Fruitful Links

“Growing bananas and tourism provide St. Lucia’s wealth. But to look for any mutually enriching link between these two pivotal activities is to search in vain. Perhaps the only time the tourist will see bananas (except possibly on the way to and from the airport) is in a hotel fruit bowl. I was once told by a tour operator who specialises in the Caribbean that he could not recommend his clients go walking in the St. Lucian countryside in case they came across “farmers with machetes”. So the ghettoised tourist has to be “protected” from the banana farmers, from members of the host community going about their daily tasks. And when I learned that cruise ships calling at St. Lucia are sometimes supplied with bananas out of containers from Venezuela, the gap between producers and consumers seemed even more offensive and absurd…”

– Polly Pattullo

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If quoting please include URL and "Exchange Values on the Table, formerly known as 'Exchange Values: Images of Invisible Lives' is a social sculpture developed by Shelley Sacks in collaboration with banana producers in the Windward Islands. [1996 ongoing] "