Vol. 77/No. 42      November 25, 2013

The case takes place under the impact of a deepening economic crisis and growing burdens of debt owed to the capitalist ruling families in the imperialist countries of the U.S. and Europe.

Among those filing the suit are the former British colonies of The Bahamas, Barbados, Grenada, Guyana, Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago; the former French colony of Haiti; and Dutch-ruled Suriname, which is in Latin America.

The case is being pursued by the British law firm Leigh Day, which won $21.5 million in compensation last June for some 5,000 Kenyans tortured by British forces during the 1950s anti-colonial uprising in Kenya.

“The suit is a just cause,” Terry Marryshow, chairman of Maurice Bishop and October Martyrs Foundation, told the Militant in a phone interview from St. George’s, Grenada, Nov. 8. “The impact of the slave trade has been tremendous at the time it took place and still continues. Compensation was never paid to victims, only slave owners.”

Between 1500 and 1900, tens of millions of West Africans were enslaved and shipped to Latin America, the Caribbean and the U.S. to work on plantations and fields producing cotton, tobacco, sugar and other products bound for Europe. The British Parliament abolished the Atlantic slave trade in 1807, but the law was not put into effect until 26 years later, when legislators spent $32 million to compensate slave owners.

In Grenada “unequal trade and unequal balances of trade continue today,” said Marryshow. With a population of some 100,000, the country is saddled with a $2.1 billion debt. “The government has practically declared bankruptcy and is discussing with the International Monetary Fund imposing higher taxes through its ‘structural adjustment fund.’”

“The Caribbean is one of the world’s most heavily indebted regions,” wrote Gail Hurley for the Sheffield Political Economy Research Institute Oct. 28. “Many Caribbean countries spend far more on debt service than on key social expenditures.”

In Jamaica debt payments accounted for nearly 50 percent of government expenditures over the past four years, while health and education amounted to 20 percent, Hurley wrote. In Grenada, debt service this year is about 41 percent of government expenditures, education and health combined just 16 percent.

The circumstances are pushing Caribbean governments into closer congruence with the anti-imperialist positions of revolutionary Cuba and the Venezuelan government, to the ire of Washington.

Since 2005 the Venezuelan government, through its energy cooperation agreement PetroCaribe, has provided countries in the Caribbean, including Cuba, with oil at preferential prices, weakening the economic stranglehold of imperialist-dominated oil conglomerates.

The growing friction between the governments of the U.S. and Europe and those of the Caribbean was demonstrated at the 2012 Cuba-Caricom summit in Trinidad and Tobago. While Cuban President Raúl Castro was welcomed on the island with a 21-gun salute, the Barack Obama administration forced the conference to move from the government-owned but U.S.-managed Hilton to another location because of Cuba’s participation.

Earlier this year, the July 26 revolutionary celebration in Cuba was attended by heads of state and other high-ranking officials from Antigua and Barbuda, Dominica, St. Vincent and the Grenadines and St. Lucia, as well as from five Latin American nations. Government representatives spoke about the impact and example of the Cuban Revolution on the region, including its role in standing up to imperialism and in providing medical aid and other assistance to Caribbean, Latin American and other oppressed nations around the world.  
 
 
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