In the early 90s documentary filmmaker Stephanie Black had been vacationing in Jamaica for several years, but every time she stepped off the plane she felt mired in a deepening quandary.
She was an American, but the presence of Americans--and their dollars--seemed to be changing the very character of the country. With every return trip, the widespread poverty appeared to become more intractable. She was puzzled by the steady stream of stories in the Jamaican press about the influence of the International Monetary Fund on the nation's economic policies.
She didn't know much about the IMF or its sister lending institution, the World Bank. "I thought they were something like the Red Cross," says Black, a New Yorker who talks and gestures with the energy of three people. After she finished making H2-Worker, a 1990 documentary about Caribbean sugarcane pickers in Florida, she decided to set aside some time for research.
Thus began her unsentimental education into the policies of the world's two major postwar lending institutions and their effect on developing countries like Jamaica. The institutions offer easy credit, but the resulting debt pushes up interest rates, and high interest rates devalue currencies. Cheaper currencies make goods more expensive, in effect locking developing nations out of their own economies.
In her feature-length documentary, Life and Debt, Black turns the stale debates about export markets and free trade into a riveting narrative. She doesn't shape her film around droning talking heads. Rather Life and Debt unfolds as a journey. The "eye" of the film is a typical American--a person much like Black, who comes to Jamaica as a tourist and at first sees only swaying palm trees and natives splashing in warm turquoise water.
Life and Debt has been racking up festival awards and will be screened this Friday at 7 p.m. in the auditorium of the Brookens Library on the campus of the University of Illinois at Springfield.
Black says many have criticized her for ridiculing tourists. They are seen gloating over the worth of the dollar, getting hammered on tropical drinks, dancing like buffoons to reggae, and taking "real life" excursions through Jamaican ghettoes in a ridiculous zebra-striped jeep. These images are cross-cut with conversations with Jamaican farmers, factory workers, and politicians about their inability to achieve economic independence after 400 years of colonialism.
"The use of the tourist goes back to the initial way I tell this story," says Black. "I'm not making fun of them. The tourists are me too. They are really a metaphor for all Americans and people from rich countries, who may not know about life outside their hotel gates."
Life and Debt constantly moves in and out of those gates--from plush hotel rooms to filthy factory floors, from pool parties to street protests--to draw attention to the metaphorical gate that exists between those in the developed and undeveloped sides of the world.
Then Black introduces former Jamaican Prime Minister Michael Manley, who was elected in the 1970s on a platform emphasizing self-sufficiency. In a powerful interview, Manley explains how rising oil prices forced him to sign Jamaica's first loan agreement with the IMF in 1977. He borrowed because he lacked viable alternatives--something he emphasizes is a global pattern in the Third World.
"Going to the IMF and signing that agreement was one of the more bitter, traumatic experiences of my life," says Manley. "[There is not one] IMF country that has a good educational system, a good agricultural system, a good public health system. . . . All of them are caught in the old colonial chains."
Among Manley's many points is that the IMF and World Bank were created without the cooperation or interests of developing countries. Intentionally or not, he argues, the bankers and bureaucrats who have required Jamaica to tighten its fiscal belt, resulting in slashes to social spending, or open its markets to exports, resulting in the crippling of its agricultural economy, have benefited from Jamaican instability and poverty.
These points are then illustrated in Black's film, and not subtlely. In a series of segments, she takes the viewer inside the Jamaican economy to examine the workings of the textile, banana, milk, potato, and poultry industries. Most disturbing is the part on Kingston's Free Economic Zones, where workers sew clothes for American corporations like Tommy Hilfiger and Brooks Brothers for $5 a day on large swaths of "nationless" land ringed by barbed wire.
These Zones, the film underscores, were meant to provide low-income jobs and help integrate Jamaica into the global economy. But after talking with poor workers, who describe the Zones' working conditions as a "slave boat," and with corporate representatives, who admit the main attraction for Tommy Hilfiger is freedom from taxes and cheap labor, it is hard to feel good about the progress of economic globalization.
The segments on Jamaica's ravaged agricultural economy leave the same impression. Black presents a succession of interviews with farmers, who speak with frightening acumen about the repercussions of loan agreements and the workings of entities like the Inter-American Development Bank. "When you open up the marketplace to those in a better position than yourself, who do you 'tink is going to win?" says one onion farmer, who can't compete against a flood of cheap U.S. onions.
One segment ends with tons of fresh milk being dumped on the ground, because the producer can't sell it. "This new world order means there will be no more regulation in the trading of commodities," says the milk producer. His company has gone from producing several million to 600 liters of milk a day, because the IMF directed Jamaica to abandon its subsidies to milk farmers and abandon control of milk imports. Stanley Fischer, former deputy director of the IMF, is then shown explaining that if such directives are not followed the IMF cuts off economic aid.
If you are American or have ever visited a country like Jamaica for a carefree beach holiday, it is hard not to feel culpable after watching Life and Debt. You might say it's an educational guilt trip, strengthened by the voiceover narrative, adapted from Jamaica Kincaid's blistering essay on third world tourism, "In a Small Place."
"I wanted Jamaica Kincaid's text because it captured the anger and militancy I was feeling," says Black. "I always felt sick in Jamaica. Every time I went there, I had to go deeper into the countryside not to feel the Americanization and imperialization that is everywhere. What doesn't make sense to me is that, according to the IMF, countries like Jamaica are supposed to be able to compete after centuries of enslavement and economic exploitation.
"The question I was asking myself when I made the film was, What is my role in this? Am I responsible in any way, if my country has the greatest influence on this economy?"
