The islands of Antigua and Barbuda form a small nation whose strategic importance is greater than its size. Located at the outer curve of the Leeward Islands, Antigua and Barbuda are well placed for strategic defense of the Caribbean against outside forces. The natural harbors along Antigua's indented coast also offer havens for naval forces.
By the eighteenth century B.C., Antigua and Barbuda had been settled by their first inhabitants, the Ciboney (or Guanahuatebey) Indians. They were followed by the Arawaks, a peaceful Indian tribe that migrated from northern South America through the Caribbean islands and arrived on Antigua around A.D. 35. They began slashand -burn cultivation of the island and introduced such crops as corn, sweet potatoes, beans, pineapples, indigo, and cotton. The Arawaks were uprooted by the Carib Indians around A.D. 1200; however, the Caribs did not settle on Antigua but used it as a base for gathering provisions (see The Pre-European Population, ch. 1).
In 1493, on his second voyage, Christopher Columbus sighted the island of Antigua and named it after Santa Maria de la Antigua. Early settlement, however, was discouraged by insufficient water on the island and by Carib raids. Europeans did not establish settlements on Antigua until the English claimed the island in 1632. Antigua fell into French hands in 1666 but was returned to the English the following year under the Treaty of Breda. Antigua remained under British control from 1667 until independence was granted in 1981.
From the start, Antigua was used as a colony for producing agricultural exports. The first of these were tobacco, indigo, and ginger. The island was dramatically transformed in 1674 with the establishment by Sir Christopher Codrington of the first sugar plantation. Only four years later, half of Antigua's population consisted of black slaves imported from the west coast of Africa to work on the sugar plantations. Antigua became one of the most profitable of Britain's colonies in the Caribbean (see The Sugar Revolutions and Slavery, ch. 1).
In 1685 the Codrington family leased the island of Barbuda from the English crown for the nominal price of "one fat pig per year if asked." The Codringtons used Barbuda as a source of supplies--such as timber, fish, livestock, and slaves--for their sugar plantations and other real estate on Antigua. This lease continued in the Codrington family until 1870. Barbuda legally became part of Antigua in 1860.
Although the British Parliament enacted legislation in 1834 abolishing slavery throughout the empire, it mandated that former slaves remain on their plantations for six years (see The PostEmancipation Societies, ch. 1). Choosing not to wait until 1840, the government on Antigua freed its slaves in August 1834. This was done more for economic than for humanitarian reasons, as the plantation owners realized that it cost less to pay emancipated laborers low wages than to provide slaves with food, shelter, and other essentials. The plantation owners continued to exploit their workers in this way into the twentieth century. The workers perceived little opportunity to change the situation, and sugar's dominance precluded other opportunities for employment on the island.
The Antigua sugar industry was severely jolted in the 1930s, as the dramatic decline in the price of sugar that resulted from the Great Depression coincided with a severe drought that badly damaged the island's sugar crop. Social conditions on Antigua, already bad, became even worse, and the lower and working classes began to protest to the point that law and order were threatened. The Moyne Commission was established in 1938 to investigate the causes of the social unrest in Antigua and elsewhere in the Caribbean (see Labor Organizations, ch. 1). In 1940, in response to the situation, the president of the British Trades Union Congress recommended that the workers on Antigua form a trade union. Two weeks later, the Antigua Trades and Labour Union (ATLU) was created. The union soon began to win a series of victories in the struggle for workers' rights.
Despite these victories, the ATLU recognized the need to participate in the political life of the island, as the plantation owners still held all political power. Thus, in 1946, the union established a political arm, the Antigua Labour Party (ALP), and ran five parliamentary candidates who met the qualification of being property owners. All were elected; in addition, one of the five, Vere Cornwall Bird, Sr., was selected to serve on the government's Executive Council. Bird and the ATLU continued to push for constitutional reforms that would give the lower and working classes more rights. Largely because of these efforts, Antigua had full adult suffrage by 1951, unrestricted by minimum income or literacy requirements. With each general election, the union and the ALP put forth more candidates and won more seats in the Antiguan Parliament. In 1961 Bird was appointed to fill the newly created position of chief minister. Five years later, he led a delegation to London to consider the issue of Antiguan independence. Following a constitutional conference, Antigua became an associated state (see Glossary) in February 1967, with Barbuda and the tiny island of Redonda as dependencies. Antigua was internally independent, but its foreign affairs and defense still were controlled by Britain.
During the period of associated statehood (1967-81), Antigua saw the rise of a second labor union and its affiliated political party and the beginnings of a secessionist movement in Barbuda, as well as the replacement of sugar by tourism as the dominant force in the economy. In 1978 Deputy Prime Minister Lester Bird (younger son of Vere Cornwall Bird, Sr.) and other like-minded political leaders called for full independence. Following their return to office in the 1980 general election, which was regarded as a popular mandate on independence, another constitutional conference was held in London in December 1980. An obstacle to achieving independence was the issue of Barbudan secession; this barrier was overcome when a compromise was reached that made Barbuda relatively autonomous internally. Complete independence was granted to the new nation of Antigua and Barbuda in 1981.
Tuesday, December 18, 2007
Geography
Antigua and Barbuda lies in the eastern arc of the Leeward Islands of the Lesser Antilles, separating the Atlantic Ocean from the Caribbean Sea. Antigua is 650 kilometers southeast of Puerto Rico. Barbuda lies forty-eight kilometers due north of Antigua, and the uninhabited island of Redonda is fifty-six kilometers southwest of Antigua. The largest island, Antigua, is 21 kilometers across and 281 square kilometers in area, or about two-thirds the size of New York City. Barbuda covers 161 square kilometers, while Redonda encompasses a mere 2.6 square kilometers. The capital of Antigua and Barbuda is St. John's, located at St. John's Harbour on the northwest coast of Antigua. The principal city of Barbuda is Codrington, located on Codrington Lagoon.
Antigua and Barbuda both are generally low-lying islands whose terrain has been influenced more by limestone formations than volcanic activity. The highest point on Antigua, however, is Boggy Peak, the remnant of a volcanic crater rising 399 meters. This mountain is located amid a bulge of hills of volcanic origin in the southwestern part of the island. The limestone formations in the northeast are separated from the southwestern volcanic area by a central plain of clay formations. Barbuda's highest elevation is 44.5 meters, part of the highland plateau east of Codrington. The shorelines of both islands are greatly indented, with beaches, lagoons, and natural harbors. The islands are rimmed by reefs and shoals. There are few streams, as rainfall is slight. Both islands lack adequate amounts of fresh groundwater.
The islands' tropical climate is moderated by fairly constant northeast tradewinds, with velocities ranging between thirty and forty-eight kilometers per hour. There is little precipitation, however, because of the islands' low elevations. Rainfall averages ninety-nine centimeters per year, but the amount varies widely from season to season. In general, the wettest period is September through November. The islands generally experience low humidity and recurrent droughts. Hurricanes strike on an average of once a year. Temperatures average 27°C, with a range from 23°C in the winter to 30°C in the summer and fall; the coolest period is December through February.
Antigua and Barbuda both are generally low-lying islands whose terrain has been influenced more by limestone formations than volcanic activity. The highest point on Antigua, however, is Boggy Peak, the remnant of a volcanic crater rising 399 meters. This mountain is located amid a bulge of hills of volcanic origin in the southwestern part of the island. The limestone formations in the northeast are separated from the southwestern volcanic area by a central plain of clay formations. Barbuda's highest elevation is 44.5 meters, part of the highland plateau east of Codrington. The shorelines of both islands are greatly indented, with beaches, lagoons, and natural harbors. The islands are rimmed by reefs and shoals. There are few streams, as rainfall is slight. Both islands lack adequate amounts of fresh groundwater.
The islands' tropical climate is moderated by fairly constant northeast tradewinds, with velocities ranging between thirty and forty-eight kilometers per hour. There is little precipitation, however, because of the islands' low elevations. Rainfall averages ninety-nine centimeters per year, but the amount varies widely from season to season. In general, the wettest period is September through November. The islands generally experience low humidity and recurrent droughts. Hurricanes strike on an average of once a year. Temperatures average 27°C, with a range from 23°C in the winter to 30°C in the summer and fall; the coolest period is December through February.
Population
In mid-1985 the population of Antigua and Barbuda was about 80,000, of which 78,500 lived on Antigua and 1,500 on Barbuda. The annual growth rate was 1.3 percent, based on a crude birth rate of 15 births per 1,000 inhabitants and a crude death rate of 5 deaths per 1,000. Infant mortality was twice that for the population as a whole, at 10 deaths per 1,000 live births. In 1981 about 34 percent of Antigua's population was classified as urban. This segment was almost completely concentrated in the capital, St. John's. Rural settlements tended to be compact villages of varying sizes, concentrated along major or secondary roadways. Nearly all of the population of Barbuda lived in the town of Codrington; the island of Redonda was uninhabited.
The people of Antigua and Barbuda were mostly black, descendants of African slaves. But the population also included some whites, descendants of British, Spanish, French, or Dutch colonists or of Portuguese, Lebanese, or Syrian immigrants. An exchange of residents had occurred between Antigua and Barbuda on the one hand and Europe and North America on the other hand as job seekers emigrated from, and retirees immigrated to, the Caribbean islands.
About 75 percent of the population belonged to the Anglican Church in the mid-1980s. The Anglican Church was acknowledged as the official church, but church and state were legally separated. The remaining 25 percent of the population included members of different Protestant denominations--Methodist, Presbyterian, and fundamentalist--as well as Roman Catholics and Rastafarians.
In the colonial era, Antiguan society was stratified on the basis of race. Europeans and those of European descent held the respected positions in society, They were the plantation owners and the political elites. On the other end of the spectrum were the black slaves or those of African ancestry, who lacked both political leverage and economic independence. The middle class was composed of mulattoes, who participated in commerce as merchants yet had little political clout. The abolition of slavery did little to change the class structure; nevertheless, the trade union movement and the associated transfer of political and economic power into workers' hands did much to weaken class barriers. In the late 1980s, society was divided along flexible class lines based on economic standing rather than the rigid racial criteria of the previous century.
The upper class in the late 1980s consisted mostly of foreigners but also included local investors or businessmen from the private sector. The higher positions in the party system, the civil service, the state-run enterprises, and the private sector professions were filled by the upper middle class, while the lower middle class consisted of other professionals, party functionaries, technicians, and skilled laborers. The lower class encompassed the rest of society.
The people of Antigua and Barbuda were mostly black, descendants of African slaves. But the population also included some whites, descendants of British, Spanish, French, or Dutch colonists or of Portuguese, Lebanese, or Syrian immigrants. An exchange of residents had occurred between Antigua and Barbuda on the one hand and Europe and North America on the other hand as job seekers emigrated from, and retirees immigrated to, the Caribbean islands.
About 75 percent of the population belonged to the Anglican Church in the mid-1980s. The Anglican Church was acknowledged as the official church, but church and state were legally separated. The remaining 25 percent of the population included members of different Protestant denominations--Methodist, Presbyterian, and fundamentalist--as well as Roman Catholics and Rastafarians.
In the colonial era, Antiguan society was stratified on the basis of race. Europeans and those of European descent held the respected positions in society, They were the plantation owners and the political elites. On the other end of the spectrum were the black slaves or those of African ancestry, who lacked both political leverage and economic independence. The middle class was composed of mulattoes, who participated in commerce as merchants yet had little political clout. The abolition of slavery did little to change the class structure; nevertheless, the trade union movement and the associated transfer of political and economic power into workers' hands did much to weaken class barriers. In the late 1980s, society was divided along flexible class lines based on economic standing rather than the rigid racial criteria of the previous century.
The upper class in the late 1980s consisted mostly of foreigners but also included local investors or businessmen from the private sector. The higher positions in the party system, the civil service, the state-run enterprises, and the private sector professions were filled by the upper middle class, while the lower middle class consisted of other professionals, party functionaries, technicians, and skilled laborers. The lower class encompassed the rest of society.
Education
The education system in Antigua and Barbuda followed the British pattern and included public and private schools. Preprimary school was available for children from ages three to six. Primary education, compulsory for all children up to age twelve, was provided for five or six years. Secondary education, lasting four or five years, was offered upon the successful completion of a qualifying examination; private schools had their own qualifying examinations, while public schools used a standard test.
Postsecondary education was offered at the Antigua State College and at the local branch campus of the University of the West Indies (UWI). The Antigua State College offered a two-year program in five departments: teacher training, the advanced level in general education, commercial, engineering, and hotel and catering. Upon completion of the program, students took exams to earn certificates from external institutions, such as the UWI, Cambridge University, and the Royal Arts Society of London. Students attending the local branch campus of the UWI completed one year of studies and then continued their studies at another campus in Jamaica, Trinidad, or Barbados.
The 90-percent literacy rate indicated that the education system was reasonably successful in imparting basic skills. Despite this achievement, substantial problems remained in the late 1980s. Educational supplies and facilities were inadequate; in addition, there existed a high percentage of untrained teachers at all levels. These instructional deficiencies contributed to a national shortage of skilled labor.
In the 1980-81 school year, primary-school enrollment was 10,211 students, 78 percent of whom were in public schools. Of a total of 436 primary-school teachers, 82 percent were in the public system. Secondary schools had a total of 5,687 students and 321 teachers; 66 percent of the students and 71 percent of the teachers were in the public system. The state college consisted of 329 students; although most were from Antigua and Barbuda, some students also came from Anguilla, the Turks and Caicos Islands, and Montserrat. The two special education schools had a combined enrollment of thirty-seven students, instructed by thirteen teachers.
Postsecondary education was offered at the Antigua State College and at the local branch campus of the University of the West Indies (UWI). The Antigua State College offered a two-year program in five departments: teacher training, the advanced level in general education, commercial, engineering, and hotel and catering. Upon completion of the program, students took exams to earn certificates from external institutions, such as the UWI, Cambridge University, and the Royal Arts Society of London. Students attending the local branch campus of the UWI completed one year of studies and then continued their studies at another campus in Jamaica, Trinidad, or Barbados.
The 90-percent literacy rate indicated that the education system was reasonably successful in imparting basic skills. Despite this achievement, substantial problems remained in the late 1980s. Educational supplies and facilities were inadequate; in addition, there existed a high percentage of untrained teachers at all levels. These instructional deficiencies contributed to a national shortage of skilled labor.
In the 1980-81 school year, primary-school enrollment was 10,211 students, 78 percent of whom were in public schools. Of a total of 436 primary-school teachers, 82 percent were in the public system. Secondary schools had a total of 5,687 students and 321 teachers; 66 percent of the students and 71 percent of the teachers were in the public system. The state college consisted of 329 students; although most were from Antigua and Barbuda, some students also came from Anguilla, the Turks and Caicos Islands, and Montserrat. The two special education schools had a combined enrollment of thirty-seven students, instructed by thirteen teachers.
Health and Welfare
In the late 1980s, Antigua and Barbuda had a fairly healthy population, primarily as a result of the relatively high level of protein in the diet. Life expectancy at birth was seventy-two years. Primary causes of sickness and death, especially among children, were gastroenteritis and dysentery, both of which are caused by poor sanitary conditions and therefore are avoidable. Many parts of the islands, especially rural areas, did not have sufficient amounts of safe drinking water or adequate wastedisposal facilities. Other causes of death were heart disease, cerebrovascular disease, cancer, and influenza or pneumonia. Pertussis, yaws, and leprosy also presented health problems. Moreover, the kind of mosquito that spreads dengue and yellow fever inhabited Antigua and Barbuda. There were some cases of child malnutrition and failure to immunize children against common diseases. Diabetes and high blood pressure were common in adults. As of 1987, Antigua and Barbuda had two reported cases of acquired immune deficiency syndrome.
The main health facility, the Holberton Hospital, had a staff of full-time doctors and offered specialist services in surgery, opthamology, radiology, and psychiatry. A smaller hospital, with 230 beds, was located on Barbuda. Antigua also had a 160-bed mental hospital and a 40-bed leprosy hospital. In 1982 there were four health centers, supervised by district health nurses, and twentyfive multipurpose satellite health clinics. There were 30 doctors and 130 nurses and midwives; most nurses had completed a three-year training program at the Holberton Hospital. The government played an active role in providing for the social welfare of the nation's citizens. Seen as an "employer of last resort," the government occasionally purchased failing enterprises in an effort to prevent increased unemployment. The government also provided social security, medical benefits, and subsidized health care. Retired civil servants received pensions, and compensation was paid to dismissed public employees.
The main health facility, the Holberton Hospital, had a staff of full-time doctors and offered specialist services in surgery, opthamology, radiology, and psychiatry. A smaller hospital, with 230 beds, was located on Barbuda. Antigua also had a 160-bed mental hospital and a 40-bed leprosy hospital. In 1982 there were four health centers, supervised by district health nurses, and twentyfive multipurpose satellite health clinics. There were 30 doctors and 130 nurses and midwives; most nurses had completed a three-year training program at the Holberton Hospital. The government played an active role in providing for the social welfare of the nation's citizens. Seen as an "employer of last resort," the government occasionally purchased failing enterprises in an effort to prevent increased unemployment. The government also provided social security, medical benefits, and subsidized health care. Retired civil servants received pensions, and compensation was paid to dismissed public employees.
Economy
The economy underwent a substantial transformation in the twentieth century as tourism replaced sugar as the principal earner of foreign exchange and the primary source of employment. Like the previously dominant sugar industry, tourism was controlled primarily by foreign capital. This control was in part the result of insufficient domestic capital, the local upper class having made more of its investments in commerce than in entrepreneurship. In an attempt to fill the local void, the government established state enterprises. Their specific purpose was to develop areas where foreigners were hesitant to invest, such as infrastructure or the faltering sugar industry, or to create domestic competition with foreign-owned enterprises, such as those in the tourist industry. The other major sectors of the economy, especially agriculture, were not strong enough to support the tourist industry; as a consequence, many items had to be imported.
Macroeconomic Overview
Economic growth in the early 1980s slowed after the relatively rapid expansion of the 1970s. This retardation was the result of several factors: recession in the industrial countries, trade problems within the Caribbean Community and Common Market (Caricom- -see Appendix C), and a severe drought that reduced agricultural output in 1984. Increased tourism brought a slight recovery in 1985, as the gross domestic product (GDP--see Glossary) reached US$180.3 million, or US$2,273 per capita. In 1986 GDP fell again, however, to US$109 million, or US$1,346 per capita. This represented a decline of 16 percent from the 1982 GDP of US$129.5 million and a 20-percent drop from the 1982 per capita GDP of US$1,682.
Antigua and Barbuda faced a debt situation in the mid-1980s; this was partly the result of the recession of the early 1980s, which did not support the national outlays on infrastructure and other items. In 1983 the current account deficit of the central government reached 3.8 percent of GDP, with a gross external debt of 16.3 percent of GDP. By the end of 1984, debt had reached close to US$100 million. Servicing the debt cost more than US$7.4 million per year, which represented 16 percent of government revenues. Import expenses were expected to fall in the late 1980s, and tourism revenues were expected to increase, thereby helping to narrow the balance of payments gap. The central government was reducing public expenditures and state investment because of the fiscal difficulties created by the debt problem.
The Barbudan economy differed slightly from that of Antigua proper in the late 1980s because tourism was relatively less important to the smaller island's economy. Barbuda's largest source of income was remittances from relatives working in the United States or Britain. The second largest source was a subsidy from the Antiguan government, budgeted and distributed by the warden of Barbuda, the person selected to administer Barbudan economic matters. Economic activity and employment were concentrated in fishing, followed by agriculture (especially the raising of livestock) and tourism. Other sources of income included charcoal manufacturing and salt mining. Development of peanut farming and the exploitation of the island's coconut trees offered potential.
The labor force in Antigua and Barbuda consisted of 31,500 workers in 1984. In the mid-1980s, these workers were divided fairly equally among three trade unions: the ATLU, the Antigua Workers Union (AWU), and the Antigua Public Service Association. The first two were affiliated with the two main political parties, the ALP and the Progressive Labour Movement (PLM), respectively. Workers were free to choose the union to which they wanted to belong. Hence, each industry employed members of two or three labor unions. The labor union represented by the simple majority (50 percent plus one) of workers was designated to represent all of the workers in that industry during contract negotiations. Wage contracts normally were valid for three years.
Foreign nationals were allowed work permits only if there were no local applicants qualified for a specific position. Work permits generally were granted, however, for those who were involved either directly or via their companies in an investment project considered to be important to the country. Citizens of the United States, Canada, and Britain did not need visas.
Communications on Antigua were modern and adequately served all parts of the island. On Barbuda, however, communications consisted of only a few telephones, mostly in the village of Codrington. The telephone system was well maintained, fully automatic, and had over 6,700 telephones. Radio-relay links from Antigua to Saba and Guadeloupe, a submarine cable, and a ground satellite station all provided excellent international service to both islands. Antigua had three AM radio stations broadcasting on medium wave: the government-owned Antigua Broadcasting Service on 620 kilohertz, a commercial station on 1100 kilohertz, and the religious Caribbean Radio Lighthouse on 1165 kilohertz. Two shortwave stations reached points throughout the Western Hemisphere from transmitters on the island; the British Broadcasting Corporation and Deutsche Welle of the Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany) shared one transmitter, and the other relayed programs from the Voice of America. St. John's also had two small FM transmitters on 99.0 and 90.0 megahertz and television service on Channel 10. The Workers' Voice and the Outlet were the two main local newspapers. The Herald was a new third newspaper.
The transportation system was well developed on Antigua but practically nonexistent on Barbuda. About 240 kilometers of paved or gravel roads connected all areas of Antigua. V.C. Bird International Airport, east of St. John's, had a paved runway and handled international flights. A small, unpaved strip at the southern tip of Barbuda could accommodate only small aircraft. St. John's was the main port for the islands, but smaller vessels could also dock at English Harbour on the south side of Antigua. More than seventy-five kilometers of narrow-gauge railroad track extended south and east from St. John's. These lines, however, were used almost exclusively to transport sugarcane. Neither island had significant inland waterways.
Role of Government
Although most economic activity was privately controlled and operated, state enterprises represented an important element in the economy in the late 1980s. Beginning with the electric power industry, the public sector expanded into agriculture, manufacturing, and tourism, as well as infrastructural services such as seaports, airports, roads, water supply, energy, and telecommunications. Productive enterprises included a cotton ginnery, an edible-oil plant, two large hotels, a commercial bank, an insurance company, the Antigua and Barbuda Development Bank, and most of the prime agricultural land.
The government's rationale for involvement in infrastructure and public utilities was that it contributed to firmer bases for further development. The purchase of failing enterprises, such as the sugar factory and the oil refinery, limited the anticipated increase in unemployment should the enterprises actually close. The government entered the tourist sector primarily to influence the employment practices of private investors. By keeping the stateowned resort open year round, the government was able to persuade the privately owned resorts to stay open as well, which alleviated unemployment in what had been the slow season. In addition, operation of the resort allowed the country to keep some of the tourist industry profits. In the manufacturing sector, the government constructed factory shells to be rented at low cost in order to attract foreign investment.
Despite achievements in some areas, such as tourism, the government's entrepreneurial efforts were relatively ineffective. Lacking an adequately trained managerial work force, the government often contracted with foreign nationals to run the state enterprises. In many cases, mismanagement grew out of the political patronage system used to fill senior public sector positions. Because the government also tended to act as the employer of last resort, it effectively gave a higher priority to reducing unemployment than to economically efficient use of labor. Despite its employment priority, the government was forced to shut down some operations, including the sugar factory and the oil refinery just mentioned, because they were serious financial liabilities.
Trade and Finance
Although Antigua and Barbuda was dependent on trade for its survival, it maintained large annual trade deficits throughout the 1980s. Manufactured goods, not including processed foods and beverages, comprised 59 percent of all exports in 1981. Food, beverages, and tobacco represented 20 percent, and other items accounted for the remaining 21 percent. Seventy percent of exports were destined for other Caricom countries, especially Trinidad and Tobago and Jamaica; the United States received 26 percent of Antiguan and Barbudan exports. Imports mainly came from the United States and included food, beverages, and tobacco (33 percent in 1981) and manufactured goods (25 percent). Other items accounted for 43 percent. Other major trading partners were Britain and Canada. In 1986 exports were estimated to equal US$51.8 million, whereas imports were US$74.1 million, for a trade deficit of US$22.3 million. This gap, although still large, was reduced from the 1982 level, when the trade deficit was US$90 million.
Like the economy in general, the finance industry in the 1980s was controlled largely by foreigners. Predominant were a small number of British and Canadian banks and insurance companies. Loans, a source of commercial and consumer credit, constituted the main link between the financial elements and the rest of the economy. The private financial institutions favored the tourist and construction industries to the detriment of other areas of the economy. Seeing this as unsatisfactory, the government established its own banks and insurance companies, including the Antigua and Barbuda Development Bank. Public institutions were a relatively insignificant part of the financial sector, however.
Antigua and Barbuda, as a member of the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS--see Glossary), was a member of the Eastern Caribbean Central Bank. As such, it used the Eastern Caribbean dollar, which was created in July 1976 and pegged to the United States dollar at the rate of EC$2.70 equals US$1.00.
Macroeconomic Overview
Economic growth in the early 1980s slowed after the relatively rapid expansion of the 1970s. This retardation was the result of several factors: recession in the industrial countries, trade problems within the Caribbean Community and Common Market (Caricom- -see Appendix C), and a severe drought that reduced agricultural output in 1984. Increased tourism brought a slight recovery in 1985, as the gross domestic product (GDP--see Glossary) reached US$180.3 million, or US$2,273 per capita. In 1986 GDP fell again, however, to US$109 million, or US$1,346 per capita. This represented a decline of 16 percent from the 1982 GDP of US$129.5 million and a 20-percent drop from the 1982 per capita GDP of US$1,682.
Antigua and Barbuda faced a debt situation in the mid-1980s; this was partly the result of the recession of the early 1980s, which did not support the national outlays on infrastructure and other items. In 1983 the current account deficit of the central government reached 3.8 percent of GDP, with a gross external debt of 16.3 percent of GDP. By the end of 1984, debt had reached close to US$100 million. Servicing the debt cost more than US$7.4 million per year, which represented 16 percent of government revenues. Import expenses were expected to fall in the late 1980s, and tourism revenues were expected to increase, thereby helping to narrow the balance of payments gap. The central government was reducing public expenditures and state investment because of the fiscal difficulties created by the debt problem.
The Barbudan economy differed slightly from that of Antigua proper in the late 1980s because tourism was relatively less important to the smaller island's economy. Barbuda's largest source of income was remittances from relatives working in the United States or Britain. The second largest source was a subsidy from the Antiguan government, budgeted and distributed by the warden of Barbuda, the person selected to administer Barbudan economic matters. Economic activity and employment were concentrated in fishing, followed by agriculture (especially the raising of livestock) and tourism. Other sources of income included charcoal manufacturing and salt mining. Development of peanut farming and the exploitation of the island's coconut trees offered potential.
The labor force in Antigua and Barbuda consisted of 31,500 workers in 1984. In the mid-1980s, these workers were divided fairly equally among three trade unions: the ATLU, the Antigua Workers Union (AWU), and the Antigua Public Service Association. The first two were affiliated with the two main political parties, the ALP and the Progressive Labour Movement (PLM), respectively. Workers were free to choose the union to which they wanted to belong. Hence, each industry employed members of two or three labor unions. The labor union represented by the simple majority (50 percent plus one) of workers was designated to represent all of the workers in that industry during contract negotiations. Wage contracts normally were valid for three years.
Foreign nationals were allowed work permits only if there were no local applicants qualified for a specific position. Work permits generally were granted, however, for those who were involved either directly or via their companies in an investment project considered to be important to the country. Citizens of the United States, Canada, and Britain did not need visas.
Communications on Antigua were modern and adequately served all parts of the island. On Barbuda, however, communications consisted of only a few telephones, mostly in the village of Codrington. The telephone system was well maintained, fully automatic, and had over 6,700 telephones. Radio-relay links from Antigua to Saba and Guadeloupe, a submarine cable, and a ground satellite station all provided excellent international service to both islands. Antigua had three AM radio stations broadcasting on medium wave: the government-owned Antigua Broadcasting Service on 620 kilohertz, a commercial station on 1100 kilohertz, and the religious Caribbean Radio Lighthouse on 1165 kilohertz. Two shortwave stations reached points throughout the Western Hemisphere from transmitters on the island; the British Broadcasting Corporation and Deutsche Welle of the Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany) shared one transmitter, and the other relayed programs from the Voice of America. St. John's also had two small FM transmitters on 99.0 and 90.0 megahertz and television service on Channel 10. The Workers' Voice and the Outlet were the two main local newspapers. The Herald was a new third newspaper.
The transportation system was well developed on Antigua but practically nonexistent on Barbuda. About 240 kilometers of paved or gravel roads connected all areas of Antigua. V.C. Bird International Airport, east of St. John's, had a paved runway and handled international flights. A small, unpaved strip at the southern tip of Barbuda could accommodate only small aircraft. St. John's was the main port for the islands, but smaller vessels could also dock at English Harbour on the south side of Antigua. More than seventy-five kilometers of narrow-gauge railroad track extended south and east from St. John's. These lines, however, were used almost exclusively to transport sugarcane. Neither island had significant inland waterways.
Role of Government
Although most economic activity was privately controlled and operated, state enterprises represented an important element in the economy in the late 1980s. Beginning with the electric power industry, the public sector expanded into agriculture, manufacturing, and tourism, as well as infrastructural services such as seaports, airports, roads, water supply, energy, and telecommunications. Productive enterprises included a cotton ginnery, an edible-oil plant, two large hotels, a commercial bank, an insurance company, the Antigua and Barbuda Development Bank, and most of the prime agricultural land.
The government's rationale for involvement in infrastructure and public utilities was that it contributed to firmer bases for further development. The purchase of failing enterprises, such as the sugar factory and the oil refinery, limited the anticipated increase in unemployment should the enterprises actually close. The government entered the tourist sector primarily to influence the employment practices of private investors. By keeping the stateowned resort open year round, the government was able to persuade the privately owned resorts to stay open as well, which alleviated unemployment in what had been the slow season. In addition, operation of the resort allowed the country to keep some of the tourist industry profits. In the manufacturing sector, the government constructed factory shells to be rented at low cost in order to attract foreign investment.
Despite achievements in some areas, such as tourism, the government's entrepreneurial efforts were relatively ineffective. Lacking an adequately trained managerial work force, the government often contracted with foreign nationals to run the state enterprises. In many cases, mismanagement grew out of the political patronage system used to fill senior public sector positions. Because the government also tended to act as the employer of last resort, it effectively gave a higher priority to reducing unemployment than to economically efficient use of labor. Despite its employment priority, the government was forced to shut down some operations, including the sugar factory and the oil refinery just mentioned, because they were serious financial liabilities.
Trade and Finance
Although Antigua and Barbuda was dependent on trade for its survival, it maintained large annual trade deficits throughout the 1980s. Manufactured goods, not including processed foods and beverages, comprised 59 percent of all exports in 1981. Food, beverages, and tobacco represented 20 percent, and other items accounted for the remaining 21 percent. Seventy percent of exports were destined for other Caricom countries, especially Trinidad and Tobago and Jamaica; the United States received 26 percent of Antiguan and Barbudan exports. Imports mainly came from the United States and included food, beverages, and tobacco (33 percent in 1981) and manufactured goods (25 percent). Other items accounted for 43 percent. Other major trading partners were Britain and Canada. In 1986 exports were estimated to equal US$51.8 million, whereas imports were US$74.1 million, for a trade deficit of US$22.3 million. This gap, although still large, was reduced from the 1982 level, when the trade deficit was US$90 million.
Like the economy in general, the finance industry in the 1980s was controlled largely by foreigners. Predominant were a small number of British and Canadian banks and insurance companies. Loans, a source of commercial and consumer credit, constituted the main link between the financial elements and the rest of the economy. The private financial institutions favored the tourist and construction industries to the detriment of other areas of the economy. Seeing this as unsatisfactory, the government established its own banks and insurance companies, including the Antigua and Barbuda Development Bank. Public institutions were a relatively insignificant part of the financial sector, however.
Antigua and Barbuda, as a member of the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS--see Glossary), was a member of the Eastern Caribbean Central Bank. As such, it used the Eastern Caribbean dollar, which was created in July 1976 and pegged to the United States dollar at the rate of EC$2.70 equals US$1.00.
Government and Politics
The Governmental System
Antigua and Barbuda is a constitutional monarchy with a British-style parliamentary system of government. The reigning British monarch is represented in Antigua by an appointed governor general as the head of state. The government has three branches: legislative, executive, and judicial.
The bicameral Parliament consists of the seventeen-member House of Representatives, responsible for introducing legislation, and the seventeen-member Senate, which reviews and gives assent to proposed legislation. Representatives are elected by popular vote in general elections that are constitutionally mandated every five years but may be called earlier. Senators are appointed by the governor general. The major figures in Parliament and the government come from the House of Representatives. The prime minister is the leader of the party that holds the majority of seats in the House; the opposition leader is the representative, appointed by the governor general, who appears to have the greatest support of those members opposed to the majority government. The prime minister creates an executive government and advises the governor general on the appointments to thirteen of the seventeen seats in the Senate. The leader of the opposition, recognized constitutionally, is responsible for advising the governor general on the appointment of the remaining four senators to represent the opposition in the Senate. The opposition leader also consults with the governor general, in conjunction with the prime minister, on the composition of other appointed bodies and commissions. In this way, the opposition is ensured a voice in government.
The executive branch is derived from the legislative branch. As leader of the majority party of the House of Representatives, the prime minister appoints other members of Parliament to be his cabinet ministers. In late 1987, the cabinet included thirteen ministries: Ministry of Agriculture, Lands, Fisheries, and Housing; Ministry of Defense; Ministry of Economic Development, Tourism, and Energy; Ministry of Education, Culture, and Youth Affairs; Ministry of External Affairs; Ministry of Finance; Ministry of Health; Ministry of Home Affairs; Ministry of Information; Ministry of Labour; Ministry of Legal Affairs; Ministry of Public Utilities and Aviation; and Ministry of Public Works and Communications.
The judicial branch is relatively independent of the other two branches, although the magistrates are appointed by the Office of the Attorney General in the executive branch. The judiciary consists of the Magistrate's Court for minor offenses and the High Court for major offenses. To proceed beyond the High Court, a case must pass to the Eastern Caribbean States Supreme Court, whose members are appointed by the OECS. All appointments or dismissals of magistrates of the Supreme Court must meet with the unanimous approval of the heads of government in the OECS system; the prime minister of Antigua and Barbuda acts on the recommendation of the attorney general in making decisions concerning this judicial body.
The Constitution of 1981 was promulgated simultaneously with the country's formal independence from Britain. The Constitution provides a basis for possible territorial acquisitions, expands upon fundamental human rights, recognizes and guarantees the rights of opposition parties in government, and provides Barbuda with a large measure of internal self-government.
In defining the territory of Antigua and Barbuda, the Constitution includes not only the territory as recognized upon independence but also other areas that may in the future be declared by an act of Parliament to form part of the territory. This cryptic provision may have been designed to lay the basis for possible extensions of territorial waters.
The Constitution sets forth the rights of citizens, ascribing fundamental rights to each person regardless of race, place of origin, political opinions or affiliations, color, creed, or sex. It further extends these rights to persons born out of wedlock, an important provision in that legitimate and illegitimate persons did not have equal legal status under colonial rule. The Constitution includes provisions to secure life, liberty, and the protection of person, property, and privacy, as well as freedom of speech, association, and worship.
In order to quell secessionist sentiment in Barbuda, the writers of the Constitution included provisions for Barbudan internal self-government, constitutionally protecting the Barbuda Local Government Act of 1976. The elected Council for Barbuda is the organ of self-government. Acting as the local government, the council has the authority to draft resolutions covering community issues or domestic affairs; in the areas of defense and foreign affairs, however, Barbuda remains under the aegis of the national government. The council consists of nine elected members, the elected Barbudan representatives to the national Parliament, and a government-appointed councillor. To maintain a rotation of membership, council elections are held every two years.
Political Dynamics
Antigua and Barbuda's political system emerged from British political tradition and the development of trade union activism. The ATLU, established in 1940, found that its activism was not completely effective without a political voice. Seeking to gain a foothold in politics, the ATLU established a political arm, the ALP, in 1946. The ALP was structurally subordinate to the ATLU and was staffed by union personnel.
When Antigua and Barbuda achieved associated statehood in 1967, the union executives became political officials, consolidating their power. The political elites retained the political system that had developed from merging colonial politics with trade unionism, a system in which they had attained prominence. As the party gained importance, the labor union became subordinate to it.
From the start, both the ATLU and the ALP were dominated by Vere Bird, Sr., considered the "father of the country" by many because of his early efforts to promote labor unionism and independence. Although the labor union and the political party that stemmed from it were considered to be democratic, power was concentrated in the president, the general secretary, the treasurer, and the eight-member executive council elected at each annual convention. The faction led by Bird normally was able to influence the outcome of these union council elections and, subsequently, rankings within the party. Conflicts that arose within the union and the party were not resolved by compromise but by purging the opposition. Factionalism became a key characteristic of union and party dynamics.
Antigua shifted from a one-party to a two-party system after 1967. Establishment of the second party resulted from the personalistic factionalism that split the ALP and the ATLU. George Walter, leader of the dissenting faction, was dismissed from the ATLU because of his outspoken objection to the close tie between the labor union and the political party. In an attempt to regain power, Walter formed both a rival union, the AWU, and an affiliated political party, the PLM. The ATLU/ALP and the AWU/PLM became competitors for power. Although the PLM initially had factions that opposed the ALP on specific issues, the differences between the two groups were more personalistic than ideological. Both the ALP and the PLM competed intensely for the increasingly important political positions, as power became concentrated in the hands of the majority party and the attitude toward elections increasingly became "winner take all."
The two nonpersonalistic groups within the PLM were the Antigua Progressive Movement (APM) and an unnamed left-wing faction. The APM opposed the ALP on the basis of its close ties with the ATLU, believing that the labor union and the party should be completely independent. When the AWU/PLM proved to behave in the same way as the ATLU/ALP, the APM faction left the PLM in 1969 to form a purely political party, the Antigua People's Party (APP). The APP could not remain viable as an independent party, however, and soon merged with the ALP. The left-wing faction, led by Tim Hector, also left the PLM, forming the Afro-Caribbean Movement, which later became the Antigua-Caribbean Liberation Movement (ACLM). Hector had been a supporter of the Black Power movement (see Glossary) as a force in the Caribbean region (see Regional Security Threats, 1970-81, ch. 7). Despite its alleged pro-Cuban, pro-Libyan stance, the ACLM was regarded by the ALP government as a legitimate opposition party. The ACLM claimed to be a permanent voice of the opposition, never attempting to achieve a majority or to form a government, as that supposedly would compromise its principles.
In 1971 the PLM won the majority of the seats in the House of Representatives in the general election, ending the ALP's continuous dominance in national politics. During the PLM administration, however, the party instituted repressive social measures, such as limitations on freedom of the press, and ineffective economic policies that contributed to a recession. As a result, the ALP again won control of the government in the 1976 general election. Some PLM party leaders, including Walter, were tried on corruption charges stemming from their mismanagement while in office. Although Walter was released on appeal, he was barred from the 1980 elections and was replaced as PLM party leader by Robert Hall. Walter again sought a way to political power by creating the United People's Movement (UPM) with some of his supporters from the PLM.
During 1976-80, the ALP implemented policies that revitalized the economy and reopened society. These measures enabled the ALP to consolidate power at the expense of the PLM and UPM. The ALP easily won the 1980 election, campaigning on the basis of improved economic and social conditions. Using the same platform in the 1984 election, the ALP won a complete victory, capturing all seats in the House except for one taken by a pro-ALP independent from Barbuda.
As the conservative opposition parties--PLM and UPM--became defunct, a new opposition party, the United National Democratic Party (UNDP), was established by Ivor Heath in late 1984. The UNDP was formed partly in response to the growing dissatisfaction with the effective monopoly the ALP seemed to have on political power and the subsequent potential for abuse. The UNDP was composed first of remnants of the PLM and later of the UPM and envisioned itself as the voice of middle-class elements pressing for greater support of private enterprise and stronger action against corruption. Although he lacked specific goals when he established the UNDP, Heath later elaborated the issues of limited tenure for the prime minister and the security of the secret ballot. The leader of the UNDP also vowed to decentralize the government if his party were to come to power. Specifically, he proposed a system of village councils to give communities a form of local government and more control of their own affairs. In the late 1980s, only Barbuda had local self-government; the other localities fell under the authority of the Ministry of Home Affairs.
The ALP faced corruption charges in the late 1980s. The Outlet, the newspaper affiliated with Hector and the ACLM, accused the Bird administration of having insufficient control over casino operations, peddling passports to non-Antiguans, mismanaging foreign loans, and using Antigua and Barbuda to launder arms shipments to South Africa. The most potentially damaging scandal, however, was the 1986 corruption case involving Minister of Public Works and Communications Vere Cornwall Bird, Jr., the first son and namesake of the prime minister. The minister was accused of fraud in the negotiation and subsequent misappropriation of a French loan of US$11 million for the rehabilitation of the V.C. Bird International Airport. Sir Archibald Nedd, a retired Grenadian judge, was appointed to lead an investigation into the matter. During the course of the inquiry, the scandal spread to touch Bird, Sr., who appeared to be attempting to cover up evidence and influence the course of the investigation. Others inside the party, such as Minister of Education, Culture, and Youth Affairs Reuben Harris, provided evidence and testimony that could be seen as harmful to the case of Bird, Jr. The situation appeared to exacerbate previously existing dissension within the party and the cabinet and contributed to a crisis in ALP leadership. The previous conflict seemed to have been based on use of favoritism by Bird, Jr., in the distribution of cabinet positions and on personality clashes and power struggles within the cabinet. Sir Archibald concluded in his report that although Bird, Jr., was innocent of criminal wrongdoing, he had behaved in a manner unbecoming a minister of government. Members of the cabinet, Parliament, and opposition forces demanded that Bird, Jr., be forced to resign. Bird, Sr., however, decided to keep his son as a member of his cabinet.
Because the PLM and UPM were still weak, the only viable rival for the 1989 election seemed to be the new UNDP. In the opinion of most observers, however, its chances were slight, despite the ALP scandal, unless the new party were to widen its organizational basis beyond its original middle-class sources of support. The ACLM was not expected to win a significant number of seats in Parliament.
Antigua and Barbuda is a constitutional monarchy with a British-style parliamentary system of government. The reigning British monarch is represented in Antigua by an appointed governor general as the head of state. The government has three branches: legislative, executive, and judicial.
The bicameral Parliament consists of the seventeen-member House of Representatives, responsible for introducing legislation, and the seventeen-member Senate, which reviews and gives assent to proposed legislation. Representatives are elected by popular vote in general elections that are constitutionally mandated every five years but may be called earlier. Senators are appointed by the governor general. The major figures in Parliament and the government come from the House of Representatives. The prime minister is the leader of the party that holds the majority of seats in the House; the opposition leader is the representative, appointed by the governor general, who appears to have the greatest support of those members opposed to the majority government. The prime minister creates an executive government and advises the governor general on the appointments to thirteen of the seventeen seats in the Senate. The leader of the opposition, recognized constitutionally, is responsible for advising the governor general on the appointment of the remaining four senators to represent the opposition in the Senate. The opposition leader also consults with the governor general, in conjunction with the prime minister, on the composition of other appointed bodies and commissions. In this way, the opposition is ensured a voice in government.
The executive branch is derived from the legislative branch. As leader of the majority party of the House of Representatives, the prime minister appoints other members of Parliament to be his cabinet ministers. In late 1987, the cabinet included thirteen ministries: Ministry of Agriculture, Lands, Fisheries, and Housing; Ministry of Defense; Ministry of Economic Development, Tourism, and Energy; Ministry of Education, Culture, and Youth Affairs; Ministry of External Affairs; Ministry of Finance; Ministry of Health; Ministry of Home Affairs; Ministry of Information; Ministry of Labour; Ministry of Legal Affairs; Ministry of Public Utilities and Aviation; and Ministry of Public Works and Communications.
The judicial branch is relatively independent of the other two branches, although the magistrates are appointed by the Office of the Attorney General in the executive branch. The judiciary consists of the Magistrate's Court for minor offenses and the High Court for major offenses. To proceed beyond the High Court, a case must pass to the Eastern Caribbean States Supreme Court, whose members are appointed by the OECS. All appointments or dismissals of magistrates of the Supreme Court must meet with the unanimous approval of the heads of government in the OECS system; the prime minister of Antigua and Barbuda acts on the recommendation of the attorney general in making decisions concerning this judicial body.
The Constitution of 1981 was promulgated simultaneously with the country's formal independence from Britain. The Constitution provides a basis for possible territorial acquisitions, expands upon fundamental human rights, recognizes and guarantees the rights of opposition parties in government, and provides Barbuda with a large measure of internal self-government.
In defining the territory of Antigua and Barbuda, the Constitution includes not only the territory as recognized upon independence but also other areas that may in the future be declared by an act of Parliament to form part of the territory. This cryptic provision may have been designed to lay the basis for possible extensions of territorial waters.
The Constitution sets forth the rights of citizens, ascribing fundamental rights to each person regardless of race, place of origin, political opinions or affiliations, color, creed, or sex. It further extends these rights to persons born out of wedlock, an important provision in that legitimate and illegitimate persons did not have equal legal status under colonial rule. The Constitution includes provisions to secure life, liberty, and the protection of person, property, and privacy, as well as freedom of speech, association, and worship.
In order to quell secessionist sentiment in Barbuda, the writers of the Constitution included provisions for Barbudan internal self-government, constitutionally protecting the Barbuda Local Government Act of 1976. The elected Council for Barbuda is the organ of self-government. Acting as the local government, the council has the authority to draft resolutions covering community issues or domestic affairs; in the areas of defense and foreign affairs, however, Barbuda remains under the aegis of the national government. The council consists of nine elected members, the elected Barbudan representatives to the national Parliament, and a government-appointed councillor. To maintain a rotation of membership, council elections are held every two years.
Political Dynamics
Antigua and Barbuda's political system emerged from British political tradition and the development of trade union activism. The ATLU, established in 1940, found that its activism was not completely effective without a political voice. Seeking to gain a foothold in politics, the ATLU established a political arm, the ALP, in 1946. The ALP was structurally subordinate to the ATLU and was staffed by union personnel.
When Antigua and Barbuda achieved associated statehood in 1967, the union executives became political officials, consolidating their power. The political elites retained the political system that had developed from merging colonial politics with trade unionism, a system in which they had attained prominence. As the party gained importance, the labor union became subordinate to it.
From the start, both the ATLU and the ALP were dominated by Vere Bird, Sr., considered the "father of the country" by many because of his early efforts to promote labor unionism and independence. Although the labor union and the political party that stemmed from it were considered to be democratic, power was concentrated in the president, the general secretary, the treasurer, and the eight-member executive council elected at each annual convention. The faction led by Bird normally was able to influence the outcome of these union council elections and, subsequently, rankings within the party. Conflicts that arose within the union and the party were not resolved by compromise but by purging the opposition. Factionalism became a key characteristic of union and party dynamics.
Antigua shifted from a one-party to a two-party system after 1967. Establishment of the second party resulted from the personalistic factionalism that split the ALP and the ATLU. George Walter, leader of the dissenting faction, was dismissed from the ATLU because of his outspoken objection to the close tie between the labor union and the political party. In an attempt to regain power, Walter formed both a rival union, the AWU, and an affiliated political party, the PLM. The ATLU/ALP and the AWU/PLM became competitors for power. Although the PLM initially had factions that opposed the ALP on specific issues, the differences between the two groups were more personalistic than ideological. Both the ALP and the PLM competed intensely for the increasingly important political positions, as power became concentrated in the hands of the majority party and the attitude toward elections increasingly became "winner take all."
The two nonpersonalistic groups within the PLM were the Antigua Progressive Movement (APM) and an unnamed left-wing faction. The APM opposed the ALP on the basis of its close ties with the ATLU, believing that the labor union and the party should be completely independent. When the AWU/PLM proved to behave in the same way as the ATLU/ALP, the APM faction left the PLM in 1969 to form a purely political party, the Antigua People's Party (APP). The APP could not remain viable as an independent party, however, and soon merged with the ALP. The left-wing faction, led by Tim Hector, also left the PLM, forming the Afro-Caribbean Movement, which later became the Antigua-Caribbean Liberation Movement (ACLM). Hector had been a supporter of the Black Power movement (see Glossary) as a force in the Caribbean region (see Regional Security Threats, 1970-81, ch. 7). Despite its alleged pro-Cuban, pro-Libyan stance, the ACLM was regarded by the ALP government as a legitimate opposition party. The ACLM claimed to be a permanent voice of the opposition, never attempting to achieve a majority or to form a government, as that supposedly would compromise its principles.
In 1971 the PLM won the majority of the seats in the House of Representatives in the general election, ending the ALP's continuous dominance in national politics. During the PLM administration, however, the party instituted repressive social measures, such as limitations on freedom of the press, and ineffective economic policies that contributed to a recession. As a result, the ALP again won control of the government in the 1976 general election. Some PLM party leaders, including Walter, were tried on corruption charges stemming from their mismanagement while in office. Although Walter was released on appeal, he was barred from the 1980 elections and was replaced as PLM party leader by Robert Hall. Walter again sought a way to political power by creating the United People's Movement (UPM) with some of his supporters from the PLM.
During 1976-80, the ALP implemented policies that revitalized the economy and reopened society. These measures enabled the ALP to consolidate power at the expense of the PLM and UPM. The ALP easily won the 1980 election, campaigning on the basis of improved economic and social conditions. Using the same platform in the 1984 election, the ALP won a complete victory, capturing all seats in the House except for one taken by a pro-ALP independent from Barbuda.
As the conservative opposition parties--PLM and UPM--became defunct, a new opposition party, the United National Democratic Party (UNDP), was established by Ivor Heath in late 1984. The UNDP was formed partly in response to the growing dissatisfaction with the effective monopoly the ALP seemed to have on political power and the subsequent potential for abuse. The UNDP was composed first of remnants of the PLM and later of the UPM and envisioned itself as the voice of middle-class elements pressing for greater support of private enterprise and stronger action against corruption. Although he lacked specific goals when he established the UNDP, Heath later elaborated the issues of limited tenure for the prime minister and the security of the secret ballot. The leader of the UNDP also vowed to decentralize the government if his party were to come to power. Specifically, he proposed a system of village councils to give communities a form of local government and more control of their own affairs. In the late 1980s, only Barbuda had local self-government; the other localities fell under the authority of the Ministry of Home Affairs.
The ALP faced corruption charges in the late 1980s. The Outlet, the newspaper affiliated with Hector and the ACLM, accused the Bird administration of having insufficient control over casino operations, peddling passports to non-Antiguans, mismanaging foreign loans, and using Antigua and Barbuda to launder arms shipments to South Africa. The most potentially damaging scandal, however, was the 1986 corruption case involving Minister of Public Works and Communications Vere Cornwall Bird, Jr., the first son and namesake of the prime minister. The minister was accused of fraud in the negotiation and subsequent misappropriation of a French loan of US$11 million for the rehabilitation of the V.C. Bird International Airport. Sir Archibald Nedd, a retired Grenadian judge, was appointed to lead an investigation into the matter. During the course of the inquiry, the scandal spread to touch Bird, Sr., who appeared to be attempting to cover up evidence and influence the course of the investigation. Others inside the party, such as Minister of Education, Culture, and Youth Affairs Reuben Harris, provided evidence and testimony that could be seen as harmful to the case of Bird, Jr. The situation appeared to exacerbate previously existing dissension within the party and the cabinet and contributed to a crisis in ALP leadership. The previous conflict seemed to have been based on use of favoritism by Bird, Jr., in the distribution of cabinet positions and on personality clashes and power struggles within the cabinet. Sir Archibald concluded in his report that although Bird, Jr., was innocent of criminal wrongdoing, he had behaved in a manner unbecoming a minister of government. Members of the cabinet, Parliament, and opposition forces demanded that Bird, Jr., be forced to resign. Bird, Sr., however, decided to keep his son as a member of his cabinet.
Because the PLM and UPM were still weak, the only viable rival for the 1989 election seemed to be the new UNDP. In the opinion of most observers, however, its chances were slight, despite the ALP scandal, unless the new party were to widen its organizational basis beyond its original middle-class sources of support. The ACLM was not expected to win a significant number of seats in Parliament.
Foreign Relations
Strong economic and political bonds largely determined the country's foreign relations in the late 1980s. Antigua and Barbuda's primary diplomatic relations were with other Caribbean countries, the United States, Britain, and Canada; embassies were maintained in each of these countries. In other countries with which Antigua and Barbuda had diplomatic relations, no Antiguan and Barbudan ambassador was in residence, but ambassadors residing in the aforementioned countries were accredited to them as well. Firmly anticommunist, Antigua and Barbuda in 1987 was considered to be one of the most ardent supporters of the United States in the Caribbean area. Various forms of United States aid were important to Antigua and Barbuda, as was North American tourism. Of importance to the United States was the fact that Antigua occupied a strategic position and hosted a United States military presence, including air force and naval facilities. After Antigua and Barbuda gained independence, the United States consulate that had been established in 1980 was upgraded to an embassy in 1982, with a staff of eighteen.
Despite Antigua and Barbuda's bonds with both the United States and Britain, relations were tense in late 1986 as the ALP government formed the impression that the United States and Britain might favor the UNDP in the upcoming 1989 election. Realizing that the Western powers might regard Deputy Prime Minister Lester Bird, the presumed successor to his father, as too leftist, the ALP leadership accused the United States and Britain of courting Heath and promoting his party in the next elections in the hope that the UNDP would institute a more conservative government. When Heath received an official invitation to visit London, the Herald, the newspaper generally regarded as affiliated with Deputy Prime Minister Bird and his supporters, cited this as evidence of Britain's support of the UNDP candidate and described as inappropriate a diplomatic meeting with the leader of a party with no elected seats in the Antiguan Parliament. The Workers' Voice, the ATLU-supported newspaper, joined in accusing the United States of interfering in Antigua and Barbuda's internal affairs.
For his part, Deputy Prime Minister Bird criticized United States policy in the region as not sharing the national priorities held by governments in the Caribbean region. Bird also expressed reservations about the pervasive presence of United States advisers in the region, increased arms shipments from the United States to the Caribbean, and the establishment of paramilitary Special Service Units (SSUs). Although some in his party feared a leftward turn should he gain power, Lester Bird and those with similar nationalistic views remained strongly anticommunist.
Antigua and Barbuda was a member of, among other international organizations, the Commonwealth of Nations (see Appendix B), the International Monetary Fund (IMF--see Glossary), the World Bank (see Glossary), the United Nations (UN) and several UN agencies (including the United Nations Education, Science, and Culture Organization), the OECS, the Regional Security System (RSS), Caricom, and the Organization of American States. As a member of Caricom and the Commonwealth of Nations, Antigua and Barbuda supported Eastern Caribbean integration efforts.
Despite Antigua and Barbuda's bonds with both the United States and Britain, relations were tense in late 1986 as the ALP government formed the impression that the United States and Britain might favor the UNDP in the upcoming 1989 election. Realizing that the Western powers might regard Deputy Prime Minister Lester Bird, the presumed successor to his father, as too leftist, the ALP leadership accused the United States and Britain of courting Heath and promoting his party in the next elections in the hope that the UNDP would institute a more conservative government. When Heath received an official invitation to visit London, the Herald, the newspaper generally regarded as affiliated with Deputy Prime Minister Bird and his supporters, cited this as evidence of Britain's support of the UNDP candidate and described as inappropriate a diplomatic meeting with the leader of a party with no elected seats in the Antiguan Parliament. The Workers' Voice, the ATLU-supported newspaper, joined in accusing the United States of interfering in Antigua and Barbuda's internal affairs.
For his part, Deputy Prime Minister Bird criticized United States policy in the region as not sharing the national priorities held by governments in the Caribbean region. Bird also expressed reservations about the pervasive presence of United States advisers in the region, increased arms shipments from the United States to the Caribbean, and the establishment of paramilitary Special Service Units (SSUs). Although some in his party feared a leftward turn should he gain power, Lester Bird and those with similar nationalistic views remained strongly anticommunist.
Antigua and Barbuda was a member of, among other international organizations, the Commonwealth of Nations (see Appendix B), the International Monetary Fund (IMF--see Glossary), the World Bank (see Glossary), the United Nations (UN) and several UN agencies (including the United Nations Education, Science, and Culture Organization), the OECS, the Regional Security System (RSS), Caricom, and the Organization of American States. As a member of Caricom and the Commonwealth of Nations, Antigua and Barbuda supported Eastern Caribbean integration efforts.
Monday, December 17, 2007
Regional Overview
THE COMMONWEALTH CARIBBEAN ISLANDS have a distinctive history. Permanently influenced by the experiences of colonialism and slavery, the Caribbean has produced a collection of societies that are markedly different in population composition from those in any other region of the world.
Lying on the sparsely settled periphery of an irregularly populated continent, the region was "discovered" by Christopher Columbus in 1492. Thereafter, it became the springboard for the European invasion and domination of the Americas, a transformation that historian D. W. Meinig has aptly described as the "radical reshaping of America." Beginning with the Spanish and Portuguese and continuing with the arrival more than a century later of other Europeans, the indigenous peoples of the Americas experienced a series of upheavals. The European intrusion abruptly interrupted the pattern of their historical development and linked them inextricably with the world beyond the Atlantic Ocean. It also severely altered their physical environment, introducing both new foods and new epidemic diseases. As a result, the native Indian populations rapidly declined and virtually disappeared from the Caribbean, although they bequeathed to the region a distinct cultural heritage that is still seen and felt.
During the sixteenth century, the Caribbean region was significant to the Spanish empire. In the seventeenth century, the English, Dutch, and French established colonies. By the eighteenth century, the region contained colonies that were vitally important for all of the European powers because the colonies generated great wealth from the production and sale of sugar.
The early English colonies, peopled and controlled by white settlers, were microcosms of English society, with small yeoman farming economies based mainly on tobacco and cotton. A major transformation occurred, however, with the establishment of the sugar plantation system. To meet the system's enormous manpower requirements, vast numbers of black African slaves were imported throughout the eighteenth century, thereby reshaping the region's demographic, social, and cultural profile. Although the white populations maintained their social and political preeminence, they became a numerical minority in all of the islands. Following the abolition of slavery in the mid-nineteenth century, the colonies turned to imported indentured labor from India, China, and the East Indies, further diversifying the region's culture and society. The result of all these immigrations is a remarkable cultural heterogeneity in contemporary Caribbean society.
The abolition of slavery was also a major watershed in Caribbean history in that it initiated the long, slow process of enfranchisement and political control by the nonwhite majorities in the islands. The early colonies enjoyed a relatively great amount of autonomy through the operations of their local representative assemblies. Later, however, for ease of administration and to facilitate control of increasingly assertive colonial representative bodies, the British adopted a system of direct administration known as crown colony government in which Britishappointed governors wielded nearly autocratic power. The history of the colonies from then until 1962 when the first colonies became independent is marked by the rise of popular movements and labor organizations and the emergence of a generation of politicians who assumed positions of leadership when the colonial system in the British Caribbean was dismantled.
Despite shared historical and cultural experiences and geographic, demographic, and economic similarities, the islands of the former British Caribbean empire remain diverse, and attempts at political federation and economic integration both prior to and following independence have foundered. Thus, the region today is characterized by a proliferation of mini-states, all with strong democratic traditions and political systems cast in the Westminster parliamentary mold, but all also with forceful individual identities and interests.
Lying on the sparsely settled periphery of an irregularly populated continent, the region was "discovered" by Christopher Columbus in 1492. Thereafter, it became the springboard for the European invasion and domination of the Americas, a transformation that historian D. W. Meinig has aptly described as the "radical reshaping of America." Beginning with the Spanish and Portuguese and continuing with the arrival more than a century later of other Europeans, the indigenous peoples of the Americas experienced a series of upheavals. The European intrusion abruptly interrupted the pattern of their historical development and linked them inextricably with the world beyond the Atlantic Ocean. It also severely altered their physical environment, introducing both new foods and new epidemic diseases. As a result, the native Indian populations rapidly declined and virtually disappeared from the Caribbean, although they bequeathed to the region a distinct cultural heritage that is still seen and felt.
During the sixteenth century, the Caribbean region was significant to the Spanish empire. In the seventeenth century, the English, Dutch, and French established colonies. By the eighteenth century, the region contained colonies that were vitally important for all of the European powers because the colonies generated great wealth from the production and sale of sugar.
The early English colonies, peopled and controlled by white settlers, were microcosms of English society, with small yeoman farming economies based mainly on tobacco and cotton. A major transformation occurred, however, with the establishment of the sugar plantation system. To meet the system's enormous manpower requirements, vast numbers of black African slaves were imported throughout the eighteenth century, thereby reshaping the region's demographic, social, and cultural profile. Although the white populations maintained their social and political preeminence, they became a numerical minority in all of the islands. Following the abolition of slavery in the mid-nineteenth century, the colonies turned to imported indentured labor from India, China, and the East Indies, further diversifying the region's culture and society. The result of all these immigrations is a remarkable cultural heterogeneity in contemporary Caribbean society.
The abolition of slavery was also a major watershed in Caribbean history in that it initiated the long, slow process of enfranchisement and political control by the nonwhite majorities in the islands. The early colonies enjoyed a relatively great amount of autonomy through the operations of their local representative assemblies. Later, however, for ease of administration and to facilitate control of increasingly assertive colonial representative bodies, the British adopted a system of direct administration known as crown colony government in which Britishappointed governors wielded nearly autocratic power. The history of the colonies from then until 1962 when the first colonies became independent is marked by the rise of popular movements and labor organizations and the emergence of a generation of politicians who assumed positions of leadership when the colonial system in the British Caribbean was dismantled.
Despite shared historical and cultural experiences and geographic, demographic, and economic similarities, the islands of the former British Caribbean empire remain diverse, and attempts at political federation and economic integration both prior to and following independence have foundered. Thus, the region today is characterized by a proliferation of mini-states, all with strong democratic traditions and political systems cast in the Westminster parliamentary mold, but all also with forceful individual identities and interests.
THE COMMONWEALTH CARIBBEAN
THE COMMONWEALTH CARIBBEAN is the term applied to the English- speaking islands in the Carribbean and the mainland nations of Belize (formerly British Honduras) and Guyana (formerly British Guiana) that once constituted the Caribbean portion of the British Empire. This volume examines only the islands of the Commonwealth Caribbean, which are Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago, the Windward Islands (Dominica, St. Lucia, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, and Grenada), Barbados, the Leeward Islands (Antigua and Barbuda, St. Christopher [hereafter, St. Kitts] and Nevis, the British Virgin Islands, Anguilla, and Montserrat), and the so-called Northern Islands (the Bahamas, the Cayman Islands, and the Turks and Caicos Islands).
To the casual observer, these islands might appear to be too disparate to allow for a common discussion. Consider, for instance, the differences in population, size, income, ethnic composition, and political status among the various islands. Anguilla's 7,000 residents live on an island totaling 91 square kilometers, whereas Jamaica has a population of 2.3 million and a territory of nearly 11,000 square kilometers. The per capita gross domestic product (GDP--see Glossary) of the Cayman Islands is nearly fourteen times as large as that of St. Vincent and the Grenadines. Trinidad and Tobago's population is evenly divided between blacks and East Indians, a pattern quite different from that on the other islands, on which blacks constitute an overwhelming majority. Although most of the islands are independent nations, five (the British Virgin Islands, Anguilla, Montserrat, the Cayman Islands, and the Turks and Caicos Islands) remain British dependencies.
These and other differences, however, should not obscure the extensive ties that bind the islands of the Commonwealth Caribbean. For instance, the islands' populations clearly regard themselves as distinct from their Latin American neighbors and identify more closely with the British Commonwealth of Nations than with Latin America (see Appendix B). All of the Commonwealth Caribbean islands except Grenada supported Britain's actions during the 1982 South Atlantic War in the Falkland/Malvinas Islands, in sharp contrast to the strong Latin American defense of the Argentine position.
This perceived distinctiveness emerged from the islands' shared historical experiences. Their transformation during the seventeenth century from a tobacco- to a sugar-based economy permanently changed life on the islands, as a plantation society employing African slave labor replaced the previous society of small landholders (see The Sugar Revolutions and Slavery, ch. 1). By the early nineteenth century, blacks constituted at least 80 percent of the population in all but one of the British Caribbean islands. The exception was Trinidad, which had begun bringing in large numbers of slaves only in the 1780s and 1790s. When the British abolished slavery in the Caribbean in the 1830s, Trinidadian planters imported indentured labor from India to work the sugarcane fields. Despite their numerical minority, whites continued to control political and economic affairs throughout the islands. Indeed, the all-white House of Assembly in Jamaica abolished itself in 1865 rather than share power with blacks. This abrogation of local assemblies and establishment of crown colony government (see Glossary) was the norm in the British Caribbean in the late 1800s and impeded the development of political parties and organizations.
Demands for political reform quickened after World War I with the appearance of a nascent middle class and the rise of trade unions. In the mid-1930s, the islands became engulfed by riots spawned by the region's difficult economic conditions (see Labor Organizations, ch. 1). The riots demonstrated the bankruptcy of the old sugar plantation system and sounded the death knell for colonial government. Beginning in the 1940s, the British allowed increasing levels of self-government and encouraged the emergence of moderate black political leaders. As a prelude to political independence for the region, the British established a federation in 1958 consisting of ten island groupings. The West Indies Federation succumbed, however, to the parochial concerns of the two largest members--Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago--both of which declared independence in 1962. Between 1966 and 1983, eight additional independent nations were carved out of the British Caribbean.
These ten island nations are located in a strategically significant area. Merchant or naval shipping from United States ports in the Gulf of Mexico--including resupply of North Atlantic Treaty Organization forces in wartime--cross narrow Caribbean passages that constitute "choke points." The Caribbean Basin also links United States naval forces operating in the North Atlantic and South Atlantic areas and provides an important source of many raw materials imported by the United States (see Current Strategic Considerations, ch. 7).
Throughout the first half of the twentieth century, the United States asserted its interest in the Caribbean by frequently intervening in the affairs of the Hispanic islands. It did not involve itself, however, in the British colonies, a difference that may explain the relatively harmonious state of relations between the United States and the Commonwealth Caribbean islands when compared with the often contentious tone evident in United States- Latin American interactions. During World War II, and especially after 1960, the United States began to assume Britain's security and defense responsibilities for the Commonwealth Caribbean. Nonetheless, Britain continued to provide police training and remained an important trading partner with the region.
The political systems of the Commonwealth Caribbean nations paradoxically are both stable and fragile. All have inherited strong democratic traditions and parliamentary systems of government formed on the Westminster model. Political succession generally has been handled peacefully and democratically. For example, Barbados' Parliament deftly coped with the deaths in office of prime ministers J.M.G.M. "Tom" Adams in 1985 and Errol Barrow in 1987. At the same time, however, the multi-island character of many of these nations makes them particularly susceptible to fragmentation. The British had hoped to lessen the vulnerability of the smaller islands by making them part of larger, more viable states. This policy often was resented deeply by the unions' smaller partners, who charged that the larger islands were neglecting them. The most contentious case involved one of the former members of the West Indies Federation, St. Kitts-Nevis- Anguilla. In 1967 Anguillans evicted the Kittitian police force from the island and shortly thereafter declared independence. Despite the landing of British troops on the island two years later, Anguilla continued to resist union with St. Kitts and Nevis. Ultimately, the British bowed to Anguillan sentiments and administered the island as a separate dependency. Separatist attitudes also predominated in Nevis; the situation there was resolved, however, by granting Nevisians extensive local autonomy and a guaranteed constitutional right of secession.
The fragility of these systems also has been underscored in the 1980s by a reliance on violence for political ends. Grenada, Dominica, and St. Vincent and the Grenadines offered the most dramatic examples (see Regional Security Threats, 1970-81, ch. 7). Over a four-year span, Grenada experienced the overthrow of a democratically elected but corrupt administration, the establishment of the self-styled People's Revolutionary Government (PRG), the bloody collapse of the PRG and its replacement by the hard-line Revolutionary Military Council, and the intervention of United States troops and defense and police forces from six Commonwealth Caribbean nations (Jamaica, Barbados, Antigua and Barbuda, Dominica, St. Lucia, and St. Vincent and the Grenadines). In 1981 the Dominican government foiled a coup attempt involving a former prime minister, the country's defense force, the Ku Klux Klan, neo-Nazis, mercenaries, and underworld elements from the United States. Several months later, members of the then-disbanded defense force attacked Dominica's police headquarters and prison in an effort to free the coup participants. In 1979 Rastafarians (see Glossary) seized the airport, police station, and revenue office on Union Island in the Grenadines.
Most of the island governments were quite unprepared to deal with political violence; indeed, only five--Antigua and Barbuda, the Bahamas, Barbados, Jamaica, and Trinidad and Tobago--have defense forces, the largest of which has only a little over 2,000 members. In response, the governments of Antigua and Barbuda, Barbados, Dominica, St. Lucia, and St. Vincent and the Grenadines signed a regional security accord that allowed for the coordination of defense efforts and the establishment of paramilitary units drawn from the islands' police forces. Nonetheless, Commonwealth Caribbean leaders generally opposed creating a regional army and contended that such a force might eventually threaten democracy in the region (see A Regional Security System; Controversial Security Issues, ch. 7).
Drug trafficking represents an additional threat to the islands' political systems. The Caribbean has become increasingly important as a transit point for the transshipment of narcotics from Latin America to the United States. Narcotics traffickers have offered payoffs to Caribbean officials to ensure safe passage of their product through the region. Numerous examples abound of officials prepared to enter into such arrangements. In 1985 a Miami jury convicted Chief Minister Norman Saunders of the Turks and Caicos Islands of traveling to the United States to engage in narcotics transactions. A year later, a Trinidadian and Tobagonian government report implicated cabinet members, customs officials, policemen, and bank executives in a conspiracy to ship cocaine to the United States. Bahamian prime minister Lynden O. Pindling frequently has been accused of personally profiting from drug transactions, charges that he vehemently denies. The most recent accusation came in January 1988, when a prosecution witness in the Jacksonville, Florida, trial of Colombian cocaine trafficker Carlos Lehder Rivas claimed that Lehder paid Pindling US$88,000 per month to protect the Colombian's drug operations.
Yet the greatest challenges facing the Commonwealth Caribbean in the 1980s were not political but economic. The once-dominant sugar industry was beset by inefficient production, falling yields, a steady erosion of world prices, and a substantial reduction in United States import quotas. The unemployment level on most of the islands hovered at around 20 percent, a figure that would have been much higher were it not for continued Caribbean emigration to Britain, the United States, and Canada. Ironically, however, because the islands' education systems failed to train workers for a technologically complex economy, many skilled and professional positions went unfilled. In addition, the islands were incapable of producing most capital goods required for economic growth and development; imports of such goods helped generate balance of payments deficits and increasing levels of external indebtedness.
In the early 1980s, regional leaders hoped that President Ronald Reagan's administration's Caribbean Basin Initiative (CBI) would produce a substantial rise in exports to the United States, thus alleviating economic problems (see Appendix D). The most important part of the CBI--the Caribbean Basin Economic Recovery Act (CBERA) of 1983--allowed eligible Caribbean nations duty-free access to the United States for most exports until 1995. The CBERA, however, excluded some of the region's most important exports, including textiles, apparel, footwear, and sugar. Although nontraditional exports from the Caribbean to the United States increased during the first five years of the CBI, Caribbean governments expressed disappointment with the program's overall results. Legislation introduced in the United States Congress in 1987 called for an extension of the CBI until 2007, an expansion of products included under the duty-free access provision, and a restoration of sugar quotas to 1984 levels. Although the status of the bill remained uncertain in mid-1988, few analysts anticipated changes in sugar import quotas.
Despite the generally troubling economic picture, the tourist sector demonstrated considerable vitality in the 1980s. Commonwealth Caribbean nations successfully marketed the region's beauty, climate, and beaches to a receptive North American audience. As a result, many of the nations achieved dramatic increases in tourist arrivals and net earnings from tourism. For example, the number of foreign visitors to the Bahamas climbed from 1.7 million in 1982 to 3 million in 1986. The British Virgin Islands recorded 161,625 visitors in 1984, an increase of 91,338 as compared with 1976. Jamaica doubled its earnings over the 1980-86 period to stand at US$437 million in 1986. At the same time, however, the sector became quite susceptible to occasional slumps in the United States economy. Two months after the October 1987 stock market crash on Wall Street, tourist arrivals in Jamaica declined by 10 percent compared with the previous year.
In an effort to minimize their overall economic vulnerability, the independent nations of the Commonwealth Caribbean and the British crown colony of Montserrat established the Caribbean Community and Common Market (Caricom--see Appendix C) in 1973. Caricom had a number of goals, the most important of which were economic integration through the creation of a regional common market, diversification and specialization of production, and functional cooperation.
The organization's greatest success was in the area of functional cooperation; by the late 1980s, almost two dozen regional institutions had been created, including the University of the West Indies, the Caribbean Development Bank, the Caribbean Meteorological Council, the West Indies Shipping Corporation (WISCO), and the Caribbean Marketing Enterprise. Not all members of Caricom felt that they shared equitably in the services provided by these institutions, however. In 1987, for example, Dominica, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, and Belize withdrew from WISCO, claiming that the corporation had provided them with few benefits.
Despite success in functional cooperation, Caricom has an uneven track record in achieving economic integration and diversification and specialization. Although members registered substantial increases in intraregional trade during the 1973-81 period, much duplication of production occurred. Over the next five years, intraregional trade declined by more than 50 percent, the result in part of the adoption of protectionist measures by the region's largest consumer, Trinidad and Tobago. In 1987 the cause of regional integration was revived somewhat by Trinidad and Tobago's decision to repeal the provisions in question and by the Caricom members' joint pledge to remove all barriers to intraregional trade by the end of the third quarter of 1988. Even if this commitment is honored, however, depressed demand in the region will inhibit exports.
The most extensive level of cooperation has occurred among seven small islands and island groupings of the Eastern Caribbean (see Glossary). The seven--Antigua and Barbuda, Dominica, Grenada, Montserrat, St. Kitts and Nevis, St. Lucia, and St. Vincent and the Grenadines--have a long history of integration that includes a common market, shared currency, and joint supreme court. In 1981 they formed the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS--see Glossary) as a Caricom associate institution to provide for enhanced economic, foreign policy, and defense cooperation. In May 1987 OECS leaders announced an agreement in principle to form one nation and called for referenda to be held on each island to approve or reject the proposed union. The original plan actually envisaged two separate votes: the first, scheduled for mid-1988, to determine whether unification was desired, and a subsequent ballot the following year to specify the kind of government of the new state. If approved, the union would be established in late 1989 or early 1990.
The fate of the proposed OECS political union remained uncertain as of May 1988. Although Antigua and Barbuda's prime minister Vere Cornwall Bird, Sr., announced his opposition to the plan in July 1987, the other six heads of government continued to support unification. Nonetheless, these leaders resisted demands from ten opposition parties to provide specific details of the proposed venture prior to the first vote. This resistance perhaps stemmed from the leaders' perception that most islanders favored unification in some form; indeed, even the opposition parties-- under the banner of the Standing Committee of Popular Democratic Parties of the Eastern Caribbean (SCOPE)--felt compelled to endorse the idea of union. Still, SCOPE and others raised many issues that needed to be resolved. How much political authority would the six states retain under an OECS government? Would the states be granted equal representation in one of the houses of an OECS parliament? Would civil service employees be subject to transfer anywhere in the new state? Would a uniform wage structure be enacted for these employees? Would Nevisians continue to have local autonomy and a right of secession? Would Montserratians support independence? Thus, a positive vote in the first referenda might lead to contentious debates in the Eastern Caribbean in 1989.
Dynamic political activity was also in evidence in early 1988 in the Turks and Caicos Islands and Trinidad and Tobago. In March 1988 the People's Democratic Movement (PDM) crushed the Progressive National Party (PNP) in parliamentary elections in the Turks and Caicos, winning eleven of thirteen seats; PDM leader Oswald Skippings became the islands' chief minister. The elections were the first held in the Turks and Caicos since the British imposed direct British rule on the territory in July 1986 (see British Dependencies: The Cayman Islands and the Turks and Caicos Islands, Government and Politics, ch. 6). That action was taken after a Royal Commission of Inquiry found the chief minister and PNP head, Nathaniel "Bops" Francis, guilty of unconstitutional behavior and ministerial malpractices. Interestingly, the commission also determined that then-PDM deputy leader Skippings was unfit for public office.
The continued decline in 1987 of the economy in Trinidad and Tobago placed considerable strains on the ruling National Alliance for Reconstruction (NAR). Against a backdrop of sharp reductions in the gross domestic product and in public expenditures, Prime Minister A.N.R. Robinson openly feuded with the former leaders of the East Indian-based United Labour Front, one of four political parties that had merged to create the NAR--the others being the Democratic Action Congress (DAC), the Organization for National Reconstruction (ONR), and Tapia House (see Political Dynamics, ch. 3). In November 1987 Robinson fired the minister of works, John Humphrey, for criticizing the government's economic performance. In response, Humphrey accused the prime minister of failing to consult with cabinet members. In January 1988 external affairs minister and NAR deputy leader Basdeo Panday, public utilities minister Kelvin Ramnath, and junior finance minister Trevor Sudama participated in a meeting of over 100 NAR dissidents seeking Robinson's ouster; the prime minister dismissed the three from his cabinet the following month. Although each side accused the other of trying to divide the nation between blacks and East Indians, neither called for the breakup of NAR. All of the sacked ministers remained as NAR members of the House of Representatives; Panday also resumed his duties as president of the All Trinidad Sugar Estates and Factory Workers Trade Union.
Thus, the Commonwealth Caribbean islands offer a study in contrast, and sometimes conflict, within their individual boundaries and among themselves. A region gifted by abundant natural beauty and a pleasant climate, it looks to North America to generate increasing tourist dollars. Yet the islands also seek to maintain their independence from North American and West European dominance. Beset by internal bickering, the region nevertheless has seen economic interdependency blossom among some of its parts. Although distinct from Latin America, it suffers from some of the same ills, including the infiltration of the drug trade into its politics. It is a region that could be on the brink of true cooperation or on the path of further disunity.
To the casual observer, these islands might appear to be too disparate to allow for a common discussion. Consider, for instance, the differences in population, size, income, ethnic composition, and political status among the various islands. Anguilla's 7,000 residents live on an island totaling 91 square kilometers, whereas Jamaica has a population of 2.3 million and a territory of nearly 11,000 square kilometers. The per capita gross domestic product (GDP--see Glossary) of the Cayman Islands is nearly fourteen times as large as that of St. Vincent and the Grenadines. Trinidad and Tobago's population is evenly divided between blacks and East Indians, a pattern quite different from that on the other islands, on which blacks constitute an overwhelming majority. Although most of the islands are independent nations, five (the British Virgin Islands, Anguilla, Montserrat, the Cayman Islands, and the Turks and Caicos Islands) remain British dependencies.
These and other differences, however, should not obscure the extensive ties that bind the islands of the Commonwealth Caribbean. For instance, the islands' populations clearly regard themselves as distinct from their Latin American neighbors and identify more closely with the British Commonwealth of Nations than with Latin America (see Appendix B). All of the Commonwealth Caribbean islands except Grenada supported Britain's actions during the 1982 South Atlantic War in the Falkland/Malvinas Islands, in sharp contrast to the strong Latin American defense of the Argentine position.
This perceived distinctiveness emerged from the islands' shared historical experiences. Their transformation during the seventeenth century from a tobacco- to a sugar-based economy permanently changed life on the islands, as a plantation society employing African slave labor replaced the previous society of small landholders (see The Sugar Revolutions and Slavery, ch. 1). By the early nineteenth century, blacks constituted at least 80 percent of the population in all but one of the British Caribbean islands. The exception was Trinidad, which had begun bringing in large numbers of slaves only in the 1780s and 1790s. When the British abolished slavery in the Caribbean in the 1830s, Trinidadian planters imported indentured labor from India to work the sugarcane fields. Despite their numerical minority, whites continued to control political and economic affairs throughout the islands. Indeed, the all-white House of Assembly in Jamaica abolished itself in 1865 rather than share power with blacks. This abrogation of local assemblies and establishment of crown colony government (see Glossary) was the norm in the British Caribbean in the late 1800s and impeded the development of political parties and organizations.
Demands for political reform quickened after World War I with the appearance of a nascent middle class and the rise of trade unions. In the mid-1930s, the islands became engulfed by riots spawned by the region's difficult economic conditions (see Labor Organizations, ch. 1). The riots demonstrated the bankruptcy of the old sugar plantation system and sounded the death knell for colonial government. Beginning in the 1940s, the British allowed increasing levels of self-government and encouraged the emergence of moderate black political leaders. As a prelude to political independence for the region, the British established a federation in 1958 consisting of ten island groupings. The West Indies Federation succumbed, however, to the parochial concerns of the two largest members--Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago--both of which declared independence in 1962. Between 1966 and 1983, eight additional independent nations were carved out of the British Caribbean.
These ten island nations are located in a strategically significant area. Merchant or naval shipping from United States ports in the Gulf of Mexico--including resupply of North Atlantic Treaty Organization forces in wartime--cross narrow Caribbean passages that constitute "choke points." The Caribbean Basin also links United States naval forces operating in the North Atlantic and South Atlantic areas and provides an important source of many raw materials imported by the United States (see Current Strategic Considerations, ch. 7).
Throughout the first half of the twentieth century, the United States asserted its interest in the Caribbean by frequently intervening in the affairs of the Hispanic islands. It did not involve itself, however, in the British colonies, a difference that may explain the relatively harmonious state of relations between the United States and the Commonwealth Caribbean islands when compared with the often contentious tone evident in United States- Latin American interactions. During World War II, and especially after 1960, the United States began to assume Britain's security and defense responsibilities for the Commonwealth Caribbean. Nonetheless, Britain continued to provide police training and remained an important trading partner with the region.
The political systems of the Commonwealth Caribbean nations paradoxically are both stable and fragile. All have inherited strong democratic traditions and parliamentary systems of government formed on the Westminster model. Political succession generally has been handled peacefully and democratically. For example, Barbados' Parliament deftly coped with the deaths in office of prime ministers J.M.G.M. "Tom" Adams in 1985 and Errol Barrow in 1987. At the same time, however, the multi-island character of many of these nations makes them particularly susceptible to fragmentation. The British had hoped to lessen the vulnerability of the smaller islands by making them part of larger, more viable states. This policy often was resented deeply by the unions' smaller partners, who charged that the larger islands were neglecting them. The most contentious case involved one of the former members of the West Indies Federation, St. Kitts-Nevis- Anguilla. In 1967 Anguillans evicted the Kittitian police force from the island and shortly thereafter declared independence. Despite the landing of British troops on the island two years later, Anguilla continued to resist union with St. Kitts and Nevis. Ultimately, the British bowed to Anguillan sentiments and administered the island as a separate dependency. Separatist attitudes also predominated in Nevis; the situation there was resolved, however, by granting Nevisians extensive local autonomy and a guaranteed constitutional right of secession.
The fragility of these systems also has been underscored in the 1980s by a reliance on violence for political ends. Grenada, Dominica, and St. Vincent and the Grenadines offered the most dramatic examples (see Regional Security Threats, 1970-81, ch. 7). Over a four-year span, Grenada experienced the overthrow of a democratically elected but corrupt administration, the establishment of the self-styled People's Revolutionary Government (PRG), the bloody collapse of the PRG and its replacement by the hard-line Revolutionary Military Council, and the intervention of United States troops and defense and police forces from six Commonwealth Caribbean nations (Jamaica, Barbados, Antigua and Barbuda, Dominica, St. Lucia, and St. Vincent and the Grenadines). In 1981 the Dominican government foiled a coup attempt involving a former prime minister, the country's defense force, the Ku Klux Klan, neo-Nazis, mercenaries, and underworld elements from the United States. Several months later, members of the then-disbanded defense force attacked Dominica's police headquarters and prison in an effort to free the coup participants. In 1979 Rastafarians (see Glossary) seized the airport, police station, and revenue office on Union Island in the Grenadines.
Most of the island governments were quite unprepared to deal with political violence; indeed, only five--Antigua and Barbuda, the Bahamas, Barbados, Jamaica, and Trinidad and Tobago--have defense forces, the largest of which has only a little over 2,000 members. In response, the governments of Antigua and Barbuda, Barbados, Dominica, St. Lucia, and St. Vincent and the Grenadines signed a regional security accord that allowed for the coordination of defense efforts and the establishment of paramilitary units drawn from the islands' police forces. Nonetheless, Commonwealth Caribbean leaders generally opposed creating a regional army and contended that such a force might eventually threaten democracy in the region (see A Regional Security System; Controversial Security Issues, ch. 7).
Drug trafficking represents an additional threat to the islands' political systems. The Caribbean has become increasingly important as a transit point for the transshipment of narcotics from Latin America to the United States. Narcotics traffickers have offered payoffs to Caribbean officials to ensure safe passage of their product through the region. Numerous examples abound of officials prepared to enter into such arrangements. In 1985 a Miami jury convicted Chief Minister Norman Saunders of the Turks and Caicos Islands of traveling to the United States to engage in narcotics transactions. A year later, a Trinidadian and Tobagonian government report implicated cabinet members, customs officials, policemen, and bank executives in a conspiracy to ship cocaine to the United States. Bahamian prime minister Lynden O. Pindling frequently has been accused of personally profiting from drug transactions, charges that he vehemently denies. The most recent accusation came in January 1988, when a prosecution witness in the Jacksonville, Florida, trial of Colombian cocaine trafficker Carlos Lehder Rivas claimed that Lehder paid Pindling US$88,000 per month to protect the Colombian's drug operations.
Yet the greatest challenges facing the Commonwealth Caribbean in the 1980s were not political but economic. The once-dominant sugar industry was beset by inefficient production, falling yields, a steady erosion of world prices, and a substantial reduction in United States import quotas. The unemployment level on most of the islands hovered at around 20 percent, a figure that would have been much higher were it not for continued Caribbean emigration to Britain, the United States, and Canada. Ironically, however, because the islands' education systems failed to train workers for a technologically complex economy, many skilled and professional positions went unfilled. In addition, the islands were incapable of producing most capital goods required for economic growth and development; imports of such goods helped generate balance of payments deficits and increasing levels of external indebtedness.
In the early 1980s, regional leaders hoped that President Ronald Reagan's administration's Caribbean Basin Initiative (CBI) would produce a substantial rise in exports to the United States, thus alleviating economic problems (see Appendix D). The most important part of the CBI--the Caribbean Basin Economic Recovery Act (CBERA) of 1983--allowed eligible Caribbean nations duty-free access to the United States for most exports until 1995. The CBERA, however, excluded some of the region's most important exports, including textiles, apparel, footwear, and sugar. Although nontraditional exports from the Caribbean to the United States increased during the first five years of the CBI, Caribbean governments expressed disappointment with the program's overall results. Legislation introduced in the United States Congress in 1987 called for an extension of the CBI until 2007, an expansion of products included under the duty-free access provision, and a restoration of sugar quotas to 1984 levels. Although the status of the bill remained uncertain in mid-1988, few analysts anticipated changes in sugar import quotas.
Despite the generally troubling economic picture, the tourist sector demonstrated considerable vitality in the 1980s. Commonwealth Caribbean nations successfully marketed the region's beauty, climate, and beaches to a receptive North American audience. As a result, many of the nations achieved dramatic increases in tourist arrivals and net earnings from tourism. For example, the number of foreign visitors to the Bahamas climbed from 1.7 million in 1982 to 3 million in 1986. The British Virgin Islands recorded 161,625 visitors in 1984, an increase of 91,338 as compared with 1976. Jamaica doubled its earnings over the 1980-86 period to stand at US$437 million in 1986. At the same time, however, the sector became quite susceptible to occasional slumps in the United States economy. Two months after the October 1987 stock market crash on Wall Street, tourist arrivals in Jamaica declined by 10 percent compared with the previous year.
In an effort to minimize their overall economic vulnerability, the independent nations of the Commonwealth Caribbean and the British crown colony of Montserrat established the Caribbean Community and Common Market (Caricom--see Appendix C) in 1973. Caricom had a number of goals, the most important of which were economic integration through the creation of a regional common market, diversification and specialization of production, and functional cooperation.
The organization's greatest success was in the area of functional cooperation; by the late 1980s, almost two dozen regional institutions had been created, including the University of the West Indies, the Caribbean Development Bank, the Caribbean Meteorological Council, the West Indies Shipping Corporation (WISCO), and the Caribbean Marketing Enterprise. Not all members of Caricom felt that they shared equitably in the services provided by these institutions, however. In 1987, for example, Dominica, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, and Belize withdrew from WISCO, claiming that the corporation had provided them with few benefits.
Despite success in functional cooperation, Caricom has an uneven track record in achieving economic integration and diversification and specialization. Although members registered substantial increases in intraregional trade during the 1973-81 period, much duplication of production occurred. Over the next five years, intraregional trade declined by more than 50 percent, the result in part of the adoption of protectionist measures by the region's largest consumer, Trinidad and Tobago. In 1987 the cause of regional integration was revived somewhat by Trinidad and Tobago's decision to repeal the provisions in question and by the Caricom members' joint pledge to remove all barriers to intraregional trade by the end of the third quarter of 1988. Even if this commitment is honored, however, depressed demand in the region will inhibit exports.
The most extensive level of cooperation has occurred among seven small islands and island groupings of the Eastern Caribbean (see Glossary). The seven--Antigua and Barbuda, Dominica, Grenada, Montserrat, St. Kitts and Nevis, St. Lucia, and St. Vincent and the Grenadines--have a long history of integration that includes a common market, shared currency, and joint supreme court. In 1981 they formed the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS--see Glossary) as a Caricom associate institution to provide for enhanced economic, foreign policy, and defense cooperation. In May 1987 OECS leaders announced an agreement in principle to form one nation and called for referenda to be held on each island to approve or reject the proposed union. The original plan actually envisaged two separate votes: the first, scheduled for mid-1988, to determine whether unification was desired, and a subsequent ballot the following year to specify the kind of government of the new state. If approved, the union would be established in late 1989 or early 1990.
The fate of the proposed OECS political union remained uncertain as of May 1988. Although Antigua and Barbuda's prime minister Vere Cornwall Bird, Sr., announced his opposition to the plan in July 1987, the other six heads of government continued to support unification. Nonetheless, these leaders resisted demands from ten opposition parties to provide specific details of the proposed venture prior to the first vote. This resistance perhaps stemmed from the leaders' perception that most islanders favored unification in some form; indeed, even the opposition parties-- under the banner of the Standing Committee of Popular Democratic Parties of the Eastern Caribbean (SCOPE)--felt compelled to endorse the idea of union. Still, SCOPE and others raised many issues that needed to be resolved. How much political authority would the six states retain under an OECS government? Would the states be granted equal representation in one of the houses of an OECS parliament? Would civil service employees be subject to transfer anywhere in the new state? Would a uniform wage structure be enacted for these employees? Would Nevisians continue to have local autonomy and a right of secession? Would Montserratians support independence? Thus, a positive vote in the first referenda might lead to contentious debates in the Eastern Caribbean in 1989.
Dynamic political activity was also in evidence in early 1988 in the Turks and Caicos Islands and Trinidad and Tobago. In March 1988 the People's Democratic Movement (PDM) crushed the Progressive National Party (PNP) in parliamentary elections in the Turks and Caicos, winning eleven of thirteen seats; PDM leader Oswald Skippings became the islands' chief minister. The elections were the first held in the Turks and Caicos since the British imposed direct British rule on the territory in July 1986 (see British Dependencies: The Cayman Islands and the Turks and Caicos Islands, Government and Politics, ch. 6). That action was taken after a Royal Commission of Inquiry found the chief minister and PNP head, Nathaniel "Bops" Francis, guilty of unconstitutional behavior and ministerial malpractices. Interestingly, the commission also determined that then-PDM deputy leader Skippings was unfit for public office.
The continued decline in 1987 of the economy in Trinidad and Tobago placed considerable strains on the ruling National Alliance for Reconstruction (NAR). Against a backdrop of sharp reductions in the gross domestic product and in public expenditures, Prime Minister A.N.R. Robinson openly feuded with the former leaders of the East Indian-based United Labour Front, one of four political parties that had merged to create the NAR--the others being the Democratic Action Congress (DAC), the Organization for National Reconstruction (ONR), and Tapia House (see Political Dynamics, ch. 3). In November 1987 Robinson fired the minister of works, John Humphrey, for criticizing the government's economic performance. In response, Humphrey accused the prime minister of failing to consult with cabinet members. In January 1988 external affairs minister and NAR deputy leader Basdeo Panday, public utilities minister Kelvin Ramnath, and junior finance minister Trevor Sudama participated in a meeting of over 100 NAR dissidents seeking Robinson's ouster; the prime minister dismissed the three from his cabinet the following month. Although each side accused the other of trying to divide the nation between blacks and East Indians, neither called for the breakup of NAR. All of the sacked ministers remained as NAR members of the House of Representatives; Panday also resumed his duties as president of the All Trinidad Sugar Estates and Factory Workers Trade Union.
Thus, the Commonwealth Caribbean islands offer a study in contrast, and sometimes conflict, within their individual boundaries and among themselves. A region gifted by abundant natural beauty and a pleasant climate, it looks to North America to generate increasing tourist dollars. Yet the islands also seek to maintain their independence from North American and West European dominance. Beset by internal bickering, the region nevertheless has seen economic interdependency blossom among some of its parts. Although distinct from Latin America, it suffers from some of the same ills, including the infiltration of the drug trade into its politics. It is a region that could be on the brink of true cooperation or on the path of further disunity.
GEOGRAPHIC SETTING
The Commonwealth Caribbean islands make up a large subcomponent of the hundreds of islands in the Caribbean Sea, forming a wide arc between Florida in the north and Venezuela in the south, as well as a barrier between the Caribbean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean. Varying considerably in size, the islands, which are the isolated upper parts of a submerged chain of volcanic mountains, are scattered over thousands of square kilometers of sea. The entire region lies well within the northern tropics.
The three principal geological formations found throughout the Caribbean are igneous and metamorphic rocks, limestone hills or karst, and coastal, sedimentary plains of varying depths, resulting in three prevailing types of topography, found either separately or in combination. The first consists of high (over 1,200 meters), rugged, sharply dissected mountains--such as the Blue Mountains in eastern Jamaica, the Morne Diablotins in central Dominica, the Pitons in St. Lucia, and the Northern Range in Trinidad--all covered with dense, evergreen rain forests and cut by swiftly flowing rivers. The second typography consists of very hilly countryside, such as the high plateau of central Jamaica, or the islands of St. Kitts, Antigua, and Barbados. There the hills seldom rise above 600 meters and are more gently sloped than the high mountains, but karst areas are still rugged. Finally, the coastal plains skirt the hills and mountains, with their greatest extensions usually on the southern or western sides of the mountains. Active volcanoes exist in Dominica, St. Vincent, and St. Lucia, and there are crater lakes formed by older activity in Grenada. All the islands have rugged coastlines with innumerable inlets fringed by white or dark sands (depending on the rock substratum ) of varying texture. The beaches of Negril, Jamaica, and Grand Anse, Grenada, have fine-textured white sands that extend for nearly eleven kilometers each.
The Caribbean climate is tropical, moderated to a certain extent by the prevailing northeast trade winds. Individual climatic conditions are strongly dependent on elevation. At sea level there is little variation in temperature, regardless of the time of the day or the season of the year. Temperatures range between 24°C and 32°C. In Kingston, Jamaica, the mean temperature is 26°C, whereas Mandeville, at a little over 600 meters high in the Carpenters Mountains of Manchester Parish, has recorded temperatures as low as 10°C. Daylight hours tend to be shorter during summer and slightly longer during winter than in the higher latitudes. The conventional division, rather than the four seasons, is between the long rainy season from May through October and the dry season, corresponding to winter in the northern hemisphere.
Even during the rainy period, however, the precipitation range fluctuates greatly. Windward sides of islands with mountains receive much rain, whereas leeward sides can have very dry conditions. Flat islands receive slightly less rainfall, but its pattern is more consistent. For example, the Blue Mountains of eastern Jamaica record around 558 centimeters of rainfall per year, whereas Kingston, on the southeastern coast, receives only 399 centimeters. Bridgetown, the capital of Barbados, has an average annual rainfall of 127 centimeters, while Bathsheba on the central east coast receives 254 centimeters--despite the fact that Bathsheba is only about 27 kilometers away by road. Recording stations in the Northern Range in Trinidad measure some 302 centimeters of rainfall per year, while at Piarco Airport on the Caroni Plains the measurement is only 140 centimeters. Most of the rainfall occurs during short heavy outbursts during daylight hours. In Jamaica, about 80 percent of the rainfall occurs during the day. The period of heaviest rainfall usually occurs after the sun has passed directly overhead, which in the Caribbean islands would be sometime around the middle of May and again in early August. The rainy season also coincides with the disastrous summer hurricane season, although Barbados, too far east, and Trinidad and Tobago, too far south, seldom experience hurricanes.
Hurricanes are a constant feature of most of the Caribbean, with a "season" of their own lasting from June to November. Hurricanes develop over the ocean (usually in the eastern Caribbean) during the summer months when the sea surface temperature is high (over 27°C) and the air pressure falls below 950 millibars. These conditions create an "eye" about 20 kilometers wide, around which a steep pressure gradient forms that generates wind speeds of 110 to 280 kilometers per hour. The diameter of hurricanes can extend as far as 500 to 800 kilometers and produce extremely heavy rainfalls as well as considerable destruction of property. The recent history of the Caribbean echoes with the names of destructive hurricanes: Janet (1955), Donna (1960), Hattie (1961), Flora (1963), Beulah (1967), Celia and Dorothy (1970), Eloise (1975), David (1979), and Allen (1980).
The natural resources of the Commonwealth Caribbean islands are extremely limited. Jamaica has extensive deposits of bauxite, some of which is mined and processed locally into alumina, with the United States being the largest market for the bauxite and alumina. In addition, Jamaica has large quantities of gypsum. Trinidad and Tobago has petroleum, pitch, and natural gas. Small, noncommercially viable deposits of manganese, lead, copper, and zinc are found throughout most of the islands. Nevertheless, most of the territories possess nothing more valuable than beautiful beaches, marvelously variegated seas, and a pleasant climate conducive to the promotion of international tourism.
Industrialization varies from territory to territory, but agriculture is generally declining on all the islands. The sugar industry, once the mainstay of the Caribbean economies, has faltered. Although the labor force employed in sugar production (and in agriculture in general) still forms the major sector of the employed labor force in Barbados and Jamaica, the contribution that sugar makes to the gross domestic product (GDP--see Glossary) has steadily dropped. Barbados has kept its sugar industry going, but it has steadily reduced dependence on sugar exports and diversified its economy. For example, in 1946 Barbados had 52 sugar factories producing nearly 100,000 tons of sugar and employing more than 25,000 persons during crop-time. Although production had increased by 1980, the number of factories had declined to eight, and the number employed was slightly less than 9,000. Furthermore, the proportion of GDP contributed by sugar and sugar products had declined from 37.8 percent to 10.9 percent over the same period.
Since the 1950s, light manufacturing, mining, and processing of foods and other commodities have been used to bolster employment and increase the local economies. Although these sectors have been important contributors to the GDP of the individual states, in no case does this contribution exceed 20 percent of the total. Moreover, industrialization has provided neither sufficient jobs nor sufficient wealth for the state to offset the decline in agricultural production and labor absorption.
The Commonwealth Caribbean islands, like the rest of the region (except Cuba), find themselves in a difficult trading situation with the United States. From the regional perspective, the United States accounts for between 20 and 50 percent of all imports and exports. On the other hand, the Commonwealth states account for less than 1 percent of all United States imports and exports and less than 5 percent of the more than US$38 billion of overseas private investment in the Western hemisphere. But the interest in the Commonwealth Caribbean islands cannot be measured in economic terms only. The Caribbean is clearly within the American sphere of interest for political and strategic considerations that defy economic valuation.
The three principal geological formations found throughout the Caribbean are igneous and metamorphic rocks, limestone hills or karst, and coastal, sedimentary plains of varying depths, resulting in three prevailing types of topography, found either separately or in combination. The first consists of high (over 1,200 meters), rugged, sharply dissected mountains--such as the Blue Mountains in eastern Jamaica, the Morne Diablotins in central Dominica, the Pitons in St. Lucia, and the Northern Range in Trinidad--all covered with dense, evergreen rain forests and cut by swiftly flowing rivers. The second typography consists of very hilly countryside, such as the high plateau of central Jamaica, or the islands of St. Kitts, Antigua, and Barbados. There the hills seldom rise above 600 meters and are more gently sloped than the high mountains, but karst areas are still rugged. Finally, the coastal plains skirt the hills and mountains, with their greatest extensions usually on the southern or western sides of the mountains. Active volcanoes exist in Dominica, St. Vincent, and St. Lucia, and there are crater lakes formed by older activity in Grenada. All the islands have rugged coastlines with innumerable inlets fringed by white or dark sands (depending on the rock substratum ) of varying texture. The beaches of Negril, Jamaica, and Grand Anse, Grenada, have fine-textured white sands that extend for nearly eleven kilometers each.
The Caribbean climate is tropical, moderated to a certain extent by the prevailing northeast trade winds. Individual climatic conditions are strongly dependent on elevation. At sea level there is little variation in temperature, regardless of the time of the day or the season of the year. Temperatures range between 24°C and 32°C. In Kingston, Jamaica, the mean temperature is 26°C, whereas Mandeville, at a little over 600 meters high in the Carpenters Mountains of Manchester Parish, has recorded temperatures as low as 10°C. Daylight hours tend to be shorter during summer and slightly longer during winter than in the higher latitudes. The conventional division, rather than the four seasons, is between the long rainy season from May through October and the dry season, corresponding to winter in the northern hemisphere.
Even during the rainy period, however, the precipitation range fluctuates greatly. Windward sides of islands with mountains receive much rain, whereas leeward sides can have very dry conditions. Flat islands receive slightly less rainfall, but its pattern is more consistent. For example, the Blue Mountains of eastern Jamaica record around 558 centimeters of rainfall per year, whereas Kingston, on the southeastern coast, receives only 399 centimeters. Bridgetown, the capital of Barbados, has an average annual rainfall of 127 centimeters, while Bathsheba on the central east coast receives 254 centimeters--despite the fact that Bathsheba is only about 27 kilometers away by road. Recording stations in the Northern Range in Trinidad measure some 302 centimeters of rainfall per year, while at Piarco Airport on the Caroni Plains the measurement is only 140 centimeters. Most of the rainfall occurs during short heavy outbursts during daylight hours. In Jamaica, about 80 percent of the rainfall occurs during the day. The period of heaviest rainfall usually occurs after the sun has passed directly overhead, which in the Caribbean islands would be sometime around the middle of May and again in early August. The rainy season also coincides with the disastrous summer hurricane season, although Barbados, too far east, and Trinidad and Tobago, too far south, seldom experience hurricanes.
Hurricanes are a constant feature of most of the Caribbean, with a "season" of their own lasting from June to November. Hurricanes develop over the ocean (usually in the eastern Caribbean) during the summer months when the sea surface temperature is high (over 27°C) and the air pressure falls below 950 millibars. These conditions create an "eye" about 20 kilometers wide, around which a steep pressure gradient forms that generates wind speeds of 110 to 280 kilometers per hour. The diameter of hurricanes can extend as far as 500 to 800 kilometers and produce extremely heavy rainfalls as well as considerable destruction of property. The recent history of the Caribbean echoes with the names of destructive hurricanes: Janet (1955), Donna (1960), Hattie (1961), Flora (1963), Beulah (1967), Celia and Dorothy (1970), Eloise (1975), David (1979), and Allen (1980).
The natural resources of the Commonwealth Caribbean islands are extremely limited. Jamaica has extensive deposits of bauxite, some of which is mined and processed locally into alumina, with the United States being the largest market for the bauxite and alumina. In addition, Jamaica has large quantities of gypsum. Trinidad and Tobago has petroleum, pitch, and natural gas. Small, noncommercially viable deposits of manganese, lead, copper, and zinc are found throughout most of the islands. Nevertheless, most of the territories possess nothing more valuable than beautiful beaches, marvelously variegated seas, and a pleasant climate conducive to the promotion of international tourism.
Industrialization varies from territory to territory, but agriculture is generally declining on all the islands. The sugar industry, once the mainstay of the Caribbean economies, has faltered. Although the labor force employed in sugar production (and in agriculture in general) still forms the major sector of the employed labor force in Barbados and Jamaica, the contribution that sugar makes to the gross domestic product (GDP--see Glossary) has steadily dropped. Barbados has kept its sugar industry going, but it has steadily reduced dependence on sugar exports and diversified its economy. For example, in 1946 Barbados had 52 sugar factories producing nearly 100,000 tons of sugar and employing more than 25,000 persons during crop-time. Although production had increased by 1980, the number of factories had declined to eight, and the number employed was slightly less than 9,000. Furthermore, the proportion of GDP contributed by sugar and sugar products had declined from 37.8 percent to 10.9 percent over the same period.
Since the 1950s, light manufacturing, mining, and processing of foods and other commodities have been used to bolster employment and increase the local economies. Although these sectors have been important contributors to the GDP of the individual states, in no case does this contribution exceed 20 percent of the total. Moreover, industrialization has provided neither sufficient jobs nor sufficient wealth for the state to offset the decline in agricultural production and labor absorption.
The Commonwealth Caribbean islands, like the rest of the region (except Cuba), find themselves in a difficult trading situation with the United States. From the regional perspective, the United States accounts for between 20 and 50 percent of all imports and exports. On the other hand, the Commonwealth states account for less than 1 percent of all United States imports and exports and less than 5 percent of the more than US$38 billion of overseas private investment in the Western hemisphere. But the interest in the Commonwealth Caribbean islands cannot be measured in economic terms only. The Caribbean is clearly within the American sphere of interest for political and strategic considerations that defy economic valuation.
HISTORICAL AND CULTURAL SETTING
The Pre-European Population
Before the arrival of Christopher Columbus in 1492, most of the Caribbean was peopled by three types, or groups, of inhabitants: the Ciboney or Guanahuatebey, the Taino or Arawak, and the Caribs. The cultural distinctions among the three groups are not great; the single greatest differentiating factor appears to be their respective dates of arrival in the region. The Ciboney seem to have arrived first and were found in parts of Cuba and the Bahamas. They also seem to have had the most elementary forms of social organization. The most numerous groups were the Arawaks, who resided in most of the Greater Antilles--Cuba, Jamaica, Hispaniola (presently, Haiti and the Dominican Republic), and Puerto Rico. The smaller eastern island chain was the home of the Caribs, a tropical forest group related to most of the indigenous Indians found in Central and South America. Barbados and a number of smaller islands were not permanently inhabited.
Estimates of the size of the pre-Hispanic population of the Americas vary considerably. Both Columbus and Father Bartolomé de Las Casas (who wrote the first history of the Spanish conquest and treatment of the Indians) produced estimates that appear to defy credibility. Las Casas thought the population of the Caribbean might have been in the vicinity of several million, and by virtue of his having lived in both Hispaniola and Cuba where he held encomiendas, or the right to tribute from Indians, he is as close as we get to an eye-witness account. Las Casas had a penchant for hyperbole, and it is doubtful that he could have produced reliable estimates for areas where he did not travel. Nevertheless, some more recent scholars have tended to agree with Las Casas, estimating as many as 4 million inhabitants for the island of Hispaniola in 1492. Although the dispute continues, a consensus seems to be developing for far lower figures than previously accepted.
An indigenous population of less than a million for all of the Caribbean would still be a relatively dense population, given the technology and resources of the region in the late fifteenth century. Probably one-half of these inhabitants would have been on the large island of Hispaniola, about 50,000 in Cuba, and far fewer than that in Jamaica. Puerto Rico, Dominica, St. Lucia, St. Vincent, and Trinidad all had fairly concentrated, if not large, populations.
The pre-European populations of the territories that later formed the Commonwealth Caribbean belonged to the groups designated as Caribs and Arawaks. Both were tropical forest people, who probably originated in the vast expanse of forests of the northern regions of South America and were related linguistically and ethnically to such present-day tropical forest peoples as the Chibcha, the Warao, the Yanomamo, the Caracas, the Caquetío, or the Jirajara--in short, the peoples found anywhere from Panama to Brazil.
The Arawaks lived in theocratic kingdoms, with a hierarchically arranged pantheon of gods, called zemis, and village chiefs, or caciques. The zemis were represented by icons of wood, stone, bones, and human remains. Arawaks believed that being in the good graces of their zemis protected them from disease, hurricanes, or disaster in war. They therefore served cassava (manioc) bread as well as beverages and tobacco to their zemis as propitiatory offerings.
The size of the community and the number of zemis he owned were directly related to the chief's importance. Chiefs lived in rectangular huts, called bohios, while the regular members of the community lived in round huts, called caneyes. The construction of both types of building was the same: wooden frames, topped by straw, with earthen floor, and scant interior furnishing. But the buildings were strong enough to resist hurricanes.
From the European perspective, the wealth of the indigenous Indians was modest indeed. While Columbus and his successors sought gold and other trading commodities of value on the European market, the native Antilleans were not interested in trade and used gold only ornamentally. Their personal possessions consisted of wooden stools with four legs and carved backs, approximately two-meter- long hammocks of cotton cloth or strings for sleeping, clay and wooden bowls for mixing and serving food, calabashes or gourds for drinking water and bailing out boats, and their most prized possession, large dugout canoes for transportation, fishing, and water sports. One such canoe found in Jamaica could transport about seventy-five persons.
The Indians painted their bodies in bright colors, and some wore small ornaments of gold and shells in their noses, around their necks, or hanging from their ears. Body-painting was also employed to intimidate opponents in warfare.
Arawak villagers produced about two crops per year of manioc, maize, potatoes, peanuts, peppers, beans, and arrowroot. Cultivation was by the slash-and-burn method common throughout the Middle Americas, with the cultivated area's being abandoned after the harvest. The Indians worked the soil with sticks, called coas, and built earthen mounds in which they planted their crops. They might also have used fertilizers of ash, composted material, and feces to boost productivity. There is even evidence of simple irrigation in parts of southwestern Hispaniola.
Hunting and fishing were major activities. Arawaks hunted ducks, geese, parrots, iguanas, small rodents, and giant tree sloths. Parrots and a species of mute dog were domesticated. Most fishing, done by hand along the coast and in rivers, was for molluscs, lobsters, and turtles. Bigger fish were caught with baskets, spears, hooks, and nets. In some cases, fish were caught by attaching the hooks of sharpened sticks to a small sucking fish, called a remora, which fastened itself to larger fish such as sharks and turtles.
Food was prepared by baking on stones or barbecuing over an open fire, using peppers, herbs, and spices lavishly for both flavor and preservation. In some places, beer was brewed from maize. The descriptions of the first Europeans indicated that the food supply was sufficient and in general the inhabitants were well fed--until the increased demand of the new immigrants and the dislocation created by their imported animals created famine.
The Caribs of the eastern islands were a highly mobile group; they possessed canoes similar to those of the Arawaks, but they employed them for more warlike pursuits. Their social organization appeared to be simpler than that of the Arawaks. They had no elaborate ceremonial ball courts like those found on the larger islands, but their small, wooden, frame houses surrounded a central fireplace that might have served as a ceremonial center. Many of their cultural artifacts--especially those recovered in Trinidad-- resemble those of the Arawaks. This might be explained in part by the Carib practice of capturing Arawak women as brides, who then could have socialized the children along Arawak lines.
The social and political organization of Carib society reflected both their military inclination and their mobile status. Villages were small, often consisting of members of an extended family. The leader of the village, most often the head of the family, supervised the food-gathering activities, principally fishing, done by the men, and cultivation, a task for the women. In addition, the leader settled internal disputes and led raids against neighboring groups. The purpose of these raids was to obtain wives for the younger males of the village.
Warfare was an important activity for Carib males, and before the arrival of the Spanish they had a justified reputation as the most feared warriors of the Caribbean. Using bows, poisoned arrows, javelins and clubs, the Caribs attacked in long canoes, capturing Arawak women and, according to Arawak informants, ritualistically cooking and eating some male captives. There are, however, no records of Caribs eating humans after the advent of the Europeans, thus casting doubts on the Arawak tales.
When the Spanish arrived in the Caribbean at the end of the fifteenth century, the Caribs and Arawaks, like all other frontier peoples, were undergoing mutual adaptations. The generally more peaceful Arawaks were becoming more adept at fighting; and, away from the contested frontier, the Caribs, like those in Trinidad, were spending more time on agriculture than warfare.
The Caribs and the Arawaks were progressively wiped out by the after-effects of the conquest, with the peaceful Arawaks suffering the greater catastrophe. The concentrated populations on Hispaniola, Cuba, Puerto Rico, and Jamaica declined rapidly, victims of enslavement, social dislocation, and unfamiliar epidemic diseases. The smaller, more scattered populations of the smaller eastern Caribbean islands survived much better physically and epidemiologically. In the seventeenth century, the Caribs resisted European settlements on Dominica, St. Lucia, and St. Vincent, destroying the first English colony on St. Lucia in 1641 and delaying the effective occupation of Dominica and St. Vincent until the middle of the eighteenth century. Some Caribs resisted assimilation or acculturation by the Europeans, and a few of their descendants still live on a reservation in Dominica. Both the Caribs and Arawaks left indelible influences on the languages, diet, and ways of life of the twentieth century people who live in the region. Caribbean food crops, such as peanuts, cashew nuts, potatoes, tomatoes, pineapples, pumpkins, manioc, and maize, have spread around the world. The Indians' habit of smoking tobacco has become widespread, and tobacco has become an important commercial commodity. Arawakan and Cariban words have permeated the languages of the region: words such as agouti, avocado, barbecue, bohio (a peasant hut), buccaneer, calpulli (an urban zone), caney (a thatched hut), canoe, cannibal, cassava, cay, conuco (a cultivated area), quaqua (a bus or truck), quajiro (a peasant), guava, hammock, hurricane, iguana, maize, manatee, and zemi (an icon).
The Impact of the Conquest
The Europeans who invaded and conquered the Caribbean terminated the internally cohesive world of the native peoples and subordinated the region and the peoples to the events of a wider world in which their fortunes were linked with those of Africa, Europe, and the Americas. The Caribbean peoples were devastated by new epidemic diseases, such as measles, smallpox, malaria, and dysentery, introduced by the Europeans and the Africans imported as slaves. Their social and political organizations were restructured in the name of Christianity. Their simple lives were regimented by slavery and the demands of profit-oriented, commercial-minded Europeans. Above all, they were slowly inundated culturally and demographically by the stream of new immigrants in the years immediately after the conquest.
Before the arrival of Christopher Columbus in 1492, most of the Caribbean was peopled by three types, or groups, of inhabitants: the Ciboney or Guanahuatebey, the Taino or Arawak, and the Caribs. The cultural distinctions among the three groups are not great; the single greatest differentiating factor appears to be their respective dates of arrival in the region. The Ciboney seem to have arrived first and were found in parts of Cuba and the Bahamas. They also seem to have had the most elementary forms of social organization. The most numerous groups were the Arawaks, who resided in most of the Greater Antilles--Cuba, Jamaica, Hispaniola (presently, Haiti and the Dominican Republic), and Puerto Rico. The smaller eastern island chain was the home of the Caribs, a tropical forest group related to most of the indigenous Indians found in Central and South America. Barbados and a number of smaller islands were not permanently inhabited.
Estimates of the size of the pre-Hispanic population of the Americas vary considerably. Both Columbus and Father Bartolomé de Las Casas (who wrote the first history of the Spanish conquest and treatment of the Indians) produced estimates that appear to defy credibility. Las Casas thought the population of the Caribbean might have been in the vicinity of several million, and by virtue of his having lived in both Hispaniola and Cuba where he held encomiendas, or the right to tribute from Indians, he is as close as we get to an eye-witness account. Las Casas had a penchant for hyperbole, and it is doubtful that he could have produced reliable estimates for areas where he did not travel. Nevertheless, some more recent scholars have tended to agree with Las Casas, estimating as many as 4 million inhabitants for the island of Hispaniola in 1492. Although the dispute continues, a consensus seems to be developing for far lower figures than previously accepted.
An indigenous population of less than a million for all of the Caribbean would still be a relatively dense population, given the technology and resources of the region in the late fifteenth century. Probably one-half of these inhabitants would have been on the large island of Hispaniola, about 50,000 in Cuba, and far fewer than that in Jamaica. Puerto Rico, Dominica, St. Lucia, St. Vincent, and Trinidad all had fairly concentrated, if not large, populations.
The pre-European populations of the territories that later formed the Commonwealth Caribbean belonged to the groups designated as Caribs and Arawaks. Both were tropical forest people, who probably originated in the vast expanse of forests of the northern regions of South America and were related linguistically and ethnically to such present-day tropical forest peoples as the Chibcha, the Warao, the Yanomamo, the Caracas, the Caquetío, or the Jirajara--in short, the peoples found anywhere from Panama to Brazil.
The Arawaks lived in theocratic kingdoms, with a hierarchically arranged pantheon of gods, called zemis, and village chiefs, or caciques. The zemis were represented by icons of wood, stone, bones, and human remains. Arawaks believed that being in the good graces of their zemis protected them from disease, hurricanes, or disaster in war. They therefore served cassava (manioc) bread as well as beverages and tobacco to their zemis as propitiatory offerings.
The size of the community and the number of zemis he owned were directly related to the chief's importance. Chiefs lived in rectangular huts, called bohios, while the regular members of the community lived in round huts, called caneyes. The construction of both types of building was the same: wooden frames, topped by straw, with earthen floor, and scant interior furnishing. But the buildings were strong enough to resist hurricanes.
From the European perspective, the wealth of the indigenous Indians was modest indeed. While Columbus and his successors sought gold and other trading commodities of value on the European market, the native Antilleans were not interested in trade and used gold only ornamentally. Their personal possessions consisted of wooden stools with four legs and carved backs, approximately two-meter- long hammocks of cotton cloth or strings for sleeping, clay and wooden bowls for mixing and serving food, calabashes or gourds for drinking water and bailing out boats, and their most prized possession, large dugout canoes for transportation, fishing, and water sports. One such canoe found in Jamaica could transport about seventy-five persons.
The Indians painted their bodies in bright colors, and some wore small ornaments of gold and shells in their noses, around their necks, or hanging from their ears. Body-painting was also employed to intimidate opponents in warfare.
Arawak villagers produced about two crops per year of manioc, maize, potatoes, peanuts, peppers, beans, and arrowroot. Cultivation was by the slash-and-burn method common throughout the Middle Americas, with the cultivated area's being abandoned after the harvest. The Indians worked the soil with sticks, called coas, and built earthen mounds in which they planted their crops. They might also have used fertilizers of ash, composted material, and feces to boost productivity. There is even evidence of simple irrigation in parts of southwestern Hispaniola.
Hunting and fishing were major activities. Arawaks hunted ducks, geese, parrots, iguanas, small rodents, and giant tree sloths. Parrots and a species of mute dog were domesticated. Most fishing, done by hand along the coast and in rivers, was for molluscs, lobsters, and turtles. Bigger fish were caught with baskets, spears, hooks, and nets. In some cases, fish were caught by attaching the hooks of sharpened sticks to a small sucking fish, called a remora, which fastened itself to larger fish such as sharks and turtles.
Food was prepared by baking on stones or barbecuing over an open fire, using peppers, herbs, and spices lavishly for both flavor and preservation. In some places, beer was brewed from maize. The descriptions of the first Europeans indicated that the food supply was sufficient and in general the inhabitants were well fed--until the increased demand of the new immigrants and the dislocation created by their imported animals created famine.
The Caribs of the eastern islands were a highly mobile group; they possessed canoes similar to those of the Arawaks, but they employed them for more warlike pursuits. Their social organization appeared to be simpler than that of the Arawaks. They had no elaborate ceremonial ball courts like those found on the larger islands, but their small, wooden, frame houses surrounded a central fireplace that might have served as a ceremonial center. Many of their cultural artifacts--especially those recovered in Trinidad-- resemble those of the Arawaks. This might be explained in part by the Carib practice of capturing Arawak women as brides, who then could have socialized the children along Arawak lines.
The social and political organization of Carib society reflected both their military inclination and their mobile status. Villages were small, often consisting of members of an extended family. The leader of the village, most often the head of the family, supervised the food-gathering activities, principally fishing, done by the men, and cultivation, a task for the women. In addition, the leader settled internal disputes and led raids against neighboring groups. The purpose of these raids was to obtain wives for the younger males of the village.
Warfare was an important activity for Carib males, and before the arrival of the Spanish they had a justified reputation as the most feared warriors of the Caribbean. Using bows, poisoned arrows, javelins and clubs, the Caribs attacked in long canoes, capturing Arawak women and, according to Arawak informants, ritualistically cooking and eating some male captives. There are, however, no records of Caribs eating humans after the advent of the Europeans, thus casting doubts on the Arawak tales.
When the Spanish arrived in the Caribbean at the end of the fifteenth century, the Caribs and Arawaks, like all other frontier peoples, were undergoing mutual adaptations. The generally more peaceful Arawaks were becoming more adept at fighting; and, away from the contested frontier, the Caribs, like those in Trinidad, were spending more time on agriculture than warfare.
The Caribs and the Arawaks were progressively wiped out by the after-effects of the conquest, with the peaceful Arawaks suffering the greater catastrophe. The concentrated populations on Hispaniola, Cuba, Puerto Rico, and Jamaica declined rapidly, victims of enslavement, social dislocation, and unfamiliar epidemic diseases. The smaller, more scattered populations of the smaller eastern Caribbean islands survived much better physically and epidemiologically. In the seventeenth century, the Caribs resisted European settlements on Dominica, St. Lucia, and St. Vincent, destroying the first English colony on St. Lucia in 1641 and delaying the effective occupation of Dominica and St. Vincent until the middle of the eighteenth century. Some Caribs resisted assimilation or acculturation by the Europeans, and a few of their descendants still live on a reservation in Dominica. Both the Caribs and Arawaks left indelible influences on the languages, diet, and ways of life of the twentieth century people who live in the region. Caribbean food crops, such as peanuts, cashew nuts, potatoes, tomatoes, pineapples, pumpkins, manioc, and maize, have spread around the world. The Indians' habit of smoking tobacco has become widespread, and tobacco has become an important commercial commodity. Arawakan and Cariban words have permeated the languages of the region: words such as agouti, avocado, barbecue, bohio (a peasant hut), buccaneer, calpulli (an urban zone), caney (a thatched hut), canoe, cannibal, cassava, cay, conuco (a cultivated area), quaqua (a bus or truck), quajiro (a peasant), guava, hammock, hurricane, iguana, maize, manatee, and zemi (an icon).
The Impact of the Conquest
The Europeans who invaded and conquered the Caribbean terminated the internally cohesive world of the native peoples and subordinated the region and the peoples to the events of a wider world in which their fortunes were linked with those of Africa, Europe, and the Americas. The Caribbean peoples were devastated by new epidemic diseases, such as measles, smallpox, malaria, and dysentery, introduced by the Europeans and the Africans imported as slaves. Their social and political organizations were restructured in the name of Christianity. Their simple lives were regimented by slavery and the demands of profit-oriented, commercial-minded Europeans. Above all, they were slowly inundated culturally and demographically by the stream of new immigrants in the years immediately after the conquest.
THE EUROPEAN SETTLEMENTS
European settlements in the Caribbean began with Christopher Columbus. Carrying an elaborate feudal commission that made him perpetual governor of all lands discovered and gave him a percentage of all trade conducted, Columbus set sail in September 1492, determined to find a faster, shorter way to China and Japan. He planned to set up a trading-post empire, modeled after the successful Portuguese venture along the West African coast. His aim was to establish direct commercial relations with the producers of spices and other luxuries of the fabled East, thereby cutting out the Arab middlemen who had monopolized trade since capturing Constantinople in 1453. He also planned to link up with the lost Christians of Abyssinia, who were reputed to have great quantities of gold--a commodity in great demand in Europe. Finally, as a good Christian, Columbus wanted to spread Christianity to new peoples. Columbus, of course, did not find the East. Nevertheless, he called the peoples he met "Indians," and, because he had sailed west, referred to the region he found as the "West Indies."
However, dreams of a trading-post empire collapsed in the face of real Caribbean life. The Indians, although initially hospitable in most cases, simply did not have gold and trade commodities for the European market. In all, Columbus made four voyages of exploration between 1492 and 1502, failing to find great quantities of gold, Christians, or the courts of the fabled khans described by Marco Polo. After 1499, small amounts of tracer gold were discovered on Hispaniola, but by that time local challenges to his governorship were mounting, and his demonstrated lack of administrative skills made matters worse. Even more disappointing, he returned to Spain in 1502 to find that his extensive feudal authority in the New World was rapidly being taken away by his monarchs.
Columbus inadvertently started a small settlement on the north coast of Hispaniola when his flagship, the Santa Maria, wrecked off the Môle St-Nicolas on his first voyage. When he returned a year later, no trace of the settlement appeared--and the former welcome and hospitality of the Indians had changed to suspicion and fear.
The first proper European settlement in the Caribbean began when Nicolás de Ovando, a faithful soldier from western Spain, settled about 2,500 Spanish colonists in eastern Hispaniola in 1502. Unlike Columbus' earlier settlements, this group was an organized cross-section of Spanish society brought with the intention of developing the Indies economically and expanding Spanish political, religious, and administrative influence. In its religious and military motivation, it continued the reconquista (reconquest), which had expelled the Moors from Grenada and the rest of southern Spain.
From this base in Santo Domingo, as the new colony was called, the Spanish quickly fanned out throughout the Caribbean and onto the mainland. Jamaica was settled in 1509 and Trinidad the following year. By 1511 Spanish explorers had established themselves as far as Florida. However, in the eastern Caribbean, the Caribs resisted the penetration of Europeans until well into the seventeenth century and succumbed only in the eighteenth century.
With the conquest of Mexico in 1519 and the subsequent discovery of gold there, interest in working the gold deposits of the islands decreased. Moreover, by that time the Indian population of the Caribbean had dwindled considerably, creating a scarcity of workers for the mines and pearl fisheries. In 1518 the first African slaves, called ladinos because they had lived in Spain and spoke the Castilian language, were introduced to the Caribbean to help mitigate the labor shortage.
The Spanish administrative structure that prevailed for the 132 years of Spanish monopoly in the Caribbean was simple. At the imperial level were two central agencies, the Casa de Contratación, or House of Trade, which licensed all ships sailing to or returning from the Indies and supervised commerce, and the Consejo de Indias, the royal Advisory Council, which attended to imperial legislation. At the local level in the Caribbean were the governors, appointed by the monarchs of Castile, who supervised local municipal councils. The governors were regulated by audiencias, or appellate courts. A parallel structure regulated the religious organizations. Despite the theoretical hierarchy and clear divisions of authority, in practice each agency reported directly to the monarch. As set out in the original instructions to Ovando in 1502, the Spanish New World was to be orthodox and unified under the Roman Catholic religion and Castilian and Spanish in culture and nationality. Moors, Jews, recent converts to Roman Catholicism, Protestants, and gypsies were legally excluded from sailing to the Indies, although this exclusiveness could not be maintained and was frequently violated.
By the early seventeenth century, Spain's European enemies, no longer disunited and internally weak, were beginning to breach the perimeters of Spain's American empire. The French and the English established trading forts along the St. Lawrence and the Hudson Rivers in North America. These were followed by permanent settlements on the mid-Atlantic coast (Jamestown) and in New England (Massachusetts Bay colony).
Between 1595 and 1620, the English, French, and Dutch made many unsuccessful attempts to settle along the Guiana coastlands of South America. The Dutch finally prevailed, with one permanent colony along the Essequibo River in 1616, and another, in 1624, along the neighboring Berbice River. As in North America, initial loss of life in the colonies was discouragingly high. In 1624 the English and French gave up in the Guianas and jointly created a colony on St. Kitts in the northern Leeward Islands. At that time, St. Kitts was occupied only by Caribs. With the Spanish deeply involved in the Thirty Years War in Europe, conditions were propitious for colonial exploits in what until then had been reluctantly conceded to be a Spanish domain.
In 1621, the Dutch began to move aggressively against Spanish territory in the Americas--including Brazil, temporarily under Spanish control between 1580 and 1640. In the Caribbean, they joined the English in settling St. Croix in 1625 and then seized the minuscule, unoccupied islands of Curaçao, St. Eustatius, St. Martin, and Saba, thereby expanding their former holdings in the Guianas, as well as those at Araya and Cumana on the Venezuelan coast.
The English and the French also moved rapidly to take advantage of Spanish weakness in the Americas and overcommitment in Europe. In 1625, the English settled Barbados and tried an unsuccessful settlement on Tobago. They took possession of Nevis in 1628 and Antigua and Montserrat in 1632. They planted a colony on St. Lucia in 1638, but it was destroyed within four years by the Caribs. The French, under the auspices of the Compagnie des Iles d'Amerique, chartered by Cardinal Richelieu in 1635, successfully settled Martinique and Guadeloupe, laying the base for later expansion to St. Bartholomé, St. Martin, Grenada, St. Lucia, and western Hispaniola, which was formally ceded by Spain in 1697 at the Treaty of Ryswick (signed between France and the alliance of Spain, the Netherlands, and England, and ending the War of the Grand Alliance). Meanwhile, an expedition sent out by Oliver Cromwell (Protector of the English Commonwealth, 1649-58) under Admiral William Penn (the father of the founder of Pennsylvania) and General Robert Venables in 1655 seized Jamaica, the first territory captured from the Spanish. (Trinidad, the only other British colony taken from the Spanish, fell in 1797 and was ceded in 1802.) At that time Jamaica had a population of about 3,000, equally divided between Spaniards and their slaves--the Indian population having been eliminated. Although Jamaica was a disappointing consolation for the failure to capture either of the major colonies of Hispaniola or Cuba, the island was retained at the Treaty of Madrid in 1670, thereby more than doubling the land area for potential British colonization in the Caribbean. By 1750 Jamaica was the most important of Britian's Caribbean colonies, having eclipsed Barbados in economic significane.
The first colonists in the Caribbean were trying to recreate their metropolitan European societies in the region. In this respect, the goals and the world view of the early colonists in the Caribbean did not vary significantly from those of the colonists on the North American mainland. "The Caribbee planters," wrote the historian Richard Dunn, "began as peasant farmers not unlike the peasant farmers of Wigston Magna, Leicestershire, or Sudbury, Massachusetts. They cultivated the same staple crop--tobacco--as their cousins in Virginia and Maryland. They brought to the tropics the English common law, English political institutions, the English parish [local administrative unit], and the English church." These institutions survived for a very long time, but the social context in which they were introduced was rapidly altered by time and circumstances. Attempts to recreate microcosms of Europe were slowly abandoned in favor of a series of plantation societies using slave labor to produce large quantities of tropical staples for the European market. In the process of this transformation, complicated by war and trade, much was changed in the Caribbean.
However, dreams of a trading-post empire collapsed in the face of real Caribbean life. The Indians, although initially hospitable in most cases, simply did not have gold and trade commodities for the European market. In all, Columbus made four voyages of exploration between 1492 and 1502, failing to find great quantities of gold, Christians, or the courts of the fabled khans described by Marco Polo. After 1499, small amounts of tracer gold were discovered on Hispaniola, but by that time local challenges to his governorship were mounting, and his demonstrated lack of administrative skills made matters worse. Even more disappointing, he returned to Spain in 1502 to find that his extensive feudal authority in the New World was rapidly being taken away by his monarchs.
Columbus inadvertently started a small settlement on the north coast of Hispaniola when his flagship, the Santa Maria, wrecked off the Môle St-Nicolas on his first voyage. When he returned a year later, no trace of the settlement appeared--and the former welcome and hospitality of the Indians had changed to suspicion and fear.
The first proper European settlement in the Caribbean began when Nicolás de Ovando, a faithful soldier from western Spain, settled about 2,500 Spanish colonists in eastern Hispaniola in 1502. Unlike Columbus' earlier settlements, this group was an organized cross-section of Spanish society brought with the intention of developing the Indies economically and expanding Spanish political, religious, and administrative influence. In its religious and military motivation, it continued the reconquista (reconquest), which had expelled the Moors from Grenada and the rest of southern Spain.
From this base in Santo Domingo, as the new colony was called, the Spanish quickly fanned out throughout the Caribbean and onto the mainland. Jamaica was settled in 1509 and Trinidad the following year. By 1511 Spanish explorers had established themselves as far as Florida. However, in the eastern Caribbean, the Caribs resisted the penetration of Europeans until well into the seventeenth century and succumbed only in the eighteenth century.
With the conquest of Mexico in 1519 and the subsequent discovery of gold there, interest in working the gold deposits of the islands decreased. Moreover, by that time the Indian population of the Caribbean had dwindled considerably, creating a scarcity of workers for the mines and pearl fisheries. In 1518 the first African slaves, called ladinos because they had lived in Spain and spoke the Castilian language, were introduced to the Caribbean to help mitigate the labor shortage.
The Spanish administrative structure that prevailed for the 132 years of Spanish monopoly in the Caribbean was simple. At the imperial level were two central agencies, the Casa de Contratación, or House of Trade, which licensed all ships sailing to or returning from the Indies and supervised commerce, and the Consejo de Indias, the royal Advisory Council, which attended to imperial legislation. At the local level in the Caribbean were the governors, appointed by the monarchs of Castile, who supervised local municipal councils. The governors were regulated by audiencias, or appellate courts. A parallel structure regulated the religious organizations. Despite the theoretical hierarchy and clear divisions of authority, in practice each agency reported directly to the monarch. As set out in the original instructions to Ovando in 1502, the Spanish New World was to be orthodox and unified under the Roman Catholic religion and Castilian and Spanish in culture and nationality. Moors, Jews, recent converts to Roman Catholicism, Protestants, and gypsies were legally excluded from sailing to the Indies, although this exclusiveness could not be maintained and was frequently violated.
By the early seventeenth century, Spain's European enemies, no longer disunited and internally weak, were beginning to breach the perimeters of Spain's American empire. The French and the English established trading forts along the St. Lawrence and the Hudson Rivers in North America. These were followed by permanent settlements on the mid-Atlantic coast (Jamestown) and in New England (Massachusetts Bay colony).
Between 1595 and 1620, the English, French, and Dutch made many unsuccessful attempts to settle along the Guiana coastlands of South America. The Dutch finally prevailed, with one permanent colony along the Essequibo River in 1616, and another, in 1624, along the neighboring Berbice River. As in North America, initial loss of life in the colonies was discouragingly high. In 1624 the English and French gave up in the Guianas and jointly created a colony on St. Kitts in the northern Leeward Islands. At that time, St. Kitts was occupied only by Caribs. With the Spanish deeply involved in the Thirty Years War in Europe, conditions were propitious for colonial exploits in what until then had been reluctantly conceded to be a Spanish domain.
In 1621, the Dutch began to move aggressively against Spanish territory in the Americas--including Brazil, temporarily under Spanish control between 1580 and 1640. In the Caribbean, they joined the English in settling St. Croix in 1625 and then seized the minuscule, unoccupied islands of Curaçao, St. Eustatius, St. Martin, and Saba, thereby expanding their former holdings in the Guianas, as well as those at Araya and Cumana on the Venezuelan coast.
The English and the French also moved rapidly to take advantage of Spanish weakness in the Americas and overcommitment in Europe. In 1625, the English settled Barbados and tried an unsuccessful settlement on Tobago. They took possession of Nevis in 1628 and Antigua and Montserrat in 1632. They planted a colony on St. Lucia in 1638, but it was destroyed within four years by the Caribs. The French, under the auspices of the Compagnie des Iles d'Amerique, chartered by Cardinal Richelieu in 1635, successfully settled Martinique and Guadeloupe, laying the base for later expansion to St. Bartholomé, St. Martin, Grenada, St. Lucia, and western Hispaniola, which was formally ceded by Spain in 1697 at the Treaty of Ryswick (signed between France and the alliance of Spain, the Netherlands, and England, and ending the War of the Grand Alliance). Meanwhile, an expedition sent out by Oliver Cromwell (Protector of the English Commonwealth, 1649-58) under Admiral William Penn (the father of the founder of Pennsylvania) and General Robert Venables in 1655 seized Jamaica, the first territory captured from the Spanish. (Trinidad, the only other British colony taken from the Spanish, fell in 1797 and was ceded in 1802.) At that time Jamaica had a population of about 3,000, equally divided between Spaniards and their slaves--the Indian population having been eliminated. Although Jamaica was a disappointing consolation for the failure to capture either of the major colonies of Hispaniola or Cuba, the island was retained at the Treaty of Madrid in 1670, thereby more than doubling the land area for potential British colonization in the Caribbean. By 1750 Jamaica was the most important of Britian's Caribbean colonies, having eclipsed Barbados in economic significane.
The first colonists in the Caribbean were trying to recreate their metropolitan European societies in the region. In this respect, the goals and the world view of the early colonists in the Caribbean did not vary significantly from those of the colonists on the North American mainland. "The Caribbee planters," wrote the historian Richard Dunn, "began as peasant farmers not unlike the peasant farmers of Wigston Magna, Leicestershire, or Sudbury, Massachusetts. They cultivated the same staple crop--tobacco--as their cousins in Virginia and Maryland. They brought to the tropics the English common law, English political institutions, the English parish [local administrative unit], and the English church." These institutions survived for a very long time, but the social context in which they were introduced was rapidly altered by time and circumstances. Attempts to recreate microcosms of Europe were slowly abandoned in favor of a series of plantation societies using slave labor to produce large quantities of tropical staples for the European market. In the process of this transformation, complicated by war and trade, much was changed in the Caribbean.
THE COLONIAL PERIOD
Evolution around the middle of the seventeenth century of a sugar plantation society based on slave labor was an important watershed in Caribbean history. Introduced by the Dutch when they were expelled from Brazil in 1640, the sugar plantation system arrived at an opportune time for the fledgling non-Spanish colonists with their precarious economies. The English yeoman farming economy based mainly on cultivation of tobacco was facing a severe crisis. Caribbean tobacco could compete neither in quality nor in quantity with that produced in the mid-Atlantic colonies. Because tobacco farming had been basis of the economy, its end threatened the economic viability of the islands. As a result, the colonies were losing population to the mainland. Economic salvation came from what has been called in historical literature the Caribbean "sugar revolutions," a series of interrelated changes that altered the entire agriculture, demography, society, and culture of the Caribbean, thereby transforming the political and economic importance of the region.
In terms of agriculture, the islands changed from small farms producing cash crops of tobacco and cotton with the labor of a few servants and slaves--often indistinguishable--to large plantations requiring vast expanses of land and enormous capital outlays to create sugarcane fields and factories. Sugar, which had become increasingly popular on the European market throughout the seventeenth century, provided an efficacious balance between bulk and value--a relationship of great importance in the days of relatively small sailing ships and distant sea voyages. Hence, the conversion to sugar transformed the landholding pattern of the islands.
The case of Barbados illustrates the point. In 1640 this island of 430 square kilometers had about 10,000 settlers, predominantly white; 764 of them owned 4 or more hectares of land, and virtually every white was a landholder. By 1680, when the sugar revolution was underway, the wealthiest 175 planters owned 54 percent of the land and an equal proportion of the servants and slaves. More important, Barbados had a population of about 38,000 African slaves and more than 2,000 English servants who owned no land. Fortunes, however, depended on access to land and slaves. Thomas Rous, who arrived in Barbados in 1638, had a farm of 24 hectares in 1645. By 1680 the Rous family owned 3 sugar works, 266 hectares of land, and 310 slaves and were counted among the great planters of the island.
In terms of agriculture, the islands changed from small farms producing cash crops of tobacco and cotton with the labor of a few servants and slaves--often indistinguishable--to large plantations requiring vast expanses of land and enormous capital outlays to create sugarcane fields and factories. Sugar, which had become increasingly popular on the European market throughout the seventeenth century, provided an efficacious balance between bulk and value--a relationship of great importance in the days of relatively small sailing ships and distant sea voyages. Hence, the conversion to sugar transformed the landholding pattern of the islands.
The case of Barbados illustrates the point. In 1640 this island of 430 square kilometers had about 10,000 settlers, predominantly white; 764 of them owned 4 or more hectares of land, and virtually every white was a landholder. By 1680, when the sugar revolution was underway, the wealthiest 175 planters owned 54 percent of the land and an equal proportion of the servants and slaves. More important, Barbados had a population of about 38,000 African slaves and more than 2,000 English servants who owned no land. Fortunes, however, depended on access to land and slaves. Thomas Rous, who arrived in Barbados in 1638, had a farm of 24 hectares in 1645. By 1680 the Rous family owned 3 sugar works, 266 hectares of land, and 310 slaves and were counted among the great planters of the island.
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