By Peter Polack

Peter Polack

 Last Friday an elderly American visitor to the Cayman Islands perished in yet another drowning in a country described by a local paper in 2023 as among the world’s worst drowning rate. In another local report this year the Cayman drowning rate was announced at 13 per 100,000 being much higher than Bahamas with a rate of 6.5 and Jamaica 0.3 per 100,000.

The Cayman rate is among the highest in the Caribbean and in the top five for the world.
 
The low Jamaican rate which is one of the few metrics where the Cayman Islands is comprehensively beaten by their struggling neighbour has it’s origin in that government’s requirement that qualified life guards supervise public beaches. This is not an unusual requirement and is prevalent in many first world countries where their citizens and visitors are of value.

As so often is usual, the Cayman Islands marches on to the sound of a different and irrational drummer. Public cries for more lifeguards that could also reduce the overstuffed local prison fall on deaf ears.

Drowning is not the only tourist killer.

Recently in Belize three young American women suffocated to death in unregulated or careless oversight of hotel accommodations there. Local authorities pirouetted from drugs to tainted liquor before finally landing on the truth of negligent poisoning.This has been a worldwide phenomenon for some time.

Three American tourists died in 2022 at a resort in the Bahamas with a mirror occurrence to Belize. There have been no criminal prosecutions.

  Belize has also become notorious for speeding boats killing tourists, the most recent being in March of this year. Prevention has not been embraced as part of their maritime safety ethos.

The Belizean and Cayman authorities are running their countries close to the reef in a world where President Trump could end the largest part of the Cayman economy with the stroke of a pen. He is very mindful of the health of his citizens and the loss of a single one does not escape him.

 Other tourist deaths this year follow the higher criminal pattern of murder,home invasions and disappearances in St.Vincent, Turks and Caicos Islands, Dominican Republic and even Costa Rica. The American colony of Puerto Rico also saw a tourist fatally shot on a visit for a Bad Bunny concert last weekend.
 

Tourism is a valuable part of all Caribbean economies and it has become clear that herding visitors into protected resort enclaves is not sufficient, however profitable for the ownership class.
 
The USA has a deep aim on the outside world and remittances, shortly to bear the brunt of a tax driven by their concern of the vast immigrant monetary resources leaving never to return. 

This should be a wake up call to the Caribbean diaspora to demand accountability from the politicians at home suspected of unjust enrichment usually accompanied by unbelievable explanations.
 
Cleanliness begins at home but also at the ballot box, recall petitions, integrity oversight are all a necessary beginning for the New Caribbean free of the deadly sins of cronyism, corruption and nepotism.

END
 
Peter Polack is a former criminal lawyer in the Cayman Islands for several decades. His books are The Last Hot Battle of the Cold War: South Africa vs. Cuba in the Angolan Civil War (2013), Jamaica, The Land of Film (2017) and Guerrilla Warfare: Kings of Revolution (2019). He was a contributor to Encyclopedia of Warfare (2013). His latest book is a compendium of Russian espionage activities with almost five hundred Soviet spies expelled from nearly 100 countries worldwide 1940-88.