Caribbean Culture

K & Dwight asked me for my observations on Caribbean culture, and although I've been making observations in my other journals, it might be wise for me collect some thoughts in one place.  I've been here for just over three months now and some of the strangeness has started to wane -- I seldom get lost driving anymore!

I suppose that the most important observation is that I don't think there is a single, unified Caribbean culture.  The emmigration from Puerto Rico has slowed, but I certainly hear a lot of Spanish being spoken.  People identify themselves by the particular West Indian island they still call home, and while there are native Crucians, there aren't too many of them.  The patois is different for each island group, I think, but all are still unintelligble to me.  The old white families are more apparent, but there are politically powerful black families around.  Many of the Black professionals seem to have roots in New York.  The Muslim community is economically powerful (food, fuel and furniture, according to Hugh, our harbor master), but there doesn't seem to be an asian community here.  The more neauveauriche, especially those brought down for EDC tax benefits, seem to congregate on the East side that Jean has labeled a "white ghetto."  What I've learned about the black culture comes mainly from the workshops I attended.  I'm told that church and family are still important, but not as much as they used to be.  Males are almost expected to be promiscuous, and apparently bigamy is not uncommon.  There is a belief in "Obeah" -- magic more than a systematic religion.  In general I'd say that people are friendly but a little stand-offish toward newcomers; I'm told they want to see if we're going to stick before investing in a relationship with us.

The informal segregation we observed when here in April is even more apparent.  Church congregations are largely black (unless the Danish tourists fill the pews) as are most of the retail clerks.  We've found several venues that are primarily white however: the "Starving Artists" sale at the Whim museum, a blues concert, and the bicycle race Alec participated in are all examples.  There are some prejudicial attitudes toward blacks.  (I don't know how they feel about me).

I think it would be fair to say that there is a general lackadaisical attitude.  There's a road sign for the airport that points in the wrong direction for example.  It's often hard to tell if a building is a ruin or under construction.  The pace of building is surprisingly slow even though I've seen people working even on holidays.  Potholes in the roads don't get fixed.  Our hostess at the Cruzan Rum tour certainly didn't want to work too hard, and there is an excessive tolerance of power outages and government corruption.  Of course a lot of that negativity may be due to white jealousy: people should have to work 30 years and be rich to enjoy being so laid-back!

I do see things that I think are remnants from days of slavery.  There are a lot of horses on this island, usually riden bareback, but also raced at tracks.  I think that riding alludes to the status of supervisors in the cane fields.  That may also be why it's important to address people with an honorific.  Owning land seems to be more important than education.  Pastor Lester White (who isn't) summarizes it as a "colonial mindset."  

That mindset certainly contributes to the dilemma of economic development here.   The island's tourist and retail economies have apparently never recovered from Hurricane Hugo in 1989, and that is nowhere more apparent than the back streets of Frederiksted.   The "ruins" are picturesque, but there are unemployed young men hanging around them in too great numbers.  It's hard to justify the elevated real estate prices when one sees all the abandoned properties.

That of course raises the question of crime.   While conventional wisdom says that cruise ships (and even the Navy) stopped calling at Frederiksted because of crime, locals are more likely to attribute the loss of cruise ship business to profit driven conspiracies by St. Thomas commercial and political interests.  The hope that casino gambling would save the day has proven clearly wrong but that hasn't stopped plans to build up to three more casinos here.

One of the ways that concern about crime is apparent on a daily basis is the common practice of checking and initialling sales receipts as you leave a store; apparently it prevents anyone from returning to walk off with the same  merchandise again.

There is also an ambivalence toward law enforcement.  On the one hand, there is a belief that there aren't enough cops.  On the other, there has been open resistance to "Neighborhood watch" and community policing.  Some say that police officers are too closely related to the criminals they're supposed to apprehend; from what I read in the papers, it's hard to get convictions here.

Those are the "important" observations.   Other oddities include the very bad driving.  The "courteous" habit of honking and pausing to let people make right turns probably contributes as much to congestion as ameliorating it.   The grocery stores still have bag boys who use a huge number of small plastic bags for your groceries, contributing ultimately to the litter everywhere.

Again, it's important to state a disclaimer; I'm still new here and I would question the anthropological validity of any of my observations so far.  We shall have to see....