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12. St. Vincent and the Grenadines
- The University of Alabama Press
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12 St.Vincent and the Grenadines Paul E. Lewis Introduction The survival of a people depends, to a large degree, on the protection of its heritage.Without some recognition of a culture’s values and belief systems, and the conscious nurturing and husbanding of such sentiments,that culture tends to lose its relevance and soon dies.In recent decades indigenous cultures have come under tremendous pressure from economic liberalism or globalization .Western consumerism touches not only our material life but also our cultural and spiritual well-being, and it is within this context that we must measure our chances for cultural survival. The protection and promotion of Vincentian heritage is central to the development of a national identity in St. Vincent and the Grenadines (SVG). Unfortunately, successive governments have either denied or failed to recognize this socioeconomic fact.And while local culture is rich and varied, it did not catch the imagination of the white colonial class or the postcolonial political elites until recent times. By assigning the label of inferior to local culture, by the allocation of few resources to a Ministry of Culture, by the lack of an enforcement procedure to deal with those who break/disregard the heritage laws, and by the failure to sensitize the population on heritage matters with a view to the better appreciation for the natural and built heritage , for example, all these elements have conspired to set a low level of heritage protection in SVG. The purpose of this chapter is to identify some significant heritage resources of St.Vincent and the Grenadines, to note significant obstacles preventing the full development and protection of those resources,and to suggest ways to improve opportunities for heritage protection and thereby enhance and maximize its heritage resources. St. Vincent is a multi-island state and geography has played a big role in its history and in the development of local culture. St.Vincent and the Grenadines / 97 Environment and Culture St.Vincent and the Grenadines are located 13° 15′ N, 61° 12′ W. St.Vincent is the largest of the 32 islands and cays that comprise this small nation of 106,253 inhabitants (CIA World Fact Book). Spanish “discovery” of the island in 1492 has been disputed by local scholars and Caribbeanists for many decades,and British and French rivalry for the control of the island chain has been the main international thrust in the early history of St.Vincent and the Grenadines. In 1763 St. Vincent was ceded to the British by the Treaty of Paris (CIA World Fact Book 2008). But the strong resistance of the indigenous peoples, first the Kalinagos and later the Black Caribs (Garifuna), kept the British from establishing plantations as they had done in Barbados, Antigua , and the other British-held islands. The British made peace arrangements with the Caribs in the First Carib War, 1772–1773, and then finally defeated them in the Second Carib War, 1795–1796. St.Vincent and the Grenadines is a parliamentary democracy, which includes strong prime ministerial rule.The unicameral legislature is dominated by the ruling party.The population is chiefly of African descent (85 percent), followed by European (3 percent), indigenous (3 percent), East Indians (4 percent), and other (5 percent), and Kingstown is an increasingly urbanized capital (approximately 47 percent of the population reside in the city). This multi-island state is polarized between the two main political parties—the governing Unity Labour Party, led by the Prime Minister Ralph Gonsalves, and the leader of the opposition, Hon. Arnhim Eustace. This sharp political division has impeded national development because the political culture has dictated that supporters of the losing party are not welcome to contribute to the national dialogue. A former British colony,the island’s economy has been heavily dependent on agriculture: sugar, cotton, arrowroot, coffee, ground provisions, and, in more recent times,bananas.But tourism has surpassed agriculture as the biggest foreign revenue source due to changes in trading partners; there is now serious competition from the Central American banana-producing nations. While tourism appears to be the government’s panacea for slow economic growth, agriculture is slowly losing its once-vaunted position to the services sector.The heritage sites and known archaeological remains are located principally on the mainland (St. Vincent), though the tourism sector is strongly entrenched in the Grenadines. Heritage refers to all those artifacts and symbolic representations of the ideas surrounding the development of a distinct people and culture;such abstractions and symbolic representations of...