ABSTRACT
Understanding the 500 year history of the Caribbean is to understand that "paradise" for the Africans in the Caribbean has been perpetually defined as survival, resistance, violence, oppression, crisis, chaos, and dependency—prevailing themes that the author observed as a resident. The ancient civilisations in the Caribbean, and others, helped shape the way society was organised, how work, money and the economy were planned, and how human culture was created and developed. Todays' Caribbean possesses characteristics that seem to indicate a direct correlation to the violent events in the Encounter Era. Tragically, the continuum of escalating violence continued throughout the Colonial Period, which equates to 453 consecutive years of enslavement, brutality, cultural conditioning, and dehumanization when combined with the Encounter Era. The continuum of violence initiated in the Encounter Era traversed through the Colonial Period, the Decolonization Period, and remains a current reality.
