Jamaica Confidential: Resorts, Rastas, and Revolution

By Robert E. Martin

Jamaica is a land of beauty and contradiction.  Located south of

Cuba and nestled within the brilliant blue of the Caribbean, it is a land

of rich blue mountain forests and breathtaking coral reefs that has long

been a tourist destination for the rich & famous.  Sadly, it is also a land

of unspeakable poverty, riddled with political corruption, and one of the

most exploited countries in the Western World.

Recently, my wife and I spent one week in Jamaica at The Sunspree Resort in

Montego Bay and discovered two stark and different Jamaicas, one fueled by

the tourism industry that consists of exclusive guarded resorts nestled

against one another for miles on end in regions like Negril and Montego,

and the other a country of ramshackle shacks, crowded & littered city

streets, lush fertile farmland where ackee (an indigenous vegetable that

when cooked tastes better than scrambled eggs), Blue Mountain coffee (they

say if you drink a cup it will keep you awake for the rest of your life),

and ganja is raised by Rastafarians, the religious core of Jamaica, intent

upon leading their people to salvation from the corruption of 'Babylon'

culture.

The leading industries in Jamaica are tourism, bauxite mining (which has

left vast strip-mined areas potting this jewel of an island), and

agriculture.  The tourism industry boomed after World War II because

Jamaica offered peace, warmth, and a kind of freedom from the increasingly

restrictive climate, both artistically & sexually, of Europe & America.

The playwright Noel Coward built his retirement home, known as Firefly in

the hills of Jamaica, James Bond author Ian Fleming resided there, and the

'soul' of the Rolling Stones, Keith Richards, owns a home in Ocho Rios.

Much to my amazement, he is even listed in the Jamaican telephone directory.

Every morning when I awoke in Jamaica, I would revel in the lush fragrance

and color of this Garden of Eden, sucking in the parrot-feather-soft air,

rich with the scent of blooming frangipani and fermenting fallen mangoes

and a hundred plants and herb I'd never heard of before.

Yet embedded within this beauty, one can never forget the legacy of

Jamaica's past.  The first Jamaican settlers were a peaceful tribe called

Tainos, but were raided frequently by aggressive Caribes, reputed to be

cannibals.

The original 'Arawak' people of Jamaica were virtually wiped out when

Christopher Columbus and the Spainiards arrived upon the island. With their

weapons, the Spanish brigade set the stage for coming centuries of war,

slavery, and colonialism, including reigns by the British, French, Germans,

and Americans.  Eventually, this leads to revolt and burning of the sugar

plantations.

To my amazement, apart from the poverty of the country, the people of

Jamaica are remarkably well educated, speaking with a British lilt in their

accent with elocution that is better than that of many Americans.

Our first journey outside the barricades of the resort takes us to Negril,

a fantasyland of vast sandy beaches with building restrictions that

prohibit any structure from being higher than the palm trees.  It is here

that we meet 'Bongo', a Rastaman eager to sell us jewelry, drugs, and conch

shells.

In Jamaica, because of the poverty, natives regard tourists as their

'visitors', and as such, expect to conduct business with them constantly,

consistently refusing to take 'no' for an answer.

With Bongo a $20.00 purchase of fine lapis jewelry was enough to put him

at ease (by the way, this was an incredible bargain for the three sets of

necklaces & bracelets I bought for my wife) and after playing me some

original reggae he had recorded, Bongo was pleading with my wife to take

him back to the States on a visa so he could start his own Harley repair

shop.

Unfortunately, many of the problems with contemporary Jamaica and the

religious 'Rastafarians' that seek to redeem the island from political

bondage is more a result of 'recent' history.

The late reggae music icon Bob Marley often lamented the deterioration of

the Rasta scene. A sinister cocaine, freebase and heroin trafficking

network had spread from Negril into Kingston once Jamaican President Seaga

had been elected.

The reasons behind Seaga's victory were clear: he was the darling of

right-wing American corporate powers - the same people who were ushering

Reagan into office. Seaga pledged to keep Jamaica free of left-wing

adventurers and ideologues, and he made himself at the disposal of David

Rockefeller and the other architects of the Caribbean Basin Initiative.

Reagan wanted the island 'cleaned-up', and one of the things he insisted

was that the ganja trade be taken out of the hands of the poor and

eliminated as a 'cash crop'.  Consequently, this forced them to look for

other sources of income, so the ganja dealers turned to cocaine and heroin

to make a living.

Unfortunately, it is difficult for Americans to understand that 'ganja' or

'marijuana' is part of the Rastafarian sacrament, no different than

drinking wine at communion.  They believe it to be a gift from Jah (God)

that leads to a state of 'irie' or well-being; but the aftermath of these

policies is obvious everywhere you go in Jamaica.

One cannot judge whether Jamaicans are wealthy or poor

by the look of their homes.  Because the banks charge

Jamaicans 30% interest, most people use their own money

to build.  When they run out, they stop building until

they can afford to complete their project.

In 1981 Reagan placed the Key West-headquartered U.S. military forces for

the entire Caribbean basin under the unified command of Rear Admiral Robert

McKenzie. Reagan was disturbed by the mounting influence of Cuba &

Nicaragua's revolutionary leftist governments in Jamaica under then Prime

Minister Michael Manley.

Capital, technology and management were shipped into the tropical basin by

multinationals anxious to avoid minimum wage laws and trade unions, and the

Jamaican people themselves saw little benefit.

Profits pouring out of Jamaica far exceed investments.  In fact, driving

anywhere on the highways around Jamaica is a nightmare.

These 'highways' are the equivalent of Michigan backroads and meander along

huge cliffs.   Five years ago the Japanese offered to rebuild the Jamaican

roads because so many Jamaicans purchase Japanese cars.  Japan gave Jamaica

$3 million to rebuild the highways and said it would be completed in three

years.  Today, two years past this deadline, the roads are a mess - with

single lanes of traffic resulting in a 50 mile trip taking up to 3 and a

half hours.

Again, much of this turmoil dates back to Reagan's Caribbean Basin

Initiative (CBI).  By the spring of 1982 Reagan put his version of this

concept before Congress, with support from Chase Manhattan Bank, Alcoa, and

Inter-Continental Hotels. It consisted of a cosmetic 12-year duty-free

arrangement for Jamaican imports (but 87 were already duty-free) except

footwear, textiles, rum, and sugar.

By 1983, the administration had killed the Congress-opposed

investor tax credits feature of the bill, and the paltry $350 million in

aid was a mere handout for a region in need of $580 million in emergency

funds.

The only relief of any consequence had been military subsidies.

Consequently, the entire CBI campaign had been a bribe to induce Jamaica

and the rest of the Caribbean to accredit the armed confrontation of

Grenada. It also provided a cover for $75 million in additional combat

funding for the war in El Salvador.

What Jamaica got for its support was more misery. Seaga's decision to allow

foreign imports into Jamaica killed the Jamaican economy. Smaller

businesses closed their doors. So by the mid-80s, the Jamaican economy was

in such bad shape that it could not pass the International Monetary Fund's

performance tests on its vast loans.

Seaga imposed a 43 percent devaluation of the Jamaican dollar.  Indeed, one

dollar in U.S. currency is equal to $42.00 Jamaican dollars today.  And

ironically, while gas was only 50 cents per gallon, the cost of a drink at

Rick's Café in Negril was $5.00.  (Of course, we must remember that today,

tourism is all Jamaica really has left!)

Of course, you would never know any of this living on the resorts.  The

13-mile Sunspree that we stayed at received a $13 million renovation in

1995 and occupied 12 acres on nearly half a mile of white-sand beach.  The

rooms were air-conditioned and furnished, and they even had satellite cable

TV. Spacious interlocking tropical- style freshwater swimming pools of

varying depths meandered throughout the resort, and if one never ventured

outside of the resort, one would never suspect there was trouble in

paradise.

Much to my amazement, one day we went sailing with Brenton, a pleasant

Jamaican that was happy to have a job doing nothing all day but taking

tourists snorkeling.

He explained to me that six miles away from our resort the night before, up

in the Blue Mountains by this watertower, the government had bulldozed

peoples' homes away and gunfire had been exchanged.  Of course, nothing

about this appeared in the Jamaican news or on the government television

station.

Still, there is much richness about Jamaica to behold.  Apart from the

value (due to its currency devaluation, Jamaica is a bargain where you can

live like a rock star at half the cost of other vacations) the country is

rich with marine life, coves that you can see clearly 50 feet to the

bottom, and a passionate people that do their best to make your stay

memorable.

Perhaps best of all, replete with all this beauty and such an intelligent

and innately gracious race of people, Jamaica puts you in touch with your

conscience.

Or as Nernelly, a Jamaican Bush Doctor puts it: "Some mon just deal wit'

information. An' some mon, him deal wit' the concept of truth. An' den some

mon deal wit' magic. Information flow aroun' ya, an' truth flow right at

ya. But magic, it flow t'rough ya."