Caribbean and Atlantic Diaspora Dance: Igniting Citizenship

Chapter 9. Tourism, Globalization, and Caribbean Dance

chapter nine Tourism, Globalization, and Caribbean Dance In light of increased economic pressures and cultural collisions that have resulted in the wake of political globalization in the twenty-first century, dance investigation now seeks to unravel artistic trends in the Diaspora and to clarify how dancers and dance forms are encouraged, developed, and protected, particularly in the Caribbean. Analyses of the interaction between tourism enterprises and dance genres, dance artists, and island governments raise issues concerning cultural and economic globalization.1 Caribbean Resources Resources on the islands are scarce generally, with only moderate to minimal dependence on sugar, nickel, tobacco, coffee, and fish in the Spanish islands; bananas, pineapples, sisal, nickel, and rum products in the French/ Creole islands; salt mining and oil refining in the Dutch islands; and bauxite, alumina, oil, gold, and natural gas mining in English/Creole islands. None of these, except oil and oil refining perhaps, amounts to significant global trade, but multiple products save the region from dependence on the fragile mono-commodity economy of its past and aide the survival of Caribbean peoples. Everywhere in the islands, however, there are ecological treasures and admired cultural practices that signal tourist interest and economic potential. For example, public festivals of all sorts frequent the culture calendars of most Caribbean islands, and Caribbeans themselves are known for their unabashed outbreaks into danced partying, all of which is enticing for inquisitive tourists. Accordingly,the large and small islands,and the culturally related mainland territories have consciously developed their human and natural resources toward tourism, the primary economic activity of the entire region.As skilled, computer-chip technology has all but wiped out the islands’ historical offer- tourism, globalization, and caribbean dance 171 ings of cheap agricultural and unskilled manufacturing labor, islanders have looked more deliberately than in the past to their beaches, tropical forests, fish and small game reserves, and often toward their cultural reserves. Tourism interests have recognized the place of dance in terms of revenue and have integrated dancers, musicians, visual artists, and theatrical or spectacle specialists into national programs. Despite acknowledged downsides, tourism has been the main attraction and sometimes the sole income-generating domain for many islands, and it is within tourism enterprises that Caribbean dance has maintained an unheralded but active position. Since the 1940s and 1950s, the islands have alternated as favored destination points for Europeans, Canadians, and U.S. Americans on vacation and in search of leisure. Recreational and educational cruise ships have etched out channels; airline agents have underscored air routes to packaged “exotic” and manicured Caribbean resorts. With the Cuban Revolution of 1959, the rise of ecotourism and health tourism seemed to blanket earlier decades of commercial, entertainment tourism.2 As always, however, from the colonial period to the present, sex has been a constant (although unofficial ) commodity within regional tourism.3 By the 1980s, “sun, sand, and sex tourism” yielded HIV and AIDS with substantial stigma and discrimination, eventually causing a decline in the tourist trade. Protestant, Catholic, and Caribbean cultural values struggled against sex education, programs to dispense condoms and needles, and adequate community health care, except in Cuba.4 With the development of banking interests and yuppie and “buppie” (black yuppie) finance in the 1980s, Caribbean islands resumed the roles they had had historically as colonial outposts and commercial marketplaces, this time supplying European and American centers with global finance, offshore banking, drugs and drug trafficking, and a more pronounced sex industry—often with a visual illustration of a Caribbean dancer as the essence of island seduction.5 The 1990s and early part of the twenty-first century have brought sharp increases in historical and ecological tourism, both of which foster a fresh look at tourism with sustainable and principled use of natural and human resources.6 For dance performance, this has meant continued interest in and influence on Caribbean performance and maximum opportunities for Caribbean dance artists. Global Markets and Caribbean Tourism Caribbean islands have pressed toward tourism development as the most immediate source of revenue for nations with precarious economic condi- 172 chapter 9 tions brought on by one or a combination of severe encumbrances, such as natural disasters like hurricanes, droughts, flooding, and earthquakes, as well as national unemployment, violence or crime, and constantly changing international priorities.Within the current global tourism market, there is dire need to maintain or increase the Caribbean share. The Caribbean tourist rate is only 2...