Jenni Campbell, Managing Editor
THE indomitable Jamaican spirit is alive and well in Houston, Texas. It has to be, with some 50,000 islanders calling Houston home.
Jamaica is in-your-face with a million-dollar Jamaica Tourist Board's 'Comeback to Jamaica' advertising campaign on the airwaves with such aggression and frequency that the appeal is almost desperate.
Under the gray skies of Texas, where very high and low temperatures battle for prominence, the Jamaican accent is distinct. It does not dominate, but is distinct. In supermarkets, banks, restaurants and stores, the Jamaican voice mixes with the Texan drawl.
Americans who had visited the island as tourists respond to the unusual accent with "Are you from Jamaica? That is a really beautiful island mon!" But among many Jamaicans the compliment has lost its relevance as news of rising crime and violence push their homeland into the distant past.
Many had left the Caribbean island under the pressure of a 1970s state of emergency, when the supermarket shelves were stripped of food, murders were being committed in high numbers in the name of politics, strikes were many and the economy was crumpling beneath a spreading rumoured communist takeover.
The socialist Government ruled by the late Michael Manley between 1972 and 1980 had promised self-sufficiency, but for too many Jamaicans, that spelt 'Cuba', and the stories about the way of life in the neighbouring island 90 miles away, were scary.
Jamaicans in their thousands fled to the sanctuary of the United States, many were professionals who had accumulated some wealth and good reputation. Some sold what they had back home and headed for the safety of the green pastures of the land of opportunities. A large number of those who fled make up the Jamaican community in Houston. They add much to the landscape of the professional 'African Americans' today, they and their children are counted among black doctors, registered nurses, lawyers, computer specialists, educators, journalists and some even hold their own in the business community.
"Houston has been good to me," is the popular refrain among the islanders.
But underneath the chorus lies the innuendo "Jamaica has been bad to me."
However, these words are given no voice, but the unending stories of 'too much crime, bad roads, indiscipline, poor education, poor health services, no jobs, no water, too many power cuts, no export, lack of leadership in Jamaica - are repeated with pomp. But absent from the discourse is an understanding of the harsh realities back home.
Jamaica, between 1972 and the 1990s, borrowed significant amounts of money from the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank in order to pay mounting debts since it gained independence from Britain in 1962. Major international trade policies were tied to these loans. Such policies erased trade barriers for imported goods from the United States into the island.
This opened the flood gates for imported food and other goods to replace those, which were being produced locally. The result of which was the destruction of domestic farming and other industries, as they could no longer compete with the U.S. prices. There was also a significant rise in unemployment and severe cuts in financial resources available to health, education and other critical sectors.
Migration to the United States and Britain, which were offering higher salaries and improved standards of living, became attractive. The possibility of affordable education for their children was the final push that some needed to board the flight from the island.
Among so many Jamaicans in Houston, the island's population of 2.5 million is insignificant to their new reality and the land of their birth seems to disappear into the sea of negativity.
"Yes, Jamaica has problems, but I cannot help them," one man concluded.
Even so, the Jamaican spirit is alive and well, at least so says Jamaica's Honorary Consul in Houston, Beverly Ford.
"These people may buy into the whole media hype, but at heart they love Jamaica. They are professional people. The Jamaican community tends to stick together here, there is an association here and they try to do as much as they can," Mrs. Ford said last Friday. She explained that the association meets at least monthly, and tries to create programmes of assistance for the island. Such assistance comes in the form of clothing and food which are sent to the needy each year. "They also put on special Jamaica awareness programmes and make themselves available to meet dignitaries from the island whenever they visit.
The Jamaican spirit, Mrs. Ford says, makes it easy for them to stand out in the workplace. "They are known for their commitment and passion, they are willing to go the extra mile,"she affirms.
But those miles hardly lead back to the island. "I would never go back to live there, no sir, dem people kill off each other every day," a small-framed woman in her mid 50s said over a cup of hot tea. She had emigrated to the United States in 1975.
HOT ITEM
Like the tea, crime is a hot item and the fear of going back home to a possible violent death is real.
The Jamaican police crime reports confirm that 2001 was indeed a bloody period for the island with 1,139 people murdered. The bloodletting really began with election year 1980 when the murder figure shot up from 351 the year before, to 889. Incidentally, it fell to 490 in 1981. Of the total number killed last year, 789 or 69 per cent died by the gun. The police blamed 581 of the murders on reprisals/drug/gang-related quarrels and 331 on domestic rows.
The general understanding is that most of the crimes occur in Kingston and its environs where nearly half of the island's population resides.
Kingston, the capital, is one of 14 parishes in the island. Its many inner-city communities are home to several gangs spurred by drug dealings with Colombian drug lords feeding United States and British markets. These gangs are held fast by political underpinnings. Inasmuch as Kingston is the centre for gang warfare, it is the chief commercial district, the headquarters for Government and provides the widest range of educational opportunities the island has to offer.
Last week, the police in St. Elizabeth - a parish on the south coast of the island, reported a low crime rate in their area and its environs. According to Superintendent Herman Brown, head of the St Elizabeth police division, a great effort is made to have the police and the people working together in order to maintain peace.
This had led to various busts, especially drug and robbery related. The Superintendent said that he was involved in a programme, that not only had police officers doing regular duty, but also hosting homework centres, offering counselling facilities, dispute resolution and giving financial aid to students in need.
Superintendent Brown is based at the Black River Police Station in the parish capital. He said the lawmen are collaborating with youth clubs, neighbourhood watches, the Boys' Scout Movement and make frequent visits to schools where student searches are conducted and meetings with teachers and parents ensure a virtually crime-free parish.
"We have proactive policing that leads to extremely good relations with members of the public," Superinten-dent Brown said. "Every other Sunday I go to church and worship, sometimes in the programme I ask the congregation to make sure that they make reports of any strangers or suspicious activities in their area.
"This," he said, "has led to raids and arrests of persons who are mostly from out of town. The majority of offenders have their permanent bases in Kingston."
"The St. Elizabeth murder rate, with 17 killed last year, four with the gun, has none of those arrested being from the parish. Only one person has been killed so far this year.
Interestingly, the St. Elizabeth's crime rate is replicated in some 80 per cent of the rural parishes across the island.
A random check with Jamaicans in Houston found only one family with a Kingston background. The others emigrated from the rural parishes of St. Mary, St. Elizabeth, Manchester, Portland, St. James or Hanover .
Many Jamaican professionals in Houston overstated their non-involvement in gangs or drug trafficking and therefore would not be targets of related crimes. Nonetheless, the fear factor remains real.
Stories of Jamaicans here who have braved the sea of negativity and returned home are rife.
"I know a man who went home and they (robbers) attacked him and chop off his hand, look what they doing to the returning residents when they go home," Charmaine Brown spoke with a tongue heavy with a Montego Bay accent.
INDISCIPLINE
Eddie Taylor, a Jamaican businessman in Houston left the island for the United States in 1981. "The last time I went home, I knew I do not want to go home again. There is indiscipline that you can't speak to young people, so many bad words. At Carnival time in Kingston during my last visit we were on the streets with everyone else. Three guys rode up on bicycles with ganja spliffs in their mouths. I asked them to take the smoke away from my children, they told us off and started to pile bottles as if they were going to throw them at us." Mr. Taylor said he quickly went back to the house and prepared for his flight back to Houston for the final time.
The businessman blames the politicians and the United States Government for the state of his home country. "Between the Governments of Jamaica and the United States, they are responsible for what is happening there now," he laments. "They have allowed the guns to go freely into the country. When I listen to the talk shows in Jamaica, the same things that they were discussing in 1981 when I left, are the same things they are discussing now. They have made no progress, no progress at all."
But the negative view of so many about the island is not new. "It is something that has been around for a long time. They are misinformed,and you cannot say that the information is not there, so they have no excuse," says Courtnay Rattray, Deputy Chief of Mission at the Jamaican High Commission in Washington D.C.
"We put out statements all the time to the presidents of the Jamaican associations in the Washington area, there are six of them. People are concerned about what is happening in Jamaica but they are not aware of what the responses are. We try to fit community meetings with Cabinet ministers when they come here, but the budget doesn't allow them to spend as much time here as is necessary." Mr. Rattray said Wednesday.
"They seem to have made up their minds, some of them use the negatives about Jamaica to justify why they are here. If you are encouraging someone to go home, you have people here who will tell you that you are doing a bad thing."
Lynford Thomas, a 40-year-old Jamaican who works in a laboratory explains that for the 10 years he has lived in the United States, he has been fighting off the negative arguments put forward by so many of the islanders. "In order to say why they are here and not in Jamaica, why they sold their houses in the 1970s and cannot buy them back now, they are forced to focus on all that is negative. I have been to Jamaica, and the way they describe the crime and all that, I do not see it as widespread as they make out. I have seen Jamaicans living in better houses, enjoying a better standard of life than some of them living here. When fox can't get the grape, him say it sour, something like that." Mr. Thomas said.
Daronda Gamble, an American who went to Negril, a township to the western end of the island, last November is still overawed by the experience. "It was beautiful, the people were friendly, I went to ordinary communities and the people were just nice. You hear the news about the crime and all that, I did not experience any of that, people were just good and treated us well, I am going back this year."
