Half-a-year after the storm of the century, Hurricane Gilbert, tore across Jamaica, the devastation to the island nation is still there to see. riving from the airport at Kingston in early March, I was reminded of a scene from Empire of the Sun. Several old transport planes stood heavily damaged at the end of a runway, hit on the ground when Gilbert swept through. One smaller craft was pasted high in a line of trees along the roadway, swept up there by “Mr. Gilbert”; it dangled like a dry fly in a spider’s web.
I was traveling in Jamaica with a group of journalists. Though it was the height of the tourist season, our time was not spent on the famed sandy beaches, but in the slums of the capital city, looking at development projects. Like the graceful snowy egrets that alight in the rubble of the Kingston dump—a vast tract where 5,000 people make their living by scavenging—the natural beauty of the island stands in stark contrast to the living conditions of the majority. Recent estimates put the number of those living in poverty as high as 80 percent out of a population of 2.3 million. A priest in one of Kingston’s poorest areas summed up the prospects: “Everyone wants out. There is no future here.”
The hurricane, which caused $2.1 billion in damage to farming and temporarily set back the tourist trade, the island’s largest industry, was just the latest in a series of troubles for the Jamaican economy. Over the last decade-and-a-half, the country’s export revenue has fallen drastically as a result of government mismanagement and shifts in world trade markets: sugar took a plunge (the U.S. quota fell to its lowest point in this century); bauxite, the island’s chief mineral export, has experienced a prolonged depression and is just beginning to come back. This, coupled with the heightened price of imports and fuel during the same period, meant Jamaica accumulated a debt almost as high as its own Blue Mountains, $4.5 billion, and per capita one of the highest in the world. More than 40 percent of Jamaica’s exchange earnings are being consumed by the debt, leaving almost nothing for investment.
In an effort to restrain the economic tailspin, former Prime Minister Edward Seaga (in power from 1980-89) agreed to a series of International Monetary Fund (IMF) demands, cutting government services, including education and health care, and drastically devaluing the Jamaican dollar in an effort to encourage exports. The slight increase in exports was outpaced by the rising price of imports, ending in even greater national debt. The small middle class is being squeezed out by inflation. The illiteracy rate, once one of the lowest in the Caribbean, has taken an alarming leap with the cutbacks in education.
Seaga’s conservative Labor government, in favor with the Reagan administration with which it shared similar foreign policy and economic tenets, encouraged free-trade zones on the island. Multinational companies in industries such as garment assembly, many from the U.S., were invited to set up shop and given incentives in the form of tax breaks. A number did, and unemployment island-wide fell from 40 percent to 25 percent (although in some areas it remains at 80 percent). But these more favorable employment figures hide the fact that most of those employed in the trade zones are vastly underpaid: $3 a day, which can only be described as a wage on which to languish. Since this is the only work available, many have little choice. And while Jamaicans resent the wage exploitation in the free-trade zones, all their attempts at unionization have been rebuffed. While partial employment has dampened general unrest for the time being, everyone knows this is not an adequate solution for the long-term. Meanwhile, the profits from the free-trade zones continue to end up off-island, in the pockets of international investors.
It was no surprise then, that national elections in February decisively turned out, by a margin of 3 to 1, the Seaga government and returned Michael Manley and the People’s National Party (PNP) to power. In his previous stint as prime minister (1972-80), Manley ran afoul of the U.S. with his populist-socialist policies and his support for Cuba. He is not likely to rode the boat this time around. His hands are firmly tied by agreements already in place with the IMF, and his socialist views seem to have moderated. While he offered very few concrete proposals during his campaign, the poor believe that things have got to get better under him. Carl Stone, a highly regarded Jamaican social scientist, estimates that Manley has about eighteen months to make a difference. Stone says that Manley’s hardest task will be to raise the awareness of poor Jamaicans so that “their expectations begin to match the limited short-run possibilities.” Most observers are skeptical that Manley will be able to do that, or be able to break with the traditional Jamaican pattern of “to the elected go the spoils.” As one Jamaican put it, “nothing really changes [with elections here]. Only a different set of men gets richer.” If the past is prelude, Labor will eventually succeed the PNP, only to be ousted in turn by the PNP.
The biggest news out of this election was the relative lack of violence. (In the 1980 election, which Jamaicans call “the War,” nearly 800 died; this year only about a dozen met that fate.) In many of the poorer areas of Kingston, there is a political tribalism that requires very little stirring to create trouble. A priest who was a poll watcher in the recent election told me he was surrounded by PNP supporters when they thought the ballots he was transporting to election headquarters to be counted were going to be spirited off in a Labor party van. He escaped with his life only because the army arrived just at that moment.
Reflecting its British colonial past, Jamaica is heavily Protestant, with Baptists and Anglicans predominating. The Catholic church is small (8 percent), but has a strong moral voice. It was among the first to call for a peace treaty between the political parties during the election campaign. The Kingston archdiocesan paper, Catholic Opinion, has called for electoral reforms. A recent church statement against the death penalty is a response to the island’s dubious distinction of having the highest per capita rate of its citizens facing execution in the Western hemisphere: Since 1980, fifty-nine Jamaicans have been executed, and Amnesty International says that presently 200 are on death row. Father Richard Ho Lung, a native Jamaican who founded the Brothers of the Poor, a small group that lives and works with the indigent, writes a weekly column for the Daily Gleaner, Jamaica’s largest newspaper, called “The Diary of a Ghetto Priest.” In 1981, Ho Lung revealed the scandalous conditions in the national poorhouse, named Eventide; where the chronically infirm and mentally retarded were warehoused. The publicity led to a national catharsis similar to that which followed our Willowbrook revelations. Eventide was revamped, broken up into smaller institutional settings, and given closer public oversight. Ho Lung regularly speaks out on controversial issues such as prison reform and controlling the drug trade. As a result, his life has been threatened by dealers.
For his part, Mr. Manley will try to cooperate with U.S. anti-drug policies by clamping down on the island’s production of marijuana. He has committed his government to sealing off Jamaica as a transfer point for drug-running operations between Latin America and the U.S.
While the hurricane season is over, and the poor still hope that they have a friend in Michael Manley, the storms are never far off. A great number of trees were downed by Hurricane Gilbert, and in many places the poor dragged them to clearings where they set up smoldering earth mounds to convert them into charcoal, which they then sold for small sums. But in the long run, Jamaica can’t make it by consuming its dead past. With its economy depleted in certain essential areas, its education and health care systems faltering, and its population growing, wise husbandry must guide Jamaica in replenishing and redistributing its national resources. More generous aid from abroad is needed. As one Jamaican businessman put it, it will be simply impossible to change things without outside help. But not the help of those who fatten themselves on free-trade zones.
Patrick Jordan is an associate editor of Commonweal. He recently visited Jamaica on a trip sponsored by Food for the Poor.
