Haiti, Dominican Republic, and Lesser Antilles

Cayman

Bodden Town is former capital, where there is a "big Burger King... a big Royal Bank of Canada...and shell firms from Qatar." Also a tax haven for hedge fund corporations.

Barbados

They call themselves Bajans, their nickname is Little England. Rihanna's home country.

Grenada

Maurice Bishop led the 1979 Revolution. Later President Reagan sabotaged it with U.S. Marine invasion in 1983.

Barbuda

Codrington is its largest city and capital. Also part of Antigua.

Montserrat

Its a territory of the United Kingdom. The Soufrière Hills volcano forced people to relocate in the 90's.

Antigua

Its capital is St. John's, where novelist Jamaica Kincaid (1949-) was born.

Martinique

Its capital is Fort de France. Its the birthplace of postcolonial thinkers: Fanon, Cesaire, Glissant, Chamoiseau

Frantz Fanon

Martinican psychiatrist, philosopher, revolutionary, and author of Les Damnésde la Terre/The Wretched of the Earth, influential in the fields of post-colonial studies, critical theory, and Marxism.

Aimé Césaire

Martinican poet and activist. He coined the term "Negritude", an influential idea rejecting Western stereotypes of Africans and insisting on African self-identification

Edouard Glissant

Martinican who presented in The Poetics of Relation the concept of opacity and the theory of the rhizome, roots that grow horizontally

Patrick Chamoiseau

Martinican author known for his work in the créolité movement

Dominica

Its capital is Roseau its the land of the Kalinago people aka Caribs

Trinidad

Its capital is Port of Spain. Its Carnival with calypso and soca music brings people together.

Haiti

Name that revolutionaries gave to the former French colony of Saint Domingue; the term means mountainous or rugged in the Taino language (Ayiti)

Dominican Republic

Its capital is Santo Domingo. It's part of the island also known as Hispaniola.

Jean Rhys

A novelist who was born and grew up in Dominica and is the author of "Wide Sargasso Sea" among other works.

Toussaint L’Ouverture

Leader of the Haitian Revolution. He freed the enslaved people and gained effective independence for Haiti despite military interventions by the British and French. He saw himself as French and died in a French prison.

Jean Jacques Dessalines

Led the slave rebellion after the first slave rebel was captured; led to Haitian independence. He saw himself as Haitian first.

Rafael Trujillo

harsh dictator of the Dominican Republic from 1930 to 1961, trained by the U.S. Marines, disregarded civil liberty, and did not modernize economy

François Duvalier (Papa Doc)

Leader of Haiti to keep them from communism, used scare tactics, decapitated people, but gave people money so they liked him, he was backed by the US

Edqidge Danticat

Born in Port-au-Prince and author of so a despot walks into a killing field

Maryse Condé

Born in Pointe-à-Pitre, Guadeloupe and author of Discovering Celia Cruz

Celia Cruz

Cuban singer known as the queen of salsa

Edward Said

Palestinian professor of culture studies

Walter Mignolo

Argentinian who says in The Darker Side of Western Modernity (2011), that the aims of the decolonial option . . . is not to eliminate the difference but to decolonize the logic of coloniality that has been deemed universal because of its European point of departure.

Sir Vidiadhar Surajprasad Naipaul (aka V.S. Naipaul)

Born in Trinidad Winner of the Nobel prize in Literature in 2001

Cyril Lionel Robert (aka C.L.R. James)

Born in Trinidad Historian who wrote the Black Jacobins

Michel-Rolph Trouillot

Haitian author of Silencing the past (1995)

Quisqueya

the Taino name for the Dominican Republic

Ayiti

the Taino name for Haiti meaning mountainous land

Parsely massacre

Spanish: Masacre del Perejil; Haitian Creole: Masak nan Pèsil; killinf of Haitians ordered by Rafael Trujillo

Kalinago

aka Caribs are an indigenous group known as fierce warriors; resisted colonization in Dominica

El Dorado

a place of reputed wealth sought by early Spanish explorers

Arawaks

indigenous group that populated the Caribbean Islands aka Taínos; characterized by being pacifists, mostly from the Greater Antilles

Caribs

Indigenous group that originated in South America and established their dominance over different indigenous groups resisting colonization; aka Kalinagos, mostly populating the Lesser Antilles

indio

description of color as opposed to black or white in the Dominican Republic

Bonus question: How do you say Strait of Hormuz in French?

Detroit d’Ormuz

Lennox Honychurch

A historian who worked on reintegrating the indigenous culture back into the island of Dominica

IMF International Monetary Fund

Attempts to be a one size fits all style loan and makes it hard to implement funding to local communities by privatizing public assets.

Bouyon, calypso, reggae, soca

Predominant music in Dominica and the Trinidad Carnival