From plantation to proletariat: Raizals in San Andrés, Providencia and Santa Catalina

In: Race & class: a journal for black and third world liberation, Volume 59, Issue 1, p. 84-92

Abstract

The authors examine the implications of both a recent international ruling at The Hague curtailing fishing rights and the encroaching Colombian-based tourist industry for Raizals – descendants of African slaves brought by the British to the islands of San Andrés, Providencia and Santa Catalina in the Caribbean Sea. There they developed an autonomous way of life, in a subsistence economy based on fishing after the British abandoned the islands. While nominally under the control of the Spanish empire and afterwards the Colombian state, Raizals differ in many ways from the dominant Spanish-speaking, Creole and Catholic mainland population – being English-speaking, Afro and Protestant. Until the mid-twentieth century, they enjoyed substantial autonomy, now undermined by the Colombian nation-building project and a judgment of the international court at The Hague giving nearby Nicaragua rights over the waters of the Colombian islands, consequently precluding Raizals from accessing their traditional fishing resources. As a result, the islanders, with their culture recast as 'heritage', have become proletarians subordinated to tourist industries owned by mainland Colombians.