Barbados Culture Gender Roles and Working Life

Barbados Culture

Barbados was once called the Little England due to its landscape of rolling terrain, as well as its customs of tea drinking and cricket, the Anglican Church, parliamentary democracy and the conservatism of its rural culture. It has a well-developed airport, electrical supply and road system, especially after independence in 1966 when the tourist industry became the most important sector of the economy. Of course, it also inherited a racial caste system from its three hundred years of slavery, and until very recent times, the white minority had almost all the political and economic power. Today, only about 5% of the population is white, 20% of mixed race background and the remaining 75% descended from African slaves. As with most of the Caribbean islands, the indigenous Arawak and Carib populations were devastated by disease in the fifty years after first contact with Europeans in 1492. Although there were American Indian slaves in the islands, including Tituba, who was one of the first of the accused in the famous witchcraft trials in Salem in 1692, this form of slavery was never important for most of the history of the West Indies.

Even in colonial times, Barbados was one of the most densely populated countries in the world, and so it remains today, even with a total population of just 270,000. Every year, 500,000 tourists arrive on the island, and about 10% of the population is directly employed in this industry. Throughout its history, Barbados has been famous for its mild climate and white sandy beaches, which are unique in the West Indies. Although the majority of the population now lives in the capital Bridgetown, in the villages "live many of the maids, security guards, cooks, taxi drivers, and the other minions of the tourist industry" (Gmelch 16). There are also many self-employed vendors, hawkers, beach boys and jet-ski operators who depend on the tourist trade as well. All of the population speaks English, and many blacks still speak Bajan as well, a creole language mixing English and African words, pronunciation and grammar. Most Barbadians regard it as 'broken' English, however, and even a vulgar or lower class dialect, although Bajan is an actual language in its own right.

There were no indigenous Americans living on Barbados when the first white settlers and the African slaves arrived in 1627, although archeological records indicate that they had lived there in earlier times. Spanish settlers first arrived in 1536 and had destroyed most of the native population by 1550, and when the English arrived under the command of Henry Powell the island was "virtually deserted" (Juong and Noelle 149). Arawak Indians kidnapped from the Guiana coast were enslaved there and taught the whites how to grow various crops, but "at no time were American Indians a significant demographic factor in Barbados or capable of sustaining an independent American Indian society there" (Breslaw 7). Early Barbadian planters experimented with cotton, indigo and tobacco, but none of these were profitable, and "a number of rich families who had fled from England due to the Civil War took refuge in Barbados and invested their wealth in the nascent sugar business" (Juong and Morrissette 149). Unlike most on the colonies on the North American mainland, the sympathies of the West Indian planters were not with the Puritans in the English Civil War, but with the Tory side. As in earlier English colonies like Virginia, the majority of laborers were originally white indentured servants until the late-17th Century. Epidemics destroyed tens of millions of American Indians, and they were not considered suitable for fieldwork on the sugar plantations. Arawak Indians were sometimes used as domestic slaves, however, because they "had the reputation of being a peaceful, unaggressive people" (Breslaw 8). Native Americans who had fought against the white settlers in New England and the Carolinas were also transported to the West Indies and sold into slavery there, but Barbados outlawed this traffic in 1676.

Tituba or Tattuba was very likely enslaved as a child and brought to Barbados, where she was then purchased by Samuel Parris, who was to become the minister of Salem Village, Massachusetts. Her people were probably a branch of the Arawak called the Tetebetana, while "uba" was a common suffix for female salve names in Barbados. Arawaks were famous for their abilities in hunting, swimming and fishing, and also "believed in the existence of a large number of spirits of the bush and of the dead" (Breslaw 17). They also had evil spirits and shape shifters called "kenaima" and shamans called "piaiman," and Tituba had learned from these as a young girl. She was owned by a sugar planter named Samuel Thompson who had 67 slaves, and was purchased by Parris in 1679. His father had owned three sugar plantations on Barbados as well as a townhouse in Bridgetown, and he purchased Tituba as a house slave. This is what she also did in his house in Salem Village, where she met with the girls of the town and predicted their futures. At the time of the witchcraft trials in 1692, she would have been 25-30 years old. Initially she was accused of bewitching the 'Afflicted Girls' of the village, and after being beaten and threatened with death by Parris, made an elaborate public confession of witchcraft. She spent two years in prison, after which time Parris sold her to pay the jailer's fees and she disappeared from the historical record.

As early as 1675, there were already slave rebellion and conspiracies in Barbados, and these continued throughout the 19th Century, even after slavery was abolished in 1838 and replaced with a form of serfdom and indentured servitude for black plantation workers. In 1676, the assembly of Barbados banned the importation of Indian slaves for fear that they might make common cause with the Africans, and the government was also very leery of white indentured servants for the same reason. There were only 72 recorded American Indian slaves in Barbados in 1684 versus 46,000 African slaves. At the same time, since most of the land was controlled by white planters, there was little opportunity for poor whites and freed indentured servants compared to the mainland colonies, and the white population of the island began to decrease as slavery became institutionalized. In 1679-84 alone, it fell from 21,725 to 19,568 while the number of African slaves continued to rise until they outnumbered whites by five-to-one (Breslaw 35). Even in the 17th Century, Barbados was "the most densely settled area in the English-speaking world," with a white planter-merchant oligarchy often ruling as absentee landlords over an African majority. These planters generally maintained houses in Bridgetown, where as early as 1690 over 90% of the while household had African domestic slaves (Breslaw 36). At the time of general emancipation in 1838, there were over 90,000 slaves in Barbados, almost all of them native-born creoles. Slavery was harsh in these sugar islands, and the life expectancy of a male slave was only four or five years. According to the Slave Code of Barbados, blacks were considered as "bestial and recalcitrant pagans unworthy of missionary efforts," which accounted for the survival of African customs and religions among the plantation slaves (Juong and Morrissette 150).

Unlike other islands in the West Indies, women were the majority of slave labor in the fields throughout the era of slavery, and their reproduction was also vital to the survival of the system after importation from Africa was curtailed. From the colonial era to the present, the "internal marketing of foodstuffs in most West Indian islands" has been "dominated by women," and female hawkers were always a common sight (Beckles 4). In addition, older women have always had great influence as matriarchs of the African community. Only in Barbados did female slaves outnumber men, and this had already happened as early as 1715. In 1640-1700, over 134,000 African slaves were sold in Barbados while 1.5 million went to the British West Indies as a whole, mainly engaged in sugar production. These colonies were always the most valuable to the European empires, and in Britain sugar planters were a powerful bloc in the House of Commons (Beckles 8). By 1829, there were 81,000 slaves in Barbados, 46% male and 53% female, although white women also outnumbered men by a similar proportion (Beckles 15).

After Britain abolished the slave trade in 1807, pressure mounted in the West Indies for the complete emancipation of the slaves, and there were major rebellions in Barbados in 1816 and Jamaica in 1831. The former began on Easter Sunday in the St. Philip Parish and was led by an African-born slave driver named Bussa or Bussoe. Although the militia and imperial troops defeated the rebels in three days, the island was under martial law for three months and 25% of the sugar crop was destroyed. Over 1,000 slaves were killed in battle or executed after the revolt and large numbers were transported out of the colony (Beckles 2001: 3). Slave owners professed to be genuinely shocked by this rebellion since the thought their property was well-fed, well-housed and cared for, and blacks were allowed to move freely around the island without passes. From their point-of-view, slavery conditions had been greatly ameliorated and humanized in the 18th Century, and the harsher punishments were almost never applied in 1816. By that time, 92% of Barbadian slaves were creoles, and almost all the other leaders of the rebellion were native-born blacks, especially drivers and supervisors on the plantations (Beckles 2001: 6). In all, there were 77,000 slaves in Barbados in 1816, 16,000 whites and 3,000 free coloreds, although the latter mostly sided with the whites during the revolt and even fought with the militia. Whites were prepared to fight to the death as well, recalling the slave revolt in Haiti that had exterminated most of the planters there, and blamed outside abolitionist agitators like William Wilberforce for instigating the slaves (Beckles 2001: 20).

Government, culture and society in Barbados were entirely geared to making the island into a factory that produced sugar, and this continued long after the abolition of slavery. British law, customs and religion were dominant, and all political and economic power was held by whites until independence in 1966. Even after that time, whites continued to control the economy, even though the state and civil service were taken over by blacks (Stoddart 61). Barbados' political parties, education system and predominantly Anglican religion all came from Britain, and even today its units of local government are called parishes. Barbadians (Bajans) are "persistently and passionately devoted to the playing of and talking about cricket," and even Independence Day in 1966 "was celebrated with a special cricket game" (Stoddart 62). Throughout the entire history of Barbados, of course, whites and blacks lived in completely separate cultural, social and educational worlds, both on and off the playing fields. There were always free blacks and mixed-race persons (creoles) who identified heavily with British culture even in the days of slavery. As early as the 1830s, black elementary school teachers "not only taught a classical English curriculum but also strongly upheld its attendant cultural values and behavioral patterns" (Stoddart 63).

At the same time, African folk culture remained a powerful influence among the African slaves and their descendants, including the practice of shamanism, bush medicine, obeah and tuk band music, as well as dances and festivals that originated in Africa. Well into the 20th Century, the Anglican Church and the (white) legal and educational waged a culture war against these practices, and tried to abolish obeah and African folk customs. In 1840, after slavery had been abolished on paper, a new Masters-and-Servants Law still kept most blacks in bondage as "estate-tied wage slaves," which also happened in the American South after Reconstruction. In addition, new state institutions like jails and asylums took over the coercive and disciplinary role of the old plantation system, while churches remained under the control of whites -- with separate seating for blacks. Even cricket was a highly segregated game, with the Barbados Cricket Committee and its successors controlled by white planters, merchants, professionals and school masters. There were separate leagues and teams for blacks, especially for the lower classes, and only after 1966 were blacks allowed to participate in the management of the sport and on its elite committees (Stoddart 67).

In the late-19th Century, there were food riots and rebellions in Barbados in opposition to the white-dominated political and economic system. Looting and destruction of plantations and white-owned business was a common feature of these revolts and disturbances. Although Marcus Garvey was from Jamaica rather than Barbados, his idea that blacks could only achieve justice by going back to Africa was highly popular there, and his Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) had a large following. During the 1930s depression, there were numerous strikes and revolts throughout the Caribbean, including Belize, St. Kitts, Trinidad and Jamaica. In 1938, a general strike in Jamaica left 46 people dead and thousands imprisoned (Browne 149). In Barbados in 1937, the rebellion began with looting and burning of white-owned stores in Bridgetown, many of which overcharged blacks and refused to extend them credit. Crowds threatened to kill all whites and attempted to burn down the elite Bridgetown Club, and the police repeatedly opened fire on them leaving at least eleven dead and dozens wounded. Pitched battles were fought in the streets between rioters and police, since most blacks perceived the latter as racist and "oppressive stooges of the local oligarchy" (Browne 154). Very quickly, the unrest spread to the rural areas where the Masters and Servants Act was still in effect, and plantations were widely hated for their poor pay and seasonal employment. Looting, arson, strikes and open battles with the police took place on a large scale, as they had in 1876, 1895 and 1917, and in this case, too, the police did not hesitate to start shooting at the crowds. Shortly afterwards, a wave of strikes broke out in the Bridgetown factories that brought the economy to a standstill. Barbadian nationalism and lower class opposition therefore has a very long history, and "one discerns a single theme of freedom, an empowering impulse, running through popular conceptions of nationhood," as well as equality, social justice and opposition to imperialism and racism (Howe and Marshall x). These traditions continue today in the globalized and service-based economy that has taken over Barbados, although much of the old social structure remains intact.

Behind the Smile is based on interviews with twenty-one workers in the tourist sector of Barbados, ranging from managers and executives to maids and bartenders. Its purpose was to "learn how they interact with the visitors and what they think of them -- of their affluent lifestyles, their moral character, and the manner in which they pursue leisure" (Gmelch ix). Mass tourism is a relatively recent phenomenon in history, given that in the past only members of the elite traveled for pleasure, while most people only moved when absolutely necessary, such as economic migrants, refugees, slaves and forced laborers. Until fairly recent times, travel was difficult, expensive and often dangerous, even for the few who could afford to do so. Only in the 19th Century did Thomas Cook create the first package tours and traveler's checks, taking advantage of the new railroads and steamships that made travel more confortable and accessible. For an island like Barbados, most of the tourists in the past were from the British middle and upper classes, and "by 1900, tourism was a small but notable feature of the economy" (Gmelch 3). Even in the 18th Century, Barbados had the reputation for a healthy climate, with mild temperatures and sea air that benefitted patients with tuberculosis and other long diseases. Bathing in the sea was also considered healthy, although the beach culture of swimming and sun tanning did not exist until the 20th Century. Upper and middle class whites tended to avoid spending too much time in the sun at all, lest their skin become too dark and they lose the status associated with fair complexions. Only with the advent of jet travel in the 1950s and 1960s did Barbados become a mass tourist destination, with travel brochures that portrayed the "image of the Caribbean as a warm, sensual, escapist place" (Gmelch 6).

In the 1950s and 1960s, the World Bank, UN and local elites all encouraged increased tourism in Barbados for purposes of economic development. Prices for its traditional exports like sugar and bananas were falling, and the government thought that the new tourist sector would create jobs and stimulate the economy. In this sense, they succeeded all too well because "today, more Barbadians work in tourism than in agriculture, and most young people disdain agricultural work altogether" (Gmelch 8). In 1959 there were 1.3 million tourists in the Caribbean, and this increased to ten million by 1980 and seventeen million in 2000. By 1992, tourism had become the most important sector of the Barbadian economy, ands stimulated many other areas ranging from food to arts and crafts to construction. From 1960 to 200, sugar production and the number of sugar plantations fell by half. Even so, the development of tourism infrastructure proved to be far more costly than initially expected in the 1950s, including expenditures on roads, airports, hotels and sewage systems designed "not just to make the tourists' journey possible but to make it convenient and comfortable as well" (Gmelch 10). Barbados and the other West Indian destinations had to raise taxes to pay for all this, as well borrow money from foreign governments, and some of them were unable to repay this and had to accept bailouts from the International Monetary Fund.

Most of the profits from tourism do not stay in the local economy but are repatriated abroad, especially since most of the industry including the airlines and two-thirds of the hotel rooms are foreign-owned. In addition, all-inclusive package holidays, paid in advance, lead to a situation in which "much of the foreign exchange never reaches the Caribbean" (Gmelch 11). Package tourists spend relatively little in the local economy and even the food they consume at the hotels and resorts is mostly imported, along with the high-priced goods that they purchase. Over 70% of the profits from tourism are repatriated abroad, which leads many Barbadians to regard this industry as yet another example of neocolonialism. Most of the remaining 30% goes to "local elites who have invested in hotels, restaurants, and other tourist attractions and facilities" (Gmelch 12). Tourism has caused inflation, and most local people can no longer afford to live in the coastal areas. Most economists who were initially enthusiastic for a transition to tourism and service sector economy have admitted that their early analyses were naive and one-dimensional, ignoring cultural and sociological factors. Even the best jobs in the industry go to foreigners or locals with lighter skins, while most of the jobs are very low-paying. Nevertheless, the per capita income of Barbados stands at $9,210, the highest in the Caribbean, with over 90% of the population having televisions and one-third owning cars (Gmelch 16). Crop Over, which was a holiday created specifically for summer tourists in 1974, has also become a very popular national holiday in recent years.