British Virgin Islands - "We The Black Suffering"
Oakes, Elizabeth
A 45-minute flight from San Juan, Puerto Rico, the sunny Brit- ish Virgin Islands, some 60 in all, are viewed as part of the "un- spoiled" tourist world. They are famous in yachting circles...
...With other West Indians, BV Islanders had also migrated to the Panama Canal and to the canefields of Cuba and the Dominican Republic in the early 20th century...
...Residents and immigrants intermarry, drink rum and play dominoes together and help each other in times of financial need...
...I have influence on people...Jesus wasn't a colonialist, an imperialist...
...For all im- unions is continuous, and atmigrant workers-legal and ille- tempts at organizing in the 1960s gal--deportation without due pro- and 1970s have failed in part becess is an ever-present threat, cause of the inability of workers to one which aids in the control and overcome these divisions...
...BVI farmers were unable to compete with mainland food suppliers for the U.S...
...Migration was not new to the British Virgin Islanders, however...
...Croix and later, St...
...This notion gains acceptance in part from BVI Mlfgrats' Needs Overlooked residents who feel outnumbered For immigrant workers, how- by skilled immigrants, and angry ever, the initial appeal of higher at the huge influx of foreign workwages in the BVI tourist industry is ers, the increase in crime in the dulled by the conditions they find last 20 years and the reluctance there...
...Kitts, Nevis, Anguilla, Montserrat, St...
...Tourism in the British Virgin Islands began with Laurence Rockefeller's construction of Little Dix Bay...
...Well I was going to school until I was sixteen years old and when I sixteen years old I would stop and go and get a job...
...Immigration and Nationality looked...
...White people going to die on top.* Nobody going to treat me like a slave...my grandfather came from India to grind cane as a slave...
...You ever had any white people were slave yet...
...Immigration and Nationality Act in 1952...
...Thus, ployers by work permits and visa immigrants especially suffer the conditions, and they know they high cost of living, a burden in- can be deported for any behavior *According to a report by the Royal Com- deemed "improper" by immigramonwealth Society in 1975, the following tion authorities-whose sympafood prices and wage differentials existed thies generally lie with resident between the BVI and St...
...Rasta talk about slavery . .it's up to Black people to change things .. I got my mind...
...interests were primarily strategic, but island residents soon saw the tourist advantages...
...The economy had deteriorated to the point where an outside economist was called in...
...To discipline of the workforce...
...20th century these petty producers had become the main suppliers of beef, poultry, vegetables and fruits to their neighbors, the Danish Virgin Islands...
...BVI businessmen were quick to point out that with so many British Virgin Islanders working in the U.S...
...do better than me...
...he said don't be like me...
...man on his face workin...
...Kitts, Nevis, Anguilla, Antigua as well as the British Virgin Islands...
...This in NACLA Reportupdate . update * update * update part emerges from their common work experience...
...Since the inauguration of tourism in the 1960s, hundreds of West Indians from Antigua, St...
...Other figures published by the government tourist board indicate that approximately 2,300 downislanders enter the British Virgin Islands temporarily (as "tourists" or "visitors") each year...
...The islanders, mostly former slaves, purchased or squatted on available land and began to produce vegetables and fruits and raise animals, continuing on a larger scale what they had begun as slaves...
...the In fact, in contrast to BV Islandaverage hourly wage for women, ers, many immigrants bring exfor example, was $1.29 in 1976...
...Frequently the target of harassment, one leader was recently jailed...
...This act secured the legality of resident workers...
...I would have had hard time to get it...I would like to come a teacher...
...And without land they Act were passed in the late 1960s...
...Too much work...
...Maarten and Dominica have migrated to the British Virgin Islands-escaping the unemployment and poverty of their own home islands in search of jobs and higher wages...
...NACLA Reportupdate 9 update * update * update have to work hard...He used to cut sugar cane...
...a quiet revolutionary...
...Virgin Island markets-though some tried to survive in the margin that remained...
...They saying now that only Tolian [from Tortola] they want to work here...
...We all Caribbean people...
...It is easy for the Tolian dem but not for the outside-one dem...They treat them bad because they can't get what kind of job they want...
...They are famous in yachting circles for some of the world's best sailing, as well as their "natural beauty...
...Living side by side in communities all over the islands, they establish deep friendships with one another...
...Seventy-eight percent of this to send money to family members group are of working age: be- in their home islands...
...immigrants is extremely precari- These antagonisms between ous...
...But I would not have get it easy...
...For the low wages that St...
...Uncertainty created by the illegal status of most of their employees caused problems for hotel and restaurant owners, who welcomed the passage of the U.S...
...These figures, ideology of "Island People...
...All white on top all over the world...
...Rastas demand an end to the 400 years of political, cultural and economic oppression of Black West Indians by white Anglo Saxon culture, the U.S...
...So the pattern was a familiar one in the 1930s and 1940swhen the British Virgin Islanders, along with the rest of the "downislanders," once again migrated to fill the lowest paid, least protected jobs, this time in the service sector...
...tween 20 and 50 years old, with All this is aggravated by the the average age 25...
...Employed as electricians, plumbers, waiters, bartenders, maids, mechanics, nurse maids, dock hands and waitresses, down-islanders constituted 30.8% of the BVI labor force of 2,544 in 1976.* These figures, compiled from voluntary employer responses to a questionnaire, underrepresent the number of illegal workers, if it includes them at all...
...Laws similar to the immigrants' needs can be over- U.S...
...After the abolition of slavery in 1834 the sugar plantations were abandoned by English planters, whose profits depended on continued slave labor and the mercy of their Liverpool creditors...
...Her advice to the governor: private, i.e., primarily foreign owned, tourism...
...Both also face the high cost of living from which resident workers' access to housing and land on which to grow food does not entirely exempt them...
...Employer opposition to while looking for a job...
...Those who could not compete faced the choice of subsistence farming on the rocky soil or migrating to other Caribbean islands for work...
...perience of labor struggles in their The status of naturalized citizen, home islands...
...Untouched by some of the familiar signs of tourist development-big seaside hotels, hamburger stands-the islands of Tortola, Virgin Gorda and Jost Van Dyke are to visitors the ideal place to "get away from it all...
...Despite the divisions between resident and immigrant workers, these bases of commonality may yet provide the foundations of a working class movement...
...Bringing them closer together is their shared experience of racial oppression...
...dollar and British colonialism...
...One of the most outspoken groups against racism and exploitation is the Rastafarians, comprised largely of young BVI nationals, sons and daughters of wage laborers and farmers...
...Many enter illegally, are hired resident and immigrant workers in illegally (without a work permit) or turn create difficulties in union or"overstay" their visitor passes ganizing...
...Thomas or cut cane in St...
...To the expatriate North American and British hotel and restaurant owners, managers and tourists, both BV Islanders and down-island immigrants are merely black West Indians...
...have no garden plots essential to Workers are bound to their emoffset the high cost of food...
...Another community group puts forth more specific demands...
...When date, only the teachers have a compared to prices, wages are union...
...Shared Racial Oppression These bonds between residents and immigrants are expressed in community and family...
...To many residents and immigrant workers in the British Virgin Islands, however, tourism is simply a new form of slavery...
...These figures come from the 1978 issue, the most recently published...
...Thus as tourism flourished in St...
...we build our hope...
...chicken $ .68 $ .80 infrequently or quietly exMonthly wages for a full time cook and pressed-among both BV Islandhome helper $30...
...In while obscuring the numbers of this socially sanctioned discourse, immigrants who come looking for Eastern Caribbean immigrants are work or who actually obtain jobs, ostracized and degraded, blamed dogivean indicationofthepoten- for the ills of BVI society and tial supply of down-island labor in viewed as untrustworthy and crithe islands...
...Croix...
...Thomas, St...
...46 That labor, part of the migrant chain that extends throughout the Caribbean, has come largely from from the Eastern Caribbean ("down-island"), as it has in previous periods of capitalist expansion in the region...
...You know in the next world white people going to be slave...
...Virgin Islands--as temporarily permanent residents-they needed a new source of labor...
...Only like my brother who born here would get any kind of job he want...
...I'm a revolutionary...
...Here, the Lord Nelson Inn, Virgin Gorda...
...Her Ph.D...
...dissertation, in anthropology, is on class consciousness in the British Vir- gin Islands...
...Down-Island Labor Needed Then in 1961 the British Virgin Islands joined the tourist development scene...
...Kitts BVI 1 doz...
...In addition to the high cost of immigrants to take part in labor of living,* the legal status of many struggles...
...We have our hope...
...Thomians migrated to the United States to avoid, immigrants worked, legally and illegally-as taxi drivers, ditch diggers, waiters, bartenders, cooks and domestics...
...minally disposed...
...94 $ 1.50 In spite of these obstacles, pro4 oz...
...barely at subsistence level...
...Many of them had had to leave the subsistence plots of their ex-slave ancestors in the 19th century to carry coal on the docks of St...
...Before that, ary workers...
...Of these, *The only publicly available statistics on migration come from the government publication, Tourism in the British Virgin Islands...
...With the birth of tourism in the 1960s, the British Virgin Islands took their place alongside most other Caribbean islands in the competition for tourists--and for cheap labor to serve them...
...And when we read God's Bible, it strengthen our hope...
...19 $60.00 ers and down-islanders...
...They keep you down all the days of your life . .want you be a slave for them...
...Elizabeth Oakes did research on Tor- tola, BVI, in 1980 and 1981...
...eggs U.S...
...With no industry and little help from Great Britain, the BVI offered them few alternatives...
...They give them outsiders...to mind someone's baby or to clean out the house...
...John, it drew the unemployed and impoverished from St...
...The boom created an attractive market for U.S...
...It struggles for local control over resources, money for schools and housing and the fair treatment of immigrants...
...48 52% are men and 48% are wo- creased by the obligations of most men...
...The desire to conwith its corresponding rights to tinue those struggles, however, is education and health care, is pos- frustrated by the restrictions they sible after seven consecutive face as immigrants and "temporyears' residence...
...For Mar/Apr 1983 the most part whites and blacks attend separate schools, live in separate neighborhoods and socialize in separate restaurants and bars...
...First claimed by the Dutch, the islands were seized and colonized by Great Britain, in 1673, as part of the lucrative British West Indian "triangular trade" in sugar and slaves...
...Both groups face uncertain health and safety on the job and an absence of an effective formal grievance procedure...
...Simultaneously, it allowed for the entry of thousands more immigrants as "temporary workers"--guarantee47update . update * update * update ing the industry a virtually inexhaustible labor supply...
...Kitts in 1974...
...one day [you] might say the hell with them...
...Those who struggle in the British Virgin Islands will not endlessly suffer the political, economic and racial brutalities of their daily existence...
...coffee $ 1.06 $ 2.63 union sentiment exists-however 1 lb...
...Despite hurricanes, rocky soil, and steep cliffside farming, they expanded throughout the 19th century, so that by the early Mar/Apr 1983 Tourism came late to BVI...
...This labor was most easily acquired from "down-island...
...Baptists have always been revolutionaries...
...As one islander put it: "West Indian man going to fight against you unless you treat him with dignity...
...In 1917, the United States purchased those islands from the Danes for $25 million...
...The main source of work was the tourist industry on the U.S...
...My father used to *These quotes, as well as the headline, are all from remarks made to the author by a wide spectrum of workers in the British Virgin Islands...
...The European demand for timber, sugar, cotton and rum provided the British Virgin Islands (BVI) with a brief period of prosperity between 1750 and 1815, but the islands were used primarily as hideouts for pirates and smugglers...
...What they give me I would have to take it...
...These divisions only reinforce the fundamental class divisions in society between white employers and black workers...
...mainland producers...
...As a result, the very large extent to which the BVI economy depends on the supply of down-island labor is obscured...
...All of this contrasts with the hostility expressed in the ideology of "Island People...
...hotels as well as military installations mushroomed in the next two decades...
Vol. 17 • March 1983 • No. 2
