Geography Lecture Explores Caribbean Communal Land Use

Land-use and environmental impact throughout Latin America and the Caribbean have been shaped by transnational communities in recent years. Andrew Sluyter will address this topic Monday, Nov. 17 at 11 a.m. in room 105 of Bandelier Hall East, as the second lecture of the University of New Mexico Department of Geography’s Fall 2008 lecture series.

Sluyter, associate professor in the Geography and Anthropology Department at Louisiana State University, presents, “Transnational Communities and Communal Lands: the Case of Barbuda,” reporting on early results of research conducted on Barbuda, one of the Caribbean’s former British colonies.

Barbudans’ transnational community stretches from Barbuda to the Bronx, to Leicester in the United Kingdom, and other parts of the world. Historic use of land, like cattle herding, together with a political struggle for independence, resulted in a communal land-tenure system on Barbuda, and a lack of tourism development benefitting their neighbors, Antigua and St. Martin.

This research creates a stronger understanding of interactions between changes in the Barbudan land-tenure system, and an increasing desire of the Barbudan transnational community for development in the country.

This lecture is free and open to the public. For more information, please call 277-5041.

Media Contact: Benson Hendrix, (505) 277-1816; e-mail: bhendrix@unm.edu