Let's Straighten Out The Facts About The Caribbean |
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By: Karrie Ann Jean |
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The chain of islands located in Central and South America are collectively called the West Indies due to the fact that Christopher Columbus had always believed that he was in India when he discovered America. In this period, most of these islands were inhabited by Amerindians. Columbus then associated the name West Indian to the people of these islands. During World War II, for an undefined reason the name, Caribbean became the common name for this group of people. Although the people of the region are referred to as Caribbean people, each of the Caribbean countries has a distinct name, history, and their own form of government. The language spoken in any Caribbean island reflects the language of the colonialist rulers who owned their great grandparents as slaves. Contrary to the European continent where the citizens of any country on this part of the planet can be referred to as Europeans, instead of being called Americans the inhabitants of these American states are known as Caribbean. It is believed to be an economic or a racial issue. Most of the Caribbean people are African slave descendants. There is not one common Caribbean culture. Some of the islands have been influenced by France, others by Spain and Great Britain; the culture of the region resembles the African culture. The French influence is remarkable in the cultures of Haiti, Martinique and Guadeloupe, and the same way, the cultures of the former British colonies have a distinctly English accent. Other countries like Cuba, the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico have all been influenced by the Spanish culture. Contrary to most of the Caribbean nations, only the island of Haiti, shared by the Dominican Republic, became independent of their colonial rulers in the 19th century. Despite its disastrous economic and political conditions, Haiti still occupied a leadership position in the region both because of its glorious history and because of its surface and its population of 7,000,000 people. Haiti is the second largest of the Great Antilles. The word Caribbean itself comes from the language of the Arawakan- given name to an Indian tribe of Central America called Carib. The Caribs are well known for their practice of cannibalism, a practice consisting of eating human flesh by humans. This practice still exists among various Indian tribes of North and South America, and among the Aborigines of Australia and the Maoris of New Zealand. In the culture of the Caribs some groups eat other people as revenge or punishment for crimes, some like the taste of human flesh, others for ceremony and rituals, or in the practice of Voodoo. In some rituals relatives eat the bodies of their loved ones, this is called endocannibalism. In primitive rites that involved human sacrifice, parts of the body were often eaten. Headhunters, for example, often consumed certain parts of a body to gain powers of the dead person. This is also found in some voodoo practices. Although many sociologists and anthropologists found similarities between the African culture and the Caribs culture, they have not yet established a scientific relationship between the two generations of people. Caribbean is a mixture of sons and daughters of former African slaves and their former masters. The Caribbean culture is similar to Afro-American culture . Haitians and the fight for freedom in America Haiti was the first country where the African slaves revolted against their masters to become the first independent black nation in the world. This example raised the level of African consciousness among the African slaves of the American continent and triggered the fight for freedom in the United States. The language barrier did not stop the new black nation from helping to liberate Peru, Bolivia and Columbia and assisting blacks in the United States in their fight for freedom.
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All blacks in America should be considered Africans, our great grandparents came into America in the same boat, tied by the same chain, for the same purpose, to work as slaves. A few of them were sold to the English man on one end of the land, and the others were sold to the French man at the other end. Our ancestors were not allowed to have a name or communicate in their language. No black man came to America with names such as Joe, Paul and Jacques. No black man spoke English, Spanish or French in the motherland. You and I, we speak the language and carry the names of the murderers who killed our dads and raped our moms. The African slaves were stripped of their languages, their religions and their loves, they were not considered as human beings. One of the tactics of the slavery society's rulers was avoiding communication between slaves and this principle was enforced severely after the independence of Haiti. The United States did not want the slaves to know about the successful revolt of the African slaves in the island of this unique island. As a fact, Haiti was isolated from the rest of the world. But somehow the news of the independence of the first black nation had spread among the slaves. A Senegal historian Mobu Boisivert reported that the white women who had secret affairs with freed slaves spread the news among the slaves. But at this time there was also an intensified anti-slavery movement in Europe led by the Society of the Friends of Black People and there was a link of information between Europe and the United States. The Caribbean and the U.S. Influence Besides Cuba, the United States has control over all the countries in the American continent. Organizations like OAS and CARICOM are considered as chapters of the U.S. State Department. Most of the countries in the Caribbean islands trade exclusively with the U.S. All trade involving a third country must be approved by the U.S. Department of Commerce and very often this kind of approval is granted only to U.S. corporations located in those countries. In countries like Haiti and the Dominican Republic free elections represent a symbolic concept. The rulers of these nations are picked from a list submitted by the U.S. State Department. The first free election was held in Haiti in 1990, and shortly after the freely elected president was overthrown by a U.S.- backed bloody military coup. As President Fidel Castro said in a speech in the Dominican Republic last year, "The Caribbean governments are like a bunch of people standing at a train station and they can't decide where to go because they are waiting for Washington to tell them where to go. And Washington itself does not want them to go anywhere, se each of them jump into a train with no destination, pretending that they went somewhere and finally they return to the same station." The independence of the Caribbean countries is limited politically and economically. The lives of the people in these countries are managed completely by the United States of America. ¨ |
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