Portrait of the Caribbean [antikvár]

CARIBBEANWhite sand, as soft as talcum powder, stretches as far as the eye can see. The only footprints along the beach are mine, on this first walk of the morning, and the only other marks on my path are from sea creatures that felt secure enough to forage in the pre-dawn stillness—or were tossed there by a roiling wave.The sea that laps the shoreline, and sometimes my toes, is just about body temperature—slightly above or slightly below, depending on when and where I happen to swim, how deep I dive, how long it has been toasted by the Caribbean sunshine, and the time of the year. (The sea temperature varies about ten degrees from summer to winter.)Life in the Caribbean seems serene. Perhaps that is its charm. Certainly that is part of it. But the region is curious with its contrasts. We dream of a place that is carefree, bathed in constant sunshine (except when it is blanketed by starlit nights), cooled by ever-present breezes, and decorated with sensational flowers set against verdant foliage. We see smiling people waiting to welcome us. We anticipate comfort and coddling.But the Caribbean is also a region of violence, as the Arawaks discovered when they were invaded by the Caribs, and both the Arawaks and the Caribs found when they were set upon by the Spaniards, and the Spaniards learned from the British or the French (and vice versa), and so on through the islands' history. It is even true these days, although invasions are usually limited to tourists.The Caribbean is a region where hurricanes have splintered buildings, broken trees like matchsticks, and given once-lush islands a brutal crew cut in a few hours; where earthquakes have dumped thriving communities into the sea, such as happened at Jamaica's Port Royal in 1692; and where volcanoes have erupted, burying an entire town, as happened in Martinique in 1902.Perhaps it is the contrasts that have given the islands their magic—the perfection of nature and the not-so-perfect lines of modern construction; the semblance of luxury and the West Indians' resentment of servitude; the complexions of people, from darkest ebony to sun-pinked white. "Islomanes" is what Lawrence Durrell has called those of us addicted to islands, but no one has clearly defined the island appeal. What draws us to these specks in the sea? Is it the search for "paradise"? The lure of adventure? The temptation of new horizons? Is it the pursuit of a dream? Do we hope for a "perfect" place with a simpler, saner life? Were we all enchanted as children by Robinson Crusoe? Did we perceive Swiss Family Robinson to have the ideal lifestyle?We search, like Diogenes looking for an honest man, for paradise; many ignore problems to find it in the Caribbean.The finite boundaries of islands fool us into believing that islands are easy to understand. They are not. Especially in theFinding a beach where your footprints can be the first m.Caribbean. The only certainty is that no two islands are exactly alike, even when they share a common government. History and natural attributes conspire to make each one different.Just like people, each island has its own personality. Thus, once-British Jamaica is not like Puerto Rico with its Spanish heritage, even though nature has endowed them with similar characteristics and they are almost the same size. And the Latino Dominican Republic is very different from the French-affected Flaiti, although both share the island of Hispaniola. Dutch Sint Maarten is also different from French St. Martin, in spite of the fact that tourism has stomped with a heavy foot on the small island they share. And Nevis is different from St. Kitts, although the two islands are a single independent Caribbean country with a British heritage.The Caribbean sea, an oval area about sixteen hundred miles east to west and seven hundred miles north to south, serves as a buffer between the south coast of the LInited States and the north coast of South America. Most of the islands are like pickets of a curving fence, separating the Atlantic Ocean from a sea cupped by the east coast of Central America. Though there are hundreds of islands, only a few—Jamaica, the Cayman Islands, Mexico's Cozumel and Isia Mujeres, Colombia's San Andres, Venezuela's Margarita, and the Dutch-affiliated Aruba, Bonaire, and Curaçao among them—are entirely surrounded by the Caribbean Sea. Most have either southern or western shores (sometimes both) washed by the Caribbean, and some—the islands of the Bahamas, Turks and Caicos, and Barbados—are surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean, although they share the history and the sun-struck lifestyle of their neighbors. Some of the islands are independent countries. Haiti was the first. It became independent in 1804, followed by the Dominican Republic in 1844, and Cuba in 1898. These days, most of the islands are independent, having become so since 1962. A few islands are still dependent territories, albeit in a modern way that yanks them from the former "colony" status and gives each a strong measure of self-government. Thus, Anguilla, the British Virgin Islands, the Cayman Islands, Montserrat, and Turks and Caicos islands are British affiliated; the United States watches over the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico and the multi-island territory of the U.S. Virgin Islands (St. Croix, St. John, and St. Thomas); and the Netherlands government has a symbiotic relationship with Sint Maarten, Saba, Sint Eustatius, Aruba, Bonaire, and Curaçao. Geologists suspect that a few of the northern islands— notably Cuba and Hispaniola—may have been part of the land-mass of eastern Mexico; and a few southern islands—Trinidad, for sure—broke from the coast of South America. But these mountainous islands are only part of the picture. The "seven hundred islands" of the Bahamas, east and south of the tip of Florida, are basically flat with an occasional hill, and ny seem difficult, but it is not impossible in the Caribbean.