THIS PROSTITUTION THAT WE CALL DEVLOPMENT

Sep 13, 2008 Editorial

Nobel Laureate, Derek Walcott, had hard-hitting words for the governments of the Caribbean when he addressed a seminar during Guyana’s hosting of Carifesta X.

He bemoaned the tendency of the region to bend backwards to foreign investors in promoting our tourism sector.

Walcott has not been singular in this respect. The former Secretary General of the Commonwealth, Sir Shridath Ramphal, also called on the region to examine closely the image of the region that it is cultivating in its promotion of tourism.

After all, the Caribbean is much more than the playground and recreation centre of the rest of the world.
With the increasing penetration of sex tourism in other parts of the world, the region needs to guard against forms of tourism that foster unhealthy values for the region.

The challenge for the Caribbean is not to sell that with which it has been endowed for a false notion of development, one that is alien to the cultures of the region and one that reduces the region to prostituting its resources.

But rather to ensure that all the people of the Caribbean are ultimately masters of their own destiny.
It is especially important at this time when the region, except for Guyana and Haiti, has indicated that it is prepared to go along with the Economic Partnership Agreement which was negotiated between CARIFORUM and the European Union, that the people of the region must ask themselves whether the models of development we are pursuing will lead to real progress or instead the prostitution of development.

On the face of it, this prostitution that we call development has led to increases in the standards of living throughout the region; it has created thousands of jobs for our peoples; it has reduced the vulnerabilities of many economies which were previously dependent on primary production.

In short, this prostitution that we call development has paid off. But at what price has it paid dividends?
Are the people of the region the ultimate owners of the means of production, or are we still generally speaking as second class citizens to the more powerful classes which run our tourist resorts, hotels and financial sectors.

Where are the bulk of the investments in the region coming from? Is it outside of the region? And whom is it benefitting.

We believe that these questions should be at the heart of any soul-searching the Caribbean should undertake as it prepares for what seems to be the imminent signing of the Economic Partnership Agreement.
The Caribbean must assess just where it stands under this agreement.

It must ask whether it is prepared to be mendicant to the greater powers of the world or whether it will even at the cost of isolation, redefine its traditional relationship with Europe to one in which it is an equal partner in an unequal relationship.

There have been strong and compelling arguments which have been made against the EPA.
The Caribbean territories have had a history of standing side by side with each other on matters of critical import.

The very basis for the formation of CARICOM was that we should find strength in unity and find consensus on our relations with the external world.

The EPA has seen the rest of the Caribbean agreeing to sign the EPA without unanimity being achieved, one of the cardinal principles in the regional integration movement.

Perhaps the dream of a united Caribbean is long gone. Perhaps that too has become an object of prostitution in the name of development.

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