Reality in Writing : Caribbean Political Economy

Originally posted April 19, 2012 NACLA.org As reported last week, April 18th marked the public release of the first batch of the secret colonial documents known as the "migrated archives." Only one day removed from the release, British media has been taken with the story, with headlines like Sins of Colonialists Lay Concealed for Decades in Secret Archive, Crimes of Empire Revealed, Colonial Papers and the Ugly Legacy of Empire, Britain Planned Posion Gas Tests in Botswana, and Colonial Office Files Detail 'Eliminations' to Choke Malayan Insurgency reveals the depth of the archives opening salvo. In part two, Robert Hill, Professor of Afro-American and Caribbean History at UCLA, who has been deeply involved in the "migrated archives" since their discovery, shares his insights into the release of the archives and what it entails for the Caribbean history. Professor Hill is editor of The Marcus Garvey and Universal Negro Improvement Association Papers Pr

Originally posted April 12, 2012 NACLA.org On April 18, England’s Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) will begin releasing the first group of sensitive documents related to the decolonization of 37 former British colonies. The release of the documents was the result of a High Court hearing in London during April 2011, which centered on four elderly Kenyans, who were labelled as suspected Mau Mau rebels by the British government, and thus experienced abuse, torture, and illegal imprisonment during the Emergency period of the 1950s. Nearly 50 years after the widespread repression and eventual process of decolonization, the case brought forth by the four Kenyan pensioners against the British government has the real potential to be regarded as a “Colonial WikiLeaks,” and quite possibly lead to the rewriting of the established narratives of decolonization and independence not only in Africa, but also throughout the Caribbean and all former Commonwealth colonies. The four claimants, Paulo

Originally posted on NACLA.org April 5th, 2012 With the release of two separate investigations this week, it is becoming increasingly clear why the reconstruction has failed the Haitian people on such a massive scale—it is lucrative business opportunity first, with the humanitarian priorities coming in at a distant second. On March 30, the Washington-based Center for Economic and Policy Research’s (CEPR) Haiti Relief and Reconstruction Watch (HHRW) released the results of a scathing investigation, which revealed that out of the nearly $400 million spent by USAID in Haiti, only 0.02% of the procurement contracts went to local firms. On the opposite side of the procurement spectrum, U.S. firms concentrated in the Washington DC, Virginia, and Maryland area were rewarded with a staggering 77.46% of the contracts. The largest of the procurements, a $173 million contract to the U.S.-based Chemonics International, was given to the company’s Haiti Recovery Initiation. One of the primary aims o