Capitalism is the basis of the American economy, a system defined by the privatization of all factors of production by private individuals (Mundó et al., 2022). The capitalist system gives power to a few wealthy individuals and takes away the poor people’s ability to go up in the socioeconomic hierarchy (Withers, 2022). The system gives wealth and opportunities to those at the highest hierarchy, hoping that their pockets would place money and job opportunities back into the economy. However, this is not normally the case. Masood and Shafi (2020) argue that capitalism is in line with Karl Marx’s theory of labor exploitation of the poor and vulnerable in society. Modem capitalism was initially developed in Great Britain and the U.S.A during the industrial period in the 19th century (Wallerstein, 2019). The advent of the industrial revolution was critical for laborers that were regarded as not valuable to be replaced by machines. This, in turn, made the value of laborers cheaper and lower hence causing a depreciation of wages. Capitalism is a deliberate effort by wealthy investors to entrench their economic system in disaster-stricken nations or regions.
At first sight and thought, capitalism seems to be a great and beneficial concept that helps to support and drive societies. However, upon further interrogation, one realizes that in a capitalistic system, there exists a huge level of instability, taking advantage of the poor and widening the gap between the rich and poor (Callaghy, 2019). It is clear that a capitalistic economic system aims toward making profits. The people who make huge profits in a capitalist system are wealthy private investors and global nations like the U.S.A who desire not to lose their wealth and dominance in controlling wealth in the world (Wallerstein, 2019). Unfortunately, capitalism is entrenched in disasters and more so, as witnessed in the 2017 case of Hurricane Irma in Barbuda (Look et al., 2019). More specifically, capitalism evidently designed to function during disasters is referred to as disaster capitalism. This form of capitalism describes the manner in which rich people take advantage of global natural disasters for the purpose of reaping huge profits, sustaining dominance, and deepening inequality. The trend leaves poor people or disaster-affected people with more difficulties and shock.
In September 2017, Hurricane Irma hit many areas of the Caribbean islands of Anguilla, and Barbuda, among many other places (Moulton & Machado, 2019). Hurricane Irma made huge destructions in the areas since it was grouped as a category five hurricane (Medina et al., 2019). This is the most powerful hurricane to be recorded in the entire Atlantic, having wind speeds exceeding 185 miles per hour and torrential rain (Bang et al., 2019). Hurricane Irma hit Barbuda with adverse effects that affected many islands’ livelihoods, houses, and infrastructural investments. There were basic services like health, telecommunication, electricity, water, and sewerage in the affected areas that were damaged. The effects on Barbuda Island were more destructive after the eye of the hurricane crossed directly above the island (Wingard et al., 2020). The aftermath was catastrophic as 81 per cent of Barbuda’s buildings became inhabitable and unsafe to live in (Wingard et al., 2020).
Disaster capitalism was and is still evident in Barbuda Island. The term disaster capitalism refers to the actions by wealthy elites exploiting crises, like major natural disasters, to get profits and ensure inequality thrives more. The practice only leaves affected people in shock and more vulnerable. After hurricane Irma struck Barbuda, there was a threat to cultural heritage through the infiltration and exploitative mechanisms by the Antiguan government and private investors (Lightman, 2020). It was after a year and a half when Hurricane Irma happened that exploiting Barbuda by the rich was still happening for the purpose of profit-making. There were efforts to erode the cultural standing, identity, and customary land relations due to developing the area (The North American Congress on Latin America, 2019). In the aftereffects of the hurricane, many multinational investors and the central Antiguan government—which holds jurisdiction over the Barbudan governing council—tried to perpetuate the destruction by aiming at the tourist ventures instead of the local recovery.
The quest to open up Barbuda to developments like Antigua will cause massive and irreparable damage to the tangible and intangible culture (Boger & Perdikaris, 2019). The infiltration of foreigners will kill the cultural lifestyle, beliefs, and sacred practices of Barbuda, something the media has not given much attention to. The Barbudans are faced with the danger of losing control over their cultural ways of life. Tangible culture is defined as historic structures, museums, artifacts, monuments, and historical records, while intangible heritage is traditional skillfulness, festivals, and religious practices (Boger et al., 2019). The long-existing structures and cultural practices have made Barbuda to be a place of cultural identity and resilience. Maintaining and reestablishing the cultural heritage and traditional practices was not part of the investors and Antiguan government after the disaster struck.
Unfortunately, the reconstruction process and recovery efforts in Barbuda have been characterized as culturally insensitive and driven by political interests. For over 400 years, the Barbudan culture has now been faced with the impending danger of being a memory that existed in the past (Boger & Perdikaris, 2019). After the Irma tragedy, disaster capitalism was on its toll, where the Antiguan government and investors decided to establish new cultural practices through the demolition of cultural heritage spots and monuments with the intention of development. According to Perdikaris et al. (2021), in 2016, the worth of huge developments that did not need popular approval shot up to $40 million. The move created more opportunities for foreign-led developments and also increased led wealthy developments to establish high-end tourism spots, such as Paradise Found and Peace (Gould & Lewis, 2018). Developers speak of sustainable tourism practices; however, they forget their understanding of sustainability as wealthy investors are different from sustainable living for the Barbuda people.
Barbuda is a smaller and less developed nation compared to Antigua (Kladky, 2022), which the former has, until today, been spared of overdevelopment. Barbuda is still in its natural condition of mangrove and scrub brush cover in most parts. The people of Barbuda get their incomes through engaging in sustainable fishing activities, the export of lobsters, and low-key tourist activities (Johnson et al., 2020). The global press has stated that multinational investors continually seek to engage in tourism development activities after the disaster. Barbudan activists have viewed the move as deliberate efforts to develop their island for large-scale tourism, just like in neighboring Antigua. Barbuda’s 1,600 populations co-exist peacefully in single settlements called Codrington, as the remaining 63-square-mile island is left to remain on its natural condition of mangroves and scrub brushes (Wright et al., 2020).
Similarly, Western governments have proven to be slow to understand that land rights are basic human rights in all land-dependent economic systems, which local people would fight to protect. Any well-wisher with the intention of using his donations or disaster relief to dispossess the poor populations has gone against human rights conventions, and the locals have sworn to legally fight the actions. Since Barbuda gained independence from slavery in 1834, they have governed their lands as common properties and not privately owned (Look et al., 2019). Citizens have no private possession of parcels of land; rather, they get their access from the locally-elected council. The practice has denied locals the freedom to own land and resources freely. Seizing their income-generation resources constitutes forceful theft because it is the illegal and forceful awakening of a sleepy capital by seeking to reform land for privatization. There is thus a continuous entrenchment of inequality and denial of communal land use.
In 2007 there was the enactment of the Barbuda Land Management Act prevented the buying of pieces of land by foreigners and the Antiguan government (Gould & Lewis, 2018). The law prevented the development and mass rise of non-local-run hotels, gambling joints, and other entertainment spots seen in the neighboring (Kladky, 2022) Antigua, which has a freehold land tenancy scheme. The Antigua and Barbuda Prime Ministers declared their plans to change Barbuda’s communal land system, which has been in existence since the abolishment of slavery in 1834 (Jameson, 2022). The Antiguan government has called the Barbuda locals aliens and inhabitants of the land that does not belong to them. The rhetoric that Barbudans are squatters on their land has been faced with resistance from all residents who claim that the Antiguan government desires to set up freehold tenure with the sole intention of freeing up the island for buying by international investors (Boyd et al., 2021). The Barbudans are not interested in establishing private resorts to introduce mass tourism, like in Antigua. The secretary of the Barbuda Island’s council, Paul Nedd, has vehemently stated that Barbudans own their land legally and communally.
On the same note of land ownership, there were efforts to remove the Barbuda Land Act (Perdikaris et al., 2019) so that Barbuda could be opened up for privatization and more development. Privatization is part of disaster capitalism in weak economies and disaster-stricken regions in the world. Barbudans are still legally fighting the move despite the Barbudan national government and private developers going on with their plans for privatizing Barbuda (Boyd et al., 2021). There are massive construction activities near Coco Point, and it is anticipated that soon works on other resort areas will begin. The main aim is to build a large airport projected to serve high-end tourist resort centres, supported by wealthy private interests despite there being two small airports functioning after the Irma disaster. In a rush to kick start the airport project, the government and developers did not go through the project’s environmental-cultural effects analysis. The lack of the required formal evaluations gave way to the excavation for the airport in the 25-acre historical land site of Plantation, which was abandoned at the end due to the discovery of caves under the surface (Boger & Perdikaris, 2019). The discovery made the parcel of land not suitable for setting up an airport.
The deliberate displacement and forceful waiting of the locals in Barbuda to come back to their land is a move to promote and circulate new forms of capital. The statement, in many definitions, aligns with David Harvey’s argument that describes the move as accumulating by dispossessing (Castree et al., 2022). The expression is defined by what the powers of the neoliberal states mobilize through the facilitation of newer paths for predatory capitalism (Rhiney, 2020). The Irma post-tragedy is being mobilized to be used as a platform for re-establishing and extending the post-colonial power ties and hegemonic land usage policies. All these efforts are geared towards setting up avenues for promoting and accumulating new forms of private capital in a virgin land populated by locals. The more time displacement takes place, the harder it becomes for locals to connect back to their lands, traditional practices, and cultures. For instance, in Barbuda, traditional activities such as living in caves, horse racing, traditional healing, festivals, hunting, and camping are all in danger of extinction (Nevins, 2021).
Lastly, capitalism has helped unfair competition to thrive by encouraging selfish and predatory behaviors among wealthy investors and the Antiguan government. Weiss et al. (2021) argue that external capital investments have threatened to bulldoze Barbuda, especially through the substitute forms of local economic developments in disguise of environmentalism and nurturing sustainability. A green recovery appeals to international investors, which translates into an overflow of high-energy international tourists who will increase property prices, threaten community-owned lands, and enhance inequality. A similar instance of Barbuda’s invasion is the transnational companies with major investments in mining, palm oil, shipping, and real estate, placing Garifuna people in Honduras on a similar oppressive capitalist path (Loperena, 2022). The Garifuna locals continue to struggle due to the massive encroachment of foreign businesses, dispossession of their ancestral lands, displacements, and political repression intensified by the 2009 coup (Brondo, 2018).
After Hurricane Irma brought destruction to Barbuda in September 2017, locals experienced massive infiltration of their cultural practices, heritage, lands, and ways of life. Barbuda, the smaller and lesser developed island, has accused the Antiguan government and international investors of deliberate efforts to control what has remained of the island. The dispossession of land, the dilapidation of core ecosystems for the financial benefit of a few, and massive illegal developments are what capitalism is defined in Barbuda. Despite the recovery process being painful in Barbuda, the Antiguan government piles pressure on the people to leave their communal lands for development. Disaster capitalism has thrived on taking advantage of vulnerable and disaster-stricken locals under the pretense of goodwill people, yet lacking any understanding of the establishment of human rights, local culture, and respect for traditions.
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