tag:theconversation.com,2011:/institutions/the-university-of-the-west-indies-st-augustine-campus-1098/articlesThe University of the West Indies: St. Augustine Campus2018-08-28T10:38:19Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1016532018-08-28T10:38:19Z2018-08-28T10:38:19ZTeaching V.S. Naipaul in the Caribbean<p>Like everyone else in the world, people on the twin-island Caribbean nation of Trinidad and Tobago learned on Aug. 11 that Trinidad-born Sir Vidia Naipaul – better known as V.S. Naipaul – had died. </p>
<p>While newspapers in the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/12/books/vs-naipaul-appraisal.html">U.S.</a> and <a href="https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/1002344/VS-Naipaul-dead-nobel-prize-literature-author-dies-tributes-how-did-he-die">Britain</a> ran tributes to this titan of English-language literature, reactions in the Caribbean have been more <a href="http://www.indiawest.com/letters_to_editor/naipaul-s-multi-racial-school-friends-in-trinidad/article_e56f1b50-a7e4-11e8-9267-7f4383e1dd5e.html">complex</a>.</p>
<p>Naipaul is perhaps Trinidad’s most famous offspring. But many here consider the 85-year old writer a <a href="https://www.spectator.co.uk/2018/08/why-has-v-s-naipaul-rejected-the-trinidad-of-his-birth/">prodigal son</a>, because he often disavowed his origins. </p>
<p>After receiving the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2001, Naipaul <a href="https://www.caribbean-beat.com/issue-53/guerilla-vs-naipaul#axzz5OvfrEZfP">claimed</a> England as his “home” and India as the country of his ancestors. He neglected to mention his birthplace and the setting for so much of his work: Trinidad and Tobago.</p>
<p>But Naipaul remains a celebrated part of the Caribbean canon, one of just three Nobel Laureates from the region. In 2007 he even participated in many events at the University of the West Indies, the Caribbean’s premiere public university, when it celebrated what it called <a href="https://sta.uwi.edu/news/releases/release.asp?id=21828">The Year of Sir Vidia Naipaul</a>. </p>
<p>As a <a href="https://sta.uwi.edu/fhe/dlcc/VMaharaj.asp">lecturer in literature at the university’s St. Augustine campus</a>, it’s my job to help students appreciate his conflicted literary legacy. </p>
<h2>Naipaul the decolonizer</h2>
<p>Naipaul’s family, like nearly <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/17/nyregion/indian-twice-removed.html">half of Trinidad’s population</a>, had Indian roots. Though his early novels were often comedies set in the Caribbean, the author left home to study in England. His later works – bleak reflections on India, Africa and the Muslim world – reflected Naipaul’s global outlook. </p>
<p>Caribbean schoolchildren first meet Naipaul as teenagers. One of his books is usually included in the <a href="https://www.cxc.org/">public secondary school curriculum</a>, which is specifically designed to make education a part of the region’s decolonization. Currently it is “A House for Mr. Biswas.”</p>
<p>Fifty-six years after independence from the United Kingdom, the Caribbean is still sloughing off a legacy of colonial rule: the perception that Caribbean culture is less rich, relevant and important than other cultures. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/233678/original/file-20180827-75981-bhxcxo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/233678/original/file-20180827-75981-bhxcxo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/233678/original/file-20180827-75981-bhxcxo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/233678/original/file-20180827-75981-bhxcxo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/233678/original/file-20180827-75981-bhxcxo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/233678/original/file-20180827-75981-bhxcxo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/233678/original/file-20180827-75981-bhxcxo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Naipaul, a complex literary titan.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Chris Ison/PA via AP</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>“Silence in our school curriculum on the subject of Caribbean writers raised additional doubts about the literary merit of such works as well as the moral standing of their authors,” wrote the literary critic <a href="http://scholarlyrepository.miami.edu/anthurium/vol5/iss2/5">Rhonda Cobham-Sander</a> in 2007. “[S]o we tended to talk about them, like the uncle who had fled to Venezuela … in the past tense, or the subjunctive.”</p>
<p>Today’s Caribbean curriculum, in contrast, teaches young people to embrace aspects of the local culture once considered embarrassing. </p>
<p>Naipaul, who was born under British colonial rule but came of age writing about the region’s drive for sovereignty, is seen as part of this post-colonial project. </p>
<p>The namesake of Naipaul’s picaresque <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/feb/12/teju-cole-vs-naipaul-a-house-for-mr-biswas-trinidad-novel">“A House for Mr. Biswas,”</a> for example, is bent on escape from living with his in-laws, the Tulsis. Even as his lot in life improves with residence in each of the Tulsis’ new homes, Biswas is never satisfied.</p>
<p>As Naipaul’s prologue makes clear, his protagonist is like the Caribbean in that way: He pursues sovereignty and personal freedom at the price of security. </p>
<h2>Naipaul in the university</h2>
<p>Over the course of their three-year undergraduate education, literature students at the University of the West Indies-St. Augustine may read Naipaul up to six times. Each course puts Naipaul to a different use as it aims to provide students with a different set of skills and competencies.</p>
<p>“A House for Mr. Biswas” again often appears on their first-year “Introduction to Prose Fiction” syllabus. </p>
<p>The short stories from <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/49741.Miguel_Street?from_search=true">“Miguel Street”</a> may be included in their “West Indian narratives” coursework, and Naipaul’s <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Way-World-V-S-Naipaul/dp/0679761667">“A Way in the World”</a> is generally a key text for teaching postmodern literary theory. Advanced literature students may read <a href="https://www.panmacmillan.com/authors/v-s-naipaul/the-indian-trilogy">Naipaul’s Indian trilogy</a> in a third-year class called “Indian Diaspora Literature.” </p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/233679/original/file-20180827-75978-1hvbxd0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/233679/original/file-20180827-75978-1hvbxd0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/233679/original/file-20180827-75978-1hvbxd0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/233679/original/file-20180827-75978-1hvbxd0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/233679/original/file-20180827-75978-1hvbxd0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/233679/original/file-20180827-75978-1hvbxd0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/233679/original/file-20180827-75978-1hvbxd0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">For Caribbean readers, Naipaul’s characters — and the humor he derives from them — are immediately recognizable.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/9/91/MiguelStreet.jpg/220px-MiguelStreet.jpg">Wikipedia</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In my experience, students – especially those from Trinidad and Tobago, who form the majority of St. Augustine’s student body – generally connect immediately and powerfully with Naipaul’s work.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/49741.Miguel_Street?from_search=true">“Miguel Street</a>,” for example, often evokes raucous laughter because its characters and events are so instantly recognizable to Caribbean readers. </p>
<p>In recounting her early readings of the book, <a href="https://www.amherst.edu/people/facstaff/ccobhamsande">Cobham-Sander</a>, recalls “laughing till I cried at Man Man … and screaming with delight at the idea of his dog leaving symmetrical piles of droppings on the stools in the Café at the corner of Alberto Street where we regularly stopped for sweet drinks.”</p>
<p>Cobham-Sander was also certain that Naipaul’s protagonist Man Man was modeled on a real person – an eccentric neighbor of hers – demonstrating the author’s talent for capturing local daily life. </p>
<h2>Naipaul the pop culture creator</h2>
<p>As <a href="https://scholarlyrepository.miami.edu/anthurium/vol3/iss2/?utm_source=scholarlyrepository.miami.edu%2Fanthurium%2Fvol3%2Fiss2%2F10&utm_medium=PDF&utm_campaign=PDFCoverPages">many scholars</a> have asserted, Naipaul’s writing style shares a great deal in common with that most Trinidadian of persons, the calypsonian. </p>
<p>“It is only in the calypso that the Trinidadian touches reality,” Naipaul writes in his long travel essay, <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/trauma-and-literature/middle-passage-and-racebased-trauma/87BC19724E6D42FA63309FF8065DF5B8">“The Middle Passage</a>.” “The calypso deals with local incidents, local attitudes, and it does so in a local language. The pure calypso, the best calypso, is incomprehensible to the outsider.” </p>
<p>But, like the traditional “calypsonian,” whose aggressive <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/40653156?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents">lyrics often offend</a>, Naipaul’s work can raise a reader’s hackles.</p>
<p>This is particularly true of the author’s many nonfictional texts. </p>
<p>In last semester’s advanced seminar in West Indian Literature, I taught “<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Middle-Passage-Caribbean-Revisited/dp/0375708340">The Middle Passage</a>” – Naipaul’s 1962 attempt to unveil the long-lasting aftereffects of slavery on the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iku9TS-3rk4">the Caribbean</a>. </p>
<p>It is Naipaul’s very first travelogue, when he cut his teeth on the form, and it was a government commission. Trinidad’s first-ever prime minister, Eric Eustace Williams, asked the young writer to explore the post-colonial Caribbean and write a critique that would lay a basis for nation-building. </p>
<p>Instead, the <a href="https://docs.lib.purdue.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=https://www.google.com/&httpsredir=1&article=2148&context=clcweb">devastating tome</a> may well have severed his relationship with the region – and with generations of Caribbean readers to come. </p>
<h2>Naipaul’s critics</h2>
<p>Among other <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/18/books/review/Shaftel-t.html">controversial</a> takes on Caribbean history, “The Middle Passage” includes such indictments as “History is built around achievement and creation; and nothing was created in the West Indies” – this in newly independent region in the midst of rewriting its history. </p>
<p>For my students, the book’s reputation as a national betrayal was a real obstacle. Most told me they disliked the text. Some said it was offensive to West Indians. </p>
<p>And that was before they had even read it.</p>
<p>These same students had enthusiastically engaged with similarly difficult questions of slavery, race and Caribbean history in the work of cultural theorist Stuart Hall. His BBC video series “<a href="http://bufvc.ac.uk/dvdfind/index.php/title/18006">Redemption Song</a>” asserts that whites and blacks lived together on plantations in “a mixture of cruelty and intimacy.”</p>
<p>But, with Naipaul, the students were less amenable to such ideas.</p>
<h2>Reconciling Naipaul</h2>
<p>The criticism that <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2002/02/a-terrifying-honesty/302426/">followed that book</a> is one of the greatest difficulties professors face in teaching Naipaul. </p>
<p>How can we help students see Naipaul’s value as a post-colonial prophet when he so famously spurned the region during its quest to forge an indigenous identity? </p>
<p>How do students reconcile the Caribbean decolonizer they first meet in high school with the Caribbean skeptic they’ll debate as more mature readers? </p>
<p>Naipaul wrote for 60 years. He was <a href="https://literature.britishcouncil.org/writer/v-s-naipaul">knighted</a>. He authored novels, essays and travelogues. He won <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2007/dec/21/lookingbackatthebookervs">every literary prize imaginable</a>. </p>
<p>He was pandit, calypsonian and knight – a provocateur of different cultural persuasions and a defender of what he believed to be right – sometimes simultaneously, often contradictorily.</p>
<p>To paraphrase the author himself, Naipaul was <a href="https://www.thehindu.com/opinion/editorial/a-complicated-man/article24672195.ece">a complicated man</a> bearing all the complicated strands of his own complicated pasts. </p>
<p>In the Caribbean, accepting this V.S. Naipaul is a task indeed, for teacher and student alike.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/101653/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>J. Vijay Maharaj is affiliated with Friends of Mr Biswas, an NGO formed to provide support for young and/or upcoming writers and readers and to maintain the Naipaul house in Trinidad for this purpose, among others. </span></em></p>Author V.S. Naipaul, who died on Aug. 11, both scorned and mirrored his Caribbean origins. At the University of the West Indies, students must reconcile this conflicted titan’s literary legacy.J. Vijay Maharaj, Lecturer, The University of the West Indies: St. Augustine CampusLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/861082017-11-01T10:16:22Z2017-11-01T10:16:22ZGuyana, one of South America’s poorest countries, struck oil. Will it go boom or bust?<p>Today, Guyana is one of South America’s poorest countries, with an average per capita annual income <a href="https://tradingeconomics.com/guyana/gdp-per-capita">of around US$4,000</a>.</p>
<p>But within the decade, it could be among the richest. In 2015, <a href="http://corporate.exxonmobil.com/en/company/worldwide-operations/locations/guyana/about-us/project-overview">ExxonMobil and its international partners</a> discovered vast oil reserves off the Caribbean coast of this small country. By 2018, <a href="http://www.offshore-mag.com/articles/print/volume-76/issue-7/latin-america/guyana-emerges-as-major-frontier-market.html">five new wells</a> will be pumping out 120,000 barrels of Guyanese crude daily.</p>
<p>Deep-water surveys estimate Guyana’s oil <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/13/business/energy-environment/major-oil-find-guyana-exxon-mobile-hess.html">reserves at around 2 billion barrels</a>. That pales in comparison to <a href="https://www.eia.gov/beta/international/country.cfm?iso=VEN">neighboring Venezuela</a> but <a href="https://www.eia.gov/beta/international/country.cfm?iso=TTO">surpasses the reserves of Trinidad and Tobago</a>, long the Caribbean’s biggest oil producer. </p>
<p>In short, Guyana is on the verge of unprecedented wealth – but only if it plays its cards right. As I’ve seen during two decades of research into Caribbean oil and gas development, natural resources can easily become a curse.</p>
<p>Is Guyana <a href="https://www.thedialogue.org/resources/what-lies-ahead-for-guyanas-new-oil-and-gas-deposits/">prepared</a> for the good and the bad of the oil bonanza to come?</p>
<h2>Guyana lays the groundwork</h2>
<p>Given its marine reserves, by the mid-2020s Guyanese oil production offshore <a href="https://www.economist.com/news/americas/21724385-it-will-take-better-politicians-resist-corrosive-power-petrodollars-will-oil-corrupt">could rise to 400,000 barrels a day</a>. Once production starts next year, Guyana will receive a 2 percent royalty on gross earnings and 50 percent of oil proceeds. </p>
<p>While that’s a fairly low <a href="http://guyanatimesgy.com/guyanas-royalty-percentage-low-ram/">royalty</a> by international standards, it will make Guyana rich. At the current market price of <a href="http://www.nasdaq.com/markets/crude-oil.aspx">around $50 per barrel</a>, this country of 750,000 people can expect to net $1 million a day in oil earnings. </p>
<p>Since full monetization of Guyana’s oil and gas resources <a href="http://www.engineeringnews.co.za/print-version/exxonmobil-sanctions-44bn-liza-development-offshore-guyana-2017-06-16">will occur in five to 15 years</a>, the country has less than a decade to deal with <a href="http://www.inewsguyana.com/tt-to-help-guyanas-energy-sector/">numerous energy-related hurdles</a>, including unresolved territorial issues with Venezuela, environmental protection, wealth management and social concerns. </p>
<p>The government’s top priority is to resolve a <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-33078948">border controversy</a> dating back to Guyana’s days as a British colony. For 200 years, Venezuela has claimed sovereignty over two-thirds of Guyana’s territory, including its exclusive economic zone. </p>
<p>This controversy – which hinges on a disagreement over the <a href="http://www.un.org/Depts/los/convention_agreements/convention_overview_convention.htm">U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea</a> – is <a href="http://guyanachronicle.com/2015/06/23/president-declares-exxonmobil-has-nothing-to-fear-operations-will-continue-in-guyanas-eez">unlikely to scare off international oil companies</a>. Venezuela <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/013bfd26-0a8e-11e7-ac5a-903b21361b43">could muck things up a bit</a> for Guyana, though, by increasing Navy patrols in Venezuela’s exclusive economic zone, which abuts Guyana’s disputed maritime area, deterring oil vessels and intercepting commercial ships.</p>
<p>Hoping to avoid such confrontations, Guyana is now <a href="https://www.noticiasdenuevaesparta.com/guyana-remains-imperiled-by-venezuelas-claim-to-its-territory-jamaica-observer/#.WfPipVLD_cs">pursuing a judicial settlement</a> at the U.N. If the countries fail to settle, the case will go <a href="https://history.state.gov/milestones/1866-1898/venezuela">to the International Court of Justice in The Hague</a>. </p>
<p><a href="http://goinvest.gov.gy/whyguyana/infrastructure/">Inadequate infrastructure</a> is another constraint to growth. Guyana now has an <a href="http://www.ndsguyana.org/Frames/chapter8.htm">ambitious $164 million plan</a> to upgrade its road networks, bridges, ports, telecommunications and river transport system. But to get Guyana’s crude to international markets, some of this construction must be done by 2018 – a tall order for a small nation.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/192509/original/file-20171030-18711-g4dgnn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/192509/original/file-20171030-18711-g4dgnn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/192509/original/file-20171030-18711-g4dgnn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/192509/original/file-20171030-18711-g4dgnn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/192509/original/file-20171030-18711-g4dgnn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/192509/original/file-20171030-18711-g4dgnn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/192509/original/file-20171030-18711-g4dgnn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Guyana, a largely rural former British colony, must upgrade its river transport system to accommodate an oil boom.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Canje_River,_Guyana.jpg">Lorski</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Environmental protections</h2>
<p>As oil production expands, protecting the marine environment will become an urgent issue for the entire Caribbean region.</p>
<p>In April, three Venezuelan doctors transporting medical supplies from Trinidad to Venezuela <a href="https://panampost.com/sabrina-martin/2017/05/09/three-doctors-drown-in-shipwreck-while-transporting-medical-supplies-to-venezuela/">drowned when their boat overturned in an oil slick</a>. A barge belonging to Trinidad and Tobago’s national oil company had ruptured, discharging <a href="http://guardian.co.tt/news/2017-04-30/oil-spill-flows-venezuela-waters">300 million barrels of crude into the sea</a> just seven miles from Venezuela. </p>
<p>Most recently, in October, a fisherman discovered an unreported <a href="http://jamaica-gleaner.com/article/caribbean/20171015/outrage-over-massive-oil-spill-tts-chaguaramas-peninsula">“massive” spill</a> off of Trinidad’s northwest coast. A video posted to Facebook <a href="http://guardian.co.tt/news/2017-10-15/authorities-probe-chaguaramas-oil-spill">shows black waters</a> near Chaguaramas, the site of a major national park. The <a href="http://www.looptt.com/content/ima-and-ema-oil-spill-update">source of the spill remains unknown</a>.</p>
<p>Such catastrophes are commonplace around Trinidad, which for 110 years has been the <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/caribbean-the-next-major-oil-region-2017-8">Caribbean’s major oil producer</a>. </p>
<p>They should serve as a warning for Guyana. Maritime crude drilling goes hand in hand with leaky pipelines, ruptured barges and rig malfunctions. In my experience, spills <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2014/01/a-series-of-oil-spills-sully-caribbean-paradise-coating-mangroves-and-wildlife-photos/">rarely result in sanctions</a> for oil and gas producers. </p>
<p>According to a June 2017 report from Guyana’s Environmental Protection Agency, <a href="http://guyanachronicle.com/2017/07/30/what-is-the-state-of-guyanas-environment">the country’s forests and ecosystems are, today, almost untouched</a>. To keep Guyana pristine even as <a href="https://twitter.com/newsnowgy/status/747578579236466688">the oil and gas sector grows</a>, proper environmental management systems are critical.</p>
<h2>Avoiding the resource curse</h2>
<p>Revenue management is another big question mark right now. From <a href="https://www.li.com/docs/default-source/future-of-iran/the-future-of-iran-(economy)-oil-and-the-future-of-iran-a-blessing-or-a-curse-pdf.pdf?sfvrsn=2">Iran</a> to Nigeria, worldwide experience confirms that social conflict and economic instability result when income from drilling, mining and the like is unequally distributed.</p>
<p>This is called the “<a href="https://resourcegovernance.org/sites/default/files/nrgi_Resource-Curse.pdf">resource curse</a>,” and Guyana must move quickly to avoid it. Recent opinion polls show that the Guyanese public has little faith in the <a href="http://www.icdn.today/opinions/government-and-leaders-in-guyana-trinidad-slip-in-rating/">leadership</a> ability of both the government and the opposition.</p>
<p>Indeed, Guyana’s gross mismanagement of its <a href="https://www.transparency.org/whatwedo/answer/overview_of_corruption_and_anti_corruption_in_guyana_with_reference_to_natu">corruption-plagued sugar and mineral extraction industries</a> raises <a href="https://www.kaieteurnewsonline.com/2017/05/22/corruption-choking-guyanas-development/">doubt</a> about whether the coming oil windfall will actually benefit citizens.</p>
<p>The Guyanese government seems to be aware of these financial management risks. On Oct. 26, Guyana became the latest member of the <a href="https://www.kaieteurnewsonline.com/2017/10/26/bringing-transparency-and-accountability-to-natural-resources-guyana-becomes-latest-member-of-eiti/">Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative</a>, an international watchdog that partners with organizations like the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. </p>
<p>In addition to monitoring Guyana’s resource governance, the initiative requires mandatory <a href="https://eiti.org/FAQ#voluntary">full financial disclosures</a> to “demonstrate commitment to reform and anti-corruption.” </p>
<p>A critical next step would be to establish a sovereign wealth fund, following the good examples of <a href="http://www.ifswf.org/member-profiles/heritage-and-stabilization-fund">Trinidad</a> and <a href="https://www.forbes.com/forbes/welcome/?toURL=https://www.forbes.com/sites/niallmccarthy/2017/09/22/norways-sovereign-wealth-fund-hits-1-trillion-infographic/&refURL=https://www.google.com/&referrer=https://www.google.com/">Norway</a>. This type of national savings account ensures that oil revenues are invested and spent in a way that transcends political cycles and generations.</p>
<h2>Ethnic strife</h2>
<p>There is good reason for concern about Guyana’s future as an oil power. Though the country has enjoyed relative <a href="https://tradingeconomics.com/guyana/political-stability-and-absence-of-violence-terrorism-estimate-wb-data.html">political stability over the past decade</a>, its <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/20/nyregion/power-corruption-and-murder-roils-little-guyana.html">society is fractious</a>. Politics in Guyana – whose population is 29 percent Afro-Guyanese and 40 percent Indo-Guyanese – divide along racial lines, with the two main ethnic groups competing over money and power. </p>
<p>Protests in 2012 <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-19747052">killed three people</a>, and more unrest occurred <a href="http://guyanachronicle.com/2017/05/16/sugar-workers-continue-to-protest">earlier this year</a>.</p>
<p>Challenges aside, Guyana also has some solid foundations for economic development. Its <a href="http://www.nationmaster.com/country-info/profiles/Guyana/Education">well-educated population</a> and <a href="https://www.state.gov/e/eb/rls/othr/ics/2017/wha/270074.htm">open, market-driven financial climate</a> make it an attractive destination for American, Chinese, Mexican and Brazilian companies, among others. </p>
<p>From 2006 to 2015, <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/overseas-business-risk-guyana/overseas-business-risk-guyana">foreign direct investment</a> – mostly in Guyana’s mining, tourism and telecommunications sectors – averaged $188 million per year, representing 7.9 percent of gross domestic product. That will surely grow once oil starts flowing.</p>
<p>The odds of a success are aided by Trinidad and Tobago, which <a href="http://www.wiredja.com/business/item/3767-trinidad-to-assist-guyana-develop-oil-and-energy-sector">has been providing technical assistance</a> to Guyana since 2016. In addition to helping its neighbor develop <a href="http://guyanachronicle.com/2017/07/21/exxon-warehouse-logistics-base-by-march">its energy and gas expertise</a>, Trinidad hopes its own refinery will soon begin <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/guyana-oil/guyana-says-future-oil-output-could-be-refined-in-trinidad-suriname-idUSL2N1GF1QG">processing Guyanese crude</a>.</p>
<p>One way or another, oil riches will transform Guyana. With sound economic policy and thoughtful leadership, it can be for the better.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/86108/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Anthony T. Bryan is affiliated with the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), Washington, D.C. as a Senior Associate (Non-Resident). He is also an energy and gas consultant.</span></em></p>Guyana is on the verge of an oil bonanza that could bring in US$1 million a day. But if it’s not careful, this poor nation – population 750,000 – could fall prey to the dreaded ‘resource curse.’Anthony T. Bryan, Professor of International Relations, The University of the West Indies: St. Augustine CampusLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/841062017-09-20T20:59:27Z2017-09-20T20:59:27ZIn the Caribbean, colonialism and inequality mean hurricanes hit harder<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/186512/original/file-20170919-32019-q2k6rl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A satellite image of Hurricane Irma spiraling through the Caribbean.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">NOAA/AP</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Hurricane Maria, the <a href="https://www.csmonitor.com/World/Americas/2017/0919/In-an-unrelenting-hurricane-season-Maria-is-next-to-churn-through-Caribbean">15th tropical depression</a> this season, is now battering the Caribbean, just two weeks after Hurricane Irma wreaked havoc in the region. </p>
<p>The devastation in Dominica is “mind-boggling,” wrote the country’s prime minister, Roosevelt Skerrit, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/19/world/americas/hurricane-maria-caribbean.html?mcubz=3&_r=0">on Facebook</a> just after midnight on September 19. The next day, in Puerto Rico, <a href="http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/09/20/552284324/hurricane-maria-makes-landfall-in-puerto-rico">NPR reported</a> via member station WRTU in San Juan that “Most of the island is without power…or water.” </p>
<p>Among the Caribbean islands <a href="https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2017/9/7/16264390/photos-hurricane-irma-destruction">impacted by both deadly storms</a> are Puerto Rico, St Kitts, Tortola and Barbuda. </p>
<p>In this region, disaster damages are frequently amplified by needlessly protracted and incomplete <a href="http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/08/18/490468640/u-n-admits-role-in-haiti-cholera-outbreak-that-has-killed-thousands">recoveries</a>. In 2004, <a href="https://www.britannica.com/event/Haiti-earthquake-of-2010">Hurricane Ivan</a> rolled roughshod through the Caribbean <a href="http://www.hurricanescience.org/history/storms/2000s/hurricaneivan/">with wind speeds of 160 mph</a>. The region’s economy took more than three years to recover. <a href="http://www.gov.gd/egov/docs/reports/Ivan-Report-07-09-04.pdf">Grenada’s surplus of US$17 million</a> became a deficit of $54 million, thanks to decreased revenue and the outlays for rehabilitation and reconstruction.</p>
<p>Nor were the effects of a 7 magnitude earthquake that rocked Haiti in 2010 limited to killing <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13623699.2010.535279?journalCode=fmcs20">some 150,000 people</a>. United Nations peacekeepers sent in to help left the country <a href="https://www.opendemocracy.net/openglobalrights/valerie-percival/un-undermined-both-public-health-and-human-rights-in-haiti">grappling</a>, to this day, with a fatal <a href="https://reliefweb.int/report/haiti/epidemiological-update-cholera-4-may-2017">cholera outbreak</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/186493/original/file-20170919-12924-1w0026y.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/186493/original/file-20170919-12924-1w0026y.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/186493/original/file-20170919-12924-1w0026y.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/186493/original/file-20170919-12924-1w0026y.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/186493/original/file-20170919-12924-1w0026y.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=499&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/186493/original/file-20170919-12924-1w0026y.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=499&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/186493/original/file-20170919-12924-1w0026y.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=499&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A tent city in post-earthquake Haiti.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Fred W. Baker III/Wikimedia Commons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>These are not isolated instances of random bad luck. As University of the West Indies geographers who study risk perception and <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/9781118786352.wbieg0804/abstract">political ecology</a>, we recognize the deep, human-induced roots of <a href="http://www.chronicle.com/article/Slow-Violence/127968">climate change</a>, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/inequality/datablog/2017/apr/26/inequality-index-where-are-the-worlds-most-unequal-countries">inequality</a> and the <a href="http://press.princeton.edu/titles/9564.html">underdevelopment</a> of former colonies – all of which increase the Caribbean’s vulnerability to disaster.</p>
<h2>Risk, vulnerability and poverty</h2>
<p>Disaster risk is a function of both a place’s physical <a href="http://www.ga.gov.au/scientific-topics/hazards/risk-impact/exposure">hazard exposure</a> – that is, how directly it is threatened by disaster – and its <a href="http://www.unisdr.org/files/29288_apdr2012finallowres.pdf">social vulnerability</a>, specifically, how resilient it is. </p>
<p>Across most Caribbean islands, hazard exposure is about the same, but <a href="http://www.preventionweb.net/english/hyogo/gar/background-papers/documents/Chap3/LAC-overview/LAC-Oveview.pdf">research shows</a> that poverty and social inequality drastically magnify the severity of disasters. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/186488/original/file-20170918-30571-o9av6o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/186488/original/file-20170918-30571-o9av6o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=482&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/186488/original/file-20170918-30571-o9av6o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=482&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/186488/original/file-20170918-30571-o9av6o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=482&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/186488/original/file-20170918-30571-o9av6o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=605&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/186488/original/file-20170918-30571-o9av6o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=605&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/186488/original/file-20170918-30571-o9av6o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=605&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Haitian Revolution’s Battle for Palm Tree Hill.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">January Suchodolski/Wikimedia Commons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Haiti, where eight out of every 10 people live on <a href="http://www.worldbank.org/en/country/haiti/overview">less than $4 a day</a>, offers an example of how capitalism, gender and history converge to compound storm damage. </p>
<p>The country is among the Western Hemisphere’s poorest in large part because of <a href="https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=kIw-TLzFE5kC&oi=fnd&pg=PR7&dq=haiti+imperialism+history&ots=L_aGHSJcps&sig=o9ZdrYsNuYjpZ4wQvkI8uxRWli8#v=onepage&q=haiti%20imperialism%20history&f=false">imperialism</a>. After Haitians successfully overthrew their European enslavers in 1804, global powers <a href="https://www.versobooks.com/books/524-damming-the-flood">economically stifled</a> the island. From 1915 to 1934, the U.S. <a href="https://books.google.ca/books?hl=en&lr=&id=kIw-TLzFE5kC&oi=fnd&pg=PR7&dq=haiti+US+military+occupation&ots=L_aFQSNhvs&sig=o6pX1qD4iYih1MPYNHp77T6iH44#v=onepage&q=haiti%20US%20military%20occupation&f=false">first militarily occupied Haiti</a>, and then followed a policy of <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/haiti-us-occupation-hundred-year-anniversary">intervention</a> that continues to have lasting effects on its governance. </p>
<p><a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/714003751?journalCode=fjhr20">International interference</a> and the resulting weak institutions, in turn, impeded <a href="https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/handle/10986/10311">development, poverty reduction and empowerment</a> efforts.</p>
<p>In such a context, disasters aggravate a country’s numerous existing social vulnerabilities. Take gender, for example. Mental health professionals offering support to victims after Haiti’s 2010 earthquake found that an extraordinarily high number of displaced women – up to 75 percent – had experienced <a href="https://theconversation.com/caring-for-haitian-women-after-hurricane-matthew-what-we-learned-from-the-2010-earthquake-66799">sexual violence</a>. This prior trauma exacerbated the women’s post-disaster stress responses. </p>
<h2>Geography and gender</h2>
<p>Inequality and underdevelopment are perhaps less marked in the rest of the Caribbean, but from <a href="http://www.ipsnews.net/2015/01/antiguan-shanty-dwellers-ask-if-poverty-will-be-the-death-of-them/">Antigua and Barbuda</a> to St. Kitts and Nevis, socioeconomic problems are now complicating both disaster preparedness and response. </p>
<p>Across the region, people spend most of their income on daily essentials like <a href="http://reel-life.org/food-shelter/">food, clean water, shelter and medicine</a>, with little left over for greeting Irma and Maria with lifesaving hurricane-resilient roofs, storm shutters, solar generators and first aid kits. </p>
<p>For the poor, emergency radios and satellite telephones that could warn of impending disasters are largely unaffordable, as is <a href="http://www.dkkv.org/fileadmin/user_upload/Veroeffentlichungen/Publikationen/DKKV_Linking_Poverty_Reduction_Disaster_Risk_Management.pdf">homeowners’ insurance</a> to hasten recovery. </p>
<p>Poorer Caribbean residents also tend to live in the most disaster-prone areas because housing is cheaper on <a href="https://unhabitat.org/books/global-report-on-human-settlements-2009-planning-sustainable-cities/">unstable deforested hillsides</a> and eroding riverbanks. This exponentially increases the danger they face. The low construction quality of these dwellings offers less protection during storms while, post-disaster, emergency vehicles may not be able to access these areas. </p>
<p>Caribbean <a href="http://climatetracker.org/when-climate-change-wreaks-havoc-women-are-hit-the-hardest/">women will also continue to be at particular risk well after Maria passes</a>. In a <a href="http://www.caribank.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/SynthesisReportCountryGenderAssessment.pdf">region where gender roles remain quite rigid</a>, women are typically tasked with childcare, <a href="http://www.nationalgeographic.com/people-and-culture/food/the-plate/2016/october/to-address-climate-change--we-need-to-change-how-we-grow-food/">harvesting</a>, cooking, cleaning, washing and the like. </p>
<p>Even in <a href="http://www.undp.org/content/dam/undp/library/gender/Gender%20and%20Environment/PB1-AP-Overview-Gender-and-climate-change.pdf">post-disaster settings</a>, women are expected to perform household labor. So when water supplies are <a href="http://edition.cnn.com/2017/08/27/health/health-consequences-flood-waters/index.html">contaminated</a> (with sewage, E. coli, salmonella, cholera, yellow fever, and hepatitis A, among others), women are disproportionately exposed to illness. </p>
<p>The work of nourishing the spirits and bodies of others when <a href="http://grist.org/article/2009-06-01-bonn-climate-change-is-sexist/">food and water shortages occur</a> is also thrust onto women, even though they generally <a href="http://siteresources.worldbank.org/INTWDR2012/Resources/7778105-1299699968583/7786210-1315936222006/chapter-4.pdf">have less access to income and credit than men</a>.</p>
<h2>No place for politics</h2>
<p>Politics, too, play a role in how the Caribbean is faring during this tumultuous hurricane season. Longtime colonial rule isn’t the only reason Caribbean societies and ecosystems are now so vulnerable. </p>
<p>Many contemporary governments in the region are, arguably, also doing their part to make life generally worse for marginalized communities. In Trinidad and Tobago, <a href="http://www.trinidadexpress.com/20170723/news/gate-fallout">divestment in public education</a> has hurt working-class university students, youth from low-income communities and older adults who were previously eligible for financial aid. </p>
<p>In oil-rich Guyana, dependency upon <a href="https://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/Guyana-ExxonMobil-Capitalizes-on-Largest-Oil-Find-in-10-Years-20170624-0004.html">fossil fuels</a> has invited an eager <a href="https://www.kaieteurnewsonline.com/2017/06/22/what-guyana-needs-to-know-about-exxonmobil-pt-2-oil-rich-but-still-poor-lessons-from-nigeria-chad-and-papua-new-guinea/">ExxonMobil in for a round of drilling</a>, despite its track record for extracting, <a href="https://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/Exxon-Mobil-Fined-19.9-Million-for-Releasing-10-Million-Pounds-of-Pollutants-into-the-Air-20170427-0019.html">polluting</a> and taking profits largely elsewhere. And, from Jamaica to Belize, <a href="http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/columns/Jamaica-s-future-choked-by-cancer-of-corruption_93609">widespread corruption</a> and <a href="https://intercontinentalcry.org/belizes-persistent-denial-of-maya-land-rights/">land rights violations</a> have severed relationships of trust between people and the states that are, in theory, supposed to protect them.</p>
<p>When storms threaten, such policies and practices intensify the Caribbean’s societal and <a href="http://www.dw.com/en/climate-change-makes-weather-extremes-the-new-normal/a-38085847">ecological risks</a>.</p>
<p>Irma and Maria are surely not the last extreme disasters that will strike the region. To survive and flourish in this dangerous <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/sep/06/twin-megastorms-irma-harvey-scientists-fear-new-normal">new normal</a>, Caribbean countries would do well to look to the heart of these issues, rethinking the concept of risk and mindfully engaging with factors like poverty, gender and climate change. </p>
<p>In practice, this means identifying their most vulnerable communities and working to improve their day-to-day well-being – not just their survival in a storm. </p>
<p>The Caribbean’s own Frantz Fanon (1925-1961), from the island of Martinique, recognized these complexities in his book, <a href="http://home.ku.edu.tr/%7Embaker/CSHS503/FrantzFanon.pdf">“The Wretched of the Earth</a>.” </p>
<p>Fanon asserted that democracy and the political education of the masses, across all post-colonial geographies, is a “historical necessity.” Presciently, he also noted that “the soil needs researching, as well as the subsoil, the rivers, and why not the sun.” </p>
<p>As the Caribbean looks for solutions to the damage and suffering brought on by both nature’s revolt and social inequality, Fanon’s words seem like a good place to start.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/84106/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The Caribbean is facing its second deadly hurricane in as many weeks. This isn’t just bad luck: the region’s extreme vulnerability to disaster also reflects entrenched social inequalities.Levi Gahman, Lecturer: Radical Geography and Critical Development Studies, The University of the West Indies: St. Augustine CampusGabrielle Thongs, Assistant Lecturer, Geography Department, The University of the West Indies: St. Augustine CampusLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/738972017-03-16T07:32:32Z2017-03-16T07:32:32ZIn Trinidad and Tobago, Carnival goes feminist (bikinis and feathers included)<p>Trinidad and Tobago’s Carnival, which recently ended its 2017 rendition, is an event as contradictory as it is extraordinary. </p>
<p>No mere mimicry of other such celebrations in Rio de Janeiro or New Orleans, Carnival on this Caribbean island of 1.4 million people – primarily descended from <a href="http://www.trinicenter.com/kwame/2002/Nov/252002.htm">enslaved Africans and Indian indentured labourers</a> – combines African traditions with European pre-Lent festivities and Indian musical rhythms. </p>
<p>Given this <a href="https://link.springer.com/referenceworkentry/10.1007%2F978-1-4614-6086-2_679">syncretism</a>, it’s perhaps unsurprising that, over the past 200 years, Carnival has been not just two days of normal order turned upside down but also an annual expression of female political resistance. </p>
<h2>Beads and glitter and ‘bikini mas’</h2>
<p>Caribbean women’s takeover of Carnival is most evident during “bikini mas”. Each year, tens of thousands of women participate in this Carnival mas(querade), “playing mas” in Rio-style sequined bikinis, feathered headpieces and beads. </p>
<p>Because playing bikini mas has come to replace traditional costumes portraying other periods, places and cultures (as well as some fantastical imagined characters), <a href="http://2017.blisscarnival.com/ny-times-carnivals-louder-commercial-beat-adds-dissonance/">some fear</a> that Trinidad and Tobago’s historic tradition is dying. New, <a href="http://www.guardian.co.tt/carnival/2012-02-13/changing-face-carnival">imported masquerade styles</a>, say traditional mas makers, do not make political statements or show off local artistry.</p>
<p>But bikini mas is a complex phenomenon. Its <a href="http://www.emeraldinsight.com/doi/full/10.1108/S1529-212620160000021011">rise is directly linked</a> to women’s increasing earnings and economic independence; disposable income and the desire for well-earned fun support the demand for such costumes. It also reflects black and brown women’s wish to be affirmed as <a href="https://books.google.tt/books?hl=en&lr=&id=dGSnsW6rA6EC&oi=fnd&pg=PA25&dq=pamela+franco+carnival&ots=cHwBWyEnyg&sig=juWro71HAdrjOaCGSRgZGZaQw_M&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=pamela%20franco%20carnival&f=false">beautiful and sexy</a>, not only seen as successful and serious students and workers. </p>
<p>As feminist scholar and mas player Dr Sue Ann Barratt told me:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>A big part of it for some women is … to show they have been working out and qualify as gorgeous, for affirmation as a woman and to send a message that you can be watched, but not touched.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>In short, bikini mas authorises women to push back against the strict moral controls that religion and society place on them (while allowing men more sexual freedom). </p>
<p>Take, for example, these lyrics from Soca music star Destra Garcia’s 2016 hit, Lucy: “I grew up as ah real good girl, always home, don’t go nowhere. As soon as I was introduced to Carnival, they say I loose”. </p>
<p>Meanwhile, singer Orlando Octave observed in one 2017 tune, “Plenty girl have [a] man and [yet] acting like they single, wining like she single, feting like she single”. </p>
<p>This contradiction – which Trinidadian women live every day – has helped spur bikini mas to become a ritual for an entire <a href="http://wlrn.org/post/carnival-made-china-trinidads-annual-festival-faces-generational-divide">generation of young women</a>: a women’s movement given cultural expression. </p>
<h2>The original anti-slut shaming</h2>
<p>These revellers are continuing the nation’s long-standing tradition of female self-affirmation, resistance to subordination, and renegotiation of the rules governing public space. </p>
<p>Caribbean women have always been at the forefront of rebellions, from rising up against slavery in the <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/01440398408574875?journalCode=fsla20">1500s</a> to leading the <a href="http://s3.amazonaws.com/academia.edu.documents/36917286/Water__Women_and_Community.pdf?AWSAccessKeyId=AKIAIWOWYYGZ2Y53UL3A&Expires=1489587018&Signature=KqDI69VPeYcUbYpPjHYByTy%2FSVw%3D&response-content-disposition=inline%3B%20filename%3DWater_women_and_community_in_Trinidad_We.pdf">1903 riots</a> over access to water. </p>
<p>Well before slavery was abolished in 1838, Trinidadian women played in Carnival bands. Sometimes they covered themselves in mud, expressing a sexuality even then decried as indecent. Alongside them would march women who fought in stickfights (public duelling competitions), a stereotypically “masculine” activity. </p>
<p>By the 1800s, such women had come to be known as “<a href="http://caribbean-beat.com/issue-77/wining-words#axzz4awn4APtH">Jamettes</a>”, from the French <em>diametre</em>, which referred to those considered to exist below the line of respectability. </p>
<p>After abolition these working-class, African-descended women continued the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u7p0fRafo0Q">Jamette</a> tradition. They often cooked, washed clothes and socialised in shared urban backyards, and worked in a wide range of trades, from washerwomen or market vendors to sex workers.</p>
<p>With its fearless and unapologetic combination of sexual, reproductive and economic issues with insistence on justice, equality and freedom from violence, Jamette politics has come to influence Trinidad and Tobago’s modern Carnival – and Caribbean feminism – in ways that <a href="https://sta.uwi.edu/crgs/december2012/journals/Editorial.pdf">cross class, colour, religion and race</a>. </p>
<p>Predating by decades the “<a href="http://amberroseslutwalk.com/">slut walks</a>” of Canada and the United States, bikini mas has helped cultivate contemporary women’s opposition to rape culture in Trinidad and Tobago, where male domination and sexual harassment of women is seen as natural and normal. Indeed, the <a href="https://redforgender.wordpress.com/2016/11/27/lifeinleggings-call-for-feminist-solidarity/">Caribbean region</a> has <a href="http://www.stabroeknews.com/2012/news/stories/02/28/sexual-violence-rates-in-the-caribbean-highest-in-the-world-report/">disproportionately high rates of sexual violence</a>. </p>
<p>Last year, a Japanese steelpan player, Asami Nagakiya, was murdered during Carnival in Port of Spain. After the city’s mayor suggested that that women’s dress and behaviour at this annual event invited abuse, <a href="https://globalvoices.org/2016/02/15/citizens-protest-against-trinidad-mayors-vulgar-victim-blaming-statements/">feminist groups</a> called for his <a href="https://grrlscene.wordpress.com/?s=carnival&submit=Search">resignation</a> and young women came out in their bikini mas costumes to protest the victim-blaming. </p>
<p>Over the next months, <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/notaskingforit?lang=en">#NotAskingForIt</a> campaign, featuring female students, workers, family members and bikini mas players, circulated social media across the entire Caribbean region. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/rKXE6GfvrIo?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">‘Just because I look glamorous in a tight dress’ doesn’t mean I’m ‘asking for it’.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Classist and sexist or empowering?</h2>
<p>Bikini mas is not without its contradictions. The cost of participation in a “band” of mas costume players can be up to US$1,000 per person. Though all classes of women find the money to pay for an outfit, economics shapes access to these moments of female freedom. </p>
<p><a href="http://ir.lib.uwo.ca/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=4955&context=etd">Classism features</a>, too, in the way that many women who play in bikini mas bands are contained on either side by ropes and security personnel. This reproduces historical ways that white upper classes used to cut themselves off from others while taking over the streets. </p>
<p>But such cordoning also signals a harsh modern reality of violence against women: the ropes are meant to protect women of all classes and races from sexual harassment. Still, this policing of women’s bodies complicates the radical potential of bikini mas. </p>
<p>Young feminist are finding ways to connect Trinidad’s centuries-old Carnival to a new generation of political resistance. This year, the prominent <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/the_americas/leave-me-alone-trinidads-women-find-a-rallying-cry-for-this-years-carnival/2017/02/26/3888f116-f9e6-11e6-aa1e-5f735ee31334_story.html?utm_term=.c14d73564033">“Leave me alone, Leave she alone” campaign</a> teamed up with singer Calypso Rose to embolden women against sexual violence and encourage men to help create a Carnival – and by extension society – in which women are safe and free. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"839799446170927104"}"></div></p>
<p>In Trinidad and Tobago, Carnival is where thousands of women express their aspirations for freedom and equality. Look beneath stock images of pretty glitter and beads, and you’ll find just such feminist ideals.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/73897/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Gabrielle Hosein receives funding from the International Development Research Council (2010-2014) and the European Union (present).</span></em></p>Some deride a Carnival trend in which women revel in the streets wearing swimsuits and feather boas. But to feminists, ‘bikini mas’ is a highly political act.Gabrielle Hosein, Lecturer and Head of Gender Studies Department, The University of the West Indies: St. Augustine CampusLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/237332014-02-26T15:11:16Z2014-02-26T15:11:16ZVenezuelan unrest could be the beginning of the end for Chavismo<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/42575/original/r5rxvfxd-1393422952.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Hugo Chávez still looms over Venezuela</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Rodrigo Abd/AP</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Venezuela has seen <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/02/18/us-venezuela-protests-idUSBREA1H0WU20140218">waves of protest</a> against the government of Nicolas Maduro. At least <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-26353651">13 people</a> are dead, a prominent opposition member, Leopoldo Lopez, is now in custody having surrendered and three US consular officials have been expelled from the country.</p>
<p>For critics of the Bolivarian Revolution, the social and political movement of Hugo Chávez and now Maduro, the main lines of argument have been well rehearsed. A populist regime with a creeping tendency towards military authoritarianism has corrupted the state and presided over a dysfunctional economy in which oil rents are diverted to its enormous client base among the urban poor. It has consciously armed <a href="http://www.economist.com/node/18529829">militias</a> to police the revolution by systematically terrorising the wider population and turned a blind eye to the explosion in crime and violence.</p>
<p>For its supporters, though, the Bolivarian Revolution is something else: a genuinely revolutionary process of change, bringing with it massive upheaval of a <a href="http://www.lrb.co.uk/v22/n04/richard-gott/robinsons-footprints">deeply corrupt and elitist order</a> and necessarily provoking a backlash from powerful vested interests that seek to resist its logic. </p>
<p>By distributing resources to the poorest – and pre-Chávez, <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2012/oct/04/venezuela-hugo-chavez-election-data">they were very poor indeed</a> – Venezuela has made <a href="http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/the-americas-blog/venezuelan-economic-and-social-performance-under-hugo-chavez-in-graphs">huge advances</a> in almost every measure of development. All of this carried out, what is more, by a government with greater <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VPKPw4t6Sic#t=43m33">electoral legitimacy</a> than many others globally. The current crisis, on this reading, is little more than an attempted “<a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-26166094">neo-fascist</a>” destabilisation led by the Venezuelan right-wing elite in tandem with US security agencies, redolent of the failed <a href="http://www.marxist.com/the-new-coup-plans-of-the-venezuelan-bourgeoisie.htm">imperialist coup of 2002</a>.</p>
<p>But this is not the turn of the millennium. In fact 15 years have passed since Hugo Chávez first swept to power – and much has changed since then. To understand this, we need to cut through the hyperbole and consider instead the deeper political economy of contemporary Venezuela.</p>
<h2>Success, but at a cost</h2>
<p>Many facts are not in doubt. The most obvious success of Chávez and his “Chavismo” ideology was the enfranchisement of large sections of the previously abandoned. Progressive social policies have seen spectacular and unprecedented <a href="http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/the-americas-blog/venezuelan-economic-and-social-performance-under-hugo-chavez-in-graphs">improvements</a> in the poverty rate, literacy, maternal health, life expectancy, child malnutrition, equality (including gender equality) and per capita GDP.</p>
<p>But these changes have been accompanied by significant costs. Mismanagement of the national oil company, PDVSA, has seen production <a href="http://www.economist.com/blogs/americasview/2012/08/venezuelas-oil-industry">plummet</a> by as much as 20% over the decade. This matters, since oil still accounts for around 95% of exports, with dependence on energy rents having essentially strangled attempts at economic diversification.</p>
<p>Inflation has been rampant. When I was in Venezuela in 2011, the official Bolívar-US$ exchange rate was 4.3 to 1, with the black market rate hovering at around twice that. In early 2013, the official rate was devalued to 6.3, yet by Christmas <a href="http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/83cc820e-8681-11e3-885c-00144feab7de.html#axzz2tlrsd4v6">inflation was running at 56%</a> and US dollars were changing hands for up to 50 Bolívares. Today, the official rate is approximately 11.7, but it takes as much as <a href="https://shd4usi8t5zbg6zcefy4.r.worldssl.net/">87 Bolívares</a> to buy a single Greenback on the black market. </p>
<p>This has had some <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/25/raspadito-venezuelans-currency-controls">bizarre effects</a>: for example, those with access to dollars – including much of the Chavista elite – have been able to <a href="http://world.time.com/2014/01/23/venezuelas-currency-controls-propels-those-with-connections/">finance living standards</a> many times greater than would otherwise be possible. Yet international airlines are suspending flights because the government has not honoured payments for tickets purchased in dollars, and foreign exchange reserves have <a href="http://www.economist.com/news/americas/21595471-latin-americas-weakest-economies-are-reaching-breaking-point-party-over">halved</a> from US$40 billion in 2008 to around US$21 billion today.</p>
<p>Then there is the question of violence. Venezuela is today “<a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jan/12/violent-crime-makes-venezuela-dangerous">the most weaponised country in the world</a>”, recording 24,000 murders in 2013 alone. Since Chávez came to power in 1999, a staggering 200,000 people have been murdered, a statistic <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/23/world/americas/23venez.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0">which bears comparison with Iraq</a>. And all are vulnerable: in January 2014, there was an outcry after Mónica Spear, a former Miss Venezuela, and her husband were <a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/nathanielparishflannery/2014/01/08/in-the-spotlight-violent-crime-in-venezuela/">brutally murdered</a> in a robbery.</p>
<p>Consequently, the country in 2014 really is very different – both for better and worse – to the one that Hugo Chávez inherited and so forcefully reshaped.</p>
<h2>Missing out</h2>
<p>A key problem is that, in so dramatically empowering the poor, Venezuelan populism has necessarily been dependent upon the simultaneous disenfranchisement of another significant swath of the population. </p>
<p>In 1999, when this group was principally a small, reactionary and bourgeois elite, this was perhaps not so problematic. But today this is not the case. The people demonstrating against the government constitute a broad cross-section of people, <a href="http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/02/16/is-this-the-end-of-hugo-chavez-s-venezuela.html">led by students</a> for the most part, but also apparently including some from <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/feb/20/venezuelas-poor-protests-chavez-revolution">poorer neighbourhoods</a>. </p>
<p>President Maduro himself also enjoys distinctly less legitimacy than Chávez did. Maduro was only elected in 2013 on a wafer-thin majority, with the country effectively split between him and the opposition leader, Henrique Capriles. And the three issues highlighted above – economic decline, the collapse of the currency and widespread violence – do not discriminate: they terrorise the poor and lower-middle classes too.</p>
<p>This is something that I am able to discern from where I live in Trinidad, just seven miles from Venezuela across the Gulf of Paria and home to thousands of émigrés from Caracas, who are part of an ever-growing <a href="http://www.eluniversal.com/nacional-y-politica/140113/number-of-outgoing-venezuelans-on-the-rise">exodus</a>.</p>
<p>These people – some of whom are my friends – are, perhaps unsurprisingly, not members of a neo-fascist elite. They are just everyday working and professional people who have come to Trinidad in search of opportunities and personal security. They acknowledge many of the social achievements of Chavismo, but they angrily reject its downsides. Many believe they will never return home to live again. They watch as their parents’ savings evaporate, recount tales of vicious “<a href="http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/venezuela/091223/kidnapping-secuestro-express">kidnap express</a>” robberies inflicted on their terrified friends and when they go to Caracas to visit – assuming that they are able to find a ticket on a <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/09/24/us-venezuela-flights-idUSBRE98N0TW20130924">ghost flight</a> – they travel laden with suitcases full of toilet rolls, toothpaste and, remarkably, imported corn flour from Venezuela.</p>
<p>For a long time, the benefits of Chavismo outweighed the negatives. But I’m increasingly less optimistic. We are now witnessing the opening chapters in what could be a long and painful denouement of the Bolivarian Revolution. Amid the screaming on either side of the debate, what Venezuela really needs is balanced analysis, skilled leadership and thoughtful compromise to manage the transition, repair the economy and stitch together a heavily fractured society. It barely needs saying that, today, the space for such intellectual and political reconciliation looks extremely limited.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>A version of this article first appeared on the <a href="http://speri.dept.shef.ac.uk/2014/02/25/unravelling-chavismo/">Sheffield Political Economy Research Institute</a>’s website.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/23733/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Matthew Bishop does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Venezuela has seen waves of protest against the government of Nicolas Maduro. At least 13 people are dead, a prominent opposition member, Leopoldo Lopez, is now in custody having surrendered and three…Matthew Bishop, Lecturer in International Relations, The University of the West Indies: St. Augustine CampusLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/187052013-10-17T05:57:36Z2013-10-17T05:57:36ZCaribbean nations in payback campaign for slave trade<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/32812/original/htt27d8b-1381394925.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Slaves confront slavers in former colony of Demerara
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Joshua Bryant, 1823</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Caribbean countries are calling upon former European colonisers to engage them in dialogue for reparation for centuries of slavery and genocide.</p>
<p>Members of <a href="http://www.caricom.org/">Caricom</a>, the organisation of Caribbean Community Countries, met in July to decide on plans to seek reparations which could include legal action against France, Britain and the Netherlands and a claim of up to £200 billion.</p>
<p>Previous claims for slavery reparations have been unsuccessful, but Caricom believes it can mount a credible case and Ralph Gonsalves, the prime minister of St Vincent and the Grenadines, has contacted the British law firm, Leigh Day and Company about the matter. </p>
<p>Leigh Day and Company successfully sued the UK government this year on behalf of former members of the Kenyan Mau Mau resistance movement. Some 5,200 Mau Mau survivors were awarded <a href="http://www.theroot.com/buzz/britain-apologizes-mau-mau-rest-empire-waits%20June%209">US$21.5 billion in reparation</a> for torture and other crimes they suffered at the hands of the British colonial authorities during their independence struggle in the 1950s and 1960s. </p>
<p>Previously, slavery claims by both <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/424984.stm">African</a> and <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/caribbean/news/story/2007/03/070327_jagdeoreparations.shtml">Caribbean</a> countries have fallen on deaf ears. </p>
<p>The former Haitian president, Jean Bertrand Aristide, was one of the first to make such an appeal <a href="http://www.nathanielturner.com/haitimakescaseforreparations.htm">in 2003</a> when he pursued a claim against Haiti’s former colonial master, France.</p>
<p>Aristide argued that France should repay, with interest, a Fr150m indemnity it had extracted from its colony in the 1825 after Haiti’s long and bloody emancipation struggle. Haiti continued to pay off this debt up until the early 20th century. Aristide argued that this sum was unjust and crippled the Haitian post independence economy. Aristide’s insistence that France repay to Haiti $21,685,135,571.48 was ignored and contributed to the demise of his administration.</p>
<p>An apology from Europe, combined with efforts to repay the damage caused by former colonisers, would certainly be a landmark victory. However, Caribbean leaders remain confident that they can make a strong case. In July 2013 it was unanimously agreed that Caricom, which represents 15 Caribbean member states, should lead the legal struggle.</p>
<h2>Moral campaign</h2>
<p>Caricom has stressed that legal action will be a last resort and is pursuing a moral campaign spearheaded by members of the Caribbean academic community. Central to this campaign will be Professor Hilary Beckles and Professor Verene Shepherd of the University of the West Indies.</p>
<p>Professor Beckles’s book, <a href="http://uwipress.com/content/britain%E2%80%99s-black-debt">Britain’s Black Debt: Reparations for Caribbean Slavery and Native Genocide</a>, is a centrepiece publication for the movement. </p>
<p>The <a href="http://caricom.org/jsp/pressreleases/press_releases_2013/pres195_13.jsp">First Regional Conference on Reparation</a> in Kingston, St Vincent in September 2013 engaged many of the region’s prominent academics and political figures. Renowned Jamaican reggae artist, Bunny Wailer, also presented at the conference. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/32816/original/wh9z6kpj-1381405523.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/32816/original/wh9z6kpj-1381405523.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/32816/original/wh9z6kpj-1381405523.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/32816/original/wh9z6kpj-1381405523.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/32816/original/wh9z6kpj-1381405523.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/32816/original/wh9z6kpj-1381405523.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/32816/original/wh9z6kpj-1381405523.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Bunny Wailer: stand up for your rights.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Alfred Moya</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>National reparation commissions will be established in each of Caricom’s 15 member states to enlist mass support for the cause. Commissions will operate in solidarity with the Regional Ministerial Committee on Reparations, chaired by the Barbadian prime minister, Frendel Stuart. Plans to erect a memorial honouring victims of European enslavement are also on the drawing board.</p>
<h2>Payback time</h2>
<p>With regard to the form that reparation should take, no fixed position has yet been ascertained. Verene Shepherd has estimated that <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/25/slavery-reparations-caribbean-nations_n_3654231.html#sthashePjfBskFdpuf">£200 billion</a> would be an appropriate starting figure. This would be the modern equivalent of the <a href="http://www.ucl.ac.uk/lbs/project/context/">£20m compensation received by British slave owners</a> following the abolition of slavery in 1834. </p>
<p>This would not take into account the still considerable manifestations of wealth that enslavement generated for Europe. These include endowments to All Souls College, Oxford. It could be argued that Britain’s industrial revolution and the establishment of the Bank of London and Barclays Bank were also achieved through the huge wealth generated by the slave trade. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/32661/original/442bj5rp-1381245699.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/32661/original/442bj5rp-1381245699.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/32661/original/442bj5rp-1381245699.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/32661/original/442bj5rp-1381245699.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/32661/original/442bj5rp-1381245699.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/32661/original/442bj5rp-1381245699.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/32661/original/442bj5rp-1381245699.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Bordeaux: built on the back of slavery.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Eric-P</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Similarly, the thriving port cities of La Rochelle and Bordeaux are linked to wealth Haiti was forced to produce for metropolitan France, while the origins of the sophisticated dykes and water systems in Holland can be traced back to wealth accumulated by the slavery business of the Dutch West India Company. </p>
<p>Campaigners are in agreement that reparation should target regional development. In particular, development will focus on transportation, renewable energy programs, education and health.</p>
<p>Whether Caricom’s call for reparation will prove to be a blessing or a curse remains a topic of international discussion. Sceptics warn that at best it will yield a hollow victory. Reparation demands may affect long-term relations and aid relationships between the Caribbean and Europe.</p>
<p>At this point Caricom must concentrate on winning the moral or legal battle for reparations. Relations between Europe and the Caribbean can be negotiated in the future.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/18705/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Gelien Matthews does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Caribbean countries are calling upon former European colonisers to engage them in dialogue for reparation for centuries of slavery and genocide. Members of Caricom, the organisation of Caribbean Community…Gelien Matthews, Lecturer of Caribbean and American History, The University of the West Indies: St. Augustine CampusLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.