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I was in Negril, Jamaica, one
sun-shiny morning about eight years ago, buying oranges from a
street vendor. He and I stood at the bridge near the town center, and in
the midst of the exchange the man told me that the austerity measures and
the burdens of debt imposed by the World Trade Organization and
International Monetary Fund was crushing Jamaica.
Globalization, he
said, was colonialism under a different name.
That encounter was my introduction to the world of the WTO, the IMF and
the IADB (Inter-American Development Bank), which serve in the varied and
interconnected capacities of banks, trade organizations and development
agencies. At the time I was utterly ignorant of what these organizations
meant for Jamaica, other developing nations or our own country for that
matter. And after watching and watching again Stephanie Black’s searing
documentary Life and Debt,
it’s hard to disagree with the street vendor. And while it’s certainly
necessary to add commentary and perspective (see the interview with SCC
Economics professor Bruce Welz), it is also unutterably clear that the
free market isn’t synonymous with freedom; the playing field is not only
not level, the rules of engagement are set almost entirely by the players
on the winning teams.
Life and
Debt focuses on globalization
cause-and-effect in Jamaica. Passionate and polemical, it is, first and
last, a documentary about perspectives. Director Black shows Jamaica as
tourists first see it from inside their jets as they descend upon the
stunning landscape of this Caribbean isle. She obtains a first hand
interview with the bloodless Horst Kohler of the IMF. She shows Jamaicans
watching television news in which President Bill Clinton explains why he’s
fighting for U.S. banana companies.
One of the very great values of the film is that Jamaicans—farmers and
teachers, in particular—are given voice to tell their own stories and to
render their own strategies for survival. Too often the voices of the
dispossessed are either cut entirely. How can the machete, asks one
farmer, compete with the machine?
Life and
Debt experienced something
better upon release than a quick death elegantly mourned in the indie
press, which is what one expects of such a film. Favorable reviews rippled
in The Guardian, Village Voice and the New York Times,
giving the Life and Debt
legs in the American market. Director Stephanie Black effectively
distills the grievances and aspirations of Jamaicans who don’t have faith
in the narrative of progress and development of global economy which is
laid out by multinational companies and their apologists.
Life and
Debt is a film about space and
the redefinition of freedom. For example, in a port area of the capital
city of Kingston is something called a “free enterprise zone,” which is
legally different in kind from the rest of the country. It is the freest
spot in Jamaica—for big business. Foreign companies such as Tommy Hilfiger
and Hanes are allowed to bring in shiploads of material to port tax-free
and to have them sewn and assembled on the cheap, whereupon they are
immediately transported to foreign markets. Unions are banned. The pay,
about US$30 or so a week, and the conditions are far less that what we
would tolerate in America.
What accounts for this? Jamaica’s debt servitude to the IMF and other
lending agencies, which has led to foreign ownership and multinational
control. The economic model imposed by the IMF on countries like Jamaica
is founded on the assumption that that the combination of increased
interest rates and cutbacks in government spending will shift resources
from domestic consumption to private investment. The price of labor is
meant to go down—as an incentive for increasing employment and production.
Black uncovers voices for self-determination, and these include Jamaica’s
Rastafarians. Life and Debt
shows Rastas reasoning about usury and singing songs that carry the weight
of proverbial wisdom, like this verse: “Dem give I basket fi go carry
water.”
Life and
Debt includes archival footage
from the 1970s, when Jamaica, then a democratic socialist government under
Prime Minister Michael Manley, who declared that "the Jamaican government
will not accept anybody, anywhere in the world telling us what to do in
our own country. Above all, we're not for sale." He wound up having to
sign Jamaica's first loan agreement with the IMF in 1977 due to lack of
viable alternatives — at interest rates of over 20% (this not a typo).
Fomenting crisis-level social situations are a number of interrelated
problems such as increased unemployment, sweeping corruption, higher
illiteracy, increased violence, prohibitive costs of locally grown food,
dilapidated hospitals, increased disparity between rich and poor.
The narration includes excerpts from A Small Place, a work of
nonfiction by Jamaica Kincaid (despite her name she is from Antigua) whose
commentary is adapted to fit the Jamaican context. This, I think, is a
questionable strategy because the narrator is off-putting, too full of
pique and judgment. “You are indifferent,” she says, to the difficulty of
Jamaicans passing through customs, to the devaluation of their dollar and
to the social ills being suffered, as we watch American tourists on
holiday.
If
one agrees with Nobel Peace Prize recipient Elie Wiesel, for instance, who
says that the opposite of love is not hate but indifference, then this is
a very strong charge. The facts and stats of Jamaica’s servitude to its
national debt speak volumes. The film doesn’t need to add a layer of
guilt (which doesn’t inspire or sustain activism) or to offend potential
allies.
But the documentary deserves close inspection by anyone who wants to take
part in the necessary dialogue we have among ourselves—or with the
citizens who live in the countries we travel in—as we grapple with the
transformations of globalization.
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Reviewed by
Michael Kuelker
SCC English
Life and Debt was shown in the
SCC International
Film Series
in Fall 2003
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