By “contemporary Caribbean,” the author, a Mexican academic, means the insular Caribbean since about 1945, though there are occasional chronological references to earlier times and geographical allusions to Central America. For the most part the emphasis is on the post-Castro era; a stated objective of the author is to carry forward the history of the Caribbean written by Eric Williams and Juan Bosch.
Like Bosch, Pierre-Charles sees the Caribbean as an exploited region, conquered and colonized by Europeans, and, in our time, dominated by North American imperialism. The United States may no longer be ending Marines to chastise local politicians, though the 1965 Domin can intervention was a return to that practice. Its military presence in the modern Caribbean, however, symbolizes its intention to maintain its empire and to suppress popular, nationalistic struggles (like the Cuban Revolution) whose goal is the liberation of Caribbean peoples from the imperial grasp of Washington.
The tone of this book is Marxist, which means the reader is subjected to some lengthy analyses of the Caribbean dependent economies. (Even the lacing of baseballs by Haitians is a part of the North American imperial scheme.) Except for the Cuban, which has freed itself from Wall Street’s domination, the Caribbean economies are manipulated by the huge multinationals—their role in the Jamaican bauxite industry, for example, receives extensive treatment—which frankly serve to perpetuate the American empire. Puerto Rico, once touted as a model for the Caribbean future, is essentially an economically depressed colony enslaved to the United States.
Like the Antillean liberators at the turn of the twentieth century who saw in political independence the foundation of a great Antillean civilization, the Marxist historians of the modern Caribbean are optimistic about the region’s future. Cuba can serve as a model. If only the truly nationalistic movements among Caribbean peoples triumph politically and in victory adopt socialist solutions for their economies, the Caribbean will be able at last to throw off the shackles of American imperialism and achieve economic and political independence.
