Antigua

Before uncle V. complains that we don’t write about people, places and culture, here’s a post about the island we’re happily stuck in.

Antigua is the main island of Antigua and Barbuda, a young country that gained independence from the U.K. in 1981. Columbus reached the island in 1493 and named it after the virgin of Sevilla’s Cathedral, Santa María de la Antigua Catedral (St. Mary of the Old Cathedral). Early inhabitants (Arawaks and Caribs) came paddling in canoes from present-day Venezuela. Slavery and diseases brought from Europe decimated the native population. Slaves were then brought from Africa, who provided the manpower for sugar production. Sugar was the main crop of Antigua for centuries. Nowadays the economy is based mainly on tourism. Antigua’s population is 80,000, more than 90% of whom have African heritage.

Our anecdotal and unscientific evidence is that there’s a significant number of immigrants from other Caribbean countries. Almost everyone working in or around the marina we have asked seem to be from somewhere else: Guyana, Dominican Republic, Jamaica and Dominica. Given the unintelligible language they were speaking, we also wondered where the guys doing woodwork on the boat next to us were from. It turns out they were speaking Antiguan Creole, a mix of West African languages and English.

In contrast with densely populated Antigua, Barbuda is more than half the size of Antigua but had a small population of only 2,000 until hurricane Irma hit the island as a category 5 storm in September. Barbuda was obliterated and a mandatory evacuation order was issued two days later in anticipation of hurricane José.  People were ferried to Antigua, which, only 50km to the south, was spared by the hurricanes. Barbuda was thus uninhabited for the first time in centuries. A few Barbudans are returning to their island, but now face a different kind of storm. Barbuda’s land is communally owned, with a system similar to what we saw in Bahama’s Little Farmers Cay. The tradition was signed into law in 2007, which requires you to have a Barbudan grandmother to buy land there. The system had kept Barbuda pristine and undeveloped. Antigua and Barbuda’s prime minister now wants to reform the system to allow for private ownership, in the name of progress and to attract investors, allegedly as the only posible way to reconstruct.

In Spanish, Antigua means “old” and Barbuda means “hairy” (or more precisely, “bearded”). Both are adjectives in their feminine form. The origin of the name Barbuda is unclear. I’ll let you guess what the name of the next larger island of the country is. It’s also a Spanish feminine adjective: old, hairy, and…? (vieja, peluda, y…)—answer below [*]. Speaking of names, you may have heard of the West Indies, Leward Islands, Windward Islands, Lesser Antilles and Greater Antilles. Yes, I’m confused too, but Antigua is part of the Leward Islands, the Lesser Antilles, and the West Indies.

One of Antigua’s main attraction is Nelson’s Dockyard, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Named afer British hero Admiral Horatio Nelson, the dockyard was strategic for British dominance in the 18th century as the only yard in the Eastern Caribbean large enough for naval ship repairs.

[*] The third island is Redonda (Spanish for “round”), the uninhabited remnants of a volcanic cone.