A Continent of Islands: Searching for the Caribbean Destiny [Paperback ed.] 0201622319, 9780201622317

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A ONTTNENT SLANDS ofJl Searching far the Caribbean Destiny

MARK KUM.ANSKY

A

Continent of Islands

Searching for the Caribbean Destiny

I

Mark Kurlansky

PERSEUS BOOKS Cambridge, Massachusetts

313

Please see p.

Many

for

permissions and source information.

of the designations used

by manufacturers and

sellers to distinguish their

claimed as trademarks. Where those designations appear in

this

products are

book and Perseus Books was

aware of a trademark claim, the designations have been printed in

initial capital letters (e.g.,

Big Mac).

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Kurlansky, Mark.

A

continent of islands

:

searching for the Caribbean destiny

/

Mark Kurlansky. cm.

p.

Includes bibliographical references

(p.

)

and index.

ISBN 0-201-52396-5 ISBN 0-201-62231-9 (pbk.) 1.

Caribbean Area

F2175.K87

—

History.

I.

Title.

1992

91-23737

972.9— dc20 Copyright

©

C1P

1992 by Mark Kurlansky

All rights reserved.

No

part of this publication

may be

reproduced, stored in a retrieval

system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher. Printed in the

United States of America. Jacket design by Diana

Coe

Text design by Vargas/Williams/Design Set in 10.5-point Berkeley

Book by

3 4 5 6 7 8 9

02010099

First printing,

January 1992

DEKR

Second paperback printing, March 1998

Corporation

CONTENTS

Introduction

The Curse

vii

1

The Problem with History Old Gods and

Why

and

40

the Revolution

Damballah

70

Left

Prophets and Profits

100 and

The Goats,

the Sheep,

Two Ways

of Looking at

a

Word

The Good Election

Man

in

240

Levittown

History Returns

The Continent

of

Underdevelopment

269

275

(Table)

Suggested Reading

300

Acknowledgments

311

Index

315

188

218

In Search of France

313

133

180

The Cookie Theory

Credits

123

210

The Diaspora

Don Pedro

It

Time

159

Death by Pepper Sauce The Tenth

the Ugly

153

Hint of Vanilla

Too Strong

62

94

Bajan Burgers

A

31

Dishes

Satellite

Color-Coded Nations Sacrifice

8

297

247

Et nous

sommes debout maintenant, mon pays

ma main

petite

et

moi,

maintenant dans son poing enorme

cheveux dans

les

le

vent,

force n'est pas en

et la

nous, mais au-dessus de nous, dans une voix qui vrille la nuit et Vaudience

comme

penetrance d'une guepe apocalyptique. Et

la

voix prononce que

la

I'Europe nous a pendant des siecles gaves de mensonges et gonfles de pestilences,

car

n'est point vrai

il

que nous parasitons qu'il suffit

que Voeuvre de I'homme

le

est finie

au monde

monde

que nous nous mettions au pas du monde

mais Voeuvre de I'homme vient seulement de commencer

et

il

reste

a I'homme

a conquerir toute interdiction immobilisee aux coins de sa ferveur et

aucune race ne possede

le

monopole de

la beaute,

de V intelligence, de

la

force et

est place

il

tenant que

pour tous au rendez-vous de

la

conquete

et

nous savons main-

tourne autour de notre terre eclairant la parcelle quafixee

le soleil

notre volonte seule et que toute etoile chute de del en terre a notre

ment sans

limite

.

.

commande-

.

And we are standing now, my country and I, hair in the wind, my little hand now in its enormous fist, and the strength is not in us, but above us, in a voice that pierces the night

and the audience

apocalyptic hornet.

And

stuffed us with lies

and bloated us with

For

it is

not true that the work of

That there

That

we

That

it is

is

man

nothing for us to do in

are parasites

enough

on

finished,

this

world,

this earth,

for us to

man has up to man to

keep

in step with the world,

only just begun,

And

vanquish

is

an

pestilence, is

But the work of it

like the sting of

the voice proclaims that Europe for centuries has

deprivations immobilized in the

all

corners of his fervor,

And no race has the monopoly on beauty, intelligence, or strength, And there is a place for all at the rendezvous of conquest, And we know now that the sun turns around our earth illuminating portion that our will alone has determined and that any star

sky to earth at our limitless

—Notes on a Return lation

to the

command

Native Land,

by Ellen Conroy Kennedy

v

.

.

falls

the

from

.

Aime

Cesaire (Martinique), trans-

INTRODUCTION

A

dozen dreadlocked Rastamen, red-eyed from the pipe they passed,

were

sitting

on curbs and

logs in the tropical bushes beside a Kingston

recording studio called The Mixing Lab. In one corner, wearing an

expensive-looking multicolored leather hat, sat Bob Marley's partner,

Bunny I

a

Wailer.

introduced myself, saying that

I

was an American

Jamaican singer," he defiantly answered.

book on

writing a

the Caribbean

He asked me why

down on most

I

wanted

the board next to him,

difficult

and wanted to write I

I

to talk to

I

was

him.

about the Caribbean. Sitting

tried to

question by explaining that

answer I

that recurring

and

admired the way Carib-

beans were struggling against enormous obstacles

With seemingly everything

writer. "I'm

explained that

to build nations.

against them, they never gave up, never

lost faith.

He

Drawing yellowish smoke from

liked that.

wheezed, "Yeah, mon, the Caribbean of magic.

try to

make

his ganja pipe

countries.

he

kind

It's

a

on

single-

Making something from nothing."

Europeans ruined these

islands, exhausted their soil

crop agriculture, drove their economies into dead ends. Caribbeans

have fought hard

to

the stigma of slavery

But

it

and take

was only when

itable that

only

have nations,

when

their

to

be

free

men and women,

their place in the

community

to erase

of nations.

Caribbean holdings were no longer prof-

Europeans relinquished them, just as slavery had ended the plantation

economy was no longer

profitable.

As twentieth-century Europe backed away from the region, Caribbeans discovered that their region was "a backyard" to the United States.

The United

States

began the century with troops

in

Cuba and

Puerto Rico, then invaded Haiti in 1915, invaded the Dominican

Republic in 1916, sponsored an unsuccessful invasion attempt in Cuba

vii

— A Continent

of Islands

in 1961,

invaded the Dominican Republic again in 1965, and invaded

Grenada

in 1983. In its efforts to control the region, the

United States

has combined such military force with the use of economic power.

Not of

now

surprisingly, Caribbeans

American cultural power

—

also

worry about the implications

television, the record industry, prosely-

tizing religions.

In the latter part of the twentieth century, Caribbeans

dream more or to

them with few

had courage,

dumped on

less

had

them. Their nations were handed over

possibilities for

maintaining them. But Caribbeans

and optimism and they embraced the

pride,

their

task of

nation building in a region of poor, young, and inexperienced countries

—building something out

been his

tract,

salvation. 'Create'

and

To no

one's surprise,

has

it

But as Cuban independence leader Jose Marti wrote in

difficult.

most famous

plantain,

of nothing.

if it

is

"Our America": "... Creation holds the key

The wine

the password of this generation.

proves sour,

it is

is

to

from

our wine!"

The millions of North Americans and Europeans who have been flocking to the winter sun of these little

new

struggling nations have caught

sense of the nation, the struggle, or the excitement. These per-

ceptions are what

I

most wanted

Caribbeans are a polite

to pass on.

people and they do not burden their guests. They do not things they think they

do not want

to hear,

tell

foreigners

and centuries of experience

have made them assume a certain closed-mindedness on our

part.

Caribbeans have found their history too horrible to show and

have tried to keep society

and

it

tastefully

upsetting for foreigners. eigners.

tucked out of

their culture, out of a

They have

sight,

along with their

vague notion that

They even avoid serving

tried to tell us that

nothing

is

it

is

all

too

local food to for-

going on here, that

they are an easygoing island people enjoying glorious sunshine. In truth, there has

always been a great deal going on: music, architecture,

theater, literature, painting

of races of

and cultures with

humor

—

a people

formed from a unique blending

a restless creativity

and

a richly ironic sense

that never fails them, even in the worst of times.

The Caribbean Sea

is

an apt metaphor

for

Caribbean society

so beautiful and serene-looking and yet with hidden violence and

sudden storms

that

have claimed so

viii

many

lives.

Only northerners

find

Introduction

the tropics serene. Tropical zones have an oppressive heat, a rotting

humidity, and a dangerous, unpredictable climate. writers have

commented on

Cuban poet Heberto me,

repels

it is

on the cover of the

novel Heroes Are Grazing

palm

trees

and

which

pounding

the

in

My

Garden

is

a deluxe sun, a scene

from at

a landscape that truly

see a

a tourist's postcard to

an attraction

light are a snare

and

a delusion

showed

first

me.

itself to

was on

I

be

by North-

felt

trees,

and

beneath a vengeful sun."

In the winter of 1973, the cruelty of this sea

dreamy beach with

cannot bear. For me, the beach, the palm

I

my

Spanish edition of

first

—you

home, stimulation directed

sent back erners

the northern misconception of the tropics.

Padilla wrote: "If there

the one

Many Caribbean

most benign-looking

a large catamaran that sailed

every day out of Montego Bay, Jamaica, with a deckload of red-faced

northern

visitors.

whose body was strung together

in the

He

tourists,

among

sat

the happy,

burned

now been

tunes that have

man

There was a banjo player, a very gaunt black

odd angles of

a Picasso figure.

plucking out those beautiful

ruined by overuse.

As the catamaran glided over calm Caribbean water, the banjo

man trip

sang,

on

"And

the sun shines daily

a sailing ship ..."

The puff

No one

paid attention to the banjo

drunk,

fell

come

about.

I

kept

his

arm

the blue sea

sky.

sixty feet long

eyes

on the man

sitting

and took

he bobbed in a calm

to

me

thrilling.

was

wide

circle

in the water as did the

man

kept

sea.

I

thought he might be laughing

There was no reason

for the

woman

next

He

just

woman

next

be so worried.

But suddenly the banjo

man

wasn't there anymore.

vanished underneath the unrippled Caribbean Sea. The to

a

next to me. The banjo

He looked happy.

as

to

was

possibly because he

dark broken pendulum swinging akimbo against

like a

and

my

woman

small elderly black

waving

of the big white sails

man who,

top/I took a

over the side.

The catamaran was about to

on the mountain

me, who,

I

now

realized,

doing something that

I

was the woman of the banjo man,

have since seen other

beating herself, pounding her

fists

on her

physical pain to distract from her emotions.

women

thighs, trying to create

The boat dropped

and searched the small patch of sea under motor power but

ix

started

do. She started

its sails

finally

A Continent

of Islands

woman was moaning

returned to Montego Bay. All the while the

beating her legs, staring no longer at the spot where the banjo

softly,

man went down

but

at the horizon.

You can

Friends and relatives were waiting in Montego Bay.

how quickly news travels in the to know what had happened,

never understand

Caribbean. Everyone

on the pier seemed to

hear the story. Knowing the story and telling

version of immortality. of

tale

what happened

was the story

told the story over

I

to the

banjo man.

was important.

that

I

but they

it is

still

wanted

the Afro-Caribbean

and over

again, the simple

never learned his name.

A man was

gone, he

left

It

behind his

story.

When you were

trying to

all

how

I

tell

and how

their lives

accidentally

stories

ironic,

first

gossips and

is

get other stories back.

They

about the hardness and the sadness of

how funny

it

was

all

in its

way. That

is

discovered the Caribbean: a crowded world of

lovingly painted tin-roofed shacks that tragedy

you

start telling a story,

and brave lean people who know

hidden under even a calm blue

rumor mongers who spread

rum

or around a standpipe or

—

bar

a

stories

sea.

a

It is

from house

world that

world of to

house

is

lived outdoors in

when

the weather turns

the cooling breezes. I

warm

see traces of that world in other places

in northern cities. Puerto Ricans, Jamaicans, Martiniquaises, in

what we

call

balconies

and out of windows,

and remembering

outside,

no way

slums, are out on their browns tone stoops, hanging from

for

them

to earn

gossiping, telling stories, longing to be

their countries that

had no place

for

them,

an income. In those dark, cold neighborhoods

of Brooklyn, in the inhospitable streets of South London, in the overbuilt outer arrondissements of Paris, in the cold,

quarter by the

Amsterdam

migrant becomes

damp Surinamese

train station, the loneliness of the

Caribbean

visible.

AAA The

first

ically.

me

problem

There

is

that chain of islands

of Michelangelo's

of the

arm

about the Caribbean

in writing

arm

of

—Cuba, Jamaica,

God on

is

defining

geograph-

whose shape has always reminded the Sistine Chapel. The upper part

Hispaniola, and Puerto Rico

x

it

—

are the Greater

Introduction

There

Antilles.

a

is

kind of joint

after

Puerto Rico. The U.S. and British

Virgin Islands lead into the forearm and hand, the Lesser Antilles, which is

composed of

the small middle islands, the Leewards

Antigua and Barbuda,

and Nevis, Saba,

Kitts

St.

—and lower —Guadeloupe, Dominica, Martinique,

Maarten, Saint-Barthelemy Islands

the Grenadines,

the

and Grenada. Just

—Montserrat,

Sint Eustatius,

Windward

part called the St.

Lucia,

Sint

Vincent and

St.

Barbados and, extending

to the east is

almost within sight of the Venezuelan coast, the two-island nation of Trinidad and Tobago. All these islands clearly

belong

to the Caribbean.

The Caribbean Sea

body of water enclosed between them and the coasts of Central and South America. Leeward and Windward Islands have a rough Atlantic is

the

side

and

a

calm Caribbean

side.

But there are Caribbean nations that do

not touch the Caribbean Sea. The Bahamas and The Turks and Caicos are entirely in the Atlantic but

by proximity,

history,

and culture are

Caribbean.

Colombia and Venezuela are on the Caribbean. They have many historical

and

and

politically

cultural ties to the region. But they are

not part of the Caribbean.

despite being too far east

by the Caribbean

on the

On

South American

the other hand, the Guianas,

coast of South America to be touched

Sea, are considered Caribbean.

Because the

British,

Dutch, and French had Caribbean colonies but no others in South America,

they tied the Guianas to their Caribbean colonies and the three have

remained that way. Guyana, the former

CAR1COM,

British Guiana,

is

the seat of

the central organization of the English-speaking Caribbean.

French Guiana has always been grouped with Martinique and Guadeloupe. Suriname, the former since independence, but

by

Dutch Guiana, has had few tradition has always

ties to

anyone

been a part of the

Caribbean, just as have the three Dutch islands off Venezuela

—Aruba,

Curacao, and Bonaire.

Then

there

is

the issue of Central America.

attempted to include El Salvador in

tion, for political reasons, continually

the Caribbean, even though in reality

nation that

is

not on the Caribbean Sea.

Nicaragua, which

is

on

America from Panama

The

that sea.

to Belize is

The Reagan administra-

it

is

On

the only Central

the other hand,

it

American excluded

entire Caribbean coast of Central

an enclave of black, English-speaking,

very Caribbean culture. But only Belize, the former British Honduras, isolated in Central

become

America by

its

British

part of the Caribbean, joining

ing in Caribbean

background, has chosen

CARICOM

and

to

actively participat-

affairs.

What emerges from

these considerations

is

dependent countries, three French departements,

xi

a region of sixteen infive British

colonies in

A

Continent of Islands

varying degrees of autonomy, a U.S.

and

six

They

all

commonwealth and

a U.S. territory,

semiautonomous members of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. have in

common

that Caribbeans can barely

culture of

its

own

a history of such savage greed

speak of

invention,

it,

and

brutality

an Afro-Asian-European-American

and the dream

that five centuries after the

slaughter began, they will take their place at last in the world, finding a

niche in which they can prosper.

When

asked

why

want

I

to write

about the Caribbean

I

try to

explain this dream, this heroic struggle, the courage and endurance of

Caribbeans. People often respond by asking, "Do you really think these

poor

little

countries can prosper in the

possibility, but, of course, I

also

do not know

1

do not know

for certain that the

modern world?" They have

world

is

just or that history, in

inexorable unfolding, eventually rights the wrongs of the past.

know

is

that

if

that

for certain that they will succeed.

What

I

its

do

these things are true, the people of the Caribbean will

have their revenge on history and find those things always searched: freedom, prosperity, and respect.

xii

for

which they have

1

.

.

mankind has paused

.

in

hurried march of progress.

its

—Horacio Acosta y

.

.

head of the architectural jury

Lara,

at the

award presentation, 1931

emblem

... the

of the highest of

of an international peace born through the application all

laws, the law of love.

—General

Rafael Leonidas Trujillo (Dominican Republic),

pleading for funding, 1932

And on the pedestal these words appear: "My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: Look on

my

works, ye mighty, and despair!"

Nothing beside remains. Round the decay

Of

the colossal wreck, boundless

The lone and

level

sands stretch

—Percy Bysshe

Ozama large city,

away.