Forty years old! If we could liken Saint Lucia to a woman, she would be middle-aged, with a vast number of children (but not as many as her neighbours) and grappling financially. It could be said that Saint Lucia has come a long way since 1979, when water-borne diseases such as bilharzia plagued the population, poverty was rampant and living conditions were deplorable. But, in the same breath, forty years ago on that fateful day, Saint Lucians, for the very first time, were unified. Forty years later, one could say that Saint Lucians have never been so divided, whether politically, religiously or culturally (just bring up the madras vs. African cloth conversation or, worst-case scenario, your political affiliation).
While living conditions have greatly improved throughout the island, Saint Lucia has backtracked in many ways when it comes to the socio-economic status of its people. The decline in agriculture in the last twenty years has seen the destruction of the farming middle-class. The license plates with ‘FAR’ no longer stand for ‘Farmers are Rich’. In fact these plates are almost non-existent as most of the population has moved far away from farming.
Once again poverty has become a rural phenomenon with 35% of the rural population living under the poverty line in areas of the south, southwest and pockets of the northeast, and there is a stark difference between the rich and the poor.
While we still have two Nobel laureates, Saint Lucians at home and around the world are excelling in business, the arts, music and innovation. However, it seems that our ranking as a tourist destination far out-measures the accomplishments of these
Saint Lucians (a shaky measure in the midst of our fragility to climate change) and that, more and more, our development seems to be tied to the enjoyment of outsiders rather than the care of our own. As Nelson Mandela said, “A nation should not be judged by how it treats its highest citizens, but its lowest ones.” And, in this context, Saint Lucia has failed resoundingly.
While I may not be old enough to have witnessed the first day of Saint Lucia as an independent nation, or the strife that came with it, I strongly believe that our path to independence was forged in the belief that Saint Lucians were capable of moulding and controlling their own destiny without being shouldered by the rest of the world. In that sense, while we have aged, as a country we have not matured in our ability to protect and promote our own. So, here’s to forty years of overcoming colonial strife and discord but to forty more of realizing the independence vision of our forefathers.
Keithlin Caroo is the founder of Helen’s Daughters, a Saint Lucian non-profit with a special focus on rural women’s economic development through improved market access, adaptive agricultural techniques, and capacity-building. It was formed in 2016 in a winning proposal for UN Women’s Empower Women Champions for Change Program. To learn more about the initiative, you can visit:
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