Despite its location almost smack in the center of the Caribbean Sea, the island of Jamaica doesn’t blend in easily with the rest of the Caribbean archipelago. To be sure, it boasts the same addictive sun rays, sugary sands and pampered resort-life as most of the other islands, but it is also set apart historically and culturally.
Nowhere else in the Caribbean is the connection to Africa as keenly felt. Kingston was the major nexus in the New World for the barbaric triangular trade that brought slaves from Africa and carried sugar and rum to Europe, and the Maroons (runaways who took to the hills of Cockpit Country and the Blue Mountains) safeguarded many of the African traditions – and introduced jerk seasoning to Jamaica’s singular cuisine. St Ann’s Bay’s Marcus Garvey founded the back-to-Africa movement of the 1910s and ’20s; Rastafarianism took up the call a decade later, and reggae furnished the beat in the 1960s and ’70s. Little wonder many Jamaicans claim a stronger affinity for Africa than for neighboring Caribbean islands.
And less wonder that today’s visitors will appreciate their trip to Jamaica all the more if they embrace the island’s unique character. In addition to the inherent ‘African-ness’ of its population, Jamaica boasts the world’s best coffee, world-class reefs for diving, offbeat bush-medicine hiking tours, congenial fishing villages, pristine waterfalls, cosmopolitan cities, wetlands harboring endangered crocodiles and manatees, unforgettable sunsets – in short, enough variety to comprise many utterly distinct vacations.
As Jamaica’s largest industry, tourism reveals a great deal about the forces at play here. Some of the country’s biggest assets – its glorious beaches and waterfalls, for example – are facing serious challenges of survival. Sewage pours into the coastal waters of all the major resort towns while the concerns of local communities are often ignored. Profits hightail it out of the country to feed the bottom line of foreign consortia. Many hotel workers live in degrading conditions, but are still expected to smile for guests; quite a few will tell you that they are lucky to have a low-paying job at all. As more and more tourists come, the resort towns sink deeper into urban blight. This is more than irony: it’s a potent recipe for social unrest and the accelerated decline of Jamaica’s most important industry. The government continues to offer reactionary ‘solutions’ to tourism’s woes, while at the same time approving ever more large-scale resorts. Fortunately, sustainable tourism is beginning to make inroads, and while the impact is still very small, there are grounds for guarded optimism.
In 2007, public discontent with the status quo swept the People’s National Party out of power after 18 years of rule. However, new Prime Minister Bruce Golding’s Jamaica Labour Party does not present a stark contrast to its predecessor; the PNP and JLP are no longer the ideological opposites they were in the 1970s, when the former pledged fidelity to Castro and the latter professed love of Reagan. Jamaicans tend to see politics as a localized arena, in which issues like the repaving of roads are more emotive than, say, the repaying of International Monetary Fund loans. And while polls repeatedly show that crime is the country’s biggest concern, there’s little serious effort to address the social ills that cause it, and no popular movement to bring them to the fore.
Behind this backdrop of governmental neglect and popular resignation is a country infused with pride in its unique history, stunning landscape and influential culture. All this is the ‘real Jamaica’.
Last updated: Sep 23, 2008
