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Sailing Into the Wind: Jamaica Steers a Course
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10868 |
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Section : |
CURRENT ISSUES
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| Issue
Date : |
7 / 1986 |
2,680 Words |
| Author
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Victor J. Bonilla
Victor J. Bonilla is a Washington-based international
consultant and former special assistant to the Secretary of
State. He lived and worked for U.S. multinationals in El
Salvador and has traveled the region extensively. He is
currently engaged in writing a book on the area for
publication in 1987. |
The current international debt crisis has produced many responses among Third World nations. Jamaica is in many ways typical of the small, self-consciously independent states seeking to chart their own future on the troubled seas of economic uncertainty and growing interdependence.
Like many Third World nations, it shares many features: a narrow export-oriented economy based on raw and semi-finished goods; a semi-skilled labor force suffering from underemployment and unemployment; growing social demands for a higher standard of living; insufficient domestic savings and capital to fuel economic developments; declining foreign investment combined with a large and growing external debt; and dependency on foreign energy supplies and technology.
But it also has features peculiar to its own history and geography: a stable parliamentary democracy inherited from its colonial past; a population of predominantly West African descent; strong economic and cultural ties to its former colonial rulers, now being eroded by American influence; a fairly high literacy rate by Third World standards (over 76 percent); and a significant underground economy based on the production and export of marijuana, locally christened by its East Indian name, ganja, that has the potential to undo the economic and political fabric.
Colonial past
Discovered by the ubiquitous Columbus in 1494, Jamaica remained under Spanish rule until 1670; when Britain added it to her empire under the Treaty of Madrid. For the next two centuries, Jamaica became one of the most prized possessions in the New World because of her prosperous sugar industry.
After the original native population was eradicated by disease and colonial exploitation, African slaves provided the underpinnings of a labor intensive sugar plantation society, not unlike that of the American South. Though slavery was abolished in 1834, a modest degree of political self-determination was not achieved until the 1930s.
That period was marked by social conflict. It saw the rise of organized trade union movements under the leadership of strong figures that were to dominate the political scene until the present.
With the institutionalization of universal suffrage, the first truly national government came to power in 1945.
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