Book Reviews -Peter Hulme, Polly Pattullo, Last Resorts: the Cost of Tourism in the Caribbean
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Book Reviews -Peter Hulme, Polly Pattullo, Last resorts: The cost of tourism in the Caribbean. London: Cassell/Latin America Bureau and Kingston: Ian Randle, 1996. xiii + 220 pp. -Michel-Rolph Trouillot, Édouard Glissant, Introduction à une poétique du Divers. Montréal: Presses de l'Université de Montréal, 1995. 106 pp. -Bruce King, Tejumola Olaniyan, Scars of conquest / Masks of resistance: The invention of cultural identities in African, African-American, and Caribbean drama. New York: Oxford University Press, 1995. xii + 196 pp. -Sidney W. Mintz, Raymond T. Smith, The Matrifocal family: Power, pluralism and politics. New York: Routledge, 1996. x + 236 pp. -Raymond T. Smith, Michel-Rolph Trouillot, Silencing the past: Power and the production of history. Boston: Beacon, 1995. xix + 191 pp. -Michiel Baud, Samuel Martínez, Peripheral migrants: Haitians and Dominican Republic sugar plantations. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1995. xxi + 228 pp. -Samuel Martínez, Michiel Baud, Peasants and Tobacco in the Dominican Republic, 1870-1930. Knoxville; University of Tennessee Press, 1995. x + 326 pp. -Robert C. Paquette, Aline Helg, Our rightful share: The Afro-Cuban struggle for equality, 1886- 1912. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1995. xii + 361 pp. -Daniel C. Littlefield, Roderick A. McDonald, The economy and material culture of slaves: Goods and Chattels on the sugar plantations of Jamaica and Louisiana. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1993. xiv + 339 pp. -Jorge L. Chinea, Luis M. Díaz Soler, Puerto Rico: desde sus orígenes hasta el cese de la dominación española. Río Piedras: Editorial de la Universidad de Puerto Rico, 1994. xix + 758 pp. -David Buisseret, Edward E. Crain, Historic architecture in the Caribbean Islands. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1994. ix + 256 pp. -Hilary McD. Beckles, Mavis C. Campbell, Back to Africa. George Ross and the Maroons: From Nova Scotia to Sierra Leone. Trenton NJ: Africa World Press, 1993. xxv + 115 pp. -Sandra Burr, Gretchen Gerzina, Black London: Life before emancipation. New Brunswick NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1995. xii + 244 pp. -Carlene J. Edie, Trevor Munroe, The cold war and the Jamaican Left 1950-1955: Reopening the files. Kingston: Kingston Publishers, 1992. xii + 242 pp. -Carlene J. Edie, David Panton, Jamaica's Michael Manley: The great transformation (1972-92). Kingston: Kingston Publishers, 1993. xx + 225 pp. -Percy C. Hintzen, Cary Fraser, Ambivalent anti-colonialism: The United States and the genesis of West Indian independence, 1940-1964. Westport CT: Greenwood, 1994. vii + 233 pp. Downloaded from Brill.com10/07/2021 06:59:38PM via free access -Anthony J. Payne, Carlene J. Edie, Democracy in the Caribbean: Myths and realities. Westport CT: Praeger, 1994. xvi + 296 pp. -Alma H. Young, Jean Grugel, Politics and development in the Caribbean basin: Central America and the Caribbean in the New World Order. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995. xii + 270 pp. -Alma H. Young, Douglas G. Lockhart ,The development process in small island states. London: Routledge, 1993. xv + 275 pp., David Drakakis-Smith, John Schembri (eds) -Virginia Heyer Young, José Solis, Public school reform in Puerto Rico: Sustaining colonial models of development. Westport CT: Greenwood Press, 1994. x + 171 pp. -Carolyn Cooper, Christian Habekost, Verbal Riddim: The politics and aesthetics of African- Caribbean Dub poetry. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1993. vii + 262 pp. -Clarisse Zimra, Jaqueline Leiner, Aimé Césaire: Le terreau primordial. Tübingen: Gunter Narr Verlag, 1993. 175 pp. -Clarisse Zimra, Abiola Írélé, Aimé Césaire: Cahier d'un retour au pays natal. With introduction, commentary and notes. Abiola Írélé. Ibadan: New Horn Press, 1994. 158 pp. -Alvina Ruprecht, Stella Algoo-Baksh, Austin C. Clarke: A biography. Barbados: The Press - University of the West Indies; Toronto: ECW Press, 1994. 234 pp. -Sue N. Greene, Glyne A. Griffith, Deconstruction, imperialism and the West Indian novel. Kingston: The Press - University of the West Indies, 1996. xxiii + 147 pp. -Donald R. Hill, Peter Manuel ,Caribbean currents: Caribbean music from Rumba to Reggae. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1995. xi + 272 pp., Kenneth Bilby, Michael Largey (eds) -Daniel J. Crowley, Judith Bettelheim, Cuban festivals: An illustrated anthology. New York: Garland Publishing, 1993. x + 261 pp. -Judith Bettelheim, Ramón Marín, Las fiestas populares de Ponce. San Juan: Editorial de la Universidad de Puerto Rico, 1994. 277 pp. -Marijke Koning, Eric O. Ayisi, St. Eustatius: The treasure island of the Caribbean. Trenton NJ: Africa World Press, 1992. xviii + 224 pp. -Peter L. Patrick, Marcyliena Morgan, Language This PDF-file was downloaded from http://www.kitlv-journals.nl Downloaded from Brill.com10/07/2021 06:59:38PM via free access BOOK REVIEWS Last Resorts: The Cost of Tourism in the Caribbean. POLLY PATTULLO. London: Cassell/Latin America Bureau and Kingston: Ian Randle, 1996. xüi + 220 pp. (Cloth £40, Paper £14.99) PETER HULME Department of Literature University of Essex Colchester CO4 3SQ, U.K. The Caribbean is now more dependent on tourism than any other region in the world. Few voices in the Caribbean speak against tourism; nonethe- less, the deep unease feit throughout the region about such an apparently irreversible dependence is clearly due to the perception that tourism offers a new form of slavery, a connection made by V.S. Naipaul in The Middle Passage (1962) and more recently pressed home by writers such as Hilary Beckles and Jamaica Kincaid. Last Resorts responds to this perception with a cool and comprehensive overview which looks at all aspects of tourism in the Caribbean: historical, economie, social, and cultural. It offers an incisive introduction to the com- plexities of such phenomena as the ripple effect, the all-inclusive hotel, linkages and leakages, the relationship (or lack thereof) between tourism and agriculture, the informal sector, and foreign investment. It demon- strates effective use of statistics and reports (many, impressively, bearing a 1995 date), a journalist's ear for the telling phrase, an attuned historical sensitivity, and a well-judged use of interview material, which allows the voices of tourists, waiters, hoteliers, and vendors to be heard. The geo- graphical range is impressively wide: there is a bias toward the English- speaking islands, but some interesting material on Cuba with its peculiar Downloaded from Brill.com10/07/2021 06:59:38PM via free access 108 New West Indian Guide/Nieuwe West Indische Gids vol. 71 no. 1 & 2 (1997) grafting of a neoliberal tourist sector onto the socialist economy. The book is attractively produced and nicely leavened by apposite quotations from poets and calypsonians. It would be difficult to imagine a more readable or astute survey of the topic in 220 pages. Currently casting its shadow over the Caribbean is the Butler model of tourism's life-cycle. According to this model, an unspoiled area is first subject to exploration, then subsequently to the stages of involvement, development, consolidation, stagnation, and deterioration. At the end of the cycle, in Pattullo's words, "What was once poor and unspoiled is again poor but now spoiled" (p. 8). Nowhere in the Caribbean has gone through the full cycle yet, although Barbados has come close. The en- vironmental impact of tourism is one of Last Resorts' major themes. Ever since Columbus, visitors have been mightily impressed by the beauty of the islands: sea, coastline, vegetation, mountains, sunlight. The terrible threat is that tourism will destroy the very qualities that bring tourists in the first place. Much has already been destroyed, and organizations such as the Caribbean Conservation Association struggle to protect an en- vironment often subject to few planning restrictions, and where short-term gain too often takes precedence over long-term protection. In particular, wetlands, coral reefs, and mangrove swamps have suffered irreparable damage, the blame for which the book lays squarely at the door of the area's politicians, who have lacked the necessary political will. Last Resorts bears out the perception that nobody now in the Carib- bean is simply against tourism: the arguments concern the appropriate models to be followed, the lessons to be learned, and the mistakes to be avoided. Last Resorts is impeccably even-handed, but it is clear that for a good number of the people whose views Pattullo reports, cruise-ship tourism offers an increasing danger, while the model of "new tourism," pioneered by Michael Manley (who writes a foreword to the book) and Maurice Bishop, now finds a possible new life in the ecotourist route. The cruise-ship industry has been one of the Caribbean's "success" stories in recent years, though, unsurprisingly, the chief beneficiaries have not been the residents of the area. Cruising has grown from an estimated 900,850 passengers in 1983 to 2.3 million in 1993. In one of the book's more chill- ing quotations, a P&O spokesperson claims that the "untapped potential in the Caribbean is vast" (p. 157). With more companies getting in on the act, and bigger and bigger ships being built, the cruise-ship market offers an increasingly convincing model of an exploitative tourism with little long-term economie gain for the region and no human or cultural benefits to anybody. Downloaded from Brill.com10/07/2021 06:59:38PM via free access BOOK REVIEWS 109 Ecotourism has sometimes been presented as the last chance for the Caribbean to find a formula which would entice the visitor, preserve the environment, and not alienate the residents; and by the beginning of the 1990s nature-related tourism was the fastest-growing sector in inter- national tourism. Ecotourism is universally seen as "a good thing," which will mean that many islands' versions of it will be as credible as the local supermarket's "ecological" washing-up liquid. Nonetheless, there are in- teresting experiments under way, and Last Resorts pays special attention to the cases of Belize, Dominica, and Guyana, which are probably the places where Caribbean ecotourism will succeed, if it is to succeed at all.