Life and Debt in the Caribbean

Colonialism, climate change, and financial collapse

There is an excellent in-depth article by Abrahm Lustgarten in The New York Times Magazine this weekend: “The Barbados Rebellion: An Island Nation’s Fight for Climate Justice", subtitled, “The Caribbean is trapped between crushing debt and a climate disaster caused by rich nations. Prime Minister Mia Mottley is battling for a fairer system.” The article reminded me of one of the best documentaries I have seen on the global financial system, Stephanie Black’s Life and Debt (2001). The film shows how the IMF, US farmers, and the World Bank colluded to wreck Jamaica’s local economy and impoverish the country so multi-national corporations could fleece it.

Like The NY Times article on Barbados, Life and Debt remains a powerful indictment of the global financial system, which assists multi-national corporations in orchestrating cunning acts of predation against the “developing world” or global south. As I remember, the film shows how Jamaica once had a successful local dairy industry. As a result of various debt-restructuring arrangements, Jamaica was forced to take imports of powdered milk from the US. US farmers were subsidized by the US government to produce this powdered milk, which could therefore be sold at low prices, undercutting the local farmers. The influx of cheap powdered milk led to the collapse of Jamaica’s dairy industry, at which point, the importers raised their prices.

As Roger Ebert wrote in his review: “One scheme to help the Jamaican economy, the film says, has been the establishment of ''free zones,'' fenced-in manufacturing areas where workers are paid $30 a week to assemble goods which arrive and leave by container ship without legally being on Jamaican soil. Labor unions are banned, working conditions are subhuman, strikers are forced back to work at gunpoint, and paychecks are taxed for health and retirement schemes that don't seem to exist.” While Jamaicans suffered catastrophic levels of unemployment, Asian workers were flown in to work at these “free enterprise zone” factories. These are common practices.

I often wonder how much of the extravagant wealth some of us enjoy as Americans and Europeans actually comes from the perpetuation of colonialism. Colonialism shifted from direct military to indirect financial mechanisms of control over the global south or “developing world,” during the last century. I suspect, if you were able to analyze it all the way to roots, you would find it is a very high proportion.

The invisible tentacles of finance circle the world, squeezing life out of originally colonized lands and continuing to fill the bank accounts of rich people, mostly of Anglo-European descent. Increasingly, these wealthy inheritors of the colonialist legacy embrace a Neo-spiritual philosophy that integrates psychedelic psychotherapy, high-priced ayahuasca retreats, mindfulness training, the technological Singularity, and pseudo-occult beliefs in “the secret” or “manifestation,” promoted by lifestyle gurus such as Tony Robbins and Joe DiSpenza. This “spirituality” perpetuates the culture of the narcissistic, entrepreneurial Self, amputated from history or responsibility.