Cultural Diversity in The Caribbean

Cultural Diversity (Definition)

Cultural diversity is observed when people from different cultural or ethnic groups live together in one place. The longer different ethnic groups live together, the more the cultures mix and become synchronized.

The culturally diverse Caribbean:

• Indigenous / Amerindian
• Africans
• European
• American
• Afro-Indian
• Asian
• Middle Eastern

Tolerance of different cultural patterns

The diversity of the Caribbean region is one of its most exciting features. It is also one of the region’s greatest challenges. We all want to be free to enjoy and practice our own cultures. In a healthy society, citizens can appreciate different cultures and allow all people to follow their own cultural traditions.

Cultural Retention

This is possible in

• Festivals
• Crafts
• Food
• Literature
• Religion
• Dance
• Language

Commercialisation of Culture

Tourists come to experience our:

• Food
• Carnivals
• Music festivals
• Cultural and historical places
• Buy traditional art and crafts
• Traditional dancing and music.

Indigenous / Amerindian

• First settlers
• Those who came from Central and South America came c. 4000BC
• Came from the Orinoco river/delta area c. 500BC
• Most of the Amerindians who live in the Caribbean can be found in St. Vincent, Belize, Guyana and Suriname.
• Tainos came from the area south of the Orinoco River
• Descendants also live in Arima (Trinidad) and the Carib territory on the east coast of Dominica.

The younger generation of the Kalinago people preserve and promote their culture by the following means:

• Recreating dances, music and songs
• Using art to tell the stories of their way of life and their myths
• Discovering the uses of their traditional herbal medicines
• Designing and selling traditional basket work.

Family & Culture  - Family patterns grow out of the culture of a society.                     Traditionally, Amerindian family members had very distinct roles.

• Men were the hunters, made weapons and defended the settlement form enemies
• Men used tools to prepare the land for crops
• Women planted and reaped the crops and prepared the food for the family
• The older people cared for and taught the children and helped with other tasks around the home.
• The larger-scale tasks were done cooperatively with the whole tribe.

Africans

• Forcibly enslaved and brought to the Caribbean in the 17th century.
• Most countries in the Caribbean have a majority Afro-Caribbean population.
• Hundreds of thousands of enslaved Africans were transported over a period of 300 years until the abolition of the slave trade in the nineteenth century.
• There are initiatives to celebrate and remember African culture and heritage which have influenced Caribbean music, food literature and art.

Family & Culture

• Traditionally the family patterns combined nuclear and extended family systems.
• Nuclear families were formed within a larger unit, so that a number of related families lived in separate houses within the same compound.
• Polygamous family structures also existed.NB//. African family patterns in the Caribbean were also influenced by the institution of slavery, since slaves were not encouraged to marry.
• Children born to an enslaved women were automatically slaves of her master
• This may have influenced the visiting unions.

Europeans

• Came to the Caribbean region in the 1492 (15th Century)
• Brought Christianity and festivals such a s Christmas and Easter.
• Destroyed the Amerindians and wanted to enslave those who survived.
• The diseases they brought with them killed many Amerindians because they had no resistance to them.
• Brought slaves with them from Africa and this trade in enslaed Africans began in 1518.

Family & Culture

• The Europeans were accustomed to the nuclear family and believed it should be the norm for everyone.
• They expected the women to stay at home under the protection of her husband and father
• Women were expected to be “chaste”.
• Women were expected to have a lower standard of education than men.
• Most European women did not work for a living, except through necessity.

Asians

• Came to the Caribbean as indentured servants from China and India
• Came to work on the sugar cane plantations in the 19th century (from 1830)
• They brought hinduism, Islam, and religious festivals associated with these religions.
• Although they were free to return home after the period of their indenture many chose to stay and became the nucleus of the Indian and Chinese communities in the Caribbean.

Family & Culture

• East Indians and Chinese typically lived in extended families containing two or more generations inhabiting the same house.
• This practice is still present in the Caribbean today.