THE CARIBBEAN: ONE r AND DIVISIBLE Jéan Casimir / ÍMTKD NATIONS IliilllllH *003600007* Cuadernos de la CEP AL, N" 66, C.2 (inglés) • APR ü LC/G.1641-P November 1992 The views expressed in this work are the sole responsibilitity of the author and do not necessarily coincide with those of the Organization. Translated from French. Original title "La Caraibe: une et divisible" UNITED NATIONS PUBLICATION Sales No. E.92.n.G.13 ISSN 0252-2195 ISBN 92-1-121181-6 CUADERNOS DE LA CEPAL THE CARIBBEAN: ONE AND DIVISIBLE Jean Casimir UNITED NATIONS ECONOMIC COMMISSION FOR LATIN AMERICA AND THE CARIBBEAN Santiago, Chile, 1992 CONTENTS Page Chapter 1 : INTRODUCTION 7 1. A rationale to be discovered 7 2. Toward a form of social development 11 3. An unpredictable future 17 4. Social groups and categories 20 5. Dualism and legitimization of power 24 6. Plan of the study 26 Chapter 2 : THE CREOLES 29 1. A new definition 29 2. African-born (bossale) or creolized person 32 3. The Creole or freedraan 38 4. Creoles in the Caribbean and Latin America 43 Chapter 3 : THE FREEDMEN 47 1. A new social category 47 2. Piecework 49 3. Trade unions and politics 54 4. Migration and creolization 58 5. The reproduction of the bossale 60 6. Freedmen and the political impasse 63 Chapter 4 . THE CARIBBEAN REGIONS 67 1. Introduction 67 2. The Caribbean of the plantations 68 3. The paradoxical consequence of colonialism 76 4. The colonial city 81 5. The endogenous Caribbean space 86 Page Chapter 5 : THE MAKING OF THE NATIONS 93 1. Introduction 93 2. Consensus and inequality 96 3. ApréBondié, c'estlate 105 Chapter 6: ECONOMIES WITHOUT MARKETS 121 1. Introduction 121 2. Caribbean poverty 122 3. Planters and the market 129 4. The freedmen and the market 133 5. The State and the market 138 Chapter 7: DISCOURSE AND DEVELOPMENT 143 1. Introduction 143 2. Culture and intervention 146 3. Fragments of the metropolises 149 4. Social structure and mobility 155 5. Civil societies 162 6. Conclusion 167 Chapter 8: CULTURE AND POWER 171 1. Social categories 172 2. Cultural dynamics 174 3. The governors and the governed 178 4. The governed become part of the government: the planters 180 5. The governed become part of the government: the freedmen 184 6. Power and creolization 186 7. Toward a new social contract 189 NOTES 193 Chapter 1 INTRODUCTION 1. A rationale to be discovered From 1492 to the present, the population of the Caribbean has largely been comprised of indentured labourers, enslaved and rural or urban workers, living and toiling under conditions invariably below the living standards of the countries that colonized the region. In the beginning of the colonization period, the destitute population seemed to regard this new world as a veritable hell on earth. In his book From Columbus to Castro: the History of the Caribbean, Eric Williams recalls that: Barbados, a word of terror to the white servant, became to the Negro, as a slave trader wrote in 1693, "a more dreadful apprehension... than we can have of hell".^ Anyone interested in Caribbean development must wonder how the idea of a nation emerged in this region, together with the related notion of a heritage which the society as a whole should strive to preserve and enrich, in short, to develop. At first, the objective of the struggles and revolts of the enslaved was not to defend a particular territory but rather to establish a certain kind of relationship between people, in other words, the conquest of freedom without any reference to a specific geographical area. In another part of his book, Williams relates that in June 1838 the General Assembly of Jamaica protested against the abolition of slavery decreed by Great Britain, on the grounds that the Jamaicans belonged to a different nation: It is unreasonable and unnatural that one nation should assume to pass laws to bind another nation, of whose customs, wants, constitution and physical advantages and disadvantages, she is, and must be, profoundly ignorant...^ Throughout the region, plantation owners adopted a similar position whenever the metropolitan edicts ran counter to what they considered to be their interest. It would therefore be useful to determine what constituted this "nation" which claimed to own the wealth that gradually became its common patrimony. Account must be taken, not only of the groups which belonged to this social body and of those that were excluded from it, but also of the institutions that either united or divided these groups. What aspects of the concept of nation-State were retained by plantation owners and social groups that succeeded them at the apex of Caribbean societies over the course of the various phases of the region's history? Contrary to the separatist behaviour of these dominant groups, the enslaved groups seemed to display a certain degree of loyalty to the metropolises when these showed more benevolence than the planters and suceeding dominant social groups. The rebellious enslaved in Saint Lucia, Saint Domingue, Guadeloupe and Dominica who rallied to the cause of the temporarily anti-slavery French Republic provide clear examples of this loyalty. However, if the plantation owners had no hesitation in distancing themselves from the metropolises when they felt that their rights and privileges were being threatened, it would certainly be reasonable to conclude that the enslaved and their descendants did not really identify with the mother countries that had been thrust upon them. The manifestations of loyalty on the part of the enslaved, who were all immigrants or descendants of immigrants, bear scant resemblance to the manifestations of membership in a primary group. There is also the question of how to establish a connection between, on the one hand, the contributions of the maroons, freed slaves and poor whites to the notion of an entity distinct from that of the colonial powers and, on the other, the divergent positions of the planters and the enslaved. No analysis of Caribbean development is possible without a set of hypotheses on how the national families in the region came to be formed. And since these analyses exist, they must be re-examined in the light of their implicit assumptions. It would be impossible to describe the rationale behind the attitude of Caribbean societies and the social groups that comprise them using only current concepts and without taking into account the special circumstances of the formation of those societies. Among other fundamental problems, it is virtually impossible to grasp the subtle difference that exists in the region between opposition to colonialism and rupture with the colonial State. During the nineteenth century, efforts to break away from one metropolis were usually aimed at entering thesphereof influence of another, R and not at creating an independent State. While the situation today has of course changed, Caribbean societies are no closer to a common vision in which independence is valued above all else. Certain populations oppose colonialism while correctly refusing independence. Their argument is that the attainment of political rights is not necessarily accompanied by greater respect for civil liberties, or greater economic security. Our intention is not merely to point out that foreign powers sometimes exploit this position for their own ends. Nor can we accuse any historical figures, certain contemporary leaders or the populations concerned of not having the same level of social consciousness as the rest of the world. It is important to understand why, from the point of view both of the dominant and of the subordinate groups of several countries of the region, this position is perfectly logical. Before making such value judgements there is one essential step to be taken which may even render them superfluous. One must be able to explain the collective decisions and choices of the peoples living in the Caribbean. There again, emphasis will perhaps have to be placed on the quality of the relationships between people and concomitantly on the absence of any material wealth to be defended. In the Caribbean, the concepts of country, nation and State do not correspond to those held in other regions of the world. The genesis of the sense of belonging to its specific societies, the development of this sense of belonging, the elements which define the national identities and the point of convergence of individuals who identify themselves in this way are unanswered questions, and some attempt should be made to find an answer to them. There are a number of corollaries to the questions about the characteristics of the heritage -material and spiritual- of the region's peoples. The considerations mentioned above raise doubts as to whether the "national economies" of the Caribbean will have the same characteristics as those of the peoples who "possess" material resources and who have a tradition of defending and developing these resources. In the absence of a common heritage, how should political boundaries be perceived and how does political authority become established to administer what these boundaries should be protecting? How can laws of economic development be imposed and enforced? To what tangible reality should these laws refer? In other words, it must not be assumed that the nation-State -as it is conceived of in the West- must necessarily succeed the type of colonial State which the Caribbean has known. On the one hand, the very idea of a colony established for the purpose of exploitation -into which category the Caribbean colonies fall-, as opposed to a colony established for the purpose of settlement, presupposes the absence of an economy and of interests that have validity outside of that which is conferred by the metropolis.