Dominica
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Photo by Sebastian Johns
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When Hollywood wanted to film the Pirates of the Caribbean they yachted and limoed Johnny Depp to the ‘unspoiled’ Eastern Caribbean island of Dominica to do his thing. Reportedly there was no place fancy enough on the island for Depp and his fellow stars to hang their hats so they were forced to wine and dine offshore. The cast and crew celebrated their hardship experience in a post-production ‘Dominica Survivor Party’. Herein hangs Dominica’s tale – poor people living often hard lives in a place rich in beauty and vibrant popular culture.
Dominica is a small island both in population (72,380) and size (754 square kilometres). Yet the island feels a lot bigger than this, with dozens of mountain peaks, waterfalls and some say a river for every day of the year. This is what the tourist promoters like to call the Caribbean’s ‘Nature Island’.
Roseau, the capital, is a tumbledown kind of town known to raise the eyebrows of the cruise-ship tourists who pour out of their floating apartment buildings and flood the waterfront – ‘This place is pretty poor, Marge.’ Roseau’s ramshackle tin buildings and dirt streets reveal the status of Dominicans in the way the world measures wealth (the second lowest income per capita in the Caribbean after Haiti).
But that is not the whole story – Dominica is rich in many ways as well. In beauty, natural resources and food it is unequalled anywhere in these parts. For a small Caribbean island, Dominica is amazingly self-sufficient in feeding itself, even exporting food to neighbouring islands. So while people tend to be cash-poor you won’t find starvation or even malnutrition on the island. Back in the days when slavery was the scourge of the Caribbean, it never really worked that well in Dominica. It was just too easy to run away and live off the mangos and dashin that grow in profusion in the volcanic jungle that coats the place. This is perhaps why Dominica is the only place left in the world with a population of Caribs – the indigenous people that once inhabited this region, 2,000 of whom still live on the eastern coast.
Dominica nestles among the Windward Islands between two of the last vestiges of French colonialism, Guadeloupe and Martinique. Unlike its prosperous neighbours, Dominicans do not have access to the European market or to French social security. The island, which celebrates its 30th year of independence in November 2008, has had to make it pretty much on its own. It has done pretty well, all things considered – swinging back and forth from Right to Left. But there has sure been some excitement – a pseudo-Rastafarian rebellion that terrorized the island back in the 1970s, for example; and an abortive invasion by US-based white supremacists back in 1981 who planned to turn the island into their own little gambling and tax haven (it’s unclear what they planned to do with the Dominicans). High and low points of recent political history range from Prime Minister Eugenia Charles (the Caribbean’s first female leader) making common cause with Ronald Reagan to intervene in Grenada, through Labour’s Rosie Douglas, who cosied up to Cuba, to the current leader Roosevelt Skerritt, who is steering the island towards the Bolivarian Revolution of Hugo Chávez.
By and large, Dominicans bear the shifts in the political wind with sceptical good humour. The undermining of the critical banana crop when the big US brands took EU buyers to the WTO over ‘subsidized’ prices for the delicious little mountain variety on which Dominican farmers have come to depend is another matter. This and every imaginable political issue gets thoroughly aired by the Calypsonians who take to the streets and airwaves every February come Carnival time. Dominicans, like most of the others in the Caribbean, combine a fierce sense of democratic autonomy with a wry eye on the outside world: ‘What will they be up to next and how will it land on Dominica’s shores?’
Sebastian Johns
At a glance
- Leader
- Prime Minister Roosevelt Skerritt
- Economy
- GNI per capita $3,960 (Trinidad & Tobago $13,340, UK $40,180)
- Monetary unit
- East Caribbean dollar
- Main exports
- Bananas (40%), soap, bay oil, vegetables, citrus fruit. Services and agriculture are the mainstays of the economy, employing 50% and 40% of the workforce respectively. But bananas have recently been hit by reduced preferential status within the European Union and there are attempts to diversify into mangos and aloe vera as well as into light manufacturing. Ecotourism is another option.
- People
- 72,380. Annual population growth rate -0.1%. People per square kilometre 96 (UK 246).
- Health
- Infant mortality 13 per 1,000 live births (Trinidad & Tobago 33, UK 5). 86% of urban people have access to adequate sanitation and 75% of rural people.
- Environment
- Dominica has rich biodiversity and protected national parks. But there is external pressure from cruise-ship tourism, some deforestation, reef damage and depletion of fish stocks.
- Culture
- Descendants of Africans 89%, descendants of Africans and Europeans 7.2%, Caribs 2.4%, Europeans 0.4%, others 0.7%.
- Religion
- Roman Catholic 77%, Protestant 17%.
- Language
- English (official). Creole, which has French and African elements, is widely spoken.
Human Development Index: [Not rated in 1990] 2005 0.798 (Trinidad & Tobago 0.814, UK 0.946). - Sources
- World Guide, UNICEF, Human Development Report, http://worldinformation.com
- Last profiled
- July 1997
NI assessment
- Income distribution
- Skewed income distribution but little desperate poverty.
(1997 ★★★)
- Life expectancy
- 75 years (Trinidad & Tobago 69, UK 79) – an exceptionally large number of centenarians.
(1997 ★★★★★)
- Literacy
- 94%. Primary schooling is compulsory.
(1997 ★★★★)
- Position of women
- Equality before the law but domestic violence a problem. Elected the first female prime minister in the region.
(1997 ★★★★) - Freedom
- Guarantees of political and trade union freedom, multiparty elections, and an often boisterous exchange of opinion in the public realm.
(1997 ★★★) - Sexual minorities
- No overt anti-gay measures but homophobia inspired by Christian fundamentalist churches.
- NI Assessment (Politics)
- Dominica, like most of the Caribbean, has a lively political democracy. While corruption remains a problem, Dominicans are not afraid to criticize those in power. The current Labour Party government under Prime Minister Roosevelt Skerritt has forged close links with the governments of Cuba and Venezuela, making Dominica the first Caribbean country to join the Bolivarian alternative to the US-led Free Trade Zone of the Americas.
(1997 ★★★)
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