Presentation by Daniella Jeffry. The St.Martin Day celebration - grassroots St.Martin people style. ====================================================== The eleventh of November 2013 Celebration At the Bellevue Gardens 10th Anniversary of the St. Martin Nation Building Foundation Birth of the St. Martin Nation Building Foundation St. Martin has undergone major political changes which have not only brought economic prosperity to the island, but have also, in the long run, undermined the very fabric of our society at all levels. They are the incorporation of St. Martin North as a commune of Guadeloupe by virtue of the 1946 Law of Departmentalization creating the Overseas French Departments, and the integration of St. Martin South into the Netherlands Antilles, having become an autonomous country within the Kingdom of the Netherlands by virtue of the 1954 Kingdom Charter. This political change linking the two parts to their regional administrative and political centres had a direct negative effect of practically forcing them to turn their backs on each other in many areas of historical cohabitation and cooperation. St. Martin South reached its peak years of prosperity during the 1970s, making it the second most popular tourist destination after Puerto Rico. As the development continued, its prosperity attracted a great amount of workers from the nearby region and more faraway countries as well, bringing to the island its corollaries of social ills, drug trafficking, and criminality. 1. The Modern Period During the Modern Period (1963-2003) St. Martin ceased to be a people nation when its inhabitants allowed their culture, way of life and livelihood to be threatened as an expression of their friendliness, solidarity, and hospitality, by their naivety, the greed and egocentric aspirations of some of their rulers. It is to be noted that St. Martin society emerging from a plantation tradition did not really evolve into a truly people-oriented economy. With the transformation of the economy of the North by the implementation of the French 1986 Defiscalization Law, intended to develop tourism by competing with the 20 year advance of St. Martin South, the native people of St. Martin North started to experience the deteriorating effects of French overseas policies. The rapid and exponential increase of illegal Caribbean immigrants, and European settlers coming essentially from the former French colonies of Africa and the Indian Ocean, made the native population a marginalized minority on the 52 km² of the North. The French youths, beneficiaries of unemployment subsidies, from mainland France added their numbers as seasonal workers in the hotel and restaurant industry, increasing their revenues with undeclared jobs on both sides of the island. The native people of St. Martin are crippled today by genocide by substitution and its correlative ills, economic marginalization, discrimination, exclusion, and chronic acculturation. The introduction of the welfare system and the construction of social apartments for the Caribbean immigrants from 1993 on when about 3000 were legalized, changed the face of the island with the escalation of criminal activity, the breakdown of social cohesiveness, breakdown of family and moral values, and the continuous decline of tourism. The period 2003-2013 is marked in the North by a change of status linking the North directly with the Republic of France and the complete downfall of the economy with the closing down of hotels and businesses; an alarming high rate of unemployment among natives; a chronic crisis in governance with an untimely and ineffective change of status. In the South, the change of status into an autonomous country of the Dutch Kingdom on 10.10.2010 and the move towards recognizing the immigrants as economic partners have surely added to the development of communautarism, each immigrant groups competing with the dwindling native population to hold the most influential positions on this small 37 square mile island. The development of communautarism in this apparently multicultural setting has the overwhelming effect to destabilize the island society and create identity confusion, wilfully encouraged by the dominant leadership. If St. Martiners neglect their heritage, they destroy the bonds that link them together, they weaken their love for country, bringing about a complete disintegration of the island society and the disappearance of the values that characterized the St. Martin society. Even though our culture has evolved through the years, its roots must be grounded in the history and way of life transmitted to us. A nation cannot be built on the separate and distinct cultures of other peoples. 2. Reunification of the people It is against the backdrop of such tumultuous internal circumstances that the St. Martin Nation-Building Foundation was born on September 16, 2003. On that occasion, the proposal of a Marshall Plan was made public to save the natives from total extinction. The Foundation is celebrating its 10th anniversary today also and hereby emphasizing its main objective, which is to contribute to the preservation of the Native St. Martin heritage as part of the nation building process. This foundation was registered in the North in 2005 as the Association L’Esprit de Concordia, its twin organization. With the concept of the cultural St. Martin ID card the Foundation has made an important step in recognizing, not only the St. Martiners of heritage on the island, but also all those descendants of St. Martiners scattered all over the world, as we know them to cling to their St Martin ancestry in whatever country they have decided to make their home. The St. Martin Nation Building Foundation truly reflects the desires and aspirations of the native population. During my regular research, I happened to fall on an article entitled ‘Guest Workers’, published in The Clarion, a St. Maarten weekly newspaper, in its issue of May 20, 1982, that is 31 years ago. This article was written by one of The Clarion’s contributors, a renowned native journalist by the name of Mr. Cornelius Wilson. This article confirmed to me that the rhetoric of the St. Martin Nation Building Foundation is nothing new and not even as direct and firm as the rhetoric of the 1980s was. This very enlightening article was prompted by the fact that the island was then beginning to face the challenges of the tourist development and population expansion. And, at that time, this journalist did react very strongly to the escalation of recklessness, disrespect, lawlessness and abuse exhibited by some newcomers to the island. I quote: “In all known civilizations and cultures it is customary good form that any guest adheres to the rules, customs and/or laws of his/her hosts. It is also so, that when one is admitted as a guest under certain conditions, that one scrupulously conforms to such conditions. If for whatever reason the guest feels that he/she cannot abide by the rules, customs and laws of the hosts or he/she cannot respect the conditions whereby one is accepted as a guest, then the guest should leave! A great number of foreign persons work and/or reside in St. Maarten. A number of them make valuable and appreciated contributions to our economy and community; a great many make valuable and appreciable contribution to their pocketbooks and bank accounts. All are, in a manner, our guests and are as such admitted to work and reside here under a number of conditions and obligations. Those conditions and obligations are stated in order to protect our society and our country as well as the ‘guest’. Any guest who does not wish to accept, respect and abide by the conditions should leave our island. Any guest who does not abide by these conditions is abusing our hospitality and should be made to leave our island. The conditions of admittance of foreign persons are to protect primarily our people. Our people should therefore be vigilant against abuse of our hospitality. Unfortunately many such transgressions of the conditions of our hospitality (can) occur without the people or the authorities being aware of them. Moreover, for the people to be able to protect and defend themselves and aid the authorities in their tasks, the general public should be able to know, or to have direct means of knowing, what the specific admittance and permit conditions are for any ‘guest’ with whom we share residence on our island.” … [End of quote] 3. Inclusion and Integration Last but not least, the St. Martin Nation Building Foundation is recognizing the inclusion and integration of all those who have made this island their home and who represent an added value in our society, as an integral part of the overall process of nation building. Nation building must start with the native inhabitants, the hosts, from the South as well as from the North, one people, the transmitters of the values and principles of the people of this land throughout history and ancestry. The rulers of this country need this historical and cultural foundation to erect the structure that will keep all the elements together. This togetherness must be ingrained in the mindset of the people to allow the seeds that were sown throughout history to continue to grow and develop. They are seeds of respect for the laws of the land, honesty, mutual assistance, generosity, solidarity, community-mindedness, tolerance, and hospitality, which characterized the essence of the St. Martin way of life. The nation building process will not be achieved without these positive ingredients of the St. Martin society. The governing structure will not stand to gain stability and sustainability without this foundation. The native St. Martiners must regain their unified way of life for the preservation of their heritage and the fulfilment of their common destiny: that is the foundation we have to thrive to consolidate. It is the ‘sine qua non’ condition in which to engage in the process of integration and inclusion. This natural human process has given substance to our St. Martin culture throughout the years. The St. Martin Nation Building Foundation intends to revive this essential and fundamental concept, because for anyone to integrate, there must be a culture, a way of life to integrate into. The more we welcome as hosts different nationalities on our island, the more we have to preserve and showcase our culture, traditions and customs, not only for integration sake, but also to perpetuate life, generation after generation. There must be a sense of continuity in order for a people to survive. We cannot afford to continue in the trend in which we find ourselves at present, where national communities compete against each other for pre-eminence. It must be reversed. Let us all thrive to rekindle the traditional St. Martin way of life. Numbers should not overrule this quality of life. .It is of utmost importance that “hosts and guests” together participate with respect and tolerance to the effort of building our people nation first, thus ensuring the success of the national governing structure by means of a bottom-up approach. To end, I will repeat the introduction of a lecture I gave on November 10, 2003, that is 10 years ago, organized by the Art and Culture Department of the Commune during a week of celebrations for St. Martin‘s Day. It is still very relevant today. I said then: “We need to regain the love of country that was and is still dear to all St. Martiners. Twenty years ago, that was in 1983, we were considered very patriotic by outsiders: We lived St. Martin. We ate St. Martin We worked St. Martin We slept St Martin We dreamt St. Martin By being too hospitable, we have put aside our culture until we have put aside ourselves to accommodate every one. And today, those who have gone through that experience are painfully waking up to the reality that there is a void within themselves. We need to develop that sense of belonging, the sense of being part of a culture and a people, that is what I call developing a sense of identity.” I thank you Daniella JEFFRY
Posted on: Tue, 12 Nov 2013 02:41:15 +0000