Economic Background

When Frederick Sanguinetti was appointed as the first commissioner of the Cayman Islands in 1898, he sought to introduce sweeping administrative changes to the islands. For instance, he oversaw the appointment of the first government medical officer, J.G.S Tait, in 1900. In 1903 a shipping register had also been established; a full-time constabulary force was introduced in 1907, the same year that the new commissioner to Cayman, George Hirst, was appointed; a government savings bank was opened in Grand Cayman the following year; and the fourth education law was passed in 1920, making education compulsory to the age of 14.1

1 Cayman Islands timeline, 1503-1979, courtesy of the ESO.

Yet despite these major changes, the islands’ economy remained beleaguered, and Caymanian men especially continued to travel abroad for work. Those Caymanian men that did remain, worked mainly as agricultural labourers – cultivating goods like avocados, mangos, pumpkins, tomatoes, yams, etc. – and as fishermen and construction workers. Caymanian women also worked, weaving thatch palm slippers, baskets, and rope for a living, or else working as domestics, cleaners, cooks, and laundresses;

138 all of this begins to confirm the limitations of the Caymanian economy in this period. Based on available evidence, day labourers in 1906, for instance, made 3 shillings per day while carpenters made 7 shillings in the same period; to 1909, these wages remained virtually unchanged from those of the 1880s. By 1948, day labourers made 7 shillings, 6 pennies while carpenters witnessed a 200% increase in daily wages, since at least the 1880s, to 25 shillings.2 Together with the inconstant nature of these occupations and an average of four persons per household to 1970,3 _Caymanians would have not been economically prosperous. We should also here take into account that basic goods (per pound) like flour, corn meal, sugar, fresh beef, pork, fish, beans, and rice, when combined, cost a total of almost 5 shillings by 1965, and so there would have been an emphasis on providing for the family’s basic sustenance and perhaps little else.4

Thus in addition to the fact of relatively low wages, that more goods were being imported than exported, Cayman’s cost of living remained high throughout the first six decades of the twentieth century. Cayman could not sustain itself on its own agricultural and maritime produce and thus imports outweighed exports. For instance, the period between 1904 and 1905 witnessed £20,840 of imports against £11,941 of exports; this indicated a balance deficit of £8,899. By 1930, in the midst of

2 CINA (compiler), HMSO, Colonial Reports of the Cayman Islands, 1970, table 11.01 wages paid,

1906-70, p.49.

3 _{ESO, Population Censuses of 1970.}

4 _{CINA (compiler), HMSO, Colonial Reports of the Cayman Islands, 1970, table 11.01, Cost of Living,}

139 the Great Depression, Cayman’s trade deficit had more than trebled, totaling £30,312. By 1968, the islands’ economy was only able to generate £4,691 worth of exports which included turtles’ head, skin, shell and meat, shark skin and thatch palm rope, while imported goods totaled more than £6.5 million.5 _{Major imported} goods included food and animals; beverages and tobacco; inedible crude materials; mineral fuels; animal and vegetable oils; chemicals; manufactured goods; machinery; and various other commodities. Cayman’s main trading partners were the United States, the United Kingdom, Jamaica, and Canada.6

Despite any such hardship, Caymanians at home were willing to work as witnessed in the islands’ relatively large labour force. By 1943, the gainfully employed population of Grand Cayman totaled 2,531 – 1,588 men and 943 women – out of an estimated population of 6,670 (figures for the sister islands are not available here); indeed, 38% of the Caymanian population was gainfully employed by this time.7 Seventeen years later, in 1960, the labour force stood at 2,229 males and 930 females out of a total population of 5,608; over 56% of the population engaged in gainful occupation, while unemployment remained relatively low at 3.7%.8

5 Imports, Exports, Balance of Visible Trade, 1904-79, in the EconomicandFinancialReview (George

Town: Cayman Islands Government, 1982), p.32.

6 _{ESO, Import Statistics, October, 1978 (Grand Cayman: Cayman Island Government, 1979), p.33.} 7 _{CINA (compiler), HMSO, Table 4.02 Gainfully Occupied Population, 1943, p.13.}

140 From the above statistical occupational and economic account, it can be seen that from 1900 to the 1960s the economy of the Cayman Islands was not a prosperous one with healthy fiscal surpluses. Nonetheless, like their ancestors from the early to mid- eighteenth century onward, the Caymanian workforce in the 1900-1960 period worked to provide themselves and their families with the basic necessities of life. This effort resonates throughout the six phases of Caymanian history and at this juncture seems bound to amass great symbolic meaning in Caymanian traditional sentiment.9 Beyond this, any such symbolism is further illuminated in its geographical displacement, that is, when Caymanians found themselves outside their country for the purpose of gainful employment. In traditional terms, the language of the Caymanians’ adjustment to, and ostensible contentment in, an unassuming economic and social existence has become a tool not only through which learning and sharing of the past can take place, but has also substantively contributed to the resonant idea of Caymanian difference.10 What follows thus strives to assess this language and its concomitant resonance in traditional Caymanian thought both on and off Cayman soil.

9 Cf. Arthur Sloane et al., LaborRelations (New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 2009, 13th edition), p.2; see also,

Edwyn Bevan, Symbolism and Belief (New York: Mcintosh Press, 2008), p.12.

10 _{See Ann Swidler, Talk of Love: How Culture Matters (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2003),}

141 3.2.2 Perpetuation, Imagination, Subjectivity, and Community: The Effects of

Caymanian Traditional Thought

When John Maloney spoke of the ‘islands that time forgot’, he was, in part, attempting to express that until the 1960s the economic and technological development of the Cayman Islands was at a virtual standstill.11 Indeed, by 1953, there was only one international bank on Grand Cayman, and a small number of automobiles in a total population of just over 7,600.12 Yet some Caymanians who grew up in the first six decades of the twentieth century still see their past in a positive manner, in spite of its material dearth; the memories of these older Caymanians remain either neutral or positive to this noticeable dearth spawned of historical circumstance. As a point of clarification, when I speak of recollective memory, like David Rubin, I am referring to ‘the type of memory that occurs when an individual recalls a specific episode from their past experience.’13

11 _{See John Maloney, ‘The Islands Time Forgot’, in The Saturday Evening Post, vol.222, no.41 (April 8,}

1950), pp.38-39.

It is within these recollections that Caymanian traditional thoughts are initially revealed, where traditional thought attempts either to draw attention to the loss of tradition, or else relays the past in sobering and/or positively selective terms in a more unperturbed manner. However, it should be kept in mind that although the legitimacy of traditional thought rests in such recollections, their superlative traditional valuation emanates from the extent of their perpetuity, that is, the extent to which they

12 Information taken from, Doren Miller (commentator), Founded Upon the Seas (George Town:

Cayman Islands National Museum, 1975).

13 _{David Rubin, Remembering Our Past: Studies in Autobiographical Memory (Cambridge: Cambridge}

142 resonate with younger Caymanian generations. This resonation, in its most vibrant form, would not only highlight a past-present cultural continuum between older and younger Caymanians, but can also evoke the subjective, imaginary and communitarian effects of traditional Caymanian thought. The following analyses attempt to assess these effects.

**

We begin with Adinah Whittaker – affectionately referred to as Miss Tooksie – who was born in Grand Cayman on June 28, 1907. Although in her 1991 interview Miss Tooksie demonstrated gaps and inconsistencies in her recollections – like not being able to remember how long she had been called Miss Tooksie, or whether the government all- age school was built before or after the 1932 Hurricane14 _{– she} exhibits coherent recollections of certain aspects of growing up in an unassuming existence. In the initial analysis, like many people, young and old, Miss Tooksie’s memory has undergone long-term transience, that is, ‘forgetting that occurs with the passage of time.’15

14 _{CINA, Interview with Adinah Whittaker, March 7, 1991, pp. 1, 5, 6 and 8.}

Nonetheless, sentiments and understandings of the past become important not so much for their historical consistency and accuracy, but the coherency – even the incoherency – of their delivery; in other words, the degree of confidence with which the past is being recollected and related becomes an

15 _{Daniel L. Schacter, The Seven Sins of Memory: How the Mind Forgets and Remembers (New York:}

143 indispensable psycho-social descriptor of the informant’s sincerest feelings of a lived past.16

Miss Tooksie’s most vibrant recollection is at once unassuming as it is steeped in nostalgia; with a sense of pride, she details her student years in the only government secondary school on Grand Cayman by 1917:

Heather McLaughlin: …But you yourself went to school in Bodden Town?

Adinah Whittaker: Oh, yes; oh, yes.

HMc: And you had to walk all that way?

AW: Oh, Rain, sun, or shine!

HMc: How long did it take you? So did you walk all the way down to Bodden Town by yourself?

AW: No, a crowd of children.

HMc: Now, on that long walk down there, how long did it take you?

AW: [Laughter] Some morning we couldn’t walk

because we was so late, we had to run it.

16 _{See, for instance, Adam Seligman et al., Ritualand its Consequences: An Essay on the Limits of Sincerity}

144 HMc: Oh dear. I was noticing when I was driving along.

It really is a long way.17

Miss Tooksie’s ostensibly gentle recollection of having to walk and/or run to school in any weather begins to express an unassuming Caymanian lifestyle especially as this related to getting around the islands: given the island’s relatively low wages which would have largely been used to pay for basic necessities, the average Caymanian in the second decade of the twentieth century would not have had the financial wherewithal to purchase an automobile or a horse-drawn cart. More importantly, however, Miss Tooksie’s relay of the past here is quite unperturbed as she is in no way stressing that the Caymanian past must be remembered for posterity. Indeed, her thoughtful and positive recall in 1991 evinces a positive attitude of her past; these expressed feelings thus have potential traditional value for the fact that Miss Tooksie has orally expressed a practice that occurred in the Caymanian past; this expressiveness has in turn been immortalized by way of the transcription process, and therefore can be passed on to younger Caymanians who are especially keen to understand and cherish this aspect of their ancestral past.

As a point of clarification, when I speak of attitude in this instance, I am referring to the line of thought that attitudes may ‘…represent an evaluative response towards

145 an object.’18 The object of Miss Tooksie’s focus is her memory of walking long distances to school regardless of the weather. That she responds to this object with a lingering sense of pride and excitement, we may evaluate her response as a traditionally favourable one: in other words, her expression has in effect established a groundwork upon which similar expressions of the Caymanian past can be built, and hints at the idea that, barring any great traumatic incident, the past can be relayed in nostalgic terms.19 _{We should at this juncture begin to anticipate the great} extent to which Miss Tooksie’s recollection would resonate with other Caymanians who are at present also keen to remember either their lived or ancestral past in the attempt to keep it alive in the midst of a rampant multiculturalism. Yet it is also my contention that a resonation of this nature introduces the idea of traditional Caymanian sentiment as vibrant image.

My idea of Miss Tooksie as traditional imager need not be limited to her, but can constantly be perpetuated and built upon by other Caymanians with past lived experiences. Despite any and all of their spoken inaccuracies with regard to the retelling of the past, the words of such Caymanians possess the potential both to establish and buttress a nostalgic appreciation for the past. Especially in the present day, this nostalgic appreciation indeed reserves the unique ability to create a

18 _{Gerd Bohner et al., Attitudes and Attitude Change (Essex: Psychology Press Ltd., 2002), p.5.} 19 Svetlana Boym, The Future of Nostalgia (New York: Basic Books, 2001), chapter 4.

146 powerful emotional pull back to that past.20 Thus the emotional power which can accompany recounts of the past, via memory, can be secured in imaginative terms; this is conveyed in the idea that the past as mental image can depend on the apposite senses if it is to be fully experienced in hindsight. Although the concept of visualization suggests the superseding sense of sight, any traditional visualization of the past necessarily transcends this limited sense.21 Thus traditional visualizations require a sensorial network that works to capture Caymanian understandings of the underlying character, or spirit, of that past episode. Indeed, the underlying spirit of Miss Tooksie’s foregoing recollection – which, it should be stressed represents my own ideas of the nature of this spirit of the past – can be decoded by the essential image that her words are likely to evoke. When, for instance, she talks about walking long distances to school in any weather, her recollection works to establish a vivid image of the actualities of that past event. Thus it was not very difficult for me, as a Caymanian, to imagine a group of children running three miles to school in the rain, laughing and ostensibly carefree in their unassuming plight.22

20 Stephanie Coontz, The Way We Were: American Families and the Nostalgia Trap (New York: Basic

Books, 1992), p.8.

Miss Tooksie’s exclamation at the actuality of having to run to school during inclement weather adds a marked auditory and visual accent, cementing the importance of vibrant expression to effective relays of the past. As I continued to visualize Miss Tooksie’s recount of this part of her past, her imagery gathered further emotional power in its

21 See Kenneth Baum, The Mental Edge (New York: Berkley Publishing Group, 1999), p.88 22 _{Cf. Appendix C.}

147 ability to elevate the appropriate senses: the imaginary senses of touch, smell, sight, and hearing contribute to her account; the fecund smells which accompany rain or sunshine, the visual effect of the rain or the sun as these foreground the sounds of the open air – chirping birds, the hum of the surf (as Bodden Town is situated right along Grand Cayman’s southern coast); the perceived taste of the atmosphere on the tongue.

Similarly, the following excerpt from the pro-Caymanian newspaper, the Caymanian Compass, imaginatively captures the perceived spirit behind the traditional use of the Cayman silver thatch palm. The Cayman silver thatch palm is unique only to the Cayman Islands and was used in historical Cayman society to make various products like the sturdy thatch rope (which was especially used by Caymanian seaman and traded at Jamaican ports), slippers known as wompers, baskets, brooms, and so forth. The silver thatch palm was also an indispensable feature of old Caymanian houses, used both as roofing and walling.23

Teams of eight to 10 men would work together to thatch a house roof, usually in exchange for a meal and help when their own homes needed re–thatching.

Based on its historical importance, the Compass’s account of this once valuable staple is immediately vivid in its descriptions:

23 _{See, for instance, Rose Ebanks, ‘History’s silver thread’, in Cayman Net News, at}

148 Using open leaves, the thatchers had to work quickly as the leaves would curl if left to dry and cause the roof to leak.

The supervising thatcher would work from inside the house. If you look carefully at a thatched roof, you will appreciate the skill involved in creating this closely constructed covering that can be best observed (and guided) from the underside.24

This evocation of the past has the ability to generate an image in the present that privileges an important Caymanian tradition: the evoked image of this utterance is steeped in a sense of community and imaginatively crystallized in tactility and vision – the feel of the palm beneath labouring hands and its visual representation upon the completion of the roof; the very vibrancy of this image works to establish the art of thatching as distinctly Caymanian. This account thus can demonstrate by imaginary touch and vision how an occupation and its attendant homegrown skills substantively contributed to a Caymanian way of life. Such evocations can readily capture a state of being in the traditional imagination, and the much perceived potency of the past thus can gain its strength from the implied imagery that undergirds favourable expressions of it. In this sense, effective traditional expressions do not always need to stress the importance that fading traditions be remembered and practiced in the present; instead, the accounts of Miss Tooksie and the Compass editor are necessarily traditional because these Caymanians are, in effect, orally transmitting information about the past, if with a marked tranquility;

24 _{Editor, ‘Silver Thatch important to heritage’, in the Caymanian Compass, at}

149 such simple yet potent relays of the past, as we will further see, not only represent evocations on which younger Caymanians can relate to, and associate with, in their quest to cherish the ways of their ancestors, but by virtue of the images which they can evoke, begin to establish a Caymanian spirit rooted not so much in an objective history, but in positive traditionalist interpretations of that history. According to my own understandings of the two accounts I have so far used, the Caymanian spirit captured is shaped in a ubiquitous, unspoken hardship; it is this hardship, in all of its unspoken potency, which gives traditional Caymanian thought its equally unspoken adapting values. Within these traditional sentiments rests the idea that the historically bound Caymanian spirit of the children of Miss Tooksie’s childhood and the Caymanian roof thatchers is ultimately revealed in their ability, as livers of the past, to subsume any ubiquitous hardship within mental structures of elation and skillful determination, respectively. Indeed, this speaks, in general terms, to the ancestral Caymanians’ ability to positively adapt to hardship, both in emotional and occupational terms, and any immaterial Caymanian nature has indeed been effectively immortalized in these terms. We can at this point thus understand Miss