Located in the eastern Caribbean, Saint Lucia has an area of 616 square kilometers (239 square miles) of rugged volcanic territory. Of note is the fact that the tiny nation has produced two Nobel Laureates: Sir Arthur Lewis (in Economics) and Derek Walcott (in Literature). In 2003 Saint Lucia's population was estimated at 162,157 people. Its ethnic breakdown was as follows: 90 percent of predominantly African descent, approximately 6 percent of mixed races, and 3 percent of East Indian or Asian descent. Overwhelmingly, its people are Roman Catholic (90%), with some 3 percent Episcopalian. English is the official language, but the popular dialect is a French-based patois. Literacy is about 70 percent. In the sixteenth century European settlement brought with it rampant disease that largely decimated the Amerindian population of Arawaks and Caribs. Colonization also resulted in the development of plantations, which led to the importation of African slaves and, after the abolition of slavery in 1834, the recruitment of indentured laborers from India and other places. British and French colonization alternated fourteen times before final British rule that lasted for 165 years, from 1814 until 1979, when Saint Lucia became independent.
The economy initially was based on agriculture, at first sugar and, after World War II (post-1945), bananas. The island has shifted toward a service-oriented economy, which in the early twenty-first century accounted for 73 percent of the gross national product (GNP), mainly in the form of tourism. Even though unemployment was about 16 percent in 2000, per capita income was stable at $5,400, as was economic growth at 2 to 3 percent. Long-term British rule resulted in the formation of a constitutional monarchy with a governor-general representing Queen Elizabeth II (b. 1926) and a Westminster-style parliamentary system undergirded by English common law. Saint Lucia shares its Supreme Court with several other islands in the eastern Caribbean and has a final appellate court in the British Privy Council. Political power resides in a bicameral legislature consisting of an elected seventeen-seat House of Assembly and a nominated eleven-seat Senate. Universal adult suffrage was introduced in 1951 and, with it, competitive partisan politics dominated by two main parties that have alternately held power.
The country's two main parties are the Saint Lucia Labor Party (SLP) and United Workers Party (UWP), but both have received minor challenges periodically from smaller parties. In May 1982 the UWP gained power; however, it lost power to the SLP in 1997. SLP leader Ken Anthony was reelected to a second term as prime minister in 2002.
The alternation of power between the SLP and UWP has followed the course of trade union politics, much of it revolving around the banana industry and public service employees. The banana industry had brought prosperity to Saint Lucia because of its access to the European Union (EU) through concessionary prices guaranteed by the Lome Convention. First signed in 1975 and coming to an end in 2000, the Lome Convention was an international aid and trade agreement between a number of African, Caribbean, and Pacific countries and the European Union aimed at helping Third World countries achieve self-sustained development. However, when cheaper bananas from Central America became available to EU member states, this triggered the collapse of the island nation's entire banana industry in the late 1990s. The crisis was offset somewhat by the development of tourism, with Saint Lucia surviving the radical shift in its economy. The nation's two-party system endures, as do freedom of the press and the safeguarding of human rights and civil liberties. Saint Lucia maintains strong links with two key regional bodies: the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States and the Caribbean Community and Common Market (CARICOM). It has been blighted by share of HIV-AIDS and drug smuggling but generally remains a stable democracy whose citizens enjoy unhampered exercise of their political rights.
