Repeating History: The Caribbean’s Perpetual Time Loop
Historians employ a variety of methods to interpret the past such as a comparative analysis or studying change-over-time. Few take the approach that history is consistent throughout a prolonged span of time and that a region of the world remains largely unchanged. The twentieth century was one of the most eventful centuries in human history with two world wars, that by themselves altered entire continents, and the fall of European colonialism throughout the world. In the twentieth century, the United States rose from a powerful nation in the Western Hemisphere to what one French scholar called a hyperpower.[1] The Caribbean is one region where change-over-time is a difficult methodology to apply to its history because so many things have remained consistent since the Spanish American War of 1898. Indeed, two scholars Antonio Benítez-Rojo and Sidney Mintz argue that the violence and turmoil that has plagued the region since the days of settler-colonialism remains a part of the region’s current structure. Due to the plantation system, adopted by the earliest European settlers and worked by enslaved indigenous peoples and Africans and indentured laborers, the Caribbean can be studied as one unit instead of individual island nations and their respective histories. In other words, the problems that effected Jamaica can be seen in Antiqua, Cuba, or Haiti. This unfortunate reality is the basis for this essay which argues that structures such as racism and classism, capitalism, and American foreign policy have continually impacted throughout the Caribbean which has led to a fundamental continuity between the nations.
In the Caribbean, throughout the last four hundred years, racism and classism have been closely linked, and were continued during the twentieth century with the help of the American government. First, a color gradient has greatly impact race relations throughout much of the Caribbean. The lighter skinned, especially white, folks were generally given more freedoms and power within Caribbean society. The people with the least amount of power, freedom, and familial connections were the newly arrived enslaved Africans. The direct connection between skin color and power and freedom started with the introduction of European settlers in the seventeenth century when the settlers began enslaving the indigenous peoples of the Caribbean. This dynamic, however, lasted well into the twentieth century when, for example, an American State Department official said, “It is well to distinguish at once between the Dominicans [generally lighter skin] and the Haitians [commonly darked skinned].”[2] This blatantly racist rhetoric is all too common when Europeans and Americans speak of the Caribbean. For example, the United States has been all too eager to accept Cuban refugees ever since Fidel Castro rose to power and reject Haitian refugees fleeing political violence and natural disasters. Another example of the racist plantation system created a system of prolonged racism toward the Caribbean nations is the way in which the class system of the region was constructed.
As early as Thomas Thistlewood (1721-1786), an eighteenth-century slave and plantation owner, to the 1930s, dark skinned bodies were the laborers that were in the sugar cane fields, and later were seen as lesser because of their skin tone. The whites were the overseers and lived in better conditions than their black populations. Beyond the 1930s, the darker skinned people were still segregated and lived in poorer conditions than their light-skinned counterparts. The Harder They Come (1972) and Sugar Cane Alley (1983) confirm this analysis. Both films, set in Jamaica in the 1970s and Martinique in the 1930s respectively, depict the upper-classes as light-skinned blacks or whites as being superior to the dark-skinned laborers in fields and factories. The idea of light-skinned dominance was in fact so entrenched in Caribbean society that in 1937, Rafael Trujillo ordered the slaughtering black Haitians in the Parsley Massacre where some 20,000 Haitians were killed.[3] Then, in early 2022, the Dominican president Luis Abinader announced that construction of a border wall between Haiti and the Dominican Republic was to begin in attempt to “stop irregular migration as well as the smuggling of weapons, drugs, and goods.”[4] The border wall may not be the slaughter of thousands of people, but it does reflect the racism that has plagued the region for over four hundred years. All too often when a leader, especially lighter-skinned, speaks of the need to maintain separation between another group, the oppressed group is being scapegoated just as Abinader is currently doing on the island of Hispaniola.
Racism and classism are often byproducts of capitalism and capitalists using the under privileged for economic gain. Capitalism and American capitalists’ expeditions have caused devastation to the Caribbean nations’ economies. One such way that the United States impact the Caribbean was through dollar diplomacy, a system “designed to use financial controls to create greater stability in the Caribbean and lessen the possibility of European intervention.”[5]After the Spanish American War, a new market was opened to American capitalists: plantations. As Gad Heuman explains, “American capital expanded its hold on Cuba, not only in sugar but also in the public utilities, tobacco, and minerals.”[6] This is important because it demonstrates the willingness for American capitalists to involve themselves in the affairs of the Caribbean. American capitalists moved around the region looking for new markets to capture and new labor to exploit. For example, in the documentary Life and Debt (2001) the viewer is presented with the glaring reality that in certain parts of Kingston, Jamaican laborers spend their time in so called “free zones” which are exempt from many of the taxes and laws of Jamaica. The workers’ wages are held and lowered beyond the minimum wage that is allowed by Jamaican law, and the capitalists threaten to close down the plant to find even cheaper labor.[7] These are clear examples of American capitalists meddling in the economies of Caribbean nations. The Caribbean nations are expected to capitulate to the United States and European nations and capitalists as has been the case for the entirety of the twentieth century.
Relying one main source of revenue into the economy has further complicated Caribbean economic matters. As early as Thistlewood, the economies of the Caribbean were based off of a single source of revenue such as sugar cane. In an effort to demonstrate the type of work the enslaved Africans of Jamaica performed, Trevor Burnard inserted a photo of slaves working in sugar cane fields in his book Mastery, Tyranny, and Desire.[8] The photo is analogous to the black laborers working in the film Sugar Cane Alley, which takes place one hundred fifty years after Thistlewood’s death. This determines that sugar cane was in important aspect of the Caribbean economy. As Heuman argues, “From the time of slavery to the recent past, sugar production was important in most of the economies of the region.”[9] In more recent times, the primary source of revenue for the Caribbean nations has been tourism.[10] Beyond the ecological damage that tourist bring to the region, if there is any interruption in the global economy the Caribbean is impacted greatly. Unlike the European nations and the United States that have diverse economies, the Caribbean relies heavily on circumstances which are out of their control such as a consistent influx of tourists. In other words, when nations have one primary source of revenue they are at the mercy of the developed nations and their respective economies. This has been a constant theme throughout Caribbean history which has led scholars to agree that the region has collective and consistent issues. The region has relied on Europe and the United States for economic security, but this security costs the region its freedom from foreign meddling.
The twentieth century was called the American century by many scholars because of the nation’s rapid expansion of territory and influence on world affairs, which greatly impacted the Caribbean nations in a variety of ways. In the final years of the nineteen century, American foreign policy in the Caribbean was taken to a new level of intervention. The Spanish American War of 1898, for example, was the United States flexing its imperialist muscles in an effort to oust the Spanish empire from the Western Hemisphere. Heuman states, “the Treaty of Paris, was signed in December 1898, ceding over Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines to the Americans.”[11] This was an important time in American and Caribbean history because it set the tone for the twentieth century. For example, after the war, Cuba became a protectorate of the United States, and once Cuba fell out of favor with the United States the Soviet Union moved in to influence Cuban politics as the U.S. did pre-Castro. Twentieth century Caribbean history is marred with invasion after invasion from the United States into sovereign Caribbean territory. The U.S. invaded and occupied Haiti in 1914, the Dominican Republic in 1916, Cuba in 1898 and 1961, and Grenada in 1983 which demonstrates a clear pattern of U.S. military intervention in the region.[12] Additionally, the U.S. annexation of Puerto Rico with the Treaty of Paris in 1898 and the purchase of the Virgin Islands from Denmark in 1917 reveals the United States’ willingness to expand is beyond is south coast borders. American military involvement in the region “engendered a nationalist response” in the countries of the region which had lasting impacts “for the remainder of the American century.”[13]
American foreign policy towards the Caribbean was responsible for the continued destabilization such as coups and assassinations of political leaders. Coups have been all too common in the Caribbean nations. As early as 1909, “the first president of the republic [of Cuba], Tomás Estrada Palma, had to deal with a rebellion against his re-election.”[14] In May 1961, Dominican dictator, Rafael Trujillo was assassinated with the help of the American Central Intelligence Agency and some Dominicans backed by the U.S. government. Shortly thereafter, an exiled Dominican, Juan Bosch, was elected to the Dominican presidency but was shortly overthrown in a military coup.[15] Although he was later restored by way of more American military intervention, this proves that military coups were, and still are, a consistent problem for the Caribbean. Possibly the most famous example of a government takeover was Fidel Castro of Cuba in January 1959. As early as 1899, the Dominican president and dictator, Ulysses Heureaux, was assassinated which plunged the country into chaos. Then, twelve years later another Dominican president, Ramón Cáceres was also assassinated.[16] As mentioned above, Trujillo was yet another Dominican leader to be killed. On the other side of Hispaniola, Haiti had seen the rise of Francois Duvalier who, in 1957, was elected president and then “declared himself president for life in 1964,” which ended in 1971.[17] Duvalier’s son, Jean-Claude, was deposed by a popular uprising in 1986. Jean-Bertrand Aristide was elected president in 1990 “but deposed less than a year later by a military coup.”[18] The most recent example of an assassination of a political figure in the Caribbean was the assassination of Haitian President Jovenel Moïse in July 2021. These examples prove that the Caribbean has seen incredible political violence for over a century. It is an unfortunate and continued reality for the region to see leaders deposed through assassination or coup.
The Caribbean is a culturally rich and beautiful region that has been shaped by European and American power. It is a unique region in which the traditional methods of studying history tend to break down. The region is stuck in a cycle of continued oppression from outside influences and the people cannot escape the constant struggle for survival. From the earliest days of colonialism and the plantation economy to the present single-sourced economic structure, the region is at the mercy of the more powerful nations. Racism and classism, generally a linked system, have dominated the region since its beginning and have continued through to today. The worst of capitalism can be seen in the region where humans are forced to work for low wages, and threats from capitalists leaving the region in search of people willing to accept even lower wages is a consistent reality for the region. The region has had a difficult time diversifying its economy which forces it to rely on one single source of revenue to support its economy such as cane sugar and tourism. Military coups, assassinations, and political instability have been all too commonplace in the region. Ultimately, Antonio Benítez-Rojo and Sidney Mintz were correct in their assessment that the Caribbean has remained a consistently violent and poor region, not because some inherent violence of the Caribbean people, but because of the influencing power of the United States and the European nations.
Bibliography
Burnard, Trevor. Mastery, Tyranny, and Desire: Thomas Thistlewood and His Slaves in the Anglo-Jamaican World. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2005.
“Dominican Republic Begins Building Border Wall with Haiti.” www.aljazeera.com, February 21, 2022. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/2/21/dominican-republic-begins-building-border-wall-with-haiti.
Gad Heuman. The Caribbean : A Brief History. 3rd ed. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2019.
Life and Debt. Jamaica: Tuff Gong Pictures, 2021.
[1] George C Herring, From Colony to Superpower (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017), 917.
[2]Gad Heuman, The Caribbean: A Brief History, 3rd ed. (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2019), 153.
[3] Gad Heuman, The Caribbean: A Brief History, 3rd ed. (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2019), 184.
[4] “Dominican Republic Begins Building Border Wall with Haiti,” www.aljazeera.com, February 21, 2022, https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/2/21/dominican-republic-begins-building-border-wall-with-haiti.
[5] Gad Heuman, The Caribbean: A Brief History, 3rd ed. 146.
[6] Gad Heuman, 148.
[7] Life and Debt (Jamaica: Tuff Gong Pictures, 2021).
[8] Trevor Burnard, Mastery, Tyranny, and Desire: Thomas Thistlewood and His Slaves in the Anglo-Jamaican World (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2005), 254.
[9]Gad Heuman, The Caribbean: A Brief History, 3rd ed. (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2019), 190.
[10] Gad Heuman, The Caribbean: A Brief History, 191.
[11] Ibid, 148.
[12] Ibid, 146-152.
[13] Ibid, 153.
[14] Ibid, 148.
[15] Ibid, 185.
[16] Ibid, 152.
[17] Ibid, 186.
[18] Ibid, 186.