are many ways to route a cruise through the Caribbean. Cruising has many definitions, which can include anything from sailing and relaxing to exploring different lands and meeting the people who inhabit them. Whatever your interests are, whether you like to meet people or try different foods or see how people live, the common denominator is always culture. Culture in itself is not a precise term and takes into account many different factors ranging from how people make a living to how people live their lives. The better you understand the Culture of the Caribbean, the more you will recoup your investment of time and money. When I discuss the Caribbean with those who have not yet visited it, many think that the culture of the Caribbean is sun and a laid-back attitude, an easygoing lifestyle that requires very little effort. In fact surviving in the Caribbean takes a great deal of effort for many different reasons: availability of jobs, seasonality of weather, politics and many other factors affect the local populace on a daily basis. The Culture of the Caribbean is many cultures that have come together. Some parts of the culture meld one into another and create what amounts to a new culture while others remain layered, one on top the other, separate and distinguishable. It will take some time and experience traveling through the Caribbean to come to understand even the most basic parts of it. Once you have a better understanding of Caribbean Culture as well as the different local cultures that exist within Caribbean Culture, you will be able to participate and thus appreciate what you will experience at a much deeper level. Your knowledge will affect your routing as you gravitate towards the things you have greater interest in. The Caribbean is a vast place surrounded by the Caribbean Sea, which measures over 1,000,000 square miles. The area includes many countries. It is populated by more than 40,000,000 people whose origins are from very diverse backgrounds. There are very few “natives” as the vast majority of Native Americans — Caribs, Arawaks, Mayans and others — were replaced by Europeans and Africans during the 15th and 16th centuries. The indigenous population of the Western Hemisphere in 1492 is estimated by experts to have had between 40 and 150 million Native Americans. Regardless of what the actual number was, within 200 years of the Europeans having made landfall, the population was reduced by over 90 percent. Disease and genocide were the main reasons for the decline. Today if you want to learn about the indigenous populations of the Caribbean you will have to search to find descendants, but they can be found and it is well worth the effort. The Europeans had a great desire to settle in the new land. Gold was initially the biggest lure. The quest for it was bloody and many of the native populations died because of the lust for it. The chief on Hispaniola, Hatuey, called gold “the God that the Spanish worshipped”. In 1511, Diego Velázquez set out from Hispaniola to conquer the island of Caobana (Cuba). He was preceded by Hatuey, who fled Hispaniola with a party of 400 in canoes and warned the inhabitants of Caobana what to expect from the Spaniards. Bartolomé de Las Casas, a Dominican friar and historian, later attributed the following speech to Hatuey, who showed the Taíno of Caobana a basket of gold and jewels, saying: “Here is the God the Spaniards worship. For these they fight and kill; for these they persecute us and that is why we have to throw them into the sea... They tell us, these tyrants, that they adore a God of peace and equality, and yet they usurp our land and make us their
NOVEMBER 2013
CARIBBEAN COMPASS
Cultural Cruising through the
Caribbean by Frank Virgintino
Below: 0No matter which language or locale, there is nothing more emblematic of contemporary Caribbean culture than ‘liming’ — simply hanging out, eating and drinking and enjoying the company of friends old and new, often in a public place. Here cruisers join locals on a Friday night at Gros Ilet, St. Lucia CASIMIR HOFFMAN
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slaves. They speak to us of an immortal soul and of their eternal rewards and punishments, and yet they rob our belongings, seduce our women, violate our daughters. Incapable of matching us in valor, these cowards cover themselves with iron that our weapons cannot break.” Hatuey was burned at the stake in Cuba by the Spanish for his insubordination. Manpower was needed to work the land in the Caribbean and with the decline of the native population a substitute had to be found. Between 1450 and 1874, West African slaves were brought to the “new world” to work the land for the benefit of the colonial interests. Of the approximately 12,000,000 that were taken from West Africa in what came to be known as the Triangle Trade, about 10,000,000 made it across alive. Of those about half were settled in Brazil, somewhat over 4,000,000 in the Caribbean and something less than 1,000,000 ended up in North America, mostly in the United States. As a result of the importation of slaves, the largest population of the Caribbean today, about 60 percent, can trace their ancestry to West Africa. [To see a table of the Afro-descendant populations of the Caribbean by location, visit http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_diaspora.] The cultural influences in the Caribbean are thus Native American mixed with West African and mixed with a variety of European cultures. The mixing produces what anthropologist Fernando Ortiz characterized in 1939, regarding Cuban culture, as ajiaco, a rich stew consisting of a large variety of ingredients. —Continued on next page
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