Bahamian development, identity stall between Columbus, Atlantis; tourist dollars seem not to land

Columbus is absent from Government House, Nassau.

Bowen Yang's amusing portrayal of Christopher Columbus on the Saturday Night Live "Weekend Edition" season premiere in mid-October reminded me of an empty pedestal I saw in Nassau, Bahamas, recently: a sight sadly symbolic of stalled development. 

(All photos and video by RJ Peltz-Steele CC BY-NC-SA 4.0.)

I was in Bahamas on the country's National Heroes Day on October 9. Bahamas replaced its Discovery Day, recognizing Christopher Columbus, with Heroes Day in 2013. The idea is to honor homegrown Bahamian heroes and shed the cultural domination of the islands' colonial past.

I've written before on my conflicted feelings about Columbus Day. So I was curious when my Lonely Planet told me that I would find a Columbus statue presiding over the capital at Government House in Nassau. Indeed, my pre-pandemic Planet was outdated. The statue was vandalized just in advance of Heroes Day in 2021 and moved into storage in October 2022. 

I found not only an empty pedestal with a crumbling top, but closed gates at Government House. Neglected surroundings, outside the gates, unfortunately spoke to my overall impression of economic development in the Bahamas.

Two bridges connect Nassau to Paradise Island.

Infrastructure is in a sorry state. Roads are a mess, and signage is almost non-existent. Business outside Nassau and island resorts is minimal. I tried walking to a purported national park on New Providence, and I gave up the effort halfway for the lack of walkways alongside merciless speeding traffic. Later, I drove to the park to find little more than a set-aside green parcel walled by chain link.

K9 Harbour Island Green School subsidizes most students' tuition.

Besides the country's relentlessly cheerful people, little thrives on the islands, economically. There is the tourism sector, the stunning natural beauty of the islands, and expat enclaves such as Harbour Island and Spanish Wells. To walk from grimy downtown Nassau across either bridge to the touristic sector known as "Paradise Island," where the famous Atlantis development is located, is to transport oneself between worlds. 

A Disney ship departs Nassau before dusk.

I wondered what shop workers on Paradise Island think when they leave the artificiality of the plaster-and-paint retail village, with its Ben & Jerry's and Kay's Fine Jewelry, for dilapidated, rat-infested residential buildings in the city's corners. I wondered whether tourists see the contrast when they are whisked through downtown en route from the airport to Paradise.

The heart of the city undergoes an equally striking transformation almost daily. Cruise ships pull into the port and unleash a legion of passengers into the downtown district. Western stores such as Starbucks and Havianas open up alongside overpriced jewelers and T-shirt purveyors.

(Video below: A funeral procession for Obie Wilchombe, Parliamentarian, cabinet minister, and tourism executive, proceeded through the heart of the tourist district while cruise passengers were in port on October 11. I watched, I admit, from the balcony at Starbucks. Tourists who didn't see the coffin must be forgiven for assuming the lively music signified joyful festivity. Embodiment of the tourism-government complex himself, Wilchombe likely would have approved.)

Bahamas declared independence from Britain in 1973.

Then in the late afternoon, the passengers return to their ships, and the downtown becomes a ghost town. I walked the streets at dusk and came across a few port workers commuting by foot, a few teens joking about, and a scarily ranting homeless man who caused me to cross the street. Every business was shuttered. It was hard to believe the same space had been dense with vacationers only hours earlier.

A night street party in Nassau reverberates.

Walking Nassau at night, the relative silence was punctured by a raging street party. A man told me that it was an anniversary celebration of the most popular local radio station, and entry, food, and drink were free. He invited me to join, and I did. It was a raucous party inside with a rapper dancing wildly on a stage, flashing lights, and, he was right, free drinks and heaps of homemade local eats. I felt like I was crashing an after-hours cast party at a Caribbean Disney World. I was having fun, but I must have looked out of place—I couldn't help but attract attention as the only person not of color—as a couple of well meaning partygoers asked if I was all right or needed help finding my way.

Signs all over Eleuthera Island promise happy Disney jobs to come.

Determined as it purports to be to carve out a national identity free of colonialism, there is a painful dearth of evidence that the Bahamanian government is accomplishing that. The government imposes a hefty 12% VAT on goods and services, and I'm sure the port fees are substantial. Where is the money going?

The International Trade Association (ITA) well described what I saw: "The World Bank recognizes The Bahamas as a high-income, developed country with a GDP per capita of $25,194 (2020) and a Gross National Income per capita of $26,070 (2020).  However, the designation belies the country’s extreme income inequality, as statistics are driven by a small percentage of high-net-worth individuals, while most Bahamians earn far less." The only evidence of infrastructure investment I saw was that which directly benefited tourists and expats.

True to form, on a ferry between Eleuthera and Harbour Island, I overheard a couple of Americans in golf outfits discussing the plusses and minuses of potential investment in an island hotel. They seemed oblivious to the fact that the hotel name they bandied about was sewn into the breast of the short-sleeve work shirt of a local commuter sitting right beside them.

The historic "British Colonial" hotel, Nassau, lost its Hilton affiliation,
but is under renovation with plans to reopen under independent operation.

 

The one-two punch of Hurricane Dorian and COVID took a heavy toll, to be sure. And tourism income is not yet back to pre-pandemic levels. Still, that can't fully explain the development stagnancy I saw in and among local communities.

Perhaps naively, I expected to find the Bahamas more a reflection of the western sphere of influence than of the developing world. It's only a 30-minute flight from Miami to Bahamas, and 85% of imports come from the United States. But on the ground on New Providence and Eleuthera Islands, the Bahamas reminded me less of Florida and more of Guinea-Bissau—a country plunged into darkness last week for failure to pay a $17m debt to its exclusive power provider, the offshore ship of a Turkish corporation.

Two years since Columbus was vandalized and one year since he was packed away, the solution to native identity at Government House is a rubble-topped pedestal and closed grounds. The people outside the gates have embraced National Heroes Day. But there is little information in circulation about who the Bahamian heroes are or why they should be celebrated. 

The government owes its people better. And I wouldn't mind seeing American- and British-owned tourism companies taking some corporate social responsibility—if that's still a thing—to ensure that something of what they pay into the country is reaching the people and lands that truly give life to today's Bahamas.

Per 'modern ethical standards,' Mass. museum surrenders $5m bronze for repatriation to Turkey

Portrait of  Lady (AD 160-180)

Public domain/Daderot via Wikimedia Commons

A story of art crime touched Massachusetts early in September, as the Worcester Art Museum let go of a bronze bust of estimated $5m worth for repatriation to Turkey.

The museum purchased Portrait of a Lady (A Daughter of Marcus Aurelius?) in 1966 from Robert E. Hecht, an antiquities dealer. If that name is familiar to American easterners, yes, Hecht was a descendant of the Hechts, 19th century Jewish immigrants from Germany who started a department store chain in Baltimore, Md., my hometown, in 1857. What became "Hecht's" had 80 or more stores in the mid-Atlantic region. When I was a kid, my maternal grandmother loved to peruse the goods at what she still called "Hecht Brothers." The company was swallowed by Macy's in 2006.

Robert Hecht had a checkered career as an antiquities dealer based in Paris. He died in 2012 at age 92. In his obituary, the N.Y. Times described Hecht as "an American expatriate antiquities dealer who skipped in and out of trouble for much of his career, weathering accusations that he trafficked in illicit artifacts." Hecht denied ever having handled stolen goods knowingly. Late in life, he was charged with trafficking in Italy, but the Italian court ruled that the statute of limitations had run.

Hecht Co., Hyattsville, Md., 1959
Library of Congress

Revelation of Portrait's illicit provenance came to the Worcester Art Museum from the office of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin L. Bragg, Jr. And if that name sounds familiar, yes, he's the one on TV charging former President Donald Trump with falsifying business records—for my money, charges of a nature that should have been pursued decades ago and always should have been the people's focus, more than recent, politically charged allegations related to the election in Georgia or insurrection in D.C.

When not on TV for a press conference about Trump charges, Bragg has become famous in the art world for his aggressive campaign to repatriate stolen works. Portrait is but one entry in an extraordinary catalog. A recent press release, for example, announced the return of Nazi-looted art to families of Holocaust victims. The work of the Antiquities Trafficking Unit is impressive, though the D.A.'s press releases read like a vanity project. Must every headline begin with "D.A. Bragg"?

I was keen to see what kind of legal documents the D.A. would file in Massachusetts to take possession of stolen antiquities. But there are no filings that I have found. The Worcester Art Museum "cooperated with the investigation" according to its press release and surrendered Portrait voluntarily.

Renaissance Court, Worcester Art Museum, 2021

Peter E via Flickr CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

The museum not only cooperated, but the press release doth protest too much, methinks, to locate the museum on the moral high ground. Upon purchase of Portrait in 1966, the museum "was provided with limited information about the object's history," the press release said. The D.A. "provided new information" in 2023. "The Museum had never previously received a claim or learned of any defect in ownership."

Colgate art history professor Elizabeth Marlowe doesn't buy it. A student of Bubon, the ancient Roman capital of Lycia, where the Bronze was found in Turkey, Marlowe told WGBH that the museum in 1966 "would have known ... that Hecht was 'a totally shady character'" who had been banned from Turkey, and that the Roman object came from Turkey. Professor of art crime at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice Erin Thompson told WGBH that the acquisition was "like Pablo Escobar giving you a big pile of white powder and claiming you had no suspicion it could be drugs."

Benin Bronze of a Portuguese soldier
at the National Museum of Nigeria, Lagos, 2022.
RJ Peltz-Steele CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

Notwithstanding its protestations, the museum acknowledged that "greater diligence" is brought to bear on acquisition today. Director Matthias Waschek said in the press release, "The ethical standards applicable to museums are much changed since the 1960s, and the Museum is committed to managing its collection consistent[ly] with modern ethical standards."

That statement rings true, and I don't blame the museum. To the contrary, current ethical standards are still in flux, and museums are caught in the middle. John Oliver lambasted museums in 2022. While I loved the Oliver segment and agree with his pro-repatriation stance in principle, I find the reality more complicated.

Oliver correctly recognized that statements from western institutions fretting about the security of antiquities if returned to their home countries feel cringeworthily patronizing and colonialist. Oliver highlighted the case of the Benin Bronzes. Nigeria has demanded that the British Museum return more than 900 bronze sculptures the British Empire looted from the Nigerian Kingdom of Benin in today's Edo State (not to be confused with the country of Benin). When I visited Nigeria in 2022, I saw replicas of missing pieces. I met Nigerian people who clearly felt a present and keen sense of injury in the absence of cherished artifacts that define tribal history, culture, and identity. Nigerians should be able to see and experience their own history in museums, just like people in Britain and America. Yet the vast majority of Nigerians will never have the resources to visit the British Museum.

Me and an oversized jollof rice pot at the National Museum, Lagos, 2022.
Learn more at the Kitchen Butterfly.
RJ Peltz-Steele CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

At the same time, I watched in horror at the destruction of the Buddhas of Bamiyan in 2001 and the sacking of the Cairo museum in 2013, the latter of which I visited in the 20-aughts. The Antiques Coalition documents devastating losses in the 2010s at museums in Egypt, Iraq, Syria, Mali, and Yemen. Say what you will about western imperialism, and there's plenty to say, museum sackings are much less common in London and D.C. When asked by a mate of mine how Nigeria would safeguard the bronzes—the country is in civil war in the north—a museum guide said that the items should be returned along with financial support to build secure facilities. OK. But already, then, the matter becomes more complicated, revealing that there's a legitimate debate to be had about how and where we care for the world's cultural heritage.

Founded in 1896, the Worcester Art Museum has plenty to see. The property houses a 12th-century French Benedictine priory, rebuilt stone by stone in 1933. The museum's 38,000-item collection includes more than 2,000 armor pieces, acquired only in 2013 and featured in rotating displays. A special exhibition from October to March, "Freedom to Say What I Please," will feature the multimedia art of activist, artist, and author Faith Ringgold.

Customary law undergirds justice systems in Africa: A-courting in Harare

Outside the "Harare Civil Court" buildings, a discarded sign reads, "Harare Magistrate's Court / Civil and Customary Law." Other court building in Harare are pictured below. All photos RJ Peltz-Steele CC BY-SA 4.0.

The integration of customary law into national legal systems based on post-colonial polities is a challenge, and an opportunity, throughout Africa. I wrote recently about customary legal authority in the Casamance region of Senegal, and Zimbabwe is no exception to the norm.

The Zimbabwe constitution expressly preserves customary law, and federal enactments spell out the scope of customary law in sensitive areas, such as marriage and child care. The constitution creates customary courts and charges other courts, including the Supreme Court, with respecting and developing customary law, just as they do common law. For NYU Law GlobaLex, Saki and Chiware (updated by Pfumorodze and Chitsove, 2017) further explained:

The main reason for the existence of these customary law courts is to provide a justice system to ordinary people in rural areas which is consistent with African custom and values.  It is  realized that most ordinary Zimbabweans regulate their lives in accordance with customary law to the extent that the legal ideas and institutions inherited from the system has  preserved the authority of traditional leaders  to adjudicate in civil disputes by customary law.

In Zimbabwe, customary courts have jurisdiction over civil, but not criminal, matters. Common law controls in the civil sphere, while criminal law is strictly codified in Zimbabwe's mixed system.

Scales of justice adorn a high court building where criminal cases are heard.

Jehovah's Witnesses occupy the walk outside the characteristically modest legal aid office.

Your humble blogger stands before the highest court('s house) in the land.

Constitutional Court.

Oussouye king applies customary law in Senegal

The king and his attendants in the sacred woods. All photos RJ Peltz-Steele CC BY-SA 4.0.

The king of Oussouye in the Casamance region of Senegal received me with my group earlier this week. The Oussouye are part of the Diola, or Jola, ethnic group, who populate a vast transnational area reaching from Gambia to Guinea-Bissau. Diola also span religious faiths, having Islamic and Christian adherents, though traditional African religious tenets run strong in tandem with colonial imports. The Oussouye tend especially to traditional faith.

The king dispenses justice in both criminal matters and civil disputes in Oussouye. Civil matters cover a broad range, from real and personal property, to domestic relations, to obligations. The king also operates a local social welfare system, growing a quantity of food to support needy members of the community.

Typical of the manner in which customary and "modern" law are integrated within African countries, the king exercises a jurisdiction of first instance. He explained that if someone takes a matter to the police or the courts of Senegal, the authorities will ask whether the complainant has yet consulted the king, and will refuse the matter if not. This system does not fully obviate conflict, as questions arise over when the national legal system should take precedence--especially in high-profile cases implicating human rights, including non-discrimination and the rights of children. But the great bulk of dispute resolution is managed uneventfully upon traditional principles.

Chosen according to a spiritual calling, not lineal heritage, the king is said to be supernaturally endowed with wisdom, notwithstanding a lack of formal training. The Oussouye king readily said that he had been a mechanic before the spirit moved him toward his royal role.

Oussouye kids head home from school.

Traditional impluvium house.

Local chief in the center of impluvium house.

Evidence abounds of Chinese investment in the Casamance region.

Cameroon human rights record prompting Washington to end trade preference includes internet shutdowns

The announcement that the United States will end trade preferences for Cameroon in response to the country's human rights record marks some good news out of Washington and exemplifies the kind of "quid pro quo" that foreign policy is supposed to leverage.

In a freedom-of-expression angle to the story, documentary filmmakers screened Blacked Out: The Cameroon Internet Shutdown at RightsCon 2019 in Tunis over the summer.  The presentation fit perfectly into one of the key conference themes, "#KeepItOn."  I was privileged to be there and to meet one of the filmmakers, who talked about the extraordinary risk of documenting the minority anglophone community in Cameroon today.  More at Quartz Africa and at the Blacked Out YouTube channel.  The film can be viewed on YouTube in its 43-minute cut or its 65-minute uncut version, below.

Of interest to legal comparatists, there's an interesting underlying story in Cameroon's civil law tradition arising from a merger of French and British political possessions.  That's not the subject of the movie, but you can imagine the tension of legal tradition running in tandem with tensions of culture, language, and history, and all of that overlaid on and obscuring, in classic imperialist fashion, pre- and still-existing tribal cultures and customary legal traditions.

Tragic legacy of conquest renders astonishing diversity on South America's northern coast today

The Guianas (ArnoldPlaton, CC BY-SA 3.0)

I spent time this summer exploring the Guianas--Guyana, Suriname, and French Guiana, on South America's northern coast--and Trinidad and Tobago, an island nation just off the coast of Venezuela.  This is a lesser visited part of the world, to be sure, though it boasts a rapidly developing touristic infrastructure that might be the envy of Caribbean and Brazilian neighbors in the decades to come.

As guides and new friends patiently explained across a mind-blowing array of geographic and historical sub-contexts, the story of this southern basin of the Caribbean is a tragedy of colonial conquest, yet yields today a triumphant range of blended cultural traditions.  Mixed ethnic backgrounds deriving identities from dramatically different parts of the globe informed the experience of the people I met more often than not, rendering a picture of diversity--and moreover of peaceful co-existence--like none I have seen elsewhere in the world.

Ruela Goedewacht is head of the Johannes Arabi primary school in Nieuw
Aurora, Suriname (CC BY-SA 4.0). The Peace Corps painted this world map,
and the school features many beautiful murals for the kids to enjoy.

European possession of these lands was itself a shifting game of Old World thrones, with the British, Dutch, French, and Spanish variously laying claims.  The Europeans then sought to exploit their possessions on the backs of slaves and indentured servants, who arrived in waves from China, India, and Africa.  All of these newcomers mixed violently and not, as usual in the Americas, with the people who now identify as Amerindians, themselves a diverse array of nations to begin with.  Later, in the twentieth century, America found ways to insert its cultural and political presence with the avowed aim of regional security, jumbling cultural allegiances yet again.

Anthony Luces of Trinidad Food Tours at left (CC BY-SA 4.0). At center
is my security officer and virtual nephew, Casey Bius.

As a result:  Churches, mosques, and temples of various kinds take up residence adjacently to one another.  Public calendars are speckled with holidays and cultural traditions, whether Ramadan, Christmas, Holi, or the solstice, which enjoy a surprising embrace of mutual observance--not to mention the universally beloved Carnival.  Many people are fluent in multiple dissimilar languages, from Marroon and Amerindian tongues traceable to African and indigenous tribes, to the curving script renderings of the Far East, as well as unique Creole blends of native and European tongues.  And to my mouthwatering delight, the food traditions have produced unprecedented and delectable blends, such as South American-cultivated beef (Western) in a cumin-rich sauce (Indian/Hindu), or pork ribs (Eastern) upon flatbread (Indian/Muslim).

Dino Ramlal of Travel the Guianas, center. At left is one of my steadfast
travel companions, Debby Merickel, who blogs at the Aging Adventurer
(CC BY-SA 4.0).

Ordinarily I travel independently.  But that's not easy in the Guianas.  Developing infrastructure makes local knowledge and a network on the ground essential, unless you have ample time to burn with missed connections.  If you wish to explore the Guianas, I cannot say enough about Dinesh "Dino" Ramlal and his team at Travel the Guianas.  Sign up before Dino realizes how much more he should be charging for his hard work.  Also, I am especially indebted to Anthony Luces, owner and guide of Trinidad Food Tours, for his mind- and  mouth-enriching street food tour of Port of Spain, Trinidad.  To tell you more would spoil the surprises.

Charcoal ice cream on the streets of Port of Spain (CC BY-SA 4.0).

OK, three words:  Charcoal ice cream.

I've said too much.

Terra Nullius: Named for legal doctrine, novel dives deeply into human identity

I'm not easily moved by fiction, so I don't make recommendations lightly.  And you need to read this book.

Terra Nullius by Claire G. Coleman (Amazon) has been a hit in Australia and thankfully was picked up for U.S. circulation by a small, Massachusetts-based publishing house, Small Beer Press.  The book has been shortlisted or nominated for a bunch of prestigious awards and won the Norma K. Hemming for exploration of themes of race in speculative fiction.  The book is a product of the Queensland "black&write!" indigenous writing fellowship.  Coleman identifies with the Noongar people of the southwestern coastal region of Australia.  A poet and writer, this is her debut novel, and she wrote it while exploring indigenous lands in a caravan.

The "speculative fiction" element of Terra Nullius is not immediately obvious in the telling of the story.  I won't spoil it here, and I urge you to avoid spoilers so that you can experience it yourself.  Even so, being married to a librarian, who recommended this book to me, I knew something of the novel's secret.  I was gripped early nonetheless, and the reveal was still richly enchanting.  For a while I had to ponder, why did Coleman tell the story this way?  But I got it, and the author interview in my Small Beer Press edition confirmed: Coleman's narrative delivers empathy for the indigenous experience in a way that I have never before witnessed.

There are countless parallels between Coleman's take on indigenous life and British colonization and the experiences of other marginalized groups, including Africans amid European colonization and First Nations in the United States.  The title, "terra nullius," refers to the Latin term and legal doctrine meaning "nobody's land."  Specifically the term was employed by the British to legally rationalize claim to Australia, as if the continent had been uninhabited.  The term turns up in American law, too, to justify claims to this continent and the displacement of native peoples.  Coleman states that she has not yet been to the United States, but would welcome the chance to compare notes on our reservations.  I would love to witness that conversation.  In ironic coincidence, I read Terra Nullius while exploring the reputed landing sites of Christopher Columbus on the Samaná Peninsula of la República Dominicana.  There are scarcely few more apt places on earth to consume this book.

While the focus might be on the indigenous perspective, this novel, in its sum, speaks even more ambitiously to the whole of our human experience.  It demands that we interrogate who we are as a species; that we ask whether confrontation and violence—might makes right—are intrinsic to our human identity, or a choice that we make, something we can change.  It comes clear that our survival may well depend on the answer.