Diversity In The Caribbean, Part II

Continued from Diversity in the Caribbean, Part I, it's interesting to note a few things. First and foremost - there's really not that much information about the people of the countries I mentioned in Part I. There's not much other than wide brush strokes which seem to casually exceed the borders of every island in the Caribbean, and perhaps all islands as well.

The Caribbean, such a diverse region, is lumped together by external countries, even lumping it in with South America - and robbing the individual countries of their individuality. As someone who grew up in Trinidad and Tobago, I remember returning to the United States and having people think that everyone spoke like Jamaicans.

Only Jamaicans speak like Jamaicans.

In a world where we can delve into plate tectonics, the history and culture of these cultures is glossed over in the hurdles of a History class. Because of the commonalities, it is easy to do this. Too easy.

As my mother mentioned in the comments of Part I, there's a lot of history - verbal history, oral history - that doesn't make it's way into the history books. Someone once said that the winners write history books - yet in the Caribbean, I do not think that this is true. I don't even think that the mainstream history (not all history, mind you!) has been written by winners - much less survivors.

Even as, at Presentation College, Mr Laydoo would prompt us to read from his sacred CXC history book - I look back on this, and I realize that though I learned a bit about Caribs and Arawaks, of Aztecs and Mayans - I did not learn much about Trinidad and Tobago other than some historic facts written with the surgical accuracy of an autopsy. It's through chatting with my elders - the people now 70-90 years old - that I learned a lot more about Trinidad and Tobago.

These islands are not large, the populations are not large. Printing books for such a small audience is economic suicide. But, friends and neighbours, we no longer need books. Part of the role of ICTs is to address such issues. So it's interesting to note how little about these countries is in the Wikipedia, which can be updated by people from these countries and provide a means for sharing this sort of information. Why isn't it being done?

And then something else hit my mailbox this morning: SoundPortraits.org. Why isn't something similar being done here in the Caribbean?

Perhaps one of the problems with the diversity in the Caribbean is that it's not shared. This serves the tourist industries well to a point, but I would think that each country's tourism would rather be seen as individual instead of fighting over slices of the 'Caribbean Tourist Pie'.