Caribbean, Wake Up: How Land Grabs and Beach Fences Are Making Us Slaves Again

Caribbean, Wake Up: Selling Our Shores, Selling Our Souls

How land grabs, corrupt deals, and “development” are making us slaves again in our own country

 

By: Dr. Clifford A. E. Illis, PhD of Philosophy in Anthropology

Our beaches are being fenced. Our hills are being sold. Our governments are applauding and calling it prosperity.

But prosperity for who? And at what cost?

Politicians receive amenities, gifts, secret perks, undisclosed deals, payments through other jurisdictions, all carefully hidden from the people. Then they go on TV, make speeches about “investment” and “growth,” and act as if their noses are clean.

Meanwhile:

• Locals become renters in their own country, paying prices so high they must become slaves to rent or mortgage just to stay on the island.
• Those who can’t keep up are pushed into substandard shacks, squeezed into the leftover corners of the land their ancestors once walked freely.

This is not just about tourism. This is about ownership, power, and the future.

In this blog I’ll break down:

• How our beaches and prime lands are being swallowed up
• The unholy alliance between investors and corrupt politics
• The new slavery: being priced out of your own home
• The silent exile of our children
• Why will today’s “beneficiaries” not escape
• What we must start doing now
• How much of “our” economy do we actually own

💡 FACT: A 2023 investigation in The Guardian reported growing concern across the Caribbean that resort projects and weak enforcement are undermining practical public access to beaches. Locals are increasingly blocked by gates, guards, and “private” developments, even where laws say beaches are public.

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1. The Great Beach Robbery: Fences on Freedom

The Caribbean without its beaches is like a heart without a beat.

On paper, in many islands, beaches are public. In practice:

• “Private resort” security turning locals away at gates,
• Tiny, inconvenient “public access” paths, while the best stretches are lined with hotel chairs,
• Traditional beach spots quietly absorbed into “exclusive developments.”

From Jamaica to Antigua to smaller territories, the script is the same:

1. Prime coastal land is identified.
2. A foreign investor proposes a hotel, villas, or a “luxury community.”
3. Government grants permission, often with tax breaks and concessions.
4. Access for locals shrinks or becomes practically impossible.

The message is clear:

The beach is “for everyone” in theory, but in reality it’s for those who can pay or who hold the key card.

 

2. The Investor–Politician Dance: Corruption in a Suit and Tie

Investors do not come with charity; they come with interests.

They bring:

• Money,
• Lobbying power,
• Promises of “jobs” and “foreign exchange.”

Politicians see:

• Campaign funding,
• Personal advantages (trips, gifts, “consulting fees,” properties elsewhere),
• Numbers to show Europe, the US, or the Kingdom: “Look how we are growing.”

The hidden part of the deal often includes:

• Tax holidays and exemptions for years or decades,
• Priority access to crown land / public land,
• Weak environmental and social conditions,
• Contracts never fully shown to the public.

So while they smile and cut ribbons, the real power over land, beaches, and key assets shifts to:

• a handful of local elites, and
• foreign companies that can easily fly away when things sour.

This is nota partnership. It is a soft occupation.

 

3. The New Slavery: Renters in Our Own Country

You don’t always need chains to create slaves.

When:

• Land prices are pushed up by foreign demand,
• Wages stay low and unstable,
• Local businesses are squeezed out by big resorts and chains,
• Basic housing becomes unaffordable,

You get a new form of slavery:

People chained not by iron, but by rent and debt.

Locals are forced to:

• Work multiple jobs just to cover housing,
• Accept poor working conditions because “jobs are scarce”,
• Watch as parts of their own island become playgrounds for others.

If they can’t pay:

• They move into poorer, more crowded areas, further from the coast, or
• They leave the island altogether.

This is how a people is pushed off its own land without a single whip.

 

4. Exile by Design: Our Children as Second-Class Citizens Abroad

When opportunity dries up at home, people don’t just complain – they leave.

Future generations will:

• Abandon the country for lack of real opportunities,
• Go to the “master’s” land – Europe, the US, Canada, the Kingdom – starting from scratch,
• Compete in systems where they are seen as “migrant labour,” not equals.

They become:

Second-class citizens in the master’s country, while the master enjoys first-class status on land their grandparents lost.

The cycle repeats:

• We lose the land.
• We lose our best minds and strongest workers.
• We import solutions and export talent, permanently.

 

5. To the Politicians and Local Elites: You Will Not Escape This

Our leaders need to understand something very clearly:

Power is temporary. Land deals are permanent.

Today, they sign:

• Resort approvals,
• Long leases on prime coastal land,
• Exclusive rights for marinas and gated communities.

They collect:

• Direct perks,
• Indirect benefits,
• Social status.

But when the music stops:

• They will not be in the office.
• The foreign investors will not care about their grandchildren.
• Their descendants will live in the same reality as everyone else:
  • priced out,
  • marginalized,
  • or forced to migrate.

The small group of locals who “benefited” one‑sidedly will:

• eventually die,
• their names cursed or forgotten,
• leaving behind a country fragmented and resentful.

The chaos they helped create will not disappear. It will wait for its own bloodline.

This is not just a political miscalculation; it is a betrayal of their own future generations.

 

6. What Caribbean People Must Do – Now, Not Later

Anger alone is useless. We need strategy and action.

6.1 Name and Document the Theft

• Identify beaches and areas where access has changed.
• Record fences, gates, “private” signs, and harassment of locals.
• Share stories and evidence in structured ways: community pages, NGOs, legal groups.

Memory is resistance. If we don’t record, they will say it was “always like this.”

6.2 Demand Transparency in Land and Beach Deals

• Public disclosure of all large coastal land transactions.
• Mandatory public consultations for resorts, marinas, and gated communities.

6.3 Protect Public Access and Ownership in Law

• Constitutional or legal guarantees of public beach access.
• Limits on the sale of coastal land to non‑nationals.
• Strict conditions and time limits on leases.

6.4 Build Local Capital and Cooperation

• Support community credit unions and co‑ops.
• Create local investment groups for small hotels, beach facilities, and local tours.

If we can drink together, we can invest together.

6.5 Change Our Mentality: From Beggars to Builders

The deepest slavery is mental:

• Believing “foreigners do everything better”,
• Waiting for outside money to “save the economy.

We must:

• Clean up our own corruption,
• Build our own discipline,
• Hold our own people accountable – not just “them”, but us.

If we don’t respect our own land, why would anyone else?

 

7. Who Really Owns the Caribbean’s Economic Heart?

The Caribbean without its beaches is like a heart without a beat. And here is the part of the injustice we rarely say out loud: most of our GDP comes from tourism – in many islands, studies put it between 60% and 85%. That means the main “product” the Caribbean sells to the world is not factories, not advanced technology, but sand and sun – our beaches and beachfronts. This is exactly what is being handed over.

Now look at the rest. If 60–85% is tourism, the remaining 15–40% of GDP is usually spread thin across:

• Small‑scale retail and local services, most not owned by locals
• Construction (often tied directly to tourism projects), most being constructed by foreign companies
• Some financial and offshore services, most of the revenue generated is transferred to foreign accounts
• A shrinking share of local agriculture and fisheries,
• Minor light industry or manufacturing in a few islands.

And here is the deeper insult:

• Much of tourism’s big money – hotels, cruise deals, large tour operations – is foreign‑owned or foreign‑controlled.
• Large construction contracts often go to external firms or local elites tightly tied to them.
• Offshore finance and “headquarters” businesses are structured so that profits flow back out, not into local communities.
• Agriculture and fisheries – the sectors most likely to be in truly local hands – make up only a small slice of the national pie and are often underfunded, undervalued, and pushed off prime land.

So, in real terms:

• The majority of the economy depends on tourism.
• The “main product” of tourism is beaches and coastal land.
• A significant share of that product is already in foreign or elite hands.
• The remaining sectors are either dependent on tourism, controlled by outside interests, or too small and neglected to guarantee any real sovereignty.

If the economic heart (tourism) and the physical heart (the coastline) are both in the grip of external powers, then what do Caribbean people truly own?

When you give away the shoreline, you don’t just lose pretty views; you place your entire economic breathing system in someone else’s hands and hope they keep you alive.

💡 FACT: Studies on tourism‑dependent economies show that when local ownership of land and key assets declines, inequality rises, political capture increases, and social tensions deepen. Economists call this the “enclave effect”: wealth circulates inside resort and investor circles while surrounding communities see little lasting benefit.

 

Conclusion: Wake Up, or Watch It All Go

This is the real choice in front of the Caribbean:

• Wake up now, protect what is left, and build with our own hands,
• or pretend nothing is wrong, and wake up one day as guests and servants on land that once carried our ancestors’ footsteps.

Our beaches are not just tourist assets. Our hills are not just “views” for foreign villas. They are part of our identity, memory, and survival.

Caribbean people, this is not the time to stay quiet. This is the time to:

• question,
• organize,
• and draw a line.

Because once the land is gone, we don’t get a second chance.