Conceptualizing the Caribbean: definitions and approaches

1. Topic 1
Conceptualizing the Caribbean
Dr. Jacqueline LAGUARDIA MARTINEZ
Jacqueline.Laguardia-Martinez@sta.uwi.edu

2. Conceptualizing the Caribbean
Main objectives
1. To examine different perspectives used to
define “The Caribbean”.
2. To establish a pertinent framework to
define the Caribbean for International
Relations experts in the context of
globalization.

3. What is the Caribbean?

4. • Antilles: from the mythical Antilia, the island of
the seven cities linked to the myth of Atlantis
• Caribbean Sea
• Wider / Greater Caribbean
• Caribbean Basin
Defining the Caribbean
Geography
Caribs: Indigenous people that fiercely resisted
European colonization

5. Defining the Caribbean
Colonial history and plantation
economy/society
1. It was colonized by European nations
2. Extermination of native population
3. Import of working force: Europe, Africa and Asia
4. Slavery as a socially accepted institution and
economic pillar
5. Raw materials’ supplier to the global economy

6. Social structure organized by the racialization of
the social relations
•Stratified and rigid (race)
•Signed by slavery
•Abolition in the Caribbean
1. Haiti (1804)
2. English colonies (1833)
3. Dominican Republic (1844)
4. French colonies (1848)
5. Dutch colonies (1863)
6. Puerto Rico (1873)
7. Cuba (1886)

7. Defining the Caribbean
Denominations (Charles Wagley)
Euro-America
Indo-America
America of Plantation (Central Afro-America)

8. A way to understand / define The Caribbean
The Plantation Economy
The Plantation Society
The Caribbean as a Plantation System

9. The Plantation Economy
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U32Zp4u_pNs

10. Main characteristics of the plantation unit
(1) large-scale land tenure
(2) hierarchical management
(3) reliance on slave and forced labor
(4) monoculture
(5) export orientation
(6) high population densities
(7) high ratio of African to European population
(8) low-skill methods of production
(9) unskilled laborers
(10) profit oriented
(11) no significant “spread effects” within the colony

11. • Lloyd Best and Kari Polanyi Levitt.
• Plantation economy as key component for the Industrial Revolution and the
capitalist expansion (global colonial project from West Europe).
• The plantation economy is a sub-type of the general category of 'export
propelled economies' and, structurally, part of an 'overseas economy' linking
metropole and hinterland under a definite pattern of economic relationships.
• The plantation economy is a distinctive type of periphery economy: it is part of
the overseas economy of the metropolis. Its role is to produce primary goods
for sale in metropolitan markets. The major source of its entrepreneurship and
finance, and indeed the locus of key decisions, is in the metropolis. It
constitutes a production area passively incorporated into the global economy.
• Due to the exogenous orientation and high dependence on external factors,
the plantation enhanced the subordinate role of the Caribbean economies.
• There are different examples of the plantation economy (plantation complex).
Models change in time.
The Plantation Economy in the Caribbean

12. The plantations are simply overseas
complements to the metropolitan
economy. Plantation economies are also
for the most part mono-crop economies,
producing sugar, cotton, or some other
staple crop for export, primarily to their
metropolitan center, while being
dependent on that center for the supply of
manufactured and consumer goods,
including the needed capital and
technology.
(Dupuy “Slavery and Underdevelopment
in the Caribbean: A Critique of the
"Plantation Economy Perspective”, 1983).
“Organization of these units has on one hand
produced very low incomes for the bulk of the
population, while at the same time yielding
profits high enough to attract major
international investors and corporations: low
levels of labor productivity, but a continual and
generally successful search for improved
technology and reduced costs of production; a
vigorous participation in international
commodity markets, but virtually moribund
domestic markets either for produce or for
labor; and finally, a system of labor force control
which has extended from slavery”
(Mandle, “The Plantation Economy: An Essay in
Definition”, 1972).

13. https://elordenmundial.com/mapas/comercio-de-esclavos/

14. • George Beckford.
• The plantation as the microcosm of the Caribbean economy and society.
• The plantation system relates to the totality of institutional arrangements
surrounding the production and marketing of plantation crops.
• The plantation is an institution embodied a hierarchy of race-class relations.
• Race and racism are organizing principles of Caribbean societies since its
inception.
The Plantation Society
“(…) different types of labour
have different access to the
means of production. It is race
which determines whether or
not a poor labourer can
eventually emerge into a
capitalist or whatever in the
Caribbean. Because in the
region’s development it is race
that determines access to the
means of production”
(Beckford, The George Beckford
Papers, 1978)
“Nonetheless the ideology of racism to legitimize African
slavery was probably significantly broader in scope than
that used to legitimize Indian slavery in that it extended
systematically to the physical, genetic and biological
attributes of Black people. The very colour of the African's
skin was held to be the first and lasting badge of his
inferiority; as were the characteristics of his mouth, nose
and hair texture. The desired consequence of extending the
ideology of racism from cultural to physical attributes was
to ensure that the African, whatever his degree of success in
assimilating white culture, was permanently imprisoned in
his status as a slave inasmuch as he was permanently
imprisoned in his black skin.”
(Girvan, Aspects of the Political Economy of Race in the
Caribbean and the Americas: A Preliminary Interpretation,
1975).

15. Rubén Blades & Son Del Solar
Plantación Adentro Fet Tite Curet Alonso
Live !
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uVCkdV62iEw

16. •It is not a single culture but a shared culture.
•Keys of the cultural unity within the Caribbean
1. Plantation and Counterplantation (Jean Casimir):
Caribbean culture as a response to the plantation society
and not the result of it. A culture of resistance (Gerard
Pierre-Charles).
2. Original languages (creoles) and multilingualism (Arnold
Antonin)
3. Crossbreeding (Arnold Antonin)
4. Religious syncretism (Arnold Antonin)
5. Migration and diaspora
Cultural Caribbean

17. Defining the Caribbean(s)
Language
English
French
Spanish
Dutch
Colonial Heritage
Intraregional
differences stemming
from the local
languages, pidgins,
Creole and Papiamento

18. The Caribbean: similar or different?
Cultural affinities
Local music is identified with the beat of Afro Antillean drums
and beats, but there are different rhythms.
Food is prepared from similar ingredients, but all are
combined in different ways across countries and across
language-defined regions.
Christian religions incorporate animistic and polytheistic traits
from the African and Asia Diasporas and indigenous
populations, but Santeria is not equivalent to Voodoo.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IvbG26i5ovg

19. Defining the Caribbean
DIVERSITY
Multiple Identities
 The Caribbean is plural, multiethnic,
made by hybrids societies
 fragmentation / insular condition/
diaspora)

20. The “analogous differences”
• The concepts of Caribbean and
“caribeñidad” (Caribbeanness) are
problematic (Antonio Benítez Rojo).
• Within distinct and conscious national
and or sub regional identities, there is
a shared experience that can be said
to be the basis of a Caribbean identity.
• There is not an identifiable single
homogeneous Caribbean identity.
Rather, there are shared regional
customs, practices and beliefs
characterized by “analogous
differences”.

21. An insular or continental
Caribbean?

25. The Caribbean islands as part of a larger region covering the
Atlantic ocean. It should be called New Atlantis comprising
Cape Verde, Azores, Canary Islands up to the Caribbean islands
in the West.
The last archipelago (Antonio Benítez Rojo)

26. Differences between insular and
continental territories
•Many of the continental countries that border the
rim of the Caribbean Basin define their identities
not only as Caribbean but also as Latin-American
countries: Andean (Venezuela and Colombia),
Central American (Costa Rica, Guatemala,
Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua) or North
American (Mexico).
•For these countries, the Caribbean is a sub region,
often marginalized.

27. To discuss
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n0UtUmzxI0I
•How could you define the Caribbean?
•Which definition “feels” better in your opinion
and why?
•What are the consequences for the Caribbean
of the difficulties to arrive to a widely accepted
definition?
•Is there a Caribbean identity?

28. Is there a Caribbean?
“The Caribbean can be many things to many people: a
geographic region somewhere in America’s backyard, an
English-speaking outpost of the British Empire, an exciting
holiday destination for North Americans and Europeans, a
place where dirty money is easily laundered, and even an
undefined, exotic area that contains the dreaded Bermuda
Triangle, the mythical lost city of El Dorado, the fabled
Fountain of Youth and the island home of Robinson
Crusoe.”
Anton Allahar. 2005. “Identity and Erasure: Finding the Elusive Caribbean”, European Review of
Latin American and Caribbean Studies 79

29. Is there a Caribbean?
Frank Moya Pons establishes that the Caribbean only exists
for three kind of people:
1. Sales managers
2. Politicians
3. Academicians
Frank Moya Pons. Historia del Caribe: azúcar y plantaciones en el mundo
atlántico. Santo Domingo, Editora Búho, 2008

30. Defining the Caribbean
Economic region
The creation of Regional Economic Communities
After WWII development and reconstruction,
economists advocated the creation of regional
economic communities as a means of taking
advantages of economies of scales and
complementarities to further economic
reconstruction and development (Pantojas, 2008).

31. •At the economic level, the Caribbean continues
divided by economic competition (no economies of
scales nor complementarities).
•Similarity of the Caribbean Basin economies: tourism,
agriculture. Services.
•But differences as well: The Caribbean includes oil/gas
producing territories (Trinidad and Tobago); semi-
industrialized economies (Dominican Republic);
financial centers (Cayman Islands).

32. http://mundinews.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/Caricom44.jpgç

33. In the Caribbean
Culture, geography and history
produce a clearly identifiable regional
complex
At the political and economic levels
heterogeneity prevails over synthesis

34. Variables are rethought and combined
GEOGRAPHY + POLITICS
CULTURE + ECONOMY
VULNERABILITY + SMALL SIZE
What about the diaspora?

35. A community of diverse peoples (political will)
Declaración II CUMBRE DE LA CELAC, 28 y 29 de enero de 2014, La Habana. https://www.fao.org/3/bl906s/bl906s.pdf
“(1) Reiteramos que la unidad y la
integración de nuestra región debe
construirse gradualmente, con
flexibilidad, con respeto al pluralismo,
a la diversidad y al derecho soberano
de cada uno de nuestros pueblos para
escoger su forma de organización
política y económica.
(4) Subrayamos nuestro propósito de
continuar avanzando unidos en la
concertación y la integración
latinoamericana y caribeña, y la
consolidación de nuestra Comunidad,
conforme los ideales y sueños de
nuestros libertadores y próceres.”
“(1) Reiterate that the unity and
integration of our region must be
built gradually, with flexibility, with
respect for pluralism and the
sovereign right of each of our peoples
to choose their own political and
economic system.
(4) Stress our purpose to continue
working together for Latin American
and Caribbean integration and
coordination as well as for the
consolidation of our Community in
keeping with the ideals and dreams of
our liberators and founding fathers.”

36. Boundaries of empires (history)
“El Caribe está entre los
lugares de la tierra que han
sido destinados por su
posición geográfica y su
naturaleza privilegiada para
ser fronteras de dos o más
imperios. Este destino lo ha
hecho objeto de la codicia
de los poderes más grandes
de occidente y teatro de la
violencia desatada entre
ellos”.
“The Caribbean is among the
places on earth that have been
intended by its geographical
position and its privileged
nature to be boundaries of
two or more empires. This
destination has made it
subject to the greed of the
greatest powers of the West
and theatre of the violence
between them.”
Juan Bosch. De Cristóbal Colón a Fidel Castro. El Caribe frontera imperial. Casa de las Américas, La Habana, 1981.

37. Break a vase, and the love that reassembles the fragments is stronger
than that love which took its symmetry for granted when it was
whole. The glue that fits the pieces is the sealing of its original shape.
It is such a love that reassembles our African and Asiatic fragments,
the cracked heirlooms whose restoration shows its white scars. This
gathering of broken pieces is the care and pain of the Antilles, and if
the pieces are disparate, ill-fitting, they contain more pain than their
original sculpture, those icons and sacred vessels taken for granted in
their ancestral places. Antillean art is this restoration of our shattered
histories, our shards of vocabulary, our archipelago becoming a
synonym for pieces broken off from the original continent.
Nobel Lecture, December 7, 1992
The Caribbean is an emotional federation
(Derek Walcott)

38. Caribe: es el único mundo en que no me
siento extranjero y donde pienso mejor
(Gabriel García Márquez)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cIMKFlvRxf0

39. Antonio Benítez Rojo. The Repeating Island. Duke University Press, 1996 (2006)
“It was a stunning October afternoon,
years ago (…) nuclear catastrophe seemed
imminent (…) two old women passed ‘in a
certain kind of way’; I will say only that
there was a kind of ancient and golden
powder between their gnarled legs, a
scent of basil and mint in their dress, a
symbolic, ritual wisdom in their gesture
and their gay chatter. I knew then at once
that there would be no apocalypse.”
The “certain kind of way” (Antonio Benítez Rojo)
“Fue una hermosísima tarde de
octubre, hace años (…) parecía
inminente (…) la catástrofe nuclear
(…) dos negras viejas pasaron ‘de
cierta manera’. Sólo diré que había
un polvillo dorado y antiguo entre
sus piernas nudosas, un olor a
albahaca y hierbabuena en sus
vestidos, una sabiduría simbólica, un
ritual en sus gestos y en su
chachareo. Entonces supe de golpe
que no ocurriría el apocalipsis.”

40. •The ‘Caribbean’ is a ground of permanent construction and
confrontation (disputed territory, disputed identities,
disputed history).
•Definitions will depend on backgrounds, purposes,
theoretical frameworks (History, Geography, Politics,
Geopolitics, Anthropology, Cultural Studies).
•Definitions respond to the efforts of understanding internal
process as well as the external influences and its impacts
on the region.
•Nowadays definitions need to consider the integration
schemes and international organizations’ visions, as well as
the growing importance of Caribbean diaspora.
Concluding…

41. A tradition of RESISTENCE Caribbean after the
Caribes and the maroons that resists
domination
The pursue of EMANCIPATION
The uniqueness of the MELTING POT
A culture that resists cultural hegemony

42. Solving the common problems
Transnational
crime
Climate change
Open economies
and external
economic shocks

43. Looking for a definition
1. To have an analytical unit.
2. Similarities or differences?
3. There are different ‘histories’: the Caribbean
defined from ‘outside’ or from ‘within’?
4. The Caribbean is made by CONSTRUCTED
societies, is a constructed subject… by who? Is
there any possibility to RE-CONSTRUCT? How
to do it (core principles, values, politics,
economics, ideas, …).

44. New World Group (NWG)
• 1960s – 1970s (Guyana, 1962)
• Most ambitious attempt to build a postcolonial, Pan Caribbean intellectual movement
• Group of Caribbean scholars and intellectuals from diverse philosophical, academic and
political traditions. TRANSDISCIPLINAR APPROACH
• Influences by George Padmore, C. L. R. James, Eric Williams, Arthur Lewis, Charles Wagley,
Marcus Garvey and Latin-American structuralism.
• Lead by Lloyd Best. Also, George Beckford, Norman Girvan, C. Y. Thomas, H. R. Brewster,
Owen Jefferson, Kari Polanyi Levitt.
• English speaking West Indies (UWI), Canada, UK, US, Puerto Rico
• Analytical framework from the Caribbean to the Caribbean to gain independence once obtain
constitutional independence (anti-colonialist and anti-imperialist). Necessity for independent
thought.
• Attention to economy, society, politics, culture and regional integration in the Caribbean
• Plantation Economy and Plantation Society (System)
• Political Culture of Plantation and Colonial Government
• Economic Dependency (Dependency Theory)
DECOLONIAL PERSPECTIVE

45. https://newworldjournal.org/
https://newworldjournal.org/independence/revisiting-the-heritage-of-
new-world/
https://newworldjournal.org/independence/introduction/

46. Caribbean Dependency Thought / Caribbean School of Political Economy

47. DECOLONIAL PERSPECTIVES

48. DECOLONIAL PERSPECTIVES