1944-1945: (Women’s Unchecked Mobility as the State’s True Concern — the Role of Women in the Peasant Economy Necessitating That Women Simultaneously Bear Ch…

1944-1945: (Women’s Unchecked Mobility as the State’s True Concern — the Role of Women in the Peasant Economy Necessitating That Women Simultaneously Bear Children Work Rural Plots and Sell That Produce to Urban Markets, the Overrepresentation of Rural-Urban Migration Disrupting the Labor Economy of the Nation — Women Having Children Being Not a Problem or a Statistical Burden on the Urban Economy but Women’s Unchecked Mobility Between Rural and Urban Space Alongside Their Relative Freedom of Sexual Partnering Choices Producing Outcomes Outside the State’s Control — as M. Jacqui Alexander’s Canonical Work Reminds Us Morality Within the Context of Translocal and Transnational Caribbean Markets Often Communicated in Terms of the Monogamous Conjugal Family): The role of women in the peasant economy necessitated that women simultaneously bear children, work rural plots, and sell that produce to urban markets. The overrepresentation of rural-urban migration disrupted the labor economy of the nation, and in a period of national economic uncertainty and the failure of large-scale international partnerships, women needed to stay in place — socially, physically, and sexually. Women having children was not a problem or a statistical burden on the urban economy. It was women’s unchecked mobility between rural and urban space alongside their relative freedom of sexual partnering choices that produced outcomes — illegitimate children, migration, and personal income — that were outside the state’s control. As feminist scholar M. Jacqui Alexander’s canonical work reminds us, morality within the context of translocal and transnational Caribbean markets is often communicated in terms of the monogamous conjugal family — the state did not fear women’s fertility; it feared their feet, the ability to walk from the garden to the market to the capital and back, carrying children and currency and choices that no tax law could regulate.