And once the tourist enclaves form, the raw nerve endings of Caribbean societies are exposed. Holder believes the root of this problem stems from race, colonialism and slavery. Disaffection among hotel staff is sometimes expressed in such terms. A hotel nurse, for example, told me how the staff had to eat their lunch under a tree, like we were back in massa s time . The gulf between visitor and local becomes even more acute when hotels import supplies, ignoring the society outside the perimeter fence except as a source of labour.
History is once again partly responsible.
Agriculture is export-orientated and always has been. Their attempts foundered, in part because antagonistic American governments, in the context of cold-war politics, encouraged tourists to stay away.