Jamaica's crippling debt
and hard life

By Angela Baldassarre

We've all heard about the World Trade Organization (WTO) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), but how many of us actually know what these organizations demand of the countries they supposedly 'help'? After watching Stephanie Black's insightful documentary Life and Debt, it's now clear to this scribe what those protestors at all the WTO and G8 summits are angry about.

Life and Debt focuses on Jamaica - land of sea, sand and sun, and a prime example of the complexities and dangers of economic globalization for the world's developing countries. Utilizing the island as an example of a country which has been under the tutelage of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and other international lending institutions for nearly 25 years, the film dissects the "mechanism of debt" that is destroying local agriculture and industry in Third World countries while substituting sweat-shops and cheap imports. Life and Debt looks at this "new world order" from the point of view of Jamaican workers, farmers, and government and policy officials who see the reality of globalization from the ground up.

It was while living in Jamaica in the early 90s that Black noticed the daily headlines reporting that the IMF money was being denied because Jamaica "had not devalued quickly enough" or because Jamaica "had not privatized enough".

"I was very, very surprised because I always thought that the IMF was something like a benevolent red cross in the area," says Black from her office in New York. "I didn't realize that there was such a strong reaching arm into the day to day policies of the country. I didn't understand that the loans were attached to such specific conditionalities."

An award winner for her 1990 documentary H-2 Worker, that spurned a congressional investigation into the "H-2" visa which allows thousands of Caribbean workers to harvest sugar cane in the U.S., and then sends them back after one year, Black found the members of the IMF whom she interviewed to be completely unapologetic about the policies.

"I think that the IMF is fairly accurately represented in the film in terms of this is its ideology. This is what you do, this is the policy if you're imposed to incorporate a country into a global economy," explains Black. "But what are these policies for if they don't benefit the people that it's ostensibly supposed to be benefiting? It's not countries that go poor, it's people that go poor. Look at what's happening in Argentina. The IMF have a specific ideology, a specific 'medicine' that they impose and give to every country which borrows from them. It's a very specific economic ideology that really has not been successful anywhere. Jamaica is the perfect example."

Is all hope lost, then, for Jamaica?

"I think the solution is a complete re-evaluation of how the country is structuring its economic development," offers Black. "Unfortunately when you have a dairy industry like what Jamaica had and you lose it, it's not like you can restart it over night. That's decades of labour and capitol, generations of work, breeds of cattle that will not come back. I am optimistic because I believe in the people, particularly the Jamaican people because they're survivors. I believe that there should be a leadership where poverty will appear first and foremost on the agenda and not the kind of acquiescence to these policies and WTO agreements which don't benefit the country itself."

Tell us what you think. word@wordmag.com

<Back to top>