THE MACRO FRAMEWORK

1
THE MACRO FRAMEWORK
2
According to Samuel Huntington, The Clash of
Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order
(1995), some 6 or 7 major civilisations flourish
on the globe today. A civilisation is a total way
of life of a people, a long-lived entity with its
own worldview, customs, religion and culture.
3
The Caribbean is not one of the six/seven, but
it is a distinct civilisation nonetheless, as
usual on socio-cultural grounds, and making an
impact in that respect.
4
Initially it was an off-shoot or affiliate of
both European and African civilisations, from
which came all of its religion, values and
customs. Over 500 years, however, it has
developed its own unique characteristics.
5
We want to consider here in outline its salient
features over the past century on three fronts
economic, political and the uniquely
socio-cultural. The aim is to move at a later
stage to examining the interaction between the
macro framework and the community.
6
On the ECONOMIC front, the main thrust has been
to break out of poverty and social exclusion. It
was this bitter exclusion, manifested in
unemployment, low wages and poverty, that drove
the rebellions of the 1930s across the Caribbean.
7
In Jamaica, for instance, the violence at Frome
in Westmoreland was prompted by the
disappointment felt by the hundreds who had
flocked there for work in building the new world
factory (as an elderly sugar worker called it)
by the British company, Tate and Lyle.
8
A second motivating factor was the low wages
received by those working in the fields for those
who did have work - a few pence for day-long
back-breaking labour weeding or irrigating or
cutting cane.
9
Not surprisingly, therefore, the first act of
sugar workers was to join the union organised by
Alexander Bustamante. The 8-hour day had been
advocated earlier by Marcus Garvey, but few
workers knew this.
10
Exclusion and poverty were the product of
colonialism. It was colonial policy to use the
colonies to export primary products - sugar,
cocoa, coffee, bananas - to the so-called
mother country, some of them for processing and
re-export to the very colonies.
11
Processing in the colonies was verboten. Thus did
the mother country treat her children, her
subjects, calculatedly and systematically
underdeveloping them, to use Walter Rodneys
phrase.
12
With the arrival in the 1940s and 1950s of a
measure of internal self-government, efforts were
made to industrialise, to get small manufacturing
going. Development was linked then with this kind
of industry.
13
Thus began Import Substitution Industrialism
(ISI), also called locally Industrialisation by
Invitation. Puerto Rico was the model followed.
14
This strategy succeeded in establishing a range
of manufacturing enterprises, small ones, in shoe
making, biscuit making, bottling, and so on. It
failed, however, to dent unemployment or to
create enterprises competitive internationally.
15
Several reasons lay behind this failure - small
market size leading to high unit cost, cost of
technology which was mostly imported, and poor
quality products resulting from protective
tariffs kept in place too long.
16
Mainly, however, this failure stemmed from the
deeper failure to address the basic structure of
the economy, namely an internal accumulation of
capital as the driving force, integration of the
various sectors (e.g. agriculture with
manufacture tourism), and high levels of
productivity.
17
ISI enterprises remained, therefore,
screwdriver enterprises import the parts and
screw them together, a highly superficial effort.
18
In a different category were the mining
industries, also started in this period, of oil
and bauxite. These were, of course, highly
successful. But being capital intensive, they had
little impact on employment. Tourism had its
start in this time also but on a very small scale.
19
The large amount of direct foreign investment
(US1 billion) pouring into Jamaica for bauxite
mining had another unnoticed effect. It concealed
a basic flaw in the economy - the exporting
cheap and importing dear, the one of primary
goods, the other of the manufactured and
processed.
20
That is a sure recipe for a deficit in a
countrys basic account and therefore for debt.
Debt was what hit both Jamaica and Trinidad in
the mid-1970s.
21
The oil shocks of 1973 and 1979 - the higher
prices imposed by the oil cartel, mostly
middle-eastern - were not the root cause of the
debt but raised it sharply. Higher oil costs
created balance-of-payments problems in
non-oil-exporting Third World countries.
22
Another crucial factor was the oil exporters
pouring their petro-dollars into western banks.
The banks offered the dollars on easy terms to
needy Third World borrowers, which led them into
repayment problems. Thus began the debt trap.
Moreover....
23
Debt led many countries into the SAPs, the
structural adjustment programmes of the IMF,
World Bank and InterAmerican Bank, since it was
from these banks that many borrowed. But SAPs in
the long run increased the debt.
24
Through the SAPs the said banks insisted on -
removal of state subsidies, - control of wage
increases, - opening of markets to imports, -
market-dictated devaluations and so on.
25
The effect?A tightening of the belt, it was
said, but really a shifting resources from the
worker to the employer. This was deliberate,
since the employer class was then supposed to
invest the money in more job-creating businesses.
26
This concretely is the trickle down process,
which is supposed to help the poor. SAPs are the
policies of the supposedly free market, the
neo-liberalism dominant for the past 25 years.
27
Trinidad and Tobago, along with Barbados, went
through IMF programmes for brief periods but came
away strengthened. Jamaica and Guyana came away
with much larger debts and more mixed results.
Political factors played a major role.
28
According to many economists, Jamaica was
definitely hurt by premature and unprepared
liberalisation in the early 1990s.
29
Over the past decade it is tourism, a service
industry which has had in Jamaica the primacy
once accorded to manufacture. In this country,
unlike Trinidad, steadfast efforts to maintain
the tool-making capacity essential for
manufacture have been lacking. This has been a
critical gap.
30
Today the great force impacting on Caribbean
economics is globalisation. Norman Girvan
distingishes globalisation as an ideological
term associated with a concrete project of the
1990s, from globalisation as a substantive
process.
31
The latter has been taking place over the past
500 years. The ideological usage is the label
employed for the post-Cold War, US-led project of
the 1990s to organise the world according to the
principles of neo-liberal economics.
32
Globalisation in this sense is an allegedly
irreversible process towards the formation of a
single world economy, society and culture driven
by technology and by the transnationalisation of
investment and of money capital.
33
Reduction and elimination of barriers to the
movement of goods, services, and capital across
national borders is held to be at once
inevitable, necessary, and universally benign.
(Globalisation, A Calculus of Inequality, ed.
Denis Benn, Kenneth Hall, Kgn Randle, 2000)
34
Girvan puts forward a counter-globalisation
critique, not as a retreat to national autarchy
but as a questioning of the assumptions and
efforts of the dominant ideology.
35
In Jamaica, Guyana and Haiti the struggle to
remove poverty remains a priority. Dependence on
primary products is still a major factor. The
overhang of massive debt, in Jamaica more
domestic, is the block to the education that the
knowledge-based economy of the 21st century needs.
36
Poverty Reduction

• Between 1990 and 2003, the number living below
  the poverty line was reduced by half, from 29 to
  14, but was back up last year to 19. This is a
  significant decline. The reason for it is not and
  perhaps cannot be exactly determined but is being
  attributed to a combination of informal economy
  and remittances sent by Jamaicans abroad.

37
On the POLITICAL front, the first task out of the
1930s revolt across the Caribbean, as identified
then by political leaders, was political
independence. Achieving this stretched over a
quarter century and longer, with Jamaica
Trinidad/Tobago the first to be independent in
the early 1960s.
38
This process moved from taking internal to taking
external responsibility. The Westminster
parliamentary model was the one followed and
initially all the Caribbean territories remained
in the Commonwealth. Later several took a
republican or other path.
39
The process also took a federal direction in the
1950s, under British encouragement but also with
considerable support from local intelligentia.
This came to an abrupt end in 1961 when
Bustamante, reversing his position, turned
against it.
40
Norman Manley responded by calling a referendum
in Jamaica, which rejected the Federation,
prompting Eric Williams famous 10 minus 1
zero. There were to have been 10 countries in
the Federation.
41
Even more important than the premature and
aborted federal project were the political
parties established, the political culture ruling
the party system, and the close linkage of the
parties with trade unions.
42
Significant differences in party systems are
found, of course, between countries, for example
between Barbados on the one hand and Jamaica and
Guyana on the other.
43
The central issue here is that of the party
political culture and rivalry built into it. The
culture referred to speaks both to the cultures
internal to the parties - democratic in the PNP,
for example, autocratic in the JLP - and to their
joint or separate behaviour toward each other and
toward the general populace.
44
Also very important was the division of the
working class between the parties. This severely
weakened the class impact of workers on policy
making. Through their affiliation to the two main
parties, workers were pitted against workers for
the sake of policies benefiting more the
better-off and the parties.
45
And not only policies. In the parties
electioneering struggle for the streets, workers
fought against workers. Workers killed workers.
As recently as 1985 the BITU blocked a united
union protest against the Government of the day.
Only in the past decade have the unions come
together across party lines.
46
The dominant political culture inherited from
colonialism was authoritarianism. This came out
of slavery, the total dominance, indeed
ownership, by one person class of other persons
another class. Ruling business, politics
private life, it did not end with slavery.
47
The classic case was the sugar cane plantations.
To get a days work the worker might have to run
behind the overseer seated on his horse, could
not smoke in his presence, could be flogged by
him for misconduct. Worker loyalty to Bustamante
grew out of gratitude to him for freedom from
that servitude.
48
In the political parties, patronage, paternalism,
clientelism and blind loyalty to the party leader
became the pattern. It started early, from the
mid-1940s, both parties trucking in party
supporters, mainly workers in those days, to
heckle and harass rival candidates. Today it is
troops from a garrison community.
49
Busta began it, seizing control of the streets
with the members of his dominant labour union,
but soon the JLP was more than matched by the
fighting 69th organised by the PNP from
Matthews Lane.
50
Thus in a by-election in the late 1940s,
according to the Enquiry instituted by the
Governor (who was anti-PNP), a JLP supporter was
beaten to death by PNPites in Gordon Town. This
came within weeks of a peace agreement between
Bustamante and Manley on June 15, 1949.
51
Housing for followers, begun with Tivoli Gardens
in the mid 1960s, carried the clientelism process
a significant step further. The PNP was to outdo
its rival in the 1970s. (The PNP has always been
more aggressive on the housing front.) The
product of these efforts is the rival garrisons
we see today.
52
A garrison, the term coined by Carl Stone, is
defined by its total intolerance of affiliation
with a rival party. This intolerance means that
unless a resident votes the dominant way or keeps
a closed mouth, s/he must get out or face death.
It means voting controlled, even beyond 100.
53
Ideology was another ingredient in the party
rivalry. PNP democratic socialism led in the
1940s-50s to the inclusion of communists and, in
the 1970s, to links with Cuba.
54
The four Hs, who were the communists, were
ejected in the 1950s, but this did not stop Busta
from using anti-communist propaganda - Russian
ships in the harbour - against NW.
55
In the 70s, Michael Manleys friendship with
Fidel got the CIA into the 1976 and 1980
elections.
56
While inter-party violence declined in the 1980s,
still their rivalry had influence on two further
developments - the formation of the Jamaican
posses in the USA, which has had enormous impact
here, and the phenomenon of corner crew violence
here at home.
57
The posses were formed by gunmen, some political
refugees, from Jamaica. From their successes
abroad they sent back drugs, guns and money. Some
of them were also deported. Many are able to move
back and forth across national frontiers. They
have been powerful models.
58
The corner crews emerged on the pattern of
territorial divisions, guns and dons established
by party political rivalry. While these crews are
not criminal gangs and most of their members are
reachable, in some cases and in some communities
they become linked with criminals.
59
From 1998 to 2000, homicides fell by 31 percent
in the corporate area and St Catherine. Community
gangs began to see the folly of turf conflict
rooted in political differences. This was a
grassroots movement, not engineered by the
politicians or pastors or police.
60
It disintegrated in West Kingston, however,
following the killing of Willie Haggart Moore
and two others on April 19, 2001, probably from a
drug deal gone sour. Politics has been involved,
however, in the violence we have witnessed since.
61
The SOCIO-CULTURAL dimension is the third and
most important of the macro framework. This scene
comes down to a struggle to assert, against the
dominant European influence, an indigenous creole
identity in which the African ingredient is
dominant.
62
For the Caribbean this has been a particularly
difficult struggle. This is because, compared to
colonialism in Africa and Asia, ours has been so
prolonged - 400 years as against less than a
century for most of Africa. Worse, it has
involved slavery and the uprooting of populations
to an entirely new environment.
63
First slavery, then colonialism, affirmed the
superiority of the European and of the white race
- its skin colour, features, hair, speech,
language, music, art, family structure, religion,
culture. Correspondingly, blackness and
everything connected with Africa was something
inferior.
64
Black people were taught to despise themselves,
their blackness, language and everything of
theirs. The insistent message was that these
things were of little or no value. The economic
and political pyramids asserted this hierarchy
and kept it in place.
65
From the beginning the fight for freedom carried
on relentlessly by slaves asserted the opposite,
view. It became most explicit in Jamaica with
Bogle and Bedward. Marcus Garvey, after Robert
Love, put the issue on the map, carrying it to
the USA, across the Caribbean and even to Africa.
66
It was the Rastafari from the early 1930s,
however, who took up Garveys message of Africa
and black self-respect and brought it to people
in a very concrete way. It is to simple Rasta
peasants to whom the greatest credit must be
given for the appreciation of race that we have
today.
67
At the outset and for many years, Rastas were
looked down on by most people and harassed and
often imprisoned by the police, their locks
trimmed, their devotion to ganja proscribed.
Their community at Pinnacle was broken up by the
police. Rastafarianism persevered and grew
nonetheless.
68
Most Jamaicans do not agree with ascribing
divinity to Haile Selassie. But the underlying
idea of bringing God from the skies down to earth
and of rejecting Europes white Jesus must be
appreciated. It was a vital part of their
assertion of Africa and of self-worth.
69
Then in 1959 Rev Claudius Henry was said to have
issued tickets to his faithful at one shilling a
head for a promised return trip to Africa. He was
charged with fraud and disturbing the peace.
70
In 1960 his son, Reynold Henry, flew the first
members of a First Africa Corps commando unit to
a training camp in Red Hills.
71
Other events were Millard Johnsons Garveyite
Peoples Political Party in 1961 - announcing
Black Man time now, Coral Gardens in 1963,
anti-Chinese riots in 1965, the response to the
visit of Emperor Haile Selassie in April 1966,
Walter Rodney active for 8 months in October
1968 banned.
72
Independence not altering the basic
socio-economic hierarchy, race had become the
central issue. Events in the United States added
their influence - the civil rights movement led
by Martin Luther King and the Black Power
movement, which impacted strongly on many youth
in Jamaica.
73
Rupert Lewis writes The turbulence of the 1960s
was a response to this policy of marginalisation
i.e. of the ideas and values of black
consciousness by the political elite
74
and though fuelled by information about the
United States civil rights and black power
movements was quite independent of them. (Walter
Rodney 1968 Revisited, p 7
75
Creolization the Creoles

• Creolization refers to the acculturation in which
  each of the two sides absorbs things from the
  other.
• In Jamaica the creoles have come to refer more,
  however, to the browns/whites who have tried to
  impose their Euro-oriented culture, e.g. by the
  motto Out of Many One People, denying black
  dominance.

76
The JLP government of Hugh Shearer met this
turbulence with repression. The police were urged
to take no measurements, recite no
beatitudes. Books on Marxism and Black Power
were banned. Jamaicans who travelled to Cuba had
their passports seized. The 1969 monthly Abeng
newspaper was harassed.
77
Michael Manley, on the other hand, by his use of
Rasta symbols, e.g. the rod of correction, was
able to channel much protest sentiment toward
winning the 1972 election and into his democratic
socialism. Expected ease in the criminalisation
of ganja never came, however.
78
What did come through Manleys regime was a
cultural opening of the country through laws
on social rights and practices, e.g. removal of
the stigma of bastardy, equal pay for women for
equal work, participation of workers in
decision-making.
79
This opening up of the socio-cultural structure,
greater upward mobility for those on the lower
rungs of the social ladder, and a valuing of
their input was the main and a great
achievement of the 1970s. On the economic front
Manley failed.
80
But perhaps a contributor to this opening
greater than that of the political regime was the
music. Rude-boy culture and ska began from the
1960s. Out of ska and Rasta beliefs came reggae,
which hit its peak in the 1970s in the music of
the Wailers, Tosh, Marley and others and is still
making an impact worldwide.
81
In the economy

• Reggae and its successor, Dancehall, have been
  economic as well as cultural success stories. The
  1970s saw blacks also starting to get into middle
  level management of businesses and to open
  medium-size enterprises, buying up or entering
  spaces left by migrating minority persons. The
  80s saw even a few big black businesses open.

82
The 1990s saw Blacks making a mark in finance and
then suffering stiff setbacks with the crash of
much of the financial sector in the mid-nineties.
While their bounce back was being questioned, the
Trinidadians arrived!
83
On the cultural side, appreciation and use of the
Jamaican language have made considerable strides,
though not without continuing attack from
anglophiles and conservatives. Hair styles
reflect the impact of Rasta locksing, with skin
bleaching and preference for brown reflecting the
view that this is the way to get ahead.
84
The national football team, the Reggae Boyz, not
only has had a unifying patriotic effect on the
country - which is the case in other countries as
well - but must have had some impact on how
people view inner city youth, from whom much of
the team is drawn.
85
The affirmation of Blackness, used also
politically by one so-called fresh prince, has
reached the point of drawing a strong warning
from a social anthropologist of standing,
Professor Don Robotham, a former UWI Pro-Vice
Chancellor, in his Grace Kennedy Foundation
lecture.
86
It was his view that the African component, while
admittedly the dominant in our creole mix, should
not be carried so far as to exclude European and
British elements.
87
He felt that the point had been reached where
those members of society who were bearers of
those latter traditions were feeling threatened
and alienated. A unity of vision, he argued, was
crucial for national advance.(Vision and
Voluntarism)
88
The fact remains, however, that black people
remain very much at socio-economic
ladder. This coincidence of class and colour is
not accidental. It is our past carried down to
this day, social exclusion, which leads to
poverty. And it is not refuted by having black
bankers or politicians.

• The fact remains, however, that black people are
  still at the foot of the