The claim sounds plausible because it rests on a genuine historical reality. Caribbean nations did enter independence with extractive economic structures. The plantation economy was not designed for local development. The educational, legal, and institutional infrastructure left behind was minimal. These are facts, not contested claims.
The comparison with other post-colonial nations that have struggled economically also has force. Many countries that experienced colonialism subsequently faced significant development challenges. The pattern is widespread enough to suggest a genuine relationship between colonial extraction and post-colonial difficulty.
The specific case of the debt burden is also real. Many Caribbean nations do carry high levels of public debt relative to their GDP. If those debt levels were in part created by the need to address colonial legacies without colonial resources, that is a legitimate grievance.
The moral intuition behind the claim is strong: if you damage something and leave without repairing it, you bear some responsibility for the condition you left behind. Applied to nations rather than individuals, the intuition retains its force.
