How a Royal Visit Helped Weaken the Crown’s Grip on the Caribbean | The Nation

• “William and Kate’s springtime tour didn’t spark the movement for independence and reparations in the Caribbean, but it did stoke it.” ⤴️
• “they were not consulted before the visit, the requirement that the villagers would have to stay 200 meters away from the royal couple at all times, and an ongoing land dispute with Flora Fauna International, a charity with connections to the royal family. Last year, 12,800 acres in Indian Creek were sold to FFI, but, according to the association of Maya villages in the region, the land—which includes the village school, the community center, and a couple hundred homes—was sold illegally.” ⤴️
• “dozens of people gathered at the soccer field carrying signs that read “Not Your Land / Not Your Decision,”” ⤴️
• “the visit to Indian Creek had been cancelled and the royal couple would visit another village instead.” ⤴️
• “Though intended to celebrate the kingdom’s relationship with its former colonies, their visit would do largely the opposite: It would galvanize organizers in the three countries, drawing international attention to the long-standing movement for reparations while stoking the flame of independence in the region.” ⤴️
• ““The protests against William and Kate [were] an indication that people are fed up, and that the reparations message is getting around,” said Verene Shepherd” ⤴️
• “the growing calls for reparations come after more than a decade of public education programs” ⤴️
• “the demands for reparations for slavery and colonization have become widespread in the Caribbean, seeping into both public and private conversations.” ⤴️
• “As the movement has expanded throughout the region, it has also deepened and evolved. Currently, the CARICOM Reparations Commission is meeting in Guyana, Trinidad, and Jamaica with the descendants of Indians who were brought to the Caribbean by colonial powers to serve as indentured servants. Members of these communities have felt “unincluded in the reparations movement,”” ⤴️
• “the publication by the University College London in 2013 of the compensation paid to former enslavers for the loss of their “property” after slavery was abolished, have placed current reparatory justice demands in a detailed historical context.” ⤴️
• “Formal calls for reparations go back almost to the beginning of the independence era. In the years following their independence from the crown—beginning in 1962 with Jamaica and continuing through 1983 with St. Kitts and Nevis—every former British colony in the Caribbean demanded some sort of reparations package, based on the argument that the British government had exploited and extracted wealth from their countries for centuries. Yet none received any.” ⤴️
• “In 1833, the British government took out a loan of $20 million to settle approximately 40,000 claims from former enslavers. Kris Manjapra, a professor at Tufts University, has found that the UK likely continued to make payments on this loan until 2015. “The implication, number one, is that British citizens for many generations were paying taxes towards paying off this debt,” Manjapra said during a phone interview. “Number two, people of the Caribbean, through the colonial machinery, were also paying for the debt [until their independence].”” ⤴️
• “The manifesto states that the victims of European crimes against humanity and their descendants “have a legal right to reparatory justice, and that those who committed these crimes, and who have been enriched by the proceeds of these crimes, have a reparatory case to answer.”” ⤴️
• “the Ten Point Plan integrates broad calls for the funding of cultural institutions, health care institutions, and science and technology programs—all of which address the colonial legacies of economic underdevelopment—with more particular calls for investment in Indigenous communities and demands for repatriation to Africa by Rastafari organizers. reparations can take the form of financial funding, “but also human resources development…technology transfer, diplomatic services and interventions,” according to Dorbrene O’Marde, the vice chair of the commission.” ⤴️
• “the plan calls for debt cancellation.” ⤴️
• “Jamaica, for instance, which has been caught in a cycle of debt, has sought bailout loans from the IMF nearly every year.” ⤴️
• “Ras Drick I, who attended the protest in Montego Bay and whose uncle was a survivor of the massacre, told me, “What I and I are still fighting for is to free ourselves from all the colonialism and the British monarchy,” using the Rastafari expression “I and I” instead of “we.” “I and I is talking about freeing ourselves: mental repatriation, physical repatriation, and physical reparations.”” ⤴️
• “organizers from Belize, Jamaica, and the Bahamas announced in a joint statement published by the Advocates Network, “We stand united in rejecting the so-called charm offensive of the Caribbean undertaken by William and Catherine, the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge.”” ⤴️
• “the former BBC royal correspondent Peter Hunt said that future trips by the royal family would be “unwise.”” ⤴️
• “International media outlets were quick to return to the Caribbean, asking organizers and political leaders what the death of the monarch meant for the region’s reparations and sovereignty movements. The reactions were mixed; the tone was mostly somber. Flags were lowered to half-mast, condolences were published, and organizers refrained, for the most part, from making political statements.31” ⤴️