By Oliver Marshall From The World Elsewhere

Islands to islands: Caymanians in Nicaragua’s Corn Islands

This is the final part of a series about the Corn Islands – two small, beautiful and remote islands on the western edge of the Caribbean, off the coast of Nicaragua. Part 1 of the series (which can be found here) introduces the islands, while Part 2 (which can be found here) focuses on coconut production, which used to dominate the local economy.

In Part 3, people of Caymanian origin tell how and why their parents or grandparents made their way to Corn Islands and they and their children adapted to their new homes.

Migration has always been an important part of life in the Caribbean – both people moving to the Caribbean and also people moving between islands and beyond. Caymanians have always looked across the seas to sustain themselves, the small islands – located roughly equidistant between Jamaica, Cuba and the Yucatán penisular – being almost entirely unsuited to agriculture. Now, of course, the British Overseas Territory of the Cayman Islands is one of the most prosperous parts of the Caribbean, its economy largely based on financial services and tourism. But as late as the 1970s, the situation there was very different.

In contrast to most Caribbean islands, the Caymans had little in the way arable land, with agriculture – such as there was – barely even providing for basic home needs. Instead, Caymanians largely derived their livelihoods from the sea.

Since the arrival of the first settlers in the 17th century, the Cayman Islands have been associated with turtles – green and hawksbill. As turtles were gradually hunted to virtual extinction in Caymanian waters, islanders turned to new fishing grounds, in particular looking northwards to Cuban waters and westwards to the Caribbean coast of Central America.

Following the abolition of slavery 1833, waves of Cayman Islanders sought out new homes. As the islands off Central America and southern Cuba were well known to Caymanian fishermen, they attracted many people in search of land. By the early 20th century there were probably more people of Caymanian origin living in the Bay Islands of Honduras, Nicaragua’s Corn Islands, Colombia’s San Andrés and Providencia and Cuba’s Isle of Pines than there were in the Cayman Islands.

Caymanians were always a small minority of the population of the Corn Islands. That said, numerous Caymanian families moved there in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The great attraction of Corn Islands was not so much the proximity to the turtle grounds of the Pearl and Miskito cays, but rather the availability of fertile land.

This blog post features five women with Caymanian links. [The previous included the memories of two other Corn Islanders of Caymanian heritage.] They tell of their families’ early years in the Corn Islands, how their grandparents or parents adapted to their new homes – and also something of their own lives. All have family in the Cayman Islands – relatives who never left their once impoverished homeland and sons, daughters, nieces and nephews and grandchildren who have “returned” in search of new opportunities.

IMAGES:
A catboat – Brigg Bay, Corn Island.
Hazel Barnard Cothrell (born 1912) Miss Hazel: “My mother was from here – her name was Caroline Cothrell. My mother had four pair of twin. Only twin she had. My daughter, the first child that I had, she had two pair of twin.”
Dolores Brock Terry (born 1927) Miss Dolores: “My sons, them work with lobster and go and fish scale fish and bring and sell. If they keep on taking the little one it will go. And after that, there’ll be nothing on the island.”
Bonnilyn Tucker Quinn de Welcome (b. 1924) Miss Bonda: “My husband spoke just a little Spanish – but he was pretty good at English!”
Lucy Ebanks Brock (1931–2014) and Florence Ebanks Brock (1933–2013)

For a LOT more on this story go to: http://theworldelsewhere.com/2015/05/09/islands-to-islands-caymanians-and-the-corn-islands/