Message from Paradise
The transatlantic slave trade and the associated exploitation of humans and nature often only function as a dusty chapter in our history books. Many do not realize that colonial continuities still determine our economic and social everyday life.
Paradise has been preoccupying mankind for thousands of years, often interwoven with religious concepts, providing a space for the realization of human ideas of a life in abundance. The “super-human” of modernity, who knows how to shape the world in his ivory tower of "progress" as he would like to, cannot cope with ruling this paradise only after his demise. So we started to create small peripheries in the form of colonies out of the European center that would secure our mundane paradise.
We should not consider paradise as an inviolable biblical construct. Although this basic idea of Eden is framed in the European context of Christendom, the concept has been taken out of this nexus over the centuries.
One can observe this especially on a literary level and the appearance of related concepts, such as the land of milk and honey. The Middle Ages in particular offer sufficient circumstances, such as epidemics, hunger and mismanagement, to increase the demand for such a place.
Several authors of this time, including the Brothers Grimm, take up the motif for their stories. Hans Sachs describes in his poem "The Cockaigne" 1530, a place in which all food and drinks are abundant and those who do the least for it, are rewarded the most. The European Middle Ages, plagued by illnesses and starvation, and its aftermath make the land of milk and honey appear as an answer to those needs.
Consequently, Paradise and the land of milk and honey are also a fluid concept that emerges from the discourse on the needs of a society and acts in response to them.
With the European "discovery" of the Americas by Columbus in the year 1492 the utopian paradise suddenly takes earthly dimensions. The first travelogues from the Caribbean provide preliminary images and construct a narrative that is greedily accepted by the hungry hands of Europe. These tell of fertile soils, gold treasures and mystify and sexualize the indigenous people at the same time. This narrative can be seen as the beginning of global economic interdependence and the initial point for the systematic exploitation of nature and man. The transatlantic slave trade and the installation of the plantation economy are the consequences.
These images, especially of the Caribbean, are still circulating in our society, serving as an answer to the needs of those who are trapped in the raging reality of capitalism today. They can be found mainly in advertising texts of travel companies that want to convince the stressed viewer of the earthly, untouched paradise and try to lure him with cheap all-inclusive offers in their own and earthly land of milk and honey. With reference to the always-good-humored populations of the destination countries, such as the Dominican Republic and the supposedly untouched landscape, the exploitation of man and nature in the present day continues through the installation of international mass tourism.
