Isolationism in Zionism and the Caribbean Marriage Steeplechase

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Isolationism in Zionism and the Caribbean Marriage Steeplechase

With Legal and Social References

The Caribbean has long been treated as a warehouse of human potential — a pilot’s choice cargo. We are exported like goods: ball players, sex workers, nurses, teachers, and yes — the instructors of their own children, even when those children are born “illegitimate.” This is not metaphor alone; it is structural: our bodies, our talents, our family lives packaged for global consumption.

When control is exerted over even the most intimate decisions, like marriage and reproduction, the stakes become life itself. This is the Caribbean steeplechase — a race rigged by inherited laws, religious doctrine, social norms, and state force.

Marriage as a Jurisdictional Battleground

Marriage in the Caribbean is rarely a purely private covenant. It is often a public contract, adjudicated by church, state, and family elders. Who has the authority to decree that a “virgin” is worthy of marriage? Who decides whether she may be considered receptive for “marriage instruction” — especially when medical students or “doctors” (real or symbolic) are in the mix?

This precinct dispute is legal as well as cultural. In many parts of the Eastern Caribbean, custody and guardianship laws still reflect colonial legacies.

In Saint Kitts & Nevis, the Guardianship, Custody and Access to Children Act gives courts wide discretion to award custody, taking into account the conduct of parents, always subject to the “welfare of the child.”¹

In Barbados, the Family Law Act 1985 presumes joint custody of children born into a marriage, placing the welfare of the child as paramount.²

In the British Virgin Islands, the Matrimonial Proceedings & Property Act explicitly rejects the old presumption of paternal superiority, mandating that the child’s welfare be “the first and paramount consideration.”³

Even as laws modernize, the stigma surrounding children born out of wedlock persists — despite reforms like Barbados’ Status of Children Reform Act (1980), which abolished legal distinctions between “legitimate” and “illegitimate” children.⁴ The state may have removed the barrier on paper, but churches, schools, and communities still enforce it socially.

The Doctor as Custodial Architect

In this contested zone, the “Doctor” — literal or figurative — becomes the gatekeeper of intimacy. He demands your obedience, lobbies for your marriage, designs the elopement, writes the prescription: “accept the Doctor’s solution.”

This figure could be a pastor, a therapist, a civil registrar, or even a family elder — but he always holds institutional backing. He does not merely advise; he assigns. He does not simply recommend; he graduates you into a legal and moral custody from which it is difficult to escape.

Domestic Violence as Systemic Malpractice

The doctor does not have to strike. He merely has to place you in a situation where harm is likely — and call it “rehabilitation.”

Domestic violence in the Caribbean is not incidental — it is structural. The Pan American Health Organization estimates that nearly 40% of Caribbean women report intimate partner violence (IPV).⁵ In Guyana, a 2018 national survey found that 55% of women experienced at least one form of IPV.⁶ In Jamaica, nearly one in four women reported physical violence by a partner.⁷ Femicides — the killing of women because of their gender — have been rising, with at least 11 women murdered every day across Latin America and the Caribbean.⁸

And yet courts and churches often act as mediators for reconciliation rather than protection, pushing victims back into unsafe environments. Police may discourage reports as “family business.” Employers may punish victims with job loss for missing work.

This is not a failure of individuals — it is a failure of systems. When the state “graduates” you into matrimonial custody before you are safe, it is malpractice by design.

Isolationism in Zionism as Global Mirror

Zionism’s model of self-preservation through walls and legal boundaries offers a revealing mirror. Israel’s policies of exclusion, visa control, and resource allocation are designed to ensure survival in a hostile context. The Caribbean, by contrast, was never allowed to build its own walls. Its borders were drawn by colonial powers, its economies structured around extraction, its labor and culture siphoned outward.

We are simultaneously hypervisible — our beaches, music, and athletes marketed to the world — and politically invisible, excluded from the places where global decisions are made.

The Rigged Steeplechase

In this arrangement, the Caribbean citizen faces a race that cannot be won.

• If you fall apart — divorce, separation, scandal — you are cited as proof of cultural weakness.
• If you stay together — faithful, disciplined, invisible — you are dismissed as boring, unworthy of celebration.

The hurdles are highest for those most capable of clearing them, and the price of “success” is often invisibility.

And still — we run.

Toward a New Map of Intimacy

The ultimate rebellion is not merely to win the race but to abolish the track itself.

Call the institutions by name:

• Ministries of Justice and Social Services that police domestic life.
• Church hierarchies that make reconciliation a moral duty even in abusive unions.
• Medical councils that impose moral criteria before delivering care.
• Employers that penalize those who leave unsafe homes.

Reframe the terms:

Marriage is not custody.

Love is not an export commodity.

Faithfulness is not a performance.

Autonomy is not rebellion — it is survival.

When we assert these truths, the steeplechase becomes a procession — not a trial to be endured, but a ceremony to be chosen. The Caribbean stops being cargo and becomes compass, pointing toward a future where intimacy is sovereign, and where no doctor, pastor, or court writes the script for our hearts.

Endnotes

1. Guardianship, Custody and Access to Children Act, Saint Kitts & Nevis Law Commission.
2. Family Law Act 1985 (Cap. 214), Barbados.
3. CALLWOOD v. CALLWOOD (BVIHCV 2009/0077), Eastern Caribbean Supreme Court decision.
4. Status of Children Reform Act (Cap. 220), Barbados.
5. Pan American Health Organization (PAHO), “Violence Against Women in Latin America and the Caribbean,” 2021.
6. United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), “Guyana Women’s Health Survey,” 2018.
7. Jamaica Constabulary Force, “Domestic Violence Statistics Report,” 2022.
8. UN Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), “Femicide in Latin America and the Caribbean,” 2023.

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