La Soufrière’s 2021 blasts emptied sixteen thousand Vincentian homes
Saint Vincent and the Grenadines spans 389 square kilometres at the southern Windwards, with most land on Saint Vincent around the capital, Kingstown. About 109,296 residents give a density near 281 per square kilometre. The Kalinago called the main island Youloumain after Youlouca, a rainbow spirit they believed lived there.
The Grenadines are a chain of 32 small islands whose northern two-thirds belong to the country, and seven are inhabited, Bequia, Mustique, Union Island and Canouan being the biggest. Columbus named the main island for Saint Vincent of Saragossa, and the Grenadines take a diminutive of Granada. People from South America lived here by about 5000 BC, followed by Arawaks and, in the fourteenth century, the Kalinago.
France planted the first lasting colony at Barrouallie in 1719, bringing enslaved Africans to grow sugar, coffee, indigo and cotton. Britain took the island in 1763, and the Afro-Indigenous Garifuna fought it in two Carib Wars. After their chief Joseph Chatoyer’s forces were defeated in 1797, nearly 5,000 Garifuna were deported to Roatán off Honduras, to Belize and to Baliceaux.
Emancipation in 1834 and the end of apprenticeship in 1838 left plantations short of hands, so about 2,100 Portuguese arrived from Madeira in 1845 to 1850 and Indian labourers followed from 1861. Associate statehood came in 1969 and independence in 1979. Population majorities descend from Africans enslaved under French and British sugar regimes. Southern Grenadine cays complete an archipelago that joins OECS, CARICOM, ALBA, and CELAC.
La Soufrière has repeatedly shaped island life: it wrecked farms in 1812, killed 1,500 to 2,000 people in 1902 and forced thousands from their homes in 1979. In April 2021 La Soufrière erupted for two weeks of explosive events, forcing 16,000 evacuations and foreign emergency aid.
Source: Saint Vincent and the Grenadines
