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Prior to the opening of the present utilities operation, at least six different generating plants, privately owned and basically for the benefit of the households possessing them, provided electrification in Utila. One of the old heads decided that this was wasteful, an inefficient duplication of efforts. Likewise, not everyone who wanted electricity could be serviced by the privately owned plants, and, finally, that a municipality-wide plant could actually be run at a profit. He was about to take on this venture himself--after much deliberation--but the group who ultimately founded the present utilities plant short-circuited his plans; they had gone to government figures in Tegucigalpa, offered the municipal government a fixed fee for the privilege of the utility plant operation, and so on. The lack of a secondary school in the island, of a medical or dental clinic, of an airfield suitable for larger craft than DC-3s, and much more, about which islanders frequently talk and complain, is further evidence that Utilians are not a risk-taking, cooperative population. (Rose [1904:64,] provides an historical footnote here in his discussion of the Utila Cays of his time. The lack of a bridge between the two inhabited cays was apparently recognized as inconvenient by all the people involved, but they did nothing about it. Rose points out that all it would have taken was all the men working together for a month to build a stone bridge. The lack of cooperation is the important point.) The military establishment impinges on Utilian life in two different ways, both of which, as I had noted at the beginning of this section, are stressful to islanders. The first of these two ways is through the Seguridad. Three to five soldiers of the Honduran army are regularly stationed in Utila, one of whom acts as harbor master (collecting fees and inspecting ships' papers) while the others operate as a police force. Technically, the soldiers are obliged to respond to requests for assistance from the Chief of Police, but they are also a semi-autonomous unit with their own commander. This commandant is empowered by the central government to initiate policing actions on his own, and also to levy fines (usually twice as high as Miss Hester imposes). The semi-independence of Seguridad soldiers--all of them Spaniards--plus an undercurrent of dislike for Utilians, plus the wealth of islanders countered by the graft of bureaucrats, leads to conflict between islanders and soldiery. Commandants are legendary for their "shake down" (my term) activities in Utila, and a newly appointed commandant (April 1973) was reported to be imposing fines as high as $35. Islanders were quickly infuriated by this most recent exercise in extortion, and appealed to the governor of the Bay Islands who immediately punished the commandant and made it clear no further "mordida" (bite) was to be put on local people. The other manifestation of the military establishment is only a variation of what has just been described. Periodically, and without warning, a contingent of soldiers appears in Utila and forcibly recruits any male who looks old enough into military service. Reminiscent of British naval press gangs, the Honduran recruiting units are supposed to obtain a quota of men from each place they visit, though they are not supposed to take anyone under age eighteen. Ignoring birth certificates or parents' protests that sons are too young, recruiting units force recruits to go with them and will not release the underaged males until as much as $500 has been handed over by a boy's family. In this situation, and in the shakedown operations of a commandant, it is the remittance economy that puts islanders in a position to be victimized and directly accounts for the quality of political involvement that Utila has with outside elements. The only way to avoid extortion on one hand is to hide in the swamps when a recruiting unit makes one of its surprise visits, or go into the merchant marine and physically absent oneself from the army threat. Kirk Rivers, shop owner and retired merchant mariner, took his son to New York a few months before the boy's eighteenth birthday (Mrs. Rivers later explained to me) so that the boy's entrance into the merchant marine would be smoothed and the possibilities of being caught by recruiters eliminated. Kirk waited with his son until the boy could ship out and then himself went back on the boats. In the case of an avaricious commandant the only defense is swift action from a powerful outside source who is physically close enough at hand to be of aid to islanders. Their wealth makes Utilians a target for exploitation, and this is so for the other Bay Islanders as well. Analysis A review of the sections on local level politics and larger political involvements shows a number of traits common in Utila that have a great deal of significance for the remittance economy. Reiterated in their simplest form these traits are: (1) Political power and authority are broadly vested with the old heads of Utila (2) With diffuse power and authority in the community there are few individuals as such who are willing to take the responsibility of decision-making (a) When decisions are forced through the immediacy of a situation or cannot be defaulted, action is precipitous and often ill-considered (b) Decisions can bring loss of face where local conditions or local individuals are not involved (c) If there is an option not to make a decision, Utilians take a "wait and see" attitude (3) Individuals from outside, or impingements from non-island sources are suspect (a) Non-Utilians are welcome to shoulder civic responsibilities that involve financial or other risk (b) Outsiders, or outside influences, are instrumental in any major changes that occur in Utila. The foregoing traits, empirically derived, are internally consistent with one another, and they also point toward a sociocultural consistency that pervades economic, social, and political organization in the island. The source of the consistency throughout Utilian culture is, to reiterate findings in Chapters IV and V, the individualism of island people that is closely related to an image of limited good that developed during Utila's economic depression. Individualism in the political organization of the island has led to an atomistic kind of situation where few will lead and none will follow. Yet, Utila is not a crime-plagued community on the verge of self-destruction. The lack of overt cooperation obscures the fact that since goals are shared among the population there may be, at any one time, numbers of people working toward the same end (as in the case of the electrification system). Efficiency of effort, or duplication of effort, is not at issue here; rather, the fact of commonness of purpose preserves the island system without strong or elaborate political organization. That commonness of purpose--achieving the good life--is well served by an atomistic system that allows many people to be absent from the system at a given time, and yet have the system continue to function in only slightly altered ways.. Orthodox anarchy, where consensus without heavy-handed political control characterizes the system, typifies Utilian political organization. The mutual support between the remittance-based economy and the polity is unquestionable, and perhaps the single most concrete feature of politics in Utila is its reinforcement of the "rest and recreation mentality"; it is this that is critical in attracting sojourners back to their island home. In Chapter VII following, the results of this study will be further discussed and summarized. CHAPTER VII SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS Having touched now on the various aspects of Utila society and culture, providing both descriptive material and analysis, it is necessary to interpret the findings of this study in terms of the aims set forth in Chapter I. One goal of this study was to provide ethnographic material on small island communities of English-speaking peoples in the Caribbean. Chapters II through VI accomplish this end as they stand. More specific goals were to look at Utilian materials for illumination of several areas in Caribbean economic studies that Brown and Brewster (1974) consider to have been neglected. Secondly, following Manners (1965:185), it was my intent to demonstrate that the dependency relationship between Utila and the United States is a function of Utila's remittance economy. Thirdly, in connection with remittances and necessary male absenteeism, I wished to examine Utilian institutions in order to identify any preadaptive characteristics in the system, as well as to discover the dynamics of continuing accommodation to this type of economy. Finally, as an outgrowth of point three, I was particularly concerned with understanding the "rest and recreation mentality" in Utila vis à vis Utilian desires for progress and the "good life." Each of the specific goals will be treated in turn throughout the following pages, but the emphasis is on the integrated nature of the findings given the integrated sociocultural system upon which they are based.
Initially, I noted the general importance to this study of four hypothesis-generating areas discussed by Brown and Brewster (1974:52-53) in their review of economic studies that have been done in the Caribbean. Paraphrasing the original quotations, these hypotheses are that external factors control the local level of economic activity; diverging production-consumption patterns provide a continuing basis for economic dependency, especially through technological factors; the level of saving is determined by things other than the size of disposable incomes; domestic prices are determined from outside the system, primarily due to import prices and the income-domestic supply relationship. Clearly, the least controversial finding of this study is that Utila's economy is an external
one. There is virtually no economic activity in Utila that does not derive ultimately from the merchant marines and remittances sent home by those in its service. To say that Utila is an economic dependent of the United States, even more than Puerto Rico or the U.S. Virgin Islands, is entirely appropriate. United States (and to a lesser extent Scandinavian) shipping provides the billets, payroll deductions, pensions, insurances, and all other things needed to give a continual flow of income, hence economic security, to Utilians. As long as there are Utilian males to sell their labor power (and as long as they continue to qualify to sell that labor power in terms of literacy and other school-related skills), or individuals willing to violate the terms of visitors' visas, the remittance system should be able to continue indefinitely. That continuance, however, would still leave Utila in a dependent position. On one hand there is the obvious dependency created through job availability itself (and being able to obtain visas to pursue those jobs), but there is another dimension to dependency in Utila which speaks to the second hypothesis. Utilians are so firmly committed to consumer buying that they are captivated in a never ending cycle of working away from the island, then returning to consume their income, then returning again to work. Utilians, for more than a generation, have made little capital investment in their island, and even the propensity to buy land is a consumer practice since land is a commodity, not a mechanism for generating more (and regular) income. Thus, there is little or no alternative to working in the merchant marine if the standard of living is to be maintained. Consumerism among islanders is an expanding phenomenon; i.e. islander wants and needs continually grow, and the potential of consumerism is infinite. In contrast, individual or household income is finite, depending altogether on the number of people who are available to go off and work, how much they can earn (and how much they can therefore remit) and their regularity of employment. In balance, infinite wants but finite resources, given the method of income production, keeps Utilians in a dependent position. Robert Manners' point about dependency in the Caribbean being tied, in many cases, to remittances (1965:185) is appropriate here. Manners says that if the flow of remittance income were to be cut off "some [islanders] would move from a position of relative adequacy to marginality; others would plunge from marginality to inadequacy, extreme poverty and crisis." What would be Utila's situation if the island were suddenly forced to be economically independent? What could be expected if islanders were to voluntarily seek economic independence? Whether forced or not, island economic independence would require one of two logical alterations in the present system. One alteration would be to develop an alternate source of income for the island by some kind of internal development. Without getting into economic development theory, such as the role that capital investment might play, and so on, it is necessary to look at empirical data and conclude simply: Utila cannot internally develop. Neither industry, agriculture, nor tourism are viable in Utila. True though it is that islanders currently garner a considerable amount of wealth through their wage labor, the island itself is circumscribed from every dimension conceivable. Logistically, it is difficult of access by would-be tourists, and poses a problem to islanders themselves in making physical connection with the outside world. Its territory is small and the land a coral-volcanic jumble. Waters surrounding the island would not support commercial fishing ventures. No other brighter possibilities appear to exist. The other alternative would be for islanders to break their consumer addiction, settling for a life style that is considerably more modest than at present and return to subsistence agriculture and limited fishing. Two closely related realities preclude this, however, the first of which is the experience--still vivid in most adult islander memories--of the years of economic depression and want. Poverty is too real to the majority of Utilians for them to tolerate very much scaling down of the good life that they have now been able to reach: an image of limited good still prevails. Secondly, islanders have had sufficient exposure to the United States model of life than any gross perversion of that model--such as would be necessary by a return to agriculture--would be likely to cause a terminal migration. In other words, Utilian perception added to the realities of island existence spell continued dependence or no island population at all. From the standpoint of islander goals in life, remittance economics make sense, and the question of economic development in the island is only academic. In any case it seems dubious at best that the island could support its present population by such means.
Faster, bigger, more sophisticated air and watercraft also constitute dependency-generating technology in Utila's economy. The air and water links to the mainland, which are never sufficiently strong for islanders needs and wants, provide the means for men to get to the outside world and take ship. These aforementioned links are what keep Utilian households supplied with staple and luxury items alike, and provide the means for obtaining medical services and whatever ancillary recreation the necessary trip to the mainland might afford. If these technological items were to disappear, islanders would be faced with a crisis situation. Finally, it is the contact with the United States by air that allows remitting to take place at all. Were it not for the international airmail service the planning that surrounds a man's shipping out would have to be altered radically; rather than monthly allotments, people would have to depend on lump-sum savings entirely, interim credit buying, and so on. It was noted above that even an overdue money order was enough to throw a household into frenzy as it attempted to readjust its budget. The ultimate dependency-rendering technology in Utila is, of course, the merchant marine itself. The merchant marine, that allows the comforts of the good life, demands that men ship out regularly and sell their labor for wages. Previously, the means of production centered on land and plantation agriculture. Subsequently, going into the merchant marine and selling one's labor has become the technique for obtaining a living, and the tie that this represents for Utilians has already been underscored. The hypothesis dealing with savings as a function of things other than size of disposable income is certainly borne out in Utila. A comparison of various figures in Chapter IV shows that an inconsequential amount of the total earnings per year (let alone since remitting was started) is put into savings. One must conclude that past experience (e.g., during the Coconut Oil Years) has not resulted in saving (or hoarding) in order to protect oneself against chance economic crisis in the future. Apparently Utilians are primarily present-oriented, except for concern with leaves and retirement, and rarely worry about future financial security. Likewise, they place a great deal of faith in future generations of friends and family to keep remittances coming in for their support and in the future of maritime shipping. The fourth hypothesis, that domestic prices are determined from outside the system, is also supported by Utilian evidence. Virtually everything necessary to life--and the good life as well--must come from some other locales since the island no longer even produces its own agricultural staples. The taste cultivated by Utilians in U.S. and other imported products (which has always been the case as attested in Chapter IV) means that islanders experience a double control on their prices; first is the control exercised by mainland suppliers, who can set import duties and retail costs, and second is the price setting that takes place in the United States itself. Utilians have little or no capacity to affect price levels either by boycott, seeking better prices in a competitive market place, or other means. The only way that Utilians have any control on prices is by opting not to buy certain things. As is evident throughout this study, many of the strictures of Utilian society are genuinely self-imposed through their conception of the good life. The trade-off is, however, that wanting to afford the prices of things, as a goal in itself aside from ownership of things, is a motivation for participating in the remittance economy. If prices were not imposed from the outside and as high as they are perhaps the remittance system would not work as well; lessened goals might be set since the symbols of the good life could be readily obtained (perhaps too involving less frequent shipping out by the men). The Interface Between Economy, Society, and Polity In the closing section of Chapter VI a form of "image of limited good" was postulated as one of the single most significant features in Utilian culture. This modification of Foster's model, the Image of Limited Good, was deemed significant because through its use one can trace preadaptations in Utila that facilitated both the inception of the remittance economy circa World War II, and its perpetuation since that time. An integral part of the postulated image is individualism within the Utilian population, which is both cause and effect of the way in which islanders behave by means of a commercial orientation. A bridge between generalized individualism and its more specific expressions in consumerism and atomism is that commercial orientation apparently brought by island settlers when they first arrived. Munch (1975), writing about the population of Tristan de Cunha, also emphasizes the importance of commercialism to social atomism. For historical reasons unimportant to analysis of Utila, Tristans developed a sociocultural system characterized by selective reciprocal relationships in joint ownerships (e.g., of boats) and cooperative or mutual aid ventures. Overall, however, the island manifests what Munch calls "atomistic integrity" (1975:5), i.e., a lack of society-wide cooperation. Selective reciprocity in Utila is difficult to discover, but commercialism has definitely been evident throughout island history. This orientation (i.e., commercialism) most certainly expresses the Utilian practices of individual economic effort (even in depression times) and sociopolitical non-cooperation. Thus, individualism as a cause results in Utilians assessing economic, social, and political phenomena in terms of personal or familial advancement, i.e., how it might help or hinder attainment of the good life. As effect, individualism results in little or no community-mindedness, lack of cooperation among themselves, and political organization that is virtually atomistic. Applying the model and its central feature of individualism to various components of Utila's past and present, it can be seen that land, originally a factor of production but more recently another consumer commodity, has been viewed as a limited and limiting phenomenon in Utila. As a factor of production, choice properties were finite in number, and this had direct bearing on how well or ill one fared in agriculture and shipping. As a commodity closely tied to the stratification system, it is a symbol demonstrating the degree to which one has attained the good life in Utila. The remittance system, which is a mere variant of individual agricultural production (since it is individual labor that is sold in the merchant marine) is basic to this new value in land. Individually earned money can be turned into individually owned land in a present-day attempt to buy prestige and security with this commodity. Since money earned in the merchant marine enables anyone with sufficient funds to buy a prime parcel of land, this is tantamount to saying that anyone can buy his or her way into the controlling sector of Utilian society, i.e., the old heads. In fact, however, this is not possible; the system of strata, once partially open, has been strictly closed since the depression years. The stratification system has been open for the bulk of Utila's history, a fact that most adult Utilians can recall; this encourages disadvantaged individuals to strive--via remittances, land purchases, and the like--to be mobile within the system. For those advantaged Utilians, who effectively control the island system, stratification is an inducement--also via remittances and the position they or their families previously purchased--to maintain their place as decision-makers. In either case, the remittance economy that Utila now has is an intimate part of individual attempts to maneuver politically and socially. Download 0.49 Mb. Share with your friends:
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