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.
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