Prof. dr. Francio Guadeloupe,
Endowed Professor in the Public Anthropology of Kingdom Relations at University of Amsterdam (UvA),
Senior researcher at the Royal Netherlands Institute for Southeast Asian & Caribbean studies (KNAW-KITLV)
Caribbean activists who promote a justice project, which tolerates no external or internal criticism, strike us as fundamentalists. The actions of these justice warriors resemble those of born-again “American” missionaries, who claim that “there is only one way, their way, one path to justice and to salvation, their path, and they will lead the chosen people to the promised land”. We see the same tendency on St. Maarten & Saint Martin, where the Holy Trinity among the island’s independistas boils down to:
1) the unification of both sides of the island into the sovereign nation-state of St. Martin;
2) the implementation of laws that will guarantee that those with longstanding roots to the island occupy the positions of authority in government and companies where the government owns major shares;
3) and, the call and promise to re-engineer the economy and social life in a way that returns multicultural St. Martin to the real St. Martiners.
While posing of Caribbean and radical, it is actually a rehashing of the American dream exported to the Global South after World War Two.
Permit us an elaboration.
Names matter, and it speaks volumes that the USA usurped the name "America" for itself. No other country on the American landmass, including the islands, can pull off that feat. The USA has been an expansive, warmongering project from its founding as the 13 colonies, which gained political independence from Great Britain. The lands where the remaining First Peoples resided were mercilessly conquered, while the USA waged war with Mexico and Spain to annex places such as Texas, California, and Puerto Rico. And let's not get started about Hawaii, Guam, the operations of the United Fruit Company in Central America, etc. Or, the segregation and exploitation of African Americans to promote the wealth and comfort of the elites among those deemed the true “Americans”. At the turn of the 20th century, as the colonized world and Haiti were fighting for dignity, respect, bread, and a global commonwealth of decent societies, the USA was simply deemed another imperial power.
Enter more guns accompanied by soft power and a masterful public relations campaign. After winning World War 2 and half-heartedly conceding the hard-won battles of its internal civil rights movements, the USA crafted itself as the alternative to not only fascist Germany and Italy, but also to France, the UK, the Netherlands, Portugal, and Denmark - the old European colonial powers. The USA of Presidents Roosevelt, Eisenhower, JFK, and Lyndon Johnson would help the colonies of Old Europe become politically independent in the form of nation-states. And whether they wanted it or not, it would keep them safe from the supposed communist threat of Stalin, Fidel, and Mao Zedong.
Culturally, the USA branded itself as Christian as opposed to ungodly Europe. “America” was Billy Graham and Pentecostalism, respectively, missionizing the world. Conversely, for those with secular tastes, the USA was the land of Jazz, Motown, Feminism, Martin Luther King Jr, Aretha Franklin, Diana Ross, Prince, and Michael Jackson. Global youth culture was dominated by “ black American culture”, and, supposedly, despite the continuing racism, there was no place on earth where ‘black people’ had it as good as the USA. “America” was the land of opportunity, where supposedly anyone who worked hard could make it.
The ideal the USA promoted through its influence in UN organs and legislation was a world consisting of sovereign nation-states where free pro-American trade was the gospel. The message was clear: the world should be open for “American” business, and it would go to war, economic and military, with anyone who sought to think beyond the nation-state and circumvent its economic interest. The acts of the 47th tenant of the White House are not so new. Remember Grenada, remember Nicaragua, remember the ongoing boycott against Cuba, and you will appreciate why the gunboat diplomacy towards Venezuela is not so new.
All remains fine in the former colonized countries as long as they couch their justice projects in the post-World War 2 dominant “American” script: every historical people with a unique culture has to refashion themselves into a nation, and every nation is the legitimate owner ofa piece of land termed its state. Other people can live on the land, but it belongs to a chosen people, the autochthons. They have the right to self-determination enshrined in the annals of the UN. They, the people, are the sovereigns who chose a leader from their midst who understands that their needs and wants come first. When that is not the case, society has to be re-engineered and the usurpers (read migrants and foreigners) put in their place. The gospel of pro-American free trade, however, is to remain untouched.
If this all sounds familiar it is because the Holy Trinity with which we started is the American dream being sold on St. Maarten & Saint Maarten as a justice project. Perhaps the essence of power is to have one's nightmarish dream become ennobled by becoming the creed of activists that emerged from the historically dominated. Justice based on the privilege of skin, ancestry, or lineage is no justice at all. Radical democrats in France and the Netherlands, the so-called colonial centers, are engaged in a mortal battle against this perversion of justice. Where is the battle against this perversion taking place on St. Maarten & Saint Martin?...in the local university - USM?...in the unions?...in the churches?...in the unruly multiculture of everyday?...
Perhaps it is time to dream another dream?
