15 December, 2013

Thoughts on Caribbean Peasantries

When I returned to my old island home of Sint Maarten this

summer, the general impression I got from the appearance of the

countryside, the state of the dwellings, businesses and so forth

was a very favourable one. To go by looks alone, one would think

the island significantly more prosperous than five or six years’

previous. To start with, the hills which had tended to vary

between dusty brown and olive drab before (the result, I was

told, of a prolonged drought), now, thought it was the hottest

season of the year, the dry just before the rains of hurricane

season, nonetheless the mountains which ring the capital

Philipsburg had a lush, verdant appearance, much more befitting

postcards and tourist brochures. The aptly-named Flamboyant Tree

(a national symbol of St. Martin, though it grows throughout the

Caribbean) was in bloom and the regenerative powers of tropical

nature seemed fully in evidence in the flocks of pelicans (brown

pelicans, also a national symbol) and frigate birds - all far

more numerous than five years ago - swirling in the sky, barely

above my head as I stood on the rooftop of the Pitusa Hotel to

take in the scenery and ponder over the old battles and new plans

which I had taken up.

Houses which had previously appeared derelict were not

freshly-painted in the bright colours which find favour in the

Caribbean. Most notably, shops, supermarkets and the like

presented new additions - an extra floor or parking lot here,

gingerbread and new signage there. One type of business that

seemed to be doing badly - though there were still some around -

were internet cafes. A sign of the proliferation of private

internet connections and - much more importantly in a society

where to shut oneself up in one’s room with a computer all

evening, as is the custom for many here in Toronto, would come

across as a sort of insanity - smart phones.

In conversations with locals I would mention this

observation with palpable admiration in my voice. Partly, as a

sort of mildly flattering conversation-starter, but partly

because things really seemed to have improved since the days when

I was an undocumented warehouse coolie for Mr. Huang of Sunny

Foods or a construction worker hauling blocks and mixing cement

to build more apartments on top of the Pitusa.

In every single case, be the interviewee my old boss,

Stephen Huang, the Chinese owner of one of the largest

supermarkets on the island, or a humble taxi driver, Dutch-

Antilles born and bred, the response was the same. Yes,

everything looked nicely spruced up and a lot of businesses had

expanded operations, but typically it had been a grave

misjudgement.

The 1990s to the mid-2000s had been a period of rapid growth

for Sint Maarten. The population grew, mainly due to immigration

from other Caribbean countries, but also from the metropole

(France and Holland), as many whites who could not make it to

their liking in Paris or Amsterdam, or who fell in love with the

climate and lifestyle of the islands, came to try their hand and

find a niche for themselves as bartenders, chefs, professionals

or simply as curious local characters in their motherlands’

colonies-by-another-name (Martinique and Guadeloupe have also

seen large population increases in the last 30 years or so,

driven by just such immigration from Europe, so I am not merely

speculating here).

During my previous residence on Sint Maarten, which ended

five years ago (hopefully to resume again sometime in the not-

too-distant future), the island was right in the midst of a long

boom. Confident local businesspeople were engaged in rapid

expansion. I might add that the setting up of a large number of

truly new, additional businesses would not be easy, given that

the little island - a mere 15.8 km north to south, 13.4 km east

to west (for reference to Torontonian readers, the longer of

those dimensions is roughly the distance between Yonge-Dundas

Square and Kennedy Station...this, the length of the whole

country) - had essentially been settled to its limits, at least

in the low-lying, easily developable parts. Indeed, it had been

developed beyond its natural limits since at least thirty or

forty years’ prior when surface area for a third major street in

Philipsburg (previously there were only Front Street and Back

Street) had to be created by filling in part of the Great Salt

Pond. The new road was very appropriately christened the Pondfill

Road. Moreover, the one-sided focus of the economy on tourism -

specifically, short-visit cruise ship tourism - meant that,

unlike, say, Jamaica or Cuba, where there are plenty of

attractions in the interior to amuse foreign visitors, economic

construction on Sint Maarten must be concentrated on the coast

even more preponderantly than in most other vacation hotspots.

As I had foreseen easily enough even from Toronto, to which

I had come just as the great financial crisis began, Sint Maarten

was hit hard, much harder than most other parts of the globe. Not

that there were wars and famines or anything of that nature - the

geography of the Caribbean and the character of its peoples

mitigate against the former and the latter is unlikely to occur

anywhere in the region besides Haiti. However, Sint Maarten, once

hit, would necessarily have more than usual difficulty in

recovering. Indeed, as of August 2013 it had not recovered and

showed no signs (certainly not in the eyes of several local

businesspeople, some quite prominent and possessed of a wealth of

experience) of doing so in the foreseeable future.

Firstly, there was the aforementioned piece of bad luck that

a great number of important local businesses were right in the

middle of bold, expansionary projects just as the crisis hit.

Hotels which suddenly were without guests, at least outside of

the tourism “high season” found it prudent to convert their

newly-constructed occupant capacity into apartments for permanent

residence by locals - a much more reliable source of income and

requiring less outlay in advertising and cleaning services. The

Sunny Foods supermarket was one example of a prominent local

business which fell into this sort of unfortunate situation.

Friends with whom I have shared the tales of my island adventures

might recall my stories of life as an illegal alien, working for

this Chinese supermarket. As brutal as conditions were, mind you,

the lanky, moustachioed owner, Mr. Stephen Huang, I always found

a likeable chap. Perhaps because he showed a fondness for my

cats, which is a saving grace for almost anyone in my books.

Anyhow, during my earlier residence on the island, construction

had already begun on a new Sunny Foods supermarket to replace the

crumbling old building that had passed through I know not how

many hands before Huang took it over some time in the late 1990s.

During my absence, operations were finally transferred to the new

location, situated right next to the Pitusa on A.T. Illidge Road.

A massive, sparkling, state-of-the-art structure that would

put many Toronto supermarkets to shame, with an asphalt sea of a

parking lot out front, so large that tenants of the neighbouring

Pitusa use it for their personal parking without obstructing

business, and with an ATM to boot (not something you will find

everywhere on St. Martin)...yes, the new building certainly was a

step up from the one I had lived and worked in, six and a half

days a week, for $400-500 US dollars a month, with my comrades

from rural Henan, China, from Haiti and Jamaica...all gone now,

save for ‘Chad the Jamaican, and one or two of the Haitians.

I saw Mr. Huang numerous times this summer (it is hard not

to see people in such a small place) and on at least one occasion

was able to have a good chat with him about the state of the

island’s economy.

I used the familiar “well, I must say, things certainly seem

to have improved since I was last here…” to open the

conversation. And, like every other business/tradesperson, from

taxi driver and chop-suey house chef, to, well, the boss of one

of the island’s largest supermarkets, Mr. Huang shok his head

with a bitter smile.

All appearances, he clarified in his trademark clipped,

matter-of-fact tone. Yes, the expansions and renovations all

looked good. But the economy was in the doldrums. Money had been

invested for business which never materialized and, as basic

principles of economics would dictate, the end result was deep

losses with little chance of digging out anytime soon. The old

Sunny Foods may have been filthy, the concrete crumbling, the

paint peeling, the tile stained and chipped, the warehouses and

storage areas infested with rats, but it was always packed, did a

roaring business and was immensely profitable. Probably, the

minimal costs in construction and maintenance (and wages too, I

remember most distinctly) did not hurt, either. I had not the

opportunity this time around to check if the other large Chinese

supermarkets - A-Foo and Sang’s - were experiencing similar

difficulties. No doubt they too are getting pinched by the sickly

economy, although, luckily for them, they had expanded to their

present size/market share some years’ before and thus have had

more time to absorb the associated costs. Here I only speak of

supermarkets and hotels, but there is no shortage of examples,

perhaps the most glaring example being the enormous, hyper-

modern, ridiculously oversized white elephant of a new

international airport, a final gift/curse from Old Man Wathey…

Aside from unfortunately-timed growth, there is another

major reason why the financial crisis hit Sint Maarten so hard; a

factor which should have been much more obvious and predictable

(alas, it seems it was so only to a wise few) and which will

undoubtedly prove much more serious - if not fatal - in the long

run. Aye, an Achilles’ heel which afflicts a great many islands,

the more so if they happen to be small ones.

I am speaking of the excessive reliance on tourism as the

main engine of the economy - nay, as the economy itself.

When I worked briefly as a stevedore for a container yard

(also on A.T. Illidge Road, with, naturally, operations on the

docks) during my last residence on Sint Maarten, I had the good

fortune to make the acquaintance of an elderly Dutchman, who has

since passed away. This old Nederlander told me the story - ah,

and what an art do people in the Caribbean make of storytelling,

such that it comes like breathing! - of when he, Wathey and a few

others (but, as he told it, mainly he and Wathey) brought the

first major lot of cruise ships to the island.

A story that would be akin to, say, the building of the

Trans-Canada railroad, the first gold strike in the Klondike, and

the first oil pipeline in Alberta all rolled into one. Oh, on a

scale much more quaint, to be sure, but everything in Sint

Maarten is quaint by the standards of a big city such as this

(Toronto, where I write), everything, that is, except the

individual human dramas, which in the orderly, efficient, cold

and grey metropolis, are dull and cookie-cutter by comparison...a

truth, whether people realize it or not, but once one does, it

becomes an unshakeable observation, like the feeling when one has

noticed that there is a mosquito in one’s room, and then one

tries to un-notice it…

The first cruise ship to dock in Philipsburg was, without

exaggeration, of a local significance equivalent to all those

aforementioned stories of economic pioneering combined. It is

almost impossible to stress just how wholly and utterly dependent

on tourism is the economy of St. Martin.

Not as a sector of the economy, or even the most important

sector. It is almost the whole economy. And, given that the

majority (and, no, “majority” here is not hyperbole; not a figure

of speech) of the island’s population have come since the

beginning of the tourist boom to, directly, get jobs in tourism

and related industries and, indirectly, because all those people

working in the tourism industry require goods and services, even

most of the economy which does not seem, on the surface of it, to

be at all related to tourism, it and most of its workers are only

there (or, at least, only came - whether they will stay or not,

who can say?) because, for the last forty or so years, foreigners

with money in their pockets have come to buy duty-free jewelry,

liquor, tobacco, and kitschy souvenirs, to roast themselves on

the beautiful white sand beaches and to enjoy the legal brothels.

During an election a few years ago I had to reread some

lines I saw in the local newspaper...Apparently, a minor

political party was seeking to establish an agriculture on Sint

Maarten. Not, I emphasize, the “improvement” or “development” of

agriculture. The establishment of an agriculture. Needless to say, at

least given how things were back then, our would-be peasant

politicos remained generally ignored curmudgeons on the fringe -

though perhaps not for long…

The newspaper was accurate, though. There is really no

functioning “agriculture” to speak of on Sint Maarten, or on

Dutch Sint Maarten anyhow. Nor any secondary industry -

manufacturing and the like - though I will confine the scope of

today’s discussion to agriculture.

When I say “there is no agriculture on Sint Maarten” I mean

to say there there is no production of foodstuffs or cash crops

on any meaningful scale, i.e. enough to supply, or nearly supply,

the local market, not even to speak of surpluses for export.

Individual householders grow certain vegetables and fruits in

their gardens, it is true. Plantains, yams, sweet potatoes...The

more enthusiastic might keep a small flock of fowl or even a goat

- though I can remember there being far more of each last time

around. But this is all done on a very small scale for household

consumption - a supplement to food bought in the market, or

perhaps for gifts/exchange with friends and neighbours, at best.

There is nothing like a Soualigan version of Coronation Market

(Jamaican readers will know of what I speak).

Various reasons for this state of affairs are given: the

soil is too poor; the island is simply too small; it would not

be profitable/nothing grows here...all facile excuses and all

utterly false. The real reasons are more complex and much less

persuasive.

Refuting the contentions of naysayers that the soil is

simply too poor; that nothing will grow, agronomists have been

invited to examine the suitability of local conditions for

commercial agriculture and experiments have been conducted with

tomatoes, pumpkins, bok choy, peppers and other vegetable crops

(the living examples in peoples’ yards are proof of the viability

of the land for tropical starchy staples, so-called “ground

provisions”). The agronomists’ verdicts are positive and the

experiments with the above-mentioned crops (not always the

easiest things to grow, versus, for instance, hardy plantains,

bananas and tubers) bear out professional opinion, though so far

no such projects have received sufficient investment to make the

leap from testbeds of the technical feasibility of vegetable

growing to working, profitable market garden systems such as

exist with Coronation Market in Jamaica and in many other

locations around the world. There exists an agriculturalists’

club and there seems to be a growing chorus of voices recognizing

that the bellyaching (figurative at present, though perhaps

literal soon enough) waiting for the economy to pick up again

could be softened by people making use of the rich soil and

abundance of edible vegetation - fruits, coconuts, etc. - which

grows almost without effort in the blessed climate of the

islands.

On the front page of the local Herald Newspaper one day this

August there was a story, accompanied by a large colour

photograph, of an older gentleman who had grown some sweet

potatoes of gigantic size in his yard. He lived in Cole Bay, a

suburban settlement on the Dutch Side. This man and his neighbour

shared the consternation of the pro-self-sufficiency politicians

and anti-colonialist intellectuals. The soil of Sint Maarten is,

in fact, quite capable of being very productive, our backyard

agriculturalist lamented. Yet, so many just leave their good land

to waste, let the fruit on their trees ripen, fall and rot

unpicked, instead buying imported versions of things they could

grow themselves, all the while complaining vociferously about

ever-rising food prices.

The Soualigan writer and historian, Daniella Jeffry-Pilot,

in her book, “1963 - A Landmark Year in St. Martin,” recalls that

in the so-called Traditional Period1 St. Martin society2 was a

mostly self-sufficient one, with a thriving peasant agriculture

and a fishery (other aspects of the old society which Jeffry-

Pilot waves poetic about I will not get into here). The local

agriculture was notable not only for the production of garden

crops. Dairy and beef cattle of exceptionally high quality were

also produced. This is significant, because it is typically

considered that the raising of cattle, particularly the

1 St. Martin historians date the Traditional Period as lasting from Emancipation in 1848 to 1963. It was during the Traditional Period that the customs, cuisine, clothing, and so forth which are considered representative of traditional St. Martin culture were established.

2 Jeffry-Pilot is of the opinion that the border between the

Dutch and French sides was mostly symbolic at this time, and that

the same, organically-developed local culture spread over both

territories, a view seconded by many other patriotic Sint

Maarteners.

successful breeding of commercially-valuable herds, requires much

greater investments of land and technical skill than, say,

growing yams and plantains. Cattle on St. Martin were raised on

such a scale and were so known for their quality that live

animals were exported to other islands to provide breeding stock

as well as beef, and the dairy industry was so productive that,

according to Jeffry-Pilot, islanders often used milk instead of

water to cook their porridge.

I am not suggesting here that society was necessarily

idyllic before the cruise ship era (though some would almost go

that far, it seems), nor that the same degree of self-sufficiency

is readily attainable, now that the population is much larger and

used to a generally higher material standard of living. However,

certainly, the naysayers who have for so many years tried to

discourage any discussion of alternatives to the “easy money” of

tourism or resource extraction (for islands that have resources

to extract, e.g. oil or bauxite) would be quickly and soundly

refuted if people would but open their eyes or jog their memories

a little. The denial of possibility is what is truly dangerous.

Part II

Tony Weis, in his 2006 article “The Rise, Fall and Future of

the Jamaican Peasantry” makes some interesting observations about

the historical role which peasant smallholder agriculture has

played in the formation of that country’s economy and culture - a

role, it must be pointed out, that is often not given the credit

it is due. Much like in St. Martin’s Traditional Period, the

Black peasantry formed the backbone of post-emancipation society

and were responsible for the formation of a good part of what has

come to be Jamaican culture. Despite this, as much as its

cultural role significantly faded with the end of slavery, the

plantation has received the vast majority of the attention from

writers as the archetypal building block/unit in the formation of

Caribbean cultures. I will not dwell on the history here; for

that the reader can consult articles by Weis, Beckford and

others. Rather, I will seize on a point Weird mentions

tangentially, though, I felt, not with sufficient depth or

breadth. Probably my mind runs with things in the direction most

relevant to its own experience…

This is the issue of unemployment, poverty in general, and

idle, occasionally delinquent/criminal youth (all really one

broader issue). Given that Weis was writing before the global

financial crisis, perhaps the economic urgencies which have come

out in sharp relief since then were not so readily perceived.

It is often said in criticism of peasant smallholder-type

agriculture that it is not economically efficient; not as

profitable as mechanized, industrialized commercial agriculture.

Such arguments have been levelled at land-to-the-tiller programs

the world over, mostly by advocates of the kind of “rational”

free market capitalism espoused by the technocrats and financiers

at the World Bank and IMF. Interestingly, I might add as a side

not, many of these same types who, in this Post Cold War era,

will try to stamp out Third World small producers for being

inefficient due to their small size and traditional systems, when

viewing the collectivization and mechanization of agriculture in

the Soviet Union and Communist China were quick to extol the

virtues of the Chinese peasant (ah, “unchanging,” picturesque

rural China…), toiling away on his little handkerchief plot of

land with his hoe, conical bamboo hat and water buffalo….and to

prophesize that collectivization would kill the initiative of the

peasant; that despite the introduction of modern science and

techniques production would surely fall, for the peasant family

farm was so productive and efficient precisely because it was so

small and everything was thus so carefully managed, the peasant

knew he was working directly for himself and his family, etc. How

the truth should vary so depending on who is suggesting what...I

believe Orwell termed this sort of reasoning “double-think”...

The best Caribbean example of the sort of policies to

revitalize smallholder agriculture that Weis, Beckford (and of

course, this writer) are talking about, and the one which had the

most dramatic and lasting results would undoubtedly be the land

redistribution program which was instituted by Michael Manley’s

PNP government in Jamaica during the 1970s.

More detailed analyses may be found in specialized studies

available through online academic journals or in (a surprising

number of) dusty volumes in the local reference library here in

Toronto (God save Roi Pierre le 1er for that). Essentially, the

Manley-era land reforms entailed effectively seizing the excess

lands of great estates which had in many cases lain uncultivated

and unproductive since King Sugar fell from grace. Before one

gets indignant at the injustices suffered by the great

landowners, it is worth mentioning that many were not citizens of

the country, nor even agriculturalists (productive or otherwise).

For example, the British author Ian Thomson, for his 2009 travel

journalism book “The Dead Yard: A Story of Modern Jamaica,”

interviewed one notable “victim” of the 1970s land reform, the

(surprisingly still-living) widow of 1930s and 40s Hollywood

movie star Errol Flynn. It was hard to tell from Thomson’s

description and the inane remarks quoted of Mrs. Flynn whether

Thomson intended the reader to view her as a figure of mockery or

of sympathy, so out of touch with reality and devoid of basic

human compassion do her pleas for chivalrous pity seem. Mind you,

considering the book as a whole, it is clear Thomson does not

feel very deeply for the common people of Jamaica, as much as his

lurid tales of violence, mayhem, and as-yet-unstifled primitive,

exotic culture make necessary use of them in earning the author

his bread and butter. Not Hardough bread, I imagine...Mrs. Flynn

still shuddered as she recalled her feelings of self-righteous

horror when the squatters first began to appear on what she

regarded as her land. Their suspicious, grinning faces, the

wicked delight they took in seizing their little patches of land

from someone they saw as an embodiment of so much historical

oppression. The beastliness of it all...Before one sheds too many

misguided tears for Mrs. Flynn, it would help to explain, the

lands which were appropriated for redistribution amounted to

several thousand acres on this one estate alone. That is to say,

this solitary widow had several thousand acres of good

agricultural land which had never been used for anything and

which she had no intention of ever using for anything, except

perhaps the satisfaction which she evidently derived from holding

it away from those who desperately needed it. Thousands of acres

on an island where most agricultural properties are measured in

the single - or, at most, double - digits.

Moreover, owners like Mrs. Flynn were not actually “losing”

anything, as the state did not take legal ownership of land that

people did not voluntarily dispose of through sale. The owners

were merely faced with the (apparently) brutally unpleasant

choice of bringing idle lands into production or hanving them

automatically leased by the state for 5-10 years. That is to say,

all the discomfort of having to share one’s vast estate with

persons poorer and darker could have been avoided simply by

putting it to some sort of agricultural use, but this was

evidently either beyond the energies of most large owners or,

possibly, it seemed too much like backing down. The lease model

was chosen so as to ensure that farmers’ capital would be put

directly into agriculture, and so that the state would have some

say in how the land was used -mainly with a view to preventing

speculation and the land being left uncultivated as before.

I am reminded here of the English writer and agronomist

Arthur Young’s dictum concerning property, “give a man the secure

possession of a bleak rock, and he will turn it into a garden;

give him a nine years’ lease of a garden, and he will convert it

into a desert.” Indeed, the tendency of farmers in the Caribbean

to be hesitant about making long-term improvements to their land

has been noted by Weis (2006), among others. Certainly, the 5-10

years’ lease system seems to be the very object of Young’s

criticism. Yet, given local conditions, where agriculture is

generally viewed with a measure of disdain and where land

speculation is rampant (being more surely and easily profitable

than actual use and cultivation of said land), also, given the

threat of social upheaval and American intervention should

excessively “Red” policies have been adopted (1) mean that there

were/are very real constraints on adopting such approaches. A

side note: although Arthur Young’s writings have been used to

advocate for the concentration of land ownership (versus the

smallholder systems prevailing on much of the European continent)

- John Stuart Mill, for instance, called Young “the apostle of la

grande culture” - in the Caribbean context, the great sugar

plantations were notorious for their lazy, environmentally-

destructive land management practices. The sole genuine peasant

that I am aware of on Dutch Sint Maarten (a Rasta who lives in a

red, gold and green shack on a hillside overlooking Illidge Road

- see the photo in my album) has, conversely, done a very

impressive job of developing his (or her - I never met them so I

cannot say) little plot of steeply-sloped land, situated amid

dense acacia scrub. Probably he/she acquired it precisely because

it is so steep as to be useless for building hotels, mansions,

and so forth, and hence was very cheap. Making lemonade where

life has provided lemons, our Rasta peasant has terraced the

hillside, much like those postcard photos of rice paddies in East

Asia that most of us are familiar with.

Manley’s land reforms did not last long, though some

families were able to become successful in agriculture and even

use their new prosperity and the government’s generosity to buy

plots outright. The concentration of land in the hands of a few

very rich families is a major obstacle to agricultural

development throughout the region. Driving through Dutch Sint

Maarten, for instance, one will notice that though the low-lying

areas are very densely settled, the hills - and it is a very

hilly island, sculpted in very compressed fashion (2) - are

almost entirely vacant. The only exceptions are the impoverished,

rough-and-tumble district of Dutch Quarter (3) and a few other

similar neighbourhoods.

Besides certain such neighbourhoods (and, even in those

cases, settlement - there being almost no agriculture - is

confined to the more level areas along the roads) the only use

one sees made of the hills is for the occasional home of some

visibly wealth resident. Big, architecturally more lavish than

the typical local dwelling (some quite attractive in a quaint,

tropical way); the mildly miniaturized present-day Soualigan

versions of the fabled Caribbean Great House, without the

venerable age or the attached plantation. Elsewise, there is a

radio tower here and there, and that is the extent of things.

There is quite plainly a shortage of land on the island;

this was often a topic of conversation during my first residence

on the island and the population has only grown since then. The

declining economy and rising cost of food imports only add to the

urgency of making use of some additional land. Rents, too, though

nothing compared to those in Toronto, are significantly higher

than on larger islands.

Why, then, is so much visibly fertile land (and some of it

can obviously be developed with labour and but a little capital,

as the presence of mansions and the terraced fields of our Rasta

peasant friend show) left unutilized? Not because, for example,

it is covered in rainforests or wildlife preserves - for it is

not. No, the main reason that the hills are vacant even as the

lowlands are so crowded would fit quite readily into a Caribbean

Marxist’s most giddily polemical propaganda speech, without

needing any nuancing or simplification.

A local politician (who shall remain nameless), who has

made it the object of his career to struggle against the cookie-

cutter major parties (4) which have unfortunately brought a

culture of endemic corruption and dependency along with tourist

dollars, related an explanation to me during this August, on a

late-night scenic drive through the Sint Maarten countryside:

All of the idle land, as far as the eye can see (which

covers most of the island) is owned by a small number of very

wealthy families. Actually, just two: the Wathey and York

families. I cannot say I have ever heard anyone talk much about

the Yorks, but the Wathey clan, of course, is that of “The Old

Man” who “strode across Sint Maarten politics like a colossus”

(or however Mr. Fabian Badejo, local author and historian,

phrased it); he who fathered the multi-million dollar white

elephant of an international airport; he whose bronze likeness

stands in front of the government building (as well as in Wathey

Square).

In a place where land is in great demand, and where

gardening/farming is an important means for making ends meet,

what better, more visible way of flaunting one’s wealth than

having an enormous amount of land and doing absolutely nothing to

make economic use of it?

Weis sees the demise of the plantations as a sign of hope

for Jamaica, his argument being that the collapse of the

plantations will free up fertile, flat land near the coast for

peasant proprietors to take over, vastly expanding their

productivity and the income which can be obtained by them for

their crops (the land requiring less irrigation and being more

accessible to markets). The Black peasantry, you see, on Jamaica

and most every other island, though numerous and industrious in

pursuing their agricultural occupations, have, since

Emancipation, mainly been confined to the hard-to-cultivate

mountainous areas (5), or portions of the great estates that the

owners were willing to dispose of during one financial crisis or

another (the West Indian plantation has been in a near-constant

state of “crisis” ever since the end of slavery, then the end of

Indentureship, then the cancelling of sugar preferences and the

rise of beet sugar, then the Black Sigatoka disease that wiped

out the Gros Michel Banana, then…). These were usually the parts

of the estate with the poorest soil and the least access to water

- water being most vital for tropical crops and hard to supply in

hilly, sloping terrain.

As I was saying, the “plantation” had generations ago fallen

from its position of prominence. Hence, I cannot share Mr. Weis’

optimism that, whatever new difficulties might be facing sugar or

banana producers in the early 2000s, such factors will of

themselves give a dramatic and decisive boost to peasant

agriculture. Certainly, low banana prices and the movement of

sugar production to Brazil, Cuba, Australia and the like (which,

I might add, occurred decades, even generations ago) are not

likely to have much of an effect on large landholders who have

nothing to do with agriculture; who hold their land idle for

speculation, for possible resource extraction, or simply to hold

it (like Errol Flynn’s widow and her thousands of acres, for

instance).

This difficult reality applies for many smaller islands as

well, where plantations long ceased to be major factors in the

economy, but where land remains concentrated in a few wealthy

hands. On Sint Maarten, for example, the Watheys and Yorks will

not be handing over their lands to prospective smallholders

because the world price of bananas, sugar or cocoa takes a dive;

such things are irrelevant to them.

So, as much as it complicates matters immensely, it is

unlikely that problems of land distribution could be solved and

agricultural production for domestic self-sufficiency

meaningfully increased without resorting to policy measures. In a

radical form, this implies some kind of land reform limiting

maximum holdings, or at least non-productive holdings, and

dividing up the wasteland of the great estates among those

willing to till it. In a milder form (but still relatively

radical, compared to the current situation), perhaps a lease

program similar to the one undertaken by Manley’s government. No

doubt such measures, no matter how moderate, would generate

significant political controversy and would first require careful

deliberation and a firm base of popular support. However, in the

alternative, one will find oneself singing paeans to peasant

agriculture, like some kind of West Indian Wordsworth, in the

ironic and unfortunate circumstance of an absence of actual

peasants.

Revisiting the widely-held belief that smallholder

agriculture is not as economically profitable as large-scale

mechanized farming, such criticisms are beside the point. Taken

to its logical conclusion, after all, this sort of economic

rationalization will lead to the total abandonment of

agriculture, as even a relatively large farm on a Caribbean

island has no hope of being able to equal in efficiency and

profitability the enormous, high-tech (and highly-subsidized)

factory farms in the United States, Canada and similar countries.

This is not a slippery-slope argument. The recent history of rice

cultivation and pig farming in Haiti, the dairy industry (as well

as the production of countless garden crops) in Jamaica, and

numerous other local agricultural systems in the region have been

ruined as a direct - and often consciously planned - result of

just such policies of economic “rationalization.”

When Michael Manley or the gentleman in Cole Bay interviewed

by the Herald urge that people use a little plot of land to grow

some food for themselves, it is not because it is expected that

anyone will be getting rich off their backyard gardens and

chicken coops. Unemployment rates in the Caribbean region are -

and almost always have been - very high in comparison with North

America and Western Europe. Even when tourism is flourishing,

this has been the case. Canadians and Europeans would probably be

surprised to know how little their tourist dollars actually

contribute to the local economy, but that is a tale for another

day. Because of the highly seasonal nature of the tourism

economy, the money flowing through the formal/cash economy in

general is also seasonal and prone to dramatic fluctuations which

local authorities can do little to combat. The high cost of

imported goods on islands that are not capable of manufacturing

most any consumer goods themselves is also a huge burden.

Without demanding any major changes in peoples’ lifestyles,

without a deliberate rearrangement of the formal economy, it is

not hard to see how having a little yard to grow some food and

perhaps raise a few chickens or a goat in - even if, by North

American standards, one would be inclined to call it a garden

rather than “agriculture” - could be a boon to many families. One

which provides emotional/psychological benefits (through a sense

of pride in self-sufficiency and enhanced security in being able

to provide for oneself, independent of fickle and uncontrollable

international market forces) as it reduces household

expenditures, improves nutrition, and, for the state, lessens at

least somewhat the payouts of precious foreign exchange for food

imports and possible, also, cash transfers through social welfare

services that might otherwise be necessary to keep the poor fed

during difficult economic times. Particularly if the land in

question was at least in part owned outright by the citizen, the

arrangement could be quite flexible. Perhaps, during high season,

or in very good economic years, when there is plenty of paying

work to be had in the formal economy, the family might lessen its

reliance on its own productive resources and devote more time to

hard-currency-earning wage labour. However, should the economy

take a turn for the worse; should work become scarce of the price

of goods in the shops rise relative to wages, the man or woman

with their little plot of land will have peace of mind in that,

even if times are tough, they will at least still be able to feed

their families and - important in a region where the spirit of

personal independence and self-reliance is very strong - they

will be able to do so by their own efforts.

This kind of security is especially significant in societies

where insecurity is usually the rule and where there do not exist

the social safety nets such as citizens of the rich countries of

Europe and North America can rely on . Granted, the social

support systems in North America and the UK definitely are not

what they once were, but I am speaking in relative terms.

Likely to be economically efficient or profitable? Doubtful.

But that does not matter. Trying to revive the great plantations

also would probably not be very profitable. Nor are the North

American factory farms which are swamping Caribbean ports with

their cut-rate products really efficient, if one considers the

massive government subsidies such farms require to function (and

which no Caribbean government could afford) and the total lack of

accounting given to the catastrophic environmental and social

costs of that kind of agriculture.

With North America and Eruope still reeling from the Great

Financial Crisis, the continue sitting idly, hoping for the

tourists to come back is like waiting and praying for rain during

a drought. Perhaps rain may eventually come. But the sensible

person picks up a shovel and starts digging a well. With neither

pity nor money likely forthcoming from the metropole anytime

soon, the nations of the Caribbean will have to manage on the

strength of their own efforts. Wringing one’s hands will not

help, but rolling up one’s sleeves and getting them a bit dirty

just might.

***Footnotes***

(1) The experience of Cuba a decade previous and Grenada

but a couple years’ later prove that there was some justification

for Manley’s caution, whether or not playing it safe was really

the most effective way to go about things...this writer wonders

if perhaps going in “with the bayonet,” so to speak, might not,

in the end, have been more successful. Alas, history provides no

end of fuel for what-ifs…\

(2) Sint Maarten always gives me the impression of the

topography in a video game more than something one would normally

expect to see in real life, such as one of the Battlefield

series, Call of Duty, Resident Evil or something like that, the

way the hills shoot up so abruptly from their flat surroundings,

such a short distance from eachother, giving a sense of mountain

ranges even though none are much over two or three hundred

metres...

(3) Which at night would make a good setting for a Silent

Hill or Resident Evil, to carry on with the video game

references….dilapidated dwellings clinging like barnacles to the

banks of narrow, serpentine roads (which would do a poor job as

paths for donkeys and mules)...really, you have to see it to

believe it, preferably after dark, as there is no street

lighting. If I sound critical, my apologies. I do not imagine

that I would go live there unless time should continue in making

me increasingly eccentric, but it is nice in some ways that there

are still neighbourhoods with such character, devoid of any hint

of the “concrete jungle,” so near the temples of tourist kitsch.

(4) The Democratic Party, or D.P. (Wathey’s party and

perhaps the closest Souligan equivalent of Canada’s Liberals as

the “natural governing party,” to paraphrase a Canadian

politician…I remember not who, but mostly likely he was a

Liberal), and the National Alliance, or N.A., the main opposition

party. For the record, there is nothing nationalist whatsoever

about the National Alliance, whose logo appears to have been

borrowed from NBC television.

(5) Sint Maarten may appear to be an exception to this rule

now, but this writer is not sufficiently knowledgeable about

agricultural practices during the Traditional Period to say

whether or not this has always been the case.