The claim links Caribbean poverty directly and causally to the legacy of slavery. Caribbean nations entered independence with economies that had been structured entirely for the extraction of value by colonial powers. The plantation system was not designed to create local capital, local institutions, or local human development. It was designed to produce sugar, tobacco, and cotton for export, using coerced labour, with profits flowing to Britain. When independence came, Caribbean nations inherited economies that were structurally incapable of self-sustaining development.
In this argument, the poverty visible in parts of the Caribbean today, particularly in Haiti and Jamaica, is not the result of bad governance or poor decisions made since independence. It is the inherited consequence of a system designed to extract wealth and leave nothing behind. The colonial powers bear ongoing responsibility for this condition because they created it, benefited from it, and left without remedying it. Reparations would represent a recognition of that responsibility and a first step towards remedying the structural damage.
CARICOM’s ten-point plan frames this in terms of ‘fiscal entrapment’: Caribbean governments that inherited poverty also inherited the costs of addressing it, producing debt levels that constrain development to this day. The argument is that this debt cycle belongs morally to the imperial powers, not to the Caribbean nations carrying it.
