The article discusses the history of Santo Domingo (which was renamed the Dominican Republic) under the French General Jean-Louis Ferrand from 1804 through 1809. Particular focus is given to Ferrand's efforts, under the direction of the French Emperor Napoleon I, to re-enslave Santo Domingo and overthrow Haiti's ruler Toussaint Louverture. An overview of the slavery laws in Santo Domingo is provided. Ferrand's use of black Haitian captives as slaves, including the Haitians captured by the French who lived near the border with Santo Domingo, is provided.
An essay is presented on the relationship between black U.S. feminist literature celebrating author Zora Neale Hurston and U.S.-Caribbean cultural linkages, and the U.S. invasion of the Caribbean during the 1980s. According to the author, black feminists' attempts to reclaim the Caribbean through Hurston contributed to a neoliberal vision of the Caribbean which excluded Grenadian revolutionaries. Grenadian government debt and depictions of the Caribbean in popular culture are discussed.
In 1795, Father Jose Agustin Caballero presented the first project for the creation of a system of public education for all the inhabitants of the island of Cuba. It was a visionary idea, but impossible to carry out at that time. The island was a colonial possession of the Spanish Crown, and most of the population was subjected to slavery or made up of Mestizos and freed blacks, the victims of segregation and racial discrimination.
Reforms proposed at the Sixth Communist Party Congress represent a new, third phase of social policy in post-revolutionary Cuba. This new stage has the potential to strengthen social equity in Cuba, improve the socio-economic situation of disparate social groups, and overcome the old limitations of social policy. Yet it could also increase inequality, and at least in the short term, its predicted impacts will be contradictory and ambivalent.
This article discusses different views about sustainable development, emphasizing -- on the basis of a survey conducted in Brazil, Mexico, and Cuba -- the role of rural women in food production and natural resource management, the strength of the rural women's movement in the conquest of rights, and the decisive participation of women in defining proposals for public policies that guarantee gender equality in rural areas. A brief comparative analysis leads us to conclude that the development model in the three countries still prioritizes the male figure in relation to land tenure, access to credit and purchase of equipment or other material resources, it is suggested that both in Cuba, a socialist country, and in Mexico and Brazil, capitalist counties, the assumptions of social policies directed to rural female workers should take into account the basic needs of rural women to guarantee a more humane and sustainable development. Adapted from the source document.
With stark income inequalities rooted in its dual currency economy, Cuba is taxing down high and unearned incomes, while trying to raise national productivity and official salaries through performance-related pay and labor restructuring. Such measures are portrayed as an abandonment of socialism, but in Cuba are discussed in terms of historic socialist debates about distribution and the balance of moral and material incentives at work, in a society still characterized by common ownership, social protection, and collective debate.
Discusses the importance of education for any nation and for Cuba in particular, examining its political, pedagogical and sociological foundations, and portraying its accomplishments over the last 50 years. The principles underlying the educational policy of the Cuban government are explained, as they underpin the mission of the National Education System (NES) to carry forward educational work in the country.
"C.L..R. James' 1938 seminal text, The Black Jacobins, and Eric Williams' 1944 tour de force, Capitalism and Slavery, constitute much more than foundational works in West Indian nationalist historiography. Both authors, born in colonial Trinidad and writing Caribbean history within its Atlantic context, made significant contributions to development discourse within the traditions of Enlightenment Idealism. As critical realists they considered popular historiography indispensable to any attempt to root philosophical ideals within recognizable terms of everyday living. In The Black Jacobins, James documents the struggles of the enslaved peoples of St. Dominique, the mercantile showpiece of French colonial capitalism in the West Indies for freedom and social justice. In addition, he details the transformation of this successful anti-slavery rebellion into something much more elaborate in terms of Atlantic history--the creation of Haiti, the Caribbean's first nation-state. In Capitalism and Slavery, Williams expands and develops the paradigm of African labor enslavement and European capital liberation, first outlined by James in The Black Jacobins, that became the basis of the revolutionary reorganization of productivity for European economic development." (author)
An excerpt from by Winston James' book Holding Aloft the Banner of Ethiopia: Caribbean Radicalism in Early Twentieth-Century America (London: Verso, 1998) is presented
Proposes that cricket symbolizes both an assertive sense of black culture and an awareness of black economic dependency on whites, a tension that is reflective of Bermudian politics
A personal and political analysis of Eric Williams' contribution to nationalist ideas and to the way nationalism was perceived and was directly or indirectly beneficial to many of Mohammed's generation
The 'Olympian' level of corruption in Trinidad and Tobago politics is discussed, as well as the seemingly incongruousness of the electorate sending back such a 'naked kleptocracy' as the Basdeo Panday regime
Profiles an Asian-Caribbean-American on American racial politics. Dr. M. Godfrey Mungal, born in Trinidad and now teaches at Stanford University, was an Indian laborer brought to the Caribbean by plantation owners after the abolition of slavery.
"On 4 December 1960 the Trinidad Guardian announced that Sir Gerald Wight had joined the Democratic Labour Party. The announcement was presented in such a way as to suggest that this was a feather in the cap of the Democratic Labour Party [DLP], and therefore the citizens of Trinidad and Tobago should follow the lead of Sir Gerald Wight. Consequently, in my address here in the University on 22 December, in which I reported to the people the outcome of the Chaguaramas discussions in Tobago, I poured scorn on the Guardian reminding them that our population of today was far too alert and sophisticated to fall for any such claptrap. I told the Guardian emphatically: Massa Day Done." (author)
Special Issue: CUBA., Describes Cuba's past and future as the only Marxist-Leninist socialist nation in the Western Hemisphere; cultural, political, and social perspectives. Topics include effects on Cuba of the demise of the Soviet empire
A variety of approaches are discussed in this work, dealing with the economic problems, geopolítics, social conditions, and controversial themes affecting the region
Discusses the relationship between squatters and the state in Brazil. Information on redemocratization in Latin America; Return of electoral democracy; Political transition from authoritarian to procedurally democratic regimes; Detailed information on the squatter settlements in Brazil; Distribution and sale of cocaine from public low-income housing projects; Information on prison authorities in Brazil.
The work of Haitian author Jacques Stephen Alexis is replete with examples of characters caught in the dilemmas of exile. The author focuses on Alexis's characters who go through a "true" expatriation, a movement out of Haiti and into another country, and considers how the various experiences of expatriation are represented, as well as how the presence of the Haitian exiles impacts the host country. Taking examples from Alexis's novel Compère Général Soleil, Monro argues that the Haitian exiles unwittingly, though inevitably, disrupt the illusion of oneness of national identity and culture and become a subversive force, creolizing culture in the place of exile, the Dominican Republic. This cultural creolization in turn is a threat to the monocultural, totalizing political discourses of the host country, it is argued.;
"In the first half of the century diasporic connections, particularly shared oppression and ancestral ties, triggered responses. When the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC), an informal organisation of African American congressional representatives, became the key architects of African American foreign policy in the early 1970s, civil rights tactics were wedded to diasporic appeals to motivate African Americans to help shift US foreign policy towards South Africa and Haiti." [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR];
Reviews several books on Cuban history before 1959. American Sugar Kingdom: The Plantation Economy of the Spanish Caribbean 1898-1934, by César Ayala; Insurgent Cuba: Race, Nation, and Revolution, 1868-1898, by Ada Ferrer; Pleasure Island: Tourism and Temptation in Cuba, by Rosalie Schwartz.;
Amy Beckford Bailey (1895–1990) was one of the politically engaged women present at the birth of the Jamaican nation in the 1930s and 1940s. Although she is widely known in Jamaica for her outstanding achievements as teacher, social worker, and feminist, what is less known is her large body of public writing. An examination of this writing broadens our sense of her accomplishments and enriches our understanding of this decisive period in the evolution of Jamaican and West Indian history, politics, and intellectual traditions.;
Discusses the impact of the presidential campaign of Barack Obama in the U.S. in 2008 examining Obama's black ancestry as well as his self-representation, which generates uncertainty about the meaning of blackness in American life. Looks into some studies examining the social status of African-Americans in the country, including their educational and employment opportunities. Moreover, addresses the social condition of Latin American and Asian American immigrants
Discusses the emergence of Afro-Hispanic literature over the past 25 years. Details the many social and political factors that have influenced the literary movement. Argues that the emergence of Afro-Hispanic literature is timely in its challenging of traditional views of what is admissible into the literary canon.;
Recalls the revolution which occurs in Haiti in August 1791. It recounts that the liberation of the African Haitian people, establishment of the Haiti Republic and the end of the dreams of Napoleon for a French-American Empire in the West are the effects of the revolution. It tells that Haitians accomplish independence in Latin America, become the second independent nation in the Western hemisphere, and the first African American republic in the modern world due to their liberation.
The underlying thesis of this paper is that contemporary Caribbean economy and society
maintain certain basic structural features rooted in slavery and the plantation system.
It traces changes that have occurred in the economic, demographic, educational, social
structural, and political realms, particularly during the 1960s. The picture that emerges is one of "change and continuity."
Reviews Franklin W. Knight's The Caribbean: the Genesis of a Fragmented Nationalism, Herbert S. Klein's The Middle Passage: Comparative Studies of the Atlantic Slave Trade, Gad J. Heuman's Between Black and White: Race, Politics and the Free Coloureds in Jamaica,1792-1865, Bridget Brereton, Race Relations in Colonial Trinidad, Ann M. Pescatello's edited book Old Roots in New Lands, Mary Noel Menezes' British Policy towards the Amerindians in British Guiana 1803-1873, Arnaud Marks and Rene Romer's edited book Family and Kinship in Middle America and the Caribbean, Gary Brana-Shute's On the Corner: Male Social Life in a Paramaribo Creole Neighbourhood, and George Beckford and Michael Witter's Small garden-- bitter weed : the political economy of struggle and change in Jamaica.
Focuses on the notion of environmental citizenship in examining how black and minority ethnic groups in Britain talk about environmental "rights" alongside environmental responsibilities. The authors conducted ten semi-structured interviews with community key informants and ten focus groups with African-Caribbean or Indian communities. Four environmental responsibility discourses in the participants' talk were identified. These were variously defined by issues of trust, social equity, off-loading of responsibility and government intervention and that served to shift environmental responsibility away from the individual onto "institutional others". Concludes by suggesting policy implications for the environmental and sustainability policy and planning community.
Examines the relationship between the national economic policy orientation of structural adjustment and political, economic and cultural attitudes of elites in Guyana. The article asserts that the material and ideological interests of elites is highly correlated to the structural adjustment program of the government. The article also establishes the links between the elites' interest and the decision making apparatus of the state.
When Ernesto Estupinan Quintero was elected mayor of the city of Esmeraldas, Ecuador, in 2000, he was the first self-identifying Black person to reach this position. The city of Esmeraldas is the capital of the only province of the nation where Afro-Ecuadorians are the largest racial and cultural group. Immediately upon his election, Ernesto began commissioning murals and statues that contested traditional representations of Blackness.
Francis Humberston Mackenzie of Seaforth (1754-1815) was a Highland proprietor in what has become known as 'The First Phase of Clearance', was governor of Barbados (1801-6) in the sensitive period immediately before the abolition of the British slave trade and was himself a plantation owner in Berbice (Guiana). It is suggested that his concern for his Highland small tenants was paralleled by his ambition in Barbados to make the killing of a slave by a white a capital offence, by his attempts to give free coloureds the right to testify against whites and by his aim to provide good conditions for his own enslaved labourers in Berbice.
