Island People: The Caribbean and the World, by Joshua Jelly-Schapiro -- A book review

This is a great book on many levels. Although it was published already in 2017, it hardly matters given the historical context and the fact that the Caribbean nations have not changed dramatically since then.
Joshua Jelly-Schapiro knows the Caribbean intimately and is extremely well-read in the region and its culture, from history and literature to music. He covers the places he visits or stays in for longer periods from the time of Columbus’ journeys, the colonial period when the islands were used for sugar plantations relying on slave labor, to contemporary cultural trends. This is how a travelogue should be: personal but anchored in the larger historical-geographic-political context, erudite but entertaining.

Yet, it took me some time to wade through the 430+ pages. Not because I wasn’t interested but because some of the chapters (each dealing with a specific island) were rather heavy going. Some sections on the larger islands — Jamaica and Cuba each get three chapters — are lively, mixing culture and societal commentary with the author’s personal experiences.
In the case of Jamaica, rasta culture and reggae, naturally, play an important part. It’s not only about Bob Marley, but also Toots Hibbert, Peter Tosh and many others get their share. Jelly-Schapiro spends time with Chris Blackwell, the founder of Island Records that brought reggae to a wider audience, now living in the villa where Ian Fleming dreamed up James Bond. Jelly-Schapiro places these cultural and musical factors firmly into the socio-political setting.
Similarly, the highly personal section on Cuba brings together history, politics, economy, music and culture. He explores the notion of cubanidad, which “first crystallized as an important, if still vague, idea when the cause of Cuban independence” was promoted by José Martí in the 1880s and 1890s (p. 120). He equally explores the roots of the specifically Cuban music that we love in the mélange of African and European traditions. He highlights the role of Israel “Cachao” Lopez, the legendary musician and composer broght to broader fame in his later years through Buenavista Social Club. The last of the three chapters concerns Cuba in the twilight of Fidel Catro’s reign.
The chapter on Puerto Rico emphasizes the island’s relationhip with the United States and the diaspora in the Bronx. The chapter also traces the history of Puerto Rican nationalism and its hero, Pedro Albizu Campos.
The three chapters dedicated to Hispaniola are weighed down by history, perhaps inevitably given how important it is in explaining the current state of affairs. The two countries that share the island — Dominican Republic and Haiti — are often contrasted, with the first one coming on top as a developmental success story and the second as a hopeless basket case. Jelly-Schapiro brings much nuance to this interpretation highlighting the violent and dictatorial history of the Dominican Republic, while bringing out the humanity in Haiti. He sheds light on the curious racial relations on the island, stemming from the two sides’ histories as Spanish vs. French colonies, and how these continue to cause tensions between the two.
The four chapters covering eight smaller islands in the Lesser Antilles are shorter, perhaps because there’s not that much to report (and perhaps because the author seems to have spent less time on each of them, which is perfectly understandable). His reporting from these islands tends to poke holes to the image of them as paradise. Yet, Jelly-Schapiro’s understanding still brings forth many distinctive features between, say, Barbados and Barbuda, both with a history as British colonies and sugar plantations.
Grenada has a distinct political history and a charismatic leader, Maurice Bishop, executed by his political rivals in 1983. Ronald Reagan found the island’s socialist experiment so threatening that he sent in the marines to subdue the tiny island nation, on the pretext of the presence of Cuban workers helping to expand the airport.
Montserrat, a British Overseas Territory where Sir George Martin, the legendary producer built a house and studio, rose to international attention in 1995 when the long-dormant Soufrière volcano erupted destroying Plymouth, the capital, and forced two-thirds of the island’s population to flee. Jelly-Schapiro explores the volcanic zones with an American geography professor, Lydia Pulsipher, and her husband. They note how, following the disaster, the British governmental aid agency DFID, relocated people into new houses in a non-affected area: “they’re well bjuilt, but they’ve got nothing to do with how Montserratians live; with the old social structure here, and with homes they built to fit it” (p. 319). Unfortunately, this is a picture that often emerges when well-meaning outsiders try to assist countries to rebuild after a disaster (for example in the aftermath of the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami).
Martinique, which still today is a French territory and the westernmost extension of EU, deserves a lengthy chapter, largely due to the writers and political thinkers it has produced, such as Aimé Césaire and Patrick Chamoiseau. Jelly-Schapiro writes (p. 358):
“Few large countries, let alone little ones, boast the literary riches allowing one to trace the whole modern arc of their culture, and the contours of that culture’s conflicts, through those of its books.”
Accordingly focusing on these writers and their poetry and their legacy at the expense of the author’s own experiences, these 32 pages took me more effort than most other parts of the book.
Throughout, the book discusses numerous authors from the islands, many of whom have achieved fame outside of the Caribbean: C.L.R. James and V.S. Naipaul (Trinidad), George Lamming (Barbados), Jamaica Kincaid (Antigua), Franz Fanon (Martinique), Jean Rhys (Dominica), and the already-mentioned Aimé Césaire and Patric Chamoiseau
Luckily, he saved the best for the last. The 40-page final chapter on Trinidad is superbly crafted. Its culture and social and political issues are presented in a very animated way. Jelly-Schapiro has spent ample time on the island, including as a visiting scholar at the university. The carnival, the calypso and steel bands form a sort of a backbone to the chapter. Jelly-Schapiro tells the dramatic story of Michael Abdul Hakim (a.k.a. Michael X), a Black activist, and the people around him.His best informant is Jay Telfer, an octogenarian figure whom he befriended. Telfer who in the 1960s played a central role in bringing West Indian culture, including the Notting Hill Carnival, to London, is a font of information and a delightful character. Before that, in the 1950s, Jay Telfer studied at NYU and worked at the jazz clubs in Greenwich Village where he met many jazz legends, and where Thelonius Monk told Telfer he was the only man able to dance to Monk’s music. Although involved in politics throughout his career, Jelly-Schapiro says of Telfer: “Personal ethics, like personal style, were for him much more important than politics” (p. 411).
Jelly-Schapiro has written a highly interesting and valuable book, although it is somewhat uneven. He generally writes well alternating between the casual when describing his own personal experiences and the academic. There are places where his style can get a bit out of hand. Take, for example, this sentence about Chamoiseau (p. 334):
“And his ideas’ shadows have been palpably present, too, over polemics surrounding the French Antilles’ great human export of now; those other public artists — soccer players — whose goals in World Cup stadia, firing France to victory in a Coupe de Monde contested in Paris in 1998, prompted scenes of joy on the Champs-Elysées more massive than any since the Liberation, and forced a country still unaccustomed to seeing itself reflected in the brown and black faces of its colonies to ask pointed questions about what, two centuries after Robespierre’s fall, a Frenchman is.”
Apart from these squabbles, it is a book worthy of its author, a fellow geographer, with a PhD from UC Berkeley. Finally, Jelly-Schapiro confesses to having adopted C.L.R. James as “a kind of intellectual hero and style icon alike” (p. 401):
“Here was a scholar activist who wrote with equal verve and brilliance about the Haitian Revolution and the game of cricket, Hegelian philosophy and Hollywood movies, Herman Melville and calypso music — and whose synthetic aptitude for doing so, moreover, found him placing all those subjects within the larger telos not only of modern capitalism but also of humanity’s struggle for democracy reaching back to the Greeks.”
If this cultural-historical-political-social mixture was what Joshua Jelly-Schapiro aimed for in this book, I think he pretty much succeeded.

Cozumel: A versatile small island in the Caribbean

 We’re in the habit of spending the Christmas break in Mexico and sometimes we go there again for the school February vacations. As it happens, we’ve recently returned from Cozumel, which is my personal favorite. We’ve been many times to Mexico over many years. Both my wife Yoko and I have had work-related trips to Ciudad de México and elsewhere in the country (Guanajuato, Vera Cruz, Cancun…) and together we’ve vacationed on the Riviera Maya and the historic city of Merida. We’ve also gone elsewhere in the region on vacation, the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, Panama. But Cozumel is my favorite. ‘Cozumel’ is a version of the original Mayan name of Cuzaam Luumil (meaning Land of Swallows), which the Spaniards simplified to suit their own language upon arriving here first in the 16^th century.


What is it that I like about the small island off the eastern shore of the Yucatan peninsula? There are many things to like but in sum it is that, for such a small place, Cozumel is surprisingly versatile. The island measures only 48 km from north to south and just 16 km across. Formed of limestone, it is almost flat – its highest point is just 14 m above sea level – and large parts of it are covered in impenetrable mangroves; so small and low-lying it is that this coastal vegetation that thrives in salty and brackish water reaches all the way into the interior. In fact, the northern half of the island is almost entirely undeveloped and covered by a mangrove jungle. The mangroves are host to a number of endemic species of birds and small mammals. The black spiny-tailed iguana is also native to the island and they are always fun to see. Unfortunately, even in this relatively undisturbed environment, many of the native species are endangered.

The versatility stems from the combination of natural and human factors. The beaches, especially on the eastern shore facing the open Caribbean, are fabulous with white sand reaching far out in the shallow coastal waters. This makes the beaches perfect for family fun and safe for children to frolic even when the ocean itself is rough (during our latest stay, the waves on the open water were so forceful that the beaches sported red flags about half of the days warning people not to get into the sea; half of the days the flags were yellow. Despite this, we could swim and play safely in the semi-enclosed lagoon of our preferred beach, Chen Rio. This is where our daughter Nowa honed her swimming skills.

Playa Chen Rio also has the simple but wonderful Pescador restaurant that serves fresh fish from the sea, simply grilled with butter or garlic or served with delicious sauces made with tomatoes, olives and other vegetables.

Cozumel is known as a paradise for divers and snorkelers due to its rich and hitherto rather unspoiled coral reefs, in particular on the western side of the island in the Cozumel Channel. The coast has many diving schools and one can frequently see the boats carrying tourists in diving gear to the reefs. Again, the tourism industry has not been easy on the sensitive corals and the previously abundant and unique black corals have declined almost to extinction since the 1960s.

One distinct aspect of tourism is based on cruise ships. Cozumel is a major port for Caribbean cruises. These massive floating hotels arrive in the early morning hours, docking on the western side of the island and releasing thousands of tourist from the USA, Canada, Europe, Russia, China and elsewhere on shore. The areas close to the piers are filled with shops and bars catering to the tourists. About 8 cruise ships dock at Cozumel daily – from our balcony one morning, I could count 7 of these behemoths –carrying over 3 million cruisers annually, most spending just one day on the island. Needless to say, such an influx of tourists brings huge amounts of foreign currency and are the most important source of income to locals. But cruise ships also pollute through sewage and exhaust fumes. Even if waste and bilge water discharges into ports are controlled, the air pollution from the ships is considerable. It also contributes to global warming. If not properly regulated, cruise ships can bring about their own undoing, as tourism depends on clean and pristine environment. Luckily, awareness of such environmental issues has increased in recent years.

During the hours when the cruisers hit the shores, it is better to stay sequestered in one’s own quarters or to drive across the island to the east coast beaches. But in the evening the ships leave, one by one, blowing their horns and floating into the darkening night. Some leave right at sunset, others a couple

of hours later. Ships at sea at night can be a romantic sight.

Once the cruisers have re-boarded their vessels we venture out and usually head towards the town – an important dimension of the versatility of Cozumel. Our base is a modest but comfortable hotel on the western shore a few kilometers south of the town, San Miguel de Cozumel. It’s a short drive or a lengthy but leisurely walk on the beachfront road (and unlike much of Mexico, Cozumel is generally very safe even after dark). About 77,000 of the island’s 100,000 permanent residents live in San Miguel. It has a small but beautiful historical center and numerous shops, cafes, restaurants and bars. The food is generally good real Mexican food, which has only vague resemblance to what passes for Mexican fare north of the border (as one sign in town said: Relax, you’re on the fun side of Trump’s wall!). You can find exquisite local dishes in many cozy restaurants, which we like to explore. There are few more relaxing affairs than to sit on a comfortable terrace watching the sun go down over the sea.

As implied earlier, Cozumel has its roots in the Mayan civilization and many of the local dishes are still prepared in that tradition. The Mayan empire had its base in present day Guatemala but it expanded to the Yucatan in the 3^rd century, reaching its peak from the 7^th to the 9^th centuries. For the Maya, Cuzaam Luumil was a sacred place where pilgrims worshipped the fertility goddess Ixchel.
The first Spaniard to land in Cozumel in 1518 was Juan de Grijalva. He arrived from Cuba and was a peaceful man. Settling in Cozumel, he married and founded a family with a Mayan princess. The later arrivals were not equally benign. Soon after de Grijalva came the notorious conquistador Hernán Cortés. True to his inclinations, he proceeded to destroy much of the Mayan culture, including their temples. By the time he left in 1530 the original society was in ruins. Apart from intentional destruction, devastating smallpox was introduced through Cortés’ crew.

In the following couple of hundred years, Cozumel became a base for pirates, such as Henry Morgan and Jean Laffite. In 1847, the War of the Castes broke out between the creoles and the native Maya in mainland Yucatan. A year later, displaced people settled onto Cozumel and created their livelihoods in farming and fishing. This continued pretty much unchanged until the 1960s when the development of tourism began and changed everything.

Despite this history, a couple of Mayan sites remain in Cozumel. These are very modest compared with the ones in Tulum, Chichen Itza and elsewhere in Yucatan. The San Gervasio ruins of a temple dedicated to Ixchel, albeit small, are archeologically valuable in their own right.

One of the attractions for Nowa is the amusement park settled in the Parque Quintana Roo in San Miguel. It is kind of an old fashioned affair where one can shoot bottles for small prizes, ride carousels and eat street food. Nowa had been dreaming of returning here for the year since she experienced it last. So we spent two evenings in the park. She even dragged me to a wildly spinning clunky machine that used centrifugal forces to throw us around at ever increasing speeds. I thought it would never end – and in some ways it didn’t, for me, as I would still feel dizzy the following morning. Against all odds, she again managed to drag me to the same machine on the second evening, as she was too small to ride it alone. Afterwards I had to waddle to rest at a bench in front of the bandstand while Yoko took Nowa to further hurtling machines.

The band that played to a couple of hundred attentive people was the Banda de Música de X Región MIlitar, a large orchestra with brass, woodwinds and drums. As a former military musician, I was quite curious about the band. I have to confess that it was rather infinitely better than our orchestra in Finland. Also their repertoire, consisting mostly of Mexican and Latin popular music, was lively and the drummers were up to the task. They also had a uniformed female soldier who served as a powerful singer. My dizziness started to fade. There was also some high-level military leader, as well as the governor of Cozumel in the audience, who got plenty of attention from photographers and the general audience.

This was our last evening in Cozumel this time. We returned to our digs early enough for me to still have a good while sitting on the balcony watching the dark sea with the lights of Playa del Carmen on the mainland less than 20 km away. Come to think of it, just sitting on the balcony is probably my favorite part of the trips to Cozumel.