Cayman Islands - What the brochures don't say. Part 1
Created | Updated Jul 21, 2005
The Caymans Islands - offshore banking centre, holiday destination and host to thousands of expatriate workers. There's a great deal of information available for foreigners considering making the move to the islands, virtually all of it biased towards making you want to come. Cayman needs expats, and it needs to sell itself to us. One just doesn’t hear the other side of the story.
What follows is certainly no less biased than anything else you’ll read, but it is at least biased the other way. It’s just the subjective experience of a single Brit living on Grand Cayman, of course, who makes absolutely no apology for any of the sweeping generalisations here that may be interpreted as offensive, slanderous or downright inaccurate.
Cayman has a peculiar society; mostly, I think, as a result of it being such a young one. Up until around fifty years ago, Grand Cayman consisted of four distinct communities of a couple of thousand people apiece, surrounded by mangrove swamp (which still covers the clear majority of the island’s surface) and each more or less isolated from all the rest. Oh, and a shit-load of mosquitoes. As perverse as it would seem from the perspective of an outsider to have these separate villages with virtually no inter-movement in terms of trade or population adrift on an island that is only twenty miles across, this was how the island was from the time of the first settlers. This was a society of fishermen - the men went to sea, the women stayed on the shore and did all the rest, everyone living here was more or less used to all the mosquitoes and the island proceeded along its way as a backward and unregarded outpost of the British Empire for the most part forgotten by the world at large. What really changed things here was, oddly enough, down to the mozzies. In the early sixties, this place was identified as the single most mosquito infested bit of rock that was home to human life on the planet, there being over forty species calling the island home and with swarms reputedly dense enough, at times, to suffocate a horse. As such, it was the perfect place to set up a major centre for research into anti-mosquito technology. So, shaking their heads in wonder that human beings ever put up with living in this infested hole anyway, the researchers moved in and systematically started exterminating the islands mosquitoes. Suddenly, through the clouds of little biting bastards, you could see some pretty amazing beaches just before the swamp reached the sea. As the island was becoming known to foreigners, though mainly a fairly select diving set, as a quiet little Caribbean island they could now go to without having to come back severely anaemic a couple of other things were happening. It was about this time that much of the British West Indies was getting its independence. Jamaica, which was in charge of the Caymans at the time, got its independence as did Bermuda, which was then a major offshore banking centre. The Caymans, quite sensibly, took the view that they could catch a mean fish but knew bugger all about actually running a country (the evidence of this is all too clear to this day) and opted to stay a British Dependant Territory. When all the banks promptly got scared of economic collapse and cleared out of Bermuda, they were discretely alerted to the existence of this unassuming little set of islands with tax-exempt status, political stability ensured by continuing British rule and really hardly any mosquitoes at all any more…
And the rest is capitalism.
The upshot of all this is that in a period of about forty years, the Caymanian population has gone from being a bunch of swamp-dwelling third world fishermen to being rich (in wealth per capita) beyond the dreams of most developed counties. If their society had developed along its natural course, they would have remained squatting in their infested mangroves, scraping a living by tilling the ocean and knowing little to nothing of the outside world for centuries yet to come.
In dealing with Caymanians in many situations, it is extremely helpful to bear this in mind.
As it is, they have been abruptly thrust into the twenty-first century by a world seeming falling over itself to shove money into the collective pocket (which, naturally, ends up being a rather more selective collective than one might think), but demanding modernisation in return. Politically, they are shielded from many of the harsh realities of international relations partly by being on of the few remnants of the British Empire (We’ve still got one! God bless you Your Majesty!), but mainly by the fact that everyone keeps their money here. They are far and away the richest nation in the Caribbean region, but they’ve only really had one generation in which to get used to this. They may have a first world standard of living, but the society and the mindset that goes with it are still, well, developing.
Caymanians are, as a result, a pretty unusual lot in terms of national character. They have the laid-back Caribbean thing happening, certainly, but it appears to be backed by a kind of diffuse mass neurosis that is difficult to pin down. Sudden success and wealth has acted on the character of society much as it may on an individual, I suppose. It has brought out a streak of pomposity that one doesn’t seem to find in other people of the region. Overreaching greed and a certain xenophobic paranoia are unfortunately also conspicuous features of the modern Caymanian national identity. These aspects of the Caymanian population are, I think, more noticeable because they are offset by a national character that is essentially honest, friendly, hospitable, easy going, deeply moral and trustworthy – if tending toward the insular. If my little analysis of Caymanian society, then, comes across as a merciless slagging, it should be borne in mind that I really don’t hold the Caymanians individually at fault. They are a young society and still very much finding their way – they are, at the moment, a little like an essentially sweet-natured child that has been spoiled by being relentlessly overindulged by a host of affluent relatives. I rather think they’ll grow out of it. Given time.
Given that the Cayman Islands now has a population of just over 40, 000 (I’m really talking about Grand Cayman here – I don’t know much about society on the ‘sister islands’ (Little Cayman and Cayman Brac), but by all accounts it consists of a handful of people, most of whom are their own cousins, and some interesting blue iguanas, so I’m going to ignore them here) it’s an important point to note that only about half of those are actually Caymanian. This seems to make Caymanians extremely paranoid about us foreigners coming and ‘taking over’ their country. The fact that they’re a British overseas territory, so this has clearly already happened seems to escape most people. This results in several things. Firstly, a society so organised around a bias towards Caymanians over foreigners that the sheer gall of it takes my breath away, and secondly a deep and abiding resentment of the bloody foreigners who have the temerity to come over and bring wealth and prosperity to the island whilst getting treated like second-class citizens. Of course, I’m talking here about the white foreigners. We have it easy. The Jamaicans and Hispanics really get shat on, mainly because generally speaking they don’t have the option of getting on a plane and buggering off when they get fed up with it all - they’re mostly supporting families back home on the comparatively lavish Caymanian wages, and even if they aren’t their options in their own countries are pretty limited anyway. What we end up with is a three-tier system, an economic apartheid. The Caymanians sitting pretty at the top, the ex-pats (us white folk are generally afforded the term ‘ex-pat’ as opposed to just plain ‘foreigner’) taking it easy in the middle and the Jamaicans/Latin Americans cleaning everyone’s bogs for minimum wage at the bottom.
It’s good, then, to be Caymanian, (if you like that sort of thing) but often being Caymanian is not small feat in itself. Being born here doesn’t necessarily qualify you – it’s been know for babies born to ex-pats to be deported (along, one presumes, with parent or parents) directly the mother leaves hospital because new arrival doesn’t have a pre-arranged visa. The most a foreigner can ever hope to attain is to achieve ‘status’ – permanent leave to reside on Cayman and the right to be legally treated as Caymanian. Although this doesn’t actually count as getting citizenship, the importance of having this ‘status’ is immense. For a start, having ‘status’ entitles one to be treated as a Caymanian by the legal system. Conviction of a minor drug offence, for example, will see a Caymanian cautioned or possibly fined. A foreigner, however, will be looking at several years in prison followed by deportation. This isn’t even a Met- style ‘institutional racism’ thing where everybody know that it happens but officially it’s denied - this is actually enshrined in Caymanian law. That’s the way the system works on all levels here: One rule for the natives, another for everyone else.
If you are lucky enough to be born on Island to Caymanian parents, you have a fair chance of immigration letting you stay, and you’re pretty much sorted for life. Schooling is free, higher education can be undertaken at any university in the world on a hefty government scholarship and a good job is more-or-less guaranteed at the end of it. Because the economy of the Island far outstrips the population, there are far more jobs than there are Caymanians, which is, of course, why all this foreign labour is essential. As such, there are stringent laws in place to the effect that any job must be advertised locally before it goes overseas, companies are obliged to have quotas of local staff, no foreigner can operate a business on Island without a Caymanian partner (these ‘silent’ partners have a reputation for waiting until the business becomes successful and then forcing out the foreigner and selling up) and so on. As a result, few Caymanians seem to bother about getting much of an education, as it doesn’t really affect their job prospects one way or the other. Another thing to be taken into consideration is a peculiar power that Caymanians are reputed to have over the rest of us on Island. I am told that it only takes one Caymanian, any Caymanian, to have a word to the, ever fascistic, Department of Immigration to have a foreigner’s visa cancelled and have them thrown off the Island within forty-eight hours. It doesn’t matter the reason or the individual complaining - a single complaint from a Caymanian and you’re gone. This is why I’ve been warned repeatedly not to have affairs with Caymanians, if it ends badly she may never want to see me again and have the means at her disposal to achieve this.
