Reality in Writing : Caribbean Political Economy

December 21, 2012 NACLA.org Due to the decline of the traditional sugar and banana exporting industries, many cash strapped Caribbean islands have been resorting to an unusual and controversial method to raise revenue—selling citizenship. While economic citizenship programs already exist in Austria, Bulgaria, Britain, and Canada, they often take several years for the applications to be processed—while in the Caribbean it only takes a couple of months. While no specifics on the nationalities involved have been released, it has been widely circulated that those most interested in the economic citizenship program are primarily the wealthy from China and the Arab World. Armand Arton, of Arton Capital, a financial advisory business based in Montreal specializing in immigrant investment programs, remarked that his firm “had provided advice to more than 500 families in 2011 and that 75% of them had been from the Middle East.” Since September 11, there has been a crackdow

December 17, 2012 NACLA.org On December 11, the United Nations announced a long overdue initiative to end the cholera epidemic which has devastated Haiti for more than two years—taking over 7,750 lives and infecting 600,000 more. While the announcement by the Secretary General Ban Ki Moon is a welcome and much needed step, the ten-year plan is not without controversy. Perhaps most practically, the Initiative for the Elimination of Cholera in the Island of Hispaniola remains largely unfunded. Of the $2.2 billion price tag, only $238.5 million has been committed. The initiative seeks to implement clean water and sanitation infrastructure in addition to public education and capacity building programs throughout both Haiti and the Dominican Republic. When pressed about the lack of funding, Nigel Fisher, the U.N. Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator for Haiti could only state that “I'm confident that more resources will come”. Given that the only half of the $12