Losing paradise in Barbuda

by Julian Davis          

Not many people have heard of Barbuda. The 62-square-mile island in the Caribbean with a population of roughly 1,800 is one of two that compose the nation of Antigua and Barbuda. The island has a fascinating and unique history. A fabled slave-breeding plantation owned by the Codrington family under the British, it was turned over to the former slaves inhabiting it after the Slavery Abolition Act went into effect in 1834. Their descendants have since maintained a system of communal land ownership without private property for nearly 200 years. Land use decisions have been stewarded by an elected council – with major development proposals requiring a referendum. 

Consequently, it remains a practically untouched paradise of pink and white sand beaches and pristine ecosystems for rare wildlife, including the largest frigatebird population outside of the Galapagos Islands. Barbuda’s matchless beauty and seclusion have long been the envy of hoteliers who have sought to own and develop its immaculate shoreline. The latest interloper, who may very well succeed where others have failed, is none other than actor Robert De Niro.

De Niro is currently building a highly exclusive resort on the southwest coast as part of his Nobu chain of hotels and restaurants through a company he founded called “Paradise Found.” The development would have been impossible without the collusion of Antiguan Prime Minister Gaston Browne in the wake of extensive destruction on the island wrought by Hurricane Irma in 2017. 

Browne insidiously used the hurricane’s devastation as pretext to force the evacuation of all Barbudans to Antigua where they encountered long delays returning home. He then pushed an amendment to the Barbuda Land Act through Parliament deleting ownership “in common by the people of Barbuda.” Meanwhile, their communal grounds were cleared for an international airport for private jets and charter planes for the ultra-wealthy to access De Niro’s planned $2,500 per night bungalows. Tragically, “paradise found” for DeNiro and his billionaire financiers means paradise lost for native Barbudans, who are currently battling the development and the airport in court.

The legality and constitutionality of the government’s actions are certainly doubtful. First, Browne’s supporters on the Barbuda Council approved the projects without a general vote. But more fundamentally, Antigua’s Constitution, adopted upon full independence from Great Britain in 1981, guarantees the enjoyment of property and protection from its deprivation without fair compensation. 

A similar case in 2007 in Belize, another former British colony, upheld Maya people’s collective rights to land, without formal title, acquired by centuries of customary use under a nearly identical provision of the constitution of Belize. The Supreme Court of Belize relied on a 1921 case of the Privy Council about a land dispute in Nigeria. That case ruled that a “community may have possessory title to the common enjoyment of a usufruct, with customs under which its individual members are admitted to enjoyment” requiring “the study of the history of the particular community and its usages in each case.” 

One can only hope the Barbudans’ lawyers are making use of such constitutional and common law precedents protecting communal property rights in addition to the important claims of environmental protection that have been reported.

But regardless of the illegality or unconstitutionality of the Browne government’s actions, the true miscarriage of justice lies in the immorality of De Niro’s disaster-capitalist takeover of Barbuda. As an Antiguan citizen myself, who visited Barbuda after hurricane Irma and witnessed the destruction, I was appalled by how quickly and decisively De Niro and the Browne government heartlessly took advantage of the situation. 

De Niro is fond of hurling epithets at Trump and Rupert Murdoch for what they are doing to his beloved homeland of the United States, declaring “shame on you” to Trump supporters outside a New York City courthouse last year. Well, shame on you, Robert De Niro. The problem with American oligarchs is that they are just as morally bankrupt as the demagogues they criticize.

In “Paradise Lost,” Milton describes how Satan, in prospect of Eden, sits in the shape of a cormorant on the tree of life. Though they resemble a cross between a goose and a loon, cormorants are close relatives of the frigatebirds that flock to the sanctuary of Barbuda’s lagoon. With the following lines, written in the 17th century around the exact same time enslaved Africans were first brought to the shores of Antigua and Barbuda, it’s all too easy to picture De Niro perched on the future site of his Nobu Beach Inn, in prospect of Eden:

Thence up he flew, and on the tree of life,

The middle tree and highest there that grew,

Sat like a cormorant; yet not true life

Thereby regained, but sat devising death

To them who lived; nor on the virtue thought

Of that life-giving plant, but only used

For prospect, what well used had been the pledge

Of immortality. So little knows

Any, but God alone, to value right

The good before him, but perverts best things

To worst abuse, or to their meanest use.

Here’s the thing: Robert De Niro is one of my favorite actors and is many people’s favorite because he is an absolute master of his craft. One of my cousins in Antigua is actually named after him. He has undeniable star power and, therefore, a responsibility to wield it ethically and not to the detriment of native peoples anywhere in the world. De Niro recently told the New York Times that being a mogul isn’t necessarily more fun than being an actor; it’s “just another task, if you will.” 

Acting is a different task and, for anyone who saw “Killers of the Flower Moon,” De Niro should stick to playing a colonial exterminator of native rights in the movies instead of acting it out in real life.  

Julian Davis is a California attorney based in San Francisco. He is a dual citizen of the United States and of Antigua and Barbuda. He can be reached at julian@telegraphlaw.com.

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