The Caribbean: An Unsettling Debate

What/where is the Caribbean?  Yes, that is a valid question.  Those in the know, know why.

by Nick Marshall

Features Writer

Monique S. Simón 
Features Editor

The ongoing frustrations for those trying to establish a single Caribbean political identity point is finding a fixed definition of its very locale: Where exactly is the Caribbean?   Most people have no difficulty identifying what the Caribbean looks like, sounds like, and even feels like, but the agreement ends when a map is produced. 

"Crystal Globe" 
by Nutdanai Apikhomboonwaroot
 on Free Digital Photos.NET

Does it include Guyana, which supplies one of the pillars of the West Indies cricket team, or Belize, which provides one of the highlights of a Western Caribbean cruise? Should it even extend to Colombia and Venezuela, which nestle along the Caribbean Sea?

Undisputed on the list are the islands stretching in an elegant chain from Cuba in the North to Trinidad in the South. While the shorelines are similar, the topography varies between the flat, parched scrubland of coral islands such as Anguilla to the soaring, lush volcanic peaks of Dominica and St. Lucia in the Windwards. These are islands which, for the most part, have sparse populations scattered around modest settlements; only the Greater Antilles nations of Cuba, Santo Domingo, Puerto Rico and Haiti nurture metropolises with populations above a million, and even then only five in total. 

Culturally, though, several mainland countries bordering the Caribbean Sea lay a claim to a Caribbean identity.  In the case of Surinam(e), French Guiana and Guyana, the culture shares clear ties with their Dutch, French and British island counterparts. Historically, there has been consistent migration between the mainland and the islands--the unity & resulting open ports provided by the ruling Colonial power. 

"Pier Stilts on Beach"
by Artur84
FreeDigitalPhotos.NET

The real link, however, dates back over 1,500 years, when Arawak Amerindians from South America first migrated northwards, as far as the Bahamas. These Amerindian* settlers became the Taino and Lucayan peoples of the Dominican Republic and Bahamas; evidence of Arawak populations is scattered across the islands, and in most cases provides the pre-Columbian island names. 

Later, the Carib/Kalina people from coastal South America conquered the Southern Caribbean and the Leewards, practically annihilating the Taino population. Today, island Carib populations have dwindled, reduced to a community in Dominica. The most potent legacy is the foods they brought with them which were not indigenous to the Caribbean but have come to symbolize its cuisine: cassava, yam, and sweetpotato** in particular. 

"Tamarillo and Cassava Fruits" 
by Africa
FreeDigitalPhotos.NET

On a political level, the closest to a single organization is CARICOM, based in Guyana. This federation encompasses 15 member states spanning English, Dutch, Spanish and French speaking islands. Similarly, the Association of Caribbean States covers 25 member states, including Central American nations. Overall, the Caribbean region comprises 13 independent island countries and numerous French, Dutch, British and US overseas territories and dependencies.

Head farther west across the Caribbean Sea and the Central and South American land mass blends Caribbean and Latin influences. Mexico, Belize, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica and Panama all evoke the Caribbean, but lack the self-contained identity of the islands. Culturally, only the Garifuna communities of Honduras and Nicaragua are true counterparts of the islands, with high proportions of Anglophone speakers distinct from the indigenous population. 

The Caribbean, then, is as much an abstract entity as a geographical or political one. Are the significant ex-pat Jamaican, Puerto Rican and Dominicano communities of New York, London and Toronto any less Caribbean than the vast swathes of their home islands converted into international vacation resorts? Hardly. Arguably, the further one is from the homeland, the more fiercely one holds onto the original culture. The Caribbean diaspora is broad and evolving. Conventional parameters no longer define it accurately. 

Nick Marshall is a the editor of the Caribbean Culture Site for Bella Online.  Originally from the UK, he currently resides in St. Maarten, Caribbean where he has worked as a journalist and teacher.  Formerly the editor of a Caribbean sailing magazine, Mr. Marshall has traveled through out 18 of the islands of the Caribbean region.   

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Lights through the Fog

One cool evening in New York City, I turned a corner.  In the ordinary world, it was (geographically) a historic street in Brooklyn: Clermont Avenue.  I was far away from the soft village lights of Antigua, Caribbean, but so close to Home, with a capital "H"--that place where "family" (in the broad Caribbean sense of the word) reside. 

My landlord was from Trinidad.  The aromas from my kitchen and his blended seamlessly.  The occasional dish was shared.  The humor, the music, the connectedness--endless.  

Yet, for several months prior to this night, I would turn the corner onto my beloved Clermont Avenue with one thought in mind--keep your head down.  Brace yourself against the cold, the hard, the unfair, the cruel, the "winter" of this frightening place. 

My landlord was not to blame; my work was not a culprit; my health was holding up remarkably well; and so was my figure (a woman's vanity was not beyond me).  Still, I couldn't hold my head up--and it was not because I'd been immoral.  I was quite proud of my contributions--charity, a listening ear, the friend who cooked and settled feuds with music, folklore, humor and a willingness to let others sit on my sofa--sleep, eat, cry, complain and come back to clarity.

So, why on this night did I not want to look up, strut, smile, showcase my adult fascination with the marvelous life I'd created out of childhood poverty and trauma?  Before I could answer the question for myself, at perhaps the ninth step onto my home-block, a voice in "non-ordinary" reality said "Look Up!"  On a night when NYC was experiencing an unusual wave of dense fog, and I, a long-held period of personal fog, I looked up, then way up. 

Behind buildings, far into the Manhattan skyline, I knew why I had been asked to, "LOOK UP!"  Because it was there; well, they were there--two tall beams of vertical light, extending through dense fog, so much so that the edges blurred into infinity.  The twin towers that were my Manhattan beacon from my bedroom window were tranformed.  I had the thought -- from "Zero to God."  

At times, there is a dark, dense fog in the tougher times we experience and it can be difficult to look up.   For many of us--certainly myself, I can say that the "family" of my Caribbean friends and close relatives have made it impossible for me to stay stuck at a personal zero.   I can say the same for my "family" of friends--those I've made more Caribbean with a dish and a story and those who've made me more Jewish, Christian, American, French, Latin, German, "foreign" with a drink and a word of connection/shared laughter.

For them and for you, I re-dedicate my poem "Night Light: Ode to Bolans Village, Antigua--HOME"

May you come to a place, always in your joy and in your difficulties where you find the capital "H" of Home--even if it's just a moment on our Facebook pages, a story on the blog.

In Global Community,
Monique S. Simon
Project Director/Chief Folklorist

 blockhttp://www.facebook.com/THECaribbeanFolkloreProject#!Lights through the Fog