By Angelique V. Nixon
Angelique V. Nixon is a Bahamas-born, Trinidad-based writer, artist, and scholar-activist. She is a Lecturer at the Institute for Gender and Development Studies at The University of the West Indies, St. Augustine, Trinidad and Tobago. She is author of Resisting Paradise: Tourism, Diaspora, and Sexuality in Caribbean Culture and an art and poetry chapbook Saltwater Healing – A Myth Memoir and Poems.
We are witness to a widespread global disaster – intense, unstoppable, change that erupts and contains. No one is really prepared for the social and economic impact of COVID-19, especially those of us in the Caribbean. We are the most tourism dependent region in the world with tourism accounting for nearly 50% of the GDP in many countries (as high as 80% in a few). While the industry has recovered from other disasters (from hurricanes to the 2008 global recession), COVID-19’s impact will be catastrophic. The global pandemic brought the travel and tourism industry to a standstill within weeks as the entire world was placed on pause in an attempt to curb the exponential spread of the coronavirus.
What has this meant for the Caribbean? What is the long-lasting impact on our economies and livelihoods in an already vulnerable region? How are women and marginalised communities adversely affected? What about the current disasters and ongoing crises – poverty, gender based violence, and climate crisis – and how will COVID-19 exacerbate these? Reflecting on food insecurity, dependency, and poverty, I ask if as a region we can turn to each other and create different economies through mutual aid, investing in food production, and sharing resources (especially as supply chains are impacted). What might our survival look like if we become less tourism and global north dependent and enact a radical shift towards mutual-regional solidarity and interdependence?
In the Caribbean, as soon as countries reported the first case(s), each enacted various protocols with travel restrictions, social distancing measures, stay at home orders, curfews, and border closings. Trinidad and Tobago responded swiftly once the first case was reported on March 12th by imposing self-quarantine for returning nationals, restricting travel and public gatherings, creating quarantine facilities for COVID-19 positive patients, and closing school/universities. Borders were closed on March 22nd. Stay at home orders followed on March 30th, now extended to May 15th. Many countries followed a similar pattern – with measures implemented for a week, then two, and then extended longer. Some countries waited to close borders in fear of the economic fallout. Nonetheless, as cases increased and fears of community spread rose, stricter guidelines were enacted across the region.
Travel and tourism quite literally transported the novel coronavirus across the world. It is no surprise then that cruise ships moving across borders with hundreds of people would also spread the virus. The first cases in the Caribbean were traced from cruise passengers, including Caribbean nationals. Nearly half of the COVID-19 cases in Trinidad are returning nationals who contracted the virus on a French Caribbean cruise (52 cases so far). By the end of March and early April, several cruise ships were stuck at sea with COVID-19 cases, pressuring governments to let them dock, and threatening to take their business elsewhere after the pandemic (Alleen Brown, The Intercept, 14 March 2020). Several Caribbean countries, however, including The Bahamas, Barbados, Jamaica, Turks and Caicos, and Dominican Republic stood up against this powerful industry and turned them away, forcing cruise lines to suspend operations.
Countries are now forced to make an impossible choice between public health mandates and bolstering their economies. Companies that do business in the region are used to getting their way and controlling how and where they move their ships. Puerto Rico and Cayman allowed them to dock which resulted in the spread of the virus on both islands. Cuba stepped up to provide assistance to hundreds of passengers and crew stuck on a cruise ship as a gesture of humanitarian solidarity.
Cuba has been a beacon of solidarity for the region, offering medical support for over 20 countries, sending doctors and medical supplies across Latin America and the Caribbean (as well as Italy and Angola). Other countries in the region, dependent on tourism, trapped in debt and structural adjustment policies, have not been able to develop such a health care system or social services to fully handle a health pandemic and economic fallout. Fear of a public health collapse has forced countries to shut down even with the inevitable costs to economies. Restrictions and measures to control the spread of COVID-19 mean hardships for many families and persons already living in vulnerability. The standstill of the tourism industry and the restriction of mobility within/between countries has led to the loss of jobs – with workers being laid off as hotels, resorts, restaurants, bars and tourist sites, among other businesses, close indefinitely. The virtual halt of travel and movement has also decreased the demand for oil and gas, resulting in a sharp drop in oil prices. This will have an impact on countries like Trinidad and Tobago that are heavily reliant on the oil and gas industry, and Guyana whose recent discovery of oil has offered the promise of prosperity to their struggling economy.
Economic hardships lead to other kinds of challenges and exacerbate existing inequalities. Globally, the sharp rise in reports of gender based violence in homes began almost immediately after stay at home orders. Women’s organisations as well as UN Women Caribbean warned of this and started sharing resources early on with targeted information to support women and families during this crisis. UN Women published “Gender and COVID-19 in Latin America and the Caribbean” arguing that countries must integrate gender into their preparedness frameworks in order to handle the rise in gender based violence (domestic and intimate partner violence especially) and to immediately address gendered inequalities that will be exacerbated during the crisis such as unpaid care work, informal work, unemployment, access to sexual and reproductive health and access to food. In Trinidad and Tobago, women’s organisations and The University of the West Indies Institute for Gender and Development Studies have called upon the government to address gender based violence as an essential part of the economic recovery plan.
We have an opportunity to radically change our structures and develop economic recovery plans that are grounded in sustainability, gender and class analysis, food sovereignty, local investment and regional mutual aid. We are witnessing how vital public healthcare systems, emergency services and social welfare programmes are during times of crisis. Neoliberal policies have eroded these with public-private austerity models that fail and leave far too many in poverty. The coronavirus crisis has exposed how vulnerable people are globally under privatised healthcare systems and dependence on capitalist markets. It is clear that capitalism will not save us. The market cannot fix this, nor can it save lives. Over reliance on foreign imports, aid, loans, and investment has made our region more vulnerable to external shocks and disasters.
Our frontline workers and first responders are vital – healthcare workers especially and others who ensure our day to day survival. We must also see the necessity of working people and their invisible labour – grocery and pharmacy workers, food producers, farmers, factory workers, market vendors, cleaners, and sanitation workers. Many of these workers are women who then go home to take care of their families. Those are paid the lowest but are expected to work on the frontlines at great risk. COVID-19 gives us an opportunity to change how and who we value.
Let us think about the varying degrees of vulnerability and privilege. For those who can work from home with a salary, this is a privilege. For those who are able to stay at home in safety with enough to get by, this is a privilege. What about people who don’t have a safe home, those who are in unsafe or abusive relationships? I think about the women and children trapped at home with abusers. I think about folks who live week to week, running out of money to feed themselves and families. I think about elders and ageing people living alone having to fend for themselves. I think about people whose work is about physical touch and human contact – from sex workers to massage therapists. I think about performers and artists who rely on gatherings to make money. I think about LGBTQI people who had difficulties getting healthcare, employment or housing before the crisis. I think about people who were already vulnerable and exploited and how much worse it is now – from migrant farm workers to domestic workers and sex workers to people locked in prisons and detention centres.
More cases, deaths, economic disruption, violence in homes, uncertainty and despair made worse by COVID-19, is multiplying around us. Some ask when we will return to normal. I ask why we would want to return to a system that has failed us again and again.
COVID-19 has exposed the depths of inequality and injustice globally. Like other human-made disasters, too many poor people and those on the margins (especially Black, Brown and Indigenous) will suffer the most. How will we survive this? How should we change? It is time for new strategies of resistance grounded in decolonial visions of regional mutual aid and south-south interdependence, such as:
1) Feeding, healing, and supporting ourselves by investing in local and regional healthcare, food production, gender justice, workers’ rights and education;
2) Decreasing vulnerability through regional mutual aid, sharing resources, and rejecting foreign aid and neoliberal agendas;
3) Establishing shared leadership and participatory governance with inclusive decision making with those most marginalised.
Some of these ideas may seem obvious and others may seem impossible. But I share them for us to think outside the box, outside colonialism, beyond survival with hope and dreams for a livable future with dignity and freedom. We know that the post-COVID recovery will be longer and harder for us in this vulnerable region. The time is now for us to think and vision strategically together and focus our recovery through sustainable and decolonial justice.