Crisis of identity and reconfiguration of the Caribbean Basin

Abstract

Until very recently the Caribbean Basin and the insular Caribbean were identified and categorised predominantly from outside. The Caribbean, the Antilles, the West Indies or the Caribbean Basin were distinct regions originally born out of the metropolitan imaginary — first European and later North American. As in the Borges’ story, the Caribbean, in its different versions, begins by being dreamed by others, from the chimera of El Dorado for the European conquistadores to the tropical paradise of modern tourists, by way of buccaneers’ and privateers’ dreams of riches in the context of the intra-European conflicts that plagued the region until the ideological mirages of the Cold War (Borges, 1974, 451–5).