Changing Lives and Changing Times in the Caribbean and Latin America

238 Pages·2013·28.28 MB·English

CHANGING TIMES AND CHANGING LIVES
IN THE CARIBBEAN AND LATIN AMERICA
TEN ORAL HISTORIES
Edited by Judith Adler Hellman
CERLAC
Te Centre for Research on Latin America & the Caribbean
at York University, Toronto, Canada
Changing Times and Changing Lives in the Caribbean and Latin America:
Ten Oral Histories
ISBN:
978-155014-5908 Print version
978-155014-5915 eBook version
Editor: Judith Adler Hellman
Hosted by: Te Centre for Research on Latin America and the Caribbean
8th Floor, York Research Tower
4700 Keele Street
Toronto, ON M3J 1P3
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Acknowledgements iii
Preface by Michele Johnson v
Introduction by Judith Adler Hellman 1
Chapter One
Resilience: Life in Rural Trinidad
by Nadine Ramharack 9
Chapter Two
An East Indian in the West Indies
by Alyssa Sewlal 23
Chapter Tree
From Plantation to Tourist ‘Paradise’ in St. Lucia
by Richard Lanns 45
Chapter Four
Green Gold and Dark Days:
Te Life of a St. Lucian Banana Farmer
by Kevin Edmonds 73
Chapter Five
Race, Class, Revolution and the U.S. Invasion of Grenada
by Ashleigh Philips 93
i
Chapter Six
Invasion and Resistance in the Dominican Republic:
A Life in Santo Domingo and Upper Manhattan
by Judith Adler Hellman 113
Chapter Seven
A Life on the Meskito Coast During the Nicaraguan Revolution
by Michael McLean Ayearst 145
Chapter Eight
Winding Road of Fear:
Te Years of Confict in Colombia Trough the Eyes of a Truck Driver
by Lorenzo Vargas 163
Chapter Nine
Civil War and Peace in El Salvador
by Juan Manuel Vidal 183
Chapter Ten
A Defant Woman in Post-Revolutionary Mexico
by Maria Elena Hernández 199
Contributors 215
ii
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
ll the authors in this collection, and I most of all, owe an immense debt
Ato Marshall Beck, the Coordinator of our Centre for Research on Latin
America and the Caribbean at York University who, having read a number of
these stories, posed to me the possibility of collecting the very best and putting
them out as both a print and electronic publication. But Marshall’s contribu-
tion hardly ended with an inspired idea. He has encouraged me at every step
of the editing process, has helped me to understand the options we had for
publication, and has taken the fles I turned over to him and transformed them
into a beautifully designed book with an arresting cover of his own creation.
In sum, Marshall’s support, his enthusiasm, and his long friendship have been
the determining element in my own ability to bring this project to fruition.
In addition to Marshall, I would like to acknowledge the support of my
colleague, Michele Johnson, whose commitment to this project and willing-
ness to provide a preface was extremely encouraging to all the authors.
With respect to my own chapter in this volume, I want to thank my
husband, Steve Hellman, who provided excellent feedback on the story of
Gabe Guzmán, and my cousin, Fred Rosen, long time editor of the NACLA
Report on the Americas, who read and ofered very helpful comments on my
chapter on Gabe. Finally, way back in the days of their graduate studies at York
University, Paula Hevia and Leandro Vergara Camus did a wonderful job to
provide a full transcription of the tapes (yes, actual tapes, and not very clearly
recorded) that I had collected from so many hours of interviews with Gabe in
1998-99. As I worked my way through 72 pages of transcribed material, I was
grateful to them all over again.
iii
A map of the Caribbean Basin, encompassing all the countries referenced in the histories con-
1
tained in this volume
1 Adapted from: “Te World Factbook 2013-14”, Central Intelligence Agency, 2013, Of-
fce of Public Afairs, Washington DC, May 2013 < https://www.cia.gov/library/publica-
tions/the-world-factbook/index.html
PREFACE
by
Michele Johnson
hen Professor Judy Hellman told me about the oral history project that
Wwould constitute the fnal assignment in the capstone course in the
Latin American and Caribbean Studies Program at York University, I was both
pleased and intrigued. My own interest in modern Jamaican social history has
led me directly into the use of oral histories in order to break the silences of
the ofen voiceless members of the society, many of whom are relegated to its
margins due to combined “disabilities” of race/colour, class/status and gender/
sexualities. Tis is by no means limited to Jamaica, since across Latin America
and Caribbean; the long shadows of European colonialisms, which depended
on the enslavement (and decimation) of aboriginal peoples, the chattel slavery
of Africans and their descendants and the indentureship of Asian labourers
in order to extract wealth from a range of commercial enterprises, including
mining and agriculture, has lef deep scars upon the lands and the people of
the region/s. Usually deemed unimportant by contemporary observers, largely
ignored by the ruling classes, and frequently unable to generate the sorts of
documentary notice that would ensure their notice, the life experiences of the
vast majority remain unrecorded and are assumed to be unremarkable. As
these oral histories make clear, it is the extraordinariness of “ordinary” lives
that make oral histories so appealing, as sometimes “inconspicuous” persons
have observed and participated in historical moments, and examinations of
the most “mundane” details inform us about our societies.
Despite their apparent value especially amongst relegated, marginal
and “un- or under-documented” groups and individuals, there is a great deal
of hesitation about the use of oral histories. Many scholars are concerned about
dependence on “eyewitnesses” who, according to Jan Vansina, “are only partly
reliable” because “[m]emory typically selects certain features . . . and interprets
them according to expectation, previous knowledge, or the logic of “what must
1
have happened,” and flls the gaps in perception.” Further, according to Paul
Richard Tompson, “there is the added possibility of distortions infuenced by
the subsequent changes in values and norms, which may perhaps quite uncon-
2
sciously alter perceptions.” Indeed, since memory involves the un/conscious
act of discarding over time, as well as individual comprehension, perception
and retention, the hurdles to gathering useful data from individuals’ memories
are potentially limiting. In addition, for oral histories to be valuable, there have
to be both an ability and a willingness to remember, as recall can be prevented
by a decision not to do so, conscious or not. Te collection of oral history
is also afected by the interviewer since her/his socially constructed presence
3
(race, sex, language) can afect the responses ofered.
For all its limitations, scholars like James Hoopes believe that “what is
interesting in historical work is its personal, human challenge,” and that that
concentration can be maintained by focusing “directly on human beings”; for
him oral history is both relevant and powerful. According to Hoopes, while
most historians continue to focus on written documents, and some give at-
tention to material culture, oral histories should be treated as simply another
4
sort of historical source and constitute “documents that are spoken”. While
oral histories are particularly useful where written records are available, says
Hoopes, they are also able to “supply information that might otherwise never
1 Jan Vansina, Oral Tradition as History, (Madison, Wis.: University of Wisconsin Press,
1985), p. 5; See Michael Frisch, “Oral History and Hard Times: A Review Essay,” Oral
History Review, 1979, vol. 7, pp. 70-79 (originally published in Red Bufalo, 1972, vol. 1,
nos. 2/3); Robert Perks and Alistair Tomson, eds. Te Oral History Reader, (London
and New York: Routledge, 1998).
2 Paul Richard Tompson, Te Voice of the Past: Oral History, (Oxford, New York: Ox-
ford University Press, 1978), p. 100.
3 See Ronald J. Grele, “Movement without aim: Methodological and theoretical prob-
lem in oral history,” Envelopes of Sound: Te Arts of Oral History, (Chicago: Precedent
Publishing, 1985), pp. 127-154.
4 James Hoopes, Oral History: An Introduction for Students, (Chapel Hill: Te Univer-
sity of North Carolina Press, 1979), pp. 4-5.
vi