By Tiffany Onyejiaka
I did not feel terribly sorry for the rich victims of the Fyre fraud fiasco. Both the Hulu and Netflix documentaries on this disaster spent the majority of their run time trying to convince me those groups were the most victimized—but I disagree. The only victims I truly cared for and felt sorry for were the ones who got the least amount of attention in both films: the Bahamian workers.
The millennial with too much disposable cash were given the chance to apply for refunds for their ticket prices. The investors who had millions to throw at a party, had multiple lawsuits filed to recoup their investments. But in the immediate aftermath of the event, the Caribbean workers received nothing monetary. They also existed as mere footnotes in the film. It would be great to write this treatment as a one-off of the festival, but it is not. Exploitation runs amuck in the tourist and international entertainment industry, especially in Black nations.
The treatment of the Bahamian workers in the Fyre Festival showcases the predatory relationship that exists between the tourism industry and people of African descent who live in tourist destinations. The Fyre Festival marketing teams marketed the private islands and terrains as a tropical fantasy land exemplifying the exoticizing of Caribbean countries by westerners, ignoring the dire conditions that exist in the country.
For centuries, westerners have looked at Caribbean lands as personal playgrounds for them to relax and vacation in—without a single regard for the people who live there. The promo videos showing mostly non-Black models frolicking around clear blue waters and white beaches is a fantasy that is strikingly dissonant from the realities of most Bahamian people. These images deviate from the realities of the Bahamas such as a poverty rate that is 12.5% and an unemployment rate that is 15.4%. The marketing touted the location on a private island completely avoiding the stark realities of private islands, which are lands that often have been bought or taken from natives of the area for sale to obscenely wealthy individuals.
The Bahamian workers in the Fyre Festival were underpaid and overworked, exemplifying the trend of inequality and exploitation that overflows in the tourism industry. In the documentary, there was always a sense of urgency and need for workers—but never in a respectful context. It always appeared that workers were existed as mere bodies to do a job for the largely white owners—without concrete plans for payment.
Tourism makes up about 40% of the Bahamas total GDP, but that does not help the Bahamians at all. The majority of tourist jobs are extremely low paying. Working conditions for women in tourist locations are especially dire, as could be seen in the case of Maryann Rolle in the documentary. Maryanne Rolle was a Bahamian restaurant owner who fed the crew using up all her life savings—just to not receive even a fraction of her money back from festival organizers. The same festival that paid Kendall Jenner a reported $250,000 to post on her Instagram couldn’t pay a Black woman for sustaining them and the workers. After the release of the film, a gofundme was set up for her by disgruntled viewers, not by any of the documentary makers or Fyre Festival organizers. As of writing this article, Rolle’s GoFundMe has raised $204,576.
The overwhelming western nature of the Fyre Festival without an inkling of attempting to integrate with Bahamian culture is reflective of the colonial lens that many tourist companies view the Caribbean through.
In the Fyre Festival, the organizers were paying millions of dollars for an American based caterer to cater the food for the guests—rather than pay for local Bahamian entrepreneurs to cook foods. They also devised a lopsided attempt to have individuals place money in credits that would deter cash usage which would negatively impact the ability of local Bahamian entrepreneurs from gaining much economic benefit from their presence. The goal was to party and have fun—not to go to a new country and make any kind of positive impact with the people.
Many wealthy Americans get upset when immigrants come to our country for a better life—yet don’t give a second thought about the disruption of life that their excessive vacations cause on people in other countries. The majority of tourist dollars do not even go to the inhabitants, but rather to the wealthy owners who pay workers a fraction of their worth. In the Bahamas, roughly 85% of all dollars are leaked out of the country and do not help the local economy. These paradise-esque playgrounds for rich westerners in the top 1% of global society have disastrous effects for the natives of these countries. Many of the hospitality work involves the largely Black staff acquiescing to any and every demand of the tourists in a manner reminiscent of servitude. Many of the luxury and prominent enclaves are environmentally demanding and unequally share resources with the neighboring non-tourist areas.
The tourist industry thrives on creating experiences and memories, steeped in exploitation, for consumers with enough money to pay for it. The Fyre Festival is a terribly accurate case study in the way tourism industries and tourists degrade the local inhabitants of these destinations.
Many of us who vacation in other countries are guilty of feeding into this terrible system. Many of us are guilty of paying and supporting establishments that exclude natives. Many of us excitedly visit these countries and take photos to hashtag without engaging with or even acknowledging the widespread systematic oppression of the people who live in these areas. Even many of us Black travelers are too busy posting #Blackpeopletraveltoo to consider that the Black people serving us are living in a neo-colonial hell. The Fyre Festival, and the subsequent documentaries expositing about it, clearly delineate that few of us truly care about ethical traveling and treating foreign people in foreign lands with the respect they deserve. Travel is meant to be a cultural exchange but, until tourism revolutionizes, it’ll remain nothing more than cultural consumption and appropriation.
Reading Suggestions:
“The Effects of Tourism in the Caribbean,” Rita Kennedy, USA Today (2018)
“The Tourism Crisis: Impact + Solutions,” Dr. Reese Halter, Huffington Post (2017)
“A Vacation is Not Activism,” Bani Amor, bitchmedia (2016)
Tiffany Onyejiaka is a Black, Nigerian-American based in the Washington, D.C area. She enjoys writing about the topic of social justice, equity, health and more for people of African descent across the diaspora. Her hope tor is the help educate and empower Black individuals with her writing and research. You can follow her on twitter at tiffany_ezinwa.
