Caribbean Cold War: The Other Iron Lady

[Gary Oswald]

Discuss this article here

 

[Coiler]

I'll admit it's a little confusing to have a "Dominica" and a "Dominican Republic" (which is what most Americans know far better due to much immigration and baseball)

 

[Thande]

I'll admit it's a little confusing to have a "Dominica" and a "Dominican Republic" (which is what most Americans know far better due to much immigration and baseball)

Blame the Spanish and their extremely limited pool of names. Who else would find a country with 5 mountain ranges (Mexico) and name them all the same chuffing thing.

 

[Charles EP M.]

"The guy who tried a coup went into sports", bloody hell.

This series of articles shows how easy it is to knock post-colonial governments down a new path if done early enough

 

[Time Enough]

This series of articles shows how easy it is to knock post-colonial governments down a new path if done early enough

It’s amusing to see Perdue try the United Fruit Playbook of how to overthrow a country, but he’s doing it in the 80s against an Anti-Communist Centre Right politician.

But yeah, this series is demonstrating how close a fair number of this Caribbean nations were to be overthrown in coups, self coups and revolutions, and how you could create another Batista Cuba during the 70s and 80s it seems.

 

[Bonniecanuck]

"The guy who tried a coup went into sports", bloody hell.

This series of articles shows how easy it is to knock post-colonial governments down a new path if done early enough

It's even funnier considering FIFA later banned him for corruption.

FIFA.

 

[Alex Richards]

The instability of a lot of these governments on the smaller islands really makes you realise one of the reasons for the FCO pushing for the West Indies Federation.

 

[Gary Oswald]

This series was due to end here cos, to reveal behind the curtain a bit, I wrote these four articles in about 6 hours in november cos I was short of articles and I knew I knew enough about all these stories already that I wouldn't need to do the heavy research I would have to do, to do say articles about the Second Boer War or Colonial Nigeria or the Adal Sultanate.

I wrote all four from memory and then fact checked against the books I have basically.

But now I've got here, it does feel very incomplete. There's a lot more stories to be told. The 1953 British invasion of Guyana and the role the international trade union movement aligned with the cia and mi6 had in starting a race war there afterwards is a story that is full of compelling pods, as is the Civil War in the Dominican Republic during the 1960s and the entire rule of the Duvalier dynasty in Haiti. There's the Cuban revolution itself of course, the unrest in Puerto Rico, the political violence in Jamaica, the Cuban exiles terrorist campaign in Barbados, the Black Power movement in Trinidad, a whole lot of cia sponsored violence in central america, the emerging drugs trade.

As Tom Scott often says, History is Fractal, there's always more to talk about.

I still aim to come back to the Scramble articles and talk more about that at some point, I still aim to write more about medieval Morocco and Christianity in the Kongo Kingdom and among the black slaves in the New World. And this is another series, I aim to come back to at some point, but no promises as to when exactly that will be.

 

[RyanF]

"Dreads"? "Nordic Enterprises"?

Did the author of this potboiler Cold War thriller just leave the placeholder names in?

 

[Death's Companion]

Its refreshing to see a crappy but not horrible story in Caribbean. Charles seems more or less the best case scenario, ruthless and canny enough to survive a poor and conflict torn nation but sensible and principled enough not to devolve into a monster. Definitely a walk so others could run kind of leader.

 

[JesterBL]

I do always find it interesting how Rastafarians are viewed in popular media as basically a joke religion for reggae fans, but were in the English-speaking Caribbean a disruptive and largely distrusted New Religious Movement.

 

[Thande]

I do always find it interesting how Rastafarians are viewed in popular media as basically a joke religion for reggae fans, but were in the English-speaking Caribbean a disruptive and largely distrusted New Religious Movement.

Reminiscent of Jehovah's Witnesses in that dichotomy I suppose. Scientologists seem to be in more of a state of quantum superposition of being lol joke punchline and genuinely dangerous exploitative cult but as viewed by the same people at the same time.

 

[Death's Companion]

Reminiscent of Jehovah's Witnesses in that dichotomy I suppose. Scientologists seem to be in more of a state of quantum superposition of being lol joke punchline and genuinely dangerous exploitative cult but as viewed by the same people at the same time.

I think with Scientology its because its clearly a scam to control the lives and assets of people, its hilariously treadbare and obvious but that makes the damage it does even more tragic.