“To Dream Another Dream, We Must First Be Allowed to Dream Our Own”

Dear Editor,

I read with great interest, and elements of unease, the recent editorial comparing the island’s independence movement(s) to the exported “American dream” championed by fundamentalist, evangelical missionaries. While it is, indeed, a compelling read, both in structure and content, and the parallels drawn have merits which warrant both consideration by, and caution from, readers, it also reads as laden with the erasure of how interwoven Caribbean political imaginations are with each other and with other global forms. Further it seems a refusal to go deeper into sentiments around democratic deficits, economic inequality, daily survival, and how the activists, the author refers to, are themselves shaped by colonial legacies and coloniality. While these influences should not excuse the phobias (xenophobia, homophobia, and others) that have surfaced in some corners of the independence discourses, or the ways the movement can edge dangerously close to elitist interests while sidelining the truly marginalized, those dynamics still deserve to be looked at and handled with care. It is important to ask hard questions about who is being centered, and who is being left out, without collapsing the whole project into a singular critique. It is also important to grapple with the complex and often troubling question of what self-determination truly means, and how different interpretations of it, especially on big ocean/small island, emerging states, can come into conflict with one another. There is room, actually, a need, for sharper internal reflection within the movements, and of course continued external critique, but both have to come from places that also considers the historical weight and layered complexities people are carrying.

I think Prof. Guadeloupe’s piece begins by offering a false equivalence between predominantly white missionaries from the United States and primarily Black activists from the island. This equivalency is false, because these two groups did not and do not come to their work from the same conditions. In fact, it conflates the extension of colonizing projects based on violence and spiritual conquest in the global south, with the fight of formerly colonized and marginalized global south people fighting for reparative justice and further control over their own futures. To be sure, I understand Prof. Guadeloupe’s suggestion that Caribbean activists, including independistas, not take on oppressive behaviors and/or become new colonizers. We can turn to present day South Africa for insights into how xenophobia, born out of a particular socio-economic powerlessness, can have people violently targeting people from neighboring countries, instead of directing their anger towards the dynamics and systems causing and creating structural inequalities. Still, what was not attended to in Prof. Guadeloupe’s piece is how power moved differently for and within both groups and this warrants further attention.

Prof. Guadeloupe is right to critique all forms of narrow nationalism, but he also does so without addressing the fact that we still exist in a world dominated by nation-states and the trans-national corporations which both challenge and reinforce their powers (when it benefits their interests). In this time of flux, the dreaming of islanders straddles old paradigms of nation-state and new sub and trans-nation longing and navigating. It is not easy and it is chaotic. Many (post)colonial Caribbean struggles are messy, hybrid, and full of contradictions. Many activists grapple with and imagine borders or flags, while grappling with the ideas of more than just borders or flags; busy with the work of thinking nation, pan-nation, beyond nation and state all at once. At the same time, they are still having to, try to, do the work of 1) recovering themselves from the histories they were erased from, 2) figuring out ways to speak with their own language, dialects and accents without shame, 3) moving through multiple layers of bureaucracies without humiliation, and 4) demanding to no longer be told that their dreams are not radical enough. We must indeed question philosophies and paradigms that exclude people and reproduce hierarchies in any form under new flags and/or within new borders. However, we must also hold space for the fact that people grappling with the legacies of the past may reach for forms of belonging, autonomy and sovereignty that reflect both their pains and their possibilities. So, to compare local Caribbean activists to born-again missionaries erases the deep pluralism and political nuances present in these movements where people are still struggling to find ways to articulate and critique their own positions, while caring for the positions of others. This is not to say that they must be excused from continuing to deepen their own work or making it more expansive, it is to say that the critique must not be overly simplified.

There is, in the editorial, a powerful warning about fundamentalism and nationalism, but there is also a troubling flattening. I read in the calls, albethey problematic, to center “real St. Martiners”, a plea (almost desperate) towards memory, towards redress, towards balance in a place where those with deep roots (albethey historically and currently migratory) are often made strangers in their own land (often by both the decisions of their own people in authority and also the colonial legacies and capitalist currents that caused and continue to cause involuntary and voluntary movement). If not careful, the think piece reads, not as a critique of one kind of dream that now holds place and space on the island next to many others, but, also, as a veiled defense of a colonial status quo. Perhaps, it does not mean to do so, but here caution must be advised as well. In some ways this piece co-opts and utilizes decolonial language in ways that undermine localized decolonial practices, albeit they imperfect. For sure, no project for justice should be immune from self and/or external examination. However, we must also take care that that critique does not become a veiled refusal to listen, to believe, or to imagine that these particular Caribbean people might be capable of dreaming dreams born out of their own regional and global entanglements, quite unlike those of the group they are being compared to.

For sure, activists on St. Maarten, in their dreaming, should also imagine new economies and social relations, both based on (ancestral) memories, but also imaginaries of more just futures, hopefully anchored in care and relationality. And yes, nativism must be critiqued, but also, we should and must consider why critiques of nativism are so often weaponized against formerly colonized peoples, while colonial metropoles are allowed to retain and defend nation-state identities, borders, and state-centric economic logics without equivalent scrutiny. Why is the desire for Caribbean self-determination stigmatized, while the continued democratic deficit of Dutch political authority is left largely un(der)interrogated?

I agree with the writer, on a few points, but particularly this one: Perhaps it is time to dream another dream or dream other dreams. However, to dream another dream, we must first have and/or create space to dream our own and to dream other dreams, we must first be allowed to dream on our own. We must continue to allow those dreams to emerge from all segments of society, even those we disagree with. Let us continue to allow dreams that center Caribbean people’s right to imagine (themselves and their futures) otherwise, even if that imagining is imperfect or (internally/externally) contested. Let us also continue to build our critique of those dreams, but in our critique let us not punch down under the guise of punching across. Let us not oversimplify our critique of any dreams and/or dreamers. In our critique let us, not diminish or erase the agency of local actors. So, to those who are already busy dreaming, the independistas, the interdependistas, the pan-Caribbeanists, the diplomats, the youth activists, the quiet and not so quiet elders, I offer to you a middle road where there is a place for many dreams; older dreams, newer dreams, and dreams still emerging. A space where hopefully these dreams will continue to bounce up each other (in increasingly meaningful and respectful ways) in processes of dream defining and dream refining. On this middle road do not reject the critique offered by Prof. Guadeloupe outright, let it sharpen you, but not distract you. Let it call you, and us, all to be more precise, more principled, more expansive in our visions. Let it be a space where more spaces must be made for other dreamers; those whose roots grow differently in Soualiga’s soil. We may not all carry the same version of St. Martin in our hearts, but may we one day, use all of those different versions towards our collective work; a cooperative, inclusive visioning. In doing so we must indeed move toward a shared, plural, living dream rooted in dignity, care, (re)memory and imaginary. Those dreams are already being imagined on St. Martin, we just have to keep listening and get better at listening, especially to and for each other.

Semper Progrediens

‍