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National Geographic : 1981 Feb
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Europe's sweet tooth helps keep the Caribbeansugarcane industry alive. In Barbados50,000 tons of raw sugar (above) await shipment to assured markets in the EuropeanEconomic Community. Elsewhere, in Guadeloupe and Martinique growers receive subsidiesfrom the home government in France,while Cubans have reportedly enjoyed guaranteedprices from the Soviet Unionfor years. Left strictly to the mercy of world-market prices, many producers of the region's single most importantcrop might fail, since they still rely heavily on labor-intensive,back breakingmethods for cutting and hauling cane (above right). 260 the most promising economies in the Carib bean. By 1980 it had a national debt of 1.4 billion dollars that it could barely service, let alone pay back. Inflation had tripled in a decade, and 30 percent of the work force was unemployed. Oil costs bit into Jamaica's foreign ex change just as they did elsewhere, but the nation counted on bauxite, the reddish earth that is the principal source of aluminum, to rescue the economy. In 1974 the island gov ernment increased taxes on foreign-owned aluminum companies that process it. The companies responded by trimming produc tion, while the income from the tax was quickly spent on programs for the poor. The man responsible for both levy and National Geographic,February1981
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