One of the things attracting tourists has taught us is to value the habit of preservation. We have to depend on devoted scholars and archeology diggers and always, tenacious individuals like Dr. Walter Roth. He was a medical man of German stock who moved to Guyana by way of Australia and was the moving spirit in the rise of Georgetown's museum of natural history. As a youth I made many trips to this museum and was fascinated by its presentation and displays; for instance the diorama of gold-digging operations in the far interior, the lighted fish tanks with fish such as the blood-thirsty pirai, a lifelike representation on the wall of the world's biggest freshwater fish, the arapaima, caught in Guyana. A huge live anaconda pans have all but vanished.
AFRICANDO Arts and Culture Festival, a collaboration between the Foundation for Democracy in Africa and Miami-Dade County, is a one-day event that will feature contemporary African, Afro-American, Caribbean & Afro-Latino cultures. MDCC and the Black Heritage Museum will display masks, statues and murals from the Caribbean, South America, Brazil and Cuba. A special "Children's Activities Village" will feature traditional African and Caribbean folk tales, puppet shows, African mask and instrument making, African textile weaving, Miami Metrozoo's exotic animal show and more. The festival, which is the closing event for AFRICANDO 2001, will be promoted in Africa, AFRICANDO organizers say. A trade delegation from Miami and Washington, D.C., will conduct trade seminars promoting the conference and festival in Nigeria, Mali, Ghana, Senegal, South Africa, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Kenya and Tanzania.
Gazing at the amalgam of rich Caribbean artistic expression - bold colors intertwining on canvas, delicately woven wire sculptures, sheer pieces of cloth with intricate handmade designs - one might think she was roaming the corridors of the Metropolitan Museum of Art or the prestigious Guggenheim rather than viewing the one-bedroom Harlem apartment of Caribbean art dealer Anderson Pilgrim. "One of the reasons that Caribbean art has yet to penetrate the New York scene is that it has yet to be fully explored even among Caribbeans", Pilgrim said. "Because of the colonization of the Caribbean islands, and the stifling post-colonial effects, many native Caribbeans didn't begin to explore their abilities until the 1970s, which was a period of real artistic revolution on the islands". A few of the artists he represented were medal winners at the prestigious Biennial Caribbean Festival, held in the Dominican Republic and featuring artists from the Caribbean and Countries in Central America which border the Caribbean.
Why? Because there is not a shred of doubt, as acknowledged by President George W. Bush's proclamation to mark the occasion last year, about the immense contributions made to the U.S. by people of Caribbean background. Not so long ago, former military General Colin Powell, a son of Caribbean-born parents, was Bush's secretary of state, one of the most powerful political posts in the U.S. Powell was even touted as a presidential contender. "But in communities (in the U.S.), where there are large concentrations of Caribbean people, for example in the South Florida area and in the New York metropolitan area, the Caribbean communities have all come together to do different things, sometimes collectively, sometimes individually, meaning individual associations..." Already some activists, who advocate on behalf of Caribbean interests in the U.S., have frowned on clauses of the proposed new immigration bill which they claim is a backward step for those wishing to see immigrant families united in the U.S. Also on the table for the leaders will be the issue of security in the Caribbean and the sensitive subject of deportations.
In 1984, the association opened an expanded Historical Museum at the Miami-Dade Cultural Center in downtown Miami. This 40,000-square-foot facility includes a permanent exhibition that traces the history of South Florida and the Caribbean, a temporary exhibition gallery that features several new exhibitions each year, a theater and classroom area for variety of educational programs, and storage areas for the museum's extensive collections of artifacts and archival materials, including books, manuscripts, maps and more than one million photographs related to the region. In recent year, the Historical Museum has directed increasing attention to Miami's role as a gateway of the Americas. To explore Miami's multifaceted connections with the Caribbean and Latin America, a new program series, Miami: The Gateway City, was introduced in Spring 1999. The objective of the 12-month series is to use the museum as a central forum for public dialogue about current issues facing Miami and as a space for related artistic presentations.
It may also have helped English-speaking migrants from the Caribbean that Florida served as a broad entry point for Caribbean migrants from Cuba, Haiti, and other countries: Where an area has a strong tradition of immigration, prevailing social attitudes are not likely to be as parochial as those in traditionally closed communities. Again, this is not to minimize the difficulties that particular migrants have faced; it is to acknowledge the fairly obvious point that some communities are less impenetrable for outsiders than others. A recent study by the British Cabinet Office has found that Caribbean women constitute a significant success story at the professional level. Specifically, for the generation born between 1940 and 1959, as many as 45 percent of the black women from the Caribbean, or who are of Caribbean heritage, now hold professional or managerial jobs, as against 27.3 percent of the black men in the same category. For the generation born between 1960 and 1979, 38.1 percent of the black women with Caribbean roots are professionals or managers, in comparison with 28.6 percent of the black men. These figures warn us that gender is now a significant factor in determining the prospects of Caribbean migrants to Britain, and they highlight the need for a broader examination of the factors that determine success for those who, in Claude McKay's words, may find themselves "a long way from home."
The genesis of these carnivals carries the intent of resisting on some level, by Caribbean migrants, the otherwise alienating conditions of life in migration, to "carnivalise" these landscapes with some of the joy and space commensurate with Caribbean carnival. Indeed, Caribbean intellectual contributions have had successful impact on the development of U.S., European and African thought. Still, the Caribbean in most imaginings, and in particular to those who do not know it well, is the place of "sun and fun," a vacation land devoid of serious engagement with the world. Caribbean carnival then is the climax of all those "sun and fun" constructions. Yet, there is a history and politics to carnival - a "carnival of resistance" beyond the outer face of "carnival of tourism" - that demands exposure.
They continued to avoid the racially-motivated behavior of many in the Cuban population in South Florida. In fact, the Caribbean (black?) organizers of the carnival care so little that they were happily prepared to give away the carnival's culture-driven economic and social enterprise to the Cuban community, even if the Cubans didn't really want anything to do with it, like Jewish Miami Beach and WASP downtown didn't. Does this mean that the huge economic infusion that was offered to other communities for acceptance is going to be realized by the people in Opa-Locka? Because, suddenly, it's as if some people belatedly became a little blacker; after all, they're home, they claim, to Opa-Locka. Yeah, right. The carnival organizers have some cojones, if not much sense of appropriateness. They outdid themselves in their fantasizing (but then, that's carnival). They opted for Hialeah and tried to hitch their wagon to Mayor Penelas' new coattail. Somebody needed to remind them of some of the politics involved. Seems Mayor Alex and Mayor [Raul Martinez] `don't tek tea', as we say in the Caribbean. Probably something to do with Alex backing the candidate who ran against Raul. Next stop, Hialeah City Hall. The rest, they say, is history.
At a recent conference in Martinique, entitled "36 hours for the Caribbean", that focused on better means of cooperation between French West Indian departments and their independent neighbors, Martiniquan lawyer Alain Manville spoke about "Law, judicial practices and human traffic in the Caribbean." "France wishes to maintain her Caribbean departments in a state of indifference towards their natural environment," said Mr. Manville. "For Nearly 10 years one has witnessed a complicity between the Prefecture of Martinique and the French embassy of St. Lucia to deny visas to nationals from St. Lucia and Dominica and when these visas are accorded, the time taken is exorbitant and stay periods are reduced to a minimum," says Mr. Manville.
The reception to the idea was favorable. In 1994, further discussions were held with Mexico, Columbia and Venezuela and with Argentina and Chile. The response was positive and to further support the idea, the ambassadors of the Latin American countries who were accredited to Jamaica, and Spain's ambassador, formed the Group of Latin America and the Caribbean as a forum for exchanging ideas and considering financial participation by their governments. In 1994, the Latin American-Caribbean Centre was created to facilitate economic, trade, research and cultural ties between the Caribbean and Latin America. The center's fundamental objective is to build strong commercial, cultural and academic ties between the Caribbean and Latin American regions and among the Caribbean countries. According to Ms. Insanally, "Economic development is one of the principal objectives of LACC. Expanding trade, investment, and tourism between the Caribbean and Latin American countries will generate income and employment, as well as stimulate technological modernization and international competitiveness. Academic and cultural development are important ends in themselves, and they also stimulate business relationships, and vice versa."
