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tiny isles and islets. Languages spoken on these islands are those spoken by their former
colonial masters: French in Martinique, Dutch in the former Dutch West Indies, Spanish in
Cuba and Puerto Rico, English in Jamaica, and so forth.
As the price of sugar has fallen worldwide, the Caribbean islands look to tourism to
support their economies. But tourism can be a fickle economic mainstay. Tourists demand
beaches, calm waters, and a seemingly unlimited supply of fresh water. Fashions and fads
move tourists to new locations. English-speaking islands draw Americans and Canadians,
but tourist wealth often goes to resort developers and not to those whose services cater to
tourists. As a result, a triple economy (tourists, developers, service providers) can engender
local resentment and civil unrest.
Some islands, however, have found a rewarding substitute for sugar. The English-
speaking Cayman Islands have a population of only 37,000, but thanks to offshore banking,
the island registers more than 40,000 companies, has 600 banks, with assets exceeding
$500 billion. Prosperity and law and order go hand in glove, and in a good tourist year
(such as 2006) more than 2.1 million visitors flock to the Caymans. (In 2011, 1.7 million
tourists visited the Cayman Islands.)
As another example of the Caribbean's varied mix, the Spanish-speaking Dominican
Republic continues as an agricultural exporter (sugar, coffee), but tourism also thrives. The
pattern of economic and social cleavages laid down centuries ago continues, with 10 per-
cent of the population owning more than 40 percent of the national income. Jamaica, an-
other English-speaking island, has a population of over 2.7 million. Its heavy dependence
on tourism results in two social and economic landscapes: the lush tourist resorts and the
out-of-sight slums.
Each of the Caribbean islands has its own economy and its own social structure. But
the sugar industry of long ago remains a palimpsest on which the modern age continues to
write.
HOW HAS SUGAR SERVED AS PALIMPSEST FOR THE “INDIAN
CARIBBEAN”?
In some places transported Indians worked alongside former slaves. In other places they
supplanted them. But whatever the conditions of work, imported East Indians gave rise to
what might be called a politics of resentment: the struggle for political control among Indi-
ans, former black slaves, and the indigenous population.
The politics of sugarcane resentment take different forms that vary with the local mix
of races, ethnic groups, religion, economic affluence, and the brutality formerly visited on
slaves by their overlords. Brazilian sociologist Gilberto Fryere shows how that brutality
has created the foundations of Brazil's present culture, a master-slave relationship charac-
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