by Niala Maharaj
Caribbean leaders have long 'bounced their heads' on the problem of inter-island disunity. If only we could get together, they sigh as one grandiose federation plan after the other crashes, then we would achieve a viable regional economy and be able to solve some of our economic and political problems.
The islands seem so far apart, divided by the bickering over which island invented the calypso, which miniscule airline should have supreme conveyance rights, which mini-nation's capitalists should have free access to the others' markets, and, when we get down to brass tacks, whose rum is most macho.
Nowadays they have the additional interference of Uncle Sam's dubious trading deal, the Caribbean Basin Initiative, to further confuse their heads.
After reading recent documents coming out of the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America, however, one begins to suspect that in order to find some direction for their efforts, they might do well to turn, not to the big capitalists of the region, or the nobel-prize winning economists who would lead them down the path of free-trade zones, but to the lady sitting on the corner with her tray of fruit.
The 'hucksters' (small inter-island traders) of the Caribbean, a group of women overlooked by policy-makers over the years, have steadily kept up a chain of food supply which has used common resources to maintain a defense against the danger of the islands drowning in Uncle Ben's. Most times they are taken for granted; indeed they are hardly even acknowledged in official statistics.
Unsophisticated in appearance and manner, they have few claims to conventional education. They deal m the most basic of necessities, the humblest of foodstuffs, the last defence items against hunger. They cater to memories of traditional delicacies: tamarind balls and bene cakes, to the lingering taste for unfashionable fruit: chennet and sapodilla, and to the ingredients for peasant cuisine: dasheen, eddoes, green-figs.
But, with their ground-provisions and governor plums and sapodillas, they have established the most rational form of economic co-operation in the Caribbean since the Caribs and Arawaks. Were it not for them, we would have been absolutely at the mercy of the import-export merchants who would have happily weaned us into a total dependence on Kelloggs and Kraft. It is not unrealistic to argue that some of us would have completely forgotten the taste of balata and sapodilla and eddoes. And so, we would have been held hostage to the suppliers of foreign food. The hucksters have been guardians not only of our small reserves of foreign exchange, but the culture that is our only protection against re-colonialisation.
But, far from being recognised, hucksters have always been regarded with a certain measure of derision as the lowest of the low. Traveling with their unsophisticated bundles from one island to the other; hassling and being hassled by airport officials, customs employees, shipping clerks; speaking in their rural small-island accents, they are treated as nuisances or illegals or as nonexistent.
Yet, their work is very complex, involving negotiations at several different levels. With farmers and truck-owners and shipping and airline officials in their home country and with customs officials, petty bureaucrats and the public in the country where they sell. They must procure travel for themselves and their goods, find places to stay in another island, deal with the restrictions on currency movement, and sometimes organise a whole reverse trade to balance off their activities.
No official assistance or support is given to them. They exist within the cracks of a system which favours foreign businessmen and locals who can claim that they can attract that magical entity, 'foreign exchange'.
Now, however, an international effort is being made to give hucksters some measure of support and recognition. The Women and Development Unit of the United Nations Economic Commission on Latin America has started studying the activities of these women in order to help them continue and expand their activities as the food line of the Caribbean.
According to the study, the traders suffer greatly from the lack of governmental services, lack of price and market information, difficulties in obtaining credit and insurance coverage, lack of access to storage and preservation facilities and a hostile currency control system.
A recent report, prepared by Sonia Cuales and Monique Lagro, explores the benefits which have been gained by traders in Dominica through the formation of an Association and urged that traders in the other islands should be assisted in doing the same. It identifies specific needs that this group has: for management training, technical skills and leadership development.
This group could perhaps benefit from exposure to the experiences of the Self Employed Women's Association and the Working Women's Forum in India. The Cuales/Lagro study is a first step in their being taken seriously as a group which has contributed to Caribbean self-sufficiency. Agencies interested in the development of Caribbean women can carry the work further.