The Caribbean: Aesthetics, Ecology, Politics
University of Warwick
23rd-25th September, 2011
Biography of the author
Dr Camille LE MASNE
Born on 12/31/1980 in Saint Michel (France)
Doctor of Philosophy (Ph. D.) in Geography
Research Assistant in SEDET – University Paris 7
12 rue du Coq -13001
Marseille - FRANCE
06 99 93 86 52
camasne@hotmail.fr
The author obtained his Ph. D. in Geography at the University Paris Diderot – Paris 7 in 2010.
Entitled “Spatial Dynamics on the Caribbean Coast of Central America: Powers and
Territories in a Marginal Area”, the thesis analyses the spatial dynamics which have taken
place on the Caribbean coast of Central America since the Spanish conquest to the present.
Teacher in the INALCO (Institut National des Langues et Civilisations Orientales – Paris)
and scholar linked with the laboratory SEDET (University Paris Diderot – Paris 7) , the author
also made publications and conferences on several thematics, such as Amerindian world,
tourism and development.
Abstract for presentation
This proposition deals with the invention of the Caribbean coast of Central America since the
conquest by the Spanish. Indeed, this area does not seem to exist before its construction by
several concurrent phenomenons which appeared at this period and still structure it today. In
reference to ancient Greek science, the tropical wet climate of this part of the isthmus is
considered by Spanish as unhealthy and as a peripherical area for colonisation. Conquistadors
were more interested in the Pacific and Central highlands, discovered on the 1520th. These
environments were seen as healthy, because their landscapes are not far away from
Mediterranean ones, whereas the specific climate of the Caribbean tropical lands, known as
tierras calientes, still has bad reputation today. This neglect is not only based on physical but
also on cultural considerations, and the Caribbean coast appeared since the Conquest like an
unproductive land caracterized by indigenous shifting agriculture. Furthermore, during all the
colonial period, the Spanish administration did not manage to control Indians living in these
“regions of refuge”. Sometimes mixed with populations from Africa, these “savages” were
also threatening colonial towns, as through Miskitos raids. Powers are a complementary way
for understanding this invention of the Central American Caribbean coast. This paradigm
shows how this main area in the globalization process, located in the heart of the transatlantic
colonial trade which operates through the axis of Panama, could have as long remained as a
margin. On the Caribbean coast, piracy, and later British hegemony and U.S. imperialism,
reveal the strategical importance of the area, by several cultural, economical and political
processes, such as protestantism, banana plantations, and the independence of Belize. This
dichotomy on the isthmus still exists today through more or less recent structures, as the
Nation-State, globalization processes, and phenomenons linked to them (infrastructures,
tourism, new administrative areas…). Finally, both human and natural local specificities are
threatened by their location on an intermediate area of environnment, culture and powers.
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Title of presentation
“The Invention of the Caribbean Coast of Central America: Environment, Culture and
Power”
When we speak about the Caribbean, we usually mean the Caribbean Islands, adding
sometimes the Guyanas. Indeeed, this area is usually thought as an addition of islands, as an
archipelago, whose borders are necessarly seas – or huge forests for the three Guyanas. This
physical aspect is one of the main explanation of the phenomenon, quite rare, of a little
geographical region, the Caribbean, defined as distinct from North and South America.
Another differenciation, less physical than human, is between a Latin America and an AngloSaxon one. In this case, the Caribbean is still a complete world, because of the ethnic and
cultural mix this region have been going through since five centuries.
However, in this two cases, the definition of the Caribbean exludes the surround of the
Caribbean basin. These borders not clearly belong to a precise world, in Venezuela, Central
America, but also New Orleans by the past. With the geopolitical approach, studies allow to
introduce relationships between States to understand the process ; and since few decades, the
phenomenon of power permit to reintegrate other parts of the Caribbean, or at least to point
the twin belonging of some places, as the Caribbean Coast of Central America.
The main issue of this article is to explain how these dualism, and, to be more precise, the
triple belonging of this fragmented area which is the Carribean Coast of Central America (it
was more triple than double in this case, because of the presence of important indigenous
minorities, who disappeared in the Caribbean islands), by the methodological approach by
territories, is a way to understand space not as continuity, but as a network with several
connections. In the case of the eastern coast of Central America, it’s impossible to think this
area as out of the Caribbean, not only for physical, but also for cultural and for “power”
reasons.
Map 1. Prehispanic Worlds and relief in Central America
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Spanish Conquest and « Green Hell »
There is no Caribbean before the Spanish : the region was named after one of the peoples
living in the archipelago. As we know, before the Conquest, Mayas didn’t do the difference
between the two parts of their territories : highlands in the West of the Centramerican isthmus,
and lowlands in the eastern part. Anthropological studies show that before Columbus, if the
perception is different about these two parts, it’s more a difference between the high and the
low, between mountain and plains, whose name are the same in Maya (nawaj means valley
and mam means hill or mountain). The signification of these two words are more linked to the
own mayan history, where plains, earlier occupied, are referenced to the past and highlands to
the present. Studies about other indigenous peoples, like Chibchas in the south of the isthmus,
show similar results, which could appear paradoxical : the distinctions between the two main
climates of Central America are not important in prehispanic period, although environnment
is not thought through anthropocentrism but by geocentrism. The Spanish anthropocentrism
will give us some indications.
Map 2. Tropical Climates in America
The invention of the Caribbean coast as a distinct territory occured with the Spanish conquest,
and first by Christopher Columbus. Columbus had a perception of the future America based
on the exemple of the Mediterranée, and in his memoirs he just notes few differences
between the Caribbean islands and what he called the Tierra Firme – the actual Panama.
During more than 20 years, America was considered as an unic world belonging to the “Zona
Torrida”, as called by Ptolemy to describe this “Whole Warm Zone”. This expression means
that it was a tropical climate, hot and wet, and underlines that it is unhealthy. But these
considerations about the American climate were just a constraint for the colonization of the
new territories, although as we know, the phenomenon of colonization was increasing
between 1500 and 1520.
Map 3. The Conquest of Central America
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A deep change occurred in the 1520s, when new conquistadors built cities on the Pacific coast,
like Panama City. Since this time, the climate of this side of the isthmus, more dry and cold,
will be considered as better for colonization. Another reason of the colonization of this part of
Central America was that the most powerfull, rich, and densely populated state was on this
side. Indian minorities were harder to beat and impossible to control on the Caribbean
lowlands.
Map 4. The Control of Central America between Piracy and Colonial Administration (16 th –
18th century)
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Moreover, another important threat appeared at this time coming from Europe, as piracy on
the Caribbean Basin. During the modern period, Spanish were unable to control the Caribbean
coast, except maybe on one point, Portobelo harbour, in Panama, which however was taken
several times. Spanish, in these case, used Greek science as an alibi for their military inability
against other europeans powers, but also against indigenous minorities of the Caribbean coast.
During three centuries, the Hippocrate’s climatological thought is growing, and the Caribbean
Coast, for the Spanish, is more and more considered as the “Green Hell”. This representation,
still strong today, is directly linked with these natural, cultural and geopolitical dialectic.
Imperialism, Positivism and Bananas…
The British domination turned during the 19th century, when Gringos, were more and more
investing in Central America. It was not only an economic domination but also a political and
a cultural one. For the populations of the ex protectorates of British Honduras (now Belize) or
Mosquitia (eastern Nicaragua and Honduras), Gringos, who were also protestants, were
usually well-received. They appeared as protectors against the new nationalist States growing
in Central America.
Map 5. Protestantism in Central America (late 20th century)
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By their capital and their technology, North American were the only ones able to do the
modernization of these little Centramerican countries. As other scholars, we think that the
Centramerican elite knowingly accorded huge bananas concessions to American companies
just to secure the acces to the Caribbean coast. The risk to see the Gringos installing
themselves was important, and elites were also afraid by the migrations of people from the
Caribbean, who reminded them the modern period and their inability to control the caribbean
coast.
The specific environnment of the Caribbean Coast and their representations, for the
“hispanic” peoples and new states of the highlands, took a great place in this phenomenon of
huge American enclaves in the coast. Except for “Gringos”, by their technology, and
“Negros”, by their “savage” character, in a centramerican point of view, these places are still
unhealthy, dangerous and at least avoidable.
So, the phenomenon of banana’s enclave was far from linking the two parts of the isthmus,
and maintained the opposition between lowlands and highlands. But with the large presence
of Gringos and technology, the dualism between nature (the Caribbean) and culture (the
mestizo-spanish highlands) was reducing.
While the enclave became official, the U.S. economical and political domination was stronger
than the British one before. The United Fruit Company, controlling all the banana
exportations of Guatemala, Nicaragua, Costa Rica and Panama in 1930, is a symbol of this
imperialism.
Map 6. The United Fruit Company in the First Half of the 20th Century
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But the enclave created the condition of a kind of unification between the two parts, or maybe
of an incorporation of the Caribbean coast by the other side. Indeed, with the crisis of the
1930th and the second world war, the domination of companies as the UFCO was reducing,
although it was still an important political actor in the isthmus. For exemple, the role of the
UFCO on the Guatemalan takeover of 1954 is pointed.
The New Millenary : Conservation and Destruction on the Caribbean Coast
Another phenomenon was the constant development of one Caribbean harbour in each
centamerican country. There was no interisthmic railway in Nicaragua neither in Honduras,
where the companies didn’t achieve the rail. But in Panama, Costa Rica and Guatemala, the
Caribbean ports were after the war the second cities of their country, after the capital city.
Map 7. Isthmian Infrastructure in the Early 21th Century
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After the rail at the beginning of the 20th century, the road is since 50 years the main way to
conquest the lowlands ; it needs less invests and is more flexible. The road network is quite
simple in Central America, with the inter-american highway on the highlands, a main road
between each capital and each caribbean port, and after, secondary roads and lot of bad tracks.
The Caribbean Coast of Central America also takes an important place with exchanges on the
Caribbean Basin, particularly on the Panama’canal waterway. But shipping routes are not
only crossing Central America, and container ports as San Pedro Sula (in Honduras) and
Puerto Limon (in Costa Rica) show that the former enclave are still playing a main role in
exportation of agricol or industrial goods.
Map 8. Population Densities
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These new importance of the Caribbean Coast for the centramerican states is also link with
the huge demographic growth happening since the nineteen sixties.
Before that, the Caribbean Coast was a demographic desert, with less than 10 inhabitants by
square meter. Although there is still big differences within departments or provincia, the
human pression is gradually increasing in the whole region, and some departments, as in
Honduras, are now very densily inhabited.
But one of the most important effect of the changes who began fifty years ago, is the
destruction of the forest border of central America. Until 1960, these two worlds were not
connected, but with the demografical growth, lowlands and the jungle appeared as the last
agricole zone remaining.
Map 9. Deforestation and Indigenous Communities
As a consequence, the “ladinisation” (hispanisation) of Indian and Black peoples was very
strong during the seventies dictatures, and continues to these days. Now, the high majority of
the population of the Caribbean coast is mestizo or ladino, and catholic.
This process should have changed the dualism between the two sides, but it remains strong.
Although the forest border is continually disappearing, the Caribbean coast is more seen as a
“Far East”, a dangerous country, than an “Eldorado”.
For the majority of mixed people of the highlands, on the west side, other process, as
indigenous autonomy or natural reserve policies, mean that these tropical lowlands are not
their countries, but still a place they don’t know and don’t want to know, except if poverty
forces them to migrate…
But in fact, both phenomenons (I mean autonomy and conservation) have little reality ;
moreover, they are sometimes considered as neo-colonialism, because it makes centramerican
States weaker than they were.
Map 10. Tourism Sites and Tours on the Caribbean Coast
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In these days, the Caribbean Coast is still belonging to the Caribbean, as in economic
activities like tourism, maquilas, drug trafic or mines and forestry concessions ; the situaton is
very similar to what happens in the Caribbean archipelago. Same thing abour power : the
american imperialism is still strong in these little and fragile territories, often used for
destabilization.
The specific environnments and their position are also explaining these situations of jump-ball
or buffer-region ; but environnments are resources, they are always exploited in an
unsustainable way, and can be abandoned very quickly. It was the case for bananas, it would
be the same for tourism…
These aspects underlines the fragility of these territories, and of the societies living there. It
reminds us that the Caribbean is a very little region compared to Latin or North America, and
that networks, as a way of organization, are maybe the only solution for these specifical
territories and human societies to not disappear.
As a conclusion, the Caribbean is an invention, because environments can change and their
representations depends on how we use it. Same thing for the cultural mix who create the
Caribbean, and could disappear in the case of the Caribbean Coast. It’s why powers – as
politic and economy – is as important as culture and environnment in the construction and
maybe the destruction of this intermediate area.
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