Black Power on the Beach

Grand Bahama Island is one of the few places on earth that makes the tinsel of Las Vegas and Miami Beach look old by comparison. Located 60 miles off the Florida coast, Grand Bahama until 15 years ago was little more than 550 square miles of scrub, coral and limestone. Since then, $1 billion in foreign investment, mainly from the U.S., has built a dozen resort hotels, retirement homes, an oil refinery, several industrial plants and an International Bazaar where tourists shop in Chinese pagodas and London-like mews. For those looking for faster action, there are casinos, including two of the largest in the Western Hemisphere. Almost everything has been imported--even the palm trees.

Now the boom area of the Bahamas is in serious trouble. In Freeport, the center of development for companies as diverse as U.S. Steel and Holiday Inns, streets are dotted with "for sale" signs, shuttered shops and interrupted construction projects. Tourist spending, the lifeblood of the island, will fall by an estimated 10% in 1970. New investment is at a virtual standstill, and the gaming casinos are hard up for business. The U.S. economic slowdown contributed to the drop--but the problem is not so much the decline of dollar power as the rise of black power.

Alien Anomaly. Freeport is caught up in a bitter, smoldering dispute between its predominantly white developers and the Bahamas' first black government, located 130 miles away in Nassau. For tourists, the feud all too often translates into rude or grudging service from hotel and restaurant employees. "All the visitor wants is a quiet vacation on the beach with a drink in his hand," a top hotel executive told TIME Correspondent Roger Beardwood. "Instead, he finds himself in on a black power situation." Prime Minister Lynden O. Pindling admits that tourist receptions in the Bahamas are less friendly than they used to be, but blames that on the gambling casinos. They have brought in a new and arrogant clientele, he says, that "rubs Bahamians the wrong way."

Tourists also find Nassau increasingly seedy and surly. But the struggle is centered on the shiny new Freeport area, which has rubbed on the sensibilities of many blacks, especially Pindling, ever since it was created in 1955 by an extraordinary law. Under it, the Grand Bahama Port Authority, owned by a group of opportunistic foreign investors, was given almost sovereign powers over Freeport, including exemption from corporate and personal income taxes until 1990, and from some import duties until 2054. The Port Authority deal turned into a heated scandal when several officials of the all-white government later admitted taking "consultant fees" from some investors. Primarily on the Freeport issue, Pindling and his Progressive Liberal Party were voted into office in 1967.

Fanning the black Bahamians' longstanding sense of grievance over discrimination, Pindling charged that Freeport was "an alien anomaly that must either bend or break." It needed a "social conscience" and "a soul." To instill them, the government acquired an interest in the Port Authority and tightened gambling tax surveillance. Last year Pindling gained major new leverage: control of immigration and the issuing of work permits in Freeport.

Island of Fear. Almost immediately, the resort turned into what Grand Bahama Tribune Editor Bernard Murphy calls an "island of fear." It became agonizingly difficult for non-Bahamians to obtain or renew work permits. The British owner of a trucking firm was denied permission to "work" as president of his own company; in another case, a young Scotsman, whose renewal application was pending, was arrested and deported without being allowed to wait until his wife could leave with him. In order to hire foreigners for any job, employers must not only prove that they can find no qualified Bahamian but also agree to train a Bahamian to take it over. Since the islands already have virtually full employment, the restrictions may well have the effect of reducing the number of jobs as well as the foreign work force.

Pindling is clearly using the Freeport issue to mollify Black Power extremists in his party and to inject a sense of nationalism against foreigners in the far-flung "out-islands." In the process, however, he has endangered a nation that depends on tourism for nearly 75% of its gross national product. Some blacks as well as whites are critical of Pindling's performance. "It is leading us all into disaster," says one prominent black, an ex-official who was forced by Pindling to retire. "This is a racist government, just as the white government was racist."

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