2.2 Aire acondicionadoautomotriz
2.2.4 Componentes del sistema
2.2.4.1 Compresor
SIZE OF FARMS Acres ACREAGE ft F A R M E R S ^ ft 0 0.00 3.59 0 - 0.5 2.48 27.79 0.5 - 1 4.01 18.05 1 - 2 7.63 18.59 2 - 5 16.93 20.28 5 - 1 0 12.01 6.90 10 - 15 6.07 1.98 1 5 - 2 0 3.90 0.91 20 - 25 2.24 0.40 25 - 50 6.12 0.71 50 - 100 7.56 0.45 1004- 31.00 0.29
(a) Includes private, state and co-operative farms.
Source: Ministry of Planning, Final Report on Grenada Agricultural Census 1981, St. George’s 1982, p.28
campaign in the Legislative Council on their behalf, the 53
monopoly position of the Association remained intact. In the 1960s the GCA and the GBCS were created.
With its avenues for development in agriculture blocked, Grenada's merchant class expanded its operations in the whole sale and retail trade and gained a predominant interest in the country's tourist industry. The three largest companies on the island are merchant houses which are roughly equal in size. The oldest, Jonas Browne and Hubbard (Grenada) Ltd, started
operations in the 1830s. Originally owned by an English family, the company was taken over by Grenadians who now own over 90 per cent of the shares. Ownership is broad-based with no
shareholder owning more than 15 per cent of the share capital. The companies activities include shipping, insurance, trading in lumber and hardware and retailing household goods, food and motor vehicles. Hubbards' interests extend to some of the most expensive real estate in Grenada, including the Grand Anse shopping centre and the Food Fair retail complex on the
54
Carenage in St. George's. The second of Grenada's leading
companies, Geo. F. Huggins (Grenada) Ltd, was established in the 1920s as a subsidiary of Geo. F. Huggins (Trinidad) Ltd based in Trinidad. In the early 1970s the parent company was bought by Geddes Grant Ltd, one of the largest domestic companies in Trinidad and T o b a g o ^ a n d the Grenadian company became a
subsidiary of Geddes Grant. Huggins engages in similar
activities to those of Hubbards. It is also an important tour operator and owns an important factory called Caribbean Agro Industries, which produces flour for domestic consumption and
C C
export. L/.E. Julien and Co Ltd is the third leading merchant house and was founded in 1937 by U.E. Julien and several other Grenadian entrepreneurs. Today the company is primarily in the
out standard wholesale and retail activities and also controls
5 7
the localCocA&Uf actory , Grenada Bottling Plant Ltd. Complement
ing the activities of the three largest companies are a host of smaller family based merchant houses whose operations are more specialized. Included amongst these are Bain and Sons Ltd, L.L. Ramdhanny and Co Ltd, M .A . Bullen and Sons Ltd and L.A. Puree 11.
The preponderant role played by merchants in Grenada, a corollary of the dependent and 'open' nature of the economy, has itself given rise to a trading mentality which permeates the capitalist class. As Kenrick Radix, the Minister for Justice,
Industrial Development and Fisheries under the Bishop regime, explained in an address given in 1981: 'In fact one can say quite honestly that the situation in Grenada and indeed, in the so-called less developed countries is that a historic attitude has been developed in a class, whereby it simply gets a letter form, puts on a 10e stamp and writes off to England or the United States and says, "would you send me down ten yards of cloth please, two dozen needles and a couple of pairs of shoes?" And then that comes back and a high mark up is put on and they make the money that way. This is part of the historical
legacy of this r e gion.^In concluding this discussion of the capitalist class, mention shold also be made of the hotel owners, who are in the main Grenadian, and a number of other enterprises that are owned by foreign companies. Regional and international firms dominate banking and insurance and control several commercial outlets and industrial establishments.
The intermediate classes in Grenada, the petty bourgeoisie and the middle class, have family, ethnic and economic links
59
with the capitalist class. As in many other Third World countries, the petty bourgeoisie has a large mercantile
80
fraction. The marketing of foodstuffs for domestic consumption is mainly performed by itinerant and sedentary vendors called hucksters. They are also responsible for the main bulk of Grenada's exports of fruits and vegetables to neighbouring states. The produce is transported in privately-owned boats. Boat-building and sea transport are also important domains of the petty bourgeoisie. Most of the boats are built in Carriacou and form the basis of the 'Bobul trade' or smuggling, which is
6 1
a major source of income for Carriacouans. The boats are also used for fishing which is a full- or part-time activity for many people living on the coast. It is estimated that in 1976 there were 1,450 fishermen, 300 fish vendors and around 850
62
fishing boats in the country. Road transport is another preserve of the Grenadian petty bourgeoisie. Prior to the revolution all private transport in the country was privately owned. Country buses, consisting of an imported chassis and a locally made wooden body, transport both people and
agricultural produce to towns. Since the 1960s enterprising individuals have purchased imported minibuses which rapidly became the most popular form of public transport. Minibuses are also used to carry tourists. The more affluent tourists,
however, are served by a fleet of individually owned taxis which provide a substantial but intermittent income for a
63
number of people. Another component of the petty bourgeoisie is the small shopkeeper. Included in this category are
many professionals who use part of their homes for retail purposes. Due to the importance of tourism and migration, the
letting of accomodation is another source of income for a broad cross-section of society. Family-owned guest houses and
private homes supplement the accomodation provided by hotels, and Grenadian nationals resident abroad have built houses which their relatives let as a source of income. On account of the country's extremely low level of development, Grenada is served by a network of tradesmen and artisans. Among these, motor mechanics are an important group because of the poor state of the country's roads.
Grenada's informal sector, the unemployed and under employed who engage in 'marginal' activitiesf^may be viewed as
6 5
a lower stratum of the petty bourgeoisie. In 1970 some 42 per cent of the population was unemployed, and underemployment extended to another 20 per cent of Grenadians. (See tables 10 and 11). So one can see that the category under discussion is a significant one. As in other Caribbean islands, tourism provides the basis for the somewhat precarious livelihood of the informal sector. Into this group should be placed beach vendors, usually older women selling home-made clothes, fruits and spices to tourists, beach boys, who provide drugs,
companionship and sexual services, prostitutes and 'walking taxis', that is young children who offer to take tourists on guided tours. Declasse layers also obtain an income and food from praedial larceny, a phenomenon that has been facilitated by the disorganized state of the country's agriculture. And remittances from abroad are sometimes sufficient to enable an
'unemployed' person to forgo the need for wage labour. Turning to the agricultural section of the petty bourgeoisie, the peasantry, great care should be exercised when trying to demarcate its ranks. For, as mentioned above, all social strata in Grenada have ties to the land. Thus, it necessary to differentiate the true peasantry, namely those who are primarily dependent upon the land for their
B
s ê S o u r c e : G r e n a d a A b s t r a c t o f S t a t i s t i c a 1 9 7 9 .TABLE 11
NUMBER OF MONTHS WORKED IN LAST 12 MONTHS - 1970
NUMBER OP MONTHS MALE FEMALE TOTAL
Under 2 months 351 407 738 2 - 3 months 510 392 902 4 - 5 months 718 621 1 ,339 6 - 7 months 1 ,567 1 ,167 2,734 8 - 9 months 1 ,800 1,063 2,863 1 0 - 1 1 months 984 575 1,559 12 months 9,826 5,489 15,315
Nil or not stated 3,673 15,086 18,759
TOTAL 19,409 24,800 44,209
livelihood, from other categories who simply derive a portion of their income from the land. The 1981 agricultural census showed that 49.07 per cent of landholders in Grenada worked in agriculture full-time, that is derived all of their income from the land. Of those who worked part-time, 30.5 per cent were estate workers, 20.8 per cent were employed with government and 19.2 per cent were tradesmen and artisans. Smaller percentages were employed as taxi drivers, shopkeepers,
66
fishermen, professionals and businessmen. Thus, an important segment of the Grenadian peasantry may be described as a semi-proletariat, that is an intermediate layer which retains ownership of its means of production in agriculture or service
6 V
trades but is obliged to work part of the time as wage labour. This stratum should be borne when we come to our analysis of the proletariat.
It is also possible to use data from the agricultural census to differentiate other segments of the peasantry. Thus, the census provided information on the extreme diversification of Grenada's agriculture. More than 20 per cent of landholders cultivated seven different crops. This is a reflection of environmental conditions, the low level of farming expertise and the landholders' concern to avoid risk by investing in more than one crop. Given the mixed nature of farming in Grenada some five acres is required to support a family in agriculture. This figure enables us to distinguish between the poor
peasants and the middle peasants. Those landholders owning
five acres and more are not obliged to sell their labour power and are therefore in a different situation to those owning less than this amount who must supplemnt their inccme with some other pursuit or live in a state of dire impoverish-
merit. Some of those owning less than five acres, however, are professionals and other high income categories, and it would be necessary to identify these in order to arrive at a precise figure for the number of poor peasants. In any event, it is instructive to note that according to the census 88.30 per cent of landholders owned less than five acres and accounted for just 16.93 per cent of the total farm acreage. (See table 9). The problem of strata that are only partially based in
agriculture is much less significant when it comes to
landholders owning over five acres because the vast majority of them work full time in agriculture.
The distinction between middle peasants and rich peasants is based on the size of landholdings and the nature of the labour that is employed. Middle peasants are independent smallholders who rely on family labour and that of associates to cultivate their land. Rich peasants, on the other hand, own significantly greater amounts of land, and although they often participate in farm work they are mainly dependent upon wage labour. Unlike planters, who own estates and employ managers to run them, rich peasants are directly involved in
R fl
the business of farming. Thus, using the admittedly
arbitrary figure of 20 acres as the dividing line between middle and rich peasants, in 1981 the middle peasantry comprised 9.7 per cent of landholders and accounted for
21.98 per cent of the land and rich peasants (owning less than 100 acres) comprised 1.56 per cent of landholders and
accounted for 15.92 per cent of the land. (See table 9). From what has been said so far, one can see that the Grenadian peasantry is primarily a poor peasantry, owning small parcels of land scattered all over the country's mountainous terrain. Moreover, land ownership and 'peasant
consciousness' is a feature of numerous strata in society, making petty bourgeois attitudes and aspirations pervasive. Without doubt, the petty bourgeoisie has deep roots in Grenadian society and in numerical terms is the most
important class of all. This is reflected in housing tenure statistics that show that the vast majority of Grenadian families own their own homes. (See table 12).
We can now turn to the pivotal component of the intermediate classes, namely the middle class. Like other Caribbean islands, the Grenadian middle class is an
outgrowth of the colonial state bureaucracy. As Grenada progressed along the road to full statehood, the white officials sent from Britain were replaced by light skinned Grenadians who aped the customs and political values of their Anglo-Saxon predecessors. Also, the increasing sophistication of the Grenadian economy created a demand for lawyers to handle contracts, and managers, clerks, book keepers and shop assistants to keep goods in circulation. And as more and more schools were established, the number of teachers in the country grew. CLR James has provided us with a very
perceptive analysis of the political ootlook of the Caribbean middle classes spawned by British colonialism: 'For generations their sole aim in life was to be admitted to the positions to which their talents and education entitled them, and from which they were unjustly excluded. On rare occasions an unexpected and difficult situation opened a way for an
exceptional individual, but for the most part they developed political skill only in crawling or worming their way into recognition by government or big business. When they did get into the charmed government circles or government itself, they either did their best to show that they could be as good
TABLE 12 HOUSING TENURE 1 970 TENURE Owned 15,051 Leased 50 Rented 2,708 Rent Free 1,355 Squatted 8 Other 91 Not stated 399
(a) All non-institutional households
servants of the Colonial Office as any, or when they rose to become elected members in the legislature, some of them maintained a loud (but safe) attack on the government. They actually did little. They were not responsible for anything, so they achieved a cheap popularity without any danger to
6 9
themselves.' While James' description of the political outlook
of the Caribbean middle class is accurate for the colonial perioc we shall see that by the 1970s the offspring of this class
had undergone a process of radica1isation. find a subgroup of this young middle class, namely the intelligentsia, was to play a decisive role in the Grenadian revolution.
The Grenadian proletariat is a somewhat amorphous
ctass. It is based in agriculture and the service activities
associated with commerce and tourism. The changes that took place in the economy from the 1950s onwards strengthened the position of the urban and tertiary strata at the expense of the rural working class. Thus, whereas the agricultural work force dropped from 12,432 in 1946 to 8,662 in 1970, a fall of some 30 per cent, the number employed in the service sector rose sharply to a figure of 5,758 in 1970. Between 1960 and 1970 the workforce increased by around 33 per cent in
construction, and 48 per cent in transport and communication. (For the 1970 figures see table 10). As for the manufacturing sector, the number employed did not rise appreciably. A survey completed in 1977 identified 120 manufacturing units, of which more than half were cottage industries with fewer than five employees. The largest employer in manufacturing was the
70
brewery with seventy-six permanent jobs. The greatest concen
tration of workers in Grenada, however, is to be found on the docks. Thus, the urban and industrial segments of the working class are not only small in numerical terms but also extremely atomised. When one takes into account the predominantly petty bourgeois configuration of the society at large and its geo-: graphical and social features, one can readily appreciate that proletarian class consciousness would tend to be extremely
feeble. Many of those employed in hotels, commercial
establishments and shops obtain their jobs through family, religious and other social connections and therefore have extra-economic obligations to the enterprise in question. Because of their farming interests and responsibilities many urban workers consider paid employment to be a priuelege and therefore readily succumb to the dictates of employers. Again, on account of the fact that most employers are persons of high social status deference to the employing class is commonplace. Under Gairy patronage and nepotism were given a free rein in public employment. And Gairy himself would personally appoint to posts in government departments women who took his fancy. This encouraged the spread of 'sexploitation', the sexual abuse of women in employment. All of these factors served to impede the maturation of proletarian class consciousness.
If one examines the rural working class, a similar
picture emerges. Reference has already been made to the ambiva lent position of the semi-proletariat. Due to the tree crop nature of agricultural production and the country's topography, most estates do not extend beyond 400 acres and employ less than sixty workers. Moreover, working conditions and the farming methods used do not facilitate the emergence of a collective identity. Although probably the most volatile section of the proletariat, plantation workers in Grenada are also the most conservative. Gairy's patronage network in agriculture only reinforced this phenomenon. In 1980 the Bishop regime obtained documentary information about working conditions in the countryside from the commission of inquiry set up to investigate the circumstances that led to the
occupation of the River Antoine estate in February that year. Based on an inspection of the plantation made by commission
members and the oral statements of estate workers, the commission's report presented a stark picture of patronage, exploitation and ignorance. River Antoine produces cocoa, coconuts, bananas and sugar cane, and is renowned for the rum that is also made. The estate covers over 400 acres. At the time of the inquiry fifty-three workers were employed; thirty men and twenty-three women. The workforce consisted of a principal gang of field labourers and a group of specialist workers who worked in the distillery. Field workers were paid only EClB.15 (men) and ECI5.15 (women) a day after deductions, while specialist workers earned slightly higher wages at
different grades. Retired workers received a pension of ECI16 a fortnight, having contributed up to 35 cents out of their daily wage to the estate's provident fund. Most retired workers were dissatisfied with the pension they received.
The majority of workers lived in the nearby village of La Poterie in greatly overcrowded houses. On average, there were seven persons to a house whose measurements were 10 feet in height and 7 feet and 10 feet in width and length
respectively. Starting at 8.00 in the morning, the field labourers worked according to task; each day a different set of instructions would be given. In the main, the work