D. Saunders the 1937 Riot in Inagua, the Bahamas In: New West Indian
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
D. Saunders The 1937 riot in Inagua, the Bahamas In: New West Indian Guide/ Nieuwe West-Indische Gids 62 (1988), no: 3/4, Leiden, 129-145 This PDF-file was downloaded from http://www.kitlv-journals.nl Downloaded from Brill.com09/30/2021 09:39:40PM via free access D. GAIL SAUNDERS THE 1937 RIOT IN INAGUA, THE BAHAMAS The upheavals in the form of mass riots and strikes during the 1930s in the British West Indian colonies did not occur on a similar scale in the Bahamas. The Nassau Riot in 1942 during the following decade was a short-lived spontaneous outburst by a group of disgruntled laborers. Black Bahamian leaders failed to convert the riot into a political movement but an analysis of the disturbance (Saunders 1985-1986) showed that it occurred against the background of narrow socio-economic and political policies then rampant in the Bahamas. Five years before the disturbance in Nassau, an incident erupted on Inagua, a remote island in the southern Bahamas. Following shortly after the Trinidad and Barbadian riots, the disturbance became known as the 'Inagua Riot.' This paper will explore the causes of the 1937 disturbance in Inagua. Such an analysis involves the examination of the disturbance and the events immediately prior to it. To date no detailed examination of the Inagua disturbance has been published.1 The incident is rarely mentioned in general histories (Albury 1983: 200; Craton 1962). Colin Hughes and Philip Cash (Hughes 1981: 19; Cash 1979: 239-240) contended that it was essentially a clash of individuals. Hughes gave the incident only a footnote and stressed that there were no similarities with the mass actions of the West Indian riots (Hughes 1981: 19). Cash devoted more attention to the event and concluded that the "events of the island of Inagua were given an importance unwarranted by the actual happenings..." (Cash 1979: 240). Margery Erickson, wife of Josiah (or Jim) who with his brothers revived the salt industry in Inagua in the 1930s, attributes the trouble to personal animosity of certain Inaguans "whose own livelihood was threatened by the new prosperity" and "who resented Jim's effort to improve Inagua" (Erickson Downloaded from Brill.com09/30/2021 09:39:40PM via free access 130 D. GAIL SAUNDERS 1987: 49). Inagua2 is about 596 square miles and is located within close proximity of Cuba and Haiti, with which territories it has traded from early times.3 It is the most southerly and third largest island of the Bahamas, lying 370 miles south of Nassau, the capital, which is located on New Providence Island. Until the mid-nineteenth century, Inagua was largely uninhabited, unlike most of the major Bahamian islands which were settled between the mid-seventeenth and late eighteenth centuries. Inagua is believed to have been permanently settled between 1844 and 1849 when Matthew Town, its chief settlement, was laid out on the western end of the island.4 Like the other Bahamian Out Islands, Inagua was governed by an Out Island Commissioner appointed by the central government in Nassau. Over the years, the Bahamas' House of Assembly, dominated by a wealthy white mercantile elite, had gained its independence and control of the purse. Like Barbados and Bermuda, the Bahamas retained the Old Representative System. Theoretically, the Colonial Governors wielded great power but the lower house of the Bahamas' bi-cameral legislature was a wholly elected body. It governed the Bahamas, maintaining influence over the economy and politics by favouring propertied interest, by excluding half of the population and by ignoring for the most part the Out Islands5, where until the 1950s most of the population lived. Being in the dry belt of the Bahamian archipelago, Inagua naturally produced salt, which soon became the island's staple product. Until 1848, however, the Turks and Caicos Islands were the leading salt-producing and exporting islands in The Bahamas. After their separation from the colony in that year,6 attention focused on the exploitation of Inagua's salt ponds and various companies were established during the mid- nineteenth century when the industry generally flourished.7 The success of Inagua's salt industry was reflected in the growth of its population from 172 in 1847 to 1,120 in 1871, as shown by the Blue Books between those years and the Census Report taken in 1871. By the early 1900s, however, the industry had collapsed. This was due partly to increasing production of mined salt in North America which caused a decline in prices, and a United States tariff which made it increasingly unprofïtable to ship to the United States, the main consumer of Inagua's salt (Albury 1983: 198). The.economy in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was being sustained by the steamship labour business which provided work for the male population (Johnson 1986: 748). Economie developments in Mexico and Central America needed much material and manpower. Steamship lines including the Hamburg-American Downloaded from Brill.com09/30/2021 09:39:40PM via free access THE 1937 RIOT INAGUA, THE BAHAMAS 131 Line, the Royal Netherlands Lines and the Atlas Company (which stopped at West Indian and Central American ports) picked up stevedore labour and contract workers to load and unload cargos at the ports (Johnson 1986: 748 and Williams 1985: 9-12).8 By 1882, Matthew Town had outstripped its main rival Albert Town on Long Cay, having become the "main centre of labour recruitment" in the Bahamas (Johnsonl986: 748). Bahamian men from other islands gravitated to Inagua to find work. At this time in the Bahamas most labourers were paid in truck. Initially steamship labourers were paid in cash but very soon the steamship companies reverted to the local system of paying in truck and allowing the labourers credit and advances in food and drink. This exploitative practice was to continue well into the twentieth century. As Howard Johnson has argued, "The credit system and the indebtedness which it induced became an effective technique for mobilizing and maintaining a stable labour force, and payment in truck served to perpetuate the indebtedness." He further argues that these systems were methods of controlling labour and also for increasing the merchant's profits (Johnson 1986: 750). Despite the truck system, the stevedore trade, helped only marginally by the cultivation and export of sisal, sustained Inagua's economy in the latter part of the nineteenth century and during the early years of the twentieth. In fact, Matthew Town was known as "a magie port" in which one could find new opportunities and earn money. lts general appearance and active commerce gave it a "booming atmosphere" (Albury 1983: 199). The appearance of a newspaper was a reflection of the increased trade between Inagua and the other islands of the Caribbean. Matthew Town was one of the few settlements in the Out Islands to publish a newspaper in the early twentieth century. A.H. Meallet, a local Inaguan, began a printing operation in Matthew Town in 1898 and a decade later began issuing the Inagua Record which espoused the cause of the labourers. It was in print for five years but made little impact on the island's social or political life (Pactor 1985: 307). With the advent of World War I, shipping was interrupted and steamship companies ceased calling at Inagua. By the 1920s and early 1930s, Inagua, like most of the Out Islands in the Bahamas, suffered from acute depression. Out Islanders flocked to Nassau to find work. Inagua's population declined by fifty percent between 1911 and 1931, dropping from 1,343 to 667 (Census 1931). Demoralized because of the lack of work, some families left to seek a living in Nassau while others migrated to the southern United States (Johnson 1986; Mohl 1987: 271-297; Granger 1970). On an Out Island tour in 1932, Governor Clifford described Matthew Town as "forlorn and Downloaded from Brill.com09/30/2021 09:39:40PM via free access 132 D. GAIL SAUNDERS desolate ... suggestive of a partially bombarded village well behind the lines." He continued that the population, "a queer mixture of Turks Islanders, a few of Haitian stock" and the rest "Bahamian stock," found it difficult to feed and clothe themselves (Dundas 1938). By the mid-1930s however, Inagua's stevedoring traffic and salt industry had been revived to a limited extent. Arthur L. Symonette, a local coloured merchant who was also Justice of the Peace, spearheaded both operations. He ran a store and served as agent for the Royal Netherlands Steamship Company (Clifford 1932). Evidence suggests that Symonette employed the truck system by which he kept the men indebted to him at his store. Margery Erickson wrote "No man could get a job on a southbound steamer except through Symonett [sic] and he employed only those whose families shopped at his store" (Erickson 1937: 49). When the stevedores returned to Inagua they found themselves in debt. Bills for goods that their families had "supposedly" bought at the store while they were away meant that their wages went to pay their debts (Erickson 1937: 49). This caused much resentment and the labourers claimed that to supplement their wages they were forced to steal from the cargo of the ship and to smuggle rum and tafia from Cuba and Haiti. In 1936 the Inagua-based stevedores struck for higher wages (Dundas 1938). Aware of Symonette's power and influence, a number of Inaguan men, who called themselves the 'Rulers' or 'Rock' of Inagua (Erickson: 1938)9, united against him and forced him to cooperate with them. According to John Hughes, Symonette was content as long as the bulk of the wages were used to purchase goods at his store (Dundas 1938).