Life and Debt (review)

This captivating documentary uses Jamaica as a case study to portray the impacts on Third World countries of Structural Adjustment Policies (SAPs) and the broader processes of trade liberalization and economic globalization they have helped intensify. SAPs refer to the collection of economic reforms that debtor countries have been forced to implement as a condition for receiving loans from international financial institutions such as the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB).

Typical structural "adjustments" include currency devaluations, reductions in government spending, higher interest rates, privatization of state industries, and reductions in trade barriers, such as import tariffs and quotas. These reforms and their effects are explored in the film from a wide variety of perspectives, including those of local farmers, factory workers, Rastafarian wise men, an economics professor, former politicians, and businessmen, as well as IMF officials. The main focusis on the problems created by these reforms for Jamaica's agricultural and manufacturing sectors, but as well, the viewer is compelled to reflect on the impacts of drastically reducing government spending on essentials like education, health care, and poverty reduction, which in turn limit the country's very ability to develop in a broad, balanced manner and thereby pay off its loans. Ironically, as the film reveals, Jamaica's foreign debt increased from about US$0.8 billion in the late 1970s to US$7 billion by the time the film was produced (2001); by 2002/3 that debt still amounted to 150% of GDP, "one of the highest ratios in the world," according to the World Bank (2004, p. xi).

The reduced trade barriers have spurred a huge increase in imports of meat, produce, and milk powder to the island, from countries such as the USA and Canada, where food production costs are generally lower and in many cases subsidized. The tragic result, as depicted so effectively in the film, has been a virtual disappearance of many agricultural and food processing activities, including onion, carrot, and peanut production, as well as local dairy and poultry operations. This has led to widespread losses of income and jobs, not to mention lower food security, a shaken sense of national pride, and a vanishing way of life in many regions of the country. Not surprisingly, perhaps, one of the only industries that do appear to be growing is private security services! Even Jamaica's famous banana culture has been threatened, following complaints before the World Trade Organization (WTO) by the US government (and its backers at Dole and Chiquita) about Jamaica's preferential access to the European market under the Lomé Agreement. Without that access and the fair price it yields them for their produce, the banana farmers interviewed in the film recognize that they will be destroyed, given their inability to compete with the excessively low labor costs that prevail in much of Central and South America.

The film is at its most compelling in the juxtapositions and contrasts it draws. Former Prime Minister Michael Manley's eloquent and detailed descriptions of the historic and current dimensions of Jamaica's problems provide a sharp yet disturbing contrast to the simplistic if not vacuous discourse of former IMF Deputy Director Stanley Fischer and former Managing Director Horst Kohler. Similarly, the viewer is left feeling uneasy when the film repeatedly depicts the frivolous experiences of mass tourists, mainly from North America, who seem utterly oblivious to Jamaica's increasingly desperate and violent reality, and to the role of their own political and economic leaders in shaping that reality.

The viewer comes to share the tragic sense of disappointment and lost hope that so many Jamaicans undoubtedly feel, some 40 years after their once optimistic and proud nation first gained independence of sorts from Britain in 1962. As Michael Manley points out, the country has done what it can to make do and struggle along, "but the country that comes out is nothing like the country that could have been."

Life and Debt is an excellent, thought provoking film. It raises critical questions about the morality of global power structures and economic relationships, and their implications for...