultures of history. i will argue that, as the “projective past” forces itself into the texts of the colonial narrative, it splits that narrative to allow for a space of revision in which the story of the marginalized can be expressed. this splitting of the narrative is visible in the structure of rhys’s novel: it is composed of three discreet parts in which different characters’ voices take up the narration. part one is told by antoinette, part two by rochester, and part three (set in england), brings us antoinette/bertha’s final echo. in the gap between these sections, there is the untold story of the “mad woman,” a story that, in dialogue with jane eyre, the reader must reconstruct. in 1847 charlotte bronte published jane eyre, a novel which would stand the test of time and become part of the english literary canon. bronte’s novel catalogues the sadness of jane’s early life; her mean aunt, a boarding school no child should ever be subjected to and eventually, her employment as a governess in thornfield hall. this is where jane’s luck seems to turn. once at thornfield, she falls in love with her employer, the dark, brooding mr. edward rochester, and he with her. unfortunately jane’s luck turns again when, just as the two are to be married, it is made known that mr. rochester is already married and that he has his wife imprisoned in the attic of thornfield. the sad truth comes out, that rochester was tricked into this marriage with bertha, a creole woman of “bad blood,” and that he has imprisoned her because she is mad. jane leaves and finds refuge with her distant cousins. meanwhile, back at thornfield, bertha in a fit of madness sets the house ablaze and ends her own life. rochester attempts to rescue her but is crippled by the fire. jane eventually returns to him and happiness is restored to both of them. jean rhys’ wide sargasso sea “bears witness” (46), as bhabha suggests, to the unequal cultural representation in jane eyre; it offers the radical revision of the narrative. in jane eyre, the character of bertha mason exists solely in the margins of the story. as a peripheral kathleen hemingway – jean rhys’s wide sargasso sea & the case of postcolonial haunting 22 character, she is only heard echoing through the halls of thornfield, unseen for most of the book. she is simply a tragic mistake in rochester’s past; the mad creole woman in the attic whose madness stems from her bad blood. in contrast, rhys’s wide sargasso sea provides a more complex understanding of a more complex character. the reader is able to see the evolution from antoinette cosway of wide sargasso sea to bertha mason of jane eyre and all of the factors contributing to her madness. rhys questions that madness and suggests that it cannot simply be explained by bertha/antoinette’s bad blood. bhabha states that the postcolonial text speaks “of the reality of survival and negotiation that constitutes the lived moment of resistance, its sorrow and its salvation” (57). in other words, postcolonial writing constitutes the moment of self-definition and all that accompanies it. it resists the forced marginalization imposed by the center/periphery structure of the colonial system. while in jane eyre bertha’s death is as marginal as her existence, with the sole purpose of clearing the way for jane’s and rochester’s marriage, in wide sargasso sea, death represents antoinette’s salvation from her colonial relationship with rochester. according to bhabha, there is a “time lag” of the postcolonial and its function is to “slow down the linear, progressive time of modernity to reveal its gesture” (56). time lags in such a way that it allows for a more critical viewing of the past. bhabha claims that “this slowing down, or lagging, impels the past, projects it” (56) and that this projection is “a mode of breaking the complicity of the past and present in order to open up a space of revision” (57). bhabha’s projective past is therefore a ghost-like reappearance and representation of the past in the present. in wide sargasso sea this past is represented as the zombi, which rochester comes across in a book entitled “the glittering coronet of isles” and specifically the chapter on obeah where rochester finds the definition of the zombi. it is “a dead person who seems to be alive or a living person who is dead. a zombi can also be ‘the spirit of a place.’” (rhys 88) rochester experiences this ghost of the place when he gets lost in the forest and stumbles on the ruins of the priest’s house. the “spirit” of the place appears hostile to rochester and he feels “certain of danger” (87). what he sees are the ruins of caribbean quilt | 2011 23 colonialism: the “pavé road like the french made” (87) and the priest’s house itself are all remnants of the colonial past, they remain as ruins preventing that part of history from being forgotten. apart from this incident, numerous other examples of the projective past confirm rhys’s concern with restoring the margins to the center in wide sargasso sea. of the island, rochester says that he “hated its magic and the secret [he] would never know” (rhys 141). what he feels is the presence of the projective past and its hostility which he cannot comprehend because he is not willing to revise the colonial narrative. the island haunts rochester because it is attempting to confront him with the colonial past and force a revision. rochester refuses to do this and as a result feels this presence in every aspect of the island and so grows to resent it. rochester measures everything in relation to the fact that he is english and the locals are not; he still defines everything through a pre-existing binary opposition. for rochester, things are either english or they are not and it is, of course, only the english things which he values. in the postcolonial context, the binary opposition clearly places the colonizing power at the centre and measures everything else in accordance with this structure. rochester can only see all of the ways in which the island is not english and it is therefore worth less to him. in revising the colonial narrative, rhys undermines this binary opposition so that the colonizer and colonized are represented equally. another instance of the projective past is the haunting character of antoinette’s mother and her descent into madness. early in the text, antoinette goes to visit her mother who is described as “a white woman sitting with her head bent so low that i couldn’t see her face. but i recognized her hair, one plait much shorter than the other” (40). after rochester’s arrival and soon after her own descent into madness begins, antoinette is described in much the same way: “she was sitting in a rocking chair with her head bent. her hair was in two long plaits over her shoulders” (66). rochester begins to hear stories about antoinette’s mother and sees her madness projecting itself into antoinette. however he fails to fully understand the complexity behind the madness, dismissing it simply as “bad blood” and attempting to bring antoinette under his control. kathleen hemingway – jean rhys’s wide sargasso sea & the case of postcolonial haunting 24 the most concrete example of the projective past, however, lies in the structure of the text. part one describes the innocence of antoinette and by extension it is a representation of the island in its original, untouched state. part two is the introduction of the dominating, colonizing force. in this case, it is rochester. and in part three antoinette has left her story entirely; she is projected into the story of jane eyre as a “ghost of a woman” (153). she is the haunting aspect of rochester’s past that lingers in the story of his present just as the history of colonialism haunts the postcolonial narrative. according to bhabha, “the time lag of postcolonial modernity moves forward, erasing that compliant past tethered to the myth of progress, ordered in the binarisms of its cultural logic: past/present, inside/outside” (bhabha 56). as jean rhys’ story moves forward, she erases the compliant past that is the story of jane eyre and instead reorganizes the binarisms by moving what was at the outside of the story, to the inside. the ghost of the past in the present necessitates a literal split in the narration “between the time of utterance and the space of memory” (57). a split between the past, narrating the time of utterance and the narration of the present, affected by the space between the “then” and “now”, not fully understanding what has happened because of what has been lost. the difficulty in writing the postcolonial narrative is that there is so little evidence of the tragedies once faced by the colonized people precisely because the very nature of colonization is to marginalize and erase. in the space of memory, aspects of identity are lost including language, tradition and culture. with the integration of the projective past, those aspects are present and so the projective past not only allows for a more complete revision of the past but for a more thorough recognition of present identity. in wide sargasso sea the narration is split along several lines. it is split between antoinette in the first section and rochester in the second. this shows the split of representation inherent in colonial history. the moment of their marriage becomes the moment of colonization; antoinette is no longer represented through herself, she is wholly represented through rochester. he renames antoinette and begins calling her bertha effectively stealing her identity, an integral part of the act of colonization. their experience on the island together caribbean quilt | 2011 25 becomes the “space of memory” where little pieces of her are chipped away until she no longer recognizes herself. however in the third section, when she becomes a haunting presence as the embodiment of the “projective past,” the narration splits again. this time it splits between bertha and antoinette, arguably the same person but bertha has lost so much of her identity that she no longer recognizes herself as antoinette. wandering the halls of thornfield she turns a corner and sees “...the ghost. the woman with the streaming hair. she was surrounded by a gilt frame but i knew her” (rhys 154). she has lost so much of herself that she does not recognize her own face; she only has a vague sense of familiarity upon seeing it in the mirror. nevertheless she has moments where she remembers her past, the “smell of vetivert and frangipani, of cinnamon and dust and lime trees when they are flowering” (151). bertha is haunted by the memory of antoinette just as rochester is haunted by the ghostly presence of bertha. bertha is however able to reconcile the “projective past” and reclaim her identity in a final act of resistance and revision. a result of the “projective past” and its split narratives is the redefinition of the colonial relationship. according to bhabha the postcolonial “departs from the traditions of sociology of underdevelopment or the ‘dependency’ theory”. (47) that is to say that it moves away from defining a culture based on its dependence on another. as it stands postcolonial societies are defined by their relationship to their colonial counterparts by a this, not that mentality; if it’s black then by definition it cannot be white, for example. in wide sargasso sea rochester describes antoinette as “creole of pure english descent” but “not english or european” (rhys 56). he also describes the way the people speak as “not english but the debased french patois” (57). it is made very clear that in the mind of the european colonizer the world is defined only by their relation to it. rochester sees the features of the island and of antoinette as definitely not english. however as bhabha points out, the postcolonial seeks to revise “the pedagogies that set up the relation of third and first worlds in a binary structure of opposition” (bhabha 47). they seek to define these cultures without dependency on the colonizing force as a point of reference. jean rhys succeeds in this by taking bertha who was kathleen hemingway – jean rhys’s wide sargasso sea & the case of postcolonial haunting 26 previously written solely in the margins of the story and defined exclusively as “not being jane eyre” and gives her life a complexity that is unreachable in the binary state. in this form she is able to become antoinette cosway and it forces “a recognition of the more complex cultural and political boundaries” (48) that exist outside the sphere of binary opposition. wide sargasso sea tells of her struggle for identity and when she finally breaks out of the binarisms that rochester tries to impose on her she is able to reconcile her identity. jean rhys forces a recognition of antoinette’s identity separate from the sphere of the colonizer. ultimately this is the purpose of the postcolonial narrative, the action of which bhabha spoke. it follows a “revisionary impulse” of “reinterpreting and rewriting the forms and effects of an ‘older’ colonial consciousness” (bhabha 48). the postcolonial revision does not actively seek to alter the past, solely the representations of it. the postcolonial uses the haunting aspect of the colonial past to represent a more complete past where both the history of the colonizer and the colonized are represented. jean rhys rewrites the “‘older’ colonial consciousness” of jane eyre and she opens “up a space of revision” (57) when she takes bertha from the attic of thornfield and allows her to become fully recognized and fully represented. through the projective past which is present in wide sargasso sea and the split narratives that accompany it, the postcolonial reorders the binary oppositions which previously ordered the colonial relationship thus redefining and revising both the identity of the colonized and the history of colonization. the postcolonial narrative acts as both “action and agency,” (57) it both demands action through revision and enables it through representation. jean rhys’s reconfiguration of the story of “the mad woman in the attic” in wide sargasso sea represents an idea “more complex than either the nihilism of despair or the utopia of progress” (57). rhys has reconfigured the colonial story of jane eyre so that it represents the histories of both the colonizer and the colonized. the haunting of jean rhys’s text “speaks of the reality of survival and negotiation that constitutes the lived moment of resistance, its sorrow and its salvation” (57). caribbean quilt | 2011 27 bibliography bhabha, homi k. "freedom's basis in the indeterminate." the identity in question (1992): 46-57. web. rhys, jean. wide sargasso sea. great britain: penguin, 1966. print. 10 the caribbean diaspora and the formation of identity in second generation immigrants *** leonicka valcius is an undergraduate student at the university of toronto, studying caribbean studies and european studies. her areas of focus include migration and the social ramifications of economic development. leonicka was born in montreal and raised in south florida. her family immigrated to canada from haiti in the 1970’s, and they have since spread all over north america and the caribbean. leonicka has familial ties to montreal, toronto, new jersey, new york, boston, florida, the bahamas, cuba, the dominican republic, and, of course, haiti chérie. *** introduction in the summer of 2008, i was fixated by the idea of homelessness. i did not mean the lack of shelter or a place to sleep; those could be provided by a house. i was more concerned with home as a community. home in my conception was a place where i would belong and recognize myself in others. and that summer, i felt homeless. i knew nothing of this “canada” to which my parents were dragging me. yes, my birth certificate and passport confirmed that i was indeed canadian but i had no idea what that meant in a social or cultural context. how different were those canucks, really? so complete was my ignorance of everything north of the 49th i would joke to my friends (and still do at times) that i was being exiled to an arctic tundra. yet, if i were honest with myself, i parallel that i felt the need to do research. i made cbc.ca my homepage and would browse the articles in an attempt to glean information. even so, ‘those canadians’ felt completely foreign to me. caribbean quilt | 2011 11 would recognize that the united states was not ‘home’ either. my political voice was stifled because i was not a citizen. i was denied financial aid by top universities because i was “technically” an international student. the very reason for leaving was that the visas that granted us permission to stay in the country had expired. despite the eleven years i lived in florida, it was made clear that i did not belong. this left me with haiti. my ties with the country run deeper than legal documents can express. as the birthplace of my parents, haiti still holds the nebulous position of native land. i say “nebulous” because the entire construct rested on a romanticized vision of a country and a people i had never visited. i know of haiti only through the food my mother cooks, the music my father plays, the blagues my aunts and uncles tell, and the memories my grandmother keeps. but is that enough? can i really construct an identity around hearsay? how can i attribute my sense of self to anything other than my lived experiences? it is with these deeply personal questions in mind that i approached this paper. with the help of research i attempted to discover my place in the context of the caribbean diaspora. the pattern of leaving the islands for europe and north america was not uncommon. people with whom my father grew up scattered to the big cities of london, paris, boston, new york, miami, and montreal. leaving haiti was an achievement. at a gala hosted by dr. eric pierre, the honorary consul general of haiti, i met a man who described his reasons for leaving haiti. he’d made the decision at about fifteen years old and knew that once he left he’d never go back. “i had dreams and goals,” he explained in french, “and i didn’t feel i could uprooted “diaspora” was not an unfamiliar word to me growing up. my parents used it all the time to describe what we were. they could have used “moun pays étrangé” as those still in haiti called us, but diaspora was a nicer way to say it. both meant that we had left our home to live in a foreign land. despite my canadian birth, i too was part of this “we.” “we’re not like them,” my mother would say. “they don’t like us.” leonicka valcius – the caribbean diaspora & the formation of identity in second generation immigrants 12 achieve them in haiti.” though he quickly reminded me that he can only speak for himself and that he was probably an exception, his motives are substantiated by the research. it is often the economic constraints of the caribbean that drive people to emigrate. migration becomes “their sole source of economic and social mobility,” (henry 1994, 31) with europe and north america providing opportunities in work and education that were not available in the caribbean. the difficulty for a second generation immigrant comes when trying to discover the culture his or her parents left behind without the context. even a seemingly mono-ethnic country like haiti (gowricharn 2006, 11) has vast amounts of diversity. this holds for the caribbean as a whole. reis contends that “the region is actually composed of a plethora of diasporas,” making caribbean immigrants living in the west “twice diasporised” first from africa (and other regions) to the islands of the caribbean and then from the caribbean to europe and north america (reis 2006, 46-47). following that line of thinking, i would argue that second generation immigrants are twice displaced – twice uprooted. what we now call the caribbean is inhabited by the descendents of enslaved peoples from various regions of africa, indentured servants from across south asia, and in the case of haiti, the last remaining taino people which european colonizers have not managed to exterminate. from this historical plurality was the present caribbean culture formed; melded from different global experiences to form a new and unique whole. similarly, it can be deduced that a second generation immigrant will form a new culture – a new identity – from the various cultures that he or she encounters and experiences. james discusses this duality in his study of trinidadian immigrant dubbed mark: …[for] mark, as a diasporic canadian, and especially as a generationand-a-half [immigrated to canada between ages of eight and twelve] caribbean canadian, home necessarily involves a combination of his ‘two worlds’: trinidad and canada… the ‘twoness,’ or duality is represented in his perception of trinidad as his birthplace, or ‘roots,’ a place that provided the foundational values upon which he has built his life and aspirations, and a place of belonging and cultural reference; and canada as his place of residence, a place he ‘likes,’ that caribbean quilt | 2011 13 ‘has been great’ to him, and that has provided and continues to provide the opportunities on which he can base his future. (james 2005, 247) in my case however, how much of that new identity will be drawn from the eurocentric culture in which i am immersed? what parts of my lived experiences confirm me to be “definitely haitian”? for the other six days of the week, second generation immigrants must still find a way to remain connected to their heritage and community. many do this by way of culture based associations. as olwig put it “…their most intensive exposure to caribbean culture [occurred] when they attended their university, because it had a large number of students from the caribbean who organized a caribbean club” (olwig 2004, 59). i can relate. in my first year at university (in florida) i had attended several events hosted by the haitian club on campus. now in my third year at the university of toronto, i have haitian by association the company one keeps can provide insight into that person’s perception of self. it is logical then to look at the strength and structure of caribbean communities and kinship groups as a marker of ties to the “native land.” in my experience, church has been the primary place of gathering for haitians abroad. in our first year in the greater toronto area, my family did not meet even one other haitian. that is until we went to church. my brother’s first reaction to the congregation of thirty or so people who ‘looked like us’ was, “where have my haitians been hiding this whole time?” a haitian church is often more like a community center than a place of worship. immigrants who face their own struggles during the week are given a support group with whom they can share their frustrations and nostalgic stories of home. henry also points out the church’s instrumental role in social support and adaptation. newly arrived immigrants can turn to the church for help, finding living accommodations and employment. the church also acts as a refuge for immigrants who arrive without documentation (henry 1994, 240-41). in my experience, some immigrants establish contacts with the church before leaving haiti so as to have a support system as soon as they arrive. leonicka valcius – the caribbean diaspora & the formation of identity in second generation immigrants 14 become active in the caribbean studies students’ union and found a sense of solidarity and belonging there. i find it interesting that without these associations, i do relatively little to foster my haitian heritage. this relates not only to the aforementioned duality, but also to a type of compartmentalization of the self in which i separate “leonicka, the canadian” from “leonicka, the haitian” and pick my persona depending on the context. henry describes a similar situation in the narration of “lara’s” relationship with a portuguese boyfriend: things that i liked doing that were from my cultural self i simply excluded him from it. we would go to cafés and [places] that were more westernized, but when i just wanted to get back into my own cultural origin – roots – i just basically never included him in it. (henry 1994, 94) i would argue that the reverse is also true. there are sectors of my life that my haitian family (my parents primarily but also some cousins) would perceive as ‘acting white’, or, more broadly, as ‘acting like them’ (them being any non-haitian). rather than try to explain this part of myself to them, i simply exclude them. it is no wonder then, that second generation immigrants “experienced more difficulty defining a singular source of identity” (olwig 2004, 62). how can you be sure of your identity if you rarely have the opportunity to be completely you? the artistic expressions of culture are the most visible and obvious ways of transmitting and preserving heritage. music, dress, and the oral tradition all constitute the most tangible response to the question of caribbean culture. this is exemplified in toronto’s annual caribana. millions flock to toronto to participate in a weekend of activities highlighting the caribbean, culminating in a parade graciously sponsored by scotia bank. though reis asserts that this “…has helped the diaspora maintain that level of connectivity with the homeland through the diffusion of cultural images” (reis 2006, 49) i would say that the very fact that celebrations of caribbean culture have become mainstreamed and commercialized undermines that project of passing on cultural values to second generation immigrants. the music, compascreole and other cultural staples caribbean quilt | 2011 15 costumes, and overall ambience of the event are a crude and hollow simulation of caribbean carnivals and tradition, constructed as a means of reaping the economic benefits of increased tourism and to bolster the idea of canada as a multicultural and accepting society. to be authentic, culture must be perpetuated in the home. weekends were always festive. i remember my brothers and i laughing at the misadventure of bouki and malice. my extended aunts and uncles would gather at my grandmother’s house, eat frittai (various fried snacks including pork, plantains, and breadfruit), blast music in the backyard, and laugh and clap as my cousins and i learned to brassérien – what anglophone caribbeans would call ‘wining.’ these experiences are similar to those of other caribbean peoples: these parties were intimate in the sense that people were linked to each other through ties of friendship, family, and work…carol recalls that…one of her aunts held ‘wining lessons for the rapidly canadianized and stiffening pelvises of young caibbean immigrants and canadian-born generation… (henry 1994, 171) it seems that older family members do recognize the need to reinfuse traditions and cultural practices into the habits of the younger generation. however when families are forced to separate as mine was, the extended family structure is weakened or dissolved, leaving the young immigrant with few cultural cues. i feel it is more appropriate perhaps to say i am neither. my identity is quite distinct from a haitian living in haiti or even a haitian who has immigrated to another part of the world (france for example). neither or both? my academically induced search for self raised many more questions than it answered. identity, it seems, has very little to do with locale. i am very much a product of my experiences and surroundings. this includes the canadian and american norms and ideas to which i have grown accustomed, and the haitian tradition and culture to which i can trace my heritage. do i have to choose one over the other? am i both canadian and haitian? it is not a stretch to see myself washing down a paté with a cup of tim horton’s. leonicka valcius – the caribbean diaspora & the formation of identity in second generation immigrants 16 gmelch rightly noted, in reference to immigrants who returned to their native barbados to live, that “migrants often do not realize how much their attitudes have been altered by their experiences in the metropolitan society until they come home” (gmelch 2004, 216). i am also distinct from the mainstream canadian in that i am “doubly removed from becoming a canadian. thus [i am] not only born to parents who come from elsewhere, but...also non-white…this means that [i] can only become part canadian, whether or not [i] want to have a hyphenated identity” (olwig 2004, 60). like the african, south asian, and taino people before me, i am in a position where, through no fault of my own, i was removed from what would have been my home. and like them i must meld different parts of my experiences to form a new whole. so far, i think i have managed to create a cohesive home that is not determined by where i am, but on who i choose to be. caribbean quilt | 2011 17 bibliography gmelch, george. "west indian migrants and their rediscovery of barbados." in coming home? refugees, migrants, and those who stayed behind, edited by lynellyn d. long and ellen oxfeld, 206-223. philadelphia: university of pennsylvania press, 2004. henry, frances. the caribbean diaspora in toronto: learning to live with racism. toronto: university of toronto press, 1994. james, carl e. "'i feel like a trini': narrative of a generation-and-ahalf canadian." chap. 9 in diaspora, memory, and identity: a search for home, edited by vijay agnew, 230-253. toronto: university of toronto press, 2005. olwig, karen fog. "place, movement, and identity: processes of inclusion and exclusion in a 'caribbean' family." chap. 3 in diaspora, identity, and religion; new directions in theory and research, edited by waltraudkokot, khachigtölölyan and carolin alfonso, 53-71. london: routledge, 2004. reis, michele. "the modern to late-modern period in the caribbean diaspora." chap. 3 in caribbean transnationalism: migration, pluralization, and social cohesion, edited by ruben gowricharn, 4358. new york: lexington books, 2006. :::::: 154 from democratic socialism to a neoliberal agenda: a jamaican case study raquel brown raquel brown is a graduate of the university of toronto. she completed her hon. bachelors of arts with majors in political science and sociology and a minor in caribbean studies. she is particularly interested in the development of the global south; the links between globalization, migration, immigration and canadian public policy. introduction this paper looks at jamaica's experience with neoliberal policies. it argues that structural adjustment policies implemented through the international monetary fund has undermined democracy and autonomy, as well as hindered economic development of the jamaican economy. further, the paper will also highlight the ways in which dependence on foreign loans reduces a government's ability to fully engage its citizens in the process of economic development. a brief but necessary historical contextualization of the formation of the two major political parties and immediate independence period of jamaica will be outlined. a more detailed exploration of the period from 1972 to 1989 will be undertaken, as this period is characterized by the emergence of two very different ideologies in jamaican politics. more significantly, during this period the jamaican economy had its first introduction to neoliberal policies. the period of 19721980 will be compared to the period 1981 1989, as these periods are characterized by opposing political and economic ideologies, the former being democraticsocialism, the latter being a neoliberal democracy. it will be argued that during the 1970s, the government of the peoples national party (pnp), under the leadership of michael manley, had greater autonomy over the affairs of the nation than the jamaica labour party of the 1980s under prime minister edward seaga. in essence the pnp in the 1970s: 1) was able to independently decide what the country's foreign policy would look like and who its allies would be. 2) had more freedom over its economic policies; they were able to decide what goods and services came through its wharfs for local consumption. resulting from this, the government was in a better position to ensure the longevity of local businesses. 3) the government of the raquel brown| democratic socialism to neoliberal agenda 155 70s had autonomy over the implementation of social policies; these policies included social welfare, education, and health. historical context the two party system in jamaica was born out of a divide in the nationalist movement in 1943. alexander bustamante the leader of the bustamante industrial trade union (bitu) left the peoples national party (pnp). bustamante formed the jamaica labour party (jlp) to run against the pnp in jamaica's first election with universal suffrage in 1944. at the time the pnp was supported by the upper-middle class and the capitalist class and was committed to fabian socialism. the jlp on the other hand had its support in the working class and a small conservative section of the capitalist class. both parties’ ideologies became very similar over the course of time. in the 1950s they started to drift apart, with shifted support base; the jlp attracted the middle class voters, and the formation of the national workers movement by the pnp gained them the working class vote (stephens and stephen, 1987). during the period from 1950 to the 1960s economic growth in jamaica was rapid. foreign investment and exports led to foreign domination over the economy, this also increased levels of social inequality within society (girvan and bernal 1982). jamaica imported half its food, all of its energy and capital goods as well as a significant portion of its raw material and consumer goods. this was paid for by the bauxite and tourist industry (stephens and stephens, 1987). the economy grew at an average rate of 8 percent in the 1950s and 5 percent in the 1960s. however, between 1960 and 1972 unemployment jumped by 7.5% affecting nearly a quarter of the population. growing inequality resulted in social tensions and a rise in crime rates (stephen and stephen, 1987). social-democracy and the manley era 1972-1980 resulting from the growing inequalities of the 1960s, in 1972 the peoples national party was elected under the leadership of michael manley. manley enjoyed wide support from various stratas of society. at this time manley was best described as a populist; he enjoyed mass support and was not organized along specific class lines (payne, 1994). keeping with his mandate of ‘change’ the manley government initiated numerous social projects which were aimed at improving the social and economic well being of the caribbean quilt | 2013 156 jamaican masses (henke, 1994). the social projects and reforms included a land lease project, the commitment to universal secondary education, skill training for young people, adult literacy programs, food subsidies, equal pay for women, nationalization of telephone, transport, electricity companies and recognized statutory corporations which kept him in favour with the capitalist class (payne, 1994; girvan and bernal 1982). the reforms manley undertook were aimed at creating social and political conditions that would foster social justice and improve the quality of lives of jamaicans. for manley, social justice is the key to national development (manley, 1974). in 1974, the manley administration made a significant break from the previous government's economic directions when they announced that they were adopting democratic socialism as the parties’ official ideology (henke 1994). democratic socialism, defined in kaufman (1885) “...was a political economic theory under which the means of production, distribution and the exchange are owned and/or controlled by the people...political power is used to ensure that exploitation is abolished, that the opportunities of society are equally available to all and that wealth...is fairly distributed”. the democratic socialist programme rejects socialism as an economic policy but preserves the right of every jamaican to own private property. this programme called for jamaica to diversify its economy and create private and public sector linkages (kaufman, 1985). the dependence of the 50s and 60s made jamaica more vulnerable to the economic crisis of the 70s; the country’s economy simply could not absorb the sudden rise in oil prices. in 1974 jamaica’s oil bill rose from $64 jmd million to $177 jmd million1. subsequently other prices rose, the impact was felt most when purchasing groceries and manufactured goods. the cost of living went up as a result. foreign capital inflows were on a decline as was income from tourism: this created a need for alternative sources of revenue. in january 1974, the government announced its plans to renegotiate tax agreements with us and canadian owned bauxite companies. a production levy was to be implemented that taxed all bauxite mined or processed in the country. the initial rate of the tax was set at 7.5% of the selling price of aluminum. the revenue 1 in 1974 the exchange rate was $1 usd= $0.90 jmd http://www.boj.org.jm/foreign_exchange/fx_rates_annual.php raquel brown| democratic socialism to neoliberal agenda 157 generated from this moved profit from a marginal $22 million jmd to $170 million jmd in two years (payne, 1994). increased payments from bauxite were critical to the expansion of government services. the government had also developed a national bauxite commission to examine the issues of revenue generation. under manley, jamaica also played an instrumental role in the development of an international bauxite association (iba) which has major oil exporters as its partners. the iba countries produced 85 percent of the capitalist world’s bauxite (kaufman 1985). the formation of the iba put jamaica out of favour with the kissinger administration as it promoted ‘wider third world resistance to western economic interests’ (payne, 1994). the manley administration also sought to enhance self reliance. they did this by expanding their international relationships; going beyond traditional trading and economic partnerships with the us and britain. in adopting new foreign policies, the manly government became friendly with cuba, and created third world trade alliances. in 1973, manley arrived with fidel castro and forbes burnham at the algiers conference of heads of state of the non-aligned countries. this resulted in jamaica being included in high profile third world politics boosting its responsibilities in the years to come. for example, jamaica was placed on the security council of the un and manley had been influential in negotiating a settlement in zimbabwe and in the agitation of the new international economic order. under manley, jamaica also took steps to expand its bauxite exports to the ussr and eastern europe, however the world economic markets were not favorable to the expansion of an export led economy at this time (kaufmann 1994). because of the unpredictability of international markets, the rise in oil prices, as well as an unfavorable economic climate, manley opted to place restrictions on imports (kaufman 1994). the main motivation behind the restrictions, manley explained, is that reduction in imports will aid in self reliance: jamaicans will learn to make things themselves and create local industries. this will result in the creation of more jobs for the jamaican people. more importantly, the restrictions were an immediate response to caribbean quilt | 2013 158 economic pressures; reducing luxury imports would save much need foreign exchange for the essentials2. manley’s new friends and trade partners continued to weaken jamaica’s relationship with the united states. the friendship reached its most tumultuous stage when manley in 1976 supported cuban presence in angola. in a meeting with us secretary of state henry kissinger (late 1975) manley was asked to remain neutral on the cuban-angolan situation, it was implied that the much needed $100 million usd trade credit depended on it. days after this meeting manley announced his support for the cuban presence in angola, this resulted in us economic aid being embargoed for the rest of the ford administration’s term (payne, 1994). in 1976, attacks from the us press practically destroyed the tourist industry. disturbances in tourism occurred alongside declining remittances and the development of a black market in jamaica. the local jamaican local newspaper: the daily gleaner, made unfounded allegations daily. the international commercial bank ceased making new loans to the country. at the same time crime was rampant; this led to claims that the cia was trying to destabilize the jamaican government (girvan and bernal 1982). the evidence supporting destabilization, albeit seemingly isolated incidents, was too much to ignore. payne (1994) suggests that after investigating several incidents that transpired in 1976 compiled with testimony by philip agee, former cia operative, there might have been destabilization underway. the usa however has denied any involvement. blum (2004) seems to support cia presence in jamaica at the time. destabilization or not, the combined result of the 1976 disturbances was a loss in the exchange reserve of a detrimental $254 million usd (girvan and bernal, 1982). despite all the social disturbances and economic shortfalls, the pnp was re-elected for a second term in december 197. this was a testament to the appeal and effectiveness of their political and social programs (girvan and bernal, 1982). it should be noted however, at this time manley could not be seen as populist. though he had won the second term, he had lost a significant portion of his upper and middle-class following and had gained an even larger working class following (stone, 1981). his vision of change came with sacrifice: manley alienated himself from many of the upper and 2 interview with micheal manley by journalist gil noble on “like it is” october 28, 1977 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_tkvvkaqhfy raquel brown| democratic socialism to neoliberal agenda 159 middle classes when his plan of reform began to infringe on the importation and use of luxury items. in 1975, manley unapologetically told the people that ‘jamaica has five flights a day to miami’ for those who were not willing to make the necessary sacrifices to build a new jamaica (weis, 2005). this statement was directed toward the middle and upper class. the entire second term of the manley regime was plagued by economic crisis (stephens and stephens, 1987). pnps victory came at the same time as the exhaustion of the central banks liquid reserves. within the pnp camp there were serious discussions about the economic crisis, and the imf must have been considered as an option for alleviating the immediate economic problems. the leftleaning within the party were doubtful of the efficiency of the imfs approach to third world economies and argued jamaica could survive the economic crisis by careful spending and supplementary loans of other kinds. in january 1977, manley explained the position to jamaican people, stating the imf imposes difficult conditions on countries who are trying to secure loans. he went on to say ‘we are the masters in our own house and in our house there shall be no masters but ourselves, above all we are not for sale.’(thomas, 2001). the pnps team of economist drafted an elaborate emergency production plan that would increase self-reliance in the production of food and raw materials diversify economic relations and promote state sector investment, inter alia. the plan was rejected by the cabinet because of the anticipated repercussions (stephens and stephens, 1987). the imf loans appeared to be the only options for foreign exchange at the time. further, in a national poll conducted by carl stone in 1977, 76 percent of the populations were in favour of us aid. this was hardly the climate to challenge the dominance of international capitalism. (stone, 1980) the carter administration appeared to want a more friendly relationship with the caribbean. us policy at that time appeared to be persuading jamaica back to the ‘western camp’. the us also made known that us aid would be forthcoming if jamaica repaired its relationship with the imf. jamaica resumed negotiations with the imf. initially the government appeared to have some bargaining power. however, in december 1977, the bank of jamaica exceeded its prescribed ceiling by 2.6 percent. the imf deemed this economic mismanagement and suspended the next insulation of the loan (payne, 1994). as bartilow (1997) puts it, this was a ‘carefully constructed trap’. the imfs set unrealistic targets to encourage caribbean quilt | 2013 160 jamaica’s noncompliance. when these targets were not met jamaica was introduced to ‘a very stringent adjustment programme’ (bartilow, 1997). a new agreement was finally concluded in 1978, which in manley’s words, ‘was one of the most savage packages ever imposed on any client government of the imf’ (payne, 1994). the fund demanded price liberalizations, interest rate adjustments, currency devaluation and cuts to social spending. unfortunately none of this alleviated economic decline, it had however, successfully undermined the parties goals of social reform. over the next year, the dismal outlook of the plan led the party to seek ‘non-imf’ alternatives to jamaica's economic problems. prime minister manley announced a general election one year before it was due, giving jamaicans the opportunity to decide what economic path the country would take and whether the imf was going to be a part of that path (girvan and bernal, 1982). seaga and jamaica’s neoliberal agenda in october 1980, the jamaican working class decided they could not sacrifice any longer. the jamaica labour party, under edward seaga, won the elections with an overwhelming majority. his campaign emphasized ‘deliverance’ from the tragedies of socialism and promised ‘to make money jingle in your pockets’ (henke, 1999; weis, 2005). seaga was very vocal about embracing pro-us foreign policy and free market domestic policies. this rhetoric was aimed at us conservatives and successfully mended jamaican-us relations as it was well received by the reagan administration. following the change in rhetoric in jamaica, the us government extended extraordinary resources to the island (biddle and stephens, 1989). in addition to jamaica’s renewed relationship with western democracy, the countries internal dynamics also changed. the style and transparency of public disclosure on topics of the economy and politics was eroded in the 1980s. the rhetoric of the 70s was based on themes such as self reliance, liberation and non alignment. in the 80s the rhetoric was centered on the functioning of markets, macro and micro economic management with a general anti-communist sentiment (henke 1994). the ideology of the country shifted from democratic socialism to neoliberalism. there was no room in political dialogue for critical questioning of the status quo. questions of democracy, human rights and social development in jamaica were completely bypassed in public debate. the focus was placed on short raquel brown| democratic socialism to neoliberal agenda 161 term questioning and reasoning about immediate, small scale problems of economic management. the larger issue of national development was overlooked for the most part (haneke 1999). in keeping with the countries new neoliberal ideologies and embracing a pro-us ideology, the government adjusted its diplomatic ties. as soon as seaga was inaugurated, the jlp government extradited the cuban ambassador. shortly after, the government also withdrew its plans for regional expansionism. the local and foreign press were pleased with sega’s diplomatic decision and praised him in the media. by the end of 1981 jamaica completely severed its relations with cuba. this break was good for a ‘us caribbean policy scheme’ which was aimed at isolating cuba. the us commended jamaica for their ‘sovereign’ decision that was ‘essential to their own interest’ (henke, 1994). in aligning himself with us foreign policy, seaga throughout his time in office removed diplomatic ties with grenada. the government supported the exclusion of grenada from the caribbean basin initiative, stating that cuba and other socialist countries would take care of grenada’s needs. seaga also supported the barbadian prime minister’s proposal to exclude countries from caricom that deviated from the norms of parliamentary democracy in the caribbean. this was clearly designed to isolate grenada (libby 1990). seaga also played an instrumental role in supporting the us invasion of grenada, the jlp government even involved jamaican forces (in minor roles) in the operation in 1983 (payne 1994). seaga’s first priority in office was to secure financial funding and prevent jamaica from going bankrupt. in his first address to the nation, he declared there was only foreign exchange for four more days. he signed a short term loan agreement with venezuela and committed himself to restoring jamaica’s relationship with the imf. in april 1981 the seaga government received its first loan of $698 million usd. it is important to note that the imf did not impose the harsh conditions that they imposed on the manley government. seaga’s government was not required to devalue the jamaican currency and there was no imposition of wage and price control (payne 1994). in the year following the election jamaica emerged as one of the most committed client states to the us government in the caribbean area (payne 1994). weis (2005) posits that jamaica was caribbean quilt | 2013 162 the us’s special project and it was believed that the failure of the program in jamaica would confirm the views of the rest of the third world. that cooperation with the imf was a pointless undertaking. as a result by 1985 jamaica had received twenty-seven times more per-capita usaid that did sub-saharan africa (weis, 2005). despite the high levels of imf/ world bank support, the economic performance in jamaica was dismal. by 1983 the economic situation in jamaica was so bad that the government had to implement a two-tier exchange rate. this assisted in further devaluations of the dollar. by march of the same year jamaica had failed its first imf performance test under the seaga government, by september they had failed the second (payne 1994). the average growth rate was barely 1.2 % by 1985 the country had gone to a recession. in 1988 the real gdp still had not reached the growth rate it was in the second year of democratic socialism. the social conditions deteriorated rapidly as a response to imf austerity programs. class antagonism heightened during the 80s, and the gap between the rich and the poor widened. financial constraints reduced the government's ability to regulate (re)distribution of goods and services (henke, 1994). the jamaican people were losing faith and patience with the seaga government. seaga was elected with a sweeping majority. in may 1981, public opinion polls showed that jlp had a 28% lead over the manley government. by the end of that year only 7% of people in the opinion polls favour seaga over manley; in october 1982 the pnp pulled ahead with 43 percent favoring them and 38 percent favoring the jlp. on november 23, seaga announced an economic plan that included further devaluations of the dollar (payne 1994). dr. paul robertson, the general secretariat of the pnp, condemned ‘in the strongest terms the deception enacted on the jamaican people by the prime minister regarding the september 30 imf test’. the statement went on to accuse the jlp government of misrepresenting the truth about the imf performance test. the statement also accused the government of a lack of transparency and said the country should have been immediately informed about the failure of the tests. robertson declared that ‘the only honorable thing would be for the minister of finance [seaga] to resign. the people’s national party raquel brown| democratic socialism to neoliberal agenda 163 hereby calls for his resignation.’(daily gleaner, november 23, 1983)3. on november 26, prime minister edward seaga announced that he would hold elections on december 15th. sega asserted that the call for his resignation was a "challenge to my sincerity, my honesty and my integrity based upon a public statement which i made, the accuracy of which was the subject of technical interpretations between jamaica and the imf, the resolution of which was not concluded having been superseded by another [imf] agreement"4. the pnp boycotted the election on grounds of illegitimacy. they stated that the elections were being held using the 1980 voters list; this would disenfranchise 150,000 young people.5 the jlp subsequently had the largest victory in the history of jamaican elections, claiming all seats uncontested. payne (1994) suggests that the snap elections were strategic. seaga was falling out of public favour and there was real prospect that his government would be the first jamaican government, since independence, to be removed from office after serving only one term. there were two things working in his favour: an election in 1983 would mean that the voters list would not be updated to include those who had come of age after 1980, these young people predominantly favored manley. in public opinion polls, 40 percent of the electorate were opposed to calling elections on the old voters list (bryan 2009). second, seaga was riding high on jamaica’s role in the invasion of grenada was successful at painting the grenadian government as illiberal without frequently held elections. he was also able to show that the pnp had taken part in the allegedly subversive meetings in nicaragua with other socialist international parties in the region. seaga in essence was effectively able to deploy the classic ‘red scare.’ roberson’s comments were the perfect excuse to call elections before the grenadian effect had worn off (payne 1994). after his victory, seaga remained committed to the course he had set. however during later years he was more openly critical of imf policies. the ultimate justification for continuing a one-party system would be improved economic situation and quality of life for 3 daily gleaner “elections over the years” lloyd williams october 14, 2002 http://jamaica-gleaner.com/gleaner/20021014/news/news6.html 4 ibid. 5 ibid caribbean quilt | 2013 164 jamaicans. however in the years to come the jlp government was faced with further economic deterioration and a widening gap between the rich and the poor. in the midst of economic hardship there was some progress. despite complaints from the private sector, companies like island life, highgate chocolate and seprod showed definite signs of growth. kingston free-zone had found employment for six thousand women. exports had increased generating much needed foreign exchange. the tourism industry was also booming showing 62 percent more growth. despite all this growth economic recovery was elusive. in a public opinion poll taken in 1986, jamaicans believed that their situation had worsened. after 1984, the economy had turned to negative growth. in 1985 the government’s debt payments neared half the countries export earnings (bryan 2009). in 1985 the government signed a new imf agreement for a loan of $120 million jmd on the conditions that there would be further budget cuts, tighter control on credit and more cuts in the public sector. this came after 65 thousand jobs were cut in the previous two years. at this point seaga became vocally critical of the imf and openly stated that their policies were counter productive (bryan 2009). the jamaican people were disgruntled and could not take any further devaluation of the dollar. in 1986 the government took a new approach to imf and really started to attempt bargaining: in september of that year seaga went to washington to discuss why he was deliberately not making payments to the imf. this meeting was blunt, the secretary of state for inter-american affairs informed seaga to create a proper privatization process and devalue the jamaican dollar further to its real market level. seaga continued negotiations, he conducted some privatization measure but he knew as it related to currency devaluation he had no alternative but to hold ground. the fund relented and in january 1987 the jlp signed its fourth major agreement with the imf (payne, 1994). the success of this negotiation was pivotal. for seaga, they marked the beginning of a much more positive relationship with the imf. the imf relented, but there was no doubt that the devaluations would take place at the end of the loan period if the inflation target was not met. nevertheless seaga’s negotiations bought him more time. seaga was able to announce real gdp growth for the fiscal year 1986-1987 of 3-4%. the main factors that accounted for this growth however were falling oil prices and growth of exports to the us under raquel brown| democratic socialism to neoliberal agenda 165 the 807 programmes; but most significantly, the growth of the tourist industry. it can be argued that this growth was unambiguously an achievement of the jlp government, their alignment with us foreign policy restored jamaica’s favorable world image as a holiday destination. in 1988 and the previous year, seaga’s government had significantly increased public expenditure on road building. when introducing the april 1988 budget, he announced his ‘social well-being programme’ which was designed to rebuild the country's social services. the political message was clear: because finances were under control, the social costs of the adjustment programme could now be tackled. in late 1988, seaga secured another loan from the imf without much problem. however there were accusations that aid was being distributed along party lines. this damaged jlp in the public opinion polls and the pnp reasserted itself. this was right about the time of elections; seaga had run out of time politically. in the elections of february 1989, the pnp took 45 of 50 seats with 57% popularity. analysis and conclusion the political ideology of the 1970s was democratic socialism. this was a political economic theory under which the means of production, distribution and the exchange are owned and/or controlled by the people. manley, the leader of the pnp, had a long term vision for the country. he wanted to create an equitable society because, for him, equity was the foundation on which development is built. as stone (1989) puts it, manley was seen as the ‘trade unionist’: someone concerned with fairness, social justice and equity for the poor. he was voted in as a populist leader in 1972; however, by the time of his re-election he had lost the vote of the upper and middle-class. towards the end of his second term, the working class had also lost faith in manley’s ability to lift them out of poverty. seaga’s political ideology in the 1980s was neoliberalism. the jlp’s 1980 manifesto declared the parties intention to "create a market system of economics... to shift unnecessary public enterprises to the private sector... [and the] progressive liberalization of import restrictions leading eventually to the elimination of all licensing requirements" (wilson 1996). seaga was seen as the manager and the fixer: he creates benefits by increasing production, income and cash flow (stone, 1989). the economist in 1983 noted that the manifest of 1980 was a regurgitation of the structural adjustment caribbean quilt | 2013 166 programme outlined by the imf and world bank (wilson 1996). it should come as no surprise that after aligning himself with a us developmental plan, one of his first political moves was to negotiate with the imf and begin implementing his neo liberal economic policies. the manley government in its quest of social democracy, subscribed to a foreign policy of non alignment, this gave the country freedom to expand its foreign affairs and trading partners beyond the traditional scope of the west, namely, the united states and britain. in doing this the manley government became friendly with cuba. in his speech before the non alignment movement (nam) in havana, manley embraced the fraternal party relations between the cuban communist party, the pnp, and the njm of grenada (libby, 1990). manley also supported the cuban presence in angola after being asked by kissinger to stay neutral. this compiled with the growing number of open marxists in manley’s cabinet was becoming increasingly threatening to the us who feared cuba having alliances in the region. manley’s lack of compliance with us advice and his open support for cuba in particular raised alarms in washington. even if the claims of destabilization are dismissed as conspiracy the us did take harsh measures, in the direction of crippling the manley government. the aid from the us was significantly lower after the angolan incident. the us governments also tied aid to imf loans, strongly implying that if the government wanted assistance they had to befriend the imf. the us took the opportunity of the jamaican imf loans to implement very harsh conditions. bartilow (1997) asserts that the imf was not pleased with the way manley had politicized the negotiation process (example the ‘we are not for sale’ speech) and undermined its autonomy. by signing with the imf, neoliberal policies were implemented under structural adjustment programs (saps) and this effectively undermined the social democratic programme. the saps reduced the amount of money in the budget for social spending and also attempted to regulate the economy by opening up jamaica to cheaper imports, at the same time devaluing the dollar. a great deal of suffering came along with the imfs saps, most of which had to be bore by the jamaican people. in the election that followed, the saps proved to be too much of a burden for the jamaican people and manley was voted out of office. raquel brown| democratic socialism to neoliberal agenda 167 the jlp was voted in with the promise of better days. in aligning himself with a us developmental plan, seaga and the jlp government limited its autonomy in deciding the country's foreign policy, economic policy and social policy. libby (1990) argues that ‘by aligning jamaica's foreign policy with us foreign policy, seaga’s principal motivation was to assert his own foreign policy by rejecting manley’s policies.’ in essence what libby is implying is that seaga was not coerced into the neoliberal agenda. he opposed manley’s democratic socialism and sought to introduce his own agenda. libby does however acknowledge that aligning his policy with the us was very important in securing aid. regardless of why his policy was aligned to us policy the fact that it was aligned limited his capacity to create economic policies that adequately address the social situation of jamaicans. witnessing the relationship between manley and the us, it became evident that the relationship was strained because of the pnps fraternity with the cuban government. seaga as a result removed the cuban ambassador to jamaica and severed all diplomatic ties. though the us had not directly told him to do so, it is well recognized that such an action supported the us. further it aided in their 20 year long scheme to isolate cuba from the rest of the region. the same is true of the grenada invasion: supporting the isolation of grenada and subsequent invasion justified us ideology. further, it helped ensure that cuba remained completely isolated. in essence seaga, in aligning his policies with the us, intentional or not, was the only reason he was able to secure the substantial amount of aid that he did. his government's autonomy, as it relates to foreign policy, was curtailed in the sense that he knew he could not have chosen any other foreign policy agenda and gotten the same level of assistance that he did. as it related to economic development the general idea in the jlp camp and among public sector supporters was that there was little conception of survival outside the imf. as henke (1999) puts its, it was believed that ‘non imf or an imf default would make the current hardships look like eden.’ the jlp could not offer jamaican businessmen the level of support or protection that the manley government had offered them, because saps required competitive open markets. this resulted in many small businesses hesitant to take part in open capitalism. import substitution manufactures believed that they had been bypassed by the government who had worked out a new timetable with the imf. further, with new imf caribbean quilt | 2013 168 loans the value on import substitution had decreased resulting in manufactures losing political influence. most of these complaints came from the private sector (henke, 1999). money talked, and to the extent that more money was coming in from the usaid and imf loans, the private sector lost its ability to influence government. because of the guidelines of saps it was difficult for the government to spend on social welfare. as a result, health care continued to decline as did the quality of education in the country. the gap between the rich and the poor was widening. the opening of the economy put food back on shelves in supermarkets, but the dollar was so devalued that the poor no longer had the purchasing power to buy it. seaga, towards the end of his term, was able to undertake meaningful negotiations with the imf. unfortunately this came at the end of his term, so it is difficult to assess the longevity of this new relationship. in closing there are a few important things to note. because of seagas alignment with the us, they were far more comfortable with him than they were with manley. this allowed him a certain degree of leniency. first, he was not subject to the ‘savage’ saps that the manley government had to endure. when he decided not to pay loans in protest, the us was not as hard on him as they were on the pnp. additionally, because the jlp government was very responsive and cooperative with the us, they were better able to bargain (this only happened in the last year of the seaga administration) so it is difficult to assess. as a general principle, democratic governments must be able to serve the needs of the people. the economy was, in fact, experiencing growth under the jlp in the latter part of their second term. however, in public opinion polls the people thought that conditions in the country had deteriorated. according to stone (1989) this means jamaicans vote according to public spending, not economic growth. the people are concerned with social spending and improvements in the services that directly impact their lives, such as infrastructure, health care and education. because of saps constraints, the seaga government, like the manley government, was not able to deliver adequate social benefits in a reasonable amount to time. as a result, they were voted out. raquel brown| democratic socialism to neoliberal agenda 169 work cited bartilow, horace a. 1997. the debt dilemma: imf negotiations in jamaica, grenada and guyana. london: caribbean. blum, william, and william blum. 2004. killing hope: u.s. military and cia interventions since world war ii. monroe, me: common courage press. bryan, patrick e. 2009. edward seaga and the challenges of modern jamaica. kingston, jamaica: university of the west indies press. girvan, norman & richard bernal 1982. ’the imf and the foreclosure of development options: the case of jamaica’, monthly review, vol. 33, no. 9, pp. 34-48 henke, holger. 1994. foreign policy and dependency: the case of jamaica 1972-89. social and economic studies, vol 43. no. 1 p 181183 henke, holger. 1999. jamaica’s decision to pursue a neoliberal development strategy. latin american perspectives, issue 108, vol. 26 no. 5 pp 7-33 kaufman, michael. 1985. jamaica under manley: dilemmas of socialism and democracy. london: zed books. libby, ronald. 1990. the united states and jamaica: playing the america card. latin american perspectives. issue 64. vol 17 no.1 pp 86-109 manley, michael. 1974. the politics of change; a jamaican testament. [london]: deutsch payne, anthony. 1988. politics in jamaica. london: c. hurst. stephen, evelyn & john stephens. 1987. the transition to mass parties and idelogial politics: the jamaican experience. comparative political studies, vol 19. no. 4 pp 443-483 stone, carl. 1881. jamaica's 1980 elections: what did manley do; what seaga need do. caribbean review 10, 2: 4-7, caribbean quilt | 2013 170 stone, carl. 1980. democracy and clientelism in jamaica. new brunswick, n.j.: transaction books. stone, carl. 1989. carl stone on jamaican politics, economics & society. kingston, jamaica: gleaner co thomas, gemma. 2001. colonialism’s children. authorhouse, indiana weis, tony. 2005. a precarious balance: neoliberalism, crisis management, and the social implosion in jamaica. capital & class vol 29 no.1 pp 115-147 wilson, bruce. 1996. from democratic socialism to neoloberalim: the metamorphose of the peoples national party. studies in comparative international development. vol.31 no.2 pp 58-82 228 cover art for main edition photographer: tammy williams image edited: samra hasnain tammy ronique williams – from the ground up 67 “from the ground up” as a child, instinct never quite gave me the understanding i needed to know the difference but as i grew, i flourished with the wisdom of my forefathers. wisdom once branded, shoveled and burned alive, by ignorance now interred in plots once ploughed with the bones. i want to feel that when you look at me, you will see deeper than the scars entrenched in my body. those which after generations, have still managed to descend into my genealogy. i want to feel that my potential will not be dwarfed for that of a little melanin, for the fact that i inherited the structure of my ancestors. i was clueless then, not realizing that along with the features encrypted in my dna, came the blemishes of a bleeding past which would always seem to aggressively control me. i want not to feel the remnants of pain’s years stinging through your eyes to feel that you are not threatened by the knots of my kinky hair, nor the dirt caked and pounded into my flesh over time. i want to feel it is okay to hang my head over the railing hair blowing in the wind to be able to open my eyes under the caribbean waters without your whips suppression to run free forgetting years of shackles and bare-bottomed lashes i want for you to know that man cannot take or repress the undaunted spirit rattling like a snake quiet, but coursing inside of me a movement which will continue to thrive to be celebrated. caribbean quilt | 2011 89 “hybrid 2” ashti-leah mindy rampersad ashti-leah mindy rampersad my work within the last five and half years has been influenced by my experience growing up in both trinidad and canada. my move to canada has always made me think about what was left behind and the new world i stepped into. still to this day i am curious about understanding how and why diasporic groups manage to hang on tightly to certain customs from “back home,” and how they adapt to a “contemporary” society such as canada. i started to recognize that some traditions were kept pure, some customs fade due to westernization, and lastly, some become a “hybrid” of both. an example of a custom that has changed due to western influences would be the art of henna, also known as mehndi. the symbolism of mehndi has been altered due to the media in canada. like many customs, the significance and purpose of this sacred tradition has now been taken away by commercialism. yet, across our borders in places such as india and trinidad this practice still remains the same; a sacred tradition which has been passed down from generation to generation. ..... 107 rastafarianism & michael manley connor doyle the 1972 general election in jamaica is often remembered for what followed it: michael manley‟s first administration and the most radical experiment in the modern era of jamaican politics. however, the campaign itself was also a novelty, perhaps most notably because of the people‟s national party‟s self-conscious adoption of rastafari symbolism and imagery. as the sociologist anita waters has written of the party in that election: “her majesty‟s loyal opposition, in contrast to the „racial harmony‟ of the previous campaign, was now saluting with clenched fists and threatening to „beat down babylon‟.”1 the infusion of rastafari into mainstream political discourse was a radical departure from past experience. whereas the jamaican establishment traditionally viewed the sect as a subversive, criminal sub-culture, manley appeared to embrace it openly. at pnp rallies across the country, reggae music with unabashedly revolutionary lyrics blared from the sound systems. candidates could be heard using recognizably rasta expressions such as “hail de man,” and “peace and love.” campaigners even took to styling manley as a latter-day joshua, sent to deliver jamaicans from the oppression of hugh shearer‟s ruling jamaican labour party. manley encouraged this image by wielding a staff he called the „rod of correction‟, a campaign device laden heavily with rastafarian symbolism. the unprecedented appropriation of rastafari in 1972 raises some intriguing questions. how, for instance, had rastafari removed itself from the “lunatic fringe” of jamaican society to find a place in mainstream politics? moreover, does this development reflect changes in the movement itself or within broader jamaican society? in this essay i will try to uncover the reasons for this shift. i will argue that rastafari became a political commodity in 1972 because by then it enjoyed a newfound cultural legitimacy, had lost much of the taboo that once surrounded it and had become an outlet for popular expressions of black nationalism and discontent with the postcolonial status quo. manley understood the resonance of 1 anita m. waters, race, class, and political symbols: rastafari and reggae in jamaican politics (new brunswick, u.s.a.: transaction books, 1985), 90. caribbean quilt | 2012 108 rastafari themes among parts of jamaican society, and sympathized with its core objectives of alleviating the country‟s deeply-entrenched poverty and altering the inherited power structure. though he shared some of the concerns of rastafari and used its language and imagery to communicate certain ideas, this should not be mistaken for a sincere embrace of the movement in its entirety. rastafari seemed to emerge almost spontaneously in jamaica during the early 1930‟s. in fact, the movement drew on several trends embedded in jamaican culture: the religious revivalism of the late 19th century, traditional afro-christianity and an anti-colonial peasant movement dating to the maroons of the 18th century. the influence of two more recent developments, however, distinguished rastafari from earlier native religious movements in jamaica. the first was the teachings of marcus mosiah garvey which were by then in currency throughout north america and the caribbean. garvey‟s emphasis on black nationalism and panafricanism informed the rastafarians‟ afrocentric world view, as well as its demand for repatriation to the spiritual homeland of ethiopia. the second inspiration was the coronation of haile sellasie as emperor of ethiopia in 1930. the event, widely featured in western newspapers and newsreels, was imbued with messianic significance by some of garvey‟s followers, who saw it as the fulfillment of biblical prophecy. although adherents have always been loath to describe rastafari as containing an official doctrine or ideology — preferring instead to regard it as a way of life — a few essential tenets can be identified. first and most important is a belief in the divinity of halie selassie, a living incarnation of god, or jah. rastafarians viewed jamaica as an exile analagous to that of the ancient israelites, a hellish existence characterized by systematic dehumanization at the hands of babylonian oppressors. africa, and specifically ethiopia, represented the promised land to which selassie the redeemer would soon arrange repatriation. the practice of rastafari must be understood as a response to the perceived babylonian conditions of jamaican society. their resistance was manifested most visibly in cultural practices such as the growing of dreadlocks and marijuana usage, which rejected the norms and aesthetic preferences of colonial society. the identity of the first rastafarian preacher remains in dispute, but the distinction is most often given to leonard howell. a connor doyle | rastafarianism & michael manley 109 committed garveyite, howell began preaching news of the coming of the black messiah throughout the poorer districts of kingston in 1933. although he attracted only a small following in the early years, howell‟s radical preaching earned him the fearful scrutiny of the colonial government and jamaican establishment. an early account of one of his meetings from the daily gleaner reflects the tone of the initial response to the emergence of rastafari: “devilish attacks are made at these meetings, it is said on the government, both local and imperial and the whole proceedings would tend to provoke insurrection.”2 for much of its history, the gleaner was the voice of the island‟s planter and merchant elite and featured a strongly probritish editorial position. its coverage of rastafari is thus highly slanted, but nevertheless serves as a useful barometer for measuring the changes in mainstream responses to the movement. from the outset, the jamaican establishment regarded rastafari — despite the sect‟s relative obscurity — as an existential threat to the colonial order. the source of the official anxiety surrounding the movement is not hard to identify. rastafari represented at its core a wholesale rejection of the hegemony of whiteness and the will to “bring about fundamental transformation of an unjust social society if not its total destruction.”3 in his preaching, howell openly supported the nyabingi, an anti-colonial resistance movement in uganda and called openly for death to all “white oppressors” in jamaica. before preaching to crowds of typically a few hundred, howell would often ask his followers to sing “god save the king” but to do so knowing that they sang not “for king george v, but for ras tafari, our new king.”4 in colonial jamaica, this act of pledging allegiance to a foreign sovereign amounted to treason. indeed, it was for selling images of haile selassie for one shilling apiece that howell was eventually arrested in 1933. in the official indictment, the colonial government accused howell and his deputy robert hinds of sedition for attempting to excite hatred and contempt for his majesty the king of england and of those responsible for the government of the 2 anthony bogues, black heretics, black prophets: radical political intellectuals (london: routledge, 2003), 159. 3 rex nettleford, introduction to dread: the rastafarians of jamaica, by joseph owens (london: heinemann, 1979), ix. 4 ennis barrington edmonds, rastafari: from outcasts to culture bearers (oxford: oxford university press, 2003), 40. caribbean quilt | 2012 110 island, and to create disaffection among the subjects of his majesty in this island and to disturb the public peace and tranquility of the island.5 thus the colonial government considered rastafari an unappeasable and existential threat which, like virtually all anticolonial movements of the era, was met with violence and repression. this initial response to rastafari set a tone and precedent for several successive jamaican governments — even after independence — in their approach to dealing with the movement. it was the 1938 labour rebellions — sparked primarily by the hardships of economic depression — which gave rise to the two political cartels that have dominated jamaican politics ever since. the protests lacked an explicit racial motive or content, but nevertheless engaged matters of economic disparity redolent of rastafari critiques. nevertheless, the brethren were conspicuous by their absence in the marches and roadblocks which for a time paralyzed the entire country. rastafari, as we have seen, dismissed the possibility of redemption from within jamaica, and looked instead to a salvation that must perforce come from without. although the labour movement did include several ex-garveyites, rastafarians took little or no part in the revolt. this disengagement from a genuine moment of mass radicalism had, i submit, lasting significance. instead of achieving an early rapprochement with the labour movements that became jamaica‟s dominant political actors in the postwar period, rastafari solidified its place in the outermost margins of jamaican politics. this in turn ensured a fraught relationship with the fledgling jamaican state, which repressed the dissident movement with a zeal worthy of its colonial predecessors. official antipathy for rastafari in jamaica persisted even after self-government was ceded by the british in 1944. the antagonism remained in part because the rastafarian, with his strident calls for a fire and brimstone destruction of the jamaican state, was still regarded as a likely agent provocateur. this longstanding association between rastafari and lawlessness was, in the eyes of the jamaican establishment, borne out by several episodes in which rastafarians were seen to be taking up arms against the state. the most prominent of these incidents took place in 1960, when 5 horace campbell, rasta and resistance: from marcus garvey to walter rodney (london: hansib publications, 2007), 71. connor doyle | rastafarianism & michael manley 111 security forces raided the rastafarian commune of the reverend claudius henry. the government believed that henry, with the support of a black militant organization in new york, was planning an armed insurrection against the jamaican state. a raid on the camp in june 1960 ended in a prolonged shootout which killed two soldiers and wounded three others. the revolt was met with a massive week-long security operation involving over 500 police and soldiers, resulting in the arrest of over 100 rastafarians.6 the „henry rebellion‟ was a relatively minor skirmish and easily suppressed, but the scale of the government response is revealing. another episode of rastafarian unrest three years later seemed to confirm official suspicions of the movement. the precise cause of the coral gardens incident remain obscure, but it seems likely that it was a land dispute between a group of rastafarians and a local businessman in the montego bay area that resulted in the torching of a petrol station and the murders of eight people. news of the violence was soon reported in kingston as an attempted insurrection. within hours, the prime minister and the commissioner of the jamaican constabulary force convened on the area, backed by nine armored vehicles from the jamaican defence force. the coral gardens incident, like the henry rebellion before it, amounted only to a minor disturbance. yet the government‟s response, as lacey notes, was to mobilize “the full weight of state power...against four men whose motives and proposed actions were unknown.”7 the paranoia surrounding any perceived attempt at rebellion can be explained in part by cold war anxieties, specifically the recent memory of castro‟s revolution in cuba. it also suggests however that the image of rastafarians held by the guardians of society had changed little with the end of colonial rule. the coral gardens incident was thought to demonstrate another dangerous aspect of rastafarian criminality, namely its association with the cultivation and trade of marijuana. the link between ganja — a plant the rastafarians considered sacred — and crime was considered self-evident. the gleaner was only repeating a widely-held belief when it observed in an editorial that “most crimes of violence in jamaica, as in india, british guiana, trinidad and 6 terry lacey, violence and politics in jamaica, 1960-1970: internal security in a developing country (manchester: manchester university press, 1977), 83. 7 ibid., 85. caribbean quilt | 2012 112 other places can be traced directly to the use of ganja.”8 the wouldbe rebels behind the coral gardens incident were widely reported to be under the influence of marijuana. partially as a response to that episode, the jlp government amended the dangerous drugs act in 1964 to increase marijuana-relented sentences from twelve months to five years. the prominence of rastafarians in the marijuana trade and the drug‟s association with criminality enforced official perceptions of the sect as a public menace. the image of rastafari held by much of jamaican society during the period was not, on the whole, any more sympathetic. george simpson, an american sociologist who visited the island to study rastafari in 1955, noted that the prevailing attitude among the middle and upper classes was “one of contempt and disgust.” although he played down the threat of a rastafarian uprising, he reported that “it is widely believed that the members of this cult are hooligans, psychopaths, and dangerous criminals. ras tafarians [sic] are often referred to as „those dreadful people‟.”9 a gleaner columnist in 1960 wrote that, “it is self-evident that the majority [of rastas] are lazy, dirty, violent and lawless scoundrels mouthing religious phrases to cover up their aversion to work and ill habits.”10 perhaps the response was extreme, but the quotation does neatly encapsulate most of the rastafarian stereotypes which, anecdotally at least, appear commonplace before the late 1960‟s. certainly the charge of idleness was frequently leveled against the brethren. in 1963, when a group of rasta youths protested an american-funded real estate development on the island‟s north coast, the response of many middle class observers, according to campbell, was dismissive: “de bway dem lazy and dem no wan wuk, dem only wan fe smoke ganja.”11 indeed, the rastafarians association with marijuana presents a fascinating contradiction. as the above quotation suggests, marijuana use was occasionally used to prove that rastafarians were generally work-shy, unproductive members of 8 rex nettleford, mirror, mirror: identity, race and protest in jamaica (kingston: w. collins and sangster, 1970), 81. 9 george e. simpson, “political cultism in west kingston, jamaica,” social and economic studies 4, no. 2 (1955), 144. 10 edmonds, from outcasts to culture bearers, 82. 11 horace campbell, “rastafari: culture of resistance,” race and class 22, no.1 (1980), 11. connor doyle | rastafarianism & michael manley 113 society. this is closely related to another trope of anti-rastafarian prejudice: mental deficiency. it is highly telling that the colonial government eventually decided to commit the incurable howell to a mental asylum. this stereotype seems to have endured; waters reports meeting a middle class respondent who explained his disdain for rastas simply because “they are stupid people.” even as late as 1970, becoming a rastafarian was still “regarded by the wider society as one of mental deterioration,” and was seen as “an urgent matter for the psychiatrist.”12 according to stereotype, the link between their mental deficiency and the rastafarians‟ chronic marijuana use was clear. yet as we have seen, their involvement in the cultivation and trade of ganja was often invoked to link the movement with violence and lawlessness. this too can be found in contemporary responses of rastafari, including in a gleaner column from 1961. in that piece, the author argues that the “aggressiveness” of the rastafarians was “intimately wrapped up with ganja smoking,” which in turn “breeds irritation which flares up all the time in „incidents‟.”13 thus the rastafarian appears to have held dual representations in the popular imagination: at once the spliffsmoking, mentally deficient idler as well as the violent, ganjaaddicted revolutionary. in any case, the close association between rastafari and marijuana served to underscore a perceived remoteness from the mainstream of jamaican society. in the first part of this essay i have discussed the continuities in the official response of successive jamaican governments (both before and after independence) toward rastafari and how these attitudes were mirrored in wider jamaican society. the purpose of the preceding pages has been twofold: first, to provide some essential context to the place of rastafari in jamaican politics and second, to highlight the complete novelty and radicalism of manley‟s appropriation and apparent embrace of the “lunatic fringe.” the question now presents itself more pressingly: given the longstanding antagonism between rastfari and the political establishment as well as an apparent widespread distaste for the movement in jamaican society, how was manley‟s reggae campaign of 1972 even possible? in the following pages i will try to trace the 12 nettleford, mirror, mirror, 56-57. 13 stephen a. king, reggae, rastafari, and the rhetoric of social control (jackson: university of mississippi press, 2002), 77. caribbean quilt | 2012 114 changes, beginning roughly in 1960, to both rastafari and jamaican society which made such a strategy feasible, and even politically attractive. in 1960, apparently disillusioned with negative press coverage and the myriad popular misconceptions surrounding their movement, several rastafarians approached the university college of the west indies (the precursor to the university of the west indies) to discuss the possibility of an academic study in to rastafari. this proved to be a shrewd decision. the report, produced by three researchers in a mere fortnight, provided for the first time an historically accurate account of the movement‟s origins and development. the report was broadly sympathetic to rastafari, and went to great lengths to dispel many of the myths which had for so long surrounded the sect. as rex nettleford, one of the study‟s authors later recalled, the researchers encountered a complex and diverse group of people who defied simple categorization: “some were indeed committed to a political and military struggle, others revivalist in orientation and in origin, some quietist but all deeply involved with the poverty and deprivation that was their climate of prime concern.”14 the report was serialized in the gleaner in eight parts, so as to ensure a wide discussion of its contents. it did not alter opinions of rastafari overnight, but its central conclusions — that the movement was driven by legitimate social and economic grievances, and that the “criminal element” comprised a tiny fraction of the rastafarian community — seems to have had resonance. as one jlp councillor later recalled: the rastas were frowned on until the 1960 study. the study presented rasta to the public as something other than criminals. i grew up in a house near a rasta, and i always thought of him, and any locksman, as a thief. he was said to steal chickens, and he may have — he probably needed to. for most of the middle class, we don‟t bother to probe much. the professors pointed out that rastas have non-criminal qualities.15 14 ibid., 43. 15 waters, race, class, and political symbols, 71. connor doyle | rastafarianism & michael manley 115 government repression of rastafari and the suspicion often shown towards its followers continued, as we have seen, well into the 1960‟s and the report did little to alter this in the short term. it remains significant, however, as the first serious attempt within jamaican society to engage with rastafari with the aim of accommodation and not further marginalization. the second major turning point in the legitimization of rastafari in jamaica came in 1966, with a brief state visit by emperor haile selassie i. a massive crowd of rastafarians converged on the airport, as the gleaner reported the next day with some bemusement: “thousands of jamaicans for whatever reason, were in a frenzy over an alien leader around whom they had woven legends.”16 it was perhaps the single largest gathering of rastafarians in the movement‟s history, which resulted not, as the stereotypes would have it, in disorder but rather a mass demonstration of goodwill. as the same gleaner report noted, never in jamaican history had there been “such a spontaneous, heartwarming and sincere welcome to any person, whether visiting monarch, visiting vip or returning leader of a jamaican party.” the state visit earned the movement a respectability it had seldom enjoyed, as several prominent rastas found themselves socializing with members of the upper and middle classes at the governor general‟s residence. the exposure and dignified conduct of the rastas during the visit, edmonds argues, “conferred a sort of warrant of credibility on the movement.”17 another consequence of the visit was a noticeable doctrinal shift among some adherents away from the founding tenet of repatriation. during a meeting between the emperor and several rasta elders, selassie was reported to have used the phrase “liberation before repatriation” which soon gained traction in the rastafarian community. this not only dampened the repatriation fervor within the movement but, according to some scholars, gave rise to more explicitly political groups such as the rastafarian movement alliance, which eschewed traditional political passivity. as enthusiasm for a divinely-appointed salvation in ethiopia waned 16 nettleford, mirror, mirror, 82. 17 edmonds, from outcasts to culture bearers, 86. caribbean quilt | 2012 116 during the 1960‟s, it came to be replaced by its logical alternative: “deliverance must be in jamaica.”18 the newfound cultural legitimacy of rastafari as well as its increased politicization during the 1960‟s were both helped immeasurably by the rise of reggae as a popular art form. by the early 1970‟s, songs by desmond decker, bob marley and the wailers and jimmy cliff had appeared on the pop charts throughout europe and north america. the widespread popularity of reggae not only achieved global notoriety for rastafari, but meant increasingly the movement became synonymous with jamaican culture for foreign audiences. many scholars have stressed the importance of reggae‟s global success in altering domestic perceptions of rastafari, with chevannes noting: “international approval silenced all middle-class criticism and opened the way for even greater identification.”19 even the gleaner, which had previously repeated the familiar middle class criticisms of “primitive” and “uncultured” jamaican music, began by the early 1970‟s to feature extensive coverage of reggae artists. the domestic popularity of reggae and other forms of rastafarian culture, especially among the young, contributed to another process evident during the 1960‟s: the blurring of previously rigid distinctions between rastafari and the mainstream. as nettleford and his colleagues discovered, rastafari had always been a heterogenous movement in which „orthodoxy‟ could be only very loosely defined. these ambiguities were deepened by the popularity in the 1960‟s of what gray calls “functional rastfarianism” to wit, the selective embrace of rastafarian language and accessories while ignoring other aspects of its core doctrine.20 as one rasta elder recalled to waters of the late 1960‟s, “there was a lot of young blood in rasta then. after that, you might expect anyone to have dreadlocks.”21 rastafari, aided in no small measure by the popularity of reggae, had become an attractive counterculture for many lower and even middle class jamaican youths. typically this psuedorastafarianism took the form of “long and carefully unkempt hair,” 18 stephen a. king, “international reggae, democratic socialism, and the secularization of the rastafarian movement, 1972–1980,” popular music and society 22, no. 3 (1998), 51. 19 barry chevannes, “healing the nation: rastafari exorcism of the ideology of racism in jamaica,” caribbean quarterly 36, no. 1/2 (1990), 79. 20 nettleford, mirror, mirror, 94. 21 waters, race, class and political symbols, 106. connor doyle | rastafarianism & michael manley 117 the donning of clothing believed to be african, the open defiance of marijuana laws, and the flagrant breach of strict rastafarian dietary laws.22 so rastafarian attitudes and cultural symbols had become widely diffused in jamaican society by 1972, embraced by people who were in other respects decidedly not rastafarians. this means we cannot understand any subsequent political appropriation of rastafari as addressed exclusively to the rastafarian community, strictly defined. another effect of reggae‟s explosion in popularity was to place rastafari firmly in contemporary political discourse. there remains a debate among scholars about the timing and scale of rastafarian political engagement. as we have seen, rastafari did not shy away from vociferous criticism of every aspect of colonial society, including its political arrangements. at the same time, rastafarians formed no political parties of their own, did not join the existing parties and refrained from discussing politics in all but the broadest conceptual terms. reggae, however, was often quite topical, replete with references to everyday events relevant to ghetto life. in one hit song from the late 1960s, for example, the ethiopians reflected on the rolling strikes and go-slows that had become a fixture of daily life for jamaicans: look deh now — everything crash firemen strike — watermen strike telephone pole men too down to the policeman too what bad by the morning can‟t come good a-evening23 reggae not only served to popularize rastafarian argot, but to associate it with the politics of resistance. given the genre‟s leitmotif of escaping “downpression” and “beating down” the tormentors of babylon, reggae leant itself to co-optation by opposition politicians. so it is not surprising that “look deh now” became a popular phrase at pnp rallies, especially when speakers were pointing to alleged abuses or corrupt practices on the part of the ruling jlp. it is worth noting that the pnp‟s use of reggae declined in subsequent elections (when they enjoyed incumbency) while the now-opposition jlp quickly embraced it. indeed, few 22 edmonds, from outcasts to culture bearers, 89. 23 waters, race class and political symbols, 96. caribbean quilt | 2012 118 politicians of the 1970‟s referenced reggae and rastafari with as much enthusiasm as jlp leader edward seaga, who declared at one party rally in 1976: “but i want him [manley] to know that eddie is trodding creation, and the kingdom over which he rules no longer exists, because „jah kingdom gone to waste‟...youthman and daughta should know which is their party.”24 seaga, a light-skinned scion of the levantine minority, made for an unlikely dread. his use of rastafarian idiom however underscores a broader point. the popularity of reggae made it possible for politicians, especially those in opposition, to appropriate the rastafarian language of resistance without necessarily embracing the core tenets rastafari itself. all of the developments listed thus far are essential in understanding the pnp‟s appropriation of rastafari in 1972. the movement had gained visibility, cultural legitimacy and, if not acceptance, certainly unprecedented accommodation in jamaican society. perhaps the most important development, however, was a newfound association between the rastafarian critique of jamaican society and an emergent black consciousness and disillusionment with the postcolonial status quo that had taken hold in jamaica by the late 1960‟s. to explain this process, a word on the socioeconomic context of the 1960‟s is necessary. one of the central tenets of the jamaican nationalism propagated by the two political parties was what gray calls “jamaican exceptionalism,” the belief that race had ceased to be a dominant factor in social relations.25 alexander bustamante — the first prime minister of an independent jamaica and a member of the largely brown middle class — identified racial harmony as one of his guiding political principles: “people in the world have come to point at jamaica as a leading example…[of a country] where races work and live in harmony with ever increasing respect for each other.”26 the myth of racial harmony was ubiquitous in official expressions of the jamaican “national ethos” in the 1960‟s. for instance, a civics textbook produced by the ministry of education wrote approvingly of this multiracial ideal, urging high school students to “accept ourselves as an integrated community and 24 edmonds, from outcasts to culture bearers, 92. 25 obika gray, radicalism and social change in jamaica, 1960-1972 (knoxville: university of tennessee press, 1991), 54. 26 ibid. connor doyle | rastafarianism & michael manley 119 work towards the full development and prosperity of every individual, disregarding racial identification.”27 in the historical narrative endorsed by bustamante and norman manley then, nationalism was concerned primarily with the achievement of political sovereignty, a linear process which culminated with independence in 1962. the rastafarian critique rejected the received narrative in the strongest terms, supplanting its preand post-independence periodization with a cyclical “dread history” which stressed temporal and ontological continuities. in this conception of history, “multiracial jamaica” was simply babylon in another guise, fundamentally unaltered by the manufactured symbolism of independence. this idea of a “continuous colonial society” is repeatedly expressed by the reggae artists of the era, such as peter tosh who sang in a popular song: “four hundred years, four hundred years / and it‟s the same philosophy.”28 for rastafarians, the notion of a racially harmonious jamaica was an obvious lie; a ploy to justify the continued exploitation of the black majority. as one rasta critic — writing under the pseudonym „interpreter‟ — observed in 1963: [we] the black majority who has helped plow the soil, planted the vineyard and gather the fruits thereof , we are not the benefactors. those who benefit are the protectors. they share the crops, they boss the work and own the shares...the majority of jamaicans are black — why then are not the black supreme here?...jamaica‟s independence means a well without water, a treasury without money.29 the rastafari critique of neocolonialism — which maintained the rule of white, creole and “socially white” elements of society over the black majority — was mirrored by the economic stratification of jamaica‟s dependent economy, which made mockery of the self-serving mythology of the island‟s elites. the country‟s principal industries were almost entirely foreign owned or else in the hands of the tiny ethnic minorities. the economic boom supported by the expanding bauxite and tourism industries failed to alleviate gaping economic inequities in jamaica. indeed, it has been 27 nadi edwards, “states of emergency: reggae representations of the jamaican nation state,” social and economic studies 47, no. 1 (1998), 23. 28 ibid., 25-27. 29 nettleford, mirror, mirror, 61. caribbean quilt | 2012 120 estimated that shortly after independence the country held the highest rate of inequality in the world: the richest five percent of the country controlling thirty percent of the economy, the poorest fifth controlling only two percent.30 despite nationalist rhetoric, independence had failed to alter the colonial structure of the jamaican economy and had only served to entrench existing classcolour correlates. although rastafarian had once been alone in uttering these subversive criticisms, this was no longer the case by the late 1960‟s. these ideas were a central component of the black power movement, which by then, had taken hold of the middle class intelligentsia. walter rodney, a visiting guyanese academic at the university of the west indies at mona, was perhaps the first to recognize the commonality of interests and ideas among jamaica's discontents. in the eight months he spent on the island before his expulsion in 1968, he worked to forge an alliance between radical intellectuals, the urban poor and rastafarians. he recognized rastafari as an authentic, homegrown black nationalism which could be used in the effort of ending the “mental slavery” of neo-colonialism. the rioting sparked by rodney‟s expulsion suggested that black pride and criticisms of the incongruities of the inherited power structure had become widespread. in short, rastafari did not create the growing black power sentiment or radical political engagement of the late 1960‟s, but it provided both with an outlet for their expression, a readily available culture and language of resistance. we can turn now to the election of 1972 and its unprecedented incorporation of rastafari. as i have argued in the foregoing pages, by the time of manley‟s campaign rastafari was no longer the “cult of outcasts” it had been a scant decade earlier. indeed, between 1960 and 1972, it had been transformed from an obscure, dissident fringe group of perhaps 10,000 to a vibrant movement of upwards of 100,000 followers.31 at the same time, its language and attitudes had become widely diffused throughout jamaican society. largely through the success of reggae, rastafari enjoyed a cultural legitimacy it had long been denied. although negative stereotypes persisted, the movement had come to be viewed by many as an authentic, jamaican expression of black consciousness. indeed, its critique of neo-colonialism gained 30 edwards, “states of emergency,” 28. 31 lacey, violence and politics in jamaica, 39. connor doyle | rastafarianism & michael manley 121 widespread credibility as disillusionment with the record of jamaica‟s post-independence government grew. by 1972 it had become possible to invoke rastafari simply because the movement had lost much of the taboo that once surrounded it. as one pnp campaign manager later recalled: [their] numbers had swelled. a lot of middle class kids became rastas. it is also true that by that time, their image had improved...they weren‟t necessarily a bad element. their language was gaining currency among the middle classes and the school children. we had the feeling that rasta talk was understood across the country.32 the question is often posed in the literature about the sincerity of the pnp‟s appropriation of rastafari. should we understand manley‟s use of rastafari as cynical opportunism or as evidence of a genuine embrace of the movements beliefs and principles? the answer, as ever, probably lies somewhere in between. manley did cleverly manipulate the language and symbolism of rastafari to successfully cast himself and his party as the voice of popular aspirations against an authoritarian and undemocratic regime. reggae music was particularly useful in demonizing the jlp as the oppressive agents of imperialism, out of touch with the concerns of the “sufferers” or black poor. manley‟s familiarity and ease with rastafari helped him appeal to progressives, the youth, the urban poor and to benefit from the “diffusion into the crevices of jamaican society of black pride.”33 yet it would be mistaken to attribute the pnp‟s turn to rastafari to mere cynicism alone. under michael manley, the party had undergone a fundamental transformation between 1968 and 1972, which ended the traditional policy convergence between the two parties. in essence, the pnp rediscovered the leftist impulse which it had suppressed during the 1952 purge of an internal marxist faction. it absorbed many elements of 1960‟s radicalism, including members of the new independent unions, which advocated nationalization and workers control of industry, as well as black power intellectuals such as d. k. duncan and arnold bertram after 32 waters, race, class, and political symbols, 196. 33 michael kaufman, jamaica under manley: dilemmas of socialism and democracy (london: zed books, 1985), 63. caribbean quilt | 2012 122 the dissolution of the abeng collective.34 the party‟s turn to the left meant that it was now more open to discourses it would have once eschewed. in other words, manley‟s criticisms of the dominance of foreign capital and extreme wealth disparities did not make him a rastafarian, but it placed him and his party in a similar intellectual framework. although manley used rastafari idiom and symbols to communicate these ideas to a broader audience, this did not render them insincere. still, there remains a hint of truth to the charges of cooptation which many scholars have leveled against the pnp‟s campaign. this is probably best demonstrated by considering the relationship between manley‟s government and the rastafarians after the election victory. initially there was hope within the rastafarian community that it had found an advocate and defender in manley. a hymn sung at claudius henry‟s peacemakers‟ church during the election went: “haile selassie i is our god / claudius henry is our king / michael manley is our joshua / what a peace of mind / our joshua has come.”35 this optimism seemed at first to be justified. manley made headlines by publicly condemning the police for shaving off the dreadlocks of brethren who they were interrogating. he also paid more than just lip service to the ideals black pride, and even encouraged his cabinet colleagues to replace their suits and ties with open neck african-inspired karebas. manley‟s government certainly evinced more sympathy to rastafari than its predecessors, but its attitude was hardly a sincere embrace of the movement and all its beliefs. for instance, despite his pledge to review jamaica‟s draconian drug laws, manley‟s stance on ganja differed little from the established policies. he agreed to only minor reductions in sentences and even cooperated with the nixon administration in operation buccaneer, aimed at eradicating jamaica‟s marijuana fields. furthermore, it was at manley‟s behest that “babylon” was given unprecedented powers under the gun court and suppression of crime act. reggae songs were regularly and arbitrarily banned from the airwaves, just as they been under the jlp. this, coupled with the failure of democratic socialism to alleviate poverty or demonstrably alter the class structure meant that 34 carl stone, “stone, power, policy and politics in independent jamaica,” in jamaica in independence, ed. rex nettleford (kingston: heinemann caribbean, 1989), 28. 35 waters, race, class, and political symbols, 127. connor doyle | rastafarianism & michael manley 123 rastafarian support faded into disillusionment. by the late 1970‟s, manley‟s place in the brethren's esteem appears to be best described by max romeo‟s tune “no, joshua, no”: you took them out of bondage, and they thank you for it, you sang them songs of love, and they tried to sing with it; but now in the desert tired, battered and bruised they think they are forsaken they think they have been used36 in conclusion, the answer to the question posed at the beginning of this essay is perhaps the most obvious one: manley and his party turned to rastafari in 1972 because it had become politically advantageous to do so. much of this has to be attributed to the drastic overhaul of the image of rastafari in jamaican society witnessed during the 1960‟s. not only had the rastafarian movement grown in the decade between independence and manley‟s victory, it had earned a cultural legitimacy long denied to it. the pnp‟s campaign can also be explained by the popular explosion of reggae — which supplied the party with a wealth of topical references as well as a familiar idiom of resistance, which suited the populist tenor of the campaign. by demonstrating his fluency in the language of the „sufferers‟, manley solidified his image as a champion of the discontented and dispossessed. manley did not share the central rastafarian concerns of repatriation or the legalization of marijuana, as his record in office shows. yet, in some ways the 1972 campaign reflects a meeting of minds. manley and the re-radicalized pnp shared the rastafarian criticisms of jamaica‟s economic injustices. indeed, the socialist project of the 1970‟s represented a genuine, although ultimately failed attempt to address these problems. 36 campbell, rasta and resistance, 137. ..... 184 the caribsave partnership: climate change impacts & tourism anna agosta g’meiner anna agosta g'meiner is a fourth year student double majoring in environmental policy & practice and physical geography at the university of toronto. her areas of interest include the impacts of climate change in the caribbean region, paleoreconstruction of sea level changes, and effective policy implementation in sids. at the university of toronto, she has done research on red spruce distribution in the appalachian mountains, and more recently on paleo sea level changes in the caribbean region during the quaternary period. anna also completed a summer internship at the caribsave partnership in barbados where she provided research assistance to the caribsave's climate change risk atlas project. this project, as well as her previous research, will be used to further her studies at the masters level, focusing on developing a greater understanding of the social, economic and physical capacity and constraints that the caribbean region faces in adapting to climate change. introduction the purpose of this paper is to introduce a work placement opportunity which was undertaken in barbados, in the summer of 2011, through the centre for the environment env440h professional work experience course at the university of toronto. this course is an opportunity for students with interests in the caribbean region, climate change research, and the intersection of tourism, livelihoods and the environment to gain greater knowledge and understandings in these fields. i will be discussing my personal experience during this work placement, as the first intern to complete a placement with the caribsave partnership. i will also briefly discuss issues relevant to climate change impacts and tourism. introduction to the caribsave partnership i conducted my summer work placement at the caribsave partnership (caribsave), a not for profit nongovernmental organization (ngo), created in 2008 as a partnership between the caribbean community climate change centre (5cs) and oxford university, with the regional office and headquarters ana agosta g’meiner | the caribsave partnership 185 located in hastings, barbados since june 2010 (caribsave 2011). caribsave was created to address several environmental issues. as it is defined within its goals and mission statement, caribsave seeks to address the challenges surrounding climate change, tourism, the environment, economic development, and community livelihoods across the caribbean basin (caribsave 2011). their research focuses on the climate change impacts on the tourism industry and its adaptive capacity, since tourism is the major economic activity in the region (hillman and d’agostino 2009). caribsave seeks to build adaptive capacity in caribbean countries, primarily by providing invaluable information in several key sectors (such as disaster management, gender equality, and biodiversity) affected by climate change to policy makers (agosta g’meiner 2011, caribsave 2011). caribsave addresses several gaps including: primary research on sea-level rise and livelihoods, poverty & gender, making updated information and knowledge available to regional governments, building technical and human resources in the region, and implementation of recommendations at the community level (agosta g’meiner 2011, caribsave 2011). the organizational structure of caribsave is complex since it is a multi-locational organization. the headquarters are in barbados, with a staff comprising of the regional coordinator and regional administrator, along with 5 to 7 staff members (depending on the project), which make up the regional technical team. an office is also located in kent, united kingdom (uk), where the human resources department is, and where most of the administrative tasks take place. the ceo and several head research scientists are also in the uk, at oxford university. several research assistants and project officers can be found in trinidad, jamaica, belize, canada, germany and switzerland (caribsave 2011). the staff is passionate about their work, and there is a laid back but highly productive atmosphere in the regional headquarters. caribsave is funded completely through international donors, international funding agencies, and development partners, mainly solicited through proposal applications. previous funders include ccccc, oxford university, dfid, ausaid, idb, unep, and acs (caribsave 2011). placement activities the nature of my placement activities was to provide research, writing and technical support to the caribsave climate change risk atlas (cccra) project, as well as writing funding proposals for small caribbean quilt | 2012 186 projects. the main project i worked on was the phase i of the cccra, which has an expected completion date of march 2012. my main task consisted of writing a draft report for the belize water sector, which included doing extensive secondary research. i also helped project managers with various tasks when needed, and had the opportunity to take part in a livelihoods, gender, poverty, and development (lgpd) mission to st. vincent and the grenadines. these missions were undertaken by caribsave staff in fifteen caribbean countries associated with the cccra project in order to collect primary research on the impacts of climate change to lgpd. regional setting the caribbean region consists of hundreds of islands and cays belonging to approximately 34 country groupings, as well as 12 continental countries with caribbean coastlines and islands (caricom 2011). these islands vary considerably in size and are made up of mainly the upper parts of a submerged chain of volcanic mountains, as well as some coral islands that have been tectonically uplifted (meditz and hanratty 1987). there are several geological formations found throughout the region. these include igneous and metamorphic rocks, karst, coastal sedimentary plains, and fossilized coral formations (ibid). these formations result in the varying landscapes that can be found in the region; high rugged mountains often covered with dense evergreen rain forests, hilly countryside and high plateaus from sloping mountains, karst terrain and corral terraces, and coastal plains usually on the southern or western sides of mountains (ibid). rugged coastlines can be found with many inlets containing white or dark sands (fig. 1). there are also active volcanoes in the region, most notably on the island of dominica. fig. 1: white sand beach in barbados and grape vine trees in the foreground. source: author’s collection 2010. ana agosta g’meiner | the caribsave partnership 187 tourism in the caribbean context and climate vulnerabilities tourism resources in the caribbean region, the main example being the climate itself, are all sensitive to climatic changes. the region has done so well as a tourist destination because it has pristine beaches, a balmy 30 degrees celsius average annual temperature, and thriving marine and terrestrial ecosystems. these systems often have a very slow response time, and thus any damage to them brought on by hydro-meteorological events (such as hurricanes, tropical storms, tropical waves, flooding, and windstorms) or changes in sea level or sea temperature are severe and lasting (fig. 2 and fig. 3) (hillman and d’agostino 2009; pulwarty et al. 2010). fig. 2: bottom bay beach in barbados, june 2010. fig. 3: bottom bay beach in barbados, after the passage of hurricane tomas in october 2010. source author’s collection 2010 and 2011 respectively. of importance, as mentioned above, is the high vulnerability of the caribbean region to changes in sea level. the intergovernmental panel on climate change fourth assessment report (ipcc ar4) lists various ways in which changes in sea levels could adversely affect small island states such as those found in the caribbean region. these include, but are not limited to: intrusion of saltwater into freshwater aquifers, degradation of coastal areas, beach sand erosion, and an increase in large storm surges from increased sea surface temperatures. all are possibilities which could lead to coastal degradation. the importance of coastal degradation is further put into perspective when applying this to the economy of the region. tourism is the driving economic force in many caribbean countries (mimura et al. 2007; hillman and d’agostino 2009). in most caribbean quilt | 2012 188 caribbean islands, tourism accounts for 20 to 70 percent of total employment (the higher percentages often found on the smaller islands), and can generate upward of 50 percent of the gross domestic product (gdp) on the smaller islands (hillman and d’agostino 2009). any sea level change would cause massive destruction of coastal environments such as sand beaches, corals, mangroves, and waterfront establishments which would negatively impact the economy. of importance to note is that tourism is also the main contributor of carbon related emissions in the region, particularly due to air conditioning systems and transportation (air, land, and water) (clayton 2009). for this reason, many initiatives have been undertaken, or are underway, in order to green this dominant sector of the economy. there have been noted successes, particularly in costa rica and belize, although many other caribbean islands have been lauded for their contributions to greening the tourism sector, particularly jamaica, barbados, and dominica (cto 2011). the highest number of green globe certifications in the americas can be found in the caribbean region, with over 150 hotels and attractions carrying the green globe international standard for sustainability stamp (green globe 2011). although there have been noted successes, there are still thousands of hotels, attractions and transportation systems which have not achieved high levels of sustainability. the hopes of caribbean economies increasingly rest on a strong and resilient tourism economy, however many countries and companies in the region do not have the means to create a sustainable tourism sector. conclusion it is due to these complex and inter-related issues that caribsave has dedicated itself to addressing the challenges surrounding climate change, tourism, the environment, economic development, and community livelihoods across the caribbean basin. these are important issues which require extensive research in order to comprehend their interconnectedness. this understanding is also important so as to develop and implement policies that provide adaptive capacities to climate change, as well as allowing un-obstructed participation in the decision making process at all levels, particularly those of affected local communities. caribsave is well adapted to succeed in its environment. ana agosta g’meiner | the caribsave partnership 189 works cited agosta g’meiner, a. 2011. personal notes from summer placement at the caribsave partnership. hastings, barbados. annual report for caribsave. 2010. annual report 2010 (not published). pdf file. caribbean community secretariat (caricom), 2011. caricom regional statistics [online]. available at www.caricom.org [last accessed 08 april 2011] clayton, a. 2009. climate change and tourism: the implications for the caribbean. in worldwide hospitality and tourism themes, vol. 1(3), pg. 212-230. caribbean tourism organization (cto). 2011. the official tourism business website of the cto [online]. available at: http://www.onecaribbean.org/ [last accessed 09 january 2012] green globe. 2011. the international standard for sustainability – home page and members page [online]. available at: http://greenglobe.com/ [last accessed 09 january 2012] hillman, r.s., and t.j. d’agostino. 2009. understanding the contemporary caribbean (2nd eds.). boulder, co: lynne rienner publishers, inc. ipcc. 2007. climate change 2007: impacts, adaptation and vulnerability. contribution of working group ii to the fourth assessment report of the intergovernmental panel on climate change by parry, m. l., o. f. canziani, j. p. palutikof, p. j. van der linden and c. e. hanson, (eds.), cambridge university press, cambridge, uk, pp. 7-22. meditz, s.w., hanratty, d.m. (eds), 1987. caribbean islands: a country study. washington: gpo for the library of congress [online]. available at http://countrystudies.us/caribbean-islands/ [last accessed 08 april 2011] mimura, n., nurse, l, mclean, r.f., agard, j., briguglio, l., lefale, p., payet, r., sem, g., 2007: small islands. climate change 2007: impacts, adaptation and vulnerability. contribution of working group http://www.caricom.org/ http://www.onecaribbean.org/ http://greenglobe.com/ http://countrystudies.us/caribbean-islands/ caribbean quilt | 2012 190 ii to the fourth assessment report of the intergovernmental panel on climate change, m.l. parry, o.f. canziani, j.p. palutikof, p.j. van der linden and c.e. hanson, eds., cambridge university press, cambridge, uk, 687-716. pulwarty, r.s, nurse, l.a. and u.o. trotz. 2010. caribbean islands in a changing climate. in environment: science and policy for sustainable development, vol. 52(6), pg. 16-27. the caribsave partnership (caribsave). 2011. official website [online]. available at http://www.caribsave.org/ [last accessed 10 december 2011] http://www.caribsave.org/ 32 climate change and caribbean coral reefs *** anastasia, a student at the university of toronto, st. george, is pursuing a bachelor of science double major in physics and caribbean studies and a minor in mathematics. she is a pianist, plays the guitar and steelpan and spends her free time arranging music. her love for soca music and steelpan in no way takes away from her passion for classical piano and physics. as a person of the trinidadian diaspora with many interests, ana has decided to look at the caribbean from a different perspective by combining her love for science and the region. this paper is a synopsis of the original *** along with its remarkable history and exciting topography, the caribbean has a complicated political flavour which adds to recent challenges of climate change. studies provide evidence of dramatic world weather patterns, with temperatures reaching all-time lows, irregular rain fall, hotter summers and terrifying hurricane seasons which appear to be worsening. these changes in climate are directly introduction this paper explores the extent to which climate change is affecting the caribbean region. in the first part, the importance of coral reefs to the caribbean will be shown. in the second part, the sensitivity of coral reefs to environmental changes will be examined. since human activity plays a major role in climate change, the third part will explore several anthropogenic (manmade) forces that affect climate change, with spin off effects that threaten the existence of coral reefs and beaches in the region. the paper concludes with suggested strategies and policies to counteract the effects of climate change in the caribbean. caribbean quilt | 2011 33 affecting the caribbean region. the region’s economy, largely dependent on “sun, sea and sand” is gradually being destroyed. more importantly, the livelihood of many who survive on tourism and fishing is being dramatically affected. increasing carbon dioxide levels have resulted in rising earth temperatures with concomitant high levels of coral reef bleaching. increases in storm and hurricane activity have caused destruction of coastal systems. increased rainfall and tremendous flooding have brought havoc to the fishing industry. in short, caribbean progress is being stifled by changes in climate. coral reefs are among the world's most amazing ecosystems in terms of biodiversity, far surpassing rain forests and other land ecosystems importance of coral reefs to the caribbean 1 coral reefs are really marine systems created from the secretion of calcium carbonate from corals . one merely has to take a trip to tobago's buccoo reef to experience this wonder of nature. there, the opportunity presents itself to enjoy one of the most stunning sites in the world while sitting in a comfortable glass bottom boat in the scorching sun. millions of organisms live in this coral reef which is also home for hundreds of thousands of varieties of fish. 2. corals live in colonies, which grow on the surface of the reef3. they extract limestone from the water and with the help of zooxanthellae, secrete calcium carbonate to make the hard shells of protection that are left behind when the coral dies, resulting in the formation of coral reefs4. zooxanthellae are single celled plants that live inside larger organisms, mostly corals5. they have a mutual relationship with corals and coral reefs6. corals provide protection for zooxanthellae, which in turn provide food and nutrients for the coral via photosynthesis, enabling the secretion of the calcium carbonate needed for the reef7 1 (birkeland) page 4 2 (schluter) page 3 3 ibid 4 ibid 5 (baker) 6 ibid 7 ibid . anastasia deonarinesingh – climate change and the caribbean 34 photosynthesis of zooxanthellae is very important for corals and for the calcification (formation of calcium carbonate) of coral reefs. both processes, i.e. photosynthesis and calcification, take place side by side in these ecosystems. photosynthesis is the chemical reaction of carbon dioxide and water to produce glucose (a carbohydrate), which is one of the main sources of food for the corals8. at the same time that zooxanthellae are carrying out processes of photosynthesis, the coral itself is carrying out processes of respiration (reverse photosynthesis), which produces carbon dioxide that zooxanthellae use9 coral reefs are important to the caribbean for three (3) main reasons . while scientists recognize the importance of these organisms to each other and tourists no doubt visit to enjoy the beauty of the reefs, a more significant aspect of coral reefs is that they present a source of livelihood for many in these countries. 10 (1) they provide a substantial amount of food for humans including "gastropods (e.g. queen conch), bivalves (e.g. giant clams, rock oysters, and pearl oysters), octopus, squid, cuttlefish, lobsters, prawns and sea cucumbers" . 11. aquamarine organisms in coral reefs are an important source of food for coastal communities, entire countries and a wide-range of pelagic or inshore pelagic fishes12 (2) they are major contributors to tourism. they are a huge source of income for tropical countries, especially those in the caribbean, through scuba diving, jewelry, curios and souvenirs from black corals, gorgonaceans, seashells, giant clams and dried fishes . 13 (3) they are vital to the aquamarine trade. in the region, there are over 60,000 small scale fishing operations. in jamaica alone, over 95,000 tons of fish are harvested for food and business annually . 14 8 (jean-pierre gattuso) page 4 9 ibid page 4 10 (birkeland) page 13 11 ibid page 56 12 ibid page 15 13 ibid page 46 14 ibid page 46 . fish from coral reefs and surrounding seas are caribbean quilt | 2011 35 exported to all corners of the earth, bringing in income to local businesses. almost all the countries of the region have at least one coral reef. they range in size and diversity. in this section, five (5) reefs will be looked at. these are to be found in the dominican republic, belize, tobago, st. lucia, and cuba. they are all major income sources in their respective countries. in the dominican republic, 37% of the country’s income comes from the tourism industry with over 500,000 dominicans employed in the tourism sector15. the parque jaragua in the dominican republic houses coral reefs, mangroves, sea grass beds and beaches16. the reefs produce a great deal of the sand for beaches, which are part of the dominican republic's biosphere reserve. the reserve brings in over $100 million us dollars from park fees, lodging, gas stations and small businesses17 the coral reef off the coast of belize also contributes to hefty revenue from the tourism industry. approximately us$175 million to us$262 million in 2007 flowed from coral reef and mangrove associated tourism . 18. according to the world resources institute, reef associated tourism and fishing associated with the reef is part of their cultural tradition and provides a safety net for the livelihood of belizeans19. sport fishing and diving off the coast of belize alone contributed approximately us$ 30 us$37 million in 200720. this can be compared to the gross us$11.2 million that belize collects from the 1.2 million pounds of fish sold in one year21. reef and mangrove associated fishing off the coast of belize amount to over us$15 million per year for the belizean economy22 research pertaining to the economic advantages of coral reefs in tobago and st. lucia estimate income from visitors’ spending money on reef related recreation, accommodation and other activities, to us$43.5 million in tobago and us$91.6 million in st. lucia, all in the . 15 (jeffrey wielgus) page 2 16 ibid page 5 17 ibid page 5 18 (emily cooper) page 2, 4 19 ibid page 2 20 ibid page 4 21 ibid page 4 22 ibid page 4 anastasia deonarinesingh – climate change and the caribbean 36 year 200623. the resulting combined income from direct and indirectly related reef associated tourism amount to over us$101 million for trinidad’s economy and over us$160 million for st. lucia’s24. in these two countries, coral reef fishing has a much smaller economic impact when compared with belize, ranging from us$0.7 million in tobago and us$0.4 million in st. lucia. coral reef fishing is essential in providing jobs, adding cultural value and a social safety net in both locations25. the world resources institute (wri) recognizes the value of coral reefs to the caribbean and its people in areas of food and public sector jobs. they are also valued as a source of fuel, providing air quality maintenance, climate and water regulation, erosion control, storm protection, cultural diversity, spiritual and religious values, cultural heritage values (e.g. lucia), recreation, ecotourism and other goods and services for the people of the region26 cuba can be singled out as having one of the largest reefs in the caribbean, surrounding the island on all four coasts . 27. these reefs stretch virtually along the entire cuban coastline and for the most part, resemble barrier reefs28. coral reef fishing also plays an important part in the cuban economy as both a food source and an income generator.29. the cuban fishing industry catches and exports many different marine species from the lane snapper from the gulf of batabanó, to the nassau grouper, the queen conch and shrimp off the southern shelf of the cuban coast30. chuck adams explains that despite the fact that economic conditions have not been ideal in cuba since the “special period” (referring to the period of economic crisis after the collapse of the soviet union in the 1990’s) exports of fish continue to be high for the country31. most recent figures quoted by adams showed that annual seafood exports in the 1990’s were averaging us $107 million, with an increased export value of us $125.4 million in 199632 23 (lauretta burke) page3-4 24 ibid page 4 25 ibid page 4 26 (institute)page 3 27 (institute, cuba) 28 (unep) page 135 29 ibid page 136 30 ibid page 136 31 (chuck adams) page 6 32 ibid page 6 . caribbean quilt | 2011 37 with these figures in mind, there can be no doubt about the importance of corals and coral reefs to the caribbean region. (1) rising sea levels is one external factor that may affect coral reefs sensitivity of coral reefs to environmental changes corals are highly sensitive organisms that are affected by changes in their environment. they require very strict environmental conditions in order to survive, grow and revive themselves after natural processes. 33. at different times of the year there are natural changes in sea levels due to the movement of the sun and earth in relation to one another34. these changes in sea levels affect the life and death of corals since reefs that live closer to the sea surface are alternatively exposed or flooded in relation to the sea level35. this natural rise and fall of sea levels is exacerbated by global warming and climate change. this results in sea levels remaining elevated, which in turn causes serious flooding problems for coral reefs36 (2) coral reefs are also affected by the changes in sea temperatures. corals can survive in seas temperatures ranging from 18 û&�wr���û c, but prefer ideal conditions of 26 û&�wr��� û& . 37. sea temperatures determine the rate of growth of corals and drastic changes in these temperatures outside the regular range could cause total destruction of reefs38 (3) corals are affected by the salinity levels of the water. corals grow ideally in seas where the salinity levels are between 3.3 to 3.6 % . 39. salinity levels change due to the dumping of large amounts of fresh water when glaciers melt40. salinity levels are also subject to change due to precipitation, storm activity, fresh water runoff and severe droughts41 33 (birkeland) page 46 34 ibid page 46 35 ibid page 47 36 ibid page 5 37 (birkeland) page 50 38 ibid page 50 39 ibid page 52 40 (lee hayes byron) page 1 41 ibid page 1 . anastasia deonarinesingh – climate change and the caribbean 38 (4) light intensity also affects the growth of corals. as depth increases, light intensity decreases exponentially42. as a result, photosynthesis and calcium carbonate levels decrease43 (5) the upwelling of nutrients could have a number of different effects on coral life . 44. upwelling is the process by which warm, nutrient rich water rushes in to replace cool, nutrient depleted water45. it brings in warm water from closer to the coasts, due mostly to the winds blowing over the sea46 . while coral reefs are a large source of economic assistance to developing states, especially in the caribbean, their environmental advantages are equally important. marine ecosystems such as coral reefs and mangroves protect island coastlines from added erosion and destruction from storms and natural breakwaters41. reefs not only protect the beaches and coastlines from storms and waves but also provide the sand for beaches47. clearly, the destruction of beaches and the coastal systems of developing states is a major concern in light of climate change and rising sea levels. climate change is not only affecting the earth’s surface temperatures, but is also affecting sea temperatures, sea levels and the intensity and frequency of weather systems, such as storms and hurricanes. the next section of the paper will explore existing evidence of destruction of coral reefs in the region. it will be seen that together with changing weather patterns in the region, specifically hurricanes in the past few years, there has been severe beach erosion which presents challenges to the tourism economy of the caribbean. coral reefs in the caribbean are being slowly destroyed, and it will be shown that a primary reason for this destruction is destruction of coral reefs, intensification of hurricanes and effects on beaches 42 (birkeland) page 56 43 ibid page 56 44 ibid page 56 45 (wikipedia) 46 ibid 47 (unep) page 55 caribbean quilt | 2011 39 anthropogenic (manmade)48. while human activity is not the only reason for the depletion of coral reefs, over the last few years such activity has only exacerbated the situation. human impact on reefs can be separated into 4 categories: pollution; sedimentation; over fishing and climate change49 (1) pollution in the form of nutrient upwelling is a type of reef pollution and is linked very closely to human waste and agricultural runoff . 50 (2) sedimentation has been linked to coastal development such as dredging, land reclamation, deforestation and poor agricultural practices throughout the islands . 51 (3) unsustainable fishing is more so related to marine life in the reefs rather than the physical reef itself. over fishing is extracting marine life from the system at a rate which is faster than it could be naturally replenished . 52 (4) human activity causes climate change. industrialization increases levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere which in turn increases global temperature. increases in temperature cause sea levels to rise due to melting glaciers and polar ice caps. increased sea temperatures cause coral bleaching . 53. coral reefs in the caribbean prefer to grow in the upper levels of the temperature range of 18°c to 36°c. coral bleaching is the loss of color by coral polyps due to them expelling their zooxanthellae or by the zooxanthellae expelling their chlorophyll which is used in photosynthesis54. temperature increases of 1-2° c above the maximum temperature range for just a few weeks are enough to cause mass coral bleaching and the destruction of reefs55. coral bleaching events have increased since 1979 and has been correlated to occurrences of the el niño southern oscillation (enso)56 (explained later). 48 (hance) 49 (unep) page 56 50 ibid page 57 51ibid page57; (nicholls) page319 52 ibid page 58 53 ibid page 59 54 ibid page 59 55 ibid page 59 56 ibid page 62 anastasia deonarinesingh – climate change and the caribbean 40 the world resources institute confirms that reefs are being greatly affected by human activity and have faced serious depletion over the years. as much as 80% of the coral reefs in the dominican republic are at threat from over fishing and sedimentation due to increased unemployment and coastal development57. the coral reefs around the coasts of trinidad and tobago are all under threat from over fishing and coastal development since fishing is very important for coastal villages58. 85% of the reefs are at threat of destruction from water pollution from poorly treated sewage, agricultural runoff, fertilizers, pesticides and chemicals59. despite the fact that the buccoo reef in tobago has been declared a restricted area, coastal development and the tourism industry has done very little to preserve this ecosystem60. 90 sq km of the coral reefs surrounding the st. lucian coast are being threatened by coastal development and over fishing, but the main source of damage to the reef has been from regional hurricanes and storms61. in belize, 63% of the reef is directly affected by over fishing, coastal development, and agricultural runoff from sugar and banana plantations and from natural weather systems62. for the first time in 1995, severe coral bleaching occurred off the coast of belize although it had already occurred in different reefs in the region63. in cuba, 70% of the country’s reefs are being affected by over fishing, pollution and hurricane activity64 climate change is put forward as the greatest anthropogenic (man-made) contributor to adversity facing coral reefs in the caribbean. reefs are being damaged due to rising sea levels, rising sea temperatures and by increased weather phenomenon associated with occurrences of enso and increased and intensified hurricane activity . 65 57 (institute, dominican republic) 58 (institute, trinidad and tobago) 59 ibid 60 ibid 61 (institute, st. lucia) 62 (institute, belize) 63 ibid 64 (institute, cuba) 65 (mimura) . the el niño is the five month period when the mean sea surface temperature anomaly in the region of the central equatorial pacific ocean exceeds a threshold value of 0.5° c for a minimum of six months caribbean quilt | 2011 41 including october, november and december. a cold phase or la niña occurs when sea surface temperatures in the region are less than -0.5°c for the same six month time period66. the southern oscillation is the atmospheric counterpart to the el niño. it is described as the oscillation of the air pressure between the tropical eastern and western pacific ocean waters67 fig. 2 – characteristics of an enso event under normal conditions and . waters on the west of the pacific ocean tend to be warmer, resulting in cooler temperatures on the coast of peru (east pacific ocean). during an el niño 68 el niño and the southern oscillation work hand in hand to give the el niño/southern oscillation (enso) which affects the entire world in some way. enso can occur in different phases; the warm phase or el niño; the neutral phase (neither defined as warm nor cold) and the cold phase or la niña . under normal climate conditions, there are only warm sea temperature conditions off the coast of south america and there is upwelling of the cool water (thermocline) from below that contributes to the success of the fishing industry off the peruvian coast. during an el niño, the warm water spreads across the equator and warm weather conditions are experienced across the equator. when this happens, there is a reduction in the upwelling of the thermocline which affects the fishing industry. 69 66 (wmo); (tartaglione) 67 ibid 68 (rhode island) 69 (tartaglione) . according to tartaglione et al., during warm ensos (el niño) when there is a decrease in atmospheric pressure, anastasia deonarinesingh – climate change and the caribbean 42 there is a decrease in hurricane activity in the caribbean and a decrease in the probability of a hurricane hitting land70. it is during the la niña phase of an enso that there is increased hurricane activity in the region71. in the last 20 years, there have been many major el niño events in 1991-92, 1994-95, 1997-98, 2002-03, 2004-05 and 2009-1072 . all of these occurrences were synonymous with decreased hurricane activity. table 1 – table showing the number table 2 – table showing the number of tropical storms/ hurricanes during of tropical storms/hurricanes during an el niño phase in the caribbean a la niña phase in the caribbean it is during the la niña years that hurricane activity increases and research has shown that since 1995 the occurrence of hurricanes reaching category 3 has almost doubled73 looking at the results in the previous tables, we see that with time there was a general trend of decreased hurricane activity over the (table 1). 70 ibid 71 ibid 72 (t. f. wikipedia) 73 (centre) year tropical storm/ hurricanes 1992 – 1993 5 1995 – 1996 21 1998 – 1999 14 2003 – 2004 21 2005 – 2006 31 2010-2011 21 year tropical storm/ hurricanes 1991 – 1992 7 1994 – 1995 7 1997 – 1998 8 2002 – 2003 14 2004 – 2005 16 2009 – 2010 11 caribbean quilt | 2011 43 last 20 years compared to the average hurricane activity of 10–15 tropical storms/ hurricanes during normal conditions. after every el niño event, there is a la niña phase which is categorized by increased hurricane activity, seen in table 2. it can also be seen that over the last 20 years there has been increased hurricane activity over time, in correlation with the strength of the previous year’s el niño. for example in 2005, one of the strongest el niño’s occurred, seeing very little tropical storms reaching hurricane status even though there were a greater number of storms on the whole. after this el niño, one of the strongest la niña’s occurred with a record of 31 tropical storms/ hurricanes that year. during an el niño (warm phase) there is an increase in sea surface temperatures and a decrease in the strength of westward blowing trade winds74. there is also an increase in vertical wind shear (change in wind speed with height) and el niño’s tend to dry out and warm the atmospheric temperature above the sea75. wind shears cause tropical storms to tilt. therefore, when there is an increase in vertical wind shear, tropical storms tilt and this is what causes a reduction in hurricane activity during an el niño. during a la niña there is a cooling of the sea surface temperatures and an intensification of westward blowing trade winds76. there is a decrease in vertical wind shear and cooler atmospheric temperatures77 with climate change being very apparent in the past few decades, it has become very obvious that the atmosphere and oceans have risen in temperature. enso events have increased and intensified and have caused tremendous coral bleaching whenever they occurred . this decrease in vertical wind shear does not force tropical storms to tilt and does not prevent their formation. 78 74 (rhode island) 75 ibid 76 ibid 77 ibid 78 (buddemeier, kleypas and aronson) . anastasia deonarinesingh – climate change and the caribbean 44 fig. 4 – effects of wind shear to hurricanes during an el niño 79 during the 1991-92 enso events, the caribbean saw tremendous coral bleaching in countries such as jamaica and the bahamas80. for the first time in the 1990’s belize experienced coral bleaching81. during the 1997-98 enso events, high levels of coral bleaching were recorded throughout the world, including the caribbean82. after a major bleaching event in 1997-98, there were also recorded bleaching events across the caribbean in 2005, due to higher than normal sea surface temperature, with the occurrence of an enso during that time period. the thermal stress caused by this event resulted in mass coral bleaching across the entire caribbean sea from panama to nicaragua, the bahamas, the lesser antilles, cuba, hispaniola, puerto rico and the windward and leeward islands83. scientists studying virgin island coral reefs predicted similar levels of coral bleaching in 2010 as in 2005 where the territory lost about 60% of its reefs84 the rise in sea temperatures over the last few decades has caused high levels of coral bleaching in the region. however, the rise in sea surface temperatures has not been the only cause for the destruction of reefs in the region. coral bleaching by high sea temperatures has only exacerbated the damage caused by natural weather phenomenon such as storms and hurricanes. there is one thing to keep in mind however, that with climate change becoming an issue, hurricane activity . 79 (byrnes) 80 (brown) page 1 81 ibid page 1 82 (unep) page 59 83 (eakin, morgan and heron) 84 (lisaparavisini) caribbean quilt | 2011 45 has increased over the last few decades, as mentioned earlier with an average of 10 15 tropical storms/ hurricanes during non-el niño years. with sea temperatures increasing, waters become more favorable for the formation of hurricanes and an increase in frequency and intensity of hurricane activity in the region is expected85 the table below shows an average of over 50% of tropical storms becoming hurricanes over the last 20 years. it is very clear that not only has the frequency of hurricane activity been increasing in the region, but the intensity of hurricanes is sky-rocketing beyond belief. an example is the damage caused by category 2 hurricane tomas to st. lucia . this can be seen in hurricane data collected by the national hurricane centre over the past few decades. 86 table 3 – table showing percentages of tropical storms that became hurricanes during la niña phases in the last 20 years . compared with other hurricanes at that stage, hurricane tomas caused tremendous damage. thus, it is evident that increased hurricane intensity is a cause for great concern. 87 year # of tropical storms # hurricanes % 1996 13 8 61.5 1998 14 10 71.4 2004 16 8 50 2005 31 15 48 2010 17 8 47 the nexus between hurricane frequency and intensity due to climate change and damage to coral reefs will now be examined. in a research paper done on the effects of hurricanes on reefs in the region, 85 (reid) 86 ibid 87 (centre) anastasia deonarinesingh – climate change and the caribbean 46 the results showed that after major hurricanes over the last 20 years, there was a 17% decrease in coral cover across the region, with no sign of re-growth or recovery up to 8 years after88 following 15 hurricanes and 15 tropical storms that passed through the caribbean region in 2005, scientists recorded that coral bleaching in the region was never higher. coral reefs in the us virgin islands decreased by over 50% in that year and the same thing happened in puerto rico, the cayman islands, st. marteen, saba, st. eustatius, guadeloupe, martinique, barbados, jamaica and cuba . the research indicates, the more intense the hurricane, the more coral reef loss is expected. the paper concluded that with increased hurricane intensity and no reef recovery after a hurricane, the effects on reef mortality in the region was devastating. this research was carried out for hurricanes up until 2001. subsequently, the next major hurricanes occurred in 2005. 89. coral mortality in the lesser antilles was just as severe, with 73% damage to certain coral species in trinidad tobago90. the hurricanes of 2005 caused tremendous damage to coral reefs in the region causing mass flooding, bringing in muddy water and sediments from land run off, and increased wave activity91 it is important to be reminded of the importance of reefs in protecting the coastlines and beaches of caribbean islands. with the major decline of reefs and the loss of protection to coasts, hurricanes have caused more damage than imaginable. in 1995, tropical storm iris and hurricanes luis and marilyn devastated the coastlines of anguilla, antigua and barbuda, nevis, montserrat and dominica causing severe coastal erosion . 92. the distance of coastline retreat in the islands varied from 2.5 m in dominica to up to 17.5 m in barbuda (coastal retreat refers to the average retreat of land from its original location)93. this coastal retreat brought with it damage to infrastructure and coastal vegetation94 88 (gardner, cote and gill) page 8 89 (wilkinson and souter) page 1 90 ibid 91 ibid 92 (cambers) 93 ibid 94 ibid . caribbean quilt | 2011 47 fig. 5 – barnes bay, antigua before and after hurricane luis 95 fig. 6 – coconut beach, dominica before and after the 1995 hurricane season96 regular monitoring of caribbean beaches over the years has shown that coastlines have been retreating and eroding at a rate of 0.3 m per year 97. in 1998, beach erosion caused by storms and hurricanes resulted in cuba having to refill its beaches with over 1million m3 of sand after the effects of hurricane lili98. in 2001 after hurricane michelle, there was a net loss of over 140 million m3 of sand from just one of cuba’s beaches99. in 2004, when hurricane ivan passed over the cayman islands, there was serious damage to the coastline beaches, especially to the seven mile beach on the western peninsula. although no quantitative data was given for the amount of damage caused, the reason suggested for such damage was the lack of reef protection along that part of the coast along with very strong wave surges.100. in jamaica, damage to beach and housing has also occurred due to hurricanes and storms undermining housing foundations along coastlines of st. margaret’s bay and orange bay101 95 ibid 96 ibid 97 (cambers, impact of climate change on the beaches of the caribbean) 98 (unep/gpa) page 56 99 ibid page 57 100 (young) page 48 101 (robinson, rowe and khan) . hurricane forces have also caused anastasia deonarinesingh – climate change and the caribbean 48 breaking and erosion of limestone cliffs in jamaica. this occurred with hurricane wilma102. clearly, damage to coral reefs by hurricanes and storms is being aggravated by the anthropogenic factors of pollution, sedimentation, overfishing and climate change. reduction of coral reefs in the caribbean portends even further damage to land and coasts of caribbean islands. dr. ulric trotz defines mitigation as “anthropogenic intervention to reduce the sources or enhance the sinks of greenhouse gases. mitigation and adaptation strategies & policies for the region 103” he refers to adaptation as the “adjustment in natural or human systems to a new or changing environment.104” in relation to climate change and global warming, adaptation refers to the adjustment of natural and human systems105 (1) early action to avoid the more disastrous effects of climate change, such as setting effective carbon prices . in this context, mitigation and adaptation strategies are looked at in an effort to alleviate the strain on the environment being caused by climate change. different strategies need to be adopted for each caribbean island depending on levels of damage and the economic and political climate. the intergovernmental panel on climate change (ipcc) and the caribbean community climate change centre (ccccc) advocate mitigation (through reduction of carbon emissions) and adaptation strategies, in relation to the caribbean and other small island developing states (the latter are low-lying coastal countries that have small, growing populations, limited resources, susceptibility to natural disasters and dependence on international trade). some broad adaptation strategies that are plausible are: 106 (2) increasing government funding for research, development and demonstration of carbon-free energy sources 107 102 ibid 103 (trotz) page 3 104 ibid page 2 105 ibid page 2 106 ibid page 11 107 ibid page 11 caribbean quilt | 2011 49 (3) preventing development close to coasts108 (4) modification of land use and building codes 109 (5) defence structures such as dikes, levees, sea walls, flood gates and tidal barriers 110 (6) afforestation measures along with wetland recreation 111 a few mitigation strategies include: (1) finding more efficient ways of using fossil fuels112 (2) suppression of greenhouse gases, e.g. suppression of carbon dioxide from oil and gas wells 113 (3) switching to renewable sources of energy like biomass, wind energy or solar energy 114 (4) waste minimization –reuse, reduce, recycle 115 strategies and policies are not easy to put in place without cooperation from all sectors in the respective states. the caribbean islands have dynamic governmental structures, with varying policy goals and economic priorities. for example, the haitian government when it takes up office may prioritize the rebuilding of its infrastructure and a steady supply of food and provision for its people. on the other hand, trinidad and tobago has no immediate concern with rebuilding infrastructure and can therefore utilize brain and manpower to implement sustainable policies. the ultimate success for implementation of these policies and strategies rests in the hands of the local population and the government, with the help of the private sector. the adaptation strategies outlined above are very wide ranging but require a great deal of deliberation and funding from governmental and private enterprises. the reason for specifying private enterprise is because the economic situation in some countries of the region is so dire that they would not be able to fully 108 (ipcc) page 313 109 ibid page 313 110 ibid page 313 111 ibid page 313 112 ibid page 591 113 ibid page 597 114 ibid pages 603 614 115 (bogner) anastasia deonarinesingh – climate change and the caribbean 50 fund these projects, like intensive research into energy sources. the caribbean is a region with a lot of potential for other energy sources, but the economies of the individual islands cannot meet the demand of these projects. this is where integration should play a larger role, with each country helping each other for the betterment of the entire region. smaller scale adaptation strategies could be adopted as outlined above, such as the modification of land use and building codes and the construction of defense structures. these are steps that could be taken even though they are small. these small changes do add up and can have big effects. the simple construction of defense structures could help eradicate much of the beach erosion along the coasts of our islands. the simple modification of land, better agricultural practices, drainage modifications and afforestation (replanting of forests) could prevent top soil erosion on land during hurricanes and storms. improved strategies and policies need to be taken on by the governments of the region. however, smaller projects like construction of defense structures and everyday practices of recycling are the people’s responsibility. the caribbean region’s delicate ecosystems are clearly vulnerable to continuing changing climate. to combat the problem, the region’s massive potential for utilizing other energy sources must be tapped into. although some islands are hugely dependent on the importation of fossil fuels and gas, an immediate and concerted shift to other sources of renewable, sustainable energy is imperative. solar, biomass, wind and hydropower are undemanding and natural modifications for islands surrounded by water. further research into these energy sources and their application to the region must be encouraged and funded both by individual islands and regional alliances. caribbean governments must band together for effective mitigation and adaptation strategies. the main focus must be the prevention of further damage to the region from the effects of climate change. immediate reduction of carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere will enormously impact rising sea and earth temperatures. ultimate success in implementation must begin with the local population conclusion caribbean quilt | 2011 51 working side by side with the government and the private sector. private sector resources can greatly assist with the funding of projects like intensive research into alternative energy sources. meanwhile, interim measures such as the construction of simple defense structures can help eradicate beach erosion along the island coasts. the 3r`s – reuse, reduce, and recycle – should be adopted by every household in the caribbean to help reduce the effects of climate change on their own country. individual concern such as careful recycling practices will demonstrate that we are all becoming aware of our environment at this most crucial juncture in global development. bibliography baker, dr. andrew. coral reefs: a reef resilience toolkit module. 2007. 20 11 2010 <http://www.reefresilience.org/toolkit_coral/c2a1_zooxanthellae.html>. birkeland, charles. "life and death of coral reefs." birkeland, charles. new york: chapman and hall, 1997. bogner, j., m. abdelrafie ahmed, c. diaz, a. faaij, q. gao, s. hashimoto, k. mareckova, r. pipatti, t. zhang. waste management, in climate change 2007: mitigation. united kingdom and new york: university press, cambridge, 2007. brown, b.e. "coral bleaching: causes and consequences." coral reefs (1996): 129 138. buddemeier, robert w., joan a. kleypas and richard b. aronson. "coral reefs." 02 2004. pew centre on global climate change. 28 11 2010 <http://www.pewclimate.org/docuploads/coral_reefs.pdf>. byrnes, kristen. "facts and fictions of al gore’s "an inconvenient truth"." 13 06 2007. global warming hoax. 10 12 2010 <http://www.globalwarminghoax.com/news.php?extend.11>. cambers, gillian. hurricane impact on beaches in the easter caribbean islands 1989-1995. 12 2996. 28 11 2010 <http://www.unesco.org/csi/act/cosalc/hur1.htm>. —. "impact of climate change on the beaches of the caribbean." commonwealth association of planners regional conference, 24-27 06 2007. centre, national hurricane. archives. n.d. 27 11 2010 <http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/pastall.shtml>. chuck adams, placido sanchez vega, anicia garcia alvarez. an overview of the cuban commercial fishing industry and recent changes in management structure and objectives. gainseville, 2000. anastasia deonarinesingh – climate change and the caribbean 52 diaz, henry f., and markgraf vera. el nino and the southern oscillation: multiscale variability and global and regional impacts. cambridge: cambridge university press, 2000. eakin, c.m., et al. "caribbean corals in crisis: record thermal stress, bleaching,and mortality in 2005." plos one (2010): 1 9. emily cooper, lauretta burke, nadia bood. "world resources institute." november 2008. world resources institute. 20 11 2010 <http://pdf.wri.org/coastal_capital_belize_brochure.pdf>. gardner, toby a., et al. 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"world resources institute." 20 september 2006. world resources institute. 20 11 2010 <http://pdf.wri.org/methodology_with_appendix_jul06.pdf>. ipcc. impacts, adaptations and mitigation of climate change: scientific-technical analysis. new york: cambridge university press, 1996. jean-pierre gattuso, denis allemand and michel frankignoulle. "photosynthesis and calcification at cellular, organismal and community levels in coral reefs." american zoology (1999): 160 183. jeffrey wielgus, emily cooper, ruben torres, and lauretta burke. "world resources institute." aprile 2010. world resources institute. 20 11 2010 <http://pdf.wri.org/working_papers/coastal_capital_dominican_republic_summary.pdf>. lauretta burke, suzie greenhalgh, daniel prager, emily cooper. "world resources institute." june 2008. world resources institute. 20 11 2010 <http://pdf.wri.org/coastal_capital_summary.pdf>. lee hayes byron, july kunz, chrisitina shumate. sea level rise & ocean warming. n.d. 20 11 2010 <http://www.biology.duke.edu/bio217/2001/sealevel/index.html>. lisaparavisini. repeating island. 20 09 2010. 28 11 2010 <http://repeatingislands.com/2010/09/20/scientistswatching-v-i-coral-bleaching/>. lohmann, kyger c. "the reef environment and biological constituents ." course outline. michigan: department of geological sciences, university of michigan, 8 7 2001. mimura, n., l. nurse, r.f. mclean, j. agard, l. briguglio, p. lefale, r. payet and g. sem. small islands. climate change 2007 nicholls, r.j., p.p. wong, v.r. burkett, j.o. codignotto, j.e. hay, r.f. mclean, s. ragoonaden and c.d. woodroffe. . research. cambridge, uk: cambridge university press, 2007. coastal systems and low-lying areas. climate change 2007: impacts, adaptation caribbean quilt | 2011 53 and vulnerability. contribution of working group ii to the fourth assessment report of the intergovernmental panel on climate change. research. cambridge, uk: cambridge university press, 2007. reid, sean. "climate change in the caribbean..." 01 2010. cmmb. 28 11 2010 <http://www.mycmmb.com/docs/emw/2010/emw2%20%20climate%20change%20in%20the%20caribbean.pdf>. rhode island, university of. "variability of hurricane activity." 2010. hurricanes: science and society. 10 12 2010 <http://www.hurricanescience.org/science/science/activity/>. robinson, edward, deborah-ann c. rowe and shakira a. khan. "beach erosion: a response to rising sea level." newspaper article. kingston: the gleaner, 27 01 2006. schluter, lorelle. "great barrier reef and marine park authority." 2006. australian government: great barrier reef and marine park authority. 15 10 2010 <http://www.gbrmpa.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0017/12437/reef-facts-01.pdf>. stacey combes, micheal l. prentice, lara hansen, lynn rosentrater. going, going, gone! climate change and global glacier decline. berlin, 1996. tartaglione, c.a., et. al. "enso impact on hurricane landfall probabilities for the caribbean." america meteorological society (2003): 2925-2931. trotz, dr. ulric. "building climate resilient economies." lecture. 11 2010. unep, wcmc. world atlas of coral reefs. los angeles: the university of california press, 2001. unep/gpa. "diagnosis of the erosion processes in the caribbean sandy beaches." environmental agency, ministry of science, technology and environment, government of cuba, 03 2003. unknown. "buccoo reef trust." 01 march 2010. buccoo reef trust: research education conservation. 28 11 2010 < 2. http://www.buccooreeftrust.org/multimedia/wallpapers/picture/wallpapers/5buccooreefaerial1024>. wikipedia. surface runoff. 6 11 2010. 20 11 2010 <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/surface_runoff>. —. upwelling. 3 11 2010. 20 11 2010 <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/upwelling>. wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. el niño-southern oscillation. 09 12 2010. 27 11 2010 <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/el_ni%c3%b1o-southern_oscillation#recent_occurrences>. wilkinson, clive and david souter. "state of caribbean coral reefs after bleaching and hurricanes in 2005." n.d. wmo, unesco, unep, icsu. the 1997 1998 el nino event: a scientific and technical retrospective. london: world meteorological organization, 1999. young, dr. simon r. "impact of hurricane ivan in grand cayman." grand turk: uk department of international development, 21 12 2004. ..... 84 maroon societies: a political perspective chantal mcfarlane chantal noelene mcfarlane is a third year student at the university of toronto. she is presently pursuing her undergraduate degree in caribbean studies and english. as a proud descendant of the accompong town maroons in jamaica, she is a staunch believer in the concept of “kindah”, one family she believes that this can manifest in the caribbean in the form of regional integration. chantal is particularly interested in the cultural, social and historical aspects of jamaica. . the act of grand marronage had a far reaching impact on slave societies. marronage in its most simplistic sense may be described as the running away from slavery by the enslaved. in jamaica1 slaves who absconded for great periods tended to live by themselves or join a maroon settlement. this essay will argue that maroon societies acted as an entity of defiance against slave communities, even though intricate organizational structures had an atypical symbiotic relationship with them. it will show that the political aspect of maroon societies acted as a dominant factor in solidifying their relationship with slave communities. this paper will first establish that maroons in jamaica were more autonomous prior to 1739 and that the difference in political structures from that of the plantation was pivotal in shaping the relationship between the two societies. it will then argue that the political scope of maroon societies impacted the culture and socio-economic organization of the maroons. finally it will posit the idea that a significant change in the relationship between maroons and the plantation in jamaica acted as an impetus which changed the political configuration of maroon communities. alvin thompson defines marronage as absconding from “the system of oppression” (slavery),2 hence it can be viewed as a definite form of resistance to slave-holding societies. the plantation was severely affected by marronage in that it lost valuable labour which in turn cut into profit. slaves that committed marronage on a 1 this paper will look specifically at the political aspect of maroon societies in jamaica. it will briefly look at the formation of maroon societies from 1655; however it will concentrate mostly on fully developed societies from late 1600s to mid-1700s. 2 alvin thompson, flight to freedom: african runaways and maroons in the americas (kingston: university of the west indies press, 2006), 9. chantal mcfarlane | the maroons: a political perspective 85 grand scale usually joined with other slaves who had run away, they would then “create independent communities of their own, ” known as maroon societies; these societies were ones “that struck directly at the foundations of the plantation system.”3 such „ex-slaves‟ congregated and interacted extensively with the slaves still on the plantations. according to mavis campbell, maroon societies are communities that are self-governed and “outside the purlieus of the slave plantations.”4 even though maroon societies are described as being outside the governance of the plantocracy they still shared an unusual mutually beneficial relationship with them. the political, economic, cultural and social organization of maroon communities was very much intertwined with the structural organization of the plantation. the political aspect however acted as the cementing factor in binding maroon societies and plantations together. the political variance in jamaican maroon communities provides a comparative example under which this can be analyzed; changes in the political setting over time significantly altered the organization of maroon societies. the first identified maroon settlements were established in jamaica by spanish slaves who fled into the mountainous regions when the english took over the island in 1655.5 this was the beginning of a new threat to slavery as an institution. maroon towns were created based on “strict security consideration.”6 towns were formed in the mountainous interiors of jamaica so as to make it inaccessible for white planters who would raid the areas and reenslave maroons. the political structure of jamaican maroons during the initial years of their formation was one that is sometimes described as a form of despotism, one autonomous from the plantation.7 alvin thompson asserts however that a major difference between slave societies and maroon societies fuelled the need for such political distinctiveness. specifically, he states that maroon societies were “born out of the quest for freedom” and the plantation was constructed out of “the quest for material gain.” this variance in the political organization of each society reflects a deeper 3 richard price, maroon societies: rebel slave communities in the americas. (new york: anchor books, 1973), 3. 4 mavis campbell, the maroons of jamaica 1655-1796, (trenton: african world press, 1990), 5 ibid 14 6 ibid, 47. 7 alvin thompson, flight to freedom, 211 caribbean quilt | 2012 86 significance, which is that the very formation and survival of emerging maroon societies was contingent on a particular political organization that embraced collective solidarity and defence.8 barbara kopytoff argues that the period of political formation before the first treaty between the maroons and the jamaican government may be viewed as the only point when the political institutions of maroon societies were outside the influence of colonial rule.9 this period had the chiefs much more involved in maintaining order within the community. the selection of a leader was crucial to signing treaties between the maroons and the jamaican government. politically, having a creole leader was advantageous to maroon societies as this person would be able to understand both whites and their fellow maroons.10 “creole” in this context refers to slaves that were born in the „new world‟ and not in africa. the creole preference in leadership kept maroon communities together so as to lessen preferential treatment for persons who came from particular tribes. the notion of tribalism being less charged, runaway slaves who then wanted to join did not have to fret about being refused entry into these groups because of their status as a creole, or a slave directly from africa. initial maroon groups were usually led by african-born slaves who defected from the plantation. this however would result in internal strife within or between varying groups of maroons.11 the political choice of creole slaves as leaders was one that changed the relationship between the plantation and these communities. jamaica was initially divided into two specific groups of maroons, the windward and the leeward. leeward maroons inhabited the west under the leadership of cudjoe while the windward maroons branched out under various leaders, the most notable being nanny.12 karla gottlieb notes that a major distinguishing factor between the two was that leeward maroons had in general recently escaped from their plantations and did not want to engage with the british whereas the windward maroons were descendants of the original spanish maroons, hence “their 8 richard price, maroon societies ,19-20 9 kopytoff, 306. 10 price, 20. 11 kopytoff, 295. 12 price, 49. chantal mcfarlane | the maroons: a political perspective 87 determination to hold on to their lands.”13 the leeward maroons of jamaica were governed sternly by cudjoe; he had inherited his position from his father who had led rebellions in the late 1600s. 14 bryan edwards in his account of the maroons in jamaica speaks of cudjoe as “a very able general.”15 cudjoe‟s political clout in his maroon band was significant, especially when it raided plantations for food. barbara kopytoff in her article “the early political development of jamaican maroon societies” argues that even though cudjoe was perceived as an authoritarian figure, when his gang raided plantations they were strictly forbidden from harming whites unless provoked.16 maroons were usually divided into groups along military lines; the society then was a hierarchical one that reflected ability and military capabilities. cudjoe divided his leeward maroons into „politico-military‟ companies17 and by doing this, he was better able to manage the maroons and keep the settlements together. nanny was seen as the main leader of the windward maroons in the early 1700s, even though their group was highly fragmented. historical accounts of nanny‟s reign are generally oral and thus historians are highly ambivalent about certain aspects of her representation. the high position held by nanny refutes observations of bryan edwards which posited lower social roles for female maroons in that society. edwards notes that women held lowly statuses in society and that they were viewed as a “beast of burden.”18 nevertheless, women were pivotal in the clearing of land and performing agricultural tasks. also, the fact that nanny emerged as a fully recognized and respected leader by both her maroon followers and the plantocracy is proof of a greater status given to the female subject. karla gottlieb argues this extensively in stating through kenneth bilby and filomina steady that maroon societies 13 karla gottlieb, the mother of us all (new jersey: africa world press, 2000), 6. 14 barbara klamon kopytoff, “the early political development of jamaican maroon societies” in the william and mary quarterly,(1978), 295. 15 brian edwards, “observations on the disposition, character, manners and habits of life of the maroon negroes of the island of jamaica.” richard price ed. maroon societies: rebel slave communities in the americas. (baltimore: john hopkins university press. 1996) , 233. 16 ibid, 297. 17 campbell, 46 18 edwards, 241 caribbean quilt | 2012 88 were highly matrifocal and women could be viewed as the “main source of stability and continuity within the group.”19 the prominence of maroon societies throughout jamaica in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries became a major cause of concern for the government of that time. the very fact of an autonomous ex-slave community within the confines of slave society was a great treachery to those who owned the enslaved. the adaptability of the political structure to the development of new institutions was needed because if aspects of the early social and political organization were not altered then the possibility of the maroon society surviving was slim.20 the change that occurred after the signing of the treaty reduced the threat of grand marronage. the political structure of maroon society was heavily connected to the religious belief in obeah. obeah in part is a belief in supernatural powers usually intended to summon spiritual ancestral ties. the use of obeah was pivotal to governing maroon societies by the chiefs. bryan edwards argues that the power which obeah men held over maroon communities “was sometimes very successfully employed” in keeping the maroon population subordinate to the chiefs.21 in jamaica, nanny was purportedly able to catch bullets in her buttocks.22 this kind of super human quality added to the aura of chiefs as perceived by the government of the country. hence, the fact that nanny had swelled ranks was due to the fact that she possessed these “uncanny spiritual powers as her martial capabilities.”23 these kinds of abilities were not only impressive to the maroons but also to those in slave societies. the political implications of this within the militarized setting of a maroon society would mean that the spiritual person would be placed in a high position of council. those who occupied such positions were instrumental in fighting the wars that raged between maroon communities and the jamaican government. the fact that the early maroon societies had to depend on the plantation for food meant that the maroons had to disrupt plantation life. these disruptions, as well as the fact that slaves were running away to join the ranks of the maroons, were not taken 19 gottlieb, 12-13. 20 price, 21. 21 edwards, 240. 22 thompson, 232. 23 ibid, 232. chantal mcfarlane | the maroons: a political perspective 89 lightly by the planters. this resulted in wars between the jamaican government and the maroons the “first maroon war” lasted from the mid-1720s until 1740.24 in this war the maroons outwitted the planters and incited the absconding of other slaves. the treaty signed by the leeward maroons with colonel guthrie on march 1st, 1739 gave full recognition to the maroon communities as autonomous areas; maroons were granted land ownership rights, and the ability to sell their produce in markets openly.25 the most important clause in this treaty according to orlando patterson stated that all future runaway slaves to maroon groups were to be returned to their masters. the maroons would then be paid for this service, causing a political rift within the leeward maroon settlements and within the plantations. the very act of agreeing to the treaty meant that cudjoe essentially took away the possibility for the enslaved to resist slavery, thereby bounding them to the plantation. the salient fact that needs to be stressed is that the political organization of maroon societies interacted with the social, economic, and the cultural aspects of the society, in the process, changing the relationship between maroon settlements and the plantation. the treaties that were agreed upon between the jamaican government and the maroon communities severely lessened the authority of the maroon chief. richard price argues that they had a debilitating effect on the maroon society because the major “cornerstone” of the political regime was removed. barbara kopytoff notes that the signing of the treaty significantly debilitated the autonomous power maroons once had and affected forms of political cohesion that could have limited internal strife. laws that governed these communities were also revoked and penalties for breaking a law under the treaty became punishable by the jamaican government. this change had a significant impact on the maroon community as certain internal mechanisms enabled chiefs to retain their authority. the imposition of the death penalty for example gave political credence to the chief in a maroon society.26 the treaty that was signed in 1739 between the maroons and the jamaican government changed the political organization of maroon societies, thus it significantly altered their relationship to 24 orlando patterson. “slavery and slave revolts: a socio-historical analysis of the first maroon war. 1665-1740.” ed. michael price. maroon societies. 246 25 ibid 26 ibid, 228. caribbean quilt | 2012 90 the colonial order. barbara kopytoff asserts that maroon communities declined significantly as a result of this treaty. she states further on that the treaties gave maroons an ambiguous position in the country as they no longer occupied an autonomous realm nor did they fall into “the traditional pyramid used to depict the social organization of caribbean plantation slave societies.”27 this precarious positioning of maroons affected the slaves directly as runaways under the treaty had to be returned; this highlights the fact that the situation for the maroons did not necessarily have a positive outcome for the enslaved. alvin thompson provides a counter argument however when he notes that even before the treaty, maroons would return runaway slaves for “material gains.”28 this of course counters the belief of maroon societies as being exclusively accepting of runaways. the historic importance of the negotiations between maroons and the jamaican government is one that is based heavily on the political structure of maroons before 1739. the changing political organization of maroon societies reshaped the relationship between maroons and the plantation system. maroon societies went from being fully autonomous to being areas that were co-governed by maroon chiefs as well as the governor of colonial jamaica. 27 barbara kopytoff. “colonial treaty as sacred charter of the jamaican maroons.” ethnohistory, vol. 26, no.1. 1979: 50. 28 thompson, 308. chantal mcfarlane | the maroons: a political perspective 91 works cited campbell, mavis, the maroons of jamaica, 1655-1796: a history of resistance, collaboration and betrayal granby, mass.: bergin & garvey, 1988. dubios, laurent. “essay review i: on the history of the jamaican maroons” in the journal of african american history vol. 93, no.1. 2008, 64-69. edwads, bryan. “observations on the disposition, character, manners and habits of life of the maroon negroes of the island of jamaica.” richard price ed. maroon societies: rebel slave communities in the americas. baltimore: john hopkins university press. 1996: 230-245. gottlieb, karla. “the mother of us all”: a history of queen nanny leader of the windward jamaican maroons. trenton: africa world press. 2000. kopytoff, barbara klamon.“the early political development of jamaican maroon societies” in the william and mary quarterly, third series, vol. 35, no. 2 (apr., 1978), pp. 287-307. kopytoff, barbara klamon. “colonial treaty as sacred charter of the jamaican maroons” ethnohistory, vol.26 no.1 1979:45-64. patterson, orlando. “slavery and slave revolts: a socio-historical analysis of the first maroon war. 1665-1740.” richard price ed. maroon societies: rebel slave communities in americas. baltimore: john hopkins university press. 1996: 246-292 price, richard ed. “introduction.” maroon societies: rebel slave communities in the americas. new york anchor books, 1973. thompson, alvin. flight to freedom: african runaways and maroons in the americas kingston: university of the west indies press, 2006. ..... 124 bombs, land & dignity: annihilation, genocide & legal recourse: vieques, puerto rico susan g. enberg susan enberg is currently completing her third year at the university of toronto. she is pursuing a double major in peace and conflict studies and latin american studies, as well as a minor in caribbean studies. her main areas of focus are oppression of marginalized persons and the abuse of human rights in latin america and the caribbean. in addition, she is particularly interested in researching us covert operations, especially with respect to nuclear testing. ms. enberg hopes to one day enhance her bachelor’s degree with a degree in journalism, and to pursue a career in research and photo-journalism. “the truth is that we ought not to accept these conditions. we should flatly refuse the situation in which the western countries wish to condemn us…for centuries the capitalists have behaved in the underdeveloped world like nothing more than war criminals.”1 franz fanon, the wretched of the earth from 1941 to 2003, the united states navy used the tiny fifty-two square foot puerto rican island of vieques for their war games, destroying much of its land and adversely affecting the health and wellbeing of island residents. however, the year 1999 marked an historical turning point in the perpetual colonization of vieques by the united states. on 19 april 1999, two f-18 jets: “mistook the navy‟s red-and-white observation post…for a target, and dropped 500 pound bombs on it”2, bombs which carried and dispersed “illegal rounds of…armor piercing incendiary depleted uranium penetrators into the live impact area”3 killing a navy security 1 franz fanon, the wretched of the earth (ny: grove press inc., 1963), 79. 2 linda backiel, “the people of vieques, puerto rico vs. the united states navy. (review of the month),” monthly review feb. 2003: 1+. academic onefile. web. 21 october 2011, 1; davis and hayes-conroy and jones, “military pollution and natural purity: seeing nature and knowing contamination in vieques, puerto rico,” geojournal, vol.69, (august 2007): 168. 3 department of the navy, office of the chief of naval operations, 2000 navy pentagon, washington, d.c. unauthorized use of depleted uranium (du) on vieques naval range, puerto rico, ser m455/9u595873, 19 august 1999; susan g. enberg | bombs, land & dignity: vieques, puerto rico 125 guard.4 the revelation that federally prohibited depleted uranium was used during this botched operation opened the door to inquiry as to what other non-conventional weapons had been stored, used and collected on the island. by utilizing the island of vieques as a case study, this essay will argue that there is no stronger example of modern-day colonialism to be portrayed than that of the systematic destruction of a colony and its people by the colonizer through intensive militarization. without question, the colonization of vieques by the united states should indeed go by a different name — that of genocide. prior to the end of the spanish-american war, puerto rico was determined by the u.s. to be a strategic military location in the caribbean. at war‟s end in 1898, the spanish as indemnity handed over puerto rican lands to the united states.5 there was no desire on the part of the united states to emancipate puerto ricans from colonial rule; rather, the u.s. further entrenched colonialist and imperialist practices through “invasion and conquest”.6 it was on the advice of united states admiral john w. greenslade that the puerto rican islands could prove invaluable to u.s. national security during world war ii. in 1941, the u.s. navy expropriated 26,000 of 33,000 acres of land in vieques in the name of national security,7 land that had for generations been the prime source of subsistence for the native community. the navy also “controlled 200,000 square miles of ocean around it”.8 as a patriotic katherine t. mccaffery, military power and popular protest: the u.s. navy in vieques, puerto rico (new brunswick, new jersey, london: rutgers university press, 2002), 7. 4 linda backiel, “the people of vieques, puerto rico vs. the united states navy. (review of the month),” monthly review feb. 2003: 1+., march/april 2003, academic onefile. accessed 21 october 2011. 5 marie antoinette merrill ramirez, “the other side of colonialism: cointelpro activities in puerto rico in the 1960s” (master‟s thesis, the university of austin at texas, 1990), 13. 6 committee for human rights in puerto rico. international tribunal on violation of human rights in puerto rico and vieques by the united states of america. social justice, vol. 27, no. 4., neoliberalism, militarism, and armed conflict, 2000, 148. 7 ronald fernandez, the disenchanted island: puerto rico and the united states in the twentieth century, second edition (ct: praeger publishers, 1996), 140. 8 hardy, mario. say “no mas” to militarism and colonialism: navy out of vieques now! the objector, fall 1999, 5. caribbean quilt | 2012 126 act of faith, the native population agreed to lend the navy their land until the end of world war ii, believing these lands would be returned to them in short order.9 however, occupation of vieques by the u.s. navy persisted for over sixty years. since their departure, the u.s. department of fish and wildlife retains control over most of the island. in 1961, the navy made clear that 26,000 acres was not enough land for their war games and asked then president john f. kennedy permission to relocate the entire population of vieques.10 this plan of total evacuation was not designed as an act of benevolence to protect the people of vieques from the poisons associated with intensive militarization. rather, the navy never paid rent for the use of the island, 11 and, in their unending greed wanted to indiscriminately bomb the island and the ocean around it. the navy‟s insidious plan of dispossession was denied through presidential order.12 the unfortunate truth at the time the navy „acquired vieques‟ was that large landholders—mostly those in the dying sugar industry—were the only residents in vieques that received adequate compensation from the united states for expropriated properties. the majority of those displaced by naval expropriations were the poorest of the poor in vieques: those who worked and lived on but did not hold title to any land themselves, as well as self-sustaining peasant farmers who also did not hold legal title to their lands.13 9 ronald fernandez, the disnchanted island: puerto rico and the united states in the twentieth century, second edition (ct: praeger publishers, 1996), 140. 10 katherine t. mccaffery, military power and popular protest: the u.s. navy in vieques, puerto rico (new brunswick, new jersey, london: rutgers university press, 2002), 38. 11 ibid, 6; committee for human rights in puerto rico, international tribunal on violation of human rights in puerto rico and vieques by the united states of america. social justice, vol. 27, no. 4., neoliberalism, militarism, and armed conflict, 2000, 147. 12 katherine t. mccaffery, military power and popular protest: the u.s. navy in vieques, puerto rico (new brunswick, new jersey, london: rutgers university press, 2002), 39. 13 césar ayala and viviana carro, “expropriation and displacement of civilians in vieques, 1940-1950,” in puerto rico under colonial rule: political persecution and the quest for human rights, ed. ramón bosque-pérez and josé colón morera (new york: state university of new york press, 2005), http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/soc/faculty/ayala/vieques/papers/03ayalacarrogal leys.pdf accessed 19 november 2011, 176-177. http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/soc/faculty/ayala/vieques/papers/03ayalacarrogalleys.pdf http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/soc/faculty/ayala/vieques/papers/03ayalacarrogalleys.pdf http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/soc/faculty/ayala/vieques/papers/03ayalacarrogalleys.pdf http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/soc/faculty/ayala/vieques/papers/03ayalacarrogalleys.pdf http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/soc/faculty/ayala/vieques/papers/03ayalacarrogalleys.pdf http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/soc/faculty/ayala/vieques/papers/03ayalacarrogalleys.pdf http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/soc/faculty/ayala/vieques/papers/03ayalacarrogalleys.pdf http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/soc/faculty/ayala/vieques/papers/03ayalacarrogalleys.pdf http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/soc/faculty/ayala/vieques/papers/03ayalacarrogalleys.pdf http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/soc/faculty/ayala/vieques/papers/03ayalacarrogalleys.pdf http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/soc/faculty/ayala/vieques/papers/03ayalacarrogalleys.pdf http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/soc/faculty/ayala/vieques/papers/03ayalacarrogalleys.pdf http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/soc/faculty/ayala/vieques/papers/03ayalacarrogalleys.pdf http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/soc/faculty/ayala/vieques/papers/03ayalacarrogalleys.pdf http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/soc/faculty/ayala/vieques/papers/03ayalacarrogalleys.pdf http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/soc/faculty/ayala/vieques/papers/03ayalacarrogalleys.pdf http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/soc/faculty/ayala/vieques/papers/03ayalacarrogalleys.pdf http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/soc/faculty/ayala/vieques/papers/03ayalacarrogalleys.pdf http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/soc/faculty/ayala/vieques/papers/03ayalacarrogalleys.pdf http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/soc/faculty/ayala/vieques/papers/03ayalacarrogalleys.pdf http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/soc/faculty/ayala/vieques/papers/03ayalacarrogalleys.pdf http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/soc/faculty/ayala/vieques/papers/03ayalacarrogalleys.pdf http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/soc/faculty/ayala/vieques/papers/03ayalacarrogalleys.pdf http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/soc/faculty/ayala/vieques/papers/03ayalacarrogalleys.pdf susan g. enberg | bombs, land & dignity: vieques, puerto rico 127 according to ayala and carro, the majority of the viequenses being “evicted” from their lands due to naval expropriations lost both their housing and their source of income simultaneously.14 in addition, most of those who had lived and worked on plantations had been entitled to small plots of land for subsistence farming under usufruct rights, rights that were abolished with the loss of the plantations through expropriation. the inability to grow some of their own foods through subsistence farming dramatically affected the poorest of vieques.15 unfortunately for the dispossessed within vieques, the end of world war ii coincided with the start of the long and drawn out cold war (1946-1991), a war that acted as justification for continued u.s. naval occupation in vieques in the name of national security. this meant that what the people of vieques needed most of all, they were continually denied, namely their land. fanon enlightens us on this issue by writing, “for a colonized people the most essential value, because the most concrete, is first and foremost the land: the land which will bring them bread and, above all, dignity.16 land meant everything to the majority of viequenses. symbolic of community and family life, its loss was a painful severing, a wound that will likely take generations to heal. the u.s. naval base on vieques was comprised of an ammunition depot and navy base on the western portion of the island, while a manoeuvre area was located on the eastern portion of the island17; the native population was squeezed in between the two.18 the viequenses endured almost constant bombardment, day and night. fernandez states: 14 ibid, 182. 15 ibid, 182-183. 16 franz fanon, the wretched of the earth (ny: grove press inc., 1963), 36. 17 katherine t. mccaffery, “fish, wildlife, and bombs: the struggle to clean up vieques,” nacla, september/october 2009, 36. 18 katherine t. mccaffery, military power and popular protest: the u.s. navy in vieques, puerto rico (new brunswick, new jersey, london: rutgers university press, 2002), 3; see map appendices i & ii which illustrate vieques before and after u.s. naval colonization of the lands: (thanks to) césar and viviana carro, “expropriation and displacement of civilians in vieques, 1940-1950,” in puerto rico under colonial rule: political persecution and the quest for human rights, ed. ramón bosque-pérez and josé colón morera caribbean quilt | 2012 128 the navy dropped roughly 3,400 bombs a month, or approximately 5 million pounds of ordnance a year, on an island that was home to 9,000 people…which added up to 158 days a year of naval gunfire 200 days a year of air-to-ground combat firing, 228 days on the underwater range, 21 days of marine assaults, and a variety of unenumerated nato attacks.19 since the 1940s, the u.s. navy completely disregarded “the expressed will of the puerto rican people” by not consulting the island population on its military activities and manoeuvres.20 while the navy has consistently asserted the strategic importance of vieques for u.s. national defence, residents of the island have continually argued that “military control of land and live-fire exercises have caused severe ecological destruction, cancer and other health problems, and overwhelming social and economic crises”.21 not only has the u.s. navy used and annihilated the land for their own nationalist security purposes, they have also promoted and rented the use of it’s land to foreign navies, including nato forces, forces desirous of testing both conventional and non-conventional weapons systems. 22 it is estimated that the navy earned approximately $80 million per year in this way.23 according to mccaffery, “the term „non-conventional weapons‟ typically refers to nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons”. 24 she assumes by this sort of promotion, that the u.s. navy can only state such information (new york: state university of new york press, 2005). http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/soc/faculty/ayala/vieques/papers/03ayalacarrogal leys.pdf accessed 19 november 2011. 19 ronald fernandez, the disenchanted island: puerto rico and the united states in the twentieth century, second edition (ct: praeger publishers, 1996), 245 20 ibid, 244 21 katherine t. mccaffery, military power and popular protest: the u.s. navy in vieques, puerto rico (new brunswick, new jersey, london: rutgers university press, 2002), 2. 22 hardy, mario. say “no mas” to militarism and colonialism: navy out of vieques now! 23 katherine t. mccaffery, military power and popular protest: the u.s. navy in vieques, puerto rico (new brunswick, new jersey, london: rutgers university press, 2002), 6. 24 ibid, 7. http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/soc/faculty/ayala/vieques/papers/03ayalacarrogalleys.pdf http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/soc/faculty/ayala/vieques/papers/03ayalacarrogalleys.pdf http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/soc/faculty/ayala/vieques/papers/03ayalacarrogalleys.pdf http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/soc/faculty/ayala/vieques/papers/03ayalacarrogalleys.pdf http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/soc/faculty/ayala/vieques/papers/03ayalacarrogalleys.pdf http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/soc/faculty/ayala/vieques/papers/03ayalacarrogalleys.pdf http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/soc/faculty/ayala/vieques/papers/03ayalacarrogalleys.pdf 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http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/soc/faculty/ayala/vieques/papers/03ayalacarrogalleys.pdf http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/soc/faculty/ayala/vieques/papers/03ayalacarrogalleys.pdf http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/soc/faculty/ayala/vieques/papers/03ayalacarrogalleys.pdf http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/soc/faculty/ayala/vieques/papers/03ayalacarrogalleys.pdf http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/soc/faculty/ayala/vieques/papers/03ayalacarrogalleys.pdf http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/soc/faculty/ayala/vieques/papers/03ayalacarrogalleys.pdf susan g. enberg | bombs, land & dignity: vieques, puerto rico 129 if they too have in fact utilized both types of weapons on vieques. 25 indeed, this can be confirmed by at least one example outside of the federally prohibited use of depleted uranium in 1999. as part of a covert department of defense initiative codenamed project shad, one of forty-nine project 112 global chemical and biological agent testing initiatives, a test (dtc test 6910) took place in may 1969 on the shores of vieques.26 marine aircraft sprayed trioctyl phosphate, a nerve agent that simulates the deadly vx nerve agent.27 sugg states that, “in the wrong hands and the right devices, it could possibly be disseminated to murder millions”.28 according to a report from the u.s. department of defense: the test was conducted in two parts: aerial spray attacks against battalion landing team (minus)…and company sized landing forces; and, an aerial spray attack against the primary control ship of an amphibious landing force…sampling was conducted on exposed personnel, and their clothing, to determine if they were contaminated with the simulant. performance of the troops, the landing craft crews, and the ship‟s crew was evaluated with regards to the response of personnel to the attack and their subsequent ability to operate in a simulated toxic environment.29 during the cold war period, the u.s. was geographically indiscriminate in its testing of biological and chemical weapons. it 25 ibid, 7. 26 united states department of defense, office of the assistant secretary of defense (health affairs), deployment health support directorate. “deseret test center project shad: dtc test 69-10.” 1-2. http://www.defense.gov/ accessed 11 november 2011. 27 ibid. 28 geary randall sugg, “the vx nerve agent: understanding the risks of a deadly threat,” professional safety, 49, no. 3 (march 2004): 71, marie antoinette merrill ramirez, “the other side of colonialism: cointelpro activities in puerto rico in the 1960s” (dissertation, the university of austin texas, 1990), 13. http://ezproxy.qa.proquest.com/docview/200372207?accountid=14771 accessed 17 november 2011. 29united states department of defense, office of the assistant secretary of defense (health affairs), deployment health support directorate. “deseret test center project shad: dtc test 69-10,” 1. http://www.defense.gov/ http://www.defense.gov/ http://www.defense.gov/ http://www.defense.gov/ http://www.defense.gov/ http://www.defense.gov/ http://www.defense.gov/ http://www.defense.gov/ http://ezproxy.qa.proquest.com/docview/200372207?accountid=14771 http://ezproxy.qa.proquest.com/docview/200372207?accountid=14771 http://ezproxy.qa.proquest.com/docview/200372207?accountid=14771 http://ezproxy.qa.proquest.com/docview/200372207?accountid=14771 http://ezproxy.qa.proquest.com/docview/200372207?accountid=14771 http://ezproxy.qa.proquest.com/docview/200372207?accountid=14771 http://ezproxy.qa.proquest.com/docview/200372207?accountid=14771 http://ezproxy.qa.proquest.com/docview/200372207?accountid=14771 http://ezproxy.qa.proquest.com/docview/200372207?accountid=14771 http://ezproxy.qa.proquest.com/docview/200372207?accountid=14771 http://ezproxy.qa.proquest.com/docview/200372207?accountid=14771 http://ezproxy.qa.proquest.com/docview/200372207?accountid=14771 http://ezproxy.qa.proquest.com/docview/200372207?accountid=14771 http://ezproxy.qa.proquest.com/docview/200372207?accountid=14771 caribbean quilt | 2012 130 was not only vieques that was subjected to experimental tests but also florida, maryland, hawaii, canada, the united kingdom and many other locations.30 this does not make the testing of biological and chemical agents any less terrifying, and certainly does not make the issue any less significant. what it does speak to, however, is that any legal proceedings against the u.s. navy and the department of defense with respect to this issue needs to be a collective effort and addressed at an international level. most certainly, the u.s. government cannot claim sovereign immunity in each of the test locations and, as this is the case, precedents may be set for fighting against similar abuses in the future. while davis, hayes-conroy and jones suggest that the navy has now admitted to its use of napalm, agent orange, and depleted uranium on the island,31 it is appalling yet not surprising that the department of defense has only recently begun to selectively address negative health issues from its testing of chemical and biological weapons on 5,500 military and civilian-military personnel. this comes forty-to-fifty years after the fact (when many cold war veterans have already died).32 this issue is of critical importance precisely because the agent sprayed over and on the island of vieques would have been suspended in the air for some time, ending up in the local waters and soil. yet, no evidence can be found indicating that the u.s. department of defense or the navy have registered concern as to how local populations—the viequenses— might have been negatively affected by the spraying of the vx simulant. despite ample evidence of viequenses exhibiting a cancer rate 27% higher than the puerto rican population among other increased incidences of adverse health issues, 33 the u.s. is not claiming culpability. while most u.s. servicemen were unaware that 30 “deseret test center investigation draws to a close”. force health protection and readiness. washington, 30 june 2003. http://fhp.osd.mil/cbexposures/shaddocument.jsp?doc.close accessed 20 november 2011. 31 jeffrey sasha davis and jessica s. hayes-conroy and victoria m. jones, “military pollution and natural purity: seeing nature and knowing contamination in vieques, puerto rico,” geojournal, vol.69, (august 2007): 168. 32 united states department of defense, office of the assistant secretary of defense (health affairs), deployment health support directorate. “deseret test center project shad: dtc test 69-10,” 1. 33 hardy, mario. “say „no mas‟ to militarism and colonialism: navy out of vieques now!” the objector (fall 1999), 5, accessed 15 november 2011, http://ezproxy.qa.proquest.com/docview/232162189?accountid=14771 http://fhp.osd.mil/cbexposures/shaddocument.jsp?doc.close http://fhp.osd.mil/cbexposures/shaddocument.jsp?doc.close http://fhp.osd.mil/cbexposures/shaddocument.jsp?doc.close http://fhp.osd.mil/cbexposures/shaddocument.jsp?doc.close http://fhp.osd.mil/cbexposures/shaddocument.jsp?doc.close http://fhp.osd.mil/cbexposures/shaddocument.jsp?doc.close http://fhp.osd.mil/cbexposures/shaddocument.jsp?doc.close http://fhp.osd.mil/cbexposures/shaddocument.jsp?doc.close http://fhp.osd.mil/cbexposures/shaddocument.jsp?doc.close http://fhp.osd.mil/cbexposures/shaddocument.jsp?doc.close http://fhp.osd.mil/cbexposures/shaddocument.jsp?doc.close http://fhp.osd.mil/cbexposures/shaddocument.jsp?doc.close http://fhp.osd.mil/cbexposures/shaddocument.jsp?doc.close http://fhp.osd.mil/cbexposures/shaddocument.jsp?doc.close http://fhp.osd.mil/cbexposures/shaddocument.jsp?doc.close http://fhp.osd.mil/cbexposures/shaddocument.jsp?doc.close http://fhp.osd.mil/cbexposures/shaddocument.jsp?doc.close http://ezproxy.qa.proquest.com/docview/232162189?accountid=14771 http://ezproxy.qa.proquest.com/docview/232162189?accountid=14771 http://ezproxy.qa.proquest.com/docview/232162189?accountid=14771 http://ezproxy.qa.proquest.com/docview/232162189?accountid=14771 http://ezproxy.qa.proquest.com/docview/232162189?accountid=14771 http://ezproxy.qa.proquest.com/docview/232162189?accountid=14771 http://ezproxy.qa.proquest.com/docview/232162189?accountid=14771 http://ezproxy.qa.proquest.com/docview/232162189?accountid=14771 http://ezproxy.qa.proquest.com/docview/232162189?accountid=14771 http://ezproxy.qa.proquest.com/docview/232162189?accountid=14771 http://ezproxy.qa.proquest.com/docview/232162189?accountid=14771 http://ezproxy.qa.proquest.com/docview/232162189?accountid=14771 http://ezproxy.qa.proquest.com/docview/232162189?accountid=14771 http://ezproxy.qa.proquest.com/docview/232162189?accountid=14771 susan g. enberg | bombs, land & dignity: vieques, puerto rico 131 the chemicals raining down on them „were real‟ during project 112, 34 the residents of vieques were absolutely unaware of the poisons being unleashed on them. many of the exposed servicemen involved in project 112 have suffered great health problems since these human tests were performed including respiratory problems, heart conditions, skin conditions and cancers.35 as many of these are the same health problems experienced by the viequenses in disproportionate numbers to those on the puerto rican mainland, it is only logical to assume that there is a link between project 112 operations and the health problems experienced in vieques. italie concurs with this statement: “because washington carried out the experiments outdoors, vieques civilians were also exposed to chemical and biological agents”.36 however, with respect to compensation and redress, to date the pentagon will only recognize u.s. servicepersons who have been physically affected by exposure to deadly substances such as the simulated vx agent, betapropriolactone, and sarin.37 who knows how many other similar deadly covert operations will be uncovered in the years to come: when it is too late because hundreds if not thousands have perished? 34 janie blankenship. “covert test program made sailors „lab rats‟: after 40 years, the pentagon acknowledges biological and chemical warfare testing on u.s. service personnel during the cold war. vfw magazine, 90, no. 4 (december,2002),1. http://go.galegroup.com.myaccess.library.utoronto.ca/ps/i.do?id=gale%7ca95 598535&v+2.i&u=utoronto_main&it=r&p=grgm&sw=w accessed 18 november 2011. 35 ibid. 36 michael italie, “pentagon tested chemical weapons in vieques,” the militant, vol. 66, no. 42: 11 november 2002, accessed 18 november 2011, http://wwwthemilitant.com/2002/6642/664251.html 37 tim dyhouse, “pentagon finished with shad test vets,” vfw magazine 91, no.1 (september 2003), 8. accessed 16 november 2011. http://bf4dv7zn3u.search.serialssolutions.com.myaccess.library.utoronto.ca/?ct x_ver=z39.88-2004&ctx_enc=info%3aofi%2fenc%3autf8&rfr_id=info:sid/summon.serialssolutions.com&rft_val_fmt=info:ofi/fmt:kev:mt x:journal&rft.genre=article&rft.atitle=pentagon+finished+with+shad+test+vets& 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http://bf4dv7zn3u.search.serialssolutions.com.myaccess.library.utoronto.ca/?ctx_ver=z39.88-2004&ctx_enc=info%3aofi%2fenc%3autf-8&rfr_id=info:sid/summon.serialssolutions.com&rft_val_fmt=info:ofi/fmt:kev:mtx:journal&rft.genre=article&rft.atitle=pentagon+finished+with+shad+test+vets&rft.jtitle=vfw%2c+veterans+of+foreign+wars+magazine&rft.au=tim+dyhouse&rft.date=2003-09-30&rft.issn=0161-8598&rft.volume=91&rft.issue=1&rft.spage=8&rft.externaldbid=gvfw&rft.externaldocid=485589301 caribbean quilt | 2012 132 by the 1970s, the residents of vieques had lost all patience with the u.s. navy and its imposition on their small, once pristine island and with much justification, began to peacefully resist. puerto rico and vieques‟ citizens had believed that the bombing of the island would settle down, if not stop altogether, after numerous pleas and peaceful protests. rather the opposite occurred. the number of bombings increased in the 1970s when u.s. naval activities from the puerto rican island of culebra were transferred to vieques,38 and increased once again in the 1990s with the transfer of u.s. naval activities from panama to vieques.39 in 1998 alone, the navy dropped 23,000 bombs on the island, most of which contained live explosives”.40 according to fanon: in the colonial countries…the policemen and the soldier, by their immediate presence and their frequent and direct action maintain contact with the native and advise him by means of rifle-butts and napalm not to budge.41 when the navy vacated vieques in 2003, the lands it held were turned over to the u.s. department of fish and wildlife and most of these lands are now officially designated as a wildlife refuge, as most are too contaminated for human inhabitation. the highimpact area that suffered the greatest exposure to ordnance has been officially designated as a wilderness preserve and is entirely prohibited from public access.42 lands designated as such are not suitable for human inhabitation and therefore require only a “superficial cleanup”.43 mccaffery states, “land inhabited by pelicans and sea turtles, simply put, is not a national priority for cleanup”.44 residents of vieques are frustrated beyond measure at 38 ronald fernandez, the disenchanted island: puerto rico and the united states in the twentieth century, second edition (ct: praeger publishers, 1996), 244. 39 committee for human rights in puerto rico. international tribunal on violation of human rights in puerto rico and vieques by the united states of america. social justice, vol. 27, no. 4., neoliberalism, militarism, and armed conflict, 2000, 147-148. 40 katherine t. mccaffery, “fish, wildlife, and bombs: the struggle to clean up vieques,” nacla, september/october 2009, 35. 41 franz fanon, the wretched of the earth (ny: grove press inc., 1963), 31. 42 katherine t. mccaffery, “fish, wildlife, and bombs: the struggle to clean up vieques,” nacla, september/october 2009, 36. 43 ibid. 44 ibid. susan g. enberg | bombs, land & dignity: vieques, puerto rico 133 the legal steps taken by the u.s. government, and most especially the u.s. navy, to shun their responsibility of cleaning up vieques so that the lands can be considered suitable for human habitation. fully believing that they would finally receive their land back, “many residents resent the agency (the department of the interior which supervises the department of fish and wildlife) as the island‟s most recent usurper. they see the mandate to protect former base land as an extension of restrictions and absolute control over the land established by the navy”.45 it is both an irony and a travesty for vieques‟ inhabitants that the united states has turned their lands into wildlife preserves and refuges after bombing these same lands for over sixty years. the people of vieques were deprived of their lands many years ago through expropriation and evictions, and they will continue to be deprived so long as the u.s. government deems the lands uninhabitable for human habitation, a status that may endure for generations. on 21 november 2000, the international tribunal on violation of human rights in puerto rico and vieques by the united states of america convened. with respect to the negative effects of militarization on the island of vieques, under section ii, part 1, findings and legal foundations states: evidence…shows a continuation of colonial domination over the puerto rican nation…harm caused by this continuing domination is particularly acute in vieques, three-fourths of which is occupied by the u.s. navy that persists since 1941, in using the island for military exercises and aerial bombardment, thus destroying the environment, ecology, health, and life of its people. despite the nearly unanimous sentiment of the people of vieques and puerto rico…the u.s. government refuses to stop its bombing and withdraw its military force from vieques…(fully and completely compensating the population for losses and damages, and repairing any and all damages caused by their presence on and around the island)…46 45 ibid. 46 committee for human rights in puerto rico. international tribunal on violation of human rights in puerto rico and vieques by the united states of america. social justice, vol. 27, no. 4., neoliberalism, militarism, and armed conflict, 2000, 145. caribbean quilt | 2012 134 the impact of this very strong statement would propel action by the u.s. government, ensuring removal of the u.s. navy from vieques in 2003. section ii, article 3, makes clear reference to the utter decimation of the lands of vieques and places blame directly on u.s. naval activities: extensive contamination of the land, waters, and air around vieques has resulted from the u.s. military practices and maneuvers, including a large submarine wasteland or ordnance, exploded and unexploded, and ammunition depots in western vieques, causing an ecological disaster. some areas have been bombed for so long that no soil remains… unexploded bombs and shrapnel are buried…some offshore keys have disappeared…and the hillsides facing the caribbean are crumbling (causing) erosion and sedimentation of the sea grass beds and coral reefs, facilitating the entry of toxic substances into the food chain.47 the tribunal also brings to light the fact that, for years, the u.s. navy lied about highly toxic materials in its ordnance, such as depleted uranium.48 what is curious, however, is that the tribunal does not mention specifically project shad, or project 112, and the use of chemical weapons on or around the island. this may be in part due to the extremely clandestine nature of the project for many years. the tribunal does stress, however, that many toxins were used and still persist on vieques due to the irresponsibility of the u.s. navy, toxins which through leaching and bioaccumulation will undoubtedly end up in the local food chain.49 the tribunal addresses head-on the negative affects suffered by the civilian population in direct relation to poisonous u.s. naval exercises on the island of vieques: 47 committee for human rights in puerto rico. international tribunal on violation of human rights in puerto rico and vieques by the united states of america. social justice, vol. 27, no. 4., neoliberalism, militarism, and armed conflict, 2000, 149-150. 48 committee for human rights in puerto rico. international tribunal on violation of human rights in puerto rico and vieques by the united states of america. social justice, vol. 27, no. 4., neoliberalism, militarism, and armed conflict, 2000, 149. 49 ibid, 150. susan g. enberg | bombs, land & dignity: vieques, puerto rico 135 the metals found include: arsenic (metalloid), barium, cadmium, cobalt, copper, chromium, lead, nickel, vanadium, and zinc, all of which are highly toxic and most of which are carcinogenic. many accumulate in the food chain…the spread of these toxic substances by navy explosions, including depleted uranium and other radioactive and chemical materials, has caused serious health problems, including cancer and breathing and nervous system disorders, in the viequense population. the people of vieques have substantially poorer health than is the case with other puerto ricans. in 1997, the mortality rate of the people of vieques was 141% in relation to the rest of puerto rico.50 the most profoundly powerful statement in the tribunal‟s findings is with respect to the colonialist bombardment of vieques—that which can be related to the argument of genocide: the situation of the people of vieques, created by the u.s. government and particularly the u.s. navy, results from the intention to destroy in whole or in part the inhabitants of this island, by causing death or serious bodily and mental harm (emphasis added)…the above findings of fact constitute multiple and gross violations of the human rights of the people of puerto rico and particularly the population of the island of vieques.51 in section iii, verdict, the tribunal places full blame on the u.s. government and the u.s. navy for the plight of the puerto rican people, most especially the population of vieques. specifically with respect to the viequenses, the tribunal emphatically recommends an immediate end to u.s. military exploitation of puerto rican lands; immediate cessation of military activities in and around vieques; and removal of all puerto rican military installations. in addition, the tribunal calls for full redress to the peoples and reparations to the lands so that they are once again inhabitable.52 50 ibid, 150. 51 committee for human rights in puerto rico. international tribunal on violation of human rights in puerto rico and vieques by the united states of america. social justice, vol. 27, no. 4., neoliberalism, militarism, and armed conflict, 2000, 150. 52 ibid, 151. caribbean quilt | 2012 136 despite the findings of the tribunal in 2000, the u.s. navy continued to deny culpability for harm done to vieques and its peoples. in may 2004, the honorable robert b. pirie, jr., under secretary of the navy, provided testimony to counteract the findings of the tribunal. pirie testified that live fire did in no way harm civilians,53 and that “…not one civilian living or working off the range has ever been killed, hurt or placed at risk.” yet in the next breath he testifies that, “during the entire history of our training on vieques, exactly one civilian death…has resulted”.54 in addition, pirie states that, “no round has fallen or explosion occurred outside the gates of the training complex—no civilian off-base has ever been so much as scratched by our operations”.55 however, rabin siegel in his article paradise invaded: the u.s. navy bombs puerto rico refutes this statement by pirie. rabin siegel clarifies that, “in october of 1993, another f-18 fighter jet missed by about 10 miles, dropping 500pound live bombs about a mile from the main town of vieques”56 and “during maneuvers involving navy and puerto rican national guard troops in 1998, bullets broke windows in school buses parked near the municipal government buildings in the santa maria sector of the island (the part that is not „navy property)”.57 although contradictions in pirie‟s statement are evident, the u.s. navy shows no concern for the local population negatively affected by its operations in the name of u.s. national security. for the united states, the wellbeing of a small number of disaffected partial citizens within a colony such as vieques is an insignificant issue. 53 united states navy. interview of the honorable robert b., pirie, under secretary of the navy, 24 may 2001, http://www.navy.mil accessed 10 november 2011, 4. 54 ibid. 55 robert l. rabin siegel, “paradise invaded: the u.s. navy bombs puerto rico,” war resisters’ international, 1 january 2001, http://www.wriirg.org/nonviolence/nvse10-en.htm accessed 17 november 2011. 56 robert l. rabin siegel, “paradise invaded: the u.s. navy bombs puerto rico,” war resisters’ international, 1 january 2001, http://www.wriirg.org/nonviolence/nvse10-en.htm accessed 17 november 2011. united states navy. interview of the honorable robert b. pirie, under secretary of the navy, 24 may 2001, http://www.navy.mil accessed 10 november 2011, 4. 57 robert l. rabin siegel, “paradise invaded: the u.s. navy bombs puerto rico,” war resisters’ international, 1 january 2001, http://www.wriirg.org/nonviolence/nvse10-en.htm accessed 17 november 2011. http://www.navy.mil/ http://www.navy.mil/ http://www.navy.mil/ http://www.navy.mil/ http://www.navy.mil/ http://www.navy.mil/ http://www.navy.mil/ http://www.wri-irg.org/nonviolence/nvse10-en.htm http://www.wri-irg.org/nonviolence/nvse10-en.htm http://www.wri-irg.org/nonviolence/nvse10-en.htm http://www.wri-irg.org/nonviolence/nvse10-en.htm http://www.wri-irg.org/nonviolence/nvse10-en.htm http://www.wri-irg.org/nonviolence/nvse10-en.htm http://www.wri-irg.org/nonviolence/nvse10-en.htm http://www.wri-irg.org/nonviolence/nvse10-en.htm http://www.wri-irg.org/nonviolence/nvse10-en.htm http://www.wri-irg.org/nonviolence/nvse10-en.htm http://www.wri-irg.org/nonviolence/nvse10-en.htm http://www.wri-irg.org/nonviolence/nvse10-en.htm http://www.wri-irg.org/nonviolence/nvse10-en.htm http://www.wri-irg.org/nonviolence/nvse10-en.htm http://www.wri-irg.org/nonviolence/nvse10-en.htm http://www.wri-irg.org/nonviolence/nvse10-en.htm http://www.wri-irg.org/nonviolence/nvse10-en.htm http://www.wri-irg.org/nonviolence/nvse10-en.htm http://www.wri-irg.org/nonviolence/nvse10-en.htm http://www.wri-irg.org/nonviolence/nvse10-en.htm http://www.wri-irg.org/nonviolence/nvse10-en.htm http://www.wri-irg.org/nonviolence/nvse10-en.htm http://www.wri-irg.org/nonviolence/nvse10-en.htm http://www.wri-irg.org/nonviolence/nvse10-en.htm http://www.wri-irg.org/nonviolence/nvse10-en.htm http://www.wri-irg.org/nonviolence/nvse10-en.htm http://www.wri-irg.org/nonviolence/nvse10-en.htm http://www.wri-irg.org/nonviolence/nvse10-en.htm http://www.wri-irg.org/nonviolence/nvse10-en.htm http://www.wri-irg.org/nonviolence/nvse10-en.htm http://www.wri-irg.org/nonviolence/nvse10-en.htm http://www.wri-irg.org/nonviolence/nvse10-en.htm http://www.wri-irg.org/nonviolence/nvse10-en.htm http://www.wri-irg.org/nonviolence/nvse10-en.htm http://www.navy.mil/ http://www.navy.mil/ http://www.navy.mil/ http://www.navy.mil/ http://www.navy.mil/ http://www.navy.mil/ http://www.navy.mil/ http://www.wri-irg.org/nonviolence/nvse10-en.htm http://www.wri-irg.org/nonviolence/nvse10-en.htm http://www.wri-irg.org/nonviolence/nvse10-en.htm http://www.wri-irg.org/nonviolence/nvse10-en.htm http://www.wri-irg.org/nonviolence/nvse10-en.htm http://www.wri-irg.org/nonviolence/nvse10-en.htm http://www.wri-irg.org/nonviolence/nvse10-en.htm http://www.wri-irg.org/nonviolence/nvse10-en.htm http://www.wri-irg.org/nonviolence/nvse10-en.htm http://www.wri-irg.org/nonviolence/nvse10-en.htm http://www.wri-irg.org/nonviolence/nvse10-en.htm http://www.wri-irg.org/nonviolence/nvse10-en.htm http://www.wri-irg.org/nonviolence/nvse10-en.htm http://www.wri-irg.org/nonviolence/nvse10-en.htm http://www.wri-irg.org/nonviolence/nvse10-en.htm http://www.wri-irg.org/nonviolence/nvse10-en.htm http://www.wri-irg.org/nonviolence/nvse10-en.htm susan g. enberg | bombs, land & dignity: vieques, puerto rico 137 although this essay has not been able to adequately cover the issue of peaceful and persistent protest by the viequenses with respect to their health and the lands of vieques, it must be stated that their efforts have gained much momentum in the international arena, inspiring positive change such as the removal of the united states navy from vieques in 2003. however, as the united states continues to invoke the right of sovereign immunity, legal avenues to recourse for dominated peoples may continue to prove elusive unless the act of genocide is justly considered synonymous with colonialist and imperialist practices such as those endured in vieques. light for the colonized can be found within the convention on the prevention and punishment of the crime of genocide (1948), for which sovereign immunity does not apply.58 it is a convention that should be invoked immediately in this case, and for every similar case, past or present. genocide is defined as: any of a number of acts committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group; killing members of the group; causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part…59 in closing, the case study of vieques as a colony of the united states has shown how intentionally destructive imperialist and colonizing practices have been historically, and continue to be to this day. though sovereign immunity helps to ensure protection of the colonizer despite pitiless atrocities committed against the colonized, sovereign immunity can be revoked through the convention on the prevention and punishment of genocide. it is under this convention that the viequenses must pursue redress from the united states government and the united states navy. vieques must be ecologically restored to the fullest extent; the united states must be forced to claim culpability with respect to health issues of the viequenses; and, once the lands and surrounding waters have been cleaned to their fullest potential, all u.s. occupation of the island must desist: colonization of all puerto rican lands must be dissolved. above all, puerto ricans with the support of the 58 united nations, convention on the prevention and punishment of the crime of genocide, 1948. 59 united nations, convention on the prevention and punishment of the crime of genocide, 1948. caribbean quilt | 2012 138 international human rights community must persist with actions that will ensure their right to decide for themselves the fate and future of their territory without further interference by the united states and its imperialist organizations. to end, i restate the quote provided at the outset by an enlightened franz fanon: the truth is that we ought not to accept these conditions. we should flatly refuse the situation in which the western countries wish to condemn us…for centuries the capitalists have behaved in the underdeveloped world like nothing more than war criminals.60 60 franz fanon, the wretched of the earth (ny: grove press inc., 1963), 79. susan g. enberg | bombs, land & dignity: vieques, puerto rico 139 works cited ayala, césar and viviana carro-figueroa. “expropriation and displacement of civilians in vieques, 1940-1950,” in puerto rico under colonial rule: political persecution and the quest for human rights, ed. ramón bosque-pérez and josé javier colón morera, 173-206. new york: state university of new york press, 2005. http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/soc/faculty/ayala/vieques/papers 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"the vx nerve agent." professional safety 49, no. 3 (2004): 32-39. http://ezproxy.qa.proquest.com/docview/200372207?accoun tid=14771. accessed 17 november 2011. hardy, mario. "say "no mas" to militarism and colonialism: navy out of vieques now!" objector (1999): 5+15. http://ezproxy.qa.proquest.com/docview/232162189?accoun tid=14771 http://www.defense.gov/ accessed 11 november 2011. italie, michael, “pentagon tested chemical weapons on vieques.” the militant. vol. 66, no. 42, 11 november 2002. accessed 18 november 2011. http://wwwthemilitant.com/2002/6642/664251.html mccaffery, katherine t. fish, wildlife and bombs: the struggle to clean up vieques. nacla, september/october 2009. mccaffery, katherine t. military power and popular protest: the u.s. navy in vieques, puerto rico. new brunswick, new jersey, london: rutgers university press, 2002. merrill ramirez, marie antoinette, ph.d. “the other side of colonialism: cointelpro activities in puerto rico in the 1960s.” master‟s thesis, the university of texas at austin, 1990. rabin siegel, robert l. “paradise invaded: the u.s. navy bombs puerto rico,” war resisters’ international, 1 january 2001, http://www.wri-irg.org/nonviolence/nvse10-en.htm accessed 17 november 2011. united nations. convention on the prevention and punishment of the crime of genocide (1948). http://ezproxy.qa.proquest.com/docview/200372207?accountid=14771 http://ezproxy.qa.proquest.com/docview/200372207?accountid=14771 http://ezproxy.qa.proquest.com/docview/200372207?accountid=14771 http://ezproxy.qa.proquest.com/docview/200372207?accountid=14771 http://ezproxy.qa.proquest.com/docview/200372207?accountid=14771 http://ezproxy.qa.proquest.com/docview/200372207?accountid=14771 http://ezproxy.qa.proquest.com/docview/200372207?accountid=14771 http://ezproxy.qa.proquest.com/docview/200372207?accountid=14771 http://ezproxy.qa.proquest.com/docview/200372207?accountid=14771 http://ezproxy.qa.proquest.com/docview/200372207?accountid=14771 http://ezproxy.qa.proquest.com/docview/200372207?accountid=14771 http://ezproxy.qa.proquest.com/docview/200372207?accountid=14771 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http://www.wri-irg.org/nonviolence/nvse10-en.htm http://www.wri-irg.org/nonviolence/nvse10-en.htm http://www.wri-irg.org/nonviolence/nvse10-en.htm http://www.wri-irg.org/nonviolence/nvse10-en.htm http://www.wri-irg.org/nonviolence/nvse10-en.htm http://www.wri-irg.org/nonviolence/nvse10-en.htm http://www.wri-irg.org/nonviolence/nvse10-en.htm http://www.wri-irg.org/nonviolence/nvse10-en.htm http://www.wri-irg.org/nonviolence/nvse10-en.htm http://www.wri-irg.org/nonviolence/nvse10-en.htm http://www.wri-irg.org/nonviolence/nvse10-en.htm http://www.wri-irg.org/nonviolence/nvse10-en.htm susan g. enberg | bombs, land & dignity: vieques, puerto rico 141 united states department of defense. office of the assistant secretary of defense (health affairs) deployment health support directive. “deseret test center project shad: dtc test 69-10.” version 10-09-2002. http://www.defense.gov/ accessed 11 november 2011. united states navy. interview of the honorable robert b. pirie, under secretary of the navy. 24 may 2001. http://www.navy.mil accessed 10 november 2011. http://www.defense.gov/ http://www.defense.gov/ http://www.defense.gov/ http://www.defense.gov/ http://www.defense.gov/ http://www.defense.gov/ http://www.defense.gov/ http://www.defense.gov/ http://www.navy.mil/ http://www.navy.mil/ http://www.navy.mil/ http://www.navy.mil/ http://www.navy.mil/ http://www.navy.mil/ http://www.navy.mil/ :::::: 31 “immigrant skies” amber williamsking the sun never sets in this city. light clings to the horizon like a jealous king gripping his crown as he conquers the night banishing every illegal glimmer, each gratuitous glow. it is a sky radiance raped and bright abandoned; dark, empty, no longer alight. here, stars are all fallen knights imprisoned by street lamps and concrete walls, cocooned in expired posters and stale graffiti. there are no sparkling sapphire nights, no constellations to connect the images amber williams-king| immigrant skies 32 of childhood dreams birthed on islands; only a dull orange haze hanging low in the distance and a lot of people who never look up because there’s nothing to see. it is a place where new faces, like mine, go as unnoticed as a misplaced moon. :::::: 90 amber williams-king yara : 11x14, acrylic and oil marker on canvas caribbean quilt | 2011 102 “torn: a custom altered by society” ashti-leah mindy rampersad i have seen changes throughout the course of time and how the use of mehndi has been taken out of its traditional context and now used in multiple forms. for example it is used on the human body for temporary tattooing; the floral and decorative patterns are seen in clothing and advertisements. my work depicts both worlds: one where a person is holding on to those traditions; the other aspect is adopted from the world that is ever changing and vast. combining both, shows my world, a hybrid world meant to resonate with those who are “torn” by what they have left and now live in. a new meaning is developed when both worlds try to co-exist. my art maintains the traditional decorative flow of patterns, which is applied on canvas or wood, using a variety of materials such as sand, torn paper, tiles and acrylic paints; these materials represent the change and influence of the world in which we now live in. :::::: 4 guyana’s ethnic security dilemma: positing an alternative reading duane edwards duane edwards has recently completed reading for a bachelor degree in sociology at the university of guyana. though trained in the social sciences, he enjoys engaging in philosophical reflections. his main project in philosophy is to bring to bear the radical philosophical ideas of caribbean thinkers to the problems faced by persons and institutions in the caribbean. introduction the ethno-political problem currently affecting guyana has occupied the attention of many guyanese. the pre-occupation with this problem results from the fact that after forty six years of independence, guyana is, by and large, stuck at the same place in terms of its political and racial engagement. the reality of race-based politics has become so ingrained in our collective psyche that every aspect of our social interaction is becoming increasingly defined and colored by our political/racial polemic. my occupation with the problem, however, goes a little further. i am interested in how our political/racial polemic serves to buttress regimes that are guilty of numerous totalitarian excesses; how the cleavage in our ethnic interaction produces negative externalities that affect the country as a whole; and how the purported fear of each other, base on fictitious premises, is creating a real monster right before our eyes. to assist me in exploring this tragi-comic situation, i will draw upon the resources of two of our guyanese thinkers, viz., wilson harris and ravi dev, along with slovenian philosopher, slavoj zizek. ethnic security dilemma – ravi dev ravi dev, among other guyanese thinkers, has posited an ethnic security dilemma (esd) as a means of explaining the political behavior of guyanese political actors. according to this postulate, guyanese of the two major race groups, namely africans and indians, vote for the parties which they think would, or is more duane edwards | guyana’s ethnic security dilemma 5 inclined to, confront and resolve their respective (esd). the african security dilemma (asd) has to do with the numerical dominance of indians. in a political structure that prioritizes majoritarian democracy, africans can be locked out of political power in perpetuity (dev 2008: 113). on the other hand, the indian security dilemma (isd) has to do with the dominance of africans in the armed forces. in the event of ethnic strife, africans have the upper hand based on their control of the arms and ammunition in the country. grounded on these 'real' situations, and unfortunate historical experiences, africans and indians vote to this day in a way that is perceived as prioritizing 'race', but which dev, et al, argue is determined by their respective security dilemmas. a different reading of reality –wilson harris wilson harris, the guyanese writer and literary critic, of course, pursued a radically different reading of reality. he was not interested in the simple explanation and justification of the status quo; he was interested in how the reality (african dominated armed forces and bureaucracy, indian numerical (political) and economic dominance) could result in the minting of the many bizarre currencies of the imagination that are experienced in guyanese history; he was interested in why out of the infinite number of possible ways to deal with, confront or neutralize these (real) imbalances, guyanese choose the one possibility that result in a crudely political and racially divided society. and, it is in exploring this question that wilson harris, the guyanese writer and literary critic, converges with the slovenian philosopher and cultural critic, slavoj zizek while at the same time exposing us to creatively new approaches to the reading of reality. esd results in a stalled dialectic harris introduces the concept of the 'backward-flowing stream of consciousness'. existing in this state of consciousness, guyanese, by and large, allow the past or past experiences to gain a type of militant occupancy over their current liveliness, a militancy which should otherwise be reserved for the future or present. caribbean quilt | 2013 6 the future and present which are usually pregnant with limitless possibilities have been, in guyana's case, static. this reveals a comic inversion of reality and progress in the guyanese political and ethnic engagement. our future takes the place of our past while our past assumes the role of our future. what is being witnessed in guyana is not even a negative dialectic in adorno's or harris' sense whereby there is a progressive negation of the totalizing structures which come with the marxian and hegelian dialectics. on the contrary, it is a stalled dialectics in which the synthesis is already made impossible by the thesis and antithesis. this stalled dialectics has been referred to by someone (walter benjamin i think) as 'dialectics at a standstill' dialectic, in that, what is being witnessed are persons of the same racial group but of various classes and religions overcoming their religious and class differences in order to achieve a unity and identity which harris refers to as 'pigmented identity' (an identity based on skin color and hair texture); stalled because the dialectical positing of unity in diversity fails to move beyond skin color and hair texture. guyanese are stuck in history as prisoners of history whereby history forecloses any possibility of freedom. so instead of achieving 'the future in the present' in c.l.r. james' sense, guyanese are stuck with the past in the present. this backward-flowing stream of consciousness and prisoner-of-history psyche reveal a lot about the psychic states of guyanese. it is only a pathological psychic condition which would allow the subjection of a living being to a hardened social practice that goes against his/her own well-being. this psychic condition is what harris referred to as a 'lust for symmetry'. this lust is highlighted rather clearly by the christian existentialist kierkegaard in his 'the sickness unto death'. according to kierkegaard, the self is made up of the synthesis of finitude and infinitude. the development of the self therefore 'must accordingly consist in infinitely coming away from oneself [that is one's finite self]...and in infinitely coming back to oneself in the finitization' (1989: 69). despair occurs whenever there is a shortcircuit in this process, that is to say, whenever there is a failure to check the infinitizing tendency of the self or to break out of the confining and constraining tendency. zizek, in his 'the ticklish subject' gives a clear explanation of the kierkegaardian despair duane edwards | guyana’s ethnic security dilemma 7 (harrisian lust for symmetry). according to zizek, '...kierkegaard inverted the standard despair of the individual who is split between the certainty that death is the end...and the unquenchable desire to believe that death is not the last thing...kierkegaard's sickness unto death involves the opposite paradox of the subject who knows that death is not the end....but cannot face the exorbitant demands of this fact' (1999: 292-293). whereas for kierkegaard, it is not death but life which becomes the ultimate horror for modern man for harris it is not confinement but freedom which becomes the ultimate horror for the post-independence west indian man. the guyanese personality exemplifies this fear of freedom in its ideal. this fear of freedom is what buttresses totalitarian and authoritarian regimes. the art of memory and the re-membering of history this prioritizing of history and historical experience lies at the heart of the conflict between caribbean poeticism and historicism. for harris, a 'historical stasis...afflicts the west indian sensibility'. (harris: 156). this historical stasis results from the prioritizing of history which according to harris is equated with prioritizing of the dead (past acts that have lost their spontaneity) above the living (current acts of the spontaneous and creative imagination): the pitting of historical fact and experience against the currency of the radical and creative imagination. it is not even the prioritizing of history as such but only of one view or perspective of history, which in other words amount to giving permanent and totalitarian status to an historical account which could only be temporary and tentative. against this tendency, harris urges us to engage in the profound art of memory, to engage in various creative readings of reality and history. this art of memory entails not merely remembering but re-membering history, which entails first dismembering then reconstructing the disjecta membra of history. if one moves from harris' metaphysics of history to history proper, one finds noteworthy attempts at applying harris' art of memory to history. two such attempts are walter rodney's 'a history of the guyanese working people, 1881 -1905' and c.l.r. james' 'black jacobins'. commenting in a foreword to rodney's book, george lamming stated that for rodney '...history was a way of ordering [emphasis mine] knowledge which could become as active part of the consciousness of an uncertified mass of ordinary people and which could be used by all as an instrument of social change.' the phrase 'ordering knowledge' speaks both to the intentionality of the thinking caribbean quilt | 2013 8 subject and the selective nature of history. it is this intentionality and agency of the thinking subject that harris emphasizes in all his work. the following excerpt by sharrad commenting on the task of the artist of memory is very instructive. "he shuffles his notes in order to awaken memory and in the process reorders [emphasis mine] perceptions of the past, creating new possibilities for understanding the complex interrelationship of innocence and guilt via the breakdown of tyrannical biases of stratified social attitudes and linear documentary history" (sharrad: 103). with this ordering and reordering of perceptions of the past, walter rodney becomes the quintessential artist of memory. the main purpose of his book was to review history in order to bring to life those periods in our history in which both africans and indians were engaged in unified struggles against the system of oppression. 'working people of african and indian ancestry in guyana have had a history of active struggle which it has been our habit to omit or underestimate in political discourse about the past' (qtd. in rodney: xix). walter rodney, in a different reading of reality searched for those moments in the past in which the various races break down the racial barriers and engaged in acts of collective liberation. for him what we need more than the bland recollection of the unfortunate occurrences of the past is a profound confession of the selective effacing of the eruption of consciousness which is a necessary condition for a radical counter-history. ideological substructure of political actions – slavoj zizek ravi dev's esd, while a sociologically valid construct, made the error of totally ignoring the ideological underpinnings of the political behavior of the two major races in guyana by attempting to suggest that their political behavior is purely situational. for him there is no ideological undercurrents fueling the actions of africans and indians in guyana – they merely react to pressing and threatening politico-economic realities. dev's thinking is a classic manifestation of post-modern thinking which attempts to suggest that we are in post-ideological times. by doing so, dev effectively separates political belief from political action and behavior. political action, according to his theory, is not guided by inherited ideologies but by current political situation. to what extent is dev's duane edwards | guyana’s ethnic security dilemma 9 conceptualization of the political culture of guyanese accurate? this is where slavoj zizek might be of some value. according to zizek, political action is always driven by political belief. but, while in the past it was very easy to identify those beliefs because persons avowedly held on to those beliefs, in what is called the post-ideological age there is a great deal of denial and distancing from beliefs and ideologies. in the past, persons had no qualms about saying that they believe africans are inferior or that indians are coolies, or about subscribing to marxism, or even nazism. paradoxically, what has happened in the age of tolerance and multiculturalism is not what would be logically expected, that is, 'i hold this view but i am still tolerant of those who do not share it'. what has happened in fact is that the prevailing attitude under multiculturalism is 'i cannot profess to hold this view because it would appear as being intolerant of another's view'. because of the rule of this arch-ideology of tolerance, there is a reluctance to admittedly hold on to any belief which could be interpreted as promoting intolerance. this does not mean, however, that we do not, in spite of this dominant ideology of tolerance and multiculturalism, hold on to, albeit disavowedly, parochial, exclusive, ethnocentric, sexist and religious fundamentalist ideologies. we still do, but we do so quietly. this is what led sarah ahmed to remark that "multiculturalism is a fantasy which conceals forms of racism, violence and inequality'' (qtd. in zizek 2009). it deals with racist, sexist, and other such separatist ideologies in very superficial ways. for example, we are expected to be politically correct when addressing others. we can no longer refer to africans as 'black dogs' or indians as 'coolie crab dogs' because that would inspire the utmost disapprobation from 'civil' society. we can, however, be totally oblivious to the killing, suffering and oppression of the other. not only can we be oblivious to it but we can also literally contribute to it, if we do so in a 'politically correct' manner. caribbean quilt | 2013 10 outsourcing of ideology – the big other another way, according to zizek, ideology plays out in our political behavior is by means of the big other. the big other is a technical term borrowed by zizek from lacanian psychoanalysis. according to the thesis of the big other, subjects need not directly subscribe to a particular political ideology; they can do so by means of their political representatives. in this way, their political ideology is proxied by another. this reduces the burden of knowing or being aware of the master signifiers current in the ideology while at the same time also reducing any kind of responsibility. both the symbolic meaning and responsibility are outsourced to what is called the 'big other'. in our own guyanese case, the big other' can be manifested in the personages of our politicians, priests, political parties or ancestors. let's take the exhortation by former president bharrat jagdeo in the election campaign of 2011 as a means of clarifying the above. jagdeo exhorted a cross-section of the guyanese community to 'know your history'. the call by jagdeo was not necessarily to study guyanese history which would entail (re)reading history from various viewpoints. on the contrary, it was a call to know what your ancestors or politicians say about history. in that case, your politicians or ancestors become your big other to whom you have outsourced the burden and responsibility of knowing history (the former leader of the opposition, robert corbin, was quick to urge his audience, after he gave them his version of history at campaign meetings, not to get overwhelmed by amnesia). the security of conscience offered by this outsourcing of ideology is made evident by the court case between fredrick kissoon and bharrat jagdeo in 2012. the case has so far revealed that the major bureaucratic and government positions were disproportionately held by indians, no africans held ambassadorial positions and that only 0.5 % of all the state resources that were privatized went to africans. because of the big other thesis, indians who supported the ppp/c regime with their votes can rest with a free conscience because while they vote the party in, they were not directly responsible for the selection process that determines who become ministers and ambassadors. in a farcical manner of course, this is a wonderful manifestation of kantian morality. kant is the duane edwards | guyana’s ethnic security dilemma 11 philosopher who posited the categorical imperative. what he means is that moral laws are so absolutely imperative that if a killer breaks into your home with the intent to kill your wife (husband) and children and insist that you tell him where they are hiding you are obligated to tell him the truth. when you tell him the 'truth' you have discharged the entirety of your moral obligation. if the killer finds your family and kills them, he is the one, not you, who have to bear the entirety of the moral burden for his act: you have totally exculpated yourself from any moral responsibility by being truthful. while the kantian morality prioritizes the moral law, existential morality prioritizes freedom and responsibility. for the existentialist, both concepts, freedom and responsibility, exist in a kind of kantian synthesis – freedom is already presupposed by responsibility and vice versa. and because one is always absolutely free in an existentialist sense, one is also absolutely responsible. so there is no way that indians in guyana, from which the ppp/c obtains its votes, can be totally exculpated from the responsibility for the ideological racism of the ppp/c. existentialist morality would also place no less a responsibility on africans, amerindians and other ethnic groups, because although they may not have voted for the ppp/c, they, by and large, legitimize the ppp/c's racism by choosing to fight only by means of ballot which is another way of conscience cleansing ' i did my part by voting against the ppp/c, therefore i have fulfilled the entirety of my moral responsibility'. this reading of reality, some might argue, places too much burden on the masses without understanding the structural constraints that influence their action. as a way of pandering to the masses, a structural reading of reality is preferable. this structural reading of reality is precisely the reading of reality that strips individuals of their humanity, subjectivity and agency and reduces them to objects rather than subjects of history. it is also a reading of reality that seems to be engendering 'collective psychopathy' among the masses. psychopathy is a condition in which victims become oblivious to the personal responsibility of their acts and who try to place the blame on every other thing or person except themselves. caribbean quilt | 2013 12 ideology as a result without its sustaining cause another characteristic of ideology outlined by zizek has to do with its truth content or lack thereof. ideology carries out a social function quite unrelated to the truth it professes to represent. and, in carrying out this function, its professed truth need not reflect the political or other reality. for example, dev's esd by his own admission has become baseless on both sides of the ethnic divide. he openly admits that africans need not fear indian numerical supremacy because indians as an absolute numerical majority is a thing of the past. on the other hand, he inadvertently i suppose, admitted that approximately 30 years after the indian community voted for the ppp/c to address its esd, indians are still faced with an african-dominated armed forces to the extent that when indians protest the police force, by command, are prepared to shoot to kill (according to ravi dev). this occurs in a political environment in which it is not only ppp/c and pnc/r competing politically which would have clearly explained the political behavior of both groups; but in which the wpa, afc, jfap and even roar whose programs were intended to radically address the esd, were available alternatives. with these competing facts, one can clearly see that it is not the fact to which the esd purports that influences the political behavior of guyanese because those facts simply do not exist. guyanese, by and large, are motivated by politico-racial ideologies the truth content of which has long since been invalidated. these ideologies have become what wilson harris refers to as 'apparition of the dead among the living'; they do not only direct the life of the living but also weigh heavily and overbearingly upon our present and future. this mindless attachment to these substance-less insecurities reveal something more fundamental in the human psyche, for which a purely structural argument or analysis might be totally inefficient. this is why wilson harris' exploration of the west indian psyche might be of significantly more value than dev's esd. to add further clarification to this disconnect between the social reality and social ideology of both africans and indians, a brief exploration of sylvia wynter's sociology of knowledge or social duane edwards | guyana’s ethnic security dilemma 13 epistemology might be useful. this reading of wynter is adopted and adapted from paget henry. in response to the epistemological question "what are the processes through which signs and symbols represent and shape our perception of reality?" wynter's response is that this process involves indirect representation by which the signs and symbols and their relation to reality always take place in a particular discursive framework which is shaped by the concepts, symbols and rules of statement formation which constitute it. these elements which constitute the discursive framework are in turn shaped by prevailing social and natural imperatives. it is usual, however, for the discursive framework to take on a life of its own by outliving its social imperative. the time between which the social imperative becomes null and the new social imperative give rise to a new discursive framework, i hereby refer to as an epistemic gap. it is my position that we are currently within this epistemic gap. the discursive framework provided by the esd becomes then a result without its sustaining cause. the wynterian response to this self-perpetuating framework would be to expose the baseless nature of the founding categories of this transcendentalised discursive framework. dev stopped half way of this revolutionary project of decentering the founding categories of the esd framework by seeming to be willing only to expose the emptiness of the asd while maintaining the validity of the isd. dev needs to take the next step forward. redemption via abjection furthermore, while the behavior determined by the esd fails to bring about its intended result, that is, the security of the race, it has resulted, nevertheless, not in the security of one race but the subordination of all races under a lumpenbourgeoisie. in spite of about 30 years of ppp rule (counting also the period in the 50's and 60's) africans still dominate the armed forces and the public sector. on the other hand, in spite of, in fact as a result of, 28 years of pnc rule, the numerical dominance of indians have been given more 'teeth' as a result of an executive presidency and the inability of parties to form coalitions after an election: two constitutional changes brought about by the pnc. in an interesting paradox, it is the pnc that gave more weight to the numerical dominance of the caribbean quilt | 2013 14 indians quite in contrast to the fear of its own constituency. this same paradox is seen on the side of the ppp/c which against the wishes its own constituency refuses for decades to reform and professionalize the guyana police force. this being the reality -africans and indians continue to vote for parties which worsen their respective esd what if the familiar way of reading the political situation in guyana is erroneous; what if it is not africans and indians who are victims of the political machination of the pnc/r and the ppp/c respectively but quite the opposite. what if both the pnc/r and ppp/c correspond to primordially dark sentiments in both races which desire the oppression and marginalization of the other. what if with the political machination of the two parties, africans and indians become victims of exactly what they secretly wish for the other. the pnc/r and ppp/c are only able to swindle us because within our own unconscious (jungian instincts) there is a desire to swindle the other. ervin goffman highlighted this paradox in his 'frame analysis' and slavoj zizek in his 'the ticklish subject'. in goffman's anecdote, in certain dark streets in america, hustlers with stolen items to sell were wont to run out of dark spots anxiously confronting innocent passersby. the hustler would give the passerby the impression that he is selling her/him a watch (or some other item) at half the market price. thinking that s/he is getting a good deal on the stolen item, the passerby falls for the bait only to realize later that the price s/he paid was the actual market price. another example drawn from local experience with what we call 'junkies' would further add clarity. the junkie goes into a neighbourhood yard cuts out a flower plant by the stem and pushes it in a milk tin with mud. knowing that the plant will soon wither, the junkie endeavours to sell it immediately. he, therefore, approaches someone in the neighbourhood offering the plant at a ridiculously low price. thinking that it is a good deal, someone in the neighbourhood buys the plant only to see it wither in less than a day. in both cases the swindler only succeeded because he appealed to something abject within the victims. that abjectness is the need to benefit at the loss of another. it is through this need that we ourselves become swindled by our political parties and leaders. is it not that what duane edwards | guyana’s ethnic security dilemma 15 happens, if ravi dev is right, when we vote according to our own esd? do we not desire our dilemma to be resolved at the expense of the other group's dilemma? strange as it may sound, it is by means of such abject desires that redemption (individual, group, national) is possible. this redemption by means of abjection was expounded upon by ethel a. powell who in her master's thesis explored the theme of redemption through abjection in the works of wilson harris, julia kristeva, et al. powell concluded that for both harris and kristeva, redemption involves coming to grips with one's own abjectness. kristeva defines abjectness as '...the raw crudity about humans such as...murderous impulses, horrifying thoughts and deeds...in short the abject is what we as humans are often about but we are loathe to admit...' (qtd. in powell 2005). it is only by recognizing in ourselves what we fear in the other that we realize that the monstrous, abject other is not necessarily outside but inside ourselves. the other is not,'the intruder responsible for all the ills of the polis. neither the apocalypse on the move nor the instant adversary to be eliminated for the sake of appeasing the group. strangely, the foreigner lives within us: he is the hidden face of our identity, the space that wrecks our abode, the time in which understanding and affinity founder. by recognizing him within ourselves, we are spared detesting him in himself' (qtd. in powell: 8). it is by means of such profound self-confession that we are able first of all to redeem ourselves (group, race); secondly, to destroy the swindler (pnc/r, ppp/c) by destroying his opportunity to swindle us; thirdly, to realize that the other group or race is not a monster that needs to be marginalized or exterminated but fellow human beings the understanding of whom has been interrupted by the projection of our own fears on them, a process which has been exploited by the swindlers. caribbean quilt | 2013 16 citations dev, ravi. (2008). "for a new political culture in guyana". in transition no. 38-39, 2008, edited by rishee thakur. turkeyen: ids. harris, wilson. (1999). selected essays of wilson harris: the unfinished genesis of the imagination. london: routledge. henry, paget. (2000). caliban's reason: introducing afro caribbean philosophy. new york: routledge. kierkegaard, soren. (1989). the sickness unto death. london: penguin books powell, ethel anne. (2005). ghosts of chance for redemption via abjection in wilson harris's palace of the peacock and others. a master's thesis submitted to the graduate faculty of north carolina university. rodney, walter. (1981). a history of the guyanese working people, 1881 -1905. baltimore: the johns hopkins university press. sharrad, paul. (1995). the arts of memory and the liberation of history: wilson harris witnessing of time. london: the johns hopkins university press. zizek, slavoj. (1999). the ticklish subject: the absent centre of political ontology. new york: verso. -(2009). multiculturalism: the reality of an illusion. www.lacan.com ::::: 129 insecurity in security: national security in the context of tourism and domestic sustainment in the caribbean melissa sobers melissa nicole sobers is currently a fourth year student pursuing her undergraduate degree in criminology and caribbean studies at the university of toronto. her academic interests include studying the intersections between political activism and acts of youth resistance to various forms of neo-colonialism and eurocentrism through a socio-legal lens. she is also fascinated by the ways in which such phenomena inform the cultural identity of certain groups in the context of the caribbean. melissa is an executive member of caribbean studies students union (carssu). her involvement is a manifestation of her drive to educate others both on the neoliberal issues plaguing the global south and on the undervalued vast wealth of knowledge and cultural capital that exists in these regions. the islands of the caribbean are encapsulated in a region of the world that is characterized by a great amount of irony at first glance. many islands are rich with minerals and natural resources, yet many others are poverty-stricken with fragile economies that hang in the balance. the region has endless provisions, fertile ground, and lush vegetation and it is one of the largest net food importers in the world. it is a domain that contributes a significantly less amount of carbon dioxide emissions than most of the world, but it faces the highest level of vulnerability to the effects of global warming. populations predominately from the developed countries of the world regard the caribbean as a tropical paradise, a modern day garden of eden, as well as a place they often frequent in their daydreams. it is puzzling that such claims are made about a region that is statically considered to be the most violent and dangerous in the world due to skyrocketing crime rates in certain countries, specifically jamaica, trinidad and tobago, and guyana. the point of irony that will be focused on here is premised on the fact that large amounts of social and economic capital is continuously poured into maintaining a level of security for tourists, and ultimately protecting the tourism industry while there is lack of centrality and capability as to providing adequate security for the regions own citizenry. the problematic industry of tourism will be briefly analyzed to get a glimpse of where its connection lies with conducing criminality in host countries. with this context in mind, two dimensions of security will be discussed. the first pertains to the implementations put in place to protect tourists while the second focuses on current security caribbean quilt | 2013 130 measures used on national populations such as state of emergency declarations, national curfews and abuse of power by authorities. finally, the globalization of security undertaken in the caribbean will be examined. such globalizing practices claim to be legitimate attempts by a ‘collective force’ to curb heightened levels of violence and escalating murder rates. yet, these efforts seem to follow a habitual path that leads to functioning, effective security protection of foreign interests and traditional, malfunctioning security measures for regional societies due to a number of institutional conflicts and vestiges of colonialism. it is important to note that the region does not resemble a homogenous entity in regards to violent crime and murder, nor do official statistics directly reflect how dangerous the region as a whole may be. many islands demonstrate a homicide rate that increases at a relatively slower progression than their neighbors. examples include barbados and dominica with a homicide rate of 11 and 10 per 100,000 people in 2007 respectively (bowling, 15). contrastingly, places such as trinidad and tobago and jamaica reveal much higher homicide rates of 30 and 59 per 100,000 people in 2007 respectively (bowling, 15). despite such heterogeneity, most published work used to outline this discussion of security in caribbean societies and the realm of tourism have assumed the opposite and generalized theoretical standpoint about the region. this is also because it is quite difficult to identify the specific practices of each country’s local security agenda. thus, taking into consideration that each island is unique and manifests conditions that set them apart from the wider caribbean space, the aim of this discussion is to capture the general problems of security, tourism dependency, and crime that are commonplace within the region. tourism can be seen in a very different light when its guise of providing opportunities for national growth and development to host countries is put to the wayside. for the caribbean, and other countries of the global south, tourism is the institutionalization of injustice. being a tourist, described best by jamaica kincaid (1988), is a crime against humanity that has the power to enforce longstanding historical conditions of asymmetrical power relations that exist in social and economic forms. countries have been cornered into accepting the industry as a main source of dependency for earning foreign revenue (pattullo, 9). this has caused the region to put the needs of tourists ahead of their own populations in order to sustain the business of tourism. the popular discourse that is held melissa sobers| insecurity in security 131 is that tourism will provide a range of jobs to locals, use locally grown produce to be served in hotels, and generate hard currency for local vendors through their exchanges with tourists and with the receiving of tips. this is hardly the reality when resorts and other tourist facilities become established in the region. the world trade organization’s implementation of the general agreement on trade in services (gats) has allowed many transnational corporations in the business of tourism the power and legality to bypass the multiplier effect described above which could act as a linkage for foreign capital to flow into the region (kalisch, 90). another leakage between tourism revenue and the local economy is the underproduction of the manufacturing sector for domestic use (pattullo, 39). the fact that the tourism industry is directly affected by the fluctuation of other economies and exchange rates can put a great deal of stress on the inhabitants of a country as well (pattullo, 47). this ultimately puts the host country’s economy in a vulnerable position in relation to the dominant tourist-providing economies of the north and the seasonality of the industry. although there is no hard evidence to claim that such exploitative practices of the tourism industry specifically contribute to the crime rate of host countries, it is basic human nature to have some level of social tension come out of areas that are continuously and systematically manipulated and utilized for the wealth and material benefit of others as well as foreign entities. a more direct phenomenon that can be said to cause an explosion of frustration horizontally, subsequently manifesting itself in the form of crime, is the ‘demonstration effect’ that usually occurs as a by-product of tourism (albuquerque and mcelroy, 1986). this happens when locals are exposed to the conspicuous spending of seemingly wealthy tourists on luxury amenities that are only imaginable and out of reach to citizens of the impoverished host country. as explained by villamil (1976) the demonstration effect occurs when there is “the disequilibrium between the fast rate of consumer preference shifts and the slow pace of productivity change”. tourists not only draw attention to the economic disparities that exists between their contact zone and that of the host country, they also demonstrate a sense of power and high status in relation to the locals. as described by benjamin bowling (2010), the low wages that are paid to workers cause social tensions from a predominately black service staff catering to a white visiting population (48, bowling). this sort of ‘leisure imperialism’ or caribbean quilt | 2013 132 ‘natural hedonism’ acts to reinforce and perpetuate colonial stereotypes whilst degrading the cultural identity of the caribbean as explained by mimi sheller (2004), thus contributing to the development of socioeconomic dysfunctions like sex tourism and the like. with so many adverse effects accompanying the implementation of tourism in the region it is difficult to grasp why a state would logically want to protect and sustain such an industry. as explained above, the dependence these countries have on the business of tourism to generate foreign capital is paramount, thus blurring their vision of capably seeing any other way to overcome their underdevelopment, while regional collaboration and cooperation would be a much better suited answer to their woes if implemented properly. a major way that local governments sustain an active tourism industry in their country is by avoiding bad publicity that could cause fear in tourists and potential investors who are interested in the region. crime against tourists is a major source of negative press against a country and is usually propagated to reflect the entire island as a barbaric and murderous domain which ultimately will produce detrimental effects for the rest of the caribbean as well. in the 1980’s the victimization of tourists began to emerge as a problem in jamaica, therefore the government saw a necessity in concentrating efforts and resources towards the security of foreigners despite the fact that the number of crimes against tourists was relatively minor in relation to the crime rate outside of the tourist enclave or rather, within the domestic sphere. jamaica became the leading country in the establishment of enclave tourism which has been exported throughout the region since the 1980’s (albuquerque and mcelroy, 972). enclave tourism is manifested in the form of all-inclusive or self contained resorts that virtually isolate tourists from contact with locals who do not work directly for the hotelier. it is meant to create an ‘ecological bubble’, according to erik cohen (1978), which is essential for making the experience of the tourist smooth and in an accustomed environment. this includes the implementation of upgraded security strategies which comes at an expensive cost. according to pattulo (1996) these efforts are “[f]unded partly by aid but also by expensive borrowing, they must all be paid for in the end by local people through some sort of taxation” (pattulo, 31). tourism melissa sobers| insecurity in security 133 chains such as sandals and couples implemented large fences and gates that act to secure visiting foreigners, keeping them in safely surrounded havens. large amounts of financial resources also go into the training and hiring of full-time security guards to surround the enclosed resorts, heightening the level of exclusivity felt by local citizens through the materialization of existing social boundaries and divisions. not only do these measures keep tourists from experiencing crime, it also keeps them from experiencing a genuine cultural and physical sense of the island. enclave tourism has managed to extend its reach of discrimination by limiting the use of certain geographical areas, such as beaches, waterfalls, and natural gardens, to tourists only. local street vendors, service operators, restaurants and boutiques are unable to have any sort of contact with foreign visitors through these mechanisms, thereby making it virtually impossible to receive monetary revenue from these groups. this sort of separation adds to the horizontal animosity created between inhabitants and guests. as explained by albuquerque and mcelroy (1999), stakeholders of multinational corporations in the tourism industry and tourists themselves felt no sort of ambivalence or discomfort towards the security measures mentioned above, nor did they oppose to the appeal made by the jamaica hotel and tourist association to the prime minister in 1992 regarding the use of army patrols around resorts and other such tourism areas (morris, 1992). such propositions are far from sustainable in terms of keeping the tourists attracted to the natural beauty of the caribbean and receiving an authentic island experience (albuquerque and mcelroy, 980). these measures that ultimately act to create a state within a state do not speak to the rest of the country’s problem of crime. they artificially mask the real situation in order to market the region as being safe and enthusiastically content to be utilized and enjoyed by foreign bodies. overall, these security measures are not feasible because they diminish innumerable links that offer revenue to the local economy and are ultimately aimed at preserving the interests of state policies. these measures also strengthen the deepening frustrations of the marginalized citizenry and acts to displace crime to other parts of the society, thus adding to the dangers that locals face. with all the aforementioned institutionalized measures put in place for tourist protection, one may be surprised at the fact that no such centralization or effectiveness exists when it comes to security measures for the majority of the national body in the caribbean quilt | 2013 134 caribbean region. with continuously swelling homicide figures on some islands in the region, governments have assumed a tough-oncrime attitude that consistently wavers when it comes to implementation and effectiveness therein. there has in fact been millions of dollars spent on security in the caribbean over the last two decades, yet it has not seemed to stop serious and armed violence in the region. funding for this national security has in fact managed to suck scarce government resources away from education, health care and poverty alleviation. the situation appears to have “escalated to bloody civil war proportions” with the highest homicide rates in the world (bowling, xi). thus far, the region has focused its attention on using prohibition regimes such as nation-wide curfews, states of emergency and basic attendant security practices, as well as concentrated numbers of officers in certain areas, usually protecting wealthy neighbourhoods most effectively. these practices have been implemented with little reflection on the advice of criminological experts. curfews can have the effect of displacing violent crime from happening out on the streets to inside the home, most often against women and children. this type of crime is much harder to investigate by authorities as it usually goes unreported due to the nature and circumstances of domestic crime and the relationship that exists between the victims and offenders. the concentration of police officers in alleged ‘hot spots’ of criminal activity does not act as a legitimate effort either due to the fact that it can also displace crime to other areas of the country once criminals realize the elevated presence of security in those particular places. there has also been the use of overt authority and abuse of power when police deal with citizens of lower socioeconomic status as a means of controlling them to prevent crime from eventually occurring. this is seen in the broadening of powers for authorities to conduct search and seizure operations and make arrests on ambiguous grounds. such regulations can most often have the adverse effect of stimulating crime instead of diminishing it by eroding the relationship between people and the state – represented in this case by law enforcement officials. this phenomenon is exasperated in caribbean nations that are politically polarized and therefore already have a removed sense of trust for state affairs. there are also no institutional mechanisms that act to deliver accountability and transparency to the public on the part of police forces, thus leaving more reason for communities melissa sobers| insecurity in security 135 to feel unsafe and distrustful of their local state services. it can be said that the disproportionate manner in which security resources are arranged to better serve the privileged and elites of the caribbean region ultimately speaks to the abundance and free amble of political corruption. according to bowling (2010), “[a]t worst, government ministers and businessmen are seen as complicit, profiting personally from the organized crime that penetrates to the very heart of commercial and political life on the islands” ( bowling, 5). aside from political corruption and destabilization, it is difficult for these impoverished nations to match the financial and technological strength of international criminal organizations when implementing national security. caribbean governments have come to realize that if the problem of crime continues to escalate at such an alarming rate it will scare away investment and curtail any potential for economic growth. quite soon nations can slip into even worse social and economic deprivation on all levels of the social stratum. in fact, the caricom task force on crime and security outlined in their summary report that the issue of security should be looked at as a “developmental and social issue”. they have stated that, “foreign investment, which is an essential requirement in the development process, is impeded by the social instability which exists in several member states. social stability, on the other hand, can only be achieved if there is specific investment in the communities” ( sanders, 389). therefore governments have recently been looking into transnational solutions for this omnipotent problem that has only intensified throughout 21st century. transnational policing is a recent development that has been implemented to change the caribbean’s organization of security. it involves the collaboration of national police officers with other officers that are transatlantic. the system works by having local police officials of a nation meet with overseas liaison officers. these officers are most often from the united states and britain and are usually stationed in the caribbean for three to four years at a time for the purpose of aiding local forces in developing ideas that will work for their situation of crime in their home country (bowling, x). an important aspect of this system is that developed countries with foreign interests in the caribbean have offered to partially fund the implementation of new security measures suggested by liaison officers. this system of policing can be looked at as a positive thing since its advice is most useful in the battle against a specific criminal problem that has started coming to light in the region. this is the caribbean quilt | 2013 136 problem of organized criminal activity being conducted by deportees coming from the united states and canada where they have been exposed to advanced criminal skills that are unfamiliar to the caribbean region’s police forces. with this new effort to formulate and introduce improved security measures to the region, many problems come to mind. one issue is the fact that these foreign liaison officers have little contextual background knowledge regarding the region. this makes it difficult for them to actually and pragmatically suggest a protocol that would work in the context of the caribbean, keeping in mind all of its complexities and its place in history which ultimately contribute to its present situation. this lends us the memory of previously exported ideas from metropolises that had adverse effects for the underdeveloped masses such as the economic teachings of the chicago boys in latin america from the school of the americas and, more locally, the operation of the moyne commission in the british caribbean. these officers tend to act with ‘occidentalism’, described by maureen cain (2000) as “presuming sameness in key cultural categories, practices and institutions” across the caribbean region (cain, 239). another point of conflict is that the security measures devised by the liaison officers may not be effectively or successfully implemented due to the fact that their suggestions are based on systems that exist in well equipped, developed nations, not underresourced police units like those of the caribbean (xi, bowling). although funding from international sources has been promised, negative implications have come out of this arrangement as well. according to bowling (2010), “the security agenda is set by those who provide the resources, and although there are mutual interest, deployment is geared firstly to the interests of the metropolitan countries rather than those of the caribbean” (bowling, xi). there has been an overflow of ideas geared towards preventing drug trafficking and drug-related crimes under the supervision and suggestions of liaison officers. this is ultimately because united states, canada and britain are mostly interested in stopping the flow of drugs from reaching their shores above any other concern. according to ronald sanders (2003), “it is significant that, when the international community was providing assistance, the entire focus was on restricting the supply of drugs, with little or no attention to the problems that transhipment was creating for caribbean countries themselves” (sanders, 386). therefore we see that through melissa sobers| insecurity in security 137 this push for transnationality in crime prevention, the caribbean region’s national body is once again made into a secondary concern. community policing has also been an idea put on the table for dealing with crime because of its ideological prevalence in canada and the united states. this approach of strengthening the partnership between citizens and police may look good on paper, but must be thought about critically in the context of certain caribbean nations, especially those which are racially divided such as trinidad and tobago and guyana. there is also the question of how much organizational capability exists in local police services to propel community policing programs (deosaran, 138). this can pose systematic setbacks if the project is simply implemented without dealing with the social roots of the country’s problem. a harsher mechanism that has been suggested includes regional associations among police, military, and customs. their course of action has included the use of military force in towns and villages alongside police officials, but this has acted in some cases to blur the responsibilities of the police and military when it comes to maintaining order in society. giving these forces increased amounts of authoritative reign enables the consent to retain a culture of control as opposed to one that assumes the responsibility to be the caretaker of its citizenry (bowling, x). the aforementioned overseas liaison officers behind all of these projects ultimately add to the threat of neocolonialism by extending the global policing power of developed countries. in other words, a link is created between the islands and the metropolis in a way that facilitates international, indirect governance (bowling, 10). drawing on the historical undertones of this practice, bowling (2010) explains that “reliance on the former colonial masters and the world’s sole superpower comes at a cost of national sovereignty and self-determination” (bowling, xi). in contrast, there has been a push for regional collaboration to solve the problem of crime collectively, relying on other caribbean nations who experience a similar struggle as opposed to neocolonial structures in developed, and unfamiliar countries. pooling resources to select the best officers from all regional forces to form a special response unit has been suggested. the idea of regionalized transnational links between local police sectors is important because as maureen cain (2000) states, the crime-fighters would be “indigenous but globally aware”. antigua and barbuda’s prime minister, lester bird, proposed in 2001 the formation of a regional caribbean quilt | 2013 138 authority to devise anti-narcotic strategies to target the root of much of the caribbean’s crime. he also called for a caribbean drug control and crime prevention office (cdccp), working towards a council of ministers of national security. “he envisaged that the office ‘would be charged with the responsibility of devising and approving a regional anti-narcotics and crime prevention strategy; managing the policy including supervising the drug enforcement units; drafting common anti-narcotics legislation; negotiating cooperation treaties with other countries; executing an educational programme against drugs, and mounting a diplomatic démarche on behalf of all caribbean states’” (sanders, 387). this call for regional mechanisms to deal with crime is a step in the right direction however, considering how unorganized and ineffective the caricom single market economy and free movement of persons regime has been it is no surprise that this project has not been fully realized either. regional entities that have in fact been formed include the regional security system (rss) and the association of caribbean commissioners of police (accp) which act to curb civil emergencies as well as respond to natural disasters (bowling, 10). what makes these organizations problematic is that they are disguised under regional claims but are actually created and funded by american, canadian, and british institutions, thus, once again, ‘he who pays the piper calls the tune’. in other words, the role of security is skewed to center around the priorities of those supplying the financial or resource aid. it is clear that the region of the caribbean has come to depend for its livelihood on entertaining people who want care-free holidays to escape the harsh realities of life. therefore it is understandable that some effective security strategies or provisions be made to protect visitors. however, the problem is that the system of tourism continually abuses and exploits caribbean nations by inadvertently perpetuating crime among local inhabitants, thus making it ironic that governments allocate scarce national resources to protect such an operation at grave social costs to their own populations. the fact is that state interests of potential development in this derogatory system is the reason behind implementing expensive security measures, despite the great costs to domestic society. the efforts used to fight the increasing crime rates or bids for protective measures for the citizens of caribbean nations are sadly not as effective or as highly prioritized as those of the tourists. melissa sobers| insecurity in security 139 many factors contribute to the unsuccessfulness of national security practices beginning with political corruption and preoccupations on economic dependency. harsh, weakly informed apparatus of national curfews and the granting of more authority to officers for making ambiguous stop and searches and arrests also act to diminish any success at providing a safer environment. the limited amount of resources available to caribbean security forces is another major roadblock for making the region a safer place. the globalization of security has not helped the local situation much either. the foreign-centered agenda of overseas liaison officers, their lack of regional knowledge and historical information, and their incompatible suggestions for security in the caribbean setting has done little to curb the situation of crime that locals fearfully face on a daily basis. there is also the major problem of deepening neocolonial ties with developed nations through the use of external aid. although solutions have been ideologically and theoretically sketched out involving the regional caribbean society, actual efforts and implementations have yet to arise in caricom’s agenda, making it impossible for citizens to hold out hope in their governmental systems. the mechanism that have been implemented thus far have simply worn the mask of regionalism but are actually devised and funded by the metropolitan countries of britain, canada and the united states. at this rate, the outlook on the caribbean’s problem with crime is not hopeful. this should act as a wake-up call for governments to truly pay attention at the detrimental effects that are emanating from sources of ‘development’ and ‘socioeconomic growth’, namely the tourism sector. instead of protecting this losing cause, governments should focus their attention on regional strategies for growth and sustainment which is their ultimate weapon for curbing the situation of crime. caribbean quilt | 2013 140 work cited biko agozino, ben bowling, geofrey st. bernard, and elizabeth ward (2009), “guns, crime and social order in the west indies”, criminology and criminal justice, vol 19 (3): 287-305 bowling, benjamin. policing the caribbean. oxford: oxford university press, 2010. print. cain, maureen. "orientalism, occidentalism and the sociology of crime." british journal of criminology 40 (2000): 239-260. academic onefile. web. 1 apr. 2012 cohen, erik. "the impact of tourism on the physical environment." annals of tourism research 5 (1978): 215-232. print. deosaran, ramesh. "community policing in the caribbean: context, community and police capability." policing: an international journal of police strategies & management 25.1 (2002): 125-146. scholars portal journals. web. 1 apr. 2012. kincaid, jamaica. “a small place.” new york: farrar, straus, and giroux, 1988. print. mcelroy, jerome, and klaus de albuquerque. "the tourism demonstration effect in the caribbean." journal of retailing and consumer services 2.4 (1986): 31-34. scholars portal journals. web. 1 apr. 2012. mcelroy, jerome, and klaus de albuquerque. "tourism and crime in the caribbean." annals of tourism research 26.4 (1999): 968-984. print. morris, m., “army patrols tourist areas.” the daily gleaner (august 20, 1992): 1. web. 1 apr. 2012. pattullo, polly. last resorts: the cost of tourism in the caribbean. london: cassell; 1996. print. sanders, ronald. "crime in the caribbean: an overwhelming phenomenon." the round table: the commonwealth journal of international affairs 92.370 (2003): 377-390. taylor & francis online. web. 1 apr. 2012. melissa sobers| insecurity in security 141 sheller, mimi, "natural hedonism: the invention of caribbean islands as tropical playgrounds," in sandra courtman (ed) beyond the blood, the beach & the banana: new perspectives in caribbean studies. kingston: ian randle, 2004. 170-185. print. villamil, j. “tourism in the caribbean”, washington: unesco/ibrd. 1979. 25 indigeneity and blackness: partners in the struggles of settler-colonialism octavia andrade-dixon introduction the north american continent, as it is known today, has experienced forced transformations over the past five hundred years. through the hands of different european powers, what is known as turtle island by many was transformed into a radically different society. colonizers built this territory through violent and unjust processes of dispossession and through the structural genocide of indigenous people and the enslavement of african peoples. these processes are conceptualized as settler-colonialism and trans-atlantic slavery. through colonial violence, indigenous identities have faced a barrage of western values imposed on their everyday lives. further, these impositions and shifts in societal structure have become internalised and therefore naturalized within indigenous livelihood. for the descendants of slaves throughout the americas, similar generational traumas have been enacted upon them by colonizing powers. although the same perpetrators enacted these traumas, and in the same geographic space, they are kept separate within colonial rhetoric. however, i contest that these are not wholly separate entities, but processes that are in conversation with each other and hold strong similarities. black and indigenous communities are directly influenced by settler-colonial morality through the naturalization of heteropatriarchy and evangelical practises into community governance. this heteropatriarchy is then weaponized by the cis-gendered heterosexual (cishet) male population for their societal advancement and to regulate the actions of women and queer/two-spirit persons. colonialism and christianity assimilatory practises are a method that settler-colonial states use to strip the subjects of colonization of their identity, in this instance, indigenous and black folk. through residential schools, the policing of spirituality and the enforcement of colonially-acceptable governing systems, indigenous and black people have had to adapt and negotiate their identities as a means of survival. in turn, they have internalized these colonial moralities within their communities. christianity is a primary tool of colonization that has been incorporated into both societies to different degrees. christianity was incorporated into indigenous communities as a means of survival in the face of violent colonialism (barker 198). authentic forms of spirituality were repressed by colonizers. indigenous peoples were forced to disguise their traditions within an acceptable religion as a covert means of preserving and ensuring the survival of their own cultural. however, in the current epoch, it becomes harder to differentiate between what is authentically indigenous, and what has been naturalized. in instances such as the diné marriage act, it was asserted by the navajo nation council that barring same-sex marriage aligns with traditional values of the navajo people (barker 206). many tribe members were shocked at this assertion and contested the view that position was compatible with their long-held values (barker 207). from their understanding, acceptance and tolerance were the seminal values of their tribes; however, the rulings of the tribal governments were in direct opposition to this idea (barker 209). in the navajo nation, despite the existence of nadleeh spirit stories that detail individuals with both masculine and feminine identities who were highly regarded in their society, they caribbean quilt ǀ 2020 26 chose to naturalize christianity into their spirituality instead (barker, 212). the interpretation enforces a colonial perspective on a non-colonial governing system. the navajo nation council no longer recognized that these ideals were not authentic to their people and, in its application of imposed ideals, it excluded a subset of its own people. the blurring of what is colonial and authentically indigenous was lost in this instance. in black communities, the same blurring of original values and christianity has occurred. for the “peculiar institution” to be successful, enslaved africans were barred from practising their authentic religions. the enforcement of christianity, coupled with the intermixing of people from different tribes and geographical areas, ensured was difficult to maintain connections to authentic modes of spirituality. many enslaved africans also disguised their original practices within christian practises because it was the only way to maintain the former under plantation surveillance. currently, christianity is a religion that has a stronghold within the black community, but elements of authentic spiritualities bleed through. my maternal grandmother is a devout christian and believes certain “worldly practises” are “of the devil.” yet, she often references obeah, an african influenced religion and medicinal practise with supernatural and natural elements, a religion that does not align with christianity (wisecup 411). these references are typically negative and are used to describe situations where she believes someone has directed bad energy or curses upon her, aligning with how it is used by many jamaicans today. despite the negative connotation, the invocation of obeah is her acknowledgement of african spiritualities and how they are still interwoven in our cultural framework. these instances of syncretism between christianity and authentic religions are a common thread between black and indigenous folk, as both groups experienced colonialism in similar ways. weaponizing heteropatriarchy the influences of christianity on authentic governing practises manifest themselves in the ways in which men perpetuate heteropatriarchy within black and indigenous communities. it is disguised as beneficial but is detrimental to non-cishet male members of the community. due to the heteropatriarchal nature of broader settler societies, men were not admonished for this behaviour by outsiders. within indigenous nations, heteropatriarchy has been enacted systematically at the legislative level. we see this in such practices as the marriage ban and the indian act. the cherokee national council banned same-sex marriage on the grounds that the original cherokee text was not gender-neutral but binary (barker 202). however, the underlying reason was fear of settler-colonial government interference in the nation’s affairs if the latter caught wind of queer indigenous people circumventing federal law (barker 201). the council willingly excluded queer cherokees from the legal privileges granted through marriage, because it would threaten their perceived security within settler-colonial society. the indian act serves as yet another example of prioritizing male benefits. women activists advocated for amendments to bill c-31’s section12 (1) (b), which stripped indigenous women and their children of their status if they had white partners (lawrence 14). the women’s efforts were not supported by male organizers, since the latter were not affected by this piece in the legislation and were more concerned that drawing attention to the indian act would affect them detrimentally (lawrence 14). had it not been women fighting against male complacency, a octavia andrade-dixon indigeneity and blackness 27 large proportion of indigenous people would not have status, leading to community alienation and inability to access resources. heteropatriarchal manifestations in the black community often take place in similar spaces, such as organizing. most notably, these practices were enacted within the civil rights movement. the most prominent names out of the civil rights movement were often those of men, such as malcolm x or martin luther king jr. however, bar rosa parks, many women were an active part of the movement but did not receive the same level of acknowledgement. women served as integral organizers creating flyers, organizing students and working on the ground with disenfranchised community members (barnett 168). despite the time and labour they put into the movements, they were not allowed to be leaders because much of the civil rights movement held leaders from the church, thus ensuring a firmly male-dominated leadership space. in black and indigenous communities, cishet male security is made the primary governing goal. when men in the community enact legislation or organizing tactics, it does not include the plights of all members. the notion of “community first” is a guise used to maintain the oppression of heterosexual women and queer community members. although the thought process is gradual freedom, the reality is that men create conditional freedoms for themselves in which they find pride in functioning like cishet white men. the ability to assert dominance over the subjugated members of the community grants them the confidence they cannot find in broader society because of their marginalized positions. thus, through the “community first” rhetoric and by weaponizing what is seen as traditional faith-based values, men are given space to perpetuate this cycle until marginalized members of the community fight for their rights at an intracommunity level. heteropatriarchy as regulation in the same way that weaponizing heteropatriarchy benefits the cishet male, it is used to the detriment of cishet women and queer individuals in black and indigenous communities. within indigenous communities, colonial laws and heteropatriarchal ideals remain unchallenged because they benefit cishet men, and allow them to maintain control over the women in their society. through the indian act, indigenous women had to be married to indigenous men for their children to maintain status. however, men were able to intermarry and pass status to their biracial children (lawrence15). the law allowed for men in the community to limit women’s choices to only other status men because of the burden of transferring status to their children. it was also queer exclusionary, only allowing for heterosexual partnerships and erasing two-spirit identities. when the law came under increased scrutiny and was challenged by indigenous peoples, most activists were women. further, once women fought back and marginally more egalitarian marriage acts were put into place, there were still heteropatriarchal tones to the legislation. amendments to bill c-31 did not remove the necessity of marriage from passing status but gave more room for intermarriage. under this protocol, indigenous women with an indigenous mother and non-status father became 6(2)s, the lower-status denomination. this maintains the burden for former non-status women to marry a status man to prevent her children from losing status. though this applies to male 6(2)s as well, society does not burden men with the same expectation to procreate with the same urgency it does women. additionally, there is no mention of two-spirit or queer couples processes of childbearing, such as sperm or egg donors. how caribbean quilt ǀ 2020 28 would their children navigate status if the biological parent was a 6(2)? this question is left unanswered with the changes. black women also experience the burden of maintaining the black family. within the black community, racial maintenance followed an inverse process: any child who was part black was deemed black. this meant slave masters would sexually abuse enslaved women to create a larger labour force (nelson). in turn, there is a strong stigma when black women date white men. for black men, who were fetishized differently, however, white women are objects of desire and personal advancement (romano 130). the thought process continues currently as black men face less scrutiny when they date white or non-white women. the expectation for black women is that they will exclusively date black and not “betray” the community by dating white or nonblack. societal pressures reveal themselves in the marriage practises of black men and women. black men have a 25% rate of marriage to white women, but black women only have a 12% rate of marriage to white men (wang). within my family dynamic, there have been explicitly gendered pressures to have black partners on me and my female family members in contrast to my male family members. my haitian grandmother, whose own mother was italian, has vocally disapproved or expressed apprehension about the white or non-black partners my female cousins and i have had. however, i have not heard the same sentiment when my male cousin dates white women. despite the trauma she has dealt with due to her biracial identity, she has not extended the same warnings equally amongst her grandchildren. the pervasiveness of gendered control on black and indigenous women lies not only in the individual expectations of the family but in the broader landscapes of community and nation. conclusion black and indigenous peoples have suffered at the hands of colonialism for centuries. both people’s homelands and cultures and been ravaged by european influences. as a result, the pervasive heteropatriarchal systems of colonizers have become commonplace in our communities, through modes such as religion and legal governance. men have continuously prioritized themselves at the expense of cishet women and queer folk in our communities. the work we put in as cishet women and queer folk is not acknowledged or congratulated until we start the applause ourselves. if not for women and queer folk, many members of the community would be left to the wayside. we pick up pieces of community when no one else is willing, and through these efforts, our cultures survive. if not for the women who fought for their children to have status, many indigenous people today would be systematically excluded from their people. if not for queer advocates, equality amongst all members would be a myth. the work of women and queer folk is what pushes us towards decolonization and staying in touch with our authentic ways rather than holding onto colonizer ways. octavia andrade-dixon indigeneity and blackness 29 works cited barker, j. (2011). native acts law, recognition, and cultural authenticity. durham: duke university press. barnett, b. m. (1993). invisible southern black women leaders in the civil rights movement: gender &amp; society, 7(2), 162–182. doi: 10.1177/089124393007002002 lawrence, b. (2003). gender, race, and the regulation of native identity in canada and the united states: an overview. hypatia, 18(2), 3–31. doi: 10.1353/hyp.2003.0031 lewis, r., & ford-robertson, j. (2010). understanding the occurrence of interracial marriage in the united states through differential assimilation. journal of black studies, 41(2), 405–420. doi: 10.1177/0021934709355120 nelson, c (2019) exploring slavery through the fugitive slavery archive [lecture] romano, r. (2018). something old, something new: black women, interracial dating, and the black marriage crisis. differences, 29(2), 126–153. doi: 10.1215/10407391-6999802 ubc. “bill c-31.” indigenousfoundations, first nations & indigenous studies ubc, 2009, https://indigenousfoundations.arts.ubc.ca/bill_c-31/. wang, w. (2015, june 12). interracial marriage: who is 'marrying out'? retrieved from https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/06/12/interracial-marriage-who-is-marrying-out/. wisecup, k. (2013). knowing obeah. atlantic studies, 10(3), 406–425. doi: 10.1080/14788810.2013.809228 front matter with bios.pdf 66 debt and destruction: the global abuse of haiti and unbalancing the myth of benevolent canada sabrina uwase an integral responsibility of nation-states is to provide protection and the means for attaining a fulfilling life to those it governs. given the fact that most current global powers were not founded with the needs of racialized peoples in mind, one is infuriated but not surprised, at the cyclical pattern of disregard and exploitation that people of colour in the americas experience. indigenous and black communities in the americas are not just disregarded by the state, but are actively targeted for exploitation and undermining. analyzing haiti’s post-colonial history and canada’s domestic and international mining operations, i argue that nations in the caribbean and latin america have been extensively exploited economically by imperial powers, and their survival undermined by colonial legacies. numerous countries in the region, to varying degrees, continue to experience the wrath of state-sponsored white supremacy and crippling debt that prevent authentic development. i advance the position that coerced debt and resource extraction have been weaponized against already ostracized communities by behemoth states that employ the myth of being a post-racial democracy. this paper also highlights a complex set of global relationships by linking extraction, state-corporate relations, and north-south divides, with a focus on canadian mining in latin america. when revolutions are discussed, people are often familiar only with the american, french, or russian ones. in efforts to make the incredible feat of the haitian revolution an exception and not the norm, the nation has been physically, politically, and economically violated by imperial powers. this whitewashing of history leaves little room for the acknowledgement and celebration of non-white actors having a claim to what counts as important. from its inception, haiti has been the source of inspiration for various slave rebellions while simultaneously sparking the first embers for the global fight for black liberation. two years prior to the beginning of the haitian revolution, france published its declaration of the rights of man and citizen in 1789. although considered forward thinking for the period, contemporary readers will note that it only applied to white property-owning men. nevertheless, the notion that all men were born “free and equal in rights” would go on to inspire oppressed peoples in haiti to claim it. despite haiti appearing to be self-governing on paper, there exist external actors who exert considerable power over the state, undermining its sovereignty. i maintain that haiti has not fully decolonized itself from the economic and political control of current imperial powers like the us and canada. for several decades after haiti had fought for its independence, world powers refused to officially recognize it as a sovereign state (trouillot 47). while most other nations are applauded for gaining their independence, haiti was largely punished by both europe and its immediate neighbors in the region. examples of this include the us cutting diplomatic ties after its independence, the prevention of haitians leaving the island in efforts to stop the exportation of radical thought, and the numerous economic embargoes that were overwhelming for the newly founded republic (fuertes 296). in an action that one can only describe as economic terrorism, france pressured haiti into agreeing to pay 150 million francs in 1825, as retribution for the “loss” of french interests in exchange for recognizing their independence (fuertes 296). in 1838, france decreased the debt to 90 million francs. with current inflation accounted for, 90 million francs today is upwards of 21 billion us dollars that haiti had to pay for debt that can be reasonably sabrina uwase debt and destruction 67 regarded as illegitimate (sommers 2015). haiti being barred from engaging in regional economic trade while being expected to repay such a ludicrous debt is a mindboggling situation. it was in this period that haiti’s independence was used against it to continue the long history of financial exploitation on the island by imperial powers. the informal recolonization of haiti has largely been made possible by debt, “aid,” and north american foreign policy. the us historically did not recognize haiti’s independence for decades and currently does not seem to respect its legitimacy as a self-governing state. even before the birth of haiti as a free republic, us president andrew johnson had hopes of seizing the whole island (hidalgo 56). soon after, in 1910, us president william taft provided haiti with an interest-heavy loan to help pay its debt (u.s. department of state). failure to repay this new debt in 1914, led to the us moving much of haiti’s money to the us with the rationale of “stabilizing” haiti’s economy (u.s. department of state). when haitians understandably expressed disdain for their suffering through demonstrations, the us responded by occupying the nation for 19 years (scott 35). the us has coached and selected numerous haitian leaders, and exiled those who fail to advance its agenda. it is difficult for many to make sense of the turmoil in haiti because the detriment has been very incremental. constant intervention and external meddling in haiti have robbed the nation and its people the right to self-govern. wealth, whether through resource extraction or labour, continues to be endlessly depleted from haiti, to benefit the insatiable hunger of global north countries. the blatant mistreatment of underprivileged nations has transformed into the more insidious practice of “spreading democracy” or encouraging “economic development.” explicit enslavement has been substituted with a combination of the following: exploitation of a cheap labour force, implementation of regimes or leaders loyal to imperial interest, and interest-heavy conditional loans. debt has been primarily used for the underdevelopment of already struggling economies for the benefit of behemoth states like the us. the caribbean and latin america have both been imperilled by financial colonialism—primarily through high-interest conditional loans. currently, one could make the claim that not one nation in the caribbean has complete economic autonomy. as norman girvan once said, nations in the caribbean are “in-dependence” rather than independent (girvan 22). “in-dependence.” meaning that the success or failure of caribbean political economies is closely linked to the foreign policy goals of global powers. it can be argued that colonial patterns of trade are still being utilized in haiti at present. former plantation-based economies, which account for much of the caribbean, have been strong-armed into continuing the pattern of basing much of their economy on natural resource extraction. with little diversification of their economies, caribbean nations fall into the colonial tradition of capital being too concentrated in one sector, which leads to unequal structures in a nation’s economy (myint 318). contrary to popular belief, the primary goal of developmental theories and models produced by western states is not to alleviate poverty but to provide large economies access to vulnerable markets. despite global financial organizations like the world bank and international monetary fund striving to appear independent on paper, they implicitly and explicitly advance the foreign policy goals of established economies—primarily those of the united states, canada, and european states. many developmental theories can be described as removed because they do not adequately acknowledge the colonial histories that funded the development of numerous global powers at the expense of racialized peoples (vanden 157). numerous states that are categorized as underdeveloped have been deprived of a clean slate that independence promises, due to the entrenchment of colonial legacies within cornerstone institutions. colonial legacies have made caribbean quilt ǀ 2020 68 their presence known primarily through socio-economic and political barriers that benefit former colonial and current imperial powers. since first encounter, the caribbean and latin america have largely been viewed by colonizers and white settlers alike as a place to endlessly exploit for capital, regardless of social suffering or environmental consequences. especially in the latin america, there exist a widely-employed myth that extraction will advance the economic development of resource-rich impoverished nations (burchart 469). within much of the scholarship linking extraction with development, there seems to be a dangerous silence regarding the gross human suffering and environmental destruction that is caused in the hamsterwheel pursuit of development. i maintain that the widespread existence of neoliberal market policies in the caribbean and latin america should be described as economic terrorism. in efforts to prevent market crashes concocted by imperial powers, nations in the region are coerced into accepting interest-heavy loans that are extremely difficult for nations already in debt to repay. to make matters worse, conditional loans usually require nations to reduce public spending and privatize pillar institutions like education, healthcare, and electricity, which devastate working class people (easterly 4). in efforts to acknowledge that the governments and people who are most affected have a degree of self-determination, one must interrogate the part that caribbean and latin american actors play in facilitating foreign exploitation. i maintain that these countries are not actively welcoming foreign intervention, but instead are strong-armed into implementing neoliberal economic policies that have social and environmental consequences. using the pretext of development, leaders in latin america have often argued that extractive projects are necessary to fund the well-being of society. using the former to justify the latter, corporations and state actors use the pursuit of development to advance particular interests that devastate the most defenceless members of the societies affected. this trading-in of environmental protection and the well-being of people for the pursuit of wealth is labelled by peter dauvergne as “shadows of consumption.” in his description of “shadows of consumption,” dauvergne emphasizes the overlooked and concealed dangers of excessive extraction and its effects on people, wildlife, and the environment (dauvergne 3). nations and multibillion-dollar conglomerates can be described to be working together to gain highly profitable extractive contracts. a fact that surprises many is that canada is one of the largest mining countries in the world. outside of continental north america, much of canada’s mining is done in numerous latin american countries (gordon 278). one could describe canada’s state-corporate interests in latin america as economic colonialism. barrick gold, founded by peter munk, is continuously regarded as the leader in gold mining. the list of environmental, sexual, and labour violations done in efforts to increase barrick gold’s profits is ever-growing (holterman 60). munk’s humanitarian legacy has been bought and paid for with stolen wealth. munk’s donations cannot be removed from their roots in indigenous land dispossession, labour exploitation, sexual violence, and environmental violence. the propaganda-like optics of canada being portrayed as gentle and benevolent is extremely dangerous because it conceals and excuses state-sponsored violence as exceptionalities instead of the norm that it is. coining the term “present absence,” andrea smith advances the view that there is a historical and contemporary erasure of indigenous peoples and cultures from north american public discourse (70). indigenous communities in canada have not only experienced genocide and subjugation by white settlers historically, but continue to resist attacks against their histories, land, sabrina uwase debt and destruction 69 languages, and culture. ann stoler writes that “racism does not merely arise in moments of crisis, in sporadic cleansings. it is internal to the biopolitical state, woven into the web of the social body, threaded through its fabric” (stoler 172). with former prime minster stephen harper’s apology for canadian residential schools in 2006 and the creation of the truth and reconciliation commission one cannot help but skeptically question whether these steps have been taken genuinely or for optics’ sake. apologies should not be considered an exoneration of canada’s past crimes, because the state continues to engage in policies and business ventures that disregard and harm indigenous communities both at home and abroad. the myth of a utopian and multicultural society in canada drives the state further into neoliberal territory. this endorses a narrative of acceptance, thus undermining local and national pressures to tackle our colonial history and present. the irony is not lost on some that canada and the us claim to be beacons for freedom and democracy yet infringe on the right for sovereign nations to self-govern without external influence. haiti was the first blow in breaking the chain of the enslavement of black people. this reorganizing of the status quo was detrimental to economies that were heavily dependent on enslaved labour. because of this, imperial powers tried profusely to destabilize the first black republic to deter others from pursuing the same means. haiti’s initial independence showed that physical decolonization was a possibility. primarily through debt and resource extraction, imperial nations have succeeded in economically colonizing politically independent states in the caribbean and latin america. caribbean quilt ǀ 2020 70 works cited burchardt, hans-jürgen, and kristina dietz. "(neo-) extractivism–a new challenge for development theory from latin america." third world quarterly 35, no. 3, 2014, p. 469. dauvergne, peter. “introduction: the ecological shadows of rising consumption. chapter 2: dying of consumption.” the shadows of consumption: consequences for the global environment, mit press. 2010. pp. 1-32. easterly, william. "what did structural adjustment adjust?: the association of policies and growth with repeated imf and world bank adjustment loans." journal of development economics 76, no. 1, 2005, pp. 1-22. fuertes, digna castañeda. "the haitian revolution: legacy and actuality." international journal of cuban studies. 2010. p. 296. gordon, todd and jeffrey r. webber. blood of extraction: canadian imperialism in latin america. fernwood publishing, 2016. p. 278. hidalgo, dennis. "charles sumner and the annexation of the dominican republic." itinerario 21, no. 2, 1997. p. 56. holterman, devin. "slow violence, extraction and human rights defence in tanzania: notes from the field." resources policy 40, 2014, pp. 59-65. myint, hla. "the "classical theory" of international trade and the underdeveloped countries." the economic journal 68, no. 270, 1958, p. 318. scott, helen. "200 years of us imperialism: haiti under siege." international socialist review 35, 2004. smith, andrea. “not an indian tradition: the sexual colonization of indigenous peoples”. hypatia, v. 18. i. 2, 2003, pp. 70-85. sommers, jeffrey. race, reality, and realpolitik: u.s.-haiti relations in the lead up to the 1915 occupation. 2015. p. 124. stoler, ann. race and the education of desire. duke university press, 1997, p. 172. trouillot, michel-rolph. "haiti’s nightmare and the lessons of history." nacla report on the americas 27, no. 4, 1994, pp. 46-51. u.s. government. "u.s. invasion and occupation of haiti, 1915-34." u.s. department of state. accessed march 8, 2019. https://2001-2009.state.gov/r/pa/ho/time/wwi/88275.htm. vanden, harry e. and gary prevost. “the political economy of latin america” in, politics of latin america: the power game (sixth ed). 2017, pp. 157-191. https://2001-2009.state.gov/r/pa/ho/time/wwi/88275.htm sabrina uwase debt and destruction 71 weyland, kurt. 2002. the politics of market reform in fragile democracies: argentina, brazil, peru, and venezuela. princeton university press, 2002. :::::: 43 theories of haitian mobility and their relationship to the dominican sugar industry juliana ramirez juliana ramirez is a fourth-year student and a jackman humanities institute undergraduate fellow doing a specialist in art history and a minor in spanish. she is interested in the representation of the 'other' in western art during the two centuries following the encounter between western europe and the americas. more specifically, in how depictions of 'racial' differences in renaissance paintings and prints helped to shape european identity. geographically, her research focuses on mexico, the caribbean, the netherlands, portugal and spain. in this paper i will study the emergence and evolution of the dominican sugar plantations—and their employment of migrant labor—in order to delineate the reasons that led to haitian migration to the dominican republic. firstly, i will investigate different scholarly explanations on migration in the caribbean; secondly, i will describe how the dominican ingenio evolved; and finally, i will compare the migration theories with the economic development of the dominican sugar industry in order to discern the possible causes of haitian migration to the dominican republic during the early twentieth century. many different scholars explain the reasons why haitians migrate. glenn perusek, for instance, believes that “it is haiti’s position as the most backward country in the western hemisphere that leads to immutable outflow from the country.”1 in other words, haiti, and its situation of extreme poverty, pushes its citizens out of the country. perusek takes this argument so far as to claim that the situation in haiti is so dire that the frequency of haitian migration is unaffected by labor demand.2 according to perusek, for haitians, migration is a choice of life or death: “migrate or starve.”3 other scholars, however, assume less radical positions. andrés cortén and michiel baud, for example, believe that what 1 glenn perusek, “haitian emigration in the early twentieth century,” international migration review 18, no. 1 (spring, 1984): 6. 2 “the reason changes in labor demand in receiving countries play little or no part in determining the level of migration from haiti—once migration flows are established—stems from the fact that the situation for most haitians at home is not ‘normal’. the situation—absolute poverty—is the fundamental cause of migration from haiti.” ibid, 7. 3 ibid, 14. caribbean quilt | 2013 44 impels haitians to migrate is the possibility of “monetary savings.”4 cortén argues that because of “the succession regime [in haiti, which led] to the parceling of land,”5 the haitian economy remained ‘backward’ and devoted to small agricultural production.6 mercantilism, then, could not—and did not—emerge in haiti; instead, the majority of financial transactions were conducted through systems of exchange and bartering.7 in other words, the cause of haitian emigration, according to cortén and baud, is not haiti’s extreme poverty, but the desire to save hard currency to bring (or send) back home in order to buy consumer goods without having to exchange the food that they grow.8 dennis conway takes on a more historical approach. he argues that people from the caribbean see “mobility options…as an appropriate response to their situations” because “their predecessors had emigrated away from the plantations.”9 put differently, migration in the caribbean emerges as a historical strategy to ameliorate one’s situation. samuel martínez, elaborates on this idea and argues that “given the caribbean region's long history of forced immigration and bonded labor, it is not surprising that geographical mobility was one of the first ways that afro-caribbean peoples asserted their freedom after emancipation.”10 migration, from this viewpoint, is not simply a necessity but also a choice. martínez, furthermore, comments that when larger migrations occur there usually is an “active inducement by government or host employers,”11 and therefore, in the case of mass migrations, the individual’s desire to ‘escape poverty’ or improve 4 michiel baud, “sugar and unfree labour: reflections on labour control in the dominican republic, 1870-1935,” journal of peasant studies 19, no. 2 (1992): 312. and, andrés cortén et al, “haití: estructura agraria y migración de trabajadores a los centrales azucareros dominicanos”, in azúcar y política en la república dominicana (santo domingo: ediciones de taller, 1976), 106. 5 “la tenencia de la tierra es aquella de la pequeña propiedad que da lugar, en razón del régimen sucesorio, al parcelamiento” [all translations from spanish to english are mine]. cortén et al, 102. 6 franc báez evertsz, braceros haitianos en la república dominicana (santo domingo: ediciones de taller, 1984), 40. 7 corte et al, 100. 8 ibid. 9 dennis conway, “caribbean international mobility traditions,” boletín de estudios latinoamericanos y del caribe 46 (june, 1989): 22. 10 samuel martínez, “from hidden hand to heavy hand: sugar, the state, and migrant labor in haiti and the dominican republic,” latin american research review 34, no. 1 (1999): 60. 11 ibid, 59. juliana ramirez theories of haitian mobility 45 their situation is less significant than the migration programs promoted by governments or employers. frans báez evertsz agrees with martínez, and argues that “haitian citizens emigrate because of extreme poverty and unemployment [but also] because in [the receiving] country there are: a constant demand for labour, and a recruiting system that stimulates, facilitates, and regulates the incorporation of haitian workers into the host country.”12 in other words, both the receiving and sending government must cooperate in the sponsorship of migrants. of these theories concerning migration in the caribbean, which one best explains the mass migration of haitians to the dominican republic in the early twentieth century? since most of these migrants work in the sugar plantations, an analysis of the development of the ingenios will be necessary to answer this question. the dominican republic was the last caribbean country to develop large-scale sugar production.13 nonetheless, dominican sugar production emerged and one could argue, at the opportune moment. its development in 1870 coincides with “the outbreak of the first cuban war of independence (1868-78)…[that] affected the production of the world’s major producer-exporter [of cane sugar, and] the war between france and germany in 1870…[that] affected the major producers of beet sugar [in europe].”14 the dominican republic, however, did not replace germany or cuba as the world’s major producer of sugar. as a matter of fact, many years passed before the incipient dominican plantations transformed into large, modern, profitable ingenios. del castillo describes this process in three phases: (1) the competitive phase 12 “los ciudadanos haitianos emigran de su país debido a los altos niveles de pobreza y desocupación imperantes; y se dirigen a [otro país] porque existe en este país una oferta predeterminada de empleos para ellos y un sistema de reclutamiento que estimula, regula y facilita su incorporación”. báez evertsz, 121. 13 harmannus hoetink, “labour ‘scarcity’ and immigration in the dominican republic c.1875-c.1930,” in labour in the caribbean, ed. malcolm cross and gad heuman (london: macmillan publishers ltd, 1988), 160. 14 josé del castillo, “the formation of the dominican sugar industry: from competition to monopoly, from national semiproletariat to foreign proletariat,” in between slavery and free labor: the spanish-speaking caribbean in the nineteenth century, ed. manuel moreno fraginals, frank moya pons, and stanley l. engerman (baltimore: the johns hopkins university press, 1985), 215. caribbean quilt | 2013 46 (early 1870s-1884 crisis), (2) the transition phase (1884 crisis-us occupation), and (3) the phase of importation of haitian labor (us occupation-1920s crisis).15 these three moments will help us understand the evolution of the plantations, and the reasons why the importation of haitian labour became imperative in this process. the competitive phase “was characterized by the predominance of individual businesses, a semi-mechanized technology, a predominantly national (dominican) labor force, and the existence of attractive salary levels.”16 however, with the crisis of 1884,17 prices plummeted, and producers “were forced to cut their expenditure.”18 dominican workers refused to perform the same job for less money, and since they had other sources of income, as the terrenos comuneros,19 they simply abandoned the plantations and returned to their communal lands. both the government and planters proved unable to control local labour because most workers had access to land through which they could earn a living.20 dominican workers, in other words, did not need wage labour to survive; they had other options. in the transition phase the main objective was the economic recovery of the industry, and thus the “concentration of capital.”21 since dominican workers were not willing to work in the plantations for the wages offered, a need for foreign labour emerged.22 this need was first satisfied by cocolos, west indian workers coming from british territories.23 as patrick e. bryan points out, “it was not the 15 ibid, 217-220. 16 ibid, 217. 17 “the beet industry had undergone extraordinary technological development during the second half of the nineteenth century…in this regard the sugar cane industry had been lagging. the gap reached such proportions that for world sugar production in the 1899-1900 harvest…31 percent was cane sugar and 69 percent was beet.” ibid., 224. 18 baud, 309. 19 hoetink, 166. 20 “the durable ‘scarcity’ of local labour for the sugar sector may be attributed to a mixture, varying over time, of such factors as low population density in combination with easy access to land.” ibid., 169. and “the dominican republic’s sparse population and easy availability of land caused the country to resemble an open frontier in 1875…if left free, rural dominicans could easily earn a living as independent agricultural producers without needing to sell their labor to large proprietors.” martínez, 62. 21 del castillo, 217. 22 “by the 1910s, dominicans had mostly abandoned labor in the cane fields to immigrant workers.” martínez, 65. 23 del castillo, 238-242. juliana ramirez theories of haitian mobility 47 welfare of labour that mattered, or the color of the labour, but the maximization of profit,”24 and cocolos worked for far less money than dominicans: they were “a source of cheap labor [and] could be subjected to harsh discipline with less hesitation than dominican national.”25 because west indians did not speak spanish, and did not have strong community ties in the dominican republic they lacked the power to organize effectively.26 however, there was a paradox. while planters encouraged the importation of foreign labor “in 1912, the dominican government passed a law that declared in part that ‘natives of european colonies in america, those of asia or africa and of oceania, as also laborers of any race except the caucasian, need prior permission to immigrate into the country.’” 27 in other words, the dominican government became stricter on its migration policies, and outright favoured the migration of whites. it was a racist policy that allowed sugar planters to import and exploit foreign, non-white labor: these non-white migrants were not welcomed in the dominican republic, and thus, working on the plantations became their only key to immigrate into the dominican. planters, in other words, saw an effective solution to lower wages (and thus optimize profit) in the implementation of foreign non-white labour, for these workers were more vulnerable. furthermore, the dominican government was “financially weaker than some of the sugar companies,”28 and “import/export taxes were [the government’s] only source of income.”29 therefore, sugar planters exerted a lot of power on the government’s policy making. what ensued from this power dynamic was a “process of ‘illegalisation’ of [the] labor force.”30 put differently, planters took advantage of the racist “national rhetoric [which] provided [them] with a lever to increase their exploitation of…workers.”31 with the illegalization of non-white labour, planters had more power over 24 patrick e. bryan, “the question of labor in the sugar industry of the dominican republic in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries,” in between slavery and free labor: the spanish-speaking caribbean in the nineteenth century, ed. manuel moreno fraginals, frank moya pons, and stanley l. engerman (baltimore: the johns hopkins university press, 1985), 238. 25 martínez, 65. 26 ibid. 27 bryan, 242. 28 martínez, 69. 29 baud, 311. 30 ibid, 314 31 ibid. caribbean quilt | 2013 48 their employees: planters, who financed the dominican government through their payment of import/export taxes, also allowed for illegal non-white labour to migrate to the dominican republic to work in the plantations. these workers, however, could not exit the plantation, for they were illegal in the country. planters had manipulated the government’s policy in order to make their workers more vulnerable and exploitable. furthermore, in 1916, when the us occupied the dominican republic, “a land registration law was promulgated which effectively put an end to the terrenos comuneros.”32 as báez evertsz mentions, “the installation of foreign agricultural companies granted with huge land concessions, was one of the most direct and important mechanisms for the dismantlement of the traditional agricultural system [in the dominican republic].”33 this reorganization of land, consequently, led to the conversion of sugar plantations into "well-protected bastions of (foreign) capital with practical sovereignty on their premises,"34 in which sugar planters had absolute control over workers.35 haitian immigration to the dominican republic emerges— as a major phenomenon—during the period of the u.s. occupation.36 firstly, in the 1920s west indians were finding other job possibilities in curaçao and aruba;37 and secondly, the haitian u.s. occupation coincides with the dominican u.s. occupation: “the u.s. military governments of haiti (1915-1934) and the dominican republic (1916-1924) began to set up conditions for the state to take an increasingly active hand in bracero recruitment and resettlement.”38 as hoetink comments, efforts to regulate immigration “were…never 32 hoetink, 169. 33 “la instalación de empresas agrícolas extranjeras, concesionarias de amplias porciones de tierra, fue uno de los principales y más directos mecanismos de desestructuración del sistema agrícola tradicional”. báez evertsz, 42. 34 baud, 311. 35 one of the most evident forms of control over workers is the fact that “dominican sugar companies minted their own money, which could only be used on the plantation…employees of the plantation were obliged to buy their daily necessities in the bodegas of the company, where prices were invariably higher than in other stores. [furthermore] as long as [employees] did not have official ‘dominican’ money they were prevented from leaving the plantation. the companies were often prepared to exchange the vales only at the end of the harvest to retain maximum control of their labourers.” baud, 313-14. 36 perusek, 12; hoetink, 173. 37 bryan, 245. 38 martínez, 67. juliana ramirez theories of haitian mobility 49 at variance with the interests of the large sugar estates, by now [1920s] mostly us owned.”39 in other words, haitian mass migration to the dominican republic emerges during the u.s. military occupations, for both government and employers (both under the control of the u.s.) deliberately create the conditions for the mobility of labour.40 of all the theories on migration in the caribbean explained at the outset of this paper, martínez’s theory best represents the relationship between the dominican sugar plantations and haitian mobility. albeit the extreme levels of poverty and haiti’s weak economy, the cause of haitian migration to the dominican republic need to be understood not only as a personal decision of the migrant, but also as a system implemented by governments and entrepreneurs to exert control over workers and to lower wages. in fact, according to martínez, “for a time, emigration fees and recruiting permits became the haitian government's largest internal source of revenue.”41 thus, migration is profitable, not only for the receiver country in the form of cheap labour, but also for the sender country in the form of permits and fees (and, of course, in the avoidance of social policy reform by the displacement of people that were likely to demand reform had they stayed). moreover, the creation of anti-migratory laws should be understood as a way to racially “isolate [the] labor force [in order] to maintain strict control over it.”42 the paradox is then unraveled: in spite of its apparent contradiction, migratory laws, as hoetink argues, are never opposed to entrepreneurs’ interests. the fact that mass haitian migration occurred at the same time as the u.s. occupation—in which u.s. interests infiltrated both government and host employers— demonstrates how an “active inducement”43 by governing bodies, more powerful than the individual interest, induced mass haitian migration to the dominican republic in the early twentieth century to be used as a source of cheap and pliable labour. 39 hoetink, 172. 40 martínez, 59. 41 ibid, 68. 42 baud, 302. 43 martínez, 59. caribbean quilt | 2013 50 works cited báez evertsz, franc. braceros haitianos en la república dominicana. santo domingo: ediciones de taller, 1984. baud, michiel. “sugar and unfree labour: reflections on labour control in the dominican republic, 1870-1935.” journal of peasant studies 19, no.2 (1992): 301-325. bryan, patrick e. “the question of labor in the sugar industry of the dominican republic in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.” in between slavery and free labour: the spanish-speaking caribbean in the nineteenth century, edited by manuel moreno fraginals, frank moya pons, and stanley l. engerman, 235-251. baltimore: the johns hopkins university press, 1985. conway, dennis. “caribbean international mobility traditions.” boletín de estudios latinoamericanos y del caribe 46 (june, 1989): 17-47. cortén, andrés, carlos ma. vilas, mercedes acosta, and isis duarte. “haití: estructura agraria y migración de trabajadores a los centrales azucareros dominicanos.” in azúcar y política en la república dominicana, 87-114. santo domingo: ediciones de taller, 1976. del castillo, josé. “the formation of the dominican sugar industry: from competition to monopoly, from national semiproletariat to foreign proletariat.” in between slavery and free labour: the spanish-speaking caribbean in the nineteenth century, edited by manuel moreno fraginals, frank moya pons, and stanley l. engerman, 215-234. baltimore: the johns hopkins university press, 1985. gorden, michelle e. “haitian forced labor in the dominican republic.” comparative labor law and policy journal 15 (january, 1994): 206-249. hoetink, harmannus. “labour ‘scarcity’ and immigration in the dominican republic c.1875-c.1930.” in labour in the caribbean, edited by malcolm cross and gad heuman, 160-175. london: macmillan publishers ltd., 1988. martínez, samuel. “from hidden hand to heavy hand: sugar, the state, and migrant labor in haiti and the dominican republic.” latin american research review 34, no. 1 (1999): 57-84. perusek, glenn. “haitian emigration in the early twentieth century.” international migration review 18, no.1 (spring, 1984): 4-18. :::::: 229 the caribbean studies student union is comprised of every student enrolled in a caribbean studies course. carssu supports these students by creating a space where they can come to share their life experiences, to discuss the implications of the themes they learn in the classroom, and to apply their skills and talents. carssu works closely with the caribbean studies department, its faculty and its professors to ensure that the program continues to grow. by hosting engaging events we hope to reaffirm the caribbean studies program as a vibrant and important part of the academic discourse. each event is an opportunity to educate someone about the importance of the caribbean in global history and politics. each social is a chance to gain new found friends. executive team 2013-2014 leslie-ann fullerton: co-president chantal mcfarlane: co-president samra hasnain: internal affairs melissa sobers: internal affairs tammy williams: external affairs candi chin-sang: technical director crystal-gyal palmer: event coordinator tiy cross-lovelace: assu representative katharine ball: academic advisor nasha mavalvala: executive at large nubia merriman: executive at large debbie mckenzie: executive at large benjamin drape: executive at large 1 a home in disorder is not a home: examining race in trinidad and tobago malek abdel-shehid among its neighbours, the island nation of trinidad and tobago stands out due to its ethnic makeup. the population of most caribbean nations is mainly of african descent; similar to guyana, trinidad and tobago is evenly divided between afro-trinidadians and indotrinidadians. unlike many of the other caribbean colonies, trinidad and tobago were not extensive plantation economies until much later in the colonial period (paton 291). this is one of the main reasons why the country presently hosts a proportionately lower afro-trinidadian population in comparison to other caribbean countries. while other ethno-cultural groups reside in the country, the aforementioned groups have dominated the landscape in numbers since at least the early 20th century (united nations statistics division). afro-trinidadians are generally descendants of enslaved africans brought to the caribbean to serve as plantation labourers; indotrinidadians are generally the descendants of south asian indentured labourers brought to trinidad to fulfill the same role following the abolition of slavery in the british west indies. trinidad and tobago's long history of colonial subjugation has bred a modern social hierarchy highly tied to race. racial categories centered around physical characteristics and created during the colonial period have been instrumental in the development of this social hierarchy. its institutionalization within the country’s modern national political system has resulted in persisting legacies evident throughout modern trinidadian society. i focus on the island of trinidad (while still making occasional reference to tobago) and argue that trinidadian national unity has been hampered by the foundations laid by the plantation system and consolidated by the modern political system. the colony’s plantation system was established by the spanish, maintained briefly by the french, and consolidated by the british. it resulted in the exploitation of enslaved africans and south asian indentured labourers, with both groups coerced into vying for preferential treatment from their colonial masters. because enslaved africans arrived in the area before south asian indentured labourers, the formation of their identity as “afro-trinidadian” occurred first. despite both islands’ favourable environments for agriculture, the spanish and french colonists were more concerned with their other colonies, such as cuba for the former and saint domingue (haiti) for the latter. britain gained control of tobago from france in 1763 and of trinidad from spain in 1797 (segal 40). at the time, both island colonies hosted relatively small populations and were not major plantation economies (40). african enslaved peoples were brought to trinidad largely in the early nineteenth century (morgan 249). segal’s research indicates that trinidad hosted 10,000 enslaved africans in 1797, with that number doubling by 1802 (40). due to the nature of the transatlantic slave trade, africans were often separated from their family members prior to leaving africa and were further divided once they reached the americas. thus, it was not uncommon for newly arrived enslaved africans to be surrounded by people of various african ethno-cultural groups (morgan 249). morgan claims that in the earliest stages of british rule, two thirds of enslaved peoples in trinidad were taken directly from the african continent, ranging from senegambia to mozambique; ethnic identity disappeared quickly as people often married outside of their ethno-cultural group (249). enslavement and forced displacement were instrumental in the erasure of african heterogeneity, replacing it instead with homogenous blackness. caribbean quilt ǀ 2020 2 despite massive growth in trinidad’s plantation economy, african people’s violent resistance to exploitation and rising costs managing the plantation system led to the abolition era. paton discusses the drastic increase in the importation of enslaved africans by british, french, and dutch land owners due to approaching emancipation (291). representing themselves as liberators, the european elite renounced its role in creating and upholding the system of enslavement and adopted a benevolent and salvific view of itself, thus erasing the contributions of oppressed people in achieving their own emancipation (heuman 349). subsequently, the colonies of trinidad and tobago, along with the rest of british west indies, declared the abolition of slavery in 1834 (pemberton et al). as a means of facilitating the transition between enslavement and freedom, british policy-makers believed that newly-freed africans should be required to complete apprenticeships: forty hours a week of unpaid labour to their former owner for a period of six years (heuman 349). as africans generally opted to leave the plantation after ending their work period, plantation owners sought new sources of labour. this new labour source was comprised of enslaved africans who were freed while out at sea, chinese labourers, and south asian labourers. the largest number of trinidad’s indentured labourers were of south asian descent; heuman estimates that roughly 150,000 people left the british raj for trinidad (357). this migration can be divided into three main periods: 1838-1848, 1851-1870, and post-1870; the majority arrived in the final era (357). this new group of indentured labourers were bound to their employer for a period of five years, followed by a period of ten years in which they were required to remain in trinidad (357). the use of indian indentured workers prolonged the life of the plantation economy, with drastic increases in production and diminished costs (358). unlike enslaved africans, south asian indentured workers were compensated for their labour; heuman notes that that they were exploited in other ways, such as poor wages or the “pass law,” which restricted an individual’s mobility to their designated plantation (358). similarly, to africans who were brought as enslaved peoples, but not to the same extent, south asian communities were subjected to a significant blurring of their ethno-cultural distinctions. south asian indentured workers in trinidad originated in different areas; as such, they carried with them different cultural traditions, spoke different languages, and belonged to various castes (358). differences between people, whether among afro-trinidadians or among indo-trinidadians, were not significant to european plantation owners, who generally treated all indentured labourers comparably (358). trinidad and tobago’s colonial history has heavily impacted later eras, especially in regard to present-day relations between ethno-cultural groups. unlike its various european colonizer states, trinidad and tobago has existed for a mere sixty years as a modern independent nation-stat. additionally, similarly to a significant portion of the americas, the islands of trinidad and tobago have undergone a drastic demographic shift over the past few centuries; once populated entirely by the numerous indigenous ethno-cultural groups of the americas, many relatively-new nation-states are composed largely of non-indigenous peoples. both the indigenous communities that persist and those that were erased have influenced newcomers to the islands of trinidad and tobago and vice versa. history demonstrates that the european colonists, particularly those of upper socio-economic status, were a highly exploitative and oppressive group. the indigenous peoples of trinidad and tobago were another victim of the european colonial apparatus. as the indigenous peoples of the americas possessed physical malek abdel-shehid a home in disorder is not a home 3 characteristics such as lighter skin that more closely resembled the european body, they have historically been ranked higher than africans and south asians in european colonial racial hierarchies (khan 406). while divisions among racialized ethno-cultural groups may benefit one or another for a short period of time, ultimately, the european colonizer, particularly of upper socio-economic status, stands to gain the most from the breakdown of solidarity. although resistance to colonial rule coupled with the rising costs of colonial administration, eventually resulted in independence for trinidad and tobago, the legacies of european colonialism manifested themselves in the racial divisions of the modern era. categorization into one of the country’s racial groups was based upon an individual’s physical characteristics; some relevant characteristics are skin colour, hair texture, and facial features. much like other european colonial societies, an individual’s racial category determined their perceived morality; additionally, people with the lightest skin were held in the highest regard, while those with the darkest skin were considered sub-human. there are several terms that are part of the local vocabulary that have been used historically and others that remain in use to denote various racial categories. for example, “dougla” refers to people of mixed african and south asian descent. in addition to afro-trinidadian and indo-trinidadian, such terms seek to categorize the country’s population; however, there are several groups in trinidad and tobago who do not fit in the categories. although modern trinidad and tobago prides itself on being a worldly and diverse country, the tendency of all groups to vie for representation and influence inevitably leads to division. not unlike the previous hundred years, the pre-independence twentieth century was characterized by fluctuating solidarity and discord between afro-trinidadians and indotrinidadians. local anticolonial movements sought to distance themselves from the strict racial hierarchy opting to pursue a collective “creole” identity, referring to the country’s ethno-cultural diversity (406). historically, both groups pressured european colonists to consider their needs. the main issue was that when one group received more attention, the other generally perceived itself to be at a disadvantage. in 1884, the hosay riots resulted in a moment of collective terror for both indo-trinidadians and afro-trinidadians, after british colonial forces massacred both groups during the hosay muharram, a local muslim celebration (411). the country has historically hosted a small muslim minority composed of afro-trinidadians and indotrinidadians. tubal uriah butler and eric williams, two prominent afro-trinidadian political leaders, provide two examples of discord between the groups. they claim that afro-trinidadians and indo-trinidadians do not mix, with the former speaking of the 1930s riot era and the latter referring to the 1960s and 1970s post-independence era (segal 305). another prominent example occurred in 1990, when a group of men involved in the black power revolt of the 1970s, now operating as “jamaat-al-muslimeen,” implemented a successful coup against the sitting government (maingot 530). led by yasin abu bakr, previously known as lennox phillips, the group took control of parliament on august 27, 1990 (530). despite the group’s mostly afrotrinidadian composition, they had opposed the sitting prime minister, a. n. r. robinson, who was afro-trinidadian yet worked extensively with indo-trinidadians. since independence, politics have generally been dictated by ethno-cultural divisions rather than ideological frameworks. led by eric williams, upper-class afro-trinidadians formed the people’s national movement (pnm), which first won office in 1956 and led the country to caribbean quilt ǀ 2020 4 independence in 1962 (527). unlike many of its newly independent neighbours, trinidad and tobago did not grapple with a major marxist uprising, so communist political parties did not receive popular support. led by basdeo panday, the left then opted to appeal to the south asian population under the name united labour front (ulf) (528). despite the fact that williams’ vision and governance centered on diversity, economic growth, and democracy, two disturbances would strategically challenge his administration. riots in jamaica, sparked by the prevention of walter rodney’s entey into the country, and protests against discrimination by trinidadian students at sir george williams university, both taking place in 1968, contributed to unveiling several domestic issues: high unemployment, emigration, and inequality, as well as general citizen discontent (529). drawing inspiration from negritude, marxist-leninism, and cuban guerillas, local student-led protests erupted under the name “black power revolt” (529). they sought williams’ resignation and massive social and economic restructuring. lack of support from the rural, middle-class south asian population resulted in the quelling of the unrest by 1974 (529). drastic increases in oil production and exportation returned the country to a more unified atmosphere. a central factor towards achieving just national unity is ensuring that residents have reached a consensus. if a national government makes decisions on behalf of its people yet does not consider everyone’s needs or the greater good, nor does it engage in practices such as community consultations, then there is no national unity. instances of disagreement eliciting strong responses such as protesting or rioting serve as an appealing option for those who feel as though their voice has been neglected. although the application of pressure reminds national governments to address requests made by their citizens, a lack of solidarity often contributes to the disintegration of progress. there are several scales, such as the local, the regional, and the national among others, that are composed of officials, elected and non-elected, who collectively aim to best represent their constituents. trinidadians, like people all over the world, are multifaceted and highly varied; the components which make up their identities are politically and socially constructed and intersecting (sylvie 492). regardless of the scale at which they are operating, people have agency to influence their own lives and the lives of those around them (sylvie 492). attempts at resistance and solidarity between ethno-cultural groups became possible only when people began to view themselves as active agents capable of creating change. despite the visible physical differences between various groups of people, criticizing the social and political constructs around them further encouraged solidarity. despite the country’s lack of national unity and modern racial hierarchy, some cultural practices have been useful in combatting oppressive colonial structures. calypso is a popular musical genre of trinidadian origin and a tool used most frequently by the afro-trinidadian working class to protest oppression by the european elite. the genre is known for having historically excluded indo-trinidadians; while hindu calypsos have existed since at least the 1970s, the genre barely mentioned the existence of south asians (holton 194). depending on the era and its most pressing issues, lyrics have ranged from segregation, to racism, to exploitative working condition among many others. the genre traces much of its foundations to west africa, yet also contains some hispanic, french, and british influences (194). one of the most prominent eras in the history of calypso was the early twentieth century at the height of british malek abdel-shehid a home in disorder is not a home 5 oil production (198). the industry was greatly segregated with europeans as a managerial class, africans as labourers, and indians were generally not present within the industry. the state did not provide any health and safety provisions to protect the lives of labourers, and private corporations did not provide labourers with proper equipment or a safe workplace (198). the workplace was segregated by race and class on the basis of attire, conduct, and appropriate behaviour while not working (198). calypsonians have remained a tool by which ordinary trinidadians could openly expose and criticize local and foreign elite. whether acting as an artist or as a listener, the genre provides trinidadians with agency and remains an important tool of resistance against neocolonialism. another example is carnival, a popular trinidadian festival taking place annually on the monday and tuesday before ash wednesday. locals refer to the parade portion of the festival as “mas,” short for masquerade, during which participants dress up in elaborate costumes, sometimes including masks. participation in the festivities was historically associated with exercising freedom to practice one’s culture despite government provisions against such activities. although the festival traces its oldest influences to french roman catholic easter processions, the incorporation of african people, music, and costumes added a certain vibrancy to the european christian custom (segal 308). other ethno-cultural groups such as south asian, british, and spanish among others have also become influential actors within the festival. trinidadian carnival has been compared to similar festivals around the caribbean and latin america. contrary to trinidad, brazilian carnival prides itself on showcasing whiteness while restricting black expression; martinique on the other hand invests heavily to reinforce black expression yet seeks to mimic french identity (308). along with calypso, carnival is an important tool in breaking down sociallyand politically-constructed barriers between the country’s ethno-cultural groups. calypso and carnival have been instrumental in bridging gaps and building solidarity between afro-trinidadians and indo-trinidadians. trinidad and tobago’s recent history has been dominated by its two largest ethnocultural groups: afro-trinidadians and indo-trinidadians. although both groups have a shared history of oppression caused largely by a european colonial elite, the differences in treatment and level of influence throughout national memory has led to a fractured society. rather than putting differences aside, the country remains staunchly divided between the two aforementioned groups, especially with relation to politics. while people come together during times of celebration such as carnival and although a significant portion of the population self-identifies as mixed-race, disparities still exist in terms of homogenous communities; moreover, control over the government contributes to access to essential services and socio-economic mobility. similarly to much of the americas, trinidad and tobago is grappling with deconstructing racial hierarchies imposed during the european colonial era. one of the central persisting issues is the existence of political parties formed along and sustained by ethno-cultural divisions. basing a country’s parties on ideological frameworks rather than ethnic ones would allow for the people of trinidad to see that they have much in common with their neighbours of differing ethnocultural groups. however, in order for this process to take place, it is essential that the preferential treatment of one ethnic group over the other cease. generally speaking, trinidad and tobago has a difficult path ahead; highlighting that people’s similarities supersede their differences will lead to national unity. caribbean quilt ǀ 2020 6 works cited heuman, g. (2011). peasants, immigrants, and workers: the british and french caribbean after emancipation. in s. palmié & f. a. scarano (eds.), the caribbean: a history of the region and its peoples (347-360). chicago: the university of chicago press. holton, g. e. l. (2012). oil, race, and calypso in trinidad and tobago, 1909-1990. in w. h. beezley & l. a. curcio-nagy (eds.), latin american popular culture since independence (193-204). plymouth: rowman & littlefield publishers, inc. malek abdel-shehid a home in disorder is not a home 7 khan, a. (2011). africa, europe, and asia in the making of the 20th-century caribbean. in s. palmié & f. a. scarano (eds.), the caribbean: a history of the region and its peoples (399-417). chicago: the university of chicago press. maingot, a. p. (2011). independence and its aftermath: suriname, trinidad, and jamaica. in s. palmié & f. a. scarano (eds.), the caribbean: a history of the region and its peoples (245-260). chicago: the university of chicago press. morgan, p. (2011). slave cultures: systems of domination and forms of resistance. in s. palmié & f. a. scarano (eds.), the caribbean: a history of the region and its peoples (523-536). chicago: the university of chicago press. paton, d. (2011). the abolition of slavery in the non-hispanic caribbean. in s. palmié & f. a. scarano (eds.), the caribbean: a history of the region and its peoples (289-302). chicago: the university of chicago press. pemberton, r., & mccollin, d., & matthews, g., & toussaint, m. (eds). (2018). historical dictionary of trinidad and tobago. lanham: rowman and littlefield. segal, r. (1995). the black diaspora. london: faber and faber limited. sylvie, r. (2004). power, difference and mobility: feminist advances in migration studies. progress in human geography, 28(4), 490-506.doi: 10.1191/0309132504ph490oa. united nations statistics division. (2016). united nations demographic yearbook [data file]. retrieved from https://unstats.un.org/unsd/demographicsocial/products/dyb/index.cshtml. https://dx-doi-org.myaccess.library.utoronto.ca/10.1191/0309132504ph490oa https://unstats.un.org/unsd/demographic-social/products/dyb/index.cshtml https://unstats.un.org/unsd/demographic-social/products/dyb/index.cshtml 55 racial capitalism, slavery, labour regimes and exploitation in the canadian seasonal agricultural workers program julie-ann mccausland introduction this paper will attempt to critically examine canada’s seasonal agricultural workers program (sawp) with an intent of connecting four themes: the canadian agricultural industry, indentured servitude, the labour regime in canada, and the racialization of the sawp. it has been argued that the workers from the caribbean who participate in the temporary agricultural workers program are should consider themselves fortunate to be given such an opportunity. i argue that this assertion is problematic because it overlooks the hardship the workers face in canada as a result of their non-citizen status. i also examine the fact that many of the workers enlisted in the sawp are forced to migrate for a living wage due to poor economic conditions in their countries of origin, and that these conditions are a direct consequence of unequal trade policies and structural adjustment programs. finally, i demonstrate canada’s complicity in benefiting from these programs. the canadian agricultural industry the sawp is a temporary labour program that brings foreign workers to canada for periods between six weeks and eight months annually in order to resolve labour shortages in the agricultural sector. as a result of this labour shortage, the canadian government employed a variety of stop-gap measures during the period between 1945 and 1965 (preibisch and binford 9). while helping to ease the shortages, these measures upheld a decidedly racist immigration policy that denied temporary visas or permanent residence to people of colour (preibisch and binford 9). a transnational approach to viewing the issues affecting migrant farm workers allows for a global perspective. to provide for themselves and their families, migrant farm workers were forced to painfully separate from their families and their communities for months every year and to lead temporary, transnational lives. for them, leading a transnational work life is not necessarily a luxury, a privilege, or an act of political resistance. it is a means to an end; it is survival (hennebry 2). the un convention on the rights of migrants defines a migrant worker as a “person who is to be engaged, is engaged or has been engaged in a remunerated activity in a state of which he or she is not a national” (unesco; hennebry 2). those who migrate temporarily for work are typically referred to as “temporary labour migrants” or “overseas contract workers” and are generally defined as people who migrate for a limited period of time in order to take up employment and send home money. accordingly, “migrant workers” have become an important labour resource in the global economy (hennebry 2). many of the workers enlisted in the canadian sawp are forced to migrate for a living wage due to poor economic conditions in their native countries. as professor edmonds highlighter in one of his lectures, the poor economic conditions in these countries are attributed to globalization and global restructuring through structural adjustment programs (saps) that are part of the requirement from international financial institutions such as the international monetary fund (imf) and the world bank. saps are policies pushed by the imf and the world bank in poor countries as conditions for receiving loans or for obtaining lower interest rates on existing loans caribbean quilt ǀ 2020 56 (edmonds). saps not only create unequal trade policies between countries such as jamaica and the united states but also provide an unfair economic shift of responsibility from the corporations involved to the most vulnerable, e.g. farmers and the poor working class in jamaica. moreover, saps force the production of crops for their profitmaking value rather than for the benefit of the farmers, i.e. cash crops. (edmonds). therefore, workers accept poor employment conditions out of economic necessity and because of limited opportunities for social mobility in their home countries, as can be seen in countries as such as mexico and jamaica. indentured servitude in “interrogating racialized global labour supply: an exploration of the racial/national replacement of foreign agricultural workers in canada,” kerry preibisch and leigh binford argue that the 1965 white paper and the reformed immigration act passed in 1966 abolished the most racist clauses of the indian act, paving the way for the recruitment of jamaican workers as well as workers from other caribbean countries like trinidad and tobago and barbados in 1968. this also allowed workers from mexico to enter the program in 1974 (preibisch and binford 9). since its inception, the offshore program has grown continuously. in 1998, ontario farming operations recruited 5,233 workers from mexico and 6,937 from the caribbean to work primarily as fruit, vegetable and tobacco pickers, but also in greenhouses, nurseries and canning factories. growers in simcoe, tillsonburg, st. catharines and leamington each attracted more than 1,000 foreign seasonal workers in 1998 (bauder and cobin 2). the majority of migrants are men from poor households, with little education and often in the position of supporting large families. the sawp has been a resounding success for canadian growers because offshore indentured workers enable agribusiness to expand and secure large profits. being indentured means that migrant farm workers are bound to specific employers by contractual agreements for the duration of their contracts. this set up and the regulations that accompany it result in a number of negative impacts on sawp workers. first, they are legally prevented from unionizing. consequently, they do not enjoy access to the same rights and protections as workers with status. additionally, because they are bound to specific employers, they must ensure that the employer is happy with them so that they can keep their works. this ensures that foreign workers not only work hard, even when they are ill and/or injured, but also that they remain submissive. for instance, migrant farm workers are forced to agree to growers’ requests for long working hours, labour through the weekend, suppress complaints and avoid conflicts, if they want to stay out of “trouble” and to be offered renewed employment the following season (preibisch and binford 10). indentured servitude has enabled a multimillion dollar enterprise for employers in the agricultural industry in canada. sawp workers have communicated clearly that being tied to specific employers makes it difficult, if not impossible, to seek out better workplaces. consequently, employers are enabled to offer poor wages and inadequate working conditions. this system of unfair advantage essentially makes the migrant farm workers “unfree” (chowdhury p.9). the labour regime in canada chris ramsaroop, a labour advocate with justice for migrant workers, argues that, besides the contract, this state of being unfree is reinforced through a climate of fear that is pervasive among the migrant farm workers community. that is, being temporary labour and tied to a specific octavia andrade-dixon racialized emotional labour 57 employer has made migrants removable, replaceable and exploitable. the threat of expulsion and/or repatriation from the program prevents farm workers from protesting because the idea has been planted in their minds that if they do protest, they will be replaced by new migrant farm workers. this demonstrates that, in addition to being unfree, migrant farm workers are viewed and treated as disposable commodities. both growers and the canadian government have successfully instituted a labour regime in which migrant farm workers are continually exploited (bauder and cobin 4). in “canada’s creeping economic apartheid”, grace galabuzi shows that the canadian government’s immigration policy is, in reality, a labour market immigration policy (galabuzi). under this immigration policy, migrants are allowed entry into canada to serve a particular labour market need. in this sense, the labour market need is in the agricultural industry. it is worth noting that this need is different from other labour market needs in that it only requires additional labour for limited periods of time per year. existing policy suggests that employers in the agricultural industry view migrant farm workers as “matter-of-fact features” of the industry as well as economic elements and “insurance policies” for the prosperity of the canadian economy (bauder and cobin 7), with little consideration for the needs of the actual workers. for example, the importance of migrant farm workers for canada’s continued economic stability is often conveyed in quotes from growers suggesting that “our industry wouldn't survive without them” (bauder and cobin. 7). the focus is on the canadian perspective, and not on mutual benefit. moreover, by using the term “them,” the grower creates a distinction, othering them as different from “us”. according to audre lorde, this distinction of difference is an absolute necessity in a profit economy that relies on outsiders as surplus people (lorde 118). this lack of concern for the workers strengthens the view that migrant farm workers are essentially “unfree” in canada. racialization of the seasonal agricultural workers program in “globalization and the mexican-canadian seasonal agricultural worker program: power, racialization & transnationalism in temporary migration,” jenna hennebry argues that the sawp participates in the processes of racialization and the unequal treatment of non-european groups, even though the program was meant to improve the prosperity of both canadians and migrant farm workers (hennebry 59). for example, public discourse in the early 1960s suggested that caribbean workers were not biologically suited for the climatic conditions of canada and, therefore, that they would be unable to live in canada year round. it was also purported that, if migrant farm workers were allowed to immigrate, they would “create racial problems” in canadian communities (hennebry 59). hence, migrant farm workers could only be admitted as temporary workers under strict mobility and employment constraints (hennebry 59-60). migrant workers were presented in a manner that portrayed them as racially inferior and better suited than canadians for strenuous, seasonal farm work. in a similar vein, an article by harald bauder and margot corbin, “foreign farm workers in ontario: representations in the newsprint media,” surveys media narratives about migrant farm workers in ontario daily newspapers between the years 1996 and 2002. the results show that the media depicted migrant farm workers as “others” in canadian society. mthe articles also made connections between migrant farm workers and crime, implying that there is a structural link between workers recruited under the offshore program and criminal behavior (bauder and cobin 10). caribbean quilt ǀ 2020 58 in another study, yasmin jiwani demonstrated that the media contributes to demonization of racialized persons by identifying their racial background when sharing the information is simply not warranted (5). jiwani characterizes this representation as “mediated racism.” mediated racism functions in several ways, the most obvious being through the association of specific groups of people with specific actions (4). this parallels henry giroux’s argument that the public’s preoccupation with linking people of colour with violence and crime is encouraged by the media’s narrative framing (177). as further stated by jiwani, the continual linking of people of colour to crime is largely due to the underrepresentation of people of colour in the media, as only 2.6% of people employed in major dailies in canada are people of colour (5). therefore, it is not surprising that newspaper articles tend to reflect the public’s preoccupation with criminal behavior and people of colour. the perceived threat of racialized persons results in a public preference for migrant workers to be employed and housed in rural communities where they are secluded and their activities are limited to labour activities on the farm. the public’s fear is exacerbated by the media’s language, leading to the raising of cultural barriers that contribute to the segregation of migrant farm workers in host communities. in addition, migrant farm workers are not in a position to influence governments, employers, and other intermediaries who have significant control over their daily lives or the parameters of their migration (hennebry 2006, 3). in “when place becomes race,” sherene razack contends that a racial hierarchy exists in canada. this racial hierarchy is built on the foundation of “white settler society.” white settler society is based on the myths created by white settlers in order to establish their claim that the lands they colonized and settled on belong exclusively to them (razack 3). in a canadian context, part of the mythology claims that white settlers came to canada and shared the land equally with the indigenous inhabitants and that, after, these settlers singlehanded developed the land, essentially making it theirs over time. over time, the myth developed to protect the interests of white settler in the face of more recent migrations into the country. now, white settlers view themselves as the original inhabitants of canada, whose benevolence in opening up their doors is being taken advantage of by third-world refugees and migrants who threaten overwhelm them (razack 4). these mythologies, coupled with the mediated racism, have been used to further construct migrant farm workers as “others” in canadian society. likewise, the segregation of migrant farm workers who are confined to the farms on which they work speaks to their isolation from canadian society. notably, geography is an essential tool in the construction of racial hierarchies (razack 7). the space in which migrant farm workers are housed becomes a one “shaped by capitalism in a class system” (razack 8). migrant farm workers are confined to rural communities where contact with white settler society is limited. when they do cross the boundaries into white settler societies, they are often harassed or, worse, assaulted by white canadians (bauder and cobin 18). compounding their grievances, growers and others consider mexican workers “closer” in appearance to the canadian population, which “naturally” makes them more desirable workers (preibisch and binford 29). for example, one administrator commented that the concentration of mexican workers in leamington was due to the “closer association” between mexicans and the region’s southern european-origin growers (preibisch and binford 29). employers also face community pressure to hire “brown” (mexican) workers as opposed to “black” (caribbean) workers because mexican workers, are closer in complexion to the white canadians and therefore more acceptable (preibisch and binford 29). consequently, racism is clearly illustrated in the communities’ as well as the growers’ concerns with black caribbean workers. octavia andrade-dixon racialized emotional labour 59 little attention has been given to the issues and right protections for migrant farm workers. for this reason, it is hard to conclude a conversation on the racialization of the sawp without mentioning the work of chris ramsaroop and gabriel alladua of the advocacy group, justice for migrant workers, for the assistance they have been giving to the migrant farm workers community. justice for migrant workers (j4mw) is a voluntarily established group that aims advocates for non-status workers who enter canada through the sawp. to achieve its mission and goals, the organization educates workers about their rights and creates spaces for workers to dialogue free of repercussions (lecture. march 15, 2018). the primary mission of j4mw is to highlight the invisibility, marginalization of and discrimination against migrant farm workers, and to connect the struggles of the workers with the processes of globalization, structural adjustment, rural displacement and how they relate to the apartheid system that still exists in canada. the organization does this by encouraging migrant farm workers to organize amongst themselves to achieve equality. unfortunately, in our lecture of march 15, 2018, the presenter, chris ramsaroop, did not delve into the issue of advocacy for equitability for female migrant workers. it would have been especially interesting in light of the 199 women that were employed in the sawp in 2003 and the 227 who were employed in 2004. the lack of clear representation of the plights of female migrant workers is what suzan archer mann describes as the “hierarchicalization of oppression” in her article on simultaneous and multiple oppressions, where one from of oppression is treated as more fundamental than the other (mann 2). nevertheless, the organization is important because of its transnational nature. it considers the economic strains of sending migrant workers from countries such as jamaica and mexico to canada, as well as canada’s complicity in benefiting from the poverty in these countries. the j4mw stresses its most important work involves considering the families left behind by migrant farm workers. conclusion while the sawp officially aims to improve the economic prosperity of both canada and the migrant workers, the program also operates under a labour regime a processe of racialization that contribute to the unequal treatment of migrant farm workers. hennebry’s research on the sawp demonstrates that migrant farm workers are particularly valuable to capitalist accumulation due to their restricted freedom and relative powerlessness in the agricultural industry in canada (hennebry 59). moreover, canada’s complicity in benefiting from the program can be attributed to the fact that sawp provides canadian employers with easy access to marginalized labour from third world countries. for example, foreign workers grew to 52.4% of the labour force and supplied 45% of total hours in 2000 in the two provinces hiring 90% of the workers: ontario and quebec (preibisch and binford 10). furthermore, we saw how notions that migrant farm workers were not biologically suited for the climatic conditions of canada have been used as a labour strategy for denying migrant farm workers their rights and a path to permanent residency. these are evidence of the racialization of the program and labour regime used to continually exploit migrant farm workers in canada. the idea that foreign labour is racially inferior assumes that foreign labour is best suited for the primitive, labour-intensive work required on farms. this flawed reasoning legitimizes the constraints of workers’ freedom and the poor working conditions under which they toil. migrant farm work is viewed as a personal choice, and the workers are seen as fortunate. caribbean quilt ǀ 2020 60 this, of course, does not take into consideration the families that are left without a child, parent, partner or sibling for part of the year. it also neglects the emotional turmoil caused by separation. additionally, migrant farm workers must endure a lack of control over the duration of their contracts, an absence of overtime pay, a high level of social isolation and virtually no possibility of obtaining permanent residency in canada (preibisch and binford 10). certainly, workers benefit from their seasonal employment in canada despite the harsh working conditions. the wages paid in canadian dollars allow farm workers to pay for better education for their children and provides the opportunity for social and economic mobility in their countries of origin. however, the workers’ enrolment in the sawp is more often than not a compelled choice rather than an enthusiastic one. it is largely due to the gap between rich countries, such as canada, and poor countries, such as jamaica. it is a form of coercion that pushes thirdworld people to seek work in the first-world countries for lack of options closer to home. thus, it is not a matter of being fortunate, but of a lack of more lucrative options. octavia andrade-dixon racialized emotional labour 61 works cited bauder, harald & corbin margot. “foreign farm workers in ontario: representations in the newsprint media. chowdhury, fariah (2012). turning factory floor and farm fields into sites of incarceration: unmapping the production of deportability through canadian immigration raids. excerpt: unpublished ma thesis. university of toronto. edmonds, kevin. “the global plantation: migrant” farm workers in canada”. lecture march 15, 2018. galabuzi, grace-edward (2001 may). executive summary in canada’s creeping economic apartheid: the economic segregation and social marginalization of racialised groups. toronto: the centre for social justice (pp. 3–5). justice for migrant farm workers: http://justicia4migrantworkers.org/justicia_new.htm lorde, audre (1984). excerpt from, age, race, class and sex: women redefining difference. in, audre lorde, sister outside: essays and speeches by audre lorde (pp. 115). berkeley. the crossing press. mann, susan archer. “simultaneous and multiple oppressions. in doing feminist theory: from modernity to postmodernity.” (2012): (pp. 178-180). new york: oxford press. preibisch, kerry and binford, leigh (2008) ‘interrogating racialized global labour supply: an exploration of the racial/national replacement of foreign agricultural workers in canada,’ canadian journal of sociology, 44(1), pp. 5-36 razack, sherene h. (2002). excerpt from introduction: when place becomes race. in s.h. razack (ed.), race, space and the law: unmapping a white settler society (pp. 1–15). toronto: between the lines. yasmin, jiwani (2016): racism and the media: http://www.stopracism.ca/content/racism-andmedia zach ruiter. (2016) “migrant workers say they’re canada’s modern day slaves”. toronto now. september 27. available at: https://nowtoronto.com/news/migrant-workers-canada%27s-modernday-slaves/ http://justicia4migrantworkers.org/justicia_new.htm http://www.stopracism.ca/content/racism-and-media http://www.stopracism.ca/content/racism-and-media https://nowtoronto.com/news/migrant-workers-canada%27s-modern-day-slaves/ https://nowtoronto.com/news/migrant-workers-canada%27s-modern-day-slaves/ 12 conceptions of race beyond north america: the subversion of the colonial racial contract in the bahamas david allens in his work ethnic groups and boundaries, frederick barth argues that applying definitions to group of peoples has less to do with emphasizing a shared culture than with defining the sentiments of communality in opposition to the perceived identity of an ‘other’ (barth). in applying barth’s framework, modern bahamian identity has developed—and is largely understood—in comparison to a haitian ‘other.' therefore, this essay will argue that, having gone through multiple iterations of the racial contract, policies of subjugation initially intended for black colonial subjects (e.g. uneven development and colonially encouraged distrust) have been subverted for use by the bahamas’ post-independence government against those with haitian ancestry. it will demonstrate that bahamian sentiments towards haitians are contextualized historically and based on a longstanding colonial tradition of discrimination and social control that pitted west indian immigrants against them. while this subjugation is no longer enforced along phenotypical lines, elements of privilege connected to the racial contract are now adjudicated along different lines that may prove harder to distinguish, perhaps making the privileges attached to the dominant identity different from a north american context. it is therefore more difficult to define a normative bahamian while the race of afrohaitians in the bahamas can easily be described as a group of people bound by the elements of slavery, racism and revolution in saint-domingue, political instability in haiti and the formation of a diasporic group. regardless, a normative bahamian will be described below, using haney lopez’s definition of race as “a vast group of people loosely bound by historically contingent, socially significant elements of their [...] ancestry;” (lopez). historical-colonial racial contract geographically separated from the rest of the west indies as a part of the isolated island groups of the north american continental shelf (west indies) and located outside of the caribbean sea, bahamian relations with the rest of the region are complex. as early as 1812, colonial officials commented that bahamians did not consider themselves west indians (saunders 117), nor were they generally accepted as belonging to the region (lewis). historically, the bahamas was considered one of the least important of an already insignificant group of colonies, and it was once described as “one of the most remote and perhaps poorest parts of the british empire” (saunders 2). compared to the rest of the region, the bahamas lacks significant natural resources; however, it has still periodically experienced relative prosperity, especially with the growth of tourism in the 1920s. sparse soil, inconsistent weather patterns across the archipelago, and a lack of valuable deposits (like oil and gold) left the country relegated to an “atlantic outpost,” one incapable of producing large sugar or cotton outputs (saunders 2). the dynamics resulting from these factors have largely been exploited by british colonialism. david allens conceptions of race beyond north america 13 with the introduction of a multi-racial environment came the need for the legitimization of colonial subjugation through the creation of a racial contract. after decades of migration, white europeans had begun assimilating into the bahamian environment. becoming less normatively ‘white’. by aligning themselves with the general colonial archetype, most british settlers and officials held the racial prejudices of bahamian whites and saw non-whites as "childlike, dependent, [and] irresponsible loafers in the sun"(kiernan 201). charles mills argues that a racial contract requires its signatories to subscribe to misunderstandings about the world under the assurance that these conceptions will be validated by a universal “white epistemic authority.” according to mills, unlike an ideal social contract, these prescribed misunderstandings—or "localized and global cognitive dysfunctions"—require their own prescribed "schedule of structural blindness and opacities" to maintain white supremacist order (mills 18). an argument may be made that the perpetuation of these ideas is represented in policies and socially-accepted practices ranging from apprenticeship, customary residential segregation and formalized public segregation to cater to tourists from the u.s. south during prohibition (brereton). with the racial contract, a “color-coded morality” exists that creates a single, fixed consciousness that restricts equality to the dominant identity. this fixed state consciousness is a departure from the fluid one needed to create a universal identity. however, race dynamics do not necessarily remain fixed on an exclusively black-white framework with ‘whites’ existing as the only dominant identity. the archetype of a ‘bahamian’ generally exists as a response to "incursions of immigrants from the rest of the british caribbean (attracted by the relative prosperity of the bahamas) and from haiti” (johnson 13-20). it may be further argued that the “animus against west indians was the continuation of a long-established tradition”(johnson). for example, with the 1891 police act, the bahamian colonial office created a new police force (phasing out the bahamian comprised force) that included among its numbers members from west indian colonies “to prevent any feelings of local sympathy between [the] police and the inhabitants of the bahamas” (themistocleous 172 ). compared to the now defunct force, new recruits were described as “literate, as might be expected of the superior class of which they [were] drawn”(tinker 39). as has been demonstrated in other works, this colonialist practice of using blacks to infiltrate and keep other blacks down is incredibly damaging (fanon). similarly, despite a previously mutual migration pattern, animosity towards haitians began following the start of the haitian revolution, when the presence of a large number of nonwhite immigrants created discontent and fear among white residents (tinker 98). by the time saint-domingue achieved independence from france in 1804, migration had almost ceased. bahamian planters were not only concerned with competition from white french immigrants but “like all whites[, they were] terrified by the prospect of the spread of a haitian-type slave revolt”(craton 267). this discontent increased when the bahamas became more economically prosperous at the same time that the haitian economy plummeted under the duvalier dictatorships (d’agostino 122). this led to colonial officials initiating restrictive policies against haitians. modern racial contract despite the internalized colonial mentality, all of the traditional demarcations that ranked cultural-ethnic and racial groups did not remain. based on latest census data, the bahamian population has maintained a majority black population. as of 2010, 90.6% of the population is caribbean quilt ǀ 2020 14 black, 4.7% white, 2.1% black and white, and the remainder (2.6%) either identifying as other or unspecified (central america: bahamas). many of the other west indian immigrants who immigrated and established affluent positions integrated with the bahamian middle class. this dichotomy is due in large part to a growth in prosperity and the achievement of political change without instability beginning in the 1950s (and again around the 1970s),. the political change that led to independence also led to policies like “bahamianization," which aimed to ensure that the economic and social benefits of the bahamas were in the hands of normative ‘bahamians’ (tinker 147). however, those charged with this political change largely included those assimilated west indian immigrants whose linage included prominent, lawyers, businesspersons, medical and academic doctors, and politicians (tinker 47) (including the country’s first premier and prime minister, the son of a jamaican policeman). at the same time, haiti inexorably moved towards becoming one of the poorest, most heavily populated nations under an oppressive and corrupt regime (craton 268). so while the normative ‘bahamian’ was loosely demarcated at best, it firmly included the black elite and excluded what was now seen as the black poor. in the bahamas, afro-haitians are often relegated to menial jobs, poverty and discrimination from various sectors of society (belton 949). jodi melamed posits that this is systemic of racial capitalism (76). it is generally accepted that bahamians do not want the menial jobs carried out by haitians. therefore, the ability to rely on other means of employment and the development of the bahamas rely on relations of severe inequality between afrobahamians and haitians. much like melamed, mills argues that economic disparities form the foreground of power dynamics with a moral hierarchy and juridical partitioning existing to justify exploitation and privilege (mills). as a result, stereotypes that depict haitians as the ‘other’ persist today. it is common in the everyday discourse among bahamians to hear haitians described with undesirable and negative connotations. in conversation with young bahamian school children, one writer recalls stating his haitian heritage, to which he received both surprise and statements like they “smell bad” and “look like rat[s]” (bertin) in response. these statements highlight how definitions of race take abstract categorizations to create an illusion that does the ideological work of marginalizing communities instead of maintaining objective biological facts (mccarthy 5). the surprise at the writer’s haitian heritage is notable. it reveals that bahamians do not know what makes a ‘haitian a haitian’ nor does it matter. there is now just a socio-historical structural need for an upwardly mobile population to have another class to contrast itself with, on that it regards and treats as inferior in status and culture. for socio-cultural reasons, haitians happen to be that necessary replacement. while stated earlier that defining the normative bahamian may prove challenging, this essay will still do so here to emphasize why haitian presence proves so challenging and why this colonial demarcation may have remained. bahamians are anglophone small islanders that have been ethnically and socially creolized, and shaped by a shared environment and common history (craton 284). historically, unlike haitians, bahamians have not had to resort to overly violent means to achieve political success, instead having come by independence peacefully. even in the era of slavery, due to the lack of large sugar and cotton plantations, bahamian slaves were treated relatively well (bahamians have a slave mentality). this intrinsic need for violence to secure peace is thus not inculcated in bahamian culture. in contrast, haitians are largely proud of david allens conceptions of race beyond north america 15 their heritage, a fact that is exploited by bahamians to reinforce the stereotype that haitians are “violent migrants from a country that seemingly cannot rule itself” and who present “the potential to destroy the bahamas” (bertin). in short, haitians are viewed as “more african, unmodernized, superstitious, fatalistic, emotional and at least potentially violent” (craton, 284). this view manifest itself so often that there exists a myth that bahamians descend from a different tribe of africans who were more docile in nature than haitians, who come from a more bellicose lineage. the description of “more african, unmodernized” (craton) and the increased likelihood of experiencing poverty(belton) is significant. firstly, through initial hierarchies established in the colonial racial contract, or the spectrum of whiteness vs. blackness, situates a greater proximity to africanness near the lower strata of society. secondly, in the same way that illegality has been associated with mexicans in the united states, illegality, immigration, poor education, poverty, and overpopulation have been associated with haitians in the bahamas. the political and socioeconomic problems of haiti have been cited as proof of this characterization. not only are the conditions in haiti portrayed as undesirable, those who flee those conditions to immigrate to the bahamas (mostly irregularly) leave to live in comparably undesirable conditions “with the presence of discarded human usage, waste, combined with the presence of domestic livestock” (shanty town residents fear crackdown). this creates an environment where afro-haitians are associated with these characteristics regardless of their actual immigration/citizenship or economic status. this can be seen as a translation of the already existing racial contract to one that utilizes ‘whiteness. if one understands whiteness not as a color but as a set of power relations (mills 127), then the treatment of haitians in the bahamas can be seen as adherence to this dynamic. the implicit contract is now instead with the ruling, socially-constructed afro-bahamian class against that of the minority afro-haitian. placing haitians as less modern and more african confers more privilege to the dominant group in the already established colonial hierarchy. as taayab mahmud argues, this perceived hierarchy brings with it an ideal of the responsibility of modernity and a duty to govern with reason and rule of law (mahmud 53). ignoring policies against haitians initiated by colonial officials, post-independence, successive majority afrobahamian governments have “attempted to curb illegal migration through the use of systematic raids, arrests, and mass deportations” (tinker 122). these efforts have taken numerous forms including a work permit program that a yale human rights delegation report argued resembled indentured servitude (bertin 82), and the passage of the 1973 nationality act that changed citizenship to jus sanguinis (perry). further, a review of media reports about haitian nationals by the university of the bahamas found that the media portrayed the migrant population “in a way that heighten[ed] the public’s perceived threat” and increased the perception of the population “to anywhere from 25,000 to 95,000 plus haitians in a country of only 300,000 plus” (bertin 85). much like the racialization of the mexican population of the united states described by haney lopez, these factors can be seen as part of the racial fabrication of the afro-haitian population. in the early 1800s, latin american nationality was separate from race; however, as ‘u.s. anglos’ looked at mexicans with increased animus in the 1840s and 50s, their race and nationality began to be conflated (haney-lopez). similarly, as animosity brewed, haitian nationality and race/ethnicity were connected; however, without obvious phenotypical distinctions, the unearned advantage and conferred dominance of privilege becomes harder to adhere to. unlike race, ethnic markers are not ascriptive in the same ways and are not always caribbean quilt ǀ 2020 16 immediately apparent like ‘biological’ differentiation. walton argues that despite it being integral to an individual’s personhood, ethnicity is “not built on specific, permanent cultural traits but rather constructed and changed over time as a result of interactions with different groups and individuals” (walton 4). therefore, an argument may be made that relying on socially defined metrics that are stand-ins for ethnicity—like anglophone names, perceived education level, and accents—makes the “intellectually convenient, [and] cognitively ingrained” process of ignoring diverse voices easier (harris). however, the intrinsic permeability of ethnicity easily allows transitions back and forth between identities under the right circumstances. thus, a deeper analysis of how privilege is granted to the dominant ideology is required. this essay has sought to describe how a historical colonial racial contract that subjected a majority afro-bahamian population transformed into a racial contract predicated on whiteness, where a majority afro-bahamian government and society still holds the same anti-black sentiments over their afro-haitian population. however, more consideration is needed for the adaptation of the racial contract for areas where phenotype and general physicality are similar. at the same time, one may argue that, under this racial contract, privilege as a dominant identity is doled out arbitrarily and without concern for an individual’s legitimate ethnic distinctions. it is merely the substitute for inferiority in any situation. david allens conceptions of race beyond north america 17 works cited barth, fredrik. ethnic groups and boundaries: the social organization of culture difference. little, brown and co., 1969. belton, kristy a. “dry land drowning or rip current survival? haitians without status in the bahamas.” ethnic and racial studies, vol. 34, no. 6, 2011, pp. 948–66. scholars portal journals, doi:10.1080/01419870.2010.526236. bertin, louis. “the haitian diaspora in the bahamas: an alternative view.” wadabagei: a journal of the caribbean and its diasporas, vol. 13, no. 3, fall 2011, pp. 74–94. central america :: bahamas, the — the world factbook central intelligence agency. https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/bf.html. accessed 29 sept. 2019. craton, michael. “the bahamian self and the haitian other: the migration of haitians to and through the bahamas, 1950–2000.” immigrants & minorities, vol. 14, no. 3, 1995, pp. 265–88. scholars portal journals, doi:10.1080/02619288.1995.9974867. d’agostino, thomas j. “caribbean politics.” understanding the contemporary caribbean, 2nd ed., ian randle publishers, 2009, pp. 87–131. fanon, frantz. black skin, white masks. grove press, 2008. guardian, the nassau. “bahamians have a slave mentality.” the nassau guardian, 20 july 2011, https://thenassauguardian.com/2011/07/20/bahamians-have-a-slave-mentality/. ---. “shanty town residents fear crackdown.” the nassau guardian, 15 may 2013, https://thenassauguardian.com/2013/05/15/shanty-town-residents-fear-crackdown/. haney-lopez, ian f. “the social construction of race.” critical race theory: the cutting edge, temple university press, 2013. proquest ebook central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/utoronto/detail.action?docid=1210896. harris, angela p. “race and essentialism in feminist legal theory.” critical race theory: the cutting edge, temple university press, 2013. proquest ebook central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/utoronto/detail.action?docid=1210896. johnson, h. “national identity and bahamian culture.” yinna: journal of the bahamas association for cultural studies, vol. 1, 2000, pp. 13–20. lewis, gordon k. the growth of the modern west indies. ian randle publishers, 2004. mahmud, taayab. “colonialism and modern constructions of race: a preliminary inquiry.” university of miami law review, vol. 53, july 1999, https://getit.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/oneclick?ctx_ver=z39.882004&ctx_enc=info%3aofi%2fenc%3autf8&rfr_id=info%3asid%2fsummon.serialssolutions.com&rft_val_fmt=info%3aofi%2ff mt%3akev%3amtx%3ajournal&rft.genre=article&rft.atitle=colonialism+and+modern+ caribbean quilt ǀ 2020 18 constructions+of+race%3a+a+preliminary+inquiry&rft.jtitle=university+of+miami+la w+review&rft.au=mahmud%2c+tayyab&rft.date=1999-0701&rft.pub=university+of+miami&rft.issn=00419818&rft.volume=53&rft.issue=4&rft.spage=1219&rft.externaldbid=bshee&rft.exter naldocid=a58919158. mccarthy, cameron. “the theoretical status of the concept of race.” race, identity, and representation in education, routledge, 2005, https://books-scholarsportalinfo.myaccess.library.utoronto.ca/en/read?id=/ebooks/ebooks4/taylorandfrancis4/201806-06/10/9781136764486#page=32. melamed, jodi. “racial capitalism.” critical ethnic studies, vol. 1, no. 1, 2015, pp. 76–85. jstor, doi:10.5749/jcritethnstud.1.1.0076. mills, charles w. racial contract. cornell university press, 1999. proquest ebook central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/utoronto/detail.action?docid=3138625. perry, charmane m. “it’s better in the bahamas” the stigma of being haitian, citizenship and identity choices among second-generation haitians in the bahamas. 2017. saunders, gail. race and class in the colonial bahamas, 1880-1960. university press of florida, 2016. tinker, keith l. the migration of peoples from the caribbean to the bahamas. university press of florida, 2011. walton, matthew j. “the ‘wages of burman-ness:’ ethnicity and burman privilege in contemporary myanmar.” journal of contemporary asia, vol. 43, no. 1, 2013, pp. 1–27. scholars portal journals, doi:10.1080/00472336.2012.730892. “west indies: encyclopaedia britannica.” encyclopædia britannica, dec. 2018, https://www.britannica.com/place/west-indies-island-group-atlantic-ocean. :::::: 217 as the snow melts before the sunbeam: writing the “inevitable” extinction of the indigenous peoples of the americas nasha mavalvala nasha mavalvala is an undergraduate student at u of t, whose academic interests include caribbean studies, african studies, and women & gender studies. she is on the caribbean studies and equity studies students' unions, and aims to develop her academic practice alongside community organizing, continuing to search for holistic ways to engage in the multiple and traversing processes of decolonial, feminist & socialist liberation. maximilian forte asserts that “indigenous peoples have been ever vanishing, almost as if disappearance was their predetermined historical role” (forte, 1). this paper will speak to the various techniques of erasure that have historically served to remove indigenous peoples from their lands and detach them from their cultures. using examples from european, north american, and caribbean texts, i will discuss the myths of perpetual extinction of indigenous peoples and how these myths have worked to annihilate the indigenous population—both culturally and physically—through fictitious repetitions within literature such as plays and poetry, but also through government documents, records and the enactment of policies of erasure. forte writes, “one of the dominant myths of extinction, wrapped in terms of the then dominant evolutionism, had to do with extinction via miscegenation, a purely racial argument. no “pure” amerindian equals no amerindian.” i will address this in the context of the historical roots of racial classification and some of the contemporary issues surrounding racial determination. i suggest that since contact, the indigenous have been represented as perpetually dying out, and i discuss the concepts of predetermination and self-fulfilling prophecy in reference to this. “these things seem mysterious,” a bostonian conceded in 1841, “but it would be impious to murmur at the decrees of fate” (dippie, 12). in the national uncanny, renee bergland writes, “the ghosting of indians is a technique of removal” (bergland, 4), referring to the widespread invocation of native american ghosts in american 19th and 20th century classic literature. my definition of ghosting in application to this paper is the actual practices used to erase the lived histories of indigenous peoples and used to deny their current existence and rights to self-determination. omitting literal ghosts and spirits, i will use the aforementioned bodies of literature to caribbean quilt | 2013 218 demonstrate how they employ the techniques of “ghosting” and erasure, diminishing indigenous presence through the falsification of a people’s history. in the national uncanny: indian ghosts and american subjects, renee bergland writes, “the ghosting of indians is a technique of removal. by writing about indians as ghosts, white writers effectively remove them from american lands, and place them, instead, within the american imagination” (bergland, 4). while bergland’s work centers around american literature and popular culture, her theory of removal by placing the native within the imagination can also be applied to a post-colonial reading of shakespeare’s the tempest. this will not attest to shakespeare’s intentions or mindset when writing the play, but simply as one understanding of this text. specifically through the characters of caliban and sycorax, forces of erasure are at work in the tempest. written into popular imagination as a savage, sub-human “demidevil,” caliban’s dehumanization pervades the popular consciousness of colonial britain. what have we here—a man or a fish?—dead or alive? a fish, he smells like a fish; a very ancient and fish-like smell; a kind of not-of-the-newest poor-john.a strange fish! were i in england now, as once i was, and had but this fish painted, not a holiday-fool there but would give a piece of silver. there would this monster make a man—any strange beast there makes a man. when they will not give a doit to relieve a lame beggar, they will lay out ten to see a dead indian. legged like a man, and his fins like arms! warm o' my troth! i do now let loose my opinion, hold it no longer: this is no fish, but an islander, that hath lately suffered by a thunderbolt. (2.2.24-35) here caliban is being observed by trinculo during his first encounter with him. the immediate questioning of his humanity, “what have we here—a man or a fish?” and simultaneously that of his being, “dead or alive,” removes the possibility of his personhood. even when trinculo decides that he is “no fish, but an islander,” his lesser humanness has already been established within the audience. trinculo thinks about the possibility of profiting from caliban, “a dead indian,” though alive; already he has been relegated to a position of death. the erasure of indigenous peoples also can be interpreted through the absent character of sycorax, caliban’s nasha mavalvala extinction of the indigenous peoples of the americas 219 mother. she is invoked quite often during the play, but only to indicate her absence. she is never able to voice her account of her story. her deprivation of voice and the telling of her story through european voices is significant in sycorax’s erasure and in her lack of access to have power in the story. it is not a negative absence of speech but a positive removal of voice. in addition, the fact that sycorax was born in algiers is made very evident. craton writes of the european view of the black caribs, that “to emphasize the african origins of the windward caribs was, of course, to stress that…they were no more indigenous than the europeans” (craton, 72). sycorax is from algiers but is at the same time equated to being indigenous to the island, suggesting that there are no actual natives present and claims to the island are just as much—or more so— european, than they are african. then was this island—save for the son that she did litter here, a freckled whelp, hag-born—not honoured with a human shape. (1.2.281-4) the notions of non-existence of the indigenous peoples have been continuous since very soon after contact. the construction of the island as absent of humans (except for caliban, who here is admitted to as human while he simultaneously dehumanized), is parallel to the initial and current rhetoric of “discovery” of the americas by columbus and europeans. this idea in itself removes the original inhabitants of the land. in racism and national consciousness, frederick case speaks of the notion of the master, recognizing that in his mind, “he possesses an inalienable right over the land. he does not simply own it (a basic notion of capitalist civilization), he is master of it (a basic distorted vision of the relationship between humans and their environment)” (case, 123). the colonizer claims this already inhabited land as his own. in his mind, he has discovered this land, and he settles his people on this newly “found” land. in this sense, the master also believes he possesses an inalienable right over the people of this land; the enslaver believes the same of the enslaved. by treating these peoples as objects, labeling them as savage, backwards, and barbaric, dehumanization is thus achieved. the widely spread concept of the europeans’ discovery of the americas “is an insult which reduces the original inhabitants of the americas to a non-people, less than savages, simple animals. the notion implies that no human civilization had existed on this continent before the arrival of europeans” (case, 124). this denial of humanity serves to distance caribbean quilt | 2013 220 the oppressive forces from those they are oppressing, allowing, in effect, a kind of absolution of moral guilt. in the vanishing american, brian dippie argues that the myth of the perpetually vanishing native american became selffulfilling, as it “accounted for the indians' future by denying them one” (dippie, xii). “the point was no longer whether or not the native population had declined in the past but that its future decline was inevitable” (dippie, xii). focusing on the 19th century onwards, dippie demonstrates that the poetry and the general body of literature of the time started to heavily employ the rhetoric and imagery of nature to explain the fate of the indigenous peoples of the americas. “the indian was at the sunset of his existence; night was about to swallow a race fated to vanish ‘as the snow melts before the sunbeam,’ or ‘like the morning dew, insensibly and mysteriously to disappear, before the lights of civilization and christianity’” (hale, 1819; cited in dippie, 13). this kind of ephemeral and biological language suggests the “inevitability” and “naturalness” of the decline of indigenous peoples in a way that appeases the national consciousness. snow must eventually melt, after all, under the fatal sunbeam of european contact. sentiments such as william tudor jr.’s in 1815 regarding ‘the extinction of our savage precursors before the dawn of science and cultivation,’” (cited in dippie, 13) allowed for the disavowal of american complicity in the devastation of indigenous peoples and instead made the native americans responsible for their own demise, as their barbarism and unwillingness or inability to adhere to western “civilization” and “progress” made it natural that they must perish. in his evaluation of the widely popular hollywood film avatar, zizek asserts that it “teaches us that the only choice the aborigines have is to be saved by the human beings or to be destroyed by them. in other words, they can choose either to be the victim of imperialist reality, or to play their allotted role in the white man's fantasy.” as many colonial voices maintain, the indigenous simply could not be saved from their savageness. in his essay “the black caribs of st. vincent,” michael craton shows that “without acknowledgment, [the british] echoed the sentiments of columbus and his successors that good natives submitted to authority and had thereby the chance of redemption through being assimilated to european culture, whereas the obdurate were irredeemable savages fit to be enslaved if not extirpated” (craton, 71). “laws cannot reach them in their woods:” this statement made by william young in his nasha mavalvala extinction of the indigenous peoples of the americas 221 report to the colonial government in 1795 reflects the common view of their inherent savagery and innate disposition to backwardness and barbarism. thus, indigenous peoples are blameworthy for their own “unavoidable” degeneration while at the same time their predetermined dissipation is seen as natural as that of dew. “the way they wrote us out of history, we will write ourselves back in” –aniki reyes ocasio, borinquentaino indigenous peoples were and still are attempted to be written out of existence through the severe underestimation of numbers and the perpetual decline of population. the poor indians have resisted the pressure of civilisation, and finally sunk under the ascendancy of a more intelligent race. in the year 1783, the indian population amounted to 2,032 souls, who, at the capitulation of the island, had declined, according to official returns, to 1,082 individuals. in the year 1830 there still existed 689 survivors of that race… at present [1858] there cannot be above 200 or 300 indians in the colony, so that the aborigines may be said to be almost extinct. (de verteuil, 173) and again in 1767: “there were, [young] claimed, no more than 2,000 vincentian caribs in all (an understatement by perhaps 80 percent), of whom the yellow descendants of the original inhabitants were no more than a tiny minority” (craton, 73). in his 1795 an account of the black charaibs on the island of st. vincent, william young reported that “the island was at that time [in 1763] inhabited by about 3000 black charaibs, or free negroes, by 4000 french (their negroes included), and by about 100 red charaibs, or indians; so reduced were that aboriginal people!” (young, 18) implicated in these statements are not only questions of numbers of indigenous peoples but the designation of who is indigenous. young’s claim of the black caribs as “negro usurpers” of “real” caribs customs and heritage are parallel with current ideas of “pure blood,” qualifications, the governments’ deciding of who is indigenous, and the denying of self-determination. in speaking of the case of trinidad & tobago, maximilian forte writes: when it became desirable to dispossess the amerindians of lands that were theirs, and were inalienable, the colonial project became one of defining them out of existence, so that their lands could be put up for sale. no purity meant no amerindians which meant no amerindian lands. residence in the mission of santa caribbean quilt | 2013 222 rosa in arima was determined by race: mixed-race offspring were no longer bound to the mission and could not in the future lay any claim to the mission lands. it mattered not that they were raised by amerindian mothers, and may have identified themselves as amerindian, what mattered was their “racial mixture.” in an article entitled, “does trinidad recognize its indigenous people?” maximilian forte writes: the fact of the matter is that the government of trinidad and tobago has no legal definition of the term "indigenous peoples," and frequently appropriates the term for referring to all people born in the country, in contradiction to established international conventions. secondly, the government has recognized only one specific organization, and worse yet, it has recognized it in a manner that suggests it is the only possible representative of trinidad's "amerindians," rendering any other claimants to an indigenous identity as fakes. thirdly, while claiming to recognize the caribs, the government has not signed any international conventions or agreements that pertain specifically to the rights of indigenous peoples. (emphasis in original) the united nations committee for the elimination of racial discrimination “asked why the caribs had all but disappeared, exactly how many were left, why they were not treated as a separate racial group and whether measures were being taken to help them, particularly in the economic and educational fields, so as to compensate them for the injustices they had suffered.”from the above passages, many complications arise. who gets the right to identify or classify someone as indigenous or non-indigenous? as has been displayed above, racial mixtures such as the community of the black caribs, presently known as garifuna, were constantly denied legitimacy of indigeneity. questions of cultural survival versus racial distinctions are essential to these complex issues. as forte writes in his indigenous resurgence in the contemporary caribbean, “one can certainly speak of survival in the commonly accepted sense of the term, but cultural survival raises certain problems. is culture to be likened to a biological organism, with a ‘life’ and ‘death,’ and once ‘dead’ can never be resurrected? this would not be the consensus in anthropology, especially where the ideational concept of culture is treated like a dynamic system of meanings, and meanings do not live natural ‘lives’” (forte, 10). forte aptly asserts that “how one is ‘indian’ in 2006 will not be the same as in 1492” (forte, 10). nasha mavalvala extinction of the indigenous peoples of the americas 223 “national consciousness, which is not nationalism, is the only thing that will give us an international dimension” – frantz fanon, wretched of the earth, p.179. in world’s within, vilashini cooppan writes: “race precludes what nation promises; race imprisons whereas nation liberates, inventing everything anew, from the structures of familial organization to the language of national community to decolonization’s famous ‘creation of new men’” (coopan, 141). race necessarily plays a pivotal role in the issues surrounding the question of indigeneity. how does being marginalized within a geographical area of world marginalization differ from being marginalized in a “developed” or “first world” country? in both instances, the indigenous are not included as citizens of the nation or in the making of a “national identity;” where they are included in the national consciousness is in the form of gift shop souvenirs of a cultural heritage or past. can the indigenous peoples of the caribbean be seen as the periphery within the periphery? or does this lead to an “oppression olympics” in a region where the struggle of afrocaribbean peoples and the black consciousness movement have been struggling to form a self-determining national consciousness? bergland writes, “on the one hand, america is and always has been a colony of europe; on the other, america is an imperial power. but both of these facts are somehow shameful in the american context, since american nationhood is built in the denial of colonialism” (bergland, 13, emphasis added). in north america the ghosting of natives can represent or be a manifestation of repressed ‘white guilt’ because the nation is built on foundations of white supremacy and this notion is constantly reified in post-colonial america. but the caribbean, the construction of caribbean nationhood, rather than being built in the denial of colonialism, is rooted in the historical and current recognition of colonialism, its legacies, and in anti-colonial struggle. whereas america denies colonialism and therefore remains in its uncomfortable relationship with it, the caribbean is a site of decolonization, as it seeks to educate and detach from the bonds of colonial thought. in order to do this, the states of the caribbean must necessarily take into account its diverse population, including (and perhaps especially) their indigenous peoples, as a truly decolonized nation cannot deny the political, cultural, or social existence of any of its citizens. forte claims that theses of extinction “have been a caribbean quilt | 2013 224 hallmark of island caribbean historiography.” he continues, “on the other hand, challenges to notions of disappearance, efforts to resist political and economic marginalization, the formation of new regional organizations, and the recent growth in a committed body of scholarship focused on these issues, collectively produce resurgence. in all cases, contemporary indigenous peoples of the caribbean refuse to be measured by the relics of their past or to be treated condescendingly as mute testimonials to a disappearing history, or a “history of disappearance” (forte, 3). nasha mavalvala extinction of the indigenous peoples of the americas 225 works cited bergland, renee. “indian ghosts and american subjects,” national uncanny: indian ghosts and american subjects. hanover: university press of new england, 2000. 1-24. case, frederick ivor. racism and national consciousness. toronto: other eye books, 2002. cooppan, vilashini. “ghostly forms: race, nation and genre in frantz fanon,” worlds within: national narratives and global connections in postcolonial writing. stanford: stanford university press, 2009. 140180. craton, michael. “the black caribs of st. vincent: a reevaluation,” the lesser antilles in the age of european expansion .gainsville: university press of florida, 1996. 71 -85. de verteuil, louis antoine aimé. “chapter v. population-ethnographyreligion-education-crime,” trinidad: its geography, natural resources, administration, present condition, and prospects. london: ward & lock, 1858. 171-205. dippie, brian. the vanishing american: white attitudes and u.s. indian policy. middletown: wesleyan university press, 1982. fanon, frantz.“the pitfalls of national consciousness,” the wretched of the earth. new york: grove press, 1963. 148-205. forte, maximilian c. “introduction: the dual absences of extinction and marginality—what difference does an indigenous presence make?” indigenous resurgence in the contemporary caribbean. new york: peter lang publishing, 2006. 1-18. maximilian c. forte. "carib identity, racial politics, & the problem ofbelonging."review of the indigenous caribbean. 1 may 2011..<http://indigenousreview.blogspot.ca/2011/05/caribidentity-racial-politics-problem.html>. maximilian c. forte. "does trinidad recognize its indigenous people?." review of the indigenous caribbean. 10 march 2007. <http://indigenousreview.blogspot.ca/2007/03/does -trinidadrecognize-its-indigenous.html>. caribbean quilt | 2013 226 shakespeare, william. the tempest. new york: oxford university press, 1987. young, william. an account of the black charaibs in the island of st. vincent’s, with the charaib treaty and other original documents, compiled from the papers of the late sir william young, esq. london: j. sewell, knight and triphook, 1795. caribbean quilt | 2011 54 “63 beach” we are usually confronted with images of the caribbean which depict the area as sensual; where the water, sand and sky are usually crystal clear, luring potential tourists to take a break from their "real" lives. i decided to contest this by taking a scene from 63 beach in guyana and placing it against a complex, looming sky to reflect the multitude of histories and relationships that make up the caribbean. the foreground and background share an intrinsic correlation, contrasting the way in which caribbean reality is juxtaposed to the tourist's ideal. tiffany gurprasad university of toronto, st george arts & science caribbean studies/visual studies oil on canvas 48 x 38 2008 76 caribbean visual arts, social media and performance wendy adeliyi the photographic installation created by maría magdalena campos-pons in de las dos aguas (between two waters), campos-pons takes the viewer on a historical journey of the two bodies of ocean water that separate africa and the americas. many dualities are seen in the photo, starting with the two women standing on either side of the photograph holding opposites ends of a boat. maría magdalena campos-pons in de las dos aguas (between two waters) the boat in the picture is held up like a bridge to symbolize the connection between the two worlds that are separate but almost replicate each other while relying on each other for balance (c & america latina). the artist herself is the subject of the image of the two women wendy adeliyi caribbean visual arts, social media and performance 77 masked by dreadlocks in a sea of confusion between the worlds. the dreadlocks, acting as the masks, can be seen as protection from the brutality faced by africans when forcefully being removed from the continent, as well as the preservation of cultural identity forcibly stripped from enslaved peoples. the dreadlocked masks can also symbolize black diaspora peoples wearing an invisible mask in western civilization as a way to survive, but never feeling like they belong to any nation: far removed from the cultural identity of being african and not belonging to the new world colonized by whites; forever floating in a state of limbo while pain stays buried under the mask (fanon 93). one mask covers the eyes in the ocean symbolizing the enslaved people that did not know where they were or where they were being taken to as if being led blind. the other mask on land covers the mouth representing freedom and identity lost through language (fanon 25). many of the enslaved were from different tribes, spoke different dialects, and could not communicate at first arrival to the new world until new creolized languages formed between each other, the indigenous people of the caribbean, and european settlers. verbal selfexpression towards slave masters was forbidden but keeping one’s mouth closed for survival was encouraged by fellow slaves and also brutally enforced by masters. the story of the slave trade becomes visualized through the garments on the women. one woman is dressed in a blue dress and represents the ocean’s middle passage while the other woman wears white representing the white sands of the caribbean in the new world; both natural elements hold up the boat that floats between them. the vessel carries four male yoruba deities from africa bringing across the protection of the orisha, an african ritual that offers a way to harmonize the spiritual and worldly aims through personal guardians of energy (c & america latina). attached to the boat by stands of dreadlocks are bags of offerings from the orisha gods that journey to the new world with the enslaved and connect them to their dead ancestors. in ifa philosophy, there are seven orisha masters. osun is the representative of sweet waters, love, money, and conception. sango is the warrior serving thunder and lightning, along with strategy. esu is the owner of roads and opportunities and provides spiritual energy. yemonja/olukun represents the ocean, mothers, and is the provider of wealth. obatala represents the head and clarity, and is the arbiter of justice. oya is the female warrior who embodies the marketplace, tornadoes, change in fortune, honor, and integrity (neimark 14). the african worship helps to guide the dead ancestors, which help to guide the living by tying the past, present, and future together for the betterment of the world. the images of the two women in the photograph both have a bag in their hand as if the offering journeyed from one continent to the other to ensure the survival of the africans. africans continue to survive on different continents throughout the world as migration continues in the present day, but the brutality and slaughter of african descendants continue. the woman in the ocean and dressed in blue wear blue and rich in colour with white spotted shoes represents the capture of the pure-blooded traditional african journeying across the atlantic seas. the woman on the right dressed in white represents a washing of the culture and traditions, but her shoes are now painted in red to symbolize bloodshed from slaughter and exploitation of the african body. the artist chooses women to be dominant in this photo and over the ocean and men. “mami wata, a deity in nigerian folklore is believed to be a woman with a half-human and halffish appearance with the ability to transform wholly into any form of her choice and often caribbean quilt ǀ 2020 78 presented with long healthy hair, enviable beauty, and a dark yet appealing mysteriousness” (face2face africa). “in the caribbean and parts of south america, the deity is highly respected and feared with many stories around her identity. the role of the strikingly beautiful goddess is to provide spiritual and material healing to her worshippers, while also protecting their emotional and mental health and growth” (face2face africa). “mama wata is the protector of the water bodies and many africans who find themselves in the western world, specifically in the caribbean and south america, the deity is said to have traveled with them on the atlantic ocean protecting them and taking some of their pain to relieve them. she is said to have captured many slave ships that do not make it to their western destinations especially during the abolition of the slave trade” (face2face africa). mariá uses women in her photograph to pay homage to mama wata’s legacy and to the dominant female energy that protects, guides, and destroys if need be. mariá magdalena campos-pons’ photograph focuses on the atlantic slave trade and the journey to the new world, focusing on the traditions of west african culture in a subtle way that creates a strong emotional impact for the viewer so that they may never forget the history where we all collectively began the journey. wendy adeliyi caribbean visual arts, social media and performance 79 works cited fanon, frantz. black skin, white masks. london: paladin, 1970. “mami wata, the most celebrated mermaid-like deity from africa who crossed over to the west.” face2face africa, 21 july 2018, face2faceafrica.com/article/mami-wata-the most-celebrated-mermaid-like-deity-from-africa-who-crossed-over-to-the-west. neimark, philip john. the way of the orisa: empowering your life through the ancient african religion of ifa. harpersanfrancisco, 1993. “old conflicts, new expressions.” c& américa latina, amlatina.contemporaryand.com/editorial/old-conflicts-new-expressions/. http://face2faceafrica.com/article/mami-wata-the..... 2 “the anglo-blackxons & indo-anglo-saxons” leslie-ann fullerton to all my fellow anglo-blackxons and anglo-indo-saxons: we, who have been stolen, bribed, beaten, raped, and bamboozled, we, who have been maliciously torn from our past like that of a tree from its roots, we, who have been educated with expensive eurocentric values in kindergarten schools, primary schools, high schools and universities, we, who are now reproducing colonial values, norms, and beliefs; beliefs alien to the message of our ancestors which run deep and rhythmic through our veins. we, who were forced to holla out a di top a wi lungs: “gad saav di queen”! we, who know so little or nothing of where our forefathers and mothers came, we, who have lost the roots of our beginning, we, who have lost the true value of what it means to be us, we, who are the "others"! we, the afros, the indos, who crossed the atlantic and the kala pani! just because we have lost the roots of those that have gone before us, does not mean we have to leave those that have not yet come without roots. let's reclaim our identity as rulers, not as servants, not as subjects. not for ourselves, but for those who have not yet come! 35 reparations in the caribbean and diaspora prilly bicknell-hersco introduction millions of people have been victim to violent and inhumane social injustices, many of them based on racial and cultural hierarchies. the nazi holocaust or the colonization of north america through the genocide of indigenous populations are examples of such instances. when these victims have no direct claim on those who committed the harm, the victims turn to the government for reparations. it can be said that the enslavement of africans in the caribbean is another painful and violent injustice, yet few reparations, if any at all, have been paid out to those most affected by the transatlantic slave trade. in 2013, caricom released an official request for reparations for the native genocide and slavery from the united kingdom and the other european colonies. the discussion of reparations for slavery has ignited debate worldwide. transformative justice is a philosophical way of handling conflict and violence. it looks to provide immediate safety, long-term healing, and reparations for victims. transformative justice attempts to hold those who commit the violence accountable by ending the immediate abuse, committing to avoid abuse in the future, and offering reparations for past abuse. “for reparations to be meaningful, or at least for them to be meaningfully transformative, there needs to be a focus on both the process and outcomes of reparations programs. moreover, reparations programs need to consider what the intended recipients want and need” (evans and wilkes 139). this thought process has led officials to take different approaches to provide reparations, including different policies and procedures beyond exclusively financial payments. historical background perhaps the best-known example of reparations paid to victims of war crimes and injustice came at the end of world war ii. in 1952, west germany signed a reparations agreement with israel to help cover the costs of resettling the jewish people who were uprooted and to provide compensation to individual jews for their losses in livelihood and property at the hands of nazi germany. this agreement was historical in that both states involved did not entertain a diplomatic relationship, nor did either state wish to establish a relationship moving forward. the negotiations also occurred a mere seven years following the end of the war and made quite an impact because they formally recognized the unspeakable crimes that were committed toward the jewish people at the hands of the german people. this acknowledgement allowed for the jewish community and its people to once again be viewed as equals because it placed the blame on those who committed the wrong-doing and not those who fell victim to those acts. caribbean repartition background a 1993 conference in nigeria called for the abuja declaration in which national committees were asked to prepare for a campaign for reparations from all countries that benefitted from slave trade and colonialism. in 2013, caricom established the caricom reparations commission (crc) whose sole purpose was to produce a case for “reparatory justice for the region’s indigenous and african descendant communities who are the victims of crimes against caribbean quilt ǀ 2020 36 humanity (cah) in the forms of genocide, slavery, slave trading, and racial apartheid.” (caricom). in doing so, the crc was attempting to hold the european government accountable for the hardships endured by the indigenous people of the caribbean region during the transatlantic slave trade. the crc contends that the eu is responsible for defining and enforcing african enslavement as well as for refusing to compensate the enslaved once they were freed, even though the government compensated slave owners for the loss of property. it also asserts that there has been no acknowledgment of the crimes committed and, further, that it has imposed racial apartheid among the emancipated. the justification and political theory addressing reparations for past injustices upon present ancestors of caribbean slaves have encountered both positive and negative feedback. codified under international law, reparations have been made to jewish and native americans in terms of free education, health care, and land. however, there have been limited reparations for those of caribbean ancestry. reasons for the lack of reparations to those caribbean communities include a lack of historical data, foreign aid from britain to the caribbean region, and the fact that slavery was common practice in the era. there is, however, a quantifiable case for providing such compensation to current caribbean communities who are descendants of enslaved africans. such reasons include a moral obligation and the economic underdevelopment of the region as a direct result of the lack of compensation. lack of historical data (ancestry) many who claim reparations are required to provide proof of their ancestry, and the crc offers case support for these people. the crc case for reparations is built upon moral, ethical, and legal arguments, including supporting the idea that contemporary populations still live with and are affected by the legacy of slavery and indigenous genocide. at the foundation of this argument is the belief that those alive today are indeed the descendants of those who were harmed over 150 years ago. within the caribbean, this belief is particularly acute, especially with regard to the calls for reparations for indigenous genocide (torres 2). while there are significant limitations on historical data, genetic testing can be used as quantifiable proof that contemporary persons of the caribbean communities are descendants of the indigenous peoples and therefore qualify for reparations. genetic testing is quickly becoming a source of evidence with the potential to prove that those currently living in the caribbean are direct descendants of the indigenous peoples who were harmed by the policies of colonial britain. torres states “calculating reparatory measures requires interpretations of the past, an assessment of the present, and an understanding of how both the past and present are related. in order to strengthen this legal case, a crucial aspect of caricom’s argument would be to establish that contemporary populations have indeed been impacted by the legacy of britain’s colonial policies” (3). genetic data can provide a missing piece of evidence necessary to reconcile the history of unaddressed abuse and exploitation of black and indigenous people. prilly bicknell-hersco reparations in the caribbean and diaspora 37 past and current reparation of others another argument as to why the caribbean region has yet to receive reparations from europe is the amount of foreign aid that is currently being received. in america, the native american population has received reparations in the form of federal aid through congressional legislation for more than a century (danielson and pimentel 90). caricom states already receive over $450 million per year in foreign aid from europe, and a large amount of that comes from the three nations being targeted for reparations: great britain, france, and the netherlands. based on this information, it is suggested that if caricom were to be awarded reparations, this monetary amount would come from the budget that is already intended for foreign aid. the financial reparations that are requested from the european union are not necessarily in the form of individual payments to the descendants of the indigenous people, but more focused on providing infrastructure to the region. “it is a renewed call for development cooperation between britain and the caribbean. it is about britain making a long-overdue contribution to the economic development of the caribbean through investments in areas such as education, health care, agriculture reform, technology, and science to transfer through the universities and colleges”(erskine 2). according to the lisbon treaty of 2009, a vital objective of the “eu’s policy on foreign aid is the reduction and eventual elimination of poverty,” including but not limited to helping to restore social infrastructures such as education and healthcare (papademetriou 6). it is also assumed that europe and the united states would cut down on the otherwise regular donations for regional development. “a reparation settlement would be another blow to a european economy struggling to recover. further, since the eu is the second-largest trading partner with caricom, anything that negatively impacts the eu economy will most assuredly harm caribbean economies” (edghill 2). precedence in order to receive reparations under international law, caricom must be able to prove that their colonial oppressors acted illegally at the time they carried out their injustices (schwartz). while slavery is, without a doubt, an inhumane injustice, at one point in time, it was legal. slavery was once thought to be more of a business than an injustice. this does not excuse the individuals who participated in the slave trade from their complicity, but it is important to understand the bigger issue of colonial powers creating structures and policies that even allowed slavery to be legal. in 1996, a motion for reparations was denied by the house of lords based on the fact that those unjust acts occurred in the distant past, and there were no living persons to act as a plaintiff in the case (schwartz). accountability and compensation for slavery are often refused simply because those injustices were restricted to the period in which it happened. those in favour of reparations argue that the responsibility of the wrongdoing cannot be transferred from one point in history to the current time. those beliefs persist today. in 2018, secretary-general antónio guterres had this to say about the transatlantic slave trade: “it was inhuman. it was shameful. caribbean quilt ǀ 2020 38 however, it was legally sanctioned — conducted and condoned by leaders and countries in europe, the americas, and elsewhere.” to provide reparations in the caribbean would set a precedent for all descendants of slaves to receive reparations. the call for reparations from caricom has already been linked to the black lives matter movement, which has led to a reopening of the reparation discussion for african americans in the united states (and across the wider diaspora)(caricom). in 2007, anthony gifford wrote, “if the transatlantic slave trade was a crime against humanity, it was a crime in international law and a suitable case for reparations” (93). the strong impact that britain had on the transatlantic slave trade should result in a moral obligation to make amends for their part. this is exemplified in the lasting effects that many black people throughout the world still encounter today. in 2018, mone dixon submitted a thesis to the city university of new york that examined the link between slavery and the mistreatment of african americans today. dixon stated, the mentality that established and supported the system of slavery, which promoted the dehumanization of black bodies, remains a reality today and keeps african americans more susceptible to state violence. the ongoing volatile acts committed by police officials onto black bodies, as well as the nation’s blatant disregard of racism, have caused an uproar within the black community. hence, the rise of the black lives matter movement (33). dixon was not the first, and will not be the last, to make this connection between the exploitation of black people and the continuous economic disadvantages as social stratification. britain, along with other countries, enjoyed significant economic benefits from slavery. most continue to do so. there is a moral obligation to provide support to their former colonies for long-term development that is sustainable, especially considering the physical state of the lands after colonial powers extracted all of their natural resources. the substantial role that britain played in the transatlantic slave trade should be acknowledged. recognizing their role in the slave trade is one small step in the direction of reparations. just as west germany apologized for the actions of the nazis, similarly, britain has an obligation to apologize for the exploitation and violence inflicted upon black bodies, regardless of how much time has passed. compensation given to british, spanish and portuguese slave owners after the abolition of slavery played a large part in the industrial development of those countries. “in 1833, britain used £20 million, 40% of its national budget, to buy freedom for all slaves in the empire. the amount of money borrowed for the slavery abolition act was so large that it wasn’t paid off until 2015.” (hm treasury). if taxpayers today are still making up for the debt incurred centuries ago from “compensated emancipation,” today’s descendants of those enslaved should have the same right to be compensated, regardless of time restraints. nothing was paid to those who suffered from being enslaved, and no land was given. this impeded the growth of “industrialization and caused chronic poverty.” manjapra also notes that the caribbean has become one of the largest centers of predatory lending at the hands of the imf and world bank, as well as european and american banks, as a direct result of their “historical enforced dependence on foreign finance” (125). prilly bicknell-hersco reparations in the caribbean and diaspora 39 it has been argued that there is a real and present need for an acknowledgment of the significance of the legacy that transatlantic slave trade left behind. not only did the caribbean lose labor forces to the slave trade, but the profits made from slavery and sugar were distributed to european nations. the economic effects of those relationships built globally during the colonial period are still evident today and continue to hinder the economic growth of the caribbean region (evans and wilkins 145). the financial burden that continues to affect the region negatively stems from the economic history that was established during the transatlantic slave trade. economic inequalities the economic inequalities resulting from the transatlantic slave trade also spread throughout the caribbean region, including the underdevelopment that exists within localized populations tying into historical practices. emancipated slaves were alienated and received no land, putting productive resources out of their reach. even the descendants of the once enslaved were refused inheritance because their ancestors had not received payment for their work. at the time slavery was abolished, little was paid to the caribbean region for education. the impact of well-educated individuals that flee the caribbean due to the slow rate of economic growth within the region was examined by mandle in 2011. while federation is considered a “cornerstone of burgeoning west indian nationalist movements” (duke), becoming a nation has not been a high priority for those living in the caribbean. the lack of progress of integration has negatively impacted the economic growth of the region. in order to successfully build a nation, the new caribbean must be strong enough to overcome the former caribbean. until then, the people in the caribbean continue to look to migration as a means to achieve better economic security. this then perpetuates the idea that the only way to attain success is to be found outside of the caribbean borders. mandle concluded that, while continuing education elsewhere is not inherently harmful, the focus must be for those to return once the training or education is completed. “what is fundamental to modern growth is the competence of a population to work in a complementary relationship with modern technology”. reparations could potentially lead to a federation of caribbean states and raise the overall economic status, which would, in turn, encourage development. the development could, in turn, reduce the rate of those well-educated persons who leave the caribbean for more developed countries. the university of the west indies has the capacity to become a “hub of technologically sophisticated research and development” (mandle), which could contribute to the return of the caribbean people. however, funds are needed to see this project to fruition. the reparations that caricom is seeking could have a significant impact on the development of this university. transatlantic slavery, present-day benefits, and harms the influence that integration resulting from slavery has had on the identity of the caribbean region remains. “in this region, indigenous populations, the african diaspora created by slavery, and european settlers provided the human basis upon which plantation economies built unique caribbean quilt ǀ 2020 40 but analogous social, political and economic institutions and cultures” (garcia). garcia explained how nearly all aspects of caribbean culture are more or less extensions of other parts of the world, from the music of afro antillean drums to food with puerto rican roots. the roots of the indigenous people continue to play a significant role in today’s culture of the caribbean region. in historical and cultural terms, a caribbean identity can be conceived as a set of overlapping circles. the segment of the surface of each circle that overlaps (music, cuisine, religious beliefs, etc.) constitutes the building block of a caribbean identity. it is further argued that this “cultural core” is provided by the afro-antillean diaspora traditions. the shared yet diverse experience(s) of slavery and plantation are the basis of the cultural bond captured in walcott’s affirmation, the driving force behind the “emotional federation.” it is also imperative to note that, just as integration has impacted the culture of the caribbean region, the ideas central to the function of slavery continues to permeate caribbean society today. “it appears that the racial hierarchies of chattel slavery still influence socioeconomic realities both within and between nations that were historically engaged in the transatlantic slave trade” (evans and wilkins). much evidence still exists for the connections between transatlantic slavery and present-day benefits and harms. when looking at the heart of the structure of inequalities, slavery is found and persists today throughout the world. a press release from the united nations in 2018 quoted martha ama akyaa pobee of ghana, who aregued that the remnants of the slave trade in her country were visible today. she pointed out that more than 40 million people worldwide were trapped in modern-day slavery in the form of forced labor, forced prostitution, human trafficking, child labor, and forced marriage. yet, while the transatlantic slave trade had devastating consequences in africa, the resilience and survival of its victims had inspired change, especially for africa’s decolonization and the pan-africanist movement. the racial hierarchies that were established to justify the transatlantic slave trade persists today in the caribbean. those of white or light skin are still typically considered to be among the elite or upper-class. it is possible that the result of the formal apology and admittance that comes with the 10-point plan for reparations laid out by the crc could be as beneficial to black people in the region as reparations were for the jewish after the agreement with west germany in 1952. gifford states, “every act of discrimination, every racial attack, every vote for a neo-fascist party, is a reminder that the doctrine of white superiority, which was used to justify the traffic in black humans, still has potency.” the relationship between present racial inequalities and slavery practices have been studied and examined by a vast number of scholars. the results of these studies directly “point to the widespread destruction of languages and culture that went hand in hand with the mass enslavement of black populations and the classification of such as less than human beings, the denial of a cultural voice and ability to practice traditions and the stunting of the development of educational systems and cultural institutions which were not developed within the caribbean region because of the structure of slave societies” (schwartz). prilly bicknell-hersco reparations in the caribbean and diaspora 41 conclusion there is a case for reparations to be paid out because of the enslavement of black people and the colonization of indigenous land. though there is a more significant gap in time from when the injustices occurred and when reparations were given, jewish communities and indigenous (native american) communities received reparations for similar circumstances. while time has passed, this does not erase the devastating legacies of slavery. countries that participated in the slave trade, who bought, sold and enslaved africans in the caribbean, benefited financially from the slave trade and were able to maintain their wealth and power, and build generational wealth from the blood of enslaved black people during transatlantic slave trade. likewise, many black people across many continents have not been able to economically recover and thus have been in a state of financial dependency, making it difficult to build generational wealth. in essence, the caribbean is comprised of third world countries as a direct result of being enslaved and colonized, thus, reparations must be considered in some capacity in order to achieve and maintain economic stability and independence across the region. caribbean quilt ǀ 2020 42 works cited caricom. (2019). 10-point reparation plan. caricom. retrieved from http://caricomreparations.org/caricom/caricoms-10-point-reparation-plan/ danielson, m., & pimentel, a. (2004). give them their due: an african-american reparations program based on the native american federal aid model, washington and lee journal of civil rights and social justice 10(1), 89-114. dixon, m. (2018). the influence of slavery on the black body: black lives matter’s intersectional methodology and new advancements (unpublished doctoral dissertation). new york, ny, cuny. edghill, m. (2013). caricom and reparations. americas quarterly. retrieved from https://www.americasquarterly.org/content/caricom-and-reparations erskine, m. (2016). sir hilary presents model for reparations at oxford university. uwi st. augustine. retrieved from http://sta.uwi.edu/news/releases/release.asp?id=1519 evans, m. and wilkins, d. (2019). transformative justice, reparations, and transatlantic slavery, social and legal studies, 28(2), 137-157. gifford, a. (2007). pipe dream or necessary atonement? index on censorship, 36(1), 89– 96. doi:10.1080/03064220701224439 papademetriou, t. (2011). european union: regulation of foreign aid – september 2011, the law library of congress. 19-44. schwartz, k. (2014). bars to recovery: the caribbean claims to reparations to slavery in international law (unpublished doctoral dissertation). new zealand: university of otago. torres, j. (2018). ‘reparational’ genetics: genomic data and the case for reparations in the caribbean. genealogy, 2(1), 7-21. doi:10.3390/genealogy201007 https://doi.org/10.1080/03064220701224439 prilly bicknell-hersco reparations in the caribbean and diaspora 43 united nations press release. (march 26, 2018). nefarious impacts of slavery, transatlantic slave trade persist today, speakers stress as general assembly observes international day amid calls to end racism. united nations retrieved from https://www.un.org/press/en/2018/ga12005.doc.htm :::::: 142 the dismantlement of the netherlands antilles: how autonomy is more viable than independence cameron wathey cameron wathey is from the 37 square mile half-dutch, half-french island of st. maarten/st. martin. his family roots are established on the dutch side of the island, which is technically considered an autonomous country within the kingdom of the netherlands. he is currently studying cinema studies, english, and history, with a specific focus on caribbean history. he is also a student leader on campus, serving as the vice-president internal & services for the university of toronto students’ union. cameron has a keen interest in the history and culture of the caribbean, the diaspora, and politics of the region. on october 10th, 2010, the netherlands antilles was dismantled. the islands have decided to part ways with curacao and st. maarten as countries within the kingdom of the netherlands while bonaire, st. eustatius, and saba have become public authorities, the equivalence of municipalities in the netherlands. the debates over the years pertaining to the viability of the netherlands antilles have ended with the dutch caribbean achieving their goal. yet, these islands are not independent territories. they still remain apart of the kingdom of the netherlands. this essay addresses the political history that has led to the recent dismantlement of the netherlands antilles in which the islands continue to be autonomous partners within the kingdom of the netherlands. due to the recent developments in the dismantlement, however, scholarly work has not been written on the status of the decolonization process as of yet. therefore, this essay presents the decolonization process up to the final plunge in 2010. attention will be focused on the context in which the netherlands antilles was created, and the key events that have occurred, with the results of 2004 referendum as the culminating event. the idea of autonomy explains why the dutch territories fought for dissolution yet wanted to remain ‘partners’ with the netherland as opposed to independent countries. for several islands in the caribbean, the topic of independence does not concern them. a relatively large proportion of non-sovereign islands can still be found in the caribbean with most being content with the present status of their country. the claim to the acceptance of their relationship with a ‘mother country’ is mainly due to the evident benefits that are attached with the status of non-sovereignty. gert oostindie claims in his article, dependence cameron wathey| the dismantlement of netherlands antilles 143 and autonomy in sub-national island jurisdictions: the case of the kingdom of the netherlands, that between the collections of islands in the caribbean, there is a positive correlation between nonsovereignty and standards of living.1 according to his findings, oostindie notes that sovereignty can be a drawback to the economic development.2 he notes that the three major countries in the region, cuba, haiti, and the dominican republic are all sovereign states. in terms of their economic development haiti is currently the poorest country in the caribbean with the dominican republic tailing right behind.3 as for the case of the ten richest islands in the caribbean, nine of them are non-sovereign.4 paul sutton lists in his article nonindependent territories and small states: retrospect and prospect, that non-sovereign territories in the caribbean also have the advantages of free trade with the metropolis, grants and social welfare assistance, access to foreign capital and labour markets, special tax concessions, aid for infrastructure and communications, a working health care system, high levels of school administration, and relatively low levels of crime compared to their independent counterparts.5 other than the advantages of aid and security by the metropolis, the level of democracy and standards of governance is considerably higher in non-sovereign islands too. the nonindependent islands still attain autonomy, yet standards of governance are defined and enforced by the metropolis.6 for all the reasons listed, politicians on non-sovereign islands aspire to maintain their partnership with the metropolis, while at the same time securing maximum autonomy. godfrey baldacchino notes that non-sovereign territories, or what he refers to as a ‘sub-national island jurisdictions (snij)’, are guaranteed a safety net by the metropolitan power, while are granted enough freedom to protect their national identity, local culture, and general exercise of local power.7 with the dismantlement of the netherlands antilles, it was 1 gert oostindie, “dependency and autonomy in sub-national island jurisdictions: the case of the kingdom of the netherlands.” the round table: the commonwealth journal of international affairs 95, no. 386 (2006): 610. 2 ibid., 610. 3 ibid., 610. 4 ibid., 611. 5 paul sutton, “non-independent territories and small states: retrospect and prospect” in governance in the non-independent caribbean: challenges and opportunities in the twenty-first century, edited by peter clegg and emilio pantojas-garcia (kingston: ian randle publishers, 2009), xxxviii. 6 oostindie, dependence and autonomy in the kingdom, 611. 7 godfrey baldacchino and david milne, “success without sovereignty: exploring caribbean quilt | 2013 144 not a matter of independence from the netherlands. rather it was about securing more autonomous advantages while retaining their relationship with the metropolis. the historical relationship between the dutch caribbean and the kingdom of the netherlands indicated the dutch’s neglect for their ‘other’ colonies in the atlantic. like several other european empires, the presence of the netherlands in the caribbean dates back to age of colonial expansion in the seventeenth century. while the dutch acquired six islands in the atlantic, most of their colonial efforts were devoted towards the pacific. the west indies did not appear on the netherlands’ agenda again until world war ii. in her famous radio broadcast in 1942, queen wilhelmina of the netherlands announced that after the war, the kingdom of the netherlands would pursue a new course. the queen spoke of ‘complete partnership’ with and autonomy for the overseas territories. the queen envisaged solidarity with the overseas territories in which the dutch government would assist with internal affairs.8 this proclamation was a consequence of the growing nationalism in the dutch east indies, as well as pressure by the u.s. and england to impose a new approach to colonialism.9 the proposal was too late, however, because nationalists in indonesia declared their independence after the end the war in 1945.10 the east indies was considered a crucial extension to the economy of the netherlands. the loss of their prized colony in the pacific suggested that the dutch were losing their foothold as an empire. despite their military intervention, however, the dutch failed to reclaim indonesia. in 1949, under pressure from the indonesian independence movement and united states, the dutch were forced to accept the transfer of sovereignty to the independent republic of indonesia.11 traumatized by a violent decolonization, the dutch were willing to grant more autonomy for their territories in the west. sub-national island jurisdictions.” the round table: the commonwealth journal of international affairs 95, no. 386 (2006): 490. 8 harold mitchell, europe in the caribbean: the policies of great britain, france, and the netherlands towards their west indian territories in the twentieth century (great britain: university of edinburgh, 1963), 39. 9 gert oostindie and inge klinkers, decolonising the caribbean: dutch policies in a comparative perspective (amsterdam: amsterdam university press, 2003), 66. 10 ibid., 66. 11 ibid., 67. cameron wathey| the dismantlement of netherlands antilles 145 the failure of the netherlands to reclaim indonesia benefitted the decolonization of the netherlands antilles and surinam. in an effort to improve their international image after the catastrophic decolonization of indonesia, the netherlands were willing to agree to negotiations with the dutch caribbean islands. the caribbean islands had high hopes to acquire the autonomous privileges that were promised by the kingdom during wartime. the overseas territories did not desire independence, but rather hoped to achieve autonomy while preserving a platonic relationship with the kingdom.12 as for the netherlands, integrating the colonies into overseas provinces, after the example of the overseas departments of france, was not an option because the netherlands did not wish to involve the overseas territories in metropolitan affairs.13 the result of their round table conferences was the statuut or the charter of the kingdom of the netherlands in 1954. the kingdom of the netherlands was composed of three equal partners: the netherlands, the netherlands antilles, and suriname. the netherlands antilles and surinam achieved their goal for autonomy with the charter. the charter was designed to grant surinam and the netherlands antilles the rights to self-government while also remain part of the kingdom of the netherlands.14 the charter defined foreign affairs, defense, citizenship, and safeguarding proper governmental administration as matters of interest that would be governed by the kingdom.15 with final authority over these affairs, the netherlands believed that they were ensuring good governance and fundamental human rights in the netherlands antilles and surinam.16 paul sutton lists that good governance is recognized as having a “broad range of concerns focused on open, transparent and accountable government; efficient, effective and responsive administration; and respect for human rights and law.”17 good governance for the netherlands was securing a local government that abided to the framework of democracy. under the matters that concerned the kingdom, however, local governments had little power to administer the best interests for their community. the equality promised in the charter was 12 ibid., 74. 13 mitchell, europe in the caribbean, 123. 14 ibid., 123. 15 oostindie , decolonising the caribbean, 217 16 ibid., 217. 17 sutton, non-independent territories, xxxii caribbean quilt | 2013 146 unbalanced from the very beginning. the lack of equality created tensions between local governments and the kingdom’s obligation to guarantee good governance.18 the charter functioned as a form of regulation for several years of its instalment until the end of the 1960s. the turning point for the charter came when violent riots broke out in curaçao on may 30 1969. it originally began as a labour conflict for higher wages then escalated into racial and political injustice that ended with mass rebellion. rioters took to the streets and attempted to burn down the capital, willemstad.19 the netherlands sent dutch marines to curaçao to restore order in the capital of the netherlands antilles. while the revolt was quickly terminated, this intervention sparked criticism from the two parties involved. the people of curaçao considered the military intervention as a form of neo-colonialism while the netherlands found their political responsibility with the netherlands antilles as increasingly problematic.20 according to gert oostindie in decolonising the caribbean, from a dutch perspective, the netherlands was caught in a paradoxical situation. the dutch were obligated to guarantee good governance while at the same time granted the local government the responsibility of overseeing local affairs.21 the netherlands, therefore, believed that they needed to remove themselves from future obligations by dismantling the netherlands antilles.22 for the netherlands antilles political independence was synonymous with economic decline. the economic benefits as part of the kingdom of the netherlands made the option of independence unattractive. aside from the safeguard of good governance, the netherlands antilles was provided with development aid from the netherlands. this aid was used to reduce public debt and finance projects for the development of the infrastructure, with the participation of dutch companies.23 the netherlands complained that the netherlands antilles was too dependent on dutch economic 18 oostindie, decolonsing the caribbean, 218. 19 rita giacalone, “the political status of curacao at the end of the twentieth century,” in islands at the crossroads: politics in the non-independent caribbean, edited by aaron gamaliel ramos and angel israel rivera (jamaica: ian randle publishers, 2001), 96. 20 ibid. 96. 21 oostindie, decolonising the caribbean, 99. 22 ibid., 99. 23 giacalone, the political status, 99. cameron wathey| the dismantlement of netherlands antilles 147 support and did not produce any revenues in return.24 therefore, the dutch urged the netherlands antilles to pursue political independence however, the other caribbean territories refused to distance themselves with the kingdom based on the terms established in the charter. after the end of the curaçao revolt in 1969, the netherlands attempted to disengage itself from its overseas dependencies. when surinam proposed their independence to the dutch, they were met with little resistance. the dutch recognized surinam’s inevitable independence as an opportunity to distance themselves from their atlantic territories.25 the amount of time between surinam’s proposal for independence to the actual transfer of their independence took only twenty months to come to fruition.26 this revealed the dutch were not willing to gradually assist the surinamese government, but would rather let them fend for themselves. by 1980, the government of surinam fell under military dictatorship.27 the country was also on the brink of economic ruin. the netherlands had imposed a ‘model decolonization’ that would continue to provide development aid, but it was too late.28 even though the military regime has been replaced with a democratic country, surinam has never recovered from the economic downfall. unlike surinam, the option for political independence for netherlands antilles has never been popular. the dutch attempted to continue to dissociate themselves from the atlantic after surinam, but it was not that simple. to dismantle the kingdom a change to the charter of 1954 would be needed. to make any changes to the charter, all partners involved would have to agree.29 the prime minister of the netherlands antilles from 1973 to 1977, juancho evertsz, stated in 1975 that independence would be completed under three conditions: first, all six island would have to realize selfgovernment; second, there would need to be a new cooperation between the islands; and finally, the islands will have attained a 24 oostindie, dependence and autonomy, 616. 25 ibid, 617. 26 ibid., 617. 27 alma young, “decolonization in the dutch caribbean: lessons from the commonwealth caribbean” in the dutch caribbean: prospects for democracy, edited by betty sedoc-dahlberg (new york: gordon and breach science, 1990), 254. 28 ibid,. 255. 29 oostindie, dependence and autonomy, 616. caribbean quilt | 2013 148 reasonable level of economic development before sovereignty began.30 evertsz’ requirements for independence emphasized that only when the netherlands antilles agreed to these preconditioned terms would the dutch realize their proposal for the independence of the netherlands antilles. with much annoyance to the dutch, the netherlands antilles proved that independence would not be an option. the netherlands’ hope for the decolonization of the netherlands antilles was fading after the disastrous results with surinam’s independence in 1975. the first several years following surinam’s independence the country underwent civil war, economic downturn, a significant lowering of standards of living, and corruption flourished.31 nevertheless, aruba realized that independence from the netherlands antilles might be the only way to achieve complete autonomy. the government of the netherlands antilles was composed of a two-tier institutional system: a parliament (staten) for all the islands and a local government called the island council (eilandsraad).32 when the charter was constructed curaçao, the largest and most populated island, was granted majority control over the parliament of the netherlands antilles. out of 22 seats for parliament, curaçao occupied eleven, eight for aruba, one for bonaire, and one for the windward group (st. maarten, st. eustatius, and saba).33 therefore, curaçao governed the federation’s affairs. in 1977, aruba had grown tired of living in the shadow of curaçao’s authority. aruba’s decision to secede from the netherlands antilles was stemmed from curaçao’s domination as the capital of the federation and along with the discrimination incited by curaçao.34 aruba’s struggle for independence could not be achieved without curaçao’s approval. furthermore, aruba would also have to acquire approval from the other islands in the netherlands antilles, 30 oostindie, decolonising the caribbean, 117. 31 armando lampe, “the recolonisation of aruba,” in islands at the crossroads: politics in the non-independent caribbean, edited by aaron gamaliel ramos and angel israel rivera (jamaica: ian randle publishers, 2001), 107. 32 lammert de jong, “the implosion of the netherlands antilles,” in governance in the non-independent caribbean: challenges and opportunities in the twentyfirst century, edited by peter clegg and emilio pantojas-garcia (kingston: ian randle publishers, 2009), 28. 33 young, lessons, 257. 34 ibid., 257. cameron wathey| the dismantlement of netherlands antilles 149 and most importantly, from the netherlands. after many years of struggle, betico croes of the majority party in aruba finally received cooperation in 1983 from all parties involved.35 croes, however, did not bargain for independence. croes argued for status aparte (separate status), in which aruba would secede from the netherlands antilles in order to manage most of their domestic affairs.36 moreover, aruba would continue as a partner of the kingdom of the netherlands. the netherlands would only agree to aruba’s status aparte on the condition that aruba would be compelled to accept independence after ten years. these ten years would serve as a transition period for aruba to gradually build a stable government and economy before they were deemed independent.37 thus, on january 1, 1986, aruba attained status aparte and was converted into an autonomous partner within the dutch kingdom, yet separated from the federation of the netherlands antilles. when the time came for their independence in 1996, aruba succeeded with attaining permanent status aparte within the kingdom.38 aruba realized that independence would be a risky decision that may or may not end with freedom or the right to self-determination of their government. with the status aparte, aruba was guaranteed greater autonomy, good governance, economic security from the metropolis, as well as a higher standard of living for its people. aruba’s secession called for the reconfiguration of the netherlands antilles’ federal legislature. until all parties settled upon the restructure of the netherlands antilles, the vacant seats in parliament were divided among the remaining five islands. curaçao solidified their dominance over the central government with fourteen out of twenty fours seats.39 despite being the second largest island in the federation after aruba’s secession as well as the former representative for the windward islands in parliament, sint. maarten’s one seat only increased to three.40 nonetheless, sint maarten was no longer dependent on curaçao or the central 35 robertico croes and lucita moenir alam, “decolonization of aruba within the netherlands antilles,” in the dutch caribbean: prospects for democracy, edited by betty sedoc-dahlberg (new york: gordon and breach science, 1990), 85. 36 oostindie, decolonsing the caribbean, 129. 37 croes, decolonization of aruba, 86. 38 oostindie, dependence and autonomy, 618. 39 fabian badejo, “sint maarten: the dutch half in future perspective” in the dutch caribbean: prospects for democracy, edited by betty sedoc-dahlberg (new york: gordon and breach science, 1990), 128. 40 ibid., 129. caribbean quilt | 2013 150 government at the time of the restructure.41 a once a sleepy, uninhabited island with hardly any economic activity has since transformed into an economic superpower within the caribbean due to extensive investments in the tourist industry.42 from the perspective of the politicians on the island, sint maarten was already autonomous and self-sufficient. as for the discussion of the netherlands antilles, the netherlands concluded that cutting all ties with their caribbean islands was no longer a possibility. instead, the dutch proposed in 1990 a draft constitution to split the netherlands antilles into curaçao and bonaire as one country followed by st. maarten, saba, and st. eustatius as the other.43 the draft constitution was immediately rejected, however. the dutch went back to the drawing board only to come back three years later to propose status aparte for each island.44 political parties in curaçao strongly pushed for this offer, but as the results of the referendums showed, the people spoke and they preferred to maintain ties with the netherlands antilles.45 the idea of dissolution was dismissed once more, for the time being at least. after a stalemate for the remainder of the twentieth century, sint maarten revived debates that have sparked the first step to the dismantlement.46 the contrasting results of the referendums held in 2004 and 2005 marked the end of the netherlands antilles.47 with 69 percent, sint maarten opted for separate status as an autonomy country within the kingdom. curaçao too preferred separate status with 68 percent. saba and bonaire’s voters preferred for unilateral link with the netherlands while stats preferred to maintain the status quo.48 the outcome of these results clearly indicated that the netherlands antilles was not functioning according to the five islands. like aruba, sint maarten no longer wanted to take orders from the dominant curaçao. ironically, curaçao wanted to free itself from the burden of its responsibility of overlooking the affairs of bonaire, saba, and st. eustatius. curaçao wanted to focus on its own 41 ibid., 131. 42 ibid., 124. 43 jong, implosion, 29. 44 ibid., 29. 45 ibid., 29. 46 ibid., 30. 47 ibid., 31. 48 oostindie, dependence and autonomy, 620. cameron wathey| the dismantlement of netherlands antilles 151 development.49 on 10-10-10, the five islands were promised what they voted for. after fifty years since the configuration of the kingdom of the netherlands, the dutch caribbean islands were still obsessed with autonomy and refused to completely severe their ties with the kingdom of the netherlands. why would a non-sovereign territory argue for independence when the benefits to autonomy include powers over finance, powers over environmental policy, powers over access, powers over free movements of persons, and powers over tourism policy?50 curaçao and sint maarten are now on the same page as aruba with high degrees of autonomy. similarly, the netherlands has also been relieved of the burden of their larger caribbean territories. even though there is no longer a federation that connects the dutch caribbean islands, these territories will never completely lose their relationship with the netherlands. their relationship within the kingdom involves a direct connection with the netherlands, including a dutch passport, migration to the netherlands, dutch protection, and a functioning democracy.51 furthermore, aruba’s status aparte has been a prime example of curaçao and sint maarten should expect. since their separation, aruba has performed good governance, and boosted local culture as well as what it means to be an aruban. as for sint maarten, they can continue to improve tourist economy without curaçao looking over their shoulder. curaçao too can work on improving and developing their economy as well. the dismantlement of the netherlands antilles could very well be the best-case scenario for the smaller islands to improve local conditions with the financial security. the larger, more self-sufficient islands now have the ability to improve their local culture since each island is unique when it comes to the language, race, and environment. the dismantlement of the netherlands antilles has granted more autonomy for those who asked for it and a closer relationship to the netherlands for those who still are dependent on the ‘mother country’. these nonsovereign territories seem to have the best of both worlds, but as seen through the history of the netherlands antilles, only time can tell if it will remain this way. 49 ibid., 620. 50 sutton, non-independent territories, xxxvii. 51 oostindie, decolonising the caribbean, 221. caribbean quilt | 2013 152 citations badejo, fabian. “sint maarten: the dutch half in future perspective” in the dutch caribbean: prospects for democracy, edited by betty sedoc dahlberg, 119-149. new york: gordon and breach science, 1990. baldacchino, godfrey and david milne, “success without sovereignty: exploring sub-national island jurisdictions.” the round table: the commonwealth journal of international affairs 95, no. 386 (2006):490. croes, robertico and lucita moenir alam. “decolonization of aruba within the netherlands antilles,” in the dutch caribbean: prospects for democracy, edited by betty sedoc-dahlberg, 81-102. new york: gordon and breach science, 1990. de jong, lammert. “the implosion of the netherlands antilles,” in governance in the non-independent caribbean: challenges and opportunities in the twenty-first century, edited by peter clegg and emilio pantojas-garcia, 24-44. kingston: ian randle publishers, 2009. giacalone, rita. “the political status of curaçao at the end of the twentieth century,” in islands at the crossroads: politics in the non independent caribbean, edited by aaron gamaliel ramos and angel israel rivera, 95-105. jamaica: ian randle publishers, 2001, 96. lampe, armando. “the recolonisation of aruba,” in islands at the crossroads: politics in the non-independent caribbean, edited by aaron gamaliel ramos and angel israel rivera, 106-113. jamaica: ian randle publishers, 2001. mitchell, harold. europe in the caribbean: the policies of great britain, france, and the netherlands towards their west indian territories in the twentieth century. great britain: university of edinburgh, 1963. oostindie, gert and inge klinkers. decolonising the caribbean: dutch policies in a comparative perspective. amsterdam: amsterdam university press, 2003. oostindie, gert. “dependency and autonomy in sub-national island jurisdictions: the case of the kingdom of the netherlands.” the round table: the commonwealth journal of international affairs 95, no. 386 (2006) 609-626. cameron wathey| the dismantlement of netherlands antilles 153 paul sutton, “introduction: non-independent territories and small states: retrospect and prospect” in governance in the non independent caribbean: challenges and opportunities in the twenty first century, edited by peter clegg and emilio pantojas-garcia, xxiii-xliii. kingston: ian randle publishers, 2009. young, alma. “decolonization in the dutch caribbean: lessons from the commonwealth caribbean” in the dutch caribbean: prospects for democracy, edited by betty sedoc-dahlberg, 255-267 new york: gordon and breach science, 1990. :::::: 100 pum pum rule jamaican dance: an analytic response to the inability to recognize female sovereignty in dancehall leslie-ann fullerton “all i want to be is a jamaican dancehall queen. if this is not possible, i will be satisfied writing about women in jamaican dancehall.” leslie-ann fullerton. leslie-ann fullerton was born and raised in a christian home in jamaica. she later became a dedicated lover and participant of jamaican dancehall as a dancehall “mogela” [model], which played an instrumental role in informing this essay. leslie-ann is currently a 4th year student at the university of toronto pursuing a double major in caribbean studies and political science. she was the 2012-2013 president and is currently the 2013-2014 co-president of carssu. in reading this essay, leslie-ann hopes that the reader takes the advice of chimamanda adichie and beware of “the dangers of telling a single story” about a people and its culture. she implores the reader to look at women in jamaican dancehall from a positive perspective. jamaican music has had a close relationship with expressing the island’s various socio-economic and political stages. in chudesokeis’s work, post-nationalis georgraphies: rasta, reggae, and reinventing africa,1 the author traces jamaica’s societal changes through music. this includes analyzing the relationship between post-nationalism, rastafarianism, dancehall, and women response to these phenomenon. particularly, the emergence of dancehall introduced a rise african women participating in overt sexual expressions that was considered indecent. in this light, dancehall was rejected by the “ideological underpinnings of the elite culture”2 and their desires to mold nationalism in jamaica into a replica of european model. as a result, dancehall songs are considered slack if it addresses sexuality in an “indecent or crude manner,”3 and because it “openly defied 1 chude-sokie, louis, 1994. “post-nationalist geographies: rasta, ragga, and reinventing africa.” the african arts, (ucla: james s. coleman published) vol. 27, no. 4, pp. 80-84+96 2 stolzoff, norman c. 2000 “wake the town and tell the people: dancehall culture in jamaica.” (north caolina: duke university press) p.68 3 stolzoff, norma. c. 2000 “wake the town and tell the people: dancehall culture in jamaica.” (north carolina: duke university press, 2000) p.104 leslieann fullerton pum pum rule jamaican dancehall 101 protestant”4 moral values and code. consequently, those who participated in dancehall, particularly female patrons, were perceived as “loose—or “slack” [as is described] in the jamaican vernacular.”5 this resulted in women in dancehall to be labeled subjected to sexual objectification by male dancehall artist. this can be attributed to a class dichotomy where working class dancehall participants reject “judea-christian ideals”6 by embracing dancehall while the upper echelons subscribed to it. another way to view this phenomenon is appreciating the fact that through dancehall, women transformed themselves from occupying peripheral positions to creating spaces of “affirmation and power” 7 in dancehall through sexual expressions. this dichotomy also renders observers unable to appreciate working class women actively creating a space where they are seen and heard in jamaica’s post-independent atmosphere. foundation female dancehall artist lady g, lady saw and tanya stevens will be juxtaposed against their male counterparts to highlight their response to chauvinism in dancehall, and how women created a liberating space for themselves in dancehall where they could be been and heard on their terms. this paper does not aim to romanticize dancehall by playing ignorant to misogynistic elements nor to its sexual objectification of women. despites the persistence of these negative aspects, the focus of this paper is to analytically respond to the inability of observers to recognize female presence in jamaican dancehall as one of empowerment, liberation, and sovereignty. the evolution of dancehall jamaica’s polarized vision for nationalism placed women in pre-constructed spaces, while dancehall afforded women the freedom to their own space through sexual expression. after decolonization, jamaica’s elite and middle class initial idea for nationalism was heavily invested in “judeo-christian values,”8 which 4 stolzoff, norma. c wake the town and tel the people. 105 5 cooper, carolyn. 2004 “lady saw cuts loose: female fertility rituals in dancehall” in sound clash: jamaican dancehall culture at large.” (new york: palgrave publishers) p. 355 6 idib 7 chude-sokie, louis, 1994. “post-nationalist geographies: rasta, ragga, and reinventing africa.” the african arts, (ucla: james s. coleman published pp. 82 8 cooper, carolyne. “lady saw cuts loose” female fertility rituals in dancehall” in sound clash: jamaica dancehall clture at large” 2004 caribbean quilt | 2013 102 dictated the proper conduct for jamaicans. in addition, the elites and middle class jamaicans wanted european "high arts of literature, sculpture, and classical music” to be entrenched in jamaica’s nationalism.9 essentially, jamaica’s racially stratified elites and middle class wanted to perpetuate the “european culture”10 that persisted after decolonization in 1962. on the other hand, rastafarianism wanted jamaica’s nationalism project to be reflective of black consciousness. according to chevannese, not only were rastafarians actively resistant to “dominant oppressive” structures, but they were also advocates of pan-africans11 consciousness in jamaica. the popularity of reggae music provided a space for rastafarians to express their socio-economical and political frustrations both locally and internationally. the most notorious example of this phenomenon is bob marley the wailers who critiqued jamaica’s oppressive structure and expressed pan-african sentiments in songs like “back to africa,” and “rasta waan go home”12 as a means to escape inequality. unfortunately, jamaicans grew increasingly frustrated with the country’s socio-economic and political inequality, and began to reject rastafarian music and it aim to repatriate to a “paradise in africa.”13 particularly, the african jamaican working class community became more invested in “having the best time possible here and now with their chosen space being in the dancehall,"14 the watershed of rastafarian of consciousness and the prominence of reggae music was marked by the death of bob marley and the “stoning of bunny wailers,15 who was the last living member of the wailers in the late 1980s. this created a space where dancehall could take form and mature. as dancehall became prominent, graphic sexual expressions by males became one of its characteristics. what came as a surprise and discontent for some was that the rise of dancehall music also came with the females taking part in the live theatre of dancehall. 9 stolzoff, norma.c “wake the town and tell the people”. p. 68 10stolzoff, norma.c “wake the town and tell the people”. p. 65 11 chevannes, barry. rastafari (new york: syracuse university press.1994) p, 17. 12 chude-sokei, louis. 1994 post-nationalist geographies rasta, ragga, and reinventing africa. p80. 13 stolzoff, norman. c. wake the town and tell the people 99. 14 idib 15 chude-sokie po idib leslieann fullerton pum pum rule jamaican dancehall 103 while the elite’s vision of nationalism excluded jamaica’s working-class women, black nationalisms and rastafarianism tended to limit women’s voices and bodies to “some kind of revolutionary propriety.16 this can be seen in the supportive but limited role played by the i-trees in bob marley and the wailers.17 both elitism and pan africanism had pre-constructed ideas of nationalism; ideas that the working class women did not create for themselves. in the end, the emergence of dancehall unintentionally achieved a sexual awakening of the black working-class women in an attempt to escape the limits of superimposed ideologies. it is in this context that the working class women became active in creating their own space through sexual expressions in dancehall with a “power that feared both” jamaica’s elite, middleclass, and pan africanist. early stage of dancehall despite the growing prominence of lyrics oriented toward women's sexuality and economic power in the 1980s and early 1990s, they were still subjected to traditional gender ideologies.18 what appears to be frequently missing from discourse similar to that of the above are women’s resistance to the constraints of gendered roles and how to it transformed dancehall. the 1987 song, “round table talk,”19 is one of the first songs that challenged gender roles in dancehall. papa san and lady g’s collaboration in the song juxtaposed traditional and modern understandings of gendered roles. in the below excerpt, lady g’s defiantly challenged this static and dated gendered mold as she transfers the gender roles duties to spouse becomes independent. this creates a conflict in the relationship. the lyrics are as follows: 16 chude-sokei, post-national geographies. rasta, reggae, and reinventing africa p.82. 17 idib 18 stolzoff, norman, c. wake the town and tell the people” p. 106. 19 papa san,ft lady g. “round table talk” 1987.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8urngojhz_i caribbean quilt | 2013 104 lady g one time gone you use to tell mi weh fi do chu mi neva did a work and want fi please yuh, but now mi a work and you naaw do nutt’n just tan inna di yaawd and help do supp’n i gwine give you a list from start to finish stop bite yuh finga nail and start to practice papa san’s response lady g a dis you wah dis? mi is a mr.! mi look like a mistress? you ever si mi inna frock? you ever si mi ina slip ? mi nuh wear make up nor put on lipstick as lady g proceeds to give papa san the list of house chores she expect him to complete—since she is now working and he “naaw do nutt’n,” which implies papa san is unemployed—she openly challenged the status quo of gendered roles in jamaican dancehall. feeling “disrespected” papa san initiates an argument in protest, during which both reveals their infidelities and ends the relationship. this song was groundbreaking. not only did it show women rejecting the constraints of gendered roles it also showed women being sexually autonomy in their refusing and choosing partners. the rise of female power in dancehall. it is important to admit that dancehall is extremely sexual. this is the core reason it appeals to its audience. one of the earliest and most persistent arguments against dancehall was based on its slack and indecent content. according to stolzoff, the growing discontent with dancehall was seen in the elite’s rejection “african working class social practices and the articulations in dance halls.20 these “social practices and “articulations” in dancehall referred to dancehall’s highly sexually suggestive dances compounded by the fact that the messages expressed in dancehall were done in ‘patois’ or ‘patwa’21 (jamaican dialect) which was a characteristics of lower class jamaicans. 20 stolzoff, norman.c . wake the town and tell the people,p. 68-77. 21 stolzoff, norman.c . wake the town and tell the people,p. 65 leslieann fullerton pum pum rule jamaican dancehall 105 once female presence in dancehall became more prominent, they began to liberate themselves from the images of sexually accommodative and docility that was constructed by male artist. take for instance this excerpt from lady saw’s, controversial but nevertheless, legendary song “the sycamore tree”22 which is as follows: cho: it was under the sycamore tree a bwoy waan mi bow an mi tell him fi flee… the sun stop shinin for me… verse 1: yuh used to drop yuh hint an mi think yuh did a gyow but mi a goody goody an mi never know how furthermore mi never deserve fi bow… so mi naw mek nuh bwoy … verse 3: mi love yuh but mi still have mi pride mi a gal wi gi yuh all di wickedest ride… but a one mic mi chat pon ah mi studio mic… in this song, lady saw debunks the sexually accommodative image of women in dancehall music. by refusing to “bow”23(jamaican vernacular for oral sex), lady saw asserts her authority in determining what she is and is not willing to do sexually. this is a far cry from the earlier portrayal of women by male artists as, ‘sexual objects’24 that fulfilled their sexual desires without reservations. she does, however, reassures her partner that even though she “nah go bow,” her capabilities to give him “di wickest ride”25 remains unfettered. as far as the above excerpt illustrates, “dismissing” lady saw as a “mere victim of patriarchy …[who is]…robbed of all agency”26 seems to be an incomplete and lethargic analysis of the artist and her contribution to the dancehall industry. moreover, in her collaboration with spragga benz in the making of the song “back shot mi love,”27 while spragga benz clearly prefers to be “pan top” in the missionary style, lady saw clearly exhibits all her 22 lady saw, 2001 my way lyrics”http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8urngojhz_i 23 jamaican vernacular for giving oral sex. 24 chude-sokei, 1994 post-national geographies. rasta, reggae, and reinventing africa. 83 25 jamaican vernacular for satisfactory sex. 26 cooper, carolyne. lady caw cuts loos. 355 27spagga benz, lady saw“back shot mi love” 2001.way lyrics”http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8urngojhz_ caribbean quilt | 2013 106 agencies by being vocal about which position will provide her with the maximum sexual satisfaction. tanya stephens is also another female artist who has challenged misogyny in dancehall and has defined women’s space in dancehall. in tanya stephens 1996 ”you nuh ready fi dis yet,”28 she calls into question the tendency for jamaican males to associate over-exaggerated genital size and overexertion of sexual capability to being good lovers. this is highlighted when tanya stephens’ song is place in the same space with that of male artist little lenny’s 1992 “bum flick pan mi dick.”29 in this light, it is not difficult to imply her song tends to counteract little lenny’s idea of good love making, even though they were released four years apart. below is a juxtaposition of little lenny and tanya stephens’ songs: little lenny: bum flick pan mi dick! 1992 intro: calling callin all stamina worker female custom brokers heart taker, buddy breakers, tantalizing whiner… verse 1: bum flick pan mi dick young gal come skin out yah a wayay wayaw rpt) uhhhhhh! yuh hear di young gyal a bawl when she get up the nine inch tall… my name, my name, calling out fi di sweetest pain… gydiup gydiup like she deh pan a donkey’s back… = tears a shed but she still want it.. every ram mi ram di gal bawl out mi buddy long like mt. everest…. the length weh mi have can buss up any middle… tanya stephens: yuh nuh ready fi dis yet! 1996 intro: oi mr mention ask yuhself this question unno say unno a don man an a unno run the program, the program verse 1: have yuh ever stop to think wha mek a gal cheat have you ever ask her if she likes how yuh dweet yuh need to check yuhself before yuh start kiss yuh teeth. have yuh ever wonder what mek a girl cum a woman fus fi satisfy before yuh say yuh done… most a unno full of pure self praise hot fire dey yah but the wood naw blaze god haffi work a miracle fi mek the dead raise round dem up and lock dem up di days 28 tanya stephens, “you nuh ready fi dis yet” mad house label, jamaica 1996. 29 tanya stephens, yuh nuh ready fi dis yet boy” madhouse label, jamaica. 1996 leslieann fullerton pum pum rule jamaican dancehall 107 in the introduction to little lenny’s above song, he is heard rounding up random prospective “female buddy breakers”30 who may be interested in taking part in his bedroom riding sessions— riding session because of his reference to a galloping “donkey.” once a partner is located, he proceeds to request that she becomes a gymnast by “bum [in the air and] flick [so that she lands] pan mi dick” ready to begin copulation. the song becomes unnerving when he acknowledges her discomfort as “sweet tears,” which is partly due to the length of his manhood—of which he boast can “buss up any woman’s middle” section. this understanding of lovemaking is standardized in jamaican dancehall. in this light, tanya stephens’ song becomes pertinent because she questions jamaican men’s sexual hubris. by enquiring if they really do know “how fi make a girl come,” while at the same time asking if a women has ever told him “she likes how him dweet”(or in other words makes love), tanya stephens highlights sexually incompetent men who subscribe to little lenny’s sentiments regarding sex. she also shows how their incompetence has influenced their sexually selfishness and over enthusiasm about the size of their genitals and their sexual performance. tanya concludes that this kind of confidence is due to “pure self praise,” which has not been validated by external reviewers. she then issues a final blow to chauvinism in dancehall by observing that “god have to work a miracle to make the dead—malfunctioning genital—raise” in the event of a prospective sexual encounter. this highlights their sexually uselessness. in the words of stolzoff, this marked the phenomenon where woman performer whose expression of sexual agency …threatened the dancehall status quo.31 the pertinence of tanya stephens’ song in relation to the sentiments expressed in little lenny’s “bum flick” should not be overlooked. it speaks to the shift in power dynamic between male and female artist in dancehall. this is because during the process of creating their own space in dancehall based on their rules, women became liberated to the point where they could now reprimand misogynistic sentiments about sex without fear of backlash. tanya’s above song was released in 1996, at a time when women’s presence in dancehall became overwhelming powerful. so much so, that an 30 “buddy” is jamaican vernacular for the male genital. 31 stolzoff, norman.c . wake the town and tell the people,p. 106 caribbean quilt | 2013 108 entire industry was created to foster to the “dancehall diva’s32” need. the dancehall fashion industry has evolved to a point where women are now the engines of the machinery that runs dancehall. dancehall fashion industry while no women became sound system disc jockeys (dj), they did however create a fashion industry that catered to women of the dancehall. based on stolzoff’s account, this was partly due to the layout of the dancehall venue,33 which placed the dj and his sound system on the perimeter of dancehall. this afforded dancehall participants the room to display their fashion and dance moves34 in a competitive nature. this was the space that women in dancehall soon took and created a space for competing and displaying their erotic dancing and ‘x-rated fashions,’ which attracted and maintained the crowd's attention. 35 this dancehall ambiance was successfully recreated in the 1997 movie ‘dancehall queen.’ it was also successful in capturing the independent, strong spirit of jamaican women36 in the dancehall scene on an intimate level. just like many dancehall divas, marcia (the main character) was a single mother who worked as an ‘igla’ (i.e. street vender). living in a “poverty stricken risk inner city”37 community in kingston, jamaica, marcia enters in the dancehall queen competition in order to win the prize cash out of necessity. she entered the competition, defeated the reigning dancehall queen, and wins the cash prize, but most importantly, she become famous after she was crowned dancehall queen. this movie is important because not only did show that any women could become a dancehall queen, but also because it informs the public of the work (designing clothes, hair, nails, and make up) that goes into creating a 32 stolzoff, norman.c . wake the town and tell the people,p. 109 33 idib 34 d’elia, suzan 2002, speech:214 rhetoric of dancehall music ( women’s fashion in jamaican dancehall. http://debate.uvm.edu/dreadlibrary/delia02.html 35 35 stolzoff, norman.c . wake the town and tell the people,108 36 susan d’ elia, 2002. speech:214 rhetoric of dancehall music (women’s fashion in jamaican dancehall) http://debate.uvm.edu/dreadlibrary/delia02.html 37 boston, thomas, d. 1997. the inner city: urban poverty and economic development. p.190. leslieann fullerton pum pum rule jamaican dancehall 109 “dancehall diva.”38 at this time, women’s sovereignty in dancehall became undeniable. essentially, since it showcased the economy of jamaican dancehall. creating the dancehall queen persona is a collaborative efforts. point in case, jamaica’s first and most memorable dancehall queen, carlene davis, who rose to dancehall royalty from not so humble beginnings through a series of dancehall competitions between other dancehall divas39 in the 1990s. a dancehall queen must embody dancehall fashion, dancing and, most importantly, attitude. in chakca demus and pliers 1998 music video for their song “murder she wrote,”40 dancehall queen carlene exhibited all three qualifications. in the video, her entire outfit was gold: wig, over sized jewelry, small bra like blouse with ‘ali baba’ like sleeves, batty rider41 and gold knee high boots to complete the look. no doubt that number was a result of dancehall’s emerging fashion industry. one of the most infamous designers to emerge from jamaican dancehall was the ouch crew42who was fundamental in the creation of dancehall’s unique style. with laces, straps, leather, sequins and chiffons materials, the ouch crew was one of the first groups to provide creatively outrageous and revealing women’s dancehall fashion of the 1990s as a commodified brand. as a result, pieces from the ouch brand are to be on display in manhattan dancehall fashion museum.43 as dancehall evolved over the years so did its fashion, as there was a moving away from shockingly 38 stolzoff, norman.c . wake the town and tell the people,p108 39 idib 40 chacka demous, pliers, 2000. murder she wrote. (decce, spectrum). 40 d’elia, suzan 2002, speech:214 rhetoric of dancehall music ( women’s fashion in jamaican dancehall. http://debate.uvm.edu/dreadlibrary/delia02.html 41 lewis, linden. 2003. (the culture of gender in the caribbean” (florida: university press of florida). p 232 42campbell, curtis: august 11, 2012the jamaica star (ouch says dancehall has lost its culture) . http://jamaica-star.com/thestar/20120811/ent/ent1.html 43 idib caribbean quilt | 2013 110 outrageous to fashionably outrageous ‘glammed’ up fashion that is know known as “swagerrific.44” modern designers emerged within the last decade to represent the new fashion demands in dancehall. on one hand, modern designers like melissa dunkley of mdiz collection,45 martin ‘white sky’ miller, and dexter “3d” pottinger46 has played a pivotal role in redefining dancehall’s fashion from mere nudity to couture nudity. according to the jamaica star writer, tanya c. ellis, these designers pieces explore the “creations of cliché designer wear, so those like the d&g, the dior's and the prada's are now featured prominently on the front line at major events”47 while at the same time maintaining its dancehall’s flavour. “[p]encil skirt” she continues, “has become the new best friend of these patrons, as they have come to realize that beautifully tailored fitting skirt allows them…to be utterly 'naked' but entirely covered,”48 which has allowed them to maintain sex appeal modestly. on the other, the hair, make up and nail technicians has played a complementary role in creating the dancehall look. in anna alissa short documentary on ‘youtube’ by the name of “street side salon,”49 she shows women getting the dancehall at mathew’s lane, down town kingston, jamaica. the clip shows hair of several of different colours being assembled in styles and glued on women’s head. in another section, the nail technicians are recorded putting on nail lavishly decorated nail tips on customer’s fingers while other staff members of the street side salon are viewed attaching on lashes and eyebrows on different customers. the nature of these styles screams dancehall and is designed for women who subscribe to the social practices of dancehall. admittedly, there are solons located in he upper echelons of jamaica. however, the adornment services that these salons provide tend to be a bit too tamed for dancehall, and are more suitable for the club scenes, not dancehall. 44 urban dictionary (a person’s style; the way they walk, talk, dress). http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=swagger 45http://styleweekjamaica.blogspot.ca/2009/05/mellisa-dunkleyscollection.html 46 ellis, tanya. the jamaica star: the changing image of dancehall (january 19, 2008) http://jamaica-star.com/thestar/20080119/ent/ent4.html 47 ibid 49 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=te4pkuravjm leslieann fullerton pum pum rule jamaican dancehall 111 dancehall dancing has, as well, evolved from its original state. one of dancehall queen carlene’s legacies is jamaica’s internationally acclaimed dancehall queen completions. jamaica has had several jamaican dancehall queens such as mad michel, keivea, stacey, and latisha,50 but there was one unlikely jamaican dancehall queen. originally from japan, junko won the dancehall queen competition in 2002 at a time when dances moves like 'log on', 'zip it up', 'angel dance', 'on line', 'screechy', and 'drive by'51 was popular in dancehall. since then, international competitors have entered the competition in an attempt to be crowned jamaica’s dancehall queen. dancers with associate degree in performing arts like “dance expressions has won jamaica cultural development commission (jcdc) nationals for dance, speech and drama every year,52 for several years, but is also active on the dancehall scene. dance expressions can be seen in mr. vegas’ song, “bruk it dung”53 doing extensive pelvic thrusting with unbelievable precisions and speed, and head top dancing.”54 moreover, after a night of displaying fashion and dance moves, one of the beneficial aspects of dancehall is late night jerk chicken with two slices of bread and a cup of soup to replenished dancehall patrons. this is another industry that is derived from female presence in dancehall, as women tend to be the one cooking and selling these delights. an observer’s oversight in carolyn cooper’s “lady saw cuts loose,” she response to american anthropologist’ obiagele lake accusations that lady saw “internalizing sexist norms,”55 and in so doing, has perpetuated the victimization of women in dancehall. while suzan d’elia hold’s that “the average jamaican woman is not interested in the level of sophistication that american or european women are concerned with.”56 this paper tends to be more supportive to cooper’s 50 henry, krishna. 2002http://jamaicastar.com/thestar/20060623/ent/ent1.html 51 ibid 52 asher, kesi, 2005 http://jamaica gleaner.com/gleaner/20051014/ent/ent6.html 53 mr. vegas. 2012 (mr. vegas music/ vpal) cd reggae. 54 stol stolzoff, norman.c . wake the town and tell the people,p110 55cooper, carolyne. lady caw cuts loos. 355 56 d’elia, suzan 2002, speech:214 rhetoric of dancehall music ( women’s fashion in jamaican dancehall. http://debate.uvm.edu/dreadlibrary/delia02.html caribbean quilt | 2013 112 explanation. according to cooper, lake’s understanding of lady saw is a result of her “unseasoned american ear”57 which lacks the cultural priming of jamaican female sexuality from an historical perspective. cooper’s responded by making an historical argument claiming lady saw is a “woman who knows the power of her own sexual appeal…and…speaks the truth about her society.”58 cooper’s argument finds its base in making the connection to african jamaican’s historical relationship with the understanding of sex and unconstrained sexuality to have been extended beyond the bounds of colonialism. one reason why subscribers of western understanding of sexuality tends to be unable to interpret women in jamaican dancehall as appositive form of sexual expression may be found in analyzing their historical understanding of female sexuality. according to carol a.b. warren, “medical control of female sexuality is part of our western cultural heritage, involving both the woman’s physical body and her social place.”59 this “space” includes the “marriage bed, the house hold, and private spaces” 60during the victorian age. in more specific terms, a woman was suspected of suffering from the sickness known as “hysteria,” if she was “gnashing of teeth, rolling of eyes, loss of voice, and choking.”61 it is useful to note that some of these characteristics are now known to be expressions of fatigue or frustration. as a cure for hysteria, the doctors believed that applying “genital stimulatory treatment [to] causes orgasm, and thus released the retained matter62 from the woman. this form of treatment was, however, mired in the controversies of “judeo-christian” narratives, which believed this approach was altogether too sexual, not very clerical63 and was eventually stopped. clearly, warren’s work shows that the west has a strong history in the sexual repression of women. this provides one reason why it is problematic to superimpose on jamaican 57 cooper 57 cooper, carolyne. lady caw cuts loos. 365 58 cooper, carolyne. lady caw cuts loos. 367 59 warren. a.b. carol. 2004. genetal surgeries and stimulation in nineteenth century psychiatry (emeral publishing group limited) 165. 60 ibid 61 warren, carol a.b warren, 2004 "genital surgeries and stimulation in nineteenth century (by elsevier ltd.all rights) p. 69 62 warren. a.b. carol. 2004. genetal surgeries and stimulation in nineteenth century psychiatry (emeral publishing group limited) 165. 63 ibid leslieann fullerton pum pum rule jamaican dancehall 113 dancehall diva’s a western perspective of what constitutes for correct and decent sexual expressions. another reason why observers fail to recognized female sovereignty in dancehall is that it has tendencies to encourage “covert and overt violence against women.”64 on sunday, september 10, 2010, the jamaican observer reported that bounty killer “used a hammer to beat”65 his companion in the head. he was charged for assault, but the case was eventually “thrown out”66 due to a lack of evidence. another example of violence against women is tracey bennett’s and captain barkley’s murder. they were killed by tracey’s estranged ex-husband on saturday, october13, 2012 in new york.67 though this happened in new york, captain barkley was a jamaica dancehall artist and both were dancehall patrons. though these two examples did not take place in the dancehall arena. they are, however, connected with dancehall and are examples of what can transpire in dancehall, perhaps not in practice, but more so in principle. in conclusion, this paper aims to analytically respond to the inability to recognized female sovereignty in dancehall through sexual expressions. the fact that the dancehall arena was the first place jamaican working class woman68 actively created a space for themselves s in a post-independent atmosphere made this a place of liberation from societal constraint. even though foundation female artist provide social commentary of jamaica’s inequalities, they have and continued to be viewed as “consistently slack and indecent.”69 64 paul, annie. brathwaite, kamau. 2007.caribbean culture: soundings on) 378 braithwaite 65 http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/news/bounty-killer-arrestedagain_7977043 66 harison, crystal.the jamaica star (bounty killer's 'hammer' case thrown out) http://jamaica-gleaner.com/latest/article.php?id=26128 67the jamaica star, sunday october 14, 2012 (captain barky shot dead j'can deejay and female companion cut down in bronx motel parking in br http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/news/captain-barkey-shot-dead_12749400 68 stolzoff, norman.c . wake the town and tell the people,p109 69 cooper, carolyne. lady saw cuts loos.362. caribbean quilt | 2013 114 unfortunately, lady saw’s reputation of being ‘slack’ has masked the strength and insight she displayed by tackling issues of infertility in her song “no less than a woman,”70 which is a topic that has been an elephant in jamaica’s room for too many years. as stated by d’elia, “although the dancehall scene is a male dominated one, it is the female, like a queen, who reigns supreme.” 71 if women’s presence is void in a dancehall session, no one will remain in the party. in addition, dancehall provides female participants with opportunity for economic mobility by becoming a dancehall artist, dancehall diva, dancehall queen, dancehall dancers’ and even dancehall cooks. one reason why the idea of women achieving liberation and empowerment in dancehall is difficult to accept from outside observers is because of the different understanding of sex and sexual expressions.72 these observers tends to look at women in dancehall as victims of sexual objects while not being able to see how women’s response to these understandings has changed the discourse in dancehall. a third reason is the possible abuse that women can experience in the dancehall, but if one is truthful, one will admit the prospect of this possibility in any industry. perhaps if there were a departure from the practice of measuring dancehall women and their willingness to sexually express themselves in reference to european women, then the point of contention would become less rigid. 70 lady saw, “no less than a woman” 2007http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ggiruh6jmo 71 d’elia, suzan 2002, speech:214 rhetoric of dancehall music (women’s fashion in jamaican dancehall). http://debate.uvm.edu/dreadlibrary/delia02.html leslieann fullerton pum pum rule jamaican dancehall 115 citations alissa, anna. december 3, 2010. street side salon. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=te4pkuravjm asher, kesi, october 14, 2005 jamaica gleaner, dance expressions speaks body language” http://jamaica-gleaner.com/gleaner/20051014/ent/ent6.html boston, thomas, d. 1997. the inner city: urban poverty and economic development. campbell, curtis: august 11, 2012the jamaica star (ouch says dancehall has lost its culture). http://jamaica-star.com/thestar/20120811/ent/ent1.html chude-sokie, louis, 1994. “post-nationalist geographies: rasta, ragga, and reinventing africa.” the african arts, (ucla: james s. coleman published) vol. 27, no. 4, pp. 80-84+96 cooper, carolyn. 2004 “lady saw cuts loose: female fertility rituals in dancehall” in sound clash: jamaican dancehall culture at large.” (new york: palgrave publishers) ellis, tanya. the jamaica star: the changing image of dancehall (january 19, 2008) http://jamaica-star.com/thestar/20080119/ent/ent4.html harison, crystal.the jamaica star (bounty killer's 'hammer' case thrown out) http://jamaica-gleaner.com/latest/article.php?id=26128 henry, krishna. 2002 the jamaica star: “junko makes japan dance” http://jamaica-star.com/thestar/20060623/ent/ent1.html lewis, linden. 2003. “the culture of gender in the caribbean” (florida: university press of florida). p 232 stolzoff, norma. c. 2000 “wake the town and tell the people: dancehall culture in jamaica.” (north carolina: duke university press, 2000) p.104 caribbean quilt | 2013 116 paul, annie. brathwaite, kamau. 2007.caribbean culture: soundings on) 378. the jamaican star: september 19, 2010. “bounty killer arrested again: deejay accused of eating girlfriend”. http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/news/bounty-killer-arrestedagain_7977043 the jamaica star, sunday october 14, 2012 (captain barkey shot dead j'can deejay and female companion cut down in bronx motel parking in br http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/news/captain-barkeyshot-dead_12749400 1lady saw, “no less than a woman” 2007 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ggiruh6jmo urban dictionary (a person’s style; the way they walk, talk, dress). http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=swagger sytle week jamaica. may 14 , 2009. http://styleweekjamaica.blogspot.ca/2009/05/mellisa-dunkleyscollection.html warren, a.b. carol "genital surgeries and stimulation in nineteenth century psychiatry", (ed.) marcia segal, vasilikie demos, and jennie jacobs kronenfeld, in gendered perspectives on reproduction and sexuality (advances ingender research, volume 8), emerald group publishing limited. ..... 3 wilson harris and human alienation duane edwards duane edwards is a 3 rd year student at the university of guyana reading for a degree in sociology. he is the president of the university of guyana students society (ugss). taking hegel's circular epistemology as his starting point in the analysis of caribbean experience, edwards is convinced that the psyche of the west indian people has been short-circuited forcing them to develop legal, political and economic systems with the symbolic inputs of european exploitation. therefore, rather than deliberately correcting the history of exploitation in the region, the caribbean has perpetuated a colonial historical reality in disguised form. edwards claims that the writings of wilson harris are pregnant with incipient ontologies, epistemologies and ethics that are uniquely west indian and that can be used as the bases of a uniquely caribbean and west indian civilization. he also agrees with harris that the west indian people are on a civilization building mission and should be more occupied with that project than with being second and third rate imitators of the projects of others. . alienation and the modern world few living in the 21st century would deny that human alienation is a defining feature of our age. it can be plausibly argued that no other people have been beset by loneliness, dread, abandonment, despair, and alienation to the same degree as the modern, 21st century subject. pre-modern humans had their god, their natural environment, kings and queens, tribal chiefs, cultural practices, and most importantly, family and fellow community members. but for the modern subject god is in many ways dead (as echoed by nietzsche), the natural environment is slowly being destroyed, kings and queens have been dethroned, tribal chiefs have been decimated, cultures have been denigrated, families have been broken apart and fellow members of society (neighbours particularly) are far away even when they are geographically proximate. but what is alienation and why is it such a dominant theme in modern social, political, and philosophical thought? moreover, why is it useful conceptually in describing contemporary society? the first question is very important, and sets the stage for this essay. “the fact to which the term alienation refers are objectively, different kinds of dissociation, breaks or ruptures between human beings and caribbean quilt | 2012 4 their objects, whether the latter be other persons, or the natural world, or their own creation in art, science and society; and subjectively, the corresponding states of disequilibrium, disturbance, strangeness and anxiety” (heinemann 9). for the sociologist, this dissociation results from the decline of the limited local community characterized by close interpersonal relationships, extended family structures and group ethics. for marxists, alienation is caused by private property and a division of labour which fosters atomism and individualism. for others, this rupture results from the modern subject‟s adjustment to a machine age and a technologically dominated world. while the aforementioned views associate alienation with shifts in the external environment, many philosophers instead attribute it to the finite and isolated character of man's existence as a stranger in the world. why is alienation such a dominant theme? to understand why alienation is such a dominant theme in modern philosophy and society, a comparison of pre-modern and modern societies must be made. previously, human beings lived in societies that held complex beliefs about god; often god was viewed as an ever-caring father at the apex of communal life. in addition to the belief in god, there was a deep connection with nature as well as meaningful bonds with community members but most importantly, a direct command over the means of subsistence. modern mass societies, on the other hand, are increasingly atomistic and individualistic. the belief in god, in spite of its spiritual and psychic value, is seen as proof of a weak and unscientific mind, with nature reified and exploited in a quest for material wealth and power. fellow human beings are viewed instrumentally (they are taken as mere means to an end), and therefore one‟s commonality with others is protected and regulated by the codices of a hegemonic, systematizing legal system. this basic comparison highlights the reality that humans have become increasingly alone contemporarily, and it is this existential aloneness that haunts them, filling them with despair, abandonment, and detachment. harris on the alienation from nature wilson harris deals with many topics in his writings, including alienation. his appreciation and response to the crisis of the modern era has many similarities with other 20th century philosophers, psychologists, sociologists, artists and writers. it duane edwards | wilson harris and human alienation 5 cannot be denied however, that harris‟ scope and conceptualizing offers us something radically new. one type of alienation harris addresses in his writings is alienation from nature. for harris, rainforests are the lungs of the world and the landscapes and riverscapes which have been perceived as passive, as furniture even, or as areas to be „manipulated,' possess life themselves and are “like an open book and the alphabet…it takes some time to really grasp what this alphabet is, and what the book of the living landscape is” (harris, 'selected essays' 40). the language of the rain forest‟s interior is a language of silence. this silence which represents for modern subjects a “void in civilization” is, for harris, filled with music that requires “an inner attunement of ear and eye to sounding waters and painted skies, painted earth.” our inability to attune our ears to the inner music of silence emanating from the landscapes, riverscapes and oceanscapes represents our alienation from nature. this alienation points to a broader „illiteracy of the imagination‟ and an inability to read “reality differently from slavish alignment to literal frame or code”, that is, to instead read “by way of indirections that diverge from formula or code...” (harris, 'jonestown' 204) it is instructive to quote harris at length here on his concept of „silent music‟: when i speak of silent music, i am intent on repudiating a dumbness or passivity with which we subconsciously or unconsciously robe the living world. living landscapes have their own pulse and arterial topography and sinew which differ from ours but are real – however far-flung in variable form and content – as the human animal's. i am content on implying that the vibrancy or pathos in the veined tapestry of a broken leaf addresses arisen consciousness through linked eye and ear in a shared anatomy that has its roots in all creatures and in everything. (harris, 'selected essays' 44) the fact that we are not attuned to the „silent music‟ and language of the living landscape reflects our alienation and estrangement from nature. this alienation which in of itself might not appear of concern to those who have grown accustomed to viewing the world as human-centered, is nevertheless symptomatic of a more profound problem with humanity – a problem which will be discussed more clearly later on. harris was also concerned with our failure to listen and attune ourselves to the cry of nature, which if taken seriously, would result in far more eruptions necessitating our caribbean quilt | 2012 6 listening ears. who would doubt that the many violent hurricanes, floods, tsunamis, signs of global warming, food and water crises are anything but nature crying out in a violent language? harris however was not simply a mere romantic by decrying man's alienation from nature; unlike rousseau, harris' ideal man is not a man of the past. moreover, the destruction of nature and our alienation from it is tied in part to technological developments. it would be absurd to wholly sacrifice these developments simply for the sake of preserving nature in its „pristine‟ form. harris was aware of the unspeakable human benefits derived from utilizing and transforming the resources of the natural world. what he called for instead was the “„re-sensitizing of technology‟ to the life of the planet” (harris, 'selected essays' 44). social and political alienation hegel's philosophy of man, made clear in his phenomenology of spirit, helps in some ways to frame discussions of „alienation‟. his phenomenology begins with consciousness in relation to its object. for hegel, consciousness is always intentional – it is always consciousness of something. this something is the object of consciousness. consciousness then tries to overcome the distinction between itself and its object. this unifying task is achieved in the “law-making operations of the 'understanding' in which the objective law it is dealing with are patently subjective creations” (kainz 25). it is this same dialectical method that hegel employs in his philosophy of right. he begins in civil society, the sphere of universal egoism, where man is threatened by other men who are pursuing their own needs and desires. this threat is overcome by the law-making and unifying operations of the state which represents the final and objective expression of the ethical idea, man in his highest form. but this highest expression of his ethical self represents for man, the individual, an alienation from his fellow man and from himself because the only relation he has with others is a juridical relation, a relation held together by civil codices and regulations. being the highest expression of the ethical self, the state (a patently subjective creation) assumes a life separate from, but absolutely paramount to individuals, families, communities and other social groupings to the extent that “if the particular will [the will of the individual or a social group] is explicitly at variance with the universal [the state], it assumes a way of looking at things and a volition which are capricious and fortuitous and comes in opposition to the principle of rightness. this is wrong…” (kainz 64). right and duane edwards | wilson harris and human alienation 7 wrong, according to hegel, are concepts only attributable to the state. just as nature represents for hegel an alienation from the „creative mind,‟ the all-powerful state for harris, with its political and legal trappings, represents an alienation for the creative minds who are members of the state. therefore, according to harris “in the death of politics… may gestate a seed of revisionary, epic theatre rooted in complex changes in human and animal nature...” (harris, 'jonestown' 8). just as one‟s alienation from nature is both symptomatic of, and portends alienation from, fellow human-beings, one‟s alienation from one‟s fellow human beings reaches its highest expression in the state, and is hence symptomatic of alienation from one‟s self. unlike hegel, harris possesses an anarchist aversion to systems, structures and the reification of human thought and life. as a thinker with an affinity to the existentialist movement, harris shares many similarities with heidegger and jaspers. just as jaspers pays much attention to abnormal and schizophrenic personalities in general, harris‟ central concern is the exploration of the disrupted psyche of the west indian man (davis 49). just as jaspers “attempts to penetrate the reality of possible world-views, and to understand their emergence from certain psychological types from forces which he calls „ideas‟'' (heinemann 59), harris was also in search of those cross-cultural vectors that link cultures – links found in the crosscultural imagination, for example. for marx and marxists, the economic expression of this alienation is revealed in the fact that under capitalism, man is reduced to a commodity – his relation with others is also a commodity relation. even the expression 'market yourself' stripped of any metaphorical undertones, is equivalent to saying „alienate yourself‟. human beings as makers of commodities become in the process of production a commodity to the extent that it is only one‟s labour capacities that are valued in bourgeois societies. “everything is inverted”, remarks heinemann, “what should be a reality, the choice [freedom] of the individual, becomes a mere possibility and what should be a possibility [the commodification of man] parades as a reality” (61). marx‟s solution to the commodification of humanity is the socialization of the means of production, achieved by a proletarian revolution. the proletarian class representing the highest expression of exploitation is the only class in marx's view that can bring about a classless society. harris appreciated the plight of the working class, the “helplessness of the animal of fate destined caribbean quilt | 2012 8 to labour in the promotion of privileges, but never to be accepted as equal participants in sorrow, or joy, or ecstasy of flesh and blood.” unlike marx however, harris doubted the ability of the working class to bring about the redemption of humanity. he asks: how can the rich save the poor...the poor the rich, the thief the saint, the saint the thief, the judge the judged, the judged the judge unless they discard contentment, or a self-righteous creed [communism], self-righteous parasitism [capitalism], and build dimensions of self-confessional, self-judgmental art, that take them into recesses and spaces that may pull them into and beyond themselves. it is not that harris failed to appreciate the capacity of the oppressed to initiate and facilitate projects of redemption, but whenever such people coalesce and become fixated into a class-in-itself and a classfor-itself mentality, what paget henry refers to as „ontic closures‟, they create other sorts of problems. a failure to recognize this may keep us locked into a deadly cycle of violence. harris’ solution to the problem of alienation it might be helpful here to reiterate that for harris, alienation is in part the comfort and simplicity we embrace which undermines our impulses for freedom. for harris and many other existentialists, freedom usually comes with too much responsibility; individuals readily prefer a simple, mundane, inauthentic, alienated existence as an escape from the responsibility engendered by freedom. humans often prefer symmetry and simplicity rather than a tragic fate. to watch a suffering neighbour for example and to stay silent is far easier than speaking out in his/her defence. to place the burden and responsibility of one‟s neighbour's situation on anything or anyone other than myself is of course, much more comforting. in surrendering our responsibilities consciously or unconsciously, we also surrender our freedom and our humanity, becoming in the process alienated and reified. one is therefore comfortable insofar as one lives in blessed ignorance, separate from the suffering of others. the harrisian solution to alienation encourages us to embrace an ethics of freedom and responsibility: in an extremely important sense all of harris' fiction and his criticism since the closing years of the 1970's is an implicit duane edwards | wilson harris and human alienation 9 challenge to each and all of his contemporaries, readers and writers alike, to shake off those crippling parochialisms, and to join him in exploring the increasingly indispensable crosscultural imperatives of his new revolutionary, re-creative, global, vision.” (hamlet, 207) harris' ethics of freedom and responsibility has some similarities with sartre and levinas. for all three thinkers, freedom does not necessarily take on the passive meaning of „absence of restraints‟, but rather, freedom is active and can only be properly experienced in resisting oppression and systems which perpetuate dehumanization. thus freedom is not the vulgar, „everydayness‟ of being able to go to the supermarket and choose between two brands of goods. freedom becomes real and meaningful in extreme situations. man is freedom, but man can only experience himself as such by acting in extreme situations. it is only then that man becomes known to himself. to understand harris' ethics of freedom and his response to the problem of alienation, it is helpful to describe his metaphysics. in his caliban's reason, paget henry does a wonderful job of elucidating and making explicit harris' ontology of consciousness. he begins by highlighting harris' notion of consciousness. this consciousness should not be confused with descartes‟ cogito which is used as the starting point of modern analytic philosophy. in harris' own words, “when i speak of the unconscious [universal consciousness] i'm not only speaking of the human unconscious but of the unconscious that resides in objects, in trees, in rivers. i am suggesting that there is a psyche, a mysterious entity that links us to the unconscious in nature” (quoted in henry 95). this universal consciousness exists in relation to the particular manifestations of self, society and nature, three spheres of existence with their own laws and quantum codes. although self, society and nature exist on their own quantum layers and possess their own logic, the harrisian “consciousness holds the key to their unity, interpenetration and transcendence” (henry 96). the infinity and the boundlessness of this consciousness place it beyond the grasp of the human intellect which can only access it by means of the traces and images which it leaves behind in its interaction with the ego, society and nature on their respective quantum planes. harris' philosophy of the interaction of consciousness and the ego is similar to sartre's categories of „being‟ and „nothingness‟. „nothingness‟ in its interaction with „being‟ negates it; similarly, caribbean quilt | 2012 10 harris' consciousness is involved in a kind of affirmation/negation interaction with the ego. the ego is an intentional structure; it is therefore constantly engaged in the creative construction of edifices that become so absolute that it tends to separate itself from the ground of reality upon which it was constructed. some concrete examples of such ego-establishment on the quantum planes of self, society and nature might provide a further elucidation of harris' philosophy. the policeman who tortured a 15 year old boy in guyana by setting fire to the boy‟s genitals, all under the pretext of fulfilling a „police duty‟ places his partial reality, his alienated self (as a policeman), above his humanity. the state, the modern bureaucracy and capitalist systems which promote absolute rationalization and depersonalization are all manifestations of the collective ego establishing itself and building stone walls around its own existence, all while basking in the illusion that its very partial reality is the only reality. technological progress which ignores the fragility and vulnerability of nature (which it exploits for raw resources) is an example of ego projection. the ego in all three cases “cut off from the guidance and symbolic inputs of the universal consciousness by its tendencies to ontic closures...imprisons itself in partial and limiting appropriations of reality” (henry 121). but before the ego can become totally rigidified in the atomic person, the oppressive state, or in insensitive technological progress, consciousness asserts itself and brings about a void by dismantling the edifices of the ego, opening up the ego to new possibilities out of which it can again proceed with its creative activity. harris' entire metaphysics can be summed up in the anarchist phrase „destruam et aedificabo‟, or destroy and rebuild; the more absolute the establishment, the more necessary its disestablishment. as stated earlier, the above summary of harris' ontology of consciousness is central to understanding his ethics. the harrisian ethics is one that embraces freedom, responsibility and crossculturality. for harris, freedom is not associated with licentiousness and moral perversity. rather, such perversity “is a measure of alienation [which] we embrace within the gravity of freedom” (harris, 'jonestown' 166). freedom means to resist with the radical and uncompromising imagination all ontic closures, and to open oneself to the infinite possibilities of the harrisian unconscious. such ontic closures manifest themselves in a life of everydayness, where one disregards others, or a life that is detached and duane edwards | wilson harris and human alienation 11 unresponsive to manifestations of oppression and discrimination. this is a life in which the individual ego brackets itself from the rest of humanity and becomes morally complacent to the extent that one becomes naturally blind, naturally deaf, and naturally numb to the misfortunes of others. in his own words, “one lives in blessed ignorance of what the other suffers.” this ontic closure can also manifest itself in history as a prison this is particularly relevant to the caribbean. centuries after the soi disant (so-called) abolition of slavery and decades after masquerade independence, caribbean people are still subject to slave institutions, slave politics and slave economics. one comedic manifestation of this tautology of history lies in “winner-take-all” politics in guyana where the ascension to power of one party seems to be associated with the victory of one race over another. this is comedic in the sense that the “freedom” and “independence” which should have been taken as the opportunities to completely abolish slave institutions established by europeans are now used as the means to perpetuate those institutions. this is tragic in the sense that the perpetuation of these institutions results in lost lives, poverty, powerlessness, marginalization and further exploitation. failing to draw upon the resources of the cross-cultural imagination, we become trapped in history, haunted by the apparitions of the dead-in-the-living. “an innermost change in all institutions has to be paid for the gift of freedom...” (harris, 'jonestown' 177) or else man himself becomes the price that has to be paid for the irredeemable, unchanging institutions. in other words, either it is institutions which change to accord with the humanity of man or man changes to accord with the inhumanity and insensitivity of unchanging institutions. the following remark by desmond hamlet demonstrates harris' insistence on the need to draw from the resources of the imagination to combat the structuralization of our being. in all his fiction and his criticisms since da silva‟s cultivated wilderness, harris skilfully analyzes the complexities and rather urgent imperatives of the cross-cultural imagination, pleading...for a new sensitivity to, and a new awareness of, the crucial necessity for students and practitioners of the creative imagination to convert rooted deprivations into complex parables of freedom and truth (207). caribbean quilt | 2012 12 for harris, freedom and responsibility are two sides of the same coin. to be free is to be responsible, and vice versa. the first phase of responsibility is self-confession and self-judgment. selfconfession entails coming to terms with and being true to oneself. the converse of self-confession is self-deception. self-deception is another characteristic of an inauthentic and alienated being. sartre defines it as consciousness directing its negation inwards rather than outwards (sartre 242). it has already been demonstrated how the harrisian unconscious relates to the ego. in this relation, what the harrisian unconscious affirms inwardly, that is, its infinite possibility, it also affirms outwardly by negating any absolute structuralization of its being. it is by this process that a person lives genuinely and in good faith. self-deception, on the other hand, entails affirming ones humanity inwardly, but negating it in one‟s words and action. we can again refer to the example of the torture of the 15 year old boy by the police. for that particular policeman, his police work which philosophically represents one of his possibilities as a human being becomes for him his only reality outside of which he does not exist. because of this self-deception, it is easy for him to commit any amount of atrocities to another human being since he is merely engaged in “effective” police work. another example is race. we give to our skin colour and hair texture a particular set of meanings from an infinite possibility of different meanings. by so doing we become trapped into being africans, indians, amerindians, etc., to the extent that these ontic closures become the totality of our being. by living in this self-deception it becomes easy to live in utter isolation, detached from the problems of the 'other'. it is this self-deception that harris confronts in all of his writings. for him guyana is poor, but graver than its economic poverty are the poverty of being, the poverty of morality, and the poverty of the cross-cultural imagination. the poverty of the crosscultural imagination manifests itself in the fact that 45 years after independence, after africans, indians, chinese, portuguese, amerindians all fought for independence, guyanese have failed miserably in developing that particular cross-cultural ethic which boldly and revolutionarily declares that 'an injustice against one is an injustice against all'. in the place of self-deception, harris implores us to engage in the profound art of self-confession and selfjudgment; thus in lieu of alienation, we must embrace freedom with all its responsibility and gravity. duane edwards | wilson harris and human alienation 13 works cited davis, viola j. the creative use of schizophrenia in caribbean writing. intelek international, 1983. hamlet, desmond. “sustaining the vision wilson harris and the uncompromising imagination”. wilson harris the uncompromising imagination. ed. hene maes-jelinek. dangaroo press, 1991. harris, wilson. selected essays of wilson harris: the unfinished genesis of the imagination london: routledge. ---. jonestown, london: faber and faber. heinemann, f. h. existentialism and the modern predicament. london: adam and charles black, 1958. henry, paget. caliban's reason. london: routledge. kainz, howard p. g.w.f. hegel: philosophical system. ohio: ohio university press, 1998. kaufmann, walter. existentialism from dostoevsky to sartre. new york: the world publishing company, 1968. knox, t. m. hegel's philosophy of right. london: oxford university press, 1952. lowith, karl. max weber and karl marx. london: george allen and unwin, 1986. :::::: 64 aids in haiti: situating the incidence and prevalence of aids in structural violence samra hasnain samra hasnain is in her final year at the university of toronto, pursuing an undergraduate degree in human biology and caribbean studies. she is particularly interested in examining the structural forces that shape patterns of health and disease in the caribbean and the ways in which these patterns illuminate the deeper rooted inequalities that exist globally. introduction in light of the past decade of rising popular interest and alarm towards infectious epidemic diseases, there has been a surge of movement throughout developed nations in allocating funds towards research and action programs to respond to these concerns. however, while the popularization of the concept of “emerging infectious diseases” has fuelled a sense of urgency towards developing ways to curb the rise and the spread of disease, it also illuminates the inequalities that exist globally in the distribution and outcome of infectious diseases. large-scale social forces, such as political violence, poverty, racism, sexism, gender and other social inequalities, rooted in historical and economic processes, shape the distribution and outcome of infectious diseases such as hiv/aids and tb. these social forces, coined as “structural violence” by paul farmer (2001), create spaces of vulnerability by firstly shaping the risk of infection and then the outcome by determining who has access to diagnostics and effective therapy following infection. drugs that could stop or slow down these epidemics, such as firstand second-line antiretrovirals, are not available in the places where populations are most vulnerable and where these diseases take their highest toll. (farmer 37-44). amidst these infectious diseases, the aids epidemic serves as perhaps the best model for addressing the inequalities that exist in the distribution and outcome of disease. emerging from its initial epicenters (america, europe and africa) in the early 1980’s, aids has followed the trail of human interactions to become a global issue (kreniske 33). it differs from other infectious diseases in the sense samra hasnain| aids in haiti 65 that it is transmitted without an intervening vector; human beings serve as the only carriers for the virus. hiv is most commonly transmitted in three ways; during sexual contact with an infected individual that results in coming into contact with bodily fluids (semen and vaginal fluids), exchanging blood with infected individuals (injection-drug use and blood transfusions) and via vertical transmission (perinatal exchange of fluids between mother and child – transplacental exchange vaginally at the time of birth and through breast milk). as a result, hiv strikes human populations at the very process of biological and social reproduction. another important aspect to note is that the experience of contracting hiv infections in the developing and developed nations has been different from the onset of the pandemic. the appearance of hiv/aids in the global south did not receive the immediate attention and prominence it assumed in the united states and europe. aids was just added to the list of the many deadly epidemic diseases that were already present (kreniske, 33). this uneven impact of aids has matched the uneven distribution and spread of the virus. the differences behind these uneven distributions have arisen not from inherent biological differences between individual and groups, but rather from differences in patterns of behavior within populations in response to socio-economic and cultural determinants. this illustrates that the aids pandemic cannot be viewed as a single phenomenon for which there is a simple global solution. instead, different neighbourhoods, cities, regions, and countries require different intervening strategies to curb the prevalence and spread of hiv (lindenbaum, 192-193). globally, among these developing nations, the caribbean stands out as being the second-most affected region in the world (coming second to sub-saharan africa) with the bahamas and haiti having the highest prevalence rates of hiv infection in the region respectively. as a result, the study of the aids epidemic in a caribbean context allows the opportunity to gain an understanding on the socio-cultural dimensions of disease. with a focus of situating the analysis in haiti, this paper aims to investigate the social forces that have contributed to the generalized aids epidemic that exists within this nation at present. while there are numerous issues (such as the consequence of political instability, income inequality, land reform, the alienation of peasants from the land, labor migration, colonial and post-colonial patterns of industrial exploitation, the resulting proliferation of informal settlements (shanty towns), caribbean quilt | 2013 66 gender hierarchies, and the traditional and emerging patterns of sexual union) that have caused haiti to become a vulnerable space for the spread of hiv, this paper will focus specifically on the political, economic and gender dimensions of structural violence in haiti. in doing so, the aim of this paper is to analyze the link between structural violence and aids and address how these specific social forces have shaped the incidence and the prevalence of aids in haiti. conceptualizing the vulnerability of the haitian state: situating political and economic instability in historical processes to gain an understanding of the reasons behind the high prevalence rate of hiv infections in haiti, it is essential to look at the factors that have caused the country to become vulnerable space to begin with. like much of the caribbean, haiti’s vulnerability is rooted deeply within colonialism. the spanish first arrived to the island they later named as hispaniola in 1493 and subsequently for the next 125 years fought against other european powers for control. the french west india company eventually established control over a third of the colony and named it saintdomingue. these french colonialists sought to make the colony profitable and established a large-scale farming system (plantation system) that required a large labor force (farmer 1993:153-160). as a result, by the end of the17th century, african slavery was instituted to obtain labor to work on plantation crops of sugar and coffee for export. the plantation economy reached staggering proportions as the demand for these luxury products increased so much so that by the end of the 18th century, the colony's enslaved africans were producing 40% of all the sugar and 60% of all the coffee consumed in europe. needless to say, saintdomingue undeniably became one of the wealthiest colonies in the caribbean (oliversmith 33). hierarchies of class, race and gender were inherent to plantation societies as they served to regulate the slave populations and to justify the authority of the european plantocracy. these boundaries were complicated when european planters fathered illegitimate offspring through the sexual exploitation of their enslaved population. the french colonial system often defined these individuals as free and able to inherit property and own slaves. these “mulattoes” added another dimension to the social hierarchies of the samra hasnain| aids in haiti 67 plantation societies and would eventually resemble some of haiti’s first national elites (oliversmith 34). in 1789, the revolutionary fervor in france spread to these early elite classes consisting of free people of color in saintdomingue, initiating a series of reform and resistance movements in 1790 that progressed into full-scale slave revolts and ultimately culminated in the colony's independence in 1804. haiti became the first independent nation in the caribbean and latin america. more importantly, haiti became the world’s first black republic (farmer 1993:164-165). since gaining independence in 1804, haiti has been severely punished by the international community. it began immediately after independence with france refusing to recognize the new republic and demanding that reparations be paid for the loss of “property," (slaves and land) in the amount of 150 million gold francs (which translates to $21 billion). france threatened haiti with invasion and simultaneously placed an embargo along with britain and the united states to pressure haiti into accepting its demands. in 1825, due to this intense international pressure, haiti agreed to pay the reparation (oliver–smith 33-35). at this moment a question that is necessary to addresses is, “why might a country of former slaves feel compelled to remunerate the plantocracy for losses incurred in a war of liberation?” (farmer 1993:168). putting aside the threat of invasion and the pressures put forth by the embargo, it is necessary to mention that the haitian elite saw their own survival at stake in this issue of diplomatic recognition. the growth of the haitian republic was held, by these elites, as being tied to continued export of subtropical commodities (farmer 1993:168 170). as a result, while european and u.s. leaders began a campaign to isolate haiti both politically and economically in the early 19th century, the haitian government and elites allowed these nations to extract haitian resources (income largely from sugar, coffee, and indigo) to fulfill the debt obligations (oliver-smith 33). thus while haiti may have been diplomatically isolated, these political maneuvers did not include commercial isolation. the haitian government and elites negotiated the extraction process with foreign powers, principally the united states, and began accumulating power and wealth while draining the nation's resources. this result was achieved through the use of caribbean quilt | 2013 68 brutality, militarism, mismanagement, and corruption that subsequently impoverished the rest of the population. under the weight of the crippling debt and the embargo, haiti went from being the richest caribbean colony, "the pearl of the antilles," to the most impoverished nation in the western hemisphere. haitian elites did little to construct a viable infrastructure or a functional institutional framework in the country (oliver-smith 33-34). during this period, haiti experienced almost continuous foreign intervention by both the united states and european powers. the united states alone sent warships into haitian waters twenty six times during the period of 1849 – 1914 under guise of wanting to protect the lives and the property of american citizens. in 1915, penetration of foreign capital coupled with the continuous invasion by u.s warships led to an armed occupation of haiti by the united states marine corps. during this period of u.s. occupation in haiti, between 1915-1934, the united states exerted enormous influence in haiti. unlike what is often suggested, the occupation was not the sudden manifestation of a new u.s. interest in protecting haitians from their corrupt leaders. rather, it was a continuation of the pattern of exploitation and domination (farmer 1993:180-183). recent developments, in the last quarter of the 20th century, have amplified haiti’s impoverishment and vulnerability. following the brutal dictatorship of "papa doc" duvalier, his son "baby doc" (jeanclaude duvalier) inherited the regime in 1971 and left the nation in even greater debt to foreign lenders due to the continual misappropriation of resources and even outright theft. the second duvalier regime, a virtual kleptocracy, was supported by the united states and as such approved the catastrophic usaid-ordered slaughter of all of haiti's pigs to limit the spread of african swine flu virus (dupuy 50-51). the loss of the pig population, which was essentially the source of peasant savings, emergency capital, and nutrition, left the rural people in an even more impoverished and vulnerable state. in addition to this, rural haitians were forced to cut to trees to produce charcoal, which led an almost complete deforestation of haitian terrain (oliver-smith 35). usaid programs along with the imposition of structural adjustment policies by the world bank and imf further weakened the rural economy. with a goal to develop haiti’s cities into centers of export production for u.s. companies, usaid, working with large landowners, encouraged the construction of agro-processing samra hasnain| aids in haiti 69 facilities, while imf-imposed tariff reductions opened haitian markets to subsidized u.s. rice surpluses, undercutting local production of the nation's staple crop and dismantling the rural economy (dupuy 52-56). this resulted in a massive migration of the rural population to the cities where impoverished migrants took up residence in slums and shantytowns. the demand for jobs and services by the displaced rural populations quickly exceeded the supply, deepening the impoverishment of the extremely dense populations in cities. political instability during the last 20 years has also led to high rates of unemployment as companies, having been forced to down size, have reduced the numbers of jobs available (oliver-smith 35). within this context, when the aids epidemic emerged in haiti in the early 1980’s, it surfaced during a period of massive and prolonged social upheaval. political unrest undermined preventive efforts and may have helped, through other mechanisms, to spread hiv. political disruptions have also served to paralyze coordinated efforts by the state to prevent hiv transmission. for example, while in 1991 the country’s first democratically elected government (led by jean-bertrand aristide) installed a new ministry of health which promised to make aids prevention its top priority however; its initiatives were disrupted when, in september of the same year, a violent military coup brought a swift end to haiti's democratic government. the 1991 coup d'état not only halted the coordinated responses to the aids epidemic, it had a direct impact on the pattern of hiv transmission. prior to the coup, urban population in places such as cité soleil had higher rates of seropositivity than rural populations. however following the coup, when the army targeted urban slums for brutal repression, large numbers of adult residents from these urban places fled to rural areas. this internal displacement substantially changed the equations describing the dynamics of hiv transmission within the country (farmer 2001:144). since 1991, the office responsible with coordinating preventive programs has been further constrained by six coups d'état, which have led, inevitably, to personnel changes and to more significant disruptions. the result is there had been no comprehensive effort to prevent hiv transmission in haiti. even in port-au-prince, what has been accomplished thus far, in the way of spreading awareness of hiv transmission, has only reached a small segment of the population (for example, haitians who are caribbean quilt | 2013 70 francophone, literate, and have access to televisions). these messages have been especially unsuccessful in rural areas, where the populations are most vulnerable at present (farmer, 2001:145). in addition to the failure of preventative programs, the lack of access to medical resources and services for the poor segment of the haitian population has further entrenched aids within the society. seeking medical help is challenging and costly for most of the population and for those who have been diagnosed with aids, antiretroviral are unaffordable and often unavailable (farmer 2001:146). as a result, political instability within haiti has structured both the transmission of hiv and also the nature of its outcomes once an individual is sick with complications of aids. economic dimension of aids as mentioned earlier, the social and political unrest in haiti (specifically in the last two decades) has had a massive impact in further impoverishing the haitian state. poverty has played a major role in generating vulnerability towards hiv infections by limiting the types of opportunities that are available for those living in the region. low income, high rates of unemployment and the lack of social welfare have and continue to serve as strong motivators for sex work. entering into this industry has exposed the improvised segment of the population to hiv infection and has increased their overall risk of contracting the disease. what is important to emphasize is that it is not sex work specifically that increases vulnerability but rather the economic conditions alongside other social inequalities that have restricted individuals ability of choice, leaving them no alternatives but to engage in behaviour that increases their risk to hiv infection (kreniske 37). gender and sexuality the fact that aids has been stigmatized globally as a homosexual disease (predominantly inflicting gay men) illustrates the need to examine the forces of gender and sexuality in relation to the epidemic. while the majority of infections in the developed world are among men, the complete opposite is seen in the developing world. increasingly, hiv is predominantly infecting women as opposed to men via heterosexual sex in places such as the caribbean (kreniske 33-37). due to the centrality of sexual behaviour to the samra hasnain| aids in haiti 71 aids epidemic, since hiv is primarily sexually transmitted within populations, the examination of how gender and sexuality affect risk taking in sexual behaviour, sustain vulnerabilities and undermine resilience in dealing with the epidemic need to be addressed (kempadoo 179-181). in doing so the hope is to understand why women and young girls face infection rates several times higher than the general population. as stated earlier, hiv in the haiti, as well as the rest of the caribbean, is primarily transmitted through heterosexual intercourse. despite the initiatives taken by the ministry of public heath to disseminate information about hiv transmission and prevention, rates of infection have continued to increase. as kamala kempadoo states, there seems to be a “disconnect” between knowledge about sexually transmitted infections such as hiv and sexual behaviour. this is the reason as to why hiv prevention and aids treatment activities have failed in the region. what this indicates is that to create effective prevention strategies, the factors that are preventing the application of knowledge in sexual behavior have to be examined. undoubtedly, power relations between sexes and hegemonic constructions of gender that are present within haitian society are critical to this issue (kempadoo 182). within haiti, a “risk” centered quantitative approach has been used to explain why certain groups within societies are more vulnerable to the aids epidemic than others. this concept of “risk” has come to be equated with individual behavioural risks, such as inconsistent condom use or multiple partners. thus, hiv prevention has been focusing on an individualized view of sexuality and the physical act of unprotected sex has initially become the major focus for intervention aimed at behavioural modification. the assumption is that “high-risk” sexual behavior can be changed into safer sexual behavior by encouraging desired behaviors through the provision of knowledge. this approach, based on the biomedical model that focuses on individual behaviour change, makes the assumption of a rational individual who is motivated by self-protected and enjoys the freedom to choose exactly when, how and with whom to engage in sex. in such a scenario the risk that such an individual takes can be diminished through information and education. however, this model is deeply erroneous due to the fact that firstly it does not take into account that sexual behaviour is often driven by desire, which is deeply irrational. secondly, this extremely narrow understanding of risk does not take into account the social inequities that exist caribbean quilt | 2013 72 between men and women that play a substantial role in increasing women’s risk to hiv. women’s very position in society is the primary cause of exposure to risk of hiv infection in haiti. thus when prevention is focused on promoting condom use, faithfulness, partner reduction and abstinence, it fails to consider the reality of what it actually means for women to abstain, be faithful or use a condom. the fact is that these options do not take place in isolation; each of them exists and is lived in specific socio-cultural, economic and political context, which predispose, enable and/or reinforce behaviour and constrict free choice. thus in haiti, the traditional gendered cultural norms of power and sexuality make it difficult, sometimes even impossible, for women to act on these behavioural suggestions as viable options for prevention. cultural norms of power, unequal gender relations, social expectations, desire and unequal access to economic and cultural resources render knowledge alone inadequate, especially among poor women (kempadoo 182188). another aspect that has been disregarded in this approach has been the complexity of sexual relationships. these relationships are embodied in and are products of negotiated relationships to power, economic dependence and social inequality that contextualize, influence and in many ways determine sexual behaviour. in the majority of these relationships men hold the power and thus control the relationship and women are often left to negotiate their position. for example, the decision to use a condom is a decision to not reproduce at the same time as to prevent infection. it is also a decision that must be made for each act of intercourse. thus women must repeatedly address the issue of sexual decision-making and sexual control and each time this is done they are emotionally, sexually, physically and economically vulnerable (mcnamara 122-125). what this example highlights is that to implement successful and culturally relevant policies to prevent hiv transmission, the larger social and gender inequalities and structural determinants of choices and behaviors that exist within haiti in which risky practices occur have to be addressed. samra hasnain| aids in haiti 73 conclusion this paper has attempted to illustrate and examine how the political, economic and gender dimensions of structural violence have shaped the incidence and the prevalence of aids in haiti. this has illustrated in a broader way the fundamental idea that disease and illness are not random phenomenon. each society by its organization and core economic features, rooted in historical processes, produces certain characteristic patterns of disease and death that are specific to it. as a result the load of disease born by each society is one indicator of the political economy and the social life of the society. as kreniske has articulated, “disease, then, is, in a large part, a social event expressing the central realities of the society in which it occurs” (35). thus, by examining the social determinants of aids this paper has illustrated how vulnerability to hiv infection are not simply due to certain risk factors that have manifested due to risky behavioural practices but rather that these risky behavioural practices have been the result of unequal gender relations, social expectations, desire and unequal access to economic and cultural resources. one dimension that this paper has not addressed is the impact of aids on the families of individuals that have been affected by the disease. due to the fact that aids predominantly affects women within the caribbean, how does the aids epidemic affect domestic arrangements and education of children? how are social units in the event of loss of personnel impacted? and lastly, how does aids affect social reproduction? these questions serve to emphasize that while analyzing the impact of aids on societies we need to remember that like any medical condition, aids affects individuals and that their experience is just as important. caribbean quilt | 2013 74 work cited dupuy, alex. “globalization, the world bank and the haitian economy” in contemporary caribbean cultures and societies in a global context. uwi, 2005. 43-70. print. farmer, e. paul. infections and inequalities: the modern plagues. los angeles: university of california press, 2001. print. farmer, e. paul. “aids and accusation: haiti, haitians and the geography of blame” in aids and culture: the human factor. ed. d.feldman. berkley: university of california press, 1993. 67-91. print. kempadoo, kamala. “centering praxis in policies and studies of caribbean sexuality” in sexuality, social exclusion and human right. ed. christine barrow, marjan be bruin and robert carr. kingston: ian randle publishers, 2009. 179-190. print. kreniske, john. “aids in the dominican republic: anthropological reflections on the social nature of disease” in aids in africa and the caribbean. ed. george c. bond et al. oxford: westview press, 1997. 3351. print. lindenbaum, shirley. “aids: body, mind and history” in aids in africa and the caribbean. ed. george c. bond et al. oxford: westview press, 1997. 191-194. print. mcnamara, regina. “female genital health and the risk of hiv transmission” in aids in africa and the caribbean. ed. george c. bond et al. oxford: westview press, 1997. 115130. print. oliver-smith, anthony. “haiti and the historical constructions of disasters” in nacla report on the americas. 2010. 43.3: 32-36. print. …… 92 the jamaican bauxite industry & decolonization monica silberberg monica silberberg will be graduating from the university of toronto this year, receiving her honours bachelor of arts with a double major in history and urban studies. the following essay was selected to be presented at the 2012 latin american and caribbean studies conference at york university. in addition to her studies, monica has been dancing with the university of toronto’s silhouettes dance company throughout her undergraduate career. abstract: this paper looks at the role of multinational corporations (mncs) in the bauxite-alumina industry of jamaica from the industry’s establishment in 1952 to the implementation of a tax levy on bauxite and the partial nationalization of the industry in 1974. the examination of the positive economic and societal developments resulting from the presence of bauxite companies in jamaica will be contrasted with a discussion of the negative economic and social implications caused by mncs. it is argued that the effects of multinational investment in the bauxite-alumina industry were largely more negative than positive. mncs contributed to poor economic and social conditions in jamaica which respectively led to the rise of social activism in the late 1960s, and subsequently the election of the people’s national party (pnp), a democratic socialist government responsible for the major structural changes to the bauxite-alumina industry in 1974. the reforms made to the bauxite-alumina industry by the pnp are addressed in this paper along with a discussion of the economic, political, and ideological motivations involved. in addition to improving social conditions in jamaica, this paper contends these reforms reflected a form of national resistance against mncs as neo-colonial actors. since the discovery of alumina rich soils in jamaica, guyana, and suriname, north american corporations have dominated the bauxite-alumina industry within the caribbean. some critics argue that mncs are a form of neo-colonialism; it is also argued that the presence of mncs have contributed to the economic growth of lesser-developed countries (ldcs). both arguments are valid with regard to the caribbean bauxite-alumina industry. bauxite is the raw ore from which aluminum is extracted after under-going a three-stage refining process. first is the mining and drying stage, where the ore is extracted from the earth and dehydrated. in the second stage, beneficiation, aluminum oxide (alumina) is chemically separated from the ore by washing it with monica silberberg | the jamaican bauxite industry & decolonization 93 hot caustic soda.1 the third and final stage is the extraction of aluminum from the alumina through a smelting process which requires large amounts of power.2 the value added is about 250% in the second stage and 225% in the third stage – jamaica however only participates in the first and second stages.3 the alumina produced after the second stage in jamaica was shipped directly to ports on the gulf of mexico and thereafter to alumina plants in louisiana, arkansas, and texas to complete the process of aluminum extraction.4 jamaica‟s bauxite deposits were discovered in 1942. since jamaica at this time was a british colony, it was proclaimed by the british government that all bauxite lands were exclusively crown property.5 the people and government of jamaica were not given a voice when england leased jamaican bauxite land to mncs from the united states and canada. the exportation of bauxite began in 1952, and three major u.s. companies (alcoa, kaiser, and reynolds) became involved in the flourishing bauxite extraction industry in jamaica.6 alcan, a canadian company, was also involved but the initial agreement regarding the price of jamaican bauxite concerned only u.s. companies. in the initial agreement, the british government and the mncs determined the division of bauxite revenue, leaving the jamaican government out of the negotiations. it should be noted that even though jamaica was still a colony, the parliament elected in 1944, which was jamaica‟s first general election with universal adult suffrage, enjoyed a degree of internal self-government. under the initial agreement, jamaica received “an incredibly low royalty” which was “deliberately fixed at a low rate of a shilling [or about 12 cents (u.s.)] per ton for the first five-year 1 norman girvan, the caribbean bauxite industry ([mona] jamaica: institute of social and economic research, university of the west indies, 1967) 15. 2 iserdeo jainarain, trade and underdevelopment: a study of the small caribbean countries and large multinational corporations (georgetown, guyana: autoprint ltd., 1976) 273. 3 jainarain, trade and underdevelopment, 273. 4 norman girvan, foreign capital and economic underdevelopment in jamaica ([kingston] jamaica: institute of social and economic research, university of the west indies, 1971) 28. 5 thakoor persaud, conflicts between multinational corporations and less developed countries: the case of bauxite mining in the caribbean with special reference to guyana, (new york: arno press, 1980) 55. 6 diane j. austin, “jamaican bauxite: a case study in multi-national investment,” journal of sociology, 11:3 (1975) 53. caribbean quilt | 2012 94 period.”7 renegotiations took place in 1957 between the government of jamaica and bauxite companies that increased the royalties received by jamaica to 14 shillings, or about $1.68 u.s., for each ton of bauxite mined.8 the government of jamaica welcomed bauxite companies and encouraged the expansion of the industry. they were eager for foreign investment which they believed would stimulate a flagging economy constrained by a low level of industrialization and small domestic markets.9 it was hoped that with bauxite development there would come an expansion of other infrastructural and export industries to replace dependence on the declining sugar industry.10 the role of the jamaican government in promoting industrialization by attracting foreign investment reflects the ideas and recommendations of economist sir arthur lewis. producing such works as industrial development in the caribbean (1951), and the industrialization of the british west indies (1952), lewis argued industrialization was essential for economic development in the caribbean, and that the process of industrialization should be stateled through the attraction of investment from foreign businesses.11 for lewis, successful industrialization had to be export-oriented and attracting investment from those foreign businesses which were already established in foreign markets would be the fastest route to exporting manufactures.12 while the jamaican government did not follow all of his recommendations, lewis‟s influence is apparent by the legislation passed in jamaica in 1956 to specifically encourage exports.13 the policies pursued by the american government also contributed to the expansion of the bauxite-alumina industry in jamaica. american aluminum reserves were severely depleted by the second world war. with the outbreak of the korean war and the development of the cold war and the arms race, concern to build up 7 persaud, conflicts between multinational corporations and less developed countries, 57. 8 ibid., 59. 9 austin, “jamaican bauxite: a case study in multi-national investment,” 53. 10 ibid., 53. 11 mark figueroa, class issues in industrialization policy: lewis’s ideas and the case of jamaica 1945-1956, (department of economics, university of salford, 1991) 7. 12 figueroa, class issues in industrialization policy, 12. 13 ibid., 18. monica silberberg | the jamaican bauxite industry & decolonization 95 aluminum reserves heightened.14 the united states government wished to break up the monopolistic control of aluminum production held by the aluminum company of america (alcoa) within the u.s. by providing handsome assistance to the expansion of other american companies, including kaiser and reynolds, which was provided under the defence production act of 1950.15 the american government decided that on the grounds of national security, capacity in primary aluminum and related materials should be doubled; thus kaiser and reynolds acquired 65% of the programmed increase.16 at the outset of the negotiations, technical knowledge of the bauxite industry and of market conditions was monopolized by the mncs. the jamaican government entered negotiations without the benefit of expert advice. they lacked knowledge concerning types of resources, volumes of resources, grades of ores, and market conditions making it nearly impossible for the jamaican government to calculate an appropriate rate at which to value their natural resources.17 the bargaining position of the jamaican government was further weakened by the fact that there were many ldcs on the seller‟s side of the market for these resources, while there were just a few mncs on the buyer‟s side.18 previously, the u.s. primarily had exploited its own resources of bauxite for the production of aluminum, importing additional supplies from guyana and suriname.19 the vertical integration of u.s. aluminum production meant that the raw bauxite ore, as opposed to refined aluminum, rarely reached the u.s. market and consequently the jamaican government had few guidelines for setting a notional value for its unrefined bauxite.20 the colonial status of jamaica further weakened their bargaining position as the british government was more active in the initial negotiations with the mncs. these factors gave bauxite companies a considerable advantage in the negotiation process as the initial agreement ensured that the government of jamaica received a very low royalty for every ton of bauxite mined. 14 austin, “jamaican bauxite: a case study in multi-national investment,” 53. 15 ibid., 54. 16 jainarain, trade and underdevelopment, 273. 17 persaud, conflicts between multinational corporations and less developed countries, 68. 18 persaud, conflicts between multinational corporations and less developed countries, 68. 19 austin, “jamaican bauxite: a case study in multi-national investment,” 54. 20 ibid., 54. caribbean quilt | 2012 96 another condition of the initial negotiations was the duration of the mining lease or permit obtained by the company. in 1957 and 1967, jamaica granted leases to the companies operating there for twenty-five years.21 these leases not only covered bauxite, but all natural resources existing in the lease-hold area. to ensure that the profits over time met the cost of establishing the plants, and to control competition, the bauxite companies bought land in jamaica far beyond their ability to utilize in the immediate future.22 often deposits of bauxite were depleted before a company‟s lease on the land expired. these lands were commonly used for agricultural production so that companies could fully capitalize on their lease. for example, alcan used bauxite-depleted land under their lease to raise cattle. alcan admitted in 1971 that their agricultural operations were a way to help eliminate the cost of importing items necessary for alumina production.23 given the superior power of mncs to control capital flows and exploit markets in the international arena, it is unrealistic to suppose that jamaica would have easily developed an independent competitive aluminum industry.24 it can be argued that mncs have provided capital, expertise, and markets for the exploitation of jamaican bauxite more efficiently than could an independent effort by the jamaican government or private jamaican entrepreneurs. several positive economic and societal developments have occurred in jamaica resulting from the bauxite-alumina industry‟s presence. within a decade of productive operations, bauxite-alumina rose to constitute almost half of jamaica‟s domestic exports by value.25 moreover, bauxite companies‟ activities have had positive spill-over effects on other industries in jamaica. for instance, bauxite companies spend locally well over $3,000,000 a year on materials, supplies, and services and in 1963 freight payments to the government-owned jamaica railway corporation exceeded $1,500,000.26 21 jainarain, trade and underdevelopment, 274. 22 tramm, “multinationals in third world development: the case of jamaica‟s bauxite industry,” 4. 23 tramm, “multinationals in third world development: the case of jamaica‟s bauxite industry,” 4. 24 austin, “jamaican bauxite: a case study in multi-national investment,” 56. 25 b.s. young, “jamaica‟s bauxite and alumina industries,” annals of the association of american geographers, 55:3 (1965): 451. 26 young, “jamaica‟s bauxite and alumina industries,” 452. monica silberberg | the jamaican bauxite industry & decolonization 97 the government used the revenue generated from the mining industry to finance the development of public infrastructure and social services including housing, water supplies, sanitation, community development, education, and health.27 those employed by the bauxite-alumina industry were also paid significantly higher wages than those in other sectors of the jamaican economy.28 since people were making more money their standard of living increased; this combined with an increase in government spending. bauxite companies have also been credited with expanding educational opportunities for jamaicans and decreasing illiteracy.29 the development of schools in bauxite industrial regions, such as mandeville, can be attributed not only to an increase of government spending but also to an increase of population (jamaicans migrating to these areas looking for work in the industry) and the pressure from bauxite workers, now sufficiently wealthy to send their children to post-primary schools.30 mandeville also experienced an increase of entrepreneurism which is further indicative of the industry‟s positive influence on societal development: “in mandeville, the proliferation and success of such businesses as boutiques, gas stations, and fast food restaurants, all catering to the needs of newly arrived and consumer-oriented bauxite industry personnel attest to the positive influence of the multinationals on social mobility.”31 while the growth of the economy, an increase in the standard of living, and high wages were all seemingly positive effects of the bauxite-alumina industry in jamaica, there is more to the story. the negative consequences of the industry include problems of land acquisition and environmental damage. when companies first approached local farmers to buy their bauxite-rich soil, many saw it as an opportunity of a lifetime.32 they sold much of their land and after a brief period of economic comfort, they found themselves almost or entirely landless. bauxite companies became large landowners and according to company statistics (which are believed to be understated) alcan in 1972 owned 49,000 acres of jamaican land and alpart owned 26,000 acres in central and southern 27 ibid., 460. 28 austin, “jamaican bauxite: a case study in multi-national investment,” 57. 29 young, “jamaica‟s bauxite and alumina industries,” 460. 30 tramm, “multinationals in third world development: the case of jamaica‟s bauxite industry,” 7. 31 ibid., 8. 32 ibid., 3. caribbean quilt | 2012 98 jamaica alone.33 together kaiser, reynolds, and alcan own almost 30% of the parish of manchester.34 with so much land designated to extractive industries, one can imagine the severity of the environmental damage caused. the environmental damage that has ensued includes loss of soil fertility and the disruption of longestablished topographical configurations.35 other environmental dangers include the threat to indigenous water supplies, air pollution to nearby areas from the plants themselves as well as from mud lakes.36 the industry also in many ways contributed negatively to the economic and social development of jamaica, particularly by sharpening inequalities. the jamaican government gained certain advantages in the development of bauxite, but not nearly to the extent that foreign corporations did. the revenue garnered by jamaica was far below the value of the bauxite and alumina which it exported. between 1950 and 1956, revenue was merely 3% of the bauxite and alumina export value.37 even after renegotiations in 1957, revenue had amounted on the average to only 17% of the industry‟s output.38 in 1970, alcoa, the world‟s largest bauxite company, had total sales and operating revenue above the entire value of jamaica‟s national production of goods and services.39 as mentioned, only the first two stages of aluminum production were done in jamaica. based on the data for 1950-1967, it was calculated that a lack of forward linkages resulted in 95% of the gross value generated from jamaican bauxite being accrued abroad rather than domestically.40 the wages received by bauxite workers in jamaica did not compare to their counterparts in metropolitan countries, yet they were still substantially higher than in other sectors of the jamaican economy. few benefited from the high wages paid by the bauxite 33 tramm, “multinationals in third world development: the case of jamaica‟s bauxite industry,” 4. 34 ibid., 4. 35 ibid., 4. 36 ibid.,” 4-5. 37 ibid.,,” 8. 38 ibid., 8. 39 ibid., 9. 40 r.m. auty, “multinational corporations and regional revenue retention in a vertically integrated industry: bauxite/aluminum in the caribbean.” regional studies, 17:1 (1983): 4. monica silberberg | the jamaican bauxite industry & decolonization 99 companies as they only provided employment for 1.1% of the working population – this figure includes not only workers directly involved in the mining of bauxite, but also those employed in company-financed construction and farming activities.41 moreover, the majority of high-ranking, managerial positions were held by personnel from metropolitan countries and rarely were jamaicans trained to fill these positions.42 thus, jamaicans occupied the lowlevel, manual labour positions and lacked occupational mobility. wage inequalities between the mining sector and other sectors of the jamaican economy had destabilizing effects on the economy, for example wage disparities have exacerbated labour power distribution problems. peasant farmers who represent the majority of the non-unionized workers in jamaica were by and large frustrated with the marginal profits from small-scale farming when compared to the mining sector. this led to a persistent and increasing trend of internal migration from rural to urban areas, where it was hoped that more profitable employment, particularly in the mining and related industries, might be found.43 the consequences of this internal migration led to fewer employment opportunities in the mining industry and thus many migrants were left unemployed or underemployed. furthermore, the rapid urbanization of bauxite-producing regions initiated overcrowding and housing shortages.44 wage disparities between the public and private sector have also frustrated government expenditure on infrastructural industries and social services.45 generally speaking, the private sector pays considerably higher salaries to their workers than does the public sector. thus, the government must now compete with the private sector for trained technicians and managerial staff who remain in short supply. the impact of mncs perpetuates a dependent economy characterized by radical disparities in wages, high levels of unemployment and a small group of privileged workers and expatriate managers. ultimately the economic, social, and environmental damage caused by mncs in the jamaican bauxite 41 austin, “jamaican bauxite: a case study in multi-national investment,” 56. 42 ibid., 56. 43 ibid., 57. 44 persaud, conflicts between multinational corporations and less developed countries, 141. 45 austin, “jamaican bauxite: a case study in multi-national investment,” 57. caribbean quilt | 2012 100 alumina industry far outweighed the benefits received by jamaica at large. only a small portion of the population experienced the economic benefits of the industry causing many to resent the presence of mncs on the island. jamaica gained constitutional independence from britain in 1962, and with it many hoped that the new national government, the jamaica labour party (jlp), would improve the poor economic and social conditions. however, drastic change did not immediately occur and the structural economic crisis and deterioration of living standards at the end of the 1960s was one of the main causes of the subsequent increase in social activism in jamaica.46 along with calls for more social justice and equality, an awakening of racial selfconsciousness led to a greater public interest in political and cultural affairs.47 with this came the election of the people‟s national party (pnp) in 1972, publicly committed to the ideology of „democratic socialism‟ and determined to reshape jamaican society, economy, and external relations accordingly.48 led by michael manley, the pnp held office for some eight and a half years (between 1972 and 1980) and instituted a series of social reforms involving significant changes to the bauxite-alumina industry. manley expressed his government‟s commitment to the creation of an economy that would be more independent of foreign control and more responsive to the needs of the majority of the people.49 the first sign of this change came in january 1974 when the government announced its intention of renegotiating tax agreements signed with the american and canadian-owned bauxite and alumina companies. these agreements at the time produced only a token yield for the jamaican government, and had not been altered since the 1950s when the industry was established. jamaica had also been frustrated by the lack of significant revenue from its large alumina output and could point to no prospects for further expansion of its 46 holger henke, between self-determination and dependency: jamaica’s foreign relations 1972-1989, (jamaica: university of the west indies press, 2000) 14. 47 henke, between self-determination and dependency, 14. 48 anthony payne, “jamaica: the „democratic socialist‟ experiment of michael manley,” in dependency under challenge: the political economy of the commonwealth caribbean, ed. anthony payne and paul sutton (manchester, uk: manchester university press, 1984) 18. 49 payne, “jamaica: the „democratic socialist‟ experiment of michael manley,” 23. monica silberberg | the jamaican bauxite industry & decolonization 101 industry by the aluminum companies.50 “it was in this context that the september 1973 nonaligned summit in algiers crystallized the ideological legitimacy of the movement of third world economic nationalism; it was followed rapidly by the ramadan war in october and the opec [organization of petroleum exporting countries] offensive that doubled crude oil prices in october and then doubled them again in december of that year.”51 the oil embargo implemented by opec during the ramadan war was a dramatic demonstration of what might be feasible in bauxite-exporting countries through collective action. perhaps it even influenced the establishment of the international bauxite association the following year. the economic crisis that resulted from the sudden rise in oil prices severely affected jamaica: in one year, from 1973 to 1974, the island‟s oil import bill rose from j$65 million to j$177 million.52 the prices for other imports rose as a consequence, especially food and manufactured goods, putting further pressure on the cost of living and the balance of payments.53 in this situation, economist norman girvan points out three options that were available to the jamaican government: 1. reduce oil imports severely, which would probably imply zero or even negative economic growth; 2. reduce non-oil imports, which would have a similar effect, since most capital and intermediate goods are imported; or 3. raise the additional foreign exchange required by higher taxes on the bauxite industry.54 jamaica chose the third option by implementing a bauxite levy in january 1974. after some unsuccessful negotiations with the aluminum companies, the jamaican government imposed a new tariff on the production of bauxite mined in jamaica and exported to north america. this new tariff raised the 1957 royalty by roughly 100% and replaced the old income tax with a levy set at 7.5 percent 50 norman girvan, corporate imperialism: conflict and expropriation, (new york: monthly review press, 1976) 136-137. 51 girvan, corporate imperialism, 137. 52 payne, “jamaica: the „democratic socialist‟ experiment of michael manley,” 27. 53 ibid., 27. 54 girvan, corporate imperialism, 137. caribbean quilt | 2012 102 of the price of aluminum on the world market in the previous year. 55 the bauxite levy was very successful from an economic standpoint. revenues increased from j$24.51 million per annum in 1973 to j$185 million in 1977.56 before the levy was implemented, manley had met with governments in washington and ottawa. in washington, he assured secretary of state kissinger that the levy was “purely economic in its implication” and that, recognizing the strategic importance of the metal, jamaica “would never seek to affect us access to our bauxite through the legitimate channels of its multinational corporations.”57 however, contrary to manley‟s declarations, the implementation of the bauxite levy suggests a political motivation as well. taking office in 1972, it was the first time the pnp had held the majority in jamaican parliament. the bauxite levy was a way to demonstrate that the pnp were very different from the predecessor government and main political rival, the jlp, proving that the pnp were more nationalistic and quicker to defend the country‟s sovereignty. the action of the jamaican government was not limited to taxes; the pnp expressed their support for the formation of the international bauxite association in 1974 and proposed a total revision of the terms of the aluminum companies‟ operations in the country. the government stated that it would: (1) “find ways of increasing the foreign-exchange contribution of the industry” (other than higher taxes themselves); (2) “reacquire for jamaica the large areas of land owned by the companies”; and (3) “secure government participation in the ownership of enterprises.”58 following the imposition of the tax levy, the pnp government partially nationalized the subsidiaries of the mncs involved in the mining of bauxite. the first nationalization occurred in november 1974 when the pnp announced that it had reached an agreement with kaiser aluminum for state participation in its mining facilities. the government would acquire 51% share in the bauxite mines at a cost of j$15 million 55 keith worrell, the economy of modern jamaica: an outline, ([kingston] jamaica: bustamante institute of public & international affairs, 1987) 20. 56 richard allicock, u.s. and tnc responses to nationalizations by left-wing governments in chile, guyana and jamaica in the 1970s, (dissertation: university of windsor, 1991) 91. 57 henke, between self-determination and dependency, 55. 58 girvan, corporate imperialism, 140. monica silberberg | the jamaican bauxite industry & decolonization 103 payable over the next ten years at 8.5% interest.59 similar agreements of partial nationalization were subsequently reached with other bauxite companies operating in jamaica. these agreements gave jamaica majority equity participation in the bauxite exploiting and processing subsidiaries of the mncs, and minority equity in the alumina producing subsidiaries. management and effective control of the enterprises still remained in the hands of mncs however.60 all of the major bauxite companies protested the jamaican imposition of the tax levy. they gave notice that they would apply for arbitration to the world bank‟s international center for settlement of investment disputes (icsid) and filed suit in 1974.61 such an action proved useless since part of jamaica‟s preparation for imposing the levy involved notifying the icsid of withdrawal from that section of its convention dealing with natural resources.62 in effect, companies were left with no legal recourse and within a few weeks they indicated they would comply with the levy, albeit with verbal protests, but without any significant confrontations with the jamaican government.63 the companies reacted to the measures of the jamaican government by decreasing exports from jamaica to the u.s., and increasing the production of their plants in guinea to supply the american market.64 in 1975 the companies doubled their imports into the u.s. from guinea, a new-comer to the industry, who were now threatened to experience similar economic and societal problems from the presence of these mncs as jamaica did. the structural reforms made to the bauxite-alumina industry were not just a strategy to improve the poor economic and social conditions of jamaica; there is also a broader component to these measures. the investment of mncs in the jamaican bauxitealumina industry is argued to be a form of neo-colonialism or economic imperialism. as mentioned, the presence of these companies has resulted in unsustainable development and persistent underdevelopment in jamaica. the economy of jamaica was dependent on the activities of mncs and the revenue produced by 59 allicock, u.s. and tnc responses to nationalizations, 91-92. 60 allicock, u.s. and tnc responses to nationalizations, 115. 61 ibid., 154. 62 ibid., 154. 63 girvan, corporate imperialism, 139. 64 allicock, u.s. and tnc responses to nationalizations, 156. caribbean quilt | 2012 104 bauxite and alumina exports. as a former british colony only recently achieving political independence, the 1974 reforms symbolized the desire of the pnp to further decolonize by eliminating economic dependence on foreign corporations. the pnp stated that they were determined not to “accept our dependence as a natural and permanent condition” and to disengage from “a slavish obedience to the u.s.”65 jamaica, like many other third world countries, sought to attract large-scale foreign investment, hoping that it would stimulate the economy and expand other infrastructural and export industries. ultimately, the mncs did effectively provide capital, expertise and markets for the exploitation of jamaican bauxite, but they also gave rise to various economic and social development problems in jamaica. the negative consequences of the mncs in jamaica have been addressed in this paper and include economic dependency on foreign capital, radical wage disparities, environmental degradation, increased rural to urban migration leading to an increase in unemployment as well as housing shortages and overcrowding which had put tremendous pressure on the jamaican government to provide appropriate infrastructure and social services. for many, the mncs were a symbol of economic imperialism and a hindrance to the decolonization process. the 1974 reforms implemented by the pnp government represented not only an effort to improve economic and social conditions in jamaica, but a legitimate challenge to the mncs who dominated the industry. whether or not these reforms were the correct course of action for jamaica is a subject beyond the scope of this paper. however, the 1974 policies that intended higher returns and greater jamaican control of the bauxite-alumina industry were a powerful statement of national resistance against mncs as a form of neo-colonialism. 65 henke, between self-determination and dependency, 54. monica silberberg | the jamaican bauxite industry & decolonization 105 works cited allicock, richard. u.s. and tnc responses to nationalizations by leftwing governments in chile, guyana and jamaica in the 1970s. dissertation: university of windsor, 1991. austin, diane j. “jamaican bauxite: a case study in multi-national investment.” journal of sociology, 11:3 (1975): 53-59. auty, r.m. “multinational corporations and regional revenue retention in a vertically integrated industry: bauxite/aluminum in the caribbean.” regional studies, 17:1 (1983): 3-17. figueroa, mark. class issues in industrialization policy: lewis‟s ideas and the case of jamaica 1945-1956. department of economics, university of salford, 1991. girvan, norman. corporate imperialism: conflict and expropriation. new york: monthly review press, 1976. girvan, norman. foreign capital and economic underdevelopment in jamaica. [kingston] jamaica: institute of social and economic research, university of the west indies, 1971. girvan, norman. the caribbean bauxite industry. [mona] jamaica: institute of social and economic research, university of the west indies, 1967. henke, holger. between self-determination and dependency: jamaica‟s foreign relations 1972-1989. jamaica: university of the west indies press, 2000. jainarain, iserdeo. trade and underdevelopment: a study of the small caribbean countries and large multinational corporations. georgetown, guyana: autoprint ltd., 1976. payne, anthony. “jamaica: the „democratic socialist‟ experiment of michael manley,” in dependency under challenge: the political economy of the commonwealth caribbean, ed. anthony payne and paul sutton, 18-42. manchester, uk: manchester university press, 1984. persaud, thakoor. conflicts between multinational corporations and less developed countries: the case of bauxite mining in the caribbean quilt | 2012 106 caribbean with special reference to guyana. new york: arno press, 1980. tramm, madeline lorch. “multinationals in third world development: the case of jamaica‟s bauxite industry.” caribbean quarterly, 23:4 (1977): 1-16. worrell, keith. the economy of modern jamaica: an outline. [kingston] jamaica: bustamante institute of public & international affairs, 1987. young, b.s. “jamaica‟s bauxite and alumina industries.” annals of the association of american geographers, 55:3 (1965): 449-464. ..... 210 appendix 1: colonial documents: of indentureship & slavery pooran bridgelal pooran bridgelal is currently a 3 rd year student at the university of toronto. he lives in toronto with his wife judy and his son levi. he is a collector of rare books and maps on the west indies. “as a trinidadian living here in toronto, one can become lost in urban life. i decided to submit this information in the hope of memory. our forefathers and foremothers were forced and cajoled to journey to the west indies. even though they were uprooted from their lives, they made new ones. i am of the firm belief that in order to know where you are going, you need to understand where you came from. this brief account of the history of our peoples is only a drop in the ocean waiting to be told by us.” *the raw information submitted here is from pooran’s personal collection. on the 26th june 1851 the ship “zenobia” sailed from british guiana to india with 305 east indian immigrants. there were 148 males, 33 females, 28 children and 1 infant; a total of 210 individuals for the region bengal. there were also 65 males, 21 females, 8 children and 1 infant; a total of 95 individuals for the region madras. on the 9th november 1851 the ship “zenobia” reached madras. upon reaching madras it stayed there for a period of 11 days and then embarked for calcutta arriving on 23rd december 1851. in a report given by the emigration agent t. caird he stated that the “coolies” were not given a good supply of water and provisions. the “coolies” complained due to the lack of water, they had to use salt water together with fresh water for cooking their rice. the surgeon who was sent on board the zenobia never offered any assistance to them. they had to rely upon the goodwill of the third officer of the ship who helped them whenever he saw fit. scurvy broke out on the ship and led to deaths, see table 1. pooran bridgelal | appendix 1 of indentureship & slavery 211 questions put forward to the emigrants on board the ship zenobia, by a. rogers, the assistant protector: q: how have you been treated on board? a: we have been well treated on the ship. q: have you had enough khana and water? a: plenty of both. q: when sick were you carefully attended to? a: yes, but we did not trust the doctor, we preferred medicine given by the captain. q: have you read the benaglee papers i gave you on coming on board, warning you not to take cash with you to your homes, and that there are a number of thieves about calcutta and upon the roads. the government will give you hoondies on the collectors of your zillahs for any amount, from 10 rupees to as many thousands; you should take these, and then you are safe. a: most of them said they wanted to take hoondies. q: i will get them for you free of all charge. on landing, you should all go to the derah from whence you embarked; you will get free quarters there, and your property will be safe. in the bazaars you are sure to be robbed, and perhaps murdered. i will send peons to take you to the derah safely. a: most of the people agreed to go to the depot. q: how were you treated in demerara? a: we were treated well. q: what wages could you earn? a: from 6 to 14 annas per day. sirdars got more. q: was you work harder than here? caribbean quilt | 2012 212 a: the work was very hard. people here do not understand how to work. q: were you paid by the month or week? a: we generally work sicca, but sirdars got more. q: were you paid regularly? a: yes, always in hand. q: were provisions high? a: yes, very high; a bag of rice sometimes six dollars; now is cheaper. q: had you good houses? a: yes, very much better than here. q: how did you like the climate? a: it is very good, sometimes plenty rain. q: were you beaten or ill-used? a: no, no one can beat us in demerara. q: did you suffer cold on the passage back? a: some who had no clothes did, but the rest did not. q: had you medical attendance on demerara? a: yes, and hospitals where we might go to and not pay anything. q: what sickness did you suffer from? a: like this country, only more sort, the chego, which is very bad. q: were active cleanly men attacked by the chego? a: not so much, but everyone gets it. pooran bridgelal | appendix 1 of indentureship & slavery 213 q: when any dies who takes their money and property? a: the magistrate generally takes all. q: most of you have brought dollars. i will send an honest poddar to the derah to exchange them for rupees; if you go to the bazaar to change them you will be cheated. most of you speak english. were there schools for you at demerara? a: we all speak a little english; two men read and write it. there is a very good school in george town for our children, made by the sahibs. caribbean quilt | 2012 214 guyana: table 1: deceased bengal emigrants occurring on the ship “zenobia,” upon leaving guyana to india names father’s name age caste zillah village beehurry kalmurry 30 tatara sahebgunge serampore sam sing luttoo 40 bhuria lohardauga chumun bourbul 30 cahar sahebguago ackepore luchmum sing aadun sing 38 rajpoot arrah domrow salar bocus huster 70 mussul man arrah doodkotaw popee bhoja 70 dhooby farrackubad seewnee mouaka dookhoo 23 bhoonij ranchee gurabur dewkee gookhool 34 bildar sahebguago hutsa assoo foyzoo 70 mussul man poorcollo capista mua dhun gobin 50 khayra midanpore gooree goulab gundhur ab 48 coorme e patna mohameedpor e chutrun dary ganga pursad rajpoot lucknow gourapore moniar terah 65 dooand patna nowda sacker sing ballyo 23 sohur bansoorah koralee bisso nath mooadub 72 gunjoe hasareebagh mundo narain lall sing 48 rupoot nagpore ramdick *zillah is a district pooran bridgelal | appendix 1 of indentureship & slavery 215 table 2: the “tally” of those onboard the ship “candahar” which arrived at the port of georgetown, guyana on the 27 th april 1848, 106 days from madras emigrants men women boys girls infants total m f embarked on jan 1848 217 66 16 17 3 1 320 died on voyage 11 5 2 2 1 21 born on voyage 2 2 arrived in port 206 61 14 15 3 299 for hospital 19 10 1 1 2 33 for immediate distribution 187 51 13 14 1 266 there had been a great deal of sickness during the voyage, and the people when they arrived in port, were suffering severely from scurvy, of which three diseased persons died in the harbour; 21 deaths had occurred on the voyage and in port; 33 were sent to the hospital; the remainder were distributed to five estates on the east coast. caribbean quilt | 2012 216 figure 1: general remarks on surgeon’s diary and journal regarding the candahar. “the surgeon on board reports the loss of his daily medical journal immediately previous to coming to anchor in demerara. after a delay of six days i have been furnished with his weekly abstract and diary. up to the arrival of the ship at st. helena there had only been four deaths; but after that, scurvy broke out and the mortality became very considerable. the appearance of this disease on board may be attributed to the decomposition of two-thirds of the onions very soon after leaving madras, the unfavourable weather in the latter part of the voyage, and partly, and also, to the great length of the voyage, 106 days, being the longest passage of any of the cooly ships hitherto to this colony. the great majority of people arrive more or less tainted with scurvy. the worst cases have been sent to the colonial-hospital; all the others were ordered a mess of fresh meat and vegetables. provisions all good, and in abundance, except the fish, none of which remains. water good. vessel in every way well adapted for emigrants.” john m. johnstone, health officer. pooran bridgelal | appendix 1 of indentureship & slavery 217 table 3: death list onboard the candahar name age disease days sick date of death m f parasaramu 25 dysentery 12 25 january chintooma 3 1/2 scorfula 22 18 february madaramacum 3 dysentery 13 28 february raymon 28 rupture of aorta 1 ½ hour 7 march nutchemuta 25 dysentery 2 16th march, jumped overboard carumuna 16 1 30 march mikey 28 1 30 march unknown 9mths inanition 4 april riape 28 scurvy 7 april jandrum 15 7 april murutama 40 dysentery 15 11 april bassona 28 hydrothorax 13 13 april carrupi 9mths. inanition 15 april carmuche 23 scurvy 11 19 april rangusuani 45 21 april mootomay 22 aneurism 6 hours 22 april maradie 25 mortification 25 april ramsuany 30 scurvy 2 28 april paranei 22 15 28 april aurie 18 22 28 april doorasawnie 9mths. inanition 30 april mother`s name sex date of birth result arrii male 20 march child died same day valiei male 23 april child still-born. caribbean quilt | 2012 218 table 4: list of slave population of the district of demarary and essequebo, of the colony of british guiana, from the year 1817 to 1832 year registered males african creole females african creole total 31st may 1817 27, 725 17,046 15,499 17,893 77,163 31st may 1820 24, 658 18,569 14,471 19,678 77,376 31st may 1823 21,767 19,457 13,005 20,748 74,977 31st may 1826 18,898 19,860 11,592 21,032 71,382 31st may 1829 16,384 20,757 10,343 21,983 69,467 31st may 1832 13,519 20,830 9,052 22,116 65,517 barbados: table 5: return of slaves escheated to the crown in the island of barbados, from jan 1 st 1808 date name of slave sex vessel imported from 3/01/1830 jane edant female amelia trinidad 3/01/1830 rosannah female amelia trinidad 3/01/1830 sophia la grenade female amelia trinidad 3/01/1830 peter male pegasus bermuda 4/03/1830 lindo male industry barbados 5/06/1830 john male perseverance antigua 5/08/1830 bashey male eliza pratt barbados 6/03/1830 maria female caroline tobago 6/19/1830 james male concord trinidad 7/01/1830 quamina male james & margaret st. christopher 7/01/1830 celia female james & margaret st. christopher pooran bridgelal | appendix 1 of indentureship & slavery 219 7/01/1830 betsy female james & margaret st. christopher grenada: table 6: an account of slaves “imported” and “exported” into and from the port of st. george, grenada, from 1 st january 1825 – 5 th july 1830 date name of slave sex vessel imported from mar/01/1830 jane edant female amelia trinidad mar/01/1830 rosannah female amelia trinidad mar/01/1830 sophia la grenade female amelia trinidad mar/01/1830 peter male pegasus bermuda april/03/1830 lindo male industry barbados may/06/1830 john male perseverance antigua may/08/1830 bashey male eliza pratt barbados june/03/1830 maria female caroline tobago june/19/1830 james male concord trinidad july/01/1830 quamina male james & margaret st. christopher july/01/1830 celia female james & margaret st. christopher july/01/1830 betsy female james & margaret st. christopher “imported” caribbean quilt | 2012 220 date name of slave sex vessel exported to feb/13/1830 malvina female amelia trinidad feb/16/1830 timothy male sir john thomas duckworth trinidad feb/16/1830 alick male sir john thomas duckworth trinidad feb/18/1830 lindo male isabella st. christopher feb/23/1830 bob male robert barbados feb/23/1830 desir male robert barbados mar/04/1830 peter male pigwidgeon st.vincent may/29/1830 bashey male lady of the isle st. vincent june/18/1830 clara female flora st. vincent july/15/1830 bob male lady adventurer st. lucia table 7: “exported” front matter with bios.pdf 227 :::::: tammy ronique williams born in moscow russia and raised in kingston jamaica, tammy ronique williams is a third year student at the university of toronto. she is pursuing an honours bachelor's degree in english and caribbean studies, with a minor in russian. she is an avid photographer. top left – right “horse and buggy rest” (varadero, cuba) “fisher boats by the seashore” (westmoreland, jamaica) “abuela” (havana, cuba) “viva cuba!” (havana, cuba) “han’ cyaat man” (savanna-la-mar, westmoreland, jamaica.)* “breadfruit stand” (bluefields, westmoreland jamaica) “cine payret” (havana, cuba) * the resilience of a nation is often evidenced in the face of its blue-collared people. the shoemaker, the street sweeper, the cane cutter, the hand cart man. ..... 151 women seeking freedom: gender, oppression & resistance in caribbean slave society jessica zlotnik jessica zlotnik was born and raised in toronto and is currently pursuing a specialist in political science and a minor in diaspora and transnational studies. her interests include gender relations, and the history of diasporic groups within canada. jessica is also active in mentoring first year undergraduate students at the university of toronto. how did race and class affect the life chances of women within caribbean slave society? while women differed at the intersections of race and class, they nonetheless experienced oppression as a result of their gender. the plantocracy attempted to define the role of women, but they responded by resisting this power through various forms. while white women enjoyed higher status within caribbean slave society, they did not enjoy the freedom and mobility of their male counterparts. therefore, white women sought autonomy by participating in the urban market economy where they would act as entrepreneurs.1 for slave and free women of colour, opportunities for upward mobility were severely limited. therefore, work disturbances, cultural resistance, and participation in the internal market economy provided an opportunity to assert some degree of independence. though women of colour were often forced into sexual partnerships with prominent white men, they sought to reclaim their power by seeking freedom and other benefits.2 the purpose of this paper is to examine how gender, race and class shaped both the oppression of women in the caribbean, and their responses to it. as historian barbara bush has argued, if white women and women of colour had anything in common, it was that 1 hilary mcd beckles, centering woman-gender discourses in caribbean slave society (princeton: markus wiener publishers inc., 1999), 65. 2 lucille mathurin mair, a historical study of women in jamaica 1655-1844, eds. hilary mcd beckles and verene a. shepherd (kingston: the university of the west indies press, 2006), 282. caribbean quilt | 2012 152 they were subordinate to all men.3 however, their experiences could hardly be described as similar. it is important to emphasize the extent to which racism worked to limit and restrict the lives of black and brown women within caribbean slave society, when compared to their white counterparts. thus, while all women in caribbean slave society faced difficulties in asserting their independence (albeit in varying degrees), they nonetheless struggled against the limitations imposed on them by the powerful planter elite. race by far played the most determining factor in how women were viewed and treated by the plantocracy. while white women occupied the highest status of all women within caribbean slave society, questions remain as to the role they played within the system of slavery. some historians believe that white women were dependent and voiceless victims trapped in a patriarchal order imposed by their men4, while others assert that they were active participants and beneficiaries within the slave system.5 there is also the persistent belief that white women were even more cruel than white men in their treatment of slaves and free women of colour.6 what remains certain is that white women who resided in the caribbean during slavery remain an under-examined group. while all women in caribbean slave society faced gendered oppression, white women remained exempt from the additional burden of racism. since freedom was passed down matrilineally, white women became the torchbearers of freedom, and thus enjoyed the protection of the powerful planter elite.7 this meant that despite class divisions, white women fared far better than their black or brown counterparts. racial prejudice dictated how women were perceived and as a result, white women were painted in a favourable light. while black and brown women were seen as morally 3 barbara bush, slave women in caribbean society 1650-1838 (shepherds hill: villiers publications, 1990), 8. 4 pedro l.v. welch, slave society in the city-bridgetown barbados-1680-1834 (miami: ian randle publishers inc., 2003), 129. 5 pedro l.v. welch, slave society in the city-bridgetown barbados-1680-1834 (miami: ian randle publishers inc., 2003), 127. 6 barbara bush-slimani, “hard labour: women, childbirth and resistance in british caribbean slave societies,” in david barry gaspar and darlene clark hine (eds.), more than chattel: black women and slavery in the americas (bloomington and indianapolis: indiana university press, 1996), 194. 7 hilary mcd beckles, centering woman-gender discourses in caribbean slave society (princeton: markus wiener publishers inc., 1999), 62. jessica zlotnik | women seeking freedom in caribbean slave society 153 degenerate and sexually promiscuous, white women were perceived as being demure and monogamous.8 however, this was not always the case. in the early stages of slavery, poor white women experienced both class and gender discrimination but as slavery matured, the status of all white women was elevated above women of colour, regardless of class.9 it appears that white women sought autonomy through financial independence, but their success depended on where they resided. while those in rural areas often lacked opportunities for independent financial gain, urban areas provided more opportunities. the large number of white women in barbados meant that many remained unmarried and untied to plantation households.10 their financial independence meant that there was a greater tendency for them to participate in the market economy as autonomous agents giving them more freedom than their rural counterparts.11 since powerful white men dominated the centre of the urban economy, many white women operated on the periphery as owners and managers of taverns, sex-houses, and slave rental services.12 while the urban economy provided white women with greater independence in a society based on patriarchal power, it could also work to further subjugate women of colour. some white women were slave owners, and some would profit from the wage earnings of black and brown female prostitutes, as well as the ownership and sale of any resulting children.13 the informal economy, thus allowed white women to exert considerable autonomy independent of male ownership. however, many working-class white women within the barbados were unable to gain access to these opportunities. the occupations which they would have previously 8 barbara bush, slave women in caribbean society 1650-1838 (shepherds hill: villiers publications, 1990), 12-13. 9 hilary beckles, “black men in white skins: the formation of a white proletariat in west indian slave society”, journal of imperial and commonwealth history, xv; 1 (oct. 1986): 13 quoted in barbara bush, slave women in caribbean society 1650-1838 (shepherds hill: villiers publications, 1990), 12. 10 hilary mcd beckles, centering woman-gender discourses in caribbean slave society (princeton: markus wiener publishers inc., 1999), 64. 11 hilary mcd beckles, centering woman-gender discourses in caribbean slave society (princeton: markus wiener publishers inc., 1999), 64. 12 hilary mcd beckles, centering woman-gender discourses in caribbean slave society (princeton: markus wiener publishers inc., 1999), 65. 13 hilary mcd beckles, centering woman-gender discourses in caribbean slave society (princeton: markus wiener publishers inc., 1999), 65. caribbean quilt | 2012 154 filled became unthinkable because of their association with both blackness and enslavement.14 professions such as cooks, seamstresses and maidservants had once been the livelihood of poor white women, but by the end of the eighteenth century, became the domain of female slaves.15 this resulted in the rampant poverty of white women within barbados.16 the black woman faced the most oppressive discrimination because of her race. in centering woman-gender discourses in caribbean slave society, historian hilary beckles asserts that the black woman became completely defeminized and recast as the “amazon.”17 this process allowed slave owners to justify her subjugation to a destructive material and social environment.18 it also meant that whites came to believe that black women could withstand working without recuperation, dropping children at will, manipulating at ease the physical environment of the sugar estate, and being more productive than men.19 the racism directed at africans would only increase throughout the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, taking on a more explicitly biologically based tone as slavery matured.20 racism and sexism meant that the fieldworker (which was often female), was treated as the capital stock of the plantation (on par with the animals) and maintained at 14 melanie newton, “defining freedom in the interstices of slave society,” chapter 1 in the children of africa in the colonies: free people of color in barbados in the age of emancipation (baton rouge: louisiana state university press, 2008), 29. 15 melanie newton, “defining freedom in the interstices of slave society,” chapter 1 in the children of africa in the colonies: free people of color in barbados in the age of emancipation (baton rouge: louisiana state university press, 2008), 29. 16 melanie newton, “defining freedom in the interstices of slave society,” chapter 1 in the children of africa in the colonies: free people of color in barbados in the age of emancipation (baton rouge: louisiana state university press, 2008), 29. 17 hilary mcd beckles, centering woman-gender discourses in caribbean slave society (princeton: markus wiener publishers inc., 1999), 10. 18 hilary mcd beckles, centering woman-gender discourses in caribbean slave society (princeton: markus wiener publishers inc., 1999), 10. 19 hilary mcd beckles, centering woman-gender discourses in caribbean slave society (princeton: markus wiener publishers inc., 1999), 10. 20 trevor burnard, master, tyranny, and desire-thomas thistlewood and his slaves in the anglo-jamaican world (chapel hill: the university of north carolina press, 2004), 131. jessica zlotnik | women seeking freedom in caribbean slave society 155 bare subsistence level.21 the harshness of fieldwork often led to low productivity which was linked to various forms of resistance undertaken by the fieldworkers.22 while resistance has often been associated with large scale revolt or rebellion, smaller acts of resistance appear to have been frequently utilized by enslaved women within the caribbean. this is based on the fact that many european planters documented that female slaves in the west indies were more troublesome than men.23 jamaican planter matthew lewis commented on the insubordinate nature of his female slaves, stating that they tended to be more insolent and aggressive.24 the concerns articulated by lewis do not appear to be unusual indicating that slave women did in fact play an important role in resisting their enslavement. 25 it appears that a significant number of slave women risked the wrath of their white masters by using verbal abuse and insolence.26 on the kings’ success plantation in demerara essequibo, there appears to have been a number of cases involving insolent slave women.27 for example, the female slave quasheba was repeatedly punished for refusing to go to work when ordered by the doctor, as was may caroline for abusing the manager and overseer.28 slaves clarissa and lavinia were also repeatedly punished for 21 barbara bush-slimani, “hard labour: women, childbirth and resistance in british caribbean slave societies,” in david barry gaspar and darlene clark hine (eds.), more than chattel: black women and slavery in the americas (bloomington and indianapolis: indiana university press, 1996), 196. 22 barbara bush-slimani, “hard labour: women, childbirth and resistance in british caribbean slave societies,” in david barry gaspar and darlene clark hine (eds.), more than chattel: black women and slavery in the americas (bloomington and indianapolis: indiana university press, 1996), 196. 23 barbara bush, slave women in caribbean society 1650-1838 (shepherds hill: villiers publications, 1990), 53. 24 barbara bush, slave women in caribbean society 1650-1838 (shepherds hill: villiers publications, 1990), 53. 25 lucille mathurin mair, a historical study of women in jamaica 1655-1844, eds. hilary mcd beckles and verene shepherd (kingston: the university of the west indies press, 2006), 234-235. 26 barbara bush, slave women in caribbean society 1650-1838 (shepherds hill: villiers publications, 1990), 60. 27 barbara bush, slave women in caribbean society 1650-1838 (shepherds hill: villiers publications, 1990), 58. 28 barbara bush, slave women in caribbean society 1650-1838 (shepherds hill: villiers publications, 1990), 58. caribbean quilt | 2012 156 resisting work obligations.29 it appears that slave women utilized the master’s dependence on their labour as a form of protest. since productivity was crucial to the economic viability of the master, work refusal remained an endearing form of resistance. cultural practices were another way that slave women could resist their oppression. there is evidence to suggest that slave women led one of the most fundamental forms of verbal expression: the song.30 they used this medium as they toiled in the fields using artistry and often malice, making penetrating statements about themselves, or heaping ridicule upon their masters.31 this annoyed and disturbed planters, particularly after 1791 when songs in the british-colonized territories mentioned haiti.32 william beckford documented that this style of singing was exclusive to the female field gangs, and that men would rarely join in the chorus, except under extraordinary circumstances.33 the dress and body could also be manipulated in an effort to alter social representation and relations of power.34 during rebellions, slaves would often use clothing in order to ridicule their masters.35 this may have occurred because in some african religions, clothing has potency and is 29 barbara bush, slave women in caribbean society 1650-1838 (shepherds hill: villiers publications, 1990), 58. 30 olive lewin, “the role of women in jamaican folk music,” savacou 10 (1974) and j.b. moreton “manners and customs”, 152-153 quoted in lucille mathurin mair, a historical study of women in jamaica 1655-1844, eds. hilary mcd beckles and verene a. shepherd (kingston: the university of the west indies press, 2006), 235. 31 kamau brathwaite, “the development of creole society, 1770-1820,” 221225 and orlando patterson, “the sociology of slavery,” 253-259 quoted in lucille mathurin mair, a historical study of women in jamaica 1655-1844, eds. hilary mcd beckles and verene a. shepherd (kingston: the university of the west indies press, 2006), 235. 32 verene a. shepherd, women in caribbean history-the british-colonised territories (princeton: markus wiener publishers inc., 1999), 61. 33 kamau brathwaite, “the development of creole society, 1770-1820,” 225 quoted in lucille mathurin mair, a historical study of women in jamaica 16551844, eds. hilary mcd beckles and verene a. shepherd (kingston: the university of the west indies press, 2006), 235. 34 steeve o. buckridge, the language of dress-resistance and accommodation in jamaica-1760-1890 (kingston: the university of the west indies press, 2004), 78. 35 steeve o. buckridge, the language of dress-resistance and accommodation in jamaica-1760-1890 (kingston: the university of the west indies press, 2004), 80. jessica zlotnik | women seeking freedom in caribbean slave society 157 strongly connected to the spiritual world.36 thus, some may have believed that this practice could have helped in the defeat of the enemy.37 another way that dress could be used as a tool of resistance was for runaway slaves.38 if a slave woman could save enough money to buy shoes, stockings, and a dress made of fine fabric, she may have been able to pass herself off as free.39 with limited resources, slave women found ways to utilize fabrics in order to distance themselves from their enslavement. cultural resistance was an accessible way for women to protest the injustices of their society. it also provided a “cultural shield” which helped to insulate the slave woman from the brutality of plantation life.40 an urban environment provided even more opportunity for slave women to curtail their oppression. in the urban context, skilled and domestic female slaves as well as those involved in self-hire, marketing, and selling could acquire a certain degree of autonomy, despite of their enslavement.41 the slave-dominated marketing system, urbanization, and the practice of self-hire helped to foster the development of huckstering which was one of the few skilled jobs dominated by slave women.42 within these broad categories of urban occupations, slaves handled their owner’s money as well as their own 36 steeve o. buckridge, the language of dress-resistance and accommodation in jamaica-1760-1890 (kingston: the university of the west indies press, 2004), 80. 37 steeve o. buckridge, the language of dress-resistance and accommodation in jamaica-1760-1890 (kingston: the university of the west indies press, 2004), 80. 38 steeve o. buckridge, the language of dress-resistance and accommodation in jamaica-1760-1890 (kingston: the university of the west indies press, 2004), 80. 39 steeve o. buckridge, the language of dress-resistance and accommodation in jamaica-1760-1890 (kingston: the university of the west indies press, 2004), 83. 40 barbara bush-slimani, “hard labour: women, childbirth and resistance in british caribbean slave societies,” in david barry gaspar and darlene clark hine (eds.), more than chattel: black women and slavery in the americas (bloomington and indianapolis: indiana university press, 1996), 196. 41 pedro l.v. welch, slave society in the city-bridgetown barbados-1680-1834 (miami: ian randle publishers inc., 2003), 157. 42 melanie newton, “defining freedom in the interstices of slave society,” chapter 1 in the children of africa in the colonies: free people of color in barbados in the age of emancipation (baton rouge: louisiana state university press, 2008), 34. caribbean quilt | 2012 158 and acquired valuable skills.43 if a slave woman was extremely lucky, the relationships she forged through long-term absences from the masters or mistresses’ residence could result in manumission with property.44 women of mixed european and african ancestry were somewhat better received by the plantocracy because of the preference for lighter skin.45 a paler complexion meant that the mixed-race woman enjoyed a position of relative privilege on the plantation.46 their white connections combined with the frequent identification of pale skin with physical frailty meant that the brown woman was often exempted from the most menial estate tasks which were found in the fields.47 however, despite the fact that brown women enjoyed a marginally higher status than their black counterparts, they nonetheless were subject to oppression by the planter class. many women of mixed african and european ancestry were selected for house work, but this by no means meant that these women enjoyed lives of unqualified privilege.48 the round the clock demands of the household greatly restricted the physical freedom of the mixed-race woman.49 though black and brown women faced oppression as a result of their race, class factors cannot be ignored. brown women were 43 n.a.t. hall, “slavery in three west indian towns: christiansted, fredericksted and charlotte amalie in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century,” in b.w. higman (ed.), trade, government, and society in caribbean history, 17001920: essays presented to douglas hall, 1983, 30. 44 pedro l.v. welch, slave society in the city-bridgetown barbados-1680-1834 (miami: ian randle publishers inc., 2003), 157. 45 lucille mathurin mair, a historical study of women in jamaica 1655-1844, eds. hilary mcd beckles and verene a. shepherd (kingston: the university of the west indies press, 2006), 270. 46 lucille mathurin mair, a historical study of women in jamaica 1655-1844, eds. hilary mcd beckles and verene a. shepherd (kingston: the university of the west indies press, 2006), 269. 47 lucille mathurin mair, a historical study of women in jamaica 1655-1844, eds. hilary mcd beckles and verene a. shepherd (kingston: the university of the west indies press, 2006), 269. 48 lucille mathurin mair, a historical study of women in jamaica 1655-1844, eds. hilary mcd beckles and verene a. shepherd (kingston: the university of the west indies press, 2006), 269. 49 lucille mathurin mair, a historical study of women in jamaica 1655-1844, eds. hilary mcd beckles and verene a. shepherd (kingston: the university of the west indies press, 2006), 269. jessica zlotnik | women seeking freedom in caribbean slave society 159 more likely to ascend to a higher social position however; factors such as education and material wealth divided them.50 free women of colour who were the wives of wealthy and educated free men of colour had a high social status.51 property ownership was also a determining factor in social status, and the elite free woman of colour who was fortunate enough to obtain property may have been better off economically than some white women.52 the frequency of white and brown concubinage resulted in the stereotyping of the brown woman as “temptress.” this is exemplified in the writings of moreau de saint-mery in which he describes a woman of mixed european and black ancestry: “the entire being of the mulatresse is dedicated to sensual pleasure, and the fire of that goddess burns in her heart until she dies....”53 while this depiction indicates that the brown woman actively seduced white men, evidence suggests that sexual relationships were often forced upon women of colour.54 however, they sometimes sought to utilize these unions for the betterment of themselves and their children.55 longterm sexual relationships with white men could provide the possibility of either freedom or social advancement for the brown female.56 historian lucille mathurin mair argues that the mixed-race woman was relatively well placed within caribbean slave society to name a high price for her favours.57 without an abundance of white women, the law of supply and demand gave mixed-race women 50 verene a. shepherd, women in caribbean history-the british-colonised territories (princeton: markus wiener publishers inc., 1999), 73. 51 verene a. shepherd, women in caribbean history-the british-colonised territories (princeton: markus wiener publishers inc., 1999), 73. 52 verene a. shepherd, women in caribbean history-the british-colonised territories (princeton: markus wiener publishers inc., 1999), 73. 53 médéric-louis-élie moreau de saint-méry, excerpt from “description… of the french part of the island of saint domingue,” in laurent dubois and john d. garrigus (eds.), slave revolution in the caribbean 1789-1804: a brief history with documents (new york: palgrave macmillan, 2006), 59. 54 hilary mcd beckles, centering woman-gender discourses in caribbean slave society (princeton: markus wiener publishers inc., 1999), 23. 55 marietta morrissey, slave women in the new world-gender stratification in the caribbean (kansas: university press of kansas, 1989), 148. 56 marietta morrissey, slave women in the new world-gender stratification in the caribbean (kansas: university press of kansas, 1989), 148. 57 lucille mathurin mair, a historical study of women in jamaica 1655-1844, eds. hilary mcd beckles and verene a. shepherd (kingston: the university of the west indies press, 2006), 282. caribbean quilt | 2012 160 considerable bargaining power.58 white and brown partnerships often developed with the understanding that a deal had been struck between the parties concerned, and mutual advantages negotiated.59 marietta morrissey asserts that free women of colour were more likely than slaves to develop beneficial relationships with powerful white men.60 along with both white and black women, the woman of mixed-race sought financial improvement through the urban market economy. the dynamics of the town helped to shape the dominant image of the brown woman as someone economically active and viable.61 mixed-race women faced brighter prospects in urban areas where they could run profitable hotels or lodging-houses.62 the owners of these houses were known for their skills in herbal medicine, and were said to be excellent nurses.63 women of colour could also improve their financial lot through the selling of goods, sewing64, and the hiring-out of slaves.65 while all women found it difficult to assert their autonomy within caribbean slave society, they nonetheless sought ways of resisting the oppression imposed on them by the plantocracy. while white women resisted traditional gender roles through their 58 lucille mathurin mair, a historical study of women in jamaica 1655-1844, eds. hilary mcd beckles and verene a. shepherd (kingston: the university of the west indies press, 2006), 282. 59 lucille mathurin mair, a historical study of women in jamaica 1655-1844, eds. hilary mcd beckles and verene a. shepherd (kingston: the university of the west indies press, 2006), 282. 60 marietta morrissey, slave women in the new world-gender stratification in the caribbean (kansas: university press of kansas, 1989), 148. 61 lucille mathurin mair, a historical study of women in jamaica 1655-1844, eds. hilary mcd beckles and verene a. shepherd (kingston: the university of the west indies press, 2006), 278. 62 verene a. shepherd, women in caribbean history-the british-colonised territories (princeton: markus wiener publishers inc., 1999), 74. 63 verene a. shepherd, women in caribbean history-the british-colonised territories (princeton: markus wiener publishers inc., 1999), 75. 64 verene a. shepherd, women in caribbean history-the british-colonised territories (princeton: markus wiener publishers inc., 1999), 75. 65 lucille mathurin mair, a historical study of women in jamaica 1655-1844, eds. hilary mcd beckles and verene a. shepherd (kingston: the university of the west indies press, 2006), 279. jessica zlotnik | women seeking freedom in caribbean slave society 161 participation within the urban market economy, black women used work refusal, cultural resistance, and the internal marketing system as ways of resisting their enslavement. while white, black and brown women did not have equal access to resources, they all sought the benefits of the urban market economy as a way of improving their lot. therefore, it is evident that while the plantocracy sought to maintain their power, women attempted to resist it. while the experiences of women were diverse and complex, resistance helped to counteract gendered and racial oppression within caribbean slave society. caribbean quilt | 2012 162 works cited beckles, hilary. “black men in white skins: the formation of a white proletariat in west indian slave society.” journal of imperial and commonwealth history, xv; 1 oct. 1986: 13. quoted in barbara bush, slave women in caribbean society 1650-1838. shepherds hill: villiers publications, 1990. beckles, mcd hilary. centering woman-gender discourses in caribbean slave society. princeton: markus wiener publishers inc., 1999. brathwaite, kamau. “the development of creole society, 1770-1820.” quoted in lucille mathurin mair. a historical study of women in jamaica 1655-1844. eds. hilary mcd beckles and verene a. shepherd. kingston: the university of the west indies press, 2006. buckridge, o. steeve. the language of dress-resistance and accommodation in jamaica-1760-1890. kingston: the university of the west indies press, 2004. burnard, trevor. master, tyranny, and desire-thomas thistlewood and his slaves in the anglo-jamaican world. chapel hill: the university of north carolina press, 2004. bush, barbara. slave women in caribbean society 1650-1838. shepherds hill: villiers publications, 1990. hall, n.a.t. “slavery in three west indian towns: christiansted, fredericksted and charlotte amalie in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century.” in b.w. higman ed. trade, government, and society in caribbean history, 1700-1920: essays presented to douglas hall, 1983, 17-38. lewin, olive. “the role of women in jamaican folk music.” savacou 10, 1974. quoted in lucille mathurin mair. a historical study of women in jamaica 1655-1844. eds. hilary mcd beckles and verene a. shepherd. kingston: the university of the west indies press, 2006. jessica zlotnik | women seeking freedom in caribbean slave society 163 mair, mathurin lucille. a historical study of women in jamaica 16551844. eds. hilary mcd beckles and verene a. shepherd. kingston: the university of the west indies press, 2006. méry-saint, de moreau médéric-louis-élie. excerpt from “description… of the french part of the island of saint domingue 1797.” in laurent dubois and john d. garrigus eds. slave revolution in the caribbean 1789-1804: a brief history with documents. new york: palgrave macmillan, 2006. moreton, j.b. “manners and customs.” 152-153. quoted in lucille mathurin mair. a historical study of women in jamaica 1655-1844. eds. hilary mcd beckles and verene a. shepherd. kingston: the university of the west indies press, 2006. morrissey, marietta. slave women in the new world-gender stratification in the caribbean. kansas: university press of kansas, 1989. newton, melanie. “defining freedom in the interstices of slave society.” chapter 1 in the children of africa in the colonies: free people of color in barbados in the age of emancipation. baton rouge: louisiana state university press, 2008, 23-56. patterson, orlando. “the sociology of slavery.” 253-259. quoted in lucille mathurin mair, a historical study of women in jamaica 16551844. eds. hilary mcd beckles and verene a. shepherd. kingston: the university of the west indies press, 2006. shepherd, a.verene. women in caribbean history-the british-colonised territories. princeton: markus wiener publishers inc., 1999. slimani, bush barbara. “hard labour: women, childbirth and resistance in british caribbean slave societies.” in david barry gaspar and darlene clark hine eds. more than chattel: black women and slavery in the americas. bloomington and indianapolis: indiana university press, 1996, 193-217. welch, l.v. pedro. slave society in the city-bridgetown barbados-16801834. miami: ian randle publishers inc., 2003. front matter with bios.pdf front matter with bios.pdf 72 the validity of patois: an analysis on the linguistic and cultural aspects of jamaican patois adriana williams the purpose of this essay is to debunk the dated eurocentric notions that dismiss the significance of jamaican patois and to argue the validity of the language. to achieve this, research was conducted by exploring various caribbean literary and linguistic components of the language. however, for the sake of space, only one example per category was analyzed. patois (also known as jamaican creole) is the word used to describe caribbean speech. patois, or patois-based languages, are a part of a continuum of creolized languages (davidson and schwartz 48), ranging from pidgins and dialects to full languages. through socialization and systemization over time, [jamaican] patois has developed into a language all its own. however, not all view patois as a language. one argument is that patois is a dialect or a pidgin, instead. neither of these linguistic categories is considered a true language, according to anglophone standards. historically, patois-based languages have been stigmatized for including only some parts of their european lexifiers—or the foundation of a mixed language (davidson and schwartz 48) —, hence the common phrase, “broken english.” it is only recently that creoles such as patois have started to be sufficiently researched. the result is a growing body of evidence demonstrating that patois-based languages— which are based on, but deviate from, english— are indeed true languages, and have seen increasing systemization. i argue that jamaican patois is indeed a language, comprising of multiple linguistic components. these components build up the strength of the identity of [jamaican] patois itself. furthermore, patois has contributed to the identity of jamaica by reproducing black autonomy through the use of patois. this is evident in caribbean literature, from poetry to academic prose. to uphold the validity of patois, linguistic components of the language and the cultural impact of patois in jamaica will be analyzed. some linguists argue that [jamaican] patois is not a language because of its creolized origins. within the discipline of linguistics, creoles refer to a speech form that is comprised of two base languages. in fact, the word creole is synonymous with pidgins and dialects, forms of speech that are not languages. nevertheless, recent investigations have led linguists to confirm that patois has systemized components, thus separating it from standard english. there are many parts that classify a set speech as a language. for the sake of space, only the syntax (word order) of patois will be explored in this essay. for example, similarly to standard english (or se), patois has an svo (sentence verb object) structure. one finds an example of svo structure in the following sentence: “keiti (s) waan (v) wan neda buk (o),” which translates to “katie wants another book” in se (durrelman-tame 12). this makes up the general structure of sentences in patois. in addition, there are variations of grammar that can change the meaning or makeup of a sentence. an example is verb duplication (durrelman-tame 12). a way of creating emphasis when speaking, a verb can be repeated within a sentence. an example is “a wok ‘im adriana williams the validity of patois 73 a wok,” which means “what s/he is doing is working” (durrelman-tame 12). another example of varying factors in sentence structure is the use of tense in patois. to convey that an action took place in the past, the words “ehm” or “did” are used as auxiliary verbs. one of these auxiliaries is normally inserted in between the subject and the verb of a sentence: “ ‘im ehn/did nyam it aaf,” which means “s/he ate it up” (durrelman-tame 12). categories such as syntax, phonetics (sound patterns), semantics (word meaning), morphology (structure of words) and orthography (spelling) are a part of the many components that make up a language. for patois to not be a language, it would have to be lacking some of these parts. as stated above, considering how many patterns have been identified within the language, patois is a functional language, one in which each element within the grammar has purpose and order. research shows that patois has a complex linguistic system. these conclusions, however, are evidently held back by dated views of the language that stem back to 17th-century britishoccupied jamaica and survive the present. a major factor that has contributed to the idea of patois being a non-standard language is the cultural stigma associated with the language category. this stigma is reinforced by two different groups: colonialists and jamaica’s own citizens. firstly, it stems from colonialists who belittled the language. from slavery to independence in 1962, anything that broke with the white norm was deemed inferior by british standards. even though this language is still connected to english, which acts as its lexifier, it is held in contempt because it comes from slaves who began to make the colonial language their own, through the creolization of english with different african languages (davidson and schwartz 48). in turn, the second wave of cultural stigma came from jamaicans themselves. due to the conditioning about their own language, repeatedly having it reduced to nothing more than “broken english,” jamaicans have internalized the negative attitudes toward the language. patois has traditionally been seen as reflecting the the humble socio-economic status of its speakers. its use can is often labelled as improper and inferior, while also associating a speaker to poverty or a lower class (bengoechea 78). this is part of an attempt by colonial powers to condition how jamaicans view their blackness and culture. despite the eurocentric biases against patois, it has continually been reproduced in jamaican society. it is a part of the country’s identity and reclamation of blackness through the use of the language. it can be seen through use across various sectors, such as academia, music, film and writing. an example of jamaican literature that utilized patois was written by louise bennett-coverley, better known as miss lou. born in 1919, miss lou, a comedienne, writer, and language advocate, was known as one of jamaica’s most important writers. combing comedy and insight, her work highlighted the importance of valuing african elements in jamaican culture (morris), hence the deliberate use of patois. in addition, she was one of the first to transcribe patois in written form throughout her work (otto 105). a famous example by miss lou is called jamaica labrish. published in 1966, it is a collection of short poems. the word labrish means ‘gossip’ in patois. jamaica labrish was well known for being distinctly written in patois and being a depiction of everyday life in jamaica. an example of the use of patois in jamaican labrish is a poem called duty bound (morris). this poem marked the departure of governor hugh foot and lady foot, whom jamaicans adored, caribbean quilt ǀ 2020 74 from the country. the following is a small excerpt from duty bound: “from de day foots set foot yah, govanah and lady start. fe timely-timely stir demself, eena jamaica heart” (morris). this piece plays with irony by using patois to describe an event revolving around the british. duty bound also is important to the idea of experience. this moment in time is a reflection of the jamaican perspective, and what makes it a uniquely jamaican experience is the use of patois, describing it in jamaica’s mother tongue. pieces like duty bound are prime examples of why the use of patois is important. firstly, it demonstrates representation. duty bound is one of many descriptions of everyday chatter that jamaicans took part in. secondly, it demonstrates resistance. despite bring streamlined into british systems, jamaicans have fought against eurocentric norms through the use of patois. using the language in its own right is a message that one’s caribbean-ness is good enough. finally, it represents identity. patois is a part of what it means to be jamaican. one example is the relationship between creolization and jamaica. the constant intermingling of different parts of culture and thought, like patois, is a characteristic of the caribbean. literature that uses patois is also an act of reclamation, which can be seen in different forms. one example is amongst caribbean women. audre lorde once said that “poetry is not a luxury, it is a vital necessity of our existence” (lorde). creating literature like poetry is a means of documenting experience and taking back one’s voice. in miss lou’s case, she was documenting the jamaican experience from a female perspective. another example is the reclamation of blackness/caribbean-ness. the use of patois focuses on the african heritage of the caribbean (brathwaite). using patois is a way of connecting with our african roots. the reproduction of patois in literature and the refinement of the language represent its longevity. despite many attempts to replace this language through “colonial structures” (morris), it still is widely spoken throughout the country. without it, jamaicans would speak primarily standard english, and in a jamaican context, standard english is a language that represents division and oppression. it is important to continue validating patois as it carries as much value and merit as any other widely studied language. patois must be upheld by community members as it is a large part of jamaican identity. patois in itself represents the history of jamaica and the efforts to liberate its people, using self-made tools. adriana williams the validity of patois 75 works cited brathwaite, kamau. history of the voice: the development of nation language in anglophone caribbean poetry. new beacon books, 2011. davidson, cecilia, and richard g schwartz. “semantic boundaries in the lexicon: examples from jamaican patois.” linguistics and education, 1994, pp. 47–64. durrleman-tame, stephanie. the syntax of jamaican creole: a cartographic perspective. john benjamins, 2008. lorde, audre. “poetry is not a luxury.” black women writers, alexander street press, 1984, https://lit-alexanderstreet-com.myaccess.library.utoronto.ca/blww/view/1000060646. morris, mervyn. miss lou: louise bennett and jamaican culture. signal books, 2014. otto, melanie. “the caribbean.” the routledge companion to postcolonial studies , routledge, 2007, pp. 95–107. universidad de alcalá de henares, bengoechea, mercedes. poetry in patois: applying a sociopsychological approach to the analysis and interpretation of british afro caribbean poems. 1997, pp. 77–105, poetry in patois: applying a sociopsychological approach to the analysis and interpretation of british afro-caribbean poems. analysis of coco fusco and guillermo gómez peña’s ‘the couple in the cage: a guatinaui odyssey’ rachelle sanicharan university of toronto fas canadian studies specialist the performance the couple in the cage: a guatinaui odyssey by coco fusco and guillermo gómez peña presents a piece mainly featuring two people where presented as a couple, from a fictional island called guatinaui. the piece performed throughout the world from 1992 to 1994 and in a film in 1993, is narrated from the perspectives of colonial experts who guide the audience through the supposed features of the island, its peoples and the roles the couple played in society. the performance was a response to the quincentennial of columbus’ arrival in the americas and sought to highlight parts of this history that are often ignored. in this way, one of the main objectives of the performance was to demonstrate the general idea of the other, and how people from developed countries viewed indigenous communities. a b s t r a c t keywords: caribbean, guatinaui odyssey, performance art. b i o rachelle is a fourth-year student as a canadian studies specialist at the university of toronto. she is an indo-guyanese canadian woman who has a particular interest in researching, recording, and preserving her indo-caribbean culture. © 2021 rachelle sanicharan caribbean studies students’ union, canada https://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/cquilt/ this work is licensed under the creative commons attributionsharealike 4.0 international license. to view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ 43 (january 20, 2022 / 08:53:06) 122815-1b_caribbeanquilt_vol6_rev.pdf .43 44 l coco fusco and guillermo gómez-peña: the couple in the cage: two undiscovered amerindians visit the west.” classroom art & education, december 1, 2018. https://www.artandeducation.net/classroom/video/244623/coco-fusco-and-guillermo-gmez-pea-the-couple-in-the -cage-two-undiscovered-amerindians-visit-the-west. behar, ruth, and bruce mannheim. “the couple in the cage: a guatinaui odyssey.” visual anthropology review 11, no. 1 (1995): 118–27. https://doi.org/10.1525/var.1995.11.1.118. 2 1 the performance the couple in the cage: a guatinaui odyssey by coco fusco and guillermo gómez peña presents a piece mainly featuring two people where presented as a couple, from a fictional island called guatinaui. the piece performed throughout the world from 1992 to 1994 and in a film in 1993, is narrated from the perspectives of colonial experts who guide the audience through the supposed features of the island, its peoples and the roles the couple played in society. throughout these performances—including some at reputable museums and similar [academic] venues globally—the audience did not know that the couple in the cage that were being showcased, were conducting a performance piece. the performance was a response to the quincentennial of columbus’ arrival in the americas and sought to highlight parts of this history that are often ignored. in this way, one of the main objectives of the performance was to demonstrate the general idea of the other, and how people from developed countries viewed indigenous communities. this includes considerations for the gaps in eurocentric conceptualization of authenticity, identity, and multiculturalism in a world that still views the ‘other’ as people who need to be subjugated—often caged, controlled, and treated like animals. the performance allows for one to gain a deeper understanding of authenticity and how it is presented and perceived in the world. something that was apparent throughout the film was the reaction of observers of the performances around the world really believed the story that was being told, and appeared to enjoy visualizing the entrapment of these two people from an undiscovered island. the performance demonstrated art as “a form of studying the west’s construction of itself through its construction of the other.” this was clear as the film demonstrated varying positionalities highlighting those who had a problem with two human beings being kept in cages and being treated like animals, and people of colour who related the exhibit to what their ancestors went through. whilst there were those who shared their disgust for such an exhibit, there were others who took photos with the two disguised performers, even going as far as to pay for the woman to dance for them or for the man to tell a story in what was presented as the language of guatinaui. in response, the performers did things like listing cities and places while mixing in spanish and made up words. these actions demonstrate how the label of other was used to justify the treatment the two performers received. in addition, the cage had things such as a tv and a radio. with these tools, the performers made a mockery of the whole ideology of the piece by 1 2 (january 20, 2022 / 08:53:06) 122815-1b_caribbeanquilt_vol6_rev.pdf .44 45 coco fusco and guillermo gómez-peña: the couple in the cage: two undiscovered amerindians visit the west.” classroom art & education, december 1, 2018. https://www.artandeducation.net/classroom/video/244623/coco-fusco-and-guillermo-gmez-pea-the-couple-in-the -cage-two-undiscovered-amerindians-visit-the-west. stith, nathan. “the performative nature of filmed reproductions of live performance.” theatre symposium 19, no. 1 (2011): 81–90. https://doi.org/10.1353/tsy.2011.0009. 4 3 dancing to rap music and watching tv. the idea of authenticity was pushed aside because of how they were being presented by ‘experts. coco fusco and guillermo gómez peña used parody as a key feature of the performance, ‘othering’ themselves for the audience, but the viewer of the film too sees the ‘colonial gaze’ and responses of the audience which too becomes a part of the art in the film. this really allowed for a full picture of what was happening during the performance, and the mindset that people had when visiting the exhibit. some people did question the legitimacy of the exhibit, but most people believed its content because historically, people being presented in cages is something that western countries have done many times before. sadly, many did not protest that two people were in cages, and instead actively participated, feeding them like they were animals and photographed them as if they were objects—paying to do so. this demonstrated the skewed perspective the western world has of people labelled as the other which leads to them being treated as less than a person. the idea behind creating such a performance that is shown globally, is to demonstrate the skewed perception that people have and to highlight the historical and contemporary labelling of people as the ‘other’ or subaltern. it is still very present in society today beyond the exhibit and its performance with people of colour often being asked where they are from, simply because of the colour of their skin, or being labelled as exotic because of their race. similarly, this othering also occurs with cultural displays that are seen as antithesis to western dogma. in the film’s demonstration of people being hesitant when approaching the cage, it also reminds the viewer that the othering that occurs in broader society is often based on fear. unfortunately, today, we still see how the “west” still fears the ‘other’ and how they still seek to control and ‘cage’ people, even if it isn’t as apparent as it is shown in this performance. the performance, the couple in the cage: a guatinaui odyssey, addresses notions of authenticity by showcasing how the idea of the other is presented to people throughout the world and how the story of the fictional characters was enough to convince many people that a new island and ‘type’ of people had been discovered. for many of these people that was enough to justify why these people were in cages, and that in itself demonstrates how othering often strips people of logic, morals, and humanity. 1 2 3 4 (january 20, 2022 / 08:53:06) 122815-1b_caribbeanquilt_vol6_rev.pdf .45 46 behar, ruth, and bruce mannheim. “the couple in the cage: a guatinaui odyssey.” visual anthropology review 11, no. 1 (1995): 118–27. https://doi.org/10.1525/var.1995.11.1.118. “coco fusco and guillermo gómez-peña: the couple in the cage: two undiscovered amerindians visit the west.” classroom art & education, december 1, 2018. https://www.artandeducation.net/classroom/video/244623/coco-fusco-and-guillermo -gmez-pea-the-couple-in-the-cage-two-undiscovered-amerindians-visit-the-west. “the couple in the cage.” imdb. imdb.com, october 10, 1993. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0301136/. l'clerc, lee. “‘the couple in the cage: a guatinaui odyssey/ recording_1.’ .” lecture, n.d. stith, nathan. “the performative nature of filmed reproductions of live performance.” theatre symposium 19, no. 1 (2011): 81–90. https://doi.org/10.1353/tsy.2011.0009. taylor, diana. “a savage performance: guillermo gómez-peña and coco fusco's ‘ couple in the cage.’” tdr/the drama review 42, no. 2 (1998): 160–80. https://doi.org/10.1162/dram.1998.42.2.160. works cited (january 20, 2022 / 08:53:06) 122815-1b_caribbeanquilt_vol6_rev.pdf .46 in el batey, my father’s foot lit a fire sophie maríñez professor of french borough of manhattan community college first published in the caribbean writer volume 31 new vistas: an evolving caribbean (2017): 91-93. “in el batey, my father's foot lit a fire” is inspired by juan bosch's short story “luis pie,” narrated from the perspective of luis pie's son. a b s t r a c t keywords: caribbean literature, haiti, migration studies, dominican literature, república dominicana, haitian-dominican relations b i o sophie maríñez is a mellon/acls fellow and a professor of french at the borough of manhattan community college and the graduate center, city university of new york. she is an awardee of the national endowment of the humanities (neh). her poetry has appeared in the caribbean quarterly, the caribbean writer, small axe literary salon, and the cincinnati romance review. © 2014 sophie maríñez caribbean studies students’ union, canada https://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/cquilt/ this work is licensed under the creative commons attributionsharealike 4.0 international license. to view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ 111 jan both: landscape with a draughtsman (january 20, 2022 / 08:53:12) 122815-1b_caribbeanquilt_vol6_rev.pdf .111 112 in the cañaveral near el batey a wound on my father’s foot made him crawl on the dirt. in the dark. pray to bondyé. crushed by his pain, he didn’t see the fire, until it came too close and wild. i saw my father coming home, hands tied in ropes, dragged on the dirt by horses and the men of greed. his face full of bruises, blood and wounds. they had accused him of lighting a fire in the cañaveral… in el batey, my father’s foot lit a fire reading jorge manrique in río piedras to luis pie— the two of them —in homage to the dominican children of haitian immigrants in the dominican republic. in the cañaveral near el batey a wound on my father’s foot made him crawl on the dirt. in the dark. pray to bondyé. crushed by his pain, he didn’t see the fire, until it came too close and wild. i saw my father coming home, hands tied in ropes, dragged on the dirt by horses and the men of greed. his face full of bruises, blood and wounds. they had accused him of lighting a fire in the cañaveral… (january 20, 2022 / 08:53:12) 122815-1b_caribbeanquilt_vol6_rev.pdf .112 30 racialized emotional labour: the weight of blackness in white spaces octavia andrade-dixon at the age of 17, from april 2016 to september 2016, i worked part-time at a yacht club on toronto island as a maintenance worker. i worked alongside another individual in the maintenance department, and we were both of afro-jamaican descent. the club had a predominantly white membership, with few customers who were people of colour. the staff was also mostly white, and there were only five other people of colour who worked there besides us, and none of them were black either. i found that, while interacting with members, i faced racialised remarks and assumptions based on my position as a maintenance worker and as a young black woman. to remain professional and avoid validating any of their racist assumptions, i employed a high level of emotional labour and restraint. in discussions with my jamaican colleague, i found he faced similar racialised comments; he also felt it necessary to employ emotional control to uphold a palatable image. however, i also found that the non-black employees did not employ the same level of emotional labour. this is not an isolated experience. i have also had to engage in emotional labour in other workplaces. moreover, it is common to hear about black employees, especially black women, performing emotional labour for nonblack customers. black female employees must employ more emotional labour when working in predominantly white spaces, especially in racialised occupations. historicizing janitorial work janitorial and maintenance work has historically been an occupation that has gendered and racialised biases (soni-sinha and yates 737). within the american context, black women were forced to join the labour economy immediately after the abolition of slavery. black women were often exempt from the notion that women belonged at home because of their racialised identities (glenn 95). the majority of black women used the skills they had acquired while enslaved to become domestics in white households, whether they chose to stay in the south or migrate north. however, the labour market for domestic work was not only occupied by black women but by lower-class white women and racialised irish women as well. with this competition, black women were thus made to do the most strenuous and dirty work in the household (taylor phillips 396). canada also has histories of black women engaging in domestic work post abolition of slavery. one example is the caribbean domestic migration scheme. the caribbean domestic scheme only allowed caribbean women to immigrate to canada as domestic workers (calliste 132). while canada was the requesting nation, it had egregious restrictions on women’s entrance to the country, such as barring entry to women who were suspected of having the potential to abuse the system by getting pregnant (calliste 134). black caribbean women faced a multitude of racialised assumptions when entering the domestic work scheme, they and did not have the opportunity to combat those assumptions or to advance socially because of the restrictions of the program and their socio-economic status. at present, the disenfranchisement of black women with little education is still prevalent, and they often occupy jobs in janitorial or domestic work. due to these histories and the stigmas associated with occupations dealing with cleaning, my family was not very receptive to the news of my employment. as someone of jamaican descent, whose family did not have to come to canada through domestic schemes, but instead had the means to obtain other employment, my octavia andrade-dixon indigeneity and blackness 31 mother could not fathom why i would take a position of such low social standing. i, too, was not proud of my first job because of stigma attached to it, and i would say i was waitressing at the yacht club rather than cleaning when asked about it. besides the stigma of janitorial work, it is a gendered occupation that recreates gendered divisions of labour through the distribution of tasks. janitorial work has two classifications: heavy duty and light duty (soni-sinha and yates 740). heavy-duty work includes “mopping and waxing floors and carrying rubbish to the chute,” while light work includes “vacuuming, dusting, and cleaning bathrooms” (soni-sinha and yates 746). divisions of janitorial work are done based on the general notion that women should not do more physically laborious tasks (sonisinha and yates 740). women are often paid less and shown less respect for their labour because of this. however, employers have tended to disregard these gender roles when it comes to black women and to blur the distinction between heavy work and light work if it is black women who have to take it on. historically, black women in domestic work have had to carry out all tasks at a toilsome rate (glenn 96). the division of labour at the club was very apparent, as i typically performed soft tasks such as dusting, vacuuming, and cleaning the washrooms. my male coworker would perform heavy tasks such as mopping and cleaning the yard. while my male coworker did not do all heavy labour when i did engage in it, it was with his assistance. these historically racialised and gendered norms in janitorial remain and add to the additional labour that black women must employ in these positions. emotional labour as a black woman hochschild describes emotional labour as the controlling and presenting of one’s emotions and to create a positive emotional state in another person (552). however, her work does not encompass the differing experiences of women from varying ethnic backgrounds. her point of view predominantly describes the single-faceted oppression that white women face as women in society. however, black women do not encounter only one facet of oppression; instead, they must navigate multi-layered oppressive standards that intersect their position as both women and black people (glenn 95). while working at the club, i felt the gravity of how my race and gender intersected when speaking to colleagues and members. comments made by those i interacted with were harmful to one or more facets of my identity. it was as if they believed the comments would not affect me because of their binary view of me as either a black person or as a woman (hill collins 70). emotional labour for black women comes with the responsibility of conforming to the standards upheld by white society (durr and harveywingfield 558). for example, black women often engage in code-switching, changing the register they use to speak with co-workers (durr and harvey wingfield 558). code-switching is a defence mechanism used to make those they are speaking with more comfortable. there is the assumption that black women talk in a harsh, uneducated manner (hill collins 69). thus, they adopt a sweeter, more formal voice when talking to unfamiliar people. when i spoke to members of the club, i would speak in a higher octave, and adopt different colloquialisms. i did this so i would seem less assuming towards the customer and to avoid triggering negative stereotypes about my identity. there is often an unspoken sense of responsibility to present the best version of oneself when around non-black people, because it feels as though our actions are viewed collectively caribbean quilt ǀ 2020 32 rather than individually. moreover, black women not only adopt different speaking patterns to make customers comfortable but different mannerisms as well. they will often shrink themselves in situations to appear as the most agreeable employee (hill collins 56). they will remain quiet “speak when spoken to” (durr and harvey wingfield 565), and attempt to take up the least amount of space. because i could listen to music at work, i would often dance while working. if i heard someone coming, i would immediately stop. further, if a member came into a room i was cleaning, i would quickly try to move what i was doing so i would take up less space and not get in their way. another way in which black women perform emotional labour in predominantly white areas is by stomaching insensitive comments so as not to seem confrontational (durr and harvey wingfield 566). when voicing a concern, people misconstrue black women’s intentions as being unnecessarily argumentative or divisive. to avoid unnecessary conflict and isolation, black women silence themselves to avoid creating discomfort at their own expense. there were multiple occasions when members or my superiors would make comments that were inappropriate, and i would smile and nod to avoid conforming to the “angry black girl” trope. in one instance, a member asked me if i was doing my fifth year of school, based solely on his assumption of me as a young black woman working in maintenance. instead of allowing myself to react or explaining to him why his comments were harmful, i just told him no, that i was attending uoft in the fall. while leaving his comment unchecked allowed him to perpetuate more anti-black microaggressions in the future, i had to pick emotional preservation over performing more emotional labour to educate this man. i also had to weight the potential risk to my job if he complained to management. the self-imposed restrictions based on long-standing teachings and the desire to disprove societal anti-blackness leads black women to be overly performative when working in non-black spaces. these patterns are prevalent in all workforces, but working in racialised service work exacerbates them, as interactions with customers are the main component of their employment. comparative levels of emotional labour the performance of emotional labour is common to those who work in the service industry. however, the distribution of emotional labour required of employees is unequal. i found while working at the yacht club that my co-workers enacted different levels of emotional labour based on the axes of their identities. emotional labour theory focuses on the creation of emotions in other (hochschild 552). thus, the amount of emotional labour needed is dependant upon the receiver’s perception of the performer. as emotional labour is often a racialised action, depending on the demographics of the space, different levels would be necessary for the in-group to feel comfortable. in non-black spaces, whether they are predominantly white or otherwise, black women are continually outsiders in their places of employment (hill collins 70). black women then implement more emotional labour to move more comfortably in these spaces (durr and wingfield 559). i used different vocal intonations, colloquialisms and changed my mannerisms because i had the subconscious desire to make the predominantly white clientele comfortable. however, i found that two of my co-workers in the maintenance department did not perform as much emotional labour, or attempt to maintain the same degree of professionalism at work. one of my co-workers was a young white woman who was the same age as me, but her boyfriend was a member of the yacht club. from the beginning of her employment, there was a octavia andrade-dixon indigeneity and blackness 33 sense of comfort that i did not share. this was because she was already a part of the in-group at the club. while i was a visible minority at the club, she could take off her uniform and blend into the social circles of the club. as a result, she would use her privilege to take liberties on the job, such as sleeping in the tv room and moving through the space as though she were a patron. my second co-worker was a latino man who worked at the club for over fifteen years. unlike my other co-worker, he had a marginalised identity as a latino man. consequently, he did not disregard emotional labour as she did. nor, however, did he employ the same kind of emotional labour as i did: he did not attempt to shrink himself or become more palatable, but would become a performative caricature of himself. although he did have an eclectic personality, i saw that he frequently presented a sensationalised version of himself to others. for the customers’ comfort he allowed himself to be tokenized and placed into a crazy latino trope (kanter 211). this performative personality permitted him more liberties in his conduct, since no one expected him to perform at a high level in his work. he would leave the yacht club for hours and drive around the island on a golf cart on garbage runs that could be accomplished in under an hour. the way management and clientele perceived my coworkers enabled their lack of regard for their work to become a long-standing pattern, a luxury i did not feel i could afford. conclusion black employees have the added pressure of performing increased amounts of emotional labour while working in racialised service positions such as janitorial work. i felt this pressure while working in maintenance at the yacht when i was just out of high school. janitorial work as a modern successor of domestic work holds many of the same racialised and gendered roles. domestic work was a prevalent occupation for black women in north america, whether they were black american or black caribbeans immigrating to canada, and these women were subject to substandard work conditions and duties. currently, black women still face poor working conditions in janitorial work due to their position in society. further, in these marginalised positions, interactions with patrons and non-black co-workers require additional labour beyond the physical demands of the job, often in the form of emotional labour. emotional labour manifests more prominently for black women in non-black spaces as they use it as a tool for assimilation and self-perseveration. although emotional labour in service work is not exclusive to black women, other marginalised groups employ varying degrees because the axes of their identity provide them with less need to perform emotional labour, based upon customers’ perceptions. thus, because of black women’s unique place in society, we are met with the added responsibility of protecting ourselves in unwelcoming spaces. however, to lessen this burden, the public needs to be educated. but whose responsibility is it? in a society that already profits off the continual labour of black women, we should not be the educators, but the spectators in society's collective unlearning. caribbean quilt ǀ 2020 34 works cited calliste, a. (1994). race, gender and canadian immigration policy: blacks from the caribbean, 1900-1932. journal of canadian studies, 28(4):131-148. durr, m. and harvey wingfield, a. (2011). keep your ‘n’ in check: african american women and the interactive effects of etiquette and emotional labor. critical sociology, 37(5): 557-571. glenn, e. (1985). racial ethnic women's labor: the intersection of race, gender and class oppression. review of radical political economics, 17(3): 86-108. hill collins, p. (2000). black feminist thought. 1st ed. new york: routledge: 50-80. hochschild, a. (1983). emotional work, feeling rules, and social structure. american journal of sociology 85(3): 551–575. kanter, r. (2008). men and women of the corporation. new york: basic books. soni-sinha, u. and yates, c. (2013). ‘dirty work?’ gender, race and the union in industrial cleaning. gender, work & organization: 737-751. taylor phillips, d. (2013). moving with the women: tracing racialization, migration, and domestic workers in the archive. signs: journal of women in culture and society, 38(2): 379404. the womb: a site of domination and resistance in the pre-emancipation british caribbean collin xia 2t1 york university faculty of graduate studies, department of political science beginning in the 1780s, british caribbean plantocracies faced the looming threat of slave trade abolition which would end the flow of enslaved african labour to caribbean plantation colonies. an enslaved woman’s function as the source of blackness and legal slave status made their wombs essential to a future without readily available slave imports. narratives centring the intensifying colonial domination of enslaved women’s wombs highlight abolitionists and slave owners’ deployment of enslave women’s reproductive labour in slave-breeding programs to produce a self-sustaining source of labour. this narrative neglects the agency enslaved women exerted in exacting control over their sexuality, marriage status, pregnancies, childbirth experience, and child-rearing process that jeopardised the institution of slavery in “gynecological revolt.” this essay privileges the feminized, unarmed, sexual, bodily defiance of enslaved women within the greater, often masculinized caribbean slavery scholarship to argue that the womb was a site of intensifying colonial domination in the age of abolition but more significantly a site of women’s revolutionary struggle against slavery. a b s t r a c t b i o collin xia is a graduate of the university of toronto’s international relations program and master’s student at york university’s political science department. his research interests include queer international relations, settler-colonialism, and the black diaspora © 2021 collin xia caribbean studies students’ union, canada https://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/cquilt/ this work is licensed under the creative commons attributionsharealike 4.0 international license. to view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ poems on the abolition of the slave trade; written. fine art. encyclopædia britannica image quest. accessed jul 22, 2021. keywords: british caribbean, jamaica, enslaved women, british slave abolition, biological reproduction, atlantic slave trade, gynecological revolt, the womb 69 (january 20, 2022 / 08:53:07) 122815-1b_caribbeanquilt_vol6_rev.pdf .69 70 jennifer l. morgan, laboring women: reproduction and gender in new world slavery (philadelphia: university of pennsylvania press, 2004), 4. sasha turner, contested bodies: pregnancy, childrearing, and slavery in jamaica (philadelphia: university of pennsylvania press, 2017), 10. morgan, laboring women, 1. turner, contested bodies, 18. morgan, laboring women, 11. . 1 4 3 women’s bodies and labour have been at the heart of colonial monoculture export economies and the entire racial slavery system. they were “important sites of political struggles over slavery, abolition, and colonial reform,” as their sexuality, reproductive labour, and childrearing practices acted as zones of conflict, in which abolitionists, slaveholders, the imperial government, and enslaved people competed to control. enslaved women’s reproductive labour held symbolic and legal significance in british colonial societies as their bodies reproduced “blackness” and its “enslavability,” allowing slave owners to claim the offspring of their female slaves as their property. it was not until the 1780s, the beginning of the british abolition campaign, in which slave owners foresaw an existential threat to the plantocracy and sought to fully capitalize on the womb to sustain the colonial-slave system. from that point on, anglo-caribbean plantocracies demonstrated significant interest in enslaved women’s reproductive labour to manage slave demographics but enslaved women often defied their masters to exert control over their reproductive capacities in “gynecological revolt” this essay examines sources centred on jamaica to argue that the wombs of enslaved women in the anglo-caribbean colonies were sites of colonial domination as slaveowners, abolitionists, and the imperial government fought to control it but were also sites of “gynecological revolt” as women exerted control over their sexuality, pregnancy, childbirth experience, and child-rearing process. the first section of this essay will describe the legal and ideological struggle between british abolitionists and slaveowners over slave trade abolition from the 1780s to 1807. the debate sparked increased control over women’s reproductive capacities as abolitionists sought to frame women as the source of a self-replenishing labour force that justified the abolition of the slave trade. as abolitionists gained momentum in britain, slaveowners began slave breeding projects to secure a new source of labour for a future without readily available slave imports. the second section begins to unravel the narrative that british intellectuals, parliamentarians, and humanitarians were the sole force fighting against the slave system by centring enslaved women who challenged slavery by exerting control over their bodies and reproduction. finally, the conclusion will tie this investigation of reproductive resistance together and make concluding comments on the lack of significance slave scholarship places on women’s feminized, unarmed, sexual, bodily defiance. to begin a discussion on women’s gynecological revolt during britain’s age of abolition (defined in this research as the 1760s-1833 ), abolitionist strategies to abolish the slave trade and slavery 1 2 2 3 2 5 1 2 3 4 5 (january 20, 2022 / 08:53:07) 122815-1b_caribbeanquilt_vol6_rev.pdf .70 71 turner, “home-grown slaves,” 39-40. turner, “home-grown slaves,” 42. turner, contested bodies, 23; turner, “home-grown slaves,” 42. turner, “home-grown slaves,” 43. turner, “home-grown slaves,” 42 . 11 8 12 10 employing women’s reproductive capacity must be examined in relation to slaveowner’s interests in preserving the status quo. according to sasha turner, before the emergence of the abolitionist movement, slaveowners preferred male slaves who were thought to be “more versatile and capable of performing the sugar plantations’ variously demanding agro-industrial tasks.” on the other hand, slaveholders “reluctantly bought females for their jamaican sugar estates throughout the seventeenth century and maintained this practice until the late eighteenth century” as enslaved women were considered less valuable due to their physiological needs during and after pregnancies, which were “viewed as distractions by capitalistic planters whose main focus was maintaining productivity and profitability.” women’s symbolic role in reproducing the slave status through their reproductive labour was not as valued because it was more profitable to purchase a male adult at their physical prime than accommodate women’s pregnancies and raise their children. it was not until the 1780s when slaveowners began to reconsider the profitability of women’s reproductive labour as the abolitionist campaign began successfully lobbying the end of the slave trade. the abolition of the slave trade, (abolitionist activists’ first step in abolishing slavery in the british empire), strategically employed enslaved women’s reproductive labour to advocate for a racial eugenics program that would supposedly make slave trading obsolete and sustain the plantation economy. abolitionists “mobilized a particular racial violence against black sexuality and motherhood” in which control of enslaved women’s fertility and maternity were central to creating a free labouring population that could be molded into ideal subject-citizens of the empire. while most jamaican slaveowners rejected the notion that their slaves could be reformed into equally free subjects, they changed their slave purchasing patterns to select more women of child-bearing age to achieve sex-parity and began a plantation breeding program to secure an alternative labour force. overall, the success of the movement to abolish british slave trading was hinged on a program to control black women’s reproductive labour to reproduce a “working population suitable for building and sustaining the british imperial enterprise.” as turner reflects, “whether in slavery or antislavery rhetoric, black women’s bodies and their lives were defined by their ability to propagate workers for the colonial economy.” this era of abolition paradoxically ushered in a period of anxiety fuelled violence and control over a previously neglected resource, the womb. the narrative of the abolitionist-plantocracy struggle over enslaved women’s reproductive capacities to secure a stable post-slave trade labour force is significant 2 2 3 9 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 (january 20, 2022 / 08:53:07) 122815-1b_caribbeanquilt_vol6_rev.pdf .71 72 katherine paugh, “the curious case of mary hylas: wives, slaves and the limits of british abolitionism,” slavery & abolition 35, no. 4 (october 2, 2014): 643. paugh, “the curious case of mary hylas,” 629-630. rhoda e. reddock, “women and slavery in the caribbean: a feminist perspective,” latin american perspectives 12, no. 1 (january 1985): 69. paugh, “the curious case of mary hylas,” 647 verene a. shepherd, “women and the abolition campaign in the african atlantic,” the journal of caribbean history 42, no. 1 (2008): 139. shepherd, “women and the abolition campaign in the african atlantic,” 142. 13 14 but not inclusive of the power and agency enslaved women exercised in this transition period by sabotaging the abolitionist-plantocracy slave breeding project. one aspect of this project was the attempt by both abolitionists and slave owners to encourage monogamous slave marriages that would subjugate female sexuality under the institution of marriage and produce racially “pure” slave children. however, enslaved women engaged in gynecological resistance by rejecting monogamy, having interracial relationships that granted them privileged status in the plantation hierarchy, as well as liberating their bodies from sexual/reproductive slavery through marronage. despite their conflicting objectives, many slaveowners, policymakers, and abolitionists found common ground in using marriage as an institution that would encourage slave reproduction, control slave sexuality through the practice of monogamy, and preserve racial purity and hierarchy in colonies. in katherine paugh’s article, “the curious case of mary hylas: wives, slaves and the limits of british abolitionism,” the institution of marriage and slavery are revealed to share a loss of civil identity for married women and slaves, a kind of “social death” that made enslaved women resistant to marriage. rhonda reddock further argues that the contempt for marriage among slave women was because “it meant extra work and being confined to one man” when both men and women often maintained multiple relationships. moreover, enslaved women actively resisted abolitionist and slaveowner interests in“cultivating a purely african plantation labour force” by having sex with non-african men which at times conferred elite status for themselves and their mixed-race children. paugh asserts that the sexual economies of british slave societies “could foster vastly unequal and even violently exploitative relationships between white men and afro-caribbean women,” but interracial reproduction also provided rare opportunities for some enslaved women to “carve out a relative independence” from husbands, masters, and abolitionists. while some enslaved women enjoyed privileged lives by rejecting racial sex restrictions, some women’s path to gynecological revolt was through marronage. verene shepherd asserts that many women did not give their bodies for reproduction or sex and chose marronage to remove their bodies “from the site of oppression.” by viewing marronage as a form of gynecological revolt, these women removed their wombs from colonial control. they removed an asset that reproduced slaves and created wealth for slaveowners. their liberated bodies could then engage in sexual activity and reproductive labour outside the institution of 13 14 15 16 15 16 17 18 17 (january 20, 2022 / 08:53:07) 122815-1b_caribbeanquilt_vol6_rev.pdf .72 73 kenneth morgan, “slave women and reproduction in jamaica, c.1776–1834,” history 91, no. 2 (2006): 244-252. morgan, “slave women and reproduction in jamaica,” 245-246. morgan, “slave women and reproduction in jamaica,” 252. turner, contested bodies, 14. turner, contested bodies, 14. 19 20 of marriage, the slave breeding program, and the jurisdiction of the colonial-slave system. in sum, enslaved women’s gynecological resistance involved resisting imperial programs to encourage slave marriages and sexual conformity as well as removing their bodies from the slavery system all together. for enslaved women who did not have the luxury of upward mobility through interracial sex, the chance to escape the plantation, or the ability to resist sexual violence, the slave breeding project advocated by abolitionists and employed by slaveowners resulted in pregnancies. however, women’s gynecological resistance continued after conception as they exercised agency over their bodies and their children throughout their pregnancies and the child-rearing process. many women chose abortion and infanticide while some chose to keep their babies and deliver them under the care of black midwives and engage in african child-rearing practices against the wishes of the slaveowners. shepherd suggests that enslaved women understood the implications of the abolition of the slave trade and acted to free their “enchained wombs” by refusing to bear children who would become slaves themselves. kenneth morgan attests to the use of abortive agents or physical violence to induce self-abortion as well as the practice of maternal infanticide. morgan claims that these desperate acts of resistance were understood within “their woeful condition of perpetual chattel slavery.” these women asserted control over their reproduction to prevent their children from living as slaves and robbed their owners of their “property.” these acts of resistance were often unnoticed by slaveowners as the reproduction rates among enslaved women in jamaica was historically low due to the bodily and emotional damage caused by their tremendous workload and frequent abuse. abortions and infanticides were difficult for slave owners to account for and are just as difficult for researchers to track as this form of resistance was silenced by the women themselves. on the other hand, a woman choosing to keep her child and cherish them is also a form of resistance in a society that systematically tore families apart for profit and discouraged familial bonds. when many of these women carried their children to term, they faced a choice of giving birth in their community with the aid of a midwife or in clinics operated by doctors hired by slave masters. many women chose to deliver their babies in their communities against the advice of doctors who warned of unsafe conditions and poor midwife practices. before slaveowners took a special interest in reproductive labour in the 1780s, enslaved women and community members held a measure of 21 22 23 18 19 20 21 22 (january 20, 2022 / 08:53:07) 122815-1b_caribbeanquilt_vol6_rev.pdf .73 74 turner, contested bodies, 149. morgan, “slave women and reproduction in jamaica,” 243 morgan, “slave women and reproduction in jamaica,” 243-244. sasha turner, “slavery, freedom, and women’s bodies,” journal of women's history 29, no. 1 (2017): 177 marisa fuentes, dispossessed lives: enslaved women, violence and the archive (philadelphia: university of pennsylvania, 2016), 10. 24 25 autonomy having developed “autonomous social networks and customs around maternal and infant care.” in choosing to rely on midwives and their community to successfully deliver their children, women exercised control over their bodies and challenged slaveowners’ power over the process by choosing who can touch them and care for their bodies/reproductive health. lastly, following the birth of their children, enslaved women employed african child-rearing practices which involved nursing their children for two years, sometimes up to three or four years, which stalled their reproductive capacities. morgan claims that a longer nursing period entailed longer lactation, which served as a natural means of contraception, “either through the physiological suppression of fertility in the mother by producing breast milk or through the social impact of constant nurturing of infants and consequent unavailability to men.” morgan suggests that long lactation periods and post-partum taboos against a mother's resumption of intercourse during the nursing period are “carry-overs from traditions in west african societies” and contributed to extensive birth-spacing practice among slaves. these practices protected enslaved mothers’ as they were able to fend off rape, prevent further pregnancies, and attend to their children. gynecological revolt is undertaken through many forms of resistance after conception, from abortion and infanticide to observing culturally informed maternal health and child-rearing practices that inhibit productive capacities. in the end, all these forms of resistance contributed to sabotaging the demographic goals of enslavers and abolitionists. to conclude, during the age of abolition, enslaved women’s reproductive capacities were increasingly significant to slaveowners, abolitionists, colonial economies/societies, and the empire itself. this essay has examined jamaican and british caribbean sources that argue the wombs of enslaved women in the anglo-caribbean colonies were sites of colonial power as well as sites of “gynecological revolt” as women exercised agency over their sexuality, pregnancy, childbirth experience, and child-rearing process. this essay has centred the female body in slavery scholarship to reveal that the womb is a significant symbol in the struggles over freedom and slavery. despite its importance, women’s bodily resistance is not privileged in narratives on slavery and abolition. while women have long participated in the armed struggles against slavery and colonialism and at times have been recognized in those efforts, by focusing on women’s bodies/the womb as a site of resistance, this essay has deconstructed resistance beyond imaginings of the “armed, militaristic, physical, and triumphant” struggle “particularly resonant in the caribbean” and privileged the feminine, unarmed, clandestine, sexual, bodily resistance as revolutionary. 26 27 28 23 24 25 26 27 28 (january 20, 2022 / 08:53:07) 122815-1b_caribbeanquilt_vol6_rev.pdf .74 75 fuentes, marisa. dispossessed lives: enslaved women, violence and the archive. philadelphia: university of pennsylvania, 2016. morgan, jennifer l. laboring women: reproduction and gender in new world slavery. philadelphia: university of pennsylvania press, 2004. morgan, kenneth. “slave women and reproduction in jamaica, c.1776–1834.” history 91, no. 2 (2006): 1-252. paugh, katherine. “the curious case of mary hylas: wives, slaves and the limits of british abolitionism,” slavery & abolition 35, no. 4 (october 2, 2014): 629-647. reddock, rhoda e. “women and slavery in the caribbean: a feminist perspective.” latin american perspectives 12, no. 1 (january 1985): 69. shepherd, verene a. “women and the abolition campaign in the african atlantic.” the journal of caribbean history 42, no. 1 (2008): 139-142. turner, sasha. contested bodies: pregnancy, childrearing, and slavery in jamaica. philadelphia: university of pennsylvania press, 2017. turner, sasha. “home-grown slaves: women, reproduction, and the abolition of the slave trade, jamaica 1788-1807.” journal of women's history 23, no. 3 (2011): 23-43. turner, sasha. “slavery, freedom, and women’s bodies.” journal of women's history 29, no. 1 (2017): 177. works cited (january 20, 2022 / 08:53:07) 122815-1b_caribbeanquilt_vol6_rev.pdf .75 :::::: 171 extraction, exploitation and degradation: a brief environmental history of western investment in jamaica thomas mccarthy tom mccarthy is pursuing a degree in history and environmental studies. he is interested in examining the intersections between people, their histories, and the environment, while attempting to form these into wider critiques of oppressive economic and social systems. in addition to his studies, he organizes with university of toronto environmental action, a student group focused on climate justice for youth. upon graduation, he's looking forward to political activism, hopefully some travel outside of north america, and eventually a return to postgraduate studies. hurricanes are nothing new to jamaicans; they have been a part of the seasons for as long as people have lived there. while they are often devastating and traumatic, people have always somehow managed to pick up the pieces, sweep up the damage, and move on with their lives. however, as severe weather events associated with climate change become more frequent and intense, and climatic conditions at large become less compatible with status quo environmental and agricultural practices, jamaica is woefully unprepared to weather the storms of the 21st century. due to a complex and interrelating set of historical factors, jamaica’s natural defenses against severe weather have been consistently degraded and undermined in the name of profit and development. from its start as a spanish, then english colony, through centuries of slavery and sugarcane monoculture; to its twentiethcentury resource extraction and tourism-based economy, jamaica’s people and natural assets have been exploited and abused to an enormous degree. however, through it all, persistent outside influences have limited and affected the choices available to the country’s leaders, particularly following independence. the same widespread practices and industries that have harmed jamaica’s environment, like sugar, bananas, and bauxite, have been lucrative to those who controlled them. the work of economists like george beckford supports the notion that the underdevelopment of jamaica is a dynamic process stemming from the legacy of slavery and continuing through to the present. people and the environment often serve as a mirror to each other; what is beneficial for society in a collective and holistic sense tends to be good for the environment, thomas mccarthy extraction, exploitation, degredation 172 and vice versa. in the case of the caribbean, as anderson contends, “the ecosystem of all small islands has a turbulent history, the same turbulence to which environmental institutions help us adapt. as a result of these disruptions, the biological and social-cultural systems become intertwined.”1 by outlining the historical narrative of jamaica’s development from an environmental perspective, it becomes clear how the very same economic ideology and practices that have contributed to poverty, exploitation, and strife in jamaica today have degraded its natural systems to the point that life there may become untenable in decades to come barring significant change. the dominance of socially and environmentally-intensive practices and the outflow of resources and capital are fundamental features of all four of jamaica’s major historical industries; sugar, bananas, bauxite, and tourism. when europeans first arrived in jamaica, and indeed the caribbean in general, they were taken aback at the natural beauty and abundance of the island and its surrounding seas. however, the reason they had stumbled upon these islands in the first place was because they had been dispatched by the courts of europe to find a route to asia, and in turn its goods and spices. they arrived seeking profit, and though they failed to find india, they were not disappointed with the wealth-generating potential of islands like jamaica. though the spanish were the first to conquer jamaica and through the enslavement of the indigenous population, exploit the region, it was the english who fully implemented and institutionalized a plantation economy in jamaica following their capture of the island in 1655. as george beckford and michael witter trace in small garden, bitter weed, when english settlers first brought highquality sugarcane from barbados, they found that it thrived in jamaican soil. however, sugarcane production, especially at a large scale, was very labour-intensive. at the same time, to pay englishmen wages to perform this truly hard labour was not 1 robert s. anderson, “gardens and forests on caribbean islands: two hundred years of environmental institutions,” in islands, forests and gardens in the caribbean: conservation and conflict in environmental history. ed. robert s. anderson et al., (oxford, macmillan education/warwick university, 2006), 11. caribbean quilt | 2013 173 economically feasible, or rather not optimal for maximum profits.2 the english and other colonizing powers solved this problem by utilizing enslaved african to make their plantations profitable. early plantation owners were quick to capitalize on this opportunity. the establishment of the royal africa company in the 1670s represents england’s entry as a major power in the trans-atlantic slave trade. over the next two centuries, millions of africans were captured and brought to jamaica to work in the cane fields.3 as african peoples were dehumanized and oppressed, the sugarcane continued to grow in vast and expanding plantations. other enterprising slave owners made investments in coffee, ginger, spices, and other valuable commodities, growing and slightly diversifying jamaica’s plantation economy. as the cane was sowed, forests were felled, and swamps were drained and filled in. canals for irrigation were dug, and streams were dammed. large inland areas of jamaica were transformed from rich, diverse tropical forest and grasslands to fields of uniform crops. sugarcane itself is a very intensive plant to grow at large scale; each plant requires a large quantity of water and nutrients in order to grow. like other high-calorie crops, if grown on the same plot of land for several years, the quality of the soil is greatly reduced. additionally, the english planters who controlled and directed this agricultural development were unfamiliar with the environmental dynamics of tropical ecosystems. in apparent contradiction to the lush forests that grow on them, tropical soils are in fact fairly poor for growing crops, but when one thinks about these forests from a different perspective, it is clear that most of the nutrients lie in the vegetation above ground. the detritus of organic matter that covers the ground of any healthy forest is what provides the minerals and nutrients to plants, not the sandy soil underneath. when a forest is removed, this loose top layer of rich organic matter is easily and quickly eroded. watts refers to the prevailing 2 george beckford and michael witter, small garden, bitter weed (morant bay: maroon publishing house,1980), 17. 3 ibid. thomas mccarthy extraction, exploitation, degredation 174 attitudes towards cane cultivation and land use as “dangerously simplistic views of the nature of cane land soils in the [caribbean].”4 over time, as cane yields gradually declined, planters found ways to mitigate soil erosion and nutrient loss, such as an increase in manure fertilization, sourcing timber from south america rather than island forests to reduce erosion, and notably the practice of planting cane in depressed plots known as cane holes. to give an impression of the human toll of this practice, watts notes that slave gangs of about 50 members were commonly expected to excavate one acre of land roughly two meters deep on every day in the planting season, which amounts to an absurd amount of digging. most of these practices had been innovated in the windward and leeward islands, and came to use in jamaica in the early to mid-1700s.5 regardless of their effectiveness in mitigating environmental degradation, the nutrient-taxing nature of large-scale cane production remained the same, as did the requirement to cut down forests and import slaves to feed the hunger for increased profit. as europe’s demand for sugar grew, so did the size of the plantations. planters who were unable to succeed were forced to sell their land to more profitable plantations, contributing to the rise of a class of extremely wealthy and powerful planters. however, as beckford and witter write, “the slave mode [of production] was totally dependent on the english market: it was supplied with inputs from english factories and in turn sold its output to english consumers ... thus the reproduction of slave society from year to year depended on its relations with english capitalism, [which] expanded on the surpluses thus extracted from slave production.”6 in conjunction, “from the end of the 17th century on, sugar production [in jamaica] survived under the protection of tariffs levied on sugar produced outside the english colonial empire.”7 this is important to note, because of the nature of dependency it describes. as jamaica progressed, the nature of this economically dependent relationship with powerful nations would change, but remain largely in place. ultimately, the environmental legacy of the plantation economy in 4 david watts, the west indies: patterns of development, cultural, and environmental change since 1492. (great britain: cambridge university press, 1987), 396. 5 ibid. 6 beckford and witter, small garden, bitter weed, 17. 7 beckford and witter, small garden, bitter weed, 21. caribbean quilt | 2013 175 jamaica runs parallel to its social legacy: the natural environment was exploited to the largest degree possible consistent with sustained profits for the ruling class. wealth and resources mostly flowed out of the country to england and throughout the empire, and what wealth remained was concentrated in the hands of the few at the expense of the many. when slavery was formally abolished across the british empire in 1838, it was mainly due to the fact that plantation economies where no longer profitable. resistance movements from enslaved populations, pressure from an ascendant industrial class who viewed plantations as inefficient and costly, (chafed at the cost of staple foodstuffs needed to feed their workers inflated by tariffs and subsidies for the colonies)and the abolitionist movements in british empire all contributed to emancipation. however, as beckford and witter point out, emancipation was hollow for many jamaicans, who were forced to sell their labour for wages, often to their former masters. “the strategy was to formally emancipate the slaves but deny them real freedom by ensuring that the means of production, particularly land, remained in the hands of european capitalists.”8 however, as much as land use had been dominated by sugarcane cultivation, a peasant land base had developed alongside it to provide food and other important crops and services. many former slaves were involved in this economy, but more rushed to join it following emancipation. it was a key to self-sufficiency, and with it, freedom. those who could provide for themselves off of the land were able to avoid the predations of the plantation system. as besson writes, “freed slaves, wherever they could, sought to obtain freehold land ... those who managed to obtain freehold land transformed this into family land to ensure freehold rights to all their descendants in perpetuity. as land was denied to the slave, so was kinship; and family land is also the basis on which kin groups or family lines are created and kinship maximized.”9 although discussing haiti, laurent dubois sheds some light on this mindset: “on these small 8 beckford and witter, small garden, bitter weed, 22. 9 jean besson (1984): land tenure in the free villages of trelawny, jamaica: a case study in the caribbean peasant response to emancipation, slavery & abolition: a journal of slave and post-slave studies, 5:1, 3-23 thomas mccarthy extraction, exploitation, degredation 176 farms, [freed slaves] did all the things that had been denied to them under slavery: they built families, practiced their religion, and worked for themselves.”10 this type of agriculture led to a very different relationship between people and the land. these people depended on the land for not only subsistence, but for maintaining and protecting their autonomy, and such ties to the land naturally lead to a strong respect for it. to live off the land requires a deep understanding of the interrelating forces of nature, and an appreciation for the ecosystems that provide means for human survival. for roughly a century, these two economies existed alongside each other. as beckford argues in persistent poverty, the plantation model continued to be a major organizational influence on the development of the jamaican economy. however, an essential component to understanding the change in jamaica’s development at the turn of the century lies in the development of wealthy countries. as beckford writes, “by the 20th century economic maturity had arrived in the metropolitan countries, and business corporations there were ready for direct overseas investment.”11 essentially, having gorged itself on profits gained through centuries of exploitation and subjugation, the west had a surplus of capital and was looking for ways to invest and grow it. an illustrative example of this in jamaica is the case of the banana industry. as the global balance of power shifted from the british empire to the united states of america, particularly in the areas claimed by the monroe doctrine, american corporations began to take interest in jamaica. in the 19th century, bananas had been a household crop on many plots of family land. bananas are nutritious, grow on a tree (thereby leaving space below for other crops), and are quite delicious. technological changes like faster ships and refrigeration made it feasible to transport perishable goods from the tropics to markets in america and europe, and tropical fruit production was seen as a profitable investment. the united fruit company of the united states came to jamaica to capitalize on this. beckford and witter elaborate on this, arguing that the development of the jamaican banana industry was crucial in several ways. it broke 10 laurent dubois, haiti: the aftershocks of history, (new york: metropolitan books, 2012), 6. 11 george beckford, persistent poverty, (mona, jamaica: uwi press, 1972), 85. caribbean quilt | 2013 177 the monopoly of sugar over the island’s economy and well-being, but simultaneously reinforced its ‘original export orientation.’12 additionally, it was much more amenable to small-scale production than sugar and far less labour-intensive, which allowed for peasants to actually make some revenue off their land. at first, this benefited the peasant economy, but as more and more took the opportunity to make money off of bananas, the large landowners and companies like united fruit came to dominate much of jamaica’s prime agricultural land. and like the plantation owners, their principal concern was profit. beckford and witter comment: “together with sugar, banana production for export ... dominated the peasant sector, which was increasingly marginalized and made to function as its labour reserve.”13 people who thought they were getting a good deal selling their banana produce to the big companies and their middle-men soon realized they had been effectively corralled into a wage-based economy. many at this time chose to emigrate, thereby selling their land to the highest bidder, who unsurprisingly would likely use the land to grow more bananas. the most obvious environmental impact of this dominance is blanket monoculture: as huge swaths of the jamaican countryside devoted to the cultivation of a single plant. beyond the economic risks associated with over-reliance on few commodities, this had the impact of further harming and reducing biodiversity, which is absolutely essential for healthy and resilient ecosystems. also, because bananas could be cultivated on hillsides, there was a push to deforest many inclined tracts of land that had previously been left relatively undisturbed. when heavy rains come, banana trees planted in uniform rows are no match for healthy forest in terms of preventing and mitigating erosion and gullying. additionally, the banana industry had the affect of wresting many people from the peasant economy, which was the only sector of the economy that approached what is termed sustainable today. people who can provide for themselves, a lack of opportunity and resources aside, often have a far greater degree of autonomy than wage-earners, and are undoubtedly a less taxing and frequently beneficial presence for their local environments. due to the various institutions that structure this dependent relationship to the land, they are invested in keeping it healthy and productive, and to do so means being attentive to and defensive of the small details that make ecosystems 12 george beckford and michael witter, small garden, bitter weed, 50. 13 george beckford and michael witter, small garden, bitter weed, 51. thomas mccarthy extraction, exploitation, degredation 178 function; from pollinating insects that are integral to food production, to songbirds that keep pests at bay. today, fertilizers and pesticides are sprayed in large quantities on jamaica’s remaining banana and cane field, which is associated with a host of terrestrial pollution concerns, but is particularly damaging to the coastal environment. as it runs off and flows into the ocean, fertilizers contribute to coral-smothering algae blooms, and pesticides and antibiotic effluents harm a wide range of species. additionally, beckford and witter mention how in times of scarcity, particularly when the global economy collapsed during the great depression, peasants were able to furnish organic consumer products from their natural surroundings, such as soap and cooking oil from coconuts, and flour from dried and ground cassava.14 today people in rich countries pay top dollar for such organic products; they are undeniably more compatible with the goal of sustainability and are superior from a human health perspective to synthetic and mass-produced consumer products. with the banana trade came the beginnings of tourism, with a few entrepreneurs installing luxurious passenger quarters on their banana boats to ferry wealthy north americans and europeans to tropical getaways. as the consolidation, expansion, and dominance of the banana trade shows, “the basic pattern of socio-economic relations and institutions had already been determined by sugar.”15 by 1960, on the eve of independence, 300 estates of over 500 acres occupied 40 percent of jamaica’s arable land.16 while the twentieth century progressed, this overall trend would continue to define jamaica’s economic development. following the second world war, there was a massive demand for lightweight metals, most significantly, aluminum. this metal alloy was a cheap and durable building material, and was used for all sorts of postwar consumer products, from radios to toaster ovens, as well as being essential for the booming airplane industry. aluminum is derived from the naturally occurring ore bauxite, of which jamaica was once incredibly rich. 14 george beckford and michael witter, small garden, bitter weed, 65. 15 ibid. 16 george beckford, persistent poverty, 242. caribbean quilt | 2013 179 in 1962, jamaica gained its independence from great britain. but, like emancipation over a century before, this failed to transform the exploitative and stratified organization of jamaican society. due to a lack of political imagination, the young country’s new leaders were faced with the dilemma of meeting social needs while maintaining positive economic growth. because of the booming demand for aluminum, one of the first actions of the governing pro-market jamaican labour party (jlp) was to allow heavy foreign investment in the country’s resource sector, taking cues from puerto rico’s ‘operation bootstrap.’ this came in the form of allowing five major multinational corporations to buy up nearly all of jamaica’s bauxite resources; four american, and one canadian.17 within five years, jamaica was the world’s largest supplier of the ore, producing 21% of global supply.18 as bradley notes, “just as it had under colonial rule, a few top-ranking civil servants and company directors were doing very well, as were a rapidly increasing number of overseas-based multinational corporations, but other than that, this new money meant nothing except on paper.” continuing their analysis, beckford and witter argue that despite diversification, “post-war developments reinforced the basic import-export orientation of the economy.”19 bauxite mining was hugely degrading for inland jamaica, particularly in the eastern mountains. as coke, weir, and hill outline, “impacts of mining and processing on environmental quality have been evident both in the long and short term. the landscape has been damaged, [and] valuable agricultural soils have been replaced by badly eroded skeletal soils capable of sustaining only grass production.”20 clear-cutting a patch of forest and tearing up the earth beneath has completely destroyed whatever ecosystem once existed. but beyond denuding large tracts of rural jamaica, the processing of the bauxite ore produces much pollution. and even though they are drastically inferior to native forest, monoculture banana tree farms are far better than a scraped-up moonscape in terms of preventing erosion. jamaica has one of the world’s highest 17 george beckford and michael witter, small garden, bitter weed, 67. 18 lloyd bradley, bass culture: when reggae was king, (london: penguin books, 2001), 263. 19 george beckford and michael witter, small garden, bitter weed, 66. 20 coke, weir, and hill, “environmental impact of bauxite mining and processing in jamaica,” social and economic studies: 36 (1987) 289-333. thomas mccarthy extraction, exploitation, degredation 180 rates of deforestation.21 for a nation that experiences heavy rains seasonally, this is highly problematic. any pollution left in the soil is carried off by erosion into both streams and groundwater used for drinking supplies. although it provided the country with breakneck 7% annual gdp growth for a period and helped address unemployment, nearly all of that wealth flowed out of the country and into the accounts of the five major multinationals that had been allowed to dominate the industry. by the time michael manley’s people’s national party was prepared to implement reforms that would keep some of the revenue in jamaica in the mid-1970s, much of the island’s bauxite had already been extracted.22 the exploitation of bauxite resources occurred simultaneously with the explosion of the tourism industry. in the midst of post-war north america’s towering affluence, unprecedented numbers of everyday people could afford to spend a week or two on a beach in the caribbean. as in many neighbouring countries, tourism has become a fundamental sector of jamaica’s economy, bringing in an estimated $944 billion in revenue in 2008.23 however, this has had extremely significant impacts on the island’s natural defenses against severe weather. natural features such as coral reefs, wetlands, salt ponds, hillside forests, and mangrove swamps are essential to sustainable human settlement in jamaica. coral reefs and mangrove forests provide a barrier against strong waves and storm surge; wetlands soak up and filter torrential rains while hillside vegetation holds the soil firm and prevents mudslides. moreover, these ecosystems provide essential services for people who rely on the land and sea- for example, the same reefs, mangroves, and wetlands that protect the island from storms provide necessary habitats for fish reproduction, which local fisherman in turn rely on to feed themselves and make a living. 21 tony weis, “beyond peasant deforestation: environment and development in rural jamaica,” global environmental change: 10(2000) 4, 299-305. 22 william jesse biddle and john d. stephens, “dependent development and foreign policy: the case of jamaica,” international studies quarterly: 33 (1989) 4, 411-434. 23 “vision 2030 jamaica: tourism sector plan, 2009-2030,” tourism task force, gov’t. of jamaica, 2009. caribbean quilt | 2013 181 however, coral reefs, wetlands, and mangroves are not what the tourists come to see. the popular imagination of the caribbean in the west is of palm trees and cocktails with miniature umbrellas on pristine white beaches that stretch out endlessly over a sandy, turquoise sea. it’s what office workers in cold, wintery climes like minneapolis and toronto save up for months to visit, and what wealthy people across north america and europe are accustomed to. unfortunately, while this type of setting exists naturally in many parts of jamaica, in many others, coral reefs abound. corals may be vibrant and colourful when filmed with an underwater hd camera, but from the shore they look like dark grey patches interrupting the turquoise expanse. additionally, they are full of sharp corals and all sorts of creatures that do not take kindly to being molested or stepped on by unsuspecting tourists, like lobsters, or sea urchins. therefore, hotel developers are keen to get rid of them. additionally, a combination of poverty and greed has led some shortsighted fishermen to use dynamite to increase their catches.24 although jamaica has land-use laws comparable to many other countries based on the british legal system, hotel developers often operate under lax regulatory oversight and foster environmentally degrading and socially exclusive zones along much of jamaica’s coast. in last resorts: the cost of tourism in the caribbean, polly pattullo characterizes the negative environmental context of hotel development and tourism as the region’s second invasion of ‘land-snatchers’: “...in the past half-century, it has been the coastline which has been clearedfor however much the europeans admired the caribbean paradise, they could not resist claiming it and ‘improving’ it.”25 while this may sound strident, it is no overstatement. places that had once been used by local fisherman and which hosted crucial nesting and hatchery sites for fish, birds, and reptiles have been wholly transformed to meet the demands of tourism. as jerome plainly states, “small, ecologically fragile islands have restructured their colonial export staple economies towards 24 thomas j. goreau, “coral reef protection in western jamaica,” protecting jamaica's coral reefs: water quality issues, 1992, 39-65. 25 polly pattullo, last resorts: the cost of tourism in the caribbean, (london, latin america bureau, 2005),130. thomas mccarthy extraction, exploitation, degredation 182 tourism by establishing transformational infrastructure and largescale resort complexes along delicate coastlines.”26 pattullo minces no words when discussing how countries, like jamaica, are “locked into a chain of tourist development where short-term gain takes precedence over long-term protection.”27 take the town of ocho rios. the name means ‘eight rivers,’ so naturally one would expect marshes and wetlands close to where these eight rivers meet the sea. however, because of the pressures of tourism development, much of these endemic wetlands have been drained, filled in, and built upon. for example, 40 acres of wetlands were recently turned into a 4,000 bed resort complete with a cruise ship pier.28 long channels of coastal sea floor must be dredged to accommodate large cruise ships, which in turn pollute the water with their exhaust and waste. developers cut down stands of coastal palm trees to improve the view from hotel rooms only to find that the beach erodes even faster without roots holding the sand together. in turn, the sand is drawn out by the tides, and chokes already beleaguered coral reef and sea grass ecosystems. in order to furnish tailor-made resort environments, sand from less developed areas is mined in large quantities and transported elsewhere. considering that due to a host of factors stemming from human action an estimated 90 percent of coral reefs worldwide are damaged, it is essential that remaining reefs be safeguarded if humans are to continue to benefit from them.29 socially, the tourism industry has had a largely negative impact on working-class jamaicans, who are left with little option but to find jobs in hotels, as tour-guides, or as other ancillary participants in the tourism economy. using the justification that their resorts are all inclusive, many resorts are closed off to ordinary jamaicans, who are charged exorbitant prices to walk along and make use of the beaches where they once caught crabs as children or stored their boats during hurricane season.30 altogether, tourism has been environmentally and socially degrading to jamaica, and while it 26 mcelroy jerome, island tourism: a development strategy for biodiversity, insula magazine, 2001. 27 polly pattullo, last resorts: the cost of tourism in the caribbean, 132. 28 polly pattullo, last resorts: the cost of tourism in the caribbean, 131. 29 ibid. 30 marie dixon frisch, “victory at pear tree bottom,” greening politics: 33 (2007) 1. caribbean quilt | 2013 183 differs significantly from sugarcane, bananas, and bauxite, most of the revenue still flows to foreign bank accounts. one decade into the 21st century, these four major industries have left jamaica with a fragile, tenuous, and heavily damaged environment. much of the island’s natural defenses against severe weather have been destroyed or greatly reduced. additonally, jamaica is situated in one of the most hurricane-prone places in the world. people recall storms like 1988‘s hurricane gilbert, remembered in the famous lovindeer song ‘wild gilbert,’ with a mix of resignation and apprehension. it was the second most powerful hurricane ever recorded in the western hemisphere, and left 45 dead and 400,000 homeless over the next several weeks, and caused heavy damage to an estimated 20% of structures on the island.31 32 as the climate heats up, the warm-water conditions which create and fuel hurricanes are going to become increasingly powerful. jamaicans can expect for storms like gilbert, which have always been once-in-a-generation events, to occur with a steadily increasing severity and frequency barring massive, global action to halt climate change. it is especially cruel that countries like the united states, canada, and great britain, who have plundered jamaica for centuries and benefitted so much from its exploitation, are the ones most directly responsible for the carbon emissions driving climate change. all this paints an incredibly bleak environmental future for jamaica, which must urgently reform the way it allows foreign businesses to operate on its territory, start massive efforts to reverse environmental damage and allow ecosystems to heal, and begin to make the sweeping adaptations required to help its people weather the intensified storms of the 21st century. 31 lovindeer, wild gilbert, 1988. 32 philip r. berke and timothy beatley, after the hurricane (baltimore: johns hopinks press, 1988), 55. 62 the dynamic character impressions regarding the life and person of thomas “indian warner” mollie sheptenko introduction “the dynamic character of impressions regarding the life and person of thomas ‘indian’ warner,” is an analysis of the “the case of ‘indian’ warner,” a part of the wider anthology wild majesty: encounters with caribs from columbus to the present day by peter hulme and neil whitehead. this analysis looks to understand how the mixed kalinago dominican*/british heritage of antiguan-born thomas ‘indian’ warner was manipulated by european powers to serve their colonial pursuits whilst maintaining positive imperial/indigenous relations in the lesser antilles. the analysis also explores abuses of indigenous populations in the greater antilles by spanish colonizers known as conquistadores. hulme and whitehead place ‘indian’ warner, born of an english father and a kalinagodominican mother, in a state of “inbetweeness,” perceived as “[both] a valued intermediary [and] a potential traitor.” ‘indian’ warner’s ethnic hybridity was never celebrated for its uniqueness, rather it was used by the british to serve their own needs, from their initial interactions with ‘indian’ warner to its serving as mitigating evidence during the trial of his halfbrother, colonel philip warner, who had murdered ‘indian’ warner in 1675. ‘indian’ warner was used as a diplomatic pawn by the british. to maintain positive relations with and control over the kalinago people on the island of dominica, in addition to reducing the animosity between themselves and the french who had once controlled the island, the british moved to appoint ‘indian’ warner as governor of the island. at this point in time, ‘indian’ warner’s ethnic hybridity was of great utility to the british; however, the same cannot be said when it came to seeking justice for his murder years later. the overwhelming sentiment to acquit colonel philip warner after he had murdered his own halfbrother (who had been labeled “a slave”, not a son of sir thomas warner), coupled with the english secretary of state’s plea to “seek justice for ‘indian’ warner” so as not to tarnish the image of the british in the eyes of the indigenous kalinago peoples exhibit the utter selfcenteredness colonizing nations and their great abuse of an individual’s ethnic hybridity. *kalinago is the original name used to describe the indigenous populations of the lesser antilles. the term carib is derogatory and carries with it a negative connotation derived from ignorant and detrimental colonial discourses. analysis the primary sources documenting various aspects of the life and death of thomas “indian” warner, supposedly the son of sir thomas warner, governor of st. kitts, and a kalinago woman from dominica, are deeply interesting and act as the means from which “indian” warner’s experiences can be interpreted. prior to interpreting warner’s life, it is necessary to understand who he was and where his lineage lies. after the death of his father, thomas “indian” warner suffered at the hands of his stepmother on the island of his birth, antigua (hulme and mollie sheptenko the life and person of indian warner 63 whitehead 95; dampier 90). it is documented by sources such as those of dampier and du tertre that after feeling disliked by relations on the english side of his family, that “indian” warner escaped to the native lands of his mother, the island of dominica. here, warner lived among the kalinago people, whose culture he shared and language he knew because of his kalinago mother. in the year 1675, “indian” warner encountered his half-brother, colonel philip warner, on the island of dominica. it was at this time that philip warner murdered his own halfbrother, his motive fueled either by avenging the “indian” warner for his treachery to the crown by his involvement in the indigenous attacks of antigua, or speculatively, by the shame he held in sharing blood with someone of indigenous descent (dampier 90). throughout warner’s life, he experienced both positive and negative relations with two of the colonizing nations in the caribbean at the time, the british and the french. in the abstract preceding their work, hulme and whitehead speak of the “in-betweenness” experienced by individuals of mixed background, such as warner, and their characterization as “[both] a valued intermediary [and] a potential traitor” (hulme and whitehead 89). the notion of hybridity in the colonial caribbean came to be dynamic, embodying the potential to be manoeuvred not only by the mixed-heritage individual themselves, but more so by external forces, such as colonizers, who would use this “in-betweenness” to the advantage of pursuing their own interests and succeeding in conquest (barratt and ranjitsingh 481). in the earlier years of contact with the english, “indian warner” was advantageous to the interests of the crown. made initially by lord francis willoughby in 1664 and revived after his death by his successor lord william willoughby in 1666 was the commission of “indian” warner to the position of governor of dominica (on the leeward side of the island) (hulme and whitehead 92). the english, despite their understanding of “indian” warner’s ambivalence towards the english, wished to gain a foothold for themselves on dominica. dominica was an island formally dominated by the kalinago, as agreed upon in a 1660 treaty between the kalinago of some of the lesser antillean islands and europeans (murphy 19). by having “indian” warner as governor on the island, the english gave the impression that it was not their domination over the island, but friendly indigenous control over the people. in later years, when warner’s appointment was renewed, it too was intended for the favourability of the english. according to the president of the council of barbados, warner was “only commissioned [as] an indian… to avoid distaste with the french” (hulme and whitehead 92). similar doings can also be identified in the spanish-colonized greater antillean islands. spanish conquistadores would engage in the appropriation of indigenous women as a “strategy to acquire rights of succession” (schwartz 11). just as the english used “indian” warner to their colonial benefit, so to did the spanish men of islands such as puerto rico and hispaniola to ameliorate their personal lives to the detriment of indigenous peoples. contrary to initial perceptions of “indian” warner as a beneficial agent by the english, similar sentiments were not shared by the french. according to an account by du tertre, there was animosity between the “indian” warner and the kalinago of the leeward side of dominica and the kalinago, allied with the french, on the windward side of the island. after supposed hostilities between the two entities were ignited, “indian” warner was captured by “savages” from guadeloupe and was held by the french, specifically under the orders of monsieur de la barre, for 2 years until the end of the war between the french and english in the caribbean (du tertre 92). it seems plausible that the french harboured hostilities towards “indian” warner for a few different reasons—such reasons as his mixed origins (i.e. his englishness, as well as the caribbean quilt ǀ 2020 64 “savage” nature accredited to him for his dominican indigenous heritage), the many complaints voiced to the governors of martinique and guadeloupe, and his lack of utility to the purposes of french colonization serve to explain the french distaste for “indian” warner. the french used “indian” warner’s mixed heritage and the negative connotations attached to it vilify and villainize him. particularly interesting of “indian” warner’s life is his murderous end and how his mixed identity served him at this time. as previously noted, “indian” warner was murdered by his halfbrother, colonel philip warner, on the island of dominica (dampier 90). negative sentiments surrounding the rumoured treachery of warner in accepting a commission from the french and his “growing antiguan sympathies” after the death of lord william willoughby, and the legitimacy of his patronage, coupled with the condemnation of his murder by certain parties, characterized the period following warner’s death (hulme and whitehead 100). for example, upon hearing of the murder of “indian” warner, the english secretary of state responded to the tragedy, on behalf of the crown, with a request to seek justice for the injustice to warner and to prove to the indigenous peoples of the island that the english were not hot-blooded, murderous peoples (coventry 102). although this response hints at the maintenance of good relations with the indigenous, it more importantly addresses the need for redress towards the crime inflicted upon “indian” warner. in contrast, other documents circulating at the time favoured colonel warner and his acquittal, depicting “indian” warner as the slave, rather than the biological son of sir thomas warner. for example, in a letter to the council of plantations in 1675, governor stapleton made clear that colonel warner’s attack was not unwarranted; more significantly, he claimed “indian” warner was a slave (stapleton 103). stuart schwartz notes in his article “spaniards, “pardos,” and the missing mestizos,” that “the relationship of mestizos to their mother’s family… and the access of these mestizos to the patronage… served to determine their position [in society] (schwartz 9)”. in connecting this statement to the discursive nature of hybrid identity, colonizers are enabled to use this often administratively-troublesome “cultural impurity” to their advantage in the demonization or salutary differentiation of mixed-identity individuals (whitehead 228; bettez 142). governor stapleton illegitimated “indian” warner’s biological connection to his father, sir thomas warner. he used negative sentiments already cast towards “indian” warner and emphasized his indigeneity in order that a murderous, but pure and established english man, could go free. “indian” warner’s indigeneity became so much of a monstrosity rather than the alterity it once was that his death was not avenged (whitehead 228). the life and death of thomas “indian” warner are centered in the dynamic impressions and manipulations of his mixed heritage. “indian” warner’s hybridity allowed him to be ascribed status and awarded prestigious titles, while simultaneously being denigrated as an “uncivilized” and treacherous individual, initially depicted as sir thomas warner’s son, but then reduced to the status of his slave. from these observations, it is evident that “indian” warner’s position as a figure of historical relevance and hybridity lies in the ambiguous interpretations of peoples past and present, based on the circumstances and media of the time. mollie sheptenko the life and person of indian warner 65 works cited barratt, sue ann and aleah ranjitsingh. “recognising selves in others: situating dougla manoeuvrability as shared mixed-race ontology.” journal of intercultural studies 39, no. 4 (summer 2018): 481-493. bettez, silvia cristina. “mixed race women and epistemologies of belonging.” journal of women studies 31, no. 1 (2010): 142-165. hulme, peter, and neil whitehead (eds.). “the case of indian warner (1657-1676).” in wild majesty: encounters with caribs from columbus to the present day, 89-106. oxford: clarendon press, 1992. murphy, tessa. “kalinago colonizers: indigenous people and the settlement of the lesser antilles.” in the torrid zone: caribbean colonization and cultural interaction in the long seventeenth century, edited by l.h. roper, 17-30. columbia: university of south carolina press, 2018. schwartz, stuart. “spaniards, ‘pardos,’ and the missing mestizos: identities and racial categories in the early hispanic caribbean.” new west indies guide 71, no. 1-2 (winter 1997): 5-19. whitehead, neil. “black read as red: ethnic transgression and hybridity in northeastern south america and the caribbean.” in beyond black and red: african-native relations in colonial latin america, edited by matthew restall, 223-243. albuquerque: university of new mexico press, 2005. copla por la muerte de su padre poem upon the death of his father urayoán noel new york university professor of english and spanish and portuguese in this self-translated bilingual poem, puerto rican poet urayoán noel reflects on life and death in the caribbean from a contemporary diasporic perspective, recasting the 15th-century castilian poet jorge manrique and his famous version of the copla verse form a b s t r a c t keywords: poetry, bilingual, self-translation, puerto rican, caribbean, death, father, copla b i o urayoán noel is a writer, performer, and translator from río piedras, puerto rico. his books include in visible movement: nuyorican poetry from the sixties to slam (university of iowa press), winner of the lasa latino studies book prize, and, most recently, the poetry collections buzzing hemisphere/rumor hemisférico and transversal, both from the university of arizona press. urayoán noel lives in the bronx, teaches at new york university, and is a board member of the clemente soto vélez cultural and educational center. © 2021 urayoán noel caribbean studies students’ union, canada https://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/cquilt/ this work is licensed under the creative commons attributionsharealike 4.0 international license. to view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ 113 alfred thompson bricher, 1875 (january 20, 2022 / 08:53:12) 122815-1b_caribbeanquilt_vol6_rev.pdf .113 114 en un rincón del caribe when these caribbean skies el año del huracán, were swallowed by the hurricane, se murió. he was gone. su ceniza sobrevive i'll be next. his ashes rise en las costas de san juan. and fall like a sargasso skein falto yo. off san juan. su cadáver representa his dead body represents mil galaxias deseantes infinite desiring galaxies en la flora in the flora de la neurona que sienta of the neuron that invents las bases librepensantes free thought, the synaptic circuitries de la aurora. of aurora. leyendo a jorge manrique en río piedras reading jorge manrique in río piedras no hay después de la tormenta. there is no after the storm. hubo vendavales antes, there were always tempests here. polvo ahora now there's dust (de multitud que revienta (cries of multitudes, blood-warm, de gritos agonizantes...). forever piercing the atmosphere...). ríe, llora. laugh. sob. thrust baila y con tu cuerpo escribe your body toward these skies. el imposible ademán dance. write the absurd refrain del bongó of the dawn. que retumbará inclusive bongos, echo. rematerialize en la flor del guayacán the lost flower in our pain. que voló. it lives on. (january 20, 2022 / 08:53:12) 122815-1b_caribbeanquilt_vol6_rev.pdf .114 religion in its diaspora: the adaptations of hinduism in the indo-caribbean kahlia brown university of toronto through the forced migration of various peoples by colonial powers, the caribbean has become a melting pot of a wide array of races, cultures, and religions. however, the existence of hinduism in the caribbean is often unknown to those outside of the caribbean and its diaspora, and is sometimes overlooked within the region. much like other social, cultural and religious artefacts in the region, hinduism in the caribbean has became distinct from its origins, through a unique process of ‘creolization’. this essay seeks to contextualize hinduism in the caribbean from the 19th century onward, considering factors that have led to the evolution of caribbean hinduism in guyana and trinidad & tobago, while acknowledging the dangers of using this evolution to define the religion as a whole. a b s t r a c t © 2021 kahlia brown caribbean studies students’ union, canada https://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/cquilt/ this work is licensed under the creative commons attributionsharealike 4.0 international license. to view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ jhandis, trinidadian home. 82 (january 20, 2022 / 08:53:08) 122815-1b_caribbeanquilt_vol6_rev.pdf .82 83 brown, k. (2020). a brief history of race, politics and division in trinidad and guyana. caribbean quilt, 5, 45. khitanya petgrave. "equality in education? a study of jamaican schools under michael manley, 1972—80." brown, k, 45. van der veer, p., & vertovec, s. (1991). brahmanism abroad: on caribbean hinduism as an ethnic religion. ethnology, 30(2), 149-166. doi:10.2307/3773407. 151. van der veer, p., & vertovec, s., 151. van der veer, p., & vertovec, s., 151. . 1 3 hinduism is not a religion that originated from the indigenous peoples of the caribbean, nor is it a religion that emerged through the spirituality of those formerly enslaved. when slavery was abolished by the british in 1807 , the southernmost colonies of britain soon required a new source of labour. the solution to the labour shortage was indentureship and the british looked to their then colony of india to fill this role. by the 20th century hundreds of thousands of indians occupied what is now guyana, and trinidad, with some also ending up in neighbouring colonies such as suriname. through this process, hinduism was brought to the caribbean by practicing hindus indentured laborers who formed around eighty-five percent of those who migrated to the region. indian indentureship, though essentially serving the same purpose as slavery, differed in many ways. labourers were typically given ten-year contracts at the end of which, some would receive passage back to india, land, or other currency. the largest difference in regard to slavery was the ability to retain culture. this meant that they were able to keep their names (although often misspelled by the british who documented them, and many chose to change their names to pretend that they were of a higher caste), their culture, and their religion. regardless of efforts to ‘re-caste’ themselves, it is estimated that nearly seventy percent of caribbean indentured labourers were, artisans, agriculturalists, or of low caste. early years in guyana and trinidad, indian indentured labourers first arrived in 1838 and 1845 respectively. upon arrival, planters dictated the lives of indentured indians and limited their mobility, preventing opportunities to congregate with hindus from different plantations or villages. while planters tolerated much of the indian culture, for example, allowing some religious rites and small shrines, “one practice in which a devotee would pierce various point of his flesh with hooks and swing by them from a pole […]proved too ‘barbaric’ for the white colonists, and hook-swinging rites were banned in british guiana by 1853.” this practice, along with other colonially defined barbaric practices such as fire walking and animal sacrifice, were suppressed by planters. although a few would re-emerge once the hindu’s gained more autonomy. as a result, there is very little documentation or evidence of large-scale religious demonstrations until the 1870’s. due to their stringent contractual obligations, it took some time before hindus were either given land or able to accumulate enough wealth to purchase a plot. once they had the means, hindus began practicing the rituals they brought with them. most prominently, evidence of large-scale hindu practices can be 1 2 1 2 4 4 5 3 5 (january 20, 2022 / 08:53:08) 122815-1b_caribbeanquilt_vol6_rev.pdf .83 84 rampersad, i. (2013). hinduism in the caribbean. contemporary hinduism, 59. . 6 observed through their jhandis and puja (prayer). jhandis are colourful consecrated flags on long bamboo sticks, placed on the north side of one’s property or home (see figure 1). the jhandis and puja that accompanied them were meant to signify the purification of a new home, similar in principle to the act of sage cleansing. the hindus, of course, did not own homes or property upon their immediate arrival and this practice did not become widespread until they had homes of their own to purify. this practice symbolized the intent of hindus to make countries such as trinidad and guyana their permanent homes, solidifying their contribution to the culture. caste, class and geography caste and class were synonymous in india and people of a shared caste generally lived amongst one another and married one another. marrying outside of one’s caste was frowned upon. however, it is important to note that caste was not recognized by the planters. as a result, indentured indians had no choice but to work alongside people from different regions and castes. that being said, many people who migrated to the caribbean from regions where the british would recruit them, often shared the same caste, and in turn, the same practices. due to the caste/class and shared geographic origin of many of these hindus. the rituals and other religious practices in the caribbean differ greatly from those in india as they represent the interests and sentiments of a people forged by a different way of life, and caste demographics were unequally represented. people from different castes/areas worshipped different gods. they brought the practices and rituals they already knew. the brahmin caste evidently looked down on the rituals and practices indentured indian’s took to the caribbean. since the high priest brahmin caste generally did not need to seek opportunities in a foreign land due to their high status, the lower caste migrants in the caribbean were tasked with establishing religious practices. thus, leading to some aspects of the religion being overrepresented, altered, or unseen in the caribbean. this fact is again represented by jhandis, a practice that is occasionally observed near places of worship in northern india. many of the migrant hindus were of northern indian origin where the jhandis were, and are still are, placed beside or near to shrines at which to pray. in a foreign land with no hindu temples, they created their own places of worship within their homes. the indentured indians, while being from northern india, were also predominantly male. hanuman, a hindu god associated with overcoming adversity, found popularity amongst the single hindu men, and so, the jhandis were often dedicated to him. there were other castes and religious practices in the early years, but over the years colonial powers influenced the indians as a whole in caribbean to form close knit communities, isolating themselves from the african-creole population that predated their arrival. this led to a more hegemonic form of hinduism (influenced by the predominantly northern-indians) founded in the shared experiences of this diasporic community. 6 (january 20, 2022 / 08:53:08) 122815-1b_caribbeanquilt_vol6_rev.pdf .84 85 unknown author . “history,” april 4, 2016. https://templeinthesea.wordpress.com/about/. . . 7 in order to be united, the caste system that plays such a huge role in india, was set aside in favour of a united front. the cultural isolation of indentured indians had many adverse effects that are still seen in the racially divided countries of trinidad and guyana, however it also led to the preservation of indian culture and the hindu religion which can be observed through the structures erected. as noted above, indentured indians did not necessarily have the luxury of discriminating against one another based on caste, and this resulted in a more hegemonic form of hinduism, distinct from that of india. hinduism for them represented a shared culture, today most indians in the caribbean do not define themselves based on what region their ancestors migrated from, or what caste their family originally was. this sense of community and the wealth they were able to accumulate in a foreign land allowed indians to pool resources, giving them the ability to manifest their religion through increasingly physical ways, while unifying in solidarity with one another. proof of this can be seen in the history of the sewdass sadhu’s temple in the sea, a now famous monument on the island of trinidad. the temple was originally erected by sadhu, an indentured labourer, after his expenses associated with returning to india to pray at temples became too much. in the 1940’s, sadhu constructed a temple on the sugar plantation to which he was indentured. upon the temple’s completion, the plantation wanted it taken down; however, the demolition of a sacred temples would be sacrilegious to any hindu. sadhu refused to demolish the temple, as did every other indian. the temple was demolished by englishmen instead, sadhu was fined and jailed. however, some believe divine intervention was at play and within months, the two englishmen responsible for the demolition died in unforeseen circumstances. this incident was an act of solidarity on the part of the hindu’s. despite what differences they may have had in india, trinidad was no place to be divided. the temple represented the beliefs of every hindu, not a select a few from the same region or caste. this demonstrates the extent to which caribbean hinduism had solidified itself as a distinct diasporic form. despite the fact that hindu’s in the caribbean seemed to have things under control for the most part, the aforementioned brahmins felt the need to intervene in the mid 20th century as they felt that their caste was not well represented. this was a problem as it was traditionally their role to pass on and educate others on religious matters. they felt that this diasporic group, now growing increasingly larger, lacked organization and guidance provided by the brahmins in india. hinduism in the caribbean had also been influenced by its surroundings. it is likely that the brahmins of india feared the creolization of a traditionally hierarchical and religion. this intervention by the brahmin missionaries of india led to a shift in the religious composition. the caribbean hindu’s who formerly did not have the option to be divided, now found themselves divided by a previously small group of people. 7 (january 20, 2022 / 08:53:08) 122815-1b_caribbeanquilt_vol6_rev.pdf .85 86 sheth, khushboo. “countries with the most public holidays.” worldatlas. worldatlas, october 1, 2018. https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/countries-with-the-most-public-holidays.html. van der veer, p., & vertovec, s. (1991). brahmanism abroad: on caribbean hinduism as an ethnic religion. ethnology, 30(2), 149-166. doi:10.2307/3773407. 138. ramnarine, t. k. (1996). “indian” music in the diaspora: case studies of “chutney” in trinidad and in london. british journal of ethnomusicology, 5(1), 134-135. 8 the brahmins, staying true to their traditions, believed that only the indians who had accumulated wealth, could assume their role in the caribbean. this resulted in groups of hindus with wealth gaining greater religious standing and power. this power led to the establishments of political parties in trinidad and guyana that were based on their now interchangeable religious/ethnic identity. social and cultural impact by the mid 20th century hinduism was firmly grounded in the caribbean. it is during this time that the social and cultural impacts of hinduism are formed. the newly appointed caribbean brahmins worked hard to have hinduism formally recognized in trinidad and guyana. their efforts are seen today through the recognition of hindu holidays along with christian ones as public holidays. trinidad, for example, now ranks fifth on the list of countries with the most public holidays due to this dual recognition. hindus were also able to establish schools and temples that still exist today. these actions led to the further unification of the religion’s followers, on a much larger scale than it had existed before. the impacts were not all positive, however with race-based hindus political parties gaining increased influence. as previously mentioned, planters kept their indentured-indians isolated together in villages, estates or plantations, which led to cultural preservation and community, but this created tensions with the led to cultural preservation and community, but this created tensions with the afro-caribbean population. this was more than likely done purposefully to easily control and manipulate indians and to prevent solidarity between the formerly enslaved and the indentured. the colonial divide continued with the hindu based parties directly opposing afro-caribbean ones. the hindu based parties represented the interests of the hindu diaspora who were able to amass much more wealth because they were compensated for their labour. this was leveraged by the brahmin intervention which supported wealthy hindus in acquiring enough power and sway within their community to participate on a larger political scale, in turn contributing to the already existing racial tensions that persist today. as noted above, the social-political impacts of hinduism in the caribbean are multifaceted and are the source of numerous debates particularly due to its correlation with ethnicity, but the cultural impacts may be more inspiring. one example is the impact of hindus music including the songs sung while honouring or showing devotion to their gods, or songs that would be sung to celebrate marriage or the birth of a child. traditionally, these songs were passed down orally by women and were in their native tongue. these religious songs were accompanied by various traditional dances. for years, these songs remained exclusive to hindus as they were specific to their religion because they were sung in hindi. 7 9 9 8 10 10 (january 20, 2022 / 08:53:08) 122815-1b_caribbeanquilt_vol6_rev.pdf .86 87 niranjana, t. (2006). 3.‘‘take a little chutney, add a touch of kaiso’’: the body in the voice. in mobilizing india (pp. 85-124). duke university press. ramnarine, t. k. (1996). “indian” music in the diaspora: case studies of “chutney” in trinidad and in london. british journal of ethnomusicology, 5(1),142. . 11 the singer dropati from suriname, who is well known for her song manikdhar jhabeeya (lawa), is one voice that can be heard at almost any hindu wedding in the caribbean. while singing entirely in hindi, dropati can be credited with paving the way for future chutney artists after her initial album release in 1958. chutney forms a critical example of the creolization of indo-caribbean culture. during the 1980’s – decades since indentureship ended in 1917 and several years since hinduism had been formally recognized – hindus made a large-scale trans-cultural contribution: chutney. chutney is a traditional indian condiment but in the context of caribbean culture chutney, is the product of the creolization of hindu religious song. well-known chutney music is a melange of these hindu traditions, and creole calypso. similar to calypso, chutney, began as a form of social and political commentary. chutney music is sung in english (although many sometimes incorporate words or phrases in hindi), making it accessible to those outside of the hindu community to take part in and enjoy and reflects the fact that most indo-caribbean people today do not speak any indian language. a great example of this cultural and musical syncretism is drupatee ramgoonai, the first female chutney artist in trinidad to experience nationwide success with the single “chatnee soca.” in it, ramgoonai describes her experience of leaving her indian village and dancing to soca, a musical genre derived from the creole calypso, then creating her own version of this chatnee (chutney) soca. today popular chutney music has little to no religious ties. songs are usually stories about indo-caribbean people but are identified by their distinctly indian tone that originated from the hindu songs. the dances associated with the music also changed. for example, in the video for the 1996 hit, chutney bacchanal by chris garcia can be seen dancing shirtless with women in traditional hindu garb. where this differs from traditional hindu culture is not only in garcia’s attire, but the dance moves that can be described as whining and involves much more physical contact than would ever be appropriate in mainstream indian hinduism. by this point, caribbean hindu traditions and culture had drifted far from its ancestral plane despite brahmin intervention. conclusion caribbean hinduism is a religion that resembles indian hinduism only in very core spiritual beliefs, i.e., gods and major rituals. in time, the hindus that migrated to the caribbean, and the religion they brought with them, became distinct and beautiful in its own way, shedding some of the negative social aspects that remain in indian hinduism. further research is warranted on the specific ways the religion differs from modern hinduism in india and globally. . though hinduism was not entirely suppressed in the caribbean, it was not immune to outside influences as evident in the practices that remain, hierarchy within the religion, the language and the culture that emerged from the 12 11 12 (january 20, 2022 / 08:53:08) 122815-1b_caribbeanquilt_vol6_rev.pdf .87 88 unique combination of indo and afro-caribbean people. though this cultural and religious syncretism is not as well documented as say christianity in the caribbean, the impacts that the caribbean region and hinduism have had on one other are undeniable and infinitely explorable. however, considering the creolization processes in the region to date, hinduism in the caribbean is still in the relatively early stages and there is much that has yet to come. 11 (january 20, 2022 / 08:53:08) 122815-1b_caribbeanquilt_vol6_rev.pdf .88 89 brown, k. (2020). a brief history of race, politics and division in trinidad and guyana. caribbean quilt, 5, 44-54. niranjana, t. (2006). 3.‘‘take a little chutney, add a touch of kaiso’’: the body in the voice. in mobilizing india (pp. 85-124). duke university press. ramnarine, t. k. (1996). “indian” music in the diaspora: case studies of “chutney” in trinidad and in london. british journal of ethnomusicology, 5(1), 133-153. rampersad, i. (2013). hinduism in the caribbean. contemporary hinduism, 57-66. sheth, khushboo. “countries with the most public holidays.” worldatlas. worldatlas, october 1, 2018. https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/countries-with-the-most public-holidays.html. taylor, p. (ed.). (2001). nation dance: religion, identity, and cultural difference in the caribbean. indiana university press. unknown author . “history,” april 4, 2016. https://templeinthesea.wordpress.com/about/. van der veer, p., & vertovec, s. (1991). brahmanism abroad: on caribbean hinduism as an ethnic religion. ethnology, 30(2), 149-166. doi:10.2307/3773407. 138. works cited (january 20, 2022 / 08:53:08) 122815-1b_caribbeanquilt_vol6_rev.pdf .89 afro-caribbean and indigenous religions as subject in caribbean rachelle sanicharan university of toronto fas [canadian studies specialist] historically, the presence of religion in art is one that is very common and well documented. like all art, the images and various projects produced, they all are up to the viewers interpretation, with underlining messages throughout. religion being such a major influence in many different cultures, it isn’t surprising that there is such a connection to art and religion. this is true when looking at the art produced in the caribbean or about the caribbean, and also by the art produced by caribbean artists. this research seeks to demonstrate some of the various caribbean visual arts that have been produced and the portrayal or influence of religion presented, ranging from pre-colonization to post-colonization visual art projects. in turn, this will present the influence that religion has had in the caribbean and how this has affected caribbean communities, whilst also highlighting the lack of representation of some common religions that are present in the caribbean today. a b s t r a c t keywords: caribbean visual art, caribbean religions b i o rachelle is a fourth-year student as a canadian studies specialist at st. michael’s college university of toronto. she is an indo-guyanese canadian woman who has a particular interest in researching, recording, and preserving her indo-caribbean culture by constantly engaging with caribbean communities, especially through the non-profit organization that she volunteers with called, brown gyal diary. brown gyal diary’s mission is to create a space primarily for indo-caribbean women to share their experiences and histories to create recognition and to preserve our culture. her inspiration towards engaging in caribbean based work, is mostly linked to her love for family. © 2021 rachelle sanicharan caribbean studies students’ union, canada https://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/cquilt/ this work is licensed under the creative commons attributionsharealike 4.0 international license. to view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ 115 (january 20, 2022 / 08:53:12) 122815-1b_caribbeanquilt_vol6_rev.pdf .115 116 bosman, frank g. “when art is religion and vice versa. six perspectives on the relationship between art and religion. ” the theological journal of emanuel university, vol. 18 no. 3, 2020, p. 3-20: sciendo, doi:10.2478/perc-2020-0013. maestri, nicoletta. “a columbian discovery: 2,000 year old zemi artifacts of the caribbean.” thoughtco, 23 oct. 2019, www.thoughtco.com/zemis-ritual-objects-of-ancient-taino-173257. roe, peter g. “walking upside-down and backwards: art and religion in the ancient caribbean.” the oxford handbook of the archaeology of ritual and religion, 2011. oxford university press, doi:10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199232444.013.0034 mastri, nicoletta. roe, peter g. . 1 historically, the presence of religion in art is one that is very common and well documented. like all art, the images and various projects produced, they all are up to the viewers interpretation, with underlining messages throughout. religion being such a major influence in many different cultures, it isn’t surprising that there is such a connection to art and religion. this is true when looking at the art produced in the caribbean or about the caribbean, and also by the art produced by caribbean artists. the caribbean has an intensive and tragic history due to colonialism that include and is not limited to the mistreatment of indigenous populations like the ciboney, arawak, and carib peoples throughout the caribbean, the african slave trade, as well as indian and chinese indentureship. moreover, european powers like the british, the spanish, the french, the dutch, and the portuguese, all played a part in the caribbean’s complex history. due to the influence of these colonial powers, the history, culture, rituals and spiritual beliefs of indigenous communities, as well as peoples that were brought to the caribbean through slavery and indentureship, there is a wide range of religious practices and beliefs that are practiced in the caribbean. some of these religious practices are the subject of caribbean visual art. this research seeks to demonstrate some of the various caribbean visual arts that have been produced and the portrayal or influence of religion presented, ranging from pre-colonization to post-colonization visual art projects. in turn, this will present the influence that religion has had in the caribbean and how this has affected caribbean communities, whilst also highlighting the lack of representation of some common religions that are present in the caribbean today. i will not be discussing the multitude of religions that were practiced throughout the history of the caribbean but i will be discussing the religions that are commonly referenced as being caribbean religions, as well as religions that are most practiced in the caribbean today. one religious practice that was present in the caribbean before colonialism, was the use of zemís. zemís are considered sacred symbols that were sometimes physical objects like the “taíno cotton reliquary (zemí)”, which reflects a human effigy in embroidered cotton, but other zemís were also made with different types of wood that was carved to create animal and/or human resemblance. zemís are very closely linked to the worship of one’s ancestors. having detailed zemís signified one’s close relation to the supernatural world. some zemís were said to have had supernatural powers that included making it rain, making things grow and the zemí even speaking to its owner. 1 2 2 3 3 4 5 4 5 (january 20, 2022 / 08:53:12) 122815-1b_caribbeanquilt_vol6_rev.pdf .116 117 mastri, nicoletta. paton, diana. the cultural politics of obeah: religion, colonialism and modernity in the caribbean world, cambridge university press, cambridge, 2015. see note 7 above. mocra, et al. “episode 7: maria magdalena campos-pons.” saint louis university, nov. 2013, www.slu.edu/mocra/voices-podcast/episode-7-maria-magdalenacampos.pons.php. see note 9 above. see note 9 above. see note 9 above. 6 religious practices using zemís were found across the greater antilles, with significant findings in dominican republic, haiti and cuba. since these zemís could be found in many countries in the caribbean, they are well documented and are considered art pieces, some being preserved and displayed in museums. the spiritual practice with zemís’ is something that is notably recognized as a caribbean religion. as colonization occurred, the development of other religious practices became common in the caribbean. one of the religions that is known for its relationship and connection with the caribbean, is obeah and relatives; vodou, palo and santería which are derivatives of african spirituality and variations arguably due to the nature of colonialism. these practices are similar to each other and they have been closely linked with sorcery and even dark magic there are many different variants of the practice of obeah, and so the religion has both a positive and negative reputation and it is still apparent in the caribbean today. obeah’s portrayal as witchcraft however, is one way that europeans furthered the ‘othering’ of afro-caribbean communities who often practiced obeah for healing and divinity. the practice of obeah and its relatives is shown in caribbean visual art and it demonstrates the progression of european influence in the caribbean. african spirituality has left an indelible mark of caribbean religiosity. derivatives of these belief systems such as obeah, vodou, palo and santería all have a basis in magic witchcraft and sorcery. for europeans however, the connection to ‘dark magic’ played an important role in the othering of afro-caribbean communities who often practiced these religions as a source of healing and divinity. europeans feared these systems because it made assimilation less likely. santería is an afro-cuban religion that is generally related to work with magic, witchcraft and sorcery, similarly to obeah. in maria magdalena campos-pons work, she presents a prominent figure in santería religion; abridor de caminos (the one who opens the path). abridor de caminos is closely related to elegua, the most important orisha or deity in santería. elegua was the first orisha, a messenger between the divine world and human world, effectively the leader of the crossroads, and thus, nothing could be done in the worlds without elegua’s permission. elegua is considered to be a trickster and is the force behind growth and divinity, she is represented by red, white and black, which are the same colours that are depicted in campos-pons work, abridor de caminos. in this work, she presents symbols of being at a crossroad, whether 7 8 9 10 6 7 8 9 10 11 11 12 12 (january 20, 2022 / 08:53:13) 122815-1b_caribbeanquilt_vol6_rev.pdf .117 118 see note 9 above. davis, andrea. canadian journal of latin american and caribbean studies / revue canadienne des études latino américaines et caraïbes, vol. 31, no. 61, 2006, pp. 261–263. jstor, www.jstor.org/stable/41800310. see note 9 above. see note 14 above. benítez, virginia alberdi. “where is the starting point of cuban art?” artemorfosis, 14 nov. 2016, www.artemorfosis.com/where-is-the-starting-point-of-cuban-art/. see note 17 above. 13 that is a literal cross spanning her face or her feet being separated and pointed in different directions between what appears to be white twig pieces. interestingly, the colours that represent this orisha, are colours that many people associate with the devil or with evil, and having the orisha being the owner of the crossroads, where there is mythology of crossroad dealers being demons or evil. this is yet another way that religions such as santería and obeah are darkly portrayed. obeah is not an organized religion like some of its western counterparts, but it is a result of the african diaspora in the caribbean, it is a creolized religion that has european and african influence. similarly, santería is also a direct result to enslaved africans whom were brought from nigeria and western african nations, that mixed their yoruba religion with elements of roman catholic influence from plantation owners. arguably, santería contains elements of european, african, and indian spiritual practices. the religion’s presence in the caribbean was also a way to demonstrate the difference between europe and the caribbean. overall, religions such as obeah and santería are creolized practices that occurred due to colonization in order to create even more of a divide between afro-caribbean peoples and europeans, something that is still apparent throughout the caribbean today. the influence of this subjugation and forced integration may be seen through art pieces which progressively show increasing european influence in religious practices throughout the caribbean. through colonialism religions such as christianity were brought to the caribbean. though we see some factors of christianity that was referenced in african diaspora religions, in some instances christianity has demonstrated influence on caribbean art directly without being combined with other practices. for example, in josé nicolás de escalera’s work, santa bárbara, we are shown that christianity has become a part of the people who inhabit the caribbean. this painting not only showcased artistic techniques from europe, but it also depicts st. barbara, a christian saint whom was a martyr and is sometimes connected to lightning, seeing as after her father killed her for being a christian when he was a pagan, he was struck by deadly lightning as he arrived home. st. barbara is referenced in the catholic church, the eastern orthodox church and other christian denominations. she is also referred to as one of the fourteen holy helpers. in josé nicolás de escalera’s work, st. barbara is pictured with a palm leaf that many times is pictured with virgin martyrs. most of josé nicolás de escalera’s work was religious based or it was portraits of colonialist. his work shows 14 15 16 17 18 13 14 15 16 17 18 (january 20, 2022 / 08:53:13) 122815-1b_caribbeanquilt_vol6_rev.pdf .118 119 see note 17 above. scher, philip w. “race and religion in the caribbean.” anthropological quarterly, vol. 77 no.4, 2004, p. 831 -834: project muse, doi:10.1353/anq.2004.0065 . 19 the influence that europeans had in the caribbean, the art techniques that were labelled european, the presence of european religion and the paintings of saints, shows how christianity began to spread in the caribbean. today, the presence of christianity is shown throughout caribbean countries, being the most popular religion in the caribbean. though many art pieces have been created that present the history of religious practices in the caribbean, there are in fact some religions that aren’t as commonly acknowledged in visual art, as being part of caribbean history. the visual art that has been discussed thus far mostly speaks of the influence that colonialism has had on afro-caribbean religious practices, but i have not mentioned any popular indo-caribbean visual art pieces. though the history of indian indentureship isn’t as long as the history of the african slave trade, indian people first arrived in the caribbean, british guiana in 1838, arriving at what is now called, guyana. indians were brought to the caribbean after the abolition of slavery, effectively replacing slavery with indentured labourers who had contracts. interestingly, many visual art pieces were created after the arrival of indians in the caribbean, yet their presence isn’t as reflected in visual art as afro-caribbean peoples and so, the religions that many indo-caribbean peoples practiced aren’t often shown in art either. seeing as though the history of indo-caribbean peoples goes back over 180 years, this part of colonialist history isn’t very reflective in caribbean art. the most popular religions that indo-caribbecaribbean peoples’ practice that is not often represented in art is hinduism and islam. this is shown especially in different countries in the community like in guyana and trinidad and tobago, were the religious practices of indo-caribbean peoples are also celebrated by afro-caribbean peoples who do not identify with these religions and vice versa. for example, in guyana, both indo-guyanese peoples who are and are not hindu, and afro-guyanese peoples whom are not hindu, celebrate the hindu festival, pagwah also known as holi. moreover, indo-guyanese people who are not christian, still celebrate easter by flying kites. both pagwah and easter are celebrated by the whole population of trinidad and tobago no matter what religion you identify with. through these religious holidays, it brings unity to countries who have historically been divided by their race and religions, demonstrating how religion does positively affect caribbean communities. though caribbean art is reflective of some religious practices in the caribbean, there is still a lack of popular recognition for certain religions that are a part of the caribbean. none of the less, indigenous religions are still present in caribbean visual art and the impact of colonialism in the caribbean is reflected in these visual art pieces as we see the influence that european practices began to have in the caribbean. creole religious practices like obeah and santería show primarily the combination of european and african spiritual practices. as colonialism contin20 19 20 (january 20, 2022 / 08:53:13) 122815-1b_caribbeanquilt_vol6_rev.pdf .119 120 continued, we see the influence that christianity has also had in the caribbean and that is also reflected in caribbean. through these pieces of art, we are shown the various stories of displacement, creolization, belonging, and tradition. we are shown a snippet of the complex and long history of the caribbean and the various religions that are/were practiced. in turn, this depicts the different communities that are in the caribbean and the different ethnicities, races, and cultures that are followed. the caribbean is very multicultural and that is reflected through the art and religions throughout the region. (january 20, 2022 / 08:53:13) 122815-1b_caribbeanquilt_vol6_rev.pdf .120 121 benítez, virginia alberdi. “where is the starting point of cuban art?” artemorfosis, 14 nov. 2016, www.artemorfosis.com/where-is-the-starting-point of-cuban-art/. bosman, frank g. “when art is religion and vice versa. six perspectives on the relationship between art and religion.” the theological journal of emanuel university, vol. 18 no. 3, 2020, p. 3-20: sciendo, doi:10.2478/perc-2020-0013 campos pons, maria m. abridor de caminos (road opener), 1997, web, cuba. cotton reliquary (zemi), taino, n.d., web, dominican rep. davis, andrea. canadian journal of latin american and caribbean studies / revue canadienne des études latino-américaines et caraïbes, vol. 31, no. 61, 2006, pp. 261–263. jstor, www.jstor.org/stable/41800310. de barros, juanita. review of obeah and other powers: the politics of caribbean religion and healing ed. by diana paton, maarit forde. journal colonialism and colonial history, vol. 14 no. 3, 2013. project muse, doi:10.1353/cch.2013.0048 de escalera, josé nicolás. santa bárbara, 2nd half xviii c (2), web, cuba. “jose nicolas de la escalera (1734-1804).” jose nicolas de la escalera | art experts, www.artexpertswebsite.com/pages/de-la-escalera.php. maestri, nicoletta. “a columbian discovery: 2,000 year old zemi artifacts of the caribbean.” thoughtco, 23 oct. 2019, www.thoughtco.com/zemis-ritual-objects of ancient-taino-173257. mocra, et al. “episode 7: maria magdalena campos-pons.” saint louis university, nov. 2013, www.slu.edu/mocra/voices-podcast/episode-7-maria-magdalenacampos pons.php. paton, diana. the cultural politics of obeah: religion, colonialism and modernity in the caribbean world, cambridge university press, cambridge, 2015. roe, peter g. “walking upside-down and backwards: art and religion in the ancient caribbean.” the oxford handbook of the archaeology of ritual and religion, 2011. oxford university press, doi:10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199232444.013.0034 scher, philip w. “race and religion in the caribbean.” anthropological quarterly, vol. 77 no.4, 2004, p. 831-834: project muse, doi:10.1353/anq.2004.0065 traverso, v.m. “how to recognize the symbols of martyrdom in art.” aleteia, 16 oct. 2020, aleteia.org/2020/10/16/how-to-recognize-the-symbols-of-martyrdom-in-art/. works cited (january 20, 2022 / 08:53:13) 122815-1b_caribbeanquilt_vol6_rev.pdf .121 the grenada revolution: investigating the ambitions and shortcomings of a radical caribbean political experiment shenhat haile 2t1 university of toronto fas history, political science & african studies in march 1979, the new jewel movement (njm) transitioned into the people’s revolutionary government (prg) through a bloodless coup that for a time revolutionized the structure of governments in the common-law caribbean. this policy review seeks to consider the success of the revolution based on: its aim of developing and sustaining a grassroots democracy, emphasis on mass education and its expansion of agribusiness initiatives as a part of broader industrialization efforts. through an investigation of some of the critical events, ideological frameworks and ambitious political objectives that briefly transformed grenadian society from 1979 to 1983 this review illustrates the complexity of the political experiment undertaken by the people’s revolutionary government and argues that despite its short time span, the grenada revolution remains one of the most critical examples of revolutionary potential and radical self-rule in the twentieth-century caribbean. a b s t r a c t keywords: grenada revolution, people’s revolutionary government, new jewel movement, maurice bishop b i o shenhat has a ba from the university of toronto with a double major in history and political science and a minor in african studies. her academic interests include history and politics of the horn of african, anti-/alternative development theory, and intellectual histories of caribbean decolonization and transnational black radical feminism. © 2021 shenhat haile caribbean studies students’ union, canada https://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/cquilt/ this work is licensed under the creative commons attributionsharealike 4.0 international license. to view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ 92 (january 20, 2022 / 09:38:47) 122864-1b_caribbeanquilt_vol7_rev.pdf .92 93 kate quinn, “conventional politics or revolution: black power and the radical challenge to the westminster model in the caribbean,” commonwealth & comparative politics 53, no. 1 (february 2015): 73. anne hickling hudson, “education in the grenada revolution: 1979-83,” compare 19, no. 2 (1989): 96. quinn, 73. brian meeks, caribbean revolutions and revolutionary theory: an assessment of cuba, nicaragua and grenada (kingston: univ. of the west indies press, 2001): 140. meeks, 140. quinn, 73. the black scholar, “revolution in grenada: an interview with maurice bishop,” journal of black studies and research 11, no. 3 (1980): 52. ibid. 1 on the 13th of march, 1979, a bloodless coup transformed the trajectory of political and social development on the island of grenada. this policy review will investigate some of the critical events, ideological frameworks, and ambitious political objectives that briefly transformed grenadian society from 1979 to 1983. the grenada revolution is regarded as one of the very few successful political experiments undertaken by a leftist vanguard party and arguably epitomizes the revolutionary potential of the organized caribbean masses. thinking alongside this notion, this review seeks to critically analyze the policy decisions of the people’s revolutionary government (prg), considering the revolution’s aim of developing a grassroots democracy, emphasis on mass education reform, and the expansion of agribusiness initiatives as a part of broader industrialization efforts. to understand the peaceful ousting that took place on 13 march 1979, we must first briefly recall the administrative abuses, political corruption, and general public contempt that characterized eric gairy’s government that would give rise to revolutionary opposition led by maurice bishop and the new jewel movement (njm). while he enjoyed general popularity in the early period of grenada’s independence , evidence of gairy’s political abuse was made apparent as early as 1962. gairy’s attempts to consolidate greater executive powers would subsequently lead to the detrimental findings of the commission of inquiry, the suspension of the constitution, and the call of new elections in 1962. gairy returned to popularity five years later in the 1967 election through a “demagogic ‘land for the landless’ programme” that put him back in credible position against the opposition however gairy never followed through with the land redistribution initiative and once again lost the faith of the planter class. gairy continued to use extralegal means to consolidate full cabinet authority, silencing his critics, and developing both an overt system of political patronage and a violent personal paramilitary, the seeds of revolutionary opposition had been planted. widespread discontent towards gairy’s abuse of power surged across grenada. meanwhile, a new radical organization was being formed that would confront eric gairy’s despotism. in 1973, the joint endeavour for welfare, education and liberation (jewel) led by unison whiteman and maurice bishop’s movement for assemblies of the people (map) joined together to form the marxist-leninist oriented, new jewel movement. according to bishop, this “was an unconventional type organization,” in the sense that electoral politics was not its primary objective. instead, it intended to weaken eric gairy’s support base, raise the political consciousness, and advocate 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 1 2 3 4 5 6 6 7 8 (january 20, 2022 / 09:38:47) 122864-1b_caribbeanquilt_vol7_rev.pdf .93 94 ibid. quinn, 76. quinn, 72. gail r. pool, “culture, language and revolution in grenada,” anthropologica 36, no. 1 (1994): 82. hudson, 97. “revolution in grenada: an interview with maurice bishop,” 56. pool, 87. hudson, 97. hudson, 98. quinn, 82. 9 for new transparent structures of government. the njm grew its political base by organizing with agricultural workers who were facing economic distress, attracting middle-class conservatives who were frustrated with the corruption of the current government, and by promoting a model of democracy in which genuine political participation was encouraged and deemed necessary for development. according to kate quinn, the bloodless coup of 1979 was thus “so [easy] partly because the ideological groundwork for the revolution had already been laid.” many of the strengths of the political experiment in grenada can be identified in the first few years following the formation of the prg government (led by njm members and bishop as prime minister), where revolutionary spirits were high and people’s political participation was in full force. while there could certainly be a much more robust conversation on the progressive policy decisions made during the prg’s leadership, i will limit my analysis to the following matters: the development of grassroots democracy, an emphasis on mass education reform, and the expansion of agribusiness initiatives and industrialization efforts. as mentioned, many scholars attribute the early success of the revolution to the enthusiastic willingness of grenadians across all social classes. maurice bishop and the prg were determined to address the poor socio-economic conditions left behind by colonial structures and the post-independence government by tackling the source of these problems. the vision was to move past the neo-colonial model of westminster exclusionary electoral politics into a form of “grassroots democracy” that operated on the voluntary mobilization of ordinary grenadians. the prg was especially able to foster a real sense of camaraderie, dignity and self-determination in the youth by giving them leadership positions within the party. the prg was also comprised of town and village residents, leading figures of the private business class, trade unionists, and anyone “who had allied themselves with the njm’s nationalist profile and analysis of reforms necessary to bring about development.” the most important features of this new grassroots democracy were the new organizations created to ensure wide scale political participation at the local level. for instance, the national youth organization, the national women’s organization, and the productive farmer’s union each had thousands of members contributing to different economic and social projects. in addition to this were a number of village, parish and workplace assemblies that would have direct representation in the national assembly. this was essentially a direct alternative to the former two-party westminster system that was structurally incapable of responding to the people’s 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 15 17 18 17 18 (january 20, 2022 / 09:38:48) 122864-1b_caribbeanquilt_vol7_rev.pdf .94 95 ibid. ibid., 75. hudson, 96. ibid., 101. ibid., 109. ibid.,104. hudson, 99. pool 82. hudson, 99. ibid. ibid. ibid. ibid. “revolution in grenada: an interview with maurice bishop,” 58. 19 needs. in situating power across regions of the country and stimulating support through public meetings and mass rallies, the prg was able to secure what was believed to be long-term support for the revolutionary government. alongside raising the political morale of the people, the prg government allocated considerable time, effort and investment into transforming grenada’s education system. the legacy of colonial education was identified early on as major obstacle to rolling out the government’s bold plans for social and economic development. prior to the revolution, the school system was characterized by high illiteracy rates, underachievement, and generally poor academic performance. foremost efforts at addressing this dysfunction were directed towards adequate professional training for teachers and educators, resulting in the establishment of a community-based program called the centre for popular education in 1980. reforms were later made to eliminate school fees, expand school capacities, prioritize university education programmes that were functional to the needs of a developing society, encourage skills development, and produce a more socially-conscious student and worker. the goal was to gradually develop an education system that would feed the needs of a rapidly diversifying and industrializing grenada. lastly, development and gdp growth in grenada was to be pursued through a mixed economy. in the colonial period, grenada was primarily a sugar economy that gradually came to include nutmeg, cocoa and bananas. one of the main objectives of the prg was to increase the processing capacity of these essential industries, while also expanding public-sector enterprises. anne hickling-hudson describes the prg approach to economic development as “flexible, gradualist and pragmatic.” its policies sought to deal with the issue of import substitution by commercializing surplus fruits into canned products, expanding farmer cooperatives, and investing in the local fishing industry. the biggest impact to grenada’s economy was arguably the trade agreements and foreign assistance supplied by other socialist states which allowed the prg to further invest in the public sector and create thousands of new jobs. public-sector ownership grew to become 30 per cent of the economy and by 1983 the unemployment rate dropped by well over fifty per cent of the gairy administration’s 1978 levels. according to maurice bishop, the economic objective was for grenada to “not live in anyone’s backyard.” despite allowing the still dominant private sector to preserve its ties 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 (january 20, 2022 / 09:38:48) 122864-1b_caribbeanquilt_vol7_rev.pdf .95 96 hudson, 102. ibid., 103. ibid., 105. ibid., 99. rupert roopnaraine, “resonances of revolution: grenada, suriname, guyana,” interventions 12, no. 1 (2010): pp. 11-34. quinn, 82. meeks, 160. 33 with western investors, it is clear that the prg’s long-term goals for grenada were centred around the principles of self-sustainability and the rejection of foreign ownership. it is in these progressive policies undertaken during the brief leadership of the people’s revolutionary government that we can see the opportunities and possibilities that were left unfulfilled. for instance, the ambitious education reform plan was designed to ensure that certain vocational programs were prioritized in a sequential manner. upon the discussion and deliberation of community members and teachers, the shifting needs of education would be reconsidered and the ministry of education would progress into the next stage of development. there were also plans put in place in 1983 to seek collaboration with cuban officials on how to develop and expand a sophisticated work-study program for students going into the agricultural industry. according to hudson, the prg emphasized the need for long-term education reform because: “by 1982, it was clear that without such education, progress would be severely constrained in the many new projects in construction, in the hotel industry, in craft design, in food technology, in scientific agriculture, forestry and fishing, in economic and environment planning, and in financial and administrative management.” despite the tremendously progressive and impactful achievements of the prg, many opportunities for further growth were cut short due to the downfall of the revolution in 1983. before addressing the major weaknesses of the prg’s policy decisions, it is important to consider the domestic and international forces that threatened the survival of the revolutionary government. while it was bishop’s desire to pursue a general policy of non-alignment, the nature of the political objectives and the government’s revolutionary ideology of anti-imperialism and self-determination naturally led the prg to align itself with cuba and other members of the socialist bloc. the march 1979 coup, growing affiliations with cuba, and the state’s new stance against foreign ownership and western intervention made grenada a target of us suspicion. anxiety towards a socialist spread or european alliance in the caribbean had been of much concern to the united states even before the enactment of the monroe doctrine in 1823. as brian meeks puts it: “grenada’s significance went far beyond its importance as a micro-state, because it was the first revolution carried out by black english-speakers, with direct lines of communication to the major black and west indian population centers in north america and great britain and because it presented the us for the first time since the vietnamese war with an opportunity to reassert its hegemonic tendencies” 34 35 36 37 38 39 33 34 35 36 37 (january 20, 2022 / 09:38:48) 122864-1b_caribbeanquilt_vol7_rev.pdf .96 97 meeks, 161. ibid., 131. ibid., 132. ibid. ibid., 160. ibid. meeks, 164 ibid. ibid. ibid., iii. 40 in a similar way, kate quinn describes the prg’s political experiments as “the most radical deviation from the westminster model ever attempted in the commonwealth caribbean.” in a region so heavily dominated by capitalist modes of development and neo-colonial exploitation, grenada was providing the ideological foundation and revolutionary praxis to refashion the relationship between caribbean states and hegemonic powers. this anxiety towards grenada’s pursuit of alternative development was heightened by the prg’s plans to build an airport on the island. additionally, though the revolution sparked an unprecedented level of political mobilization, the small minority of remaining gairy loyalists who did not see themselves represented by the new government may have proved to be a major threat to the survival of the revolution in the near future. however, the internal conflict that would contribute to the downfall of the government did not occur between the prg and this minority, but amongst the leading members of the revolution itself. it is widely understood that the crisis of 1983 that put an end to the revolution was the result of a quiet opposition faction within the party led by minister of finance bernard coard. on the other hand, scholars argue that this narrative of conspiracy often shifts attention away from other factors that played a role in the ultimate collapse of the prg. it is therefore very critical to consider some of these threats when discussing the major flaws and weaknesses of the revolutionary experiment in grenada. according to brian meeks, author of caribbean revolutions and revolutionary theory (1993), “the failure of most studies to explore the relationship between actors and structures is a fatal error.” he argues that many of the political objectives laid out by bishop and the prg were appropriate for grenada’s development, but experienced difficulty in execution. this is in large part due to the “clandestine vanguard structure” of the party and the way in which power was seized and socialist policy was pursued from a “paternalistic” approach. for instance, meeks argues that in gaining the support of the masses, populist leaders like maurice bishop are able to present the idea of national elections as an unnecessary and counter-productive activity that could ultimately undermine the revolutionary party. he also cites that the prg’s refusal to hold elections contradicted the party’s aims to genuinely involve the population in a grassroots democracy movement and signalled more distress towards an already alert united states. additionally, the seemingly impressive developmental growth during 1979 and 1983 is often attributed to the large sums of loans and foreign aid provided to grenada from it socialist links, not from a sudden influx of economic activity on the island. the funnelling of this aid into public industries meant that private sector performance 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 (january 20, 2022 / 09:38:48) 122864-1b_caribbeanquilt_vol7_rev.pdf .97 98 suffered during these few years. efforts to diversify the economy from agribusiness to tourism did not make significant changes and the majority of the country’s export was still dependent on the staple crops – nutmeg, cocoa and banana. meeks therefore concludes that the revolutionary party was in economic crisis long before it “finally succumbed to internal dissension” in 1983. the prg’s fall would leave the country vulnerable to us invasion shortly thereafter. in this policy review, i have attempt to illustrate the complexity of the political experiment undertaken by the people’s revolutionary government from 1979 to 1983. despite its short time span, the grenada revolution arguably remains one of the most critical examples of revolutionary potential and radical self-rule in the twentieth-century caribbean. the strengths and weaknesses of this political experiment indicate the difficulty revolutionary socialist governments face when attempting to distance themselves outside the reach of western imperialist forces. 47 48 49 (january 20, 2022 / 09:38:49) 122864-1b_caribbeanquilt_vol7_rev.pdf .98 99 hudson, anne hickling. “education in the grenada revolution: 1979-83.” compare 19, no. 2 (1989): 95–114. meeks, brian. caribbean revolutions and revolutionary theory: an assessment of cuba, nicaragua and grenada. kingston: univ. of the west indies press, 2001. pool, gail r. “culture, language and revolution in grenada.” anthropologica 36, no. 1 (1994): 73–107. quinn, kate. “conventional politics or revolution: black power and the radical challenge to the westminster model in the caribbean.” commonwealth & comparative politics 53, no. 1 (2015): 71–94. roopnaraine, rupert. “resonances of revolution: grenada, suriname, guyana.” interventions 12, no. 1 (2010): 11–34. the black scholar. “revolution in grenada: an interview with maurice bishop.” journal of black studies and research 11, no. 3 (1980): 50–58. works cited (january 20, 2022 / 09:38:49) 122864-1b_caribbeanquilt_vol7_rev.pdf .99 the reality of reparations: an exploration of neo-colonialism, morality and control in the caribbean amna khan king’s college london religion, politics & society ba reparations are widely understood as the process by which compensation is given or amends made for previous wrongdoing. in the context of the caribbean, it may refer to official actions taken by former colonial powers to acknowledge and recompense states affected by colonialism and slavery. this paper seeks to analyse discussions of reparations in the region and consider how the lack of compensation may be perceived as demonstrating that modern power relations are merely repackaged propagations of imperialism. fundamentally, this paper argues that the notion that colonisation was left behind in the 19th century with the abolition of slavery or mid-20th century with the political independence of caribbean nation-states is a facade and uses reparations discourse as the foremost example of such. this is demonstrated through the following questions: why do reparations need to be paid? why are they not being paid? and what needs to change? a b s t r a c t keywords: caribbean politics, reparations discourse, colonialism, neo-colonial economics, caricom b i o amna khan is a final year student studying religion, politics & society at king’s college london. she completed this paper as part of her semester abroad with university of toronto. her focuses include the intersections of politics and its surrounding themes in current global discourses and the history of capitalism in modern cities. © 2021 amna khan caribbean studies students’ union, canada https://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/cquilt/ this work is licensed under the creative commons attributionsharealike 4.0 international license. to view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ 55 (january 20, 2022 / 08:53:06) 122815-1b_caribbeanquilt_vol6_rev.pdf .55 56 l amy strecker, “indigenous land rights and caribbean reparations discourse,” leiden journal of international law 30, no. 3 (2017): 633, https://doi.org/10.1017/s0922156517000073 university college london (ucl), “legacies of british slave-ownership,” university college london department of history, accessed april 3, 2021, https://www.ucl.ac.uk/lbs/. david olusoga. “the treasury’s tweet shows slavery is still misunderstood,” the guardian, february 12, 2018, randall robinson, the debt, what america owes to blacks (new york: plume books, 2000), 216. 5 4 the historical events of colonial slavery were undeniably tragic; however, reparations discourse also looks to ending the “continuing dispossession” of the oppressed communities colonial systems created. the unfortunate reality is that when caribbean states assumed their independence beginning in the 1960s, the institutional features of their colonial subjection did not immediately disappear. instead, these same oppressive policies took new forms. not only was this evident through caribbean governments, some of whom are still recovering from lingering ideological rejections of democracy instilled by experiences of corrupt and unrepresentative leadership, but analyses of major american and british infrastructures and corporations reveals that they too were founded on the exploitation of slaves. this highlights the ways in which the continued existence of colonial systems and organizations is a preservation of those colonialist ideologies at the continued determent of the subaltern british historian david olusoga generated a database in collaboration with university college london (ucl) entitled ‘legacies of british slave-ownership’ which offers an interface through which members of the public can observe the quantifiable foundation from which major british establishments were built on slavery. the commercial database involves over 1400 individuals and information on broader cultural and political legacies. for example, the bank of england alone has relationships with twenty-nine individuals and investors who had slave-related legacies. the bank of england remains the central bank of the united kingdom. thus, it is a reminder of the ways in which the subject of reparations stays ever-present in modern discourses where relationships from slavery and colonization are widely identifiable. this is especially applicable when one considers that official monetary acknowledgements have never been in favour of the slaves. part of the abolition act of 1833 britain compensated 46,000 slave-owners with £20 million for their “loss of human property;” but neglected to provide any form of apology or recompensation for the real victims. in ‘the case for reparations’ event held in summer 2020, hilary beckles mentioned how the events catalyzed by george floyd’s death in march of that year reaffirmed how the disposal of black lives has been entrenched since colonial days. this is evidence of how the effects of slavery are not simply traceable to historical periods but rather its victims are produced ad infinitum, “long after the active stage of crime has ended”. further, its lasting destruction affects a multitude of experiences, from economic to ideological and cultural. strecker’s exploration of the ‘ongoing violations of indigenous rights’ across the caribbean evidences how land rights for native communities are 1 1 6 4 5 6 7 7 (january 20, 2022 / 08:53:06) 122815-1b_caribbeanquilt_vol6_rev.pdf .56 57 strecker, “indigenous land rights,” 637. strecker, “indigenous land rights,” 640. alfred l. brophy, “the case for reparations for slavery in the caribbean,” slavery & abolition 35, no. 1 (2014): 165, doi: 10.1080/0144039x.2013.847222. brophy, “the case for reparations,” 168. 9 8 both lacking and not effectively implemented. for example, strecker accuses the surinamese government of repeatedly failing to protect its n’dujka, kalina and lokono communities from mining interventions of their lands. in belize, where there are some international laws in place for mayan land rights but these are not fully implemented. only two of the thirty-eight villages in the toledo district were actually protected. this reveals that even where acknowledgements are beginning to be made for comparable subaltern communities, they are not always followed through by relevant authorities. simultaneously, public apologies for the historic significance and existing unacceptability of slavery have begun to be made, as seen by british prime minister tony blair early on in his tenure. regardless, the expectation of reparations by the caribbean nations remains strong. so, why are they not being paid? the awareness about the inhumanity of slavery has long existed but for as long as these have been present, pro-slavery voices have been giving arguments as for why the process was justified or ultimately a net positive. these are extremely problematic as firstly, they are rooted in dehumanizing economic and legalistic terms – that may be perceived as the result of the commodification of man by the capitalistic nature of the modern world and secondly because these are perspectives consistently perpetuated by the dominating force of the oppressor-oppressed relationship. in my exploration of the reason reparations claims have been largely ignored by the modern western world, i go into detail on these economic and legal bases from which pro-slavery literature has been grounded. the legality of slavery has been long contested with authorities of european colonial powers consistently denying its criminality on the grounds that “law is district from morals”. brophy considers this question in his review of beckles’ magnum opus britain's black debt, writing that beckles adopts the perspective that what is legal should refer to some “seemingly universal moral standards… outside of the courts and outside of parliament” and based on a “natural law conception rather than a positive law conception”. however, i recognise that this could be considered an idealistic conceptualisation where philosophically speaking, what one perceives as moral, the other may not. just because something seems like it should be absolute does not mean it necessarily is, thus this exploration of the definition of ‘legal’ further obscures the already complex reparations discourse the question of law also applies to modern day treaties as strecker notes there is a lack of recognised “continuity between colonial administrators and newly independent states” where such is necessary for realistic acknowledgements of 8 10 11 9 10 11 (january 20, 2022 / 08:53:06) 122815-1b_caribbeanquilt_vol6_rev.pdf .57 58 strecker, “indigenous land rights,” 635. olusoga, “the treasury.” brophy, “the case for reparations,” 165. karl marx, a contribution to the critique of political economy, trans. s.w. ryazanskaya ( moscow: progress publishers, 1859). deborah cowen, "following the infrastructures of empire: notes on cities, settler colonialism, and method,” urban geography 41, no. 4 (2020): 469-486, doi: 10.1080/02723638.2019.1677990. cowen, "following the infrastructures,” 469-471. 13 12 previous wrongdoings to be made. instead, the projected removal of colonisation from present discourses means there need not be acceptance of past tragedies as these institutions no longer exist, technically speaking. however, the reality is nowhere near as clear cut as european history would like us to believe. in the same vein that olusoga reported the actual end of slavery came thirty years after its focal abolition, reparations discourse is not merely a consideration of past events. it may be argued, for example, that historically, many of the legal allocations and justifications of slavery were based in the fact that its economic benefits were clearly observable, falling victim to brophy’s prophecy that “morality is so often sacrificed for money”. american abolitionist ralph waldo emerson contained this perspective through his notion that “slavery and anti-slavery is the question of property and no property” demonstrating how the basis of the slave trade was the exploitative commodification of man to labour the mass consumption of the industrial revolution. this schema of capital accumulation dictating social philosophy and livelihood is conceptually defined by the marxist base and superstructure cyclical framework, within which society’s means of production have direct influence over its laws, media, culture, politics and so on. at the same time european colonial expansion was gaining tract, capitalism was becoming consolidated as the economic foundation of the modern world. with such, the characteristics of individual profiteering, private accumulation and disenfranchisement of the lesser classes became standard and projected across the colonies of the european empire, fulfilling lenin’s framework of ‘imperialism as the latest stage of capitalism’. here, i map how imperialist ideological and institutional frameworks persist in the present world through frameworks established during this vacuum of industrialisation, capitalisation and colonialism of the 19th and 20th centuries. as evidence for these economic justifications of slavery, i look to cowen’s analysis of how modern canadian city infrastructures are revelatory of historic ‘settler’ relations, such as the canadian pacific railway being funded in part from transatlantic slave funds and simultaneously being the current major port access from canada to north america. in other words, both the development of these infrastructures themselves and their financing reproduces “nationalistic… material relations” rooted in and thus preserving “violence… (and) colonial dispossession” to this day. 12 14 11 10 15 13 14 15 16 16 17 17 (january 20, 2022 / 08:53:06) 122815-1b_caribbeanquilt_vol6_rev.pdf .58 59 brophy, “the case for reparations,” 167. strecker, “indigenous land rights,” 632. “caricom ten point plan for reparatory justice,” caricom caribbean community, accessed march 30, 2021, https://caricom.org/caricom-ten-point-plan-for-reparatory-justice/. 19 18 19cowen’s article demonstrates the high extent to which colonialist sentiments are present in modern urbanisation .the historic prioritisation of economic gain over humanistic value was introduced by the commodification of man by slavery and evidentially exists to this day, providing grounds for authorities within the capitalistic worldview to reject reparations discourses. considering these perspectives, the question of ‘what needs to change?’ in order to facilitate an understanding of slavery and repatriations in line with modern morality remains. the reality is that the black racial experience is continually repressed through structures which are inherently imperialistic. the acknowledgement and apology involved in reparations is necessary for many communities to come to terms with their histories and improve their present livelihoods. as highlighted through his criticism of the second half of beckles’ book, where beckles discusses how reparations should be paid to descendants of the exploited, brophy asserts that the “victims of slavery are still alive and well” and thus their acknowledgement is just as pressing. the main avenue through which reparations have been officially presented is caricom’s reparations commission (crc), which was set up following the 2001 world conference against racism held in durban. the caricom website states its output “outlines the path to reconciliation, truth, and justice” and this is achieved through their ‘10 point plan for reparatory justice’ published in march 2014 with british law firm leigh day. some of these include attention to repatriation (point two), illiteracy eradication (point six) and debt cancellation (point nine), which is demonstrative of their multi-faceted consideration. whilst catalytic for specific acknowledgement policies, caricom’s establishment focuses on interstate claims where wider reparations discourses must be adopted by international powers in order to be most extensively effective. having just explored the economic spotlight of reparations discourses, a major development which needs to be made by the international authorities involved is reparatory justice goes beyond monetisation. as i have explored through this paper, whilst colonialism and slavery were destructive to native economies, they also impacted ideologies, cultural histories, land rights and so on. not only this but their destruction was not one-dimensional, affecting the intersections of labour and capital which influence modern conceptualisations of value and experiences of livelihood in the capitalistic worldview we exist in. 20 20 18 (january 20, 2022 / 08:53:06) 122815-1b_caribbeanquilt_vol6_rev.pdf .59 60 strecker, “indigenous land rights,” 644. strecker, “indigenous land rights,” 645. caricom, “caricom ten point plan.” mark brown, “jamaica seeks return of artefacts from british museum,” the guardian, august 7, 2019, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/aug/07/minister-seeks-return-of-priceless-artefacts-from-british-museum strecker, “indigenous land rights,” 645. brophy, “the case for reparations,” 168. ray & perry, “why we need reparations,” 4. 22 21 24 19a central form of reparatory justice which i believe is consistently overlooked is that of cultural heritage, supported as lixinski communicates such objects and histories have “essential symbolic importance… (in) cultural revival and importance”. this is especially significant where indigenous people are consistently victim to cultural loss and erasure with the “traditional narrative of extinction” constantly pushed by modern capitalistic powers. this is a consideration evident in point four of caricom’s plan about ‘cultural institutions’ which states european museums and research centres have access to “facilities to reinforce the consciousness of citizens in history as rulers and change agents” that caribbean educators don’t. on the subject of the reparations for cultural heritage, this is directly observable through museum institutions which actively house artefacts stolen from the colonial period. for example, in 2019, together with the national reparations commission, jamaica’s culture minister olivia grange requested artefacts made by the indigenous taino people “including a 500-year-old carved wooden figure of a rain god” to be returned by the british museum. essentially, for reparations discourses to become more effective in their contents and implementation, the redefinition of terms which centralise the human needs to take place in their evolution. in order to make this realistic, this involves european acknowledgement of its colonial history involving reparatory justice beyond distancing itself from the past. this is purported through strecker’s recommendations for these international authorities to actively fulfil their “political and moral obligation” to improve accessibility to physical means of heritage in their position as ex-oppressor with current dominating power. also, reparations discourse involves affirmative action as much as it does historic acknowledgement in order to be fully effective. this is evident via ray & perry’s executive summary published by a non-profit policy research organisation on ‘why we need reparations for black americans’ citing “the harriet tubman community investment act” as a good template for reparatory considerations to be structured in its address of “education, homeownership, and business ownership barriers” in practice. my exploration of reparations and its surrounding discourse proves how it is a consideration which is undeniably historically entrenched and requires far more attention than has been given in the international arena. i observe that the general rejection of claims for reparatory justices made by caribbean nations to european western powers is evidence for how their current global dominance is based in those previous colonial 23 20 21 22 23 24 25 27 28 (january 20, 2022 / 08:53:06) 122815-1b_caribbeanquilt_vol6_rev.pdf .60 61 hilary beckles. britain's black debt: reparations for caribbean slavery and native genocide (kingston: university of west indies press, 2013), 23. 28 conceptualisations of control and trade they so wish to remove themselves from, with the reality being that so many modern establishments and infrastructures preserve the very frameworks that reparations seek to acknowledge. to conclude this research paper, i quote one of hilary beckles’ final remarks on the topic: “the darkness of slavery will hover overhead until the illumination of reparative discourse takes effect and allows justice to be achieved”. 28 (january 20, 2022 / 08:53:06) 122815-1b_caribbeanquilt_vol6_rev.pdf .61 62 anti-slavery. “tony blair apologies for britain’s role in the slave trade.” accessed july 14, 2021. https://www.antislavery.org/tony-blair-apologies-britains-role slave-trade-2/. baksi, caroline. “the story of the zong slave ship: a mass murder masquerading as an insurance claim.” the guardian, january 19, 2021. https://www.theguardian.com/law/2021/jan/19/the-story-of-the-zong-slave-ship-a -mass-masquerading-as-an-insurance-claim. beckles, hilary. britain's black debt: reparations for caribbean slavery and native genocide. kingston: university of west indies press, 2013. brophy, alfred l.. “the case for reparations for slavery in the caribbean.” slavery & abolition 35, no. 1 (2014): 165-169. doi: 10.1080/0144039x.2013.847222. brown, mark. “jamaica seeks return of artefacts from british museum.” the guardian, august 7, 2019. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/aug/07/minister-seeks return-of-priceless-artefacts-from-british-museum. caricom. “caricom ten point plan for reparatory justice.” accessed march 30, 2021. https://caricom.org/caricom-ten-point-plan-for-reparatory-justice/. cowen, deborah. “following the infrastructures of empire: notes on cities, settler colonialism, and method.” urban geography 41, no. 4 (2020): 469-486. doi: 10.1080/02723638.2019.1677990. knight, andy & beckles, hilary. “the case for reparations.” bocas lit fest video, 8:20. october 12, 2020. https://uwitv.org/intv/the-case-for-reparations-conversation-with -prof-sir-hilary-beckles. marx, karl. a contribution to the critique of political economy. translated by s.w. ryazanskaya. moscow: progress publishers, 1859. olusoga, david.“the treasury’s tweet shows slavery is still misunderstood.” the guardian, february 12, 2018. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/ feb/12/treasury-tweet-slavery-compensate-slave-owners. ransom, roger. “the economics of the civil war.” accessed april 2, 2021. http://eh.net/encyclopedia/the-economics-of-the-civil-war/. ray, rashawn & perry, andre m. “why we need reparations for black americans.” policy 2020 brookings. accessed march 29, 2021. https://www.brookings.edu/policy2020/bigideas/why-we-need-reparations-for black-americans/. robinson, randall. the debt, what america owes to blacks. new york: plume books, 2000. strecker, amy. “indigenous land rights and caribbean reparations discourse.” leiden journal of international law 30, no. 3 (2017): 629-646. university college london (ucl). “legacies of british slave-ownership.” university college london department of history. accessed april 3, 2021. works cited (january 20, 2022 / 08:53:06) 122815-1b_caribbeanquilt_vol6_rev.pdf .62 19 dependency, white privilege, and transnational hegemonic reconfiguration: investigating systems of power and identity privilege in the bahamas david allens white cultural hegemony has been used as a determinant of identity privilege in the bahamas since the beginning of british colonialism. this ideal justifies and confers the dominance of whiteness while also including a moral responsibility to enforce the racial hierarchy as a part of a "global cognitive dysfunction" (mills 18) that sees non-white actors as intrinsically lesser; an understanding charles mills argues is needed to uphold a racialized social contract. this “grammar of racial difference” inculcates the need for whiteness to act as savior through the subjugation and cultural integration of the “other” (mahmud). however, beyond its role as a dysfunction, this conception of a moral obligation—or colloquially, a ‘white savior complex’—guides understandings of why colonial leaders forged hegemonic relationships with the u.s. despite the country’s apparent intent to achieve independence. these relationships were a strategic part of a colonial-savior complex and adherence to a global system that values 'whiteness.' as the bahamas neared independence in 1973, the actions of its white-majority internal self-governance began reconfiguring the existing colonial regime of identity privilege. competing in a racially-constructed global capitalist environment requires forging strategic economic ties and trade agreements with world superpowers such as the united states’ while adhering to international regulations. inadvertently, imperialist and hegemonic relationships are created. this essay discusses how racial capitalism and mills’ global system of white supremacy is demonstrated through economic reliance on the u.s. and global systems, and how mills’ conception explains the construction of identity privilege based on global imperialism in the context of american hegemonic influence. this essay will track the construction of identity privilege for the normative westerner (including north american) in the bahamas that is developed from normative whiteness and the factors that facilitate the continuation of the current state. historical construction of white identity privilege in the bahamas as an archipelago 50 miles off the coast of south florida, historical connections through geographical proximity are frequent. these connections include rum-running, bootlegging, and the later tourism boom of the 1920s, as well as a short-lived occupation by u.s. marines seeking supplies during the american war of independence. however, these connections often come as a double-edged sword. for example, the tourism boom in the 1920s saw the development of the industry and boosts to the economy but worsened the racial situation and hardened the existing color line with importations of jim crow understandings to the bahamas in creating environments both comfortable and socially familiar for white tourists (saunders). caribbean quilt ǀ 2020 20 the united states has always been an important trade partner for imports, even before independence, due to the country's distance from britain. the bahamas currently imports nearly all its food and manufactured goods from the united states (u.s. department of state, n.d.). as a result, the idea of a normative american and westerner has been attached to that of prosperity. the application of independence was intended to provide freedom from colonialism. however, one might contend that it has not proved as advantageous as hoped due to the western hegemonic forces inculcated in bahamian society. forces like racialized post-colonial u.s. cultural imperialism and multi-national imposition were introduced and facilitated by geographical proximity, by socio-economic elites welcoming racialized western forces as a trade-off for solidifying and maintaining power, and by political influence of global hegemonic forces over the nation’s elite. reconfiguration through liberalism and transnational supports multiple historical processes have constituted, transformed, and perpetuated regimes of privilege in the bahamas. the racial contract requires its signatories to subscribe to misunderstandings about the world under the assurance that these conceptions will be validated by a universal “white epistemic authority”. according to mills (19), unlike an ideal social contract, these prescribed misunderstandings (or “localized and global cognitive dysfunctions”) require their own prescribed “schedule of structural blindness and opacities” to maintain white supremacist order. one such misconception is derived from colonial ontology, which perpetuates the view that ideas, thoughts, and behaviors must be imported from the more civilized and advanced “mother” country. while this explains what occurs in a strictly colonial environment, this complex idea transforms into a post-colonial presentation that maintains a global system of white supremacy and liberty as its legitimizing ideology. for mahmud (1999), in a colonial environment, europe forms the consolidation of history, and the other is then forced always to compare itself to those standards. perhaps then, in a post-colonial, imperialist environment, this understanding is expanded from europe to the west. the colonial argument is that history, as it occurs in europe, is what will eventually occur outside of it (mahmud). if this is expanded from europe to the west, then pressures from first-world countries and multi-national agencies occur under this racialized idea of fixing the “other.” essentially, the “west” expects its liberal values and way of life to spread to the rest of the world because of its intrinsic superiority. moreover, liberalism itself contends that further development requires open multinational connections. to achieve this development, the global system of white supremacy and racial capitalism is enforced either through complacency or imposition. according to the inter-american development bank (idb) wages and productivity survey, tourism and tourism-related activity account for 60% of the bahamas’ gdp, directly or indirectly employing about 50% of the workforce, while financial services account for 15% of the gdp. using the example of these core bahamian industries (banking and tourism), it is interesting to consider the competing axes of the complicit position of local elites (in the case of racialized u.s. cultural hegemony as a facet of global imperialism) and the more overt regulatory-sanction methods (used by multi-national organizations in banking and related economic fields) that allowed the construction or reconfiguration of identity privilege. david allens supremacy and reconfiguration of identity privilege 21 these axes are both essential factors in perpetuating white supremacy; however, it is often a challenging distinction to make. for example, in the case of racialized u.s. cultural imperialism, it has been an implicit and gradual process, not one as a result of any definite u.s. imposition. comparatively, multi-national regulation upholding tenents of racial capitalism is overt and sanctions resulting from a breach of them is swift and severe. u.s. cultural imperialism the interrelationship between the bahamas and america’s political, economic, and social practices, and their geographies is a complex one. u.s. tourists constitute the majority of visitors to the country, at 6.6million a y (the nassau guardian). they also account for large amounts of foreign direct investment (fdi). moreover, due to the bahamas' dependence on tourism and trade (mainly from the united states), the economy is often affected by u.s. economic performance. one key example of american fdi demonstrates the transition from the british colonial regime of white supremacy to a regime of u.s. hegemony rooted in white supremacy but not enforced through direct rule. in 1955, the colonial, white bahamian government signed the hawksbill creek agreement, which granted sweeping tax exemptions to american lumber financier wallace groves and his newly created grand bahama port authority limited. it also provided exemption from regulatory control and a crown grant of 51,000 acres to administer a port area for 99 years (encylopaediabritannica, n.d.). over time, amendments have revised the prerogatives; however, the agreement has mostly remained the same. this arrangement served as a pivot point for the reconstruction of identity privilege, as the creation of a “free port” was meant to whet the bahamas’ appetite for more american industrial and tourism investment, which would feed a normative definition of whiteness. today, those with fdi can apply for permanent residency when they invest in a residence valued at $750,000, and for accelerated consideration for a residence valued at $1,500,000 or more (daminos realty). similarly, the 1963 transfer of authority from the colonial government to the u.s. through a joint agreement to facilitate the opening of the united states’ atlantic undersea test and evaluation center (autec) marks a shift in political influence. the agreement allowed the u.s. government to establish a naval base on the eastern coast of andros island with easy access to the “tongue of the ocean” for testing. u.s. hegemonic force would continue to assert its political influence. in response to charges that it was not actively working to reduce drug trafficking, the bahamian government allowed u.s. customs service to operate the first tethered aerostat radar system out of high rock, grand bahama, in 1984. pressure from international regulations and agencies in addition to accounting for between 15-20% gross domestic product (gdp), the bahamian financial services industry forms the backbone of the middle class, with its human capital being predominately bahamian (the bahamas investor) as a result, governance bodies hold much influence over the bahamas. the leverage held by standards agencies and international organizations can be gleaned from a statement in s&p's global rating of the bahamas threatening severe penalties. the american-based credit rating said that it “could lower [its] rating… over this period,” in the caribbean quilt ǀ 2020 22 event that the government did not institute measures to improve public finances as quickly as expected. additionally, it warned that a “lack of confidence” over increasing debt costs would result in a downgrade. conversely, the document explained that a reduction to the increase in government debt “beyond [their] expectations” could lead to an upgrade (s&p global ratings). lending agencies like the international monetary fund (imf) and the inter-american development bank (idb); organizations like the financial action task force (fatf), the organization for economic co-operation and development (uecd); and frameworks like the u.s. foreign accounting tax and compliance act (fatca) and common reporting standard (crs) force countries and industries to change processes quickly and according to their varying desires. pressure from these global organizations results in the enforcement of racial capitalism and a global white supremacist regime. while, for melamed, contemporary liberal and multicultural terms place a value on forms of humanity to align with “state-capital orders,” (77) perhaps in a global conception, they align with supranational-capital orders. in line with these orders, multi-national organizations may be seen as coercing developing countries into loan capacities while forcing additional restrictions when arbitrary debt-service ratios are not met. these international organizations may then maintain leverage over 'non-nations' through their control of intermediary banking systems (including american banks like jp morgan chase), which patrol access to international markets and regularly threaten with blacklisting. this may be seen as the remnants of the bases of the “modern grammar of racial difference” (mahmud). while an argument may be made for the technical competencies of these organizations, they may be perceived as an actualization of a european understanding of a duty to govern those below them in the racial hierarchy with the goal of seeing them achieve reason, the rule of law, and an ideal level of “prosperity”—what fanon might argue to be demonstrative of a european authority complex. conclusion it may be argued that the identity privilege outlined, which posits an ideal of “western-ness” (i.e., enforced international alignment and perceived coerced cultural imperialism) at its apex, represents reliance on phenotypical and normative definitions of “whiteness”' while these processes are generally controlled by those who are phenotypically white, one might suggest that their normative 'whiteness' is the source of privilege. the hegemonic relationships resulting from either imposition or complacency form a normative definition of whiteness and identity privilege in a bahamian context that aligns with an image of expatriates, foreign investment, and conspicuous consumption. much like import rates, examples of how this identity privilege has been entrenched is demonstrated through how market forces react to primarily american, western programming. with privatized t.v. provider services, subscriptions to television streams are based on public desire. it is interesting then to note that options for station subscriptions remain largely along normative american categories (cable bahamas). the cultural hegemony of the united states as an industrialized giant merely filled the void that british rule left behind. mannoni might argue that this is representative of “a need for dependency.” however, a more critical analysis might also contend that any need for david allens supremacy and reconfiguration of identity privilege 23 dependency is a learnt one as a result of colonization. fanon posits that it is “the racist who creates his inferior.” with this in mind, we could consider mannoni's “dependency complex” as one that exists only as a result of the sense of inferiority created by the racist and privileged. as a result, a learnt dependency on colonial leadership is replaced by racialized u.s. cultural imperialism and enforced global imperialism via multi-national organizations. this paper suggests that despite independence, the bahamas remains subjected to the dependent role under a system of white privilege resulting from colonial agreements made with the united states, multi-national agencies, and regulatory bodies that enforce a hegemonic reconstruction of influence. caribbean quilt ǀ 2020 24 works cited cable bahamas. “channel lineup.” rev, https://www.cablebahamas.com/revtv/comparechannels/. accessed 14 oct. 2019. daminos realty. “acquiring bahamian permanent residency by investment.” bahamas real estate blog, 22 may 2018, https://www.sirbahamas.com/bahamasrealestateblog/acquiring-bahamian-permanentresidency-by-investment/. encylopaediabritannica. “freeport | the bahamas |.” britannica.com, https://www.britannica.com/place/freeport-the-bahamas#ref266376. accessed 14 oct. 2019. fanon, frantz. black skin, white masks. grove press, 2008. mahmud, taayab. “colonialism and modern constructions of race: a preliminary inquiry.” university of miami law review, vol. 53, july 1999, https://getit.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/oneclick?ctx_ver=z39.882004&ctx_enc=info%3aofi%2fenc%3autf8&rfr_id=info%3asid%2fsummon.serialssolutions.com&rft_val_fmt=info%3aofi%2ff mt%3akev%3amtx%3ajournal&rft.genre=article&rft.atitle=colonialism+and+modern+ constructions+of+race%3a+a+preliminary+inquiry&rft.jtitle=university+of+miami+la w+review&rft.au=mahmud%2c+tayyab&rft.date=1999-0701&rft.pub=university+of+miami&rft.issn=00419818&rft.volume=53&rft.issue=4&rft.spage=1219&rft.externaldbid=bshee&rft.exter naldocid=a58919158. melamed, jodi. “racial capitalism.” critical ethnic studies, vol. 1, no. 1, 2015, pp. 76–85. jstor, doi:10.5749/jcritethnstud.1.1.0076. mills, charles w. racial contract. cornell university press, 1999. proquest ebook central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/utoronto/detail.action?docid=3138625. saunders, gail. race and class in the colonial bahamas, 1880-1960. university press of florida, 2016. s&p global ratings. ratingsdirect: the commonwealth of the bahamas. 18 dec. 2018, p. 9. the bahamas investor. roadmap for financial services. 2017, http://www.thebahamasinvestor.com/2017/roadmap-for-financial-services/. the nassau guardian. “historic tourist arrivals in 2018.” the nassau guardian, 21 mar. 2019, https://thenassauguardian.com/2019/03/21/historic-tourist-arrivals-in-2018/. u.s. department of state. “u.s. relations with the bahamas.” united states department of state, https://www.state.gov/u-s-relations-with-the-bahamas/. accessed 14 oct. 2019. malek abdel-shehid from trinidad and tobago to the world 7 from trinidad and tobago to the world: determining the role of calypso in a new era malek abdel-shehid calypso is a popular caribbean musical genre that originated in the island nation of trinidad and tobago. the genre was developed primarily by enslaved west africans brought to the region via the transatlantic slave trade during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. although westafrican kaiso music was a major influence, the genre has also been shaped by other african genres, and by indian, british, french, and spanish musical cultures. emerging in the early twentieth century, calypso became a tool of resistance by afro-caribbean working-class trinbagonians. calypso flourished in trinidad due to a combination of factors—namely, the migration of afro-caribbean people from across the region in search of upward social mobility. these people sought to expose the injustices perpetrated by a foreign european and a domestic elite against labourers in industries such as petroleum extraction. the genre is heavily anticolonial, anti-imperial, and anti-elitist, and it advocated for regional integration. although this did not occur immediately, calypsonians sought to establish unity across the region regardless of race, nationality, and class through their songwriting and performing. today, calypso remains a unifying force and an important part of caribbean culture. considering calypso's history and purpose, as well as its ever-changing creators and audiences, this essay will demonstrate that the goal of regional integration is not possible without cultural sovereignty. to begin, calypso seeks to shed light on major social, economic, and political issues affecting people across the region, providing them with an alternative to narratives produced by the state and the elite. in the early twentieth century, the colony of trinidad and tobago was one of many british colonies in the caribbean, collectively forming the british west indies. because of the colony’s proximity to oil fields, trinidad became one of the british empire’s oil hubs from 1909 until independence was achieved in 1962 (holton 193). while indian indentured workers were relegated to sugarcane plantations, africans made up the majority of the labour force in the oil industry. it is in this context that calypso emerged as a means for disenfranchised afro-caribbean labourers to protest the oppression they endured in the industry. the lyrics frequently make reference to segregation, racism, and exploitative working conditions. while the political calypsonians of the caribbean were critical of the foreign elite for exploiting local labour and natural resources; they were equally critical of local elite who pursued self-interest over collective progress. clear commonalities between calypsonians included critiquing the elite and arguing for regional integration. politicians across the region believed that independence for their individual islands would better satisfy people’s needs while meeting their own interests. regional integration across the british west indies, albeit short-lived as the west indies federation (19581962), or wif, showed caribbean people that unity was possible. an early example of both was atilla’s “expedite federation” (1933), which makes a clear case for regional integration: “united we stand, divided we fall / we must succeed, yes, one and all” (rohlehr 266). however, once federation was achieved, the union was plagued by many issues such as finding a site for the capital city or local political unease regarding benefits for each colony. lord laro’s caribbean quilt ǀ 2020 8 “referendum” (1961/1962) exemplifies jamaican perception of the project, “if jamaica join the federation, / all the small islanders will come and flock up the land,” which led to the island’s referendum and decision to exit the union (rohlehr 277). all member states were required to surrender some of their formal sovereignty in order to gain effective sovereignty. for various reasons, state leaders eventually rejected such a comprise; consequently, they achieved independence in name, but lacked control over economic decision-making. since then, persistent issues have plagued the region, but solutions thus far have not been substantial enough to truly benefit local people. the exclusion of local working-class people from positions of power by the elite, whether foreign or domestic, has contributed to stagnation. david rudder’s “one caribbean” (1994) imagines a reformed region, one in which caribbean nations have set aside their differences in favour of establishing unity: “one caribbean, one caribbean / one love, one heart, one soul / reaching for a common goal” (rohlehr 304). despite a lack of meaningful action, calypsonians remain hopeful that change is near. calypso's transition to including people of all backgrounds from across the caribbean has helped the genre to become a regional genre. as was previously mentioned, it was originally developed by working-class afro-trinidadians. indo-trinidadians were accepted within the genre in the 1970s (holton 195). indian migrants began arriving in the area as indentured labourers around the time of the abolition of slavery; large-scale immigration persisted until the late nineteenth century (heuman 357). indo-trinidadian were classified above afro-trinidadians in the colony’s racial hierarchy, leading to conflict between the two groups. lamming cites a calypso written sometime between 1946 and the early 1960s that exemplifies indo-trinidadian exclusion at the time: “what’s wrong with these indian people / as though their intention is for trouble” (40). in the mid-twentieth century, the afro-trinidadian elite had nearly gained control of the government. they believed that they had minimal shared attributes with indotrinidadians. sir lancelot pinard, an indo-trinidadian calypso artist active from the 1930s to the 1960s who helped popularize the genre around the world, was an unlikely icon (funk 271). early in his career as an american entertainer, his lyrics were not especially political. later on, with the advent of mccarthyism, his left-leaning political affiliations resulted in his being banned from the us (funk 282). both in trinidad and tobago and across the rest of the caribbean, it took time for other groups to be welcomed in the genre. over the course of the twentieth century, the genre expanded beyond the borders of trinidad and tobago, eventually reaching communities throughout the region. like reggae, the popularization of calypso across the caribbean has helped to further regional unity. the prevalence of calypsonians originating from other islands, but who settled in trinidad, is an important part of this history. trinidad’s rise in status through profits from the petroleum industry encouraged people from across the region to migrate in hopes of realizing upward social mobility. a rather shameful case of trinidadian xenophobia was when grenadian migrants to trinidad faced police brutality in the 1950s (rohlehr 289). foreign artists were drawn to the island because many of the most prominent calypso tents were located in trinidad. some notable non-trinidadian calypsonians include louise bennett of jamaica and brother valentino of grenada. malek abdel-shehid from trinidad and tobago to the world 9 although there have been several prominent female calypsonians, the genre has traditionally been dominated by men. black stalin’s “caribbean unity” (1979) urges the caribbean man to strive “for a better life in the region / for we woman / for we children / dat must be the ambition of the caribbean man / de caribbean man, de caribbean man;” it mentions caribbean women and children, but not independent of a patriarchal figure (rohlehr 291). black stalin’s paternalism demonstrates an erasure of women’s agency in the collective struggle of working-class caribbean people against an exploitative elite. rohlehr’s article, which has substantiated much of my research, includes only one major female calypsonian: louise bennett. despite historical exclusions and present-day inclusivity, calypsonians sought to eliminate oppression, gain cultural sovereignty, and strive for regional integration. finally, calypsonian engagement with the caribbean diaspora offers a new field of possibilities in terms of starting an intergenerational conversation between artists and audiences of different eras. using calypso to continue discussions of regional integration and cultural sovereignty is a necessary conversation. in terms of the caribbean diaspora, its population relative to the population of the region makes it one of the most notable groups of its kind in the world (patterson 500). caribbean migration out of the region has resulted in the creation of large overseas communities in cities around the atlantic such as london, toronto, and new york city (504). in the present-day, it is not longer possible to discuss caribbean culture without mentioning the role played by diasporic communities. consider the famous trinidadian singer machel montano, whose music is more generally classified as soca rather than calypso. whether his audience is 25,000 attendees of trinidadian carnival or madison square gardens, montano’s reach is transnational (spotify). although his soca hit “famalay,” featuring bunji garlin and skinny fabulous, is heavily rooted in party culture, lyrics such as “we doh see skin / we doh see colour / we see strength / we see power” demonstrate his belief that judging people based on their bodily features is unproductive (genius). this song features two trinidadian artists and one vincentian artist. perhaps a seemingly apolitical decision, this collaboration demonstrates mutual admiration and reminds caribbean people that their differences are not significant. in the region where race and capitalism as we know them were arguably created, works such as this are not without value. colonial power structures are present in all aspects of society; their universal deconstruction is paramount. furthermore, like many of the calypsonians who came before him, montano believes that caribbean people should put their differences aside and strive for unity. he had the opportunity to work with one of the most famous calypsonians, trinidadian singer calypso rose. in the calypso-soca genre-crossing track “leave me alone remix,” featuring montano and manu chao, the lyrics “if yuh 15 or 25 / if yuh 50 or 75 / once yuh breathing and you alive / so we whining all day!” are rooted in party culture; nevertheless, they unify the fanbases of the “traditional” calypso rose and the “modern” machel montano (metrolyrics). the lyrics seek to involve people from all age brackets in the festivities. applying the teachings of the lyrics to wider society demonstrates the need for caribbean youth to be involved in our rapidly changing world. despite the multitude of changes since the early twentieth century, there are many caribbean quilt ǀ 2020 10 persisting issues such as corrupt elites, lack of educational and employment opportunities, lack of unity in the region, and a continued reliance on colonial institutions. as older generations have done before them, the youth needs to proactively mobilize against the present-day status quo. historical exploitation of the region’s people and its resources ensures that this will not be a simple task. however, putting differences aside and working together will ultimately benefit the region as a whole. the rise and development of calypso has greatly contributed to the ongoing conversations of caribbean regional integration and cultural sovereignty. the world, and the caribbean more specifically, has undergone dramatic changes since the dawn of the twentieth century. many of the issues plaguing the region have not changed much since then. the caribbean environment and climate change are topics that have not historically received much attention from calypsonians. over the past few decades, it has become evident that climate change poses one of the greatest threats to humanity and our current way of life. while the caribbean has been on the receiving end of many harmful policies and frameworks such as structural adjustment programs (saps) and neoliberalism, the region is highly susceptible to changing weather patterns (girvan 35). in recent years, the caribbean has faced the onslaught of numerous devastating natural disasters, most notably tropical storms. this is particularly noticeable in two of the region’s largest industries: tourism and agriculture (edmonds). girvan’s assessment that “sids will cease to exist,” referring to small islands and low-lying coastal developing states, is increasingly resembling reality (23); the example of dominica quickly comes to mind as the island was forced to totally evacuate during september 2017 (elie). in the face of such an issue, calypsonians would argue for regional cooperation and unity. while the region may have endured these past few decades without meaningful regional solidarity, climate change is a relatively new issue for modern society. this global phenomenon has alarmed people irrespective of social group. the caribbean and its people are highly susceptible to rising sea levels and changing weather patterns. without the ability to control their politics and economies, caribbean people and the islands themselves may not survive the coming storm. malek abdel-shehid from trinidad and tobago to the world 11 works cited “calypso rose leave me alone lyrics.” 2019. metrolyrics. cbs interactive inc. 2019. http://www.metrolyrics.com/leave-me-alone-lyrics-calypso-rose.html. edmonds, kevin. 2017. “after the hurricanes.” nacla report on the americas, september 15. https://nacla.org/news/2017/09/15/after-hurricanes. elie, janise. 2017. “'it feels like dominica is finished': life amid the ruins left by hurricane maria | janise elie.” the guardian. guardian news & media limited. november 1, 2017. https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2017/nov/01/it-feels-likedominica-is-finished-life-amid-the-ruins-left-by-hurricane-maria. funk, ray. 2013. “sir lancelot: taking calypso from carnival to nightclubs, hollywood, and the world.” in carnival: theory and practice, edited by c. innes, a. rutherford, & b. bogar., 271-286. trenton: africa world press. girvan, norman. 2011. existential threats in the caribbean: democratising politics, regionalising governance, clr james memorial lecture, valsayn, trinidad and tobago, may 12. heuman, gad. 2011. “peasants, immigrants, and workers: the british and french caribbean after emancipation.” in the caribbean: a history of the region and its peoples, edited by s. palmié & f. a. scarano, 347-360. chicago: the university of chicago press. holton, graham e. l. 2012. “oil, race, and calypso in trinidad and tobago, 1909-1990.” in latin american popular culture since independence, edited by w. h. beezley & l. a. curcio-nagy, 193-204. plymouth: rowman & littlefield publishers, inc. lamming, george. 1995. “coming, coming, coming home.” in coming, coming, coming home: conversations ii, 29-50. st. martin, house of nehesi publishers. “machel montano (ft. bunji garlin & skinny fabulous) – famalay.” 2019. genius. genius media group inc. january 4, 2019. https://genius.com/machel-montano-famalay-lyrics. “machel montano.” n.d. spotify. spotify ab. accessed april 12, 2019. https://open.spotify.com/artist/6wxp7sszfvi21cnl8jicdq/about. patterson, o. 2000. “a reflections on the caribbean diaspora and its policy implications.” in contending with destiny: the caribbean in the 21st century, edited by kenneth hall and dennis benn, 500-510, kingston, jamaica: ian randle publishers. rohlehr, gordon. 2004. “the dream and reality of caribbean unity in poetry and song.” in a scuffling of islands: essays on calypso, 265-305. san juan: lexicon trinidad ltd. http://www.metrolyrics.com/leave-me-alone-lyrics-calypso-rose.html https://nacla.org/news/2017/09/15/after-hurricanes https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2017/nov/01/it-feels-like-dominica-is-finished-life-amid-the-ruins-left-by-hurricane-maria https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2017/nov/01/it-feels-like-dominica-is-finished-life-amid-the-ruins-left-by-hurricane-maria https://genius.com/machel-montano-famalay-lyrics https://open.spotify.com/artist/6wxp7sszfvi21cnl8jicdq/about investigating discourses of indigeneity and taino survival in jamaica shenhat haile 2t1 university of toronto fas history, political science & african studies in jamaica, the longstanding notion of indigenous extinction through colonial violence and subsequent intermixing with enslaved africans has led to widespread debate on the island regarding the legitimacy of taíno survival. colonial narratives attesting to the absolute decimation of original inhabitants throughout the caribbean region have arguably created stagnant understandings of indigeneity in jamaica into the 21st century. this paper seeks to investigate complex conceptualizations of indigeneity on the island and explore the ways in which the myth of extinction has persisted into the post-colonial period, along with the challenges related to the reconstruction of taíno histories in jamaica. a b s t r a c t keywords: indigeneity, jamaican history, taíno revival, maroons, caribbean indigeneity b i o shenhat has a ba from the university of toronto with a double major in history and political science and a minor in african studies. her academic interests include history and politics of the horn of african, anti-/alternative development theory, and intellectual histories of caribbean decolonization and transnational black radical feminism. © 2021 shenhat haile caribbean studies students’ union, canada https://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/cquilt/ this work is licensed under the creative commons attributionsharealike 4.0 international license. to view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ taino village tapestry by jamaican artist merck bowden (2009) 26 (january 20, 2022 / 08:53:05) 122815-1b_caribbeanquilt_vol6_rev.pdf .26 27 jada benn torres, and harcourt fuller, “investigating the ‘taíno’ ancestry of the jamaican maroons: a new genetic (dna), historical and multidisciplinary analysis and case study of the accompong town marroons.” canadian journal of latin american and caribbean studies 43, no.1 (2018): 48. erica neegangagwedgin. “rooted in the land: taíno identity, oral history and stories of reclamation in contemporary contexts.” alternative: an international journal of indigenous peoples 11, no. 4 (2015): 377. jorge duany. “making indians out of blacks: the revitalization of taíno identity in contemporary puerto rico,” in gabriel haslip-vera, taíno revival: critical perspective on puerto rican identity and cultural politics (2008): 57. 1 2 3 1 2 this paper seeks to investigate ongoing discourses of indigenous survival in jamaica and efforts to contest enduring myths of taíno extinction on the island. colonial narratives attesting to the absolute decimation of original inhabitants throughout the caribbean region have arguably created stagnant understandings of indigeneity in jamaica into the 21st century. as a result, entrenched misconceptions about the disappearance of jamaica’s native taíno population have continuously been reproduced in academic literature. despite current efforts to revive indigenous histories, many factors contribute to the challenges faced by scholars and community leaders in reconstructing taíno histories on the island. i will first briefly explore the ways in which the myth of extinction has persisted into the post-colonial period through exclusionary knowledge production rooted in colonial accounts. ongoing interdisciplinary work has emerged in recent years to halt reproductions of this narrative, thus allowing national discourses on taíno survival to shift accordingly and suggest a hopeful future for indigenous cultural revival in jamaica. complex conceptualizations of indigeneity vary across the caribbean region. in jamaica, the longstanding notion of indigenous disappearance through colonial violence and subsequent intermixing with enslaved africans has led to widespread debate on the island regarding the legitimacy of taíno survival. in order to identify the challenges that exist for communities to assert their indigenous ancestry in jamaica, there must first be an understanding of the ways in which formal institutions continue to uphold historical myths of an alleged extinction. modern-day jamaica is a nation predominantly composed of an african-descendant population. nevertheless, depictions of the indigenous taíno on the jamaican coat of arms (1962) gives recognition to the varying cultures that have once populated the land. unlike the complex public discourses of cultural (january 20, 2022 / 08:53:05) 122815-1b_caribbeanquilt_vol6_rev.pdf .27 28 nationalism and politicized taíno revitalization in nearby puerto rico, the taíno of jamaica have been historically regarded as simply a relic of the past, nonexistent in contemporary jamaica. in scholarly publications as recent as 2018, the notion of taíno extinction endures as a supposed historical truth. taíno disappearance has been concretized throughout decades of academic literature and has only more recently been approached as a matter of debate. discussions surrounding indigenous survival have largely centred around varying historical accounts on the origins of maroon communities and their intermingling with native taínos. as a result, it is important to consider the ways in which maroon communities have come to stand in for the perished indigenous population and how theories of intermixing have denied the possibility of prolonged survival. in escaping enslavement and forming new communities in the jamaican hinterlands, the existence and survival of maroon societies are recognized as one of the most notable early instances of successful resistance to colonial rule in the caribbean. the myth of extinction can be traced back to 1520, where spanish documentation estimates the swift and total decimation of indigenous populations resulting from violent enslavement, disease, and genocide. elimination of the native population ultimately deemed the land terra nullius – unoccupied and subject to justifiable land expropriation from colonial powers. this effectively allowed for a separation of taíno and african histories on the island, in which it is argued that slaves assumed the labour needs of the spanish left vacant by indigenous erasure. therefore, many scholars of maroon communities have left little room for the possibility of taíno survival based on these colonial historical accounts. barbara kopytoff’s (1976) analysis on maroon ethnicities claims that various elements of different west african cultures may have come together to create unique maroon societies. she argues the likelihood that indigenous inhabitants survived in small numbers on the interiors of the island, yet their entire “contribution to the maroon stock was doubtless very small, and their cultural contribution appears at present to have been negligible.” while other caribbean historians such as sylvia wynter suggest that a process of acculturation may have taken place, in which remnants of indigenous groups and maroons “mingled in a common resistance,” on the island’s peripheries, she ultimately credits maroons with “humanizing” the land left by taíno disappearance. gaama gloria simms. “maroon indigenous women circle, jamaica: historical recurrences from indigenous women's perspectives.” journal of international women’s studies 19, no. 2 (2018). kathleen wilson. "the performance of freedom: maroons and the colonial order in eighteenth-century jamaica and the atlantic sound." the william and mary quarterly, third series, 66, no. 1 (2009): 61. torres and fuller, “investigating the ‘taíno’ ancestry of the jamaican maroons.” atkinson, lesley-gail, ed. the earliest inhabitants: the dynamics of the jamaica taíno. jamaica: university of the west indies press (2006): 164. kopytoff, 46. ibid., 38. sylvia wynter. “jonkonnu in jamaica.” jamaica journal4, no. 2 (1970): 36. 6 8 9 3 4 5 4 5 6 7 10 7 8 9 10 (january 20, 2022 / 08:53:05) 122815-1b_caribbeanquilt_vol6_rev.pdf .28 29 in its place, wynter offers an argument she believes to be more fitting for the process in which africans come to claim a connection to this land – that is, a process of “indigenization.” from this framework, it is evident how maroon communities begin to be characterized as the sole resistors to colonial violence on the island. the british invasion of jamaica in 1655 thus “solidified the maroon reality as the indigenous people” according to wynter. unlike their taíno counterparts, maroon survival complicates national conceptualizations of indigeneity in jamaica. in a 2018 article published for the journal of international women’s studies, simms refers to the maroons, rastafari, and revivalist as the three indigenous groups of jamaica, in which the maroon are the “godmother of all indigenous cultures in jamaica.” these historical narratives – while on the surface, appear to reconsider the myth of extinction at the onset of european contact – merely reproduce accounts of indigenous non-existence by maintaining their minimal and insignificant association with early maroon societies. i will later explore the efforts that have been made to counter colonial narratives that disentangle taíno and maroon histories of collaboration and survival. the presumed fact of indigenous disappearance is also further embedded in academic literature regarding historical processes of cross-cultural contact in jamaica. complex discourses of creolization have offered frameworks in which the internal diversity of caribbean nations can be examined. while the term “creole” carries shifting definitions across time and space, carolyn allens (1998) investigates how imported populations in the new world, sharing common experiences of colonialism, fragmentation, and domination, engaged in finding new ways of belonging through the invention and adaptation of cultures. she describes creolization as “a common pattern”, holding distinct connotations and applications depending on the region. the 19th century use of the term was often employed to denote one’s racial status and relationship with the land as native or foreigner. despite the intricacies of this discourse in academia, many scholars base their analysis of jamaican creolization in the myth of indigenous disappearance and the cultivation of new “native” cultural practices and languages. in james a. delle’s (2000) analysis of nineteenth century creolization in jamaica, he simplifies creolization as a “theoretical concept used to explain processes by which european and african populations adjusted or adapted to conditions in the new world.” . ibid. wynter, 36. simms, 245. carolyn allens. “creole then and now: the problem of definition.” caribbean quartery44, no.1/2 (1998): 36. ibid., 44. ibid., 36. ibid., 37. james a. delle."the material and cognitive dimensions of creolization in nineteenth-century jamaica." historical archaeology 34, no. 3 (2000): 56. . 11 13 14 15 12 11 12 13 16 17 14 15 16 17 18 18 (january 20, 2022 / 08:53:05) 122815-1b_caribbeanquilt_vol6_rev.pdf .29 30 additionally, he maintains it can be defined as a “cognitive process of defining a distinctly jamaican social identity on the parts of both european and african peoples. in a similar way, sylvia wynter identifies creolization as a phenomenon in which african cultures operate as the “crucible of the cultural deposits of the immigrant peoples, transforming borrowed elements of culture into something indigenously caribbean.” the basis in which understandings of creolization (a processes that is generally accepted to accurately describe the ongoing experiences of african, european, and asian populations in the caribbean) ultimately reproduce narratives of the impossibility of indigenous survival and their subjugation to histories solely of conquest and genocide. in delle’s analysis, he emphasizes creolization as “a special form of ethnogenesis in plantation contexts.” shona jackson (2012) highlights how “labor plays a role in becoming creole,” in which post-columbian populations (in the jamaican case, black and afro-creole populations) are brought into academic discourse and given legitimacy as founding members of the modern nation state to which they are able to yield state power, arguably at the expensive of indigenous peoples. i nvestigations into the processes of creolization in jamaica have largely focused on the cultural contacts between postcolombian populations, especially african and european, while failing to consider the role of indigenous taíno cultures within these paradigms. moreover, these discourses surrounding maroon ethnogenesis and the exclusionary nature of creolization studies have arguably aided in the ongoing denial of taíno existence in contemporary jamaica. despite the role of scholarship in entrenching these myths, examining the ways in which recent discourses have challenged these enduring colonial narratives may give greater insight into the seemingly hopeful future for taíno cultural revival on the island. the effort to disrupt the widely accepted notion of indigenous extinction in jamaica has been interdisciplinary. in the academic sphere, this work has been undertaken by historians, archaeologists, and geneticists seeking to develop a more informed understanding on the enduring legacies of pre-colombian peoples and cultures in jamaica. for instance, lesley-gail atikinson’s 2006 editorial compilation of archaeological study into the earliest inhabitants of the island aims to challenge misconceptions about the jamaican taínos resulting from insufficient field research. specifically, she cites a number of factors inhibiting academic inquiry into historical taino sites and inadequate efforts at conserving existing ones as a major contributing factor preventing histories of indigenous survival in jamaica from being recognized. ibid wynter, 38. delle, 56. jackson, shona n. creole indigeneity: between myth and nation in the caribbean. university of minnesota press (2012): 47. ibid. atkinson, 7. ibid. . 20 22 23 24 21 25 19 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 (january 20, 2022 / 08:53:05) 122815-1b_caribbeanquilt_vol6_rev.pdf .30 31 in a chapter of the text investigating taíno ceramics from post-contact jamaica, the author contests the myth of taíno disappearance with a careful examination of archival documents in which census records report “indian” populations alongside enslaved africans in sevilla la nueva in 1533. while colonial narratives assert indigenous extinction by as early as 1520, these records suggest that spanish authorities were considering possible ways to re-settle the remaining taíno natives elsewhere on the island. further archaeological evidence suggests small taíno populations present at the site during this period. shifting disciplines, advancements in the field of genetic testing have also played a significant role in confronting the notion of indigenous extinction. valid criticisms exist regarding the use of mtdna (mitochondrial dna) as an analytical tool for uncovering the histories of genetically diverse populations, and the adverse political implications of reviving or reconstructing these histories cannot be understated. nevertheless, a study published in 2018 by fuller and torres investigates the extent to which jamaica maroons can trace their ancestry to indigenous tainos. more specifically, the study builds on the growing debates amongst scholars regarding the intermixing of these two populations, seeking to validate these claims through genetic testing. self-identifying jamaican taínos such as dr erica neeganagwedgin have been publicly ridiculed and mocked for their efforts to reclaim a lost heritage. genetic inquiry into maroon populations therefore seeks to address the “longstanding antagonisms between oral history, colonial writings and contemporary scientific evidence.” the study’s findings confirm the presence of taíno dna lineages in today’s accompong town maroons, therefore supporting the theory of communal relationships that existed between indigenous and african populations during the colonial period. the researchers maintain, “dna is simply a testament to genetic exchange between african and non-african peoples.” however, as these new studies emerge, it is critical to ensure genetic findings to do not inspire a regression into essentialist discourses of taíno existence in jamaica. as dr. neeganagwedgin herself states, reviving the colonial pseudoscience of blood quantum is not the objective . rather, there must be an understanding that after five centuries of extinction myths and ethnic intermixing, taíno people and cultures do not exist in their “authentic” and undisturbed precolombian forms. the ongoing endeavor, therefore, is not to disentangle indigenous histories from those of the maroons in order to identify modern-day indications of cultural ibid., 164. atkinson, 164. as explored in gabriel haslip-viera, “the politics of taíno revivalism: the insignificance of amerinidan mtdna in the population of puerto ricans. a comment on recent research,” centro: journal of the center for puerto rican studies, vol. 18 no. 1 (2006). torres and fuller, 70. ibid., 49. ibid., 50. ibid. ibid., 67. neeganagwedgin, 383 32 33 34 31 29 28 26 30 26 27 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 (january 20, 2022 / 08:53:05) 122815-1b_caribbeanquilt_vol6_rev.pdf .31 32 survival, but rather to continue challenging and disputing historical materials that have written jamaica taíno’s out of existence entirely. the remainder of this paper will explore the ways in which shifting paradigms on indigenous extinction have come to be recognized on the national level and what challenges persist in reconstructing taíno histories. in examining these conflicting discourses, it appears that recent work undertaken by scholars to revisit widely understood notions of taíno disappearance is occurring alongside national initiatives to reclaim indigenous heritage in jamaica. for instance, in 2006, the jamaican national heritage trust marked may 5th as “taíno day,” aimed at raising public recognition and appreciation for the island’s original inhabitants. the day is commemorated with exhibitions of historical artifacts and public lectures at the institute of jamaica. while this celebration may ultimately reflect the jamaican state’s enduring recognition of taíno heritage simply as a relic of the pre-colonial past, this national commemoration arguably marks a turning point for state actors to begin engaging in taíno revival initiatives. this is further exemplified in the 2019 enstooling of a taíno chief in jamaica after over five hundred years. “jamaica celebrates taíno day.” the gleaner, may 5, 2011. http://jamaica-gleaner.com/gleaner/20110505/newss5.html. ibid. williams, paul h. “jamaica gets first taíno chief in over 500 years.” the gleaner, june 19, 2019. http://jamaica-gleaner.com/article/news/20190619/jamaica-gets-first-taino-chief-over-500-years . 35 37 35 36 36 37 according to the gleaner, robert pairman, an advocate for the preservation of taíno heritage in jamaica, was named the cacique of a local taíno tribe in which recovered symbolic gifts from the institute of jamaica were offered in celebration. the article detailing the event also cites newfound dna testing as a significant source of validation for taíno communities who have affirmed their indigenous ancestry despite centuries of denial. there have also been recent efforts by the national commission on reparations calling for the british to return stolen taíno cultural artifacts to jamaica. additionally, the 8th annual international maroon council held by the charles town maroon council in 2016 emphasizes the need to recognize centuries of indigenous survival in the caribbean as an organizational goal. the event pamphlet stresses the importance of learning jamaican taíno histories and perspectives in order reimagine “how we jamaicans see ourselves and claim identity.” despite these historic advances, there remains substantial factors hindering research into taíno histories that could arguably further progress ongoing revival efforts. atkinson cites a lack of resources for investigation and long-term research as a major challenge faced by archaeologists in jamaica. 38 39 40 41 “jamaica celebrates taíno day.” the gleaner, may 5, 2011. http://jamaica-gleaner.com/gleaner/20110505/newss5.html. ibid. williams, paul h. “jamaica gets first taíno chief in over 500 years.” the gleaner, june 19, 2019. http://jamaica-gleaner.com/article/news/20190619/jamaica-gets-first-taino-chief-over-500-years. a taiío chief lewis, emma. “as jamaica seeks the return of taíno artefacts from britain, relics at home may not be safe · global voices.” global voices, september 2, 2019. charles town maroon council. “peace & dignity journey 2016.” 8th annual maroon conference:towards a borderless indigenous community, (2016): 11. atkinson, 7. 41 35 38 37 40 36 39 (january 20, 2022 / 08:53:05) 122815-1b_caribbeanquilt_vol6_rev.pdf .32 33 more significantly, however, remains the challenge of preserving indigenous artifacts and historical sites. real estate and infrastructural development threaten the remnants of taíno civilizations left below the ground. the mistreatment of these materials by institutional bodies and the neglect of calls for controlled development make uncovering lost histories all the more difficult. through an examination of the literature on this matter, it appears that historical efforts to erase taino existence from postconquest jamaica have come under serious scrutiny in recent years. i have argued that discourses of creolization and notions of the “indigenization” of african maroons do not provide constructive frameworks for which surviving jamaican taíno communities can investigate and validate claims to indigenous ancestry. while there persist individual attitudes that the possibility of indigenous survival is simply based in “sentimental declarations” and false claims to an extinct heritage, certain actors in jamaica are shifting towards an understanding of the need for taíno cultural revival and formalized recognition of their survival. this calls upon the question of power; who is responsible for the resurgence of taíno histories in jamaica? in recent years there have been efforts to challenge colonial myths undertaken by scholars and taíno activists, however, what does actual revival and recognition look like in the jamaican context? questions may arise in the near future regarding the role of the state in determining the validity of taíno self-identification, and so the challenge of ensuring state actors do not resort to the use of colonial-era racialized ascriptions of “legitimate” indigenous heritage is critical. taíno community leaders must arguably be at the forefront of conversations on formal recognition under the state. enduring colonial narratives must continue to be challenged and criticized in jamaican national discourse in order to advance projects of indigenous revival. ibid., 8. thwaites, daniel. “wackos are not extinct.” the gleaner, july 27, 2014. 42 42 43 (january 20, 2022 / 08:53:05) 122815-1b_caribbeanquilt_vol6_rev.pdf .33 34 allen, carolyn. "creole then and now: the problem of definition." caribbean quarterly 44, no. 1/2 (1998): 33-49. atkinson, lesley-gail, ed. the earliest inhabitants: the dynamics of the jamaican taíno. jamaica: university of the west indies press, 2006. benn torres, jada and harcourt fuller, “investigating the ‘taíno’ ancestry of the jamaican maroons: a new genetic (dna), historical and multidisciplinary analysis and case study of the accompong town marroons.” canadian journal of latin american and caribbean studies 43, no.1 (2018): 47-78. charles town maroon council. “peace & dignity journey 2016.” 8th annual maroon conference: towards a borderless indigenous community, 2016. delle, james a. "the material and cognitive dimensions of creolization in nineteenth-century jamaica." historical archaeology 34, no. 3 (2000): 56-72. duany, jorge. “making indians out of blacks: the revitalization of taíno identity in contemporary puerto rico,” in gabriel haslip-vera, taíno revival: critical perspective on puerto rican identity and cultural politics (2008): 261-280 jackson, shona n. creole indigeneity: between myth and nation in the caribbean. university of minnesota press, 2012. “jamaica celebrates taíno day.” the gleaner, may 5, 2011. http://jamaicagleaner.com/gleaner/20110505/news/news5.html. kopytoff, barbara. “the development of jamaican maroon ethnicity.” caribbean quarterly 22, no. 2/3 (1976): 33-50. lewis, emma. “as jamaica seeks the return of taíno artefacts from britain, relics at home may not be safe · global voices.” global voices, september 2, 2019. neegangagwedgin, erica. “rooted in the land: taíno identity, oral history and stories of reclamation in contemporary contexts.” alternative: an international journal of indigenous peoples 11, no. 4 (2015): 376-388 simms, gaama gloria. “maroon indigenous women circle, jamaica: historical recurrences from indigenous women's perspectives.” journal of international women’s studies 19, no. 2 (2018): 244-247. thwaites, daniel. “wackos are not extinct.” the gleaner, july 27, 2014. http://jamaica-gleaner.com/gleaner/20140727/cleisure/cleisure4.html. williams, paul h. “jamaica gets first taíno chief in over 500 years.” the gleaner, june 19, 2019. http://jamaica-gleaner.com/article/news/20190619/jamaica gets-first-taino-chief-over-500-years. wilson, kathleen. "the performance of freedom: maroons and the colonial order in eighteenth-century jamaica and the atlantic sound." the william and mary quarterly, third series, 66, no. 1 (2009): 45-86. wynter, sylvia. “jonkonnu in jamaica.” jamaica journal 4, no. 2 (1970) works cited (january 20, 2022 / 08:53:05) 122815-1b_caribbeanquilt_vol6_rev.pdf .34 35 wynter, sylvia. “jonkonnu in jamaica.” jamaica journal 4, no. 2 (1970) (january 20, 2022 / 08:53:05) 122815-1b_caribbeanquilt_vol6_rev.pdf .35 recreating collective memories of africa in the afro-caribbean diaspora: ‘spiritual resistance’ in cuban santería and haitian vodou stephane martin demers 2t1 york university osgoode hall law school forced to succumb to a life of enslavement, african-turned-afro-caribbean slaves developed a collective image of their beloved homeland and forged an unbreakable chain of solidarity among their many ethnicities. the collective recreation of africa as manifest in the imagination of afro-caribbean slaves through the practice of cuban santería and haitian vodou in sixteenthto eighteenth-century cuba and haiti catalyzed their resistance to european subjugation. in particular, these recreated cultural memories served as a foundation for the enslaved to subvert the dominant culture and resist enslavement. syncretism fails to properly acknowledge the afro-caribbean slaves’ efforts in challenging the imperial regime and the role these efforts played in maintaining their african roots. the tumultuous yet hopeful history through which cuban santería and haitian vodou evolved reveals that the african spirit continuously takes on new forms but never dies. a b s t r a c t keywords: africa, caribbean, afro-caribbean slaves, santería, vodou, enslavement, syncretism b i o stephane recently graduated from the university of toronto with a bachelor of music and a minor in history. stephane is currently pursuing his juris doctor at osgoode hall law school at york university where he intends to combine his interests in music and law to create a more equitable and just law school environment and legal profession. © 2021 stephane martin demers caribbean studies students’ union, canada https://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/cquilt/ this work is licensed under the creative commons attributionsharealike 4.0 international license. to view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ 90 (january 20, 2022 / 08:53:08) 122815-1b_caribbeanquilt_vol6_rev.pdf .90 91 bettina e. schmidt, “the creation of afro-caribbean religions and their incorporation of christian elements: a critique against syncretism,” transformation 23, no. 4 (october 2006): 237, https://doi.org/10.1177/026537880602300407. lizabeth paravisini-gebert and margarite fernandez olmos, creole religions of the caribbean: an introduction from vodou and santería to obeah and espiritismo (new york: new york university press, 2011), proquest ebook central, 39. patricia gonzález gómes-cásseres, “afro-cuban religions: spiritual marronage and resistance,” social and economic studies 67, no. 1 (03, 2018): 118, h schmidt, “a critique against syncretism,” 237. paravisini-gebert and olmos, creole religions of the caribbean, 41. paravisini-gebert and olmos, 36. paravisini-gebert and olmos, 125. maya deren, divine horsemen: the living gods of haiti (london: thames and hudson, 1953), 62, quoted in paravisini-gebert and olmos, 121. . 1 3 africans en route to the americas during the middle passage lost much of their cultural heritage. the doggedness of european colonial officials in their erasure of lasting cultural memories was largely responsible for the irreversible loss of components of african religions and music. forced to succumb to a life of enslavement, african-turned-afro-caribbean slaves developed a collective image of their beloved homeland and forged an unbreakable chain of solidarity among their many ethnicities. cuban santería and haitian vodou ,both afro-caribbean religions originating in modern-day nigeria , are important manifestations of this newfound solidarity. this research argues that during the sixteenth to eighteenth century, africans in cuba and haiti facilitated the collective recreation of african-ness by practicing cuban santería and haitian vodou. this allowed afro-caribbean slaves to successfully resist european attempts to suppress their religious and musical practices. through this ‘spiritual marronage,’ – a term coined by gómes-cásseres – they were able to endure the intolerable brutality of slavery. afro-caribbean resistance against european repression though yoruba prisoners of war with a broad knowledge of religious practices were among the africans who traversed the middle passage during the eighteenth century, european colonial practices significantly reduced the amount of knowledge that they were able to retain and the number of individuals with this knowledge. in cuba, only twenty out of the hundreds of orishas (gods of santería) worshipped in africa survived to have any lasting impact on the religious practices of the afro-cubans. still, african slaves used the orishas that they did retain to suit their present needs. for example, they called on chango, the warrior orisha in santería, to withstand the inescapable oppression to which they were subjected. worshippers of haitian vodou also used their iwas (gods of vodou) to challenge colonial rule. they called on the petwo, a group of vengeful and violent creole iwas originating from kongo and angola, to counter their initial displacement and subsequent enslavement in haiti. although santería and vodou were formed under slavery and colonization, afro-caribbean slaves used the resistive capacities of their deities of a bygone africa to protest their state of destitution. 2 4 5 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 6 7 8 8 (january 20, 2022 / 08:53:09) 122815-1b_caribbeanquilt_vol6_rev.pdf .91 92 paravisini-gebert and olmos, creole religions of the caribbean, 36. gwendolyn midlo hall, social control in slave plantation societies: a comparison of st. domingue and cuba (baltimore: johns hopkins press, 1971), 79, hathitrust. hall, 40. hall, 41. . 9 11 restricted from openly worshipping their deities in sixteenth and seventeenth century cuba, afro-cuban slaves had to find other ways to oppose european domination. while afro-cuban cabildos often served this role, the spanish imperial regime would often use these separate societies that fostered african solidarity through public gatherings and religious processions to further restrict religious expression. their first method to achieve this goal was to stimulate interethnic conflict among the afro-cubans. specifically, they allowed only certain dances to be performed in a short window of time on specific days and prohibited the display of african iconography during parades. aware of this colonial scheme, the afro-cubans sustained ties to their african roots and asserted their communal solidarity. the king, queen, and captain, the three most important figures of the cabildos, rallied under an identifying flag while outfitted in royal and military attire – a bold statement in and of itself. even though each cabildo was associated with a catholic saint, the afro-cubans secretly worshipped their ancestral gods. thus, instead of further dividing the afro-cubans along ethnic lines, the cabildos allowed them to maintain a sense of religious and political autonomy through their collective memory of africa. in doing so, they effectively countered the prevailing social order narrowly focused on weeding out their cultural practices. unlike the restrictions put in place by spanish colonizers to restrict african religious expression in cuba, the laws designed to suppress vodou in seventeenth and eighteenth century haiti were unmistakably repressive. despite the law’s attempt to eliminate any trace of this ‘devilish’ religion, haitian slaves subverted the social order by taking up arms against whites, congregating in meetings, and escaping bondage. vodou equipped these slaves with the power to undertake these acts of defiance. if for any reason a slave attacked a white person, they would either be given the death penalty – either broken alive on the wheel, or flogged. undaunted by these punishments, in 1758, infamous haitian religious leader françois mackandal attracted a large group of maroons through the transgressive power of vodou to eliminate whites from the colony. these networks of followers across estates were instrumental in attempts to overthrow the colonial framework in haiti. though mackandal’s death at the hands of authorities later that year effectively suppressed the rebellion, he rallied enough slaves whose religious convictions were steeped in the power of vodou and african unity to attempt to supplant the social order. though short-lived, mackandal’s conspiracy inspired slaves to congregate and collectively rebel in spaces free of the watchful eyes of planters. in violation of 10 9 10 11 12 12 (january 20, 2022 / 08:53:09) 122815-1b_caribbeanquilt_vol6_rev.pdf .92 93 leslie gérald desmangles, the faces of the gods: vodou and roman catholicism in haiti (chapel hill, nc: the university of north carolina press, 1992), 26, hathitrust. desmangles, 27. paravisini-gebert and olmos, creole religions of the caribbean, 36. paravisini-gebert and olmos, 40. barbara bush, “african echoes, modern fusions: caribbean music, identity and resistance in theafrican diaspora,” music reference services quarterly 10, no. 1 (october 22, 2007): 19, doi:10.1300/j116v10n01_02. paravisini-gebert and olmos, creole religions of the caribbean, 35. reed, “shared possessions,” 7-8. anp (archives nationales de paris), file f52; file f3, 90: 110-21, quoted in desmangles, the faces of the gods, 23. roger bastide, african civilizations in the new world, trans. peter green (london: c. hurst and company, 1971), 156, quoted in paravisini-gebert and olmos, creole religions of the caribbean, 38. . 13 15 the police rulings of 1758 and 1777 which “…prohibited the slaves, under penalty of death, from meeting during the night or day,” they violently attacked planters and recklessly raided plantations during vodou meetings. this shared religious solidarity that fueled these insurrections gave rise to slave revolts that would emerge during the haitian revolution. during this time, religious conviction fuelled similar acts of resistance in cuba – though not leading to revolt as quickly. afro-cuban slaves similarly resisted slavery by absconding from their owners to congregate. it was in the palenques, fortified settlements on the periphery of society, to which afro-cuban slaves escaped slavery and continued to practice santería using a combination of percussion instruments and coded call-and-response vocals to communicate. in developing strong community networks rooted in a collective representation of africa, haitian and afro-cuban slaves resisted their conditions to protect their cultural practices from erasure. though haitian and afro-cuban slaves escaped to areas where they could safely practice their religions, they remained influenced by a colonial structure where roman catholicism was the only religion officially permitted. steeped in the belief that santería and vodou were against everything christianity stood for, european planters were determined to expunge the slaves’ ‘strange’ practices with “proper christian behavior.” the law both reflected and shaped this mode of thinking. under articles ii and vi of the code noir, every slave had to be baptized and instructed in the catholic, apostolic, and roman faiths. but the inability of planters and lawmakers to enter the spiritual realm of worshippers of santería and vodou meant that the latter could worship their african gods under the guise of catholic saints. roger bastide recounts how during a catholic ceremony, haitian slaves who appeared to be dancing before a catholic altar were most likely worshipping their african deities. under the threat of severe punishment, the slaves went to great lengths to safeguard their memory of africa, preserve their african religious traditions, and reclaim their humanity. 14 16 13 14 15 16 17 21 20 19 18 17 18 19 20 21 (january 20, 2022 / 08:53:09) 122815-1b_caribbeanquilt_vol6_rev.pdf .93 94 schmidt, “a critique against syncretism,” 237. paravisini-gebert and olmos, creole religions of the caribbean, 79. bush, “african echoes, modern fusions,” 21. fernando ortiz, la africania de la música folklórica de cuba (havana: ministerio de educación, dirección de cultura, 1950), quoted in bush, 19. schmidt, “a critique against syncretism,” 236. paravisini-gebert and olmos, creole religions of the caribbean, 33, 172. schmidt, “a critique against syncretism,” 239 katherine gerbner, “theorizing conversion: christianity, colonization, and consciousness in the early modern atlantic world,” history compass 13, no.3 (2015): 138, doi:10.1111/hic3.12227, quoted in gómes-cásseres, “afro-cuban religions,” 123. 22 24 through the prohibition of musical performance, specifically drumming, european slaveholders attempted to sever the afro-caribbean slaves’ connection with africa and its cultural practices. since the drums had the power to blur ethnic divisions among imported africans and in turn encourage them to embrace their common african identity, these restrictions were felt far and wide. slave revolts and successful attempts at marronage were opportune moments for the slaves to use the drums to resist colonial rule. furthermore, through their “…imitation of tone and sound of the lucumí language,” the drums reminded afro-cuban slaves of the strength they wielded over their white masters, which increased their willingness and ability to unseat their oppressors. even when the “rhythms of resistance” were prohibited, slaves used their bodies to call on the afro-cuban orishas and haitian iwas for assistance in surviving their seemingly inescapable condition. since the africans’ religions and music existed in a spiritual realm that was largely inaccessible to the europeans, their recreation of africa in their collective consciousness was never entirely severed. critiquing ‘syncretism’ as theoretical frame even though cultural encounters between afro-caribbean slaves and europeans were characterized by resistance and suppression, this process led to the merg -ing of old cultural traditions to forge new ones, a process frederick ortiz calls transculturation. “santería” for example literally means devotion of catholic saints, and each cuban orisha and haitian iwa is associated with a catholic saint. while apologists see this as evidence of the fact that cuban santería and haitian vodou are syncretic religions, the relationship between the vodou iwa dambala and the catholic saint patrick is one such example that illustrates why the label ‘syncretic’ is a mischaracterization. in 406 ad, st. patrick, a man of romano-british origin, was brought to ireland by irish pirates as a slave. he eventually escaped his condition and was reborn into an evangelizer. by linking st. patrick’s experience of slavery, hardship, and freedom with dambala’s, the master of waters in vodou, and their own experience of the same sort, haitian slaves destroyed the “…imperial dichotomy of…the colonizer and the colonized.” syncretism assumes that the dominant religion drives the ‘creolizing’ process of both religions forward. but the reverse is true. africans incorporated christian elements in their religions to continue to “see the world through the religious prism of their african ancestors.” thus, the only purpose christianity served was to further the slaves’ cause of liberation against the tyranny of oppression, thereby bringing them closer to their past life in africa. 23 25 26 29 28 27 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 (january 20, 2022 / 08:53:09) 122815-1b_caribbeanquilt_vol6_rev.pdf .94 95 paul gilroy, the black atlantic: modernity and double consciousness (cambridge: harvard university press, 1993), 189, quoted in schmidt, “a critique against syncretism,” 240. 30 conclusion afro-caribbean slaves developed cuban santería and haitian vodou based on a collective memory of africa that was “…frozen at the point where blacks boarded the ships that would carry them into the woes and horrors of the middle passage.” using this recreated memory of africa as a foundation, they subverted the dominant culture and resisted enslavement. they resisted their condition by adapting their gods to the circumstances of an unforgiving environment, preserving their cultural practices in the afro-cuban cabildos, inciting slave rebellions and pursuing marronage through religion and music, and discreetly worshipping their gods in place of catholic saints. syncretism fails to properly acknowledge the afro-caribbean slaves’ efforts in challenging the imperial regime and the role these efforts played in maintaining their african roots. the tumultuous yet hopeful history through which cuban santería and haitian vodou evolved reveals that the african spirit continuously takes on new forms but never dies. 30 (january 20, 2022 / 08:53:09) 122815-1b_caribbeanquilt_vol6_rev.pdf .95 96 bush, barbara. 2007. “african echoes, modern fusions: caribbean music, identity and resistance in the african diaspora.” music reference services quarterly 10, no. 1 (22 october): 17–35. doi:10.1300/j116v10n01_02. desmangles, leslie gérald. 1992. the faces of the gods: vodou and roman catholicism in haiti. chapel hill, nc: the university of north carolina press. hathitrust. gómes-cásseres, patricia gonzález. 2018. “afro-cuban religions: spiritual marronage and resistance.” social and economic studies 67, no. 1 (march): 117-136, 142-144. http://myaccess.library.utoronto.ca/login?qurl=https%3a%2f%2f www.proquest.com%2fscholarly-journals%2fafro-cuban-religions-spiritual marronage%2fdocview%2f2305086720%2fse-2%3faccountid%3d14771. hall, gwendolyn midlo. 1971. social control in slave plantation societies: a comparison of st. domingue and cuba. baltimore: johns hopkins press. hathitrust. paravisini-gebert, lizabeth, and olmos, margarite fernandez. 2011. creole religions of the caribbean: an introduction from vodou and santería to obeah and espiritismo. new york: new york university press. proquest ebook central. reed, teresa l. 2012. “shared possessions: black pentecostals, afro-caribbeans, and sacred music.” black music research journal 32, no. 1: 5-25. doi:10.5406/blacmusiresej.32.1.0005. schmidt, bettina e. 2006. “the creation of afro-caribbean religions and their incorporation of christian elements: a critique against syncretism.” transformation 23, no. 4 (october): 236–43. https://doi.org/10.1177/026537880602300407. works cited (january 20, 2022 / 08:53:09) 122815-1b_caribbeanquilt_vol6_rev.pdf .96 the university of toronto journal of caribbean studies caribbean quilt volume 6, issue 2 2021 caribbean quilt is an interdisciplinary journal focused on elucidating, challenging and redefining discussions about pertinent issues faced in the caribbean and its diaspora. this journal highlights the dynamic dialectical relations that exist between individuals, institutions, and regional hegemonic forces through various mediums of expression. we extend a special thanks to new college and the university of toronto caribbean studies program for their continued support of our efforts to advocate for the betterment of the caribbean and its diaspora, — an aim which is achieved through the publication of caribbean quilt and similar knowledge sharing initiatives. caribbean studies students’ union (carssu) #500c 40 willcocks st university of toronto new college student centre toronto, on canada m5s 1c6 carssu@utoronto.ca (january 20, 2022 / 09:38:39) 122864-1b_caribbeanquilt_vol7_rev.pdf .1 caribbean quilt is published annually by the university of toronto caribbean studies students’ union. its content is produced in line with the principles of open access research and in support of the greater global exchange of knowledge. as a result, caribbean quilt is freely available to the public via: https://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/cquilt. caribbean quilt is also listed on the directory of open access journals (doaj). for more information visit: https://doaj.org caribbean quilt has an exclusive license for the articles published herein, limited to first right of publication granted by the author(s) who hold copyright. articles herein are covered by applicable copyright law with authors retaining copyright of their manuscripts. this volume of caribbean quilt is published under a creative commons attribution-sharealike 4.0 international license. all articles published in this volume of caribbean quilt are archived via the pkp preservation network (pn). authors are not restricted from self-archiving in additional repositories or on personal websites. the editors of this journal strive to meet the high standards defined in the code of conduct and best practice guidelines for journal editors promoted by the committee on publication ethics (cope). issn 1925-5829 issn 1929-235x (online) front cover art by megan mungalsingh printed in canada by thistle printing © copyright 2021 contributors. all rights reserved by caribbean quilt of the caribbean studies students’ union. individual articles copyrighted by their individual authors. caribbean quilt nor its sponsors, including and not limited to the caribbean studies students’ union and the caribbean studies program at the university of toronto, are responsible for any views expressed in the included content. the journal, its editors and sponsors are indemnified against any loss, liability, damage, cost or expense of action arising from any breach, or alleged breach, of ownership representations espoused by its content creators, or any legal action arising from acceptance and publication of the author(s) work. for more information on caribbean quilt publication guidelines visit https://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/cquilt/about (january 20, 2022 / 09:38:39) 122864-1b_caribbeanquilt_vol7_rev.pdf .2 editor-in-chief david allens 2t1 university of toronto, oise https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9261-5568 assistant editor prilly bicknell-hersco 2t1 york university, faculty of education copy editor korede akinkunmi 2t1 lincoln alexander school of law , jd layout and design editor ejaaz ramdhanie university of the west indies, st. augustine advisory board dr. kevin edmonds (chair) caribbean studies program dr. néstor e. rodríguez caribbean studies program david allens (editor-in-chief) caribbean studies students' union jasmine mclaughlin-morgan caribbean studies students' union tyler lee shue caribbean studies students' union alex vesuna caribbean studies students' union adrianna williams caribbean studies students' union abigail ralph caribbean studies students' union avinash dindial caribbean studies students' union reading committee the caribbean quilt reading committee is composed of all current faculty/instructors of the university of toronto’s caribbean studies program. below are the faculty committee members for this issue period. dr. néstor e. rodríguez university of toronto, professor of spanish and director of caribbean studies program dr. alissa trotz university of toronto, professor of caribbean studies and director of woman and gender studies program dr. kevin edmonds university of toronto, professor of caribbean studies 3 (january 20, 2022 / 09:38:39) 122864-1b_caribbeanquilt_vol7_rev.pdf .3 80 who is claudia jones? julie-ann mccausland introduction claudia vera jones née cumberbatch, was a trinidad and tobago-born journalist and activist who, at eight years old, migrated to the united states from port of spain, trinidad, in the british west indies (boyce davies 159). jones’ mother and father had arrived in the united states two years earlier, in 1922, when their economic circumstances had worsened as a result of the drop in the cocoa trade, which had impoverished the west indies and the entire caribbean (boyce davies 159). like many black people who migrated from the west indies, jones’ parents hoped to find fortunes in the united states, where ‘‘gold was to be found on the streets’’ and the dreams of rearing one’s children in a ‘‘free america’’ were said to be realized (boyce davies 159). however, the lie of the american dream was soon revealed, as jones, her three sisters and her parents suffered exploitation and indignity at the hands of the white families and from the legacy of jim crow national policy (boyce davies 159). jones attended wadleigh high school where she was active in the junior national association for the advancement of colored people (naacp). two years before she graduated high school, jones’ mother died of spinal meningitis at the age of thirty-seven (boyce davies xxiv). later, jones was committed to sea view sanatorium for almost a year after having been diagnosed with tuberculosis (boyce davies xxiv). after graduating high school, jones gained employment in a laundry, a factory, a millinery and in sales (boyce davies xxiv). this is significant, because, presumably, her experience from working in these environments contributed to the development of her political thinking. as carol bryce notes, claudia jones was involved in the scottsboro boys’ organizing, and she wrote ‘‘claudia’s comments’’ for a black newspaper that she subsequently became the editor of (boyce davies xxiv). the scottsboro boys were nine african american teenagers who were falsely accused in alabama of raping two white women on a train in 1931. jones wrote on behalf of the scottsboro boys’ legal defense as a journalist for the young communist league journal, the “weekly review” (mcclendon). in 1936, jones joined the communist party and young communist league, where she was assigned to the youth movement wing. after several promotions, she eventually became the educational director of the young communist league, where she was tasked by party to work with working-class and black women for peace and equality. it was during this period that she filed preliminary papers for u.s. citizenship (boyce davies xxiv). in 1947, she was arrested for the first time and imprisoned on ellis island under the 1918 immigration act. this act stated that the united states would exclude and expel from the country, aliens who were members of the anarchistic and similar classes (boyce davies 2008, xxiv). jones was arrested under this act because she was not a citizen of the united states. she was later released on $1000 bail and threatened with deportation to her native country of trinidad if she did not modify her persistent stand against exploitation and the oppression of black women in the united states (boyce davies xxiv). in this period, she toured forty-three u.s. states, covering the west coast, reorganizing statelevel women’s commissions, recruiting new party members, and organizing mass rallies. after several arrests at the height of her struggle for the freedom of exploited black women, and during the mccarthy era, she was declared un-american in 1955 and deported to britain, as she was considered a subject of the british empire (boyce davies xxiv). julie-ann mccausland who is claudia jones? 81 in london, she was welcomed by friends and communist party members, including other communist deportees from the united states. soon she became affiliated with caribbean members of the communist party of great britain (cpgb) (boyce davies xxiv). she also joined the west indian forum and committee on racism and international affairs and worked in various organizations in london, including the caribbean labour congress (london branch) (boyce davies xxiv). she later founded the west indian gazette (later, west indian gazette and afroasian caribbean news) in london, was involved in the political organizing of caribbean, panafrican, and third-world communities in london and helped to organize the city’s first caribbean carnival at st. pancras hall. jones also worked with the african national congress to organize hunger strikes against apartheid. additionally, she organized boycotts of south africa for the freedom of political prisoners such as nelson mandela. she met martin luther king jr. in london when he was on his way to oslo to collect the nobel peace prize and gave a speech in japan as a delegate to the 10th world conference against hydrogen and atom bombs (boyce davies xxiv). essentially, claudia jones was an influential and popular public figure, an active journalist and public speaker, a close friend of many influential people, including w.e.b. du bois, and amy ashwood garvey, who was the female political and intellectual equivalent of c. l. r. james (boyce davies 2).1 during jones’ years in the united states and britain, she was vocal in her belief that peace could not be attained if women, especially poor women, were excluded from the conversation. she challenged the communist party to take a more serious interest in the cause of black women (boyce davies 40). she died in london, england at the age of 49(boyce davies 2008, xxiv). her funeral drew recognition from people and governments around the world. this recognition included diplomatic representations and media coverage (boyce davies 2008, xxiv). jones’ ashes were interred in a plot of land that is located left of the grave of karl marx in the highgate cemetery, london (boyce davies xxiv). with this background in mind, i focus my discussions in this paper on two themes: a) claudia jones’ contribution to expanding marxist thought to incorporate race and gender into its class analysis and b) the impact of her lived experiences in shaping the development of her political thinking. carol boyce davies’ biography of claudia jones is very strong in that it provides extensive details as to who claudia jones was and how instrumental her advocacy was for black women. however, a weakness i found in the biography is that boyce davies did not discuss why jones’ contributions remain largely underappreciated and why jones remains relatively unknown to many in the afro-caribbean culture. i will argue that claudia jones’ contributions are undervalued because she is constructed as lacking credibility by virtue of being a female. claudia jones was a valiant fighter against racism and imperialism who dedicated her life to the progress of socialism and the liberation of black people. how has the work of claudia jones contributed to expanding marxist thought to incorporate race and gender into its class analysis? jones was often considered more radical than marx because she did not believe that capitalism was the only factor contributing to sexism and racism (edmonds). for jones, gender was also a significant contributor to the oppression that black people, and specifically black women, face in the united states. marx provided a theory of society in which it would progress through a mode 1 conspicuously, like jones, amy ashwood garvey remains outside the pool of knowledge of caribbean intellectual history (boyce davies 20082). caribbean quilt ǀ 2020 82 of production and class conflicts between the proletariat, the workers and the bourgeoisie. however, he did not account for race and gender or for the position of black women in society. claudia jones advanced marx’s ideology by expanding it to consider the issues of colonialism, imperialism and an analysis of women in society (boyce davies 219). according to boyce davies, jones’s position is read by some as being informed largely by communist party literature, indoctrination and idealism; however, jones’ position was in part influenced by her vast knowledge of leninism (boyce davies 221). leninism is derived from the ideology of vladimir lenin, a russian revolutionary, politician and political theorist who had taken a position on what was then called ‘‘the woman question,’’ asserting that ‘‘we must create a powerful international women’s movement, on a clear theoretical basis’’ (boyce davies 3). building on lenin’s ideology, jones supported the creation of a subcommittee within the communist party to address the woman question (boyce davies 51). she did this by insisting on the development, in the party, of theoretical training for women comrades, the organization of women into mass organizations, daytime classes for women, and "babysitter" funds to allow women's activism. while boyce davies did not definitively define the notion of the ‘the woman question,’ i understand from her discussion that the concept refers to the status of women in society and our involvement in feminist movements for social change (boyce davies 2008). nevertheless, though jones was well read in leninism and recognized that lenin had advanced views on the colonial question, she was also cognizant that lenin spoke only of the enslavement of women within the social and economic structures that restrict them to domestic labour (boyce davies 3). lenin was therefore speaking of a particular type of woman: the white woman. jones recognized that this general position did not account for the specificities of any group of women, as it spoke of women generally and did not take into consideration that black women at that time were already located in a super-exploitative condition within the given productive labour sectors (boyce davies 3). this is the analytical space in which claudia jones began to contribute not only to expanding marxist thought, but also leninist thinking, while at the same time providing intellectual leadership from which scholars of black women’s social and political history and condition in various societies could learn and contribute to (boyce davies 3). claudia jones’ best contribution to black feminist thought entailed her theorizing of the super-exploitation of the black woman. the concept rests solidly on claudia’s observation that black women— ‘‘as workers, as negroes, as women’’—were ‘‘the most oppressed stratum of the whole population’’ (boyce davies 12). for jones, ‘‘capitalists exploit woman doubly, both as workers and women. woman has to face special oppression in every field in capitalist society— as a worker—a wife, a homebuilder and a citizen” (boyce davies 40). while most of her theory was put to paper in ‘‘an end to the neglect of the problems of negro women,’’ jones also wrote on the subject in her column on women’s issues for the daily worker, titled ‘‘half the world’’ (boyce davies 40). this was a column that made its position clear in its title: in representing women, we are, indeed, representing “half the world” (boyce davies 40). further, jones’ courtroom speech after her sentencing was explicit in making her philosophical and ideological positions clear publicly and officially (boyce davies 219). her speech was not a plea for leniency, but a demonstration that black women were also thinkers, held ideological positions, and could assert themselves; it was also a demonstration of her work in women’s activism and her involvement in a political struggle. she knew she was going to be sentenced but continued to let her voice be heard. she refused to back down from her advocacy (boyce davies 219). julie-ann mccausland who is claudia jones? 83 marx’s development of his theory on the mode of production and the working-class is useful for intellectuals who study political thought, but claudia jones was someone who worked outside of an academic context, and her entire production of ideas rivaled many of those produced in the universities at the same time (boyce davies 10). that is, claudia jones’ praxis was far more critical, especially for black people, as she combined theory and practice: she did transformative, “on the ground” work in addition to developing theory. her intellectual contribution is particularly important since many black communities did not have access to academic institutions before the civil rights era (boyce davies 10). jones shows, by her example, a way of maintaining her political positions and affiliations and of advancing others beyond marx’s theoretical positionings. she benefitted from lenin’s advances on the issue of imperialism and the national/colonial issue, as well as the woman question (boyce davies 67). while being an avowed marxist-leninist, she continued to assert the importance of black women as an analytical category, subject to society’s ‘‘super-exploitation,’’ but still active, with potential for leadership, and by her example, also thinkers. her ability to link race, gender, geography and labour in the context of the position of black women internationally, along with her internationalist, anti-imperialist approach, provided a more advanced reading than marx of both the conditions of and the possibilities for resistance by black women under imperialism (boyce davies 67). how did the lived experiences of claudia jones shape the development of her political thinking? according to boyce davies, claudia jones’ anti-imperialist feminist, socialism stems from her background: caribbean in geographic and cultural identification and anti-imperialist in orientation. she linked labour to black identity and women’s rights (boyce davies 67). additionally, claudia jones’ political thinking and activism were also shaped by her affinity to other black caribbean feminisms, for example, elma francois’ feminism. elma francois was a political activist from trinidad and tobago who, in february 1938, became the first woman in the history of trinidad and tobago to be tried for sedition (boyce davies 67). according to boyce davies, at the trial, “francois, unlike other defendants, undertook the greater part of her own defence herself” and her speech was very similar to jones’ speech before judge dimock, in that the speech revealed a series of internationalist/pan-africanist views similar to those that jones espoused (boyce davies 2008, 67). for example, when asked to define “world imperialism and colonialism,” francois “described the relationship between the ruling classes of the world and the exploited workers of the colonies” (boyce davies 67). claudia jones shared many similar positions on women’s activism and involvement in political struggle (boyce davies 67). for scholars in the caribbean, one of the distinctive features of caribbean feminism is its anti-imperialist, labour orientation, which sees women’s economic rights as central to any fulfillment of their human rights in general (boyce davies 67). hence, jones identifying with francois might have been central to the development of her thinking and understanding of caribbean feminism. another significant experience of claudia jones that shaped the development of her political thinking was her exile from the united states, which she details in the piece titled “ship’s log,” which she wrote for her father aboard the queen elizabeth ship (boyce davies 157). in this piece, jones refers to her condition as ‘‘my exile for my independent political ideas’’ and to the united states as the ‘‘land i belong to and know and its people with whom i have worked and struggled for social progress’’ (boyce davies 157). in the basic dictionary definition, an exile is one who is separated from his or her own country, often as a result of banishment (boyce davies 157). the caribbean quilt ǀ 2020 84 word “deportation” overlaps with “exile” in that it refers to “the lawful expulsion of an undesired alien or other person from a state or [incomplete quote]” (boyce davies 157). ultimately, jones turned the pain of being imprisoned and later exiled into a positive emotion, turning the “ship of exile” into a vehicle that would take her to “marvelous places” (boyce davies 157). in so doing, she transformed her punishment into an opportunity to carry her activism even further into the diaspora. why are her contributions underappreciated today? claudia jones’ contributions to our struggle and the struggles of all oppressed people is one of the most outstanding contributions of a black communist. while jones did not use the word “intersectionality” in her praxis, it is hard not to notice her ideas of equality and intersectionality as she linked race, gender, geography and labour in the context of the situation of black women internationally (boyce davies 67). jones remains largely unknown, unrecognized and underappreciated today, and she seems to have simply disappeared from major consideration in histories of black anti-imperialist work and black transnational feminism. in retrospect, i am reminded of the 19th century political locution, “ain’t i a woman” by sojourner truth, a formerly enslaved black woman who fundamentally challenged the dominant notions of “woman” and opened a discussion about the concept of intersectionality (brah and phoenix 46). like jones, sojourner truth did not coin or use the term intersectionality, but her discussions of what it means to be a woman under different circumstances has been the subject of many debates, especially as it relates to the concept of global sisterhood (brah and phoenix 46). essentially, like sojourner truth, jones’ intellectual contributions have been overlooked from black history. i have been thinking of jones through the concept of the “gender wars” because credibility is such a foundational power in those wars and because women are so often accused of being categorically lacking in this department (solnit 104). not uncommonly, when a black woman says something that impugns a white man or an institution, especially powerful ones, the response often questions not just the facts of her assertion but her capacity to speak and her right to do so (solnit 104). on this final note, jones’ stunning achievements in the era of men such as martin luther king jr., normal manley and cheddi jagan, to name a few, paled because she was a woman and one of caribbean origins; because of this, she continues to be dismissed, erased and silenced. we still exist in a white hegemonic world where caribbean women and, by extension, black women and girls are devalued. julie-ann mccausland who is claudia jones? 85 works cited brah, avtar & phoenix, ann. (2004/2013). supplement 4 – adapted from activist insight: sojouner truth (1797-1883). gender and women’s studies in canada: critical terrain. davies, carole boyce. (2008). left of karl marx: the political life of black communist claudia jones. duke university press. mcclendon iii, j. (2007). claudia jones (1915-1964). retrieved from https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/jones-claudia-1915-1964/ solnit, rebecca. (2014). "cassandra among the creeps." (from men explain things to me. chicago: haymarket books): harper's magazine; new york vol. 329, iss. 1973. 4-9. the influence of american hegemony on revolutionary thought kennedy-jude providence university of toronto fas biology and health and disease/ caribbean studies in may 2020, two months after the covid-19 pandemic struck the world, forcing humans stationary...at home...and unable to work and carry out routine, everyday activities, the brutal murder of george floyd was captured on camera and broadcast on social media. largely peaceful protests against police brutality and systemic racism erupted overnight, beginning in minneapolis, and rapidly growing all over the united states. the black lives matter (blm) movement’s quickfire blaze continued to spread from minneapolis all the way to the west indies within a week. the longstanding relationship between the united states and the caribbean region is evident, leading to the popularization of the regional idiom, “when the us sneezes, the caribbean catches a cold.” the impact of the blm movement on the caribbean is comparable to that of the civil rights and pan africanism movements of the latter half of the 20th century and reminds the world of the significance of regional revolutions such as the grenada revolution. one year into a crippling pandemic, the irony of this article will explore the aforementioned influences, comment on us intervention in grenada and contextualize the adage“when the us sneezes, the caribbean catches a cold.” a b s t r a c t b i o kennedy providence is a 4th year biology, and health and disease double major, also pursuing a minor in caribbean studies. having lived and grown up in the beautiful twin islands of trinidad and tobago, she studied the region’s history and culture all throughout her pre-tertiary academic career. © 2021 kennedy-jude providence caribbean studies students’ union, canada https://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/cquilt/ this work is licensed under the creative commons attributionsharealike 4.0 international license. to view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ social activist dawn de coteau and soca star hollice mapp aka "mr killa" 63 (january 20, 2022 / 08:53:06) 122815-1b_caribbeanquilt_vol6_rev.pdf .63 64 mendes-franco, janine. “‘born fi dead': the caribbean looks at the george floyd protests and sees itself.” global voices, 3 june 2020, globalvoices.org/2020/06/03/born-fi-dead-the-caribbean-looks-at-the-george-floyd protests-and-sees-itself/. . 1 the regional idiom, “when the us sneezes, the caribbean catches a cold” is profoundly multifaceted and compelling. the ‘cold’ can be interpreted in multiple ways, from the direct influence and impact on caribbean lifestyle, fashion trends, food, culture and music by american hegemony, to influences in historic movements and revolutions. the united states of america has an infamous reputation of intervention, interference and intrusion in the governance and politics of small island developing states (sids) and land territories within the caribbean basin often fundamentally changing the trajectory of the caribbean’s revolutionary history. in 2020, this influence was seen, yet again, as the black lives matter (blm) movement’s quickfire blaze spread from minneapolis on may 26, 2020 to the west indies within a week. largely peaceful protests against police brutality and systemic racism erupted in response to the deaths of ahmaud arbery, george floyd and breonna taylor and the preceding generations of genocide faced by too many black, indigenous and other persons of colour within uncle sam’s space. considering the aforementioned influences and us intervention in grenada this research seeks to consider some of the positive and negative externalities resulting from the region’s proximity to us influence to contextualize the adage: “when the us sneezes, the caribbean catches a cold.” the 2020 declaration of the covid-19 pandemic initiated a wave of global lockdowns and everyday life stopped. where physical or social distancing, quarantine, medical or fashion face masks, sanitizing formulae or frequent hand washing, structured coughing or sneezing and remote or virtual work and study became the new normal. globally accepted social practices like handshakes and hugs were replaced by routine temperature checks and mass testing. as a result, human populations were driven to exponentially increased digital screen time and overall mass media consumption: virtual meetings, classes and gatherings were introduced, obsessive monitoring of news broadcasts for pandemic updates became routine. with increased media consumption and time at home, when the recorded murders of ahmaud arbery and george floyd went viral on mainstream media, nations around the world sat up and paid attention. unlike other facets of society, the resulting protests benefited from “the covid-19 domino effect” and its influence on the media. with no pun intended, virtually overnight, everyone with access to cable television and the world wide web morphed into protestors, activists, bystanders or critics. caribbean commentary of the ‘rebellious and unruly’ and sometimes violent nature of some protests, sought to isolate us ‘sneezes’ as not concerning the caribbean, hinting that for the largely afro-caribbean population, racism and police brutality were not the norm. for the region 1 2 1 2 3 (january 20, 2022 / 08:53:07) 122815-1b_caribbeanquilt_vol6_rev.pdf .64 65 noel, melissa. “the fight against racial injustice is a caribbean fight too.” essence, 1e7 july 2020, www.essence.com/feature/united-states-caribbean-relations-solidarity-protests/. wong, melissa. grenadian activist: prejudices and racism exists in the caribbean too, 18 june 2020, www.loopnewscaribbean.com/content/grenadian-activist-prejudices-and-racism-exists-caribbean-too . 2 however, “these ideals of togetherness and sentiments of being “one people” that are widely celebrated throughout island nations often overshadow deep rooted issues, which stem from the eras of slavery and colonialism.” many caribbean territories, not excluding grenada, displayed an initial stance of solidarity with the blm movement, hosting island protests against systemic racism and police brutality. grenadian activist dawn de coteau told loop news caribbean at a june 2020 blm protest, “the caribbean must also face its own reality, as prejudices and racism exist in the caribbean islands... when you look at the black lives matter [movement in the region] it’s about the social injustices, the economic injustices, health, equality, employment and about people from white communities parachuting into islands and demanding privilege.” though the duration of the caribbean blm protests seemed to have been short-lived, and their overall impact incomparable to that of the us and larger countries, i believe that these demonstrations triggered in west indians the prominence of revolution in caribbean history. it reignited conversations about racism, colourism, discrimination and police brutality that have been left ignored since the independence and decolonization movements of the 1960s and 70s. de coteau’s remarks on the blm movement through a grenadian lens, mirrored analogous sentiments shared by the former prime minister maurice bishop, who also aimed to advance and liberate grenada during his dynamic 4-year stint in power. bishop, along with the new jewel movement and the grenadian public, had led a massive demonstration that resulted in the dismantling of preceding prime minister eric gairy’s government. achieving almost all of his goals, bishop and the grenada revolution finalized the island’s divorce from its european colonial forefathers by attempting a ‘popular socialist’ way of governance. consequently, this put grenada under a microscope operated by the united states which already had a special interest in the spice-isle due to pre-existing relationships cultivated by eric gairy. because of the ongoing cold war with the soviet union, anyone or any country that showed agreement or interest in anything marxist-leninist or socialist was swiftly blacklisted and kept under close watch by the usa de coteau’s remarks on the blm movement through a grenadian lens, mirrored analogous sentiments shared by the former prime minister maurice bishop, who also aimed to advance and liberate grenada during his dynamic 4-year stint in power. bishop, along with the new jewel movement and the grenadian public, had led a massive demonstration that resulted in the dismantling of preceding prime minister 2 3 3 (january 20, 2022 / 08:53:07) 122815-1b_caribbeanquilt_vol6_rev.pdf .65 66 mullin, corinna, and azadeh shahshahani. “to organize in times of crisis, we need to connect the dots of global resistance against imperialism.” uneven earth, 18 apr. 2020 lewis, hope. “globalization’s people: black identities in u.s.-caribbean encounters.” law & inequality 32, no. 2 (2014): 349–. . 4 eric gairy’s government. achieving almost all of his goals, bishop and the grenada revolution finalized the island’s divorce from its european colonial forefathers by attempting a ‘popular socialist’ way of governance. consequently, this put grenada under a microscope operated by the united states which already had a special interest in the spice-isle due to pre-existing relationships cultivated by eric gairy. because of the ongoing cold war with the soviet union, anyone or any country that showed agreement or interest in anything marxist-leninist or socialist was swiftly blacklisted and kept under close watch by the usa. thus, when socialist cuba assisted grenada in completing one of the major goals set out by bishop, the surveillance being conducted by the us rapidly developed into a full invasion of the island. under the pretence that grenada’s airport would be strategic for soviet missions – rather than tourism – and that another foothold in the region would be detrimental to the us, the 1983 invasion of grenada ultimately resulted in the assassination of maurice bishop and members of his cabinet. if the us invasion of grenada is examined in the context of the title of the article, the invasion almost exactly justifies the statement “when the us sneezes, the caribbean catches a cold”. what began as the us involvement in the cold war is equivalent to the “sneeze” and the neo-colonialist invasion grenada suffered can be be read as the “cold”. this tragic historic event is noteworthy as the us undermined a government with the help of spies and trampled upon past revolutionary successes by caribbean peoples, leaving grenada re-infected with another unforgettable imperialist “cold”. as mullin argues, the years following the 1983 invasion of grenada have witnessed a continuation, and in many ways, deepening, of both: the racism that underpins the violent dispossession to which marginalized communities at ‘home’ and ‘abroad’ are subjected, coupled with the discursive infrastructure of a capitalist dominated media and public sphere designed to obscure and normalize this dispossession as well as to delegitimize resistance. regardless of these negative influences, the region has experienced positive externalities resulting from its proximity to the us. the us heavily influenced the political and revolutionary climate of the region throughout the latter half of the 20th century, with the 1960’s civil rights movement, stonewall riots and women’s liberation movement all leading to ripple effects in caribbean politics. the african-american press played an important transnational role by reporting us. civil rights abuses to the world and by reporting african, and later, caribbean and latin american, independence and anti-colonialist struggles. 4 5 5 (january 20, 2022 / 08:53:07) 122815-1b_caribbeanquilt_vol6_rev.pdf .66 67 lambert,laurie. comrade sister: caribbean feminist revisions of the grenada revolution. university of virginia press, 2020, pp. 3–4. bishop, maurice. “revolution in grenada: an interview with maurice bishop.” the black scholar, vol. 11, no. 3, 1980, pp. 50–58. lambert,laurie. comrade sister: caribbean feminist revisions of the grenada revolution. university of virginia press, 2020, pp. 3–4 . 6 various west indian countries protested racism, colourism, the removal of an alien head of state, along with other remnants of colonialism that stained the region. unlike the blm movement, the grenada revolution, along with other movements endemic to the west indies, did not model their demonstrations after those of their northern neighbours, but took advantage of the influential political atmosphere and implemented many inimitable riots and revolutions. as it relates to revolution, what we see in the caribbean “is an original pattern, not european, not african, not a part of the american main, not native in any conceivable sense of that word, but west indian, sui generis, with no parallel anywhere else.” maurice bishop did not draw inspiration directly from the us civil rights movement and the pan-africanism movements; instead, he studied the leaders of these movements in depth, translated the issues being fought abroad to fit the caribbean to evoke change. for bishop, “there had not been any one single” point of influence. rather, he “concentrated at one time his attention on frantz fanon, and on malcolm x, fidel, and che, [as well as] nkrumah and […] many different socialist and progressive thinkers.” . as demonstrated in these examples of positive externalities, while united states “sneezes” may be the initial impetus for west indian movements, for a lasting impact, the leveraging of the caribbean “original pattern” is needed. it is imperative that any revolution be bespoken to the region, related and implemented to suit each individual country. while the 2020 blm movement achieved tremendous stimulation and awareness demanding justice for people of colour in the united states, its iterations in the region failed to successfully leverage caribbean issues of inequality and racial injustice. it is important to note however that the tragedies captured on camera that fuelled the blm movement are not foreign or far-fetched in the caribbean, and it is quite possible that after years of futile pleas for change falling on deaf ears, people have merely become desensitized to police brutality, violence, and racism. just like the united states, the caribbean “will only be able to truly realize the ideals of togetherness when conversations are had, and actions are taken to fully address racial inequities and discrimination” .perhaps there are still opportunities to embrace the political climate, revive our innate revolutionary spirit and lobby for level playing fields. it is yet to be seen when this revolutionary fight in the region may occur again. 6 7 8 8 7 (january 20, 2022 / 08:53:07) 122815-1b_caribbeanquilt_vol6_rev.pdf .67 68 wong, melissa. grenadian activist: prejudices and racism exists in the caribbean too, 18 june 2020, www.loopnewscaribbean.com/content/grenadian-activist prejudices-and-racism-exists-caribbean-too. noel, melissa. “the fight against racial injustice is a caribbean fight too.” essence, july 2020, www.essence.com/feature/united-states-caribbean-relations solidarity-protests/. mendes-franco, janine. “‘born fi dead': the caribbean looks at the george floyd protests and sees itself.” global voices, 3 june 2020, globalvoices.org/2020/06/03/born-fi-dead-the-caribbean-looks-at-the-george floyd-protests-and-sees-itself/. mullin, corinna, and azadeh shahshahani. “to organize in times of crisis, we need to connect the dots of global resistance against imperialism.” uneven earth, 18 apr. 2020. lewis, hope. “globalization’s people: black identities in u.s.-caribbean encounters.” law & inequality 32, no. 2 (2014): 349–. comrade sister: caribbean feminist revisions of the grenada revolution, by laurie r. lambert, university of virginia press, 2020, pp. 3–4. bishop, maurice. “revolution in grenada: an interview with maurice bishop.” the black scholar, vol. 11, no. 3, 1980, pp. 50–58. works cited (january 20, 2022 / 08:53:07) 122815-1b_caribbeanquilt_vol6_rev.pdf .68 indigeneity in the caribbean power & limits of language: linguistic reclamation as a driver of taíno identity in borikén lucia faria........................................................................................................................ integrity of authenticity and real presence in the couple in the cage: a guatinaui odyssey kiewan foxe...................................................................................................................... limits to recognition: the trinidadian state and its indigenous population adam rudder..................................................................................................................... decolonization and social change contemplating the afterlife of slavery: gynecological resistance, marronage, and revolution in late-eighteenth-century saint-domingue stephane martin demers.................................................................................................. internal and external factors to the success of the cuban revolution boyuan dong.................................................................................................................... envisioning the future using the dreams of the past: caribbean historiography and decolonizing development in the caribbean areli freeman................................................................................................................... thought leadership and women’s liberation politics: a book review of left of karl marx by carol boyce davies janae knott...................................................................................................................... democratic socialism a solution to colonial tourism structures kennedy-jude providence................................................................................................ manley and bishop: the tragedy of leftist reformism in the caribbean tristan scott...................................................................................................................... silencing the radical black feminst: a book review of left of karl marx by carol boyce davies alexander vesuna............................................................................................................. 11 18 22 32 39 49 60 66 73 82 (january 20, 2022 / 09:38:40) 122864-1b_caribbeanquilt_vol7_rev.pdf .8 the grenada revolution: investigating the ambitions and shortcomings of a radical caribbean political experiment shenhat haile................................................................................................................ culture and identity counternarratives of nationalist anti-black images: normalizing and extolling blackness in contemporary art of the hispanic caribbean liza girgis.................................................................................................................... bodegas, baseball & ballads: the democratization of puerto rican identity ruth masuka................................................................................................................. a revolutionary cuisine: food, liberation & cubanidad ruth masuka................................................................................................................. after peter doig’s “music of the future” joseph mulholland........................................................................................................ invisible ink abigail ralph................................................................................................................. politics, identity and jamaican music rachelle sanicharan..................................................................................................... our sponsors............................................................................................................... 92 101 118 122 128 130 132 140 (january 20, 2022 / 09:38:40) 122864-1b_caribbeanquilt_vol7_rev.pdf .9 as you read and reflect on the pieces presented in this volume, we ask that you remain mindful that indigenous peoples have lived in the caribbean since time immemorial. the word ‘caribbean’ itself derives from a european transliteration of the name of the indigenous peoples of the eastern caribbean. when europeans arrived in the caribbean in 1492, they found a diverse range of indigenous peoples already living there. the descendants of these pre-columbian people call the caribbean home to this day, whether they live in the region or in the diaspora. we also acknowledge the land on which the university of toronto operates. for thousands of years it has been the traditional land of the wendat, the seneca, and the mississaugas of the credit river. today, this meeting place is still the home to many indigenous people from across turtle island and we are grateful to have the opportunity to work on this land. below is a list of indigenous-led organizations or funds in toronto that we recommend to readers who wish to offer their time or funds to organizations that amplify the voices of indigenous people: • raven trust (https://raventrust.com) • 1492 land back lane legal fund (https://ca.gofundme.com/f/legal-fund-1492-land-back-lane) • native women’s association of canada (https://www.nwac.ca) • inuit tapiriit kanatami (https://www.itk.ca) • water first (https://waterfirst.ngo) • clan mother’s healing village (https://clanmothers.ca) • native child and family services of toronto (https://nativechild.org) • toronto indigenous harm reduction (https://www.torontoindigenoushr.com) • indian residential school survivors society (https://www.irsss.ca) • legacy of hope foundation (https://legacyofhope.ca) • indspire (https://indspire.ca) • reconciliation canada (https://reconciliationcanada.ca) land acknowledgement 4 (january 20, 2022 / 08:53:04) 122815-1b_caribbeanquilt_vol6_rev.pdf .4 caribbean quilt volume 6 (2021) and its issues ‘resiliency’ and ‘revolution’ represent a departure from the norm. it has been eight years since caribbean quilt published a double issue volume, which is a rarity in student-run journals. such a feat highlights the scope of scholarship produced in the field by the university of toronto core and extended community. reflecting on contemporary and historical challenges in the region, pieces featured in resiliency consider the ways in which the caribbean and its trailblazers have stood firm. it is often used to put the onus on the marginalized or disenfranchised to ‘be or become resilient. resiliency is what a region composed of the “modern world’s historically marginalized -indigenous peoples, enslaved peoples, and indentured labourers” has continued to achieve. revolution features work that considers some of the region's innovative solutions and their challenges when developing processes needed for the caribbean to thrive.our contributors approached these interrelated themes in dynamic ways and we hope this work inspires you through our collective efforts towards meaningful change in the caribbean. we selected these themes as an invitation to you, the reader, to see the historical and contemporary ways in which threads of resiliency and revolution permeate all aspects of daily life in the caribbean -l iterature, visual art, music, performance, community activism, and festivals. within letter from the editors each issue, the pieces have been organized into three thematic groups: indigeneity in the caribbean, decolonization and social change and culture and identity. contributions from recent graduates have a 2t1 designation. it is our hope that this volume serves as a reminder that the caribbean was a region forged in struggle, but gleans strength through its hybridity. as we continue in the tradition of critical thought and expression set out through this journal, we are all the more cognizant that this remains true for the region’s diaspora as well. producing caribbean quilt volume 6 would not be possible without the creativity and dedication of our masthead, advisory board and reading committee whose insights made this possible. thanks are owed to our advisory board chair, dr. kevin edmonds, megan mungalsingh whose artwork graces one of our covers for the second year in a row, mariya maistrovskaya, and the entire journal production services team at university of toronto libraries. without them, these issues would not be the quality products you now -literally, or figuratively, hold in your hands. enjoy. david allens prilly bicknell-hersco korede akinkunmi editor-in-chief associate editor copy editor de silva, kevin. “letter from the editor.” caribbean quilt 1 (november 18, 2012): 1. https://doi.org/10.33137/caribbeanquilt.v1i0.19062. 1 5 (january 20, 2022 / 08:53:04) 122815-1b_caribbeanquilt_vol6_rev.pdf .5 megan mungalsingh university of toronto fas, cognitive science and psychology ole time (2021) gouache on cold-pressed watercolour paper. this painting depicts a small child sitting on a wooden porch, listening to an elder, who is seated on a rocking chair. this scene represents a sort of idyllic storytelling wonder. it is both old and new. with this piece the artist aimed to show the microcosms of a cultural resilience. if one were to reflect upon landmark works of caribbean art or literature, one is likely to find at their core, the stories of the everyday caribbean person. those stories start here. megan mungalsingh is a trinidadian artist whose mediums include gouache, watercolor and acrylic painting. she is a fourth year student at the university of toronto majoring in cognitive science and psychology. her artistic interests include caribbean folklore, fantasy and horror. note on the cover: 6 (january 20, 2022 / 08:53:04) 122815-1b_caribbeanquilt_vol6_rev.pdf .6 2019-2020 was my first year working with the caribbean quilt student editorial board. in the production of volume 6, i was taken aback by the level of engagement and seriousness that caribbean studies students had in producing their journal. one year later, it is clear that as a program, we clearly have the best students in the world. in a year when so many of us have faced isolation as our lives shifted to online classes, the caribbean quilt community remained strong, and acted as an anchor for the caribbean studies community, which has managed to remain creative, curious and resilient. thanks to the foundation laid by the volume 6 team, the brilliant editorial team of david allens and prilly bicknell-hersco have hit the ground running during another very challenging year with covid-19 and related restrictions. a great deal of work and forward thinking has gone into how to increase the visibility, accessibility, functionality and aesthetics of this volume, which will no doubt pay dividends for issues still to come. i would also like to thank korede akinkunmi, who has done a stellar job with the copy editing, who also kindly offered important, timely and creative feedback on the pieces and journal, beyond the initial scope of work. another big thank you to ejaaz ramdhanie, who has undertaken the layout and design aspects of this journal, and offered his own insightful thoughts on how to showcase the work of our students. beyond the editorial team and students, i wanted to thank professor nestor rodriguez, who as the caribbean studies program director has always gone above and beyond to support the production of the journal. thank you to all of the caribbean studies instructors, who provided the inspiration and guidance behind so many of these pieces. thanks to professors melanie newton, alissa trotz, ramabai espinet, berardo garcia-dominguez, lee l’clerc and chris ramsaroop. this journal would not be possible without the new college initiatives fund, and the support of new college vice principal tara goldstein and new college librarian jeff newman. thank you to nancy crawley and nancy dragecevic, for all of the work that you do turning all of my ncif requests into reality. since the publication of volume 6, in my own research and course preparation, i have had the pleasant surprise of having articles by caribbean quilt contributors show up on google scholar. this is incredible. to see some of those very same students be cited by established academics is a testament to the incredible work that you all do. in solidarity kevin edmonds, caribbean quilt, faculty advisor 2020-2021, caribbean studies letter from faculty advisor 7 (january 20, 2022 / 08:53:04) 122815-1b_caribbeanquilt_vol6_rev.pdf .7 :::::: 184 monsanto and caribbean agricultural politics mark chatarpal mark chatarpal is currently studying at the university of toronto. with a love for his country guyana, mark has maintained strong connections with his home, family and friends. in addition to his studies, mark does small-scale community based development in guyana and roriama, brazil. . introduction in the past, sovereignty was normally portrayed as the duo between competing states over the possession of land. as land acquisition occurred, states ensured that food production increased. in recent times however the game has changed. instead of states maintaining sovereignty over food production, multinational companies have monopolized this arena and as a result have acquired great influence over smaller underdeveloped states large north american based multinational companies (mncs) continue their onslaught on the global south by underdeveloping the region through the control of the global food supply. the result is that “underdeveloped” states are robbed of the ability to sustain and feed themselves. the greed of the capitalist north actively ensures that peoples of the south become and remain dependant on them for survival. it is in light of this situation that the sovereignty of smaller states and their capacity to produce food independently away from the influence of the north warrants scrutiny. mark chatarpal | monsanto and caribbean agricultural politics 185 within this context, my research will focus on food sovereignty beginning with situating the discussion in a regional framework and then broadening the analysis to a global context with a specific case to illustrate the arguments in this paper. in particular, this paper will discuss monsanto and its links to the caribbean, focusing on mnc’s connection and influence over the agricultural political arena. in short, i aim to outline how monsanto and caribbean agricultural politics are inter-related. by inter-related, i mean to highlight, expose and theorize how specifically an american based multinational corporation managed to garner hegemonic influence not only over latin and south america, but also over the caribbean and its current inroads into guyana. to facilitate this analysis, this report has been divided into seven sections. firstly, a brief history of monsanto will be given in order to discuss the connection between monsanto and caribbean agricultural politics this section will also attempt to address some initial questions such as: who are the primary owners of this corporation and how are they interconnected with the interests of the u.s.a? what is the company’s involvement in deterring holistic development within smaller countries and also the effects of their business practices? building upon this foundation, the essay will outline monsanto’s unethical gene patenting practices of various plant species from around the globe, specifically addressing the ways in which monsanto is actively involved in the process of attempting to establish global ownership of seeds such as rice, corn and soy. looking at the effect of these detrimental practices t , this paper will juxtapose the effect and impact of seed patenting in india, to the company’s current expansion of their agro-empire into the caribbean. to properly ascertain the susceptibility of the agriculture sector within the caribbean, highlighting the current state of food security within the region is essential. why does monsanto view the caribbean as ‘ripe for the picking’? through an analysis of a case study of a small village in guyana, this paper will address the question above by i highlighting the indirect influence of monsanto within a caribbean context. the aim here is to stress the negative caribbean quilt | 2013 186 ramifications this mnc along with usaid has on a micro scale. . this section will also include a critique of the government of guyana’s approach to food sovereignty, their official position on monsanto, and their contradictory practices within the local economy. as an aside, obtaining information these contradictions came at a high price and so this section will also be utilized to briefly discuss the threats that i faced while gathering data for my research. the final portion of this essay will discuss alternative ways of developing the agriculture sector, away from the claws of mncs such as monsanto following this, the mncs current involvement in the caribbean and south america will be addressed in order to explain why brazil is being regarded by monsanto as their launch pad for hegemonic agro-domination throughout latin america and the caribbean. importantly, the aim is to address the connection between the u.s government and monsanto corp in order to illustrate how this partnership instrumental in suppressing the socialist revolution occurring in venezuela. the paper will conclude with a discussion of some of the policies that president hugo chavez has implemented in a bid to maintain sovereignty and to rid his country of capitalist control. ___________________________ a concise history of monsanto corp “…be mindful of those who say, ‘we are here to help you’…”arnold itwaru (a. h. itwaru) john f. queeny initially founded monsanto corp in 1901; at that time the company primarily focused on producing artificial sweetener, which was used to bolster sugar-based products. during this decade the price of raw sugar fluctuated both in the u.s and in the caribbean since both regions were enduring the tail end of the slave abolition movement (beckles and shepherd 460). thus, the company profited enormously from the decline in plantation sugar. mark chatarpal | monsanto and caribbean agricultural politics 187 notably, sixty years later, during the period of the vietnam war, monsanto had become strongly affiliated with the u.s government. the peoples of vietnam were fighting tooth and nail to fend off the u.s invasion of their homeland. american historians would never concede to the fact that during this time their troops were becoming increasingly demoralized due to the tenacious resistance mounted by the vietnamese national liberation front (nlf). indeed, in 1961 monsanto was commissioned by the u.s military to produce a specific herbicide called ‘roundup’ to counter this tenacity. along with other countless forms of genocidal, destructive tactics, the u.s decided to attack the nlf’s food supply by spraying roundup relentlessly over thousands of acres of vietnamese villages, crops and jungle. this pesticide was branded ‘agent orange’ by u.s troops during the commencement of operation ‘ranch hand’. the results were disturbing; hundreds of thousands of innocent vietnamese peoples died due to severe poisoning of their food and even more horrifying were the multitudes of children born with birth defects1. rough estimates figure around over five hundred thousand children being born with major defects all as a direct result of contact with roundup while in the womb (ruppert, 2011). though the ramifications of roundup still persist in present day vietnam, monsanto has never offered an explanation or an apology for their actions. on the contrary, the company’s website offers a wellphrased organizational statement emphasizing the integrity, transparency and respect it has for the community (monsanto corp, 2006). to date, the company is now ranked as a fortune 500 company and employs 21,035 employees worldwide, with over 404 facilities in 66 countries (monsanto corp, 2006). with a multibillion dollar profit margin the company continues to genetically modify the genes of several plant and animal species. for the purposes of this essay, the focus will be on genetically modified crops (gm crops) as 1 images 1&2 provided at the end of this section caribbean quilt | 2013 188 these crops are capable of resisting roundup pesticides and give much larger yields than average. such hefty financial growth did not come without severe consequences. numerous lawsuits continue to be filed, most focusing on transgenic contamination (which will be specifically discussed later on in this essay) and local farmers shared experience of their crops becoming cross-pollinated with monsanto’s gm crops. other lawsuits tackle the bullying tactics monsanto implements to force local farmers, both within north america and around the world to use their gm seeds. in 2010, computer software giant, bill gates, made an unprecedented move by purchasing 500,000 shares of monsanto stock through the bill and melinda gates foundation. purchasing such a large percentage of the company brought further notoriety to the gates foundation. what is significant about this purchase was the unification of two ideologies which must be discussed. the bill and melinda gates foundation is the largest private charity in the world. the foundation has billions of dollars at its disposal, which far exceeds the gdp of some small countries. bill gates, like his father, has been a strong believer and propagator of eugenics.2 on the basis of this ideology, gates approach to philanthropic work is extremely paternalistic; he largely views the world’s population is in need of guidance and that citizens of the global south are incapable of feeding themselves. following this line of reasoning the responsibility of ensuring that there is enough food to feed the growing population falls upon the shoulders of western powers who portray themselves as the benevolent, gracious nations. (gates, 2012). needless to say, gates’ ideology could be categorized as nothing less than a preposterous idiosyncrasy and nothing more than a hypocritical facade (zizek 2011, 240). regardless, gates’ eugenics ideology coupled with monsanto’s genetic manipulation of 2 eugenics is the selective breeding of certain traits in human populations as a method of proposed human improvement; some view it as the self-directed human evolution (merriam-webster 248) mark chatarpal | monsanto and caribbean agricultural politics 189 plants reveals a very important aspect of humanitarian aid work. it reveals that behind the charitable façade, there are many extremely problematic programs and strategies at work intended to maintain dependency so as to facilitate the continued exploitation of the global south. it is commonly known that the gates foundation does the bulk of its charity work within africa and india as evidenced by constant bombardment of news relaying the foundations’ hefty donations to people in lesser-developed countries (ldcs). these donations come in the form of dry and canned goods, water filtration facilities and more notably seeds (gates, 2012). what the foundation fails to mention is where these food are sourced from and more importantly, the type of seeds given out by the gates foundation. needless to say, monsanto’s gm seeds are freely distributed to peoples in the global south which in turn contributes to s threatening the remnants of independent agrarian societies. in short, the bill and melinda gates foundation, the world’s largest private charity, single handedly distributes monsanto gm seeds in the form of aid to foreign countries. this type of aid not only destroys the recipient country’s agrarian economy, it deepens the country’s reliance on food supply from the north, particularly from the u.s. in addition to creating this dependency which has ultimately contributed to stunting the development of the global south, recent evidence has surfaced exposing monsanto corp as the new owner of the renowned mercenary group blackwater now called xe solutions (ribeiro,). the confluence of the bill gates foundation, monsanto corp and xe solutions illustrates an imperialist murderous mode of reasoning which concludes that the only way to save peoples of the south is to force them into total compliance ( itwaru, 2011). with the gates foundation as the face, monsanto corp as the brain developing the seeds of destruction, and xe solutions providing the muscle and intelligence, this unholy trinity is a perfect manifestation of a new type of imperialism corporate imperialism. to make matters worse, monsanto corp (gates foundation & xe solutions included) is now close allies with the united states agency for international development (usaid). usaid is by and large a direct caribbean quilt | 2013 190 extension of u.s imperialism. as a result, this link between monsanto corp and usaid p means that countries who accept aid from the u.s. are also directly allowing monsanto corp access to their agricultural sector. with such imperialist systemic practices at play, developing countries in the global south stand little to no chance at withstanding such an onslaught. however, there are some countries which have been successful in resisting and repelling monsanto corp altogether: venezuela, cuba, haiti and zimbabwe to name a few. the case of haiti will be discussed later in detail. in the case of zimbabwe, despite being a victim of ‘aid-bombs’ (i use this phrase to emphasize the type of aid forcefully placed upon the peoples of zimbabwe) and ladened with unnecessary sanctions, zimbabwe has managed to survive without the help of the u.s. this does not mean that the u.s has actively stopped attempting to undermine zimbabwe’s agriculture sector by dropping large quantities of monsanto gm corn in key areas of the country. rather, that the people of zimbabwe recognize these tactics of neo-imperialism and continue to destroy whatever vestiges remain of ‘aid-bombs’ found within their country. _________________________ image 1: picture of deformed vietnamese children due to their mothers being exposed to monsanto’s, ‘roundup’ pesticide (google image). mark chatarpal | monsanto and caribbean agricultural politics 191 image 2: a vietnamese man who was doused directly with ‘agent orange’ also known as ‘roundup’ (google image). monsanto’s business practices “…to achieve world domination, they no longer rely on bayonet-wielding soldiers. all they need is to control is food production…” frederick engdahal (engdahl 2007, 74) what gives monsanto corp the right to patent plant species from around the globe? by patent i mean the exclusive right to own and market specific plant genes. moreover, when was this practice instigated and in what ways have governing authorities been kept neutral? in order to address these critical questions, a concise outline of the emergence of biotechnology and patenting practices must be given. near the end of the 1980’s, the dag hammarskjold foundation held a biotechnology meeting entitled, “laws of life”. this meeting addressed emerging issues of genetic engineering and patenting, making it abundantly clear that giant companies such as monsanto were rebranding themselves as companies of the “life sciences”, whose goal was to control the world’s agriculture through patents, genetic engineering, and mergers between companies. further, changes included aggressively collecting plant seeds from around the globe and manipulating their properties in order to claim ‘ownership’ of these plant species. this process of comodification results in farmers not being allowed to keep monsanto’s gm seeds caribbean quilt | 2013 192 for replanting which results in farmers continually having to repurchase seed to sow. this means that farmers are consistently dependent on monsanto for seeds and fertilizer with little opportunity to seek a transactional relationship elsewhere (shiva, monocultures of the mind: perspectives on biodiversity and biotechnology 1993, 25-29). every developing country (with the exception of cuban and venezuela) is forced to adhere to the wto’s rules and regulations in order participate in the global trading arena.. part of this trade agreement requires that governments enforce of seed patent laws. this means that smaller countries are bullied into accepting patenting laws in order to generate economies of scale. in short, the entire framework of the world trade organization is designed to allow large mncs such as monsanto to penetrate foreign agromarkets, rendering them totally dependent on the north for food supply. indeed, this predatory practice is not only backed by the wto, but also by the u.s constitution, (which renders a corporation as a singular entity) .this relationship has ensured that these corporations are protected and not liable for persecution in any court, whether foreign or domestic. to further elaborate this point, analysis of monsanto’s dealings in india can be utilized to illustrate some of the specific tactics that monsanto uses in order to gain control over food production. india’s agricultural sector has suffered the most prior to their resistance against monsanto. due its wide array of soils, climates and large variety of plants, india is globally known for its large variety of staple crops. the peoples of the himalayan mountains eat several types of cereal grains, whereas the inhabitants in the western region use millet and those in eastern india consume primarily rice and fish. this illustrates that each region has a specific set of dietary habits, unique to each sub-culture (shiva 2000, 21)). monsanto corp realized the opportunity of patenting the majority of these plants as a means by which to establish any tangible control over the world’s food market. mark chatarpal | monsanto and caribbean agricultural politics 193 through direct and indirect links (ngos, primarily the bill & melinda gates foundation and usaid), monsanto began selling the idea of ‘higher production yields’ to the indian government. in an attempt to compete on the global arena, the indian government quickly capitulated and offered large tax breaks to monsanto to conduct research and development within their country (somerville and santoni 1993, 347). from a political viewpoint, the indian government could then claim that their country was friendly to foreign investment and charitable development, while monsanto could demonstrate their prerogative to help impoverished peoples of the global south (shiva et al 2003, 47). in reality, what such development meant was the agricultural enslavement of local indian farmers. in this context the term farmers, encompass the vast majority of indian men and women who were coerced into abandoning their intergenerational crops for monsanto gm seeds. local farmers were promised vast returns for planting gm seeds, unbeknownst to them that these seeds contained ‘terminator technology’ which systematically cross pollinated with nearby crops and genetically altering them during the pollination process. in short, once farmers began planting gm seeds, whatever alternative crops existed before were destroyed once they pollinated with monsanto seeds. this process is called ‘transgenic contamination’. this meant that farmers were now forced to plant only monsanto seeds, since their alternating crops were mutating and unable to grow properly. to make matters worse, from the profits earned from their harvest, farmers were forced to continually repurchase fresh seeds to plant, instead of their intergenerational practices of saving their best seeds for the next year. what this translated to was further impoverishment of the peoples of india. farmers mostly males committed suicide since they were unable to bear the strain of single crop-profit dependency. women were now left to fend for themselves and their children; those who owned land were forced to sell to larger farmers since they were unable to till the soil. some women went into prostitution, their children were either forced to join them or roam the streets in search of work. these are caribbean quilt | 2013 194 only but a few examples of the irresponsible practices by monsanto corp, which single-handedly disrupted a thousand year intergenerational practice of saving seeds, and also by transgenic contamination of native plant species. vandana shiva, a world-renowned activist, propagates the right of freedom of seed for all which articulates that no company should be allowed the right to patent any plant. moreover, her work with the local farmers within india garnered her national respect and admiration (shiva, manifesto on the future of seeds). therefore, shiva was able to mount the largest resistance within india against monsanto corp. due to large civil outcry; the indian government eventually capitulated and slapped monsanto with a ban on their patenting practices. however, some reports still show that monsanto still secretly collects plant samples from the region (shiva, stolen harvest: the hijacking of the global food supply 75). not only is india severely affected; mexico also experienced transgenic contamination, specifically with their corn species. mexico is the global motherland of corn species. their farmers rear the purest strains of corn, which up until recently, studies have shown that monsanto gm seeds from the u.s have already begun cross pollinating with several mexican strains. to date, a growing number of mexican farmers and agricultural authorities are increasingly worried. studies show within ten to fifteen years the majority, if not all of mexico’s indigenous intergenerational strains will be tainted by monsanto terminator gm seeds (image & compagnie, productions). the majority of the world’s specimens of rice, cotton and legumes all originate from india. this is important to note since seeds for rice, eggplants, okra, bora and squash among others were brought across the atlantic by indentured laborers to my specific case study of guyana. thus in a way, india was the source, the motherland, for a majority of crops within the caribbean. why do latin & south america and the caribbean seem to be the next major target market for monsanto? more specifically, mark chatarpal | monsanto and caribbean agricultural politics 195 how does the caribbean fit into the company’s agro-empire expansion plan? in order to address these questions, one must consider the history of caribbean mono-crop dependency, moreover, how the state of food security within the caribbean is currently at its weakest. _____________________________ the state of food security in the caribbean “…i am asked ‘where is imperialism’, just look into your plates: you see imported corn, rice or millet. this is imperialism, let’s not look any further…”thomas sankara (sankara 62) the caribbean has a long history of mono-crop dependency, where most countries within the region earned the majority of their gdp through the growth of a specific crop. during colonialism the imperial powers constructed the caribbean to be the sugar bowl, tobacco pouch, coffee shop and rum supplier of the world. the region was designed in this way to primarily produce sugar, tobacco, coffee and a variety of by-products associated with these three staple crops (weis 185). during the independence era, caribbean economies were faced with the looming task of generating foreign exchange since their markets were now forced to compete on the global arena. in order to rectify the problem, st lucian economist arthur lewis came up with the idea of ‘industrialization by invitation’. the crux of his argument implied that most states within the region were dangerously reliant on agricultural production; it was urgent that states began to diversify their production. this meant that a massive shift away from agriculture production was in order. lewis theorized that the only way to diversify production was through an immediate injection of foreign cash. he propagated the need for caribbean states to openly invite foreign investors into their countries. in short, the imperial powers never really left the caribbean the system only recalibrated itself and created a new framework in which to operate. whether lewis was naive or coerced by foreign powers to create such dependency theories remains a caribbean quilt | 2013 196 mystery. the important fact to consider, however, was that most heads of state within the caribbean with the exception of: cheddi jagan, michael manley, fidel castro and maurice bishop, willingly complied. this was due to their trained dependence on foreign assistance. by trained, i mean the ongoing mythology of the west as civilized, contrasted with the caribbean in need of their ‘help’. this mindset allowed foreign powers, particularly financial institutions, to implement crippling policies which further underdeveloped the region. violence is articulated in a number of different ways and in the context of the caribbean we can see how potently systemic it is. the foreign powers knew that in post-independent caribbean, any type of continual military invasion would have incurred severe resistance within the region. it was important for this reason to keep the region under control subtly through financial means. when the price of oil skyrocketed in the 1960’s, most caribbean countries (with the exception of cuba), were once again in need of foreign exchange and immediate loans. the foreign powers created the imf and the world bank to offer larger than needed loans to countries at high interest rates, and to make matters worse, these financial agencies ensured that they implemented structural adjustment programs within the borrowing countries to facilitate a faster rate of repayment. needless to say, these adjustment programs were designed to overburden the fragile caribbean economies, consequently plunging them into a spiral of foreign aid dependency, much like monsanto’s practices with indian small farmers. therefore, the caribbean community became displaced and subdued amidst the steadily encroaching takeovers by multi-national corporations, the continual economic incapacitation by the imf structural adjustment program and the restrictive practices of the wto. through this three-prong approach (policies of mncs, the imf and wto) there is a steady decline of agrarian practices within the caribbean. such a decline poses a severe threat to these small nations already facing significant levels of debt. the caribbean, with the notable exception of cuba, has succumbed to food dependency mark chatarpal | monsanto and caribbean agricultural politics 197 on the north, thus rendering them into nothing more than ‘bread basket dependent states’ (weis). monsanto corp made its initial entrance into the caribbean not through the standard rearing or sale of crops, but primarily from the influx of fast food restaurants. i argue that the influence of u.s media coupled with the flooding of u.s subsidized goods onto caribbean shelves, stimulated the population’s taste for foreign foods verses their own domestic produce. in short, as the daily diet changed to include these foreign products, citizens within the caribbean began to consume mass amounts of food from u.s based fast food restaurants. this mass consumption resulted in permanent dietary dependency and more importantly, stronger reliance on monsanto grown ingredients, which interconnected with the rise of u.s fast food restaurants. thus, restaurants such as mcdonalds, kentucky fried chicken and wendy’s produce foods with monsanto gm ingredients. breadbasket dependency (bbd) was a primary concern for four pivotal leaders in the caribbean. in guyana, cheddi jagan made it a part of his 1992 campaign promise to ensure that fast food companies were using local ingredients; that protective tariffs be placed on imports to ensure the future viability of local produce. moreover, jagan began reintroducing policies in local government that would gradually reduce the influence of mnc and other foreign institutions within guyana (jagan, the west on trial, my fight for guyana's freedom 145). michael manley in jamaica and maurice bishop in grenada also began designing grow local-eat local programs within their respective countries. the usa ensured that they were unsuccessful; they used the cia to undermine the manley government and invaded grenada under the pretext of stopping communism (jagan, the usa in south america and other essays 52). to date, the only caribbean country that managed to break free from food dependency and reach a high level of self-sufficiency is cuba. under the leadership of fidel castro, the peoples of cuba worked hard to diversify their economy without external help, though this did not without obstacles. cuba caribbean quilt | 2013 198 today nonetheless, in my perception, is the strongest agro economy in the caribbean and is impenetrable, and dare i claim impervious to mncs such as monsanto. it is clear now that the phenomenon of the breadbasket dependency provided a clear inroad for mncs into the caribbean market. but what about other countries in south america why is monsanto so keen on establishing large bases within that region? to answer these questions, i will briefly highlight monsanto’s current ‘development’ projects within the caribbean and in south america. ____________________________ monsanto’s involvement within the caribbean and south america “…the savage exploitation of rainforests continues in south america. trees are felled like dumb creatures. river catchments are impoverished. the muse of nature within the consciousness of peoples is threatened…”wilson harris (harris 44) in reality, monsanto has been intricately intertwined in the agro-affairs of the caribbean and in south america since the 1980s. as mentioned previously, their involvement within the region came hand in hand with the u.s of aid relief, particularly through ngos such as usaid, cida, simap, food for the poor, bill and the melinda gate foundation among others. for the purposes of this essay, i will address two pivotal countries in which monsanto has its strongest involvement. finally i will discuss the only recent resistance to monsanto corp within the region. in 1983, the company established a relationship with puerto rico through usaid and the us government’s ‘operation bootstrap’. operation bootstrap was a new u.s foreign policy that facilitated the insertion of large mncs into the puerto rican economy. according to the u.s government, this was the development of democracy at its finest (klein 48). in reality what transpired was the obliteration of puerto rico’s agro-system, which forced the population to be dependent on foreign foods. mark chatarpal | monsanto and caribbean agricultural politics 199 in 2007, monsanto returned to puerto rico to plant their gm corn on a large scale. their primary purpose was to test their new msp hybrid seeds (crosses of corn females and males. once planted, these seeds were sprayed constantly with rogueo and desespigue pesticides, all designed by monsanto). the corn once ripened, are mechanically harvested and stored in two major plants: isabela and juana diaz. these two factories own and control a combined size of 2,325 acres (the approximate size of puerto rico is 23,733 acres). in this way monsanto corp has direct control of roughly 12% of the country’s landmass, in addition to employing close to 400 people on the island. the seeds produced from these two factories are called “grandparents” and are packaged and sold to farmers worldwide. puerto rico, in this way, serves as a global cornseed processing plant for the company (martinez). monsanto arrived in brazil in 1963. since then, it has firmly established a solid foothold over the brazilian agro-industry. the company produces herbicides and seeds for corn, soybeans, cotton and vegetables. more importantly, in 2008, monsanto acquired aly participacoes ltd and canavialis ltd, two companies focused on sugarcane breeding technology and are both based in brazil (monsanto corp). with this acquisition came the control of all soy, sugar cane and cotton production within brazil. what makes brazil so important to this discussion is primarily because of the immense rainforest located within the country. brazil is the fifth largest country in the world and its amazon rainforest is affectionately called the ‘lungs of the earth’. moreover in recent times, brazil’s economy has been growing at close to 8% a year, making it an attractive investment for foreign companies. with such a strong, emerging economy, brazil vies to be recognized and classified as a ‘first world country’, even at the expense of the further impoverishment of its citizens. monsanto, recognizing the economic potential of brazil as the breadbasket of south america, ensured that they controlled most major crops within the country. now more than ever, monsanto is growing larger quantities of gm soybeans, cotton, sugar cane and caribbean quilt | 2013 200 rice. but in order for monsanto to acquire more fertile land, the company is encouraging the destruction of the amazon by local landowners in return for huge profits. it is not surprising that landowners are somehow able to acquire monsanto manufactured agent orange chemicals that were used in vietnam. according to recent reports dated july 2011, large landowners in the amazonian region are actively spraying thousands of acres of pristine jungle with agent orange. one landowner was discovered to harbor over four tons of the pesticide. local activists were able to identify and photograph large tracts of now dead forests3. some reports estimate that approximately 10 acres of amazonian rainforest is cleared daily by local landowners keen on planting monsanto gm seeds (messenger). one could also speculate that due to monsanto’s close ties with u.s foreign policy, the company is allowed to expand in order to apply more pressure on the peoples of venezuela and chile against their governments. as discussed previously, monsanto’s seeds contain ‘terminator technology’ which once pollinated with native strains of core plants begins the transgenic contamination process. thus, with gm seeds being sowed abundantly right outside of their borders, the revolutionary movements within venezuela and chile could be undermined due to food contamination. image 3: ariel view of amazonian forests sprayed with agent orange. note the large tracts of lifeless trees.(picture by: stephen messenger) (messenger) 3 see image 3. mark chatarpal | monsanto and caribbean agricultural politics 201 the case of guyana what is rain for, if not rice for an empty pot; and pot for in a hungry village? the son succeeds his father in a line to count as he did, waiting, adding the latest to the first of his losses; his harvests of quick wind padi… ‘rice’ by: martin carter (carter 89) indentured labourers from india made painstaking sacrifices to bring seeds from their motherland to the caribbean. this action, in a way, clearly showed a deep connection between agricultural practices and cultural attitudes. in short, peoples of the south knew the importance of food independence. these connections still remain embedded in guyanese society (jagan, the west on trial, my fight for guyana's freedom 32). like mexico with corn, guyana firmly established itself as a pseudo-home for rice and its cultivation within the caribbean. in guyana, rice and sugar cane are the two largest crops produced within the country. under the leadership of cheddi jagan during the 1960s, guyana was affectionately known as the ‘breadbasket of the caribbean’. this ideal was further ingrained when dr. jagan began introducing subsidies and stimulus packages designed to encourage local farmers to grow more food (jagan, forbidden freedom: the story of british guyana 87). one sector that grew rapidly under jagan’s policies was the rice industry. thus, there was growing pressure on the plantocracy to allow small farmers to save more of their rice-paddy for the following year and allowances for more agricultural land. most agricultural reform policies came to a crashing halt when dr. jagan was forcefully removed from office during the british invasion. the actions of the british were costly for the peoples of guyana. the people witnessed the betrayal and removal of guyana’s only honest caribbean quilt | 2013 202 politician, the only politician who genuinely wanted the unification of his citizens in a socialist, political and economic culture. things changed dramatically due to the imf’s structural adjustment programs of the 1990s. president hoyte succumbed to foreign pressure and allowed tariffs to be removed on all foods imported into the country. this meant that local farmers were now forced to compete with heavily subsidized u.s farmers. farmers in the u.s are subsidized by up to 80% by the u.s government, and they are strongly encouraged to overproduce, the excess of course is dumped into foreign food markets, such as in the case of guyana. in short, the produce of guyanese farmers was more expensive than foods imported from the u.s. to further the damage, the wto began implementing stricter trade policies, which limited the quantity of rice being exported. these two acts of systemic violence against the peoples of guyana crippled the agriculture sector, rice production in particular. to date, the rice industry has shrunk substantially. larger farmers were forced to amalgamate, and consequently small farmers were forced into selling their lands. those who refused to sell at first are now forced to wait in long lines for days at a time to sell their rice-paddy to on a few mills left in the country at below market value. rice millers have thoroughly accepted standardized packaging practices, selling only rice grains of a specific size, discarding or selling everything else at well below their market value. this type of standardization forced farmers to discard their ancient seeds and seek modified seeds, which had larger yields and were up to wto and milling specifications. the question then arises, when exactly did monsanto corp enter into the guyanese rice market? based on my research, the company made its most notable incursion in 2009 when guyana’s national agricultural research institute signed a major deal with u.s based stine seed company (stabroek news). the agreement meant that guyana would provide space for stine seed company to continue developing ‘hybrid seeds’ in exchange for local researchers to learn more about gm technology. this company also assisted with mark chatarpal | monsanto and caribbean agricultural politics 203 research and development for the ‘rustic backcross-breeding program’, which was implemented by the guyana rice board. more importantly, what i discovered after scrutinizing the stine seed company was that they are a subsidiary of monsanto corp, and are listed on their website as an active partner (monsanto corp). this connection in itself validates my argument concerning monsanto’s involvement indirectly in guyana. to make matters worse, due to the enforced standardization of rice grains on local farmers, the guyana rice board implemented a series of ‘promotional campaigns’. from 2000 to the present, the guyana rice board has actively propagated the g98 rice grain series. the chart below shows the specific grain and the description attributed to it by the grb. year released series of rice seed description by the grb 2000 g98-22-4 an extra long grain, high quality, locally developed from the rustic backcrossbreeding program. 2000 g98-24-1 same as above 2000 g98-30-3 same as above 2010 g98-135 *an extra long grain, high quality, locally developed from the rustic backcross breeding program which has not been officially released as yet but is occupying a significant portion of the commercial acreage (guyana rice developent board) what is most notable in this chart is the constant resort by the grb towards the g98 series. after extensive research and according to scientific patenting reports in 1998, monsanto corp modified and patented the g98 rice grain and all other g98 series following (prior ip). on record, the government of guyana has not conceded to the use of monsanto gm seeds. however off record, i was able to secure information that government officials were strictly caribbean quilt | 2013 204 warned to remain mute on the issue since, “…it made the ministry of agriculture look bad…” (de mendonca). another disturbing connection involves monsanto corp, oxford university and some of the indigenous peoples of guyana. in 2001, oxford university began conducting an ethnobotany program among macushi women within the interior of guyana. true to its description as a way of encouraging the development of women, oxford researchers encouraged indigenous women to bring plants that contained medicinal or healing properties. the macushi women, however, were paid mere pittances for their work and were told that the plants would be used for research to develop pharmaceuticals (dilly 61). the connection here is based on recent cash incentives oxford university has been getting from monsanto corp to conduct research and development throughout the global south. recently, oxford university press allowed for the publishing of a book that praised monsanto for taking a realistic and bold step in feeding the world’s poor and attempting to alleviate hunger (lappe). i would not be surprised if oxford’s ethnobotany program in guyana is nothing more than a glorified scheme to exploit indigenous peoples of their knowledge of medicinal plants to benefit monsanto corp, who would patent them immediately. such gross exploitation of a mnc within a country like guyana can still be interpreted as abstract and without base. this is why i will attempt to address these same exploitative tactics within the parameters of my childhood village of hauraruni (pronounced, har-ra-roo-ni). i will give a quick outline of monsanto’s influence in my village and how with the help of usaid has begun destroying childhood home. usaid & hauraruni friendly farmers society “…de guvament nah do nuttin fuh we, all dem ah tink bout now is how fuh full dem pocket. suh wah yuh want we do, nah guh back to dem white men fuh look a wuk…”delroy wong (wong) mark chatarpal | monsanto and caribbean agricultural politics 205 the name hauraruni is speculated to derive from an indigenous word that meant ‘land of plenty’. my village adopted its name from the beautiful hauraruni creek which gracefully shaped its way around 460 acres of fertile land and finally empties into the mighty demerara river. my village is approximately forty miles away from the capital city of georgetown and is about three miles away from the main highway. with such a rich arable land, most people within my community were involved in agriculture. i still have fond memories of fields of golden pineapples, pear and cashews trees, the sweet smell of the silverballi tree in its annual bloom, the acres of watermelons and the childhood joy of communal living. through combined communal living my village was able to sustain itself. this all came to a grinding halt in the 1990s due to the imf structural adjustment program. within a year farmers in my community were forced to sell their produce significantly lower than the market value in order to save their client base. as the years went on one by one, or sometimes by groups, farmers and their families people whom i considered my family were forced to do two things: griped by hunger and humiliated by their empty pockets, most villagers left farming completely and became loggers or sold their lands and moved to the city in search of work. most people i knew sold their land never to return were or even visit simply because they could not afford to, or felt that they had to ‘make it’ in order to be perceived as a success. by 2009, most the people from my village were desperate to generate revenue by whatever means necessary. in december 2010, usaid initiated its ‘friendly farmers’ program in guyana; their stated goal was to teach farmers new and innovative ways to grow crops. with few other options available to them, leaders from my community felt that they should approach usaid for help, since close to 20 farmers and their families were out of work and wanted to return to the soil. due to the ngo’s policy, the villagers were required to create a name for their group, more importantly they needed to provide a substantial size of land if caribbean quilt | 2013 206 usaid were to be interested. within six months, the group returned to the ngo with a presentation of 25 acres of land what the villagers did was to combine their land holdings in order to ‘impress’ the usaid representative (fredericks). once the papers were signed, usaid introduced the group to their technical supervisor, mr. nir dahan. upon researching his background i discovered some very disturbing news, mr. dahan worked directly for carana corp, a company with close connections to monsanto corp. i found out that carana corp created major inroads for monsanto in parts of africa (quin). this meant that both corporations had a longstanding relationship with one another. according to carana, their company with the generous support of usaid, was modernizing the agro-sector in guyana and valued the project in hauraruni at approximately usd$250,000. i was only able to discover this due to carana’s mandatory report to the united states agency for international development, which must be made available to the public. the question then arises, precisely what did carana corp through usaid do with usd$250,000 dollars? the answer is horrifying due to the evidence i have accumulated. the first edict given to the group was a total deforesting of the area; this meant that over 25 acres of jungle was cleared4. with the help of heavy machinery and under the guidance of usaid officials, the farmers razed much of their village land, in the hopes that better days were ahead for them. after clearing the forest, all that was left was raw exposed dried sand. according to usaid officials, this was perfect soil for planting. seedlings were grown in a makeshift nursery and according to villagers required large amounts of pesticide. officials demanded that young papaya plants were planted strictly 4 feet apart from each other, even though villagers felt this was wrong5. as was said by one villager, “…meh neva see wan papaya tree grow suh fass and suh close together, dis ting cyan be right…” (wong). 4 see image 4 5 see image 5 mark chatarpal | monsanto and caribbean agricultural politics 207 in addition to the deforestation and growing practices, what should be noted is the use of harsh pesticides. according to workers there, they are forced to spray the plants two times a day with a chemical called duoguard 11 and rt 3. also, i have received first hand reports of fertilizer 20-20-20 being pumped continuously into the sand. the only type of plant that requires such large amounts of water, pesticide and fertilizer are gm modified seedlings. moreover based on research rt 3 is a patented monsanto product. during my research i was able to uncover classified evidence that showed rt 3 causing intergenerational cancerous cells on test animals, much less humans who work and consume those plants (monsanto corp). even 20-20-20 fertilizers are distributed by caribbean chemical, another representative of monsanto corp (caribbean chemicals). to date, usaid has pushed most of the villagers away, claiming that they are inefficient and not needed at the farm. this means that the villagers who contributed their own land are now being disposed and displaced. more importantly, the community structure has been totally discombobulated; young people who were motivated at the idea of earning income on a collective basis are seeing the destruction of their home and are reacting violently. the sales of the produce do not benefit the villagers but go to servicing the large debt placed on the group. from personally trespassing in the area (based on my studies and level of education, instructions were left by officials not to allow me onto the farm) i know for a fact that usd$250,000 was not spent on developing the area. from my estimations i would say approximately usd$60,000 was spent, and those are generous calculations. one can only wonder where or to whom the remainder of the funds go, these questions swirl in my mind more and more whenever a usaid or carna official drives through my village in an expensive range rover. ____________________________________ caribbean quilt | 2013 208 image 4: partial view of cleared forest. *notice the total destruction of the soil. (image from delroy wong) image 5: gm papaya plants being reared on 20-20-20 fertilizer and rt 3 (image by delroy wong) below image 6: inside view of gm seedling nursery (image by delroy wong)below mark chatarpal | monsanto and caribbean agricultural politics 209 image 7: pump used to irrigate plants with monsanto pesticides (image by delroy wong) conclusion “…my philosophy: very simplethe world is big and can provide amply for all there need not be poverty and suffering. man is capable, given the opportunity of fantastic cultural and intellectual attainment. but first there must be an end to the system of capitalismthe system which because it is based on individual greed breeds insecurity, poverty, ignorance and suffering…” – cheddi jagan 1964 to conclude this argument is extremely difficult, primarily because the discourse continues. daily situations, such as hauraruni, repeat themselves globally. millions of peoples in the global south suffer at the hands of this new form of imperialism. the time has come for a significant shift away from such capitalist practices. the only way to do so is from the ground up, from the community level where small groups of people can be de-educated away from colonialist methodology and re-educated to the realities of the world around them. it is important to note the threats posed to this research. i lost count the number of times i was told to cease asking questions relating to the farm in hauraruni. close friends of mine were threatened to be fired from work if they were caught taking any pictures on my behalf. to compound this situation, some of the youth of the village are unhappy with the circumstances their parents have placed them in. in addition, my contacts within the ministry of agriculture (guyana) were threatened and were slapped with the caribbean quilt | 2013 210 directive that if they were to divulge any information, they would lose their contracts. regardless of these threats, some government employees still pointed me in the right direction in terms of acquiring answers. the rice farmers are constantly threatened, not only by rice millers, but also by members of government, who explicitly make it clear to the famers that they would face severe consequences if any of them were to be found providing information. irrespective of these threats, the majority of farmers i met were warm, courteous and willing to discuss the issues, off record. once small communities begin developing themselves without the help of foreign aid, and then their government will be increasingly held accountable. no more will local governments continue disrespecting famers by freely distributing gm modified seeds to the impoverished under the cloak of ‘grow more food’ campaigns (de mendonca). no more will usaid officials get away with such blatant underdevelopment processes. no more will they feel comfortable living a lavish lifestyle while we work in subservience towards their interests and not ours. the time has come for communities to develop their own homegrown methodology of food security. the structure needs to be reshaped to accommodate the voices of guyana’s indigenous population. perhaps a good example of real agricultural development can be best attributed to president hugo chavez. president chavez expelled monsanto completely out of venezuela and immediately implemented new policy, which barred the company from ever returning and also from patenting anything belonging to the peoples of venezuela. the time has come for change, it must come from within and discourse must continue. mark chatarpal | monsanto and caribbean agricultural politics 211 works cited alleco, ina and r silverio. 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"machines of war: blackwater, monsanto and bill gates." 30 january 2012. infowars.com. 22 april 2012 <http://www/infowars.com/machines-of-war-blackwater-monsanto-and-billgates-2>. rodney, walter. how europe underdeveoped africa. washington : howard university press, 1982. rt news. www.rt.com. 14 04 2012. 22 04 2012 <http://rt.com/usa/news/farmers-crop-monsanto-dow-pesticide-411/>. —.www.rt.com. 11 04 2012. 22 04 2012 <http://rt.com/usa/news/monsanto-farmers-tobacco-use-809/>. ruppert, madison. "the world's largest human experiment part 1: gmo's, roundup and monsanto monstrocity." 11 july 2011. activist post. 22 april 2012<http://www.activistpost.com/2011/07/words-largest-humanexperiment-gmos.html>. caribbean quilt | 2013 214 sankara, thomas. we are heirs of the world's revolutions; thomas sankara, speeches from burkina faso revolution 1983-87. new york: pathfinder press, 2007. shiva, vandana. earth democracy: justice, sustainability and peace. london: zed books ltd, 2005. —. "manifesto on the future of seeds." 01 january 2012. vandana shiva. 22 april 2012 <http://www.vandanashiva.com>. —. monocultures of the mind: perspectives on biodiversity and biotechnology. london: zed books ltd, 1993. —. stolen harvest: the hijacking of the global food supply. cambridge: south end press, 2000. shiva, vandana, et al. biodiversity: social & ecological perspectives. london: zed books ltd, 2003. shrivastava, dr. arun. "weaponization of the food system: genitically manipulated maize threatens nepal and the himalayan." 24 april 2012. global research . 24 april 2012 <http://www.globalresearch.ca>. somerville, john and ronald e santoni. social and political philosophy: readings from plato to gandhi. new york: anchor books, 1993. stabroek news. "nari signs seed research pact with us companies." 30 july 2009. stabroek news. 22 april 2012 <http://stabroeknews.com>. the murderous mode of reasoning. by arnold itwaru. perf. arnold itwaru. new college , toronto. 19 11 2011. the world according to monsanto. dir. marie-monique robin. image & compagnie, productions. 2008. urfie, jean-yves, mervyn claxton and zili danto. "a new earthquake hits haiti: monsanto's deadly gift of 475 tons of genetically-modified seeds to haitian farmers." 13 may 2010. norman garvin . 22 april 2012 <http://www.normangirvan.info/wpcontent/uploads/2012/05/monsanto.htm>. weis, tony. labour, capital and society: agrarian decline and breadbasket dependence int he caribbean: confronting illusions of inevitability. london: university of western ontairo press, 2003. wong, delroy. hauraruni farm co-op mark chatarpal. 28 12 2011. ziegler, jean and siv o'neal. "fuelling world hunger: how the global biofuel industry is creating massice destruction." 11 12 2011. mark chatarpal | monsanto and caribbean agricultural politics 215 www.globalresearch.ca. 22 04 2012 <http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=28434>. zizek, slavoj. living in the end times. london: verso publication , 2011. exoticism, exchange, and early indigenous-colonial relations in the 15th to 16th century caribbean akshay dua university of toronto fas political science specialist, history the initial interactions between indigenous groups and european colonists across the caribbean were largely shaped by pre-existing sociocultural conditions. the central importance of exchange for social construction and the concomitantly high value placed upon foreign material was common to many native societies. this played in contrast to european understandings of exchange, which was far more focused on economic gain and competitive bargaining. the role assigned to exchange and the foreign in indigenous and european societies guided their perceptions of each other and respective goals in interaction. native systems were well entrenched throughout the regional networks of trade and culture in the caribbean, and so colonists entered into a world fundamentally defined by such systems. european imperial views permitted them to exploit these systems, twisting indigenous exaltation of intercultural trade into a tool for attempted oppression, subversion, and assimilation. nevertheless, colonists were unable to undermine core structures, even if they appropriated them for the creation of new hierarchies and dehumanization of natives. these structures prevailed even as colonization grew more pervasive and degenerative. a b s t r a c t b i o akshay dua is an undergraduate student pursuing a specialist in political science and a major in history at the university of toronto. his research interests are centered on humanitarian development, the relevance of history and culture in contemporary politics, interstate geopolitical competition, and the magnification of repressed voices. © 2021 akshay dua caribbean studies students’ union, canada https://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/cquilt/ this work is licensed under the creative commons attributionsharealike 4.0 international license. to view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ 16 (january 20, 2022 / 08:53:04) 122815-1b_caribbeanquilt_vol6_rev.pdf .16 17 introduction from the first point of contact between the desperate spaniards and bemused caribbean natives on the shores of san salvador to the expansive settlement projects of subsequent years, material exchange defined indigenous-colonial relations in the caribbean. the origins of their intercultural dynamics in the late 15th and early 16th century, however, took form long before spanish adventurers ever stepped foot in the americas. these relations were shaped by the high value accorded to and desire for foreign goods in indigenous caribbean societies, henceforth entitled ‘exoticism’. relations were further developed through complex processes of economic and political interaction. here, ‘goods’ refer to both the material and immaterial, objects and knowledge. while it is essential to avoid generalization about the indescribably diverse peoples that populated the precolonial caribbean, these systems of interaction and exchange extended from hispaniola to the orinoco basin and were widely affecting. in concordance with the desirability of the exotic, they produced remarkably similar precolonial cultural values among various indigenous groups and typically imbalanced indigenous-colonial relationships. i argue that exoticism dictated initial relations between the spaniards and caribbean natives, and accelerated colonial material exploitation 1 2 and political domination. this is visible through the impact of differentiated perceptions of trade, the hierarchizing character of exchange, and alterations to indigenous cultural practices. thus, as physical processes of colonization began, the roots of hegemony had already been deeply implanted. exchange and the foreign in indigenous value systems to adequately examine the nature of indigenous-colonial associations, their foundation in indigenous sociocultural and economic systems must be clarified, and the associated value accorded to the foreign. from the first waves of caribbean migration that expanded upwards from south america around 5000 bce onwards, vast transregional trading networks began to be established. a diversity of goods, from lapidary ornaments to knowledge systems, were exchanged between innumerable and often distant groups. intercommunal interaction was frequent and ongoing, and embedded itself in the fabric of nearly all caribbean polities. simultaneously, foreign goods gained prestigious value, becoming indicative of authority throughout the caribbean and lending its holders sociopolitical preeminence. it is unclear whether the economic centrality of exchange endowed foreign objects with value, or whether a preexisting affinity for the foreign among early societies promoted high mobility and the expansion of trade. 3 4 antonio l. curet, “the earliest settlers,” in the caribbean: a history of the region and its peoples, ed. stephan palmié and francisco a. scarano (chicago, il: university of chicago press, 2011), 56-65. corinne l. hofman et al., “island rhythms: the web of social relationships and interaction networks in the lesser antillean archipelago between 400 b.c. and a.d. 1492,” latin american antiquity 18, no. 3 (september 2007): 250-259, https://doi.org/10.2307/25478180. corinne l. hofman et al., “stages of encounters: migration, mobility and interaction in the pre-colonial and early colonial caribbean,” world archaeology 46, no. 4 (august 2014): 595-596, doi:10.1080/00438243.2014.925820. floris w.m. keehnen, corinne l. hofman, and andrzej t. antczak, “material encounters and indigenous transformations in the early colonial americas,” in material encounters and transformations in the early colonial americas: archaeological case studies, ed. corinne l. hofman and floris w.m. keehnen, (boston: brill, 2019), 3-5. 1 2 3 4 (january 20, 2022 / 08:53:04) 122815-1b_caribbeanquilt_vol6_rev.pdf .17 18 annie cody, “distribution of exotic stone artifacts through the lesser antilles: their implications for prehistoric interaction and exchange,” proceedings of the international congress for caribbean archaeology 14 (bridgetown, 1991): 209-210. michael heckenberger, the ecology of power: culture, place and personhood in the southern amazon, ad 1000-2000 (abingdon: routledge, 2004), 61. floris w.m. keehnen, “treating ‘trifles’: the indigenous adoption of european material goods in early colonial hispaniola,” in material encounters and transformations in the early colonial americas: archaeological case studies, ed. corinne l. hofman and floris w.m. keehnen (boston: brill, 2019), 67-68. hofman et al., “island rhythms,” 258-259. heckenberger, the ecology of power, 64 franz scaramelli and kay tarble de scaramelli, “the roles of material culture in the colonization of the orinoco, venezuela,” journal of social archaeology 5, no. 1 (february 2005): 154-155, https://doi-org.myaccess.library.utoronto.ca/10.1177/1469605305050152. nelly arvelo-jiménez and horacio biord, “the impact of conquest on contemporary indigenous peoples of the guiana shield,” in amazon indians from prehistory to the present: anthropological perspectives, ed. anna roosevelt (tucson: university of arizona press, 1994), 57-58. heckenberger, the ecology of power, 57. william f. keegan and corinne l. hofman, the caribbean before columbus (new york: oxford university press, 2017), 109. 5 regardless, this exoticism and exchange became inseparable, and likely caused reciprocal amplification. due to the far reaches of interactive trade, exoticism can then only be understood as pan-caribbean, rather than a limited regional phenomenon. those that controlled the flow of foreign goods became powerful regional actors, and often caciques. alien jewelry, tools, and esoteric forms of knowledge in the way of information or cultural practices such as dance and folklore could bestow esteem. political hierarchies were structured through the trade of these goods. consequently, a community’s foreign items were overwhelmingly stored within elite residences. the association of some of these goods with religious symbolism also granted these leaders an air of spiritual authority alongside their temporal one. however, these power structures were not immutable or inflexible. to preserve their alterity and associated renown, goods were persistently exchanged and widely dispersed, thereby creating new elites and displacing old ones. 5 6 6 7 7 9 9 8 8 the intersection of exoticism and trade extended to social organization, with intercommunal ties and resolution of disputes being facilitated through exchange. this entailed material interdependence, as well as integrative social processes such as matrilineal marriage, adoption, large ceremonies, and frequent travel. even warfare served these ends, by plundering and subsequently adopting alien objects and prisoners of war into conquering societies. all these practices constituted social incorporation, with symbolic articles and people from foreign cultures being absorbed. incorporation strengthened a community’s culture through expansion of practice and identity, but also reinforced exoticism, interdependent communion, and exchange on which the culture was based. this was evidenced in the physical structure of precolonial communities, with a common feature of villages being pavilions designated as welcoming and trading spaces for passing travellers. although all caribbean societies possessed idiosyncratic practices, they were seemingly connected, from south america to the greater antilles by this 11 10 10 12 13 (january 20, 2022 / 08:53:04) 122815-1b_caribbeanquilt_vol6_rev.pdf .18 19 scaramelli and scaramelli, “the roles of material culture,” 150-153. mary jane berman and perry l. gnivecki, “colonial encounters in lucayan contexts,” in material encounters and transformations in the early colonial americas: archaeological case studies, ed. corinne l. hofman and floris w.m. keehnen (boston: brill, 2019), 43-45. fernando santos-granero, vital enemies: slavery, predation, and the amerindian political economy of life (austin: university of texas press, 2009), 47. lynne a. guitar, “negotiations of conquest,” in the caribbean: a history of the region and its peoples, ed. stephan palmié and francisco a. scarano (chicago, il: university of chicago press, 2011), 120-123. roberto valcárcel rojas, “european material culture in indigenous sites in northeastern cuba,” in material encounters and transformations in the early colonial americas: archaeological case studies, ed. corinne l. hofman and floris w.m. keehnen (boston: brill, 2019), 102-103. christopher miller and george hamell, “a new perspective on indian-white contact: cultural symbols and colonial trade,” the journal of american history 73, no. 2 (1986): 312-313, https://doi.org/10.2307/1908224. ibid., 315-318. 14 15 16 17 18 definitive sociocultural foundation. therefore, trade and exoticism not only ensured physical survival through commodities, but social survival through maintenance of friendly relations and cultural preservation. contrary perceptions of trade the importance of exotic goods in caribbean indigenous societies was central to the divergence of their perceptions of exchange from spanish colonial viewpoints. indigenousgroups largely entered trade relationships in pursuit not only of physical sustenance, but social enhancement, through incorporation of foreign articles. the europeans, however, regarded trade in a purely economic manner, with each side trying to maximize their gains while incurring minimal costs. crucially, indigenous uses of slavery tended to be exogenous—through abduction in warfare—and were directed towards humane societal assimilation of foreigners. early forms of spanish enslavement or indentured labour, such as the encomienda system, prioritized exploitation of labour for peak efficiency and production. 14 15 16 17 this difference was ground in principles of communion versus competition. spaniards continually sought to identify the most worthless items within their own value systems that could be exchanged with natives in an attempt to exploit indigenous openness to multifarious objects of trade. this effort failed to realize that indigenous systems fundamentally differed in perception of value, caring little for the functions europeans had ascribed to objects in favour of the objects’ ability to be socially incorporated. thus, their varying perspectives inculcated imperial notions of inherent native primitivity in their failure to understand value as it was defined by europeans. these demeaning conceptions became particularly acute in the eagerness with which indigenous peoples accepted gaudy and cheap ‘trinkets’ of europeans such as coloured beads or metal pieces. entire regions were ostensibly purchased with such objects, with europeans exploiting the indigenous perception of trade as socially constructed rather than competitive. rather than primitivity, the appeal of these glass and metal objects derived from indigenous belief that they could be effectively incorporated. 19 20 18 19 20 (january 20, 2022 / 08:53:05) 122815-1b_caribbeanquilt_vol6_rev.pdf .19 20 hofman et al., “island rhythms,” 259-260. keehnen, “treating ‘trifles’,” 65-67. virginia dejohn anderson, creatures of empire: how domestic animals transformed early america (new york: oxford university press, 2004), 33. scaramelli and scaramelli, “the roles of material culture,” 158. cody, “distribution of exotic stone artifacts,” 209-210. keehnen, “treating ‘trifles’,” 74-75. miller and hamell, “a new perspective,” 312. keehnen, hofman, and antczak, “material encounters,” 5. miller and hamell, “a new perspective,” 312. keehnen, “treating ‘trifles’,” 74-75. 21 22 23 24 25 this was often because they resembled indigenous constructions and symbology but were nevertheless foreign products. these objects were often repurposed for alternate uses, such as implementation into indigenous tools, fineries, or ritualistic items. this tendency spawned colonial arguments for their evolutionary failure and consequent inability to comprehend complex european practices. this included the refusal to consume rather than adopt domesticated animals as incorporated creatures. foreign goods in indigenous-european interaction the desirability of foreign goods itself was misconstrued by the europeans as a desire for specifically european goods. in the colonial view, the interdependent exchange encouraged by exoticism was merely a form of dependence, which colonists had adopted upon initiating trade. strong indigenous desire for their goods and knowledge was seen as an implicit admission of european superiority, even though many indigenous groups typically regarding all foreign goods as desirable for their sociocultural purposes. ornamental stone artifacts from south america, for example, were considered highly valuable among the elites of the greater antilles. both indigenous groups and colonists therefore viewed possession of european objects and knowledge among natives as status symbols, but for far different reasons. indigenous peoples granted this prestige on account of an individual’s apparent access to trade and foreign goods, providing them with power and the means to expand their community’s social structures. the spaniards, however, perceived this possession as the mark of an ennobled savage, with close connections to the colonial elite and ability to recognize the depravity of indigenous culture. kalinago warfare against the spanish, an indigenous opportunity for foreign incorporation by capturing prisoners and looting, was also used by spaniards to demonize the kalinago as atavistic monsters. these notions elevated evolutionary rhetoric against indigenous peoples, by contending that even they were cognizant of their own inferiority. this cultivated the seeds of eurocentric acculturation theory, which held that the triumph of european over indigenous culture was inevitable and inseparable from modernization. this perception of exoticism reflected spanish goals in trade. while many natives believed that european exchange could augment socialization and communion, the spaniards sought to ‘civilize’ and assimilate indigenous 26 27 21 22 23 25 24 28 29 30 26 27 28 (january 20, 2022 / 08:53:05) 122815-1b_caribbeanquilt_vol6_rev.pdf .20 21 neil lancelot whitehead, “the ancient amerindian polities of the amazon, the orinoco, and the atlantic coast,” in amazon indians from prehistory to the present: anthropological perspectives, ed. anna roosevelt, 33-53 (tucson: university of arizona press, 1994), 39. rojas, “european material culture,” 109. keehnen, “treating ‘trifles’,” 67-68. heckenberger, the ecology of power, 130. scaramelli and scaramelli, “the roles of material culture,” 139-141. ibid., 149-151. whitehead, “the ancient amerindian polities,” 41. scaramelli and scaramelli, “the roles of material culture,” 148-150. arvelo-jiménez and biord, “the impact of conquest,” 71-72. 31 32 33 34 peoples through trade. hence, colonists characterized indigenous adoption of these goods as an attempt to liberate themselves from innately primitive cultures and accept spanish dominion. the giving of spanish clothing to natives, a prestigious foreign item in the indigenous view, was especially regarded as a transformative method of civilization due to its tangible alteration. these distinct perceptions of indigenous exoticism and trade permitted ideological subordination of natives and self-glorification by spaniards, thereby justifying cultural colonization. hierarchy in exchange the ideological institution of natural indigenous inferiority in initial spanish interactions was followed by the extension of this effort to political hierarchies. political organization in the precolonial caribbean was often determined by the exotic and trade, with one’s access according them with significant prestige. regional powerbrokers amassed foreign goods and knowledge in order to assert their status in ostentatious public displays, while power continually changed hands through the high mobility of goods, partly to preserve their exotic quality. despite significant material exchange between natives and spanish colonists, european goods were sparse across indigenous communities. this was largely because most were located in elites’ physical residences, a trend displayed in the households of many caciques such as guacanagarí. the ownership of foreign goods granted elites an authority over specific areas that was often non-hereditary and ultimately transient. spanish colonists shattered this complex political system, by exploiting the widely enshrined principle of exoticism. the prevalence of identifiable regional leaders within the economic supply chain simplified colonial appropriation of power and goods, through assassination or coercion. this permitted them to wrest command over indigenous trade networks and monopolize its foreign goods, both their own and others, in order to institute themselves as high-ranking authorities. indigenous trade networks based in exoticism thus unwillingly facilitated imperial hegemony. while some indigenous leaders gained prominence by controlling exchange of european manufactured goods, many were subordinated to spanish rule. additionally, spaniards imposed dependency relationships upon indigenous polities by controlling access to foreign goods and resources, especially addictive ones such as alcohol. dependency was deepened by the introduction of differential exchange and debt 35 36 37 38 39 29 30 31 34 32 33 35 36 37 38 (january 20, 2022 / 08:53:05) 122815-1b_caribbeanquilt_vol6_rev.pdf .21 22 kathleen deagan, “colonial origins and colonial transformations in spanish america,” historical archaeology 37, no. 4 (2003): 6, https://www.jstor.org/stable/25617091. heckenberger, the ecology of power, 57. deagan, “colonial origins,” 8. kathleen deagan, “colonial transformation: euro-american cultural genesis in the early spanish-american colonies,” journal of anthropological research 52, no. 2 (1996): 150-151, https://www.jstor.org/stable/3630198. scaramelli and scaramelli, “the roles of material culture,” 136-153. keehnen, “treating ‘trifles’,” 65-75. fernando ortiz, cuban counterpoint: tobacco and sugar, trans. harriet de onís (durham: duke university press, 1995), 98-103. 40 41 42 43 mechanisms, thereby intensifying the costs of adopting foreign goods while heightening their appeal. the impermanence of power was broken by this new order, with colonists maintaining their authority by stagnating the formerly rapid flow of intercommunal trade and exclusively holding its exotic products. beyond regional dominance, colonists exercised exoticism to deepen local political influence, primarily through intercultural marriage. many spanish settlers married elite indigenous women in order to assume preeminent positions within various indigenous communities and legitimize land acquisition, through matrilineal policies. while the indigenous population initially embraced these occurrences for the purpose of foreign integration and social expansion, colonists employed it to acquire localized power over indigenous groups. these marriages were even endorsed by the spanish crown, in order to educate natives in supposedly civilizing spanish traditions. the significant role of exoticism in precolonial political organization ultimately benefited the arriving colonists of the late 15th century, providing a path towards pervasive methods of political and economic rule and indigenous subjugation. cultural transformation and meaning the value of the exotic as it related to indigenous-spanish interaction profoundly affected the character and customs of indigenous culture. the mass influx of foreign goods expanded the range of social and economic practices, and rejuvenated preexisting traditions in exoticism, trade, and incorporation. however, it did so at the cost of validating spanish claims to superiority and homogenizing foreign influences in native societies, with the spaniards monopolizing the exotic through their grip on trade networks. at first, indigenous peoples usually perceived this influence as a form of “cultural enhancement”, a view shared by the spaniards, but was credited instead to racist theories of acculturation and social darwinism. this became more pointed as indigenous societies, despite modifying many goods, began to display markers of european influence. this included infrastructural, agricultural, linguistic, culinary, fashion, and manufacturing practices. much of this cultural alteration resulting from implementation of the exotic signified a process of creolization between diverse native groups and the spaniards. the emergent mixed-race peoples were simultaneously exhibited as 44 45 46 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 (january 20, 2022 / 08:53:05) 122815-1b_caribbeanquilt_vol6_rev.pdf .22 23 marcy norton, sacred gifts, profane pleasures: a history of tobacco and chocolate in the atlantic world (ithaca: cornell university press, 2008), 58-60. alfred w. crosby, the columbian exchange: biological and cultural consequences of 1492 (westport: praeger, 2003), 78-79. 47 48 the beginnings of inexorable acculturation processes and deplored for the tainting of indigenous ancestry. these claims were buttressed by spanish portrayal of indigenous goods and culture as detrimental to natives themselves, positing that trade items such as chocolate and tobacco were corrupting forces, despite using them themselves. spaniards argued that their goods were far superior, as evidenced in rapid indigenous incorporation of specific items such as european domestic animals and tools. this imperial campaign built on indigenous affinity for foreign goods in order to perpetuate unidirectional reliance, economic exploitation, and political command. thus, exoticism and incorporation of european elements into indigenous culture were encouraged by the spanish crown and settlers, giving rise to new ethnic groups and irreversibly altering indigenous culture. although this served some indigenous cultural objectives, it bore the cost of greatly advancing colonial ones. conclusion the legacies of spanish settlement in the caribbean remain devastating to this day, having inflicted countless horrors on indigenous peoples and placing them at the whims of colonial jurisdiction. repression was not solely directed by spanish practices, but inadvertently by indigenous values in exoticism and exchange. in the early years of the colonization project, from the 15th to 16th century, spaniards exploited this tradition to institute their authority and degrade indigenous sovereignty and culture. the impact of exoticism is visible in the two groups’ differing perceptions of trade, placement of political elitism in exchange, and indigenous cultural transformations. the results of these dynamics have remained in place for many generations after spanish invasion. 46 47 48 (january 20, 2022 / 08:53:05) 122815-1b_caribbeanquilt_vol6_rev.pdf .23 24 anderson, virginia dejohn. creatures of empire: how domestic animals transformed early america. new york: oxford university press, 2004. arvelo-jiménez, nelly and horacio biord. “the impact of conquest on contemporary indigenous peoples of the guiana shield.” in amazon indians from prehistory to the present: anthropological perspectives, edited by anna roosevelt, 55-78. tucson: university of arizona press, 1994. berman, mary jane and perry l. gnivecki. “colonial encounters in lucayan 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keehnen, floris w.m., corinne l. hofman, and andrzej t. antczak. “material encounters and indigenous transformations in the early colonial americas.” in material encounters and transformations in the early colonial americas: archaeological case studies, edited by corinne l. hofman and floris w.m. keehnen, 1-31. boston: brill, 2019. works cited (january 20, 2022 / 08:53:05) 122815-1b_caribbeanquilt_vol6_rev.pdf .24 25 keehnen, floris w.m. “treating ‘trifles’: the indigenous adoption of european material goods in early colonial hispaniola.” in material encounters and transformations in the early colonial americas: archaeological case studies, edited by corinne l. hofman and floris w.m. keehnen, 58-83. boston: brill, 2019 miller, christopher and george hamell. “a new perspective on indian-white contact: cultural symbols and colonial trade.” the journal of american history 73, no. 2 (1986): 311-328. https://doi.org/10.2307/1908224. guitar, lynne a. “negotiations of conquest.” in the caribbean: a history of the region and its peoples, edited by stephan palmié and francisco a. scarano, 115-129. chicago: university of chicago press, 2011. norton, marcy. sacred gifts, profane pleasures: a history of tobacco and chocolate in the atlantic world. ithaca: cornell university press, 2008. ortiz, fernando. cuban counterpoint: tobacco and sugar. translated by harriet de onís. durham: duke university press, 1995. rojas, roberto valcárcel. “european material culture in indigenous sites in northeastern cuba.” in material encounters and transformations in the early colonial americas: archaeological case studies, edited by corinne l. hofman and floris w.m. keehnen, 102-123. boston: brill, 2019. santos-granero, fernando. vital enemies: slavery, predation, and the amerindian political economy of life. austin: university of texas press, 2009. scaramelli, franz, and kay tarble de scaramelli. “the roles of material culture in the colonization of the orinoco, venezuela.” journal of social archaeology 5, no. 1 (february 1, 2005): 135-168. https://doi-org.myaccess.library.utoronto.ca/10.1177/1469605305050152. whitehead, neil lancelot. “the ancient amerindian polities of the amazon, the orinoco, and the atlantic coast.” in amazon indians from prehistory to the present: anthropological perspectives, edited by anna roosevelt, 33-53. tucson: university of arizona press, 1994. (january 20, 2022 / 08:53:05) 122815-1b_caribbeanquilt_vol6_rev.pdf .25 contemplating the afterlife of slavery: gynecological resistance, marronage, and revolution in late eighteenth-century saint-domingue stephane martin demers 2t1 york university osgoode hall law school évelyne trouillot’s novel the infamous rosalie makes it abundantly clear that slavery was deeply ingrained in all aspects of an enslaved person’s life. enslaved expectant mothers in late-eighteenth-century saint-domingue contemplated the afterlife of slavery through acts of gynecological resistance such as abortion and infanticide as well as marronage both in the novel and as a historical actuality. these acts of resistance laid the groundwork for the development of a collective liberation mentality among slaves necessary for the emergence of an independent haiti and the creation of the first black republic. black counter-historical narratives, such as trouillot’s novel, can provide historians with a vantage point from which to understand how historical actors who are often silenced were some of the greatest agents of change and justice in the modern era. enslaved women should occupy a space in scholarly literature and historical discourse that honors their actions as active agents in search of collective liberation and independence. a b s t r a c t keywords: slavery, enslaved expectant mothers, gynecological resistance, abortion, infanticide, marronage, revolution b i o stephane recently graduated from the university of toronto with a bachelor of music and a minor in history. stephane is currently pursuing his juris doctor at osgoode hall law school at york university where he intends to combine his interests in music and law to create a more equitable and just law school environment and legal profession. © 2021 stephane martin demers caribbean studies students’ union, canada https://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/cquilt/ this work is licensed under the creative commons attributionsharealike 4.0 international license. to view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ 32 (january 20, 2022 / 09:38:41) 122864-1b_caribbeanquilt_vol7_rev.pdf .32 33 évelyne trouillot, the infamous rosalie, trans. marjorie attignol salvodon, foreword by edwidge danticat (lincoln: nebraska paperback, 2020), 19. karol k. weaver, medical revolutionaries: the enslaved healers of eighteenth-century saint domingue (urbana: university of illinois press, 2006), 6. crystal eddins, “‘rejoice! your wombs will not beget slaves!’ marronnage as reproductive justice in colonial haiti,” gender & history 32, no. 3 (2020): 563, https://doi-org.myaccess.library.utoronto.ca/10.1111/1468-0424.12497. trouillot, the infamous rosalie, 119. eddins, “‘rejoice! your wombs will not beget slaves!’,” 563-564. trouillot, the infamous rosalie, 82. fred moten, in the break (minneapolis: university of minnesota, 2003), 14–22, 198–200, quoted in saidiya hartman, “venus in two acts,” small axe 12, no. 2 (2008): 11, muse.jhu.edu/article/241115. trouillot, the infamous rosalie, 41. 1 évelyne trouillot’s novel the infamous rosalie makes it abundantly clear that slavery was deeply ingrained in all aspects of an enslaved person’s life. according to michaud, a white overseer on the fayot plantation, as a female slave arcinte’s child was already a slave and punished before birth, forever marked by the whip of the overseer.” to avoid this unfortunate fate, enslaved expectant mothers in late eighteenth-century saint-domingue performed acts of gynecological resistance with the help of black midwives. they also escaped the plantations on which they labored in hopes of liberating themselves and their unborn children. the novel only hints at the ways in which enslaved women’s decision to kill infants – marked as slaves before birth – or to birth them beyond the confines of saint domingue’s plantations are informed by the larger historical context. this research contends that enslaved expectant mothers contemplating the afterlife of slavery through acts of abortion, infanticide, and marronage both in the novel and as an historical actuality laid the groundwork for the development of a collective liberation mentality among slaves necessary for the emergence of an independent haiti and the creation of the first black republic. confronted with the immutability of slavery and its attendant ubiquity of violence, enslaved expectant mothers’ vision of freedom would at first be squashed. lisette, a creole house slave and the daughter of an african-born bossale, had inherited the conditions of slavery through the traumatic memory of the experiences of her grandma charlotte, her great-aunt brigitte – the midwife and healer for the montreuil plantation, her godmother ma augustine, and her mother ayoube, all of whom were aboard the rosalie during the middle passage. the violent and exploitative measures that white planters imposed on her ancestors’ bodies to increase crop yield and the number of births only worsened this memory. however, enslaved women forcefully opposed colonial rule and its organizing logic in the decades leading to the haitian revolution. importantly, gynecological resistance and marronage provided them with the avenues to choose their actions – an option so seldom accorded to them. further, their choice was aimed at securing freedom for their unborn children. imagining “the resistance of the object,” a phrase coined by fred moten, occurs at a juncture in the novel where lisette and fontilus are dancing with one another. lisette states, “so often, with a bright, faraway look in his eyes, he would talk to me about a future we had to create.” the nightmare of marie-pierre 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 (january 20, 2022 / 09:38:41) 122864-1b_caribbeanquilt_vol7_rev.pdf .33 34 trouillot, 88. laurent dubois and john d. garrigus. “the haitian declaration of independence: january 1, 1804,” in slave revolution in the caribbean, 1789-1804: a brief history with documents (basingstoke: palgrave macmillan, 2006), 189. trouillot, the infamous rosalie, 77. weaver, medical revolutionaries, 41-42. trouillot, the infamous rosalie, 93, 95. weaver, medical revolutionaries, 57, 60. trouillot, the infamous rosalie, 119-120. weaver, medical revolutionaries, 57. weaver, 58. 9 (one of the “ship sisters” from congo who boarded the rosalie with lisette’s ancestors) also sets the tone for the urgency with which enslaved expectant mothers would need to create this seemingly unattainable future. in marie-pierre’s recounting of her nightmare to lisette, dogs are giving birth to “brawling pups” in the “darkness of the barracoons.” on the plantations of saint domingue, enslaved women gave birth to newborns who were already tethered to the institution of slavery. even though their predetermined condition would subject them to a life of misery and misfortune, enslaved mothers went to great lengths to ensure their children did not become “the prey of these vultures [or white masters].” elaborating on the dialogue between lisette and fontilus, grandma charlotte at a later point in the novel dreams of severing the chain of memory whose roots lay in slavery: “perhaps one day we’ll no longer even remember [the word barracoons]; it will have perished with those of us who bore its mark.” in spite of the great hardships that lisette’s ancestors endured, and her own experiences of losing nearly everyone she knew and loved to slavery, enslaved expectant mothers’ were doubtfully hopeful that their acts of abortion and infanticide on the plantation would bring about the liberation they so desperately yearned for. though enslaved women were among the least powerful in slave society, midwives used their privileged position to assist them in inducing abortions. in doing so, midwives prevented enslaved women’s unborn children from becoming slaves and in turn undermined the institution of slavery. for example, due to her aversion toward birthing children who would be marked as slaves, gracieuse, master fayot’s cocotte, had seven abortions, albeit without assistance. historically, midwives possessed knowledge about and used plants, such as the leaves of the avocado tree, that could bring on an abortion, a fact to which pouppée-desportes, an eighteenth-century french botanist, attests. the abortive powers of enslaved women formed the liberating potential that was further realized through their infanticidal might. in the infamous rosalie, enslaved women used infanticide as an imaginative tool to bring about the liberation and independence that they sought. readers learn that the seventy knots tied around brigitte’s mysterious cord represent the seventy babies that she killed and saved from slavery as a midwife on the montreuil plantation. similarly, an arada midwife who lived on the fleuriau plantation in late eighteenth-century saint domingue wore a rope collar with seventy knots representing the number of children she 10 11 12 13 14 16 15 17 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 (january 20, 2022 / 09:38:41) 122864-1b_caribbeanquilt_vol7_rev.pdf .34 35 trouillot, the infamous rosalie, 122. anthony bogues, ““the black jacobins and the long haitian revolution” with anthony bogues,” uic institute for the humanities, feb 3, 2015, youtube video, https://youtu.be/yrjbxphcnmu. weaver, medical revolutionaries, 37. weaver, 56. hartman, “venus in two acts,” 3. trouillot, the infamous rosalie, 90. bogues, ““the black jacobins and the long haitian revolution.”” trouillot, the infamous rosalie, 95. 18 claimed to have killed. following these incidents, the emancipatory practice of inserting a needle in a baby’s brain through the fontanel at birth soon became a widespread practice in saint domingue. as lisette contemplates the seventy lives “who will not have the chance to see the sun rise,” she comes to accept death as preferable to a life in bondage. literarily and historically, the emancipatory spirit grew beyond sites where enslaved expectant mothers performed resistive acts. however, french colonial officials adamantly suppressed the imagination of enslaved women and deemed slavery the culminative point of their lives, restricting the scope and significance of gynecological resistance. if planters witnessed midwives assisting enslaved mothers in inducing abortion or committing infanticide, they would be severely whipped. arguably worse, planters often forced pregnancy among enslaved women using an iron collar. despite the mechanisms that planters utilized to ensure they were profiting from the reproductive capacities of enslaved women, the latter found ways to circumvent these brutal measures. even when offered incentives for bearing children, such as exemption from days of work in proportion to the number of children they gave birth to or granting them le libre de droit (complete freedom), they were steadfast in their refusal to offer up potential laborers. by thwarting the cycle of productivity on which slavery depended, enslaved expectant mothers developed an independence of mind that would emerge in more concrete forms during the haitian revolution. abortion and infanticide represented a kind of freedom only obtainable in death. lisette, upon realizing that she holds strength in being a slave, ventures on a quest to “reanimate the dead” and in turn to challenge the economic construct upon which slavery rests through marronage – freedom in life. her training as a maroon begins when vincent, her lover and a maroon known as “the fearless one,” thoughtfully utters, “ants take their time to cross the road, but one day they reach the other side.” this parallels anthony bogues’, director of the center for the study of slavery & justice at brown university, literal and metaphorical notion of “working through to get to another side.” lisette embraces the uncertainty of her journey as a maroon so that her unborn child may be free. prior to her departure, she also recognizes how vincent’s and gracieuse’s fates are bound together. though not immediately apparent to her, readers will understand that in their respective acts of resistance, both agents imagined a world without slavery by unchaining themselves and in gracieuse’s case, her children, from the bonds of servitude. 19 20 21 22 23 25 24 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 (january 20, 2022 / 09:38:41) 122864-1b_caribbeanquilt_vol7_rev.pdf .35 36 bogues, ““the black jacobins.” eddins, “‘rejoice! your wombs will not beget slaves!’,” 575. eddins, 576. eddins, 576. eddins, 573. eddins, 566. laurent dubois and john d. garrigus, “the haitian constitution: 1805,” in slave revolution in the caribbean, 1789-1804: a brief history with documents (basingstoke: palgrave macmillan, 2006), 192. . 26 according to bogues, “revolution is the moment at which the idea of freedom and a new beginning coincide.” agents of gynecological resistance envisioned the possibilities of freedom, but it was the agents of marronage who awakened its embryonic potential. for example, enslaved women fled to autonomous villages away from the plantation to birth free and rebellious children. in communities that thrived outside of the slave economy, the children of enslaved mothers were able to give free reign to their rebellious tendencies and form strong support networks consisting of other enraged and powerful maroons. thus, enslaved expectant mothers’ marronage propelled the fully formed liberation mentality of haiti’s independence into being by conjuring up an image of the slave as untethered to any external authority through acts of gynecological resistance. however, in the same way that colonial officials responded with force to suppress abortion and infanticide, marronage did not go without punishment. if an enslaved woman (or any enslaved person for that matter) was seen fleeing the plantation or had already escaped, they would either be returned to their master, tortured by whipping or the use of hot irons, or murdered. considering the strict enforcement of these brutal punishments and the added burden of being a woman, and in some cases a mother, female runaways made up an alarming 14 percent (1,858) of maroons from 1766-1791 in saint-domingue, as documented in les affiches américaines. furthermore, the child-woman ratio in the baoruco mountains of le maniel, the most successful maroon settlement in haiti, was 2:1, suggesting that the free population was growing substantially. due in large part to enslaved women who became maroons, their children who were raised as free subjects and aware of slavery’s horrors became emergent revolutionaries by the time the haitian revolution had begun. enslaved expectant mothers believed that revolution would put an end to slavery and that their unborn children were essential in achieving this outcome. the collective spirit of liberation engendered by these women would contribute to the rise of notions of haitian unity, independence, and protection from colonial interference. this is evidenced by artifacts like the haitian constitution proclaimed by jean-jacques dessalines, the leader of the haitian revolution. article 2 states that “slavery is abolished forever” while article 12 goes a step further and affirms that no white man may ever enter haitian territory or inherit haitian property. through inducing abortion, committing infanticide, and engaging in marronage, enslaved women envisioned a society radically different from their own, mostly to gain freedom for their unborn children. the victory that haitian revolutionaries 27 28 29 30 31 32 29 30 31 32 (january 20, 2022 / 09:38:41) 122864-1b_caribbeanquilt_vol7_rev.pdf .36 37 trouillot, the infamous rosalie, 51. trouillot, 7. trouillot, 129. dubois and garrigus, “the haitian declaration of independence,” 191. hartman, “venus in two acts,” 13. hartman, 4. . 33 enjoyed in 1804 would not have been possible without a concerted and collective effort at forging a liberation mentality brought about by acts of reproductive resistance performed by enslaved expectant mothers. in the infamous rosalie, lisette simultaneously surrenders to and challenges her condition as a slave. on the one hand, she is unable to imagine life in the absence of slave society and its many actors. on the other, she expresses a strong underlying desire to be free: “dwelling within me is my true vision, the one that refuses all servility…so close, so far.” after gaining knowledge that she was spared by brigitte before her seventy-first attempt at infanticide, lisette decided to forge a new beginning away from the plantation and ensure the freedom of her unborn child. she declares, “creole child who still lives in me, you will be born free and rebellious, or you will not be born at all.” lisette’s bold declaration and the liberating spirit it gives rise to bears a striking resemblance to dessalines’ unwavering statement in “the haitian declaration of independence”: “vow before me to live free and independent and to prefer death to anything that will try to place you back in chains.” what started as a doubtful hope of liberation expressed by grandma charlotte and enslaved expectant mothers becomes a deliberate undertaking for lisette at the end of the novel. decades before the haitian revolution had even begun, lisette fiercely proclaimed freedom – as uncertain as obtaining it was. her determination not to let the uncertainty of attaining freedom deter her from doing so animates much of enslaved expectant mothers’ efforts to gradually overthrow the institution of slavery through gynecological resistance and marronage. even though saidiya hartman perceives accounts of the history of black-counter historical projects as failures, they can nevertheless provide historians with a vantage point from which to understand how historical actors who are often silenced were some of the greatest agents of change and justice in the modern era. as “the incomplete project of freedom” unfolds, enslaved women should occupy a space in scholarly literature and historical discourse that honors their actions as active agents in search of collective liberation and independence. 34 35 36 37 38 33 34 35 36 37 38 (january 20, 2022 / 09:38:41) 122864-1b_caribbeanquilt_vol7_rev.pdf .37 38 bogues, anthony. 2015. ““the black jacobins and the long haitian revolution” with anthony bogues.” uic institute for the humanities. 3 february. youtube video. https://youtu.be/yrjbxphcnmu. dubois, laurent, and john d. garrigus. 2006. “the haitian constitution: 1805.” in slave revolution in the caribbean, 1789-1804: a brief history with documents. basingstoke: palgrave macmillan. dubois, laurent, and john d. garrigus. 2006. “the haitian declaration of independence: january 1, 1804.” in slave revolution in the caribbean, 1789-1804: a brief history with documents. basingstoke: palgrave macmillan. eddins, crystal. 2020. “‘rejoice! your wombs will not beget slaves!’ marronnage as reproductive justice in colonial haiti.” gender & history 32, no. 3: 562-580. https://doi-org.myaccess.library.utoronto.ca/10.1111/1468-0424.12497. hartman, saidiya. 2008. “venus in two acts.” small axe 12, no. 2: 1-14. muse.jhu.edu/article/241115. trouillot, évelyne. 2020. the infamous rosalie. translated by marjorie attignol salvodon. foreword by edwidge danticat. lincoln: nebraska paperback. weaver, karol k. 2006. medical revolutionaries: the enslaved healers of eighteenth century saint domingue. urbana: university of illinois press. works cited (january 20, 2022 / 09:38:41) 122864-1b_caribbeanquilt_vol7_rev.pdf .38 front matter with bios.pdf envisioning the future using the dreams of the past: caribbean historiography and decolonizing development in the caribbean areli freeman university of toronto faculty of arts and science, economics and international relations double major, material culture minor in this paper, the connection between the ways in which history in the caribbean is written and understood, and between revolutionary movements and thought today in the anglophone caribbean, are explored. it is argued that it is not possible to achieve a decolonized caribbean, a necessary condition for the inclusive development of the region, when histories of revolution and development remain thoroughly steeped in colonial biases and imbalances of power. through examining the colonial context of knowledge production and consumption while also acknowledging that the past is often used as a model for the future, it is concluded that a focus on writing decolonized histories is essential to imagining a decolonized future in the caribbean. a b s t r a c t b i o areli freeman is a fourth year undergraduate student of international relations, economics and material culture at the university of toronto.through her studies, she hopes to gain a deeper understanding of the issues and challenges surrounding economic development, both in the international arena and within nations. © 2021 areli freeman caribbean studies students’ union, canada https://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/cquilt/ this work is licensed under the creative commons attributionsharealike 4.0 international license. to view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ 49 (january 20, 2022 / 09:38:42) 122864-1b_caribbeanquilt_vol7_rev.pdf .49 50 george j sefa dei, “introduction: mapping the terrain towards a new politics of resistance,” in colonialism and education: the politics of resistance, ed. sefa dei, george j., and arlo kempf (sense publishers: 2006), 7. 1 introduction when i learned about the discovery of oil in guyana last year, i did not feel particularly joyful. if anything, i felt a mixture of hope and dread: hope that the current administration would be interested in utilizing this discovery to improve life for ordinary guyanese, and dread about the media circus. i expected this discovery would bring the corruption that would welcome neocolonial forms of investment that continue to ignore the needs of the subaltern. while theoretically these are not the only results that are possible when countries in the region make comparable discoveries, for some, it seems like common sense that these are the most likely. why? what contributes to the belief that current inequalities and silences will only be reinforced by attempts to develop in the region? in this paper, i reflect on this question by considering the importance of historiography from a decolonial perspective. defined as the study of historical writing, historiography recognizes the impact historical perspectives have on our contemporary understandings of cultural, and socio-political perspectives. in the context of this research, i argue that colonial modes of knowledge production impact our conceptualization of the social change and revolutionary ideals needed in the region as well as our record of subaltern contributions. by exploring the historiography of the twentieth century anglophone caribbean from a decolonial perspective, this research argues that in many instances true decolonization and development of the region requires a a reframing of the region’s history that highlights lessons the contributions of subaltern actors and transitions away from history. considering three regional examples of grenada, this paper considers the systems of colonialism that were introduced by european colonial powers as well as those of neocolonialism and neoliberalism that persists in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries due to the regions continued dependence on colonial modes. using the definition of ‘colonial’ posited by george j. sefa dei, as anything imposed and dominating, i argue that colonial modes of knowledge production are those that deliberately ignore the contributions of subaltern actors. a colonial mode of knowledge production will refer to systems of creating knowledge, such as through writing, that reinforces the domination of the subaltern .the writing of the history from a decolonial and revolutionary perspective, however, provides both the inspiration and intellectual frameworks for future thought and movements that place equal weight on the contributions of the subaltern. similarly, the writing of history within colonial systems of knowledge production means that social change is limited in scope by misguided and often idealized understandings of colonial structures of power which have not benefited the peoples of the region. 1 (january 20, 2022 / 09:38:42) 122864-1b_caribbeanquilt_vol7_rev.pdf .50 51 bridget brereton, “recent development in historiography of the post-emancipation anglophone caribbean,” in beyond )udjphqwdwlrqௗ��3huvshfwlyhv�rq�&duleehdq�+lvwru\��hg��e\�-xdqlwd�'h�%duurv��$xgud��'lswhh��dqg�'dylg�9lqfhqw�7urwpdq�� �3ulqfhwrq�1-��0��:lhqhu�3xeolvkhuv������������� ����%uhuhwrq������ ����2��1ljho�%roodqg��³+lvwrulrjudsk\�ri�'hfrorqlvdwlrq�lq�wkh�$qjorskrqh�&duleehdq´�lq�%h\rqg�)udjphqwdwlrqௗ�� 3huvshfwlyhv�rq�&duleehdq�+lvwru\�hg��e\�-xdqlwd�'h�%duurv��$xgud��'lswhh��dqg�'dylg�9lqfhqw�7urwpdq���3ulqfhwrq�1-��0�� :lhqhu�3xeolvkhuv������������� ����%uhuhwrq������� ����%uhuhwrq���������� ����%roodqg������� ����%roodqg������ 2 trends in caribbean historiography ,q�rughu�wr�xqghuvwdqg�wkh�fxuuhqw�frqfhswxdol]dwlrq�ri�&duleehdq�klvwru\�lw�lv�xvhixo� wr�xqghuvwdqg�lwv�irfxvhv��shulrgl]dwlrqv� dqg�phwkrgrorj\��7kh�klvwru\�ri�wkh� anglophone caribbean, there are two pdmru�zdwhuvkhg�prphqwv��7kh�iluvw� rffxuv�lq������dw�wkh�riilfldo�hqg�ri� slavery and the start of the post-emancipawlrq�shulrg���������������dqg�wkh�vhfrqg� ehjlqv�lq�wkh�����v��zkhq�d�vhulhv�ri� oderxu�surwhvwv�lq�wkh�uhjlrq�uhvxowv�lq�d� shift in social, political and economic frqglwlrqv���7kh�odwwhu�vlploduo\�pdunv�d� vkliw�lq�wkh�skdvhv�ri�ghfrorql]dwlrq�� 3uh�������wkh�uhjlrq�zdv�sulpdulo\� composed of colonies some of which maintained representative government, iurp������wr������zdv�wkh�shulrg�ri� oderxu�uhehoolrqv�dqg�frqvwlwxwlrqdo� ghfrorql]dwlrq�ehjlqv��dqg������wr�wkh� ����v��zkhuh�prvw�iruphu�&duleehdq� frorqlhv�ehfdph�lqghshqghqw�vwdwhv� &duleehdq�klvwru\�lv�xvxdoo\�zulwwhq�zlwk�d� irfxv�rq�vrfldo�klvwru\��klvwru\�fhqwhuhg� durxqg�udfh��hwkqlflw\��fodvv��jhqghu�hwf���� dqg�lv�xvxdoo\�zulwwhq�edvhg�rq�dufklydo� grfxphqwv�fuhdwhg�e\�frorqldo�jryhuqphqwv��rudo�klvwrulhv�dqg�srsxodu�zulwlqj� olnh�frorqldo�hud�&duleehdq�qhzvsdshuv��� :kloh�gliihuhqw�vfkroduv�ri�frxuvh�kdyh� wkhlu�rzq�lghdv�dqg�dqjohv�wkdw�wkh\�xwlol]h�� when writing history, the major difference between scholars writing caribbean history has been pro-colonial and anti-coorqldo�shuvshfwlyhv��7kh�odwwhu�kdv�ehfrph� dominant (in the sense that writing has jrqh�iurp�sudlvlqj�frorqldo�uxoh�wr�ehlqj� h[wuhpho\�fulwlfdo�ri�lw���d�vkliw�wkdw�lv� generally considered to have happened in wkh�����v�dqg�����v���7klv�shulrgl]dwlrq�lv� ri�frxuvh�frqwhvwhg��dqg�dv�d�uhvxow�wkh� transition between pro-colonial and [de]colonial periods may be seen as ryhuodsslqj��zlwk�erwk�dozd\v�h[lvwlqj�exw� one becoming dominant at some period in wlph� caribbean history, historical imagination and the connections between past and present caribbean historiography and the regions klvwrulfdo�frqvwuxfwv�uhiohfw�frorqldo� glvwulexwlrqv�ri�srzhu�dqg�nqrzohgjh� surgxfwlrq��,q�vrph�lqvwdqfhv��klvwruldqv� that write this history are embedded within wkh�surfhvvhv�ri�frorqldo�nqrzohgjh� fuhdwlrq�zkloh�rwkhuv��wkurxjk�wkhlu� writing, stand opposed to these framezrunv���7krvh�wkdw�duh�hgxfdwhg�lq�:hvwhuq� xqlyhuvlwlhv�lq�wkh�frxqwulhv�ri�iruphu� frorqldo�srzhuv��vshdn�wkh�odqjxdjhv�ri� colonialism and live in societies whose vwuxfwxuhv�ehdu�wkh�pdunv�ri�kxqguhgv�ri� \hduv�ri�grplqdwlrq�duh�dovr�qrw�lppxqh� 3 4 5 6 2 3 4 6 7 8 8 7 (january 20, 2022 / 09:38:42) 122864-1b_caribbeanquilt_vol7_rev.pdf .51 52 anthony bogues, “history, decolonization and the making of revolution: reflections on writing the popular history of the jamaican events of 1938.” interventions 12, no. 1 (2010): 84. d.j. stanley, historical imagination, (routledge, 2020), 40-41. michel foucault, 1980, 1989 as cited by george j sefa dei, “introduction: mapping the terrain – towards a new politics of resistance,” in colonialism and education: the politics of resistance edited by sefa dei, george j., and arlo kempf (sense publishers: 2006), 8. brereton, 194. shalinee bahadur, raegan gibbings and amilcar sanatan, “forward ever with jacqueline creft: the paradox of women's liberation in the caribbean revolutionary left,” history in action 6, no.1 (2018): 31. 9 to continuing the process of colonial knowledge production. similar to the way we think about the future being influenced by our ideas, our thinking about the past is impacted by our thoughts about the present and the future. this is especially true when discussing revolutions. they ask questions about potential, which relates them to the future because they are both tied to the unknown, but also relates them to the past because they draw upon memory. history is a collection of historical concepts, which are constructions historians make and “insert into the past” in order to capture the significance of the patterns they see. historical concepts are a reflection of individual historians’ worldviews, which are a product of the ways in which they experience power. as a result, historical writing is a reflection of current power relations. power, in a foucauldian sense, is “relational and circulates among groups” . it is not something held exclusively by those identified as being at the top of the social hierarchy, but instead is wielded in different spheres and by different peoples. by being written within contexts where colonial relations of power continue to shape the world, caribbean historical writing has the current way power is distributed imprinted onto it. documents in comparison to other sources, such as oral histories. this is a feature of western thought. this then helps to produce a history that is written from the view of european colonizers and their values, since what they decided to record would be what was found significant to them. in this value system, the wellbeing and development of the caribbean and its people were not prized. the focus on social history magnifies this, since writing about social relations is at the heart of caribbean scholarship. therefore, the writing will be even more reflective of current historians’ specific models and thoughts about the relative importance of certain groups in society. for example, the absences in writing about grenada’s revolutions reflect patriarchal constructs that are closely tied to modes of colonial thought about women. these beliefs place women as being secondary in importance and capability when compared to men and instead relegates them to supporting roles. in grenada, women in the revolution’s historiography, similar to women in colonial and post-colonial societies, are largely ignored unless they are attached to men in some way. black women like jacqueline creft, an activist and education minister within grenada's people’s revolutionary government (prg), are not treated as acting from positions of power but instead as if they only play supporting roles. 10 11 12 13 9 10 11 12 13 (january 20, 2022 / 09:38:42) 122864-1b_caribbeanquilt_vol7_rev.pdf .52 53 carlene edie, “domestic politics and external relations in jamaica under michael manley, 1972–1980,” studies in comparative international development 21, no. 1 (march 1, 1986): 72. arlo kempf “anti-colonial historiography: interrogating colonial education,” in colonialism and education: the politics of resistance edited by george j. sefa dei and arlo kempf (sense publishers: 2006), 135. 14 our beliefs about progress and prosperity also shape constructions. in caribbean studies, this can be seen in economic analyses of the region’s revolutions and efforts to decolonize, which perpetuate colonial distributions of wealth that existed at the time of writing. in a largely capitalist post-colonial west, historical writings often exhibit a bias towards popular forms of capitalism. this is a reflection of neocolonial thought about the superiority of american economic systems. for example, in writing about michael manley’s economic troubles in jamaica, carlene j. edie states that other academic writing on the topic at the time did not consider the effects of removing foreign capital on the country’s ability to improve the economy, and instead focused on the incompatibility of socialism with economic development. however, in the development space, manley’s ideas would be totally accepted (for example, universal education) and are in fact encouraged today in countries trying to develop, although they are always presented within a capitalist framework, implying that the analyses themselves were not necessarily grounded in economic realities and data. instead, they are a reflection of the time period (edie’s article was written in 1986). the influence of the “washington consensus” (a set of neoliberal economic policies that were popular in the 1980s), a hallmark of american hegemony, was being reflected in the writing of these historians. therefore, it is seen that in various aspects of caribbean historiography, writing about history is not necessarily only grounded in the happenings of the past, but are also shaped by the writer’s present. the importance of history in the future of development in the caribbean now that we have examined the mechanism through which the present constructs the past, we can shift to examining how the past constructs the future. what we know about the past helps us model the future, because this provides a jumping off point for future scholarship. in the realm of development, this is especially true as current regimes of development rely heavily on the results of previous experiments and data. writing about caribbean revolutions reflects colonial modes of knowledge production and dissemination creates an issue for the imagining of the future development of the region because it implies future development will be limited in how much it can be decolonized. this is harmful because colonialism keeps the subaltern (whether the lower classes or the global south) underdeveloped for the enrichment of the colonizer, and so if future development is neocolonial then its impacts will be felt extremely unequally. in caribbean historiography, models of revolutionary development focus on the leadership and contributions of middle-class leadership, foreign education and top-down led economic planning. this is a reflection of and reinforces colonial systems of merit that emphasize the importance of western education, language and knowledge. this is not to say that western knowledge is necessarily bad, but rather that it is presented as universal, which helps to dominate and 15 14 15 (january 20, 2022 / 09:38:42) 122864-1b_caribbeanquilt_vol7_rev.pdf .53 54 alex dupuy, “race and class in the postcolonial caribbean: the views of walter rodney,” latin american perspectives 89, no.2 (1996): 127. bogues, 79. bogues, 82. bogues, 83. bogues, 83-85. 16 delegitimize non-western ‘others’ as well as obscures the fact that sometimes its application is inappropriate, or harmful, in some contexts. this tendency is seen in caribbean writing about revolution, which is usually written as follows: the turnover of power within current caribbean states when they went from colonies to countries resulted in power being concentrated in a new caribbean petty bourgeoisie , whose political and educational development provided the foundation for new nationalisms and political experiments during the third period of decolonization. as a result, future development in the region also falls to a new, educated middle class. this is not unique to the caribbean. writing about the history of nation-building during the global third wave of decolonization is often, though not always, characterized by focusing on the contributions of an educated middle class that developed through attending well-known schools that emphasized the superiority of western-style education, fuelled by the influence of benedict anderson’s imagined communities. however, to what extent did the middle class alone really shape the revolutionary path? are these arguments just a reflection of historical reality, or could this focus overemphasize middle class contributions due to beliefs about the greater intellectual and leadership capacities of an educated middle class? an example of this tension is seen in anthony bogues’ 2010 article “history, decolonization and the making of revolution: reflections on writing the popular history of the jamaican events of 1938.”, where he compares two analyses of the 1938 labour unrest in jamaica. the analysis done by scholar and africanist ken post aims to frame the events as a workers’ rebellion , denying the importance of vanguard leadership in the event, which contrasts other characterizations by writers like arthur lewis, who treated the event as a disorganized workers’ rebellion (led by workers). in examining the strengths and weaknesses of both approaches, he notes that the latter tends to imply the need for a paternalistic kind of guidance was needed for the workers and that similar accounts are often not written with the perspectives of workers, the revolutionaries themselves, in mind. ultimately, he concludes that caribbean history by nature must be organized around the history of the subaltern to truly illuminate the past. it is seen that both approaches are not necessarily incorrect or too imaginative, but rather build on different aspects of the revolt that the authors found significant. however, because of the tendency to dismiss the importance of ordinary caribbean peoples in political change, alex lewis’ constructions became more dominant and were taken to demonstrate the lack of leadership ability among the workers, when this is not necessarily true. in this way, the way in which history in the caribbean is written can fail to recognize the importance of the subaltern in the region’s development. 17 18 19 20 16 17 18 19 20 (january 20, 2022 / 09:38:42) 122864-1b_caribbeanquilt_vol7_rev.pdf .54 55 catherine moffat, “development unmoored,” in colonialism and education: the politics of resistance, edited by george j. sefa dei and arlo kempf (sense publishers: 2006): 212. 21 while i do not deny the importance of the educated middle class in leading revolutions, writing in this manner ignores the importance of the masses, contributing to their being sidelined in discussions about change. in other revolts and experiments, the lower classes provided the necessary support needed to shape the tide of the revolutions through their support or rejection of the revolutionaries. the experiments in guyana, grenada and jamaica were shaped by the people, even if they were not given power in the aftermath. as a result, the relative importance of middle-class leadership is overstated. this is seen in scholarship in the grenada revolution which focuses on the ideological and planning failures of the prg, and analyses of jamaica’s economic experiments under manley which discuss the tensions between the main political factions. these revolutions were fuelled and upheld by the willingness and efforts of the masses, either in adhering to new economic models or through systems of patronage. continuing to write like this perpetuates the domination of one class because thought about future development will mirror the same class divisions; those advocating for change will be looking for the next jagan, bishop or manley. the result of this is the elevation of the middle and upper classes’ interests and achievements, and the continued disengagement of everyone else. on a global scale, our current development discourse does the same. instead of writing about the leadership of the middle class, it is enabled by writing about the historical and inherent difference between the global north and south. technocrats from the north or south (but educated in the north) become “saviours” because they have made the other into a person to be saved. and this will continue in new schemes of development that are created, because it is difficult to conceive of development occurring in any other way. contemporary writing about development and development schemes still focuses on emulating the models and achievements of the global north without considering the needs and ideas of the subaltern. therefore, writing about caribbean history reflects colonial and neocolonial modes of domination, which are harmful for future change in the caribbean. this can specifically be seen in discourse about development: a historical focus on the importance of an elite that are upheld by colonial beliefs about the superiority of certain types of education and knowledge will result in future inequality as the region develops. looking forward after considering the issues and effects of the issues of current caribbean historiography, it is difficult to think of ways to move forward because while it is clear that we need to acknowledge and elevate the subaltern, successful models of this engagement are limited because of the way in which official histories are written, as discussed earlier. we often do not have the language and the history to consider a completely different way of thinking. however, there are some ways to at least start changing thought. 21 (january 20, 2022 / 09:38:42) 122864-1b_caribbeanquilt_vol7_rev.pdf .55 56 sefa dei, 11. kempf, 134. ������3hjj\�/hylww��0dxulfh�&uxo��0lfkdo�%xfkrzvnl��6xekdgud�0lwud�&kdqqd��-dvqd�ýdsr��*hu�'xlm]lqjv��0lfkdho�3��.�� 2n\huhir��0duhh�3dug\�l�1rho�%��6dod]du���'hfrqvwuxfwlqj�dqg�5hfrqvwuxfwlqj��(peudflqj�$owhuqdwlyh�:d\v�ri�3urgxflqj�� &odvvli\lqj�dqg�'lvvhplqdwlqj�.qrzohgjh���(wqrorãnd�wulelqd��������������� 22 first, the obvious answer is to look towards new histories and language that treat visions of revolution being by and of the people as having equal validity to revolution being led by a very small group of people. language is powerful as a tool iru�ghfrorql]dwlrq��vlqfh�wkh�delolw\�wr� name an issue while giving one the “cultural and political capital” to challenge lw���$v�d�uhvxow��ghyhorslqj�qhz�frqfhswxdo� frameworks and terms for understanding the transition between old and new forms of domination that the caribbean faces helps to combat colonial constructions of the subaltern. in this way, even in the consideration of the before-mentioned texts as primary sources that tend to reproduce colonial power dynamics, we fdq�plqlpl]h�wkh�kdup�wkdw�frxog�eh� created. in addition to this, the writing of history should continue to be viewed as more of a dialogue between official histories and the histories of the subaltern, rather than an argument for one or the rwkhu��zklfk�$uor�.hpsi�vxjjhvwv�fdq� help to “reveal the bad and celebrate the good.”. this can help to illuminate the work and importance of other groups in the creation of revolution, which can help further future development that is more inclusive and successful for ordinary peoples. finally, in development discourse specifically, we must consider that difference is not synonymous with backwardness, and to consider forms of knowledge that we would not consider conventional. knowledge that originated and is written in (xursh�dqg�1ruwk�$phulfd�qhhgv�wr�eh� ³surylqfldol]hg´���wuhdwhg�dv�ehlqj�iurp�d� certain place and time, rather than frpprq�dqg�xqlyhuvdo�nqrzohgjh���'rlqj� so helps us to conceive that there are other spheres of knowledge that could have solutions to the problems being faced. ultimately, development is a term that reaches far beyond material gains but rather having the capacity and ability to direct one’s life while creating a history than one may take pride in, something that lv�qrw�frpsdwleoh�zlwk�frorql]hg�plqgvhwv�� breaking away from the colonial past and present requires doing away with ways of thinking entirely. in order to do that, we must consider new ways of doing things, and that requires questioning old ways. to conclude, the way history is written is not an impartial rendering of facts, but rather a process in which patterns are taken and made into narratives based on the historian’s own world views. in klvwrulhv�derxw�uhyroxwlrq�lq�wkh�$qjorskrqh�&duleehdq��vshflilfdoo\�lq�*x\dqd�� -dpdlfd�dqg�*uhqdgd���wkh�klvwru\�uhiohfwv� colonial and neocolonial constructions of the world, simply because the historians writing are immersed in them. the impact of this is to perpetuate colonial imbalances of power, and in the realm of development, models of top-down development that elevate the status of those who can lghqwli\�prvw�zlwk�wkh�:hvw�dqg�ljqruh� everyone else. in a circular way, this creates an environment for development in the caribbean that does the same. the colonial present is imposed onto writing about the past through historians’ biases, 23 24 22 23 24 (january 20, 2022 / 09:38:42) 122864-1b_caribbeanquilt_vol7_rev.pdf .56 57 and then the colonial past is used to create a colonial future. in order to break this cycle, i argue that literature about the history of caribbean decolonization and revolution must be further decolonized. i will admit that i am skeptical of being able to fully decolonize, because we will never be fully aware of the full extent to which we are caught in colonialism’s grasp: we must use its language to navigate the world it helped to shape, and so are in some ways doomed to remain attached to colonial discourses, even if we widen their boundaries. as a result, instead of looking to completely do away with colonialisms, being mindful of the considerations raised and critical of dominant histories allows for meaningful movement towards decolonization. hopefully, this will allow for better, more inclusive and more compatible discourse to be given space to be considered in the region’s future plans. (january 20, 2022 / 09:38:42) 122864-1b_caribbeanquilt_vol7_rev.pdf .57 58 bahadur, shalinee, raegan gibbings and amilcar sanatan. “forward ever with jacqueline creft: the paradox of women's liberation in the caribbean revolutionary left.” history in action 6, no.1 (2018): 26-34. bogues, anthony. “history, decolonization and the making of revolution: reflections on writing the popular history of the jamaican events of 1938.” interventions 12, no. 1 (2010): 76–87. bolland, o. nigel. “historiography of decolonisation in the anglophone caribbean” in %h\rqg�)udjphqwdwlrqࣟ��3huvshfwlyhv�rq�&duleehdq�+lvwru\ edited by juanita de barros, audra. diptee, and david vincent trotman, 265-296. princeton nj: m. wiener publishers, 2006. brereton, bridget. “recent developments in historiography of the post-emancipation anglophone caribbean” in %h\rqg�)udjphqwdwlrqࣟ��3huvshfwlyhv�rq�&duleehdq� history, edited by juanita de barros, audra. diptee, and david vincent trotman, 187-212. princeton nj: m. wiener publishers, 2006. dupuy, alex. “race and class in the postcolonial caribbean: the views of walter rodney.” /$7,1�$0(5,&$1�3(563(&7,9(6 89, no.2 (spring 1996): 107-129. edie, carlene. “domestic politics and external relations in jamaica under michael manley, 1972–1980.” 6wxglhv�lq�&rpsdudwlyh�,qwhuqdwlrqdo�'hyhorsphqw 21, no. 1 (march 1, 1986): 71–94. kempf, arlo. “anti-colonial historiography: interrogating colonial education,” in &rorqldolvp�dqg�(gxfdwlrq��7kh�3rolwlfv�ri�5hvlvwdqfh� edited by george j. sefa dei and arlo kempf, 129-158. sense publishers: 2006. /hylww��3hjj\��0dxulfh�&uxo��0lfkdo�%xfkrzvnl��6xekdgud�0lwud�&kdqqd��-dvqd�ýdsr�� ger duijzings, michael p. k. okyerefo, maree pardy i noel b. salazar. "deconstructing and reconstructing. embracing alternative ways of producing, classifying and disseminating knowledge." (wqrorãnd�wulelqd 48, br. 41 (2018): 3-50. moffat, catherine. “development unmoored,” in colonialism and education: the politics of resistance edited by george j. sefa dei and arlo kempf, 211-242. sense publishers: 2006. sefa dei, george j . “introduction: mapping the terrain – towards a new politics of resistance,” in &rorqldolvp�dqg�(gxfdwlrq��7kh�3rolwlfv� ����������ri�5hvlvwdqfh�edited by sefa dei, george j., and arlo kempf, 1-23. sense publishers: 2006. works cited (january 20, 2022 / 09:38:42) 122864-1b_caribbeanquilt_vol7_rev.pdf .58 59 stanley, d.j.. historical imagination. routledge, 2020. (january 20, 2022 / 09:38:42) 122864-1b_caribbeanquilt_vol7_rev.pdf .59 internal and external factors to the success of the cuban revolution boyuan dong university of toronto fas, latin american studies & spanish specialist fidel castro, the revolutionary leader of cuba, gave a speech on the fourth anniversary of the cuban revolution, mainly focusing on how to solidify the pueblo cubano under the revolutionary flag against the u.s. intervention. this paper aims to examine the cuban revolution stand on the view from four years after castro has died, to prove that what castro has mentioned during his fourth anniversary speech has been accomplished, as well as compare the revolutionary movements of its neighbours like grenada, to see why cuba could be the only successful example of socialism in the western hemisphere. the paper will focus on the social changes during the post-revolution cuba based on the scholar research of louis a. pérez and john walton’s comparison article between grenada and cuba. a b s t r a c t keywords: us imperialism, cuban revolution, fidel castro, cold war, b i o boyuan dong is a fourth-year undergraduate student majoring latin american studies and spanish. currently his focus is on the narratives of affection in the contemporary latin american literature © 2021 boyuan dong caribbean studies students’ union, canada https://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/cquilt/ this work is licensed under the creative commons attributionsharealike 4.0 international license. to view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ 39 (january 20, 2022 / 09:38:41) 122864-1b_caribbeanquilt_vol7_rev.pdf .39 40 fidel castro, “fourth anniversary of the cuban revolution,” castro speech database 2000 (havana: january 2, 1963). https://www.marxists.org/history/cuba/archive/castro/1963/01/02.htm fidel castro, “fourth anniversary” fidel castro, “fourth anniversary” 1 3 on january 2, 1963, one and a half year after the playa girón invasion, before his supporters at plaza de revolucion, fidel castro gave a speech on what the cuban revolution had achieved during the four years since its outset. in his speech, the leader of communist cuba denounced the former us president john f. kennedy’s speech about the same event. though both kennedy and castro mention the bay of pig invasion, the similarities end there with castro viewing the event as an imperialist invasion, intended to topple what the pueblo cubano has achieved since 1959. kennedy saw it not as an invasion but a liberation – with soldiers there to deliver freedom to a place where human rights were violated, interests of the domestic and international stakeholders destroyed, and individual dignity and freedom of expression had been eliminated. to kennedy, the state was subjugated under the dictatorship of castro castro. while castro referred kennedy in his speech as “the chief of pirates” kennedy, reproached castro’s post-revolutionary cuba as a “prison” surrounded by water where six million of the population was imprisoned. according to castro’s speech, kennedy had disavowed castro’s revolution and all the reforms and campaigns carried on by him, while castro addressed the revolution was a “victory” and exemplary to the people under the exploitation by imperialism . though in the speech, kennedy had negated all that was done by the revolutionary government, it would be unreasonable to deny all the achievements by castro’s government, which by that time was backed by the masses and enjoyed high popularity. considering the context of these conflicting narratives, this research seeks to analyze what fidel castro speaks about in his fourth anniversary speech considering the accomplishments and the success of the cuban revolution in the context of the internal and external factors that pushed forward the revolution. specifically, this paper considers that internally, fidel castro’s communist government implemented a series of campaigns and reforms that had visible and immediate improvement to the pueblo cubano and externally, a bipolarized confrontation and hostility helped the cuban government to solidify its rule. fidel castro quoted kennedy’s speech in his own, telling the audience that kennedy believed that within the cuban regime and its army there should be people who “hold to a faith in freedom and are filled with consternation at the destruction of freedom in their island and are determined to restore that freedom so that the cuban people can again govern themselves” . while concurring, castro and the fidelistas had a vastly different approach to the restoration of freedom and self-governance . the elimination of influences from the united states was rapid and visible. the mass nationalization of foreign capitals had won castro unprecedented support by cubans who formerly suffered the large income distribution inequality and the exploitation by u.s. 2 1 2 3 4 (january 20, 2022 / 09:38:41) 122864-1b_caribbeanquilt_vol7_rev.pdf .40 41 fidel castro, “fourth anniversary” fidel castro, “fourth anniversary” fidel castro, “fourth anniversary” louis a. pérez, “cuba between reform and revolution” (oxford university press: 2005). p. 224 pérez, “cuba”.p. 224 pérez, “cuba”.p. 224 pérez, “cuba”.p. 225 pérez, “cuba”.p. 229 4 6 imperialism . to understand why castro possessed such popularity, it is necessary to understand the situation in cuba before revolution. with such, it becomes clear why castro included an ironic use of kennedy’s phrase “cuban people can again govern themselves” in his own speech. the influence of the u.s. in pre-revolutionary cuba was omnipresent and formidable. while cuba’s major industries and foreign exchange were centered around the production of sugar, cuba was not able to control its price . moreover, its over-dependence on sugar had increased its vulnerability to the fluctuations of the international sugar price. the consequence of losing influence over the market meant that when sugar prices increased, cuba had a remarkably high cost of living when compared to north america . when sugar prices dropped, foreign investors rushed in and purchased real estate and shares of different sectors such as electricity and telecommunications further violating the sovereignty of the nation. the export-dependent economy was in misery. according to pérez, most peasants and sugar field workers “lived in desperate conditions, without access to minimum educational, health, and housing facilities” . with an increasing number of foreign investors holding national properties, foreign business owners were able to gain more influence than local small-scale land owners as well as the cuban middle class. local industries faced a strong foreign competition with little or no government restrictions, like tariffs, to protect domestic enterprises . as a consequence of local industries crashing, workers and the middle class found it harder to maintain their lives because of the high cost of living and the scarcity of basic necessities. according to data provided by pérez, one-fifth of the agricultural land was controlled by large sugar companies and “almost three-quarters of all land in production was held by only 8 percent of the farms (numbering 16,622)” . the tremendous inequality gave fidel castro an opportunity to win over the masses because the people who suffered in this increasingly worsening condition needed someone to lead them and eliminate the foreign influences which they deemed the cause of their misery. castro promised just that and fulfilled his commitment to become the leader and expel all exploitation that had harmed the cuban people. since fidel castro, all properties controlled by americans now became state-run and he achieved what kennedy had mentioned – “cuban people govern themselves” through sectors and properties no longer belonging to the americans but cubans. this is why castro satirized kennedy in his fourth anniversary speech highlighting kennedy’s comparison between us invaders and the independence heroes like marti, bolivar and 5 7 5 6 8 7 8 10 9 11 9 10 11 (january 20, 2022 / 09:38:41) 122864-1b_caribbeanquilt_vol7_rev.pdf .41 42 fidel castro, “fourth anniversary” fidel castro, “fourth anniversary” pérez, “cuba”.p. 243 pérez, “cuba”.p. 243 pérez, “cuba”.p. 253 pérez, “cuba”.p. 245 pérez, “cuba”.p. 273 12 14 o’higgins , whom castro thought of as freedom fighters. to do so, castro incisively pointed out the differences between these independence symbols and the intruders: “marti who did not receive his funds from the yankee treasury […] of that marti who did not come escorted by the yankee fleet, nor was he preceded in his landing by yankee bombers, of that marti who on a stormy night landed in a rowboat almost by himself on the western shores” . beyond the recovery of sovereignty through the expelling of foreign presence after the revolution, a series of reforms and campaigns (mainly agrarian reform and literacy campaigns) have also been widely considered as improvements that fidel castro’s government achieved. the land left by foreign investors was put to reuse after nationalization through the division of land to diversify national production. for large sugar mills, land that exceeded a given limit was nationalized, with compensation given by the government “in the form of twenty-year bonds bearing an annual interest rate of 4.5 percent” . nationalized land was redistributed to state-run corporations or individuals with no land holdings while the communist committee also established the instituto nacional de reforma agraria (inra) in order to supervise and enforce the redistribution and production of land. during the nationalization, castro did not face the difficulties many expected, because within the cuban bourgeoisie class and the foreign capitalists there were internal conflicts. landlords, large company owners, sugar exporters failed to cooperate unanimously against castro’s policies. each one only focused on their own narrow interests and were frequently in conflict with other members of the bourgeoisie class . it gave fidel castro chance to break the entire upper class of cuba when “the internal opponents were in disarray” and recover all properties under the name of the revolutionary republic. cuba also carried a thorough literacy campaign that none of the former governments were able to achieve. this contributed to the popularity of castro and the success of the revolution. castro described in his speech these literary campaigns carried out as part of the revolution. students were dispatched to rural areas as volunteers to teach, fees were afforded by the government, elementary education became more universal, and higher education was no longer a privilege accessed only by middle to upper class families. in 1958, “almost half of all cuban children aged six to fourteen years had received no education. only a quarter ri�wkh�srsxodwlrq�ri�¿iwhhq�\hduv�ru�roghu� had ever attended school” . the comparison before and after the revolution is surprising, as pérez mentions: 13 15 16 18 17 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 (january 20, 2022 / 09:38:41) 122864-1b_caribbeanquilt_vol7_rev.pdf .42 43 pérez, “cuba”.p. 233 pérez, “cuba”.p. 244 pérez, “cuba”.p. 243 francis coppola, “the godfather part ii”, directed by francis ford coppola, (new york city: paramount pictures, 1974) 19 21 “almost 30 percent of the population of color over twenty years of age was illiterate […] they suffered greater job insecurity, more unemployment, poorer health care, and constituted a proportionally larger part of the prison population. they generally earned lower wages than whites” . in march 1959, castro’s government legally abolished racial discrimination in all sectors. from education to entertainment and tourism, services were open to people of colour, which provided an immediate relief to the tensions in the society. income has been redistributed with an increase in workers and non-white people and a decline in landlords and officials . the disparity of income and literacy rate between cities like havana and rural areas had decreased. during the campaign, thousands of men and women were mobilized across the island to eradicate illiteracy, which was praised by castro as the revolutionary spirit of the cuban people. as a result, by 1962 cuba had reported a literacy rate of 96% – one of the highest in the world. a series of successful campaigns and reforms had proved that castro’s government was built to govern by the people and serve the people. properties owned by the government officials of the former batista government were all seized. peasants received lands and education, ciudadanos got jobs, and non-whites acquired protection. virtually all sectors had witnessed an increase in benefits and wages while luxury imports were restricted by the government in order to save foreign exchange, which was used to improve health and industrial sectors . direct and immediate relief to the society gave castro the supreme authority to rule the island and mobilize the people who followed his ideology. this was demonstrated in american pop-culture and the 1974 film the godfather ii where character michael corleone sees a guerrilla fighter using a suicide attack to kill a batista official, and notes: “the soldiers are not paid to fight. the rebels aren’t. they could win” . in castro’s speech, he had denounced the version of “free havana '' and “real cuba '' suggested by john f. kennedy, whose anti-communist ideal of cuba deferred from castro’s ideology of the method by which cubans could and would govern themselves moving forward. the free cuba that castro deemed a successful accomplishment was not recognized by the u.s. government nor the cuban diaspora in the u.s. – especially in epicenters of cuban culture like miami. the definition of free cuba has raised an immense discussion among cuban americans. for example in 1999, they centered around whether the u.s. government should return elian gonzalez to his father in cuba. elian was a six-year-old boy who crossed the sea to enter the u.s. illegally from cuba with his mother. while his mother died when their motorboat sank during the crossing, he had survived the accident, saved by fishermen in that area. his uncle in the u.s. saw him as a miracle and a survivor from the castro’s cuba and 20 22 19 20 22 21 (january 20, 2022 / 09:38:41) 122864-1b_caribbeanquilt_vol7_rev.pdf .43 44 lillian guerra, “elián gonzález and the ‘real cuba’ of miami: visions of identity, exceptionality, and divinity,” cuban studies, vol. 38, 2007 lillian guerra, “elián gonzález”, p. 4 lillian guerra, “elián gonzález”, p. 18 castro castro, “fourth anniversary” 23 24 wanted him to stay in the u.s.. the event was quickly known by the cuban-american community, who had defended and protested to prevent the u.s. government from returning the boy to cuba and his father. it dramatized, according to lilian guerra, the “creation and growth of what many miami cubans understand to be the ‘real cuba’ in the u.s.” the cuban exiles in the u.s. did not recognize all achievements done after the revolution because they deemed themselves more cuban than island cubans. to them – just like kennedy – castro had changed the island from cuba to a prison, and all who supported castro and the revolution were automatically deprived of their cuban identity. thus, the problem was not merely whether the boy should be returned from the “real cuba” to castro’s regime but rather a question of “if castro wants the boy, then we could not give the boy to him”. most miami cubans ignored the literacy campaign, the raise of wages and agrarian reforms carried out successfully by the revolution because they were against castro himself, thus all he had done they would oppose. for many of the exiles, elian’s event showed that “the alternative patria, the "real cuba", had finally been born” . each side of the island cubans and miami cubans considered the other traitors who did not live in “free cuba”. for the exiles, staying on the island and tolerating the revolution was passively admitting the legitimacy of castro’s version of “free cuba”, which was considered an action of treason even if the majority of cubans had chosen to stay on the island and defend the success that allowed cubans to govern themselves on the island for the first time. to them, the cuba of cubans could only be achieved outside of castro’s power and protected by democratic and anticommunist values, such as in the those castro. the cuban exiles in miami have intentionally ignored the impact of u.s.. interventions and its support of dictators as an avenue to protect its interests on the island since the 1901 platt amendment. the u.s.. presence in cuba, which was erased by castro, had impeded moderate political change facilitated through the collusion with local capitalists, elites and military dictators. another reason that the miami cubans could not see objectively the net positive benefits of the regime was because many of them were supporters of former dictator fulgencio batista, whose interests in cuba had been expropriated by fidel castro. their identity and their building of a “real cuba” proposed by president kennedy neglected “cuba's neocolonial history and the revolution's nationalist goals and socialist policies” as well as the half century of the u.s. occupation and domination in cuba. when castro made fun of kennedy in his speech quoting that “this flag will be returned to this brigade in a free havana” , he revealed that the cubans in the u.s. were exploiters and accomplices of the u.s. neo-imperialism who failed to attain their interests within cuba after the revolution. they, as only a small number of the cuban population, could not foresee the inevitability of the cuban revolution which was 25 23 24 25 26 26 (january 20, 2022 / 09:38:41) 122864-1b_caribbeanquilt_vol7_rev.pdf .44 45 pérez, “cuba”.p. 271 pérez, “cuba”.p. 275 merle collins, “are you a bolshevik or a menshevik? mimicry, alienation and confusion in the grenada revolution,” interventions 12 (1) 2010, p. 38 27 28 backed by the cuban peasant workers who outnumbered them. they stood for their class identity rather than their national identity, which left their political view of the “real cuba” or “free havana” at odds with the majority who benefitted from castro’s policies. in addition to the internal reasons that determined the success of the cuban revolution, the external reasons have also contributed an important factor to the survival of the cuban revolutionary government. after the u.s. has decreased the export quota of cuban sugar to zero, cuba allied with the soviet union (ussr), who offered its support to cuba. cuba purchased refined oil from the ussr and cuba’s sugar was purchased by ussr. the soviets provided not only material and financial aids but also technical assistance to construct cuban national industrial enterprises such as telecommunication, transportation and mining. according to perez’s research, the “soviet assistance was instrumental in building and modernizing an estimated 160 industrial enterprises” . the outside support from the soviet union also provided quintessential relief to the shortage of food and medical facility supplies in cuba. it helped the elimination of malnutrition in cuba by guaranteeing a minimum daily foodstuff ration and “at least one hot meal at work canteens, school cafeterias, and hospitals” . hospitals and medical instruments were also built in rural areas, improving the equality of allocation of resources between havana and rural areas. cuba’s success in transitioning from what was virtually a u.s. colony to a communist nation is hard to duplicate in regionally. the cuban example is unique in international politics and has served as an outlier in caribbean revolutionary thought. considering the most similar example regionally, the following comparison between cuba and grenada highlights the extent of cuba’s ability to withstand american hegemonic influence. firstly, the leader of the cuban revolution was also a military leader. castro had formed guerrilla troops loyal to him before the cuban communist party (ccp) was established. he was the head of the army as well as the head of the party. it allowed him to gain the power to enforce the reforms and campaigns carried out and eliminate his opponents within the island and foreign powers who wanted to topple the regime. grenada had the communist movements the new joint endeavor for welfare, education and liberation (the new jewel movement or njm). its leader maurice bishop did not possessed any military forces. as a result, while the movement was able to achieve a ‘bloodless coup’ it was not able to withstand u.s. military pressure when it eventually arrived. bishop and the njm allied with other parties to form the opposition in the 1976 election. as collins mentions, bishop tried to “agitate as part of an official parliamentary opposition” until in 1979, he seized the nation when the former pm eric gairy was away at the un in new york. the njm gleaned control of grenada by a coup d’etat but not a revolution, which means bishop seized power 29 27 28 29 (january 20, 2022 / 09:38:41) 122864-1b_caribbeanquilt_vol7_rev.pdf .45 46 pérez, “cuba”.p. 271 pérez, “cuba”.p. 275 merle collins, “are you a bolshevik or a menshevik? mimicry, alienation and confusion in the grenada revolution,” interventions 12 (1) 2010, p. 38 phil miller, the secret story, p. 106 30 31 from “within the rule”, a less violent and radical path compared to cuba. bishop was not able to eliminate his opponents completely and defend himself from foreign power because he was a party leader and did not fully control the defense force of grenada, which made military officials more likely to cooperate with the u.s.. during the us subversion in 1983. secondly, grenada’s former metropole, the uk, still had the power of projecting its influences in the caribbean while cuba’s former metropole was not able to. after taking the nation, the njm threatened to “nationalize british economic interests in the caribbean, which were seen as comparable with the uk’s investments in india” . according to the document from the national archives in london and overseas policy committee of the britain’s defence secretary has an identical plan of invading grenada once eric gairy’s government was toppled . while it is true that since the end of wwii britain has granted independence for many of its former colonies, the newly independent nations in the caribbean such as jamaica, grenada, and the bahamas still faced immense foreign influence. as miller suggested, the capital investment of uk in the caribbean “which may be at risk from nationalization, of at least £250 million” which would be larger if “banking, insurance and oil industry” were included . cuba avoided this colonial influence as the former metropole of cuba, spain, had just ended the military dictatorship of francisco franco and was focused on its path to democratization. spain’s presence in cuba, a colony it had left some sixty years before, was almost negligible. thus, the international environment faced by grenada was much more difficult than cuba. cuba could ally with the ussr without too much scruple while grenada had to consider the consequence of its embrace of communism in perspective of not only the us but also the uk. thirdly, cuba’s geographical importance and natural resources were more important than grenada, which made it able to attain support from the ussr as a vanguard to counter capitalism. fourth, cuba was the first country to have a socialist revolution which the u.s. was not too much aware of. after cuba, the caution of the expansion of communism of the u.s. became much higher. to let the case of cuba not happening again, the u.s.. has increased its control over latin america and the caribbean to prevent “consequent political instability in the area which could be exploited by cuba and other opponents of the united states” . after cuba, the intention of the u.s.. to subvert any possible socialist or communist reform and revolution was reinforced. combining the various internal and external factors above, one may begin to understand why fidel castro considered the cuban revolution as a victory. the revolution carried out a series of campaigns that effectively benefited the vast majority of cubans. income equality, health care and education were provided in spite of race, class, gender. the gaps between cities and rural areas had been 32 30 31 32 33 33 (january 20, 2022 / 09:38:41) 122864-1b_caribbeanquilt_vol7_rev.pdf .46 47 pérez, “cuba”.p. 253 34 had been reduced. the people were united under the revolution with a strong leader that had eliminated their opponents and foreign power. cuba was able to gain support because it was strong from within. the support from the soviet union was a factor but not the reason of the success . seizing its ideal opportunity, the cuban revolution was successful and it will inevitably remain successful – just as fidel castro has mentioned in his fourth anniversary speech. 34 (january 20, 2022 / 09:38:41) 122864-1b_caribbeanquilt_vol7_rev.pdf .47 48 $oyduh]�1d]dulr��0dqxho��������$utxhrorjtõd�/lqjxtvwlfd��(vwxglrv�0rghuqrv�'luljlgrv� ����������$o�5hvfdwh�<�5hfrqvwuxfflyq�'ho�$udkxdfr�7dtõqr��6dq�-xdq��(glwruldo�gh�od� ����������8qlyhuvlgdg�gh�3xhuwr�5lfr� $uurp��-xdq�-rvh��������(vwxglrv�gh�/h[lfrorjtd�$qwloodqd��6dq�-xdq��(glwruldo�gh�od� ����������8qlyhuvlgdg�gh�3xhuwr�5lfr )holfldqr�6dqwrv��6khulqd��³3urskhwlf�5hsdluv��1duudwlyh�dqg�6rfldo�$fwlrq�dprqj� ����������3xhuwr�5lfdq�7dtqr�´�language & communication��������������±���� )holfldqrဨ6dqwrv��6khulqd��³+rz�'r�<rx�6shdn�7dtqr"�,qgljhqrxv�$fwlylvp�dqg� 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����������,ghqwlw\�dqg�&xowxudo�3rolwlfv��3ulqfhwrq��1-��0dunxv�:lhqhu� .luwlnolv��.ċ���0dqxho�&dvwhoov¶�7khru\�ri�,qirupdwlrq�6rflhw\�dv�0hgld�7khru\���lingua posnaniensis ����qr������������������� 0dnhshdfh��$qqh��glu��������:h�6wloo�/lyh�+huh��æv�1xwd\xqhkq���%xooiurj�)lopv� 1hhjdqdjzhgjlq��(ulfd��³5rrwhg�lq�wkh�/dqg��7dtqr�,ghqwlw\��2udo�+lvwru\�dqg�6wrulhv� ����������ri�5hfodpdwlrq�lq�&rqwhpsrudu\�&rqwh[wv�´�$owhu1dwlyh��an international journal of indigenous peoples�����qr���������������±���� 2k,ihduq��7dgkj��³6rflrolqjxlvwlf�9lwdolw\�ri�0dq[�diwhu�([wuhph�/dqjxdjh�6kliw�´� international journal of the sociology of language�����������±��� 5xpvh\��$odq��³:ruglqj��0hdqlqj��dqg�/lqjxlvwlf�,ghrorj\�´�$phulfdq�$qwkursrorjlvw� ������������������������±���� works cited (january 20, 2022 / 09:38:42) 122864-1b_caribbeanquilt_vol7_rev.pdf .48 invisible ink abigail ralph university of toronto scarborough faculty of biological sciences; neuroscience, health policy and psychology there is a gap in academic literature that highlights the perspectives of canadian-caribbean individuals that navigate both poverty and the stigma of limited access to resources necessary for livelihood in canada. by employing the intersecting identities of low-income and (un)documentation, this poem aims to deconstruct the stereotypical expectations of canadian-caribbean immigrants. what does an impoverished canadian-caribbean immigrant look like once we’ve disregarded our representativeness heuristic? they now may be the straight-a student in your class or that lady that never seems to wear an uncoordinated outfit – or perhaps your lecturer or community organizer who has an undying passion for 19th-century opera. by mobilizing this idea, this poem seeks to encourage the reader to reconsider our pre-conceived notions of an (un)documented, impoverished canadian-caribbean individual. similarly, this poem challenges the notion that to exist, is contingent on external perceptions. a tree in the northwest territories may exist unknowingly to us and still be able to blow gracefully in the wind. a b s t r a c t keywords: poverty, immigration b i o abigail is a hardworking and compassionate student that aims to bring awareness of health inequities in marginalized populations through advocacy. she is currently an undergraduate student at the university of toronto studying both neuroscience and health policy. © 2021 abigail ralph caribbean studies students’ union, canada https://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/cquilt/ this work is licensed under the creative commons attributionsharealike 4.0 international license. to view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ 130 (january 20, 2022 / 09:38:52) 122864-1b_caribbeanquilt_vol7_rev.pdf .130 131 i don’t exist on paper i’m telling you, it’s true if you look up my records you’ll find another you i don’t have the ability to grow to compound like wealth but instead, i slither between fear and no health i don’t exist on paper what don’t you understand? it sounds a bit odd but it’s all a part of the plan. the numbers don’t make sense or simply add up but when you see me in person you would never guess. you’d say my smile is contagious you’d say my skin is bliss you’d say my ambition is inspiring you’d say, i was born to be rich i don’t exist on paper so how can i be free? if you didn’t get it by now, this is my story of living in poverty (january 20, 2022 / 09:38:52) 122864-1b_caribbeanquilt_vol7_rev.pdf .131 after peter doig’s “music of the future” joseph mulholland university of toronto centre for comparative literature the poem is loosely inspired by peter doig’s painting “music of the future” and reimagines the night scene that is depicted in the painting. the poetic voice is rooted in a deep sense of place while simultaneously speaking from the outer edges of that place, creating a liminal space through poetic images and narrative. a b s t r a c t keywords: poetry, poems about painting, contemporary painting, peter doig b i o joseph mulholland is a poet and visual artist from albuquerque, new mexico. he holds a ba and ma from the university of puerto in comparative literature and is currently a phd candidate at the university of toronto’s centre for comparative literature. he is the author of the poetry chapbook phantom ride (baseline press, 2017). © 2021 joseph mulholland caribbean studies students’ union, canada https://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/cquilt/ this work is licensed under the creative commons attributionsharealike 4.0 international license. to view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ 128 (january 20, 2022 / 09:38:52) 122864-1b_caribbeanquilt_vol7_rev.pdf .128 129 the town’s only survivor has taken to painting nightscapes. a body of water that aches ungrammatically, or a man holding a candle under a bridge, waiting for hard edges to feather out, swelling, the stars learn to count backwards, attempting to recreate an un-narratable origin story. is every instance of déjà vu a doorway to the infinite? or is the infinite what holds the sky from falling in the most quotidian of ways? this is the music of the future—colors only recognizable as sound. sound on the threshold between worlds, deteriorating at the slightest disturbance, a fallen palm branch or a hummingbird’s death. the curtains of this house move with the sea’s breath. in future iterations, this beach will be a desert valley and this night will not turn from the hurricane’s arrival. by joseph mulholland (january 20, 2022 / 09:38:52) 122864-1b_caribbeanquilt_vol7_rev.pdf .129 44 a brief history of race, politics and division in trinidad and guyana kahlia brown this essay will act as an analysis of the indo-afro racial politics of two west indian countries: trinidad and tobago, and guyana. i will give the circumstances that led to the migration of large numbers of east indians as indentured servants to trinidad and guyana, specifically. i will also explain how these conditions led to a distinct form of government and society. through tables of electoral data in trinidad, the racial voting patterns will be observed, and i will elaborate on how political parties do or do not pander to their respective racial communities. finally, i will conclude by addressing how the racial divide in these two large caribbean nations impact caribbean regionalism on a larger scale. introduction there is a well-known history of the caribbean that many will learn about through conventional schooling and the media. to provide some background, it is taught that in 1492, european colonizer christopher columbus sailed the ocean blue and discovered the “new world.” the “new world,” of course, was what is called the americas today. it encompasses north and south america, as well as the caribbean islands scattered in between the two continents. in due time, european colonizers attempted to enslave the native populations of the americas. this was done through the efforts of people like bartolomé de las casas, who advocated for the peaceful conversion of indigenous populations, because they too were men with souls and their freedom, but who proposed african slaves as a means to compensate for lost labour forces (anthony). in the caribbean, native populations were depleted to nearly nothing by a number of ways, including but not limited to the diseases and war that europeans brought with them (huxley 57). soon enough, the transatlantic slave trade was in full swing, with thousands of slave vessels controlled by the french, spanish, english, dutch, portuguese, danish and the us. it is estimated that, between 1519 and the mid 19th century, approximately 11 million people were taken from africa and enslaved. varying accounts report that 9-10 million of those enslaved arrived to the americas alive. of those millions of people, around 4.7 million ended up in the caribbean. this number is significantly larger than that of british north america, whose numbers totaled only 361,100 (eltis 23). the caribbean islands were unique in the sense that the enslaved population outnumbered the native or european populations, this remains true to this day, with some exceptions. what followed is a history not as well known. slavery was abolished in 1807, but this did not mean that slavery ceased to exist. on the contrary, the practice continued for decades after. during the time of emancipation, some plantation colonies had begun to dry up. the soil of islands like barbados, which was known for its high productivity, nor longer yielded as much as much as it once had. planters began to look at islands that had not yet been overly exploited. one such island was trinidad, which yielded 3-4 times as much product as its previously abundant predecessor, barbados. although slavery had been abolished, inter-colonial slave trade was just beginning. planters migrated themselves and their enslaved africans from the “old colonies,” such as barbados, dominica and jamaica, opting to settle in the then more fertile lands of 45 trinidad, demerara (now part of guyana) and among others. there were laws against this but planters easily evaded them. due to the ban on importing slaves, there were not enough labour forces in trinidad and then demerara. the abolition of slavery stood in the way of the success of planters. this consequently led to the search for new labour sources that would be used in the british west indies. may 30th is celebrated as a holiday in trinidad and tobago. may 5th is a holiday in guyana. these two dates share the same origin: indian arrival day. in 1838, the first vessel carrying indian indentured servants arrived in guyana, while in trinidad this happened in 1845. there are parallels between the transatlantic slave trade and the encouraged migration of indian populations to the caribbean: the exploitation of africans and indians were viewed as solutions to labour shortages. africans were forced to carry out the labour that was previously done by now dwindling indigenous populations. following the abolition of slavery, the workforce was once again depleted, so indentured indian servants were recruited to take up the work. from the 17th to the 20th century, india was a british colony. the 19th century was a particularly difficult one for some. lower-class northern indians and displaced bengalis found themselves in dire need of land and employment. calcutta and madras, both cities situated along the eastern coast of india, offered transport to british colonies. the indians who migrated were referred to by the pejorative term coolie. coolie was a term that reflected their place in society. to be a coolie in the 19th century was to be an unskilled labourer. some definitions trace the term back to the tamil word kuli. according to gaiutra bahadur, the term was first used to refer to south asians by portuguese sailors looking for labourers. however, indians were not welcome in all british colonies despite considering themselves british subjects. indians were only welcomed where it benefitted the british. an example of this can be seen in the case of the passengers of the komagata maru in 1914, a ship filled with british passport holders and war veterans who also happened to be sikh indians. the shipped docked in vancouver, but all those who were aboard were refused entry and sent back to india. indians were allowed to migrate to other british colonies such as fiji and mauritius, but primarily to trinidad and guyana. according to lomarsh roopnarine, “…about 2.5 million noneuropeans – mostly east indian and chinese – but also a substantial number of africans, javanese, japanese and pacific islanders were brought to the caribbean…” (2003). of that number, 238,000 indentured servants were sent to guyana and 143,939 to trinidad. there were conditions that came with labour migration: indentured servants were contractually obligated to work for their planter for up to 10 years, earning very little in wages. edward jenkins describes the ideal length of time for a term of indenturing: “i have been informed by the late governor and by one of the principal planters of trinidad that the one-year system works well, and, while encouraging independence in the coolie, exercises also on the master a beneficial restraint, since he can only keep his best immigrants from year to year by kindly treatment” (1871). these were absolutely better terms of work than what the enslaved africans received, but the planters or ‘masters’ still retained control. the planters retained the right the punish their indentured servants for any infractions through imprisonment. despite these clauses in their contracts, for many, being an indentured servant in the caribbean was still better than being unemployed and landless in india. indentured servants were rewarded for the contractual service with land and money. 46 this is when hostilities worsened between the emancipated black population and indentured indians. it is a trend we still see today: employers seek out cheaper labour, thus abandoning those who were previously employed. this breeds resentment. rather than paying the former enslaved people fair wages, the planter sought to exploit a new group for human capital. emancipated people now competed for employment due to the indians being exploited for their labour and doing the jobs that former slaves were once forced to do for free, and for which they still have seen no reparations. this understandably led to tensions between the two ethnic groups and resulted in isolated communities. indian communities existed mainly due to the social pattern of those who share common backgrounds gathering together. this can be observed in any place where mass immigration of certain groups occurs; we can look to toronto’s little italy for an example. but agglomerations like this are often also a group’s response to the hostilities of others. by this time coolie was used to remind those whose lives were shaped by colonizers of their exploitation. what made matters worse was that the white colonist did not want to encourage a relationship between its previous labour force its current one. some europeans in the caribbean feared that the african population would encourage the indians to incite riots.1 daurius figueira describes one european reverend’s views on the two races: “by morton’s testimony to norman in january 1885 it is clearly apparent that morton views the afrotrinidadian as a disruptive element, a hindrance to the attempt to constitute the east-indians as gunga din/coolie.” (2010, xxii). europeans feared that the two groups would realize that they held power in numbers and hold back colonial attempts to domesticate their labourers. note the reference to coolies: as previously stated, the word was used derogatorily against indentured servants the same way the n-word was used to label enslaved africans. the words were and are still hurled between the black and indian communities in trinidad and guyana in order to belittle each other. 1 figueira, d. (2010). the politics of racist hegemony in trinidad and tobago. iuniverse. 47 figure 1. j. murray jordan a family in the coolie village, trinidad, 1897 the system of indentureship that created the racial divide in trinidad and guyana would continue to the early 20th century. however, when indentureship ended, indians were in a far better position than their african counterparts had been when slavery was abolished. by the mid 20th century, indians were able to elevate their economic standing, now composing most of the ‘urban’ middle class. indians were able to do so because of the aforementioned land and money to start businesses they received. africans, who had been in the caribbean for much longer, received nothing and rarely experienced any upward social mobility, remaining in the lower urban class. in 1965, c.l.r james wrote west indians of east indian descent. in it, he summarizes the prejudice and resentment that indians and those he refers to as creoles, harboured towards one another. james quotes a man whose ethnicity he does not specify: “…an indian got a job at the base. next thing every job in that department was held by an indian. that is the way they are. they are all for each other, they think of indians first” (1965). he goes on to further emphasize the division even in taxis. indian drivers pick up indian passengers and indian passengers only enter indian drivers’ taxis (with some exceptions, such as if an indian and african were personally acquainted). these behaviours seem to reveal an odd form of racial nepotism that likely emerged due to the group’s instinct to congregate together and look out for one another. james, who was a very outspoken supporter of the federation, encouraged nationalism instead, to consider the west indians as a whole rather than east indian-west indians. he encouraged indians to break the cycle of indians and africans being separated in politics. though this thinking was absolutely necessary during this time, the populace was just not ready to hear it. james was always ahead of his time in his ideologies; he hoped for too much too soon. in the following decades, trinidad and guyana would prove that racial integration was nowhere in sight. 48 guyana when linden forbes sampson burnham was elected as the first prime minister of guyana in 1966, the racially-divided voting patterns of the indians and africans of the soon-to-be independent country were already evident. during this period, the afro-indo populations were finally able to speak for themselves, exhibiting self-rule. prior to caribbean independence, many liberal thinkers—including dr. eric williams (trinidad), cheddi jagan (guyana) and michael manley (jamaica)—advocated for caribbean independence and unity in the form of federation. the federation was a caribbean regional group that aimed to unite the caribbean in order to benefit the region as a whole when competing in the global market, amongst other things. in a lecture given by trinidadian marxist c.l.r james in 1958, the rising racial tensions are briefly mentioned: we heard that the east indians in british guiana were opposed to the federation and these were the reasons given. they had a numerical majority over the other races, they hoped to establish an indian domination of the colony; federation would bring thousands of africans (or people of african descent) from the smaller islands to british guiana, these knew how to work land and how to build up from small beginnings. they would place the indians in british guiana in an inferior position. therefore, the indians were against federation (1958). james also noted that these sentiments existed in trinidad as well. as previously stated, the indians who were brought to the caribbean (often of their own freewill) were able to work for wages; additionally, they were given land and money. the indians dominated in numbers and land ownership, and most wanted things to remain that way. nevertheless, not all indians believed that access to the same opportunities for africans would mean a disadvantage for them. cheddi jagan, who was a co-founder of the ppp (people’s progressive party) and the child of indentured servants, wanted to unite the africans and indians of guyana. he saw the two groups for what they were, people who had been exploited and taken advantage of by the colonial system. indeed, his seemingly non-biased racial views were something c.l.r james would praise him for. being a socialist, jagan preferred to steer clear of racial politics; his ideologies were more in line with economic politics. however, guyana itself did not reflect this. jagan’s supporters were largely indian, and once the ppp became a party run mainly by indians, the party’s policies began to favour indians. despite jagan’s initial dreams of uniting the populace of guyana under the shared experience of oppression, the opposite happened, and he perhaps unwittingly became the political face of the indo-guyanese people, even though his politics did not necessarily align with their own sentiments. indians supported jagan because he too was indian, a fact he clearly understood (marsal, 33). to this day, ppp’s supporters are mainly comprised of indo-guyanese people. on the other side of the guyanese race politics was afro-guyanese lawyer forbes burnham. for years, burnham also belonged to the ppp. however, he eventually broke with them formed his own political party, the people’s national congress, in 1957. i will not get into 49 the specifics of party differences, but burnham enjoyed foreign support because he was less radical than jagan. prior to the split, the ppp was a party that united the two races that made up the 80% majority in colonial guyana. burnham’s choice to leave the ppp led to further racial divisions. hintzen and premdas write with the split, there began a slow but inexorable ideological about-face by burnham that was to culminate, later, in support for capitalist, prowestern policies. the opportunity for power for the burnhamite faction was prescribed in ways that offered no other options. burnham was supported by the more moderate east indians in the ppp who had close ties with the east indian professional and entrepreneurial urban middle classes. more importantly, he drew his mass support from the predominantly urban, black lower-class population. (1983, 179) although there were some anomalies, much like jagan, burnham garnered most of his support from those who shared his lineage. the ppp and pnc represented very different ideologies and forms of government, but this was not necessarily a fact that indians or africans considered when voting. trinidad in trinidad, independence was achieved a few years before guyana, but the political situations resembled one another. by the time the honourable first prime minister, dr. eric williams (a man of mixed race: french creole and black),was elected, the two-party. ethnically-divided system was in place. williams was not, however, representative of the country’s demographics as a whole, something that would work to his disadvantage in 1958. colin clarke states that in trinidad, “the fact remains, however, that government and opposition in trinidad, since adult suffrage was introduced in 1946, have been decided by racial blocks of majority (creole) and minority (indian) …” (1991, 48). similarly to guyana, pre-independence movements were largely composed of both ethnic groups who at the time shared a common goal. this momentary co-operation was not reflective of the racial politics in the country’s history. once the country’s independence was attained, the two-party system was in place. dr. eric williams, who is partially credited with spearheading the independence movement, was the head of the people’s national movement party founded in 1955. the main opposition party at the time was the democratic labour party, which was a merger of three other parties ran by bhadase sagan maraj (indian) of the people’s democratic party, albert gomes (portuguese) of the party of political progress groups and tubal uriah butler (afro-grenadian) of the butler party. the dlp was composed of three different racial groups, an optimistic start, but the party was led by maraj. until the party’s split in 1971 (with the exception of alloy lequay, who saw the end of the party), the party was led by indotrinidadians and drew their support from the indian middle class. when the pnm lost to the dlp in 1958, williams attributed this to the indian votes over which the dlp held the monopoly. the statistics prove that williams was correct in his suspicions. table 1 ethnicity and voting in the 1958 federal election: selected polling divisions 50 division number of indians dlp votes tunapuna 3,427 3,402 curepe and st. augustine 3,140 4,284 tacarigua 948 911 arouca 1,567 1,454 d'abadie 313 272 piarco 277 300 caroni 1,272 1,313 total 10,944 11,936 table 2 ethnicity and voting in the 1958 federal election: selected polling divisions polling division indians dlp votes 52 136 135 53 20 21 54 169 170 55 235 228 56 184 204 57 245 249 60 315 313 63 56 52 25 54 54 26 51 54 29 49 50 34 106 103 36 306 298 39 117 116 40 117 115 17 206 205 122 243 241 table 3 – constituency and ethnicity in trinidad constituency african indian % % couva north 25 75 couva south 25 75 51 tabaquite 40 60 naparima 40 60 siparia 47 52 these tables, taken from selwyn ryan’s social & occupational stratification in contemporary trinidad and tobago, prove a clear correlation between racial voting patterns. indians almost exclusively voted for the dlp. however, the same could be said about black voters. ryan provides the example of laventille, where williams won 93.5% of the votes because the area was, and still is, made up predominately of black people (ryan 114). so while williams complained of indians voting blindly based on race, those who supported him did the same. i would like to say that things in trinidad got better in the following decades, but that would be untrue. in 1972, a political split occurred within the dlp, which gave the rise of the united labour front came as the opposition. it came as no surprise that the party was led by an indian: basdeo panday. in 1995, panday would become trinidad and tobago’s first prime minister of indian descent. however, he was politically active for many years before that (leung & deuber 12). later, in 1988, he would go on to form the united national congress. since then, the party has acted as the indian opposition to the pnm. a more recent example of this can be found in the 1995 general elections in which the unc defeated the pnm. by this time, the indo-trinidadian had surpassed the afro-trinidadian population, and tensions ran high. neither party has openly state that it is pandering to its ethnic supporters, but both parties’ recruitment practices say otherwise. in 1995, the pnm and unc sought to maintain their ethnic support at the micro level: it is at this level of intimate inter-personal communication that each of the two major parties made their communal pitch, invoking ethnic stereotypes, metaphors and prejudices so as to consolidate their support. in practically every case, the two major parties realized that the campaign canvasser, who was often a well known community leader such as a teacher, a church minister, a businessman, or a popular sport or musical personality, was of the same ethnic group as the local community he was active among.” (premdas and ragoonath 39-40). the parties organized community leaders in order to maintain or convert people. this was done essentially through fear mongering: indians were scared with threat of african crime (premdas & ragoonath 39), and the africans were told to beware of an indian take over (see james 1965). this is a pattern that has not since been broken: the two races have continued to vote for their respective party, and each party blames the other for the short comings of the country, with racial prejudice lurking in the background. the pnm, dlp, unr, unc, etc. have all acknowledged that their votes lie with their ethnicities; they rely on this fact, using it as a crutch to obtain power through bigotry. concluding observations 52 the circumstances under which africans were brought to the west indies were atrocious. indians being brought in as indentured servants is not something that should be celebrated either; however, they were better off than the emancipated africans. indians migrated to the west indies often to seek out better opportunities that they did not have in india, while enslaved africans never had a choice. these circumstances ensured that indians were more likely to succeed in the west indies. after over a century in trinidad and guyana, indians have used their privilege to make sure that their ethnic group prospered. by the mid-20th century, the indian populations in both trinidad and guyana, were large enough to impact politics and form race-based parties. around this time in guyana, it is clear that indians did not support federation. indians, given their social and economic standing at the time, did not want unity; instead, they wanted prosperity for their community. indians went out of their way to support other indians within their respective country of residence but could not adopt the idea of united nationalism, because this would include the africans. this inhibited not only national unification, but regional as well. if a country is divided by race and cannot be united internally, how can the it be expected to co-operate with neighbouring countries? the fact remains that guyana and trinidad and tobago were and are countries divided along racial lines. during the independence and federation era, they were home to extreme racial unrest, and unprepared or unable to contribute to regional unity. c.l.r james voiced his wishes for the racially divided countries of trinidad and tobago in his lecture on west indians of east indian descent: “the people, of all races, want to put all this behind them and begin a new life. that is why we want and must have the new party” (1965). he believed that the people of the west indies wanted to move past governments that were divided by race, and he encouraged the formation of a new party that would represent all demographics. this is a feat that some have attempted to achieve; thus far, however, very little progress has been made moving away from the indo-afro two-party dominant systems of trinidad and tobago and guyana. 53 works cited anthony, d. (2015, july). july 2015: bartolomé de las casas and 500 years of racial injustice: origins: current events in historical perspective. retrieved from http://origins.osu.edu/milestones/july-2015-bartolom-de-las-casas-and-500-years-racialinjustice. bahadur, g. (2013). coolie woman: the odyssey of indenture. university of chicago press. clarke, c. (1991). society and electoral politics in trinidad and tobago. in society and politics in the caribbean (pp. 47-77). palgrave macmillan, london. eltis, d. (1972). the traffic in slaves between the british west indian colonies, 18071833. the economic history review, 25(1), new series, 55-64. doi:10.2307/2599736 eltis, d. (2001). the volume and structure of the transatlantic slave trade: a reassessment. the william and mary quarterly,58(1), 17-46. doi:10.2307/2674417 figueira, d. (2010). the politics of racist hegemony in trinidad and tobago. iuniverse. grace, s., & helms, g. (1998). documenting racism: sharon pollock’s the komagata maru incident. painting the maple, 85-99. hintzen, p. c., & premdas, r. r. (1983). race, ideology, and power in guyana. journal of commonwealth & comparative politics, 21(2), 175-194. huxley, g. l. (1980). aristotle, las casas and the american indians. proceedings of the royal irish academy. section c: archaeology, celtic studies, history, linguistics, literature, 57-68. james, c. l. r. "lecture on federation (west indies and british guiana)." demerara: the argosy company (1958). james, c. l. r. (1965). west indians of east indian descent. retrieved from https://www.marxists.org/archive/james-clr/works/1965/eastindians.htm. jenkins, e. (1871). the coolie, his rights and wrongs: notes of a journey to british guiana, with a review of the system and of the recent commission of inquiry (no. 7432). strahan & company. la guerre, j., & girvan, c. (1972). the general elections of 1946 in trinidad and tobago. social and economic studies, 21(2), 184-204. retrieved from www.jstor.org/stable/27856528 https://www.marxists.org/archive/james-clr/works/1965/eastindians.htm 54 leung, g. a., & deuber, d. (2014). indo-trinidadian speech. english in the indian diaspora. amsterdam: benjamins, 9-27. mars, p., & young, a. h. (eds.). (2004). caribbean labor and politics: legacies of cheddi jagan and michael manley. wayne state university press. meighoo, k. (2002). basdeo panday: a political biography. premdas, r. r., & ragoonath, b. (1998). ethnicity, elections and democracy in trinidad and tobago: analysing the 1995 and 1996 elections. journal of commonwealth & comparative politics, 36(3), 39. reddock, r. (2008). indian women and indentureship in trinidad and tobago 18451917: freedom denied. caribbean quarterly, 54(4), 41-68. retrieved from www.jstor.org/stable/40654698 roopnarine, l. (2003). east indian indentured emigration to the caribbean: beyond the push and pull model. caribbean studies,31(2), 97-134. retrieved from www.jstor.org/stable/25613409 ryan, s. d. (1991). social and occupational stratification in contemporary trinidad and tobago. institute of social and economic research, university of the west indies. 113118 tables and figures: figure 1. 1. jordan, j. m. (2008). a family in the coolie village, trinidad, 1897. photograph, st. james town . retrieved from https://www.flickr.com/photos/caribbeanphotoarchive/3099091860/in/album72157608769702677/ tables 1, 2, 3 and 4. 2. ryan, s. d. (1991). social and occupational stratification in contemporary trinidad and tobago. institute of social and economic research, university of the west indies. 113118 the university of toronto journal of caribbean studies caribbean quilt volume 6, issue 1 2021 caribbean quilt is an interdisciplinary journal focused on elucidating, challenging and redefining discussions about pertinent issues faced in the caribbean and its diaspora. this journal highlights the dynamic dialectical relations that exist between individuals, institutions, and regional hegemonic forces through various mediums of expression. we extend a special thanks to new college and the university of toronto caribbean studies program for their continued support of our efforts to advocate for the betterment of the caribbean and its diaspora, — an aim which is achieved through the publication of caribbean quilt and similar knowledge sharing initiatives. caribbean studies students’ union (carssu) #500c 40 willcocks st university of toronto new college student centre toronto, on canada m5s 1c6 carssu@utoronto.ca (january 20, 2022 / 08:53:04) 122815-1b_caribbeanquilt_vol6_rev.pdf .1 caribbean quilt is published annually by the university of toronto caribbean studies students’ union. its content is produced in line with the principles of open access research and in support of the greater global exchange of knowledge. as a result, caribbean quilt is freely available to the public via: https://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/cquilt. caribbean quilt is also listed on the directory of open access journals (doaj). for more information visit: https://doaj.org caribbean quilt has an exclusive license for the articles published herein, limited to first right of publication granted by the author(s), who hold copyright. in el batey, my father’s foot lit a fire is an exception in this issue where the right of second publication was granted. articles herein are covered by applicable copyright law with authors 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néstor e. rodríguez caribbean studies program david allens (editor-in-chief) caribbean studies students' union jasmine mclaughlin-morgan caribbean studies students' union tyler lee shue caribbean studies students' union alex vesuna caribbean studies students' union adrianna williams caribbean studies students' union abigail ralph caribbean studies students' union avinash dindial caribbean studies students' union reading committee the caribbean quilt reading committee is composed of all current faculty/instructors of the university of toronto’s caribbean studies program. below are the faculty committee members for this issue period. dr. néstor e. rodríguez university of toronto, professor of spanish and director of caribbean studies program dr. alissa trotz university of toronto, professor of caribbean studies and director of woman and gender studies program dr. kevin edmonds university of toronto, professor of caribbean studies 3 (january 20, 2022 / 08:53:04) 122815-1b_caribbeanquilt_vol6_rev.pdf .3 limited to recognition: the trinidadian state and its indigenous population adam rudder university of toronto fas philosophy, psychology and caribbean studies one prevalent issue regarding the enfranchisement of indigenous communities within the politics of the caribbean includes the idea that such communities cease to exist. though the impact of european colonization in the region proved to be destructive to indigenous ways of life, this impact was far from exterminatory, and caribbean governments and authorities who argue the contrary base their testimony upon groundless claims. this paper analyses the actions of trinidad and tobago’s post-independence government in curating a nationalist discourse based on the histories of its afro-creole population, and how that discourse was ultimately founded on a complete disregard for the country’s indigenous population. the paper first delves into the colonial extinction narratives that have served to restrain trinidad’s indigenous community, then it investigates various biological and historical evidence that prove indigenous diffusion beyond the limits outlined in extinction narratives. finally, trinidad’s afro-creole-based nationalism is explored to gain insight on how such an ethnically-driven nationalism has hindered the concerns of trinidad’s overall indigenous community. a b s t r a c t keywords:afro-creole, dna, extinction, indigenous, miscegenation, post-independence, santa rosa, trinidad and tobago b i o adam rudder is currently in his fourth year of undergraduate study at the university of toronto pursuing a double major in philosophy and psychology with a minor in caribbean studies. he is a canadian-trinidadian student whose research interests include the intersections between caribbean religions and political thought, and the role that ethnic and race relations play in the cultural hybridity of the caribbean. © 2021 adam rudder caribbean studies students’ union, canada https://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/cquilt/ this work is licensed under the creative commons attributionsharealike 4.0 international license. to view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ 22 (january 20, 2022 / 09:38:40) 122864-1b_caribbeanquilt_vol7_rev.pdf .22 23 maximilian forte, “carib identity, racial politics and the problem of indigenous recognition in trinidad and tobago,” 174. arie boomert, the indigenous peoples of trinidad and tobago from the first settlers until today, 97. boomert, 115. forte, “carib identity, racial politics and the problem of indigenous recognition in trinidad and tobago,” 175. forte, 176. 1 introduction throughout the caribbean colonial era, extinction narratives were frequently used as a basis for dispossessing the region’s indigenous community of their land — a theme that persisted with the emergence of postcolonial states in the mid-20th century. one such example of this can be seen in trinidad, where the politics, history, and nationalism of the country centred around the culture of its afro-creole population in an attempt to unify the character of the nation. efforts for an afro-creole nationalism hindered the state’s recognition of indigenous concerns and ways of life however, and these efforts often grounded themselves upon narratives of indigenous extinction. dna and archaeological evidence have since shown that myths of indigenous extinction are just that — myths; the indigenous community in trinidad is greater than history would report. this paper argues that despite the diffusion of trinidad’s indigenous community throughout the island, the post-independence government refrained from recognizing their concerns in an effort to preserve a nationalism that focused on the country’s afro-creole population. it will attempt to argue this by analysing the extinction narratives that have served to confine trinidad’s indigenous community. next, the paper will investigate dna evidence and historical writings that prove indigenous diffusion beyond the limits outlined in extinction narratives. finally, it will explore trinidad’s afro-creole-based nationalism to understand how it has inhibited the concerns of the overall indigenous community. the development of extinction narratives myths about the extinction of trinidad’s indigenous community stretch back to the british empire’s occupation of trinidad at the end of the 18th century. prior to their arrival, the island was shared between the indigenous community and spanish settlers. maximilian forte describes this indigenous community as “a cosmopolitan mixture of people” who were “all assembled under the label of carib,” a label that would help provide the foundation for later extinction narratives. despite the spanish’s numerous failed attempts to inhabit the island, trinidad’s indigenous population eventually eased their resistance to european colonization and came to tolerate spanish presence on the island. the indigenous community was not fully subjugated to colonial rule, and the spanish typically adapted to the lifestyle carried out by their cohabitants. over time, however, the power of trinidad’s indigenous community waned as a result of the demographic decline of indigenes throughout the lesser antilles. the spanish gained more power and established missions across trinidad, where the island’s indigenous community would ultimately be confined. when the british seized control of trinidad from the spanish in 1797, they brought with them an “administration of race” that would aid them in their classification of the island’s inhabitants. trinidad became a slave colony under the british empire, and indigenes would work as free labourers on british plantations for the first four decades of british rule. the british 1 2 3 4 5 2 3 4 5 (january 20, 2022 / 09:38:40) 122864-1b_caribbeanquilt_vol7_rev.pdf .23 24 forte, 180. forte, 178. forte, 176. 6 empire expressed similar behaviours to their spanish counterparts, in that they continued the practice of relocating and assigning trinidad’s indigenous community to various missions throughout the island. by confining indigenes to specific loci of land, it gave the colonial administration a means for classifying them geographically. indigenous populations could now be calculated via inquiry of the missions’ residents. furthermore, the british practice of racialization and the creation of hierarchies based on race provided an avenue to marginalize the indigenous groups on the island. race became another technique for calculating the colony’s indigenous population, since racial mixture was viewed as a way to exempt someone of their indigeneity. the confinement of the indigenous community to missions and the introduction of race allowed for the development of two useful extinction narratives for the colonial administration: extinction by miscegenation and extinction by localization. extinction by miscegenation was a narrative perpetuated by the british colonial administration in an attempt to hinder who could be recognized as indigenous, and in turn, decrease the legitimacy of indigenes claiming rights to land that the british sought to occupy. this extinction narrative is best captured in the words of forte, who states that “the only real carib is a pure carib — and the only pure carib is a dead carib.” the idea here is that the only people who could be recognized as indigenous by the british were those of pure, indigenous blood, and only they had any reasonable claims to the land. the colony of trinidad was home to a number of different ethnic groups, including but not limited to people of african descent, european descent, indigenous groups, and east indians who would come to trinidad in its post-emancipation era. racial mixture mattered greatly to british authorities, as anyone who claimed indigenous status lost the title if they were not of pure indigenous ancestry. under the british, the indigenous community enjoyed certain rights not accessible to the african slave population and as such, the indigenous community sat on a higher rung of the british hierarchy of race. thus, racial mixture on the part of the indigenes meant racial impurity for the colonial administration, and it would give them cause to divest indigenous communities of their land and deny people access to their missions. this way, the population of indigenous people residing on the missions would slowly but steadily decrease to a point where the british could claim indigenous extinction, and moreover, justify their dispossession of indigenous land. localizing the indigenous community to specific missions also served the purpose of proving indigenous extinction. the later, post-independence government of trinidad would use these localizations to inadvertently continue the dangerous narrative of indigenous extinction. the narrative of extinction was bolstered by the confinement of indigenous people to missions across the colony of trinidad, as this gave credence to the idea that a pure, indigenous population had truly been wiped out and the only remaining ones were those on the missions. 7 8 6 7 8 (january 20, 2022 / 09:38:40) 122864-1b_caribbeanquilt_vol7_rev.pdf .24 25 forte, “carib identity, racial politics and the problem of indigenous recognition in trinidad and tobago,” 187. forte, 187. jada benn torres et al., “analysis of biogeographic ancestry reveals complex genetic histories for indigenous communities of st. vincent and trinidad,” 483. 10 as mentioned previously, the spanish were the first to establish missions in trinidad, beginning in 1697 when the “capuchin missions” became the designated territory for all “free native populations in central and south trinidad.” though the british did not grant indigenes this same title of freedom, they continued to use the missions as a means to constrain the indigenous communities that were active on the island. this would have an injurious effect on the postcolonial society of trinidad, as its government would continue the colonial practice of determining indigeneity based on residence within the missions. throughout the 1970s, multiple administrations would come to recognize the presence of indigenous people in the trinidadian borough of arima. the santa rosa first peoples community (srfpc), formerly known as the santa rosa carib community, represents the indigenous community present in arima. the trinidadian government recognized the srfpc as a limited liability company in the latter half of the 20th century, designating the community as “‘representative of the indigenous amerindians of trinidad and tobago.’” this designation is rather harmful, however, because by recognizing the srfpc as a community that speaks for all indigenous people on the island, the trinidadian government bolsters the extinction narratives that have kept indigenes unrecognized for so long. indigenous concerns and practices are confined to the locus of arima and the srfpc, with no consideration given to the concerns of other overlooked indigenous communities in trinidad. the srfpc and arima become the place of reference for outsiders seeking to understand indigeneity and its history in trinidad. in turn, this extinguishes the history of the indigenous folk located on other parts of the island, and the history of those who were banned from their indigenous communities having been the product of miscegenation. many extinction narratives in trinidad have been preserved through continued miscegenation between indigenous communities and other ethnic groups, and through the localization of indigenous groups to specific parts of trinidad. as a result, these narratives run counter to evidence of indigenous dissemination, an area that will be explored in the following section. indigenous presence in trinidad and tobago the analysis of dna evidence and historical documentation by scholars and researchers alike have produced evidence that trinidad’s indigenous community is not only alive, but also extensive in the sociocultural makeup of the country. a recent study done on the biogeographical ancestries of indigenous communities in trinidad and tobago found that patterns of genetic variation were consistent with the historical records of migration on the island prior to and after spanish colonization. benn torres et al. confirm that there were more than eight different ethnic groups in the caribbean at the instance of european arrival, bringing credence to the idea that the original inhabitants of trinidad varied in ethnicity. as mentioned previously, the island’s first inhabitants 11 12 10 11 12 (january 20, 2022 / 09:38:40) 122864-1b_caribbeanquilt_vol7_rev.pdf .25 26 benn torres et al., 488. benn torres et al., 490. benn torres et al., 491. maximilian forte, “extinction: ideologies against indigeneity in the caribbean,” 48. 13 were a cosmopolitan mixture, which raises questions about the subsumption of this group under the singular label ‘carib.’ it can be argued that this unilateral labelling was simply a means to advance extinction narratives, as it became easier for colonial administrations to determine indigeneity based on whether the subject at hand was ‘carib’ or not. it also speaks volumes about the trinidadian state’s appointment of the srfpc as the representative for all indigenous peoples in the country. recognizing the spokespeople for indigeneity as ‘carib’ implies an ethnic group identification, and benn torres et al.’s research highlights why this identification cannot be made. the participants of the study were all selected from the srfpc, their genetic samples were collected, and genealogical interviews were conducted. the results of the study found high median amounts of indigenous-american ancestry in the srfpc sample, along with african, west eurasian, and east and south asian ancestries. the researchers note that the wide range of indigenous ancestries found in the srfpc sample was reflective of the gene flow of indigenous groups from south america that moved between the coast of south america and trinidad during the 19th century. these results are further proof that there is ethnic diversity in trinidad’s indigenous population and that it is naive to classify the whole community as ‘carib.’ furthermore, the fact that african, west eurasian, and east/south asian ancestries were found in the srfpc sample helps delegitimize claims of indigenous extinction. if non-indigenous dna is found in a sample of self-identifying indigenes, then it is plausible to suggest that indigenous dna would be found in the greater population of trinidadians who do not claim indigenous ancestry. the high median proportion of indigenous dna in the srfpc sample was reflective of the marginalization that indigenous communities faced at the hands of the british empire. as such, it would come as no surprise if indigenous ancestries were found in a random sample of the trinidadian population, but further research must be done before one can make this claim unequivocally. nevertheless, there are reasonable scientific grounds to suggest that the successors of trinidad’s first indigenes had disseminated throughout the island. the colonial practice of ostracizing indigenous communities to various missions on the island support this claim, as the rules attached to miscegenation allowed for the dispersal of “racially impure” indigenous populations throughout the greater society of trinidad. other examples of indigenous continuity can be seen in historical documentation. in an article regarding the extinction myths perpetuated in the caribbean, forte makes mention of their incredulity. he highlights a major objection to extinction claims: trinidad’s indigenous inhabitants never lost a decisive war, signed a treaty, or ceded their lands. forte’s assertion deauthorizes colonial claims of indigenous extinction due to miscegenation, and postcolonial claims that trinidad’s indigenous populations were wiped out during 14 15 13 14 15 16 16 (january 20, 2022 / 09:38:40) 122864-1b_caribbeanquilt_vol7_rev.pdf .26 27 steele, “visibility and meaningful recognition for first peoples: a critical discourse studies approach to communication, culture and conflict intersections in seeking social justice,” 494. forte, “extinction: ideologies against indigeneity in the caribbean,” 55. boomert, the indigenous peoples of trinidad and tobago from the first settlers until today, 147. tracy assing, email message to author, december 2020. 17 colonization. indigenous communities survived under the spanish with the latter having to adopt indigenous ways of living to subsist, while in the hands of the british, indigenous communities were subject to the harsh realities of slavery, but still maintained their presence within the missions to which they were confined. moreover, extinction by miscegenation fails to stand as a foundation for extinction ideologies, especially since miscegenation helps to expand indigeneity rather than contain it. admittedly, the colonial narrative around miscegenation was used to contain indigeneity, but in practice, and as evidenced by dna analysis, miscegenation serves as a method for expanding indigeneity beyond an intra-ethnic scope. further evidence of indigenous dissemination can be seen in spanish documentation of indigenous communities at the time of their occupation. throughout the 17th century, spanish authorities confirmed that there were unknown numbers of indigenous folk living in forested regions of trinidad. the practice of escape into the hinterlands was not uncommon to indigenous groups throughout the caribbean, as it was a way for them to survive the brutality of colonization. having confirmed the existence of indigenous populations in the forest regions of trinidad, it becomes increasingly harder to defend narratives purporting indigenous extinction. while there is little information documented about the lifestyles of these groups of people residing in the island’s hinterlands, one can reasonably conclude that these communities eventually re-immersed themselves into trinidadian society over the years. this further validates the aforementioned claim that indigenous ancestries may be found in samples of trinidad’s current population, as indigenes had a social reach that stretched beyond the confines of the colonial missions they were restricted to. myths of indigenous extinction lack any clear, valid evidence, and one may inquire into why such narratives were repeated in trinidad post-independence. afro-creole nationalism and its repercussions the post-independence government of trinidad and tobago was greatly concerned with nation-building and developing a national ethos, which had the negative effect of hindering indigenous concerns. in personal communication with tracy assing, a member of the indigenous community in arima with close ties to the srfpc, she discussed the fact that there were current initiatives being carried out by members of trinidad’s indigenous community regarding state recognition of loss of land, culture, history, language, and way of life. the lack of state acknowledgement on these issues may very well be due to the government’s initial efforts at nation-building after independence in 1962. bridget brereton cites the narrative that is typically produced by former colonies in the development of a new nation: it is usually based around heroic anticolonial struggles, it culminates into the achievement of a formal nationhood, and it ignores internal divisions. brereton also points out that these narratives are generally ethnic in nature, and that they 18 19 17 18 19 20 20 21 (january 20, 2022 / 09:38:40) 122864-1b_caribbeanquilt_vol7_rev.pdf .27 28 bridget brereton, “contesting the past: narratives of trinidad & tobago history,” 170. brereton, 171. brereton, 174. brereton, 176-177. maximilian forte, ruins of absence, presence of caribs: (post)colonial representations of aboriginality in trinidad and tobago, 137-138. 21 are employed in an effort to destabilize “linear nationalist histories” constructed by colonial powers. by producing an ethnic narrative of the former colonies’ historiography, former colonies can counter any colonial documentation regarding their history. these narratives emerged in trinidad post-independence and were heavily based on the experiences faced by the afro-creole population of the country. much of this can be attributed to eric williams and his political party’s rise to prominence, as his scholarly works provided the foundation of trinidadian nationalism as it is today. eric williams’ history of the people of trinidad and tobago perpetuated an anticolonial, afro-creole narrative of trinidad that would eventually permeate the nationalist discourse of the island. the book’s central theme was the devastation brought by colonialism, and the trinidadian people’s struggle to overcome that history. while the book was unifying in that it acknowledged the subordination faced by all ethnic groups during colonialism in trinidad, the book projected a view that africans and their descendants represented the most important ethnic group in the nation. eric williams would go on to become the prime minister of trinidad where his political party, the people’s national movement, would assume power for several years. williams’ book became the hegemonic narrative of trinidad’s past, and afro-creole arrangements had come to be regarded as the defining culture of the nation. to a degree, the afro-creole narrative was exclusive in that it pitted other ethnic groups as background characters in a rather multicultural nation. it also underplayed the contributions made by other ethnic groups to the development and history of the nation. the problem with the narrative is that it perpetuated an idea of indigenous extinction that allowed the trinidadian government to ignore calls for recognition of lost indigenous culture. if one recalls brereton’s model, one can see the role that the indigene plays in the nationalism of trinidad and tobago. postcolonial representations of the indigenous community posit them as the primordial heroes who first fought against colonization — the first tenet of brereton’s model includes anticolonial, heroic struggles as the basis for formal nationhood in former colonies. by nationalizing the indigene as the hero, the government recognizes the indigenous community’s efforts in the fight against colonization, but it also serves as a model for how far afro-creole trinidadians have come. this conceptualization of the indigenous person is based on narratives of extinction, where the martyrdom of the indigene serves the foundation for afro-creole progress. essentially, the indigenous community had to sacrifice their culture, land, language, and way of life to allow later trinidadians to embrace modernity. thus, the indigene does not only serve as a national hero, but also the bridge that allowed modern trinidadians to engage in nation-building and nationalist discourse. to grant the indigenous community the recognition 22 23 24 22 23 24 25 25 26 (january 20, 2022 / 09:38:40) 122864-1b_caribbeanquilt_vol7_rev.pdf .28 29 forte, 138-139. tracy assing, the amerindians. 26 that they are asking for would be to deny a modern interpretation of trinidad’s historiography, a perceived backward step rather than one toward progress. the obsession over progress is a colonial attitude, perpetuated by the post-independence government of trinidad, and assing (2010) captures this attitude perfectly in stating the following: “houses take up spaces where [indigenes] would have made [their] gardens.” conclusion this paper has argued that trinidad’s post-independence government’s lack of recognition of indigenous concerns was due to the country’s ethnically-based nationalism founded on myths of indigenous extinction. the essay has tried to prove this by outlining the relevant extinction narratives used to confine indigenous populations on trinidad, analysing dna evidence and historical documentation as a means for disproving extinction narratives, and exploring the afro-creole nationalist rhetoric that has prevented government recognition of indigenous concerns. trinidad’s formation as an independent state presented the country with an opportunity to move forward in spite of its colonial past. however, in making the move forward from a colonial history and developing an anticolonial future, a country must take account of the lived experiences of their entire demographic, for to neglect even one of these histories is to perpetuate colonial practices. trinidad is one of the more progressive caribbean nations in its recognition of its indigenous population; however, more work needs to be done to address internal divisions. with further education of the indigenous community’s claims for lost land and culture, there remains hope that trinidad will come together as one and be unified in any fight or push towards progress. 27 27 (january 20, 2022 / 09:38:41) 122864-1b_caribbeanquilt_vol7_rev.pdf .29 30 assing, tracy. the amerindians. directed by sophie meyer. 2010; port of spain: trinidad and tobago film company, 2010. dvd. benn torres, jada, victoria martucci, melinda c. aldrich, miguel g. vilar, taryn mackinney, muhammad tariq, jill b. gaieski, et al. “analysis of biogeographic ancestry reveals complex genetic histories for indigenous communities of st. vincent and trinidad.” american journal of physical anthropology 169, no. 3 (may 2019): 482-497. https://doi-org.myaccess.library.utoronto.ca/10.1002/ajpa.23859. boomert, arie. 2016. the indigenous peoples of trinidad and tobago from the first settlers until today. leiden: sidestone press. brereton, bridget. “contesting the past: narratives of trinidad & tobago history.” nieuwe west-indische gids 81, no. 3-4 (2007): 169-196. https://www.jstor.org/stable/43390667. forte, maximilian c. 2005. ruins of absence, presence of caribs: (post)colonial representations of aboriginality in trinidad and tobago. gainesville: university press of florida. forte, maximilian c. “extinction: ideologies against indigeneity in the caribbean.” the southern quarterly 43, no. 4 (2006): 46-69. http://myaccess.library.utoronto.ca/login?qurl=https%3a%2f%2fwww.proquest. com%2fdocview%2f222265546%3faccountid%3d14771. forte, maximilian c. 2013. “carib identity, racial politics and the problem of indigenous recognition in trinidad and tobago.” in who is an indian?: race, place and the politics of indigeneity in the americas, 172-193. toronto: university of toronto press. steele, godfrey a. “visibility and meaningful recognition for first peoples: a critical discourse studies approach to communication, culture and conflict intersections in seeking social justice.” discourse & communication 14, no. 5 (may 2020): 489-511. https://doi.org/10.1177%2f1750481320917553. works cited (january 20, 2022 / 09:38:41) 122864-1b_caribbeanquilt_vol7_rev.pdf .30 :::::: 216 “requiem” amber williams-king (in haiku) i from grave ships they leap black diamonds with glassy eyes ghosts beneath the sea ii pulled by the moon’s song spirits dance on swaying tides bodies dip, ebb rise indigeneity in the caribbean kalinago-european alliances in the seventeenth-century caribbean: wavering between empire and decolonization…....................................................... stephane martin demers exoticism, exchange, and early indigenous-colonial relations in the 15th to 16th century caribbean…...................................................................................................... akshay dua investigating discourses of indigeneity and taino survival in jamaica…................ shenhat haile the early colonial circum-caribbean: affected and infected by colonialism and disease…...................................................36 kennedy-jude providence analysis of coco fusco and guillermo gómez peña’s ‘the couple in the cage: a guatinaui odyssey’…................................................................................................. rachelle sanicharan decolonization and social change green gold is no more….............................................................................................. david allens the reality of reparations: an exploration of neo-colonialism, morality and control in the caribbean…..... amna khan the influence of american hegemony on revolutionary thought............................ kennedy-jude providence the womb: a site of domination and resistance in the pre-emancipation british caribbean …................................................................................................................... collin xia equality through education: a review of michael manley's vision for jamaica…................................................. renée annan 11 16 26 43 48 55 63 69 76 (january 20, 2022 / 08:53:04) 122815-1b_caribbeanquilt_vol6_rev.pdf .8 culture and identity religion in its diaspora: the adaptations of hinduism in the indo-caribbean …........................................ kahlia brown recreating collective memories of africa in the afro-caribbean diaspora: 'spiritual resistance' in cuban santería and haitian vodou ….......................... stephane martin demers linguistic representations of black characters in cuban fiction of the new millennium…............................................................................................................... catia dignard in el batey, my father’s foot lit a fire…............................................................ sophie maríñez copla por la muerte de su padre …........................................................................ poem upon the death of his father urayoán noel afro-caribbean and indigenous religions as subject in caribbean art …....... rachelle sanicharan our sponsors........................................................................................................... 82 90 97 111 113 115 122 (january 20, 2022 / 08:53:04) 122815-1b_caribbeanquilt_vol6_rev.pdf .9 bodegas, baseball & ballads: the democratization of puerto rican identity ruth masuka university of toronto fas double major in diaspora & transnational studies and peace, conflict & justice, minor in music history & culture] evident within many diasporic communities is a group consciousness and organization that operates in non-institutional spaces outside the realms of government agencies. the case of puerto ricans is no different and beyond collective organization, islanders in the diaspora went further in redefining the very criteria of puerto rican identity. this paper focuses on the migrant communities located in new york and the ways in which informal activities and non-institutional venues served as community centres. food traditions, sporting competitions, and poetic practices all acted as cultural bases. such activities fostered a democratic and participatory formation of puerto rican identity and played a critical role in the socioeconomic development of migrants. these spaces also provided room for the complex nuances of puertoricanness that were overlooked or purposely excluded from dominant ideologies by both the american and puerto rican government. looking at bodegas, athletic clubs, and the nuyorican poets cafe, we can observe the vital role of spaces outside the state’s control in facilitating an egalitarian and communal process of identity-making. a b s t r a c t keywords: new york city, puerto rico, nuyorican, bodega, baseball, boricuan, diaspora b i o ruth masuka is a 3rd year student studying the intersections of peace and justice practices and art. her research focuses on the use of non-institutional domains and informal spaces as catalysts for bottom-up group consciousness, capacity-building and community organizing. © 2021 ruth masuka caribbean studies students’ union, canada https://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/cquilt/ this work is licensed under the creative commons attributionsharealike 4.0 international license. to view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ 118 (january 20, 2022 / 09:38:51) 122864-1b_caribbeanquilt_vol7_rev.pdf .118 119 sanabria, carlos. the bodega: a cornerstone of puerto rican barrios (the justo martí collection). centro press, center for puerto rican studies, hunter college, cuny, 2016. hernandez, sigfredo, and carol kaufman. “the role of the bodega in a u.s. puerto rican community.” journal of retailing, vol. 67, no. 4, 1991, pp. 375–396. otero, solimar. “barrio, bodega, and botanica aesthetics.” atlantic studies, vol. 4, no. 2, 2007, pp. 173–194., doi:10.1080/14788810701510894. 1 long before institutions and governmental agencies intervened, puerto rican migrants arriving in new york took it upon themselves to organize their communities. in fact, their own frameworks of identity were often in stark contrast to official characterizations of them, reflecting their nuanced and complex interests and relationships to the homeland and their new home. this group consciousness took place through informal activities and non-institutional community spaces. through these parts of life, puerto ricans not only reaffirmed the cultures of their home island, but developed unique traditions of the new island they found themselves. in this manner, it is critical to explore the arenas in which this development took place. these localities of cultural change served as critical bases for securing the rights for diasporic communities, transforming hegemonic ideologies of puerto rican identity, and exploring the tensions at the heart of the livelihoods of migrants. looking specifically at the community institutions of bodegas, sport clubs, and the nuyorican poets cafe, we can observe the importance of spaces that exist outside the control of the government which allow for a true democratic formation of identity. bodegas, far from being only commercial enterprises, have served as catalysts for economic and social development within the puerto rican communities since the first waves of migration to new york. bodega owners, viewed with great respect due to their financial autonomy, continued to support their neighborhoods by stocking puerto rican goods, providing opportunities for newcomers, and simply being a familiar face. shoppers would bond over similar grocery lists and shared hometowns. yet with the forces of globalization and capitalism continually expanding, the enduring legacy of the bodega cannot be explained purely from an economic perspective; in fact, many economists anticipated the decline of the small grocery stores as puerto rican immigration fell and large food companies sold goods at cheaper prices. their longevity can be explained by their multidimensionality, a fundamental condition of puerto rican character. besides the physical needs of food purchases being met, the very intrinsic human emotion of belonging is fulfilled in every trip. the bodega’s capacities of both convenience and community have made it not only a puerto rican institution, but a cherished new york cultural establishment that goes beyond ethnic or social status. fulfilling these dual functions provided puerto ricans with a simple way to maintain identity but also transform it based on their new shared experiences of new york in those tight aisles. beyond the bodegas, another often overlooked mechanism of fostering group consciousness, especially within academic research, are sports leagues which were one of the original spaces of identity construction and community development 2 3 1 2 3 (january 20, 2022 / 09:38:51) 122864-1b_caribbeanquilt_vol7_rev.pdf .119 120 gems, gerald. “puerto rico: sport and the restoration of national pride.” the international journal of regional and local studies, vol. 1, no. 1, 2005, pp. 107–120., doi:10.1179/jrl.2005.1.1.107. ibid duany, jorge. the puerto rican nation on the move: identities on the island in the united states. university of north carolina press, 2002. 4 within the diaspora. the baseball games and boxing matches organized by athletic clubs became popular pastimes. the physical prowess of puerto ricans was on full display and beyond just trophies and medals, these sporting activities united what was otherwise a society at odds. far from a static monolith, puerto rican consciousness and culture is multi-faceted and contradictory as shown by a 1998 referendum. presented with the choices of statehood, independence, or commonwealth status, more than half of puerto rican voters chose none of the above. regardless of these contradictions however, dating back to the 1950s, puerto rican reports analyzed the embrace of baseball games on the puerto rican psyche and argued that 'destiny disunites us but sport unites us.’ at a very primal level, sporting restored a sense of pride to impoverished communities through winning which brought them together in a way no institutional agencies had achieved. physicality was of great importance, especially within earlier generations of puerto rican migrants, and was perhaps the only time puerto ricans felt they had equal footing with their supposed superiors. to a community that faced social, economic and political constraints, sporting competitions provided the islanders with the self-determination america promised yet failed to give them. it offered hope for some and an opiate for others. despite being granted american citizenship, sporting, especially baseball, still seems to be the strongest link between puerto rican identity and the united states. sporting was the pinnacle of meritocracy; whoever was best would win. the confidence any victories caused transferred to how the islanders would navigate other areas of their lives and like bodegas, was not controlled by an external body that enforced government policies but remained out of touch with their experiences. these sporting leagues often expanded to become social clubs whereby several activities were planned outside of boxing rings and baseball diamonds to remain accessible to a growing puerto rican diaspora. as their function as community centres grew, so followed their function as a catalyst for group consciousness. bodegas and sporting leagues, while both serving the latent functions of community spaces, did not have an explicit purpose of active resistance against hegemonic definitions of puerto rican. while art forms of resistance within new york’s puerto rican community are pervasive everyday performances, the nuyorican poets cafe is an especially potent site for collaborative negotiation-based formations of identity. more than any other instrument of informal community building, the nuyorican poets cafe embraced the fringes of puertoricanness and examined the racial, linguistic, and transnational nuances of the barrio, both conceptualized as the fixed geographical neighborhood of east harlem and a dynamic psychology the puerto ricans shared. founded in 1973 5 6 4 5 6 (january 20, 2022 / 09:38:52) 122864-1b_caribbeanquilt_vol7_rev.pdf .120 121 dowdy, michael. “they must be re(pre)sented: archiving nuyorican poetry’s ‘diasporous’ bodies.” journal of modern literature, vol. 39, no. 3, 2016, p. 141., doi:10.2979/jmodelite.39.3.11. duany, jorge. “the rough edges of puerto rican identities: race, gender, and transnationalism.” latin american research review, vol. 40, no. 3, 2005, pp. 177–190., doi:10.1353/lar.2005.0043. noel, urayoán. “on out of focus nuyoricans, noricuas, and performance identities.” liminalities: a journal of performance studies, vol. 10, no. 3-4, 2014, pp. 1–14., doi:1661910139. goergen, juana iris. “in visible movement: nuyorican poetry from the sixties to slam.” latino studies, vol. 13, no. 4, 2015, pp. 573–574., doi:10.1057/lst.2015.37. 7 in the living room of poet miguel algarín, its modest roots demonstrated a rejection of imperial, class-based categorizations of individuals. markets and money held no power over the artists who would occupy the space that eventually moved to a larger space to accommodate for expanding audiences. the nuyorican poets cafe challenged the easy equation of being born in puerto rico and speaking spanish as the sole criteria for establishing one's puertoricanness. the nuyorican artistic tradition disfigured dominant notions of time, space, and language and based their idea of nationalism on artistic autonomy. the framing of identity was based on shared experiences rather than a specific outcome. with the likes of pedro pietri, the infamous critique of capitalism and in turn, america, and jorge brandon, the ‘godfather’ of nuyorican literature, pushing this movement, the nuyorican poets cafe soon became one of the most respected arts organizations in the city. as algarín described it, the cafe was the home of the ‘democratization of the verse’. the themes of longing for return, economic exploitation, queer and racialized puerto ricans, and other inconvenient truths became the topics of an ongoing conversation between the performer and the audience. puerto rican identity, constantly in motion, always finds itself at a crossroads. often facets of this identity find themselves in contradiction with one another. this is evidenced by persistent disputes regarding the direction of the post-colony. rather than masking these disputes with simple categorizations of puertoricanness, the communal activities and spaces of bodegas, athletic clubs and the nuyorican poets cafe embraced and acknowledged the complexity of these characterizations. in some sense, these spaces offered a ‘cultural citizenship’, much more valuable than their american passport to its beholders as it was truly democratic. these institutions do not concern themselves so much with what defines puerto rican identity as they do with who gets to define it. in this framework, puerto ricans are all proud of their culture but for varying and distinct reasons. the freedom and agency puerto ricans had migrated to the united states had not been found within an american passport, but rather the truest forms of democracy were in the everyday activities where the power to define themselves was placed directly in the hands of the people. 8 9 10 8 9 10 (january 20, 2022 / 09:38:52) 122864-1b_caribbeanquilt_vol7_rev.pdf .121 integrity of authenticity and real presence in the couple in the cage: a guatinaui odyssey kiewan foxe university of toronto fas caribbean studies with performance often being used as a means of entertainment for many, audiences can sometimes be at fault for allowing their gullibility to fiction and historical inaccuracies led to dangerously self-constructed beliefs. time and time again with regard to the colonial history of indigeneity in the “new world,” we face the risk of falling victim to historical deceit. coco fusco and guillermo gómez-peña’s performance, the couple in the cage: a guatinaui odyssey, is a masterfully produced stage play that reveals flaws in past and present historical beliefs that were strengthened by almost laughable false colonial narratives. highlighting the ignorance to indigeneity in western mind, the two performers lead the viewer to question their relationship with the history of oppressed societies or “the other.” this analysis seeks to consider the significance of the couple in the cage: a guatinaui odyssey in the context of the fragility and danger of colonial credence that leaves “the other” as a victim of falsehoods. a b s t r a c t keywords: indigenous narratives, colonial performance, historical falsehoods, “the other” b i o kiewan foxe is currently a fourth-year student at the university of toronto with a focus on caribbean studies and drama. finding the overlapping of the colonial history of the caribbean and performance to be a fascinating subject, led to kiewan becoming interested in the world of caribbean academia © 2021 kiewan foxe caribbean studies students’ union, canada https://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/cquilt/ this work is licensed under the creative commons attributionsharealike 4.0 international license. to view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ 18 (january 20, 2022 / 09:38:40) 122864-1b_caribbeanquilt_vol7_rev.pdf .18 19 coco fusco, “the other history of intercultural performance,” tdr: drama review 38, no. 1 (spring 1994): 147, https://doi.org/10.2307/1146361 fusco, “intercultural performance,” 152. melanie newton, “‘the race leapt at sauteurs’: genocide, narrative, and indigenous exile from the caribbean archipelago,” caribbean quarterly 60, no. 2 (february 2014): 7, https://doi.org/10.1080/00086495.2014.11671886. newton, “genocide, narrative,” 7. fusco, 162 1 3 introduction dating back to the discovery of the “new world” in the fifteenth century, it may be argued that terms such as ‘savage’, ‘uncivilized’, and ‘primitive’ were used in such an abundance due to no other justification than deliberate subjugation. in coco fusco and guillermo gómez-peña’s performance, the couple in the cage: a guatinaui odyssey, the two latin american performers cleverly highlight colonial ignorance, prejudiced views and lies by forcing their audiences to question the validity of their western history and knowledge of “the other.” this process seeks to contradict “contemporary tourist industries and cultural ministries of several countries around the world [that] still perpetuate the illusion of authenticity to cater to the western fascination with otherness”. the significance of this remark is that the irony laden performance of the couple in the cage places its audience in a critical position which seeks to make them feel self-conscious about their western views that forced the “other” into “an aesthetic value”. the authenticity, or in this case unauthenticity, that fusco and gómez-peña capture in their performance puts forth the idea that western ideologies and colonial history abuses the ideal image of the indigenous populations by highlighting the colonial practice of injecting fiction into history to fortify the fictional “aesthetic value” of indigeneity in the “new world.” when watching the performance of the couple in the cage: a guatinaui odyssey, one cannot help but consider that the performance is an accurate portrayal of the indigenous falsities that christopher columbus would have spread upon returning to europe. this is especially true considering the supporting narratives of scholars. for example, in considering indigenous narratives in the caribbean, historian melanie newton speaks to similar false assumptions in the atlantic that originated in the fifteenth century. it is during this time when columbus began the transmission of false accounts of indigenous populations, such as their barbaric and violent nature, because he despised the colour of their skin. however, it is essential to note that it was also during this time that columbus’s son, hernando colón, wrote a logbook that captured his father’s travels. the significance of his logbook is that it contradicted the supposed truths that his father played a significant role in influencing. the narratives of both columbus and his son were needed to establish the substance of real presence in the couple in the cage: a guatinaui odyssey. fusco’s mention of one criticism of the performance not being authentic because her and gómez-peña’s skin were not being dark enough to look like “real primitives” coincides with history opting to believe columbus’s account of indigeneity over his son’s more accurate narrative. the persistence of these beliefs may be seen as an example of the ways which western colonial views have been corrupted by the fetishization of 2 4 4 5 5 1 2 3 4 5 (january 20, 2022 / 09:38:40) 122864-1b_caribbeanquilt_vol7_rev.pdf .19 20 fusco, 149 ����'ldqd�7d\oru��³$�6dydjh�3huirupdqfh��*xloohupr�*yph]�3hĕd�dqg�&rfr�)xvfr¶v�µ&rxsoh�lq�wkh�&djh�¶´�7'5��'udpd� 5hylhz�����qr�����6xpphu�������������kwwsv���grl�ruj���������gudp�������������� � 6 wkh�uhodwlrqvkls�ri�dxwkhqwlflw\�dqg�uhdo� suhvhqfh�lq�7kh�&rxsoh�lq�wkh�&djh��$� *xdwlqdxl�2g\vvh\�lv�d�uhodwlrqvkls�wkdw� pdnhv�rqh�frqvflrxv�wkdw�wkh�³2wkhuqhvv´� wkh�:hvwhuq�zruog�vhhpv�wr�eh�lqidwxdwhg� zlwk�lv�edvhg�xsrq�d�klvwrulfdo�looxvlrq�� ([sodlqhg�fduhixoo\�e\�)xvfr��glvsod\v�dqg� shuirupdqfhv�vxfk�dv�7kh�&rxsoh�lq�wkh� &djh�duh�³olylqj�h[suhvvlrqv�ri�frorqldo� idqwdvlhv�dqg�khoshg�irujh�d�vshfldo�sodfh� lq�wkh�(xurshdq�dqg�(xur�$phulfdq� lpdjlqdwlrq�iru�qrqzklwh�shrsohv�dqg� wkhlu�fxowxuhv�´��,q�pdq\�zd\v��rqh�frxog� ghhp�)xvfr�dqg�*yph]�3hxd¶v�shuirupdqfh�dv�frphglfdoo\�wudjlf�lq�wkh�vhqvh� wkdw�wkhuh�zdv�d�wlph�lq�klvwru\�zkhuh�wkhlu� shuirupdqfh�zrxog�kdyh�ixhoohg�(xurfhqwulf�lghrorjlhv��7kh�dvvxpswlrq�rqh�pdnhv� derxw�7kh�&rxsoh�lq�wkh�&djh�lv�wkdw�iru� prvw�li�qrw�doo�ri�wkh�dxglhqfh��wklv�lv�wkh� iluvw�wlph�wkdw�wkhlu�wkrxjkwv�duh�ehlqj� dvvrfldwhg�zlwk�d�ylvleoh�shufhswlrq�� fuhdwlqj�vrphzkdw�ri�d�olwhudo�suhvhqfh�iru� wkhp�wr�h[shulhqfh��,q�rwkhu�zrugv��gxulqj� wkh�frqfhswlrq�ri�idovh�lqgljhqrxv�qduudwlyhv��rqh�zrxog�olnh�wr�pdnh�wkh�fodlp� wkdw�gxulqj�wkh�iliwhhqwk�fhqwxu\��wkrvh�zkr� eholhyhg�&roxpexv¶v�vwdwhphqwv�kdg�qr� phdqv�ri�uhdol]lqj�wkh�devxuglwlhv�lq�klv� vwrulhv��zklfk�lv�zk\�klv�zrugv�zhuh�wdnhq� iru�wuxwk� ,q�shuirupdqfh�vwxglhv��3urihvvru�'ldqh� 7d\oru¶v�fulwlfdo�uhylhz�ri�7kh�&rxsoh�lq� wkh�&djh��7d\oru�wkrxjkw�suryrnlqjo\� uhjdugv�wkh�shuirupdqfh�dv�d�v\vwhpdwlf� uhsuhvhqwdwlrq�wkdw�³sdurglhv��surgxfhv� dqg�h[srvhv�wkh�rwkhu��dqg�xqzlwwlqjo\� frooxghv�zlwk�wkh�hwkqrjudsklf�sohdvxuhv�lw� vhwv�rxw�wr�ghfrqvwuxfw��6r�lv�wkdw�wkh� srlqw"�7kdw�wkhuh�lv�qr��rwkhu���qr�qrqfrhuflyh�v\vwhp�ri�uhsuhvhqwdwlrq"´��� 7kurxjkrxw�wklv�dqdo\vlv��wkh�zrug� ³2wkhu´�lv�frqwlqxrxvo\��7kh�iroorzlqj� rqh¶v�ylhzlqj�ri�7kh�&rxsoh�lq�wkh�&djh�� lw�fdxvhv�rqh�wr�uhdol]h�wkdw�wkh�frqfhsw�ri� ³wkh�2wkhu´�lv�d�surgxfw�ri�frorqldolvp� wkdw�lv�dujxdeo\�lqwulqvlf�suhvhqw�lq�dq\� vrflhw\��7kh�&rxsoh�lq�wkh�&djh��$�*xdwlqdxl�2g\vvh\�lv�d�shuirupdqfh�wkdw�pd\� ohdg�wkh�ylhzhu�wr�txhvwlrq�pdq\�dvshfwv� ri�frorqldolvp��dqg�lq�pdq\�zd\v��lw�pd\� eh�dujxhg�wkdw�)xvfr�dqg�*yph]�3hxd¶v� shufhswlrq�vhhnv�wr�fkdqjh�rqh¶v�lpsuhvvlrq�ri�shuirupdqfh�duw��7kh�shuirupdqfh� fuhdwhv�vxfk�dq�lpsdfwixo�fdwkduwlf�ihholqj� wkdw�qrw�rqo\�ohdyhv�rqh�zlwk�dq�dssuhfldwlyh�ihholqj��exw�dovr�vhuyhv�dv�d�uhiohfwlqj� slhfh�wkdw�ohdyhv�rqh�txhvwlrqlqj�zkdw� rwkhu�dvshfwv�ri�klvwru\�kdyh�ehhq�xqidlwkixoo\�uhfrughg� 6 7 7 (january 20, 2022 / 09:38:40) 122864-1b_caribbeanquilt_vol7_rev.pdf .20 21 fusco, coco., guillermo gómez-peña, and paula. heredia. couple in the cage: a guatinaui odyssey. toronto, ont: v tape, 1993. fusco, coco. “the other history of intercultural performance.” tdr: drama review 38, no. 1 (1994): 143–67. https://doi.org/10.2307/1146361. taylor, diana. “a savage performance: guillermo gómez-peña and coco fusco’s ‘couple in the cage.’” tdr: drama review42, no. 2 (1998): 160–75. https://doi.org/10.1162/dram.1998.42.2.160. newton, melanie j. “‘the race leapt at sauteurs’: genocide, narrative, and indigenous exile from the caribbean archipelago.” caribbean quarterly 60, no. 2 (2014): 5–28. https://doi.org/10.1080/00086495.2014.11671886. works cited (january 20, 2022 / 09:38:40) 122864-1b_caribbeanquilt_vol7_rev.pdf .21 silencing the radical black feminist: a book review of left of karl marx: the political life of black communist claudia jones alexander vesuna university of toronto curriculum and pedagogy, oise in their work left of karl marx: the political life of black communist claudia jones carol boyce davies works to rescue claudia jones from obscurity and bring the brilliant intellectual back into dominant historical discourse. the radical black feminist was erased from the history books because her intellectual thought posed a threat to the capitalist order. claudia jones spent her life working as a journalist allowing her intellectual thought to be brought to the masses in an attempt to build the consciousness of the people. she was key theoretician in the cpusa and as a black radical feminist jones stood at the vanguard of revolutionary political thought working to push marxism further left to account for the intersections of race, gender, and class. therefore, leftist and marxist political thought needed to be pushed further left to recognize the triple oppression that black women faced. claudia jones possessed a unique ability to speak across difference bringing different groups of people together. her anti-capitalist political thought and this ability to bring people together was seen as a threat to the wealthy elite and the status quo, leading to her eventual deportation to britain. this piece will work to highlight the life and contributions of claudia jones that has been given new life by carol boyce davies. a b s t r a c t keywords: marxism, intersectionality, caribbean political thought, black radical feminism, historical erasure b i o alexander vesuna is a graduate of university of toronto majoring in history and critical studies in equity and solidarity. he is currently pursuing an ma in curriculum and pedagogy at oise. © 2021 alexander vesuna caribbean studies students’ union, canada https://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/cquilt/ this work is licensed under the creative commons attributionsharealike 4.0 international license. to view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ 82 (january 20, 2022 / 09:38:45) 122864-1b_caribbeanquilt_vol7_rev.pdf .82 83 carol boyce davies, left of karl marx: the political life of black communist claudia jones (duke university press, 2007), 2. davies, 2 davies, 199 davies, 199 davies, 62 davies, 199 davies, 199 1 buried in highgate cemetery in london, england is someone who is considered one of history’s most radical thinkers. the cemetery in north london is the location where the radical philosopher karl marx was laid to rest. the father of both communism and marxism marx’s work has stood the test of time. to the social elite and political right marx and his philosophies are seen as a dangerous threat. to the political left however, marx is considered a radical thinker advocating for radical and revolutionary change. his critique of capitalism and socialist ideals have been deeply influential to the left. however just to the left of marx – unbeknownst to most – is an intellectual more radical than marx himself. often forgotten by the history books, with their contributions and struggle uncredited, this intellectual pushed marxist thought further left and – as carol boyce davies would argue – earned her spot being buried to the left of karl marx. in left of karl marx: the political life of black communist claudia jones carol boyce davies works to retrieve the life and the brilliant work of the radical intellectual claudia jones. conducting interviews, examining documents and looking through fbi files davies makes use of the limited resources available to write an insightful biography on the life of claudia jones. davies illuminates the amazing intellectual work that jones produced as well as her activism and impact on the caribbean community. the book left of karl marx: the political life of black communist claudia jones works to reclaim the life of claudia jones and illuminate her contributions in pushing the limits of marxism further left. claudia jones was born in port of spain, trinidad on february 21st, 1915 and immigrated with her family to harlem, new york as a child; seeking the imagined american dream and instead receiving a nightmare of rampant urban poverty and racial oppression. her working-class family faced oppression both because of their class position and status as caribbean immigrants. this discrimination that her family faced, the poor economic situation and the denial of black citizen rights led to jones to organizing for and believe in the need for black liberation. jones grew up during a time when jim crow laws still existed in the united states and black people were subjugated to white violence. claudia jones organized against jim crow and the racist discrimination it stood for. during this time, her mother passed away at the young age of thirty-seven at a workstation in the garment shop where she worked. this was a pivotal moment in jones’s life as she considered her mother’s death to be as a result of the extreme exploitation of the capitalist system and saw it as endemic of the ways in which millions of working-class men and women suffer under this capitalist system. claudia jones eventually began writing for an american-west indian newspaper in which her father was the editor and throughout her life worked as a journalist to build the political consciousness of the working class. working as a journalist outside of traditional academia, jones’ theorizations and politics was able to go 2 3 4 5 6 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 7 (january 20, 2022 / 09:38:46) 122864-1b_caribbeanquilt_vol7_rev.pdf .83 84 davies, 73 davies, 72 davies, 200 davies, 31 davies, 30 davies, 194 davies, 194 8 directly to the people. carol boyce davies argues that intellectual activity is not always located within the ‘academy’ and jones’s followed a long tradition of black activists and radical black intellectuals who used newspapers to communicate with the public. jones wrote for the young communist league’s weekly review, cpusa’s daily worker, and her “half the world” column, and after her deportation to britain, founded the west indian gazette and afro-asian caribbean news. in 1936 claudia jones officially joined the communist party and throughout her time in the party she wrote nine essays on women’s rights as well as continued her work as a journalist. in cpusa jones fought for the equality of women and was a leading theorizer linking issues that women faced to class struggle, anti-imperialism, and the anti-war movement. jones’s saw the exploitation and oppression of women as a result of capitalism which maintains patriarchal relations as a key component. this oppression of women is also part of a global struggle and a key to ending this oppression would be the dismantling of the capitalist system, which espouses patriarchal power relations, replacing it with a socialist system. even though jones and the cpusa’s women’s commission dealt specifically with the needs of u.s women jones’s feminism was internationalist. jones’s biggest contribution during her time in cpusa was she illuminated the intersections of race, class, gender, and imperialism. this theorization allowed jones to challenge the limits of cpusa’s theorization and had a profound influence on both marxist thought and women’s movements that followed. even though the cpusa had many women in the party jones had to fight against patriarchal power relations within the communist party; challenging longstanding norms in order for men in the cpusa to take the oppression and exploitation that women faced seriously. jones also fought against racist power relations illuminating that certain women held power while other women were subordinated based on race. her theories on “triple jeopardy” of oppression and the intersectionality of race, gender, and class helped push cpusa towards a truer theory of liberation. claudia jones was also an advocate for peace and the peaceful relations between nations. she linked war to imperialism and to issues of women’s rights, black rights and labor exploitation. as a part of this process, she pursued peace work and saw achieving peace to being tied to the dismantling of imperialism and capitalism. this is despite the fact that any anti-war stance in the united states was considered communist – therefore implicitly anti-america — and claudia jones was aware that her identification as a communist would lead to her multiple arrests and eventual deportation. throughout, her tenure in the cpusa jones faced multiple arrests under the smith and mccarran-walter act which eventually led to her exile to britain on october 23, 1955. this was a result of the united states war on communism which in actuality was a war on anything that 9 10 11 12 13 14 8 9 10 11 12 13 (january 20, 2022 / 09:38:46) 122864-1b_caribbeanquilt_vol7_rev.pdf .84 85 davies, 33 davies, 145 davies, 170 davies, 6 davies, 6 davies, 172 15 opposed the status quo. following world war ii and the growth of socialist liberation struggles around the world communism became constructed as a threat to american society. the united states elite feared the opposition of subjugated people in the united states who would throw off the chains of oppression and fight for radical change. any political stance that opposed the dominant positionality, opposing capitalist and colonial institutions was seen as communist. therefore, claudia jones was constructed as a threat to america because of her socialist beliefs and her desire to reorient society around the most vulnerable – black women. jones also presented a particular threat because of her ability to speak across divisions and bring people together. from this perspective, it is clear the jones was deported because she was a black woman espousing ‘contrary’ political beliefs and activity leading to her construction as an enemy of the state. claudia jones’s identification as a black woman communist of west indian descent, which put her in opposition to racial discrimination and the white supremacist state that is the united states. facing deportation jones desired being sent to britain and comparably britain thought this was better than her going to the caribbean because they would be better equipped to handle her politics there. this is because during jones’ deportation, the caribbean was embroiled in revolutionary struggles for liberation and britain did not want to risk a radical figure like jones amplifying these voices. her exile in england altered the nature of her work as the communist party in britain was excessively racist and she did not have the energy nor patience to fight against the same racism that she had fought to illuminate in the united states party. davies illuminates that her emigration to the u.s lead to jones facing racism while with her migration to britain she saw similar trends of racism leading to pan-african politics of resistance and the internationalizing of her understanding of racism. this led her to focus more directly on the developing of a caribbean community in england, pan-africanism and internationalism. claudia jones worked closely with the caribbean/african diaspora community as well as the asian community and eastern europeans. jones became a leading figure in the caribbean community in britain and she founded the west indian gazette which later became the west indian gazette and afro-asian caribbean news in 1957. this newspaper was central to the development of a caribbean community in britain and she developed her internationalist politics covering issues in the africa, asia, and the caribbean and connecting these issues to capitalism and the anti-imperialist struggle. jones journalism was key to developing a political consciousness for those that read but illuminating the social relations relating these groups to come together in solidarity. claudia jones helped develop the growing london caribbean community through her journalism, activism and the establishing of the london carnival. the carnival was part of caribbean culture 16 17 18 19 20 14 15 16 16 18 19 20 (january 20, 2022 / 09:38:46) 122864-1b_caribbeanquilt_vol7_rev.pdf .85 86 davies, 33 davies, 145 davies, 170 davies, 6 davies, 6 21 and this event worked to resist, “euro-american bourgeois aesthetics, imperialism and cultural hegemony, and political and racial oppression. carnivals, in the african diaspora tradition, demonstrate the joy that its people experience in ‘taking space.’ a number of scholars have lghqwl¿hg�wkh�jhqhudwlqj�hohphqwv�ri� caribbean carnivals generally.” as jones shows through her work with the london carnival, culture is important in the development of sustainable communities and jones saw that community was key to the development to the success of any struggle against capitalism and colonialism. davies says, “for jones, as the title of her article indicates, art and culture, if linked deliberately to human freedom as fundamental aspects of human self-assertion and expression, provide the impetus for human liberation: a people’s culture is the genesis of their liberation!” in this way, jones sees culture as integral to any and all liberation struggles. colonialism fought to erase the history of the colonized as well as their culture enforcing eurocentric traditions upon the subaltern. they called this a civilizing mission, but they did this to weaken the people’s resistance to the colonial system therefore culture is key to its destruction. in the individualizing system of capitalism and the erasure of the colonized culture, cultural resurgence is integral to uniting the colonized people and mobilizing against these racist systems. the capitalist and colonial powers may have guns or tanks, but the colonized people have culture, and they have community. carol boyce davies illustrates how claudia jones has expanded and pushed marxist theory further left to include both race and gender as the work of karl marx and marxist theorists before jones lacked an analysis of these perspectives. these theorizations chose not to illuminate the racist, patriarchal and white supremacist nature of capitalism. davies therefore in her work such as an end to the neglect of the problems of the negro women illuminate that black women were not simply discriminated and exploited based on class but face a “triple jeopardy” based on their class, race and gender. karl marx saw all of history as being a conflict between classes, between the elite in society, the working class and the peasant class. marx offers a robust critique of capitalism that shows that capitalism is an exploitative system that exploits the working class. in a capitalist society there is the bourgeoisie, capitalist or elite class that owns the land and means of production. the other class is the proletariat or working class, which owns neither land nor the means of production therefore all they have to sell to meet their basic needs for survival is their labor. the philosopher promoted a theory of society that saw a movement from feudalism through capitalist to socialism. therefore marx promoted the overthrowing of the capitalist system and the ruling elite through revolutionary struggle and the establishing of a socialist society that is ruled by a ‘dictatorship of the proletariat.’ his critique of capitalism and socialist ideals have been deeply influential to the political left but a gap in his analysis is the question of race or gender. marx could not see past his own 22 23 24 25 21 22 23 24 25 (january 20, 2022 / 09:38:46) 122864-1b_caribbeanquilt_vol7_rev.pdf .86 87 davies, 212 c.l.r james, the black jacobins: toussaint l’ouverture and the san domingo revolution (penguin, 1989), 329. davies, 2 davies, 41 davies, 41 davies, 30 26 as a white european man and this limited any accounts of colonization or the struggle of women. even though marx’s scope was limited others worked to expand marxism. lenin for example similarly sought to advance marxism further to include issues of colonialism, imperialism, and provide an analysis of women in society. even with the contributions of lenin it was the radical intellectuals of the caribbean that pushed marxism further left to illuminate how class and race were co-constitutes of each other. it was the works of black intellectuals such as c.l.r james that argue class is racialized because the first proletariat was the enslaved black person. james demonstrates here, as well as other scholars in the black radical tradition, that class and capitalism are both racialized. integral to the development of the capitalist system was the dispossession of land from indigenous people and the exploitation of enslaved black labor. capitalism is built on not only the exploitation of the working class but the exploitation of a racialized working class. colonization worked to subjugate racialized people politically, economically, and socially for the expansion and development of the capitalist system. the process of colonization created stability for the resources of the colonized people to be stolen, labor to be exploited and a market that was controlled by the colonizing power. this led to the transferring of wealth from the caribbean and the global south to the elite in the global north. therefore, imperialism is directly tied to capitalism. black intellectuals in the caribbean worked to expand marxism to include race but it was not until claudia jones that gender began to become an integral part of this analysis. it was the work of black women such as claudia jones that expanded marxism to include not only race but gender. claudia jones argues that while all workers are being exploited black women are in a position of “super exploitation” because of their class, race and gender. jones theorization was grounded in communist theory and in the emancipation of all the working class but as a working-class black woman herself she saw that the emancipation of black women was central to full emancipation of the working class. jones says that black women are “the most oppressed stratum of the whole population,” and then says “capitalists exploit woman doubly, both as workers and women. woman has to face special oppression in every field in capitalist societyas a workera wife, and a homebuilder and a citizen.” jones illuminates here that women are doubly oppressed because of their gender but black women are at the most oppressed because they are also oppressed because of their race. jones then argues that black women are often the heads of households in black communities and that the entire community would remain in poverty if black women continued to face this triple jeopardy. 27 28 29 30 31 26 27 28 29 30 (january 20, 2022 / 09:38:46) 122864-1b_caribbeanquilt_vol7_rev.pdf .87 88 davies, 38 michel-roplh trouillot, silencing the past: power and the production of history, (beacon press,1995), 29. 32 claudia jones in for new approaches to our work among women illuminates that black women are restricted to the lowest paying jobs such as a domestic labor and not only makes less money than men but make less than half the pay of white women. this illuminates that black women were being oppressed for their class, race and gender. claudia jones also illuminates here that certain women, while oppressed by men, hold positions of power over other women based on their racial position. even in the cpusa jones had to struggle to show that mainstream feminism did not account for the specific experiences of black or racialized women and jones struggled to fight against these power relations. robin d.g kelley says, “the structural position of black people black women in particularin the political economy placed them in the vanguard of the revolution.” black women are the most exploited and the most vulnerable in society therefore because of their position jones sees them as the driving force to make change. this is definitely illuminated through left of karl marx: the political life of black communist claudia jones which similarly demonstrates the ways in which claudia jones and the black women she influenced are the vanguard of radical change. throughout her life claudia jones had made profound impacts on marxism, black feminism and the developing of a caribbean community in london. jones pushed those on the left to include in their politics the super exploitation of black women and to see the intersections of class, race and gender. as an internationalist jones illuminated the social relations connecting the working class struggles and the struggles for liberation across the globe to an oppressive system of capitalism. jones founded the london carnival and worked to establish a caribbean community in london. with all the labor and all the impact she has not received the credit for all her accomplishments throughout her life. the name claudia jones remains unuttered, slipping out of dominant discourses and historical narratives. in this respect, claudia jones remains a forgotten, unsung hero of the left. in michel-roplh trouillot’s silencing the past: power and the production of history the author argues that all history are narratives constructed by power. history is not about truth but constructing narratives that serve the ruling class and those in power. the elite decide what is allowed to be remembered and what is to be forgotten. claudia jones was someone that the elite in society wanted silenced because her radical politics could lead to change which threatened the status quo. claudia jones was a black feminist, a marxist-leninist, and an internationalist that could speak through difference to unite groups of people in the struggle against the system of capitalism and colonialism. she was both anti-racist and anti-patriarchal seeing these being inherently linked to the globalized system of capitalism and colonialism. jones’s politics were anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist threatening the agenda of the elite in society. she was trying to reorient society to take care of the people and the most vulnerable. claudia jones was erased from the archives of history because of this threat she caused to the capitalist system 33 32 33 (january 20, 2022 / 09:38:47) 122864-1b_caribbeanquilt_vol7_rev.pdf .88 89 davies, 173 davies, 4 34 and the profit of the elite in society. the smith and mccarran-walter act were launched as weapons to incarcerate and deport radical change from occurring. these legal codes were used to criminalize all those desired the radical reorientation of society to be centered on the needs of the people and not the elite. the state’s goal was the stopping of these ideas from spreading across america causing the oppressed working class to rise up against their oppressors. they also feared the colonized people such as black people rising up, as was occurring throughout the caribbean and the global south at the time. claudia jones was deported not only for being a communist, but a black woman that identified as a communist. davies says, “claudia was able to identify all the vshfl¿f�udwlrqdohv�iru�khu�ghsruwdwlrq�exw� all of which came down to the fact that she, a black woman assumed the identity of being a communist, as did angela davis two decades later, namely someone who struggles through an organized communist party effort to bring about an egalitarian society free from class, race, and gender injustices. her political identity as d�frppxqlvw��dgghg�wr�khu�lghqwl¿fdwlrq�dv� caribbean, complicated even further, in the view of the ins, her rights to u.s. citizenship.” as a black women jones encountered both patriarchy and anti-black racism throughout her life. being a black women she was constructed as a threat or a dangerous other to america’s white supremacist society. black women are at the bottom of the social order and through their othering are constructed as not belonging to the central tenants of the american state. this combined with her being constructed as a communist, a threat to the capitalist order, lead to her erasure jones similarly has fallen out of the history of leftist politics due to the ways in which she constantly pushed back against racism and patriarchy that existed amongst the left. this illuminates that in liberation, revolutionary struggle and organizing that women are often told to put their dream of equality on hold until after the struggle at which point, their efforts for female liberation are again ignored or erased. the life of claudia jones demonstrates the ways in which women fight revolutionary struggles on multiple fronts. the struggle against capitalism or the working-class struggle, the struggle against patriarchy or for women’s equality, and the struggle against racism or the struggle for racial equality. therefore, her identity as a black women and the fact that she would not wait until after the revolution to challenge both racist and patriarchal power relations led to her conflict with white men and women within the party. her politics, her race, her gender, and her ability to build sodality between movements lead to her erasure. davies says, “while a domestic 8�6��dssurdfk�lv�dssursuldwh�iru�àhvklqj� rxw�wkh�vshfl¿fv�ri�$iulfdq�$phulfdq� feminist political history in the united states, such a position remains bordered within the u.s. narrative of conquest and domination and thus accompanies the ‘‘deportation of the radical black female subject’’ to an elsewhere, outside the terms of the given u.s. discourse. for this reason as well, there tended to be a consistent deportation of class analysis 35 34 (january 20, 2022 / 09:38:47) 122864-1b_caribbeanquilt_vol7_rev.pdf .89 90 davies, 233 36 also to this elsewhere, though there would be fairly frequent mention of class in a variety of formulations.” davies illuminates here the radical black female subject did not belong in the u.s because of their race, gender and their politics of creating a better world. this is an important demonstration of the ways in which neoliberalism begun to seep into identity politics and divide the people. without class analysis people began to only theorize the links between race and gender not being able to connect issues of racism or gender to the structural system of capitalism. therefore, there was a weakening of political thought that led to people dividing themselves among their identities instead of bringing each other together against the struggle against capitalism. this individualism and division are caused by the deporting of class and the new neoliberal order. the class struggle is integral to bringing different groups together and demystifying the social relations that connect racial and gender struggles to the capitalist system. claudia jones’s erasure was because she could see these links and unite the people against the system of capitalism. the book left of karl marx: the political life of black communist claudia jones works to recover the radical black women and reclaim the life of claudia jones to illuminate her contributions to pushing the left further left. it works to uncover the life of a revolutionary women who spent her life struggling against racism, patriarchy and the capitalist system. jones pushed leftist political thought and marxism further left by illuminating the intersections of race, class and gender. her immigration to the united states and the racism she faced taught her the need for black liberation. her deportation to britain and the racism she saw there furthered her political thought showing her that the struggle against racism was an international struggle. this led to growing of pan-african aspect of her political thought. being part of the african diaspora led her to not subscribe to a certain nationalistic identity. this combined with her understanding of the class struggle being an international struggle against the oppressive system of capitalism led her to work with people from different communities, races and political groups. this paper has sought to demonstrate the ways in which claudia jones’ ability to speak and unite people across difference ultimately lead to her silencing and erasure. even with her silencing davies illuminates that in the decades following jones’s death there was a peace movement spreading across the united states, decolonization and socialist struggles across the global south and a feminist movement. even with attempts by the united states to erase jones, it is clear that her political thought was resonating throughout these movements and her struggle were carried on. this book, the work and life of claudia jones is integral for all those on the radical left envisioning radical different world. carol boyce davies does a splendid job recovering claudia jones and the black radical women illuminating that their position to the left of karl marx has been rightfully earned. 35 36 (january 20, 2022 / 09:38:47) 122864-1b_caribbeanquilt_vol7_rev.pdf .90 91 davies, carole boyce. left of karl marx: the political life of black communist claudia jones. duke university press, 2007. james, cyril lionel robert. the black jacobins: toussaint l'ouverture and the san domingo revolution. penguin uk, 2001. trouillot, michel-rolph. silencing the past: power and the production of history. beacon press, 1995. works cited (january 20, 2022 / 09:38:47) 122864-1b_caribbeanquilt_vol7_rev.pdf .91 equality through education: a review of michael manley's vision for jamaica renée annan university of toronto new college, double major in history and sociology michael manley envisioned a jamaica that would provide equality for the working-class through education. this was done considering the socio-economic structure of the country which reflects its legacies of colonialism, slavery, and imperialism. indications of this trauma are evident in racial divisions based largely in colourism and class inequalities, which have led to the stigmatization of manual labour. during what historians chambers and airey label the ‘socialist era’ in jamaica (i.e. 1972 and 1980), manley’s people’s national party (pnp) government sought to embed ideals of self-reliance into vital socio-economic industries such as education, agriculture, manufacturing, and tourism. the ultimate goal of this was aimed at reversing the condition of psychological dependency that plagued many regions in the global south. this policy review seeks consider the process by which michael manley implemented his administration’s free education policy during the years of 1972 to 1980. a b s t r a c t b i o renée completed her undergraduate degree at the university of toronto in fall 2020. renée is currently enrolled in a post-graduate human resources management certificate program, and has future plans to begin her masters of communication in fall of 2022. © 2021 renée annan ribbean studies students’ union, canada https://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/cquilt/ this work is licensed under the creative commons attributionsharealike 4.0 international license. to view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ ray chen, “young faces of jamaica,” national library of jamaica digital collection, accessed august 9, 2021 76 (january 20, 2022 / 08:53:07) 122815-1b_caribbeanquilt_vol6_rev.pdf .76 77 donna chambers and david airey, “tourism policy in jamaica: a tale of two governments,” current issues in tourism 4, no. 2-4 (2001): 94, doi: 10.1080/13683500108667884 khitanya petgrave. "equality in education? a study of jamaican schools under michael manley, 1972—80." caribbean quarterly 57, no. 2 (2011): 41, accessed april 16, 2021, http://www.jstor.org/stable/23050527. anthony payne. "the 'new' manley and the new political economy of jamaica." third world quarterly 13, no. 3 (1992): 465, accessed july 7, 2021, http://www.jstor.org/stable/3992196. khitanya petgrave, "equality in education,” 31. ibid, 31. . 1 3 michael manley envisioned a jamaica that would provide equality for the working-class through education. this was done considering the socio-economic structure of the country which reflects its legacies of colonialism, slavery, and imperialism. indications of this trauma are evident in racial divisions based largely in colourism and class inequalities, which have led to the stigmatization of manual labour. during what historians chambers and airey label the ‘socialist era’ in jamaica (1972 1980), manley’s people’s national party (pnp) government sought to embed ideals of self-reliance into vital socio-economic industries such as education, agriculture, manufacturing, and tourism. the ultimate goal of this was aimed at reversing the condition of psychological dependency that plagued many regions in the global south. this policy review seeks to consider the process by which michael manley implemented his administration’s free education policy during the years of 1972 to 1980. particular attention will be paid to manley’s social democratic ideals, and the ways in which he promoted equality through accessible education as a solution to issues faced by poor inner-city youth. the early twentieth century was a time of tremendous social and educational reforms throughout various leading caribbean countries, including trinidad and tobago, guyana, and cuba. in keeping with this regional trend, the manley administration worked towards a mandate that demanded for the social elevation of the working class people. as a result, much like other policy mandates, the education policy enacted during this period reflects the pnp’s overall agenda of enacting increased state control over key areas of jamaican society. the free education policy (1972-80) despite being born into a mixed-race upper-class household, michael manley was known for being sympathetic to the plight faced by the black majority living in jamaica and as a result is remembered by some as a champion of social democratic policies. arguably, the most famous of those policies was enacted in september of 1973 and labelled the ‘free education’ policy. this policy meant that all fees associated with tuition were fully subsidized for all post-primary school children aged 10-19 as well as students enrolled in the island’s university. the former was the primary focus of the educational reform, as the majority of secondary school students lived in garrison communities plagued with violence and poverty. manley posited that two things had to be facilitated in order to achieve his goal. first, a complete reconstruction of the jamaican identity based on the communal spirit of black power (i.e. one rooted in african history) and secondly, a release of the traumas adopted from the british educational 1 2 3 2 1 2 4 4 5 5 (january 20, 2022 / 08:53:07) 122815-1b_caribbeanquilt_vol6_rev.pdf .77 78 michael manley, the politics of change. a jamaican testament. washington dc: howard university press, 1974, chapters 2 & 3 khitanya petgrave, "equality in education,” 31. davis e carlton, "michael manley: some visions that still remain relevant." caribbean quarterly 57, no. 2 (2011): 59, accessed april 14, 2021, http://www.jstor.org/stable/23050528. khitanya petgrave, "equality in education,” 31. khitanya petgrave, "equality in education,” 32. ibid., 31 . 6 8 system. in essence, in order to reach urban black youth and abide by his goal of equality through education, manley offered a healing of collective trauma through policy reform in the shape of access to a free afro-centric and practical education. many aspects of free education appeared viable in theory, however, upon implementation, challenges arose. the following section will look at several factors that impacted the success of the manley administration’s educational expansion program marketed in the form of free education. policy implementation challenges during the eight years of the manley administration, the minister of education changed eight times, making it one of the most difficult positions to navigate or implement. this posed a critical challenge to policy implementation and stemmed from manley’s challenge of distributing power through the governing party, in a way that would satisfy all intra-class interests. in 1974, manley spoke at the sixth commonwealth education conference and outlined his objectives for education in jamaica. he placed an emphasis on promoting practical attitudes towards work, self-reliance, acceptance of responsibility, and community building at the forefront of how he planned to execute this goal. one of the main strengths of the free education program was that it one of the main strengths of the free education program was that it facilitated access to all schools in the country which led to an increased rate by which primary school aged kids could enter secondary (or elitist grammar) schools. the number of candidates gaining subsidized tuition into grammar schools after passing the common entrance examination (cce), “rose from 2,180 in 1972 to 4,782 in 1974, [and peaked] at 9,470 in 1978.” even with national numbers reflecting growing expansion of school attendance, passing any reform also came with the fine balancing act of appeasing pnp’s multi-class power dynamics with local capitalist interests. recognizing that nothing of this stature happens in one fell swoop, there were inevitable caveats embedded within the education policy that ensured the poor urban youth that manley was trying to raise out of the garrison communities did not actually ever get past a certain level of the gatekeeping. furthermore, considering the high turnover for the cabinet appointment of education minister, some argue that manley sought to glean the capital and support of local business elite via appointments. as such he appointed eli matalan, a local businessman with no prior political experience, as education minister, a move that likely caused ripples within the manley government. 1 2 7 6 9 10 7 8 9 10 11 11 (january 20, 2022 / 08:53:07) 122815-1b_caribbeanquilt_vol6_rev.pdf .78 79 ibid., 35. carlene j edie, “domestic politics and external relations in jamaica,” 72. . 12 the educational reforms rolled out by manley were under constant threat mainly from class conflict. for example, manley’s proposition to have an increase of both technical and vocational subjects taught on a scientific level, at the expense of literary studies, directly clashed with the desires and interests of the jamaican bourgeoisie. specifically, as the needs of the middle and upper-class jamaican elites were prioritized, the working-class population slowly withdrew their support for the pnp government. policies that were highly favoured by the pnp government often directly conflicted with the local capitalist policy desires, which ultimately threatened the socio-political order of society. the instability of society by the late 1970’s was reflected in the division along class and racial lines, international pressures promoting anti-socialist rhetoric, and erupting violence in the garrisons which contributed to a collective atmosphere of psychological trauma, confusion, and vulnerability. although manley strove to embed a culture of pro-african, black pride and sophistication through education, factors such as ministerial disorganization, class and political related conflicts, and intensifying economic crisis, all placed limitations on the quality of, and access to, free education. conclusion the totality of ministerial disorganization, class and political related conflicts, and intensifying economic crisis prevented the schooling system from acting as an outlet by which marginalized youth could attain equal access to education. ultimately, the most devastating weakness of the free education policy under pnp was the fact that poor students did not actually get granted access to elite grammar schools just by passing the cee exam; therefore, the explosive acceptance numbers shown above in the early 1970s were not reflective of equality of access to education for all. essentially, education was increased but longstanding improvements to class relations were not realized as elite grammar schools remained inaccessible overall. 2 9 10 13 12 13 (january 20, 2022 / 08:53:08) 122815-1b_caribbeanquilt_vol6_rev.pdf .79 80 carlton, e. davis. "michael manley: some visions that still remain relevant." caribbean quarterly 57, no. 2 (2011): 51-74. accessed april 14, 2021. http://www.jstor.org/stable/23050528. chambers, donna, david airey. “tourism policy in jamaica: a tale of two governments.” current issues in tourism 4, no. 2-4 (2001): 94-120, doi: 10.1080/13683500108667884 dodman, jane. “the best glass? equitable access to quality education in inner-city kingston, jamaica.” environment and urbanization 33, no. 1 (2021): 83–98. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956247820983665. edie, carlene j. "domestic politics and external relations in jamaica under michael manley, 1972–1980." studies in comparative international development 21, no. 1 (1986): 71-94. manley michael. the politics of change. a jamaican testament. washington dc: howard university press, 1974. chapters 2 & 3. payne, anthony. "the 'new' manley and the new political economy of jamaica." third world quarterly 13, no. 3 (1992): 463-74. accessed july 7, 2021. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3992196. petgrave, khitanya. "equality in education? a study of jamaican schools under michael manley, 1972—80." caribbean quarterly 57, no. 2 (2011): 24-50. accessed april 16, 2021. http://www.jstor.org/stable/23050527. works cited (january 20, 2022 / 08:53:08) 122815-1b_caribbeanquilt_vol6_rev.pdf .80 as you read and reflect on the pieces presented in this volume, we ask that you remain mindful that indigenous peoples have lived in the caribbean since time immemorial. the word ‘caribbean’ itself derives from a european transliteration of the name of the indigenous peoples of the eastern caribbean. when europeans arrived in the caribbean in 1492, they found a diverse range of indigenous peoples already living there. the descendants of these pre-columbian people call the caribbean home to this day, whether they live in the region or in the diaspora. we also acknowledge the land on which the university of toronto operates. for thousands of years it has been the traditional land of the wendat, the seneca, and the mississaugas of the credit river. today, this meeting place is still the home to many indigenous people from across turtle island and we are grateful to have the opportunity to work on this land. below is a list of indigenous-led organizations or funds in toronto that we recommend to readers who wish to offer their time or funds to organizations that amplify the voices of indigenous people: • raven trust (https://raventrust.com) • 1492 land back lane legal fund (https://ca.gofundme.com/f/legal-fund-1492-land-back-lane) • native women’s association of canada (https://www.nwac.ca) • inuit tapiriit kanatami (https://www.itk.ca) • water first (https://waterfirst.ngo) • clan mother’s healing village (https://clanmothers.ca) • native child and family services of toronto (https://nativechild.org) • toronto indigenous harm reduction (https://www.torontoindigenoushr.com) • indian residential school survivors society (https://www.irsss.ca) • legacy of hope foundation (https://legacyofhope.ca) • indspire (https://indspire.ca) • reconciliation canada (https://reconciliationcanada.ca) land acknowledgement 4 (january 20, 2022 / 09:38:40) 122864-1b_caribbeanquilt_vol7_rev.pdf .4 caribbean quilt volume 6 (2021) and its issues ‘resiliency’ and ‘revolution’ represent a departure from the norm. it has been eight years since caribbean quilt published a double issue volume, which is a rarity in student-run journals. such a feat highlights the scope of scholarship produced in the field by the university of toronto core and extended community. reflecting on contemporary and historical challenges in the region, pieces featured in resiliency consider the ways in which the caribbean and its trailblazers have stood firm. it is often used to put the onus on the marginalized or disenfranchised to ‘be or become resilient. resiliency is what a region composed of the “modern world’s historically marginalized -indigenous peoples, enslaved peoples, and indentured labourers” has continued to achieve. revolution features work that considers some of the region's innovative solutions and their challenges when developing processes needed for the caribbean to thrive.our contributors approached these interrelated themes in dynamic ways and we hope this work inspires you through our collective efforts towards meaningful change in the caribbean. we selected these themes as an invitation to you, the reader, to see the historical and contemporary ways in which threads of resiliency and revolution permeate all aspects of daily life in the caribbean -l iterature, visual art, music, performance, community activism, and festivals. within letter from the editors each issue, the pieces have been organized into three thematic groups: indigeneity in the caribbean, decolonization and social change and culture and identity. contributions from recent graduates have a 2t1 designation. it is our hope that this volume serves as a reminder that the caribbean was a region forged in struggle, but gleans strength through its hybridity. as we continue in the tradition of critical thought and expression set out through this journal, we are all the more cognizant that this remains true for the region’s diaspora as well. producing caribbean quilt volume 6 would not be possible without the creativity and dedication of our masthead, advisory board and reading committee whose insights made this possible. thanks are owed to our advisory board chair, dr. kevin edmonds, megan mungalsingh whose artwork graces one of our covers for the second year in a row, mariya maistrovskaya, and the entire journal production services team at university of toronto libraries. without them, these issues would not be the quality products you now -literally, or figuratively, hold in your hands. enjoy. david allens prilly bicknell-hersco korede akinkunmi editor-in-chief associate editor copy editor de silva, kevin. “letter from the editor.” caribbean quilt 1 (november 18, 2012): 1. https://doi.org/10.33137/caribbeanquilt.v1i0.19062. 1 5 (january 20, 2022 / 09:38:40) 122864-1b_caribbeanquilt_vol7_rev.pdf .5 megan mungalsingh university of toronto fas, cognitive science and psychology liberté (2021) gouache on cold-pressed watercolour paper. "liberté" is a subversion of a famous french work called, "liberty leading the people" by french artist, eugene delacroix. the painting is famously associated with the french revolution (despite not originally depicting the revolution). in contrast, this painting subverts the original concept with stories of the haitian revolution. in lieu of libertas, cécile fatiman, a mambo, is leading the people while holding the haitian flag. fatiman is a figure in haitian history noted for her involvement in the ceremony at bois caïman that is said to have been one of the major catalysts for the haitian revolution. she stands on the military sash of french general charles leclerc, while overlooking the pillage of cap-français (now cap-haïtien). megan mungalsingh is a trinidadian artist whose mediums include gouache, watercolor and acrylic painting. she is a fourth year student at the university of toronto majoring in cognitive science and psychology. her artistic interests include caribbean folklore, fantasy and horror. note on the cover: 6 (january 20, 2022 / 09:38:40) 122864-1b_caribbeanquilt_vol7_rev.pdf .6 2019-2020 was my first year working with the caribbean quilt student editorial board. in the production of volume 6, i was taken aback by the level of engagement and seriousness that caribbean studies students had in producing their journal. one year later, it is clear that as a program, we clearly have the best students in the world. in a year when so many of us have faced isolation as our lives shifted to online classes, the caribbean quilt community remained strong, and acted as an anchor for the caribbean studies community, which has managed to remain creative, curious and resilient. thanks to the foundation laid by the volume 6 team, the brilliant editorial team of david allens and prilly bicknell-hersco have hit the ground running during another very challenging year with covid-19 and related restrictions. a great deal of work and forward thinking has gone into how to increase the visibility, accessibility, functionality and aesthetics of this volume, which will no doubt pay dividends for issues still to come. i would also like to thank korede akinkunmi, who has done a stellar job with the copy editing, who also kindly offered important, timely and creative feedback on the pieces and journal, beyond the initial scope of work. another big thank you to ejaaz ramdhanie, who has undertaken the layout and design aspects of this journal, and offered his own insightful thoughts on how to showcase the work of our students. beyond the editorial team and students, i wanted to thank professor nestor rodriguez, who as the caribbean studies program director has always gone above and beyond to support the production of the journal. thank you to all of the caribbean studies instructors, who provided the inspiration and guidance behind so many of these pieces. thanks to professors melanie newton, alissa trotz, ramabai espinet, berardo garcia-dominguez, lee l’clerc and chris ramsaroop. this journal would not be possible without the new college initiatives fund, and the support of new college vice principal tara goldstein and new college librarian jeff newman. thank you to nancy crawley and nancy dragecevic, for all of the work that you do turning all of my ncif requests into reality. since the publication of volume 6, in my own research and course preparation, i have had the pleasant surprise of having articles by caribbean quilt contributors show up on google scholar. this is incredible. to see some of those very same students be cited by established academics is a testament to the incredible work that you all do. in solidarity kevin edmonds, caribbean quilt, faculty advisor 2020-2021, caribbean studies letter from faculty advisor 7 (january 20, 2022 / 09:38:40) 122864-1b_caribbeanquilt_vol7_rev.pdf .7 4 land acknowledgement as you read and reflect on the pieces presented in this volume, we ask that you remain mindful that indigenous peoples have lived in the caribbean since time immemorial. the word ‘caribbean’ itself derives from a european transliteration of the name of the indigenous peoples of the eastern caribbean. when europeans arrived in the caribbean in 1492, they found a diverse range of indigenous peoples already living there. the descendants of these pre-columbian people call the caribbean home to this day, whether they live in the region or in the diaspora. we also acknowledge the land on which the university of toronto operates. for thousands of years it has been the traditional land of the wendat, the seneca, and the mississaugas of the credit river. today, this meeting place is still the home to many indigenous people from across turtle island and we are grateful to have the opportunity to work on this land. below is a list of indigenous-led organizations or funds in toronto that we recommend to readers who wish to offer their time or funds to organizations that amplify the voices of indigenous people: • raven trust (https://raventrust.com) • 1492 land back lane legal fund (https://ca.gofundme.com/f/legal-fund-1492-land-back-lane) • native women’s association of canada (https://www.nwac.ca) • inuit tapiriit kanatami (https://www.itk.ca) • water first (https://waterfirst.ngo) • clan mother’s healing village (https://clanmothers.ca) • native child and family services of toronto (https://nativechild.org) • toronto indigenous harm reduction (https://www.torontoindigenoushr.com) • indian residential school survivors society (https://www.irsss.ca) • legacy of hope foundation (https://legacyofhope.ca) • indspire (https://indspire.ca) • reconciliation canada (https://reconciliationcanada.ca) 5 a letter from the editors after an almost two-year hiatus of publications, the caribbean quilt volume 7 (2023) ‘resurgence’ aims to showcase academic scholarship and work on the caribbean and its diverse histories, politics, cultures, and identities. we have high aspirations for the continuity of such a vital student-run journal and the sustained growth of the caribbean studies program at the university of toronto. it is aptly titled resurgence, and we view it as a labour of love and an ode to the region we call home. this year, in both the caribbean and its large diaspora, we saw a revitalized energy to many culturally defining events, such as carnival and all the aspects that go with it. in the two years of hiatus from those national staples, there was a craving for the unified energy and, thus, a need for the resurgence of something distinctly and wholly caribbean. a feeling of togetherness was seen throughout the world through those events this year, and we certainly felt it too. with this journal, we held it in the same regard. there is a need for a new force of academic scholarship—for a resurgence of the spotlight on the caribbean within the vast field of academia. our aim for this journal is to highlight thought-provoking and insightful pieces that demonstrate how far our reach in the academia of the region can go as we cross our own version of the carnival stage in the academic world. we hope you will feel the same togetherness when reading this journal that many felt on the global stage this year. the caribbean is a region that has gone through so much—colonialism, natural disasters, revolutions, and most recently, was hit incredibly hard by the pandemic. nonetheless, it continues to bounce back and resurge with a renewed force of unity, joy, and resilience. we hope this volume and the works included reminds you of that. the production of this edition of the quilt is attributed to the efforts of the advisory committee and reading committee. we also would like to express our gratitude to the talented megan mugalsingh, whose stunning artwork has graced our cover for the third time. many thanks to our advisory board chair, dr. kevin edmonds, for helping us every step of the way and to the journal production services team at the university of toronto libraries. without them, this would not have been possible. with gratitude, alyssa nurse brittney bahadoor haonan qin editor-in-chief associate editor layout editor mobólúwajídìde (bo) joseph layout editor 6 note on the cover megan mungalsingh university of toronto 2t1 fas, cognitive science and psychology the stage is scorched earth (2023) gouache on mixed media paper in its most literal form, this painting depicts a moko jumbie crossing the carnival stage alone, face painted white, and its mouth covered. in the waves of their fabric are spanish conquistadors and one of columbus’ three ships, positioned here as heralds of colonial violence. in trinidad and tobago’s carnival, the stage is an open space that performers and masqueraders cross while being observed by judges and spectators. it is a place that has served as a background and an artefact to rebellion and celebration. while it is becoming a place of the commodification of our culture, this piece begs the sorrowful reasons for its existence are not forgotten. megan mungalsingh is a trinidadian artist whose mediums include gouache, watercolor and acrylic painting. she is an alum of the university of toronto who majored in cognitive science and psychology. her artistic interests include caribbean folklore, fantasy and horror. 7 letter from faculty advisor being a student organizer can be a tireless and thankless task – yet their work is crucial in order to continue initiatives which mean so much to programs such as ours. this year, the caribbean studies program is deeply indebted to the hard work and dedication of two student leaders who stepped up big time to produce volume 7 of the caribbean quilt, alyssa nurse (of the caribbean studies students’ union) and brittney bahadoor (of the west indian students’ association). on behalf of the caribbean studies faculty and student community, i want to thank you both for taking this very large and challenging task of putting together a journal in short order while somehow balancing your own schoolwork, extracurricular, as well as personal responsibilities. it is not easy, but you have both produced something to be proud of – and i am confident that i will continue to be impressed by your respective achievements in the future! over the past year, it has been incredible to see how the journal has drawn so many new students into caribbean studies. this year’s volume features a great mix of first-time and returning contributors, with articles ranging from political economy, cultural expression, indigeneity, international relations, and feminist thought, in addition to three unique artistic submissions. it is rewarding to see the journal's reach and the respective articles published in past volumes continue to grow. the last time i checked, the most-read article had been viewed over 11,000 times, and the most cited article had been referenced by 20 other publications, with many others in close succession. this is impressive by any measure and is a testament to the high-quality work that caribbean studies students are producing, the questions they are asking and the gaps they are filling through their creative research and insightful analyses. for the fourth volume in a row, we have been very lucky to feature beautiful, thought-provoking artwork by u of t alumni megan mungalsingh on our cover. we are also thankful for the hard work that moboluwajidide (bo) joseph and haonan qin put into the journal over the summer of 2022 to help create the template for this volume. beyond the editorial team and students, i wanted to thank professor conrad james, who, as the caribbean studies program director, has always gone above and beyond to support the production of the journal. thank you to all the caribbean studies instructors, who provided the inspiration and guidance behind many of these pieces thanks to professors melanie newton, alissa trotz, ramabai espinet, bernardo garcia-dominguez, lee l’clerc and chris ramsaroop. thank you to the new college principal’s office and the office of student life for their support, as this journal would not be possible without the funding made possible to new college academic student groups. in solidarity, kevin edmonds caribbean quilt faculty advisor kalinago-european alliances in the seventeenth-century caribbean: wavering between empire and decolonization stephane martin demers 2t1 york university osgoode hall law school thomas ‘indian’ warner is described as a figure who brokered peace between the kalinago and the europeans. however, the influence of warner’s actions when compared to retaliatory measures taken by europeans against him and the kalinagos, and the longevity of alliances suggests that the intermediary role often attributed to him is exaggerated. examining warner’s voluntary and involuntary association with his kalinago roots, and his resistance and peace efforts with the europeans improves our understanding of the nature of warner’s personal alliance with the kalinago as well as the kalinago’s broader alliance with the europeans. this research examines these complexities to highlight how his presence and absence in the turbulent seventeenth century of caribbean history influenced his alliances and broader connections. a b s t r a c t keywords: kalinago, english, french, alliances, seventeenth-century b i o stephane recently graduated from the university of toronto with a bachelor of music and a minor in history. stephane is currently pursuing his juris doctor at osgoode hall law school at york university where he intends to combine his interests in music and law to create a more equitable and just law school environment and legal profession. © 2021 stephane martin demers caribbean studies students’ union, canada https://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/cquilt/ this work is licensed under the creative commons attributionsharealike 4.0 international license. to view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ 11 (january 20, 2022 / 08:53:04) 122815-1b_caribbeanquilt_vol6_rev.pdf .11 thomas ‘indian’ warner’s alliances with the kalinago, english, and french shifted frequently. in hulme and whitehead’s document reader, wild majesty: encounters with caribs from columbus to the present day, william dampier describes warner as a figure who mediated conflict between the kalinago and the europeans. however, the influence of warner’s actions when compared to retaliatory measures taken by europeans against him and the kalinagos, and the longevity of alliances indicates that he was not as neutral an intermediary as dampier’s description suggests. warner’s alliance with the kalinago, the kalinago’s alliances with the europeans, and the english crown’s short-lived alliance with the kalinago can be better understood through an analysis of the intricacies of warner’s mixed-race heritage and his involvement in resistive and peaceful kalinago-european relations. born in the english island of antigua to sir thomas warner, the governor of st. kitts, and a kalinago woman, warner was considered an ‘indian’. in antigua, he endured inhumane treatment at the hands of madame warner, his english stepmother. desperate to escape these unfavorable conditions, he fled to st. lucia and subsequently became one of the captains of the kalinago in dominica. shortly thereafter, the english crown appointed him governor of dominica. though his principal task as governor was to negotiate the kalinago’s status as subjects of the english crown, it may be argued that the resentment towards the english, which was likely held as a result of his previous experiences in antigua, compelled him to ally with the kalinago. but warner’s decision to form an alliance with the kalinago was not entirely voluntary. due to european stereotypes about the kalinago’s behavior, he was labeled an ‘indian’ without concern for his ideal personal identifiers. generally, the europeans saw the kalinago as their “common enemy.” the english viewed the kalinago as “potential traitors.” the french described them as “careless” and “exceedingly vindictive people.” by virtue of warner’s close contact with the kalinago, he too was considered an enemy of the europeans regardless of his mixed heritage. ostracized from european circles of power, warner used the kalinago to combat notions of inferiority and weakness. the threat that warner’s race posed to the “neat bifurcations of colonial understanding” (whitehead 2005, 228) also indirectly . 12 1. peter hulme and neil l. whitehead (eds.), wild majesty: encounters with caribs from columbus to the present day: an anthology (oxford: clarendon press, 1992), 92. 2. hulme and whitehead, 90. 3. hulme and whitehead, 89. 4. hulme and whitehead, 91. 5. hulme and whitehead, 90. 6. hulme and whitehead, 89. 7. hillary mcd. beckles, “kalinago (carib) resistance to european colonisation of the caribbean,” caribbean quarterly 54, no. 4 (2008): 81, http://www.jstor.org/stable/40654700. 8. beckles, 89. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 (january 20, 2022 / 08:53:04) 122815-1b_caribbeanquilt_vol6_rev.pdf .12 consolidated his alliances with the kalinago by provoking rivalries between the french and english. the central dispute was whether thomas warner was the legitimate son of sir thomas warner. the french general antoine lefèbvre de la barre believed that warner’s ‘caribbee’ status, which he inherited from his mother, nullified any claim to sir thomas warner’s legal parentage over him. on the other hand, the english lord william willoughby believed that warner was in fact his legitimate son.” warner and his kalinago troops capitalized on the europeans’ time spent disputing this fact by attacking their settlements in the leeward islands and preventing them from seizing kalinago land. ironically, warner’s exclusion from the europeans’ acceptable categories of race allowed him to lead the kalinago more effectively in their fight against european colonization. examining warner’s role in helping the kalinago resist european colonization is essential in understanding the nature of his alliance with the kalinago. warner and kalinago leaders allied with interisland kalinago and african runaway slaves to ‘delimit’ european land expansion and halt european colonization. however, some point to warner’s short dialogue with monsieur de malassis, a french officer, while imprisoned to suggest that he was not allied with the kalinago and was instead more sympathetic to the europeans. while imprisoned, warner states: “these people are beasts, a rabble, & wretches unworthy of me; & i am not involved with them.” these comments must be understood in the context of his arrest, and it is unlikely that he was genuinely disdainful of the kalinago. instead, to avoid being persecuted by the french, it was in warner’s best interest to show them that he was not allied with the kalinago. although kalinago-european relations were mostly adversarial, with warner at their side, the kalinago negotiated treaties and exchanged goods with the europeans. a treaty signed on 31 march 1660 by the kalinago and europeans stipulated that in exchange for granting the kalinago dominion over dominica and st. vincent, the europeans would acquire guadeloupe, martinique, and the leeward islands. furthermore, at prince rupert’s bay in dominica, the kalinago traded tobacco and cassava bread for european knives, hatchets, and other iron tools which were used for canoe construction. thus, the notion of the kalinago’s total resistance 13 9. neil l. whitehead, “black read as red: ethnic transgression and hybridity in northeastern south america and the caribbean,” in beyond black and red: african-native relations in colonial latin america, ed. matthew restall ( albuquerque: university of new mexico press, 2005), 228. 10. hulme and whitehead, wild majesty, 98. 11. tessa murphy, “kalinago colonizers: indigenous people and the settlement of the lesser antilles,” in the torrid zone: caribbean colonization and cultural interaction in the long seventeenth century, ed. l. h. roper (columbia, south carolina: university of south carolina press, 2018), 28, doi:10.2307/j.ctv6sj7vv.5. 12. hulme and whitehead, wild majesty, 94. 13. tessa murphy, “kalinago colonizers,” 24. 14. lennox honychurch, “crossroads in the caribbean: a site of encounter and exchange on dominica,” world archaeology 28, no. 3 (1997): 296, https://doi.org/10.1080/00438243.1997.9980349. 15. honychurch, 297. 15 9 10 11 12 13 14 (january 20, 2022 / 08:53:04) 122815-1b_caribbeanquilt_vol6_rev.pdf .13 against the europeans is mistaken. the kalinago struck a fine balance between fighting for their independence and brokering peace with the europeans. however, the europeans sometimes outright broke the peace with the kalinago. in june 1675, philip warner, thomas’ half-brother, murdered thomas. knowing that the kalinago would rebel against the english without thomas to control them, the english crown pledged to punish the person who committed this act. in presenting this façade of peace, the english were provided with an opening to invade the kalinago when they were least expecting it. though the king’s public declaration to punish the offender was seemingly noble, this was merely a tactic to disguise his insatiable desire to acquire land through the destruction of the kalinago. the english crown capitalized on the murder of thomas warner by feigning peaceful relations with the kalinago and in turn furthering imperial goals. alliances between thomas ‘indian’ warner, the kalinago, the english, and the french were complex. examining warner’s voluntary and involuntary association with his kalinago roots, and his resistance and peace efforts with the europeans can improve our understanding of the nature of warner’s alliance with the kalinago and the kalinago’s alliance with the europeans. furthermore, thomas’ murder provides a window into the english crown’s disingenuous motivations to forge alliances with the kalinago. with more information on thomas warner’s life and the period in which he lived, historians may be better able understand how his presence and absence in the turbulent seventeenth century of caribbean history influenced the broader dynamics of the early colonial caribbean. 14 hulme and whitehead, wild majesty, 102-103. hulme and whitehead, 102. 17 16 17 16 (january 20, 2022 / 08:53:04) 122815-1b_caribbeanquilt_vol6_rev.pdf .14 works cited 15 beckles, hillary mcd. 2008. “kalinago (carib) resistance to european colonisation of the caribbean.” caribbean quarterly 54, no. 4: 77-94. http://www.jstor.org/stable/40654700. honychurch, lennox. 1997. “crossroads in the caribbean: a site of encounter and exchange on dominica.” world archaeology 28, no. 3: 291–304. https://doi.org/10.1080/00438243.1997.9980349. hulme, peter, and neil l. whitehead, eds. 1992. wild majesty: encounters with caribs from columbus to the present day: an anthology. oxford: clarendon press. murphy, tessa. 2018. “kalinago colonizers: indigenous people and the settlement of the lesser antilles.” in the torrid zone: caribbean colonization and cultural interaction in the long seventeenth century. edited by l. h. roper, 17-30. columbia, south carolina: university of south carolina press. doi:10.2307/j.ctv6sj7vv.5. whitehead, neil l. 2005. “black read as red: ethnic transgression and hybridity in northeastern south america and the caribbean.” in beyond black and red: african-native relations in colonial latin america. edited by matthew restall, 223-243. albuquerque: university of new mexico press. (january 20, 2022 / 08:53:04) 122815-1b_caribbeanquilt_vol6_rev.pdf .15 microsoft word miller_foodsecurity_numbered.docx caribbean quilt 2023 vol. 7 no. 1 86 climate change and globalization: food security in the caribbean donna miller centre for caribbean studies faculty of arts & science, university of toronto donna is a proud canadian-born st. lucian and jamaican. she is currently enrolled in her first year of a compressed nursing program at the university of western ontario. a few of her long-term aspirations include becoming a nurse practitioner and obtaining her doctor of nursing to pursue different leadership and/or teaching roles in nursing. she recently graduated from the university of toronto, majoring in human biology and double minoring in practical french and caribbean studies. while in school, she helped to serve my caribbean community as an administrative director on the west indian students association. a few of her hobbies include playing the piano, swimming, listening to music and of course, learning about her heritage and the impact that it continues to have on persons in the caribbean and the diaspora. keywords: climate change caribbean globalization food security nutrition greenhouse trade liberalizations developmental justice abstract climate change and food security are among the world's biggest challenges. a growing population and climate change mean vulnerable regions like the caribbean will continue to face unique strains. the effects of climate change are associated with poverty and a decrease in food security because of the decline in food production and access to sufficient nutritious food. trade liberalization increases the number of challenges experienced by the local caribbean agricultural sector and has devastating effects on food security and rural livelihoods. reduced crop diversity and production and low household incomes result in changed diets. these changes have increased the prevalence of non-communicable diseases (ncds), such as diabetes and hypertension, as well as obesity and other long-term health problems. current and proposed strategies to aid with the challenges of climate change include further research on creating heat-tolerant cattle breeds, technological developments, micro-insurance interventions, and the expansion of greenhouse farming. the traditional and acquired knowledge and skills of individuals in the agricultural sector are fundamental in creating strategies to adapt to the impacts of climate change, and it is essential to ensure the strengthening of food security and food sovereignty. financial resources in the caribbean are inadequate, and therefore, the global north must pay its dues in shouldering the responsibility of reducing the economic and environmental vulnerabilities in the caribbean. caribbean quilt journal homepage: https://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/cquilt/index caribbean quilt 2023 vol. 7 no. 1 87 climate change and food security are among the world's biggest challenges. both issues are exacerbated by their interactions with each other. a growing population and climate change mean vulnerable regions like the caribbean will continue to face unique strains. the caribbean is experiencing progressive warming over time, alterations in the frequency, duration and intensity of rainfall, and an increase in tropical storms and hurricanes. these effects are associated with poverty and a decrease in food security because of the decline in food production and access to sufficient nutritious food. this paper will investigate how climate change has affected the caribbean economically by examining the topic of globalization. it will also discuss the implications of climate change on food and agriculture. moreover, it will explore how it has affected diets and food security and whether the region's people have adapted and how. furthermore, this paper will assess the strategies being explored to mitigate the ramifications of climate change. by reviewing the history of globalization, the interactions between climate change and food, and the proposed plans of action to adapt to current and projected challenges, one may better understand the importance of these compounding effects and how it influences the region presently and in the future. beckford and rhiney describe globalization as the factors contributing to the world becoming a global village, such as barrier breakdowns of communication, trade, access to information and transportation. it is a process that promotes the unification of countries socially and economically. despite being viewed as a progressive and beneficial process, it highlights the poverty within developing regions. economic globalization in the caribbean refers to reducing trade barriers that allow unrestricted competition in external economies. this trade liberalization increases the number of challenges experienced. notably, the local agricultural sector devastates food security and rural livelihoods (beckford and rhiney 2016, 6-7). this is important to communicate due to agriculture's significance and essential role in the caribbean despite its declining gdp contribution. domestic food production in the caribbean community (caricom) is at an all-time low, driving members to become net importers, except for guyana and belize, to deal with problems concerning the quality and quantity of food available to consumers (beckford and rhiney 2016, xvi). to understand why the caribbean faces these persisting issues, one must recall its history and how globalization has evolved its economy, demography, politics, sociocultural aspects, and environmental sectors. since colonization, the region has been experiencing globalization through its transnational integrations, some of which have negatively impacted the caribbean and are challenging to reverse. for example, during the plantation era, the caribbean was successfully dominated by the external influences of mainly europe, africa, and asia. this domination brings forth a deliberate and forced dependence on developed countries, and previous colonizer states that pressures a dependency on external authorities, markets, and geopolitical agendas (beckford and rhiney 2016, 3-4). in terms of globalization, wilk writes that the danger of the global food system is not on the minds of many when thinking about the economic systems that bring it to the table. food can now connect politics and health, big corporations and kitchens, and more. this means that those who have power gain the ability to control the “daily bread” of the powerless (2007, 14). gahman and thongs examine "development justice" in the caribbean, which they state needs to take place to establish and secure a liveable future for inhabitants of the caribbean, given the realities they face. in addition to climate change, they add that the caribbean suffers challenges caused by (neo)colonial social connections and debt bondage. these challenges are sustained because of the lack of economic wealth in the region and the refusal of external organizations to pay reparations for the enslavement, indentureship and dispossession of indigenous people from their history and culture. the lack of monetary wealth, in turn, makes it challenging to finance climate change riskreduction strategies. it is argued that with the continuation of neoliberal policies and, thus, trade liberalization and privatization, growth and development are not possible. consequently, caribbean governments negotiate economic caribbean quilt 2023 vol. 7 no. 1 88 dependency with private investments and accept foreign loans as external assistance. if this dependency continues and climate change policies are premised on neoliberalism, the gap between the rich and the poor will increase, ecosystems and wildlife will be reduced, and disaster risks, food insecurity, and vulnerability will increase (2020, 763764). the role of the global north is to implement "development justice," in which systemic adjustments are made. the goal should be to reduce inequalities surrounding wealth, power, and resources between countries, the rich and the poor, and men and women (gahman and thongs 2020, 768). in terms of climate change which will continue to be an ongoing issue, improvements must be made to reduce the effects of the expected increase in life-threatening catastrophes, which may be done by providing both resources and financial assistance without the expectation of receiving payments back. scholars and politicians must demonstrate responsibility by abstaining from reverting to historical tendencies of imperialism, land dispossession, white supremacy, colonialism, and neoliberal approaches when initiating recovery efforts in the caribbean (gahman and thongs 2020, 773). globalization is only one part of global change which shapes agricultural trends and the vulnerabilities of caribbean agriculture. the other part is environmental change. both have affected export agriculture and domestic food production. vulnerabilities to caribbean agriculture may also be looked at as a result of shocks and stresses. environmental shocks include hurricanes and floods and environmental stresses consist of soil erosion and shifts in rainfall patterns (barker 2012, 43). since the 1960s, the region’s climate has been changing immensely with rising air and sea temperatures, an increase in the severity of hurricanes and a reduction in rainfall. however, this observation is not constant within the region. consequences to domestic production and export agriculture would include a decline in the water available for crops because of an increase in evapotranspiration. in addition, rising sea levels are expected to cause more damage to rice and sugar crops by flooding rivers and other flooding events. coastal regions in the caribbean are especially vulnerable as these locations are used for export crops, namely rice and sugar cane (barker 2012, 43). the principal agricultural export in grenada is nutmeg. it exports the second most nutmeg after indonesia. before hurricane ivan, there were 6,500 nutmeg farmers and over 30,000 people whose income was associated with nutmeg production and distribution. hurricane ivan destroyed 90% of nutmeg trees while the area used to grow nutmeg was decreased by 29%. consequently, production was reduced by over 60%. cocoa, commonly grown with nutmeg as an understory crop was also damaged. both these crops take years to recover. therefore, the nutmeg and cocoa sector rehabilitation severely cost the country as they could not export pre-ivan amounts for several years. in addition to the food production that was affected by the environmental shock of hurricane ivan, people lost their sources of income, and there was a lower contribution to agricultural exports and, thus, a lower contribution to the county's gdp (barker 2012, 50). reduced crop diversity and production and low household incomes result in changed diets. families are experiencing difficulties acquiring enough nutritious food. home cooking and agricultural labour are being regarded more with contempt; meanwhile, the consumption of cheap, imported, processed foods and drinks continues growing. children are at the forefront of this shift in consumption with a changing preference for sweet, soft, and easy-to-cook foods rather than cassava or plantain. many processed imported foods in the caribbean include corned beef, soft drinks, tinned fish, rice, flour and instant noodles. the consumption of these imported goods creates an urban nutrition problem because of the limited access to agricultural land, low incomes and the comparatively lower cost of imported foods compared to local fresh foods, which are, therefore, consumed by households classified as relatively poor (connell et al. 2020, 10). these changes in food consumption and poor nutrition have increased the prevalence of non-communicable diseases (ncds) such as diabetes and hypertension. the current trends in economics interconnected with urbanization and environmental change have significantly affected the caribbean quilt 2023 vol. 7 no. 1 89 health of individuals in the caribbean. governments are aware of this growing public health issue; however, they tend to avoid taking action, such as heavily taxing or banning imported goods, fearing a decline in votes during elections. enormous hormonal and physiological changes resulting from the inter-generational outcomes of poor nutrition have been detected in fetal development. these outcomes include ncds, obesity and other long-term health problems. these cumulative effects, in turn, increase healthcare costs and decrease healthcare efficiency in a system historically known to have had more communicable and “tropical” diseases. resources and labour are needed to treat such diseases, which are more costly and intensive (connell et al. 2020, 13-14). climate change's impact on agriculture and fisheries must be minimized to alleviate the threat to food security in the caribbean. with factors such as globalization and climate change, the caribbean must take action to prevent adverse impacts and better prepare for changing and intensifying climatic conditions. this will ensure that food security and food sovereignty are safeguarded and enhanced. lenderking, robinson and carlson describe food security as the ability of people to have physical, social and economic access to a sufficient quantity and quality of food that meets their dietary requirements for a healthy life. food security becomes reduced when put at risk by climate change: food availability, access, stability, and utilization decrease. food security challenges and strategies to alleviate them were analyzed to determine whether they are effective and how they can be ameliorated (2020, 238-239). challenges faced in caribbean small island developing states (sids) include a reduction in crop growth rate, yield, and fertilization, the heat stress of various animals, and an inability of specific households to afford adequate, nutritious food. one proposed strategy included obtaining a global perspective on solutions to increase agricultural research and development. further research was suggested for creating heat-tolerant cattle breeds in puerto rico and the us virgin islands, where beef and dairy are primarily produced. other proposed advancements included technological developments—information and communication technology, artificial intelligence, renewable energy, and biotechnology. in terms of helping lower-income families adapt to economic barriers, it was advised that policies be implemented to increase income opportunities for rural households who typically find employment in agriculture. this would aid in diversifying livelihoods and securing a more stable income. lastly, it was put forward that governance and institutional capacity must be improved to improve food security and climate adaptation. these governments should have policies focused on local and traditional knowledge and building communities with the capacity and resources available to help reshape and form their food supplies (lenderking, robinson, and carlson 2020, 241242). thomas-hope describes food security as a process that commences with food production and ends with consumption. food availability is also often considered in terms of the quantity and variety of food available to be distributed. it is also expressed in terms of accessibility, including the affordability and ability to access nutritious and culturally preferred food. to make this possible, households must have an income that allows purchasing locally produced foods and other food items such as sugar and salt to complement the food. the different abilities in food acquisition between households lead to variations in food security. not only is economic capacity critical, but also self-sufficiency and the ability to purchase food from other countries. (2017, 3-4). addressing the structural inequalities is one long-term solution to manage the stressors brought on by climate change. knowledge sharing between institutions, local farmers, and the more vulnerable, specifically the poor, is also required to ensure that strategies incorporate culturally and socially grounded solutions (thomas-hope 2017, 9). spence explores the use of micro-insurance interventions as a method to strengthen food security in caricom countries. this strategy would target small-scale farmers and fishers to help them recover from the impacts of climate change (2017, 206). micro-insurance with low-cost premiums built into insurance portfolios consists of tailored interventions that would assess the risk of impact from environmental disasters on low-income families, production groups and communities and provide payment caribbean quilt 2023 vol. 7 no. 1 90 based on the likelihood and cost of the determined risks (spence 2017, 210). many concerns surface when considering the use of microinsurance. one salient question that must be asked is how adequate the funds would be when provided to a given farmer or production group when a disaster arises. in other words, will paying insurance premiums amount to the funds required to build back a more robust agricultural sector and reduce environmental vulnerabilities or will it be used in ways that are not sustainable? regardless of whether or not the funds are sufficient, it is a matter of if countries in the caribbean have the required resources, technology, and knowledge to create alternatives to agricultural products, better hurricane detection equipment and materials to build a stronger infrastructure and ultimately enhance food security. this is one reason why the caribbean should not be the sole region to take on responsibility for climate change. more prominent, developed countries that have the resources, money and power should be the ones to provide not only funds but the tools and knowledge instead of the individuals who already come from low-income households who may not be able to afford insurance premiums. therefore, if used as an intervention, affordability and sustainability must be considered (spence 2017, 211). adaptations that individuals within the caribbean are developing include creating planning documents that outline strategies to aid with decreasing the ongoing and forecasted vulnerabilities of climate change impacts. current adaptation planning documents from caribbean sids were evaluated to assess their contents, and substantial differences were found in their guidance on vulnerability risk assessments and climate hazard risks. improving these shortcomings may improve adaptation planning in the caribbean. government ministries in caricom, the focus group, have been trained in adaptation planning in the caribbean since 2013. these groups of people involve ministries responsible for climate change policies, non-governmental organizations, and banks (thomas et al. 2019, 2013-2015). another initiative taken up by communities in the caribbean includes the expansion of greenhouse farming. in 2011, spain and caricom provided special education and training in greenhouse technology to various countries in the region. shortly after, st. kitts and nevis opened the region's largest greenhouse, st. kitts eco-park (an agrotourism destination), in 2014. among the benefits of greenhouse technology includes minimizing environmental vulnerabilities to crops, consistent production, and the knowledge of managing crops (beckford and norman 2016, 205). some challenges associated with establishing greenhouse technologies in the caribbean include the cost to construct them, the cultural reluctance to change to greenhouse technology, and the hesitancy of creditors to fund greenhouses due to the high perceived risks. to reduce these challenges, education should be made available and economically accessible to small-scale farmers, public awareness regarding greenhouse farming may be conducted through public education, and access to credit should be granted to farmers (beckford and norman 2016, 208). the traditional and acquired knowledge and skills of individuals in the agricultural sector are fundamental in creating strategies to adapt to climate change's current and projected impacts. it is essential to ensure the strengthening of food security and food sovereignty. however, their financial resources are inadequate. therefore, the global north must pay its dues in shouldering the responsibility of reducing the economic and environmental vulnerabilities in the caribbean. by reviewing the history of globalization, the interactions between climate change and food, and the current and proposed plans of action to adapt to these challenges, the purpose of creating a more secure future for people in the caribbean becomes not only more urgent but necessary. caribbean quilt 2023 vol. 7 no. 1 91 bibliography barker, david. “caribbean agriculture in a period of global change: vulnerabilities and opportunities.” caribbean studies 40, no. 2 (2012): 41–61. https://doi.org/10.1353/crb.2012.0027. beckford, clinton l., and anthony norman. “climate change and quality of planting materials for domestic food production: tissue culture and protected agriculture.” essay. in globalization, agriculture and food in the caribbean: climate change, gender and geography, 189–215. london: palgrave macmillan, 2016. beckford, clinton l., and kevon rhiney. “geographies of globalization, climate change and food and agriculture in the caribbean.” essay. in globalization, agriculture and food in the caribbean: climate change, gender and geography, 322. london: palgrave macmillan, 2016. beckford, clinton l., and kevon rhiney. preface. in globalization, agriculture and food in the caribbean: climate change, gender and geography, xi-xviii. london: palgrave macmillan, 2016. connell, john, kristen lowitt, arlette sainte ville, and gordon m. hickey. “food security and sovereignty in small island developing states: contemporary crises and challenges.” essay. in food security in small island states, 1–23. singapore: springer nature, 2020. gahman, levi, and gabrielle thongs. “development justice, a proposal: reckoning with disaster, catastrophe, and climate change in the caribbean.” transactions of the institute of british geographers 45, no. 4 (2020): 763–78. https://doi.org/10.1111/tran.12369. lenderking, hania lincoln, stacy-ann robinson, and gail carlson. “climate change and food security in caribbean small island developing states: challenges and strategies.” international journal of sustainable development & world ecology 28, no. 3 (2020): 238–45. https://doi.org/10.1080/13504509.2020.1804477. spence, balfour. “micro-insurance in disaster risk reduction: a strategy for enhancing domestic food security in caricom countries.” essay. in climate change and food security: africa and the caribbean, 205–16. routledge, 2017. thomas, adelle, omagano shooya, martin rokitzki, maria bertrand, and tabea lissner. “climate change adaptation planning in practice: insights from the caribbean.” regional environmental change 19, no. 7 (2019): 2013–25. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10113-019-01540-5. thomas-hope, elizabeth. “the interface of climate change and food security.” introduction. in climate change and food security: africa and the caribbean, 1–12. routledge, 2017. wilk, richard r. “globalization through food.” essay. in home cooking in the global village: caribbean food from buccaneers to ecotourists, 13–26. oxford: berg, 2007. microsoft word gourianov_jones_numbered.docx caribbean quilt 2023 vol. 7 no. 1 25 claudia jones, the person and the idea dmitri gourianov centre for caribbean studies faculty of arts & science, university of toronto dmitri gourianov is a fourth-year student studying political science at the university of toronto. keywords: claudia jones marxism intersectionality feminism political thought abstract carol boyce davies' influential work, left of karl marx, describes the life and time of claudia jones, a not very well-known, influential 20th-century marxist thinker. through an in-depth look at the trials and tribulations jones underwent, whether it be her time in prison or her deportation to england, davies captures her essence and thoroughly analyzes her political development. however, what is left lacking in her discussion of jones' life is davies' reasoning as to why the grandmother of intersectionality was left out of the history books, both by capitalists and socialists alike. in this work, i use davies' work on claudia jones' life to discern why this is the case and how the factors contributing to her erasure from the public consciousness were so influential in their efforts. by the end of this review, i look at how the separation of one from their ideas plays a pivotal role in their erasure and how this occurred to claudia jones. as a history buff, i relished my only visit to london. not only did i take the opportunity to visit several museums, but i also visited karl marx's grave. although i did not understand at the time why some visitors were visiting the grave to the left of the famous theorist, i still noticed that the headstone read "claudia jones" and promptly forgot about this until a month ago. i did not realize that this woman i knew nothing about until this year would be someone i will never forget. after reading her biography left of karl marx by carol boyce davies, claudia jones' mark on marxist theory is blatantly evident, as her theory of super-exploitation expanded the relevance of marxism to incorporate race and gender into its class analysis. the experiences which shaped claudia jones' political thinking were primarily tied to the sexism and racism she endured, as well as the personal relationships which influenced her growth as a person. her under-appreciation as a writer and political thinker can also arguably be due to the simplification of her character as a leftist/woman/black person rather than a multidimensional human being. this kind of thought is intrinsically tied to the unique issues experienced by black women, and unfortunately, these issues persist today. on the topics of racial, sexual, and worker justice, jones astutely observed that a fight for one was also a fight for caribbean quilt journal homepage: https://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/cquilt/index caribbean quilt 2023 vol. 7 no. 1 26 all, seeing that to divide such ideas and goals meant the campaigns would collapse. one must not forget the unique experiences of any three, nor the experiences of those who suffer injustices in multiple camps at once. for jones, the movement would only progress once black women were allowed to play a central role in the proletariat's emancipation. in her work for the unity of women in the cause of peace, she outlines the importance of the militancy of black women. "we can accelerate the militancy of negro women to the degree with which we demonstrate that the economic, political and social demands of negro women are not just ordinary demands, but special demands flowing from special discrimination facing negro women as women, as workers, and as negroes" (jones, 1951). for scholars such as john mcclendon, davies explains and agrees with, maintains that jones' work ought to be first understood through a marxist lens, as her feminist stance did not come from a drive towards identity politics but rather as a tool of unifying both sexes of the working class (davies, 2007). davies concludes that by taking a closer look at jones’ writing in her work for the unity of women in the cause of peace, there can be found a progression in the hierarchy of importance in the stages of struggle, which begins with women co-managing the campaign for worker equality alongside men and ends with socialism. that being said, the weakness of mcclendon's argument was also pointed out by davies, as simplifying jones' views to a purely class struggle-based worldview lacks the depth jones proposes by focusing on all social issues simultaneously. this is because negating the unique experience working black women have in the movement does not consider the link between black women and socialism jones is suggesting. this idea was very personal for jones, as she experienced pressure even from social groups she was a part of. on domestic work, jones wrote her views about women's conditions. she writes, ''the lot of the domestic worker is unbearable misery. usually, she has no definition of tasks in the household where she works. domestic workers may have 'thrown in' in addition to cleaning and scrubbing, such tasks as washing windows, caring for the children, laundering, cooking, etc. and all at the lowest pay'' (davies, 2007); that is to say, no pay at all. while these sentiments have slowly been changing in recent decades, with a growing cohort of husbands helping their wives around the house, the position many women find themselves in this day is untenable if the goal is to construct an egalitarian society. however, sexism did not stop at housework, as foster and jones agreed that the communist party usa struggled with winning over women to the cause over its male-centric leadership and management (davies, 2007). similarly, jones saw the lengths certain women had to go to stay safe. an example of this would be her recollection of billie holiday's incarceration at alderson prison, where she refused to perform for a party at the warden's office on the grounds of "violating" her contract (davies, 2007), with what seems to be the more plausible reason is to avoid harm from her male guards through a vague legal defence. there would be no way to tell if holiday were to violate her contract on such grounds when asked by the officers, but one shivers to think of the potential consequences a group of men could bestow upon the singer. other women would not be so lucky, as jones and the sojourners often invoke the story of rosie lee ingram, a mother of fourteen who faced life imprisonment for defending herself against a white supremacist who attempted to rape her (davies, 2007). a similar case was that of assata shakur, who had to resist attempted rapes while imprisoned before her escape. jones' experiences with sexism were only one factor influencing her theory, and racism would play an equally important role. while she was unashamedly a feminist, she was, more importantly, a black feminist, which made many white women uncomfortable. davies describes the barriers to jones' activism from other women, writing: "this was not an easy position for jones to advance, and it exposed her to a great deal of criticism from white women and the charge that she was guilty of 'reverse chauvinism'. jones was not directly attacking white women, though she felt that the corporate media was complicit in this representation of white women for all women" (davies, 2007). this experience is eerily similar to contemporary discussions around race, with the term "reverse racism" having been catapulted into the mainstream not a decade ago. even more so, as today the term "intersectionality" has come to caribbean quilt 2023 vol. 7 no. 1 27 mean jones' "super-exploitation"; and so then it must be recognized that today we find ourselves not strictly in an orthodox marxist dialogue, but a jonesian one, for lack of a better term. jones describes this super-exploitation in her own words: ''the most oppressed stratum of the whole population [are black women]... capitalists exploit woman doubly, both as workers and women. woman has to face special oppression in every field in capitalist society—as a worker—a wife, a home builder and a citizen'' (jones, 1951). this idea must have been understood by the us government, at least to a degree, as deporting jones to london and not the caribbean impeded her organization's efforts. not because of anti-communist sentiments in london but because she was first and foremost seen by london communist leadership as a black woman and then as a comrade. when claudia jones arrived in the uk, she had a reception davies describes as "lukewarm," which was in contrast to the "resounding sendoff" from the communist party usa, showing her that she would have to climb the ranks despite the colour of her skin once again (davies, 2007). nevertheless, then again, the story of claudia jones is not so simple. if she were forgotten by history because she was just black or a woman, this would not correlate so well with her total eradication, and because of this, the stripping of her humanity played the third important role in her erasure. call me a romantic, but it does not seem to be the case that she was stomped out of history so thoroughly simply because she was a minority, but rather that her essence, her soul (for lack of a better term), was first stripped away by those who did not, or could not, understand her as a person. even the most progressive individuals, those who support feminism and the eradication of racism, can slip into the pitfalls of separating the person from their idea. claudia jones was more than just a black person, a woman, or a communist; she had individuals who played vital roles in developing her political thinking. for one, she would not have gotten into journalism (or at least not as enthusiastically) without her father. growing up, her father was a journalist for one of the black newspapers in harlem, and davies describes claudia's interest in the field because of her father and the career's link to political expression (davies, 2007). by making such an impact in her life, claudia's father ignited a passion and drive that would later see her interviewing other essential figures such as martin luther king jr. and w. e. b. du bois. in addition to this, her relationships also played vital roles in her development. jones was married for a time to abraham scholnick but later divorced over alleged extramarital relations on jones' part (one of the presumed men being howard johnson) (davies, 2007). however, this is one topic where it is easy to separate jones the person from jones the idea. as little is known about what occurred, it is easy to over-sexualize her, and for many, this would be enough to discredit her ideas. moreover, davies outlines a second inclination by claudia to marry soon after arriving in london, presumably to abhimanyu manchanda whom she had an intimate relationship toward the end of her life (davies, 2007). like any other, their relationship had difficulties and moments of joy, which allowed her time to relax amidst the constant campaigning. davies also suggests that this period of love with manchada developed claudia's analyses and political decisions, one being changing her newspaper's name to include "asian" news and her burgeoning interest in communist china (davies, 2007). her health can also be seen as a point of politicization. an article written about claudia during her time in prison was captioned ''claudia jones denied diet prescribed for heart illness''. by bringing attention to her treatment in prison, although rightly so, the reader inevitably concludes that refusing prison food is also an act of protest, turning her into a revolutionary figure even when she may not have intended this (although she was very revolutionary). after all this analysis, the question of why her contributions are underappreciated still needs answering. to this question, the bluntest answer would be stupidity. the more nuanced answer would be stupidity, as defined by dietrich bonhoeffer. bonhoeffer's theory of stupidity purports that it is not a lack of intelligence but rather a moral defect which arises naturally when a group of people come across a loud, powerful, and self-assured individual (bonhoeffer, 1951). it matters little whether the ideas promoted are logical or well-argued; stupidity is the herd mentality that anyone can succumb to when faced with such an caribbean quilt 2023 vol. 7 no. 1 28 authoritative speaker, especially in an authoritative system. this phenomenon could also be described as the lack of consciousness, or in claudia jones' case, a people's lack of class consciousness. this is why her ideas were too dangerous for states to keep around, as davies describes the goal of jones' journalism as "the education of the community [as the] priority, as it was in all of the other journalistic activity in which claudia jones was engaged" (davies, 2007). even when it came to the carnival in london, claudia attempted to appeal to the human need for community and then, secondly, educate those who came. for this reason, the london carnival is seen by davies as one of the most successful events in making caribbean culture central to the british experience, even when british comrades opposed its continuation due to its pageantry (davies, 2007). what these other communists did not realize, however, is once again the human aspect they attempted to separate from their ideas, and claudia jones' ability to maintain the unity between these two concepts made her frighteningly effective. however, one's techniques only remain effective insofar as they outlive you, and unfortunately, the dogmatism of capitalists and leftists alike who did not fundamentally understand why these concepts could not be separated was the ultimate downfall of jones' work. today, we only remember her work because of those who ensure that human is not cut from their idea, and concepts such as leftist unity and intersectionality show this. perhaps, then, we ought to remember that all politics is the need to be wanted, to keep safe, and to love one another and that although ideas are a powerful weapon, they are useless once we allow them to be stripped of their humanity. claudia deserves to be remembered as the intelligent person she was and still is. caribbean quilt 2023 vol. 7 no. 1 29 bibliography boyce davies, c. left of karl marx (2007). left of karl marx (utoronto.ca) jones, c. for the unity of women in the cause of peace (1951) bonhoeffer, d. letters and papers from prison (1951). letters and papers from prison (fortresspress.com) microsoft word miller_foodsecurity_numbered.docx caribbean quilt 2023 vol. 7 no. 1 86 climate change and globalization: food security in the caribbean donna miller centre for caribbean studies faculty of arts & science, university of toronto donna is a proud canadian-born st. lucian and jamaican. she is currently enrolled in her first year of a compressed nursing program at the university of western ontario. a few of her long-term aspirations include becoming a nurse practitioner and obtaining her doctor of nursing to pursue different leadership and/or teaching roles in nursing. she recently graduated from the university of toronto, majoring in human biology and double minoring in practical french and caribbean studies. while in school, she helped to serve my caribbean community as an administrative director on the west indian students association. a few of her hobbies include playing the piano, swimming, listening to music and of course, learning about her heritage and the impact that it continues to have on persons in the caribbean and the diaspora. keywords: climate change caribbean globalization food security nutrition greenhouse trade liberalizations developmental justice abstract climate change and food security are among the world's biggest challenges. a growing population and climate change mean vulnerable regions like the caribbean will continue to face unique strains. the effects of climate change are associated with poverty and a decrease in food security because of the decline in food production and access to sufficient nutritious food. trade liberalization increases the number of challenges experienced by the local caribbean agricultural sector and has devastating effects on food security and rural livelihoods. reduced crop diversity and production and low household incomes result in changed diets. these changes have increased the prevalence of non-communicable diseases (ncds), such as diabetes and hypertension, as well as obesity and other long-term health problems. current and proposed strategies to aid with the challenges of climate change include further research on creating heat-tolerant cattle breeds, technological developments, micro-insurance interventions, and the expansion of greenhouse farming. the traditional and acquired knowledge and skills of individuals in the agricultural sector are fundamental in creating strategies to adapt to the impacts of climate change, and it is essential to ensure the strengthening of food security and food sovereignty. financial resources in the caribbean are inadequate, and therefore, the global north must pay its dues in shouldering the responsibility of reducing the economic and environmental vulnerabilities in the caribbean. caribbean quilt journal homepage: https://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/cquilt/index caribbean quilt 2023 vol. 7 no. 1 87 climate change and food security are among the world's biggest challenges. both issues are exacerbated by their interactions with each other. a growing population and climate change mean vulnerable regions like the caribbean will continue to face unique strains. the caribbean is experiencing progressive warming over time, alterations in the frequency, duration and intensity of rainfall, and an increase in tropical storms and hurricanes. these effects are associated with poverty and a decrease in food security because of the decline in food production and access to sufficient nutritious food. this paper will investigate how climate change has affected the caribbean economically by examining the topic of globalization. it will also discuss the implications of climate change on food and agriculture. moreover, it will explore how it has affected diets and food security and whether the region's people have adapted and how. furthermore, this paper will assess the strategies being explored to mitigate the ramifications of climate change. by reviewing the history of globalization, the interactions between climate change and food, and the proposed plans of action to adapt to current and projected challenges, one may better understand the importance of these compounding effects and how it influences the region presently and in the future. beckford and rhiney describe globalization as the factors contributing to the world becoming a global village, such as barrier breakdowns of communication, trade, access to information and transportation. it is a process that promotes the unification of countries socially and economically. despite being viewed as a progressive and beneficial process, it highlights the poverty within developing regions. economic globalization in the caribbean refers to reducing trade barriers that allow unrestricted competition in external economies. this trade liberalization increases the number of challenges experienced. notably, the local agricultural sector devastates food security and rural livelihoods (beckford and rhiney 2016, 6-7). this is important to communicate due to agriculture's significance and essential role in the caribbean despite its declining gdp contribution. domestic food production in the caribbean community (caricom) is at an all-time low, driving members to become net importers, except for guyana and belize, to deal with problems concerning the quality and quantity of food available to consumers (beckford and rhiney 2016, xvi). to understand why the caribbean faces these persisting issues, one must recall its history and how globalization has evolved its economy, demography, politics, sociocultural aspects, and environmental sectors. since colonization, the region has been experiencing globalization through its transnational integrations, some of which have negatively impacted the caribbean and are challenging to reverse. for example, during the plantation era, the caribbean was successfully dominated by the external influences of mainly europe, africa, and asia. this domination brings forth a deliberate and forced dependence on developed countries, and previous colonizer states that pressures a dependency on external authorities, markets, and geopolitical agendas (beckford and rhiney 2016, 3-4). in terms of globalization, wilk writes that the danger of the global food system is not on the minds of many when thinking about the economic systems that bring it to the table. food can now connect politics and health, big corporations and kitchens, and more. this means that those who have power gain the ability to control the “daily bread” of the powerless (2007, 14). gahman and thongs examine "development justice" in the caribbean, which they state needs to take place to establish and secure a liveable future for inhabitants of the caribbean, given the realities they face. in addition to climate change, they add that the caribbean suffers challenges caused by (neo)colonial social connections and debt bondage. these challenges are sustained because of the lack of economic wealth in the region and the refusal of external organizations to pay reparations for the enslavement, indentureship and dispossession of indigenous people from their history and culture. the lack of monetary wealth, in turn, makes it challenging to finance climate change riskreduction strategies. it is argued that with the continuation of neoliberal policies and, thus, trade liberalization and privatization, growth and development are not possible. consequently, caribbean governments negotiate economic caribbean quilt 2023 vol. 7 no. 1 88 dependency with private investments and accept foreign loans as external assistance. if this dependency continues and climate change policies are premised on neoliberalism, the gap between the rich and the poor will increase, ecosystems and wildlife will be reduced, and disaster risks, food insecurity, and vulnerability will increase (2020, 763764). the role of the global north is to implement "development justice," in which systemic adjustments are made. the goal should be to reduce inequalities surrounding wealth, power, and resources between countries, the rich and the poor, and men and women (gahman and thongs 2020, 768). in terms of climate change which will continue to be an ongoing issue, improvements must be made to reduce the effects of the expected increase in life-threatening catastrophes, which may be done by providing both resources and financial assistance without the expectation of receiving payments back. scholars and politicians must demonstrate responsibility by abstaining from reverting to historical tendencies of imperialism, land dispossession, white supremacy, colonialism, and neoliberal approaches when initiating recovery efforts in the caribbean (gahman and thongs 2020, 773). globalization is only one part of global change which shapes agricultural trends and the vulnerabilities of caribbean agriculture. the other part is environmental change. both have affected export agriculture and domestic food production. vulnerabilities to caribbean agriculture may also be looked at as a result of shocks and stresses. environmental shocks include hurricanes and floods and environmental stresses consist of soil erosion and shifts in rainfall patterns (barker 2012, 43). since the 1960s, the region’s climate has been changing immensely with rising air and sea temperatures, an increase in the severity of hurricanes and a reduction in rainfall. however, this observation is not constant within the region. consequences to domestic production and export agriculture would include a decline in the water available for crops because of an increase in evapotranspiration. in addition, rising sea levels are expected to cause more damage to rice and sugar crops by flooding rivers and other flooding events. coastal regions in the caribbean are especially vulnerable as these locations are used for export crops, namely rice and sugar cane (barker 2012, 43). the principal agricultural export in grenada is nutmeg. it exports the second most nutmeg after indonesia. before hurricane ivan, there were 6,500 nutmeg farmers and over 30,000 people whose income was associated with nutmeg production and distribution. hurricane ivan destroyed 90% of nutmeg trees while the area used to grow nutmeg was decreased by 29%. consequently, production was reduced by over 60%. cocoa, commonly grown with nutmeg as an understory crop was also damaged. both these crops take years to recover. therefore, the nutmeg and cocoa sector rehabilitation severely cost the country as they could not export pre-ivan amounts for several years. in addition to the food production that was affected by the environmental shock of hurricane ivan, people lost their sources of income, and there was a lower contribution to agricultural exports and, thus, a lower contribution to the county's gdp (barker 2012, 50). reduced crop diversity and production and low household incomes result in changed diets. families are experiencing difficulties acquiring enough nutritious food. home cooking and agricultural labour are being regarded more with contempt; meanwhile, the consumption of cheap, imported, processed foods and drinks continues growing. children are at the forefront of this shift in consumption with a changing preference for sweet, soft, and easy-to-cook foods rather than cassava or plantain. many processed imported foods in the caribbean include corned beef, soft drinks, tinned fish, rice, flour and instant noodles. the consumption of these imported goods creates an urban nutrition problem because of the limited access to agricultural land, low incomes and the comparatively lower cost of imported foods compared to local fresh foods, which are, therefore, consumed by households classified as relatively poor (connell et al. 2020, 10). these changes in food consumption and poor nutrition have increased the prevalence of non-communicable diseases (ncds) such as diabetes and hypertension. the current trends in economics interconnected with urbanization and environmental change have significantly affected the caribbean quilt 2023 vol. 7 no. 1 89 health of individuals in the caribbean. governments are aware of this growing public health issue; however, they tend to avoid taking action, such as heavily taxing or banning imported goods, fearing a decline in votes during elections. enormous hormonal and physiological changes resulting from the inter-generational outcomes of poor nutrition have been detected in fetal development. these outcomes include ncds, obesity and other long-term health problems. these cumulative effects, in turn, increase healthcare costs and decrease healthcare efficiency in a system historically known to have had more communicable and “tropical” diseases. resources and labour are needed to treat such diseases, which are more costly and intensive (connell et al. 2020, 13-14). climate change's impact on agriculture and fisheries must be minimized to alleviate the threat to food security in the caribbean. with factors such as globalization and climate change, the caribbean must take action to prevent adverse impacts and better prepare for changing and intensifying climatic conditions. this will ensure that food security and food sovereignty are safeguarded and enhanced. lenderking, robinson and carlson describe food security as the ability of people to have physical, social and economic access to a sufficient quantity and quality of food that meets their dietary requirements for a healthy life. food security becomes reduced when put at risk by climate change: food availability, access, stability, and utilization decrease. food security challenges and strategies to alleviate them were analyzed to determine whether they are effective and how they can be ameliorated (2020, 238-239). challenges faced in caribbean small island developing states (sids) include a reduction in crop growth rate, yield, and fertilization, the heat stress of various animals, and an inability of specific households to afford adequate, nutritious food. one proposed strategy included obtaining a global perspective on solutions to increase agricultural research and development. further research was suggested for creating heat-tolerant cattle breeds in puerto rico and the us virgin islands, where beef and dairy are primarily produced. other proposed advancements included technological developments—information and communication technology, artificial intelligence, renewable energy, and biotechnology. in terms of helping lower-income families adapt to economic barriers, it was advised that policies be implemented to increase income opportunities for rural households who typically find employment in agriculture. this would aid in diversifying livelihoods and securing a more stable income. lastly, it was put forward that governance and institutional capacity must be improved to improve food security and climate adaptation. these governments should have policies focused on local and traditional knowledge and building communities with the capacity and resources available to help reshape and form their food supplies (lenderking, robinson, and carlson 2020, 241242). thomas-hope describes food security as a process that commences with food production and ends with consumption. food availability is also often considered in terms of the quantity and variety of food available to be distributed. it is also expressed in terms of accessibility, including the affordability and ability to access nutritious and culturally preferred food. to make this possible, households must have an income that allows purchasing locally produced foods and other food items such as sugar and salt to complement the food. the different abilities in food acquisition between households lead to variations in food security. not only is economic capacity critical, but also self-sufficiency and the ability to purchase food from other countries. (2017, 3-4). addressing the structural inequalities is one long-term solution to manage the stressors brought on by climate change. knowledge sharing between institutions, local farmers, and the more vulnerable, specifically the poor, is also required to ensure that strategies incorporate culturally and socially grounded solutions (thomas-hope 2017, 9). spence explores the use of micro-insurance interventions as a method to strengthen food security in caricom countries. this strategy would target small-scale farmers and fishers to help them recover from the impacts of climate change (2017, 206). micro-insurance with low-cost premiums built into insurance portfolios consists of tailored interventions that would assess the risk of impact from environmental disasters on low-income families, production groups and communities and provide payment caribbean quilt 2023 vol. 7 no. 1 90 based on the likelihood and cost of the determined risks (spence 2017, 210). many concerns surface when considering the use of microinsurance. one salient question that must be asked is how adequate the funds would be when provided to a given farmer or production group when a disaster arises. in other words, will paying insurance premiums amount to the funds required to build back a more robust agricultural sector and reduce environmental vulnerabilities or will it be used in ways that are not sustainable? regardless of whether or not the funds are sufficient, it is a matter of if countries in the caribbean have the required resources, technology, and knowledge to create alternatives to agricultural products, better hurricane detection equipment and materials to build a stronger infrastructure and ultimately enhance food security. this is one reason why the caribbean should not be the sole region to take on responsibility for climate change. more prominent, developed countries that have the resources, money and power should be the ones to provide not only funds but the tools and knowledge instead of the individuals who already come from low-income households who may not be able to afford insurance premiums. therefore, if used as an intervention, affordability and sustainability must be considered (spence 2017, 211). adaptations that individuals within the caribbean are developing include creating planning documents that outline strategies to aid with decreasing the ongoing and forecasted vulnerabilities of climate change impacts. current adaptation planning documents from caribbean sids were evaluated to assess their contents, and substantial differences were found in their guidance on vulnerability risk assessments and climate hazard risks. improving these shortcomings may improve adaptation planning in the caribbean. government ministries in caricom, the focus group, have been trained in adaptation planning in the caribbean since 2013. these groups of people involve ministries responsible for climate change policies, non-governmental organizations, and banks (thomas et al. 2019, 2013-2015). another initiative taken up by communities in the caribbean includes the expansion of greenhouse farming. in 2011, spain and caricom provided special education and training in greenhouse technology to various countries in the region. shortly after, st. kitts and nevis opened the region's largest greenhouse, st. kitts eco-park (an agrotourism destination), in 2014. among the benefits of greenhouse technology includes minimizing environmental vulnerabilities to crops, consistent production, and the knowledge of managing crops (beckford and norman 2016, 205). some challenges associated with establishing greenhouse technologies in the caribbean include the cost to construct them, the cultural reluctance to change to greenhouse technology, and the hesitancy of creditors to fund greenhouses due to the high perceived risks. to reduce these challenges, education should be made available and economically accessible to small-scale farmers, public awareness regarding greenhouse farming may be conducted through public education, and access to credit should be granted to farmers (beckford and norman 2016, 208). the traditional and acquired knowledge and skills of individuals in the agricultural sector are fundamental in creating strategies to adapt to climate change's current and projected impacts. it is essential to ensure the strengthening of food security and food sovereignty. however, their financial resources are inadequate. therefore, the global north must pay its dues in shouldering the responsibility of reducing the economic and environmental vulnerabilities in the caribbean. by reviewing the history of globalization, the interactions between climate change and food, and the current and proposed plans of action to adapt to these challenges, the purpose of creating a more secure future for people in the caribbean becomes not only more urgent but necessary. caribbean quilt 2023 vol. 7 no. 1 91 bibliography barker, david. “caribbean agriculture in a period of global change: vulnerabilities and opportunities.” caribbean studies 40, no. 2 (2012): 41–61. https://doi.org/10.1353/crb.2012.0027. beckford, clinton l., and anthony norman. “climate change and quality of planting materials for domestic food production: tissue culture and protected agriculture.” essay. in globalization, agriculture and food in the caribbean: climate change, gender and geography, 189–215. london: palgrave macmillan, 2016. beckford, clinton l., and kevon rhiney. “geographies of globalization, climate change and food and agriculture in the caribbean.” essay. in globalization, agriculture and food in the caribbean: climate change, gender and geography, 322. london: palgrave macmillan, 2016. beckford, clinton l., and kevon rhiney. preface. in globalization, agriculture and food in the caribbean: climate change, gender and geography, xi-xviii. london: palgrave macmillan, 2016. connell, john, kristen lowitt, arlette sainte ville, and gordon m. hickey. “food security and sovereignty in small island developing states: contemporary crises and challenges.” essay. in food security in small island states, 1–23. singapore: springer nature, 2020. gahman, levi, and gabrielle thongs. “development justice, a proposal: reckoning with disaster, catastrophe, and climate change in the caribbean.” transactions of the institute of british geographers 45, no. 4 (2020): 763–78. https://doi.org/10.1111/tran.12369. lenderking, hania lincoln, stacy-ann robinson, and gail carlson. “climate change and food security in caribbean small island developing states: challenges and strategies.” international journal of sustainable development & world ecology 28, no. 3 (2020): 238–45. https://doi.org/10.1080/13504509.2020.1804477. spence, balfour. “micro-insurance in disaster risk reduction: a strategy for enhancing domestic food security in caricom countries.” essay. in climate change and food security: africa and the caribbean, 205–16. routledge, 2017. thomas, adelle, omagano shooya, martin rokitzki, maria bertrand, and tabea lissner. “climate change adaptation planning in practice: insights from the caribbean.” regional environmental change 19, no. 7 (2019): 2013–25. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10113-019-01540-5. thomas-hope, elizabeth. “the interface of climate change and food security.” introduction. in climate change and food security: africa and the caribbean, 1–12. routledge, 2017. wilk, richard r. “globalization through food.” essay. in home cooking in the global village: caribbean food from buccaneers to ecotourists, 13–26. oxford: berg, 2007. microsoft word danaf_numbered.docx caribbean quilt 2023 vol. 7 no. 1 79 conditional support: chinese development aid in the caribbean omar danaf centre for caribbean studies faculty of arts & science, university of toronto omar danaf is a fourth-year undergraduate student at the university of toronto majoring in political science and american studies. he has interned at various political organizations, including the office of a u.s. senator, a u.s. intelligence agency, and private sector think tanks. in combination with his coursework, these experiences have cultivated an interest in how strategic competition between the united states and china has affected the caribbean. keywords: development aid maritime silk road intiative msri chinese-caribbean relations chinese-caribbean trade rare earth elements sino-taiwanese competition abstract in recent decades, china has emerged as a significant economic power operating within the caribbean, analyzing its foreign policy strategy in the region of paramount importance. this essay will seek to identify the ideology undergirding china's foreign policy within the caribbean, using these insights to analyze the effects of beijing's increased engagement within the region. this essay will argue that beijing has sought to create close ties with several caribbean states by launching numerous generous development assistance projects, attaching conditionalities to these projects to effectively incorporate partner states into their export and ideological network. china views the caribbean as a valuable political partner, as its proximity to the united states makes its potential alliance with china a prominent counterfactual to western hegemony. to achieve this argument, i will highlight how china’s maritime silk road initiative (msri) has influenced china’s grand strategy within the caribbean, as it seeks to incorporate the region into a broader economic network to challenge western economic systems. i will then highlight how economic considerations influence china’s bilateral relations with some resource-rich caribbean states, investigating china's diplomatic approach to increasing its access to natural resources in the region. lastly, this essay will investigate how china's development assistance-based strategy has impacted the caribbean. this will cover its negative and positive effects on domestic industries while exploring how china's ambitious economic expansion has stoked social discontent in the region. in recent decades, china has emerged as a significant economic power operating within the caribbean, analyzing its foreign policy strategy in the region of paramount importance. this essay will seek to identify the ideology caribbean quilt journal homepage: https://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/cquilt/index caribbean quilt 2023 vol. 7 no. 1 80 undergirding china's foreign policy within the caribbean, using these insights to analyze the effects of beijing's increased engagement within the region. this essay will argue that beijing has sought to create close ties with many caribbean states by launching numerous generous development assistance projects, attaching conditionalities to these projects to effectively incorporate partner states into their export and ideological network. china views the caribbean as a valuable political partner, as its proximity to the united states makes its potential alliance with china a prominent counterfactual to western hegemony. to achieve this argument, i will highlight how china’s maritime silk road initiative (msri) has influenced china’s grand strategy within the caribbean, as it seeks to incorporate the region into a broader economic network to challenge western economic systems. i will then highlight how economic considerations influence china’s bilateral relations with a number of resource-rich caribbean states, investigating the diplomatic approach china has used to increase its access to natural resources in the region. lastly, this essay will investigate how china’s development assistance-based strategy has impacted the caribbean. this will cover its negative and positive effects on domestic industries while exploring how china's ambitious economic expansion has stoked social discontent in the region. china’s actions within the caribbean have been guided by its strategic desire to economically incorporate developing states into a vast sinocentric trading network, with beijing attempting to create an economic coalition amongst the global south to challenge western dominance. the caribbean thus stands out as an ideologically significant region for china, as its proximity to the u.s. makes it a potentially symbolic rebuttal to western economic hegemony. despite its close proximity to the united states, the caribbean has 1 gahman, levi, gabrielle thongs, and adaeze greenidge. 2021. “disaster, debt, and ‘underdevelopment’: the cunning of colonial-capitalism in the caribbean.” development (society for international development) 64 (1-2): 112–18. https://doi.org/10.1057/s41301-021-00282-4. 2 mendez, alvaro, and chris alden. “china in panama: from peripheral diplomacy to grand strategy.” geopolitics 26, no. 3 (2021): 838. failed to create sustained economic growth and benefit from trade globalization, leading to its exploitation and underdevelopment by the west.1 this has influenced the region's unique relationship with china in two ways. first, the caribbean's classification as a region that has failed to economically benefit from the neocapitalist system led by the united states has made it a region of emphasis for the ccp, as ‘small states’ left behind during the neocapitalist revolutions of the 1980s are of distinct significance to china’s attempts to create a “sinocentric [trade] network” spanning the global south that can challenge the eurocentric economic and political norms governing international politics.2 china frames this coalition as an inclusive alternative to the west’s current dominance of the international system, as it will incorporate developing economies into china’s vast export market.3 second, china’s ideological beliefs have made the caribbean an area of pronounced importance for beijing due to the region’s difficulty generating economic growth despite its geographic proximity to the united states, as this neatly demonstrates the west’s exploitative relationship towards the global south. 4 if beijing could develop close ties with the caribbean and partially displace the west's economic and diplomatic hegemony, it would achieve a symbolic political victory, showing that china could compete with and even beat america in its backyard. to this end, china has drawn heavily from its msri initiative to guide its actions in the caribbean. this broad ideological strategy intends to achieve structural changes to the global economy by creating maritime trade flows that situate china as the de facto leader of international maritime trade through its vast export network.5 this ideological cornerstone of chinese foreign policy explains why economic considerations are central to beijing's approach to the caribbean. they seek to incorporate the region into a more extensive trading https://doi.org/10.1080/14650045.2019.1657413. 3 ibid., pg. 838-839. 4 macdonald, scott b. 2022. “introduction.” in ‘the new cold war, china, and the caribbean : economic statecraft, china and strategic realignments.’ cham: springer international publishing ag. 5 ibid., pg. 839; 844. caribbean quilt 2023 vol. 7 no. 1 81 network to significantly augment chinese soft power in distant parts of the world. china's high demand for natural resources has led to its calculated courtship of resource-rich caribbean states such as guyana, cuba, and jamaica, aiming to gain access to new streams of natural resources. china relies on development assistance to garner close relations with these potential client states, allowing several caribbean nations to secure significant material gains through developing close economic and political ties with china. due to china's ongoing economic expansion, it had become a significant consumer of rare earth elements such as nickel and bauxite, with its 'thirst' for these natural resources being "one of the most compelling drivers of [its] foreign economic policy."6 this has led to beijing's interest in cultivating close relations with caribbean countries with significant mineral deposits, such as jamaica and guyana, attempting to access these resources through its state-sponsored investment in caribbean domestic resource production sectors.7 to this end, china has directly invested in caribbean resource production companies through its state-owned enterprises (soes), seen through its purchase of a 70% controlling stake in guyana’s omai bauxite mining corporation, using this purchase to make its chinese state-owned aluminum giant the largest bauxite producer in the global market.8 to secure these favourable deals, china rolled out an extensive campaign to assuage the guyanese government, complete with a 15.3 million dollar public debt write-off that held symbolic value due to the caribbean's high rate of external debt.9 this acquisition strategy is not exclusive to 6 bernal, richard l. “the growing economic presence of china in the caribbean.” world economy 38, no. 9 (2015): 1427. https://doi.org/10.1111/twec.12204. 7 valle, valeria marina. “latin america and the caribbean satisfy china’s hunger for energy, minerals, and metals.” latin american policy 4, no. 1 (2013): 2–3. https://doi.org/10.1111/lamp.12001. 8 bernal, richard l. “the growing economic presence of china in the caribbean.” world economy 38, no. 9 (2015): 1427. https://doi.org/10.1111/twec.12204. 9 ibid., pg. 1423. 10 horta, loro. “a brave new world: china embraces the guyana, as china sent over $100 million in aid for infrastructure projects in jamaica to strengthen its relationship with the golding government, using this relationship to open the door to beijing's investment in jamaica's aluminum sector.10 caribbean leaders have been able to capitalize on china's desire to secure long-term investments in the region, as host countries often leverage investment from beijing to increase domestic resource production, evidenced by its creation of a "state-of-the-art" sugar production facility in guyana, nearly doubling sugarcane production in the country.11 this strategy has the potential to generate lasting benefits to caribbean economies, as china's investment signals its willingness to strengthen the economies of partner states in ways that its western competitors have historically been unwilling to do.12 ultimately, china's need for natural resources will be a crucial facet of its engagement with the caribbean, as host countries will likely solicit large aid packages from beijing in exchange for access to their valuable natural resources. despite china's notable investments in several resourcerich caribbean countries, its development assistance projects are often undergirded with economic conditionalities designed to significantly increase chinese migrant flows to host countries, creating tension with local businesses that often cannot compete with chinese-owned businesses. china's development assistance projects represent multimillion dollar investments that have a chance to route significant sums of money to small caribbean economies and rejuvenate portions of their private sectors.13 however, the caribbean has failed to benefit from these projects in such caribbean.” defense & security analysis 25, no. 4 (2009): 428. https://doi.org/10.1080/14751790903416749. 11bernal, richard l. “the growing economic presence of china in the caribbean.” world economy 38, no. 9 (2015): 1421. https://doi.org/10.1111/twec.12204. 12 gustafson, bret. “the new energy imperialism in the caribbean: the caribbean has some of the highest utility rates in the world. decades of fossil fuel dependence, foreign profiteering, and domestic debt made it so.” nacla report on the americas (1993) 49, no. 4 (2017): 421–28. https://doi.org/10.1080/10714839.2017.1409013. 13 macdonald, scott b. 2022. “introduction.” in ‘the caribbean quilt 2023 vol. 7 no. 1 82 a manner. china views these projects "as lucrative [construction] activities whose profit has to go to chinese firms," systematically excluding local labourers and construction companies from participating in these ventures.14 as a result of its preferential selection of chinese contractors, china 'exports thousands of migrants to the caribbean countries it sends assistance to, with a significant number of chinese migrants sent to work on development projects staying in the country and creating distinct communities known for their ownership of successful small businesses.15 beijing strategically includes terms in development projects that prevent partner states from limiting chinese migrant inflows and preventing recipient states from establishing economic barriers regulating migrants' involvement and ownership activities in domestic industries.16 as a result, beijing’s assistance projects drastically increase chinese migrant inflows to the caribbean, allowing china to use these groups to enhance beijing’s soft power in the region.17 this complicates the relationship that china’s seemingly benign development agenda has with the caribbean, as aid projects are meant to usher in deep economic connectivity with china and their host countries, often having a detrimental impact on local businesses that have to contend with highly competitive chinese supply chains. this practice has led to the “soaking up [of] small businesses” in countries where large infrastructure projects are built, creating a dynamic in which chinese expatriates drive local competitors out of business and create foreign-owned monopolies that closely mirror western multinational corporations, exporting profits generated abroad. 18 in this sense, development assistance poses similar challenges to caribbean governments as the restrictive loan packages offered to the region by the west, new cold war, china, and the caribbean : economic statecraft, china and strategic realignments,’ 93-94. cham: springer international publishing ag. 14 tudoroiu, theodor, and amanda ramlogan-gangabissoon. “the myth of china’s no strings attached development assistance : a caribbean case study,” 6. lanham, maryland: lexington books, 2020. 15 ibid., pg. 156. 16 ibid., pg. 151. 17 ibid., pg. 151. obfuscating china's seemingly benevolent intentions. despite this, however, development projects will continue to be a salient characteristic of sino-caribbean relations, bringing with it a set of economic conditionalities that have the potential to damage the local caribbean industry. political competition with taiwan has been a defining feature of sino-caribbean relations, as several caribbean states’ recognition of taiwan has led to intense competition between the two nations in the region. this has benefitted several caricom members, as china has sought to use development assistance flows to reward its regional allies, a dynamic which has been used to gain funding to modernize domestic industries by several governments. caricom has a unique relationship with china, as six of its fifteen member states recognize taiwan, making it one of the few remaining battlegrounds in taiwan and china’s diplomatic war.19 this rivalry has profoundly impacted china's interactions with the region, as richard bernal finds that the $25 billion china spends yearly on development assistance in the caribbean is generally only offered to countries in the region that no longer recognize taiwan.20 countries such as dominica and st. kitts and nevis have used the competition to their advantage, soliciting generous aid projects from china in exchange for their sole recognition of the prc, a tactic used by dominica to get approximately $140 million in aid from beijing.21 in addition to increased development inflows, preferred nations receive access to an expanded chinese export market, gaining access to higher-value exports such as maritime vessels, support equipment, and tankers, of which some caricom members re-export for profit.22 china's strategy of providing aid to its diplomatic partners thus can be 18 ibid., pg. 165. 19 horta, loro. “a brave new world: china embraces the caribbean.” defense & security analysis 25, no. 4 (2009): 426. https://doi.org/10.1080/14751790903416749. 20 bernal, richard l. “the growing economic presence of china in the caribbean.” world economy 38, no. 9 (2015): 1411; 1422. https://doi.org/10.1111/twec.12204. 21 ibid., pg. 1423. 22 idib., pg. 1412. caribbean quilt 2023 vol. 7 no. 1 83 reliably used by caribbean nations to gain a substantial source of development inflows, as beijing's investments in the region indicate that it is willing to divert economic resources to gain diplomatic partners in the caribbean. however, as the power in this trade relationship is disproportionately balanced in china's favour, significant risks remain associated with the caribbean's acceptance of china's development assistance. caribbean leaders view china as a potential source of significant tourism inflows and structure their relationships with beijing to attempt to promote chinese tourism in the caribbean. however, these efforts are unlikely to yield substantial returns as they ignore chinese tourist preferences and domestic opposition to beijing's increased regional presence. due to china's potential to be a significant source of tourism inflows, caribbean policymakers "have an obsession" with capturing a significant portion of china's tourism market, leading to close cooperation with china to build chinese-owned tourism projects in countries such as st maarten, st. lucia, and guyana.23 despite policymakers' hopes that china will become a significant player in the tourism industry, it is unlikely to happen, as few chinese tourists prefer the caribbean over similar sea and sand destinations in asia. the region's geographical isolation from china ultimately limits its appeal.24 even if these obstacles could be surmounted, significant challenges domestically exist to allow for the reforms and societal changes that would need to be made to facilitate a significant scale shift in chinese tourism preferences. primarily would be the need for a cultural change within the 23 tudoroiu, theodor, and amanda ramlogan-gangabissoon. “the myth of china’s no strings attached development assistance : a caribbean case study,” 114. lanham, maryland: lexington books, 2020. 24 ibid., pg. 114. 25 liao, xinge, and dolores sánchez aguilera. “chinese tourism in the caribbean—destination image and future expectations.” in tourism product development in china, asian and european countries, 128; 132. singapore: springer singapore, 2020. https://doi.org/10.1007/978981-15-4447-7_7. 26 hearn, adrian h. “harnessing the dragon: overseas caribbean, as studies indicate chinese tourists expect local tour guides and officials to be proficient in chinese while requiring cultural traditions to be accommodated by their host countries.25 there remains significant hostility towards china in the region,26 as high levels of cultural tension in recent years led thousands of protestors in santo domingo to protest against chinese business interests in 2013. 27 events such as this have alarmed beijing and soured potential tourists, as chinese nationals in the caribbean “feel threatened” by such occurrences, leading top ccp officials such as vice-premier li keqiang to “explicitly [ask] for the protection of chinese shopkeepers” and nationals in negotiations with caribbean officials. 28 therefore, china is unlikely to posit a notable impact on the caribbean tourism industry, as there is relatively little interest in the region from chinese tourists, and cultural hostility to chinese nationals has soured prospective tourists. despite china's enthusiastic engagement with the caribbean, it will not displace america's hegemonic influence over the region. this is for two reasons: america is the caribbean's most prominent export and import market by a significant margin—making its displacement as the region's primary economic partner a daunting investment that china is unwilling to take—and because any such displacement would likely trigger a security confrontation with the u.s. that china seeks to avoid. while china's recent economic advancements in the caribbean are significant, they are dwarfed in comparison to the west's economic presence in the region, as china accounted for less chinese entrepreneurs in mexico and cuba.” the china quarterly (london) 209, no. 209 (2012): 111–113. https://doi.org/10.1017/s0305741011001500. 27 li, yuan. “dominican republic and p.r. china: exchange, trade and investment,” 13. gfdd/funglode fellows program. global foundation for democracy and development, december 2013. https://www.globalfoundationdd.org/documentos/dr-china-exchange-eng.pdf. 28 tudoroiu, theodor, and amanda ramlogan-gangabissoon. “the myth of china’s no strings attached development assistance : a caribbean case study,” 153; 161. lanham, maryland: lexington books, 2020. caribbean quilt 2023 vol. 7 no. 1 84 than one percent of foreign direct investment in the region in 2013.29 furthermore, china’s demand for caribbean exports is significantly lower than its western counterparts, as its “importance as an export market for the caribbean has not significantly increased” in recent years.30 as a result, the caribbean will be forced to continue to foster close relations with major western countries such as the united states. additionally, china's early-21st century expansion in the caribbean occurred when american foreign policy was primarily preoccupied with the middle east and asia, with china's growing engagement in the region being narrowly enabled by a temporary period of american malfeasance.31 this would likely change if china were to establish itself as a viable competitor to american hegemony in the caribbean. america has a demonstrated history of using military force in the region when it perceives foreign superpowers as taking actions that are "clearly detrimental to american interests."32 the u.s. has repeatedly projected military power in the region to deter encroaching superpowers, with america's current military operation in haiti serving as an indirect warning to china not to challenge the u.s. in its backyard overtly. as a result, commentators argue that "the prc will avoid any overt attempt at undermining us [dominance] in the region,” as this will force the two powers into a security showdown that will undermine the economic advances china has sought to foreground in the caribbean.33 thus, america's presence in the region limits the extent of sino-caribbean cooperation, as china sticks to less controversial economic deals crafted to avoid direct competition with western interests. ultimately, china will continue to use the caribbean as an economic hub to distribute chinese goods and increase its soft power but will make sure not to challenge western hegemony for fear of security consequences. china views the caribbean as a region of strategic significance due to its potential to challenge western hegemony in beijing's great power competition with the united states. 29 bernal, richard l. “the growing economic presence of china in the caribbean.” world economy 38, no. 9 (2015): 1414. https://doi.org/10.1111/twec.12204. 30 ibid., pg. 1414. 31 horta, loro. “a brave new world: china embraces the despite the caribbean's political importance to this initiative, china has prioritized its economic welfare when interacting with regional states, using large development assistance projects as a bargaining chip to dictate its economic relationship with partner states. as a result of the lucrative investments promised by these projects, beijing has been able to pressure many caribbean governments into adopting domestic laws that have significantly increased chinese migrant inflows while also decreasing domestic barriers to their extensive involvement in caribbean economies. this has dramatically increased beijing's soft power within the region, creating animosity towards chinese expansion in many caribbean states, as these practices have eroded export competitiveness and disadvantaged many domestic businesses. as a result of this perceived cultural hostility towards beijing, chinese businesses are likely to continue to prioritize their current form of engagement in the region—focusing investment on natural resources industries while incorporating the caribbean into beijing's vast export market. there are severe constraints to the ccp's engagement in the region; however, chief amongst these is the close geographic proximity of the united states to the caribbean. due to the profound economic and secure connectivity that has emerged from this proximity, beijing is unlikely to be able to replace america as the most significant trade and political partner in the region, declining to challenge american hegemony for fear of a militarized showdown with washington. caribbean.” defense & security analysis 25, no. 4 (2009): 429. https://doi.org/10.1080/14751790903416749. 32 ibid., pg. 425. 33 ibid., pg. 425. caribbean quilt 2023 vol. 7 no. 1 85 bibliography bernal, richard l. 2015. “the growing economic presence of china in the caribbean.” world economy 38 (9): 1409–37. https://doi.org/10.1111/twec.12204. gahman, levi, gabrielle thongs, and adaeze greenidge. 2021. “disaster, debt, and ‘underdevelopment’: the cunning of colonial-capitalism in the caribbean.” development (society for international development)64 (1-2): 112–18. https://doi.org/10.1057/s41301-021-00282-4. grydehoj, adam, sasha davis, rui guo, and huan zhang. 2020. “silk road archipelagos: islands in the belt and road initiative.” island studies journal 15 (2): 3–12. https://doi.org/10.24043/isj.137. gustafson, bret. 2017. “the new energy imperialism in the caribbean.” nacla report on the americas (1993) 49 (4): 421–28. https://doi.org/10.1080/10714839.2017.1409013. hearn, adrian h. 2012. “harnessing the dragon: overseas chinese entrepreneurs in mexico and cuba.” the china quarterly (london) 209 (209): 111–33. https://doi.org/10.1017/s0305741011001500. horta, loro. 2009. “a brave new world: china embraces the caribbean.” defense & security analysis 25 (4): 425–32. https://doi.org/10.1080/14751790903416749. li, yuan. 2013 “dominican republic and p.r. china: exchange, trade and investment,” gfdd/funglode fellows program. global foundation for democracy and development, https://www.globalfoundationdd.org/documentos/dr-china-exchangeeng.pdf. liao, xinge, and dolores sánchez aguilera. 2020. “chinese tourism in the caribbean—destination image and future expectations.” in tourism product development in china, asian and european countries, 121–35. singapore: springer singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-4447-7_7. macdonald, scott b. 2022. the new cold war, china, and the caribbean: economic statecraft, china and strategic realignments. cham: springer international publishing ag. mendez, alvaro, and chris alden. 2021. “china in panama: from peripheral diplomacy to grand strategy.” geopolitics 26 (3): 838–60. https://doi.org/10.1080/14650045.2019.1657413. tudoroiu, theodor, and amanda ramlogan-gangabissoon. 2020. “the myth of china’s no strings attached development assistance: a caribbean case study.” lanham, maryland: lexington books. valle, valeria marina. 2013. “latin america and the caribbean satisfy china’s hunger for energy, minerals, and metals: editorial.” latin american policy 4 (1): 2–3. https://doi.org/10.1111/lamp.12001. green gold is no more david allens 2t1 university of toronto oise leadership, higher and adult education with the collapse of the banana industry, gabriel allahdua was thrust into a new reality that highlights the challenges of life under the externalities of neocolonialism. almost 10 years later, allahdua is one of many who have endured canada’s migrant worker programmes and is currently an advocate for change. a b s t r a c t keywords: neocolonialism, st. lucia, banana trade, migrant worker rights, trade liberalization, canada b i o david allens has been an active member of the caribbean studies program and community since his first-year of undergrad at the university of toronto when he served as public relations coordinator for the caribbean studies students’ union (carssu). as a med candidate in adult education and community development, david’s current research interest surround the organizational development needs of public sector reform in the common-law caribbean. © 2021 david allens caribbean studies students’ union, canada https://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/cquilt/ this work is licensed under the creative commons attributionsharealike 4.0 international license. to view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ 48 st. lucian activist and former migrant worker gabriel allahdua marches at a rally in support of migrant workers’ rights in ottawa in october 2016. (justice for migrant workers) (january 20, 2022 / 08:53:06) 122815-1b_caribbeanquilt_vol6_rev.pdf .48 49 gabriel allahdua sits in his mother’s home on the eastern side of st. lucia, where he grew up as the penultimate of her nine children. his mother and brother-in-law both recently passed, and gabriel was on the island and in the homestead to “play [his] role.” the two-story home on austin hill in derniere riviere was surrounded by freshly cut grass, and tropical shrubbery hiding in the shade of the housepossible case of re-infection. with this protective mechanism in mind, coupled with the indigenous caribbean inhabitants’ immune systems, unaccustomed to alien diseases, viral and bacterial infection exploded into the leading cause of death of these once virile populations. as a result, disease ultimately posed a greater threat to survival than armed invasion (montenegro and stephens 2006, 1861). "i was forced to become a migrant worker," the fifty-year-old said with a sardonic chuckle. “at that time, i was self-employed in five different things, i thought my income was diversified, and then the hurricane just destroyed my whole livelihood." allahdua described hurricane thomas as the final “nail in the coffin” for many people on the island. the apex of a series of unfortunate – and in some instances orchestrated – events that led to the collapse of st. lucia’s largest industry. gabriel’s father (who was 60 years old when his son was born) was a beekeeper. having learned the trade “from a very tender age,” gabriel, the sixteenth of his father’s seventeen known children, "continued the tradition after [his] father died in 1998." by the next year though, “i had to diversify my income.” “i [started] operating a small greenhouse which, when compared to canada and the united states of america (usa), it was like i was a hobbyist, but for me, in my tiny country it is something you can do to survive," or at least is a viable opportunity to supplement one's income. what gabriel did not know at the time was that “green gold” – the backbone of the countryside community of dennery – was on the verge of collapse. nor would he have been aware of the devastating rippling effects its failure would lead to. since the 1950s, the united kingdom (uk) allowed the protected sale of caribbean bananas to replace unprofitable sugar production, and in 1975 under the lomé convention, this opportunity was expanded to the rest of the european union, allowing african, caribbean and pacific countries to set prices for fixed amounts of commodities regardless of the global market price. these protections provided a way for the markets of former european colonies like st. lucia to develop without relying on foreign aid. at its peak in the early 1990s, the lomé convention protections ensured that the banana industry could increase to about 20 percent of the windward islands' gdp, providing immense opportunities for working-class st lucians. (january 20, 2022 / 08:53:06) 122815-1b_caribbeanquilt_vol6_rev.pdf .49 50 “[children] saw that their parents were not educated, and their parents could access credit. their parents could buy a van, their parents could do some improvements on their own. that was a strong message to them that you do not need an education to survive.” this was socialized in children from a young age. “the very first place where i worked, [ was la ressource primary school] in the countryside, and it has a record around the country for the lowest school attendance.” "once bananas start producing, you can harvest at least twice for the month," and on harvesting days, the children were taken away from school to work, gabriel explained. the downside of this practice would soon be increasingly evident. struggling against an ‘unleashed’ force despite forming such a large share of the local gdp, windward island bananas only represented seven percent of european banana imports. three-quarters came from us multinational corporations in control of the latin american banana crop. these american multinationals petitioned to end the lomé protections under sec. 301 of the us trade act. as the european commission put it in 1997, this “unleashed the full force of the us's legal and administrative resources, against the struggling democracies of 7 small caribbean countries whose combined wealth [at the time was] less than 0.4% of that of the us." throughout this process, few people in st. lucia really considered that “green gold was no more.” it was “not until it really hit us hard, that i would say they really took it seriously.” “they always expected that the government would intervene,” gabriel continued. “people always expected green gold to be green gold.” the world trade organization (wto) twice ruled against the eu's banana import regime, and by april 2001, after a series of retaliatory sanctions were authorized by the wto, the eu agreed to change its existing preferred zone framework by 2006. “we really experienced [the effects of those decisions] firsthand in st. lucia because banana was our main crop," gabriel said. without those protections, st. lucia’s producers could not compete. “st. lucia is a volcanic island and very mountainous,” gabriel explained. “because it is mountainous, a lot of the banana cultivation [cannot be] mechanical.” large producers find it challenging to operate on the island without sufficient flatland suitable for industrial equipment, so instead, “a very large percentage of banana producers were small farmers” who grappled with high production costs. gabriel paused, gathering his thoughts, before estimating that small farmers were responsible for over 60 to 75 percent of production. "at one point, it was estimated that we had between 12 and 15 thousand farmers. multiply that 12 to 15 thousand by an average of three workers on harvesting days, and you have a very significant labour force working in agriculture.” "can you imagine that at this point in time, we have less than 300 farmers? can you imagine the impact?" gabriel asked before repeating himself, reconsidering. "that's if we have 100 right now," he said, "that's the impact on employment." (january 20, 2022 / 08:53:06) 122815-1b_caribbeanquilt_vol6_rev.pdf .50 51 by 2012, this environment became untenable for both gabriel and his five interconnected jobs. he had worked as both a beekeeper and a middleman for farmers while managing a convenience store and greenhouse. “all of that was happening in the countryside," gabriel explained, where everything is easily susceptible to the exigencies of the global agriculture market. "the wto ruling[s] drove people off the land. that's one," he said, listing the factors that upended the livelihoods of those in dennery. “number two, the 2008 global financial crisis made things worse.” and then, “imagine you don't have preferential treatment, your income is affected, and now you have to use a lot of that income to control a [disease] you never had before.” gabriel was referring to black sigatoka, "an important development" in the banana industry's decline. this amounted to fewer farmers able to support the convenience store or gabriel’s middleman operation. next was the varroa mite – or “dynamite” as he called it – that ruined his beekeeping. "anytime your hives are infested with [varroa mite], you lose anything between 50% and 100%, so that's a dynamite man.” all that was left was the greenhouse, and "that could not sustain me," gabriel said, shaking his head solemnly. finally, “hurricane thomas in 2010 was the really hard straw that broke the camel’s back for me and for most people.” so, "literally, i was forced [to migrate]. i didn’t do that by chance, i didn’t do that by choice.” to gabriel and others, these factors appear to amount to nothing less than a funnel that engineers environments in developing nations, forcing residents to migrate to the first world under less than ideal circumstances. “so why do they interfere? why do they exploit?” gabriel asked rhetorically. “[america] has always seen the islands of the caribbean to be in their backyard not only because of war [or] to protect their [domestic] interests and their own home but also, you know, america is grab; they just grab.” “capitalism is the very few at the expense of the majority, and that’s what this is,” he surmised. it demonstrates what first world countries may choose to ignore; their interference and exploitation wear away at the resiliency and safety nets of smaller countries – and their residents like gabriel – leaving them susceptible to unavoidable factors – like hurricane thomas and unexpected “dynamite.” gabriel left his home very early on thursday, january 12th, 2012, leaving enough time for the one-hour drive to george f.l. charles airport and the two hours needed to check-in and clear security before his 6:40 am flight to barbados. weeks before, an officer from the st. lucian ministry of labour “had [gabriel and the sixteen others travelling with him] sign a whole set of paperwork,” never stopping to explain or give legal advice. “just sign sign sign.” at the airport, one of them was christened the government’s armour bearer and received everyone’s paperwork to be presented at pearson international airport. (january 20, 2022 / 08:53:06) 122815-1b_caribbeanquilt_vol6_rev.pdf .51 52 in hindsight, gabriel sees his journey and these initial experiences as a harbinger for canada’s seasonal agricultural worker programme (sawp). the flight into grantley adams international airport (bgi) left the soon to be ‘temporary foreign workers’ with an almost 10-hour layover on a “bright, sunny” 81°f day. during the layover, “i got to know that that same small airline had other flights into barbados. so why couldn’t they [book us one of those] you know?" he said, laughing. "what is the point, right? why leave so early only to kill so many hours in barbados.” two liat flights were scheduled to arrive at bgi before the eventually delayed ac967's original departure time. bgi sports an open-air concept. large dark blue fans with narrow blades cover the check-in area, while ceiling-high support columns surround a bar where gabriel watched a replays of windies cricket matches. “can't recall the opponents, but it was exciting enough for me to watch over and over again." the bar sits in the center of a courtyard that faces the curb and parking lot. beyond both is pug’s – a red and white trimmed bar with picnic tables on its front veranda. while gabriel watched the match, others in the group went to “socialize and get to know each other” – and more importantly – to drink beers at a lower price within walking distance of the airport. despite the annoyance of the layover, the experience would prove to be a reprieve. under the cover of darkness as the nearly full 146-seater airbus a320 taxied on the runway, gabriel remembers feeling a sense of dissonance. conflicted between “economics” and a growing ominous feeling. to many, canada is emblematic. "you cannot study geography and don't study niagara falls, you know? when you study about diversity, it's canada. so, the way canada is portrayed, i wanted to be there.” especially considering that when “in a difficult situation […] you’re anxious to better [it].” conversely, workers’ rights had begun to be diminished through coercion to comply with an onslaught of unexplained paperwork, lest they be labelled "a troublemaker." despite the red flags, gabriel knew of no programme-related complaints. moreover, he perceived acceptance into the sawp to be the second time canada had been influential at a “very important occasion in my life.” in 1989, gabriel completed secondary school education, "thanks to the government and people of canada." with a shortage of secondary institutions, many were unable to further their education. in the 1970s however, castries comprehensive was built as the first of 150 ‘maple leaf’ schools and has continued to have canadian governmental support. "it is because of canada, i got a second chance to complete a secondary school education,” so comforted by its image as "the gentleman," he trusted canada again. eager for "a great opportunity to get out of the vicious cycle of poverty.” (january 20, 2022 / 08:53:06) 122815-1b_caribbeanquilt_vol6_rev.pdf .52 53 the air canada flight completed its descent into pearson international airport at 9:40 pm, arriving at the gate some six minutes later. having never been outside of a tropical climate, gabriel remembers the 5°c weather as the “height of winter.” "just before i came up, i was in touch with a few friends in canada. they asked me to dress warm. that's it, you know." at this point, “i don’t know what on earth is ‘dress warm’. in the caribbean, once you wear a long sleeve, you're warm" he said, smiling. after over an hour of processing, the seventeen workers were ushered onto a yellow school bus “only to find out that the bus did not have any heaters running.” leaving only worn vinyl seats and the cabin’s exposed metal for warmth. not knowing where they were headed or how long the journey would be, "we were all loud and full of comments, complaints and surprises. but it was a long day and a long ride,” so as the bus made its way west onto highway 401 off the 401 express “we tried to get some sleep and keep ourselves warm.” every so often, the driver would move onto the “sleep awakening portion” of the road as they drove through southern ontario on highways 8, 7 and 2 and “everyone instantly would burst the silence with a comment that the driver is sleepy.” four hours later, the bus arrived at a farm just outside of a municipality of fewer than 28,000 people. by then, it was -7ºc and snowing. attached to a 54-acre greenhouse was a packhouse which connected to one of two bunkhouses on the property. donning his long sleeve, gabriel entered. it was empty, its hvac off—the ideal ending to a 3:00 am greeter-less arrival. when rectified later that morning, they realized the correct bunkhouse was some 500m away. no one was around to tell them. the second bunkhouse was detached from the larger structure and housed about sixty-two workers, including kolocheto, who first arrived a few years earlier. underequipped and with eight to each room – except for a converted nightwatchman room with six – things like cooking were “survival of the fittest.” “according to the contract," these accommodations are free. in practice, this money is recouped through pay deductions for "support or some kind of strange name” gabriel does not recall. kolocheto showed gabriel his assigned room before going to his own to get a winter jackets. “he placed it at the bottom of the bunk bed, and he tells me that's your bed," gabriel said, mirroring the moment by slapping his hand on the table. "to be honest, that was so powerful to me." “i ended up spending four years in the program, and i ended up spending four years on that same bed that [kolocheto] reserved for me," he said, shaking his head with a smile. (january 20, 2022 / 08:53:06) 122815-1b_caribbeanquilt_vol6_rev.pdf .53 54 temporary foreign workers face numerous challenges, especially when isolated in rural communities where life revolves solely around the farm. pay discrimination, inadequate health services, substandard housing, and pay deductions for benefits they have little or no access to plague the experience. companies can request temporary foreign workers for roles when qualified canadians or permanent residents are not available. however, requests are not made for positions with benefits like overtime and paid vacation. "the programme is designed that once you engage in primary agriculture, you do not get" anywhere near the benefits given to canadian workers. there is a distinction made between gabriel and those “on the same compound” doing sunset® brand final packaging and distribution processes. one demarcated by physical separation. “there are three qualities that canada wants” in its temporary foreign workers. “people of colour, [those who] are illiterate, (or english is a second language), and/or [those who] are ignorant” to labour and human rights issues. during the three years gabriel spent at castries comprehensive secondary school, he studied the dark pages of history but was confident those histories remained in the past. yet, "at the lowest point in my life," it became clear that the “dark pages that canada helped me to study are alive and well in canada.” gabriel explained that this was not something he could let go by easily. "i rather see somebody with a smile on their face than somebody who is in fear," and canada welcomes migrant workers into "a climate of fear." when combined with a canadian "culture of silence," this keeps workers compliant. living on the farm, "you do not see us; we are invisible,” gabriel said. “our employer controls the travel agency that books our flight in and out of canada. so, the moment you speak up, the farmer can send you back.” gabriel has since become an advocate for those who remain in the programme. “what is the recipe to exploit somebody? ignorance and poverty,” allahdua said, answering his question. "the program keeps us poor by paying minimum wage,” while immigration status yields barriers to essential services like education, keeping workers ignorant. to gabriel and others, it is clear that if the canadian system had its way, temporary workers and the injustice hidden in the sawps policies, would be swept “under the cover of darkness.” out of sight and mind. meanwhile western systems continue to stifle the region’s ability to make and sustain its versions of “green gold” leading to a cyclical affect. ultimately, the resiliency required to “resist these foreign powers comes with some element of education, some element of creativity and a desire for something better.” (january 20, 2022 / 08:53:06) 122815-1b_caribbeanquilt_vol6_rev.pdf .54 a revolutionary cuisine: food, liberation & cubanidad ruth masuka university of toronto fas double major in diaspora & transnational studies and peace, conflict & justice, minor in music history & culture in one of his infamous speeches, castro challenged cubans with the question: “why should we eat peaches? we were made to think that peaches were the best thing going and when we’d visit someone’s house they’d offer us peaches. so we all thought that...peaches were better than mangoes, but peaches are expensive and foreign and mangoes are sweeter, cheaper, and much better.” castro’s words spoke to how food, as an instrument of identity formation, allegiances, and community solidarity, is an intrinsic part of cuba’s history. in a cuban context, food and cuisine can be understood as a site of resistance given the daily role food has in defining cubanness. its function goes beyond a mere biological necessity of nourishment and can be understood as a signifier of cultural capital, economic mobility, and social status. this paper seeks to demonstrate the ways in which food is so intertwined with music, religion, and other social institutions that it has become a storytelling practice of the narrative of cuba’s complex and nuanced historical, political, and socioeconomic realities. food is not just a matter of what appeals to someone’s taste, but a matter of what appeals to someone’s ideologies. cuba’s cuisine is an informant in understanding the intersections between the choices of individuals, communities, and the state-at-large. a b s t r a c t keywords: cuba, food, revolution, cuisine, identity b i o ruth masuka is a 3rd year student studying the intersections of peace and justice practices and art. her research focuses on the use of non-institutional domains and informal spaces as catalysts for bottom-up group consciousness, capacity-building and community organizing. © 2021 ruth masuka caribbean studies students’ union, canada https://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/cquilt/ this work is licensed under the creative commons attributionsharealike 4.0 international license. to view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ 122 (january 20, 2022 / 09:38:52) 122864-1b_caribbeanquilt_vol7_rev.pdf .122 123 pilcher, j. m. (2012). eating à la criolla: global and local foods in argentina, cuba, and mexico. ideas, (3). doi:10.4000/ideas.406 delgado, e. (2009, november 20). a cuban committees of defense of the revolution celebration. retrieved from: https://havanatimes.org/other-galleries/a-cuban-cdr-celebration/ paponnet-cantat, c. (2003). the joy of eating: food and identity in contemporary cuba. caribbean quarterly, 49(3), 11-29. doi:10.1080/00086495.2003.11672221 ibid ibid folch, c. (2008). fine dining: race in prerevolution cuban cookbooks. latin american research review, 43(2), 205-223. doi:10.1353/lar.0.0029 1 even prior to cuba’s era of revolution, food served as a vehicle of hegemony, identity, and rebellion. the spanish colonial regime made fervent efforts to replace indigenous foodways to no avail as the native cuisine was better suited to the physical environment and was strongly defended by the local population. although their attempts to suppress indigenous cuisine proved to be mostly futile, it was still the perspective of spanish imperialists that to eat too much of native foods was a return to the barbarism of the native people. similarly, in the mass plantations, where african slaves were subject to inhumane treatment and forbidden from communicating, food became a medium of memory and tradition. cuisine, as conceptualized by food anthropologist sidney mintz, is “the ongoing foodways of a region, within which active discourse about food sustains both common understandings and reliable production of the foods in question.” applied to the cuban context, cuisine can be understood as a site of resistance given the daily role food has in defining cubanness. its function goes beyond a mere biological necessity of nourishment and can be understood as a signifier of cultural capital, historical relevance, economic mobility, and social status. an example of a meal that remains a cuban staple in the present-day, congri (rice and black beans) likely finds its roots in neighboring haiti in the combination of the words “congo” and “rice” (riz, french). this suggests the name came from when rice and beans was a common meal for slaves as it provided sustenance and protein. through the conucos y crías system, some plantation owners provided tiny plots of land to slaves to grow their own food rather than having to provide them food. this allowed for the preservation of african farming practices and produce. beyond maintaining identity through the land, african food traditions were fortified through song with hymns sung during the long grueling work slaves endured daily. the close association between food, music, and afro-cuban existence illustrates how culinary and melodic practices have served as forms of resistance against dominant ideologies even preceding the revolution. in many ways, the culture of the revolution was nourished in these everyday acts of defiance in sustaining african and indigenous food heritages against the colonial regime. through these and other examples, this research seeks to demonstrate the importance of food and cuisine as a fluid representation of cuban identity and values at the intersections of individual, community-based, and state-level choices. 2 3 4 5 6 1 2 3 4 5 6 (january 20, 2022 / 09:38:52) 122864-1b_caribbeanquilt_vol7_rev.pdf .123 124 paponnet-cantat 2003 ibid dawdy, s. l. (2002). ‘la comida mambisa’: food, farming, and cuban identity, 1839-1999. new west indian guide / nieuwe west-indische gids, 76(1-2), 47-80. doi:10.1163/13822373-90002543 ibid paponnet-cantat (2003) 7 it is important to note the food imageries specific to the cuban context and their origins. colonial legacies are still evident within cuba’s cuisine. although cuba’s geography and climate would make it more conducive to being a fish-eating population, cubans still tend to have a taste for meat. however, at the start of castro’s revolution, killing cows for meat consumption was outlawed due to the need for milk as well as transportation. more importantly, this shift in food patterns reflects a political connotation against traditional colonial cuisine. another food product with clear colonial connotations is sugar. the cooking of sweet dishes came to resemble the gayapo (sugar cane juice) slaves were given as their only food while working the plantation. josé martí, the infamous writer and considered the father of cuban independence, conveyed a clear distaste for sugar in his works, preferring the wild honey used to make “cuba-libre”. this was a symbolic rejection of the colonial economy and a celebration of both a free land and free people. as the fever of revolution spread throughout cuba, food imageries transformed from traditional colonial dishes to the produce of the people. stews like ajiaco and caldoza, arising from african heritage, illustrate the shift from a cuisine once defined by slave labor and hegemonic forces to foodways reflective of the variety of the cuban population. prepared with whatever available produce native to the land, the stew models the multidimensional identity and the continual struggle against hegemonic forces. another fundamental ingredient that serves as a paradigm of culture and identity in cuba are viandas, which cover the numerous root vegetables native to cuban soil. they are believed to hold medicinal powers and have also been an integral part of smallholder independent farming in cuba. these foods are accompanied by the emblematic drinks in cuba, especially coffee, rum, and beer. coffee, being a mainstay of the economy, marks the closing of a meal and a sense of community and social inclusion. beer has grown in meaning as a signifier of special occasions and the transition from work to social times of leisure. to speak of cuban food traditions without the mention of rum would make for an incomplete narrative. as one of the most enduring legacies of the sugar and slave economy, rum has come to the transfer of power into the people’s hands and with that, the resources of the land. it is important to note that cubans often prefer homemade rum or from local sources like neighbors, although lower quality, to brand names like havana club, as a testament to the devotion of local products and the communal network. food’s value in times of revolution is celebrated by cubans to this day. such as commemorating historical moments like the 1960 committees of defense of the revolution (cdr), which was the largest mass organization in cuban history. annually, caldoza, the cultural stew of cuba, is assembled among communities 9 10 8 11 7 8 9 10 11 (january 20, 2022 / 09:38:52) 122864-1b_caribbeanquilt_vol7_rev.pdf .124 125 dawdy (2002) fuster, m. (2015). writing cuisine in the spanish caribbean: a comparative analysis of iconic puerto rican and cuban cookbooks. food, culture & society, 18(4), 659-680. doi:10.1080/15528014.2015.1088195 anderson, b. r. (1982). imagined communities. london. pilcher (2012). 12 using the produce everyone has to offer, symbolizing the revolutionary bond between the nation, neighborhoods, and homes. the linkages between specific foods and other daily activities of cuban life exemplify both the individual and communal construction of identity. beyond the varied meanings of cuban foods, there is a strong link between the local farmers who cultivate the land. known as sitierios, the very existence of the owners of small plots of land entailed a form of resistance against colonial forces that have now replaced by capitalist forces of globalization. given the long era of slavery in cuba, land ownership has always been a reflection of autonomy and independence. following their crusade for freedom, former african slaves purchased small farms to produce food for their families. at the start of castro’s revolution, the figure of the peasant farmer became the cuba hero. the province of oriente, where 41% of sitieros were afro-cuban was entitled the “most cuban region of all of cuba.” with agrarian reform and food security being main priorities of the socialist government, small farmers embodied emancipation and self-sufficiency. the overlap of the ex-slave, sitiero, and soldier, is once again a testimony to the multiplicity of cuban character. a valuable source of knowledge in appreciating the nuanced dimensions of food in cuba is cookbooks. if understood as a historical document, cookbooks serve as “windows into kitchens of the past.” it was a common strategy of colonial governments to use written text to legitimize their rule while simultaneously marginalizing existing native cultures. the kitchen was by no means excluded from this. this is especially of significance in cuba, where cooking knowledge historically took the form of oral practices rather than written form. earlier cookbooks reflect the forced notions of cuban identity which revolved around european cosmopolitan cuisine. later editions begin to include traditional african dishes along with the foodways of the taíno people, the principal inhabitants of cuba. the presence of cuban produce like viandas was of great symbolic importance as a shift of power from the periphery. during the revolution, the cookbook became a text fraught with political implications. nitza villapol, a cuban cookbook author who was a staunch advocate of the socialist government, created recipes using the foods rationed by, for example, offering a way to make tamales out of the imported russian oats. food as a mechanism of patriotism, in turn, makes the cookbook a tool of the production of ideologies. the cookbook transformed a national cuisine into a nationalist cuisine. the political praxis of food arguably reached its height during the período especial also known as the special period in time of peace at the start of the 1990s. what was meant to be a temporary phase of crisis after the fall of the soviet union, cuba’s largest partner in both trade and 14 13 15 12 13 14 15 (january 20, 2022 / 09:38:52) 122864-1b_caribbeanquilt_vol7_rev.pdf .125 126 wilson, m. (2012). moral economies of food in cuba. food, culture & society, 15(2), 277-291. doi:10.2752/175174 412x13233545145345 alfonso, i. d. (2014). we are what we now eat: food and identity in the cuban diaspora. canadian journal of latin american and caribbean studies, 37(74), 173-206. doi:10.1080/08263663.2012.1100600 paponnet-cantat (2003) altieri, m. a., companioni, n., canizares, k., murphy, c., rosset, p., bourque, m., & nicholls, c. i. (1999). the greening of the ''barrios'': urban agriculture for food security in cuba.agriculture and human values, 16(2), 131-140 ibid buchmann, c. (2009). cuban home gardens and their role in social-ecological resilience. human ecology, 37(6), 705-721. doi:10.1007/s10745-009-9283-9 16 ideologies, lasted up until the turn of the century. the communal practices of preparing and eating food were reduced to attempts to fulfill increasingly unmet physical demands of nourishment. although the food rationing system was meant to provide a sufficient standard of food items, it was more optimistic than realistic and forced cubans to meet their needs through the black market. due to the illicit nature of meeting food needs, the very acts of preparing, consuming, and enjoying food was limited to behind the closed doors of the family kitchen, shrouding a once communal and social space with secrecy because it did not operate according to legal norms. this era, also referred to as “la temporada de vaca flaca” (skinny cow period), caused mass anxiety over food that induced a moral dilemma as cubans found themselves torn between feeding their immediate family or sharing what little they had with friends and neighbors. this social erosion was captured in a common saying of the time: “ si una visita no avisa, es un caos político; no se puede atender de la manera que quieres.” (an unannounced visit is political chaos; it can't be looked after as one would wish it) while the physical effects of food scarcity were drastic, the social ramifications of the crisis went to show food’s function as a site of community organization. while the special period perpetuated and exacerbated food insecurity, it also provided a return from the government’s investments in education and social services. at the onset of the crisis, cuba accounted for only 2% of the latin american population but 11% of the region’s scientists. cuban agronomists, supported by agricultural government policies in favor of developing local, grassroots solutions, produced technologies to improve systems of both rural and urban farming in matrimony between environmental sciences and the needs of the people. in both a figurative and literal sense, agricultural reform flourished through the community networks where exchanging produce and goods was a common occurrence. in sharp contrast in the united states of america where millions of empty homes, unoccupied skyscrapers, and vacant parking lots are held tightly by corporations, the cuban government turned over private land unless it was put to use. through such policies, hundreds of unused lots, many previously overrun with garbage, have been transformed into green spaces and sites of food production. this also allowed for a rebuilding of community ties lost due to food scarcity as gardeners would share the fruits of their labor with neighbors and friends. the pride of self-reliance and the generosity one could show because of it soon made home gardens a reflection of the owner’s sociocultural status, health, 17 18 19 20 21 16 17 18 19 20 (january 20, 2022 / 09:38:52) 122864-1b_caribbeanquilt_vol7_rev.pdf .126 127 wilson (2012) deere, c. d., & royce, f. s. (2019). provisioning cuba’s private restaurants: linking tourism and agriculture. tourism planning & development, 16(6), 675-695. doi:10.1080/21568316.2019.1569120 thiemann, l., & spoor, m. (2019). beyond the “special period”: land reform, supermarkets and the prospects for peasant-driven food sovereignty in post-socialist cuba (2008–2017). canadian journal of development studies / revue canadienne détudes du développement, 40(4), 546-563. doi:10.1080/02255189.2019.1632174 22 and their commitment to the well-being of their families and communities. at a macro-level, these gardens also reflected a dedication to the land and in this sense, an extension of the revolutionary notion of reaping what one sows. cuba currently finds itself, along with the rest of the world, at a critical juncture. the dominant systems of capitalism have been called into question due to its incapacity to mediate crisis, the ongoing climate crisis, and recurring global financial catastrophes. cuba’s geopolitical position has always made it a case study in how two opposing systems co-exist, creating polarities between cuba as a place for cubans and cuba as an economic space “with both affinity and aversion to metropolitan capital, commodities, and values.” food serves as another site of negotiation between these two discrepancies. looking toward the island’s future in a post-pandemic recovery, tourism as one of cuba’s major economic sectors will be critical. restaurants, once looked down upon as capital enterprises pandering to the west, were revived with raul castro’s economic reform policies and have in turn shown the potential role of self-employment activities in fostering a productive cuban economy. beyond the added economic benefits, paladres, the private restaurants often catered for international visitors, facilitate investments into peasant farmers and urban gardeners through restaurant purchases. cuban agrarian policies and the growth of urban gardening have exemplified how a crisis-induced solution of small-scale agriculture and peasant agency can be consolidated and further stimulated in a phase of economic recovery. at a microlevel, cuban practices of eating have once again become an act of defiance towards the new dominant ideologies of globalization and neoliberalism as consumers’ adaptation to normative pressures for convenience, casualness, and speed, implicit in practices of the fast-food industry, has drastically altered food habits, family life, and consumption rituals. in between community and commodity, food can be understood as an indicator of cuba’s future political and socioeconomic systems. if these narratives of food tell us anything, it tells us this: the authenticity of cubans lie in the people. in the words of cuba’s national hero, josé martí, “the wine is sour, but it is our wine.” food as a form of storytelling, neighborhood building, and defying dominant systems of power goes to show how the everyday acts of cubans are embedded with liberation and solidarity. it is democracy in its most potent form, as everyone must eat. how one goes about doing so is a testament to their values, community ties, and a broader sense of loyalty to different institutions. the variety of cuban cuisine is a reflection to the complexities and nuances of cuban identity that come together, at times in conflict and at times in harmony, to create a rich, vivid and unique imagery rooted in the people and the land they cultivate. 23 24 21 22 23 24 (january 20, 2022 / 09:38:52) 122864-1b_caribbeanquilt_vol7_rev.pdf .127 microsoft word bacchus_redemptionsong_numbered.docx caribbean quilt 2023 vol. 7 no. 1 113 redemption song: a commentary on caribbean society maria bacchus centre for caribbean studies faculty of arts & science, university of toronto maria bacchus is a guyanese canadian undergraduate student at the university of toronto. having completed a bachelor of arts with a major in history and minors in anthropology and classical studies, her academic career has been characterized by an exploration of the social, cultural, and religious landscapes of antiquity and contemporary times through her production of artwork, literature, and oral history during her time at the university. keywords: stuart hall historical causality foreign influence colonialism plantocracy cultural continuity assimilation race abstract this essay unpacked and analyzed the seven-part documentary series, redemption song, narrated by stuart hall, about the caribbean in the early 1990s. given the diversity of the caribbean, redemption song unified the caribbean by framing how the caribbean’s past of foreign influence has shaped its present. thus, this essay linked historical causality and the caribbean’s present as a cultural mosaic to argue that redemption song demonstrates how contemporary caribbean society is a product of its history of foreign influence and colonialism. this was accomplished by discussing a scene from each episode of redemption song and connecting it with secondary literature on caribbean society to touch upon how the series represents and comments on contemporary caribbean society. namely, this essay discussed issues concerning the economy, identity, citizenship, race, class, sovereignty, borders, and tourism and how they relate to british, african, indian, french, spanish, and american influences in the caribbean introduction redemption song is a seven-part documentary series narrated by the late theorist stuart hall about the caribbean in the early 1990s. an overarching study of the caribbean is 1 kamala kempadoo, “introduction: thinking about the caribbean,” in sexing the caribbean: gender, race and sexual labor challenging, considering its diversity of ethnicities, languages, religions, and cultures.1 this begs the question, what unites the caribbean as a topic of discussion and study? while the series covers many cases, many (routledge, 2004), 5. caribbean quilt journal homepage: https://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/cquilt/index caribbean quilt 2023 vol. 7 no. 1 114 contemporary issues represent critical aspects of caribbean society. sidney mintz argued that the caribbean is distinct due to its social form, which stems from the colonial history that has shaped the region.2 therefore, this essay will play with the dynamics of historical causality and the caribbean as a “cultural mosaic” to argue that the content explored in hall’s redemption song exemplifies the linkages of caribbean society and its history of colonialism and foreign influence. this will be achieved by analyzing a central theme or scene from each episode of redemption song to show how the series may comment on issues of caribbean society contemporary to the filming of the series. these issues comment on how foreign or global forces influence different areas of life in the caribbean, showing the relationship between the caribbean’s past and its present. episode 1 the first episode in the series, “iron in the soul,” laid the foundation of the series. as a result, hall began by addressing a seminal component of the caribbean: its history with, and legacy of, colonialism and slavery. at the core of a discussion of slavery in the caribbean is the institution that organized and maintained slavery, the plantation. as mintz argued, the intersection of slavery, plantations, and sugar reshaped the caribbean society and the economic landscape.3 the plantation was integral because its economic structures brought different people from the world together in a particular way, shaping the population and social composition of the caribbean.4 on top of bringing together diverse peoples, the plantation system controlled the lives of the people within it, and so, one’s status within the plantation shaped how one related to others and was perceived.5 “iron in the soul” depicted the plantation in its historical form describing slavery in jamaica, and its contemporary vestiges, by featuring the cave family plantation in barbados. the caribbean’s history with the plantocracy also contextualizes its current economy. beckford discussed the unequal distribution of land in jamaica, where the few 2 david scott, "modernity that predated the modern: sidney mintz’s caribbean," in history workshop journal 58, no. 1 (2004): 199. 3 scott, 200. 4 george l. beckford, “introduction,” in persistent poverty: underdevelopment in plantation economies of the third world (university of west indies press, 1999), 3. 5 beckford, 9. existing plantations account for 56% of the available farmland in the country.6 as a contrasting point, small farms (of less than five acres), which occupy 71% of the farms in jamaica, only encompassed 12% of the country’s farmlands, thus restricting the opportunities of these small farmers.7 the difficulty of local caribbean farmers in attaining land attests to the continued monopoly the plantation has on land in the caribbean. despite this, steven cave, the current owner of the cave plantation, expressed concern over the barbadian government threatening to nationalize his family’s plantation.8 when held against the economic angle of an uneven distribution of land skewed in favour of the plantation, his words appear short-sighted or conveniently ignoring the benefit of the country and many small farmers over his personal preferences. this attitude of entitlement is a vestige of the plantocracy, demonstrating how the caribbean’s historical plantation system, and its embedded class structure, continued to impact contemporary caribbean society and economy. episode 2 the second episode, “out of africa,” attests to the continued presence of africa in the caribbean. redemption song used this standpoint to describe haiti’s history and the expressions of african identity and culture in contemporary haitian and jamaican society. as the episode presented, vodou served as an amalgam of different west and central african rituals that came over with slavery and survived due to haiti’s isolation.9 in jamaica, africa is intentionally drawn upon as inspiration with rastafarianism and marcus garvey’s “back to africa” movement.10 thus, caribbean society is a product of assimilation and retention in response to its history of encroachment, colonialism, and slavery.11 slavery worked by trying to instill a sense of inherent inferiority in the enslaved people, especially in comparison to the superiority of their retaining african customs and traditions within music, dance, religion, and language has allowed those in the caribbean to survive the 6 ibid., 23. 7 ibid. 8 redemption song, “iron in the soul.” 9 redemption song, “out of africa.” 10 ibid. 11 stuart hall, "negotiating caribbean identities," new left review no. 209 (1995): 7-8. caribbean quilt 2023 vol. 7 no. 1 115 rupture of displacement and overall, the trauma of slavery.12 as “out of africa” elaborates, africa evoked a rediscovery of roots, the recreation of one’s history, and a reclamation of one’s agency.13 thus, rastafarians believed they were in exile and aspired to return to zion or africa, showing that repatriation is vital to their belief.14 africa becomes idealized as a powerful symbolic point of reference for home, roots, and source of identity. additionally, the biblical references of ethiopia provide a counternarrative of liberation and dignification which contrasted with the conditions of slavery.15 this reinforces the notion that societies in the caribbean have been influenced and shaped by resistance to slavery and the plantation.16 therefore, redemption song celebrates the role this cultural retention has played in the past and present, contextualizing the african influences in contemporary caribbean society. episode 3 “paradise lost” describes the differing conditions of life in the dominican republic, ranging from wealthy individuals such as senora puccini, who can afford to travel all around the world and host extravagant parties, to haitian migrant workers, whose lives have been compared to slavery. the juxtaposition between the two speaks to the intersection of race, citizenship, statelessness, and nationalist ideologies in the dominican republic. hall frames the discussion with a remark that even the poorest dominican citizen would not be caught dead cutting sugar cane.17 instead, it is the work of migrants from haiti. this intentionally contrasts the dominican citizen against the haitian migrant in the dominican cane fields. other scholars, such as samuel martinez, have also used the word “slavery” to describe the situations of the haitian migrant workers within the dominican sugar industry. 18 haitians have migrated and worked in the cane fields of the dominican republic since the beginning of the twentieth century.19 by the 1930s, the 12 hall, 7, 12. 13 redemption song, “out of africa.” 14 chevannes, 1. 15 ibid., 34. 16 ibid., 17. 17 redemption song, “paradise lost.” 18 samuel martinez, "from hidden hand to heavy hand: sugar, the state, and migrant labor in haiti and the dominican “piece-rate” wage system was instituted, where cane cutters were only paid according to how much sugar cane they cut, resulting in economic coercion due to such low wages. 20 additionally, 25,000 haitians were killed in 1937, but those living on the sugar estates were spared, establishing that the only safe space for haitians on dominican soil was within the bateyes.21 redemption song sheds light on the lives of these haitians and the forced labour, constant surveillance, horrible living conditions, and debt to the company store they faced.22 additionally, hall described haiti as “the republic’s traditional enemy.”23 this wording contextualizes the conditions of haitians in the dominican republic and links it to a history of a racialized construction of the dominican republic in opposition to haiti. the trujillo dictatorship led a propaganda effort in the 1930s to depict haitians as culturally and racially distinct from the dominican people, establishing dominican identity and citizenship along racial lines while isolating and othering those of haitian descent.24 this mistreatment of haitian workers coincided with the redefinition of the dominican republic and haiti along racial lines, with the populace of the former depicted as spanish and the latter as african, which limited the opportunities for haitian workers in the dominican republic to the cane fields. ultimately, the fear of the “haitian menace” justified trujillo’s dictatorship.25 overall, the depiction of haitian migrant workers in the dominican republic in redemption song has been used to show the stark contrast between classes in the country. still, this case study is the tip of the iceberg in discussing race, style, and national identity in the country. episode 4 the fourth episode, “la grande illusion,” explored society in martinique in light of its historical and contemporary connections with france. martinique’s connection with france is evident in its everyday community, as seen republic," latin american research review (1999): 57. 19 martinez, 60. 20 ibid., 66-67. 21 martinez, 70. 22 redemption song, “paradise lost.” 23 ibid. 24 martinez, 69. 25 ibid., 71. caribbean quilt 2023 vol. 7 no. 1 116 through the country's widespread french culture and language. the pervasive french influence in martinique speaks to the colonial tendency to transfer its culture, language, and education systems to its caribbean colonies.26 the caribbean middle class was seen as having the social and cultural capital to rule the caribbean post-colonial state because they adopted the west's cultural capital and consumptive patterns. 27 however, such features of the west were incompatible with the caribbean’s economy and nature due to clashes with the natural racial hierarchy in the caribbean.28 this racial hierarchy necessitated the negotiation of one’s identity within or against their “inherent” social rank within the racial hierarchy.29 an example of this can be seen in the episode’s depiction of the white population in martinique, with interviewees stating that they do not mix with other racial groups to maintain their racial and cultural superiority. 30 martinique’s education system also teaches french language and history but ignores, sidelines, and ultimately erases black history.31 the varying value and attention placed on different histories and cultures show the uneven racialized landscape of the caribbean. redemption song acknowledges this condition in the title of the episode. as elaborated by aime cesaire, “la grande illusion” refers to the belief that the enduring french influence in martinique would allow its citizens to be considered equal to black frenchmen.32 the status of being an equal black frenchmen remains an illusion due to the racialized nature of caribbean society.33 this racial hierarchy is present in martinique, so while french culture and language transfer was transferred, it was placed on top of the racial order. thus, the denial of this order perpetuates the “grande illusion.” therefore, in martinique, there is a disjuncture between the valorization of french identity and what this french identity embraces and hides, which has repercussions on the identity and self-recognition of those living in the 26 redemption song, “la grande illusion.” 27 aaron kamugisha, "the coloniality of citizenship in the contemporary anglophone caribbean," race & class 49, no. 2 (2007): 24-25. 28 kamugisha, 24-25. 29 hall, 8. 30 redemption song, “la grande illusion.” 31 ibid. 32 ibid. 33 redemption song, “la grande illusion.” caribbean. episode 5 “worlds apart” highlights the linkages between history and contemporary society in portraying trinidad and guyana's racialized divisions and tensions. the caribbean post-colonial state is ultimately a racial state based on how the connection between race, colour, culture, and class shapes caribbean society. 34 in trinidad and especially guyana, there is an ideological divide between those of african and indian origins. this divide is believed to have begun when indian indentured workers were brought in by colonial powers after emancipation, taking away the bargaining power of formerly enslaved people to better conditions and wages.35 the tension between those of african and indian descent in the caribbean was fostered by colonial powers, dividing society to prevent the union of these groups against the colonial administration.36 despite the perceived differences between the groups, they share the common interest of being shaped by foreign influences, which pit them against each other.37 however, this ideology also produces material consequences, leading to ethnic polarization and political violence.38 this racial divide is present in guyanese politics between the people’s progressive party (ppp), which indo-guyanese broadly supports, and the predominantly afro-guyanese-supported people’s national congress (pnc).39 these parties are perceived to be inherently different even though they are ideologically similar, with liberal-democratic views, following the 1990s.40 thus, redemption song depicted the naturalization of ethnic polarization due to a specific history. additionally, “worlds apart” provides a new avenue to consider how racial identity and ethnic divisions can be subverted in caribbean society through featuring the singer, drupatee. as an indo-trinidadian, drupatee is part of a community that strongly draws upon the largely patriarchal 34 kamugisha, 26. 35 kevin edmonds, “race and conflict in the caribbean,” lecture at the university of toronto. 36 ibid. 37 perry mars, "ethnic politics, mediation, and conflict resolution: the guyana experience," journal of peace research 38, no. 3 (2001): 366. 38 mars, 357. 39 ibid., 356. 40 ibid., 357. caribbean quilt 2023 vol. 7 no. 1 117 indian family values.41 thus, she was expected to be a housewife in a private, supportive role in the domestic sphere. despite this expectation, and with her husband’s support, drupatee challenged traditional indian patriarchal expectations and became a famous public singer. drupatee also subverted racial lines by appealing to afro-trinidadian audiences by singing calypso.42 thus, the portrayal of drupatee in “worlds apart” showed that it is possible to transverse these gendered and racial divisions, showing how these seemingly “inherently different” groups were not, in fact, worlds apart. this subversion reiterates that the tale of a historical rift between guyanese of indian and african descent is a myth based on relatively recent antagonisms.43 race is seen as a pervasive reason for divisions shaping many aspects of caribbean society, such as politics and gendered family structures. still, the episode furthers this topic by showing how this preconception of race as an end-all can be subverted and challenged. episode 6 “following fidel” focused on life in cuba. within this episode, hall also touches upon guantanamo bay. by doing so, hall reasserts that despite the hard borders and security measures between guantanamo bay and the rest of cuba, it is still part of cuba. the physical and ideological maintenance of separation between guantanamo bay and the rest of cuba links to a more extensive discussion of sovereignty and the nature of foreign intervention in cuba. the story of cuba is intertwined with foreign influence, as expressed through the vintage american cars found on its streets or the soviet-style clothing tailored for eastern european women, available in cuban stores.44 the case of guantanamo bay reinscribes the nature of the foreign occupation, as it represents a portion of cuba that still belongs to the united states but also hardly resembles cuba.45 the cubans in guantanamo bay must commute to work over large distances and face security searches. meanwhile, the americans who live on the base are isolated, with no communication with the outside. so few can compare the 41 redemption song, “worlds apart.” 42 ibid. 43 mars, 366. 44 redemption song, “following fidel.” 45 ibid. 46 ibid. 47 yarimar bonilla, "ordinary sovereignty," small axe: a conditions in guantanamo’s well-stocked shelves and the bare ones surrounding cuba.46 the case of guantanamo is one of security, management and, ultimately, dissociation, where the “savagery and barbarism” of its surroundings are kept outside its gates.47 guantanamo bay is a space of containment and management for those that could potentially “trouble” the nation, namely haitian migrants.48 however, the terms of the lease of guantanamo bay to the united states dictate that the cuban government has “sovereignty” over the area even though the united states operates and exercises its military control.49 therefore, guantanamo bay serves as “a carefully crafted legal absence” which allows the united states to use simultaneously and remain unaccountable for this space in cuba.50 thus, this shows how space can be constructed in a way separate from its surroundings, allowing foreign occupation to co-occur unimplicated. despite this, hall challenges this dismissal of accountability by bringing guantanamo bay back into the conversation of cuba by featuring clips of the site and its workers and contrasting it with the rest of cuba.51 this speaks to a more significant pattern of the illusion of accountability and (non)sovereignty found in the discourse of imperialism, occupation, and foreign intervention compared to its reality in the caribbean.52 episode 7 “shades of freedom” ends the series by discussing how, despite the formal end of colonialism and slavery, caribbean society has attained freedom in differing degrees. perhaps one of the most poignant examples of this conditional emancipation from foreign influence is seen with tourism in the caribbean. the caribbean has been a source of desire for its natural beauty and “tropical sensuousness.”53 colonial portrayals of the caribbean as welcoming and open for conquest are repurposed by the current tourism industry, distorting the caribbean’s reality and presenting caribbean journal of criticism 17, no. 3 (2013): 161. 48 bonilla, 160. 49 bonilla, 161. 50 ibid., 160. 51 redemption song, “following fidel.” 52 bonilla, 161. 53 kempadoo, 1. caribbean quilt 2023 vol. 7 no. 1 118 an orchestrated caribbean caricature to the tourist.54 this is motivated by the fact that many of the economies of caribbean countries rely on profits from a particular view of the caribbean. 55 however, as expressed in redemption song, the money and services brought in by tourism is not used to benefit the country’s people but to enrich those who own the tourism sector.56 actions undertaken to help the locals, such as replacing a statue, are only accomplished if seen benefitting the tourist industry.57 the attention and effort put into the tourism industry, rather than national development, contributes to the alienation of caribbean peoples.58 as discussed in the episode, the local becomes incidental, a second-class citizen, and sidelined against the needs of the tourist.59 the material and ideological construction of the caribbean according to foreigners' desires and consumption patterns is a simultaneous act of violence towards its locals.60 thus, hall ends the episode with a message that links all the episodes of redemption song to caribbean society in general: an awareness that the caribbean’s past was cast in “different images of europe” and now must determine if its present reshapes or breaks away from these images to depict the caribbean in its likeness.61 the balance between the benefits of the tourism industry in the caribbean against the damaging effects of caribbean alienation, commodification, and reproduced inferiority must be negotiated as caribbean society redefines itself from its past. in conclusion, contemporary caribbean society is a product of its past and has been shaped by cultural continuity and change. this essay has analyzed each episode of hall’s redemption song and has put it in conversation with topics relevant to caribbean societies today to demonstrate that caribbean society is shaped by its history of foreign influence. thus, this essay has touched upon issues of economy, identity, citizenship, race, class, sovereignty, borders, and tourism and how it has related to british, african, indian, french, spanish, and american influences in the caribbean. 54 kamugisha, 29. 55 kempadoo, 1. 56 redemption song, “shades of freedom.” 57 kamugisha, 28. 58 ibid., 29. 59 redemption song, “shades of freedom.” 60 kamugisha, 29. 61 redemption song, “shades of freedom.” caribbean quilt 2023 vol. 7 no. 1 119 bibliography beckford, george l. “introduction.” in persistent poverty: underdevelopment in plantation economies of the third world, 3-29. the university of west indies press, 1999. bonilla, yarimar. "ordinary sovereignty." small axe: a caribbean journal of criticism 17, no. 3 (2013): 152-165. https://doi-org.myaccess.library.utoronto.ca/10.1215/07990537-2378973. chevannes, barry. “1: the spirit of resistance.” in rastafari: roots and ideology, 1-43. syracuse, n.y.: syracuse university press, 1994. https://hdl-handle-net.myaccess.library.utoronto.ca/2027/heb04567.0001.001. hall, stuart. "negotiating caribbean identities." new left review no. 209 (1995): 3-14. http://myaccess.library.utoronto.ca/login?qurl=https%3a%2f%2fwww.proquest.com%2fscholarly-journals%2fnegotiating-caribbean-identities%2fdocview%2f1301912480%2fse-2%3faccountid%3d14771. hall, stuart, redemption song. 1991. mars, perry. "ethnic politics, mediation, and conflict resolution: the guyana experience." journal of peace research 38, no. 3 (2001): 353-372. https://doi.org/10.1177/0022343301038003005. martínez, samuel. "from hidden hand to heavy hand: sugar, the state, and migrant labor in haiti and the dominican republic." latin american research review (1999): 57-84. http://myaccess.library.utoronto.ca/login?qurl=https%3a%2f%2fwww.proquest.com%2fscholarly-journals%2fhidden-hand-heavy-sugar-state-migrant-labor-haiti%2fdocview%2f1297358726%2fse-2%3faccountid%3d14771. kamugisha, aaron. "the coloniality of citizenship in the contemporary anglophone caribbean." race & class 49, no. 2 (2007): 20-40. https://doi.org/10.1177/0306396807082856. kempadoo, kamala. “introduction: thinking about the caribbean.” in sexing the caribbean: gender, race and sexual labor, 1-14. routledge, 2004. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203338087-2. scott, david. "modernity that predated the modern: sidney mintz’s caribbean." in history workshop journal 58, no. 1 (2004): 191-210. the early colonial circum-caribbean: affected and infected by colonialism and disease kennedy-jude providence university of toronto fas biology and health and disease/caribbean studies oftentimes when thinking about the plantocracy, slavery and the circum-caribbean region, the first thing that comes to mind is the suffering endured by millions of indigenous populations, genocide and forced african migrants, enslaved, and tortured for the singular benefit of european enrichment. any historical thought process is usually followed by a celebration of the region’s nutrient rich soil, an ideal climate for successful agriculture. however, there are further aspects that are not often given due weight in consideration, including the numerous subtle and intricately intertwined ways colonialism impacted the region scientifically, specifically through disease and immunological degradation. this research paper seeks to highlight and consider the multiple ways in which the region was not only affected but also infected by disease and colonialism. a b s t r a c t mining, hispaniola, late 16th century, courtesy of slaveryimages.org. keywords: colonialism, immunology, disease, caribbean, slavery. b i o kennedy providence is a 4th year biology, and health and disease double major, also pursuing a minor in caribbean studies at the university of toronto. the diverse, shared history of the west indies has been an interest of hers for as long as she can remember. © 2021 kennedy-jude providence caribbean studies students’ union, canada https://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/cquilt/ this work is licensed under the creative commons attributionsharealike 4.0 international license. to view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ 36 (january 20, 2022 / 08:53:05) 122815-1b_caribbeanquilt_vol6_rev.pdf .36 37 while there are numerous ways in which one may consider the colonial project in the circum-caribbean, it may be argued that its histo-environmental effects are often given insufficient consideration. the suffering and genocide endured by millions of indigenous peoples and the forced migration, torture, and enslavement of africans had a detrimental impact on the physical and psycho-social environment of the region. collectively, through the mono-cultivation of the king cropsugarcane, the mining of precious metals, and the introduction of novel disease, european powers slowly but most steadfastly, drained the unadulterated treasury that was the caribbean basin to support the rapid proliferation of their emerging, mercantilist societies. focusing on the early colonial caribbean, this paper seeks to consider the ways in which immunological degradation was used to benefit and further the colonial project in the 17th and 18th century. indigenous peoples faced an even greater threat than armed invasion – disease (montenegro and stephens 2006, 186). in order to wholly comprehend the reason for the devastating impact disease had on the indigenous populations of the region, we must first briefly discuss and have a basic understanding of the human immune system. scientifically speaking, immunological memory against disease is acquired once one is exposed to a pathogen – a disease causing organism (balloux and van dorp 2017, 1). following this initial encounter, the body deploys its immediate, or innate immune system to not only fight the infection but produce antibodies which invoke immunological ‘memory’ to ‘remember’ this virus in the indigenous caribbean inhabitants’ immune systems, unaccustomed to alien diseases, viral and bacterial infection exploded into the leading cause of death of these once virile populations. as a result, disease ultimately posed a greater threat to survival than armed invasion (montenegro and stephens 2006, 1861). soon after 1492, european sailors inadvertently introduced diseases, such as smallpox and measles, mumps, whooping cough, influenza, chicken pox, and typhus to the americas. in the first century after the initial columbian exchange, approximately 93% of the caribbean’s indigenous population died – a massive demographic collapse that scholars often mainly attribute to the foreign bacterial and viral diseases introduced by europeans (montenegro and stephens 2006, 1861). however, this infers that regardless of colonial modes of subjugation, indigenous populations were too weak to ward off novel infection. this is despite the fact that “indigenous peoples in [the circum-caribbean] had perhaps one of the most sophisticated and diverse indigenous health systems in the world” (montenegro and stephens 2006, 1865). the experienced medicinal and herbal proficiency of indigenous peoples translated into a wisdom that offered a multitude of natural remedies for pre-colombian illnesses. this was due in part to the fact that these populations were naturally, a migratory people. the organic movement of the indigenous population, whether stimulated by amicable or hostile terms, supported the exchange of medicinal practices and herbal knowledge during regional encounters. (january 20, 2022 / 08:53:05) 122815-1b_caribbeanquilt_vol6_rev.pdf .37 38 considering this broad and sophisticated medical knowledge base however, questions arise from the inability to rehabilitate their dying population from these novel ailments plaguing the region. such a question, however, places insufficient consideration on the unjust, demanding working conditions, that created harsh and inhumane physical environments but also inhibited sufficient recovery time for the infected and ill. under the stress of excessive labour requirements “the viruses suffered by the indigenous populations [left] victims who escape, killed, or as weak as a kitten for weeks.” (mcneill 2012, 35) despite the sometimes ambient, sometimes encircling biological genocide, the europeans never lost sight of their goal of resource exploitation. columbus and his men first noted the richness of the soil, in their recounts of the islands protection by a vast, barrier-like wall of foliage. however, upon meeting the people who inhabited the land, the colonizers’ focus shifted quickly to the brilliant gold and silver pieces adorning the autochthonous population, the latter oblivious to the european attraction and value placed on their ornaments. applying forced privilege, power and supremacy, the invaders established control over the islands and mining operations were initiated; with native populations made to toil underground, endure barbaric working conditions, and extract precious metals for the financial gain of europe. as a result, this research posits that through these working conditions, european invasion altered the region’s socio-environmental history by diverting the natural course of science away from the acquisition of immunological memory and the subsequent maturation and development of immune systems – resulting in extinction. the indigenous populations were denied the opportunity to develop immunity on their own terms and denied biological knowledge of newly introduced euro-diseases which itself shaped the direction of the scientific history of indigenous peoples. while the spaniards came to the new world in search of the proverbial “el dorado”, imagined to be overflowing abundantly, the realization that this resource was in fact quite scarce and difficult to find and extract meant they shifted focus at the end of the 17th century to establishing an agrarian-based economic structure. of all the cultivations, sugar cane flourished in the tropical-marine caribbean climate and emerged as providing the most wealth to the empire. notwithstanding the ease with which the unrefined fruitage grew, the success of refining the crop relied on two integral factors: cheap, readily available labour, and cheap, easily accessible fuel. the indigenous population, having been grossly depleted by the year 1620, mainly because of disease, now on the verge of extinction, was rendered an insufficient and therefore, unusable source of cheap, forced labour, prompting european invading nations to begin exploring new options: africans. (january 20, 2022 / 08:53:05) 122815-1b_caribbeanquilt_vol6_rev.pdf .38 39 as the british colonial empire gradually grew in power simultaneously with the increasing value of sugar, the declaration of ownership and seizure of various territories in the caribbean increased british colonies. these invaders brought with them ‘suitable’ labour, that is, massive numbers of enslaved, african migrants. again, science repeated itself as the introduction of multiple unfamiliar populations, invited disease, epidemic, and death, hence, brutal suffering to a mass number of people, african enslaved and european alike, owing to a lack of immunological memory. in the case of the african slaves, yellow fever (mcneill 2012, 41) was one disease that accompanied their involuntary passage to the caribbean, ‘eager’ to be released upon new, upcoming territories and hosts. it is imperative to note that the climate of the region not only supported the intensive cultivation of crops, but also the reproduction and survival of insects that served as the vectors or ‘vessels’ for the transmission of diseases. though the aedes aegypti mosquito, the disease carrying agent for yellow fever, was not indigenous to the caribbean, and arrived as a result of the european slave trade, these vectors occupied a specific niches that the plantation society coupled with the tropical marine climate unintentionally nurtured. unlike many mosquitoes, a. aegypti eggs require clean, unpolluted water to mature into larvae and pupae (mcneill 2012, 41). as we envision the containers used to store the gargantuan volumes of sugar produced, as well as the additional barrels kept in case of excesses of production, coupled with the climate’s high levels of seasonal and intermittent rainfall, this stagnant, fresh water collected, would have provided optimum conditions for the rapid and prolific reproduction and survival of this vector. what is interesting about the science of this disease and its successive, detrimental effect, is that it was not unfamiliar to the enslaved african population, as the mosquito is of african origin, however, the living conditions endured by the enslaved, facilitated the effortless and most vicious transmission of the disease. with mosquito-borne diseases, the cycle’s efficiency depends chiefly on three things: the population densities of people and vectors; the feeding focus of the vector, that is, whether or not it bites only people or bites people among other mammals; and the longevity of the vector. with attention to the first, it is plausible that the growing slave population, in any given island or territory, would have provided the virus with a more than satisfactory availability of hosts for easy, widespread replication and infection. perhaps, as well, the intimate, ultra-close and unhygienic physical spaces provided as accommodation of enslaved persons, facilitated constant contact and ultimately fostered an environment again, ideal for disease transmission. these highly influential factors led to the infection of a plethora of people, and when many people were ill at the same time. this increase the virulence of the disease. (january 20, 2022 / 08:53:05) 122815-1b_caribbeanquilt_vol6_rev.pdf .39 40 planters, disgruntled by slave population reduction aka asset loss and impediments to support and sustain consistent production capacity, used the opportunity of disease to create racist, gendered stereotypes that bolstered the stability of the plantocracy. as scholars often note, “the plantation’s wealth relied on its structure being by necessity racist” (mcwatt 2019, 66). 17th and 18th-century observers often claimed that men were more vulnerable than women, although this characterization is tempered by a colonial mentality that saw vulnerability as a consequence of intemperance – a trait typically associated with males (mcneill 2012, 35). if we think about mcneill’s statement, it is quite alarming because, in spite of the numbers of enslaved people that fell ill, including those that succumbed to their illness, many europeans also contracted the disease and endured intolerable sufferings and death. yet, i am not surprised with mcneill’s statement for two reasons: first, though the europeans placed the african enslaved at the bottom of their social strata, they expected this labour force to be able to withstand the most unbearable of conditions, while maintaining a submissive attitude. the high expectations set for these forced migrants were in stark contrast to the lowly treatment meted out by their masters. second, the foundation of the plantocracy was built on racism and social divisions. the ease with which the european observers were able to make spurious claims – that the virus may affect more men than women, and by further offering some rationale for that vulnerability – though due to illness, was indicative of the euro-defined traits of the “disobedient” african male, one of several racially-driven stereotypes about the enslaved population; indirectly referencing the white man’s superior discipline, intelligence and apparently resistance to disease. the living conditions and density of the slave population in the caribbean resulted in a mass number of slaves becoming immunologically affiliated with viral infection. this is significant as the plantation depended on these labouring imports to fuel the economy, withstand, and supply the high demand for caribbean sugar, and fund the planters, their families and europe. with a large portion of the labour force dead or substantially “weak as kittens”, this slowed production, and negatively impacted the financial bottom-line of the plantocracy. regardless of this fact, planters seemingly found a way to achieve their ambitious goals, despite widespread illness and a weakened labour force. i propose that the planters, driven by insatiable appetites, would have imported more slaves at formidable cost to quickly replace the dead. it is possible and is not far-fetched that there was some degree of manipulation or misappropriation that monetized loss of property, yielding monetary compensation from england ergo, a revolving reimbursable fund for new, more people-property acquisitions. history tells us that planters often insured their slaves, so it is possible that, due to the oceanic separation between the caribbean region and the continent, slave losses due to diseases may have been overstated, exacerbated then unjustifiably funded, for unaudited personal benefit. (january 20, 2022 / 08:53:06) 122815-1b_caribbeanquilt_vol6_rev.pdf .40 41 this is not a preposterous allegation, especially if we consider the zong massacre of 1781, an indescribably tragic incident which involved the premeditated death of 130 slaves due to the respective europeans’ attempts to claim insurance on their murdered bodies. jeremy krikler (2012) notes that many planters and slave traders’ written accounts, note that slaves were hand-picked by surgeons aboard slave ships, ensuring health, strength, and youth, before purchase. regardless of the medical ‘clearance’, disease was heralded as the leading cause of death on slave ships. we remember that illness was viewed as vulnerability, and vulnerabilityintemperance, justifying slavers’ decisions to throw infected african bodies overboard; to avoid the spread of infection to other slaves, and crew members, to conserve the limited resources and it may be argued, it was similarly used to also invoke fear in the newly purchased cargo. all this is to say, slave owners and traders were able, from time to time to ‘justly’ kill their slaves, subsequently reap the benefits of this dastardly practice, and defend any imminent claims. no doubt, colonialism shaped the development of scientific history and anomalies of the early caribbean through its imposition of deadly, novel, and infectious diseases to an immunologically unprepared, and unsuspecting indigenous population. however, more importantly this immunological degradation was used to benefit and further the colonial project in the 17th and 18th century by a) reducing the indigenous population’s ability to leverage existing medical knowledge to combat diseases and b) linking colonially defined intemperance to vulnerability and infection to subjugate african slaves. the effects of these infectious diseases on the ‘pioneer’-to-enslaved indigenous and enslaved african populations developed an agrarian based economy, and not only shaped the scientific history, but added to growing fields of scientific research and ultimately, the overarching history stemming from the theft and colonization of the circum-caribbean region. (january 20, 2022 / 08:53:06) 122815-1b_caribbeanquilt_vol6_rev.pdf .41 42 burnard, trevor, and richard follett. “caribbean slavery, british anti-slavery, and the cultural politics of venereal disease.” the historical journal 55, no. 2 (2012): 427–51. https://doi.org/10.1017/s0018246x11000513. crosby, alfred w. the columbian exchange: biological and cultural consequences of 1492. westport, ct: praeger, 2003. krikler, jeremy. “a chain of murder in the slave trade: a wider context of the zong massacre.” international review of social history 57, no. 3 (2012): 393–415. https://doi.org/10.1017/s0020859012000491. mcneill,john robert. mosquito empires: ecology and war in the greater caribbean, 1620-1914. new york: cambridge university press, 2010 mcwatt, tessa. shame on me: an anatomy of race and belonging. toronto: random house canada, 2020 balloux, francois, and lucy van dorp. “q&a: what are pathogens, and what have they done to and for us?.” bmc biology vol. 15,1 91. 19 oct. 2017, doi:10.1186/s12915-017-0433-z montenegro, raul a, and carolyn stephens. “indigenous health in latin america and the caribbean.” the lancet 367, no. 9525 (2006): 1859–69. https://doi.org/10.1016/s0140-6736(06)68808-9. works cited (january 20, 2022 / 08:53:06) 122815-1b_caribbeanquilt_vol6_rev.pdf .42 microsoft word wong_indigeniety_numbered.docx caribbean quilt 2023 vol. 7 no. 1 125 indigenous erasure and resistance in the caribbean elizabeth wong centre for caribbean studies faculty of arts & science, university of toronto elizabeth is an undergraduate student at the university of toronto majoring in diaspora and transnational studies and ethics, society, and law. she was previously an undergraduate fellow at victoria college's northrop frye centre. her work is interdisciplinary, often drawing on philosophy, anthropology, and cultural studies to think through the intersections of race, culture, and colonialism in toronto and abroad. keywords: indigeneity resistance colonialism dispossession belize diaspora entanglement caribbean abstract indigeneity has, for the most part, been absent in literature on the caribbean, even in decolonial writing. writing on the caribbean has often portrayed indigenous people as extinct and thus irrelevant to contemporary life in the caribbean. however, indigenous peoples have played and continue to play a central role in caribbean politics. this essay discusses how and why indigenous people have been erased from discourse on the contemporary caribbean. i argue that indigenous erasure is a longstanding colonial tactic still used to justify the dispossession of indigenous peoples. drawing on the case of the maya peoples’ struggle for land in belize, i describe how indigenous people resist colonial and capitalist violence. having identified and historicized the myth of indigenous erasure in the caribbean, i sketch possibilities for shifting the discourse on the caribbean to highlight rather than ignore the historic and ongoing contributions of indigenous communities to the caribbean. i suggest that diaspora and entanglement are two concepts that may help clarify the caribbean’s complex colonial histories in a way that underscores the importance of indigenous peoples to the caribbean. i. introduction indigeneity has largely been ignored in caribbean literature, political discourse, and law. if indigenous people figure in discussions on the caribbean, they are usually only considered victims of europe's imperial conquest. portraying indigenous peoples as relics from a pre-colonial past obscures the fact that many indigenous communities have survived colonial genocide and continue to resist ongoing oppression. in this essay, i aim to answer the following questions: how and why have indigenous peoples been erased from discourse on the contemporary caribbean? how can we invalidate the myth that indigenous people no longer exist in the caribbean and highlight their continued resistance to colonial and capitalist violence? i will argue that indigenous erasure is a longstanding tactic of colonial caribbean quilt journal homepage: https://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/cquilt/index caribbean quilt 2023 vol. 7 no. 1 126 domination entrenched in scholarship about the caribbean, even in decolonial writing. i will highlight ongoing indigenous resistance projects that remain central to caribbean politics to undermine the imperial myth of indigenous erasure. in addition, i will suggest that diaspora and entanglement are two concepts that can shift the discourse on the caribbean to understand complex colonial histories better and foreground indigenous peoples’ continued presence in the caribbean. this essay proceeds in four parts. in part ii, i historicize the myth of indigenous erasure within europe’s colonial invasion of the caribbean and explain how it remains salient in recent literature. i detail how anti-colonial scholarship often ignores or marginalizes indigenous communities. in part iii, i challenge the idea that indigenous communities are non-existent or irrelevant to the modern-day caribbean by describing how indigenous communities work together to contest dispossession and harmful capitalist extraction. in part iv, i draw on stuart hall and édouard glissant to sketch how the concepts of diaspora and entanglement might reframe discourse on the caribbean in a way that does not erase indigenous peoples. finally, in part v, i offer concluding remarks on dismantling the myth of indigenous erasure. ii. indigenous erasure as continuing colonial violence the myth of indigenous erasure began with europe’s colonization of the caribbean. to take control of indigenous lands, colonizers invoked the principle of terra nullius, meaning empty land or land belonging to nobody.1 colonizers declared they could claim ownership of caribbean islands because these lands were unoccupied. indigenous dispossession and erasure have always been central to europe's imperial projects. 2 colonizers dehumanized 1 filiberto penados, levi gahman, and shelda-jane smith, “land, race, and (slow) violence: indigenous resistance to racial capitalism and the coloniality of development in the caribbean,” geoforum (2022): 8. 2 gabrielle hosein, “indigenous geographies and caribbean feminisms,” stabroek news, 2017, https://www.stabroeknews.com/2017/04/10/features/indigenousindigenous peoples, describing them as soulless, subhuman beasts to justify stealing, enslaving, and killing their lands.3 this colonial logic of doubting the humanity of indigenous peoples to justify their dispossession, subjugation, and decimation constitutes “misanthropic skepticism.”4 dispossessing and dehumanizing indigenous peoples erase their histories and deny them their rights to life and land. european colonizers committed genocide against indigenous peoples and thus attempted to erase indigenous knowledge and cultures; nevertheless, indigenous people fought back, and some survived. indigenous communities remain in the caribbean, yet settler colonial governments deny their existence and disregard their rights claims. in the anglophone caribbean, for instance, only belize, guyana, and dominica recognize the rights of indigenous communities in their national law.5 the myth that indigenous people are extinct is closely bound to the colonial idea that indigenous people, their histories, and their land rights are insignificant. this myth has persisted––it bleeds into a contemporary discourse on the caribbean, even anti-colonial discourse. caribbean thinkers, politicians, and activists have often ignored indigenous peoples or reduced indigenous history to colonial genocide, portraying indigenous peoples as extinct. melanie newton observes that if caribbean authors mention indigenous peoples, it is often only to note that “europeans murdered them all.”6 while recognizing indigenous genocide is imperative, it is equally important to acknowledge the resilience of indigenous peoples and their ongoing struggles against neocolonial capitalist extraction. newton argues that the idea that indigenous people no longer exist is a form of colonial knowledge and power that has infiltrated caribbean scholars’ anti-colonial projects.7 geographies-caribbean-feminisms/ 3 penados, gahman, smith, “land, race, and (slow) violence,” 8. 4 ibid., 2. 5 melanie j. newton, “returns to a native land: indigeneity and decolonization in the anglophone caribbean,” small axe 41 (2013): 108. 6 ibid., 118. 7 ibid., 109. caribbean quilt 2023 vol. 7 no. 1 127 hence, those writing in and about the caribbean misstep when they fail to challenge the assumption that indigenous violence is a thing of the past. in the pleasures of exile, a series of essays on colonization and decolonization in the caribbean, george lamming refers to indigenous people only once, describing them as part of a tragic, lost past: “indigenous carib and arawak indians, living by their own lights long before the european adventure, gradually disappear in a blind, wild forest of blood.”8 other prominent scholars of caribbean history, including sidney mintz, c.l.r. james, and eric williams, offer valuable yet limited critiques of colonization because they ignore indigenous peoples' role in the decolonial struggle.9 my aim here is not to discredit the writers i have cited; they have generated profound insights into the workings of colonialism. instead, i aim to reveal that the myth of indigenous erasure is deeply entrenched in perceptions of the caribbean––even in critical and revolutionary thought. caribbean history has thus been marked by "aboriginal absence." as a result, caribbean scholarship has implicitly forwarded the colonial, imperial, and capitalist aim of annihilating indigenous peoples.10 on newton’s account, the descendants of enslaved people and indentured labourers transported to the caribbean from africa or asia are often described as 'indigenous' to the caribbean. this misuse of indigeneity occurs both in literature and in everyday discourse. sylvia wynter, for example, claims that afro-caribbean culture had "become indigenous” because pre-colonial indigenous cultures were lost when the “arawak indians died out.”11 here, wynter wrongly reduces indigenous peoples and cultures to historical relics, denying their continued presence in the caribbean. according to michelle hosein, caribbean people have claimed indigeneity to assert their belonging to the region after years of being devalued under colonialism.12 this misuse of indigeneity, however, obscures indigenous 8 george lamming, the pleasures of exile (ann arbor: university of michigan press, 1992), 13. 9 newton, “returns to a native land,” 110. 10 ibid., 109. 11 ibid., 117. 12 hosein, “indigenous geographies and caribbean feminisms.” peoples’ histories and their ongoing resistance to oppression. the imperial myth of indigenous erasure also underlies creolization theory. caribbean scholars developed the notion of creolization to refute the colonial idea that caribbeans are primitive and instead recast caribbeans as modern people. this theory held that the mixture of african, european, and asian cultures in the post-colonial caribbean generated creole identities that afforded caribbeans a modern, globalized subjectivity. though creolization was a reclamation of power for descendants of enslaved people and indentured labourers, it implicitly excluded indigenous peoples from modernity. indigeneity is, in many respects, the antithesis of creolization. following this theory, indigenous people are not modern or relevant to the globalized world because they are not creolized.13 creolization thus further obscures indigenous presence in the contemporary caribbean. iii. indigenous communities’ ongoing resistance indigenous peoples in the caribbean have remained resilient despite neo-colonial violence. as hosein writes, "indigenous people didn't become extinct. they don't belong to a time past.”14 indigenous communities resist colonial oppression, which takes shape today as the state-sponsored expropriation, privatization, and destruction of indigenous lands for capitalist profit.15 the land has always been and continues to be at the center of colonial violence.16 the dispossession of indigenous communities is a form of “structural violence” because it endangers indigenous lives through neutral-seeming institutions, such as private property law.17 these institutions normalize indigenous precarity. even though colonial violence is deeply entrenched in contemporary institutions and cultures, indigenous peoples tirelessly struggle against dispossession. a striking example of indigenous resistance is the maya land struggle in what is now known as belize. since 13 newton, “returns to a native land,” 111. 14 hosein, “indigenous geographies and caribbean feminisms.” 15 ibid. 16 penados, gahman, smith, “land, race, and (slow) violence,” 1. 17 ibid., 3. caribbean quilt 2023 vol. 7 no. 1 128 contact with colonial powers, the q’echi and mopan maya peoples have fought to regain their lands and protect their livelihoods.18 in the mid-1990s, the belizean state granted corporations access to maya lands for timber extraction.19 like in the colonial era, the state denied that the maya people were indigenous to belize, thereby denying them their land rights. misanthropic skepticism and the myth of indigenous erasure were again at work for (neo-)colonial capitalist profit. in 2007, after many years of an arduous legal battle with the belizean state, the supreme court of belize recognized the maya people as indigenous and thus as bearing land rights. the court mandated that the state obtain the maya community's informed consent before allowing corporations to develop on their land. the state, however, violated the court order to respect maya land rights for 37 out of the 39 maya communities.20 after launching and winning another court case and subsequent appeals, the remaining 37 maya communities won legal recognition of their right to ancestral lands. this case underscores that indigenous communities continue to struggle against neo-colonial exploitation, and their relentless efforts yield essential gains. moreover, this case demonstrates the strength of indigenous governance systems and indigenous nations' power when they stand in solidarity. indigenous peoples often band together to plan and carry out resistance projects because the oppressive states and corporations they oppose have abundant economic resources and political power. hosein describes a conference titled "indigenous geographies and caribbean feminisms: common struggles against global capitalism," which brought together women leaders from many indigenous nations in the caribbean, including akawaio, garifuna, kalinago, lokono arawak, macushi, maho, mopan maya, q’eqchi maya, wapichan, and warrau first peoples.21 at the conference, these leaders discussed the possibilities for 18 ibid., 4. 19 ibid., 5. 20 ibid. 21 hosein, “indigenous geographies and caribbean feminisms.” 22 ibid. 23 beatriz felipe pérez and alexandra tomaselli, “indigenous peoples and climate-induced relocation in latin america and the caribbean: managed retreat as a tool or a joining their local efforts to disrupt the capitalist, neo-colonial extraction that threatens their communities. in detailing this conference, hosein highlights that indigenous peoples are at the forefront of struggles against state projects to generate profit by privatizing water and clearing forests to make space for other development.22 indigenous peoples are spearheading these battles against unsustainable capitalist extraction in part because they are disproportionately affected by climate change.23 rising sea levels, water shortages, and extreme weather events in the caribbean have displaced many indigenous peoples.24 the economic subordination and political marginalization that indigenous people have suffered since contact with colonizers has left indigenous nations in the caribbean with little land and few resources. this deficiency, in turn, made indigenous people more vulnerable to the effects of climate change.25 indigenous sovereignty is, therefore, inextricably tied to climate change, among other justice issues. the examples of indigenous resistance i have sketched reveal that the myth of indigenous erasure allows capitalist states and corporations to steal indigenous lands, deplete their resources, and ultimately endanger indigenous lives. these examples elucidate the pressing need to debunk the erroneous belief that indigenous people no longer exist in the caribbean and that colonial violence has ended. indigeneity must be central in discussions on global capitalism, climate change, and the possibilities for creating a sustainable and just future. anyone who lives on stolen lands and benefits from the destruction of indigenous lives is responsible for working towards the end of colonial violence. a critical step in reducing the harm done to the indigenous communities of the caribbean is to disrupt the myth of indigenous erasure. we must instead shift the discourse to threat?” journal of environmental studies and sciences 11, no. 3 (2021): 353. 24 ibid. 25 rose-ann j. smith and kevin rhiney, “climate (in)justice, vulnerability and livelihoods in the caribbean: the case of the indigenous caribs in northeastern st. vincent,” geoforum 73 (2016): 22. caribbean quilt 2023 vol. 7 no. 1 129 highlight the centrality of indigenous justice projects to contemporary caribbean politics. this can be done, i argue, by reframing the caribbean––its history and current state– –using the concepts of diaspora and entanglement. iv. diaspora and entanglement for reframing the caribbean to close her essay on indigenous absence in caribbean anti-colonial writing, newton identifies that diaspora has the potential to be a “liberating concept,” and she sees a similar value in the idea of entanglement.26 she does not, however, expand on how we might use these concepts going forward. here, i will elaborate on the concepts of diaspora and entanglement and clarify their usefulness for dispelling the myth of indigenous erasure. the idea of diaspora conveys the dispersal of people from a homeland. the term is often associated with exile and forced migration, like the movement of slaves and indentured labourers from africa and asia to the caribbean.27 writing from his experience as a black jamaican who lived in the caribbean and the uk, stuart hall describes diaspora as a “scattering” that leaves migrants and their descendants unable to “ever [go] home in exactly the same way as you left it.”28 for hall, diaspora produces hybrid cultural identities continuously "producing and reproducing themselves anew" through influences from the homeland and host land.29 hence, the diaspora does not essentialize caribbean identities by claiming that caribbean people retain an inherent african-ness at their core; instead, diaspora takes seriously that migration fundamentally alters our identity and worldview. reading the contemporary caribbean through the concept of diaspora sheds light on the fact that caribbeans with lineage to africa or asia are not indigenous to the caribbean, nor are they indigenous to africa or asia. instead, due to 26 newton, “returns to a native land,” 119. 27 robin cohen, “diasporas and the nation-state: from victims to challengers,” international affairs 72, no. 3 (1996): 507. 28 stuart hall, “through the prism of an intellectual life,” in essential essays, volume 2: identity and diaspora, ed. david morley (durham: duke university press, 2018), 317. 29 stuart hall, “cultural identity and diaspora,” in the atlantic slave trade, they are diasporic people uniquely positioned between their homeland and host land. they cannot claim the host land as their own or return to an ancestral homeland. diaspora thus offers a means of understanding and communicating the differences between indigenous caribbean people and caribbeans with african or asian heritage. moreover, highlighting diaspora clarifies that not all those who moved to the caribbean during the colonial era were responsible for indigenous genocide. distinguishing between indigenous and diasporic caribbeans is critical to dispelling the myth of indigenous erasure. framing the caribbean population as diasporic opens the possibility of discussing the complexity of the histories of enslavement, including indigenous peoples’ historical and continued resistance to colonialism. taking up the language of diaspora alongside indigeneity creates a space for discussing the potential for collaboration between indigenous communities and diasporic caribbeans to decolonize the caribbean and end capitalist exploitation. furthermore, because diaspora challenges the rigidity of national borders, which often cut through indigenous lands, diaspora is a subversive tool that can call into question the authority of the nation-state to control land and define belonging. thinking through diaspora primes us to consider indigenous peoples' rights to land and self-government critically. like diaspora, entanglement helps call attention to the caribbean's colonial foundations and lasting impact on contemporary caribbean society. édouard glissant puts forward the idea of entanglement in caribbean discourse. recognizing the impossibility of returning to the homeland, glissant argues that caribbean people must “return to the point of entanglement, from which we were forcefully turned away.”30 the point of entanglement is, for glissant, the caribbean itself––its complex cultural and political history. glissant uses entanglement to describe the caribbean as a society formed through a mesh of indigenous, colonial discourse and post-colonial theory: a reader, ed. patrick williams and laura chrisman (abingdon: routledge, 2013), 401. 30 édouard glissant, caribbean discourse: selected essays, trans. j. michael dash. (charlottesville: university press of virginia, 1992), 25. caribbean quilt 2023 vol. 7 no. 1 130 african, asian, and european cultures, thoughts, and languages. as a lens through which to read the contemporary caribbean, entanglement foregrounds the region’s complex and violent colonial history. at the same time, entanglement produces beauty and creative potential, and therefore it can act as a guiding principle for imagining a future free of exploitation. entanglement is a rejection of the misconception that colonialism is a phenomenon of the past that has no bearing on contemporary society. suppose we return to the point of entanglement by drawing attention to the caribbean's complex histories. in that case, we will be better positioned to understand that indigenous peoples continue to be a vital part of the caribbean's entanglement. to say that the caribbean remains entangled is also to wrestle with the fact that indigenous and diasporic caribbean people can have conflicting needs and interests.31 taken together, diaspora and entanglement offer us a way of reconceptualizing caribbean histories without erasing indigenous communities’ historical and ongoing resistance to colonialism. v. conclusion in this essay, i have described the colonial tactic of claiming that indigenous peoples are absent or extinct. indigenous absence has persisted over time: scholarship on the caribbean, even at its most revolutionary, has reinforced the idea that indigenous peoples existed only before colonization and are irrelevant to present-day decolonial struggle. states continue invoking the myth of indigenous erasure, denying indigenous peoples' status and land rights to facilitate capitalist resource extraction. indigenous peoples, however, resist this neo-colonial oppression, often collaboratively. their projects to reclaim land intersects with climate justice because harmful extractivist practices are premised on indigenous dispossession. finally, i have suggested dismantling the myth of indigenous erasure by reframing the caribbean as a locale of diaspora and entanglement. shifting discourse on indigeneity is necessary because the myth of indigenous erasure continues to be taken up by states to justify dispossession; however, changing 31 newton, “returns to a native land,” 121. discourse only has limited effects on material and legal conflict. even if we eradicate the myth of indigenous erasure, land reform will remain rife with tensions. indigenous communities must still appeal to the state to respect their rights to land, engaging with the state on its terms. if, as hosein suggests, seeking recourse for indigenous oppression through global institutions operated by the global north, such as the un, reinscribes rather than dismantles colonial relations, we face the challenge of finding better solutions that call state power into question. though eradicating the myth of indigenous erasure is not a panacea for indigenous violence, it is essential for validating indigenous rights claims. it must be accompanied by localized, community-based justice projects that support indigenous sovereignty. caribbean quilt 2023 vol. 7 no. 1 131 bibiliography cohen, robin. 1996. “diasporas and the nation-state: from victims to challengers.” international affairs 72, no. 3: 507–520. https://doi.org/10.2307/2625554. glissant, édouard. 1992. caribbean discourse: selected essays, translated by j. michael dash. charlottesville: university press of virginia. hall, stuart. 2013. “cultural identity and diaspora” in colonial discourse and post-colonial theory: a reader, edited by patrick williams and laura chrisman. abingdon: routledge. hall, stuart. 2018. “through the prism of an intellectual life.” in essential essays, volume 2: identity and diaspora, edited by david morley. durham: duke university press. hosein, gabrielle. 2017. “indigenous geographies and caribbean feminisms.” stabroek news. https://www.stabroeknews.com/2017/04/10/features/indigenous-geographies-caribbean-feminisms/ lamming, george. 1992. the pleasures of exile. ann arbor: university of michigan press. newton, melanie j. 2013. “returns to a native land: indigeneity and decolonization in the anglophone caribbean.” small axe 41: 108–122. https://doi.org/10.1215/07990537-2323346. penados, filiberto, levi gahman, and shelda-jane smith. 2022. “land, race, and (slow) violence: indigenous resistance to racial capitalism and the coloniality of development in the caribbean.” geoforum: 1–11. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2022.07.004. pérez, beatriz felipe and alexandra tomaselli. 2021. “indigenous peoples and climate-induced relocation in latin america and the caribbean: managed retreat as a tool or a threat?” journal of environmental studies and sciences 11, no. 3: 352– 364. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13412-021-00693-2. smith, rose-ann j. and kevin rhiney. 2016. “climate (in)justice, vulnerability and livelihoods in the caribbean: the case of the indigenous caribs in northeastern st. vincent.” geoforum 73: 22–31. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2015.11.008. microsoft word dealmeida_numbered (1).docx caribbean quilt 2023 vol. 7 no. 1 100 the consequences of colonialism to the history and lives of the garifuna people of st. vincent maria fernanda de almeida centre for caribbean studies faculty of arts & science, university of toronto maria fernanda de almeida is a fourth-year undergraduate student at the university of toronto. she is pursuing a history & political science specialist degree and a minor in latin american and caribbean studies. in 2021, she received the uoft excellence award for continuing research at oise (the ontario institute for educational studies). maria's writing and research interests revolve around latin american and caribbean political history, especially the impact of colonialism and civil wars on contemporary politics. in september 2023, she will start her masters degree in global affairs at the munk school of global affairs and public policy. keywords: caribs colonialism national identity historical literature st. vincent garifuna indigenous yurumein abstract garifuna people have lived on the caribbean island of st. vincent for over 300 years. land ownership struggles, racism and discrimination and attempts at cultural erasure mark their history. this paper analyzes the relations and consequences of colonialism to the current status of the neglect of the garifuna of st. vincent. it argues that the arrival of spanish, french, and british to st. vincent influenced the genocide of caribs, the creation of stereotypes associated with their people, and the spread of academic literature based on false narratives of their stories. these consequences led to the current struggles that the garifuna face on the island and in their fight to rewrite historical memory and knowledge. finally, it is essential to recognize their progress in rebuilding an identity of self-recognition by restoring historical memory and demanding governmental recognition. the garifuna people's origin and culture date back to 1635 on st. vincent. at that time, two ships carrying enslaved africans to the west indies were shipwrecked near the island. its survivors formed alliances with the indigenous people and established themselves there. hence, the garifuna, also known as the black caribs, developed their ancestral culture and heritage through the union of africans, arawaks, and caribbeans throughout the centuries. they caribbean quilt journal homepage: https://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/cquilt/index caribbean quilt 2023 vol. 7 no. 1 101 lived peacefully until the 18th century when the british and french started to dispute control of the island for economic gains and attack the people. consequently, three wars happened in the region: the seven years' war, and the first and second caribbean wars, which impacted the future of the black caribs in the territory and overseas.1. more importantly, the period was marked by the british and the french's historical characterization of the garifuna—with negative stereotypes and connotations—still associated with them today. little academic research challenges the false historical narrative created by the colonizers and aims to tell the true story from the garifuna point of view. therefore, this essay argues that colonialism caused the status of social neglect, discrimination, and cultural loss that the garifuna experience. the arrival of spanish, french, and british to st. vincent influenced the genocide of caribs, the creation of stereotypes associated with their people, and the spread of academic literature based on false narratives of their stories. these consequences led to the current struggles that the garifuna face on the island and in their fight to rewrite historical memory and knowledge. the social and economic realities of the black caribs of st. vincent have their roots in the arrival of the europeans and the conflicts they initiated for colonial interests. enslaved africans who had survived the sinking of two spanish ships in the 1600s became the first non-american group to settle on the island. they were also the first and foremost group to resist european colonizers during the next century. the region became a site of british and french disputes for control until 1763 when england gained power through the treaty of paris. however, more disagreements emerged. 1julie chun kim, “the caribs of st. vincent and indigenous resistance during the age of revolutions,” early american studies: an interdisciplinary journal 11, no. 1 (2013): pp. 118-129. 2 kim, “the caribs of st. vincent and indigenous resistance,” p. 127-9. 3 kim, “the caribs of st. vincent and indigenous resistance,” p. 130-2. 4 adrian fraser, “revisiting the carib story,” caribbean between 1772 and 1773, the british were forced to retreat due to the first caribbean war.2 taking advantage of the situation, in 1779, with support from the natives, france once again occupied the area. only in 1783, with the treaty of versailles, the british regained authority over the island. unsatisfied with external control, the inhabitants fought the british again during the second caribbean war in 1795. the close contact with europeans and their limitation on social welfare and access to medication caused many caribs to die from starvation, distress, and epidemic diseases, such as yellow fever, that disseminated the population.3 this time, a year later, the vincentians were forced to surrender. the survivors were deported and sent to the island of baliceaux, where many perished. eventually, they were allowed to return to live under english colonial rule, except for the black caribs, who were sent away to the roatán island on the coast of honduras. this forced migration led to the spread of the caribs to central america.45 moreover, since colonizers' contact with st. vincent began, the garifuna people have been a target group. the second carib war gave rise to the debate on the morality of owning land and enslavement, which forced the british to create justifications for their forced acquisition of garifuna land. they appropriated columbus's characterization of caribs as cannibals and spread narratives of their hostility and illegitimate right to the territory.6 the term "carib" was created by the spanish to differentiate the indigenous groups (red caribs) from the african descendants (black caribs). it was mainly a way to alienate the latter and portray them with negative associations, terms, and narratives. for instance, kim writes that william young's an account quarterly 60, no. 2 (2014): pp. 57. 5 taylor e. mack, “cultural maladaptation and preadaptation in colonial honduras: spaniards vs black caribs, 1787-1821,” journal of latin american geography 10, no. 2 (2011): pp. 189. 6 julie chun kim, “natural histories of indigenous resistance: alexander anderson and the caribs of st. vincent,” the eighteenth century 55, no. 2-3 (2014): p. 220. caribbean quilt 2023 vol. 7 no. 1 102 of the black caribs in the island of st. vincent's (1795) was the first to use the black-red terminology. the british continued to use this characterization as an ideological strategy to satisfy the conquest of the land.7 nevertheless, the relationship between africans and amerindians strengthened during the first colonial years as slaves who successfully ran away from the english sugar plantations joined the indigenous communities. this impacted the decision of natives to also adopt the term carib as a form of european resistance.8 although the two groups were allies, history purposely separated and differentiated them to continue a narrative that explained the enslavement and land possession of the black caribs. thus, the historical, social, and cultural genocide of the garifuna started by the european in colonial times. their economic interest in developing sugar plantations and continuing slavery caused them to target the garifuna and influence history writing according to their financial interests. furthermore, these narratives impacted the literature on the history of the garifuna for centuries. only contemporary scholars started to challenge and rewrite them as they pointed out the biases in historical accounts. in 1789, the botanist alexander anderson wrote on the effects of the seven years' war in st. vincent and how the caribs were responsible for the destruction of architecture, british plantations, and the country's flora. he called them "infernal banditti" since they prevented him from completing his work.9 his accounts of the physical and mental effects that the massacres and the deportation caused on the black caribs during the caribbean wars were justified by the logic that if they were to be on the island, war and destruction would continue. 10 another work with the primary 7 kim, “natural histories of indigenous resistance,” p. 222. 8 kim, “natural histories of indigenous resistance,” p. 221. 9 kim, “natural histories of indigenous resistance,” p. 217-8. 10 kim, “natural histories of indigenous resistance,” p. historical influence on the carib's history is charles shephard's reports from the european point of view. he dedicated his piece to "the survivors of the carib war," which, to him, were only the planters and soldiers. 11 hence, it includes stereotyped accusations against caribs, such as allegations of cannibalism, which would influence future academic and research work and historical knowledge. many still go back to these accounts instead of searching for contemporary literature, critics hulme.12 in addition, the main historical consequence is the creation of the term black carib and the negative association it gave to the people within society. as mentioned, the name was created by spanish explorers, who divided the peoples they encountered in the caribbean into the two groups of arawak and carib to distinguish friendly from hostile natives. any hostile groups were deemed carib and portrayed as cannibals.13 in the eighth century, the british started naming the african descendants (their enemies) as black caribs since they were viewed as ethnically different from the original inhabitants of st vincent. in contrast, the aboriginals were called red or yellow caribs. the terminology was first encountered in british reports focused on appropriating lands. hence, the term black negatively references aggressiveness.14 young's accounts have also influenced later versions and reports in identifying the population as predominantly african descendants of black caribs. he tells the story that the red caribs were the first to inhabit the island until the arrival of fugitive slaves from bequia in 1675. the latter would become enslaved people for the indigenous communities. these enslaved people, however, belonged to a hostile tribe and eventually killed all the men and kidnapped the women, which explained the 218. 11 fraser, “revisiting the carib story,” p. 55-6. 12 fraser, “revisiting the carib story,” p. 55-6. 13 kim, “the caribs of st. vincent and indigenous resistance,” p. 121-22. 14 kim, “the caribs of st. vincent and indigenous resistance,” p. 122. caribbean quilt 2023 vol. 7 no. 1 103 significantly low number of red caribs by the time the british arrived in 1763. young's book was dedicated to an english colony agent who was responsible for controlling the deportation of garifuna from st. vincent. hence, elsa goveia describes his work as a "piece of settler history."15 these narratives not only deemed the garifuna of st. vincent as enemies but also as mere african interlopes who had no right to the island. in other words, it was a convenient fiction to attack anti-british oppositions as they inhabited the most fertile lands.16 fraser points out that there has been no "comprehensive retelling of the true story,", especially on the history of all caribs and their roles in the second carib war.17 in 1973, scholar bernard marshall pointed out that after 200 years of the war, the main work of reference was still dated back to 1795, a biased and unexamined account.18 later in 2005, peter hulme argued that the only stories being questioned and analyzed were of those british planters and allies, which revolved around the reasoning of white men's burden. it was a historical truth that had never been challenged. it was in the mid-20th century that a new academic trend emerged with intellectuals who included and considered indigenous sociological theorizing, which was a start to understanding the region and its movements of independence and wars and their national and postcolonial identities.1920 scholars who managed to stay truthful and objective faced hardships. for example, gullick wrote a "small" book on black caribs' cultural development during the 19th century and early 20th century. however, kerns criticizes his work as it lacks enough documentation and presents false statements on relations between caribs and 15 fraser, “revisiting the carib story,” p. 55. 16 kim, “the caribs of st. vincent and indigenous resistance,” 122-23. 17 fraser, “revisiting the carib story,” p. 53-4. 18 fraser, “revisiting the carib story,” p. 53-4. 19 rhoda reddock, “radical caribbean social thought: race, class identity and the postcolonial nation,” current sociology 62, no. 4 (2014): pp. 505-7. 20 kim, “the caribs of st. vincent and indigenous europeans.21 also, frederick ober's camps in the caribbees, written in the 1880s, focuses on the lives of those who remained on the island and were not exiled—becoming a minority in their homeland. it is a central piece of research; however, the book was written when the caribs suffered significant discrimination from society, and many denied their ancestry; hence it is also an incomplete work.22 contemporary scholars are the ones who obtained success in accounting and writing from the carib's perspectives. hulme is a contributor to the retelling of these stories. his work focuses on european accounts of those who lived closer and with more contact with the vincentians, which makes their statements more accurate. his main study discusses the perspectives of french soldiers who militarily trained caribs. more specifically, emmanuel-francois, marquis de lambertye, who was part of the french antilles service in the 1750s and alexandre moreau de jonnes, whose memoir of his career as a soldier was published in 1858. scholars have mostly ignored their writings.23 other disregarded reports are from french missionaries. although they have biases, they help balance and open the narratives for different interpretations as they all present diverse relationships with the black caribs. fraser points out that the french in the 18th century enjoyed close contact with the garifuna as they lived among them, traded and provided military aid as opposed to the british, who had a more "antagonistic" contact heavily focused on the acquisition of lands and slavery.24 however, sociologist paget henry says there is still significant reliance on western literature that has historically compromised and resistance,” p. 121-22. 21 virginia kerns, “exiled from st. vincent: the development of black carib culture in central america up to 1945 . c. j. m. r. gullick.,” american anthropologist 80, no. 2 (1978): pp. 434. 22 kim, “the caribs of st. vincent and indigenous resistance,” p. 121-22. 23 fraser, “revisiting the carib story,” p. 55-6. 24 fraser, “revisiting the carib story,” p. 57. caribbean quilt 2023 vol. 7 no. 1 104 excluded pillars of the caribbean theory and the absence of ongoing feedback on the regional intellectual tradition.25 recent scholarship by melanie newton and brooke newman was the first to emphasize the story of the indigenous side of the carib wars and the importance of race and indigenous land claims. this analysis is still new and lacks contributions.26 this lack of knowledge in history might be unknown worldwide, but not for the caribs. on his research trip to st vincent, twinn writes that people know the historical lies. as one interviewee said: "even that story about columbus coming here, doctor fraser proved that he couldn't have done that. he was in spain, so how come he discovered st. vincent? they have been telling us lies for years." there was a general agreement that they had a history of bias, and people did not care to correct it.27 therefore, to gather the historical truth, it is essential to understand the caribs' history and perspectives from both sides: from them and the europeans. these mythologies of division and origin influenced british views on carib/kalinago racial classification, their access to rights, and their strong resistance to colonization. academic and historical literature significantly affects the development and creation of historical knowledge and consciousness and the formation of national identity. current research needs more resources to continue challenging false narratives and offer justice to the story of the caribs and the garifuna. 25 kerns, “exiled from st. vincent,” p. 494. 26 heather freund, “who should be treated ‘with every degree of humanity’? debating rights for planters, soldiers, and caribs/kalinago on st. vincent, 1763–1773,” atlantic studies 13, no. 1 (may 2015): pp. 127-8. 27 paul william twinn. "hegemony, carib history and historical consciousness in st. vincent." electronic thesis or diss., university college london (university of london), 2008, pp. 213-4. 28 keri vacanti brondo, “a garifuna homecoming: finally, although they managed to survive and maintain their culture alive, the garifuna people and their descendants overseas continue to suffer from these historical consequences and fight for historical, political, and social recognition and change. the 2014 documentary yurumein (homeland) by andrea leland demonstrates the reality of the black carib now in st. vincent and the lost contact with their american descendants. it shows the lives of the garifuna people on the island while interacting with caribs from honduras coming to visit their ancestor's land for the first time. a fusion of culture and customs occurs as the film shows interviews with the people. many say they are still affected by the cannibalism rumours. they are called "stupid, evil, warlike, ferocious, cannibal."28 the documentary also provides a story of the carib's history and their attempt to challenge european narratives and supremacy. it shows attempts to revive their culture and overseas linkage through their accounts of reclaiming historical knowledge and identity. those who live on the island also talk about how they lost knowledge of the garifuna language as many tried to negate their ancestral identity and lack of written knowledge to pass it on. it shows how history affected their relationship and proximity to their own culture. throughout the film, vincentians and catrachos connect through dance, music, food, and instruments to celebrate the future and remind others of the past.29 their long-lost exchange of knowledge denounces the importance of oral history and the impact of the written ones created by colonizers as both groups contrast in cultural cultural revival among the caribs of st. vincent, yurumein homeland: the caribs of st. vincent. produced and directed by andrea e. leland in conjunction with new day films. original music by andy palacio, rhodel castillo, and abuza. still photographs by kingsley roberts; edited by tom shepard, 2014.,” current anthropology 57, no. 2 (2016): pp. 244. 29 mark anderson, “yurumein (homeland): the caribs of st. vincent.” american anthropologist 116, no. 4 (2014): 860–61. caribbean quilt 2023 vol. 7 no. 1 105 proximity.30 the documentary closes by exposing the current struggles to rebuild history. the island of balliceaux, where they were planning to build a memorial for the dead caribs in the war, is for sale, demonstrating the current land dispossession black caribs continue to encounter.31 besides, smith and rhiney’s study points out that carib communities are still isolated and vulnerable to struggles like climate conditions. the study analyzes the impact of climate hazards on indigenous carib communities on the island. extreme weather, such as hurricanes, impacts their livelihood activities, especially in farming communities, for example, the hurricane thomas in 2001. the authors explain that the causes of this vulnerability are rooted in historical economic neglect and political marginalization of these communities that live within lower social and economic conditions and vulnerable geographic locations that depend heavily on agriculture to survive. scholars argue that despite being the region that contributed less to greenhouse emissions, caribbean countries were early impacted due to their small geographical size, high concentration of settlements and economic activities along low-lying coastal areas, and more.32 another example of their isolation on the island is the situation of public transportation. twinn gives the example that their public transport consists of small buses carrying less than 20 passengers. to go to georgetown, the biggest town on the island, caribs travelling from rural areas need to cross the rabacca dry river, a dangerous pathway that degenerates into a rock-strewn dirt track because of the lack of a bridge. drivers must cross via a shifting ford that can rapidly be transformed into a dangerous torrent 30 brondo, “a garifuna homecoming,” p. 244. 31 brondo, “a garifuna homecoming,” p. 244-5. 32 rose-ann j. smith and kevon rhiney, “climate (in)justice, vulnerability and livelihoods in the caribbean: the case of the indigenous caribs in northeastern st. vincent,” geoforum 73 (2016): pp.29-30. 33 twinn. "hegemony, carib history,” p. 188-9. following storms in the highlands. at one time, certainly in the early part of the twentieth century, there had been a footbridge over the river, and the failure of the government to build a new bridge capable of carrying traffic is seen as another instance of the caribs being treated as second-class citizens.33 thus, it also affects their identity as both vincentians and caribs, as anti-carib attitudes remain. nevertheless, one must acknowledge their success in surviving and maintaining their culture alive during several attempts of cultural genocide and the fight for social and political reforms. they managed to spread overseas. after being exiled from st. vincent, the black caribs migrated and spread across america; this phenomenon is due to cultural preadaptation and maladaptation that define their success and the spanish' failure in surviving in the trujillo region even though they arrived at the same time, for example.34 the carib population has one of the highest fertility levels in the world. crawford writes, "the central american black carib population has increased from fewer than 2,000 persons in 1800 to approximately 70,000 at present."35 in addition, different economic and political reasons made the caribs relocate on other temporal waves of migration. they went to places near honduras and later spread to haiti, benefiting from their french knowledge. some began migrating into the mosquitia, while most remained in the trujillo area.36 this constant reallocation enabled them to increase overseas contact and survive colonialism. the garifuna in st. vincent has sought to situate themselves as people who live, fight, and exude their mixed culture of arawak and black ancestry in a transnational 34 twinn, "hegemony, carib history,” p. 187. 35 m. h. crawford, “the anthropological genetics of the black caribs ‘garifuna’ of central america and the caribbean,” american journal of physical anthropology 26, no. s1 (1983): pp. 161. 36crawford, “the anthropological genetics of the black caribs,” p. 166. caribbean quilt 2023 vol. 7 no. 1 106 territory. efforts include the government's newly implemented reforms and policies to celebrate garifuna culture and indigenous national identity. for instance, it recognized chief joseph chatoyer as its first national hero and former garifuna leader during the caribbean wars. another example is the discontinuation of the "discovery day" celebrations in the 1990s and replacement with "indigenous peoples day.37 this festival has strengthened relationships between the island and other caribbean countries and groups. today, the official recognition of the garifuna as part of a cultural diversity that until a few years ago was denied by the indo-european mestizo nationalist discourse that prevailed in the region is a historic achievement. in 2001, unesco proclaimed garifuna culture as a masterpiece of the oral and intangible heritage of humanity and recognized st. vincent as the primary cultural site of their culture.38 although the roots and consequences of the past are still seen and lived by them, they continue to fight for a rightful space and rights in their ancestral home. in conclusion, the written history of the garifuna is heavily influenced by the european perspective and manipulated narratives. due to the consequences of colonialism—its exploitation of labour, massacre, deportation and spread of false stories—caused the garifuna of st. vincent to become a neglected population and lose contact with their culture. today they are trying to rebuild an identity of selfrecognition by restoring historical memory and demanding governmental recognition. however, their case is complex. they carry indigenous and african identities, which insert them into movements and struggles on transnational networks and narratives of belonging around indigenous and black or afro descendants' movements. 37 twinn, "hegemony, carib history.” 38 anderson, “yurumein (homeland),” p. 860-61. caribbean quilt 2023 vol. 7 no. 1 107 bibliography anderson, mark. “yurumein (homeland): the caribs of st. vincent.” american anthropologist 116, no. 4 (2014): 860–61. https://doi.org/10.1111/aman.12159. brondo, keri vacanti. “a garifuna homecoming: cultural revival among the caribs of st. vincentyurumein homeland: the caribs of st. vincent. produced and directed by andrea e. leland in conjunction with new day films. original music by andy palacio, rhodel castillo, and abuza. still photographs by kingsley roberts; edited by tom shepard, 2014.” current anthropology 57, no. 2 (2016): 244–45. https://doi.org/10.1086/685855. crawford, m. h. “the anthropological genetics of the black caribs ‘garifuna’ of central america and the caribbean.” american journal of physical anthropology 26, no. s1 (1983): 161–92. https://doi.org/10.1002/ajpa.1330260508. fraser, adrian. “revisiting the carib story.” caribbean quarterly 60, no. 2 (2014): 53–64. https://doi.org/10.1080/00086495.2014.11671888. freund, heather. “who should be treated ‘with every degree of humanity’? debating rights for planters, soldiers, and caribs/kalinago on st. vincent, 1763–1773.” atlantic studies 13, no. 1 (2015): 125–43. https://doi.org/10.1080/14788810.2015.1079450. kerns, virginia. ": exiled from st. vincent: the development of black carib culture in central america up to 1945. c. j. m. r. gullick." american anthropologist 80, no. 2 (1978): 433–34. https://doi.org/10.1525/aa.1978.80.2.02a00650. kim, julie chun. “natural histories of indigenous resistance: alexander anderson and the caribs of st. vincent.” the eighteenth century 55, no. 2-3 (2014): 217–33. https://doi.org/10.1353/ecy.2014.0023. kim, julie chun. “the caribs of st. vincent and indigenous resistance during the age of revolutions.” early american studies: an interdisciplinary journal 11, no. 1 (2013): 117–32. https://doi.org/10.1353/eam.2013.0007. mack, taylor e. “cultural maladaptation and preadaptation in colonial honduras: spaniards vs black caribs, 1787-1821.” journal of latin american geography 10, no. 2 (2011): 177–93. https://doi.org/10.1353/lag.2011.0051. reddock, rhoda. “radical caribbean social thought: race, class identity and the postcolonial nation.” current sociology 62, no. 4 (2014): 493–511. https://doi.org/10.1177/0011392114524507. smith, rose-ann j., and kevon rhiney. “climate (in)justice, vulnerability and livelihoods in the caribbean: the case of the indigenous caribs in northeastern st. vincent.” geoforum 73 (2016): 22–31. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2015.11.008. caribbean quilt 2023 vol. 7 no. 1 108 twinn, paul william. "hegemony, carib history and historical consciousness in st. vincent." electronic thesis or diss., university college london (university of london), 2008. http://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/1445178/. microsoft word bahadoor_racerelations_numbered.docx caribbean quilt 2023 vol. 7 no. 1 92 guyana’s racial politics: causes, issues, and its welcoming of western neocolonialism brittney bahadoor centre for caribbean studies faculty of arts & science, university of toronto brittney bahadoor is in her fourth and final year of her undergraduate degree, pursuing a bachelor of arts with a specialist in history and minor in caribbean studies at the university of toronto. her indo-caribbean heritage has spurred her love for caribbean history and instilled a desire to shed lights on the histories of the west indies that are so often overlooked, specifically guyana and trinidad post-emancipation. all of those interests culminated in her senior thesis for the department of history in which she researches the history of racial relations between afro and indo caribbeans in their migration to toronto. she has continuously been involved with the caribbean community on campus and is the incumbent president of the west indian students’ association (wisa). keywords: politics race relations neocolonialism history guyana abstract this paper discusses the history of ethnopolitics in guyana and how the racial divide between the two largest ethnic groups in the country—the indo-guyanese and afro-guyanese—not only fractured society but allowed for western superpowers to exert neocolonial influence. it explores the historical origins of race relations between the indians and africans in guyana from british colonization to the modern political era of the 1960s. it looks at how politics was utilized both as a unifying and dividing factor—dependent on the goals the political leaders sought. this article breaks down the ever-complicated political parties and their general history and discusses the causes of this political divide, both due to internal pressures and external forces. it also aims to show how the racial politics in guyana were orchestrated by both the united states and great britain as it occurred during the ushering in of the neocolonial era. it is built around the argument that the racial divide caused by the guyanese politics of the 1960s became the basis for the complicated modern-day race relations and the various causes. the goal is to essentially tell part of guyana's racial and political history in a way accessible to everyone. guyana is a country with such a deep history which is frequently obscured; this article aims to dissect just a portion of it, especially a part that has affected and continues to affect the population and diaspora even today. guyana is one of the most fascinating countries in the caribbean. it has been singled out in its unique culture and politics compared to other caribbean nations due to its ethnic population being highly different from the rest of the region. while the caribbean has been dubbed a cultural melting pot, some will inevitably clash with all these caribbean quilt journal homepage: https://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/cquilt/index caribbean quilt 2023 vol. 7 no. 1 93 different groups coming together. that was precisely the case between the indo and afro-guyanese in guyana. that racial clash caused the country to destabilize and created tensions still visible in modern-day life. guyanese politics in the 1960s created an environment where the tensions between the indo and afro-guyanese stretched to an all-time high and eventually collided. that era of ethnopolitics also shows how guyana became a product of western neocolonialism due to tampering by the united states of america and britain. this paper seeks to show just how those ethnopolitics affected society, the neocolonial impact of western global superpowers on guyana, and the aftermath left on guyanese society moving forward. as stated previously, guyana is an anomaly of a country. it is the only english-speaking country located in south america. however, it is tied to the caribbean due to the closeness of history and culture it shares with the other islands, mainly trinidad. it is a country that has so many natural resources, diverse peoples, and plenty of lands, yet it falls relatively low on many international indicators of civil and political freedoms.1 how did a country with so much potential fall apart so quickly? the history of guyana is very complex, especially when it comes to race relations between both the indians and africans. however, it needs to be discussed to understand how the tensions were built and why they were utilized within the political sphere. formerly known as british guiana, the country2 switched hands between all the major metropoles of the colonial era before being formally ceded to britain in 1831. under british rule, guyana saw the growth of the plantation and the institution of slavery. due to the immense amount of fertile land, guyana became one of the most prosperous sugar colonies, which meant it received an influx of enslaved africans. the system of slavery that developed within guyana was very similar to the system used within the united 1 lisa ann vasciannie, “electoral politics in guyana,” international election observation in the commonwealth caribbean, 2017, pp. 129-154, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-590691_5, 129. 2guyana was formerly three separate colonies: berbice, demerara, and essequibo but britain combined them into british guyana when the land was ceded. 3 joseph b. landis (university microfilms, 0ad), pp. 1-424, 16. 4 ibid. states of america.3 that system ensured that the enslaved were viewed as less than people, meaning they could not marry, hold familial relations, or do anything while under their master. this contrasts with the rest of the south american colonies under spanish and portuguese rules in which the enslaved could have some autonomy.4 when britain outlawed slavery in 1834, the plantocracy wanted to ensure the sugar industry remained profitable. this, without surprise, did not work, as it was still equated to slavery and caused many issues with the formerly enslaved—many complained it was worse than slavery,5 and was ended after four years. apprenticeship caused much backlash, yet the british still needed to find a way to continue the sugar industry once again. thus came the implementation of indentured servitude in the british caribbean colonies. in may 1838, the first ship from indian carrying indentured labourers arrived in guyana. indentured servitude is contracted labour under a person or group for a certain period. often it was a contract of five to ten years, with a meagre payment in return—25-45 cents per day, depending on the type of work.6 when the contract was made, the indians were offered the choice of returning to india or staying in guyana, where they would be given some land in return for starting their lives there. many of the indian indentured workers stayed after their contracts were finished. the indentureship scheme lasted until 1917 when the british also outlawed it. in those 79 years, about 240,000 east indians came to guyana. 7 the island's population increased to about 150,000 by 1920, and the freed african population went from 10,000 in 1833 to 95,000 by 1940.8 when the institution of slavery and indentureship had both been outlawed, there were now two dominant ethnic groups within guyana—indians and africans. approximately half the population was indian, a third or so african, 5 cheddi jagan, “indo-caribbean political leadership,” in indenture & exile: the indo-caribbean experience, ed. frank birbalsingh (toronto, on: tsar, 1989), pp. 14-25, 15. 6 ibid., 16. 7 ann marie bissessar, “race and politics in guyana,” in ethnic conflict in developing societies trinidad and tobago, guyana, fiji, and suriname (cham: springer international publishing, 2018), pp. 43-71, 46. 8 ibid., 47. caribbean quilt 2023 vol. 7 no. 1 94 and the rest were the others.9 the issue then arose about racial tensions, with the two dominant groups being people of colour and the european plantocracy. to avoid any rebellions and uprisings by the two groups, the european plantocracy pit both groups against each other. this was done in two ways: unintentionally and intentionally. cultural retention was the first vital difference that caused resentment between the two groups. when brought over as enslaved, africans were stripped of their culture and forced to create something new. the east indians were allowed to bring religious customs, food, and practices from india into guyana. this began to stir resentment from the formerly enslaved africans as the british plantocracy encouraged the indians to uphold their culture as much as possible.10 the differential treatment and unequal burdens that the plantocracy demonstrated between both groups caused a heavy ethnic divide and tensions to stretch.11 all of this background is important in the narrative that frames the political discourse of guyana’s 1960s. there is an inextricable link between race and politics in guyana, and become the source of many electoral issues in years to come. 12 indentureship and slavery were still a recent memory to many afro and indo-guyanese, and many blamed the british government. due to the environment that colonialization built, the alienation of both groups and the overall social consequences provided the background for a cohesive mass-based national movement for independence.13 this was the creation of the peoples' progressive party (ppp). the party emerged in 1950 under the leadership of cheddi jagan, an indo-guyanese politician who was a socialist and multiethnic party. he brought forbes burnham, an afro-guyanese politician, as his second in command to raise african support for the party.14 with the leadership being two members of the two major ethnic groups in guyana, it looked like the masses were 9 joseph b. landis (university microfilms, 0ad), ph.d. thesis, yale university, pp. 1-424, 299. 10 andra p. thakur (national library of canada, 1973), ma thesis, university of alberta, pp. 1-144, 47. 11 cheddi jagan. “indo-caribbean political leadership,” 16. 12 vasciannie, “electoral politics in guyana,” 130. 13 ralph c gomez, “race, class, and politics in guyana: the role of the power elites,” the western journal of black studies, 1979, pp. 1-9, 3. going for a change. the creation of this political party can be seen as a form of colonial resistance on all fronts. universal suffrage was gained in guyana in 1951, allowing the masses to participate in an election without the direct control of the colonial government. the ppp was the first organized political party in guyana and presented a goal of self-government, economic and social development, and the development of a socialist state.15 however, this went against everything that britain wanted for the country. guyana was still a crown colony in 1950, only gaining independence in 1970. thus, it became a slap in the face to britain as guyana now had a mixed party with very anti-colonial goals. the party won the 1953 election, winning 18 of 24 seats in the new electoral system that had just been introduced after constitutional reforms. jagan, the new prime minister, introduced many policies intending to turn guyana into a socialist state—that stance it held made britain extremely uneasy, causing the metropole to intervene shortly after. britain suspended the guyanese constitution, removed all the ppp elects in the house, and sent in military troops to ensure no backlash.16 this effort by britain caused the ppp to split into two factions—the jaganites under cheddi jagan and the burnhamites under forbes burnham. this eventually turned into jagan keeping his faction known as the ppp and burnham creating his party known as the peoples national congress (pnc) at the time of the 1957 election. as stated previously, both jagan and burnham were founding members of the ppp, meaning both were still socialist parties. the difference was that the ppp was heavy marxists, and the pnc was more of a moderate socialist party.17 however, the main difference between the ppp and the pnc was race. the split was not race-based—jagan and 14 stacey-ann wilson, “guyana the uncooperative republic,” in politics of identity in small plural societies: guyana, the fiji islands, and trinidad and tobago (new york, ny: palgrave macmillan, 2016), pp. 75-97, 79. 15 andra p. thakur (national library of canada, 1973), pp. 1144, 65. 16 stacey-ann wilson, “guyana the uncooperative republic,” 79. 17 ibid. caribbean quilt 2023 vol. 7 no. 1 95 burnham were the two prominent men leading the party, so it was natural that the split happened that way. however, a census taken during the 1957 election showed that over 90% of registered indo-guyanese voters voted for cheddi jagan's ppp, and over 90% of afro-guyanese voters voted for forbes burnham's pnc.18 this became the ongoing pattern for any electoral politics in the years following. both parties lost the support of the other races in the years following. while the split was not forcefully race-based, the result of the indian versus african guyanese factions became the primary issue. the brief moment of unity that both groups shared was now replaced with the same negative perceptions each group held from colonial times.19 the fact that the pnc was almost exclusively african and the ppp almost exclusively indian became a significant aspect of burnham and jagan’s politics. this was the birth of guyana's infamous politics, in which race determines whom you vote for over any other factor. the first election after the split, 1961, was fought mainly on racial lines instead of a political ideology.20 jagan’s ppp won 42% of the popular vote and 20 of the 35 seats. the pnc won 41% percent of the popular vote and 11 seats. both parties won all their seats in areas that were majority indian or african. it became clear that the population voted for the party led by their ethnicity. this is ironic, to a degree, because both forbes burnham and cheddi jagan once worked together to unite the masses. however, the 1961 election created the opposite problem. following that election, the pnc began utilizing racial tensions as their primary campaign strategy under the direction of forbes burnham. the 1964 election was deemed one of the messiest elections in guyanese history, as this was the first election in which both the ppp and pnc told the people to ‘vote for their own.’21 the ppp used the strategy of telling all the indian voters to vote for "apan jhatt" or their own kind.22 18 joseph b. landis (university microfilms, 0ad), pp. 1-424, 2. 19 stacey-ann wilson, “guyana the uncooperative republic,” 78. 20 joseph b. landis (university microfilms, 0ad), pp. 1-424, 171. 21 stacey-ann wilson, “guyana the uncooperative republic,” 81. 22 ibid. the pnc favoured a campaign which compared the indoguyanese and their values to white supremacy, intending to wipe out afro-guyanese culture.23 while these are only two examples of racial polarization, they caused hostile feelings, including riots that destroyed businesses and villages and harassment of both groups in guyana. this strategy now became the set basis for all guyanese elections moving forwards. additionally, the significance of the split vote in racial blocs bled over into society. while jagan’s ppp won the most votes, forbes burnham’s pnc joined up with some smaller parties, including the united democrat party, to form a majority coalition and had control over the government. eventually, by 1967, the pnc and forbes burnham had won enough votes to become the majority government. it was under forbes burnham and his time as leader of the pnc that many ulterior motives for guyanese politics seemed to come into play. as mentioned, his party escalated the ongoing tensions between indians and africans and used that to his advantage. when burnham rose to power, he made several changes to how the government ran, which was highly authoritative and almost dictatorial. in particular, he passed legislation that allowed guyanese living abroad to vote in elections.24 this became a controversial action because the majority of guyanese who were living abroad were african.25 by passing this law, burnham continually tipped the results of his election in his favour. he also manipulated trade unions, introduced the patronage system for labour, and rigged referendums to create a new constitution. all of these aspects favoured afroguyanese over the indo-guyanese. the overseas vote caused immense controversy and garnered attention internationally, including that of the united states.26 while he did much more, as will be explained later on, there is another aspect to the racialized elections and 23 ibid., 88. 24 joseph b. landis (university microfilms, 0ad), pp. 1-424, 6. 25 ibid. 26nigel westmaas, “1968 and the social and political foundations and impact of the ‘new politics’ in guyana,” caribbean studies 37, no. 2 (2010): pp. 105-132, https://doi.org/10.1353/crb.2010.0003, 111. caribbean quilt 2023 vol. 7 no. 1 96 tensions in guyana that is often overlooked—the role of foreign governments. as stated previously, guyana was a country that had enormous wealth within it. to the british, the sugar industry. to the united states of america, offshore oil and minerals. thus, guyana was a country that attracted international attention. however, the rise of socialist politics in guyana in the 1900s coincided with the cold war era, in which both the united states and britain were thoroughly opposed to socialism or communism. cuba was already an issue enough, and the idea that guyana may become a communist country in south america posed an issue to western alliances and values. guyana gained independence in 1970 after burnham and the pnc rose to power. it was an implicit idea that the government which brought forth independence would continuously stay in power,27 and both the united states and britain knew this. the ppp was a unique party as it was the only socialist party in the caribbean and south america at the time. cheddi jagan's politics were more left-leaning, which, when he gained power, allowed him to make many decisions for guyana that aimed to benefit the country and people over anything else—he wanted to create a socialist state. an example would be the revival of the labour relations bill in 1963, which garnered significant attention from britain and the united states of america. the passing of this law was the beginning of britain's acknowledgement that guyana was straying from their intended idea of self-government and becoming too independent of their ideas.28 when the split occurred in 1957, both the pnc and ppp were socialist at the core, but one side was less left-leaning than the other—burnham's the more moderate while jagan was more marxist. the united states of america was aware of this and began subtly interfering with guyanese politics. in 1961, cheddi jagan made a trip to the united 27 stacey-ann wilson, “guyana the uncooperative republic,” 86. 28 andra p. thakur (national library of canada, 1973), pp. 1144, 65. 29 joseph b. landis (university microfilms, 0ad), pp. 1-424, 206. 30 ibid. 31 joseph b. landis (university microfilms, 0ad), pp. 1-424, 208. 32 "cia meddling led to race-based politics in states to meet with president kennedy, as guyana—at this point—was seen as a possible new valuable ally. however, during this trip, jagan made no effort to say anything critical about the soviet union or communism, causing kennedy to question jagan’s leadership qualifications.29 kennedy stated that “if we gave aid, there would be a 50 percent chance of his [jagan and his party] going communist, that, if we didn't there would be a 90 percent chance, and that we would all catch hell whatever we did.”30 however, in 1962 when forbes burnham visited washington, he was met with favourable reactions from the united states government as he presented himself as very anti-communist.31 forbes burnham and the pnc were the favourable options for the support of the united states. in 1964, the year of the 'messy' election, the racial tension reached a point where riots began. while i had already spoken on this earlier within this paper and how the split caused it, the riots were also caused by america's cia. according to a report by the financial times, the cia helped aid the race riots of 1964 to prevent jagan's ppp from winning the election in december of that year. the united states also sent aid to forbes and the pnc to help aid their campaigning and other strategies.32 all this was because the united states was nervous about guyana becoming a communist stronghold in south america once it gained independence. the british were not exempt from this either—they also met with burnham and several political opponents of jagan to work on unseating him at the next election.33 because guyana was not an independent country at the time of the election of 1964, the united states and britain still held power to intervene. the united states was able to because both jagan and burnham came to washington and met with the kennedy administration to discuss the future of guyana. britain still held power because it was still the guyana." ft.com (jun 10, 2015). http://myaccess.library.utoronto.ca/login?qurl=https%3a%2f%2fwww.proquest. com%2ftrade-journals%2fcia-meddling-led-race-based-politics-guyana%2fdocview%2f1695302165%2fse-2%3faccountid%3d14771. 33 perry mars, “ethnic politics, mediation, and conflict resolution: the guyana experience,” journal of peace research 38, no. 3 (2001): pp. 353-372, https://doi.org/10.1177/0022343301038003005, 358. caribbean quilt 2023 vol. 7 no. 1 97 metropole. due to this fact, guyana relied heavily on foreign governments to maintain some form of balance, which allowed both countries to directly interfere with the racial tensions in guyanese society and utilize them to change who the leader and party in power were.34 as britain had monopolized racial tensions during the colonial era, it was not a surprise that they did it again in guyana pre-independence by instigating the split of the original ppp party in the 1950s into an indian party and an african party. however, the united states of america and its tampering with the elections and race riots demonstrate the rise of western neocolonialism within the caribbean. since guyana held socialist values and was leaning into them and the potential under cheddi jagan and the ppp, it was unsurprising that the united states decided to play dirty politics in guyana. however, the united states ensured guyana would no longer achieve any of its potential by choosing to support forbes burnham to unseat jagan and the decision to fund race riots and burnham's authoritarian platform. this ensured u.s. dependence and ensured that the 'communist' values of the ppp would not return. history shows that the next twenty years that burnham and the pnc were in power were some of the most challenging years in guyanese history, especially for indians. it was the primary reason for the mass migration elsewhere.35 how race has been utilized in guyana from colonial to modern politics has not changed. it continues to be a significant aspect of who gets to advance based on your skin colour and what that entails. the political environment of the 1960s with cheddi jagan's peoples progressive party and forbes burnham's peoples national congress heightened racial tensions to the point where both the indians and the africans viewed the other as wrong. it also allowed the united states of america to utilize the racial tensions in a neocolonial way to ensure that guyana did not fall into communist hands. however, this all traces back to britain's hand-splitting of the original ppp. guyana was a country that had enormous potential with its natural resources and people. however, due to messy politics and foreign interference, it remains one of the poorest countries in the 34 andra p. thakur (national library of canada, 1973), pp. 1144, 108. caribbean, with some of the highest migration rates today. the impacts of racial politics are also heavily evident today in how afro and indo-guyanese view each other, even if they migrated out. 35 vasciannie, “electoral politics in guyana,” 134. caribbean quilt 2023 vol. 7 no. 1 98 bibliography bissessar, ann marie. “race and politics in guyana.” essay. in ethnic conflict in developing societies trinidad and tobago, guyana, fiji, and suriname, 43–71. cham: springer international publishing, 2018. "cia meddling led to race-based politics in guyana." ft.com (jun 10, 2015). http://myaccess.library.utoronto.ca/login?qurl=https%3a%2f%2fwww.proquest.com%2ftrade-journals%2fcia-meddling-led-race-basedpolitics-guyana%2fdocview%2f1695302165%2fse-2%3faccountid%3d14771. gomez, ralph c. “race, class, and politics in guyana: the role of the power elites.” the western journal of black studies, 1979, 1–9. jagan, cheddi. “indo-caribbean political leadership.” essay. in indenture & exile: the indo-caribbean experience, edited by frank birbal singh, 14–25. toronto, on: tsar, 1989. landis, joseph b. “race relations and politics in guyana.” ph.d. thesis, yale university, university microfilms, n.d. mars, perry. “ethnic politics, mediation, and conflict resolution: the guyana experience.” journal of peace research 38, no. 3 (2001): 353–72. https://doi.org/10.1177/0022343301038003005. thakur, andra p. “guyana: the politics of race and class, 1953-64.” ma thesis, university of alberta, national library of canada, 1973. vasciannie, lisa ann. “electoral politics in guyana.” international election observation in the commonwealth caribbean, 2017, 129–54. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-59069-1_5. westmaas, nigel. “1968 and the social and political foundations and impact of the ‘new politics’ in guyana.” caribbean studies 37, no. 2 (2010): 105–32. https://doi.org/10.1353/crb.2010.0003. wilson, stacey-ann. “guyana the uncooperative republic.” essay. in politics of identity in small plural societies: guyana, the fiji islands, and trinidad and tobago, 75–97. new york, ny: palgrave macmillan, 2016. microsoft word providence_blackfeminism_numbered.docx caribbean quilt 2023 vol. 7 no. 1 19 define and empower: black feminist discourse in a caribbean context kennedy-jude providence centre for caribbean studies faculty of arts & science, university of toronto kennedy providence is a 5th year student pursing a bachelor of science with a biology and health & disease double major, as well as a minor in caribbean studies at the university of toronto. having lived and grown up in the beautiful twin islands of trinidad and tobago, the diverse, shared history of the west indies has been an interest of hers for as long as she can remember. keywords: caribbean feminism women of colour anticolonial black feminism abstract in the global feminist forum, many women and women-identifying voices are forgotten and subsequently omitted. women of colour, specifically black women, are often left out of discourses due to the troubled history of feminism and its founders. in light of this, black women have frequently been forced to create narratives and discourses through art, music, resistance and scholarship. this discussion aims to highlight the progression of feminism over the years, beginning with its troubled past and recognizing the potential for its future while incorporating discussions of the reclamation or emergence of black caribbean feminism from the residual shackles of colonialism and the patriarchy. when feminist discourses are raised frequently, the more intimate and intricate conversations about the sexuality, history and identity of people of colour are omitted, forgotten or glazed over by the overpowering space occupied by its one-dimensional definition. this is not for lack of black, indigenous and other people of colour identifying as feminists or for failure to contribute to this global forum, but due to the dominating definition and widely accepted concept of feminism, historically excluding several voices of women and those who identify as female. the irony that confronted me is that, before embarking upon this project, i never considered myself a "feminist"; and certainly did not identify with the mental meaning carved out in my mind, not because i do not support women's rights or because i did not embrace my "female-ness," but because the ongoing narratives never quite felt like they applied to me or were about me or needed me. my first epiphany was that: there is not one perfect or finite model of feminism that can address and include everyone's ideals. again this is partly due to the origin of the movement being limited from conception by what the pioneering white women assumed to be and deemed to be 'all women's issues. in this essay, my objective is to highlight the progression of feminism over the years, beginning with its troubled past and caribbean quilt journal homepage: https://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/cquilt/index caribbean quilt 2023 vol. 7 no. 1 20 recognizing the potential for its future while incorporating discussions of the reclamation or emergence of black caribbean feminism from the residual shackles of colonialism and the patriarchy. i intend to supplement my argument by including demonstrations of feminism by black caribbean women, condemned and, i dare say, demonized by what i will call white feminism, the former described as unconventional, evidencing lingering colonial stereotypes that continue to plague the region to this day. there is no shortage of definitions for "the caribbean." from one geographical definition of a chain of islands and land, territories close in proximity to each other, with shores united by the caribbean sea (oxford dictionary), to a second historical definition that links the region's colonial past hand in hand with the political ideologies and governance frameworks that were constructed post-colonialism and abolition of slavery. however, a third geological definition states that the caribbean region comprises countries on the caribbean tectonic plate. all of the three definitions mentioned above provide broad descriptions of commonalities of "the caribbean'', which inadvertently exclude some countries and include others that may align with a definition though the country itself is not technically part of the region. in like manner, feminism and the global feminist movement offer multiple definitions and applications of feminism, which may appear inclusive at first glance but essentially omit people of colour. this patent omission has driven modern-day feminists to create multiple constructs that tangibly aim for inclusivity by factoring in race, ethnicity, socio/economic class, sexuality and sexual orientation, political alignment and immigrant status. from the movement's inception to 2021, there have been four documented waves of this crusade from which approximately six new strains of feminism emerged. the caribbean region is a multicultural melting pot, home to many different people, cultural traditions, and idiosyncratic ways of life. this demographic diversity has informed various political structures, experiments, social policies, and agents of change. feminism is one notable social initiative, partly nurtured within the region, but most scholarship only recognizes the colonial caribbean's role in implementing this movement. the journey of feminism in the caribbean has had many high and low tides, with two very notable milestones. the first is the recognized and accepted colonial pathway. worldwide, first-wave feminism had a relatively simple goal: have society recognize that women are humans, not property. though the leaders of first-wave feminism were abolitionists, their focus was premised upon "white" women's needs, white women's rights, and this exclusion would haunt feminism for years to come. (soken-huberty, 2021). the first wave gained traction in the late 19th century, where first-wave feminists and the scholarship that accompanied them frequently used slavery as a metaphor for the bondage of marriage and patriarchial control that white women felt. tracing the use of this analogy between the white woman's status within marriage and slavery began in french writings of the mid-seventeenth century, with scholars arguing that by the time of the french revolution, the white woman's subordination in marriage had become inextricably compared to objections to the institution of black slavery in the west indies and americas (rosenthal, 2018). for a deeper investigation into this association, jamie rosenthal investigates eliza fenwick, a prominent figure in the caribbean and european first-wave feminist movements. a divorced, british, single mother, fenwick resettled in the caribbean on the island of barbados, with hopes of improving her family's economic circumstances in 1814. (rosenthal, 2018). fenwick was considered a radical in england, as she was a vocal advocate for women's equality and the abolition of slavery. interestingly, after she moved to barbados, she directly subscribed to anti-abolition movements by owning her own slaves. though the manifesto of the first-wave feminist movement aimed to have society recognize that women are humans, not property, first-wave feminists contradicted their mandate and continued to treat black women as property and not as humans. fenwick continued to contribute to the first wave of feminism but revealed that she and many other first-wave feminists did not consider black women as real women, and caribbean quilt 2023 vol. 7 no. 1 21 even worse, they did not consider them worthy/deserving of their rights, equality and humanity. due in considerable measure to first-wave feminism being so well documented [due to the freedoms of some and not others], it can quickly be credited as the big bang of the feminist movement; however, this does not mean that the movement was devoid of feminist demonstrations by caribbean enslaved women. one chilling demonstration historically considered a dastardly act of defiance is infanticide, executed by enslaved mothers salvaging maternal instinct to extract their offspring from a wretched existence, boundless hopelessness. inexplicable or disturbing perhaps to anyone who cannot contemplate the anguish immortalized in the enslaved, but in the context of this analysis, the surest form of resistance in the story of the chattel-enslaved caribbean women as full, rational people who made calculated decisions with rebellion in mind (allain, 2014). initially classified as an act of non-insurrectionary resistance to the plantocracy, it also encompasses many elements of feminism, despite history's retelling of the events that prompted, preceded, and, i controversially suggest, offered a plausible justification. in short, enslaved caribbean women practiced infanticide and abortion to prevent, with absolute conviction, their children from ever becoming the direct property of white plantation owners or enduring any of the inhumanity of shackled servitude. sabina park, an enslaved jamaican who was brought to trial for killing her young child, claimed that she "had worked enough for buckra (master) already and that she would not be plagued to raise the child… to work for white people." (allain, 2014). park's story is not uncommon to the region, and records kept by planters that display the low birth and high infant death rates attest that infanticide was indeed a common occurrence in response to inhumane conditions of the plantocracy. not surprisingly, plantation owners and many white feminists condemned infanticide and would accuse slave women of procuring abortions to continue to have promiscuous sex unhindered by pregnancy (allain 2014). this, of course, functioned to bolster the claims of pro-slavery advocates that enslaved women were neglectful, evil, unfit mothers (allain, 2014). in reality, enslaved women were accepted to be two things in the plantocracy: both unconditionally: reproductive machines to increase property stock and sexual objects available to and for white enslavers. the plantocracy was founded upon and fueled by european wealth and greed, therefore, planters pursued any measure to reduce expenditure or increase earnings. they often did so by stripping enslaved women of their sexuality and denying them motherhood by kidnapping their children. (bush, 2010) children of the enslaved became the new enslaved, subjected to two fates, either being sold to another plantation or being forced to work under the same inhumane conditions as their enslaved mother. as heartless as it seemed, infanticide was a particular option that prevented children from being born into slavery and experiencing the horrible abuses of the plantation. the unbelievably difficult choice these women, enslaved or not, were forced to make is arguably the purest form of feminismdirect control of one's destiny as a woman. pure, unrefined feminism is resistance to not only the patriarchy but also to the plantocracy, constructed upon the importance of choice as a fundamental human right. the over-sexualization of the black enslaved female by their former masters was further extorted by white caribbean feminists using it as an avenue to demonize black women for being overtly sexual and promiscuous, without any acknowledgement of the plantocracy and the patriarchy's direct hand in this vicious cycle. this has fed and furthered the negative, residual, colonial and patriarchal sweeping stereotypes plaguing caribbean women today, painted as embattled sex in the form of concubinage, prostitution, asexual warriors, or hypersexuality, each working the intimacies that exist between invisibility and hypervisibility (rowley, 2010). today, black women are still eliminated or erased from feminist conversations while continually condemned for their sexuality and choices. the protection and cover of feminism fall short of extending to the black woman, whose feminist struggles stand in isolation and atonement for sins "she" did not commit. the developing story of caribbean quilt 2023 vol. 7 no. 1 22 black feminism does not discourage but inspires caribbean women to pursue unconventional feminism and modern-day demonstrations. caribbean feminists have been able to chart their course, create their definitions, and participate in their style of feminist discourse, often through scholarship, politics and artistic expression, most substantially manifest in music. looking closely at artistic expression, specifically music, the caribbean basin is brimming with genres, original works and world-class artists telling of the exploitation, the exclusion, and the ethos of who she is and why. jamaica dancehall artist and collaborator lady saw can be considered a prominent example of resisting colonialist, heteronormative, and patriarchal ideals through song and performance. the internationally recognized disc jockey and songstress, who has not only influenced but entered the arena to dominate the male-dominated caribbean music scene, is known outside of dancehall as marion hall and formally on the music scene as the proclaimed 'queen of dancehall.' in her signature "raw" style, lady saw has capitalized on these misdirected stereotypes and expectations attached to caribbean women while also manipulating the theme of the overly sexualized black, caribbean woman in her favour. hall speaks directly to the black caribbean working-class woman and challenges the patriarchy by recognizing and simultaneously exposing the blatant gendered double standards present in caribbean culture [and the global music world], but also achieves this by promoting the right to female sexuality. colonialism stained black female sexuality, allowing the world to look down on black women and black people who identify as female as overly sexual, promiscuous, lustful and sinful beings. saw represents the direct response, reclaims her sexuality, and helps other women of colour reclaim and recognize theirs by speaking openly about sex, sexual health and safety while calling attention to race, class and political issues these women face. alongside her liberal use of 'obscene' language and jamaican patois in her lyrics, her additional brazen use of feminized "bad" words in jamaican popular culture becomes a subversive reclamation of the contested power of the "bad" and the "vulgar" (cooper, 2004). lady saw has contributed to the more inclusive feminist discourse while being omitted from the popular western feminist conversation. helping women (cis or not) be more vocal and confident about owning their sexuality and guiding them to realize that everyone is entitled to their sexuality and place in the world. the singer, paradoxically an unsung heroine herself, lady saw, would have satisfied the criteria to be declared a notable caribbean feminist contributor. on a similar note, when looking at black caribbean contributions to accepted feminist scholarship, another contributor that is widely revered is audre lorde. undoubtedly, audre lorde's voice is central to the development of contemporary feminist theory, as this black, lesbian feminist poet is at the cutting edge of consciousness. (lorde, 1984) lorde, a new york native born to caribbean parents, has dedicated her life to including black women, poor women and black lgbtqia+ people in widely accepted feminist conversations and scholarship. despite being a highly acclaimed academic, she has witnessed and faced the deliberate exclusion and erasure of black voices from ongoing conversations of feminism. it is a particular academic arrogance to assume any discussion of feminist theory without examining our many differences and without significant input from poor women, black and third world women, and lesbians (lorde, 1984). a significant incident occurred when she was asked to speak at a conference for the new york university's institute for humanities. despite her status, the organizers failed to prepare the panel for the contributions of black women and lesbians in a country where racism, sexism, and homophobia are inseparable (lorde, 1984). additionally, there was a failure to add more than one opportunity for these voices to contribute, as one sole panel allowed black women, lesbians and people who identify as women to discuss their issues. thereby once again, assuming lesbian and black women have nothing to say about existentialism, the erotic, women's culture and silence, developing feminist theory, or heterosexuality and power (lorde, 1984). lorde's forcible inclusion through poetry and writing has helped shape feminist thought by commenting on the tools of racist patriarchy that have been used over time to examine the fruits of that same patriarchy. (lorde, 1984) caribbean quilt 2023 vol. 7 no. 1 23 lorde's freedom to publish accessible feminist scholarship is a direct form of writing back to the plantocracy, the patriarchy and harmful colonial first-wave feminism, as it reclaims black women's rights in developing feminist discourse. in closing, far from being one dimensional, feminism casts a wide net and should transcend more sectors, with the indigenous and black being key vulnerable and under-represented constituencies as articulated above. it may be a point of contention that black enslaved women (such as sabina park), and modern free black women lady saw and audre lord can and should be recognized as black feminist icons sharing the same space, and the fact that their inclusion is considered potentially contentious speaks to the residual colonial pressures that stain the caribbean region and the world today. the caribbean region, by any definition of feminist inspiration, has spawned many female pioneers and leaders in all sectors. in recent years there have been 11 female heads of government for caribbean countries, where dominica was first in 1980, with the most recent being dame sandra mason, the newly appointed president of barbados, following their 2021 status of an island republic. expressive world-renowned female designers, athletes/ sportsmen/ sportswomen, dancers, craftsmen, writers, jurists, professionals and the like, the caribbean has produced a catchment of internationally renowned feminists, endowed with all the attributes to step and take their place in any discourse or definition, of any wave of feminism, old or new. the future of caribbean black feminism and intersectional, inclusive feminist discourses is auspicious. caribbean quilt 2023 vol. 7 no. 1 24 bibliography lady saw cuts loose: female fertility rituals in the dancehall. in sound clash: jamaican dancehall culture at large cooper, c. (2004). sound clash: jamaican dancehall culture at large. palgrave macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781403982605 sister outsider: lorde, audre. sister outsider: essays and speeches. crossing press, 1984. gendered realities: mohammed, patricia. gendered realities: essays in the caribbean feminist thought. university of the west indies press, 2002. rowley, michelle v. "whose time is it? gender and humanism in contemporary caribbean feminist advocacy." small axe: a journal of criticism, vol. 14, no. 1, duke university press, 2010, pp. 1–15, doi:10.1215/07990537-2009-040. gahman, levi, and tivia collins. "recognizing and undisciplining feminist geography in the caribbean." gender, place and culture: a journal of feminist geography, vol. 26, no. 7-9, routledge, 2019, pp. 988– 1000, doi:10.1080/0966369x.2018.1555519. rosenthal, jamie. “from radical feminist to caribbean slaveowner: eliza fenwick’s barbados letters.” eighteenth-century studies, vol. 52, no. 1, johns hopkins univ press, 2018, pp. 47–68, doi:10.1353/ecs.2018.0026. allain, j. m. (2014). "infanticide as slave resistance: evidence from barbados, jamaica, and saint-domingue." inquiries journal/student pulse, 6(04). retrieved from http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/a?id=893 bush, b. (2010). african caribbean slave mothers and children: traumas of dislocation and enslavement across the atlantic world. caribbean quarterly, 56(1-2), 69–94. https://doi.org/10.1080/00086495.2010.11672362 hepburn, k.-a. (2017, september 26). module 1: caribbean society and culture. jamaica gleaner. new feminist activism, waves and generations. (2021). un women discussion papers. https://doi.org/10.18356/25216112/40 oxford university press. (1992). the oxford dictionary. soken-huberty, e. (2021, february 28). types of feminism: the four waves. human rights careers. retrieved november 30, 2021, from https://www.humanrightscareers.com/issues/types-of-feminism-the-four-waves/. turner, s. (2011). home-grown slaves: women, reproduction, and the abolition of the slave trade, jamaica 1788-1807. journal of women's history, 23(3), 39–62. https://doi.org/10.1353/jowh.2011.0029 the power & limits of language: linguistic reclamation as a driver of taíno identity in borikén lucia faria 2t1 katholieke universiteit leuven faculty of social sciences, msc. international politics the story of the taíno people has been historically told from the narrative perspective of the dominant colonial viewpoint, which has been continuously employed as a tool to reinforce the idea of the taíno community’s “extinction” or nonexistence. this paper outlines the role of the taíno people as a key element within caribbean indigeneity and demonstrates the central ways in which taíno culture has been reinterpreted and carried forward in modernity. to this end, it assesses the lasting impact of language within the cultural landscape of taíno nationhood. a b s t r a c t keywords: borikén, language reclamation, taíno, jíbaro-borícua b i o lucia faria is a brazilian-american graduate student passionate about latin american affairs and politics, with a regional focus on the southern cone. she has a bachelor of arts from the university of toronto and is currently pursuing a master of science at the university of leuven in brussels, belgium. in her spare time, she writes opinion articles and commentary. © 2021 lucia faria caribbean studies students’ union, canada https://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/cquilt/ this work is licensed under the creative commons attributionsharealike 4.0 international license. to view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ 11 source: lorianne disabato, “taíno mural,” june 21, 2013. 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krog�wkh�dxwkrulw\�wr�pdnh�vxfk�ghflvlrqv�� 7kh�*hqhudo�&rxqflo�ri�7dtqr��*&7��� krzhyhu��kdv�pdgh�d�yhu\�fohdu�dujxphqw�� dq\wklqj�vdlg�lq�dq\�odqjxdjh�e\�d� 7dtqr�%rulfxd�shuvrq�fdq�eh�ghilqhg�dqg� ylhzhg�dv�7dtqr�%rulfxd�� ([whqvlyh�uhvhdufk�kdv�ehhq�ghyhorshg�rq� wkh�lpsdfw�ri�7dtqr�%rulfxd�dfwlylvp�rq� udfldol]lqj�uhjlphv�dqg�rq�qdwlrqdolvw� surmhfwv�wkurxjkrxw�3xhuwr�5lfr¶v�klvwru\�� +rzhyhu��wkhuh�kdv�ehhq�ohvv�irfxv�rq�wkh� ghilqlqj�idfwruv�lqyroyhg�lq�lghqwli\lqj� rqhvhoi�dv�sduw�ri�dq�hqwkqrudfldo�jurxs� wkdw�lv��lqfruuhfwo\��frqvlghuhg�wr�eh� qrqh[lvwhqw��)holfldqr�6dqwrv�kljkoljkwv�lq� khu�uhvhdufk�wkdw�rqh�ri�wkh�gulylqj� uhdvrqv�wkdw�prwlydwh�7dtqr�%rulfxd� dfwlylvwv�wr�hqjdjh�lq�surmhfwv�ri�odqjxdjh� uhylydo�lv�wkh�ghvluh�wr�h[sdqg�wkhlu� 2 3 4 5 6 1 2 3 4 5 6 (january 20, 2022 / 09:38:40) 122864-1b_caribbeanquilt_vol7_rev.pdf .12 13 arrom, juan jose. 2000. estudios de lexicología antillana. san juan: editorial de la universidad de puerto rico. makepeace, anne, dir. 2010. we still live here (âs nutayuneân). bullfrog films. ohifearn, tadhg. 2014. “sociolinguistic vitality of manx after extreme language shift: authenticity without traditional native speakers.” international journal of the sociology of language (2015), 47. granberry, julian, and gary vescelius. 2004. languages of the pre-columbian antilles. birmingham: university of alabama press, 20-24. feliciano-santos, sherina. “negotiation of ethnoracial configurations among puerto rican taíno activists.” ethnic and racial studies 42, no. 7 (2019), 1152. . 7 cultural understanding or connection to ancestors, as well as to develop the knowledge and information set required to gain recognition from the government and reclaim rights to sacred grounds. although many boricua groups regard the project of language revival to be a critical step in mobilizing activism and culture, the taíno case-study presents a unique set of challenges. scholars estimate that taíno was spoken as a native or mother-tongue language in puerto rico sometime around the 16th century. as such, there are limited linguistic resources and data from which to draw when analyzing attempts to reclaim the taíno language. furthermore, unlike other minority languages such as wôpanâak and manx, there are no bible translations, vocabulary databases, or legal documentation that could assist scholars in the reconstruction project. currently, the recorded documents that display vocabulary from the taíno language are scarce, but there are certain records that have been utilized in the process. for instance, there are sections transcribed in taíno in the early journals and chronicles from expeditions to the americas. since taíno was an arawakan language, as evidenced by linguistic research, other related arawakan languages have also been utilized to reconstruct pronunciation and phoneme aspects of the language. projects of language reconstruction, when devised with the intention of contemporary use, often become the podium for longstanding cultural debates between a variety of social actors. to this end, the reclamation of language and culture can be understood not only as an emblem of the associated group’s resilience and visibility, but also as a pathway to pragmatic realms such as government recognition or the reacquisition of sacred sites and land. however, although groups such as the gkt have indeed demonstrated a more pragmatic facet to taíno language reclamation efforts, it is different from other linguistic revival cases in that its main purpose is not contemporary use. feliciano-santos highlights that taíno language practices are not anchored in any set of expectations of what taíno should look or sound like. this is because while some taíno/boricua individuals do draw their conception of the language to the ways their ancestors spoke, others do not necessarily hold that same objective. for some individuals, speaking taíno is not about sounding or speaking in the same way as their ancestors, but instead about reconnecting to their conception of nationhood and of what it means to be taíno. as such, scholars note that language reclamation efforts are more concerned with progress and connections than they are with accuracy. here, activists are shown to raise several critical debates on the question of taínoness and on how to effectively create markers of continuity 8 9 10 11 7 8 9 10 11 (january 20, 2022 / 09:38:40) 122864-1b_caribbeanquilt_vol7_rev.pdf .13 14 ���)holfldqrဨ6dqwrv��6khulqd��³+rz�'r�<rx�6shdn�7dtqr"�,qgljhqrxv�$fwlylvp�dqg�/lqjxlvwlf�3udfwlfhv�lq�3xhuwr�5lfr�´� -rxuqdo�ri�/lqjxlvwlf�$qwkursrorj\�����qr�������������� ���5xpvh\��$odq��³:ruglqj��0hdqlqj��dqg�/lqjxlvwlf�,ghrorj\�´�$phulfdq�$qwkursrorjlvw���������������±���� ���)holfldqrဨ6dqwrv��6khulqd��³+rz�'r�<rx�6shdn�7dtqr"�,qgljhqrxv�$fwlylvp�dqg�/lqjxlvwlf�3udfwlfhv�lq�3xhuwr�5lfr�´� -rxuqdo�ri�/lqjxlvwlf�$qwkursrorj\�����qr�������������� 12 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122864-1b_caribbeanquilt_vol7_rev.pdf .14 15 ibid, 12. forte, manuel. 2006. the dual absences of extinction and marginality—what difference does an indigenous presence make? “indigenous resurgence in the contemporary caribbean: american indian survival”. new york, ny: peter lang. neeganagwedgin, erica. “rooted in the land: taíno identity, oral history and stories of reclamation in contemporary contexts.” alternative: an international journal of indigenous peoples 11, no. 4 (2015), 380. 15 visibility and reinforces its presence, creating a link between self-identification and language. this process is critical because it allows the taíno community to shift the framework of what it means to be taíno, and provides a pathway towards self-determination where community members obtain the space needed to develop their own decision making and their own self-identification. ultimately, language reclamation is seen as one of the avenues available to shift the balance of power towards minority groups and to allow them the voices and spaces needed to deconstruct the colonial narrative of the taíno community as “extinct”. if we apply this same conception to the language reclamation efforts of the general council of taíno (gct) group, another key connection between self-determination and language comes to the forefront. the gct has continuously criticized the formal or “textbook” format of the taíno language reconstruction project, due to their belief that speaking taíno is a spiritual manner. it is important to note that the gct is not against language reclamation efforts – instead, they argue towards a linguistic project that does not necessarily define orthographical or phonetic norms, and instead redefines the language within the context of culture. as such, their argument has shifted the debate on language reclamation from the realm of structure towards the sphere of cultural reconnection. here, they highlight the importance of language as a defining element of ideas, expression, and motives, rather than a normative structure. within the gct framework, each indigenous group has the voice to define what falls under the umbrella of their language. conclusion manuel forte posits that indigenous identities in the caribbean region are constantly being reproduced, rather than “invented”. if we apply his argument to the case of taínos in puerto rico, how one expresses taíno culture in 2020 will not be the same as in 1492. the taíno case-study of language reclamation demonstrates that how one expresses indigeneity is relational, and that the pathways utilized by communities to connect to the land and culture are constantly shifting. while the dominant colonial discourse is that taíno people are extinct, various communities in borikén prove otherwise. oral societies convey and document their culture and histories in a range of different ways, such as songs, crafts, dances, instruments, and constructions. although language reclamation efforts pose various challenges especially in terms of accessing documentation and debates around different definitions of nationhood – it also brings forward a critical step in reshaping the construction of what it means to be taíno. the experiences lived by communities such as the guaka-ku (gk), the liga guakía taínaké (lgtk), the movimiento indígena jíbaro boricua (mijb), as well as several others, provide critical insights on the intricate accomplishments and challenges of language reclamation efforts 16 17 15 16 17 (january 20, 2022 / 09:38:40) 122864-1b_caribbeanquilt_vol7_rev.pdf .15 16 ���.luwlnolv��.ċ���0dqxho�&dvwhoov¶�7khru\�ri�,qirupdwlrq�6rflhw\�dv�0hgld�7khru\���/lqjxd�3rvqdqlhqvlv�����qr������������ ��� 18 lq�%rulnpq��%\�hpsor\lqj�wkh�yrfdexodu\� dqg�h[suhvvlrqv�ri�wkhlu�fxowxuh��wkh�7dtqr� shrsoh�frqwlqxh�wr�vkduh�wkhlu�frqqhfwlrq� wr�qdwlrqkrrg�dqg�wudglwlrq�wkurxjk� ydulrxv�wrrov��$v�vxfk��wkurxjk�wkh�hiiruwv� 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.luwlnolv��.ċ���0dqxho�&dvwhoov¶�7khru\�ri�,qirupdwlrq�6rflhw\�dv�0hgld�7khru\���lingua posnaniensis ����qr������������������� 0dnhshdfh��$qqh��glu��������:h�6wloo�/lyh�+huh��æv�1xwd\xqhkq���%xooiurj�)lopv� 1hhjdqdjzhgjlq��(ulfd��³5rrwhg�lq�wkh�/dqg��7dtqr�,ghqwlw\��2udo�+lvwru\�dqg�6wrulhv� ����������ri�5hfodpdwlrq�lq�&rqwhpsrudu\�&rqwh[wv�´�$owhu1dwlyh��an international journal of indigenous peoples�����qr���������������±���� 2k,ihduq��7dgkj��³6rflrolqjxlvwlf�9lwdolw\�ri�0dq[�diwhu�([wuhph�/dqjxdjh�6kliw�´� ����������,qwhuqdwlrqdo�-rxuqdo�ri�wkh�6rflrorj\�ri�/dqjxdjh�����������±��� 5xpvh\��$odq��³:ruglqj��0hdqlqj��dqg�/lqjxlvwlf�,ghrorj\�´�$phulfdq�$qwkursrorjlvw� ������������������������±���� works cited (january 20, 2022 / 09:38:40) 122864-1b_caribbeanquilt_vol7_rev.pdf .17 democratic socialism a solution to colonial tourism structures kennedy-jude providence university of toronto fas biology and health and disease/caribbean studies the caribbean’s environmental diversity and tourism products have been a longstanding source of income leading many to argue that the detriments of tourism outweigh its beneficial, economic effects. however, as the covid-19 pandemic changed the course of traveland by extension, tourism, countries have been forced to re-evaluate travel structures, means of income and longstanding clientelist relationships with their north american neighbours. in this commentary, i discuss the socio economic effect of the covid-19 pandemic on tourismin the context of jamaica; as well as the possibility of re-engineering democratic socialism for implementation in the post-pandemic environment as a way to psychologically decolonize the region and alleviate the potentially lingering, devastating effects of the pandemic. furthermore, while there are other prevalent issues that threaten tourism and have plagued the region for years including and not limited to pollution, environmental degradation, climate change, crime and natural disasters, this analysis is simply intended to focus on identity, economy and the seemingly never-ending cycle of western imperialism threatening west indian identity. a b s t r a c t keywords: commentary, covid-19, continuity and change, jamaica, democratic socialism, clientelism b i o kennedy providence is a 4th year biology, and health and disease double major, also pursuing a minor in caribbean studies. having lived and grown up in the beautiful twin islands of trinidad and tobago, she studied the region’s history and culture all throughout her pre-tertiary academic career. © 2021 kennedy-jude providence caribbean studies students’ union, canada https://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/cquilt/ this work is licensed under the creative commons attributionsharealike 4.0 international license. to view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ 66 (january 20, 2022 / 09:38:43) 122864-1b_caribbeanquilt_vol7_rev.pdf .66 67 link to instagram textpost: https://www.instagram.com/p/ckwrfkkmse1/ burleigh, n. (2020, august 4). the caribbean dilemma. the new york times. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/04/travel/coronavirus-caribbean-vacations.html. 1 2 i first saw the quote “the caribbean is not a disneyland dumping ground for first world entitlement” in a february 1, 2021 instagram post explaining inter alia that, despite the ongoing catastrophic covid-19 pandemic, western hemispheric tourists, celebrities, and high-profile individuals continued to venture to the caribbean as it posed a ‘safer threat’ and was a ‘blissful escape’ from the tragedy and rigid safety restrictions and lockdowns then imposed within continental countries. if one were to peep outside of the destination resort however, it would be revealed that this fantastical sea, sand, sun as advertised did not avail itself to the majority of the islands’ local working-class population except of course, as staff. this is representative of the caribbean region’s residual neo-colonization and dependency on western wealth, welfare and clientelism. in this commentary, open to be disproven or modified by empirical data and statistics, i discuss the socioeconomic effect of the covid-19 pandemic on tourism as well as the possibility of re-engineering democratic socialism in the post-pandemic environment as a way to psychologically decolonize the region and alleviate the lingering, devastating effects of the pandemic. this research uses the context of jamaica as a case study as its prior democratic socialism reforms provide a baseline for future iterations and due to its current dependence on tourism as a primary industry. while the focal point of this paper is to consider a re-engineered democratic socialist framework as a solution to issues in tourism, it acknowledges but does not study other prevalent issues that threaten tourism and have plagued the region for years such as pollution, environmental degradation, climate change, the illicit war on drugs, crime and natural disasters. this analysis is simply intended to focus on identity, economy and the seemingly never-ending cycle of western imperialism threatening west indian identity. the covid-19 pandemic rendered the world stationary, remote, distanced, masked, and isolated: even in illness, even in death. in most countries, travel was heavily restricted, involving a face covering, quarantine and a negative result covid test upon arrival at a destination. for the majority of the world’s populations, the idea of travel became a structured privilege, reserved for essential services and priority personnel. despite the risks associated with aircraft travel, travel agencies, airlines and even some countries continued to advertise temptingly cheap flights and ‘escape’ deals. the fact is that many countries, especially small island developing states (sids), are dependent on international travel and the tourism industry accounts for substantial foreign income and exchange. nina burleigh of the new york times states in a december 2020 article, “tourism has always been a two-edged sword for the region. it brought money for some, but also brought corruption, environmental degradation and unchecked development.” having observed these trends emerging out of the covid-19 pandemic, burleigh’s “two-edged sword” became more apparent to me, as i witnessed sids, with varying 2 (january 20, 2022 / 09:38:43) 122864-1b_caribbeanquilt_vol7_rev.pdf .67 68 cross mike, solange. “effects of covid-19 on trinidad and tobago.” diplo.edu. accessed may 4, 2021. h ttps://www.diplomacy.edu/blog/first-month-covid-trinidad-and-tobago. better banking policies needed to blunt covid-19 impacts in latin america and caribbean.” iadb. accessed july 2021. https://www.iadb.org/en/news/better-banking-policies-needed-blunt-covid-19-impacts-latin-america-and-caribbean. d'souza, s. (2021, february 5). jamaica warns canada's caribbean flight ban will badly hurt island's economy | cbc news. cbcnews. https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/canada-travel-ban-covid19-caribbean-jamacia-1.5901495. 3 4 degrees of dependency on tourism battle the extensive pros and cons of opening their borders to international tourists and preventing their economic collapse or stagnation. the massive risk of island-wide tragedy, and the inability to withstand a viral outbreak that would further stagger the opening of the tourism industry, is a real threat. it is interesting to note that, even those caribbean states for which economies are not solely dependent on tourism, similar challenges were faced. for instance, “before the crisis, trinidad and tobago were experiencing an economic downturn from the external collapse of commodity prices of their main revenue sources (natural gas and oil) as tensions between russia and saudi arabia contributed to a fall in prices…[however], [trinidad and tobago] will also be hit by the disruption of earnings in the tourism sector as this is one of the primary sectors in tobago.” similar challenges were faced in jurisdictions with a joint dependency on tourism and banking. since the abolition of slavery, and the plantocracy, the caribbean has been stuck in a never-ending ‘tug-of-war’ with the western hemisphere regarding its economic autonomy; post-colonial, novel modes of capital control and neo-colonization were introduced and disguised under the pseudonyms of clientelism and industrialization by invitation. the tourism industry has been heavily fuelled by these frameworks, as foreign compacompanies would permissibly ‘invade’ the homes of caribbean locals with gargantuan cruise ships and massive, all-inclusive resorts. oftentimes, the economic benefits of these attractions outweighed the detrimental effects to the environment and to the locals, as a flourishing tourism industry can help combat unemployment, with job opportunities and revenue streams of foreign exchange. however, the pandemic forced sids like jamaica to (temporarily) shelve the sea, sand and sun package and close international borders, in efforts to protect their populations from detrimental outcomes caused by the movement of people. with little to no international tourists, local stay-at-home orders and public health regulations, the inevitable closure of the public and parts of the private sector, left all the people who staffed these institutions, jobless and dependent on the government for support. according to cbc news canada, jamaica lost approximately $508 million us dollars in revenue, last year due to the pandemic . continuing along this train of thought, with the government dependent on tourism for revenue, the unemployed labour force dependent on the government, and the pandemic wildly controlling the reigns of the economy, parallels arise, that mirror jamaica’s economic state in the latter half of the 20th century during former prime minister michael manley’s term in office. 5 3 4 5 (january 20, 2022 / 09:38:43) 122864-1b_caribbeanquilt_vol7_rev.pdf .68 69 brierley, j. s. (1985). a review of development strategies and programmes of the people's revolutionary government in grenada, 1979-83. the geographical journal, 151(1), 40. https://doi.org/10.2307/633276 6 however, before we consider the conditions that led to jamaica’s reforms in 1972-1980, it is important that we discuss the effects of ongoing international travel on the caribbean region, and in jamaica. slavery and the plantocracy were the birth of capitalism, as monetary values were placed on black bodies, stolen land from indigenous peoples and crops grown/ harvested. during these genocidal 400 years, european masters began introducing the rapid turnover of enslaved servants who were considered to be disadvantageous to business or who were compromised by illness, pregnancy or otherwise. most caribbean societal frameworks were built on the trans-atlantic slave trade and systems of colonialism. most of the caribbean working class are descendant populations, so it is not surprising that still today, workers are treated extremely unfairly and are considered to be expendable; a tangible reminder that the world has never been truly decolonized. going back to the quote, “the caribbean is not a disneyland dumping ground for first world entitlement,” despite efforts to combat the virus from the inside out (including and not limited to closing the borders temporarily and reducing activity within the public and private sectors) the aforementioned economic fallout forced jamaica to reconsider operating its tourism industry – often referred to as the panacea for the financial woes of many of the region's small islands. the issue with this, in the context of the pandemic and privilege, will be examined. re-opening the tourism sector requires the physical attendance of locals who staff these institutions, where the attendant risks if contracted, and without proper care and attention, could be fatal. for workers of the proletariat or working class, lockdowns and stay-at-home orders are either accompanied by lost earnings from staying away or increased exposure from attending to visitor needs – sometimes the choice is made for them or non-existent. whatever the perspective, if infection occurred workers are quickly replaced while families struggle economically and emotionally in the aftermath. most of the workers in this sector commute using public transport to the “luxury and safety” of the resort; thus, adding another level of potential risk of cluster infection. the privileges, protection and entitlement provided by wealth, in addition to relevant health care and a high quality of life, includes freedom to choose, which is sometimes at someone else’s detriment. the choice to escape the global north despite the most persuasive warnings and descend upon the tropics may have to be re-thought: “the caribbean is not a disneyland dumping ground for first world entitlement.” upon further reflection, i began to imagine a post-pandemic caribbean and ways in which this vulnerable period of recovery may be used to its advantage, as so many historic figures and revolutionaries have done before. michael manley introduced democratic socialism in jamaica during his elected term in office after a period of economic stagnancy plagued the island due to clientelist relationships 6 (january 20, 2022 / 09:38:43) 122864-1b_caribbeanquilt_vol7_rev.pdf .69 70 ambursley, fitzroy. "jamaica: the demise of' democratic socialism'." new left review 128 (1981): 76. astor, m. (2019, june 12). what is democratic socialism? whose version are we talking about? the new york times. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/12/us/politics/democratic-socialism-facts-history.html. 7 established with the jamaican bourgeoisie and the united states in the wake of independence from british colonial oversight and rule. to simplify, a clientelist relationship entails the receipt of political support in exchange for goods and services. on the heels of economic stagnation and a rapid decline in productivity following the fluctuations in the budding bauxite industry, manley adopted a democratic socialist mode of operation to help combat jamaica’s dependency, further liberate the newly enfranchised jamaican people, and nationalize the economy. though manley’s experiment has been extensively critiqued and has been deemed unsuccessful, fitzroy ambursley states in a 1981 article that “the ultimate weakness of the pnp was its failure to unite and mobilize the small peasants, farmworkers, urban wage-earners and casual labourers who comprise the overwhelming social and political majority of jamaican society,” i propose that if democratic socialism were to be applied to jamaica and possibly multiple sids in the wake of the covid-19 pandemic, these detrimental effects of foreign-economic and industry-specific dependency would be alleviated and possibly reduced completely in the future… broken…. as we aim to continue the decolonization of the region. democratic socialism aims for the working class to control the economy, and by extensionsociety through democracy; “this requires a long-term outlook... [as] theirs is a minority position. their goal is to convince a majority, [while] supporting many social-democratic policies.” in the likeness of prime minister manley, if 2021 jamaica were to adopt a democratic socialist framework after the pandemic, it would be timely. one major strength of manley’s experiment was the strategic use of the political climate of the day in the latter half of the 20th century. the atmosphere of the latter half of the 20th century in comparison to the present day was that it was one ripe with various individual movements, revolutions and attempts at social change. taking into account the pandemic and its associated politics, coupled with the re-ignition of the worldwide black lives matter movement in 2020, i believe that the jamaican people would be receptive to a form of government that promotes equality and the nationalization of the private sector through a fair, democratic lens. additionally, the adaption of democratic socialism would allow the government and the local population to have much more control over the tourism industry, as well as allow for the diversification of the economy. the dependency on longstanding western hemispheric relationships would also be reduced astronomically. further, i believe that if democratic socialism were reintroduced, this framework would also allow for greater management of the influx of tourists that visit the region, now and in future. in this way, “the caribbean tourism industry could take this opportunity to differentiate the islands, and maybe even put responsibility 8 8 7 (january 20, 2022 / 09:38:43) 122864-1b_caribbeanquilt_vol7_rev.pdf .70 71 burleigh, n. (2020, august 4). the caribbean dilemma. the new york times. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/04/travel/coronavirus-caribbean-vacations.html. mullin, corinna, and azadeh shahshahani. “to organize in times of crisis, we need to connect the dots of global resistance against imperialism.” uneven earth, 18 apr. 2020. 9 on travellers to go beyond the resort walls or cruise ship all-inclusives and explore local food and culture.” the covid-19 pandemic has transformed the travel industry… its full effect on the future is left to be seen but travel may become more selective and restricted, available to only those who possess the necessary privilege and entitlement. with a democratic socialist government and the reduction of dependent, foreign, economic relationships, coupled with selective travelsids could rebrand the tourism industry to showcase more than sea, sand and sun, and cultivate a more appreciative tourist who is better integrated, with a more relevant and targeted tourism package of attractions, supporting the local economy. lastly, in the event of likely future us intervention, though it is difficult to propose a strategy to avoid future interference from the west, especially since this commentary, is open to be disproven or modified by empirical data and statistics, we can continue to use the vulnerable political atmosphere of the post-pandemic world to our advantage, and attempt to establish greater local and regional control of resources in the public and private sector. as i close, “true liberation and survival—depends upon centring the needs, struggles and collective leadership of the most vulnerable among us.” looking to the post-pandemic future, in order to apply the suggested policies of social change offered by democratic socialism, it would be imperative that the needs and pleas of the working class, the lower class and those that comprise 99% of the population are placed at the forefront of government policies. learning from the shortcomings of manley, the active prioritization of the lower and working classes could increase the chances of success in the experiment. the pandemic is still raging and waging war on humanity, with unparalleled losses of life, loved ones and property. the forecast is grim in the aftermath, still not yet fully assessed; but the possibility of re-introducing a democratic socialist government to jamaica and possibly to various other sids may provide the chance for true self-governance preserving the best of both political frameworks. the caribbean’s narrative must be re-written and this period where the world is on its knees, is an opportunity to look back, look within and look forward and re-define our space, who enters it, terms of entry and the value of the resources within – human, natural and financial. i submit that a democratic socialist government will offer that option and give the caribbean a fighting chance to dispel and reverse the perception or reality of being a dumping ground. 10 9 10 (january 20, 2022 / 09:38:44) 122864-1b_caribbeanquilt_vol7_rev.pdf .71 72 link to instagram textpost: https://www.instagram.com/p/ckwrfkkmse1/ 7, burleigh, n. (2020, august 4). the caribbean dilemma. the new york times. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/04/travel/coronavirus-caribbean-vacations.html. cross mike, solange. “effects of covid-19 on trinidad and tobago.” diplo.edu. accessed may 4, 2021. https://www.diplomacy.edu/blog/first-month-covid trinidad-and-tobago. brierley, j. s. (1985). a review of development strategies and programmes of the people's revolutionary government in grenada, 1979-83. the geographical journal, 151(1), 40. https://doi.org/10.2307/633276 ambursley, fitzroy. "jamaica: the demise of' democratic socialism'." new left review 128 (1981): 76. astor, m. (2019, june 12). what is democratic socialism? whose version are we talking about? the new york times. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/12/ us/politics/democratic-socialism-facts-history.html. mullin, corinna, and azadeh shahshahani. “to organize in times of crisis, we need to connect the dots of global resistance against imperialism.” uneven earth, 18 apr. 2020. edie, carlene j. "domestic politics and external relations in jamaica under michael manley, 1972–1980." studies in comparative international development 21, no. 1 (1986): 71-94. edmonds, kevin. "guns, gangs and garrison communities in the politics of jamaica. "race & class 57, no. 4 (2016): 54-74. d'souza, s. (2021, february 5). jamaica warns canada's caribbean flight ban will badly hurt island's economy | cbc news. cbcnews. https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/ canada-travel-ban-covid19-caribbean-jamacia-1.5901495. frank, m., &amp; chappell, k. (2020, april 20). empty resorts spell long crisis for caribbean as coronavirus hits. reuters. https://www.reuters.com/article/us health-coronavirus-caribbean-tourism-iduskbn222189. muñoz, s., srinivasan, k. (2021, march 12). how the caribbean can avoid becoming a covid-19 long-hauler. imf. https://www.imf.org/en/news/articles/2021/03/11 /na031221-how-the-caribbean-can-avoid-becoming-a-covid-19-long-hauler works cited (january 20, 2022 / 09:38:44) 122864-1b_caribbeanquilt_vol7_rev.pdf .72 microsoft word development piece.docx caribbean quilt 2023 vol. 7 no. 1 132 forward ever, backward never: examining the relationship between colonial violence and capitalist development in a caribbean context alyssa nurse centre for caribbean studies faculty of arts & science, university of toronto alyssa nurse is a fourth-year undergraduate student at the university of toronto completing an honours bachelor of arts while double majoring in economics and political science. she has been actively involved with the centre for caribbean studies and is the incumbent co-president as of 2021 of the caribbean studies students’ union (carssu). she was born in barbados but was raised in guyana prior to moving to toronto, which has significantly influenced her academic interests especially in the field of economic growth and development in the caribbean region. keywords: caribbean development capitalism colonialism violence abstract ____________ this paper very briefly challenges the normative understanding of development as purely beneficial and aspirational. it argues that capitalist development, as it manifests in the caribbean, is built on a foundation of colonial violence and exploitation. the paper takes a twofold approach to exploring this relationship, arguing (1) that colonial violence and capitalist development are mutually reinforcing and (2) that the violent legacies of the colonial encounter are replicated in modern-day development initiatives. through an analysis of development projects in haiti and belize, this paper shows how development-induced displacement, environmental degradation, and the erasure of indigenous culture and customs are all examples of this ongoing replication of colonial violence. the paper incorporates scholarship that explains the continued existence of this relationship and raises important questions about how to move forward. finally, it calls for more decolonial perspectives and critical approaches to capitalist development that recognize and address the ongoing effects of colonial violence especially in caribbean contexts. caribbean quilt journal homepage: https://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/cquilt/index 133 i. introduction: in a normative sense development can be considered as beneficial and even aspirational. it implies a sense of advancement, improvement, or progress, whether that be understood in terms of one’s material conditions, economic growth indicators or even societal indicators such as literacy and life expectancy. regardless of how the concept is perceived, what is often missing or left out of the conversation is not only the pervasiveness of violence and exploitation in the name of capitalist development today, but also the origins being rooted in the colonial encounter. the aftermath has grave ramifications on the social, cultural, and political integrity of formerly colonized countries, especially when you apply such considerations to the caribbean, a region described by dr. kevin edmonds as “at crossroads, due to the intense political and economic fracturing resulting from the multifaceted legacies of colonialism and the current crisis of capitalism.”1 my argument is twofold: (1) i argue that there is a mutually reinforcing relationship between colonial violence and capitalist development. (2) that the violent legacies of the colonial encounter are still replicated in modern day development initiatives as evident by development induced displacement, environmental degradation as well as the erasure of indigenous culture and customs. to illustrate this point, i turn to two examples of development projects in the caribbean, specifically in haiti and belize. however, my analysis goes a step further by incorporating scholarship that explains both how and why this is still the case. ii. situating the colonial violence and capitalist development debate: any attempt to disentangle the relationship between colonial violence and capitalist development should involve some contextualizing of the ongoing debate that exists. in the eyes of institutions such as the world bank 1 kevin edmonds, “an elusive independence: neocolonial intervention in the caribbean,” international socialism 2, no. 146 (2015): http://isj.org.uk/neocolonial-intervention-in-the-caribbean/. 2 paul collier, lani elliott, håvard hegre, anke hoeffler, marta reynal-querol and nicholas sambanis, “breaking the conflict trap: civil war and development policy,” world bank policy research report, 56793. (washington, dc: world bank, 2003) as well as some scholars violence is understood as “development in reverse.”2 for all intents and purposes this mutually exclusive relationship predicates that once there is conflict or violence present in a society, vital resources are often reappropriated or redirected for destructive means and ends.3 such that the result has negative spillover effects relating to the productivity of other resources.4 ultimately it is repeated violence and conflict that impedes development as it obliterates any advances or improvements made in economic growth, infrastructure, healthcare, education etc. this line of thinking perpetuates the notion that one of the primary barriers to development is violence. while there is merit to these considerations, there are issues that persist. for instance, this linear prescription of conflict divergence to sustained development, prosperity and peace misses the nuanced interplay between violence and development.5 historically, the rise and spread of capitalist modes of production both in europe and beyond was anything but peaceful. the economic and social structures that emerged were often the product of violent processes in which economic surplus were acquired through the exertion of coercion.6 as frantz fanon, a prominent caribbean political thinker frankly puts it, “for centuries the capitalists have behaved like real war criminals in the underdeveloped world. deportation, massacres, forced labor, and slavery were the primary methods used by capitalism to…. establish its wealth and power.”7 from this perspective colonial violence and capitalist development are implied with each other and instead have a mutually inclusive relationship. one relevant point of contention across these debates is the definition and understanding of violence. for proponents of violence as development in reverse, violence tends to take the form of organized crime and civil wars. 3 samir elhawary, “violent paths to peace? rethinking the conflict-development nexus in colombia,” colombia internacional, no.67 (2008): 87 4 ibid., 87 5 ibid., 87 6 ibid., 88 7 frantz fanon, “on violence” in the wretched of the earth. (new york: grove press, 1963): 57 caribbean quilt 2023 vol. 7 no. 1 134 their focus is on violence strictly in the physical sense, which is easily quantified and categorized, especially for the purpose of drafting reports or conducting quantitative analysis. for example, according to the 2011 world development report on conflict, security and development “on average, a country that experienced major violence over the period from 1981 to 2005 has a poverty rate 21 percentage points higher than a country that saw no violence.”8 contrastingly, for scholars that tend to recognize an inextricable link between capitalist development and violence, there is a greater tendency to focus both on the physical understanding but also the structural, systemic and psychological dimensions of violence. these academics have scholarship which highlights that structural violence also encompasses various forms of suffering and trauma especially due to negligence and inaction9. there is even what is coined as “slow” violence which “occurs gradually and out of sight, a violence of delayed destruction” and it is “typically not viewed as violence at all.”10 this tends to take the form of toxic dumping, deforestation, wildlife loss etc. these alternative depictions of violence highlight the total disregard of their lives and livelihoods from the idea of national development and progress. iii. development induced displacement in haiti: often when countries undertake development projects such as the construction of dams or highways, it entails the forced relocation of people and entire communities. this is why the displacement in question is development induced. haiti much like countless other countries has dealt with such occurrences. in 1956, the lake péligre dam was completed in the artibonite district, with the intention of serving as a hydroelectric facility. the project was funded via a us$40 million loan from the united states government and was 8 world bank, “overview” world development report 2011: conflict, security, and development. (washington, d.c.: world bank group, 2011): 5 9 filiberto penados, levi gahman and shelda-jane smith, “land, race, and (slow) violence: indigenous resistance to racial capitalism and the coloniality of development in the caribbean,” geoforum (2022): 5 10 ibid., 5 executed by the artibonite valley development organization (avdo).11the construction of the dam was coupled with intense logging operations which rapidly decimated the river basin above the dam and eroded much of the topsoil. the environmental degradation also lowered the quality and quantity of land and freshwater resources. in turn, rural agriculture saw much of its economic opportunities destroyed.12 consequently, significant mass migration ensued from more rural areas to urban centers. unfortunately, the rapid growing urban population put significant strain on available resources and created more social and economic challenges for haitians in the slums of port-au-prince.13 so while the hydroelectric and irrigation facility increased the production of some crops in the valley downstream,14 it came at a significant cost. in evaluating the haiti case study, robert nixon’s theory regarding “unimagined community” is of particular use in understanding how development projects like the péligre dam violently harmed residents of the artibonite district. when countries construct their vision of national development, it is contingent on the creation of imagined communities but also unimagined ones.15what this means is that long before any construction of the dam transpired and before any physical bodies were displaced, the residents, in the eyes of the avdo were removed from the idea of haiti’s developing nation state. based on nixon’s theory, the violence inflicted is two-fold; the physical eviction of haitians from the artibonite district but also the less explicit violence of perceiving the locals as invisible and dispensable. it is this erasure of impacted communities from development discourse that is extremely harmful, and this has been an ongoing issue since the colonial era. in this context, unimagined community offers a more nuanced picture of the variations of violence that tends to accompany capitalist development. 11 phillip howard, “development induced displacement in haiti,” refuge 16, no. 3 (1997): 6 12 ibid., 10 13 ibid., 10 14 ibid., 6 15 robert nixon, “unimagined communities: developmental refugees, megadams and monumental modernity,” new formations, no. 69 (2010): 62 caribbean quilt 2023 vol. 7 no. 1 135 iv. erasure of indigenous culture and customs in belize: moreover, the erasure of indigenous culture and customs of the maya people of the toledo district in belize is testament to the violent legacies of colonialism prevailing for the sake of capitalist development. for context, there is a long and complicated history between the belize government and its indigenous people who have long fought and resisted relentlessly against their government’s misappropriation of their land. in 2015 the people of the toledo district were victorious in their court case against the government of belize as the caribbean court of justice (ccj) ruling recognized their rights to occupy indigenous lands.16 at the heart of the grievance both the government as well as multinational corporations failed to obtain free, prior and informed consent (fpic) of maya communities regarding logging and mining concessions on their ancestral territories.17 while the ruling was historic in nature, both the belizean government and third party multinational corporations were still complicit in repeated fpic violations.18in fact, said violations coincided with indigenous land defenders facing assault, harassment, unjust imprisonment and other forms of physical oppression.19 moreover, these violations were constituted as “slow” violence as it disrupted indigenous lives and livelihoods, fractured relationships with ancestral lands and destroyed the integrity and ecology of the environment. it is argued that the mere existence, necessity and even violations of free, prior and informed consent (fpic) are a result of the colonial encounter and emphasizes the inherit dispossessive and violent character of capitalist development.20 furthermore, scholars have provided a useful theoretical lens through which the rationale of dispossession, domination and exploitation of indigenous people can be analyzed. “misanthropic skepticism involves doubting and condemning the humanity of others based on categorical differences such as their phenotype, melanin 16 filiberto penados, levi gahman and shelda-jane smith, “land, race, and (slow) violence: indigenous resistance to racial capitalism and the coloniality of development in the caribbean,” geoforum (2022): 1 17 ibid., 1 levels, ethnicity etc.21 it is but one example of the ways in which colonizers and capitalists constructed the “other” in order to justify the enslavement, torture and indentureship of colonized people. forms of racial dehumanization such as misanthropic skepticism are the reason indigenous people tend to be critical towards development initiatives as they have been subject to centuries of violence and exploitation from colonizers and are repeatedly excluded from the benefits of development. misanthropic skepticism illustrates and draws attention to how and why more modern and conventional capitalist development initiatives still perpetuate a violence that originated in the colonial era. v. forward ever, backward never: where do we go from here? the intent of this paper is to invoke thought and spark conversation surrounding how we understand development, especially in a modern caribbean context. in addition, the scholarship introduced provides some framework to identify and address the relationship between colonial violence and capitalist development, whether that be understood via. “misanthropic skepticism” or “unimagined community.” yet, many questions still need to be considered. will truly autonomous, self-directed development in the caribbean not involve the exploitation and dispossession of its own people? how do we rethink or reimagine approaches that mitigate both the “slow” and more visible forms of violence that arise due to international development projects? and why do decolonial perspectives and critical approaches to capitalist development get sidelined? in conclusion, not only did colonial violence lay the foundation for capitalist development, its legacy lives on as a version of neocolonialism, disrupting lives and livelihoods, perpetuating environmental degradation, and eradicating indigenous histories and cultural endeavours. it is challenging to fully adhere to the forward 18 ibid., 5 19 ibid., 6 20 ibid., 7 21 ibid., 2 caribbean quilt 2023 vol. 7 no. 1 136 ever, backward never mindset, when the adversities and atrocities of our colonial past still plague us in new variants to this day. caribbean quilt 2023 vol. 7 no. 1 137 bibliography collier, paul; lani elliott; håvard hegre; anke hoeffler; marta reynal-querol; & nicholas sambanis. 2003. breaking the conflict trap: civil war and development policy, world bank policy research report, 56793. washington, dc: world bank. edmonds, kevin. 2015. "an elusive independence: neocolonial intervention in thecaribbean." international socialism 2 (146). http://isj.org.uk/neocolonial-intervention-in-the-caribbean/. elhawary, samir. 2008 “violent paths to peace? rethinking the conflict-development nexus in colombia,” colombia internacional (67): 84-100 fanon, frantz. 1963. “on violence” in the wretched of the earth. new york: grove press: 1-62. howard, phillip.1997 “development induced displacement in haiti,” refuge 16(3): 1-11 nixon, rob. 2010. "unimagined communities: developmental refugees, megadams and monumental modernity." new formations (69): 6280 world bank. 2011. “overview” world development report 2011: conflict, security, and development. (washington, d.c.: world bank group): 1-16 penados, filiberto, levi gahman and shelda-jane smith. 2022 “land, race, and (slow) violence: indigenous resistance to racial capitalism and the coloniality of development in the caribbean,” geoforum: 1-11 contents chapter 1: culture and identity……...……………..……................................................................11 everybody jumping on the savannah grass: how carnival became a symbol of trinidad and tobago’s national culture............................................................................................12 brittney bahadoor define and empower: black feminist discourse in a caribbean context…………………19 kennedy-jude providence claudia jones, the person and the idea………………………………………………...………………………………….......25 dmitri gourianov the illusion of citizenship and sovereignty in the caribbean………………...…………………….……...30 maria bacchus the cultural and spiritual origination of the western, southern and central african influences of trinidad and tobago’s carnival and the artform of kalinda….…...35 shayna thompson gentrification in toronto’s little jamaica: food for resistance……………………...……………………..43 elizabeth wong chapter 2: politics and social change…………...............................................................49 the plantation economy and guyana’s extractivism………………………………………………...…………….50 alyssa nurse haiti – harmed at the hands of others……………………………………………………………………………………………..57 max ray-ellis canadian-trinidadian activism: navigating intersectional identity in queer care……...65 julia chapman socialism, farming, and resistance: how cuban socialism is beating the embargo………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..73 dmitri gourianov conditional support: chinese development aid in the caribbean………………….……………………79 omar danaf climate change and globalization: food security in the caribbean………………………………….…86 donna miller guyana’s racial politics: causes, issues, and its welcoming of western neo-colonialism…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………92 brittney bahadoor chapter 3: history and decolonization…………......................................................................99 the consequences of colonialism to the history and lives of the garifuna people of st. vincent………………………………………………………………………..…………………………………………….………100 maria fernanda de almeida the future of food in the caribbean: climate change and food security……..…….………..109 donna miller redemption song: a commentary on caribbean society………………………………………..………………113 maria bacchus decolonizing the body: resistance in the queer, femme caribbean…………….…………………..120 maria vidal valdespino my body is my own………………………………………………………………………..…………………………………………122 my labour is not unskilled…………………………………………………………………………………….………………123 my love is not unnatural………………………………………………………………………………….…………………….124 indigenous erasure and resistance in the caribbean…………………………….………………………………….125 elizabeth wong forward ever, backward never: examining the relationship between colonial violence and capitalist development in a caribbean context……………………………………………………………….132 alyssa nurse microsoft word bahadoor_carnival_numbered.docx caribbean quilt 2023 vol. 7 no. 1 12 everybody jumping on the savannah grass: how carnival became a symbol of trinidad and tobago’s national culture brittney bahadoor department of history faculty of arts & science, university of toronto brittney bahadoor is in her fourth and final year of her undergraduate degree, pursuing a bachelor of arts with a specialist in history and minor in caribbean studies at the university of toronto. her indo-caribbean heritage has spurred her love for caribbean history and instilled a desire to shed lights on the histories of the west indies that are so often overlooked, specifically guyana and trinidad post-emancipation. all of those interests culminated in her senior thesis for the department of history in which she researches the history of racial relations between afro and indo caribbeans in their migration to toronto. she has continuously been involved with the caribbean community on campus and is the incumbent president of the west indian students’ association (wisa). keywords: carnival trinidad culture nationalism history abstract ____________ this paper focuses on the history of carnival in trinidad and tobago and how the country moulded the event to become a staple of nationalism following independence in the 20th century. it explores the historical beginnings of carnival, from slavery to indentured servitude to modern-day trinidad. it looks at how becoming a mascot of trinidadian culture was achieved in two ways—the representation and rhetoric of the event and how it became a commodity that politicians could use to prove a robust national culture to the world. it takes on central themes of unification, regardless of race, class, or culture, and how the event tells the history of this island, even with the costumes and enthralling music. it touches on how carnival reflects cultural and political movements throughout the country's history, how it became significant for social changes after independence, and how it could withstand the infiltration of global capitalism and still present a story about trinidad's culture and resilience. it is built around the argument that after independence in 1962, trinidad needed a way to present itself as a nationalist country now that it did not have a metropole. this was achieved by propping up carnival and allowing it to reflect various movements of the past. the goal is to add to the conversation that carnival is not just a boisterous party on the island but also reflects the colonial history and diverse peoples and how it was able to modernize itself while sticking to these core values. caribbean quilt journal homepage: https://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/cquilt/index caribbean quilt 2023 vol. 7 no. 1 13 while the caribbean region itself is very diverse, one could say trinidad and tobago is the island that is one of the significant melting pots. harbouring so many people and cultures, one may wonder how they form a steadfast, national culture. there is an answer to that: carnival. a major attraction in the modern-day that welcomes all is known for colourful costumes, enthralling music, and a party that seemingly never stops. yet, it is so much more than that. following the achievement of independence from britain in 1962, the desire for a national representation that came from that separation started to portray carnival as the centre of national culture in trinidad and tobago. this was done in two specific ways—representation and rhetoric of the event and a commodity that politicians could use to prove a 'strong' national culture. as a result, this would allow for the country's economic development. this paper analyzes how this was done in-depth and how carnival became a mascot for trinidadian culture. in terms of history, trinidad1 and tobago share a similar narrative to the rest of the caribbean islands. more than any other island, trinidad was in the hands of various european metropoles, eventually going from the spaniards, french, dutch, and eventually british. in 1797, trinidad became a crown colony of the british empire and began to hold a large population of enslaved africans, becoming one of britain’s most significant sugar colonies. after emancipation until 1917, about 143,000 indian immigrants came to trinidad. in terms of relevance for this paper, more detail is not needed. the base ethnic composition of the island post-emancipation is as follows: formerly enslaved africans and soon-to-arrive indian indentured workers were the main large groups. until this point, trinidad had encountered three major european powers, but the one that introduced carnival to the island was the french in the 18th century. 1 while the island is trinidad and tobago, it will be referred to as trinidad to keep conciseness and clarity. as well, carnival occurs on the mainland of trinidad, not tobago. 2 ernest d. brown, “carnival, calypso, and steelband in trinidad,” the black perspective in music 18, no. 1/2 (1990): p. 81, https://doi.org/10.2307/1214859, 4. 3 philip w. scher, “copyright heritage: preservation, carnival and the state in trinidad,” anthropological quarterly 75, no. 3 the original version of carnival was primarily for the white french plantocracy, with the ruling class dressing in exquisite clothing and others in masquerade, mocking the social realities of the french slave system.2 emancipation allowed emancipated africans to join the carnival, and in doing so, they began to change the event. the narrative was then flipped to costumes that mocked the european ruling class. from the arrival of french planters in the 18th century to independence from britain in 1962, carnival began to change and reflect societal issues, cultures, and events in the emergence of modern carnival.3 this can be seen with the emergence of other satirical costumes such as the sailor costumes, which mocked the british sailors on the island in the 19th century, and the moko jumbies, which derive from african culture brought over by the enslaved peoples in the years prior. these costumes were essential in what carnival represented, as they represented the interests and feelings of the afro-trinidadians. participating in the costuming at the carnival is often referred to as playing mas. mas has become one of the three significant aspects of the trinidad carnival. the modern carnival as seen today is a two-day festival held on the monday and tuesday before ash wednesday, or the start of the period of lent for the christian and catholic religions. it begins with j’ouvert very early on monday morning, which has more traditional costumes and is then followed by pretty-mas later during the day on the monday and then on the tuesday. music brought over from the plantations, such as african drumming, kaisos, and canaboulay music, began to appear at the festivals, which eventually created the trinidadian carnival staple of calypso music.4 there were many instances by the upper-class whites in the late 19th and early 20th century to try and ‘reclaim’ carnival, such as banning african drumming in 1884. 5 (2002): pp. 453-484, https://doi.org/10.1353/anq.2002.0054, 469. 4 ernest d. brown, “carnival, calypso, and steelband in trinidad,” the black perspective in music 18, no. 1/2 (1990): p. 81, https://doi.org/10.2307/1214859, 9 5 ernest d. brown, “carnival, calypso, and steelband in trinidad,” the black perspective in music 18, no. 1/2 (1990): p. 81, https://doi.org/10.2307/1214859, 8. caribbean quilt 2023 vol. 7 no. 1 14 this only resulted in creating another carnival staple— the steel pan. created in the 1930s, “musicians began a process of conscious experimentation, heating and pounding out the metal containers to create notes… oil drums were used because their larger surfaces accommodate more notes…” 6 from this, the steel pan as we know it emerged. calypso and steel bands (also known as pan) form this festival's other central aspects. as seen up to this point, it is clear that the original celebration was now established as an afro-appropriated emancipation festival.7 however, trinidad also houses one of the largest populations of east indian migrants. until then, carnival primarily took classic costumes and music from african culture. however, it also had to incorporate indian cultural ideals as well. carnival is no exception to the ideal of racial differences that have plagued trinidad and tobago from colonial times. 8 however, it cannot simply ignore the fact that trinidad is highly diverse and indian involvement soon had to be incorporated for this to represent national culture. soca music, created in 1941, started to gain prominence in trinidad and, subsequently, carnival. soca is described as a mix of calypso music and traditional indian rhythms, which can be seen as a fusion of the music of the two major ethnic groups in the country. when eric williams' peoples national movement party came into power in 1956, it saw increasing indian involvement in carnival.9 one of the most prominent east indian developments under this era of government leading up to independence was the emergence of chutney soca—incorporating secular music from east indian plantation communities with calypso, suggesting further the integration of indians into the world of calypso and 6 ibid., 92. 7 milla cozart riggio, “the power of play: performance, time, and space in the caribbean carnival world,” caribbean quarterly 65, no. 4 (february 2019): pp. 575-602, https://doi.org/10.1080/00086495.2019.1682358, 576. 8 amanda lynn zavitz and anton l. allahar, “racial politics and cultural identity in trinidad's carnival,” identity 2, no. 2 (2002): pp. 125-145, https://doi.org/10.1207/s1532706xid0202_02, 135. 9 ibid., 139. 10 ibid., 141. 11 garth l. green, “carnival and the politics of national identity in trinidad and tobago” (dissertation, umi press, 1998), carnival.10 the introduction of the largest ethnic group in modern trinidad—indo-trinidadians—into the carnival scene sets the stage for establishing carnival as the centrefold of trinidadian culture. as mentioned above, trinidad carnival often reflects the movements in the island’s history, making it a suitable candidate to represent the country’s national culture. after achieving independence in 1962, the idea arose that national culture and heritage needed to be established through cultural prop—carnival could do this.11 the williams government needed a way to prove that they were strong on their own without needing a metropole to ensure that. the onset of independence brought a flurry of disappointments plaguing the trinidadian government, such as poverty, unemployment, and cultural conflicts. 12 these issues would reflect poorly globally if they became the foundation upon which trinidad had to build their national identity. jamaica and grenada were able to participate in various non-alignment policies in their postcolonial period to establish themselves; thus, trinidad also needed a way to forge this 'third-way' for their development as a thirdworld country.13 to do this, carnival had to be presented in a way that seemed applicable to base a national culture. prominent carnival historian garth l. green defines cultural nationalism as creating, encouraging, and maintaining solid national cultural institutions shared without any outside influences.14 how the historical roots of carnival situate themselves in both afro and indo-trinidadian histories and how the event adapted to the changing times of the country made it the perfect institution to fit green's definition. going off this definition, one would pp. 2-450, 40. 12 garth l. green, “‘come to life’: authenticity, value, and the carnival as cultural commodity in trinidad and tobago,” identities 14, no. 1-2 (may 2007): pp. 203-224, https://doi.org/10.1080/10702890601102670, 215. 13 natasha barnes, “the utopic popular: trinidad’s carnival,” in cultural conundrums gender, race, nation, and the making of caribbean cultural politics (ann arbor: university of michigan press, 2010), pp. 71-98, 88. 14 garth l. green, “‘come to life’: authenticity, value, and the carnival as cultural commodity in trinidad and tobago,” identities 14, no. 1-2 (may 2007): pp. 203-224, https://doi.org/10.1080/10702890601102670, 204. caribbean quilt 2023 vol. 7 no. 1 15 not call african and indian influence an outside culture, as the beauty of trinidad is that it is formed through this diversity. however, that diversity is precisely why a solid national culture was needed. the multiethnic and multicultural country had to find a way to balance all these cultures in the new postcolonial world where the power structure known for so many years was now unsettled.15 how carnival reflects the country's significant social changes after independence has become intertwined with the event. it is a constant pattern that carnival constantly changes with historical circumstances in which its social actors emphasize them.16 after independence, carnival became accessible to the middle and working classes, thus grasping the 'regular' person and most of the population. as mentioned previously, mas (masquerading/costumes) is one of the important three parts of trinidad carnival. coinciding with the second wave of feminism in the united states and the newfound openness of female sexuality, we begin to see the emergence of 'pretty mas.' along with the various cultural costumes dating back to colonial times, a growing number of working-class trinidadian women played mas, a traditionally male-dominated event. 17 pretty-mas is what is seen in trinidad carnival today—tiny bikinis and thongs with gems and elaborate feather pieces on the costume, with a type of dancing known as 'whining.' the development of women sensually playing mas is seen as a form of reclamation of beauty from how women of colour were viewed in colonial times to now.18 the liberation of women in carnival after independence is only one way carnival began to show trinidad's significant social changes as the middle class began to gain 15 ibid. 16 garth l. green, “carnival and the politics of national identity in trinidad and tobago” (dissertation, umi press, 1998), pp. 2-450, 65. 17 ibid., 91. 18 natasha barnes, “the utopic popular: trinidad’s carnival,” in cultural conundrums gender, race, nation, and the making of caribbean cultural politics (ann arbor: university of michigan press, 2010), pp. 71-98, 105. 19 david v. trotman, “acts of possession and symbolic decolonisation in trinidad and tobago,” caribbean quarterly 58, no. power. at independence, eric williams and the people's national movement (pnm) were the government in power. this partly reflected a liberal and socialist platform that would uplift the middle and working class in the country. williams himself was a notable advocate for the caribbean and trinidadian nationalism, and his achievement of independence with his party allowed this to be seen.19 on the night of formal separation and independence from britain, there were steelband performances in queen's park savannah and memorial park. these steel bands then roamed through the streets with a following of trinidadian citizens, regardless of the class following and celebrating.20 this became a standard practice in carnival that arose out of this. mas was no longer limited to those in the upper class in trinidadian society but anyone. these people could find their place in carnival by playing pan and calypso.21 as a symbolic reference to gaining independence, on the final day of the carnival, mas bands, mixed with every culture and ethnicity, would parade from memorial park to queen’s park savannah, dancing and celebrating trinidadian culture before presenting themselves in front of the carnival judges on the ‘savannah grass.’ the achievement of independence in trinidad allowed it to be cemented as an event that showed trinidad's progress in the world, from feminism beginning to play a role more than ever to the finale of the event being a direct reference to the night trinidad became its nation. carnival began to make noise globally as the independence era began. this small country could rarely have given the world so many cultures in a single internationally recognized event.22 politicians soon recognized the global impact. it became clear that a distinct national culture could be found in this event, as it became a space for making a pan-trinidadian identity. carnival began 1 (2012): pp. 21-43, https://doi.org/10.1080/00086495.2012.11672429, 29. 20 ibid., 30. 21 milla cozart riggio, “the power of play: performance, time, and space in the caribbean carnival world,” caribbean quarterly 65, no. 4 (february 2019): pp. 575-602, https://doi.org/10.1080/00086495.2019.1682358, 577. 22 ernest d. brown, “carnival, calypso, and steelband in trinidad,” the black perspective in music 18, no. 1/2 (1990): p. 81, https://doi.org/10.2307/1214859, 84. caribbean quilt 2023 vol. 7 no. 1 16 not to see colour in trinidadian society, instead reaffirming trinidadians that they were, regardless of indian, african, or indigenous, trinidadian at the end of the day. with international attention, the infiltration of global capitalism in the marketing and commodification of caribbean popular culture began to add another challenge—how to present to the world that trinidad had a robust national identity in carnival without losing the cultural aspect to it. the commodification of culture is dangerous as it reduces the event to a mere money-making scheme. however, carnival is much more than that. pretty-mas and the "wine and jam" carnival were attracting tourism to trinidad; however, it also gave way to the idea of trinidad culture just becoming something that could be exploited.23 in the 1990s, the national carnival commission (ncc) was established to avoid this. this was a state-sanctioned governing body that oversaw every aspect of carnival. it was created to revive the traditional mas that tells the story of the island’s history—with the various costumes and music telling the stories of slavery, emancipation, indentureship, colonialism, and achievements of independence. 24 that is what trinidad’s national culture and identity should be representative of. one notable point from the act of parliament that created the ncc goes as follows: “(paragraph c) the identification, evaluation and promotion of all carnival related industries with a view to the enhancing and marketing of their cultural products and services.”25 while the pretty costumes and modern soca do well in helping achieve global recognition, it begins to overshadow the true significance of carnival. the goal of the ncc was and continues to ensure that carnival does not become a "whine and jam solely" oversexualized event that becomes one big party, but rather 23 ibid., 81. 24 philip w. scher, “copyright heritage: preservation, carnival and the state in trinidad,” anthropological quarterly 75, no. 3 (2002): pp. 453-484, https://doi.org/10.1353/anq.2002.0054, 472. 25 ibid., 464. 26 ibid., 460 27 ibid., 462. 28 natasha barnes, “the utopic popular: trinidad’s carnival,” in cultural conundrums gender, race, nation, and the making one that represents a nation with multiple ethnic groups fought against colonialism to become what it is today. when the global world starts to notice it, the curious thing about national identity is balancing what attracts national attention versus how to preserve cultural heritage. a solid national culture can be viewed as an antidote to globalization, homogenization, and cultural imperialism.26 after independence, former colonies try to achieve this to separate themselves from that past narrative. carnival has always been and continues to represent the history of the island. as with caribbean countries, tourism has always been a significant part of the economy. in trinidad, it has become the busiest season for tourists.27 however, the pretty mas and "whine and jam" soca attracted these tourists. the peculiar thing about the ncc was that it was created to ensure that traditional mas, with moko jumbie, sailor costumes, and traditional calypso, still was present within the overall celebrations. however, the dangers of consumptive pleasures will triumph despite the dangers of commodification and usurpation of the base culture.28 the commodification of the culture means that the culture is treated merely as something that can be easily disposed of or changed to fit what suits best. however, this could also be a positive thing, as in the case of trinidad and tobago's carnival. the creation of the ncc was a way for the government to present the standard image that trinidad is a diverse society with nationalism that unites all people regardless of race and social class.29 the blend of all cultures that make up trinidadian society participating, whether through music, such as chutney and soca, or mas, which saw indo and afrotrinidadians taking part, allowed carnival to become commercialized and politicized. 30 in the post-independence years, under williams’ pnm government, a of caribbean cultural politics (ann arbor: university of michigan press, 2010), pp. 71-98, 96. 29 jonathan boyarin, charles tilly, and daniel a segal, “living ancestors: nationalism and the past in postcolonial trinidad and tobago,” in remapping memory: the politics of timespace (minneapolis: university of minnesota press, 1995), pp. 221239, 226. 30 amanda lynn zavitz and anton l. allahar, “racial politics and cultural identity in trinidad's carnival,” identity 2, no. 2 (2002): pp. 125-145, caribbean quilt 2023 vol. 7 no. 1 17 tremendous amount of time, money and energy was spent developing the culture through carnival.31 this could be attributed to the fact that it was to become a mascot for trinidadian nationalism on a global scale, as it would showcase why the need for independence was so vital: that trinidad has come together as one, and it can be seen here. in a unesco report on trinidad in april of 1979, it was said that, “the government of trinidad and tobago recognizes the need to record, stimulate and support its rich and diverse cultural heritage ... on the national level, trinidad and tobago is attempting to develop an integrated national framework, carry out an inventory of the country's cultural and natural heritage together with strategies for the effective management of artistic resources.”32 the way to do this was with carnival as not just a celebration but a commercial event that would garner attraction from the rest of the world. as a result, the government and the various institutions set up to aid the event, like the ncc and the carnival development committee, were able to turn this event into a mere cultural object with a history of the past. this was seemingly successful as carnival boosted the trinidadian economy heavily. this was one of the main reasons for the cultural commodification mentioned above, as it essentially helped trinidad's failing economy. at the point of independence in the early 1970s, trinidad came off the oil boom around the second world war. however, that was not a sustainable source of growth and the country needed to diversify it. the event began to generate about usd 156 million (around 1 billion ttd) per annum and accounts for most of the country's cultural sector earnings.33 today, it continues to grow. carnival's appeal to the rest of the world, https://doi.org/10.1207/s1532706xid0202_02, 139. 31 gordon rohlehr, “the culture of williams: context, performance, legacy,” callaloo 20, no. 4 (1997): pp. 849-888, https://doi.org/10.1353/cal.1997.0083, 876. 32ibid., 873. 33 suzanne burke, “creative clustering in small island states: the case of trinidad and tobago's carnival industry,” caribbean quarterly 60, no. 1 (2014): pp. 74-95, https://doi.org/10.1080/00086495.2014.11672514, 74. 34 ibid., 76. including tourists, allowed the government to use the event to promote national identity and boost the overall economy. the carnival industry then became a cushion from external shocks affecting the traditional economic growth of the country as well as various foreign influences.34 although carnival has become a tool for economic growth, it is still distinctly trinidadian. however, it is still evident that old traditions and social cultures will be broken down as capitalism and cash nexuses enter the picture.35 the state supported the creation of carnival as a product as it heavily increased visitor expenditure and growth, but it still became a cultural phenomenon. at the height of the tourism economy, carnival has become vital to the country's gross national product (gnp) amidst the dwindling oil production.36 whether carnival loses its traditional structure, it will remain a vital part of the trinidadian culture, as seen by its importance and contribution to the national economy. there is a reason why trinidad and tobago is the first thought of when the word carnival is spoken. it is more than just a party; it is an authentic national culture that tells the story of many cultures in one. due to that, it is no surprise that it soon became the staple of national culture after the country achieved its independence from britain. carnival encapsulates histories and traumas while allowing all types of trinidadians the ability to participate. it reflects current and past political and social movements, all while being presented as a way to gain national recognition and positive addition to the economy. as machel montano, the crowned king of soca, said about trinidad’s carnival, “everything you do must be rich in heritage and potential for the future.” 35 amanda lynn zavitz and anton l. allahar, “racial politics and cultural identity in trinidad's carnival,” identity 2, no. 2 (2002): pp. 125-145, https://doi.org/10.1207/s1532706xid0202_02, 142. 36 philip w. scher, “copyright heritage: preservation, carnival and the state in trinidad,” anthropological quarterly 75, no. 3 (2002): pp. 453-484, https://doi.org/10.1353/anq.2002.0054, 469. caribbean quilt 2023 vol. 7 no. 1 18 bibliography barnes, natasha. “the utopic popular: trinidad’s carnival.” essay. in cultural conundrums gender, race, nation, and the making of caribbean cultural politics, 71–98. ann arbor: university of michigan press, 2010. boyarin, jonathan, charles tilly, and daniel a segal. “living ancestors: nationalism and the past in postcolonial trinidad and tobago.” essay. in remapping memory: the politics of timespace, 221–39. minneapolis: university of minnesota press, 1995. brown, ernest d. “carnival, calypso, and steelband in trinidad.” the black perspective in music 18, no. 1/2 (1990): 81. https://doi.org/10.2307/1214859. burke, suzanne. “creative clustering in small island states: the case of trinidad and tobago's carnival industry.” caribbean quarterly 60, no. 1 (2014): 74–95. https://doi.org/10.1080/00086495.2014.11672514. green, garth l. “carnival and the politics of national identity in trinidad and tobago.” dissertation, umi press, 1998. green, garth l. “‘come to life’: authenticity, value, and the carnival as cultural commodity in trinidad and tobago.” identities 14, no. 1-2 (2007): 203–24. https://doi.org/10.1080/10702890601102670. riggio, milla cozart. “the power of play: performance, time, and space in the caribbean carnival world.” caribbean quarterly 65, no. 4 (2019): 575–602. https://doi.org/10.1080/00086495.2019.1682358. rohlehr, gordon. “the culture of williams: context, performance, legacy.” callaloo 20, no. 4 (1997): 849–88. https://doi.org/10.1353/cal.1997.0083. scher, philip w. “copyright heritage: preservation, carnival and the state in trinidad.” anthropological quarterly 75, no. 3 (2002): 453–84. https://doi.org/10.1353/anq.2002.0054. trotman, david v. “acts of possession and symbolic decolonisation in trinidad and tobago.” caribbean quarterly 58, no. 1 (2012): 21–43. https://doi.org/10.1080/00086495.2012.11672429. zavitz, amanda lynn, and anton l. allahar. “racial politics and cultural identity in trinidad's carnival.” identity 2, no. 2 (2002): 125–45. https://doi.org/10.1207/s1532706xid0202_02. manley and bishop: the tragedy of leftist reformism in the caribbean tristan scott 2t1 university of toronto fas human geography, geographic information systems, environmental studies the caribbean and latin america has been home to numerous leftist and populist political experiments during the 20th century, most of which have in turn experienced some level of retaliation from the capitalist global north. jamaica under michael manley and grenada under maurice bishop are two such examples, and both can be evaluated for their choice in pursuing relatively moderate, reformist left-wing policies – neither of which permanently dismantled capitalist institutions in their respective states. yet, both countries were ultimately subject to destabilization efforts from the capitalistic global north, which sought to maintain its political and economic hold over the region. this paper examines leftist reformist policies (as opposed to revolutionary policies) in jamaica, and grenada, and observes how even the most moderate economic policies looking to curb capitalism’s most harmful negative externalities are still viewed as a near-existential threat by institutions in the global north. a b s t r a c t keywords: michael manley, maurice bishop, caribbean socialism, reform vs revolution, capitalism, colonialism b i o tristan scott is a recent graduate from the university of toronto, majoring in human geography, geographic information systems, and environmental studies. tristan’s academic interests include urban planning, data analytics, history, and political science, particularly as it concerns the intricacies of left-wing politics and neoliberalism. © 2021 tristan scott caribbean studies students’ union, canada https://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/cquilt/ this work is licensed under the creative commons attributionsharealike 4.0 international license. to view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ 73 (january 20, 2022 / 09:38:44) 122864-1b_caribbeanquilt_vol7_rev.pdf .73 74 c. b. davies & m. jardine, “imperial geographies and caribbean nationalism: at the border between ‘a dying colonialism’ and u.s. hegemony” (2003). ibid. ibid. ibid. f. ambursley, “jamaica: the demise of ‘democratic socialism’”. new left review, 128 (1981), 76. 1 introduction as a historically colonized and racialized region of the world, the caribbean has been subject to the influence of foreign actors, particularly those residing in the global north. as the concepts of empire and colonial rule became untenable in the post-second world war era, capitalism as a means maintaining wealth accumulation in the periphery rose to the forefront. through management infrastructures such as the u.s-built and global north-supported bretton woods institutions, former colonies such as those in the caribbean would have to take on liberal economic policies such as structural adjustment programmes, privatization, and initiate a reduction of market regulations. if a newly independent caribbean state had any hope of developing while also maintaining cordial relations with the wealthy global north, they would have to sacrifice any ideas of formulating alternative, nation-specific forms of governance. in addition, with the united states emerging as the hegemonic power of the west after the second world war, it was given relatively free reign to impose its own economic ideals over much of the global south. by extending the influence of american monopolies, controlling supply chains, wielding its advanced and mobile army, and flooding the region with american products, the united states turned the caribbean and latin america into its own personal “backyard” – a region firmly in its sphere of influence. with capital flows replacing the territorial boundaries associ ated with the empires of the past, the united states successfully recreated a form of economic imperialism in the present. although world history is marked by numerous violent and revolutionary attempts at breaking the bonds presented by political and economic colonialism, the caribbean has been noted for attempting change via moderate reformist methods. this paper will examine jamaica under the michael manley government and grenada under maurice bishop and the new jewel movement, arguing that reformist methods in the global south, despite their tendencies toward upholding capitalistic institutions, are seen as being just as threatening as their revolutionary counterparts in the minds of global north actors. jamaica before and after independence: alexander bustamante and the state jamaica prior to independence was grappling with the final vestiges of overt colonialism and was largely subject to the influence on alexander bustamante. according to ambursley, the bustamante industrial trade union (bitu), which held control over much of jamaican industry after the second world war, was routed to defend the interests of both british and american capitalists. indeed, it was under the management of bustamante himself that the bitu threatened a worker strike against clement atlee, then prime minister of the united kingdom, who proposed nationalizing two of the 2 3 4 5 1 2 3 4 5 (january 20, 2022 / 09:38:44) 122864-1b_caribbeanquilt_vol7_rev.pdf .74 75 ibid. j.r. mandle, patterns of caribbean development: an interpretive essay on economic change (routledge, 1982). ibid. ibid. ibid. f. ambursley, “jamaica: the demise of ‘democratic socialism’”. new left review, 128 (1981): 76. ibid. ibid. “jamaica vs. the transnationals: battle over bauxite,” nacla report on the americas, 12:3, (1978): 17-25, ibid 6 island’s sugar monopolies. paired with the influence of bustamante, jamaica’s path to industrialization would be based upon the policy of “industrialization by invitation” (idi), devised by st. lucian economist w. arthur lewis. wanting to shift the caribbean away from its primary export of agriculture, lewis called for creating an economic atmosphere that was attractive to foreign investment, therefore kickstarting industrialization. caribbean leaders would be required to keep wages low to entice existing companies. lewis also recommended the creation of a caribbean-wide industrial development corporation and an industrial development bank, with the former providing investment to the region while the latter offered loans to companies. lewis appeared to envision a firmly capitalistic economic order for the region, where industry and wealth provided by europe and north america would “trickle down” to locals. with caribbean governments tagging on their own tax incentives for prospective businesses, the region adopted idi policies across the 1950s. the process of industrialization was therefore attached to the movements of foreign capitalists, who had the space to operate across the caribbean virtually free of charge. it must be mentioned that the welfare of caribbean labourers goes unaddressed in lewis’ policy. attempts at improving the material well-being of workers would therefore be a secondary or nonexistent goal in the eyes of capitalists such as lewis and bustamante. michael manley and the liberation of jamaica via reformist means with financial downturns and widening wealth inequalities occurring throughout the 1960s, jamaica’s people’s national party under michael manley won the 1972 election. manley adopted the phrases of “betta mus come” and “power to the people”, signalling that his party would be adopting a populist edge in their management of jamaica. initial social and economic reforms included universal secondary education, lifting bans on black liberation and marxist literature, and the initiation of nationalization programmes. manley also announced his intentions to renegotiate bauxite and alumina royalty agreements with canadian and american corporations. in addition, a levy upon bauxite was applied country-wide, raising tax rates by 480% by 1975, amounting to a total increase from $2.50 to $14.51 per tonne. international goals included the formation of the international bauxite association, which would bring together numerous global south countries. finally, manley voiced his support for black liberation movements across the african continent. 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 (january 20, 2022 / 09:38:44) 122864-1b_caribbeanquilt_vol7_rev.pdf .75 76 c. edie, “domestic politics and external relations in jamaica under michael manley, 1972–1980,” studies in comparative international development, 21(1), (2007): 1–94. https://doi.org/10.1007/bf02717364 democratic socialists of america. (n.d.). what is democratic socialism? https://www.dsausa.org/about-us/what-isdemocratic-socialism/ m. bolton, “‘democratic socialism’ and the concept of (post)capitalism,” . the political quarterly, 91(2), (2020): 334–342. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-923x.12830 democratic socialists of america. (n.d.). what is democratic socialism? https://www.dsausa.org/about-us/what-isdemocratic-socialism/ g. graham, democratic political tragedy in the postcolony: the tragedy of postcoloniality in michael manley’s jamaica and nelson mandela’s south africa. (routledge, 2018). https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315444529 ibid. ibid. 16 topping off his shift away from the capitalistic norms established by british colonists and bustamante, the pnp published its “thirteen principles of democratic socialism”. manley particularly noted that his democratic socialist ideal for jamaica “…was the philosophy that best gives expression to the christian ideal of equality of all god’s children”. as evidenced by the ambitious reforms of the early 1970s, the manley government had the aim of redistributing wealth and supporting liberation movements worldwide, all of which fall in line with the leftist goals advocated by the pnp’s version of democratic socialism. however, a question yet remains: did the goals of manley and the pnp truly fall within the bounds of democratic socialism, and perhaps most importantly, were they conducive to eventually dismantling capitalism in jamaica? democratic socialism and social democracy the democratic socialists of america define democratic socialism as a system in which “…the economy and society should be run democratically – to meet public needs, not to make profits for the few”. similarly, bolton states that democratic socialism looks to dismantle the concept of private property while ensuring that production is run democratically by workers in an alliance with the state. as such, the needs of workers and of society at large, rather than those of a capitalist or a group of shareholders, are to be emphasized and supported. as a form of socialism which depends upon democratic consensus, democratic socialism is opposed to state-based, centrally planned forms of socialism, commonly found in marxist-leninist communist states such as the soviet union and cuba during the 20th and 21st centuries. in detailing the erosion of democratic socialism in jamaica, graham states that michael manley’s reforms were firmly moderate and non-revolutionary, with no calls for seizing control over jamaican capital. capitalism under the pnp would instead seek to “domesticate” capitalism through nationalization, the establishment of welfare infrastructure, and the creation of rural cooperatives. manley looked to forge a “third path” for jamaica, one which differed from both traditional neocolonial models of capitalism and the state-based marxist-leninist form of communism. as such, it could be argued that the form of democratic socialism implemented by the manley government was instead a form of social democracy, which calls for wealth redistribution, social safety nets, and government economic intervention as a means of countering the often-harmful 18 20 21 22 19 17 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 (january 20, 2022 / 09:38:44) 122864-1b_caribbeanquilt_vol7_rev.pdf .76 77 a. lavelle, the death of social democracy: political consequences in the 21st century. (routledge, 2008) ibid. ibid. f. ambursley, “jamaica: the demise of ‘democratic socialism’”. new left review, 128 (1981): 76. ibid. a. lavelle, the death of social democracy: political consequences in the 21st century. (routledge, 2008) ibid. c. edie, “domestic politics and external relations in jamaica under michael manley, 1972–1980,” studies in comparative international development, 21(1), (2007): 1–94. https://doi.org/10.1007/bf02717364. a. lavelle, the death of social democracy: political consequences in the 21st century. (routledge, 2008), 13. 23 consequences of capitalism and markets. capitalism as an economic system would therefore not be overthrown, but instead retooled to serve the needs of working-class jamaicans. therefore, there is no indication that manley’s form of “democratic socialism” would have ever brought about the true diminishment of capitalism and the onset of socialized control for working class jamaicans. manley’s methods were not truly “revolutionary” in any meaning of the term – there would be no violent overthrowing of jamaica’s economic order nor an ousting of american and global north influence from the island. additionally, citing the austerity measures taken by france, britain, sweden, and germany, lavelle states that social democratic governments ultimately capitulate to capitalistic pressures, either from within the government apparatus itself or from capitalist influence elsewhere. citing callinicos, lavelle argues that social democratic reforms are prone to significant reactions from big business, including capital flight, which can destabilize a government. such a point can be observed in the eventual demise of the manley government and the reactionary responses seen towards their bauxite levy, which resulted in domestic business circles moving their wealth abroad. as a result, capital inflow as a measure of the island’s gdp shrank from 9.7% to 0.9% as countries looked elsewhere for profit maximization. additionally, the us moved to support the political ambitions of the liberal capitalist jamaica labour party, while american media initiated a smear campaign against the jamaican tourism industry. by undercutting two of jamaica’s largest industries, tourism and mining, the nation was left economically devastated. such an economic situation rendered manley’s reformist goals impossible to meaningfully achieve. lavelle notes that within a functioning social democracy, constant economic growth for financing its robust social programs is an absolute necessity. therefore, social democrats and reformist socialists such as manley often fall into a “catch-22”, where they attempt to declaw capitalist institutions while simultaneously attempting to maximize the funds that can be siphoned from them. countries such as the european nations analyzed by lavelle or jamaica under future liberal capitalist politicians often eventually end up sidelining social democratic reforms and choosing the opposing path of neoliberalism: the promotion of a strong free market via tax breaks, privatization, and deregulation. the post-manley period, which saw the opposing jamaica labour party ascend to rule under edward seaga, turn to the free market and the global north for fixing jamaica’s financial woes. agreements were struck with the international monetary fund, 25 27 28 29 26 24 30 31 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 (january 20, 2022 / 09:38:45) 122864-1b_caribbeanquilt_vol7_rev.pdf .77 78 d., austin, “vanguards and masses: global lessons from the grenada revolution,” learning from the ground up: global perspectives on social movements and knowledge production. (2010): 175-191. ibid. ibid. g.m. telleria, “vanguardism and the vanguardist organization: a study of the sandinista national liberation front and its rise to power,” latin american policy, 8, (2017): 27-40. https://doi.org/10.1111/lamp.12115 ibid. ibid 32 regulations on companies were diminished, and austerity measures were introduced, resulting in sizeable cuts to jamaican social programs. seaga’s neoliberal goals aimed to create a “good business climate” in jamaica by any means necessary, even if the result was a decline in social well-being. it can therefore be determined that jamaican social democracy, or “democratic socialism” as termed by manley himself, may have been doomed from the start, and would not have eroded jamaican capitalism. the structural problems inherent in jamaican social democracy were further compounded by its position as an industrializing, majority-black, and formerly colonized state in the global south. unlike the industrialized and often formerly imperialist nations of europe and north america, jamaica lacked the international prestige and leverage required to go against british and american interests that were intent on exploiting the country’s resources and claiming most of its wealth. by observing the problems associated with social democracy, we see that the reformist policies of the pnp may have ironically moved jamaica towards neoliberalism, which would have ultimately served the needs capitalists, given time. however, sensing danger, domestic and foreign actors quickly looked to dismantle manley’s relatively docile policies regardless. it becomes clear that even a measured, reform-based attempt at curbing the negative externalities associated with capitalism politics will result in significant backlash from global north actors. grenada’s new jewel movement: revolution via reform manley’s attempt at achieving democratic socialism via reformist means can be contrasted with the new jewel movement (njm), a marxist-leninist organization which overthrew the previous regime via revolutionary means while maintaining elements of capitalism during their rule. before the revolution, eric gairy served as prime minister of grenada. his reign was noted as being rife with corruption, electoral fraud, and the usage of a paramilitary force which terrorized political threats and the island’s citizens. it must be mentioned that the njm, led by maurice bishop, initially attempted to bring about a leftist government via democratic means, wishing to uphold the electoral institutions that were, at least in theory, baked into the fabric of the relatively new country. it was only after multiple failed attempts at unseating the incumbent gairy that the njm turned towards vanguardism: where a political party serves as a community’s sole centralized backbone for driving class struggle and a future revolution. such parties are tightly centralized, with members required to strictly follow the party resolutions. it was through such an organizational model that the njm under bishop was able to remain unified against the increasingly brutal and erratic actions taken by the gairy government. 33 35 36 34 31 30 37 32 33 34 35 36 37 (january 20, 2022 / 09:38:45) 122864-1b_caribbeanquilt_vol7_rev.pdf .78 79 n., phillip, “women in the grenada revolution, 1979-1983,” small axe, 11(1), (2007): 39-66. d., austin, “vanguards and masses: global lessons from the grenada revolution,” learning from the ground up: global perspectives on social movements and knowledge production. (2010): 175-191. r. burtenshaw, grenada’s revolution at 40. jacobin, february 9 2019). https://www.jacobinmag.com/2019/09/grenada-revolution-maurice-bishop-reagan marxists internet archive. (2018). “stagism”. encyclopedia of marxism, 2019. j. brierley, “a review of development strategies and programmes of the people's revolutionary government in grenada, 1979-83”. the geographical journal, 151(1), (1985): 40-52. doi:10.2307/633276 ibid. ibid. ibid. 38 in addition, the njm also focused their efforts on uplifting the material and political conditions affecting women through the progressive women’s association (pwa). although not initially viewing their fight through a socialist lens, the pwa advocated for employment opportunities, improved working conditions, and wages for women. rather than purely attaining change along economic lines, bishop acknowledged the identity-based wants of the pwa and incorporated them into the revolution. looking to keep the party strong, the prg did not tolerate the existence of multiple women’s liberation groups, stating that a plurality could allow for cia and other negative infiltration that could undermine the revolution. the adoption of vanguardism in the grenadian contrast gave the njm, and eventually the people’s revolutionary government (prg), a thoroughly revolutionary edge, which would eventually allow for a liberated grenada to be fully unshackled from the racial and economic bounds provided by capitalism and allow for a transition to communism. it must be noted that although the njm considered itself a marxist and leftist political party, it pursued a mixed economy, recognizing that grenada did not yet have the economic development required to fully bring about communism . it can therefore be argued that although the gairy government was overthrown through revolutionary means, the transition to communism would be done via reformist methods. as such, bishop’s government bears some level of resemblance to manley’s attempt at implementing social democracy in jamaica. although both countries in their experimentations with leftist politics ultimately kept their capitalist institutions intact, the njm did so within the context of a centralized revolutionary government. the marxist-leninist idea of “stagism” would evidently rule, where grenada goes through a capitalist-tolerant phase until the economy was adequately developed and a significant proportion of the population was educated. only then would full worker control over the means of production be viable without undermining the well-being of the state. in terms of agricultural developments, bishop’s goals appeared tied to improving the material well-being of grenadians at the most basic level. goals included implementing price freezes upon staples and increasing the consumption of locally-grown products. according to brierley, economic policy was seen in the creation of a “tri-sectoral” strategy, where grenada’s public, private, and cooperative sectors would work together towards common goals. although the prg was indeed left-wing, such an economic choice resulted in private corporations remaining firmly in place. to the astonishment of observers, the prg saw an unemployment decrease from 49% before the revolution to 14% by 1983. furthermore, in contrast 39 41 42 40 43 44 45 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 (january 20, 2022 / 09:38:45) 122864-1b_caribbeanquilt_vol7_rev.pdf .79 80 to other nations in the western hemisphere that saw declines during and after the 1970s recession, the island saw levels of sustained economic growth between the years of between 1979 to 1983. however, despite grenada’s relatively capitalist-friendly approach, the united states and surrounding caribbean nations still observed bishop’s government as a threat to neoliberal hegemony in the region, resulting in an american-led invasion in 1983 and the toppling of the prg. conclusion in observing the similarities and differences between jamaica under michael manley and grenada under maurice bishop, we recognize that political developments in the caribbean are largely tied to the wants and whims of the global north, largely due to the region being part of “america’s backyard”. although both countries have attempted to implement reformist methods that either would have resulted in the maintaining of capitalism or a gentle movement away from it, both saw significant backlashes from global north actors. the us-led invasion of grenada and the economic troubles experienced by the jamaican pnp both acted as warnings to global south and caribbean countries during the late 20th century. leftist policies that erode the neoliberal capitalistic hegemony will not be tolerated under any circumstances. as of 2021, both jamaica and grenada are managed by conservative, centre-right governments that adhere to the capitalistic policies which their predecessors sought to dismantle. for now, it appears as if the economic preferences of the global north reign supreme across much of the caribbean. it remains to be seen if leftist political forces can regain the level of prominence they once held in decades past and once again challenge the global north for regional sovereignty. 45 (january 20, 2022 / 09:38:45) 122864-1b_caribbeanquilt_vol7_rev.pdf .80 81 “jamaica vs. the transnationals: battle over bauxite,” nacla report on the americas, 12:3, (1978): 17-25. ambursley, f. “jamaica: the demise of ‘democratic socialism’”. new left review, 128 (1981): 76. austin, d. “vanguards and masses: global lessons from the grenada revolution,” learning from the ground up: global perspectives on social movements and knowledge production. (2010): 175-191. bolton, m. “‘democratic socialism’ and the concept of (post)capitalism,” . the political quarterly, 91(2), (2020): 334–342. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-923x.12830 brierley, j. “a review of development strategies and programmes of the people's revolutionary government in grenada, 1979-83”. the geographical journal, 151 (1), (1985): 40-52. doi:10.2307/633276 burtenshaw, r. grenada’s revolution at 40. jacobin, february 9 2019). https://www.jacobinmag.com/2019/09/grenada-revolution-maurice-bishop-reagan davies, c.b. & jardine, m. imperial geographies and caribbean nationalism: at the border between “a dying colonialism” and u.s. hegemony (2003). democratic socialists of america. (n.d.). what is democratic socialism? https://www.dsausa.org/about-us/what-is-democratic-socialism/ edie, c. “domestic politics and external relations in jamaica under michael manley, 1972–1980,” studies in comparative international development, 21(1), (2007): 1–94. https://doi.org/10.1007/bf02717364. graham, g. democratic political tragedy in the postcolony: the tragedy of postcoloniality in michael manley’s jamaica and nelson mandela’s south africa. (routledge, 2018). https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315444529 lavelle, a. the death of social democracy: political consequences in the 21st century. (routledge, 2008), 13. mandle, j.r. patterns of caribbean development: an interpretive essay on economic change (routledge, 1982). marxists internet archive. (2018). “stagism”. encyclopedia of marxism, 2019. phillip, n. (2007). “women in the grenada revolution, 1979-1983,” small axe, 11(1), (2007): 39-66. telleria, g.m. “vanguardism and the vanguardist organization: a study of the sandinista national liberation front and its rise to power,” latin american policy, 8, (2017): 27-40. https://doi.org/10.1111/lamp.12115 works cited (january 20, 2022 / 09:38:45) 122864-1b_caribbeanquilt_vol7_rev.pdf .81 thought leadership and women’s liberation politics: a book review of left of karl marx by carol boyce davies janae knott university of toronto rotman commerce, arts & science, university of toronto claudia jones’ life and intellectual work have made impactful contributions in several spaces, including marxist-leninist ideology and anti-imperialism discourse. this review analyzes the left of karl marx: the political life of black communist claudia jones written by carol boyce davies. davies offers valuable insight into jones’ anti-imperialist ideas, which are layered as she believed imperialism was the root cause of racism and fascism. furthermore, davies draws upon a wide range of jones’ journalistic pieces to highlight the impact she has had in areas like communist ideology and women’s political liberation. a b s t r a c t keywords: communism, imperialism, internationalism, liberation, marxism, wage equality, feminism b i o janae knott is a 4th year undergraduate student at the university of toronto. she is completing her bachelor’s degree in commerce, while obtaining minors in caribbean studies and economics. her academic interests include political economy and economic development in the caribbean, decolonization theory, and social mobility. © 2021 janae knott caribbean studies students’ union, canada https://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/cquilt/ this work is licensed under the creative commons attributionsharealike 4.0 international license. to view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ 60 (january 20, 2022 / 09:38:42) 122864-1b_caribbeanquilt_vol7_rev.pdf .60 61 claudia jones' life, intellectual work, and organizing efforts have shaped history when considering its expansion of marxist-leninist ideology and contribution to anti-imperialist discourse. ‘the left of karl marx: the political life of black communist claudia jones’ written by carol boyce davies details her life and career journey, outlining the ways in which jones navigates through neo-colonial systems as an active black feminist and communist. the geographical movements and displacements in her life also contributed to her internationalist ideology. although born in trinidad, she spent much of her adult life in the united states before being deported to england. her unique life and observations motivated her to advocate for disenfranchised people in various capacities, and much of her advocacy was done through journalism and community organizing. in this review, i will discuss jones’ notable additions to marxist theory as it relates to black people, women, and other marginalized groups ultimately arguing that jones was the first to bring an intersectional approach to marxist and socialist theory, before ‘intersectionality’ became widely accepted and well known. furthermore, i will discuss her approach in combating imperialism, which she suggests is the root cause of racism and division in modern society. finally, i will discuss why her contributions are frequently overlooked, which i suspect is due to the us government’s strategic efforts to paint her as a criminal and deviant. one of jones’ most notable contributions is her expansion of marxist theory to show how black people, and in particular black women, are disproportionately affected by capitalist structures and policies. prior to her time, marxist theory simply suggested that class exploitation was due to factors including wage differentiation, which unfairly allow monopolists to make unreasonable profits. since women are a part of the working class, they too are subject to class exploitation, but the exploitation was not seen to be caused by their gender itself. jones proves that the issue is much deeper than this, where multiple structures work together to oppress groups to varying degrees: capitalism, imperialism, and patriarchy. therefore, one-dimensional analysis of the impact of capitalism isn’t sufficient to drive actual change. for example, examining the racial impact of capitalism alone isn’t sufficient to create a more equitable society, because although black men and black women both experience racism, black women are oppressed by black men due to structural conditions of patriarchy. her contribution is important because it changes the benchmark of progress within the marxist-leninist framework. she explains that advancement can really only occur if black women, as the “triply oppressed group,” can access better living conditions because this would entail dismantling all oppressive structures that drive issues like wealth inequality, power struggles, etc. jones’ approach in demonstrating the need for intersectionality was brilliant due to its logical approach. to demonstrate that the issues within the capitalist society are layered, she dissects the issue by the layer of gender, and then combines race and gender together. as a baseline, claudia explains that women face exploitation as workers and within the household. in work settings, women face (january 20, 2022 / 09:38:42) 122864-1b_caribbeanquilt_vol7_rev.pdf .61 62 lower wages and subordination to service positions, and in the household their labor goes unrecognized and uncompensated. importantly, these are related as since household work is not respected or deemed as real work. the value of work that women do outside the household is simply seen as an extension of this and therefore they aren’t paid wages that reflect the output of their labor. jones then used statistics to demonstrate that black women are positioned economically at the lowest rank of society confined to lower paying jobs and given few opportunities to become professionals. disproportionate representation in service work led to striking disparities in wages. when considering comparisons between black women’s wages to men’s average wages and then white women’s wages to the same, it demonstrates the issue as both a racial and gendered problem. the super exploitation of black women was an issue close to jones’ heart likely because of her family’s experience of her mom dying at 37 from strenuous working conditions in a garment industry job. i found the approach she used to prove why the black woman’s problem should be ‘everyone’s problem’ to be an interesting one. she provided the reasoning that since black women are leaders in their households, improving conditions for them means creating better living conditions for all black people, and remarkably, society in general benefits from the value of the labor of black women. i believe jones introduced the public to the basic premise of intersectionality through her intellectual work provided to the communist party of usa, as she introduced them to the concepts and language of ‘triple oppression’. ultimately, this was an important contribution to communist ideology because by proving that capitalism, imperialism and sexism create unique conditions for different groups, the need for specific and targeted group-by-group solutions is highlighted. jones was firmly rooted in anti-imperialist politics as she found imperialism was the primary driver behind structural issues like racism and fascism. once again, jones made interesting contributors to marxist theory with respect to imperialism and conflict. marxist theory states that all modern wars are caused by competition for resources and markets controlled by imperial powers, and these wars are a natural consequence of the free market and social stratification systems we operate in. jones enhanced this theory by writing about war’s disproportionate effects on black and brown communities, stating that these groups truly bear the brunt of this competition for resources. according to author boyce davies, jones wrote a froxpq�lq�µ+doi�wkh�:ruog¶�wkdw�lghqwl¿hv� how health, food, schooling, and day-to-day survival and general well-being are impacted when the government emphasizes war rather than people. particular attention is given to the report’s ¿qglqjv�rq�eodfn��0h[lfdq��dqg�3xhuwr� rican families who often lived in poverty. the column ends by saying ‘‘let woman today hear from its readers on what you are doing in your community: (1) to demand an end to the wage freeze and for immediate wage increases; (2) for immediate price and rent control; (3) for a cut in taxes of low-incomed people.’’(davies, carole boyce. left of karl marx: the political life of black communist claudia (january 20, 2022 / 09:38:42) 122864-1b_caribbeanquilt_vol7_rev.pdf .62 63 jones. (north carolina: duke university press, 2008), 81.). clearly, jones was interested in the effects of imperialism on particular groups, one of which was caribbean countries. she defines the us as a covert imperialist where they view the west indies as a source of advantages, such as food and cheap labor. given these terms, she advocated for a fully independent caribbean federation, which was self-governing and safeguarded the rights of vulnerable people such as minority groups. when met with knowledge that made this seem unlikely, she advocated for the islands having labor organizations and unions to protect common workers from the interests of bourgeoisie rulers. journalism helped jones disseminate her anti-imperialist ideas, where she found that political education was key to building the consciousness of oppressed groups. furthermore, she used writing as a tool to build a joint sense of identity amongst black people of various geographies, drawing connections between anti-colonial struggles around the world as she saw all fights for liberation as related. jones brought this internationalist perspective to all platforms she wrote for. for example, she prompted the west indian gazette to launch ‘solidarity campaigns’ with leaders of liberation movements in african and asian countries. similarly, she was instrumental in helping caribbean readers in the uk to redefine their blackness and separate themselves from ‘britishness’, which was meaningful given they were regularly reminded that they were outsiders, as evidenced by the nottinghill riots occurring in 1958. whilst tackling british racism was one of the central goals of the west indian gazette, jones also provided caribbean uk residents with exposure to black artists and intellectuals from around the world, creating fertile ground for development of an african consciousness and unifying the black world. using the west indian gazette, she featured african american artists, interviewed w.e.b du bois & martin luther king, and facilitated events for british residents that paralleled those of global events. for example, she connected the ‘march in britain’ to the one occurring in washington dc. jones personally understood the challenge of maintaining identity in migration, as the time at which she moved to the united states marked the initial influx of caribbean people settling in the us. like many immigrants, she was immersed in caribbean culture while living in new york, and from observation she saw that public displays of culture were important to diasporic development and solidarity. she observed the caribbean carnival in new york was being resumed post-war as a sister event to carnival in trinidad, and it was seen as a means of bridging cultures. her critique of carnival in new york influenced her organizing of carnival in the uk: jones saw that the event did not foster any relationship to caribbean and african americans celebrating it, and it did not help caribbean migrants adjust to their new environment in any way. given the nottinghill riots, jones made the uk carnival both symbolic of interracial friendship and the power of caribbean culture identity, organizing a caribbean carnival committee to help best display aspects of caribbean culture like steelband music and art/fashion through a carnival queen competition. her effort lives on today as the scale of the carnival grew and the event later became known as the (january 20, 2022 / 09:38:43) 122864-1b_caribbeanquilt_vol7_rev.pdf .63 64 notting hill carnival, an event which attracts millions of uk residents and foreigners annually. her internationalist approach was also evident in her feminist politics, which could easily be observed by looking at her writing for the ‘half the world’ column. jones believed that when women became conscious of their exploitation and once empowered, they were capable of organizing amongst themselves, obtaining power to influence public and political activity that they were previously strategically excluded from. in the column, jones recommended texts from authors around the world who were pursuing socialism, including books on women in china and the soviet union, ‘the woman question’ (which included ideas from marx, engels, lenin, and stalin), and biographies of influential black women, including sojourner truth and harriet tubman. this ideological stance permeated her personal life and relationships too, as she felt connected to other women in leadership with the same liberation ideals for their respective countries. for example, in prison jones used poetry to communicate solidarity with other feminist activists like the puerto rican activist blanca canales torresola, who was fighting for political liberation in puerto rico. in my opinion, one reason why jones may not be credited properly for her contributions to society and intellectual thought is the us government’s criminalization of her image, and consequent damage to her reputation in the international community. since she publically branded herself as a communist, she was deemed oppositional to the american government from the beginning as in the eyes of the state, communism and radicalism were synonymous, and advocates for marxist-leninism were criminals rather than politically engaged citizens. the fbi strongly believed that people of her political orientation had intention to overthrow the american government, and therefore should be policed and silenced. the texts which formed the basis for her deportation are telling, as they highlight that american society is founded upon values of racism, sexism, and capitalism. her article ‘international women’s day and the struggle for peace’ was deemed subversive by the fbi, and her piece ‘women in the struggle for peace and security’ led to her arrest as it prompted american women to advocate for peace and end the korean war, taking up a similar stance to women involved in anti-war and anti-fascism efforts in latin america, the soviet union, asia, and africa. jones was said to be violating the internal security act of 1950, which condemns aliens publishing information that opposes the present government in attempts to overthrow it. this is particularly interesting because jones was involved in several counter-education efforts, educating people on the true values of communism to reduce stigma. however, her public affiliations to the communist party, black liberation movements, and international feminist movements made her the perfect target for the fbi to incarcerate and deport. this criminalization points to the struggle of black activists with public political affiliations and ideological stances that differ from the state’s ideological orientation. (january 20, 2022 / 09:38:43) 122864-1b_caribbeanquilt_vol7_rev.pdf .64 65 davies, carole boyce. left of karl marx: the political life of black communist claudia jones. north carolina: duke university press, 2008. works cited (january 20, 2022 / 09:38:43) 122864-1b_caribbeanquilt_vol7_rev.pdf .65 politics, identity and jamaican music rachelle sanicharan university of toronto fas canadian studies specialist music in jamaica has a long history that is very much intertwined with religious, social, and political factors. as the development of reggae music grew, it became increasingly popular in relation to politics and social issues. this research examines the development of reggae and dancehall music in jamaica in relation with politics and identity. in turn, this research seeks to present the importance of jamaican music as a voice for jamaican people—an accurate presentation of their experiences and their beliefs. a b s t r a c t keywords: reggae, dancehall, jamaican music, jamaican politics, jamaican identityb i o rachelle is a fourth-year student as a canadian studies specialist at st. michael’s college university of toronto. she is an indo-guyanese canadian woman who has a particular interest in researching, recording, and preserving her indo-caribbean culture by constantly engaging with caribbean communities, especially through the non-profit organization that she volunteers with called, brown gyal diary. brown gyal diary’s mission is to create a space primarily for indo-caribbean women to share their experiences and histories to create recognition and to preserve our culture. her inspiration towards engaging in caribbean based work, is mostly linked to her love for family. © 2021 rachelle sanicharan caribbean studies students’ union, canada https://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/cquilt/ this work is licensed under the creative commons attributionsharealike 4.0 international license. to view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ 132 (january 20, 2022 / 09:38:52) 122864-1b_caribbeanquilt_vol7_rev.pdf .132 133 “the history of jamaica.” jamaica information service. accessed 2021. https://jis.gov.jm/information/jamaican-history/. ambursley, fitzroy. “fitzroy ambursley, jamaica: the demise of 'democratic socialism', nlr i/128, july–august 1981.” new left review. accessed 2021. https://newleftreview.org/issues/i128/articles/fitzroy-ambursley-jamaica-thedemise-of-democratic-socialism. see note 2 above. “the history of jamaica.” jamaica information service. accessed 2021. https://jis.gov.jm/information/jamaican-history/. ambursley, fitzroy. “fitzroy ambursley, jamaica: the demise of 'democratic socialism', nlr i/128, july–august 1981.” new left review. accessed 2021. https://newleftreview.org/issues/i128/articles/fitzroy-ambursley-jamaica-thedemise-of-democratic-socialism. dawes, kwame. “sound systems.” world policy journal 35, no. 1 (2018): 35–39. https://doi.org/10.1215/07402775-6894768. 1 music in jamaica has a long history that is very much intertwined with religious, social, and political factors. as the development of reggae music grew, it became increasingly popular in relation to politics and social issues. this research examines the development of reggae and dancehall music in jamaica in relation with politics and identity. in turn, this research seeks to present the importance of jamaican music as a voice for jamaican people—an accurate presentation of their experiences and their beliefs. in order to do so, i will first briefly examine jamaica’s political history, the different factors that lead to jamaica’s independence, and the distinct differentiation between economic classes in jamaica. this paper will not go into detail about jamaica’s long history of discovery, the slave trade, and the general settlement period. instead it focuses on jamaica in the early 20th century when jamaica’s political participation began to significantly develop. throughout the 1930s, jamaica and jamaican peoples faced many hardships that involved slow-moving political advancement, economic depression, falling sugar prices, and the ruin of the banana industry due to panama’s industry disease, unemployment, and rising population growth. due to these hardships, as well as a lack of voting rights, riots and violence began to tear through the streets of jamaica. from these riots and violent acts came the emergence of two labour unions and two political parties. norman manley founded the national workers’ union and the people’s national party in 1938 while sir alexander bustamante founded bustamante industrial trade union and the jamaica labour party in 1943. norman manley and the people’s national party (pnp), reflected the interests of the urban petty bourgeoisie, middle peasants and small traders. whereas sir alexander bustamante and the jamaica labour party (jlp) reflected the working class, with majority of that class living on the borderline of wag labour and peasant small-holding. collectively, norman manley and sir alexander bustamante, are credited for moving jamaica towards self-government. the first general election took place in december 1944 under universal adult suffrage, with the jlp winning 22 out of the 32 seats. jamaica was one of ten other caribbean states who formed the federation of the west indies, in 1958, but jamaicans opposed the idea in 1961, abandoning the federation in order to be a self-governed nation. almost 20 years later, jamaica officially gained its independence from britain on august 6, 1962 with sir alexander bustamante as the country’s first prime minister. at the time, jamaica’s economy was booming, bauxite was in demand, tourism was gaining popularity, and there was a banana revival. by 1969, 2 3 4 5 6 1 2 3 4 (january 20, 2022 / 09:38:52) 122864-1b_caribbeanquilt_vol7_rev.pdf .133 134 oumano, elena. “reggae says no to 'politricks.' (music and politics in jamaica).” the free library. accessed 2021. http://www.thefreelibrary.com/reggae+says+no+to+%27politricks.%27+(music+and+politics+in+ jamaica)-a019701030. see note 7 above. see note 7 above. edie, carlene j. “domestic politics and external relations in jamaica under michael manley, 1972–1980.” studies in comparative international development 21, no. 1 (1986): 71–94. https://doi.org/10.1007/bf02717364. see note 10 above. 7 michael manley succeeded his father and became the leader of the national people’s party, going on to win the 1972 general election. moving into this new period of leadership, the development and progression of reggae as a form of social and political influence, was popularized. social protest no longer only took the form of riots but “was also taking the form of cultural and musical expression [allowing] the period [to be the] most intense development of the reggae musical idiom.” it is imperative to note that reggae also has an intertwined relation with rastafarianism. while this paper does not cover the religion and the social factors also influenced the stigmatization of reggae artists, this positionality allowed the genre to become a rallying call for the country’s marginalized. in addition to the 1972 elections, the year also marked the beginning of greater recognition of the reggae band the wailers—later bob marley and the wailers—with their signing of a record deal with island records. by the mid-70s, the wailers had released their second studio album, natty dread, which was reflective of the political tensions taking place in jamaica throughout the 70s. with the increase of violence taking place because of the tension between the people’s national party and jamaica labour party, bob marley even spoke of his own experience of army member stopping him on the street the night before manley was elected, in rebel music (3 o’clock road block). “the 1970s saw the use of influential reggae ‘political songs’, which sang the praises of particular candidates, natty dread, was no exception. in addition to rebel music, the album also featured the song, revolution—which many people believed was bob marley’s promotion of the people’s national party.. rising in popularity worldwide, bob marley and the wailers released their third album, rastaman vibration, in 1976, featuring the song war. this song similarly demonstrates a plea for political change and freedom from oppression. at this time, bob marley was such an influential and controversial figure that the cia had created a file on him and on december 3, 1976 there was an assassination attempt on his life, injuring him, his wife and his manager prior to the smile jamaica concert—which is believed to have been an event in support of the people’s national party. marley still performed at the show but left jamaica the day after, seeking safety in england. for the next few years, violence and political tension continued with the general populace picking sides and being divided. bob marley returned to jamaica in 1978 to play the one love peace concert, with the goal of calming tensions prior to an election period that was quite violent. due to the influence that bob marley had, he got prime minister michael manley and jamaica labour 8 9 10 11 5 6 7 8 (january 20, 2022 / 09:38:53) 122864-1b_caribbeanquilt_vol7_rev.pdf .134 135 edie, carlene j. “domestic politics and external relations in jamaica under michael manley, 1972–1980.” studies in comparative international development 21, no. 1 (1986): 71–94. https://doi.org/10.1007/bf02717364. ambursley, fitzroy. “fitzroy ambursley, jamaica: the demise of 'democratic socialism', nlr i/128, july– august 1981.” new left review. accessed 2021. https://newleftreview.org/issues/i128/articles/fitzroy-ambursley-jamaica -the-demise-of-democratic-socialism. dawes, kwame. “sound systems.” world policy journal 35, no. 1 (2018): 35–39. https://doi.org/10.1215/074027756894768. oumano, elena. “reggae says no to 'politricks.' (music and politics in jamaica).” the free library. accessed 2021. 12 party leader, edward seaga, on stage, one standing one both sides of marley. while the divisions that had developed over the years was not settled by this moment on stage, it demonstrated that in addition to marley’s influence over fans and the broader marginalized community he and his music exerted influence over those in power, and presents another example of the influence that reggae has had on politics in jamaica. prime minister michael manley was not re-elected in 1980 due to “the pnp’s state expansionist policies and anti-imperialist foreign policies [which] were perceived as threatening to the interests of the local bourgeoisie, international financial institutions and the u.s. government.” this led to the withdrawal of “their capital resources from the government.” furthermore, due to the administration’s relationship with fidel castro and other european communist countries, manley, a democratic socialist, strained the relationship of allies like britain, american and canada. the economic impacts of doing so were a large factor in why he was not re-elected in 1980 and jamaica labour party leader, edward seaga came into power. these external factors were compounded by the fact that the people whom suffered where promised change by manley, but got tired of waiting for these changes to be implemented. as stated in jamaica: the demise of ‘democratic socialism,’ “there is no way to deny the fact that the ultimate weakness of the pnp was its failure to unite and mobilize the small peasants, farm workers, urban wage earners and casual labourers who compromise the overwhelming social and political majority of jamaican society.” throughout these political changes, reggae remained the music of the people—relatable to the struggles the general populace faced, it is a music that presents a narrative that is all too familiar. as dawes stated in, sound systems: a new generation of jamaican musicians is blending dancehall and roots reggae to take on the country’s problems, “reggae represented the dreams and ambitions of poor jamaicans, and it spoke to them in their own voice,” many times in proper english so that audiences globally can understand. that representation was also influencing politics. in 1996, the release of buju banton’s song it’s politics time again essentially launched electoral campaigns for prime minister. after many years of back and forth leadership, a record-breaking murder rate and dire economic conditions, banton singing, “are you going to vote now, we need love not war” was a rallying call for many. as we see the commercialization of reggae music, however, some people began to “reject roots reggae for its contamination by white power, its commercial packaging of original song compositions into albums destined for listeners with the money for a 13 9 10 11 12 14 15 13 14 15 (january 20, 2022 / 09:38:53) 122864-1b_caribbeanquilt_vol7_rev.pdf .135 136 frydman, jason. “death in the arena.” small axe: a caribbean journal of criticism 23, no. 3 (2019): 34–49. dawes, kwame. “sound systems.” world policy journal 35, no. 1 (2018): 35–39. oumano, elena. “reggae says no to 'politricks.' (music and politics in jamaica).” the free library. see note 18 above. oumano, elena. “reggae says no to 'politricks.' (music and politics in jamaica).” the free library. spence, kim-marie. “when money is not enough: reggae, dancehall, and policy in jamaica.” the journal of arts management, law, and society 49, no. 1 (2018): 45–60. gould-taylor, sally. “‘bullets and badges: understanding the relationships between cultural commodities and identity formation in an era of gaza vs. gully: a jamaican ‘rural’ ethnography.,’” 2016. http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.12613/1329. see note 22 above. see note 22 above. 16 home turntable.” this allowed dancehall to gain in popularity much in the same way reggae did decades before—as the voice of the people. though dancehall was present before the 1980s, we see the influence of dancehall emerge, becoming an important part of jamaican music, experience and identity. as dawes states, “when chanting or speaking into the mic, dancehall artists directly address a patwa speaking jamaican audience.” in this way, dancehall literally became the voice and language of the people. in 1996, beenie man, one of the top dancehall artists of all time, promoted the ghetto splash concert, the aim was to bring peace and create unity through music, something that the people of jamaican respond positively to. the concert was supposed to mirror marley’s one love peace concert, with the political leaders clasping their hands together in a show of unity, but the crowd did not respond well, instead booing the display. the people of jamaica saw that political elites were trying to use their love of music and the genre’s popularity with the masses to manipulate them. as oumano states, “the voter appeal of jamaican music has become increasingly evident to politicians, and they are eagerly wooing the music sector, which until recently, was linked in the politicians’ minds to a relatively powerless underclass.” “show” of unity from political leaders, “poor people are fed up/the system shut up.” dancehall music often had controversial, sexual, and violent lyrics, but its approach showed a reality that many people experienced in jamaica. as spence states in when money is not enough: reggae, dancehall, and policy in jamaica, “dancehall music is of lower-class origin, emerging largely from kingston’s urban ghettos and encapsulating the value and lifestyles thereof.” as dancehall has developed into the 21st century, we see the emergence of new popular artists and artists rivalries—most notably that of vybz kartel and mavado. once the protégés of bounty killa at the beginning of their careers, in 2006, they began their notorious musical war leading to broader social implications. with kartel from the working-class town, portmore (aka gaza) and mavado from the poor kingston neighbourhood, cassava piece (aka gully) a divide that is similar to the east coast v. west coast rap era in the united states. people had to choose a side, making sure that they didn’t cross into gaza territory if they were gully, and not going into gully territory if they were gaza. just like that, these two artists represented an identity of people, “jamaican people, home and abroad alike, were no longer ‘reping’ their political party or color, their parish, their social status 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 (january 20, 2022 / 09:38:53) 122864-1b_caribbeanquilt_vol7_rev.pdf .136 137 cooper, carolyn. “one love on gaza street.” the jamaica gleaner, november 2009. https://mobile.jamaica-gleaner.com/20091122/cleisure/cleisure3.ph see note 25 above. see note 25 above. dawes, kwame. “sound systems.” world policy journal 35, no. 1 (2018): 35–39. https://doi.org/10.1215/07402775-6894768. see note 28 above. see note 28 above. 25 (uptown vs. downtown) their color (browning vs. black). they were ‘reping’ their association with gaza or gully.” carolyn cooper, professor of literary and cultural studies at the university of the west indies and a popular social commentator on everything to do with dancehall, states, “very rarely do we acknowledge the powerful role of dancehall music as serious social commentary.” ‘gaza’ and ‘gully’ are now a part of everyday language of jamaican culture. it’s like jamaica labour party and people’s national party. we’re accustomed to the tribalization of politics that we carry the either/or mentality even into entertainment.” the gully and gaza clash is more than just who is your favourite artist, it refers to economic and social standing, it refers to how people identify themselves, as cooper stated, “like it or not, the real war is not between the gully and the gaza. it’s between the ‘have-nots’ and the ‘have-gots’. efforts to move passed this divide is evident in the roots revival reggae which has allowed for a combination of both conscious reggae, dancehall and some hip-hop influences. artists like damian “jr. gong” marley, chronixx, and protoje, are all a part of this revival, however many of these artists have a deeper connection to the music industry. “jamaican music has historically been associated with the revolutionary power of the lower classes, yet for the most part, the roots-revival artists as middle-class young people who come from a musical lineage.” damian “jr. gong” marley is the youngest son of bob marley, protoje is the son of 1970s reggae singer lorna bennett and a father who was a calypso singer, and chronixx who was named after his father, chronicle, a reggae enthusiast. even with these conscious reggae artists making music that is reminiscent and influenced by past reggae music, sometimes referring to politics and economic status, “it is clear that dancehall remains the music of the ‘underprivileged’ as its practitioners tend to speak on behalf of the poor and oppressed—though not always for purposes of political resistance.” demonstrating how both dancehall and reggae have deeper connections to the people of jamaica, rather than just being music that is enjoyed or even “politics” music, it is also reflective of varying identities of jamaica. jamaican music involves so much more than simple lyrics and musical arrangement. reggae and dancehall have influenced historical and contemporary jamaican politics. the music also allows for recognition and acknowledgment of similar experiences and beliefs. in this way, jamaican music often functions “as a site for ‘the repair of cultural injuries’”—an opportunity to heal and unite the people. similarly, reggae and dancehall are both significant when discussing identity and speaking about 26 27 28 29 30 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 (january 20, 2022 / 09:38:53) 122864-1b_caribbeanquilt_vol7_rev.pdf .137 138 mann, larisa kingston. “white faces in intimate spaces: jamaican popular music in global circulation.” communication, culture & critique 9, no. 2 (2015): 266–83. https://doi.org/10.1111/cccr.12106. oumano, elena. “reggae says no to 'politricks.' (music and politics in jamaica).” the free library. accessed 2021. 31 social and economic hardships, “it is growing increasingly clear that no matter how acidly jamaican politicians try to exploit their nation’s music, reggae is better suited to the rush of revolutionary blood than to reinforcing an inequitable status quo.” by highlighting trends in its development, this research has demonstrated the ways in which music in jamaica has had a long history that is very much intertwined with social and political factors. 32 32 (january 20, 2022 / 09:38:53) 122864-1b_caribbeanquilt_vol7_rev.pdf .138 139 ambursley, fitzroy. “fitzroy ambursley, jamaica: the demise of 'democratic socialism', nlr i/128, july–august 1981.” new left review. accessed 2021. https://newleftreview.org/issues/i128/articles/fitzroy-ambursley-jamaica-the demise-of-democratic-socialism. “bob marley.” biography.com. a&e networks television, may 6, 2021. http://www.biography.com/musician/bob-marley. cooper, carolyn. “one love on gaza street.” the jamaica gleaner, november 2009. https://mobile.jamaica-gleaner.com/20091122/cleisure/cleisure3.php. dawes, kwame. “sound systems.” world policy journal 35, no. 1 (2018): 35–39. https://doi.org/10.1215/07402775-6894768. edie, carlene j. “domestic politics and external relations in jamaica under michael manley, 1972–1980.” studies in comparative international development 21, no. 1 (1986): 71–94. https://doi.org/10.1007/bf02717364. frydman, jason. “death in the arena.” small axe: a caribbean journal of criticism 23, no. 3 (2019): 34–49. https://doi.org/10.1215/07990537-7912310. gould-taylor, sally. “‘bullets and badges: understanding the relationships between cultural commodities and identity formation in an era of gaza vs. gully: a jamaican ‘rural’ ethnography.,’” 2016. http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.12613/1329. “the history of jamaica.” jamaica information service. accessed 2021. https://jis.gov.jm/information/jamaican-history/. hope, donna. “inna di dancehall: popular culture and the politics of identity in jamaica.” canadian journal of latin american and caribbean studies / revue canadienne des études latino-américaines et caraïbe 32, no. 64 (2007): 228–30. mann, larisa kingston. “white faces in intimate spaces: jamaican popular music in global circulation.” communication, culture & critique 9, no. 2 (2015): 266–83. https://doi.org/10.1111/cccr.12106. nixon, angelique v. "blackness, resistance and consciousness in dancehall culture." black renaissance 9, no. 2 (fall, 2010): 190-199,250. http://myaccess.library.utoronto.ca/login?qurl=https%3a%2f%2fwww.proquest. com%2fscholarly-journals%2fblacknessresistance-consciousnessdancehall%2f docview%2f365912181%2fse2%3faccountid%3d14771. oumano, elena. “reggae says no to 'politricks.' (music and politics in jamaica).” the free library. accessed 2021. http://www.thefreelibrary.com/reggae+says+no+to+%27politricks.%27+ (music+and+politics+in+jamaica)-a019701030. spence, kim-marie. “when money is not enough: reggae, dancehall, and policy in jamaica.” the journal of arts management, law, and society 49, no. 1 (2018): 45–60. https://doi.org/10.1080/10632921.2018.1528191. vilanova, john. “kingston be wise': jamaica's reggae revival, musical livity, and troubling temporality in the modern global music industry.” international journal of communication, 2019. “at the crossroads -looking for meaning in jamaican dancehall culture: a reply.” small axe 11, no. 1 (2006): 193–204. https://doi.org/10.1353/smx.2006.0031. works cited (january 20, 2022 / 09:38:53) 122864-1b_caribbeanquilt_vol7_rev.pdf .139 microsoft word valdespino_decolonizingthebody_numbered.docx caribbean quilt 2023 vol. 7 no. 1 120 decolonizing the body: resistance in the queer, femme caribbean maria vidal valdespino faculty of arts and science, university of toronto maria vidal valdespino is a first-generation immigrant from the cumbia, bolillo-loving borough of ixtapalapa, mexico city, humming her way to a brighter future on the 35 jane bus. she is a multimedia artist inspired by her and her family's encounters with migration, poverty, love, and resilience. she hopes to create feelings of representation through her art by celebrating racialized and disabled womxn and their bodies. she is majoring in critical studies in equity and solidarity with two minors in sociology, and women and gender studies. keywords: decolonial feminism third world labour queer theory sexuality radical love visual synopsis when one exists outside the boundaries of what it means to be a person, let alone a ‘good’ womxn, the simple act of existing is a threat to the heteronormative standards present in one’s life (alexander, 1994; kempadoo, 2004, p. 27). within the caribbean, many colonial discourses on sexuality and race still exist today, where caribbean womxn are harmed through dehumanizing stereotypes that pin their sexuality and agency with perversion, rejection of nature, and deviancy along with hypersexuality, immorality and purity, despite countries’ ‘independence’ of the colonial world (reddock, 2007, p. 3-5; kempadoo, 2004; alexander, 1994). using three visual pieces, i put three of these harmful stereotypes in conversation with decolonial thought found in third-world feminism and queer thought: “my labour is not unskilled” with rejection of nature, “my love is not unnatural” with perversion, and “my body is my own” with agency and opposition of hypersexuality. caribbean quilt journal homepage: https://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/cquilt/index caribbean quilt 2023 vol. 7 no. 1 121 works cited alexander, j. m. “not just (any) body can be a citizen: the politics of law, sexuality and postcoloniality in trinidad and tobago and the bahamas.” feminist review, 1994, vol.48, pp.5-23. green, c. “gender, race and class in the social economy of the english-speaking caribbean.” social and economic studies, vol, 44, no. 2, pp.65, 1995, http://myaccess.library.utoronto.ca/login?qurl=https%3a%2f%2fwww.proquest.com%2fscholarly journals%2fgender-race-class-social-economy-english-speaking%2fdocview%2f1301803744%2fse2%3faccountid%3d14771 kempadoo, k. (2004). “introduction: thinking about the caribbean.” in sexing the caribbean, pp. 1-14. routledge, 2014. https://www-taylorfrancis-com.myaccess.library.utoronto.ca/chapters/mono/10.4324/9780203338087-2/introduction-thinking caribbean-kamala-kempadoo?context=ubx kempadoo, k. “past studies, new directions: constructions and reconstructions of caribbean sexuality”. in sexing the caribbean, pp. 15-51. routledge, 2004. https://www-taylorfrancis-com.myaccess.library.utoronto.ca/chapters/mono/10.4324/9780203338087-3/past-studies-new directions-constructions-reconstructions-caribbean-sexuality-kamala-kempadoo?context=ubx&refid=075dcb41-2b42-4046 8627-785c89c4b74a microsoft word wong_gentrification_.docx caribbean quilt 2023 vol. 7 no. 1 43 gentrification in toronto’s little jamaica: food for resistance elizabeth wong individual undergraduate research faculty of arts & science, university of toronto elizabeth is an undergraduate student at the university of toronto majoring in diaspora and transnational studies and ethics, society, and law. she was previously an undergraduate fellow at victoria college's northrop frye centre. her work is interdisciplinary, often drawing on philosophy, anthropology, and cultural studies to think through the intersections of race, culture, and colonialism in toronto and abroad. keywords: gentrification cultural identity little jamaica resistance food community hybridity abstract over the past decade, the toronto neighbourhood, commonly known as little jamaica, has experienced gentrification through the construction of the eglinton crosstown light rail transit. this gentrification has perpetuated social and economic inequalities affecting the caribbean diaspora in little jamaica. urban planning tools, such as the heritage conservation district, have been central to the effort to preserve and protect the distinctive culture in little jamaica. nevertheless, community members recognize these measures as inadequate to curb gentrification and reduce economic inequality. i argue that analyzing gentrification only as a matter of urban planning fails to account for how the local community uses cultural forms, like food, to resist gentrification. though food is widely recognized as a means of constructing identity and building community in the diaspora, less attention is paid to the political implications of food's social power. drawing on interviews with community members and local activists, this essay examines how the caribbean community in little jamaica constructs cultural identity through food, highlighting a tension between authenticity and hybridity that exists within this cultural identity. i conclude that because food produces cultural identity and community, food and food spaces may play a role in communities' resistance to gentrification and inequalities in the urban sphere. preface this project was born from my interest in how cultural forms might become political tools. though this research is centred on little jamaica and the caribbean diaspora, i am not a member of the caribbean diaspora nor a resident of little jamaica. i am interested in little jamaica because it has become an intersection of toronto's culture, identity, and gentrification. this essay does not speak for toronto’s caribbean quilt journal homepage: https://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/cquilt/index caribbean quilt 2023 vol. 7 no. 1 44 caribbean diaspora but instead seeks to shed light on alternative methods of political resistance at work in a diasporic city such as toronto. this essay was not completed for a course but rather was the result of my receiving the northrop frye undergraduate research award. introduction little jamaica is a commercial corridor between keele street and allen road on eglinton avenue west. though little jamaica includes a small residential area around eglinton, it consists primarily of a cluster of caribbean restaurants, grocery stores, hair salons, and music stores. since 2011, little jamaica has been the site of the construction of the eglinton crosstown light rail transit (lrt), a new branch of toronto’s public transit. this construction has driven the gentrification of little jamaica. this gentrification has worsened social and economic disparities between the racialized caribbean diaspora living and working in little jamaica and wealthy white torontonians. the construction of the eglinton lrt has thus contributed to the displacement of the caribbean diaspora from little jamaica. gentrification in little jamaica has been perceived as a matter of urban planning and thus has been tackled with urban planning tools. however, analyzing gentrification only as a matter of urban planning obscures how the local community engages in cultural resistance, taking up food, among other cultural forms, to resist gentrification. because food remains central to community-building and the production of shared cultural identity in the diaspora, food and food spaces can contribute to communities' political projects, including their resistance to urban change and displacement. gentrification in little jamaica for over a decade, the construction of the eglinton lrt has slowed traffic, restricted parking, and obstructed street 1 romain baker et al., “a black business conversation” (toronto: black urbanism toronto, july 2020), http://www.blackurbanismto.com/our-work/. 2 ross cadastre (president of the black business and professional association) in conversation with the author, november 2, 2021. 3 baker et al., “a black business conversation.” access to businesses in little jamaica. as a result, the small businesses that makeup little jamaica have suffered a steep decrease in sales. the city-wide closures during the covid-19 pandemic exacerbated the effects of construction.1 many businesses could not keep up with increasing commercial rent prices and did not qualify for financial relief from the federal government because they were unregistered.2 as a result, many businesses moved or shut down. since the beginning of the eglinton lrt construction, over 140 businesses along eglinton have closed, many of which were black-owned.3 gentrification has and continues to displace the caribbean diaspora in little jamaica towards other parts of the gta. community members are concerned about mass displacement for its effect on the culture of little jamaica. if caribbean businesses and residents are driven out of little jamaica, eglinton avenue west will no longer be the cultural hub it is today. while the concern that gentrification can erase diasporic culture is widely shared, less attention has been paid to how the community takes up precisely these cultural forms to resist gentrification because gentrification continues to be framed as a problem to be solved through urban planning. to mitigate displacement and cultural erasure in little jamaica, city councillors have motioned for little jamaica to be assessed as a possible heritage conservation district (hcd). under the ontario heritage act, the hcd protects areas with “significant cultural heritage value, character and integrity.”4 though one might expect hcds to protect various aspects of culture in neighbourhoods, urban planners have primarily applied hcds to protect building façades and only those of british and french colonial settlements, not ethnic enclaves.5 thus, hcds, among other urban planning tools, are not designed to protect minority cultures and prevent the displacement of disadvantaged groups. little jamaica has become the first primarily 4 scott barrett, “heritage conservation districts in toronto,” ed. mary macdonald (city of toronto, city planning division, january 2012). 5 gordon w. fulton, “policy issues and their impact on practice: heritage conservation in canada,” apt bulletin: the journal of preservation technology 29, no. 3/4 (1998): 15. caribbean quilt 2023 vol. 7 no. 1 45 racialized area and ethnic enclave to be considered for heritage designation. however, given that heritage designation has worked to protect only a community's aesthetic value, community members in little jamaica recognize that heritage designation is not enough to support social and cultural life in the neighbourhood. caribbean business owners have been further marginalized because they are under-represented in the three business improvement areas (bias) in little jamaica that work alongside the city of toronto to manage this neighbourhood’s economic development. 6 because many black business owners have neither the time to volunteer in the local bias nor the money to buy into the bias, the diasporic community has only a peripheral influence on plans for little jamaica's development. black urbanism toronto affirms that bias in little jamaica has not been "accountable and responsive to the black business owners they represent."7 in sum, the racialized owners of caribbean businesses have difficulty resisting gentrification and shaping how little jamaica evolves through existing political networks and using urban planning tools. food for cultural identity and cultural resistance having recognized that hcd status is insufficient to support social and cultural life in little jamaica, community members have taken up several cultural forms, including food, to resist gentrification. food has long been recognized as a means of constructing cultural identity in the diaspora. those living in the diaspora might imagine a connection to the homeland by cooking, eating, and sharing particular “home” foods.8 for many, food fulfils a nostalgic desire for a lost homeland and makes little jamaica a liminal space between the homeland and the host land.9 many community members described the food as a keystone of cultural identity in the caribbean diaspora. 6 sipo maphangoh (senior urban planner at the city of toronto) in discussion with the author, october 20, 2021. 7 baker et al., “a black business conversation.” 8 ato quayson and girish daswani, “introduction diaspora and transnationalism,” in a companion to diaspora and transnationalism, ed. ato quayson and girish daswani (oxford, uk: blackwell publishing ltd, 2013), 2; michelle obeid, “home-making in the diaspora,” in a companion to diaspora and transnationalism, ed. ato quayson and girish daswani (oxford, uk: blackwell publishing ltd, 2013), 372. caribbean restaurants, farmers’ markets, and grocery stores in little jamaica have provided the diasporic community with the foods that form a shared cuisine. though caribbean produce is now widely available in the gta, many diaspora members who grew up or have developed ties to little jamaica and now live outside of toronto continue to visit the neighbourhood grocers and restaurants. so, food draws the diaspora community from the wider gta towards little jamaica to engage them in a continual production of cultural identity. because the community regularly interacts and gathers in their local restaurants and cafes, these have become important sites for producing and reproducing a shared cultural identity. many in the diasporic community define little jamaica by its caribbean restaurants, saying that the neighbourhood would not be the same without rap’s jerk chicken and randy’s patties, for example.10 randy's patties closed this year, after 43 years of business, due to the eglinton lrt construction and the pandemic. some used gustatory metaphors to describe the neighbourhood’s culture: little jamaica is a “taste” of the caribbean, they would say. community members described cultural identity in little jamaica in different ways. some community members vehemently maintained that little jamaica’s culture is authentically caribbean as a microcosm of life on the islands. they held that the social customs, culinary practices, and tastes represented in little jamaica were pure, insulated from foreign––mainly white canadian––influence. one might question these claims of authenticity because culture inevitably changes in the diaspora. however, i argue that one might dismiss these claims of authenticity too quickly if one does not interrogate the socio-political context in which they are made. on my account, these community 9 debbie gordon, “the erasure of little jamaica: exploring the role of design in the gentrification of toronto’s eglinton avenue west” (york university, 2018), https://yorkspace.library.yorku.ca/xmlui/bitstream/handle/10315/35802/gordon_debbie_m_2018_masters.pdf?sequence=2&isallowed=y; robert murdie and carlos teixeira, “the impact of gentrification on ethnic neighbourhoods in toronto: a case study of little portugal,” urban studies 48, no. 1 (2011): 1. 10 josh matlow (city councillor) in discussion with the author, october 13, 2021. caribbean quilt 2023 vol. 7 no. 1 46 members did not describe cultural identity as hybrid or unstable because cultural authenticity became a political strategy. community members took up claims of authenticity to make a stronger argument for curbing gentrification in little jamaica. claiming that little jamaica has a distinct, authentic culture allows the community to use a persuasive language of protection and preservation. to garner political and economic support from the provincial government, activists and city councillors insisted that little jamaica's distinct culture be preserved and protected. though this rhetoric is restrictive because it assumes that culture is fixed, it remains helpful in drawing attention to how gentrification affects local culture. in stuart hall's terms, this authentic cultural identity is a strategic “positioning” that allows the diasporic community to pursue economic and social relief.11 many community members claiming cultural authenticity were acutely aware that aspects of caribbean culture have been co-opted and altered to fit toronto's multicultural agenda. the founder of the afro-caribbean farmers' market in little jamaica insisted on the market’s african and caribbean nature to prevent this cultural form from being co-opted in the same way that caribana had been made a celebration of multiculturalism.12 the city renamed caribana the toronto caribbean carnival and couched it in the language of diversity and multiculturalism. what was once a celebration of the emancipation of enslaved people in canada and an important political platform for the caribbean community in toronto became a heavily commoditized multicultural parade.13 claims of cultural authenticity help the diasporic community prevent their cultural forms from being incorporated into multicultural projects that perpetuate the idea that multiculturalism yields economic equality. though the effects of displacement are seen through the closure of many caribbean restaurants, food is also a lens through which we can see the community’s efforts to resist gentrification and displacement. restaurants have become 11 stuart hall, “cultural identity and diaspora,” in stuart hall: selected writings on race and difference, ed. paul gilroy and ruth wilson gilmore (durham: duke university press, 2021), 261. primary spaces for organized community meetings in little jamaica. two not-for-profits held several community consultations and information sessions on resisting gentrification and working towards community land ownership at local restaurants. these organizations sought to support the restaurants during times of financial hardship, and they recognized the symbolic value of these restaurants for the residential and diasporic communities. in this way, food spaces became important sites for community organizing. food, then, has the potential to be a tool for and site of cultural resistance because food contributes to the creation of cultural identity. conclusion to sum up, i have suggested that gentrification ought to be analyzed not only through the lens of urban planning but through the lens of cultural resistance. the community in little jamaica is taking up cultural forms, including food, to resist gentrification. food contributes to constructing cultural identity, which has been central to this community's political projects. thus, i have identified that food and food spaces can play a role in communities' resistance to gentrification. further research might examine how food contributes to different communities’ political projects. 12 lori beazer (founder of the afro-caribbean farmers’ market) in conversation with the author, october 25, 2021. 13 ibid. caribbean quilt 2023 vol. 7 no. 1 47 bibliography baker, romain, dane gardener-williams, anyika mark, elizabeth antczak, mona dai, samuel ganton, and tura wilson. “a black business conversation.” toronto: black urbanism toronto, july 2020. http://www.blackurbanismto.com/ourwork/. barrett, scott. “heritage conservation districts in toronto.” edited by mary macdonald. city of toronto, city planning division, january 2012. https://www.toronto.ca/legdocs/mmis/2012/pg/bgrd/backgroundfile-44992.pdf. case, cheryll. “black futures on eglinton.” community cultural mapping study. cp planning, january 14, 2021. https://cpplanning.ca/bfoe. fulton, gordon w. “policy issues and their impact on practice: heritage conservation in canada.” apt bulletin: the journal of preservation technology 29, no. 3/4 (1998): 13–16. https://doi.org/10.2307/1504605. gordon, debbie. “the erasure of little jamaica: exploring the role of design in the gentrification of toronto’s eglinton avenue west.” york university, 2018. https://yorkspace.library.yorku.ca/xmlui/bitstream/handle/10315/35802/gordon_debbie_m_2018_masters.pdf?sequence=2&isallowed=y. hall, stuart. “cultural identity and diaspora.” in stuart hall: selected writings on race and difference, edited by paul gilroy and ruth wilson gilmore, 257–71. durham: duke university press, 2021. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv1hhj1b9. hall, stuart. “culture, resistance, and struggle.” in cultural studies 1983: a theoretical history, edited by jennifer daryl slack and lawrence grossberg, 180–206. durham: duke university press, 2016. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv11cw8wg. hall, stuart. “thinking the diaspora: home-thoughts from abroad [1999].” in essential essays, volume 2, edited by david morley, 206–26. duke university press, 2018. https://doi.org/10.1215/9781478002710-011. maphangoh, sipo, and elena bird. “little jamaica & the eglinton west neighbourhoods.” planning study. city of toronto, march 2, 2021. www.toronto.ca/littlejamaica. mintz, sidney w. tasting food, tasting freedom: excursions into eating, culture, and the past. boston: beacon press, 1996. murdie, robert, and carlos teixeira. “the impact of gentrification on ethnic neighbourhoods in toronto: a case study of little portugal.” urban studies 48, no. 1 (2011): 61–83. https://doi.org/10.1177/0042098009360227. murdoch, h. adlai. “‘all skin’ teeth is not grin:’’ performing caribbean diasporic identity in a postcolonial metropolitan frame.” callaloo 30, no. 2 (2007): 575–93. https://doi.org/10.1353/cal.2007.0208. obeid, michelle. “home-making in the diaspora.” in a companion to diaspora and transnationalism, edited by ato quayson and girish daswani, 366–80. oxford, uk: blackwell publishing ltd, 2013. https://doi.org/10.1002/9781118320792.ch21. caribbean quilt 2023 vol. 7 no. 1 48 quayson, ato, and girish daswani. “introduction diaspora and transnationalism.” in a companion to diaspora and transnationalism, edited by ato quayson and girish daswani, 1–26. oxford, uk: blackwell publishing ltd, 2013. https://doi.org/10.1002/9781118320792.ch1. caribbean quilt university of toronto journal volume 7 issue 1 2023 resurgence emerges as a powerful and timely theme for exploring the complex and dynamic realities of the caribbean region, where histories of resistance, resilience and revolution continue to shape the possibilities for social justice and transformative change. the caribbean quilt is an interdisciplinary journal focused on elucidating, challenging and redefining discussions about pertinent issues faced in the caribbean and its diaspora. this journal highlights the dynamic dialectical relations that exist between individuals, institutions, and regional hegemonic forces through various mediums of expression. caribbean studies students’ union (carssu) university of toronto new college student centre 40 willcocks st, m5s 1c6 toronto, on canada carssu@utoronto.ca 1 the caribbean quilt is published annually by the university of toronto caribbean studies students’ union. its content is produced in line with the principles of open access research and in support of the greater global exchange of knowledge. as a result, caribbean quilt is freely available to the public via: https://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/cquilt. caribbean quilt is also listed on the directory of open access journals (doaj). for more information visit: https://doaj.orgcaribbean quilt has an exclusive license for the articles published herein, limited to first right of publication granted by the author(s) who hold copyright. articles herein are covered by applicable copyright law with authors retaining copyright of their manuscripts. this volume of caribbean quilt is published under a creative commons attribution-sharealike 4.0 international license. all articles published in this volume of caribbean quilt are archived via the pkp preservation network (pn). authors are not restricted from self-archiving in additional repositories or on personal websites. the editors of this journal strive to meet the high standards defined in the code of conduct and best practice guidelines for journal editors promoted by the committee on publication ethics (cope) front cover art by: megan mungalsingh printed in canada by thistle printing 2 masthead editor-in-chief alyssa nurse 2t3 university of toronto, faculty of arts and science associate editor brittney bahadoor 2t3 university of toronto, faculty of arts and science layout editors haonan qin 2t2 university of toronto materials science and engineering mobólúwajídìde (bo) joseph 2t3 university of toronto faculty of arts and science cover art megan mugalsingh 2t1 university of toronto, faculty of arts and science advisory board dr. kevin edmonds (chair), caribbean studies program alyssa nurse (editor-in-chief ), caribbean studies students’ union brittney bahadoor (associate editor), west indian students’ association tierrai tull, caribbean studies students’ union lolitta mangwa, caribbean studies students’ union shalana deonarain, caribbean studies students’ union calista nyembwe, caribbean studies students’ union 3 zoei ollivierre, west indian students’ association esha mahabir, west indian students’ association reviewers conrad james university of toronto, professor of caribbean studies and director of caribbean studies program dr. kevin edmonds university of toronto, professor of caribbean studies dr. alissa trotz university of toronto, professor of caribbean studies and director of women and gender studies program dr. melanie newton university of toronto, professor of history & caribbean studies and graduate associate chair for the department of history microsoft word gourianov_cuba_numbered.docx caribbean quilt 2023 vol. 7 no. 1 73 socialism, farming, and resistance: how cuban socialism is beating the embargo dmitri gourianov centre for caribbean studies faculty of arts & science, university of toronto dmitri gourianav is a fourth-year student studying political science at the university of toronto. keywords: cuba socialism united states embargo decolonization abstract beginning as a minor assignment which ought to have taken two days, it soon ballooned into a three-month project looking at the cuban political system and the farming sector's role in developing not only socialist theory but socialism in practice. as the collapse of cuban socialism has been expected for the past four decades by western scholars and lawmakers, this same inevitability has perplexed its proponents as it continues not to occur. cuba has been under embargo by the united states for over sixty years, and the covid-19 pandemic and hurricane ian have exacerbated the tremendous pressure on the socialist government. one ought to ask the question, then, how cuba remains so resilient after the collapse of the ussr. although not a conclusive reason as to why socialism remains prevalent in cuba, this essay looks at one aspect of this new cuban socialism and its successes: farming systems. by looking at the roles polycultural cropping and alternative incentive schemes play in cuba, i conclude that they both play a vital role in developing and reinforcing socialism in the island nation. for decades, the inevitable collapse of cuban socialism was hailed to be just over the horizon as economic stagnation gripped the island nation through an embargo incrementally intensified by the united states. this embargo, however, has yet to destroy the castro regime, nor has it succeeded in breeding anti-government sentiments for the most part. today we see the complete opposite, an international community united in their opposition to the american embargo. although the theory was simple, to breed resentment by limiting luxuries and food supplies, the latter has remained stubbornly resilient, and not only that, but it also poses a threat to american capitalism itself. simply put, the farming techniques cuba has developed and implemented over the past decades have kept the island nation afloat and become a form of resistance to american imperialism. this is through several ways, the most notable of which being the astonishing efficiency of polycultural farming being used to circumvent the shortages caused by the embargo, how civil participation in growing local food has united people during this time of economic caribbean quilt journal homepage: https://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/cquilt/index caribbean quilt 2023 vol. 7 no. 1 74 stress, as well as how the persistence of cuban socialist political discourse has become the antithesis to americanled capitalism. however, this could not have been managed without eliminating monocultural farming techniques. it must first be understood what the difference between monocultures and polycultures is. for one, monocultural cropping is farming a single crop in a given area, while polycultural cropping is farming several in a given area. monocultural cropping is the most prevalent kind of farming in the west, as it is easy to keep track of usable products. in contrast, polycultural cropping inevitably comes across the difficulties associated with sifting through farmland for the primary product, secondary products, and crops planted for their service to the ecosystem. in essence, whether either farming style is better for the environment or more efficient long term does not matter in the case of most agriculture markets, as monocultural farming by western empires was historically promoted across their colonial holdings for the sake of cheap and easy production. however, cuba has adopted polycultural cropping, which has brought high crop yields associated with the system. this can be seen in akhsan et al.'s 2022 research paper on the relationship between farmers' income and the introduction of polycultural farming. by comparing the polycultural and monocultural practices in indonesian cocoa farms, they were able to study the impact of crop heterogeneity on the production of farmers' crop yields. their results suggest that using polycultural systems provides a higher income than monocropping and reduces operational costs (akhsen, 2022). not only this, but polycultural cropping also reduces the risk of pest attacks and allows farmers to sell secondary crops alongside their primary crops. the efficiency of polycultures on a farmer's yields and reduced operational costs, although at the expense of having to seed and harvest secondary crops, ultimately has proven to have a net gain on farming efficiency, something which cuba has wisely capitalized on, while america has historically promoted the direct opposite in their imperialist ventures. in nations such as nicaragua, the us would intervene whenever their interests were threatened. in gobat's work central america and the united states, he describes the history of american intervention in mesoamerica from 1904 until the present (gobat, 2022), wherein the direct military presence of america ensured the reinforcement of large plantation businesses in nicaragua from 1909 1933, and systemic nepotism ensured that the us-created nicaraguan national guard would also leave general anastasio somoza garcia and his sons in charge of the interventionist forces until 1979. additionally, after the collapse of guatemala’s dictatorship in 1945, the subsequent presidencies of jose arevalo (1945 1951) and jacobo arbenz (1951 1954) (gobat, 2022) saw the abolition of forced labour drafts in the country, as well as the legal validation of the invasion of expropriated banana plantations by peasant communities. this saw the centuries-old, imperialist-established mono-crop farms occupied by their workers. unfortunately, individuals such as john foster dulles and allen dulles, who had connections to the then-invaded united fruit company land and individuals in the cia, ensured that a us-backed coup would depose the guatemalan democracy and replace it with a military junta (gobat, 2022). after the cuban revolution, the united states expanded efforts to control central american exports in fear of the revolution's spread. while kennedy would invest heavily in developing the economies of central american countries, gabot also acknowledges that these reforms were targeted at prospering american investors at the expense of peasant communities and the environment (gobat, 2022). this leads us to cuba today and how its switch to a polycultural crop farming system has ensured the state’s survival under near-impossible odds. after the collapse of the soviet union in 1991, cuba saw its economy, specifically the farming sector, collapse. in the 90s, cuba posted the worst growth in per-capita food production in all of the caribbean and was forced to radically change its way of farming to be less dependent on imports (miguel, 2012). as it decentralized its crop production, dismantling inefficient state-owned farms favouring urban and cooperatives, cuba would replace its monocultural system with polycultures. as mentioned before, in the case of indonesian cocoa farmers, polycultural farming in cuba also led to fewer pest attacks and protected the soil by increasing the equivalent land ratio of crop density (sharma, 2021). from 1996 2005, this change in farming style would see an annual growth rate in food production caribbean quilt 2023 vol. 7 no. 1 75 of 4.2%; this was also when the annual growth rate in the region averaged around 0% (miguel, 2012). in ingrid hanon's critique of moishe postone’s interpretation of the marxist theory, she touches on cuba's adoption of polycultures and how it led to a farming revolution. she argues that today, this shift to a more participatory farming system goes deeper than just producing more food. instead, she argues that cuban socialism now has the opportunity to establish an alternative organizational and technological agricultural production system that is knowledge-intensive instead of capital-intensive, which opens the door to new grass-roots research-based farming methods (hanon, 2022). however, cuba's ability to develop an economical alternative to the farming sector is also an ability to form an ideological alternative to american political hegemony. although this paper is on cuban resistance to american imperialism through alternative farming techniques, polycultural farming has been the sole focus of the discussion thus far. although the ability to feed one's people ensures the stability of your regime, ideology is just as important, and the participatory nature of cuban farms is the second half of cuba's farming successes. cuban urban farms have shown that farmers require more than profit to incentivize production, with the most straightforward and notable alternative incentive models being based on social recognition and pride. in her work cuban urban agriculture and the challenge to orthodox western economic discourse, sharma outlines one of these incentive systems being used by the cuban government, the referencia system. she states: "in this system, agricultural units seek designations of municipal, provincial, or national reference, to be referenced as exemplary model units for others to work towards and replicate" (sharma, 2021). agricultural units achieve these designations by reaching their respective criteria. one such referenced agricultural unit sharma describes is ubpc organoponico vivero alamar, which produces 15 different fruits and vegetables and eggs and their seedlings for future sewing seasons (sharma, 2021). by recognizing and giving pride to such agricultural units, the referencia system ensures that the primary production driver is civil participation in the cuban farming sector. not only this, but by giving communities pride and giving other communities a goal to strive for, urban farming plays an additional role in indoctrinating citizens into striving for more than just a profit motive. additionally, by putting food production in the hands of the community, the work is visibly and emotionally tied to the people who consume it, ensuring that the community is not alienated from the state but an active participant in the state's survival. whether it be described as nationalism or patriotism, this phenomenon which grows from urban farms, shields the government from protests concerning food production, as people know that they are responsible for their well-being, with or without the us embargo. by doing so, the state has turned something as mundane as grocery shopping into a prevalent ideological tool that opposes american capitalism. in a purely hegelian sense, cuban socialism’s persistence into the 21st century poses itself as the primary antithesis to american capitalism, even if it may not seem that way. although russia and china continue to be at the forefront of the news cycle, with both antagonists shaking their fists at the heroic west, what must be noted is that what is not said can be as powerful as what is said. although russia and china reflect modes of capitalism as opposed to that of america, they are still modes of capitalism, authoritarian or not. cuba's place as an alien to western conceptions of organization makes it so that the success of cuban polycultural farming has been downplayed, if not rendered non-existent in orthodox economic discourse, as was discussed by sharma. instead, it is easier to see the adoption of polycultures when accompanied by a profit motive, as akhsen et al.'s research show that diminishing cocoa production has driven farmers to find other avenues of income. not only this, but by succeeding where the west expected cuba to fail, its experiments with polycultural and participatory farming bolsters, develops, and spreads socialist theory by promoting a palatable and eco-friendly version of socialism through the works of western scholars and media. this can be seen through the coverage of cuba by popular western outlets. the australian institute of international affairs published an analysis by antony murrell on the embargo, wherein he concludes, "australia can do its part by continuing to join caribbean quilt 2023 vol. 7 no. 1 76 in the chorus of states opposing the embargo. safety in numbers means that doing so carries little risk of diplomatic blowback" (murrel, 2022). similarly, the guardian's david adler asked the question, "if communism is a failed system, then why not let it fail on its terms and let cubans see for themselves the true face of their revolution? what is marco rubio so afraid of?" (adler, 2022). these are just some of the most recent articles against the embargo, and the world continues to condemn its maintenance unanimously. public sentiments toward the cuban embargo globally continue to favour cuba, and the truth is that rubio (and america as a whole) have something to fear. by lifting the embargo, the us would recognize its failure and legitimize cuba's successful resistance, becoming another foreign policy blow like afghanistan or vietnam. cuba's development of urban farm systems into a burgeoning system of collective action has become fertile ground for the socialist experiment. apart from the initiatives discussed thus far, another is the usufruct of land for public use. in her work cuba’s informal gardens, clouse describes these usufruct leases as allowing cuban growers easy access to state-owned land parcels free of rent, allowing a claim of tenancy rights for 10 25 years, as well as on the crops produced on the land (clouse, 2022). what usufruct offers land, including unused and underperforming parcels in urban environments, including vacant lots, land by roads and river corridors, and those protected for alternative development projects. by allowing the allocation of such land, usufruct allows agricultural entrepreneurs to innovate and develop upon existing farming techniques to increase the efficiency and value of the common land. this form of innovation, separated from the longterm monetization of a suitable public, forms the foundation of an ever-developing system of anti-capitalist incentives. clouse goes on to touch on cuba's public land use policies, saying, "urban design interventions enable people to take control over spaces that they care about, have a measure of input on the shape and form of their cities, protest dominant paradigms, create something fresh, or communicate an idea" (clouse, 2022). by channelling public discontent into these constructive projects, the government can circumvent addressing protesters in the streets by allowing them to make the changes they wish to see. space hijacking, the process by which individuals seize land, is driven by campaigns to transform unused spaces into more appealing community areas, which grows a community's attachment to its geography and gives residents a place they perceive as theirs. although such spaces do not necessarily have to be for growing food, clouse notes that efforts to grow food happened organically (pun intended), perhaps representing a form of constructive rebellion (clouse, 2022). having the cuban government embrace this counter-cultural movement as its own, and it could capitalize on a dissatisfied public and turn it into a suitable apparatus by which societal development came both from top-down and bottom-up forces. moreover, clouse suggests that cuba's adoption of these policies shows a more significant desire globally for similar systems. she states, "like defiant gardening, this form of agricultural engagement is both under-represented in the literature on urban farming and also perceived to be a fringe form of landscape design engagement, even though worldwide interest demonstrated through visible evidence of participation" (clouse, 2022). such a desire for public engagement in the community, separate from the monetary incentive, shows the power cuba's socialism could wield if the embargo were lifted. the effectiveness of these policies shows its antithesis to american capitalism. to that end, it can be seen how the farming techniques cuba has developed in tandem with public land use not only ensured the stability of the castro regime but also posed a unique threat to america through its ideological resistance. cuban socialism's resilience under the pressures of the american embargo has led to several successes during a time of strife. by developing and implementing over 60 years an alternative to western farming techniques, it continues to weather out the american storm and threaten western capitalist hegemony. research into the feasibility of polycultural farming techniques compared to the traditional monocultural system has shown its efficiency and promise in studies such as those done with indonesian cocoa farmers and their incomes. historically, although many cultures have used polycultural farming techniques before cuba, western imperialism's standardization of caribbean quilt 2023 vol. 7 no. 1 77 monocultural farming ensured the hegemony of such extraordinary powers, including america's intervention in central american markets like nicaragua and guatemala. cuba's ability to reform itself after the collapse of the soviet union saw the island nation become a more participatory and successful example of socialism under extreme pressure. however, its successes did not purely stem from adopting polycultures but also through grass-roots and cooperative efforts to maintain a dialogue between the government and the people. economically, this saved the nation and, ideologically, united it. by successfully synthesizing a non-monetary incentive which united the individual's goals with the government's, cuba has made itself the ideological antithesis of america. although the embargo still stands, the global community remains behind the island nation, and the desire to adopt similar participatory and eco-friendly systems continues to grow worldwide. for these reasons, america cannot lift the embargo, for it may mistakenly do the right thing and stop the suffering of countless people for the sake of a bygone ideal. caribbean quilt 2023 vol. 7 no. 1 78 bibliography sharma, s. cuban agriculture and the challenge to orthodox western economic discourse. (2021): 36. literatureand-the-holocaust-investigating-the-value-of-a-literary-holocaust-education.pdf (researchgate.net) clouse, c. cuba’s informal gardens: situating state support and public participation. (2022): 237, 238 cuba’s informal gardens: situating state support and public participation | springerlink adler, d. cuba has been under us embargo for 60 years. it is time for that to end. feb. 3, 2022. cuba has been under us embargo for 60 years. it’s time for that to end | david adler | the guardian gobat, m. central america and the united states. (2022): 257 262. the oxford handbook of central american history google books akhsan, akhsan, muhammad arsyad, achmad amiruddin, muslim salam, nurlaela nurlaela, and muhammad ridwan. indepth study of multiple cropping farming systems: the impact on cocoa farmers’ income. agrivita, journal of agricultural science 44, no. 2 (2022). an in-depth study of multiple cropping farming systems: the impact on cocoa farmers’ income | akhsan | agrivita, journal of agricultural science (ub.ac.id) altieri, miguel a., and fernando r. funes-monzote. the paradox of cuban agriculture. monthly review 63, no. 8 (2012): 23-33. the paradox of cuban agriculture | links hanon, ingrid. "moishe postone, the mode of production of capital and cuban agriculture." capitalism nature socialism 33, no. 1 (2022): 39. moishe postone, the mode of production of capital and cuban agriculture (tandfonline.com) murrel, a. the cuba embargo at 60: when will it end? australian institute of international affairs (2022) the cuba embargo at 60: when will it end? australian institute of international affairs australian institute of international affairs microsoft word bacchus_citizenship_numbered.docx caribbean quilt 2023 vol. 7 no. 1 30 the illusion of citizenship and sovereignty in the caribbean maria bacchus centre for caribbean studies faculty of arts & science, university of toronto maria bacchus is a guyanese canadian undergraduate student at the university of toronto. having completed a bachelor of arts with a major in history and minors in anthropology and classical studies, her academic career has been characterized by an exploration of the social, cultural, and religious landscapes of antiquity and contemporary times through her production of artwork, literature, and oral history during her time at the university. keywords: citizenship dominican-haitian relations sovereignty foreign intervention north atlantic universals abstract this essay aims to analyze the aspirational universality of the terms “citizenship” and “sovereignty” by focusing on the nature of these terms in the caribbean. this is accomplished by establishing the traditional definitions of sovereignty and citizenship before comparing the central tenets of these definitions with case studies from the caribbean which challenge, contradict, or negate these conventional definitions. specifically, this essay will discuss the promises of birthright citizenship entrenched in the constitution of the dominican republic in contrast with the statelessness and noncitizenship that those of haitian descent experience in the dominican republic. next, sovereignty is complicated when its traditional definition is compared to the caribbean’s history of foreign intervention, specifically in haiti and jamaica. this concludes that sovereignty and citizenship are situation-specific constructs and illusionary in the caribbean. these illusions' prevalence is contextualized by building off the work of yarimar bonilla and michel-rolph trouillot, who grouped these terms as “north atlantic universals” to reinforce the non-existence of citizenship and sovereignty, according to their traditional definitions in the caribbean. introduction the terms “citizenship” and “sovereignty” are quintessential concepts that often come with the implication of being static and universal. however, what would it mean to think about citizenship and sovereignty as situation-specific constructs? this essay will argue that citizenship and sovereignty in the caribbean are contradictory illusions when one compares the state’s promises of citizenship and sovereignty with its reality. the concept of citizenship will be disproven by contrasting birthright citizenship and promises of inclusion with the exclusionary policies seen in the dominican republic towards those of haitian caribbean quilt journal homepage: https://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/cquilt/index caribbean quilt 2023 vol. 7 no. 1 31 descent. similarly, the concept of sovereignty will be disproven by first looking at the traditional promises of sovereignty against the inability to self-govern brought about through foreign intervention, as seen with haiti and jamaica. these case studies will discuss how citizenship and sovereignty are “north atlantic universals,” as michelrolph trouillot and yarimar bonilla discussed, which points to their illusionary nature.1 citizenship the prospect of citizenship comes with the promise of inclusion by being part of a community. traditionally in sociology, citizenship has been defined by t.h. marshall as “a status which is enjoyed by a person who is a full member of a community.”2 this definition also comes with the understanding that citizenship implies an entitlement to the civil rights of individual freedoms, the right to participate in the politics of a community through voting or holding office, and the social right to a particular standard of living, achieved through the access to supports such as welfare or educational services. 3 citizenship comes in different forms, such as birthright citizenship. as its name implies, this concept refers to citizenship being granted to all born in a nation-state. within the caribbean context, the idea of birthright citizenship appears in the constitution of the dominican republic. the 1865 dominican constitution included the following section, “all those that have been born or will be born in (dominican) territory (are dominicans), whatever the nationality of their parents.”4 the context in which this constitution was written, recently after the dominican republic and haiti fought against their spanish occupiers, promoted the unity of both nations and their peoples.5 this paints the picture that the state welcomes and will provide for all born under its domain. however, interpreting and enforcing such laws reveals that this may not be the case. 1 yarimar bonilla, "ordinary sovereignty," small axe: a caribbean journal of criticism 17, no. 3 (2013): 158. 2 john scott, "citizenship," in a dictionary of sociology, oxford university press, 2014. 3 scott. 4 amelia hintzen, “permanently in transit: blackness and noncitizenship in the caribbean,” translation (kampala, uganda), no. 127, (2019): 219. 5 hintzen, 219. the reality is that from the 1980s onwards, the government of the dominican republic began to withhold identification documents from those with suspected haitian descent.6 this served as an example in which citizenship was withheld or denied based on the recipient’s skin colour, accent, clothing, or occupation.7 despite the constitutionally entrenched policy of birthright citizenship, the judges of the dominican constitutional tribunal ruled that haitian immigrants who originally crossed the border to work on sugar fields were labelled as temporary visitors “in transit,” thus making them. even their children born in the dominican republic are no longer eligible for dominican citizenship, suspending the citizenship of all suspected haitians born after 1929.8 labelling the haitian workers as “in transit” strategically bypassed the citizenship their children would be entitled to via the birthright citizenship policy from the 1865 dominican constitution.9 by being unable to attain an identification document, these dominican-born non-citizens of haitian descent also do not have access to the rights of a citizen, such as to vote, get married, travel abroad, or receive higher education.10 this exclusion was strategically done to define the dominican republic in opposition to haiti, depicting the country as whiter and thus more “civilized” in contrast to the proudly black nation of haiti.11 this shows a clear divergence from the citizens initially promised in the dominican constitution through strategic methods of exclusion and the denial of citizenship. additionally, definitions of citizenship do not mention the reality of the state’s preference for the ideal citizen shaping who gets to be a citizen. the colonial legacy in the caribbean left behind the idea of a “coherent nation” without considering the racial and hierarchical nature of the caribbean.12 this created the illusion of a united nation which simultaneously hid the reality of stratification along racial and social lines. these conditions exacerbated the division between the favoured or ideal citizen and the denial of 6 hintzen, 216. 7 ibid. 8 hintzen, 217. 9 hintzen, 224. 10 hintzen, 226. 11 hintzen, 220. 12 aaron kamugisha, "the coloniality of citizenship in the contemporary anglophone caribbean," race & class 49, no. 2 (2007): 24. caribbean quilt 2023 vol. 7 no. 1 32 citizenship to those who did not match the state’s criteria. the caribbean postcolonial state was conceived to be belonging to the caribbean middle class, as they were considered to have the social and cultural capital to rule.13 this was because the middle class emulated the consumption of the west, making them corrupt as such consumption is incompatible with the caribbean.14 overall, the archetypal citizen in the caribbean is the middle-class male, who, in turn, reproduces the nation.15 for example, despite the entitlement of all citizens to political participation, the vast majority of those involved in parliament, business, and the courts are men.16 thus, citizenship is primarily focused on the state’s view of the ideal citizen, resulting in an uneven expression of citizenship in the caribbean. sovereignty the pattern of the divergence of traditional definitions of citizenship with the realities of citizenship in the caribbean follows similarly in the case of sovereignty. according to bonilla, the “modern sovereign state” is imbued with a form of power that is singular, absolute, territorially confined within the nation’s space, and vertically rooted in the apparatus of the state. the treaty of westphalia holds that national governments have supreme authority over their internal affairs and that the other states cannot intervene under the exception of threat or obligation of the alliance.”17 such a definition implies that sovereignty signifies that a state has authority, agency, and power over its internal affairs without the intervention of foreign powers. the existence of sovereignty in the caribbean is complicated, as seen in the example of haiti. sovereignty is not inherently gained at the moment of independence. instead, a state must have dedicated leadership and funds to establish and maintain its authority and control, which this essay will argue was absent in haiti at its inception due to foreign 13 kamugisha, 24. 14 kamugisha, 25. 15 m. jacqui alexander, “not just (any) body can be a citizen: the politics of law, sexuality, and postcoloniality in trinidad and tobago and the bahamas,” feminist review 48, no. 1 (1994): 7, 20. 16 kamugisha, 31. 17 bonilla, 156. emphasis added with italicization to highlight areas of the definition that will later be problematized. 18 thomas craemer, “estimating slavery reparations: present value comparisons of historical multigenerational reparations influence. following a successful slave revolution and fight for independence from france, haiti was declared the first free black nation on 1 january 1804.18 however, by 17 april 1825, france demanded that haiti pay a reparation of one hundred and fifty million francs to acknowledge haiti’s independence and as indemnity for the loss of the profits earned from its former colony.19 haiti’s “independence debt,” as craemer phrases it, was intentionally created to be ten times the amount of haiti’s revenue, estimated to be 15 million as of 1823, necessitating the young state to take out loans to pay the debt.20 the debt took 156 years to pay, and considering that 80 percent, as of 1915, of haiti’s revenue, was dedicated to servicing this debt, the development of the country’s infrastructure and education and healthcare systems were also stunted.21 this is the first of many examples in which a foreign power, such as france, intervenes with haiti and hinders its ability to have “supreme authority over their internal affairs.”22 other powers, such as the united states during its occupation of haiti between 1915-1934, may create the illusion of providing infrastructure and a centralized government. still, they had little interest in establishing long-lasting economic or governmental development.23 thus through repeated foreign intervention, haiti is intentionally kept in a state of underdevelopment due to the west’s fear of haiti inspiring other states with its insurrectionary action.24 despite the definition of sovereignty as a self-contained state, within the caribbean, sovereignty is intentionally undermined by, and in justification for, foreign intervention. in the case of jamaica, structural adjustment and neoliberal globalization have depleted the state’s ability to provide social services for most of the population.25 described as an “uneven alliance” by m. jacqui alexander, the conditions attached to the funds given to a nation forcibly open the country to foreign investment and exchange, which policies,” social science quarterly, 96 (2015): 643. 19 craemer, 643. 20 craemer, 652. 21 craemer, 639, 643. 22 the quotation draws upon the definition of sovereignty found in bonilla. 23 robert fatton jr., "haiti: the saturnalia of emancipation and the vicissitudes of predatory rule," third world quarterly 27, no. 1 (2006): 128. 24 fatton, 117. 25 kamugisha, 34. caribbean quilt 2023 vol. 7 no. 1 33 simultaneously reduces the consumption of local goods in favour of its foreign counterparts.26 similarly, rather than provide for its citizens, the needs of caribbean citizens are sidelined in favour of the tourist economy, focusing once again on foreign visitors rather than the country’s citizens.27 such conditions stifle a state and hinder its claims to and expression of sovereignty. using the example of haiti’s supposed “exceptionalism,” bonilla argued that the sovereign nation in the caribbean is an imagined construct strategically imposed on the caribbean.28 foreign powers have used the “failure” of sovereignty in caribbean states to justify their continued intervention under the guise of “freedom, democracy, and human rights.”29 the reality is that the “failure” of sovereignty results from intentional sabotage by foreign intervention, undermining the very conception of sovereignty as a state’s uninterrupted individual rule. analysis the case studies discussed in this essay have shown that the realities of exclusionary citizenship and the undermining of sovereignty through the crippling of self-determination negate the existence of traditional citizenship and sovereignty in the caribbean.30 instead, this essay argues that these concepts exist in complicated and contradictory forms in the caribbean because the expectation that conventional citizenship and sovereignty exist stems from western ideals’ imposition on caribbean society. in reality, citizenship and sovereignty, according to bonilla, are north atlantic universals that, as argued by trouillot, depict themselves as universal while also serving as “thinly veiled attempts at establishing a normative vision of the world.”31 this point refers to the idea that sovereignty and citizenship are terms defined by their realities in north atlantic or the west but are understood to be universally applicable, then used as frames of reference for the rest of the world. the issue in this situation is that the western societal and economic worldviews, and thus their aspirations, are incompatible with that of the caribbean. 32 while 26 alexander, 16. 27 kamugisha, 28-29. 28 bonilla, 153. 29 bonilla, 162. 30 the term “traditional” refers to citizenship and sovereignty in accordance with the definitions mentioned earlier in this essay. 31 bonilla, 158. theorizing citizenship, marshall noted a “tension between the principles of citizenship” and its reality in a capitalistic setting and his def. his citizenship has been criticized for its eurocentric and idealistic view.33 additionally, birthright citizenship was largely prevalent in the west following the abolition of slavery as a nationalist tactic to unify the children of formerly enslaved people with pre-existing citizens, making it an inherently western construct.34 alternatively, the caribbean is an inherently racially hierarchical, patriarchal, and heteronormative society, influencing its implementation of citizenship.35 as for sovereignty, bonilla argues this concept is more a “provincial myth” used to justify foreign intervention, which ultimately controls the caribbean without being accountable.36 as a result, traditional citizenship and sovereignty appear to be contradictory “failures” within the caribbean. these concepts are aspirations depicted as the universal norm when they are culturally-specific illusions.37 therefore, this essay has argued that when the traditional definitions of citizenship and sovereignty are compared to the realities of the caribbean, these terms are illusions. this was achieved first through a discussion of citizenship and exclusion in the caribbean, namely seen with the denial of citizenship to those of haitian descent, despite the promises of the dominican constitution. similarly, the individual and absolute rule implied by sovereignty is problematized by considering examples of foreign intervention in haiti and jamaica, which crippled the ability of each nation to be self-sufficient. this culminated in a discussion of how the disjunction between the expectations and realities of citizenship and sovereignty in the caribbean indicates the imposition of incompatible western ideals onto the region, creating the illusion of caribbean “failure” regarding citizenship and sovereignty. 32 kamugisha, 25. 33 scott. 34 hintzen, 219. 35 kamugisha, 26. 36 bonilla, 164. 37 ibid. caribbean quilt 2023 vol. 7 no. 1 34 bibliography alexander, m. jacqui. "not just (any) body can be a citizen: the politics of law, sexuality and postcoloniality in trinidad and tobago and the bahamas." feminist review 48, no. 1 (1994): 523. https://doi.org/10.2307/1395166. bonilla, yarimar. "ordinary sovereignty." small axe: a caribbean journal of criticism 17, no. 3 (2013): 152-165. doi: https://doi-org.myaccess.library.utoronto.ca/10.1215/07990537-2378973. craemer, thomas. “estimating slavery reparations: present value comparisons of historical multigenerational reparations policies.” social science quarterly, 96 (2015): 639-655. https://doi-org.myaccess.library.utoronto.ca/10.1111/ssqu.12151. fatton jr, robert. "haiti: the saturnalia of emancipation and the vicissitudes of predatory rule." third world quarterly 27, no. 1 (2006): 115-133. https://doi.org/10.1080/01436590500369378. hintzen, amelia. “permanently in transit: blackness and non-citizenship in the caribbean.” translation (kampala, uganda), no. 127 (2019): 216-227. https://doi.org/10.2979/transition.127.1.20. kamugisha, aaron. "the coloniality of citizenship in the contemporary anglophone caribbean." race & class 49, no. 2 (2007): 20-40. https://doi.org/10.1177/0306396807082856. scott, john. "citizenship." in a dictionary of sociology, oxford university press, 2014. https://www-oxfordreference-com.myaccess.library.utoronto.ca/view/10.1093/acref/9780199683581.001.0001/acref9780199683581-e-257. microsoft word thompson_numbered.docx caribbean quilt 2023 vol. 7 no. 1 35 the cultural and spiritual origination of the western, southern and central african influences of trinidad and tobago’s carnival and the artform of kalinda. shayna thompson centre for caribbean studies faculty of arts & science, university of toronto shayna rivelle thompson is a visual and mural artist for over ten years, as well as a certified biotechnician from trinidad and tobago. a fourth-year student at the university of toronto, majoring in african studies and minoring english and life sciences, shayna’s academic studies focus on panafricanism and the importance of the caribbean to be acknowledged from a historical, spiritual, creative and holistic health perspective. keywords: trinidad & tobago carnival african diaspora kalinda africa culture abstract in this thesis, i will discuss the origins of carnival and the artform of kalinda within the caribbean twin island of trinidad and tobago. i will discuss these practices' cultural and spiritual roots in west, central and south africa. the first section of this paper will discuss trinidad and tobago's carnival. the explanation regarding the festival will provide an understanding of how, what, where, when, and why it came into existence and will always be significant to the island's cultural and spiritual structural foundation. the second section will explain kalinda's complete physical and spiritual art form and why it is to understand. the last section of this paper will discuss the significant cultural and spiritual connection between carnival and kalinda. it will discuss how this festival and art form are significant to trinidad and tobago's spiritual and cultural foundation, hence providing the relevance of it being remembered and carried on. african influences are predominant throughout the caribbean—one island, which can be seen in trinidad and tobago. while trinidad and tobago has a diversity of races and ethnicities that produce its cosmopolitan society, impacting the country's culture, the african influence is the most predominant. trinidad and tobago's african influences are rooted within the regions of west, central and south africa. carnival and kalinda are entwined with each other as kalinda is done during the period of carnival within the period of trinidad in tobago (predominantly between the january to february period). this had been traditional within trinidad in the early nineteenth and caribbean quilt journal homepage: https://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/cquilt/index caribbean quilt 2023 vol. 7 no. 1 36 twentieth centuries. trinidad and tobago’s carnival is regarded as ‘one of the best examples of strong cultural hybridity between africans and europeans’ (miyoshi, mika “representation of african heritage in trinidad carnival." representation of african heritage in trinidad carnival, january 7th, 2016, pp. 83-93). carnival is a traditional, annual street festival (known as the 'the greatest festival in the world') in the capital of trinidad and tobago, port of spain. it is held for two days, always on a monday or tuesday as 'carnival monday and carnival tuesday.'it pays ancestral homage and symbolization african emancipation from slavery in the nineteenth century. before the forty-day christian and catholic lenten period, these two days fall between january and february. the purpose of this was and is to continue the celebration of the history of emancipation, of african slavery from the european colonization. they were no longer under oppression due to their persistent rebellion. two significant historical, events that have to be understood that contributed to the product of carnival were the emancipation of slavery in 1838 and the 'canboulay riot of 1881' (guzda, john. the canboulay riot 1881: influence of free blacks on trinidad's carnival. january 11th, 2012, pp. 110). an estimated 44,002 africans of the six million from africa, were brought to trinidad and tobago through the 'middle passage' (the journey to the caribbean and other parts of the new world at this time) via slavery from the transatlantic slave trade to work on the plantations owned by europeans, from the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries (government of trinidad and tobago, “emancipation sold into slavery.” emancipation sold into slavery). the most severe method used on africans was the abolition of their physical and spiritual connection to africa, in addition to the strict control and punishment methods such as castration, branding with hot irons, dismembering and locking in prisons and dungeons ("emancipation sold into slavery." emancipation sold into slavery, p1). the agenda behind this principle was dispersing the same ethnic groups to various plantations to prevent the groups from creating an uprising. communication that was now to be eradicated was one of the most important things to be destroyed here. a significance of this was the banning of african drums and rituals due to enslavers’ fears that they would be able to communicate physically and spiritually amongst themselves. this led them to practice their religion underground simultaneously and the religious faith of the enslaver, who imposed christianity as the only acceptable form of worship upon them. this was a form of manipulation by the africans, and they 'consciously erected a parallel interpretation of the christian structure of saints such that when they publicly prayed to them, their inner minds/heads (ori-inu), which the african regards to be by far more powerful than the actual head, in spiritual matters, was praying to the equivalent orisa’ (aiyejina, funso, and rawle gibbons. “orisa (orisha) tradition in trinidad. “caribbean quarterly, vol. 45, no. 4, 1999, pp. 42). this, however, was not going to last forever due to emancipation. in 1783 european (british and french) catholic enslavers would have their masquerade balls in the pre-lenten season, with enslaved people only having servant roles. they would do so using clothing, accessories and makeup. africans, who had their own culture inclusive of dress wear, music, drumming, dancing and singing, combined this with the mocking of their european superiors, producing a variety of characters paraded even up until today. the enslaved africans were from the west, central and south regions and were brought to trinidad. they were the yoruba (the predominant west), koongo-angola (modernly spelt congo central, angola south,) and hausa (northern nigeria). the yoruba, the predominant african group, was and still is a major influence within the carnival in addition to the english, french and spanish influences. these people's combination of religion and spirituality were and are very critical to carnival as it is a major component in carnival's spiritual purpose ancestral veneration of those who paved the way for emancipation. the ancestral veneration consists of two essential aspects: the combined religiousspiritual belief of orisha and their regional costume portrayal. the yoruba tradition of orisha is one of the 'most prominent,' 'contemporary african religious traditions' had and is still noted as one of the most prominent brought to caribbean quilt 2023 vol. 7 no. 1 37 trinidad. (aiyejina, funso, and rawle gibbons. “orisa (orisha) tradition in trinidad. “caribbean quarterly, vol. 45, no. 4, 1999, pp. 35) the orisa tradition was named sango, after sango, the god of thunder and lightning and the 'titular/patron deity of oyo' (where postemancipation yoruba captives came from). this was because he had the most meaningful and prominent influence on this african religion. he was known to possess 'protector' and 'avenger' qualities, leading to the belief that he was impressionable to the oppressed and enslaved. trinidadian novelist, playwright, journalist and writer earl lovelace shows the reference to this in the dragon can’t dance: 'sweeping yards in a ritual, heralding the masquerader's coming, that goes back centuries for its beginnings, back across the middle passage, back to mali and to guinea and dahomey and congo, back to africa when maskers were sacred and revered'(lovelace, 1979: 120). aiyejina, funso, and rawle gibbons. “orisa (orisha) tradition in trinidad. “caribbean quarterly, vol. 45, no. 4, 1999, p 41). the orisa faith survived due to the oyo-yoruba africans (captives from wars between yoruba subgroups sold into slavery) who had been brought to their new home, the new world in the caribbean and south america. the principal places were cuba, brazil and trinidad via the atlantic slave trade (eighteenth and nineteenth century). this is the reason why the faith has survived up to the present. even though it has not been consistently recorded via documentation from then to now, trinidadians of african descent have been able to continue practicing this yorubaoriginated legacy. this is done through generations remembering what they have learnt through ancestry passing this tradition down to second and third generations. the costumes are significant to the homage and, therefore, the pioneer designers of the culture. many prominent and influential pioneers have laid the foundation for trinidad and tobago carnival. they are harold saldenah, peter minshell, brian mac farlane, carlisle chang, george bailey, stephen lee chung, and norris eustace. norris eustace and harold saldenah were two legendaries who made their mark within the roots of this carnival tradition. norris eustace was the designer for the great harold saldenah. this period would have been around the late 1950s to the early '60s, the emergence of carnival in trinidad and tobago. his nephew curtis eustace, the national record holder for the most 'king of carnival' titles in trinidad and tobago, continues today's tradition. through the diversity of designs created for all those participating in the festival to enjoy, these pioneered carnival designers shared the common factor from past to present carrying on the importance of ‘mas’ – the concept of costume worn to celebrate african diversity as well as other ethnicities who also became emancipated. after years of revolts and rebellions from africans, on june 18th, 1837, at st joseph, donald stewart, known as 'dagaa,' former african chief in guinea and the leader of the first british west india regiment, led a revolt. this led to him and his remaining crew being sentenced to death on august 16th, 1837 and the following year on august 1st, 1834; the british parliament passed 'the act of the abolition of slavery' on august 28th, 1833 ("emancipation sold into slavery." emancipation sold into slavery, pp 57). 'canboulay' (spelled initially as 'cannes bru lees') was the act of sugarcane fields being burnt. burning the crops was a rebellious revolt done to the elite european enslavers for liberty and to sabotage their enslaver's economy. this was because it was produced by free slave labour. the enslaved people showcased how they were anticolonial and anticatholic, taking a pro-african stance in emancipating and celebrating this. this led to an important historical event of canboulay that marked the start of the festivity, 'canboulay act in 1881'. this was when the british administration decided to out rule and permanently suppress annual african celebrations in the capital city's streets by using police restraint and force. revolting and protesting were in the streets for african freedom. after years of struggle, even after slavery had been abolished to receive freedom, in 1962, trinidad and tobago had become colonial rule abolished and no longer under the british regime. through this freedom, they immediately did not hesitate to celebrate on the streets. it is from this point on to now that carnival is celebrated in the history of emancipation and struggle (elder, j.d. “cannes brûlées.” tdr (1988-), vol. 42, no. 3, caribbean quilt 2023 vol. 7 no. 1 38 1998, pp. 38-43). kalinda is the traditional art form of stick fighting practiced within trinidad and tobago’s carnival period, predominantly by males. this prospectus will explain the simultaneous cultural and spiritual roots of these practices of african slaves of the yoruba, traditionally continued in trinidad and tobago under european colonization in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. the word is comprised of two words with two meanings combined. 'ka' is a southern koongo and mbundu 'nominal diminutive prefix,' similarly in french creole languages. it meant drum (hearn 1890, 143) hence why it can be linked to being used as a call out by the fighters to encourage drummers to play louder, to hype them up for the match; they would say, "give me keg/ka” (pearse 1955, envelope 4, 8.22). this practice arrived in trinidad in the nineteenth century with these enslaved africans. eventually, it became part of the plantation creole culture. it was highly noticeable within central africa. this was predominantly, originally and culturally practiced as a pastime by central and south africans, continued by second and third-generation descendants. these descendants were of koongo-angolan ancestry. it was also used as a form of self-defence, particularly by those who would have been considered professionally trained soldiers 'specially trained for war' (thornton 1988b, 362) with the stick. in addition to this, being able to display skills that "included a facility in hand-to-hand combat with sword, club, battle axe, and stabbing spear, and in some cases use as a shield . . .thus the important skill was, above all, the ability to twist, leap, and dodge to avoid arrows or the blows of opponents'' (pp. 363-64). evidence is seen as the koongo and ngdongo is connected to the war drills of the haitian musundi battle dance. there were many ways to open a fight. one way it commenced was for a player "to run in a mystic circle ."this was done to 'close off emanations of jealousy and envy' (thompson 1991,7). a second was called the 'parade .'there was a time limit of three to four hours in the afternoon consisting of various contestants in the ring called a gayal. there were holes prepared near it so that a fighter had a headrest to rest his head so that blood would have been able to be drained out over the hole. this congo poses signified 'the presence of the spirit' and 'ecstasy' sharing similarity to what is known by the koongo as 'yaangalala .'this is when the hands are thrust above the head with fingers spread wide. it was done with his "left arm akimbo and the right hand up and forwards ."this was an 'opening pose' in that players could strike their opponents by throwing power against them to increase their chances of strength to win. women sometimes pose similarly to their male counterparts with the left hand on the hip, and the right held 'poised in the air' (courlander 1960, 131). the stick is called 'bois,' a french for wood made from the following fruit trees yellow poui, sour guava, gasparee and anaree. it was believed that the saplings of these trees should be cut 'when the moon is weak and the nights are dark .'it is the most significant asset to the fighter himself, hence why much preparation went into it for a bloody win. it ranged from five to six feet in length with a diameter of about seven-eighths of an inch. the stick fighters were called 'meyers' (warner-lewis, maureen. central african in the caribbean transcending time, transforming cultures chapter 8 ‘accessing power: ritual war and masquerade 209’). they were generally believed to have had their mothers put snake poison on their sticks, wiping it with a red cloth. they ensured the sticks were spiritually guarded as they were believed to have 'power .'it is said to be the 'guarded stick' that as soon as you hit your opponent 'a lash, bam their stick burst in half’ as deemed in the trinidadian creole colloquial language (meaning in english layman’s terms, the stick would break). this was also regarded by the french term 'bon rai' or bonne raise' 'a good strike .'it rested on the thumb and the little finger, clasping it with three middle fingers. the spiritual and physical were entwined as serious preparation (pearse 1955, envelope 4). music played a huge role. it consisted of connoisseurs and percussion. the person was accompanied by the music of short lengths of bamboo or 'spoons against bottles' or drums. these tones and rhythms were said to forewarn competitors of two things: to instruct them by hinting to him something wrong with his strategy or how to take advantage of the enemy's weakness (hill 1972, 26). being caribbean quilt 2023 vol. 7 no. 1 39 stuck to the head was considered the worst type of blow for a player to receive. in southwestern nigeria and trinidad, drums are accompanied by 'gourd rattles and hand clapping .'two instruments used by trinidadian shangoists who would have been involved in the musical aspect of kalinda are the shagby and a long slender calabash. the shagby is an instrument of equivalence to the shekere rattle in nigeria, made from a large round calabash whose top has been replaced with a piece of goatskin' (simpson, george eaton. "the shango cult in nigeria and in trinidad." american anthropologist, vol. 64, no. 6, 1962, pp. 1208. jstor, accessed march 2nd, 2020). the long slender calabash contained a string of buttons that produced a high sound volume when shaken. the 'chantwells' (in french chauntuelles or chantrelles in chantuer), known as the male singers, would sing lyrics to motivate the opponents, with the male drumming simultaneously playing a role in the big drum tradition. (warnerlewis, maureen. central african in the caribbean transcending time, transforming cultures chapter 8 ‘accessing power: ritual war and masquerade pp. 199-206’). the songs used in the act of kalinda were yoruba sacred melodies which developed into a genre of music called ''trinidad yoruba.'' these songs had african religious chants that were sacred. these songs stemmed from the worship of shango among the yoruba. shango was the deity of thunder and lightning. these songs were sung as personal boasting in ritual battles and revolting against the oppressors during 'canboulay or burning of the sugarcane fields.'it was a known prelude routine to burning crops by free labourers or enslaved people to sabotage the enslaver's economy. these boasts were 'ó rú ogùnná gbòńgbò’ (‘he carried aloft a huge flambeau’ a flame is lit) and ‘ó fi íréké pán' ('he set the canes alight'). a common chant was 'zingaytalala .'it was an old-folk chant traditionally sung in the gayelle, rarely used now. it is described as "a cry from deep from within, an old stickman chant, a reckoning. it is a cry from the spirit, a shout from the soul, a cry for healing, a call to the world to do more and be more, for the good of the whole '' (espinet, rachel. “3canal to 'boom up history' with zingaytalala.” trinidad and tobago newsday, february 15th, 2019). in conclusion, these two practices remind trinidadians of the freedom they enslaved africans yearned. the execution in both has remained at present except for kalinda, being practiced as a culturally african-based sport and remembering the artform's tradition. while it is not used for warbased reasons, the elders who have passed on his art form up to current will use it as a form of self-defence if necessary. the carnival of trinidad and tobago's influence has spread globally to a diversity of countries worldwide as there are many trinbagonian communities in places such as north america (toronto being one of the biggest with the toronto caribbean carnival), europe and japan. the tradition is continued today by many carnival bands and the 'king and queen showcase' competition. as toronto is one of the biggest influencers out of trinidad, louis saldenah, owner of the masquerader band louis saldenah mas k club, and curtis eustace (nephew of norris eustace) continue to win competitions of the king and queen showcase, followed by first-time designer nicholas guy ("news release." ontario science centre awards the 2019 innovation in mas' award to nicholas guy's heartbeat of the last conflict at the toronto caribbean carnival). these two practices commemorate the emergence of slavery and the celebration of the new life free of enslavement. carnival is celebrated, and kalinda is practiced during the carnival season as a reminder of the historical struggle that africans mainly encountered to reside in a liberated society and remember the african heritage that moulded trinidadians of african descent into members of society today holistically. caribbean quilt 2023 vol. 7 no. 1 40 bibliography aiyejina, funso, and rawle gibbons. “orisa (orisha) tradition in trinidad.” caribbean quarterly, vol. 45, no. 4, 1999, pp. 35-50. jstor www.jstor.org/stable/40654100 besson gerald. 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"carnival dates for historians 1700 to 1825 ad." tobago island research, tobago island research, july 12th, 2001, www.seetobago.org/tandt/carnival/dates/cdcroots.htm. accessed november 20th, 2019. oral discussions with curtis eustace. nov 2019. elder, j.d. “cannes brûlées.” tdr (1988-), vol. 42, no. 3, 1998, pp. 38-43. jstor, www.jstor.org/stable/1146678. elder, j.d. “kalinda”: songs of the battling troubadours of trinidad.” journal of the folklore institute, vol 3, no. 2, 1966, oo, 192203. jstor, www.jstor.org/stable/3814054 government of trinidad and tobago, “emancipation sold into slavery.” emancipation sold into slavery emancipation sold into slavery.” emancipation sold into slavery national library of trinidad and tobago. emrit, ronald. “carlisle chang.” cultural and sports history of trinidad and tobago by ronald c. emrit, ronald c. emrit,http://www.bestoftrinidad.com/profiles/chang.html “harold saldenah”http://www.bestoftrinidad.com/profiles/saldenah.htmlcultural and sports history of trinidad and tobago by ronald c. emrit, “peter minshell”http://www.bestoftrinidad.com/profiles/minshall.htmlcultural and sports history of trinidad and tobago by ronald c. emrit, “stephen lee heung”http://www.bestoftrinidad.com/profiles/leeheung.htmlcultural and sports history of trinidad and tobago by ronald c. emrit fayer, joan m. contact englishes of the eastern caribbean. edited by michael aceto and jeffrey payne williams, john benjamins, 2003. pp 221-223. ferdinand, nicole. mas a technical description. vanus investments ltd, may 9th, 2019. http://www.ncctt.org/new/images/pdf/chapter%20iii%20the%20mas%20industry%20of%20trinidad%20and%20tobago.pdf gerstin, julian. “tangled roots: kalenda and other neo-african dances in the circum-caribbean.” caribbean quilt 2023 vol. 7 no. 1 41 nwig: new west indian guide / nieuwe west-indische gids, vol. 78, no. 1/2, 2004, pp. 5–41. guzda, john. the canboulay riot 1881: influence of free blacks on trinidad's carnival. january 11th 2012, pp. 1-10. hill, donald r. “west african and haitian influences on the ritual and popular music of carriacou, trinidad, and cuba.” black music research journal, vol. 18, no. 1/2, 1998, pp. 183–201. jstor, www.jstor.org/stable/779398. isaac-flavien janice. the translation of carnival in trinidad and tobago: the evolution of a festival. november 21st, 2011. tusaaji.journals.yorku.ca/index.php/tusaaji/article/download/37814/34274/. accessed november 20th, 2019. johnson, samuel. the history of the yorubas from the earliest times to the beginning of the british protectorate. edited by obadiah johnson, 1st ed., cambridge university press, new york, united states of america, n.d. lennox, sarah. “‘her english ensign tied upside down’: carnival as a means of anticolonial resistance in emmanuel appadocca.” the journal of commonwealth literature, vol. 54, no. 2, june 2019, pp. 257–272. liverpool, hollis urban. “origins of rituals and customs in the trinidad carnival: african or european?” tdr (1988-), vol 42, no, 3, 1998, pp. 24-37. jstor, www.jstor.org/stable/1146677 liverpool, hollis urban. ritual of power and rebellion; the carnival tradition in trinidad and tobago. (volumes i and ii). the university of michigan, 1993. lopez, david. emancipation & carnival a historical perspective of trinidad and tobago. maharaj, candice. “the origins and evolution of carnival in trinidad and tobago.” https://retrospectivejournal.com/2018/11/11/the-origins-and-evolution-of-carnival-in-trinidad-and-tobago-2/, retrospect journal, november 11th 2018. accessed november 20th, 2019. mcgill aldwyn. "curtis eustace interview for 50th anniversary of toronto carnival by aldwyn mcgill" youtube, june 27th, 2018. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sdbnjvz_r80 miyoshi, mika. "representation of african heritage in trinidad carnival." representation of african heritage in trinidad carnival, january 7th, 2016, pp. 83-93. mc williams l. "origins of traditional carnival mas" youtube, february 13th, 2012. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9_yvyjbmck perkins, anna. "carne vale (goodbye to flesh?): caribbean carnival, notions of the flesh and christian ambivalence about the body." sexuality & culture 15.4 (2011): 361-74. web. november 12th, 2019. riggio, milla cozart, carnival. routledge, 2004. sabiu, ibraahim & zainol, fakhrul & abdullahi, mohammed. (2018). hausa people of northern nigeria and their development. 179-189. caribbean quilt 2023 vol. 7 no. 1 42 scher, philip w. “the devil and the bed-wetter: carnival, memory, national culture, and post-colonial consciousness in trinidad.” western folklore, vol. 66, no. 1/2, 2007, pp. 107–126. jstor, www.jstor.org/stable/25474847. sofo, giuseppe. “carnival, memory and identity.” култура /culture [online],.6 (2014): 17-24. web. 19 nov. 2019 spriller attillah. "we must remember the history behind canboulay" youtube, february 23rd, 2017. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=waqtpoj6fi0 warner-lewis, maureen. central african in the carribean transcending time, transforming cultures chapter 8 ‘accessing power: ritual war and masquerade 199-226’. 1st ed., university of the west indies press, 2003. warner-lewis, maureen. “8 the influence of yoruba music on the minor-key calypso.” guinea's other suns: the african dynamic in trinidad culture, the majority press, 1991, pp. 141–159. warner-lewis, maureen. “trinidad yoruba: its theoretical implication for creolisation processes.” caribbean quarterly, vol. 44, no. ½, 1998, pp. 50-61. jstor www.jstor.org/stable/4065402 counternarratives of nationalist anti-black images: normalizing and extolling blackness in contemporary art of the hispanic caribbean liza girgis university of toronto department of spanish and portuguese this article examines contemporary art of the hispanic caribbean as a counternarrative to the antiblack aesthetic ideals in the region. by exploring beauty standards on these islands through quotidian language and images that portray beauty, the proliferation of whiteness as the epitome of the aesthetic is exhibited in modern day dominican republic, puerto rico and cuba. this article follows the work of scholars who have theorized and evidenced that the post-independence narrative has dominated the islands’ perceived racial identities, marginalizing blackness and praising whiteness. we add that this discourse has also impacted its peoples’ daily beauty rituals, as most of them facilitate the ‘whitening’ of one’s appearance. present-day art that extolls blackness and questions the exclusion of people of african descent on the islands thus serves as a powerful truth reveal; contrarily to the official history, negritude is not rebellion, rather it is the region’s nature and beauty. in other words, this research seeks to explore how this art portrays negritude as the face of the hispanic caribbean, normalizing and celebrating the appearance of the majority of its people. a b s t r a c t keywords: hispanic caribbean, blackness, beauty standards, anti-black nationalism, racial identities, counternarratives b i o after graduation, i travelled to the caribbean and south america. then, i decided to return to the university to complete my ma. i am interested in the cultural production of the diaspora of the hispanic caribbean and how it maintains an ongoing dialogue with cultural production of the islands. © 2021 liza girgis caribbean studies students’ union, canada https://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/cquilt/ this work is licensed under the creative commons attributionsharealike 4.0 international license. to view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ 101 (january 20, 2022 / 09:38:49) 122864-1b_caribbeanquilt_vol7_rev.pdf .101 102 néstor e. rodríguez, divergent dictions: contemporary dominican literature (mexico: siglo xxi editores, 2005), p. 43. ibid., p. 22. 1 …jamás podrán cuantificar el aguacero eterno detrás del pecho detrás del alisado, del maquillaje ese aguacero que no para que deja todo sin rostro y sin artistas… anamú y manigua, mayra santos febres, 1991. contemporary artists from the dominican republic, puerto rico, and cuba have been portraying blackness in their work to reinclude the islands’ african ancestry in the present-day imaginary of the nations. this art represents resistance to the official discourse of national identity, which is inherently antiblack. in reality, the latter has caused unquantifiable psychological and physical harms as these populations are mostly of african descent. the extract from santos febres’ poem above may help us begin to imagine this pernicious effect on society, and it tells us that the hispanic caribbean is in need of a racial identity re-education program. to begin, although santos febres writes for puerto rico and the histories of the three islands are distinct, similar antiblack sentiments have emerged. but how did this originate? firstly, colonialism has had an essential role in generating these ideas but understanding the influence of this past is not sufficient to grapple with racism’s perdurance on the islands today. in reality, the independence movements from spain, as well as the politics that followed are worth exploring. hence, we must distinguish the three national imaginaries that have been materialized because they have reflected diverging versions of antiblackness. first, in the case of the dominican republic, this nation shares the same island as haiti, which has provoked anti-haitianism, and antiblackness until today. in fact, haiti—as the first african descended ruled nation in the americas—represented for many nascent latin american countries the threat that a black republic could rule over the white elites. thus, repressing blackness as modern identity became a necessary defense mechanism to protect white interests. additionally, the competing spanish and french empires on hispaniola generated tensions; although most dominicans are of african descent, the spanish leaders had to form a narrative to oppose the french. in consequence, blackness became the enemy and the scapegoat: dominicans were catholic and hispanic, as opposed to the black haitians who practiced “barbaric” voodoo. hereinafter, as scholars have observed, this racism did not end with independence. today, antiblackness persists in the dominican republic, and this is because these sentiments were crystalized during the two major dictatorships of trujillo (1930-1961) and balaguer (1966-1978). .rodríguez writes that the result of these dictatorships—regimes which not only violently opposed blackness but invested resources to erase it from dominican imaginary — is that a europeanising discourse has ruled. dominicans are “interpellated as ‘hispanic-taíno’, despite the fact that, culturally and ethnically, the vast majority would be more accurately described as possessing african and hispanic origins.”2 today, “in a country where the dominant part of the population is composed of mulattos and blacks, the vast majority does not think of themselves as such, but prefers to use the phantasmagoric category of the indio [literally ‘indian’; a reference to the original 2 1 2 (january 20, 2022 / 09:38:49) 122864-1b_caribbeanquilt_vol7_rev.pdf .102 103 ibid., p. 6-7. amaryllis lópez, "se dice pelo bueno: black affirmations in contemporary puerto rican literature,” (bridgewater state university, 2020), p.4. ibid. fabienne viala, “daniel lind ramos and the visual politics of race in puerto rican art”. aica caraïbe du sud, no. 4 (2015): p.4, https://aicasc.files.wordpress.com/2015/11/viala-en.pdf. ibid. lópez, “se dice pelo bueno: black affirmations in contemporary puerto rican literature,”p. 4. ibid., p.5. 3 indigenous population] to refer to their racial condition.” consequently, many dominicans cannot identify with their african roots. meanwhile, in puerto rico, we have a similar “christianised whiteness” that was used to define the nation. an island perpetually colonized by two hegemonies—spain and the united states— unable to free itself, resisted to the second colonizer by exalting its hispanic heritage, marginalizing indigeneity and blackness even more. hence, this impossibility to become an independent state engendered an inner patriotism, a constant remembering of the idiosyncrasies of puerto rico. one of these was the islands white, indigenous and black racial makeup; extolled in a disproportionate manner. as viala notes, in both puerto rican conversations on identity and in cultural production there is this “overrepresentation of the taíno.” one significant example is the seal of the institute of puerto rican culture which displays and represents: …the myth of a harmonious miscegenation…– spanish, arawak and black – are equally represented but with attributes that connote and denote, their different importance in the puerto rican imagination. the visual message of the seal is that spain brought culture, language and civilisation; the indigenous caribbean people encountered by the spanish conquistadors are represented as possessing a religion, and therefore a soul... but the black slaves are remembered only as a working labour force for the plantation. although this myth of trigueño puerto rico has “included” all racial components, it has dehumanized the african presence as a labor force. additionally, one could argue that the indigenous and the black characters on the seal are equally marginalized since both are shirtless. however, viala argues that the taíno man is holding a cemí—a religious artefact—while the african man carries a machete, thus indigenous people are given this power to educate and tell the story, while the black people are workers in puerto rican imaginary. in other words, these characters are literally holding what modern day puerto ricans pass down to the subsequent generations as racial identities. consequently, although puerto ricans claim their african heritage, many do not claim their blackness. lópez writes that this paradox also stems from the fact that the nation was built on “colorblindness.” “as lloréns states, the process of blanqueamiento and mestizaje…has allowed puerto rico to view itself a…post-racial paradise. thus, affirming a black identity in puerto rico is seen as challenging the racist narratives that protect this ‘post-racial paradise’ ...black puerto ricans are expected to negotiate and conceal their blackness for the “good” of the nation.” therefore, this pride of being a mixed nation leaves no room to affirm blackness in puerto rico because if the island’s 3 4 5 6 7 4 5 6 7 8 8 9 9 (january 20, 2022 / 09:38:49) 122864-1b_caribbeanquilt_vol7_rev.pdf .103 104 ibid., p.7. helg, aline. “race in argentina and cuba, 1880-1930: theory, policies, and popular reaction,” in the idea of race in latin america, 1870-1940, edited by richard graham (austin, texas: university of texas press,1990), page # 47. david luis-brown, “‘the coming unities’ in ‘our america’: decolonization and anticolonial messianism in martí,du bois, and the santa de cabora.” in waves of decolonization: discourses of race and hemispheric citizenship in cuba, mexico, and the united states, edited by donald e. pease ( durham and london: duke university press, 2008), p. 69. david booth, “cuba, color and the revolution,” science & society 40, no. 2, (1976): p. 155-157, jstor. 10 particularity is its racial mixture, negritude alone is un-puerto rican. as lloréns observes, “puerto rican society tends to accept only ‘folkloric’ depictions of blackness.” on the other hand, puerto rico’s neighbor, cuba, seems to put african descended cultures at the foreground of the national stage, as images of afro-cuban culture are prolific. yet, this does not necessarily mean that blackness is invited in cuban discussions of national identity. cuba possesses a similar racial imaginary to puerto rico; that of a racially heterogenous island. like puerto ricans, cubans racially see themselves as a white, indigenous, and black nation, however there is a grand difference: cubans do not focus on mestizaje as a national identity like puerto ricans. josé martí—the father of cuban independence— “[professed] that [being] cuban means [being] more than white, more than mulatto, more than black.” in other words, cuba was built on martí’s rhetoric, which “privileged national unity over racial grievances.” the story has thus told cubans that to achieve freedom, they must unite into one body, and consequently, discussing race means compromising liberty. additionally, like the dominican dictatorships, the cuban revolution has had an important role in crystalizing the independence narrative. in fact, scholars have compared martí’s writing with castro’s speeches, because the revolution sought to liberate cubans, ending racial inequalities: there were two types of racial discrimination, castro explained. one was that which took place in recreational and cultural establishments; the other…affected a man's right to earn a living…discrimination in work centers. discrimination in both areas had to be brought to an end, and in the future the public educational system would be used to ensure that blacks and whites were educated together in a spirit of brotherhood…in these two speeches in the early months of 1959 fidel castro not only identified the aspirations of his movement in relation to domestic racial discrimination but also established the limits beyond which it could not go. henceforth he referred to the color problem in his speeches only in passing and implying that, with the campaign to end discrimination in workplaces and social centers completed, there was little if anything that remained to be done. booth demonstrates the eloquence of castro’s discourse in this epoch; by stating the projects of the revolution would end racial inequality, he echoed martí and established a fixed imaginary of racism and of racial equality in cuba. in other words, by declaring the end of racism, the revolution guaranteed that afro-cubans would be incapable to voice the different perduring types of discrimination they faced. in fact, detecting black marginalization after the revolution remains extremely 11 12 13 10 11 12 13 (january 20, 2022 / 09:38:50) 122864-1b_caribbeanquilt_vol7_rev.pdf .104 105 convoluted in cuba, because of the revolution’s exaltation of afro-cuban cultures. rejecting blackness has thus become un mal necesario, a necessary sacrifice for most dominicans, puerto ricans and cubans to be accepted by their compatriots as nationals. meanwhile, those who do exalt their blackness—whether in conversation or physically—are often considered foreign or rebellious. this nuance between resistance and rebellion has made antiblackness loyalty and law, while blackness is misbehavior and chaos. amidst the power of this discourse, cultural production from these islands has questioned the racism in the official narrative and its fallacies. in fact, one of the ways artists are rewriting their national identities is by foregrounding their blackness. the visual aspect of art is impactful in this context because one of the main ways negritude has been erased from these identities is by bombarding its nationals with images of white people and their spanish heritage as the ideal. indeed, by marrying the national with their african ancestry, these artists are not only reinserting negritude in the narrative, but they are inviting their people to see the beauty of their blackness. for once, the latter is portrayed as positive, thus normalizing and exalting nature. now, before grasping the positive impact of this art, we must first understand how the antiblack rhetoric rules images and consequently beauty ideals in contemporary societies of the hispanic caribbean. what and who is considered “beautiful” in the hispanic caribbean? by analyzing quotidian conversations in the hispanic caribbean, we may answer this question. first, when discussing a person’s aesthetic, skin is one of the primary determiners of beauty. for instance, when comparing and deciding who is more attractive between two people, the one with the lighter complexion has the tendency to be portrayed as more beautiful. in fact, soft words to refer to lighter caribbean peoples’ skin such as crema are used as well as the adjective blanquito/a. indeed, the use of the diminutive ito/a is affectionate, exalting whiteness. in the hispanic caribbean, white people are depicted as possessing a flawless, angelical beauty; this veneration for this “rare” type of aesthetic is both harmful and convincing, because most of the population of the region is of african descent. the diminutive ito is also used in negro/a and moreno/a as an affectionate term, but we cannot ignore that black skin is often portrayed as a deficiency, as excess: él/ella es demasiado prieto/a (he/she is too dark) tends to be the reasoning behind why one considers a darker skinned person less attractive. consequently, to evade this negative connotation, many african descended people of the hispanic caribbean refer to their skin and racial identity with black euphemisms such as caramel, canela, or they prefer to identify themselves as mixed by describing themselves as mulato/a, or trigueño/a. often, many steer with either their nationality dominicano/a, puertorriqueño/a/, cubano/a, the taíno counterparts taíno/a, quisqueyano/a, boricua, or their hispanic heritage, referring to themselves as spanish or hispanic. now, black (negro/a (january 20, 2022 / 09:38:50) 122864-1b_caribbeanquilt_vol7_rev.pdf .105 106 and moreno/a) exists in this vocabulary, but in the dominican republic and puerto rico, it is mainly used when describing african americans and haitians. furthermore, the adjective moreno/a is significant because it has a double meaning: it can describe either one who is brunette with brown skin or one who is black. the latter definition is used as a black euphemism in other parts of latin america. for instance, in countries like mexico, moreno/a is used to describe people of african descent, because it is considered “rude” to refer to black people as black. in other words, even if moreno/a is a euphemism for black and even if moreno/a can also refer to someone who has brown or caramel skin, some people of the hispanic caribbean use the adjective to distinguish the african diaspora from themselves. the necessity to steer clear from blackness is subconscious and it does not come from nowhere. it is a reflection of the nationalist expectations imposed on the nationals of the islands. but how can these countries maintain such an influential antiblack discourse, if the majority is of african descent? in order to preserve this white ideal, antiblack discourse has colonized the african descended people through images and language, impacting their daily routines. people of the hispanic caribbean are bombarded by images of whiteness, and in consequence whitening one’s appearance is a necessary step to look presentable. while this psychological and physical harm seems clear, it is so playfully embedded in quotidian life and language that it goes unnoticed. for instance, african descended women who keep their natural hair are often told—in both a joking and serious manner— so, you didn’t brush your hair today? hence, afro-textured hair is perceived as uncivilized and unkempt, and this sets the expectation that hair straightening is considered basic grooming, like showering. moreover, afro-textured hair is synonymous with bad hair: pelo malo, and encaracolado are interchangeable expressions that characterize blackness as evil and unkempt. other nicknames to refer to the afro connotate unbrushed hair: pasa(cuba) and pajón (dominican republic). from a young age, african descended girls from these islands get their hair straightened by their family members. to put it another way, without teaching them the vocabulary, this ritual sends the youth a message: their pelo is malo. i wanted to evaluate the strength of this linguistic repudiation towards blackness by seeing if the younger generations in the diaspora had these same beliefs. indeed, there is a large population of dominicans, puerto ricans and cubans in the united states, so it could not be ignored. i interviewed cuban american kindergarten teacher katelyn alfonso in the bronx, ny, as the majority of her students are four-year-old dominicans and puerto ricans of african descent. when we met, i asked if she witnesses any of this discourse in the children and she stated that many of her female students wear wigs and have their hair straightened every day for school. when one student complained her wig was itchy, alfonso advised her she didn’t need to wear it, but the young girl replied, “i can’t, mami says i have to look clean for school”. naturally, this antiblack rhetoric has affected her male students also, she observed, as they did a self-portrait activity and none of the african-descended young boys used (january 20, 2022 / 09:38:50) 122864-1b_caribbeanquilt_vol7_rev.pdf .106 107 abigail henry. “former miss universe puerto rico kiara liz ortega wins reality show mira quién baila,” angelopedia, accessed april 29th 2021, https://www.angelopedia.com/news/miss-universe-puerto-rico-2018-kiara-liz-ortegadelgado-mira-quien-baila-winner/50661. jennifer marcial ocasio, “is puerto rico ‘racist’? online comments about new miss universe spark discussions.” orlando sentinel, december 10th, 2019.https://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/nationworld/os-puerto-rico-miss-universe-20191210 -qsdvlsvu2fffbbvu4sxfm6jpmy-story.html (accessed april 29th 2021). marcial, “is puerto rico ‘racist’?”. 14 darker colors to draw themselves. for example, one boy portrayed himself with straight hair, and miss alfonso told him to draw his curly hair. he looked at her, puzzled, then laughed. alfonso reassured him: “draw yourself—even if mami will be mad— this is you.” these examples are a representation of this antiblack rhetoric that is impacting young hispanic caribbean children across the borders today. looking from an outside perspective, i also analyzed trends in international beauty pageant winners. i found that it is an insightful way to explore the beauty ideals of a nation; this being a world competition—like the world cup or the olympics—the country wants to send its “best” contestants; in this case, whom they deem is the most beautiful. moreover, these contests demonstrate how a nation wishes to be imagined by the gaze of the world. in terms of race, we see that most winners of miss universe have been white with light features; even in countries where most of the population is of african descent. in fact, in the case of the hispanic caribbean, it is curious to see that amidst the dominican republic, puerto rico and cuba’s pride of being racially mixed, the winners have mostly been of european descent. first, in the case of the dominican republic, only about six women of visible african features have won since the first competition in 1927. meanwhile, in puerto rico, miss puerto rico 2018—kiara ortega—was only “the third woman with noticeably mixed (african and indigenous) features to win miss universe puerto rico after alba reyes in 2004 and zuleyka rivera in 2006.” in fact, this means that no woman of visibly african descent has won in puerto rico, and therefore we have evidence that whiteness is considered the epitome of beauty on the island. this is indicative of beauty standards in borinquen since consuming miss puerto rico and miss universe is extremely important to puerto ricans; because the island is 4th in the world—after the philippines, the united states, and venezuela— for the most miss universe titles, winning the pageant is paramount. indeed, the outrage exclaimed by multiple puerto ricans on social media when their own blonde and green-eyed madison anderson berríos was the first runner up in miss universe in 2019 reflects this passion. it also reveals antiblack sentiments, as the winner zozibini tunzi, of south africa was crowned: “messages like ‘i can’t believe that the black woman won,’ ‘so many women with beautiful hair and the bad hair won,’ ‘shaka zulu’s cousin answers well’, and ‘she looks like a monkey’ crammed social media outlets.” marcial writes that this reference to shaka zulu— “a 19th century military leader”— was from a representative of the puerto rico department of education. finally, in the case of cuba, it is more difficult to quantify the trends in the pageant winners due to the island’s political and economic situation. however, in the years that miss cuba was prominent (1952 to 1967) no afro-cuban woman has 15 16 14 15 16 (january 20, 2022 / 09:38:50) 122864-1b_caribbeanquilt_vol7_rev.pdf .107 108 ernesto mccausland, “celia cruz reflexiona sobre la vida,” youtube, 9.21 minutes, september 7th, 2012. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eai-zxvr6-y david booth, “cuba, color and the revolution,” science & society 40, no. 2, (1976): p. 144, jstor. 17 won the contest. moreover, although not a contestant at this year’s miss universe, cuba made an appearance. held in hollywood florida, cuban performers danced to celia cruz’s bemba colorá. an afro-cuban artist and cuba’s pride, cruz was one of cuba’s most significant musicians. she was known to exalt the sweetness of her blackness through her catch phrase ¡azúcar! does this mean that the island was and is proud to be black on the international stage? this question does not have a short answer. celia cruz’s success is undeniable, but the afro-cuban performer’s beginnings were rough as she was told time and time again that she was too black to perform. in an interview, a journalist asked her what she thought about her day’s beauty standards and cruz,—referring to her refusal to go under the knife— stated that toda la vida he sido fea, desde que nací y el público me ha aceptado así; amidst her “ugliness” she succeeded in her career and the audience has accepted her the way she looks. in this context la guarachera de cuba was not referring to her blackness but it is interesting to see her refusal to conform to her day’s beauty ideals, which were and remain white focused. i argue that celia cruz’s success does not signify the end of racism on the island. in fact, booth has written that exceptional talent has been one of the ways afro-cubans have managed to be accepted as the representatives of cuba since the early days of the island’s independence. fast forward to 2021, intentional or not, the choice of song is meaningful to explore the question of antiblackness in cuba today. first, bemba is a pejorative word used to refer to big lips, specifically those of people of african descent. the song’s chorus is pa' mi, tú no eres na' /tú tienes la bemba colorá (you mean nothing to me/ you have big colored lips). it seems cruz was imitating the antiblack discourse in her country. second, in the verse she sings: baila tu rumba/canta tu son/tu guarachita y tu danzón… /dance your rumba/sing your son/your guaracha and your danzón. this verse can be interpreted as a voice of encouragement from another afro-cuban telling their black counterpart to exalt their blackness amidst the racism. yet, with the use of the imperative, we can also interpret it as a white voice ordering an afro-cuban to perform their musical genres. regardless of cruz’s intention, we can observe that afro-cubans have only been accepted to represent their nation as performers but never as the island’s face. amidst the seriousness of this topic— like most of celia cruz’s performances— bemba colorá takes on a playful tone; a mirror of both the casual pejorative language to refer to the appearance of people of african descent in the hispanic caribbean and the lack of seriousness and commitment in terms of discussing race in cuba. perhaps it is precisely this playful discourse that has made space for cultural producers like celia cruz to exalt their blackness and remain in cuban imaginary. 18 17 18 (january 20, 2022 / 09:38:50) 122864-1b_caribbeanquilt_vol7_rev.pdf .108 109 “jorge pineda: recent works,” africanah (blog), october 19th,2016, https://africanah.org/jorge-pineda-recent-works/#:~: text=jorge%20pineda%2c%20(b.,%2c%20spain%2c%20in%20february%202013. 19 as we can see, not all people from the hispanic caribbean have followed the antiblack rhetoric. beyond the musicians and intellectuals who have advocated for normalizing blackness through their words, some prominent figures of the region are affirming their negritude through their physical appearance. the natural hair movement—initiated by african american women during the civil rights movements—has revibrated in the caribbean. since images of white people have been the only ones to describe professionalism and beauty, just the simple act of wearing natural hair has been a form of resistance in the region. for instance, after years of getting dominican blow outs to appear on television, afro-dominican journalists marivell contreras and edith febles began to wear their natural hair on television; a defiance statement but also a positive message to their viewers, normalizing negritude. additionally, in 2014, dominican-american carolina “miss rizos” contreras opened the first natural hair salon in santo domingo. in addition, natural hair salons and black hair products are becoming available in puerto rico and cuba. it is clear that if images of black people and beauty services are accessible, it is becoming more difficult to believe the fallacy that blackness is unnatural and ugly. these counternarratives we see in the media and in contemporary life of the hispanic caribbean are a form of a re-education campaign, providing african descended people of these islands with the tools to affirm their blackness and to unlearn that their negritude must be erased for them to be beautiful. now, we have seen how images and language have been powerful tools to exalt whiteness and taboo blackness. fortunately, contemporary artists of the region are joining this project, changing the visual and linguistic narratives available for their compatriots in the dominican republic, puerto rico and cuba. i argue that since visual arts are both a reflection of the national and synonymous with the aesthetic, they have had a grand role in questioning the absurdity of antiblackness and promoting pro black beauty ideals in the hispanic caribbean. these cultural producers are seeking to include the black subject in both the official narrative and in daily life by portraying their negritude as both nationalistic and beautiful. the dominican republic jorge pineda is one of the leading dominican visual artists today. a world renown queer creator from barahona, the dominican body and its negotiation with blackness is central to his work: pineda understands reality as [a] permanent interpretation…as a mask behind which there is no definitive face but rather a game of successive maskings. what jorge pineda does is open up the possibility of mining the control exercised over us… through the path of an over-identification with it…in a certain measure he projects… the constitutional lacking of the subject which is simultaneously an excessive presence of the ‘impossible’… it’s not the moment of the disappearance of the veils or of the lifting of the theatre curtain, but rather that of the acceptance of the screen.19 (january 20, 2022 / 09:38:50) 122864-1b_caribbeanquilt_vol7_rev.pdf .109 110 fig. #1, pineda, jorge. mama, painting, 2016, (lucy garcía arte contemporáneo, santo domingo), https://africanah.org/jorge-pineda-recent-works/#:~:text=jorge%20pineda%2c%20(b.,%2c%20spain%2c%20in%20 fig. #2, pineda, jorge. me voy, installation, 2005, (hunter east harlem gallery), https://wmuprintmaking.wordpress.com/2014/09/11/jorge-pineda-visiting-printmedia-artist/. 20 in other words, pineda sees identity as an excessively dramatic performance which attempts to cover the truth. we can observe this question of overconsumption or over-identification with the mask in the multiple layers of clothing that worn by the characters in mama (2016). in this image we cannot see the characters’ skin colors, nor do we have any indication of their physical appearance. we simply observe the distinct colors and materials worn by the mother and her child. the layered clothing demonstrates the intricacies and the multiple masks that are utilized to hide this racial identity. it also appears the parent is connecting her thoughts with her child’s in order to proliferate some message. regardless of what the latter may be, what is certain is that the mama in pineda’s piece is attempting to pass down her mask to her progeny. in fact, pineda’s characters tend to be young subjects in a constant process of negotiating their negritude. me voy (2005) is another example of this. a child of african descent is standing in the corner; as we know, in childhood this space is that of punishments. i could not help but think of the children in miss alfonso’s class, who are taught that exalting blackness is misbehavior. indeed, the purpose of the punishment in the corner is for children to reflect on their mistakes, and in this process we see black scribbles leaking from the hands of the boy. the character is also portrayed in 3 dimensions whereas the black scribbles are painted on the wall, meaning that they no longer form a part of him. in this case, the title, me voy (“i’m leaving”) could signify that he is walking away from the reality of his blackness. thus, the use of young characters in pineda’s work suggests that this disconnect with negritude is not inherent but is learned over time. once more, pineda evokes characters who work to intricately hide their blackness. let us see other artists who reflect on the outcome when this veil is removed. 20 21 21 (january 20, 2022 / 09:38:50) 122864-1b_caribbeanquilt_vol7_rev.pdf .110 111 fig. #3, llano, kilia. untitled, mural, 2018, (hotel in las terrenas coco, honey and hill), https://www.facebook.com/1045059695552454/posts/finalizado-el-mural-comisionado-por-el-nuevo-hotel-en-las-terrenascoco-honey-an/2277746068950471/ fig. #4, llano, kilia. murales de mi patria (series), mural 2016, (megacentro rd, santo domingo), https://dominicancult.blogspot.com/2016/02/mural-by-kilia-llano.html. 22 kilia llano is one of the most prominent dominican visual artists today. a muralist from santo domingo, llano is interested in depicting the dominican body through urban art. she affirms dominican negritude by painting african descended subjects as part of and in harmony with the dominican landscape. by drawing her people as black in the landscape, she not only resists the dominant taíno-spanish racial identity, but the artist affirms that blackness is natural rather than something that should be hidden. for instance, in the untitled piece below (2018) we see a dominican woman who is in the forefront and the centre of the island. she is happy to be entrenched in what appears to be honey, and thus blackness is depicted as sweet, positive, and as the nature and the essence of dominicanness. the colours and her smile depict that negritude is beautiful, rather than something that leads to rejection from the nation and the rest of the world. in fact, this mural was commissioned by a new hotel in las terrenas coco, honey and hill, which means that the gaze of foreigners will fall on this image, and dominican identity appears to be reshaped on the international stage. meanwhile, the second image below (2016, also untitled) is a part of the murales de mi patria collection. the work can be found at megacentro, a large shopping mall in santo domingo. this mural audience is regular people—especially families—and this quotidian experience is a way to normalize blackness in dominican life. indeed, in the painting we have a young afro-dominican girl who has the island’s flag painted on her face. this affirms that first, blackness is a part of dominican identity, providing the nationals with a sense of pride for their negritude as part of nationalism. second, by depicting a child, the youth who see this image can identify themselves and begin to portray themselves as black. moreover, it is essential to observe that llano draws these characters with their natural hair, —whether curly hair, afro-textured hair or styled in braids—normalizing afro-textured hair as a hairstyle rather than a supposed lack of maintenance. 23 23 22 (january 20, 2022 / 09:38:51) 122864-1b_caribbeanquilt_vol7_rev.pdf .111 112 fig.#5, arroyo pizarro, yolanda. illustrations by: brittany gordón pabón. pelo bueno, book, 2018, (edp university press, puerto rico), https://latinosinkidlit.com/2020/10/26/book-review-pelo-bueno-good-hair-by-yolanda-arroyo-pizarroillustrated-by-brittany-gordon-pabon/ yolanda arroyo pizarro, pelo bueno. (puerto rico: edp university press, 2018), p. 10. 24 puerto rico yolanda arroyo pizarro is an afro-puerto rican author who seeks to show the youth of her island that they must not disguise their blackness to be beautiful. her children’s book pelo bueno (2018) provides a significant number of counternarrative images, as the pages are replete with colorful depictions of two black females happy with their natural hair. specifically, by juxtaposing pelo bueno with an image of a happy girl with an afro, arroyo literally turns pelo malo on its head. in the story, as the abuela is styling her granddaughter’s hair, the latter tells the former that children at school have called her hair texture malo. the abuela then tells her that her pelo is not malo, because it has never done any harm to anyone 25 this simple reflection of the adjective malo demonstrates that this process of unlearning that blackness is ugly begins with questioning the everyday simply put, the afro-puerto rican author reminds the youth that—amidst the fact that their pelo is not malo—they may hear their appearance is bad or unkempt, but they must remember this is a fallacy. additionally, by writing a children’s book arroyo reminds us that it is important to re-educate young african descended people in the region with positive images of blackness before hating their natural hair becomes unquestionable. lópez argues that storytelling also permits this unlearning process: the grandmother goes on to style her grandchild’s hair into a crown, saying that she now is “a queen like the queens from our african ancestors” … by mentioning juana agripina, an enslaved woman who legally defended and fought for her freedom in nineteenth-century puerto rico, the grandmother honors the beauty and history of resistance of afro-puerto ricans. these new styles allow the grandchild not only to see her natural hair in a new light, but also to be introduced to a more varied representation of history that includes images of the strength and beauty of african queens and women warriors. as lópez states, arroyo advocates for the essential role of storytelling of black heroes to children in order to reinsert blackness in contemporary puerto rican imaginary. in other words, in remembering black puerto ricans as individuals, rather than recalling them as slaves, there is the possibility of young afro-puerto ricans to see themselves as black rather than just having black ancestors. as we have seen 25 24 26 (january 20, 2022 / 09:38:51) 122864-1b_caribbeanquilt_vol7_rev.pdf .112 113 amaryllis lópez, "se dice pelo bueno: black affirmations in contemporary puerto rican literature,” (bridgewater state university, 2020), p.22. susan canning, “daniel lind-ramos.” sculpture magazine, september 9th, 2020. https://sculpturemagazine.art/daniel-lind-ramos/ (accessed april 30th 2021). fabienne viala, “daniel lind ramos and the visual politics of race in puerto rican art”. aica caraïbe du sud, no. 4 (2015): p.6, https://aicasc.files.wordpress.com/2015/11/viala-en.pdf. fig. #6, lind-ramos, daniel. con-junto, installation, 2015, (marlborough gallery), https://sculpturemagazine.art/daniel-lind-ramos/. 26 with miss alfonso’s students in the bronx, the antiblack discourse begins at an early age with families from the hispanic caribbean, hence arroyo’s work is fundamental for the next generation of puerto ricans of african descent. daniel lind ramos is another afro-puerto rican cultural producer who questions the underrepresentation of the island’s african heritage. a painter and sculptor from loíza, —the region of the island with the largest concentration of afro-puerto ricans— lind ramos places african elements in the foreground of his art, arguing that blackness is inherently puerto rican. the artist builds his installations from everyday materials such as “graters, casseroles, coconuts, machetes, palm tree trunks and branches…as well as found materials such as [stereo speakers], trombone parts, rebar, brooms, brushes…bongos, cymbals, a music stand…basketballs, and even…shoes… [his installations are] filled with percussive rhythms and harmonies seen and nearly heard.” (canning 2020, para.5) indeed, by combining both everyday objects and african instruments, the sculptor is “merging the political, the mythical and the everyday life in the manner of chronicle of the unsaid, [unmasking] the multiple components of caribbean identities hidden behind the national delusions of his island…” (viala 2015, 6) simply put, he resists the idea that his island’s african legacy is of the past. for instance, in his piece con-junto (2015) below, lind ramos not only remembers the legacy of the african presence in puerto rico but heseeks to normalize blackness as a large part of modern puerto rican identity. the title of this artwork delivers this message. first, the word conjunto in spanish signifies something that is joint or combined, but ramos has divided it. this tells us about the paradox that the harmonious mix of mestizaje has created a divide and has subsequently excluded blackness. it also shows us that puerto rico has space to include its african legacy. through the words con (with) and junto (together) lind-ramos suggests a potential of unity within this divide. all in all, con-junto tells the audience that negritude is so prominent on the island that it cannot be forgotten in puerto rico’s imaginary of mestizaje. 27 27 28 28 29 (january 20, 2022 / 09:38:51) 122864-1b_caribbeanquilt_vol7_rev.pdf .113 114 fig. #7, diago durruthy, juan roberto. rostro sin nombre, painting, 2018, (cernuda art gallery, chicago), https://www.artnews.com/art-in-america/aia-reviews/juan-roberto-diago-afro-cuban-paintings-1202674786/. 30 cuba juan roberto diago durruthy is an afro-cuban painter and sculptor who uses photographs, metal-welding, and paint to portray the black legacy and the perduring racism on his island. unlike the bright colors we see in the works of the dominican and puerto rican artists mentioned, diago prefers to use light blue, grey, black, and white tones to reflect the otherness of the black body and the exclusion of the afro-cuban experience. additionally, like pineda’s subjects, the black characters are blurred, as faces without faces are recurring figures in diago’s work. namely, the artist mirrors the absence of their voice in nationhood by painting them without a mouth, ears, or a nose. in fact, although they possess eyes, they do not have eyeballs, hence the afro-cuban subject is presented as a body without a vision or a soul. for instance, one of diago’s most famous works is rostro sin nombre (2018) or “nameless face”. hence, the title of this piece brings attention to this erasure of the black subject in modern cuba. the face is both the center of the image and invisible, drawing on this paradox of inclusion-exclusion of afro-cubans in the official identity of the island. overall, by presenting black people with blurred features, diago demonstrates how the official discourse has omitted the recounting of individuals who built cuba. moreover, the tiles indicate that the afro-cuban is the foundation and a large part of the racial mosaic, but this subject is relegated to the bottom of the landscape; a place where the cubans walk over every day. this work is thus criticizing the official discourse which appears to include the african legacy of cuba but has relegated blackness to the past, like in a museum. finally, the abstract nature of diago’s art presents a subject who is melancholic because he is an invisible protagonist. in other words, diago argues that the afro-cuban is in centre stage in the performance of cubanía yet this subject is not given the chance to speak. born in matanzas in 1959, maría magdalena campos pons is a world renown artist based in the united states. like the cultural producers we have seen, the afro-cuban artist is interested in portraying blackness in photography, sculpting and audiovisuals. similar to diago’s art, campos’ pieces are abstract, yet the latter’s signature is using her body as her canvas. we see this method in freedom trap (2013) where she portrays with her face the paradox of cuba’s revolution; an ideal of freedom which turned into a prison. as we have seen, the freedom theories of both the independence movement and the revolution go hand in hand with the cuban dream of racial equality. in fact, campos presents the disillusion of the latter; painted white, with her face caught in a net, the artist showcases that the imagined 30 (january 20, 2022 / 09:38:51) 122864-1b_caribbeanquilt_vol7_rev.pdf .114 115 fig. #8, campos pons, maría magdalena. freedom trap, photograph, 2013, (gallery wendi norris, san francisco), https://www.facebook.com/gallerywendinorris/posts/10156870626070378/. 31 racial paradise of cuba libre washed blackness away from the national mosaic, closing the doors for afro-cuban liberation. here, we have a double trap; the net—perhaps referring to the lack of agency of afro-cubans in official discourse —and the position of her face mimicking that of a mug shot—reflecting the myth of criminality imposed on people of african descent— a symbol of the perduring racism on the island. all in all, campos portrays the prison in which the official cubanía has trapped afro-cubans. it is a life sentence because it is a marginalization portrayed as freedom. to conclude, it is evident that cultural production has served as a tool to rewrite the antiblack narratives in the hispanic caribbean. these artists from the dominican republic, puerto rico and cuba are proliferating new images of national beauty ideals available to their audiences and are showcasing the damages of the racist fallacies propagated in official discourse. after centuries of trauma caused by whiteness being proliferated as the epitome of the aesthetic, blackness is finally being recognized as beautiful to the youth, an essential target audience for the future of the islands. these artists are providing children with images in which they can identify themselves, and proudly imagine themselves as black. as we have seen, masking this reality has suffocated nature, provoking self-harm in daily life in this region. further, these cultural producers are redefining what the nationalist discourse named rebellion by calling it nature. in other words, the pro-black images we have seen are counternarratives, but it is not enough to name them resistance pieces. beyond dropping the antiblack veil, the primary intensions of these contemporary artists from the hispanic caribbean are to normalize nature in the dominican republic, puerto rico, cuba and in the rest of the world. 31 (january 20, 2022 / 09:38:51) 122864-1b_caribbeanquilt_vol7_rev.pdf .115 116 alfonso, katelyn alexandra. personal interview. april 1st, 2021. arroyo pizarro, yolanda. pelo bueno. puerto rico: edp university press, 2018. booth, david. “cuba, color and the revolution.” science & society 40, no. 2, (1976):129–72. canning, susan. “daniel lind-ramos.” sculpture magazine, september 9th, 2020. https://sculpturemagazine.art/daniel-lind-ramos/ fig. #1, pineda, jorge. mama, painting, 2016, (lucy garcía arte contemporáneo, santo domingo), https://africanah.org/jorge-pineda-recent-works/#:~:text=jorge %20pineda%2c%20(b.,%2c%20spain%2c%20in%20february%202013. fig. #2, pineda, jorge. me voy, installation, 2005, (hunter east harlem gallery), https://wmuprintmaking.wordpress.com/2014/09/11/jorge-pineda-visiting printmedia-artist/. fig. #3, llano, kilia. untitled, mural, 2018, (hotel in las terrenas coco, honey and hill), https://www.facebook.com/1045059695552454/posts/finalizado-el-mural comisionado-por-el-nuevo-hotel-en-las-terrenas-coco-honey-an/ 2277746068950471/. fig. #4, llano, kilia. murales de mi patria (series), mural 2016, (megacentro rd, santo domingo), https://dominicancult.blogspot.com/2016/02/mural-by-kilia-llano.html. fig.#5, arroyo pizarro, yolanda. illustrations by: brittany gordón pabón. pelo bueno, book, 2018, (edp university press, puerto rico), https://latinosinkidlit.com/2020/10/26/book-review-pelo-bueno-good-hair-by yolanda-arroyo-pizarro-illustrated-by-brittany-gordon-pabon/ fig. #6, lind-ramos, daniel. con-junto, installation, 2015, (marlborough gallery), https://sculpturemagazine.art/daniel-lind-ramos/. fig. #7, diago durruthy, juan roberto. rostro sin nombre, painting, 2018, (cernuda art gallery, chicago), https://www.artnews.com/art-in-america/aia-reviews/juan roberto-diago-afro-cuban-paintings-1202674786/. fig. #8, campos pons, maría magdalena. freedom trap, photograph, 2013, (gallery wendi norris, san francisco), https://www.facebook.com/gallerywendinorris/posts/10156870626070378/. mccausland, ernesto. “celia cruz reflexiona sobre la vida.” fundación ernesto mccausland, september 7th, 2012. youtube video, 9:21. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eai-zxvr6-y. helg, aline. “race in argentina and cuba, 1880-1930: theory, policies, and popular reaction.” in the idea of race in latin america, 1870-1940, edited by richard graham, 37-70. austin, texas: university of texas press,1990. henry, abigail.“former miss universe puerto rico kiara liz ortega wins reality show mira quién baila.” angelopedia (blog), february 25th, 2021, https://www.angelopedia.com/news/miss-universe-puerto-rico-2018-kiara-liz ortega-delgado-mira-quien-baila-winner/50661. works cited (january 20, 2022 / 09:38:51) 122864-1b_caribbeanquilt_vol7_rev.pdf .116 117 “jorge pineda: recent works.” africanah (blog), october 19th,2016, https://africanah.org/jorge-pineda-recent-works/#:~:text=jorge%20pineda%2c%20 (b.,%2c%20spain%2c%20in%20february%202013. lópez, amaryllis. “se dice pelo bueno: black affirmations in contemporary puerto rican literature.”bsu honors program theses and projects, item 310. bridgewater state university, 2020. luis-brown, david. “‘the coming unities’ in ‘our america’: decolonization and anticolonial messianism in martí,du bois, and the santa de cabora.” in waves of decolonization: discourses of race and hemispheric citizenship in cuba, mexico, and the united states, edited by donald e. pease, 202-240. durham and london: duke university press, 2008. marcial ocasio, jennifer. “is puerto rico ‘racist’? online comments about new miss universe spark discussions.” orlando sentinel (orlando, fl), december 10th, 2019. https://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/nationworld/os-puerto-rico-miss-universe 20191210-qsdvlsvu2fffbbvu4sxfm6jpmy-story.html. rodríguez, néstor e. divergent dictions: contemporary dominican literature. translation by kerstin oloff. mexico: siglo xxi editores, 2005. santos febres, mayra. anamú y manigua. san juan, puerto rico: iguana dorada, 1991. viala, fabienne. “daniel lind ramos and the visual politics of race in puerto rican art”. aica caraïbe du sud, no. 4 (2015) : 1-13. (january 20, 2022 / 09:38:51) 122864-1b_caribbeanquilt_vol7_rev.pdf .117 microsoft word rayellis_numbered.docx caribbean quilt 2023 vol. 7 no. 1 57 haiti – harmed at the hands of others max ray-ellis centre for caribbean studies faculty of arts & science, university of toronto max ray-ellis is an undergraduate student from north york, ontario. he is currently pursuing a bachelor of arts (honours) degree at the university of toronto with a major in diaspora and transnational studies and a double minor in canadian studies and history. outside of his studies, he is an avid reader of canadian, north american, and caribbean history. keywords: foreign intervention caribbean-international relations haitian history post-independence american imperialism caribbean decolonization minustah abstract after a revolution that spanned over a decade, haiti became the second nation to achieve independence in the western hemisphere after the united states of america. while the united states has since gone on to become a global superpower, haiti is currently the poorest nation in the americas. for over two centuries, there have been continuous cases of foreign intervention in the caribbean’s oldest republic. initially, these cases were clear efforts by nations to protect their own interests. later on, officials from different nations around the world began to tell their own populations that they needed to help the haitian people through various measures. this paper details how foreign intervention has resulted in far more negatives than positives in haiti. it examines cases of foreign intervention stretching from the early nineteenth century up until the recent united nations-led initiatives of this century. the paper provides a chronological story of what has happened in the nation and how generations of haitians have been harmed. regardless of their stated intentions, nearly every case of foreign intervention in haiti has resulted in lasting, negative impacts for its people. this analysis displays how haiti has been consistently wronged by other nations and how it was essentially never given the chance to develop its potential as a sovereign state. on january 1, 1804, haiti officially proclaimed its declaration of independence, roughly two months after its forces led by jean-jacques dessalines expelled the last remaining french forces from their territory. their revolution had begun in 1791, when enslaved people sought to break free of brutal french colonial rule that originated in the midseventeenth century. the subsequent haitian constitution, published in 1805, detailed a “free and form sovereign caribbean quilt journal homepage: https://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/cquilt/index caribbean quilt 2023 vol. 7 no. 1 58 state, independent of all the other powers of the universe,” known as the “haitian empire,” where “slavery is abolished forever” and “equality before the law is irrefutably established.” the future appeared bright for this newly independent black nation in the caribbean. unfortunately, for haiti and the haitian people, this bright future was not to be. for the past two plus centuries, haiti has been continuously disadvantaged and subjected to mistreatment by other nations, including france and the united states. the potential for haiti to emerge as a prosperous nation has thus been quashed due to numerous cases of foreign interference, which are still ongoing today. haiti’s mistreatment by the international community began with its independence. upon its founding as a nation in 1804, haiti expected to be able to establish international relations with other countries just as the united states had done so several decades earlier after its successful revolution. unfortunately for haiti, most european colonial powers, such as great britain and spain, refused to recognize its independence for several decades as they feared that providing recognition to a nation formed by slave rebellion would lead to similar revolts in their colonies; this fear was also prevalent in the united states.1 haiti had to operate as a de facto independent entity that did not have official recognition from the international community. great britain finally recognized haitian independence in 1825, despite having recognized the independence of mexico, colombia, and argentina in 1823 when these countries successfully revolted against spain.2 most western european nations had recognized haiti as independent by 1860. however, the united states did not do so until 1862, over a half-century after the haitian declaration of independence.3 their recognition came under president abraham lincoln during the u.s. civil war, as some white americans advocated for resetting american blacks in haiti or 1 gerald horne, “the haitian revolution and the central question of african american history,” the journal of african american history 100, no. 1 (2015): 33-35, https://doi.org/10.5323/jafriamerhist.100.1.0026. 2 charles w. wesley, “the struggle for the recognition of haiti and liberia as independent republics,” the journal of negro history 2, no. 4 (1917): 369-371. https://doi.org/10.2307/2713395. 3 b.w. higman, a concise history of the caribbean (new york: cambridge university press, 2011), 151. 4 ibid. elsewhere.4 according to frederick douglass, a prominent american abolitionist and ex-slave, "after haiti had shaken off the fetters of bondage, and long after her freedom and independence had been recognized by all other civilized nations, we continued to refuse to acknowledge the fact and treated her as outside the sisterhood of nations.”5 while establishing formal recognition was important for haiti, achieving the recognition of its former colonial power, france, came at a massive price for the young nation. france had long desired to reconquer haiti. in the 1780s, when haiti was the french colony of “saintdomingue,” it was the wealthiest colony in the world, producing nearly half of its sugar exports and a more significant proportion of its coffee.6 losing haiti was a blow that france did not wish to accept, and it spent several decades attempting to negotiate compensation for the “property” lost by its citizens in haiti, which included both land and the formerly enslaved people.7 france and haiti attempted negotiations for this compensation on multiple occasions under different regimes before king charles x of france issued a virtual ultimatum in 1825. he sent the baron de mackau, along with fourteen armed ships, to the haitian capital of port-au-prince, where the baron delivered an ordinance to haitian president jean-pierre boyer.8 the ordinance declared that the king would recognize “full and entire independence” for haiti so long as they met two conditions: french commercial ships would only be required to pay half of the docking rights, and haiti would pay the former french plantation owners an indemnity of 150 million francs.9 boyer, faced with the looming destruction of port-au-prince and a potential war, elected to accept the ordinance, which was not a treaty and did not provide security guarantees from france.10 the indemnity amount was later renegotiated to 60 million francs in 1838 when 5 wesley, “the struggle for the recognition of haiti,” 376-377. 6 higman, a concise history of the caribbean, 147. 7 liliana obregon, “empire, racial capitalism and international law: the case of manumitted haiti and the recognition debt,” leiden journal of international law 31, no. 3 (2018), 604-609, https://doi.org/10.1017/s0922156518000225. 8 obregon, “empire, racial capitalism and international law,” 610. 9 ibid. 10 ibid, 610-612. caribbean quilt 2023 vol. 7 no. 1 59 france fully recognized the independence of haiti. 11 nonetheless, this debt was still enormous, and its imposition transformed haiti into what some view as a “neo-colonial state” or nearly a “dependency of france.”12 haiti ultimately borrowed over 166 million francs to pay off the debt. its last payment occurred in 1910, over a century after independence.13 even after achieving diplomatic recognition, haiti experienced numerous problems due to the actions of other nations. towards the end of the nineteenth century, several cases of “gunboat diplomacy” arose due to german citizens holding interests in haiti. in 1872, a german navy captain held two haitian citizens hostage and took control of two haitian ships because he believed two german businessmen were owed reparations for financial losses they accrued in haiti.14 the germans returned the ships and people after haitian president nissage saget paid the amount demanded. however, they also defecated the haitian flag, sending a message of immense disrespect to the entire nation.15 the incident was part of a growing series of occurrences where foreign businessmen used their home nation's navies as threats to gain a financial advantage in haiti.16 these events resulted in a vast amount of wealth being uprooted from haiti by foreign businessmen, which undoubtedly harmed the nation's financial state.17 over two decades later, in 1897, the controversial and embarrassing lüders affair occurred. haitian police officers were searching for a man named dorléus présumé, who was accused of theft.18 présumé worked as a coachman for emile lüders, who came to assist présumé and attempted to stop the arrest.19 both men were sentenced to one year of imprisonment for assault, battery, and using force to resist arrest. however, lüders contacted the german 11 wesley, “the struggle for the recognition of haiti,” 376. 12 wesley, “the struggle for the recognition of haiti,” 376; obregon, “empire, racial capitalism and international law,” 614. 13 obregon, “empire, racial capitalism and international law,” 613. 14 solon ménos, “the luders affair,” in the haiti reader, ed. chantalle f. verna et al. (durham, nc: duke university press, 2020), 147. 15 ibid. 16 ibid. 17 ibid. embassy for support as he was half-german.20 the resulting affair saw the german chargé d'affaires demand the release of lüders, the removal of all judges, and the dismissal of all police officers involved in the case.21 the haitian president tirésias simon sam issued a pardon to lüders, and he was allowed to depart the nation; six weeks later, germany sent two warships to the harbour in portau-prince, demanding a letter of apology, financial compensation for lüders, the ability for lüders to return, a special reception, and a 21-gun salute to the german flag.22 president sam was given four hours to decide and ultimately agreed to the terms, resulting in national embarrassment for the haitian people.23 moments like these are examples of haiti being treated as a second-class nation, which worked to destabilize the country and keep it from achieving economic prominence. they simultaneously damaged the national pride of the country. they lowered the popularity of the presidents forced to deal with these situations. the biggest foreign offender in haiti since the turn of the twentieth century has been the united states. in 1823, american president james monroe declared that european countries should not seek any more colonies in the americas or interfere in the politics of independent nations in the americas; this was subsequently referred to as the “monroe doctrine.”24 while this may appear at first glance as the americans stepping in for fellow nations and peoples in the americas, it was effectively a tool for the united states to establish and enforce their hegemony in the region.25 the u.s. had set its eyes on haiti as early as 1868 when american president andrew johnson requested the annexation of the island of hispaniola to “secure a defensive and economic stake in the west indies.”26 by the turn of the twentieth century, the americans became 18 ibid. 19 ibid. 20 jacques nicolas léger, haiti, her history and her detractors (new york: neale, 1907), 249-250. 21 ibid. 22 ibid, 250. 23 ibid. 24 higman, a concise history of the caribbean, 198. 25 ibid. 26 “u.s. invasion and occupation of haiti, 1915-34,” united states department of state archive, accessed december 24, 2022, https://2001-2009.state.gov/r/pa/ho/time/wwi/88275.htm. caribbean quilt 2023 vol. 7 no. 1 60 increasingly concerned by germany’s position in the caribbean and its influence over haiti.27 from 1911 to 1915, haiti saw seven presidents either assassinated or overthrown.28 this gave the united states government what they saw as ample reason to intervene and place haiti under its influence. in 1914, the government of woodrow wilson sent u.s. marines to remove $500,000 from the haitian national bank and transfer it to new york, which put the americans in charge of haiti’s finances. the following year, they sent marines again to invade and occupy haiti officially. they would stay in the nation until 1934, making this the longest of any occupation the u.s. carried out in the caribbean.29 the american occupation of haiti was disastrous and devastating for haiti and its people. american professor robert fatton jr. stated that while the american occupation “may have created a semblance of an infrastructure and a form of centralised government,” it “contributed neither to long-term self-sustaining economic development nor to lasting democratic forms of accountability.”30 with haiti requiring a new president in 1915, the u.s. influenced the haitian legislature into selecting philippe sudré dartiguenave as their new president, angering many people. 31 when the legislature refused to adopt a new constitution that would have overturned some laws since independence, the u.s. forced dartiguenave to dissolve the legislature.32 this effectively placed the nation under the control of a gendarmerie controlled by u.s. marines and selected haitians until 1929, when the legislature was finally allowed to meet again.33 during this time, the u.s. troops and the gendarmerie practiced press censorship. they reinstituted the long-outdated corvée system that forced peasants to perform unpaid labour.34 the occupational force was also accused of mass murder, abuse, physical assault, rape, 27 ibid. 28 ibid. 29 higman, a concise history of the caribbean, 206. 30 robert fatton jr., “haiti: the saturnalia of emancipation and the vicissitudes of predatory rule,” third world quarterly 27, no. 1 (2006), 128, https://www.jstor.org/stable/4017663. 31 united states department of state archive, “u.s. invasion and occupation of haiti.” 32 ibid. 33 ibid. 34 ibid; patricia j. lopez, “clumsy beginnings: from ‘modernizing mission’ to humanitarianism in the us occupation of haiti (1915–34),” environment and planning a 47, no. 11 (2015): torture, and forcing corvée labourers to work months beyond their mandated three-day maximum term.35 in 1919, an american brigadier general complained to a colonel that u.s. troops and their associates were conducting “practically indiscriminate killings” of haitian people.36 when the united states finally left haiti in 1934, they were criticized for doing little to alleviate the poverty that most haitians faced or the near-universal illiteracy that persisted among the population.37 haitians lived with their country occupied by a foreign military force for nearly twenty years. they walked away with few substantial improvements to compensate for the oppression, death, and censorship they faced. the united states’ involvement in haiti, official or unofficial, did not cease when their occupation ended in 1934. the central intelligence agency (cia) is particularly noteworthy for its efforts to influence politics and governance in the americas. from 1957 to 1971, haiti was ruled by the dictator françois "papa doc" duvalier, and his son jean claude “baby doc” duvalier succeeded him from 1971-1986.38 the cia opted to support the duvaliers as they feared official opposition to them would push them towards aligning with nearby cuba and their communist ruler fidel castro.39 nonetheless, the cia was discreetly involved with several groups that wished to overthrow duvalier's rule in haiti. they provided a rebel group named “jeune haïti” with arms, money, and special forces training in 1963, knowing that the group may have assassinated duvalier during their unsuccessful coup attempt.40 the cia was subsequently involved in the “coalition haïti” scheme that involved haitian expatriates unsuccessfully invading haiti in 1968.41 baby doc duvalier eventually fell from power at the hands of the haitian people in 1986. however, the cia continued to wield its power and 2246, https://doi.org/10.1177/0308518x15598262. 35 ibid. 36 ibid, 2247. 37 dana g. munro, “the american withdrawal from haiti, 1929-1934,” the hispanic american historical review 49, no. 1 (1969): 26, https://doi.org/10.2307/2511314. 38 kathleen marie whitney, "sin, fraph, and the cia: u.s. covert action in haiti," southwestern journal of law and trade in the americas 3, no. 2 (1996): 315. 39 ibid. 40 ibid. 41 ibid. caribbean quilt 2023 vol. 7 no. 1 61 influence over haiti in the following years. in the late 1980s, a catholic priest named jean-bertrand aristide gained popularity in port-au-prince by preaching what some have termed "liberation theology."42 haiti was set to hold its first democratic election since papa doc duvalier’s initial victory in 1957; the cia, meanwhile, intended to fund candidates who opposed aristide, who was calling for a boycott of the election by the poor.43 an estimated 30-300 voters were killed on election day by troops led by a service d'intelligence national (sin) commander, and the election was not held.44 the u.s. government ceased its funding of the haitian military as a result, but the cia continued funding sin, an organization it had helped create with the stated goal of obtaining intelligence on drug trafficking.45 the cia often trained sin agents. they subsequently spied on supporters of aristide, participated in drug trafficking, and murdered as many as 5,000 members of pro-democracy movements between 1986 and 1991.46 the cia, an american governmental organization, actively funded a group that engaged in violations of human rights, criminal acts, and drug trafficking; this is a clear-cut example of foreign interference harming the people of haiti. perhaps unsurprisingly, the cia’s involvement in haiti's politics continued after what they perceived as a surprise election win by jean-bertrand aristide in 1990.47 seven months after his inauguration, members of haiti’s army and national police force staged a successful coup and dismissed aristide from power. 48 “key members” of the forces involved in the coup were paid for information by the cia, despite their well-known participation in drug trafficking.49 the united states has denied playing a role 42 ibid, 318. 43 ibid. 44 ibid, 319. 45 ibid, 316-320. 46 ibid, 319-320. 47 ibid, 320. 48 ibid. 49 ibid. 50 ibid, 321. 51 ibid. 52 philippe r. girard, “operation restore democracy?,” journal of haitian studies 8, no. 2 (2002): 70. 53 tarr, michael, and linda robinson. “haiti’s bloody message to clinton: restoring democracy is harder than it in the 1991 coup in haiti. nonetheless, cia agents were stated to have been at the headquarters of the haitian army during the coup. at the same time, key leader raoul cedras was previously supported by both the u.s. and france to oversee security during the previous year’s election; cedras and fellow coup leader michel francois were both partially educated in the united states.50 under the regime empowered by the coup, haiti suffered from numerous human rights abuses that included extrajudicial killings, among other atrocities.51 the u.s., under the administration of president bill clinton, then embarked on “operation restore democracy,” a military intervention designed to reinstall aristide as the elected ruler of the nation and remove cedras and his associates from power. 52 supported by the united nations, the broader mission to restore aristide to rule also included the direct support of canada.53 operation restore democracy was cited as failing to install a “stable political system” in haiti; part of this failure has been blamed on the fact that the united states forces and the cia both shared sympathies for the coup regime that they were sent to remove from power and investigate for crimes committed.54 recently, a united nations peacekeeping force, minustah, intervened in haiti from 2004 to 2017—the international force comprised primarily of brazilians. 55 during this time, haiti suffered from a cholera epidemic, later discovered to have originated from a nepalese peacekeeping base in 2010.56 in addition to bringing cholera to the nation, the force was noted for its sexual exploitation and abuse of haitian women and girls, which resulted in numerous children being born to single haitian mothers who suffered from social stigma.57 two centuries after independence, haiti once again faced harm from other seems.” u.s. news & world report 115, no. 16 (1993): 36. 54 girard, “operation restore democracy,” 79. 55 federico neiburg, “the brazilian army in haiti – foreign intervention and domestic politics” opinio juris, january 5, 2020, https://opiniojuris.org/2020/05/01/the-brazilian-army-inhaiti-foreign-intervention-and-domestic-politics/. 56 bartels, susan a., et al., “cholera in the time of minustah: experiences of community members affected by cholera in haiti,” international journal of environmental research and public health 19, no. 9 (2022): 4974-2. 57 ibid; vahedi, luissa, et al., “‘it’s because we are “loose girls” that’s why we had children with minustah soldiers’: a qualitative analysis of stigma experienced by peacekeeper-fathered children and their mothers in haiti.” journal caribbean quilt 2023 vol. 7 no. 1 62 nations. haiti was the second country in the americas to achieve independence. however, it is the poorest nation in the western hemisphere today.58 it is evident that since its founding, the nation has been dealt consistent blows, intentionally and unintentionally, from foreign nations. dessalines’ vision of being “independent of all the other powers of the universe” never truly materialized for haiti.59 in november 2022, canada’s prime minister justin trudeau did not dismiss the possibility of a canadian military intervention in haiti to help combat gang violence and control.60 suppose there is a lesson to be learned from the distant and recent past. in that case, most, if not all, foreign involvement in haiti usually results in some form of harm to the haitian people. of interpersonal violence 37, no. 23-24 (2022): np22674. 58 bartels et al., “cholera,” 4974-1. 59 laurent dubois and john d. garrigus, slave revolution in the caribbean, 1789-1804 (new york: palgrave macmillan, 2006), 192/ 60 dylan robertson, “haitian political parties must all agree if canada leads military intervention: trudeau,” global news, november 20, 2022, https://globalnews.ca/news/9293242/haitianpolitical-parties-canada-military-intervention-trudeau/. caribbean quilt 2023 vol. 7 no. 1 63 bibliography bartels, susan a, georgia fraulin, stéphanie etienne, sandra c wisner, and sabine lee. indent“cholera in the time of minustah: experiences of community members affected by indentcholera in haiti.” international journal of environmental research and public health 19, indentno. 9 (2022): 4974–. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph19094974. dubois, laurent. avengers of the new world: the story of the haitian revolution. cambridge, indentma: harvard university press, 2004. dubois, laurent, and john d. garrigus. slave revolution in the caribbean, 1789-1804: a brief indenthistory with documents. new york: palgrave macmillan, 2006. fatton jr., robert. “haiti: the saturnalia of emancipation and the vicissitudes of predatory indentrule.” third world quarterly 27, no. 1 (2006): 115-133. indenthttps://www.jstor.org/stable/4017663. girard, philippe r., “operation restore democracy?” journal of haitian studies 8, no. 2 indent(2002): 70–85. higman, b.w. a concise history of the caribbean. new york: cambridge university press, indent2011. horne, gerald. “the haitian revolution and the central question of indentafrican american history.” the journal of african american history 100, no. 1 indent(2015): 26–58. https://doi.org/10.5323/jafriamerhist.100.1.0026. léger, jacques nicolas. haiti, her history and her detractors. new york: neale, 1907. lopez, patricia j. “clumsy beginnings: from ‘modernizing mission’ to humanitarianism in the indentus occupation of haiti (1915–34).” environment and planning. a 47, no. 11 (2015): indent2240–56. https://doi.org/10.1177/0308518x15598262. ménos, solon. “the luders affair.” in the haiti reader, edited by chantalle f. verna, kaiama indent. glover, nadève ménard, millery polyne, and laurent dubois, 147–149. durham, nc: indentduke university press, 2020. munro, dana g. “american withdrawal from haiti, 1929-1934.” the hispanic indentamerican historical review 49, no. 1 (1969): 1–26. https://doi.org/10.2307/2511314. obregon, liliana. “empire, racial capitalism and international law: the case of manumitted indenthaiti and the recognition debt.” leiden journal of international law 31, no. 3 (2018): indent597–615. https://doi.org/10.1017/s0922156518000225. oostindie, gert. “slave resistance, colour lines, and the impact of the french and haitian indentrevolutions in curaçao." in curaçao in the age of revolutions, 1795-1800, edited by wim indentklooster and gert oostindie. brill, 2011. indenthttp://www.jstor.com/stable/10.1163/j.ctt1w76v9f.4. neiburg, federico. “the brazilian army in haiti – foreign intervention and domestic politics.” indentopinio juris, january 5, 2020. https://opiniojuris.org/2020/05/01/the-brazilian-army-in-indenthaiti-foreign-intervention-and-domestic-politics/. caribbean quilt 2023 vol. 7 no. 1 64 robertson, dylan. “haitian political parties must all agree if canada leads military intervention: indenttrudeau.” global news, november 20, 2022. https://globalnews.ca/news/9293242/haitian-indentpolitical-parties-canada-military-intervention-trudeau/. tarr, michael, and linda robinson. “haiti’s bloody message to clinton: restoring democracy indentis harder than it seems.” u.s. news & world report 115, no. 16 (1993): 36. united states department of state archive. “u.s. invasion and occupation of haiti, 1915-34.” indentaccessed december 24, 2022. https://2001-2009.state.gov/r/pa/ho/time/wwi/88275.htm. vahedi, luissa, heather stuart, stéphanie etienne, sandra wisner, sabine lee, and susan indentandrea bartels. “‘it’s because we are “loose girls” that’s why we had children with indentminustah soldiers’: a qualitative analysis of stigma experienced by peacekeeper-indentfathered children and their mothers in haiti.” journal of interpersonal violence 37, no. indent2324 (2022): np22673–np22703. https://doi.org/10.1177/08862605211072178. wesley, charles h. “the struggle for the recognition of haiti and liberia as independent indentrepublics.” the journal of negro history 2, no. 4 (1917): 369–83. indenthttps://doi.org/10.2307/2713395. whitney, kathleen marie. "sin, fraph, and the cia: u.s. covert action in haiti." southwestern indentjournal of law and trade in the americas 3, no. 2 (1996): 303-332. microsoft word nurse_plantationeconomy_numbered.docx caribbean quilt 2023 vol. 7 no. 1 50 the plantation economy and guyana’s extractivism alyssa nurse centre for caribbean studies faculty of arts & science, university of toronto alyssa nurse is a fourth-year undergraduate student at the university of toronto completing an honours bachelor of arts while double majoring in economics and political science. she has been actively involved with the centre for caribbean studies and is the incumbent co-president as of 2021 of the caribbean studies students’ union (carssu). she was born in barbados but was raised in guyana prior to moving to toronto, which has significantly influenced her academic interests especially in the field of economic growth and development in the caribbean region. keywords: plantation economy guyana extractivism production structure economic development abstract the plantation economy school of thought has been somewhat absent from mainstream discourse surrounding development despite offering a critical lens to understand the caribbean region's historical and contemporary economic conditions. this paper examines the extent to which plantation economy scholarship can explain the current production structure of guyana's extractive oil and mineral industries. this is demonstrated through a historical recapitulation of the plantation economy’s theoretical underpinnings, situates the pertinent particulars regarding guyana’s extractive industries and highlights the lack of inter-sectoral linkages, significant exploitative ownership agreements and skewed export dynamics that exist. the intention is to spark a resurgence in plantation economy scholarship, especially since its relevance remains as vital as ever in addressing the region's structural barriers to economic development. in this critical reflection piece, i argue that the plantation economy school of thought effectively applies within the context of guyana's oil and mineral industries. this is because the lack of inter-sectoral linkages, exploitative ownership agreements and skewed export dynamics plague the current state of these industries. all of these are commonly reflected and explained through the features of the plantation economy. this paper is structured as follows; i summarize the core characteristics that underpin the plantation economy school of thought and establish the modern-day applications of its usage. afterwards, i present the relevant details about guyana's oil and mineral industries. lastly, using the guyanese case study, i argue that the plantation school of thought explains the oil and mineral industries' extractive production structure by evaluating industrial linkages and examining ownership and export caribbean quilt journal homepage: https://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/cquilt/index caribbean quilt 2023 vol. 7 no. 1 51 dynamics. my argument demonstrates the relevance of the plantation economy school of thought and some of the continued modern-day limitations on guyana's economic growth and development. 1) plantation economy 101 scholars like lloyd best and kari polanyi levitt in the late 1960s pioneered the plantation economy school of thought in. it emerged as a critical theoretical perspective that challenged the conventional prescriptions and recommendations for countries to attain economic development, or as deemed by girvan (2009), “one-size-fits-all" approaches. countries tended to be categorized as either "underdeveloped" or "backward" without paying significant attention to their vastly different cultural, historical, and geographic circumstances. the caribbean-centric theory asserts that economic policy decisions are influenced and sustained by institutions and historical legacies of slavery and colonialism. during slavery, plantations were understood as self-sustaining economic enclaves and engaged in little to no exchange with other plantations. they utilized slave labour to specialize in producing and exporting crops like sugarcane. the relationship comprised the "metropole" or colonial power and the dependent colony or "hinterland.” (witter 2021, 469). these dynamics are considered to be so deeply entrenched that they have persisted over time, especially since caribbean economies, from their inception, were tailored to serve the interests of the metropole (best and levitt 2009). plantation economy highlights how these caribbean economies have been battling what appears to be a persistent dependence; "of growth without development, of adjustment without structural change, of diversification without transformation” (girvan 2009). as such many caribbean economies, today are still understood as economic enclaves. there are roughly five central characteristics or “rules of the game” of plantation economies, as highlighted by best (1968). these principles laid much of the institutional framework that explained the dynamics of dependency, which are the hallmark of the relationship between the hinterland and the metropole (edwards 2017, 105). the first feature is navigation acts which establish exclusive spheres of influence for the metropolitan economy and the limits placed on the external intercourse of hinterland economies, e.g., the british commonwealth. such a phenomenon was dubbed “inter caetera” (best 1968, 284). the second characteristic deals with the provisions regarding the division of labour between the hinterland and metropole. it is also known as the muscovado bias. this “rule” stipulates that the hinterland is subject to “either crude production or crude processing” (best 1968, 284). at the same time, the actual valued added activities are left to the metropole to conduct. thirdly, regarding the financial relationship, the metropole is the intermediary between the hinterland and the rest of the world. this is called the metropolitan exchange standard. the fourth feature is commercial intermediation, which guarantees metropolitan intermediation in affairs regarding hinterland trading. it is also known as the navigation provision regarding the “origin, destination and carriage of trade” (best 1968, 284). the fifth and final characteristic is imperial preference, which outlines the “general conditions under which hinterland producers are able to dispose of their output in the metropolitan market” (best 1968, 284). moreover, the evolution of this school of thought brought about three classifications representative of the caribbean economy throughout successive stages. model i is the “pure plantation economy” best understood as the plantation system that arose as a result of european exploration, colonization and conquest (best and levitt, essays on the theory of plantation economy: a historical and institutional approach to caribbean economic development 2009, 13-14). it reflected slave labour as the mode of production and the plantation as the production unit. (edwards 2017, 106) (girvan 2006, 334). model ii is the "plantation economy modified" and covered the post-emancipation period and extended until around independence. during this period, a national economy emerged and shifted to a free workforce that received wages, ultimately leading to a "residentiary sector." however, this period was still highly reliant on the demands and skills of the pure planation economy (model i) and the important exports were no longer demanded with the same level of intensity as before. caribbean quilt 2023 vol. 7 no. 1 52 the third and final stage is model iii or "plantation economy further modified" which represents the modern period (girvan 2006, 335). the most relevant model for this paper's analysis is the plantation economy further modified. the reason is that the scholarship developed on this model incorporates the emergence of newer industries operated by multinational corporations (mncs) (edwards 2017, 106; witter 2021, 472). which “control decisionmaking, investment, technology, the supply of inputs, and the processing and disposal of outputs” (girvan 2006, 335). in addition, this phase saw the shift of many plantation economies to mineral exporting economies. scholars have argued that the plantation theory still applies in the context of the mineral and oil industries (girvan 2006; edwards 2017; witter 2021). the reason is that the dependency relationships between the metropole and the hinterland persist and mirror the dynamics of the operation of the plantation (girvan 2006, 335; witter 2021, 472). in other words, the features from model i are still reproduced in modern times. 2) guyana’s oil and mineral industry and the realities of resource riches after defining the theoretical specificities required for analysis, we can now examine the case study of guyana and its mineral industries. situated in the northern section of south america, guyana is the only country with english as its official language and is home to roughly 780,000 people (the world bank 2020). the country is culturally a part of the anglophone caribbean and was a british colony until 1966, when it gained independence. like many other caribbean countries, guyana’s exports are predominantly agrarian and raw material oriented. the country's mineral industry predominantly comprises gold, bauxite and, to a lesser extent, diamonds. in the gold industry, most of the output comes from artisanal, small and medium-scale (asm) operations and is almost exclusively conducted by locals (pasha, wenner and clarke 2017). large-scale production, however, is predominantly done by two foreign-owned companies as of 2015; the canadian company guyana goldfields inc. and australian company troy resources inc (pasha, wenner and clarke 2017). in more recent years, other foreign-owned companies have made investments but are yet to commence operations, such as dream hole mining company and gmv minerals inc. (pasha, wenner and clarke 2017). it remains to be seen whether large-scale foreign-owned operations will surpass asm mining in terms of output; regardless, there is no doubt of the significance of the industry since "gold production accounted for almost 10 percent of gdp and 56 percent of total exports in 2019" (balza et al. 2020). lastly, the mining industry has replaced the sugar industry in terms of economic importance and has been the leading contributing resource to economic growth, making the industry extraordinarily relevant and suitable for plantation economy analysis. guyana's oil industry dates back to the 1930s when the first oil prospection license was issued to trinidad leaseholds company ltd. (ministry of natural resources: petroleum management programme 2021). throughout the 1960s to 1990s, the country encountered issues procuring sufficient funding from investors and mainly experienced unsuccessful offshore and onshore projects. (ministry of natural resources: petroleum management programme 2021) . however, the country has seen a significant reversal of fortune in the past seven years. in 2015, the american multinational corporation exxonmobil discovered oil reserves roughly 120 miles offshore guyana's coastline. the company reported 1.4 to 2 billion barrels of recoverable oil and gas (whitlock 2017). by 2016 the first official petroleum agreement was signed between the cooperative republic of guyana and three multinational oil corporations: exxon mobil, hess corp, and cnooc ltd. this agreement stipulated the terms and conditions regarding cost recovery and production sharing, taxation and royalties, import duties, etc. (dpi 2019). december 20th, 2019, marked the "first oil." the liza phase 1 within the stabroek block was where the first commercial batch of crude oil was produced for export (blackmon 2019). as of 2022, there have been five additional oil discoveries within the stabroek block, bringing the total number of oil discoveries to thirty-one (kulovic 2022) (reuters 2022). consequently, the estimated barrels of recoverable oil have increased to 11 billion (kulovic 2022). moreover, in february 2022, exxonmobil began producing at guyana’s caribbean quilt 2023 vol. 7 no. 1 53 second offshore development, the liza phase 2, bringing the total production capacity to roughly 340,000 barrels per day (exxonmobil 2022). it should come as no surprise that the country is speculated to become one of the top oil-producing nations by 2025 (bajpai 2020). lastly, guyana was also projected to be one of the fastest-growing economies despite the catastrophic effects of the covid-19 pandemic that ravaged the caribbean and the rest of the world (bajpai 2020). based on the current state of the mineral and oil industries, they are ideal for assessing the validity of the plantation economy theory. 3) how the plantation school of thought explains the current production structure of guyana’s oil and mineral industry after familiarizing ourselves with what the political economy school of thought entails and what guyana's oil and mineral industry looks like. we can examine multiple metrics and paradigms to test the theory's applicability. these are ownership, industrial linkages, and lastly, export dynamics. the first paradigm of evaluation takes place in the form of ownership. edmonds (2017) states, "the natural resource sector across the caribbean has been dominated by high levels of foreign ownership – and the rip and ship extraction model has not contributed much in terms of meaningful economic development either." these sentiments are accurate in both the mineral industries and oil industries and mirror the model iii stipulations of the plantation economy as well as the more general characteristics of the school of thought. in the context of the mineral industry, best and levitt (2009) point to the role played by international actors and agencies in influencing the asymmetric terms of companycountry ownership agreements. these include institutions like the imf and world bank. girvan and girvan (1971) cite instances where the world bank's "recommendations or aid have coincided with the interests of the corporations." one such example occurred in the early 1970s when the canadian-owned company alcan aluminum limited sought to promote the usage of world bank money to resolve the dispute it had with the guyanese government (girvan and girvan 1971, 384). the contractual agreements between aluminum companies and bauxite countries reinforce asymmetric bargaining power, promote exploitative ownership agreements and designate spheres of influence ultimately to advance mnc interests. similarly, in the oil industry, the operation of the stabroek block is divided among three oil companies. exxon is the chief operator with a 45% share, followed by u.s-owned hess corp with 30%, and china's cnooc ltd. holds 25% (valle 2022). to make matters worse, the agreement terms between guyana and exxon are abominable and were the source of significant controversy. per the 2016 agreement, guyana is stipulated only to receive 52% of all the oil revenues from the stabroek bloc, with the remainder being split amongst the three companies mentioned above. the issue is that guyana is being blatantly exploited and robbed of billions of dollars since most oil licensing deals involve the host country receiving anywhere from 65-85% (carpenter, scott; forbes 2020). the plantation economy further modified (model iii) explains why this happens; "when a new natural resource is discovered, or an old one is revived, the national economy has neither the capital nor the entrepreneurship nor the international experience to organize production" (best and levitt, essays on the theory of plantation economy : a historical and institutional approach to caribbean economic development 2009, 27). as such, we see guyana accepting deals and offers out of dependence on foreign capital and expertise. in addition, these trade deals regarding ownership and revenue allocation encompass the third and fourth features of the pure plantation economy, the navigation provision and the metropolitan exchange standard, respectively, as seen by the metropole or mncs in this context being directly involved in setting guyana's terms of trade and how fiscal earnings from the industry are distributed. moreover, guyana's oil and mineral industries suffer from a lack of inter-sectoral linkages. in guyana, this would look like raw bauxite ore being used as an input in the aluminum industry or gold as an input in the local jewellery industry. in doing so, considerable cost savings can accrue, and both industries can benefit from economies of scale once the volume of production increases. in examining, the caribbean quilt 2023 vol. 7 no. 1 54 second feature of the plantation economy or the muscovado bias is that it requires a simple production structure and leaves the actual value-added activities to be conducted by the metropole. this is evident in guyana's oil and mineral industries; their production structures are simple and entirely extractive of raw materials with minimal opportunity for developing industrial linkages. unfortunately, when guyana sought to enact change, the country was met with exploitative conditions. for example, first bauxite llc (fbx) has stated that they will only bring an aluminum smelter to the country if given access to offshore natural gas from the oil industry (aluminium insider 2020). these statements were made after the newly commissioned bauxite mine at bonasika in the upper demerara region was opened, and guyanese were advocating for a local aluminum plant to establish inter-industry linkages. the company cited excuses such as needing affordable and competitive rates for their production process to justify their claims (aluminium insider 2020). although this arrangement was never formalized due to a change in governance, the reality is that it is a ploy to garner greater access to guyana's natural resources. ultimately with the intent of furthering the capitalist agenda that is at the heart of many foreign-owned companies operating in the caribbean. additionally, regarding export dynamics, countries like guyana "had become structured around the export earnings and fiscal revenues generated by the exploitation of mineral resources by foreign companies, characterized as mineral-export economies" (girvan, caribbean dependency thought revisited 2006, 335). it is evident that asymmetrical export dynamics exist since guyana does not refine the hundreds of thousands of barrels of crude oil it exports, nor does it manufacture aluminum products from the bauxite ore it exports. the country is considering "more than 10 proposals from foreign companies to build and operate an oil refinery" (james 2021). however, the government is extremely cautious about accepting offers, and in 2021, incumbent president, irfaan ali stipulated that any attempts to institute a refinery “will have to be done by private-sector investors and not the government” (james 2021). until the first refinery is in operation, the country has virtually no say in where the crude oil it exports gets refined. for example, trinidad has expressed interest in refining guyana's crude oil, which can mutually benefit both caribbean economies (guyana standard 2020). however, depending on the terms and conditions of the proposals by foreign mncs, the trinidad-guyana refinery agreement is unlikely to materialize. ultimately, these relationships parallel the fifth characteristic of the plantation economy, imperial preference, which stipulates that the hinterland producers have no say in how their exports are utilized in the metropolitan market. in conclusion, the plantation economy school of thought does an excellent job of establishing how the legacies of slavery and colonialism shaped the structure of caribbean economies. the theory also coincides with the sentiments echoed by scholars like dr. walter rodney (1972), "others exploit all of the countries named as "underdeveloped" in the world; and the underdevelopment with which the world is now preoccupied is a product of capitalist, imperialist and colonialist exploitation." critical theoretical perspectives like plantation economy address the caribbean's unique history, and the exploitative relationships that followed suit impact how its political institutions operate and function under such conditions. we see these same patterns perpetuating in guyana, with foreign mncs' predatory capitalism reinforcing what is deemed “extractive imperialism” (fischer 2019, 551). the lack of inter-sectoral linkages, significant exploitative ownership agreements and skewed export dynamics are barriers that reinforce dependency-esque relationships and impede internally driven growth. for these reasons, many scholars are weary of the resource curse repeating itself in the oil sector, especially since the mineral industries like gold and bauxite have not brought about substantial economic transformation (balza et al., 2020; edmonds, 2017). the country still leaves much to be desired concerning its oil and mineral industries, or as edmonds (2012) states, “everything that glitters isn’t green.” caribbean quilt 2023 vol. 7 no. 1 55 bibliography aluminium insider. 2020. first bauxite says guyana aluminium smelter a possibility if given access to offshore natural gas. february 22. accessed april 17, 2022. https://aluminiuminsider.com/first-bauxite-says-guyana-aluminium-smelter-apossibility-if-given-access-to-offshore-natural-gas/. bajpai, prableen. 2020. the five fastest growing economies in the world. october 16. accessed april 17, 2022. https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/the-five-fastest-growing-economies-in-the-world-2020-10-16. balza, lenin h., emily brearley, dillon clarke, and victor gauto. 2020. traversing a slippery slope: guyana's oil opportunity. idb report, inter-american development bank. doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.18235/0002622. best, lloyd. 1968. "outlines of a model of pure plantation economy." social and economic studies 17 (3): 283–326. best, lloyd and kari levitt. 2009. essays on the theory of plantation economy : a historical and institutional approach to caribbean economic development. kingston: university of the west indies press. blackmon, david. 2019. exxonmobil announces ‘transformative’ first oil in guyana. december 26. accessed april 14, 2022. https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidblackmon/2019/12/26/exxonmobil-announces-transformative-first-oil-inguyana/?sh=564d19e46d27. carpenter, scott; forbes. 2020. oil deal with exxon deprives south american nation of billions. february 4. accessed april 13, 2022. https://www.forbes.com/sites/scottcarpenter/2020/02/04/oil-deal-with-exxon-deprived-south-american-nationof-billions-report-says/?sh=656d0c4761b3. dpi. 2019. "petroleum agreement between the government of the cooperative republic of guyana and exxon mobil, cnooc nexen petroleum guyana limited, hess guyana exploration limited." department of public information. july 1. accessed april 29, 2022. https://dpi.gov.gy/petroleum-agreement-between-the-government-of-the-cooperativerepublic-of-guyana-and-exxon-mobil-cnooc-nexen-petroleum-guyana-limited-hess-guyana-explorationlimited/#more. edmonds, kevin. 2012. everything that glitters isn’t green in guyana. july 13. accessed april 16, 2022. https://nacla.org/blog/2012/7/13/everything-glitters-isn%25e2%2580%2599t-green-guyana. —. 2017. the caribbean is being killed: time to fight back. november 20. accessed april 12, 2022. https://sfbayview.com/2017/11/the-caribbean-is-being-killed-time-to-fight-back/. edwards, duane. 2017. "the renewed relevance of the caribbean plantation school." journal of eastern caribbean studies 42 (2): 100-173. exxonmobil. 2022. exxonmobil starts production at guyana's second offshore development. february 11. accessed april 29, 2022. https://corporate.exxonmobil.com/news/newsroom/news-releases/2022/0211_exxonmobil-starts-productionat-guyanas-second-offshore-development. fischer, andrew m. 2019. "on the origins and legacies of really existing capitalism: in conversation with kari polanyi levitt." development and change 50 (2): 542-572. girvan, norman. 2006. "caribbean dependency thought revisited." canadian journal of development studies 27 (3): 328-352. caribbean quilt 2023 vol. 7 no. 1 56 girvan, norman. 2009. "foreword: plantation economy in the age of globalization." in essays on the theory of plantation economy : a historical and institutional approach to caribbean economic development, by lloyd best and kari levitt. kingston: university of the west indies press. girvan, norman, and cherita girvan. 1971. "making the rules of the game: company-country agreements in the bauxite industry." social and economic studies 20 (4): 378-419. guyana standard. 2020. trinidad formally expresses interest in refining guyana's oil. january 5. accessed april 15, 2022. https://www.guyanastandard.com/2020/01/05/trinidad-formally-expresses-interest-in-refining-guyanas-oil/. hilson, gavin, and tim laing. 2017. "guyana gold: a unique resource curse?" the journal of development studies 53 (2): 299-248. james, canute. 2021. guyana cautiously weighing refinery proposals. december 8. accessed april 25, 2022. https://www.argusmedia.com/en/news/2281338-guyana-cautiously-weighing-refineryproposals#:~:text=guyana%20supports%20the%20construction%20of,country's%20oil%20sector%2c%20he%20sai d. kulovic, nermina. 2022. exxonmobil digs up three more oil discoveries in guyanese waters. april 27. accessed april 30, 2022. https://www.offshore-energy.biz/exxonmobil-digs-up-three-more-oil-discoveries-in-guyanesewaters/#:~:text=the%20three%20discoveries%20are%20located,announced%20in%20early%20january%202022. ministry of natural resources: petroleum management programme. 2021. summary/history of petroleum exploration in guyana. accessed april 29, 2022. https://petroleum.gov.gy/summary-history-petroleum-exploration-guyana. pasha, sukrishnalall, mark d. wenner, and dillon clarke. 2017. toward the greening of the gold mining sector of guyana: transition issues and challenges. idb report, university of guyana, inter-american development bank. doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.18235/0000759. reuters. 2022. exxon makes three new oil discoveries in guyana and boosts reserves. april 26. accessed april 30, 2022. https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/exxon-makes-three-new-discoveries-guyana-increases-oil-reserves-202204-26/. rodney, walter. 1972. how europe underdeveloped africa. london: bogle-l’ouverture publications. the world bank. 2020. population total guyana. accessed april 15, 2022. https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/sp.pop.totl?locations=gy. valle, sabrina. 2022. exxon next month to begin pumping from the 2nd guyana oil platform. january 25. accessed april 15, 2022. https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/exxon-next-month-begin-pumping-2nd-guyana-oil-platform-source2022-01-26/. whitlock, kayla. 2017. "guyana, caution oil." washington report on the hemisphere 37 (9): 1-8. witter, michael. 2021. "caribbean economic thought: advances, retreat, current challenges." agrarian south: journal of political economy 10 (3): 463-491. microsoft word chapman_numbered.docx caribbean quilt 2023 vol. 7 no. 1 65 canadian-trinidadian activism: navigating intersectional identity in queer care julia chapman faculty of arts and science, university of toronto julia chapman is a trinidadian-canadian third-year undergraduate student at the university of toronto. she is pursuing a double major in political science and english. chapman’s personal experience of identity within the caribbean diaspora drives her academic interests in decolonization and intersectional identity. keywords: qtbipoc trinidadian-canadian intersectionality identity activism abstract this paper seeks to explore what trinidadian canadian qtbipoc (queer, trans, black, indigenous, people of colour), and allied activism and care can look like in canada and how this activism is informed by this complex intersectional identity. this paper focuses on three activists: richard fung, anthony mohammed, and deb singh. richard fung informs complex art-based activism through his complex identities as trini, chinese, canadian, and as a gay man. fung presents complex identity informing complex activism, for fung, this is film-based art that explores the many topics surrounding his identity. anthony mohammad and deb singh present similar experiences of complex identity as trinidadians within a south asian diaspora and identity within queer communities. for mohammad navigating his sexuality as a gay man through caribbean and south asian communities presents contradicting yet synchronous experiences of inclusion and exclusion. mohammed exhibits complex activism through his work in varied queer groups intended for caribbean and south asians separately. singh similarly identifies the acceptability of a particular identity; navigating fluid sexuality, binary gender, and monogamy presents a similar thread of contradicting inclusion and exclusion. for trinidadian-canadian queer activists, their complex navigation of intersectional identities informs their community work and artistic expression as activists. intersectional identities are at the core of queer, trans, black, indigenous, people of colour (qtbipoc) activism and care. for many, intersectional identity is complex and can be contradictory. navigating queer and ethnic communities can mean interpreting parts of the self through conflicting lenses. for trinidadian-canadian queer activists, identity must be navigated through queer identity, ethnic community and cultural background. this paper seeks to explore what trinidadian canadian qtbipoc and allied activism and care can look like in canada and how this activism is informed by this complex intersectional identity. for trinidadian-canadian queer activists, their complex navigation of intersectional identities informs their community work and artistic expression as activists. caribbean quilt journal homepage: https://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/cquilt/index caribbean quilt 2023 vol. 7 no. 1 66 this essay begins by providing background for the research as it was conducted through a research opportunity program and supervised by professor tara goldstein and postdoctoral fellow jenny salisbury as a research opportunity program. the essay delineates my inspiration from d’bi.young anitafrika and the archival research method using the arquives. it introduces the inspirations by d’bi and the methods throughout the arquives of trini/canadian activists deb singh, anthony mohammed, and richard fung, with an in-depth look at richard fung's intersecting identity and how that contributes to his activism. trinidadian canadian qtbipoc activists present a shared experience of navigating their queer identity through cultural and racial identity. this research was conducted under the supervision of professor tara goldstein, and postdoctoral fellow jenny salisbury as part of a research opportunity program (rop) towards a larger project focused on 60 years of queer, trans, bipoc (qtbipoc) activism and care. the university of toronto research opportunity program provides second and third-year faculty of arts and science undergraduate students the opportunity to join an instructor’s research project and earn course credit.1 the overarching objective of goldstein and salisbury’s research program was to conduct archival research on moments of activism and care between the 1970s to 2020s that have challenged heteronormativity and cis-normativity in canada. this project builds on the work of bishop owis, a postdoctoral fellow at the university of british columbia and a recent student of professor goldstein.2 owis identified the different appearances of activism in differing communities and linked activism and care in qtbipoc spaces.3 to elaborate, owis recognized building networks of care and creating chosen families as activism for survival and thrival in these communities.4 this rop project 1 “research opportunities program,” 2023. faculty of arts & science. https://www.artsci.utoronto.ca/current/academics/research-opportunities/research-opportunities-program. 2 owis, bishop. “out at school: imagining a slow ethic of care in research-based theater.” 2023. qualitative inquiry, vol. 29(2), pp. 323–331. 3 ibid., 323-331. 4 ibid., 323-331. 5 anitafrika, d’bi.young. “creating new decolonial frameworks,” 2022. new299. university of toronto. uses an intersectional lens which examines the intersections of heteronormativity and cis-normativity with other forms of structural discrimination, such as anti-asian racism, anti-black racism, anti-indigenous racism and settler colonialism. to help the students prepare for their own individual projects, the research team invited guest speaker d’bi.young anitafrika jamaican-canadian feminist dub poet and activist to present their teachings in care. d’bi’s instruction on sacredness and experience were guiding principles in my research. for d’bi, sacredness is defined by the self for the self; they ask how we define what is sacred to us and how we treat what is sacred to us. experience means recognizing our individual canvasses of knowledge. d'bi emphasizes communicating experience through a hierarchy of oppression and communicating in a decolonial direction.5 therefore, i began with familiar intersections of identity. i began with an interest in immigrant queer activism. as the child of a trinidadian immigrant, i felt curious about how this identity may influence an intersection of qtbipoc and allied activism in canada. my research was gathered through the arquives. the arquives, located on isabella street in toronto, formerly the canadian lesbian and gay archives, is the largest independent lgbtq2+ archives in the world. it was founded in 1973 as part of the canadian gay liberation movement and has since been the only lgbtq2+ archives in canada with a national scope. initial searches into the arquives brought me to suhail abualsameed and a newcomer program for queer muslims.6 and el-farouk khaki for the queer liberation theory project7. each of these activists and their work is undoubtedly impactful; however, i did not feel connected to their stories. since there are certainly differences between each activist's 6 abualsameed, suhail. “suhail abualsameed discusses salaam, a soy newcomer program for queer muslims,” interview by nancy nicol, the arquives digital exhibitions. https://digitalexhibitions.arquives.ca/items/show/645. 7 khaki, el-farouk. “interview with el-farouk khaki for the queer liberation theory project,” interview by nick mulé and queer ontario, the arquives digital exhibitions. https://digitalexhibitions.arquives.ca/items/show/1127. caribbean quilt 2023 vol. 7 no. 1 67 experiences and my own, it is crucial that in the care of this project, i attempt to understand the activists i research as best i can. d'bi.young anitafrika inspired me to boldly pursue trinidadian immigrant activism and care through her emphasis on experience and sacredness.8 for transparency, my father is an anglo-canadian, my mother is an indocaribbean immigrant from trinidad, and i was born in canada. i realized through d'bi’s inquiry with respect to how we treat what is sacred to us9, that i hold this part of my identity sacred to myself, and thus i will approach this part of my activist identity with a sacred respect. this is a place in which i felt empowered to approach this research; hence i decided to focus on trini qtbipoc and allied activism. my research seeks to explore what trini qtbipoc and allied activism and care can look like in canada and how this activism is informed by this complex intersectional identity. i began with preliminary research into three activists via the arquives: deb singh, anthony mohammed, and richard fung. deb singh is a queer, polyamorous, cisgender, canadian-born indo-caribbean, working-class parent. 10 she is an activist and counsellor at the toronto rape crisis centre/multicultural women against rape. 11 anthony mohammed is an aids activist, equity worker and indocaribbean lgbtq leader. he was born in 1967 in san fernando, trinidad and tobago, and in 1969 his family relocated to toronto.12 in high school, mohammed took up his activism with strength, and he attended camp kandalore, 8 anitafrika, d’bi.young. “creating new decolonial frameworks,” 2022. new299. university of toronto. 9 ibid. 10 brown, elspeth. lgbtq oral history digital colaboratory, prof. elspeth brown, pi 2021. the arquives canada’s lgbtq2s+ archives pussy palace oral history project fonds, f0205, series31. https://collections.arquives.ca/en/permalink/descriptions49549 11 brown, lgbtq oral history digital collaboratory. 12 mohammed, anthony. interview by nancy nicol, september 1st, 2004. the arquives canada’s lgbtq2s+ archives nancy nicol fonds, f0051, series 3, file f0051-03-576, item f0051-03-576-071. 13 mohammed, interview by nicol. an anti-racist and equity camp where he met counsellors and gay activists tim mccaskell and richard fung. 13 richard fung is a video-oriented artist and writer; he was born in trinidad in 1954 and came to toronto via ireland in 1973. richard fung’s work as an activist is that of an artist. his work encompasses films which have been broadcast in canada, the united states, and trinidad and tobago.14 fung has published numerous essays and received awards in both canada and the united states.15 he is currently a professor in the faculty of art at ocad university. my exploration of his work focuses on the mid-1990s to early 2000s, where i find fung’s political engagement and work particularly, as he says, “grounded in [his] contradictory experience as gay, chinese, trinidadian, canadian, a video maker, middle-class, and so on.”16 in the early 2000s, after receiving a research-creation grant from the canada council for the arts to study the relationship between nationalism and homophobia in canada and trinidad and tobago, fung attended a solo exhibition by trinidadian visual artist christopher cozier. 17 here he was “accosted” by the word “bullers” “written on an oldfashioned, stand-up blackboard that formed part of an installation.”18 buller is a derogatory word for gay men which references anal sex and, specifically, sodomy. fung informs us that "buller" is sharp and poisonous and that in his youth, he lived in "terror that the word would be shot 14 fung, richard. “biography: richard fung,” 2021. richard fung.ca. http://richardfung.ca/index.php?/about/biographycv/. 15 ibid. 16 fung, richard. “dirty dozen: an interview with richard fung by helen lee,” interview by helen lee, 2002. originally pub lished in: like mangoes in july ed. helen lee and kerri sakamoto,2002. http://www.richardfung.ca/index.php?/interviews/dirty-dozen-2002/ 17 fung, richard. “uncomfortable: the art of christopher cozier (2005),” 2005. originally published in public 31, 2005. http://www.richardfung.ca/index.php?/articles/uncomfortable-t e-art-of-christopher-cozier-2005/ 18 fung, “uncomfortable,” publication. caribbean quilt 2023 vol. 7 no. 1 68 [his] way."19 i admit that i cannot share his experience as a gay asian man, but as a trinidadian, i recognize the sharp pain and fear of the cutting language. cozier used “buller” in a listing of attributes to describe “them” separate from “us”.20 cozier further listed “them” as white people, rich people, people from big countries, and all of the above.21 while “us” was described as people who must pray, people who must work hard, people who must learn to love their “culture” and who must always respect their leaders.22 i want to note that cozier made the decision to place culture in quotation marks. i can theorize this as a reference to the colonial implemented culture rather than the blend of found and shared culture among the people. this piece was a social commentary on the trini nationalist project ongoing during this time. fung claims he was drawn to this piece because it was a critique of homophobia in building the xenophobic nationalist project from an artist he knew not to be gay.23 fung created his documentary “uncomfortable: the art of christopher cozier (2005)” and an accompanying essay of the same title. in his essay, fung prefaces that he did not plan to make a documentary surrounding an artist and that explication by an artist does not further enlighten him beyond the artist’s art.24 in the film, in addition to speaking on his blackboard installation, cozier talks about the cultural aspects of trinidad and their influence on his art. he discusses decorated fences to keep people in and out, and he speaks on native trees in front of historically colonial buildings such as banks and government buildings. he speaks on what he sees as the three roles for men on the island, as intellectuals, workers, and incarcerated, and on 19 fung, “uncomfortable”, publication. 20 fung, richard. “uncomfortable: the art of christopher co zier (2005),” 2005. documentary by richard fung. the aquives canada’s lgbtq2s+ archives richard fung fonds, f0134, series 12, file f0134-12-001. 21 fung, “uncomfortable”, documentary. 22 ibid. 23 fung, “uncomfortable”, publication. 24 ibid. 25 fung, “uncomfortable”, documentary. the influence of the 1962 independence and subsequent 1970s revolts. cozier also argues that inherent to living on an island is looking out and knowing “there is a world out there”25. fung clarifies that cozier’s cultural critique originates from his “specific ethnic and geographical location, that of a middle class, “brown” person from port of spain.”26 this critique is imperative as the island’s largest ethnic group has roots in india, yet the political sphere is predominantly an african-creole space. moreover, the small number of filmic images representing the nation means “the stakes” for the voices of the country are high.27 i would like to note that in his clarification, fung does not discuss the identity of chinese trinis; he does not include his own identity as a trini. beyond his work on christopher cozier, fung’s work of this time also explores the masculine and sexual identity of chinese men in north america. in 1995, fung cited barbara ehrenreich, an american author and political activist who claims homosexuality is seen as "the ultimate escapism from the male role of breadwinner."28 fung elaborates that the age of aids has expanded the irresponsible image of gay men to frame self-destructive behaviour and uncontrollable appetites for sex.29 he furthers this perception towards chinese gay men in north america, recalling the influx of chinese immigrants in the late 1800s as miners and railroad builders.30 these immigrants largely consisted of single men; the few women included were listed as either married women, girls, or prostitutes, and not granted identity beyond their connection to men.31 26 ibid. 27 ibid. 28 fung, richard. “burdens of representation, burdens of responsibility,” 1995. maurice berger, brian wallis, and simon watson (eds.), constructing masculinity, pp. 291-298, new york: routledge 29 fung, “burdens,” 291-298. 30 ibid. 31 ibid. caribbean quilt 2023 vol. 7 no. 1 69 in victoria, british columbia, reinforced by the 1884 royal commission on chinese immigration head tax which rose from $10.00 to $500.00 in 20 years, and the 1923 chinese exclusion act, which was only lifted after ww2, chinese communities were commonly referred to as "bachelor societies" without the presence of women or families.32 fung finds the “anxious suppression of the possibility of sexual relations between [these] men.”33 most significant. fung states that the word “bachelor” is commonly used as a euphemism for homosexual men, even though this usage presumes heterosexuality34. simultaneously, the label infantilizes chinese men into non-men, yet "endows them with the sexual threat of men devoid of socially sanctioned sexual release," meaning men seeking prostitution and displaying predatory sexuality.35 the contemporary north american chinese man is still perceived along this spectrum of “asexual wimpiness and a degenerate, sexual depravity," continually producing an unstable masculinity36 . fung explores the narratives of chinese male masculinity and sexual identity as it was formed in north america. he finds two possible avenues of “wimpiness” or “depravity” and none which encompass a gay chinese male identity. richard fung's 1996 film "dirty laundry" elaborates on the gay chinese male identity. fung's film opens with the concept of not speaking chinese languages when you are chinese, and although he does not explicitly state it, i would note that this is something fung personally experiences as a trini chinese canadian. fung continues his exploration of chinese migration, emphasizing the heavy segregation between men and women in these mining and worker communities, and he informs the viewer that queer male relationships were not uncommon.37 these relationships may have engaged in sexual pleasure or non-sexual bed sharing; regardless, heavy companionship and 32 ibid. 33 ibid. 34 ibid. 35 ibid. 36 ibid. 37 fung, "dirty laundry." 38 ibid. affection amongst men in these societies were prevalent.38 the film also features sky lee, a canadian artist and novelist who spoke on the misplacement of chinese culture for the descendants of these migrants, as the migrants initially attempted to dampen their culture.39 sky lee also explains her own experience coming out to her chinese canadian mother, whose concerns for her rose from what sky lee called a "circumstantial location."40. sky lee's mother was concerned that without a husband, her daughter might not be taken care of; lee connects this to the identity of chinese women in canada being connected to their status in proximity to a man.41 richard fung's activism as a trini chinese canadian gay man rests on his artistry and representation. he explores the multi-facets of his identity and sustains a thread of complex belonging and isolation. in his 1980 essay, "asians gay and proud" fung states that "non-white gays and lesbians face a double-edged sword." he says they experience cultural schizophrenia, that the racism of general society filters into the gay community while the sexism and homophobia of "ethnic" communities creates a constant isolation42. his work between the mid-90s to early 2000s explores this dichotomy. he represents his trini culture while recognizing sharp homophobia in his work with cozier, and while combating racism and xenophobia faced by his identity as a chinese canadian, he corrects narratives to include further parts of his identity as a gay man. i have conducted preliminary research into anthony mohammed via his 2004 interview with nancy nichol, a professor in the visual arts department at york university. mohammed, as a trini qtbipoc activist, speaks on a 39 ibid. 40 ibid. 41 ibid. 42 fung, richard. “asians: gay & proud,” 1980. the asianadian v. 2. n 3 winter 1979-80, p.30 http://www.richardfung.ca/index.php?/articles/asians-gay and-proud/ caribbean quilt 2023 vol. 7 no. 1 70 similar thread of this "double-edged sword"43. mohammed was born in trinidad but grew up in the west end of toronto.44 in high school, he began his activism and community role in earnest, joining zami, which is generally known as a black queer group in toronto but was intended for black people and west indians; most members were afro-caribbean.45 while mohammed is indo-caribbean, he acknowledged that this organization was a community he felt connected to and could navigate the types of homophobia he experienced in caribbean communities.46 mohammed also joined khush, a south asian gay and (to a lesser extent) lesbian organization.47 through both organizations, mohammed states he found all of his needs met, but there was nothing which met him as a whole person.48 mohammed further speaks on the differing identities to which he belongs and how he feels received. for example, as a teenager, when called racial slurs, he felt support from his parents and community in rectifying this behaviour. however, when he was called homophobic slurs, he felt alone and could not seek support. 49 mohammed also touches on cultural pride and homophobia, which occur simultaneously for him. while discussing reggae and dancehall lyrics, which encourage hatred for lgbtq2s+ communities, mohammed explains the contrast of his feelings, on the one hand, he is proud of the caribbean culture which is taking hold in canada's caribana culture, but on the other hand, he says that "just because it's cultural doesn't make it right"50. mohammed continues the thread found in fung's work of navigating a queer identity through cultural and racial identity. mohammed, in his search for the queer community, struggled to locate a community which encompassed himself entirely and experienced conflict in cultural pride and sharp homophobia. deb singh has similar experiences in navigating 43 ibid. 44 mohammed, interview by nicol. 45 ibid. 46 ibid. 47 ibid. 48 ibid. 49 ibid. 50 ibid. conflicting identities. to note, i have engaged with deb singh’s pussy palace oral history project interview as a member of the toronto women's bathhouse committee. i would highlight her navigation of identity, beginning with her journey through her identities as bisexual, pansexual, and omnisexual to identifying herself as a queer woman.51. singh also states that she has been in open relationships her whole life yet has found it far easier to discuss queerness than to discuss her poly identity. furthermore, singh is of indo-carib identity, yet often finds herself placed in a south asian diaspora. as a first-generation canadian, she feels a “mix up of three different spaces”52. singh also reflects on her religious identity. she was raised catholic and went to an all-girls catholic school in her youth, yet she says she “can feel hinduism and islam in [her] blood."53. part of the south asian diaspora and indo-carib identity is the amalgamation of religious identity which singh recognizes. the pussy palace was a lesbian bathhouse in toronto which was raided in september of 2000. it was a safe space for queer women and non-binary folx. deb singh was part of the toronto women’s bathhouse committee and on the subcommittee that organized sugar shack events, a bipoc-led bathhouse series for bipoc queers. in her interview, singh speaks about the “eroticization of certain bodies” and the importance of safe spaces or sugar shack events intended for racialized women and non-binary folx.54 these events were exclusively based on self-identification, meaning that racialization was not dictated by the external judgement of appearance. singh notes the difficulty in maintaining and sustaining racialized safe spaces within the queer spaces, desiring inclusion with the importance that racialized women and non-binary folx need a space within the space.55 singh navigates identity as a 51 singh, deb. interview part of lgbtq oral history digital collaboratory, prof. elspeth brown, pi, 2021. the arquives canada’s lgbtq2s+ archives pussy palace oral history pro ject fonds, f0205, series 31. 52 ibid. 53 ibid. 54 ibid. 55 ibid. caribbean quilt 2023 vol. 7 no. 1 71 queer, polyamorous and racialized woman. as a south asian diasporic trinidadian born in canada, she experiences an amalgamation of religious identities and feels the "mix up" of these three identities.56 my research on the identity of trinidadian immigrant qtbipoc and allied activism and care excludes afro-caribbean and anglo-caribbean identities, excludes trans experiences, and is generally male-dominant. however, it is apparent trini qtbipoc and allied activism and care are certainly varied. it includes visual artistry, representation, taking roles in spaces which may conflict with other parts of identity, involvement in rape crisis and assistance, and other methods not explored in my research. it also appears that this intersectional identity requires complex navigation, which aligns with complex activism, such as visual artistry expanding many topics surrounding identities of sexuality, gender, race, and culture. the complex identity of trinidadian qtbipoc appears to inform complex activism and complex navigation. 56 ibid. caribbean quilt 2023 vol. 7 no. 1 72 bibliography abualsameed, suhail. “suhail abualsameed discusses salaam, a soy newcomer program for queer muslims,” interview by nancy nicol, the arquives digital exhibitions. https://digitalexhibitions.arquives.ca/items/show/645. anitafrika, d’bi.young. “creating new decolonial frameworks,” 2022. new299. university of toronto. brown, elspeth. lgbtq oral history digital collaboratory, prof. elspeth brown, pi 2021. the arquives canada’s lgbtq2s+. archives pussy palace oral history project fonds: deb singh, f0205, series 31. https://collections.arquives.ca/en/permalink/descriptions49549. fung, richard. “asians: gay & proud,” 1980. the asianadian v. 2. n 3 winter 1979-80, p.30 http://www.richardfung.ca/index.php?/articles/asians-gay-and-proud/. fung, richard. “biography: richard fung,” 2021. richardfung.ca. http://richardfung.ca/index.php?/about/biographycv/. fung, richard. “burdens of representation, burdens of responsibility,” 1995. maurice berger, brian wallis, and simon watson (eds.), constructing masculinity, pp. 291-298, new york: routledge http://www.richardfung.ca/index.php?/articles/constructing-masculinity-1995/. fung, richard. “dirty dozen: an interview with richard fung by helen lee,” interview by helen lee, 2002. originally published in: like mangoes in july ed. helen lee and kerri sakamoto, 2002. http://www.richardfung.ca/index.php?/interviews/dirty-dozen-2002/. fung, richard. “dirty laundry,” 1996. the arquives canada’s lgbtq2s+ archives richard fung fonds, f0134, series 8, file f0134-08-047. fung, richard. “uncomfortable: the art of christopher cozier (2005),” 2005. documentary by richard fung. the arquives canada’s lgbtq2s+ archives richard fung fonds, f0134, series 12, file f0134-12-00. fung, richard. “uncomfortable: the art of christopher cozier (2005),” 2005. originally published in public 31, 2005. http://www.richardfung.ca/index.php?/articles/uncomfortable-the-art-of-christopher-cozier-2005/. khaki, el-farouk. “interview with el-farouk khaki for the queer liberation theory project,” interview by nick mulé and queer ontario, the arquives digital exhibitions. https://digitalexhibitions.arquives.ca/items/show/1127. mohammed, anthony. interview by nancy nicol, september 1st, 2004. the arquives canada’s lgbtq2s+ archives nancy nicol fonds, f0051, series 3, file f0051-03-576, item f0051-03-576-071. owis, bishop, et al. “out at school: imagining a slow ethic of care in research-based theater.” 2023. qualitative inquiry, vol. 29(2), pg 323–331. “research opportunities program,” 2023. faculty of arts & science. https://www.artsci.utoronto.ca/current/academics/researchopportunities/research-opportunities-program. singh, deb. interview part of lgbtq oral history digital collaboratory, prof. elspeth brown, pi, 2021. the arquives canada’s lgbtq2s+ archives pussy palace oral history project fonds, f0205, series 31. linguistic representations of black characters in cuban fiction of the new millennium: a tale about continuity and subversion catia dignard university of toronto department of spanish and portuguese if scholarship has focused on the return to the stereotypical portrayals of black characters during the 1990s, and that were common to the pre-revolutionary era, what had not yet been addressed is how differentiating linguistic traits (manner of speech) have been used to represent black characters in more recent cuban fiction, a narrative strategy that goes back to colonial times. apart from conveying “authenticity” (i.e. the details of the havana slang) when building fictional characters, such a literary device, i contend, was also a way to emphasise the island’s socioeconomic and cultural decadence or “involution” during this decade of economic upheaval. since the second decade of the new millennium, other voices, namely from the caribbean side of the island, have emerged and imposed themselves in fiction, leading me to explore the other levels of significance of this narrative strategy. what follows is a tale about continuity and subversion. a b s t r a c t keywords: linguistic representations; black characters; cuban fiction; special period; new millennium; marginality; otherness; caribbeaness; haiti b i o catia dignard is a doctoral candidate in the department of spanish and portuguese. her dissertation examines the topic of linguistic representations of black characters in contemporary cuban fiction, and how these reflect evolving notions of nationhood, class and race relations on the island. her doctoral research is funded by the social sciences and humanities research council of canada (2020-2022), and draws upon literary and critical theory (postcolonial, critical race and disability studies), sociolinguistics and anthropology. this article is an adapted version of catia’s talk given at the new college 2020-2021 senior doctoral fellow speakers series (caribbean studies) on may 5, 2021, in which she explained the process leading to her current research and preliminary conclusions. © 2021 catia dignard caribbean studies students’ union, canada https://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/cquilt/ this work is licensed under the creative commons attributionsharealike 4.0 international license. to view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ 97 (january 20, 2022 / 08:53:09) 122815-1b_caribbeanquilt_vol6_rev.pdf .97 98 carlos uxó gonzález, representaciones del personaje del negro en la literatura cubana: una perspectiva desde los estudios subalternos. (madrid: editorial verbum, 2010), 13. this perspective is shared by casamayor cisneros, odette. 2002. “études et essais: les masques du noir: quelques approximations sur la présence du noir cubain dans le récit cubain contemporain.” cahiers d’études africaines 42, no. 1 (2002): 7–30 and carlos uxó gonzález, 2010. carlos uxó gonzález, 21. esther katheryn whitfield. cuban currency the dollar and special period fiction. (minneapolis: university of minnesota press, 2008). for a more in depth analysis, consult odette casamayor-cisneros.“blackness, cubanness, and the end of an era.” black diaspora review 5, no. 2 (2016): 12-23. esther katheryn whitfield, 74. �����$uldqd�+huqiqgh]�5hjxdqw��&xed�lq�wkh�6shfldo�3hulrgௗ��&xowxuh�dqg�,ghrorj\�lq�wkh�����v�� ���������1hz�<run��3dojudyh�0dfploodq����������� 1 3 $w�wkh�hqg�ri�wkh�����v��&xedq�srhw�dqg� journalist, manuel vázquez portal was approached by a young portuguese student seeking advice for writing a thesis on the topic of “blacks in cuban literature.” half-jokingly, he responded categorically that she would have to read “all” of cuban literature. vázquez portal’s comment points to the long history of the representation of black characters in cuban fiction: a cycle beginning with abolitionist novels such as cecilia valdés (1882) by cirilo villaverde; followed by the cuban revolution’s interlude of relatively “silencing” the racial question, leading to literature’s (few) black protagonists serving mostly to demonstrate the benefits of the socialist 5hyroxwlrq���ehiruh�wkh�����v�pdunhg�wkh� return to the stereotypical portrayals of black characters that were common to the pre-revolutionary era, such as their “sexualisation” or “criminalization”. to go back to our anecdote, the theme of the student’s thesis and their meeting with vázquez portal are both related to the “new cuban boom” promoted largely by european publishing houses and coined special period fiction by esther whitfield. a genre popularized particularly by writer pedro juan gutiérrez’s own brand of “dirty realism” (or “realismo sucio”), which featured emblematical depictions of havana’s marginal and mostly black populations, namely in his notorious 7ulorjtd�vxfld�gh�/d�+dedqd���������� however, it is important to consider that &xedq�ilfwlrq�sxeolvkhg�iurp������wr� 2004 has been significantly influenced by the overall context of the economic crisis. critics and authors themselves have demonstrated and commented on the pressure to reveal and depict at length the grim realities of life in this “still-socialist society” , and thus at times catering to foreign demand’s thirst for both "authenticity" and dark tales about a socialist utopia gone dystopia. beyond the facts and figures illustrating the economic impacts of the disintegrating ussr – which demonstrated cuba’s high degree of commercial dependency on soviet subsidies and eastern european markets – cuba’s special period can also be considered a “defining category of experience” that “brings up memories of deprivation and hopelessness; of hunger and heat; of wheeling and dealing, of dreams of a life hovhzkhuh´���,q�qduudwlyh��vxfk�whvwlprnies/depictions have also revealed “zones of silence” in which cuban reporters had been kept away by the state controlled press. such zones refer to specific neighbourhoods – with ground zero, centro habana – largely populated by the poor, marginalized and mainly black cubans who seemingly have been left unaffected by the revolution’s socialist agenda and it’s “social homogenizing forces”. 2 4 5 6 7 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 (january 20, 2022 / 08:53:09) 122815-1b_caribbeanquilt_vol6_rev.pdf .98 99 pedro juan gutiérrez. interview by catia dignard. personal interview. havana, 12 december 2019. translation to english mine. esther katheryn whitfield, 111. these conclusions are based on the analyses by maría del carmen zabala argüelles. “cuba: la dimension raciale dans le processus de reproduction de la pauvreté.” alternatives sud 17, no. 2 (2010): 135-156, and by alejandro de la fuente. “recreating racism: race and discrimination in cuba’s ‘special period.’” socialism and democracy 15, no. 1 (2001): 65–91. https://doi.org/10.1080/08854300108428278. esther katheryn whitfield, 113. christina civantos. “race/class/language: ‘el negro’ speaks cuban whiteness in the ‘teatro bufo.’” latin american theatre review 39, no.1 (2005): 49. according to civantos, the figure of the negro/negrito bozal refers to a “recently arrived african who speaks a pidgin form of spanish known as macúa or bozal…literally a muzzle” and thus, “the term negro bozal reflects the perception of the recently arrived slave as incapable of speech, or at least muzzled by his/her inability to speak spanish.” (50) 8 10 during a conversation/interview i had with him in december of 2019, seated in the lobby-bar of hotel sevilla, in close proximity to the emblematical neighbourhood of his novels, writer pedro juan gutiérrez, still a journalist at the time while writing “a bit in secret” his trilogía and el rey de la habana, commented a tad more on what he termed “zonas de silencio” (zones of silence). in his words, these referred to “zones of society in which reporters did not enter normally. no news story would take place here, in a solar, in centro habana. no mention was made of poverty in havana; no mention was made of the centro-habaneros’ religiosity…poor people did not exist. it was as if journalism made-up this fantastic world…in which we were all heroes. then, my books started to appear in which i talked about the anti-heroes, those who have been left behind, those who have no voice. so, i do it deliberately because i lived there, right there.” because gutiérrez’s depictions dealt with marginality as well as the lived experiences of criminality, incarceration and violence all intertwined with ethnicity, poet and critic victor fowler calzada considered el rey de la habana “one of the few works to give the margins a space in contemporary cuban literature,” while writer ena lucía portela insisted on gutiérrez’s “proximity” and “skill in remaining faithful to the details”. in other words, he wasn’t “faking it”. moreover, such “details” also concurred with academics from inside and outside of cuba who documented the plight of the mainly black segment of the population who would become further disadvantaged by cuba’s opening to tourism and foreign capital’s discriminatory policies (official tourism industry) and thus, since 1989, the “reappearance” of social re-stratification according to racial background. however, it is noteworthy that if portela also signals the “truthfulness” of gutiérrez’s dialogues in el rey de la habana (1999), for their “authentic rhythm and colouring, their faithfulness to the details of the havana slang” , what has not been addressed are the many other levels of significance associated to this literary strategy. while the works of carlos uxó and jorge hernández examine the literary construction of linguistic otherness as a way to signify subalternity of the black subject in the cuban context, they focus mainly on colonial texts. this is a period in which mainly white writers would caricaturize the spoken language of their black characters, stressing in their texts the "imperfect" pronunciation of spanish. this narrative strategy finds its precedence in the teatro bufo, a cuban version of “blackface 9 11 8 9 10 11 12 (january 20, 2022 / 08:53:09) 122815-1b_caribbeanquilt_vol6_rev.pdf .99 100 christina civantos, 50. according to e. rodríguez herrera (1953), in his prologue to this pre-revolution edition of cecilia valdés, villaverde’s effort in integrating different types of speeches, particularly those of his black characters, and in spite of its shortcomings, was to be “celebrated”, given the novels’ realist genre: “hay que estudiar detenidamente este lenguaje tan variado en la cecilia valdés de villaverde, porque es uno de los méritos de la novela, por más que a veces falla al poner en boca de algunos esclavos palabras como cruz, dispué, y otras en vez de cru y dipué o dimpué, como se advierte en algunos pasajes.” cirilo villaverde, a nd esteban rodríguez herrera. cecilia valdés; o, la loma del ángel, novela de costumbres cubanas publicada en new york en 1882. (habana: editorial lex,1953), xliv. emphasis in original. these oeuvres from the first decades of the so-called republican (or pre-revolutionary) era will be the object of analysis in a forthcoming chapter of my doctoral dissertation. ���7klv�wrslf�lv�h[whqvlyho\�dqdo\vhg�lq�wkh�zrun�e\�(o]elhwd�6norgrzvnd��(vshfwurv�\�hvshmlvprvௗ��+dlwt�hq�ho�lpdjlqdulr� cubano. (madrid: iberoamericana, 2009). the long standing recurrent “fear” which stems from the events in the neighbouring island and that have served to “stir zklwh�ihduv´�lq�rughu�wr�srvwsrqh�&xed¶v�lqghshqghqfh�iurp�6sdlq��lv�glvfxvvhg�lq�$ohmdqgur�'h�od�)xhqwh��$�1dwlrq�iru�$ooௗ�� race, inequality, and politics in twentieth-century cuba. (chapel hill, nc: university of north carolina press, 2001), 27-28. alejandro de la fuente, 49. rafael rojas. essays in cuban intellectual history 1st ed. (new york: palgrave macmillan, 2008), 98. 13 comedy akin to u.s. minstrel shows” and sub-genre, negro catedrático (“black professor”) plays, by which blacks or are ridiculed “for not being able to speak properly” – such is the case of the negro/negrito bozal figure – or, rejected for speaking too “properly,” that is, with a high degree of over-correctness, in the case of the negro catedrático. in this line of thought, civantos signals the important role the plays, namely those by bartolomé josé crespo y borbón who “first established the figure of the bozal,” have had on constructing this “white vision of black speech.” in narrative, these linguistic representations have being sustained, notably, by the foundational cecilia valdés (new york city, 1882 definite and extended version), in which cirilo villaverde offered a panorama of the linguistic varieties of his coloured characters, which in turn has served as an example for other realist genre oeuvres. this cataloguing or imitating of black voices persists well into the first two decades of the twentieth century, for example, in the realist novels by miguel de carrión (1875-1929), such as las honradas (1917) and las impuras (1919). another noteworthy example is the vignette “el negro viejo” in estampas de san cristóbal (1926) by jorge mañach (1898-1961). this research being part of a larger project, my main objective is to analyze the significance of this literary device and which translates itself by the ‘voicing out’ of historical anxieties related to race, such as the return to the primitive, africanness, the trope of haiti as cuba’s radical other and the perils of the (re) creation of a “black republic”. in other words, by establishing the link between perceived “blackness of language” and “decadence,” i wish to demonstrate that the use of such a literary device was a way to emphasise the island’s socioeconomic and cultural “involution” during the special period. this is part of a broader discourse that since the nineteenth century has associated these tendencies to the “african” or “black” part of the island’s population. if josé antonio saco (1797-1879), who considered “the progressive blackening of cuba [fuelled by the plantation economy] would lead to its ‘slow decadence, its certain intellectual ruin’,” rojas signals the re-emergence, at the beginning of the special period, of discourses tainted, namely, by the ‘haitian peril’ and overall rejection of cuba’s “caribbean” character. by extension, we could add to this, the stigmatization of linguistic traits associated with caribbean spanish traditionally 15 19 18 17 14 12 16 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 (january 20, 2022 / 08:53:10) 122815-1b_caribbeanquilt_vol6_rev.pdf .100 101 for an interesting discussion on the topic of linguistic experimentations, which presence marks a shift in cuban fiction since wkh�����v��frqvxow�+xhuwdv��%hjrxd��(qvd\r�gh�xq�fdpelrௗ��od�qduudwlyd�fxedqd�gh�orv�¶�����/d�+dedqd��&xed��&dvd�gh�odv� américas, 1993). ���3hgur�-xdq�*xwlpuuh]��(o�5h\�gh�od�+dedqd���/d�+dedqd��(glflrqhv�8qlyq����������������(pskdvlv�plqh� el rey de la habana, 48. el rey de la habana, 48. ���&lwhg�lq�6hujlr�9dogpv�%huqdo��/hqjxd�qdflrqdo�h�lghqwlgdg�fxowxudo�gho�fxedqr���/d�+dedqd�� editorial de ciencias sociales, 1998), 75. 20 attributed to the lower classes, dominated e\�eodfn�dqg�pl[hg�udfh�srsxodwlrqv�±�dqg� the lexicon connected to certain sectors of wkh�$iur�&xedq�srsxodwlrq� *lyhq�wkdw�wkh�uhwxuq�ri�wklv�olwhudu\� strategy of integrating "black speech" �lqfoxglqj�oh[lfrq�ri�$iulfdq�ruljlq�lq�wkh� qrwrulrxv�+dydqd�vodqj���shufhlyhg�dv�d� qhjdwlyh�pdunhu��dqg�wkxv�d�phdqv�wr� construct otherness, in contemporary cuban fiction of the 1990s has not been studied and has persisted, to a certain ghjuhh��lq�rhxyuhv�ri�wkh�1hz�0loohqqlxp� that reflect, namely, on the special period, i will first consider briefly pedro juan *xwlpuuh]¶v�wuhdwphqw�ri�olqjxlvwlf�uhjlvwhuv� lq�(o�5h\�gh�/d�+dedqd��������iru�klv� “setting the stage”. second, i will be turning to younger narrators, more connected to the caribbean side of the ,vodqg��dqg�zkr�kdyh�ghdow�pruh�vshflil� cally with the racial question and integrat� hg�yhuqdfxodu�lq�wkhlu�wh[wv��ohdglqj�ph�wr� h[soruh�wkh�rwkhu�ohyhov�ri�vljqlilfdqfh�ri� wklv�qduudwlyh�vwudwhj\��)lqdoo\��,�zloo�riihu� some preliminary conclusions with regards wr�wkuhh�ohyhov�ri�vljqlilfdqfh�ri�zkdw�kdv� been termed “linguistic experimentations,” and the factors that may explain, after a kldwxv�ri�doprvw�wkluw\�\hduv��wkh�uh�hphu� jhqfh�ri�udfldol]hg�yrlfhv�dqg�dowhuqdwlyh� readings of these. ,q�klv�uhylhz�ri�(o�5h\�gh�/d�+dedqd�� 0ljxho�*duftd�3rvdgd�qrwhv�wkh�prvw� ³vhqvdwlrqdolvwlf´�dvshfwv�ri�wkh�qryho� �³vh[�dqg�vxuylydo�vwudwhjlhv´��zkloh� drawing attention to the topic of language ydulhwlhv��wkh�lqirupdo�froortxldo�uhjlv� ters). at this point, i will argue that apart from ascribing to the main protagonist, 5h\��olqjxlvwlf�wudlwv�wr�frqyh\�³dxwkhqwlfl� ty” and offer an account of language change on the island, such a literary ghylfh�fdq�eh�frqvlghuhg�d�zd\�wr�hpskd� vlvh�&xed¶v�vrflrhfrqrplf�dqg�fxowxudo� ghfd\�ru�³lqyroxwlrq´�gxulqj�wklv�ghfdgh� ri�hfrqrplf�xskhdydo��li�zh�frqvlghu�� iluvwo\��wkh�dxwkru¶v�uhylvlwlqj�ri�qduudwlyh� vwudwhjlhv�surshu�wr�frorqldo�olwhudwxuh�±�lq� wkh�pdqqhu�ri�d�&lulor�9loodyhugh��wkdw� jlyh�wkh�lpsuhvvlrq�ri�wkh�,vodqg¶v�uhyhuv� ing to “primal times,” namely with the lqwhuyhqwlrqv�ri�³od�qhjud�7rpdvd´�� :kloh�wkh�fodvv\�wudqvyhvwlwh�6dqgud��d� vhoi�surfodlphg�µklmd�gh�2fk~q¶�zkr� represents the figure of the refined mulata, zkhq�idfhg�zlwk�wkh�fuxghqhvv�ri�5h\¶v� vshhfk�dfwv��vfrogv�klp�lq�wklv�pdqqhu�� ³1r�ph�gljdv�µr\h¶��kh\���1r�ph�jxvwdq� odv�yxojdulgdghv��«���,�grq¶w�olnh�yxojdul� wlhv��1r��7rgrv�vrq�ljxdohv�gh�jurvhurv� vxflrv��pdokdeodgrv´��\rx�duh�doo�wkh� vdph��euxwhv��vfxpedjv��irxo�prxwkhg���� zkhq�7rpdvd��d�³eodfn�&rqjd´��³qhjud� frqjd´��wdnhv�ryhu�klp�khu��zkhq�6dqgud� is said to be “pasando un muerto”), her eodfnqhvv�zlqv�ryhu�dqg�olqjxlvwlf�wudlwv� surshu�wr�er]do�6sdqlvk�hphujh��7kh� qduudwru�frpphqwv�wkdw�7rpdvd�³kdeoded� en español enredado y en congo, casi lqlqwholjleoh´��wdonhg�lq�dq�hqwdqjohg�do� most unintelligible spanish). for exam� soh��³�±7rpdvd�yd�d�kdeod�>u@�sd¶wl�>sdud� wl@´��³�7rpdvd�ylhqh�d�d\xgd�>ghohwlrq�ri� ilqdo��u�@´��³�8kppp«7~�qdflvwh�frq�xq� 22 24 21 23 20 21 22 (january 20, 2022 / 08:53:10) 122815-1b_caribbeanquilt_vol6_rev.pdf .101 102 this part of my analysis is based first on carlos paz pérez’s 1988 study that explains the “impoverishment” of cuban spanish as a result of the particular slang spoken by “antisocial elements,” many of them clearly identified as members of the abakuá secret society, an afrocuban fraternity with “marked features of decadence.” de lo popular y lo vulgar en el habla cubana. (la habana: editorial de ciencias sociales, 1988), 19, translation mine. second, for pointing to the explicit racialization of the debate, i refer to luis a. ortiz lópez. huellas etno-sociolingüísticas bozales y afrocubanas. (frankfurt an main: vervuert, 1998), 156. finally, for it’s transnational and very politically charged dimension, i refer particularly to studies based on perceptual dialectology, which investigate “nonlinguists’ beliefs about their own [language] and other varieties.” gabriela g. alfaraz “dialect perceptions in real time: a restudy of miami-cuban perceptions.” journal of linguistic geography, 2.2 (2014): 74). the studies conducted by alfaraz (2002; 2014) and by andrew lynch (2009a, 2009b) point to the fact that negative perceptions of cuban spanish spoken on the island from the miami side have been linked to beliefs about race and poverty. anke birkenmaier. “más allá del realismo sucio: ‘el rey de la habana’ de pedro juan gutiérrez.” cuban studies 32 (2001): anke birkenmaier, 46. esther katheryn whitfield, 100-101. 25 arrastre grande, que viene de atrá [deletion of final /s/] pero te cayó a ti. no é [instead of ‘es’] un sorbo. es un arrastre de cadena pesa, pa’toa [para toda] la vida”. to summarize, this passage is both reminiscent of colonial literature’s tendency to imitate black voices, and of the island’s first lexicographers, namely dominican e. pichardo with his diccionario provincial casi razonado de voces y frases cubanas (1849), to characterize “black speech” – at the time, of the so-called “negros bozales o naturales de áfrica”as “disfigured castilian” (“castellano desfigurado”). secondly, rey’s speech acts, that is, his limited and “ruinous language”, both recall the claustrophobic and ruinous space of centro habana in which he wanders and conditions his “limited vision of the world”. if sandra alludes to the “language issue”, that is, rey and many others’ systematic use of the informal register by the term “malhablados,” and which has given rise to certain anxieties concerning the perceived linguistic “impoverishment” on the island, a debate that has also been racialized on both sides of the florida strait, she/he is also aware of rey’s lack of “linguistic capacities” as noted by anke birkenmaier. for example, when rey asks “¿qué es fascinado (captivated)?” sandra responds by a “no, nada…¿quieres comer algo?” (“no, nothing, do you want to eat something?”). additionally, if the critic contends that the novel “needs a narrator to fill in the gaps in rey’s language” and that rey’s actions, namely to kill hunger, are what is important in the novel, “not his speech”, i posit that, au contraire, rey’s language and its deficiencies are important in several respects. first of all, his language serves as a marker of the island’s social and cultural decadence. secondly, it participates in the aesthetics of the ruins that permeates the novel. in other words, we may establish an analogy between the “gaps” in rey’s language (e.e. elision, contractions) and the ruins that surround him as an allegory of a crumbling social project. thus, if when representing havana’s landscape “architectural ruins stand as readable figures for the decay of cuba’s socialist dream”, so do rey’s linguistic limitations. since the second decade of the new millennium, other voices, namely from the caribbean and central part of the island, have emerged and imposed themselves in fiction, leading me to explore the other levels of significance of this narrative strategy. in fact, such “exploration” was contingent in receiving books written by authors residing outside of havana, given the scarce attention to the topic of race in narrative written from the capital, in 23 24 26 27 28 25 26 27 28 (january 20, 2022 / 08:53:10) 122815-1b_caribbeanquilt_vol6_rev.pdf .102 103 i am greatly indebted to havana-based generación cero writer raúl flores iriarte for receiving these books, for my fiction of the new millennium corpus of study, and for facilitating my interview with one of it’s author, nelton pérez. for a thorough discussion on these two younger generations of authors and their tendency to steer away from “special period” topics, including the topic of race, consult the works of uxó (2010; 2015) for the novísimos and the introduction to the dossier on the generación cero by monica simal and walfrido dorta. “literatura cubana contemporánea: lecturas sobre la generación cero (introducción).” letral: revista electrónica de estudios transatlánticos 18 (2017): 1-8. bill ashcroft, bill, gareth griffiths, and helen tiffin. the post-colonial studies reader 2nd ed. (london: routledge, 2006), ariana hernández-reguant, 72. ariana hernández-reguant, 3. 29 particular by the novísimos and then, generación cero authors. hence, in order to compare the “special period” linguistic characterizations to those of newer generations of cuban authors, i analyzed cuban fiction of the second decade of the “new millennium,” namely “virgen en la pradera” in el crimen de san jorge (2012) by michel encinosa fú (la habana, 1974), short stories “25” and “32” in apuntes de josué 1994 (2015) by nelton pérez martínez (manatí, las tunas, oriente, 1970) and la catedral de los negros (2015) by marcial gala (havana 1965). these authors are, amongst the newer generations of narrators, those who, from the island, have dealt more directly with the racial theme and its socio-historical basis, and also because of their use of vernacular language or other “linguistic experimentations” that to varying degrees revisit the narrative strategies of their predecessors. i also have included works by nelton pérez and marcial gala, whose voices are more connected to the caribbean and central part of the island along with its specificities and literary traditions; “spaces” that are seemingly more inclined to experiment with language, may it be for aesthetic reasons or for the sake of realism, such as the remarkable example of guillermo cabrera infante (gibara, 1929 london, 2005), as well as two writers that have pursued in this tradition: josé soler puig (santiago de cuba, 1916-1996) and guillermo vidal (las tunas, 1952-2004). before presenting my preliminary findings with regards to the different levels of this narrative strategy, what emerges from these three texts is that they not only integrate vernacular language (to stress the orality of their black characters) for the sake of “realism” – how people really speak in certain regions or sectors of cuban society (including their lexicon) -, but their characters themselves allude to the “language issue” or this tendency to use manner of speech as a marker of origin (geographical-cultural) or of group identity (youth, marginality). if ashcroft reminds us that voice differences, which include language, dialect or accent, along with body differences, are the “most common and superficial features by which the subject is the most directly and immediately othered,” these “voice differences,” i will argue in a more positive way, point to the coexistence of diverse cultural identities and how these are negotiated on an individual and collective basis in the caribbean, conceived as a multi-linguistic space. furthermore, i contend that the way language is inscribed in these works both reinforce and flow from cuba’s “multicubanidad,” that is, its “redefinition” since the 1990s as an “ethnic and cultural community” this viewpoint not only contrasts with the prior stress on “homogeneity of experience” within the revolution’s socialist cosmology/agenda, but also permits counter narratives to discourses such as ortiz’s cubanidad, 30 31 32 29 30 31 32 (january 20, 2022 / 08:53:10) 122815-1b_caribbeanquilt_vol6_rev.pdf .103 104 rogelio martínez furé is an afro-cuban writer, scholar of folklore and religion and founder of the national folkloric ballet of cuba (conjunto folklórico nacional). consistent with his stress on cuba’s multicultural nature, state sponsored ecured mentions martínez furé’s “rich and diverse ancestry” that includes: “mandingas, franceses, lucumíes, españoles, chinos y, muy probable, de algún indio en lontananza”. very recently, on feb. 8, 2021, the documentary film on his life: “rogelio martínez furé: a cuban griot” (juanamaría cordones-cook, 2014), was presented at the university of missouri, college of arts and scienceblack studies in which he is portrayed as “a contemporary griot, a repository of oral tradition who recovers and guards afro-cuban and caribbean silenced memories and true identity (blackstudies.missouri.edu). ariana hernández-reguant, 83-84. emphasis mine. ��%hqtwh]�5rmr��$qwrqlr��/d�lvod�txh�vh�uhslwhௗ��ho�&duleh�\�od�shuvshfwlyd�srvprghuqd���+dqryhu��1+��(glflrqhv�gho�1ruwh������ rafael rojas explains the persistence of cuba’s uneasiness (read “rejection”) when facing its caribbean identity and this, in spite of revolutionary rhetoric on racial equality and african cultural legacy, by the fact that according to the imaginary of the revolution and of the left in general, cuba was considered a “leading country in the third world,” but also “not so very third :ruog��xqghughyhorshg�ru�/dwlq�$phulfdq��gxh�wr�lwv�ehorqjlqj�wr�wkh�6rylhw�eorf�dqg�lwv�vrfldo�dgydqfhv´�������*lyhq�vxfk� discourse, the dominican republic and puerto rico came to represent “negative archetypes” for the nationalistic rhetoric, jlyhq�wkhlu�³frpprq�hohphqw�ri�+lvsdqlf�$iulfdq�phvwl]dmh´��hpskdvlv�lq�ruljlqdo��³(vvd\v�lq�&xedq´������� 34 based on the ajiaco metaphor (melting-pot/mestizo nation), by celebrating black’s “otherness” and cultural differences even within afro-cubans. in other words, a position that claims “not the essential integration of african elements into national culture, but the impossibility of such an occurrence” and which implicitly link culture and its varied manifestations with race, also emerges within this space of debate. rogelio martínez furé �0dwdq]dv����������wkh�ohdglqj�sursrqhqw� of this viewpoint, illustrated it in this way, alluding also to diversity versus homogeneity in manner of speech (extract): a mulatto cuban from baracoa, the descendant of haitian émigrés in a coffee-growing area, is not the same as a black cuban descendant of arará from the province of matanzas, a sugar-growing area, or a fair-skinned cuban from pinar del rio, a tobacco-growing area, the descendant of canary islanders. they are all cuban, but there are differences in food, speech, psychology, religious beliefs, and phenotypes. i believe it is important to accept plurality and free ourselves from the monomania, according to which we are all the same. these works of fiction also enter in dialogue with other “caribbean-centric” texts, whether intertextually, by referring to foundational oeuvres that vindicated 35 36 37 34 35 afro-cuban culture and caribbeaness. if these texts vindicate in many ways their “caribbeaness” and, by extension, what benítez rojo would qualify of “la afirmación de su propia otredad, su asimetría periférica con respecto a occidente,” nonetheless the specter of haiti persists as the uncanny neighbour that stirs up anxieties about this place where we don’t want to go back to or become. this is particularly relevant in apuntes de josué �����e\�3puh]�dqg�/d�fdwhgudo�gh�orv� negros by gala, in which the re-emerging tropes of radical alterity, “haiti” and “oriente,” are also bound up with the linguistic factor. thus, to make sense of all that precedes i have summarized the significance of this narrative strategy of integrating black speech in three instances: 1) as a signifier of socioeconomic, cultural, moral decay; 2) as a marker of group identity, codes of conducts in poor and marginal neighbourhoods, and cubanness; 3) as a pretext/way to revisit the nation’s history (colonial transaction and the society it fostered, migrations, national symbols, archetypes and stereotypes). 36 37 (january 20, 2022 / 08:53:11) 122815-1b_caribbeanquilt_vol6_rev.pdf .104 105 marcial gala. la catedral de los negros 2ª ed.. (la habana, cuba: editorial letras cubanas, 2015), 17. cited in frígoli, leandro. “la catedral de los negros: una mirada sobre la obra del poeta, narrador y ensayista, marcial gala. ” marcha. marcha.org.ar. 14 de junio de 2017. www.marcha.org.ar/la-catedral-de-los-negros/ jorge a. hernández,. hablar entre cubanos. (santa clara, cuba: editorial capiro, 2013), 103. jorge mañach. indagación del choteo (1928). tercera edición revisada. (la habana: editorial libro cubano, 1955), 60. 38 first, and as presented in my analysis of gutiérrez’s el rey de la habana, the linguistic characterization of the black subject is used mostly as a signifier of socio-economic, cultural and moral decay by which the protagonist’s speech acts mirrors the ruinous city of havana, which in turn stands as an allegory of a crumbling social project. in addition to the use of narrative strategies reminiscent of colonial literature, namely the example of the “negra tomasa”, which i have argued served to emphasize the island’s historical involution, the incursion of lexicon derived from afro-cuban popular religiosity also adds another layer of “otherness”, by relegating spatially the black protagonist to africa rather than cuba, a narrative strategy also reminiscent of colonial literature. in “virgen en la pradera” by encinosa fú, apart from restaging an “african space” there is a commentary on the degradation of education, culture and morality in this microcosm of cuban society; the animalization and hyper-virility of the black subject, the incursion of a disabled character when touching upon the children’s depravity, referred to as “the tribe”, and the linguistic codes/manner of speech that emphasizes this barrio’s marginal status. in gala’s la catedral, the idea of the ruinous city of havana is displaced to the fictitious mostly black and marginal neighbourhood of punta gotica, cienfuegos, and by which the most stigmatized linguistic traits and swearing are ascribed to the mothers of certain characters, all part-time prostitutes (as was the case of 39 40 41 rey’s mother), giving way to their son’s comments such as barbarito’s “my mother spoke that way”. relative to the second instance of this narrative strategy, given that both “virgen en la pradera” and la catedral de los negros are set in poor and marginal neighbourhoods, the informal register is stressed, namely with the many incursions of the colloquial and street talk/lexicon proper to marginal sectors, including those derived from afro-cuban popular religiosity, integrally part of the cultural setting. however, not only manner of speech serves as a marker of group identity and codes of conduct proper to these spaces, but also of cultural identity and cubanness. what gala termed “ese especial modo que tenemos los cubanos de hablar,” (“this special way we cubans speak”), includes the use by the people of particular narrative strategies. set in the special period, gala’s novel also includes expressions and the lexicon that emerged at that time. according to jorge hernández, these years of crisis gave way to an “abundante repertorio de frases y vocablos, marcados en su mayoría, por la interpretación irónica, paródica o poética,” a repertoire not yet collated, but nonetheless, dispersed in chronicles, articles and works of authors. one of these “literary strategies” used by cubans in reaction to their daily hardships and state censorship, demonstrating both creativity and resilience, has been to engage in a great deal of ‘metaphorizing’. consequently, to allude to the mothers’ dealings in prostitution, they are said to be “en la lucha,” (instead of 38 39 40 (january 20, 2022 / 08:53:11) 122815-1b_caribbeanquilt_vol6_rev.pdf .105 106 the balsero crisis refers to the massive migrations of cubans on rafts of fortune during the summer of 1994, at the height of the special period of the 1990s. however, this type of migration had already started since 1991. according to ackerman, already between 1991 and 1994, “a total of 45,575 cuban balseros (rafters) were rescued by the u.s. coast guard. of those, 16,778 entered the united states immediately. the remainder were sent to "safe haven" camps located at u.s. military bases in guantánamo, cuba, or panama” (169). in holly ackerman. “the balsero phenomenon, 1991–1994.” cuban studies (1996): 169-200. sklodowska also discusses the haitian’s already “linguistic otherness” for his “uso preferido del créole” and for being associated with the french heritage of this part of the island, at a time when cuba’s republic of letters voice their “preocupación por el «afrancesamiento» de la lengua española”. worthy of note is to what extent white creole anxieties towards racial mixing are transposed at the linguistic level when considering this concern for maintaining the purity of the 6sdqlvk�odqjxdjh��iuhh�ri�iruhljq�frqwdplqdqwv��)uhqfk�dqg�&uproh���,q�(o]elhwd�6norgrzvnd��(vshfwurv�\�hvshmlvprvௗ��+dlwt� en el imaginario cubano. (madrid: iberoamericana, 2009), 68; 69 note 6. la catedral de los negros, 169. 42 “prostituirse”). gala also exploits culinary metaphors, which go back to jorge mañach’s seminal text indagación del choteo who “serves us” an example of this cuban tendency to equate bodies to meat, with the serial killer el gringo’s mastering of this type of choteo, and which variations go beyond the realm of metaphor, which in turn leads us to the objectification of the white body. interestingly, this particular use of language or wordplay (choteo) also becomes a way to subvert the traditional power dynamics between blacks and whites. in a third instance, manner of speech or the “language issue” serves to anchor other discussions or becomes a pretext to revisit cuba’s particular history, afro-caribbean legacy, and social dynamics, which in turn inform current conflicts that the economic crisis of the 1990s permitted to unleash. the use of this narrative strategy is particularly emphasized in apuntes de josué 1994 by nelton pérez, in which the nation and the re-emergence of specific social conflicts during the special period are also reflected upon and worked out at sea in the balsas/rafts in the context of the balsero crisis. in fact, it is in his vignettes or apuntes “25” and “32” in which the cuban “holy trinity” of nation, identity and race figure, that perez’s linguistic experimentations are more clearly racialized, racial stereotypes are voiced out, and in which the specter of the 43 haitian as cuba’s radical other invites itself. for example, the incursion of yorqi dubois lescay, a black character which surname clearly denotes his haitian ancestry, not only permits to allude to cuba’s neo-colonial context by which haitian and jamaican braceros migrated to work on us owned sugar plants at the beginning of the twentieth century, but discuss the “language issue,” by which the protagonist’s manner of speech with supposedly “french creole influences” confers him radical alterity. nonetheless, it is important to specify that if black characters are singled out by their speech acts in these two vignettes by a mainly “white” crew, the incursion of the “haitian” character is also met with suspicion by it’s black cuban counterpart, which adds layers and nuances when touching upon discrimination and otherness in the caribbean region. in la catedral de los negros, el gringo mistakenly takes a certain “pierre giscard” for an haitian, and this, mostly for his “linguistic” features, namely, for his voice “cargada de erres” (“full of r’s”) that he “did not like from the very beginning” (“que no me gustó desde el principio”). this last example underlines once more the haitian’s “radical alterity” in the cuban imaginary at large. 41 42 44 43 44 (january 20, 2022 / 08:53:11) 122815-1b_caribbeanquilt_vol6_rev.pdf .106 107 this additional insight draws on long enduring discourses by which blacks in cuba have historically been associated with “crumbling” political regimes. see alejandro de la fuente. “recreating racism: race and discrimination in cuba’s ‘special period.’” socialism and democracy 15, no. 1 (2001): 65–91, p. 90.. 45 furthermore, these linguistic portrayals of black characters in narrative are conditioned by three main factors. first, by their temporal proximity with the revolution’s cosmology and its social modernizing and homogenizing effect when writing on the special period. second, the shift brought by the discourse of “multi-cubanidad” – i.e. “we are all cuban, but we are not the same” – that opened narrative to multiple voices and regional linguistic differences. finally, the particular literary traditions of the caribbean and central region of the island, more open to linguistic experimentations and reflections on the topics of race relations within the caribbean region. a tale about continuity and subversion… given that the backdrop of these three texts is cuba’s special period, or have been written partly during that time (pérez’s apuntes de josué 1994), they do retake, to varying degrees, the more sociological angle of documenting the plight of blacks who had been hardest hit by the rise of inequalities, and the narrative strategies established in fiction of the 1990s to add “authenticity”, including at the linguistic level, and thus, the integration of the notorious havana slang. corollary to the realization that if “we are all cubans, we are not all equal,” is the re-emergence of integrating discriminating linguistic features pointing to race. in addition, the sense of “end of the worldness” expressed by certain authors, namely pedro juan gutiérrez, also accounts for the trope of the ruin and by which the black body becomes a metaphor for a crumbling social project. in “virgen en la pradera”, encinosa fú picks up many of the topics, archetypes and stylistic codes proper to pedro juan gutiérrez’s realismo sucio. however, if language still serves as a signifier of socioeconomic, cultural, moral decay, there is a shift in perspective insofar as the author-narrator leaves a certain space for other voices to emerge and point to the perils that lie within this black community for those who do not conform to its particular codes of conduct. in other terms, whites are “other” and acting “like whites”/”wearing white masks” is stigmatized in these mainly afro-cuban spaces. gala pushes this even farther in la catedral de los negros by eliminating completely the omniscient narrator and by giving voice to those who live in the margins of the city. given this change of perspective, the rich whites from the upscale punta gorda (cienfuegos) and the white guajiros from neighbouring provinces become the “other”. as mentioned previously, language does not serve explicitly to stigmatise the black subject in these settings, but rather to point to the people’s resilience and the degree in which language use can serve to subvert traditional power dynamics, if we refer, for example, to el gringo’s special brand of “metaphorizing”. ultimately, what we may perceive as an “evolution” in the way language is used to reflect cuba’s afro-caribbean legacy, that is, from a narrative strategy serving to construct otherness, to one conveying cuba’s multicultural/regional and socioeconomic realities, neither is it a process devoid of tensions, nor is it generalized in more recent works of fiction. my main 45 (january 20, 2022 / 08:53:11) 122815-1b_caribbeanquilt_vol6_rev.pdf .107 108 objective in this part of my current research was to dismantle this “last frontier” in which the topics of race, language and the island’s caribbeaness are intertwined and discussed, and this, taking into account these “spaces” and literary traditions that permit such linguistic experimentations/reflections. 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