Robert Coram - Caribbean Time Bomb: The United States Complicity in the Corruption of Antigua

This book made available by the Internet Archive.

For all my students

Acknowledgments

Many people contributed to this project.

In Atlanta, Linda Matthews, head of Special Collections in the Woodruff Library of Emory University, pointed me toward valuable reference works. In New York, George Wade has been of immense and continuing help. In Vermont, retired U.S. Customs agent Larry Curtis provided highly significant and heretofore unpublished information. In England, Robert and Alison Spendelow shopped for various books not available in America; they also tracked down King Juan II.

Numerous people in Antigua opened their homes and their hearts. They wish to remain anonymous. I hope that one day the mood of their country will change and that they will not fear to have their names associated with a project such as this.

A special thanks to Harvey Ginsberg, an alchemist of an editor.

Finally, Jeannine Addams, more than anyone else, made it happen.

Caribbean Time Bomb

Prologue

From Jamaica east to Puerto Rico and down through the southward plunge of sun-splashed islands that constitute the Leewards and the Windwards and stretch all the way to South America, there is no country so corrupt as Antigua. The modern history of Antigua is chronicled in the recurring scandals that have distressed the nation since 1978. Facts of the corruption and details of the scandals are well-known to most Anti-guans. The names of the knaves and the future plans of the con men who slouch through Antigua also are recognized. But because all of this malfeasance radiates from one of the great heroes of the CaribbeanPrime Minister Vere Cornwall Bird nothing is done. No punishment is meted out. And today the carnival of corruption continues.

The story of Antigua is more than a simple story of moral decline. It is the story of how something noble was wrecked. The most enduring and the most uplifting dream in the hearts of men, especially in the hearts of former slaves and former colonial subjects in the Caribbean, has been the dream of freedom. Antigua was lifted to freedom in the great arms of Vere Cornwall Bird. He made the dream come true. But extortion, rapacity, and an insatiable greed destroyed the dream. The moment was lost. And that is the melancholy story of Antigua.

Vere Cornwall Bird is the last surviving member of that group of grand old men who leaped from the trade union movement of the 1930s and 1940s to become political leaders who carried their countries from the servitude of colonialism to the glory of independence. They were men who, within the brief span

of a single generation, lifted their people from the hell of the canefields to full equality in the family of nations. Because Bird fills a unique niche in the history of Antigua, he is in fact, if not in title, Prime Minister for Life. Bird became Antigua's first national hero at a time when Antiguans yearned for such an individual. He was all they had. And because heroes are few on Antigua, there is a compulsion to hold onto and to venerate Vere Cornwall Bird.

V. C. Bird, as he is commonly known, is to Antigua what George Washington was to America. Because Antigua is so small and because there are so many islands in the Caribbean, Bird is not well known to the outside world. But inside the region his aura shines brightlyor at least it did until the late 1980s. Now tragedy is tied to the name.

The story of how a national hero became a figure of ridicule and of how his tightly knit family disintegrated is a warning to everyone about the perils of money and power and success. And the story of how Antigua was brought to the precipice of collapse can serve as a signpost for small countries around the world.

V. C. Bird has dominated the Antiguan trade union movement and Antiguan politics for more than a half century. He is called "Papa" and "The Father of the Nation." Only one man, a lonely and often-ridiculed newspaperman named Tim Leonard Hector, has loudly and consistently raised his voice against V. C. Bird. And Hector has been arrested eleven times for his temerity. Twice he was jailed and denied habeas corpus hearingsonce for nine days and once for nineteen daysbefore being released.

Antiguans read but did not react to much of what Tim Hector wrote. They forgave Bird's every offense, and at each election but one they returned him to office. They watched impassively as V. C. Bird turned Antigua into a virtual totalitarian state and became the undisputed sole ruler who suppressed almost every form of opposition. On no other island in the Caribbean has so much political power been concentrated for so long in the hands of one man.

Had Bird retired after leading his country to independence, he would be recognized as the greatest of all Antiguans and the most noble of Caribbean men. But now he has a dual legacy.

On one hand he will forever be remembered as the man who fought and prevailed against the horrors of British colonialism; the visionary who shook off centuries of slavery and servitude on the great sugar estates; the bold leader who used a fledgling trade union to achieve political power and to found a new nation. But he also will be remembered for the corruption that he first condoned, then sponsored, and finally participated in. His face has appeared on the label of beer botdes and casino chips, his name on the international airport, and his hands in everything. Under V. C Bird, Antigua has become not only a sanctuary but a spawning ground for crooks and scoundrels, a place where, for the right price, one can buy everything from a diplomatic passport to a government minister, an island where all of one's schemes, no matter how illegitimate, can find official sanction. No other Caribbean nation, not even Haiti under the Duvaliers, has been plundered and mismanaged for so long in so public a fashion by a single family and with such devasting results.

Members of the Bird family have long believed that because of V. C. Bird's early years, they have almost a divine right to rule Antigua. When I first met members of this extraordinary clan more than a decade ago, they were united against political pretenders. But now the two oldest brothers are engaged in a bitter battle to succeed their father. I have talked with both brothers about their bitter strife, and I have watched the family become fragmented, as members shift their allegiance from one brother to the other.