Paradise, Enraged

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The tourism industry – hotels, restaurants, and other amenities – has long replaced the extractive colonial economies that once dominated the Caribbean. But many Caribbean residents still resent the foreigners who come to their region to plunder the palms and sands.

These visitors don’t contribute much to the countries, they say, they harm them instead.

In the Dutch territory of Aruba, for example, protesters with the No More Hotels movement, recently took to the streets of the capital Oranjestad on King’s Day, a holiday honoring the Dutch monarch. They held signs that read “Decolonize Aruba,” “Defending What’s Sacred,” and “Mother Nature is Screaming,” reported Global Voices.

The protesters say there is too much hotel construction on the island. In addition to leveling trees and destroying open space, Aruba’s sewage and waste management systems can’t handle the hotels’ waste, they added. As a result, this waste often winds up in the sea, fouling the water, harming reefs, and killing flora and fauna.

Prime Minister Evelyn Wever-Croes is listening. She took office in 2017 with a pledge to expand the hotel industry on the island to increase tax revenues and job opportunities. Now, however, according to the Aruba Papers, she has curtailed most – but not all – new construction.

That’s surprising, say observers, pointing to how Caribbean governments recognize that tourism is essential to their economies, making up almost one-third of the region’s GDP and up to 90 percent of some countries’ economies, according to the International Monetary Fund.

Still, this local anger shouldn’t be a surprise, argued Caribbean analyst Kenneth Mohammed in the Guardian. Local governments in Caribbean nations often give tax breaks and other incentives to hotel developers and operators to entice them to come to their beautiful islands. In return, the hotels ban locals from enjoying their beaches, while offering low-wage service jobs in a new twist on colonialism, critics say.

That’s the case in Barbuda, say locals, who have been fighting the government for years because of its “landgrabs,” to prevent the country from becoming a “billionaires’ club” like Antigua, wrote Marketplace.

Opponents say the development is hurting the fragile ecosystem, and shutting locals out of the benefits. The government denies those charges, saying the island needs jobs and investment, and especially the tax revenue on high-end real estate, to pay for services such as education and healthcare.

“This, in fact, is the tourism of the future for the Caribbean,” said Ronald Sanders, Antigua and Barbuda’s ambassador to the United States. “A Caribbean country can make more money from five luxury properties than from five hotels.”

Meanwhile, this fight over access, land rights, jobs and the environment is playing out across the Caribbean, say analysts.

In Jamaica, Ziggy Marley, the son of Bob Marley, is heading a campaign to petition the government for equal access to beaches for locals. In Grenada, activists are fighting a Six Senses resort at La Sagesse, saying the mangroves and other vegetation need to be protected.

Climate Tracker, meanwhile, wondered whether the hotels were actually helping the residents of the Cayman Islands – a British overseas possession and notorious tax haven – when tourists’ trash is a major problem and locals receive meager wages serving the global elite.

Meanwhile, two years ago, a judge ordered a developer to stop building a new hotel in Saint Barts and refill a massive hole near an environmentally fragile beach at a cost of $57 million.

And in St. Lucia, activists are seeking to stop all commercial activities around the Pitons, two volcanic mountains that are considered national treasures, added Caribbean Life.

Some observers say that at the end of the day, it’s a matter of respect.

“A wall goes up, a private jet lands, and a famous billionaire is there for two to six weeks out of the year,” Raymond Pryce, a former Jamaican parliamentarian who follows the issue, told the Americas Quarterly. “We have these zones of exclusion, and a native population that is underemployed and under-resourced – you see the stark differences between the haves and the have-nots.”

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