brief history of the caribean

jan rogozinski

traveling along the northern coast of honduras and to the bay islands recently made me curious about the broader caribean. roatan had supposedly hosted 5000 english pirates at one time and also served as a deposit point for escaped slaves captured on st vincent island. when these garifuna arrived on st vincent, they adopted arawak customs that those now settled on the northern honduran coast still practice.

since columbus, much of the development of the caribean islands has been strongly influence by wind. the trade winds from africa in the east enter the caribe at its southeast, around barbados. they then flow clockwise, to the north on approaching the central american mainland around nicaragua/honduras and continue north skirting along the eastern coast of the yucatan. excepting another clockwise pattern in the gulf, they winds heads back to the east between florida and cuba, climb up north to the carolinas, and then back east to europe. these winds facilitated the arrival of the european and africans as well as the shipments back to spain of gold and silver from mexico and peru. by the 1700's, they enabled the "triangle trade" route which sent sugar and rum from the caribe to europe, guns and manufactured goods from europe to africa, and slaves from africa to the caribe. this idea was taught to me in elementary school (4th grade?) and again in world history in high school (10th grade) but has new meaning to me since i've learned to sail myself and understand winds.

most islands were inhabited by arawak and/or the more warlike carib. these groups had come from the south america and practiced an agricultural method called conuco. in this system, a section of brush was burned, the ashes piled into mounds, holes poked in the mounds, and cuttings from various root vegetables placed in the holes. crops included arrowroot, peanuts, peppers, gourds, tabaco, maize, beans, and squash. fruits included pineapple and guava.

while the spanish initially dominated the caribe, by the later 1500's, english and french pirates began to challenge spanish control with attacks on convoys and port cities. pirates at various times operated out of the bahamas, haiti, jamaica, and some of the smaller islands. constant wars between the european powers meant ownership of the islands often changed hands. well-fortified islands could fend off attacks as long seiges usually failed as the european seigers often had to withdraw due to disease epidemics.

sugar was first successfully grown in barbados in the 1640's where the first plantation society emerged, characterized by intensive african slavery. sugar production was widespread across the caribean islands by the 1700's.

slavery on the sugar plantations was brutal and slaves escaped to form maroon colonies, often in the non-arable mountain regions of islands like st vincent, dominica, jamaica, hispaniola, guadeloupe, and cuba. utilization of the conuco system kept them fed. slave rebellions were common and the largest occurred in saint domingue in 1789 and resulted in the black republic of haiti.

in the 1800's, programs of amelioration and emancipation were carried out and sugar production consequently lessened. trinidad opted to bring in thousands of indians as indentured servants to work its plantations during this time.

the main events of the 1900's in the caribe involve the independence of most of the islands from their former european rulers. some countries followed socialist courses and others dictatorial ones. many ran up debts and had to privatize in order to get IMF assistance. sugar became less important economically as the industries of tourism, off-shore banking, oil refinement, and drug smuggling grew.

the lost colony of the confederacy

eugene harter

the result of the civil war was, of course, the abolition of the economic system based on slave labor but also the weakening of the economy due to destruction of crops, infrastructure, housing, etc. faced with this dire economic situation, hopelessness for future economic improvement, and harassment by (and forced subordination to) the political system controlled by northern interests, many southerners (mostly white, some black) decided to emigrate in the following 10 years or so. while some went to mexico, a larger group (perhaps 20,000) set sail for brasil (literally; some of the ships that took them from new orleans or mobile to the port of rio de janeiro lacked powered engines).

many groups went as part of colonization societies. often these were led by religious ministers. typically a scouting party would find and buy land in brazil before returning to the US to arrange transport to the colony for the recruits.

though slavery was still legal in brazil, few of the immigrants purchased slaves and this is discredited as a motivation for relocation to brazil by the author. the presence of cheap labor, however, was attractive. slavery was abolished peacefully a few years later through a system that compensated former slave owners for the monetary investment their slaves had represented.

the confederates contributed technical knowledge to brazilian agriculture as well as introduced the watermelon to that country.

over time, the separate and isolated enclaves of the confederates largely dissolved as its members moved to urban areas and generally merged into brazilian population.

Shame of the Nation: the Restoration of Apartheid Schooling in America

Jonathan Kozol

Much of the inequality among schools and many of the problems with public K-12 education in the US stem from the way in which schools are largely funded from local funds. Somewhere around 45% of these funds are collected from local taxes by my last knowledge. I remember this being something of a revelation when I was a 22 year old teacher but now I have accepted it and feel like most people are aware that the system is structured in this way.

Kozol does not propose taking money from richer districts and redistributing to poorer districts outright. However, he does ridicule the idea of the funding of poorer districts being raised to an "adequate" level. This may be where I disagree with him. I think bringing inadequately funded schools to a funding level adequate to allow students and teachers to fully prepare for the accountability-based tests that have since even before no-child-left-behind would be a huge victory for education. Of course, it is ridiculous that this is not the norm.

However, the subject of this book is not primarily funding inequalities. Instead, Kozol hammers away at the point that in the inadequately funded, urban school systems that were once integrated racially and now lack white students, the black and hispanic students are not being prepared to be successful in a country in which whites are the majority because they are not learning how to interact with whites in their formative years. on the one hand this seems like common sense and on the other it would seem hard to prove empirically.

I highly recommend this book as it does what good books do: provoke a lot of thought and contemplation on possibilities and make one think that something could possibly come of you reading it.