Lacy Wright – Letter From WashingtonSINCE LAST November, Jamaica has been represented in the United States by Seymour Mullings, Jamaica's 7th ambassador here in her 40 years of independence. I visited him this week to see if he liked his new job.
He said he did, although he was humbled by the thought of following so many distinguished predecessors. At the same time, he felt that being ambassador in what I told him, immodestly, was Jamaica's most important diplomatic post, was not as demanding as representing a Jamaican constituency in Parliament, his calling for the previous 32 years along with his several ministerial posts.
Not that he represents no Jamaicans now. As he described recent trips to Jamaican communities in New York, Boston, and Louisville, Kentucky, and planned visits to Chicago, Los Angeles and elsewhere, the thought was inescapable that his constituency had not disappeared but grown considerably.
Some of the stops on the Ambassador's travels are places he has been before. He is a two-time US Information Service grantee, having come here in 1970 and, as leader of Opposition business in Parliament, again in 1980. He toured a number of cities on both occasions and on other trips.
Getting down to business, the Ambassador noted that the importance of the US to Jamaica's economy, always strong, had grown more so with the decline of bauxite as a foreign-exchange earner relative to tourism. This made attracting American tourists to the island more vital than ever, an effort Mullings obviously considered one of his main priorities.
Another issue of high concern, said the Ambassador, was deportations. He echoed the longstanding Jamaican lament that young men sent home with no money or relatives were prone to turn to crime.
He was also worried that, with the post-September 11 attention given to foreigners in the US illegally, more Jamaicans than before might start to be deported. That, however, had not happened yet. Moreover, with US authorities apparently concentrating more and more on nationalities with a history of yielding terrorists, the likelihood of their targeting Jamaicans and other Caribbeans did not seem high. Still, it was a possibility that worried him.
As far as illegal drugs were concerned, the Ambassador noted regretfully that Jamaica had become a cocaine crossroads, but said anti-narcotics co-operation between Jamaica and the US was strong. He was also pleased with the OAS's new Multilateral Evaluation Mechanism, which allowed Jamaica and other countries to work together to improve their anti-drug performances. This was a welcome alternative to the US-run annual "certification" system, whereby the State Department graded countries on their anti-narcotics efforts. Most countries found this "report card" patronising, and the Ambassador hoped the new approach would supplant it.
Bananas, the Ambassador agreed, was a formerly neuralgic issue that had faded in urgency since the US-European Union agreement of a year ago that will eventually do away with European import quotas for the fruit. The Caribbean growers' fear had been that, without a quota guaranteeing them a fixed volume of exports, they would lose their European market share to their more efficient Central American counterparts.
Jamaica, the Ambassador argued, was doing well in this new setting. Jamaica Producers of St. Mary's, for one, had become a grower and exporter of high quality and efficiency, and would be able to survive despite the tougher challenges ahead.
I could not leave the spacious office of the Ambassador, an accomplished jazz pianist, without asking him whether he was continuing to play. He was. He said he had placed a Yamaha upright in his residence, and used it for his own enjoyment.
Lacy Wright was Deputy Chief of Mission at the US Embassy in Kingston and acted as Ambassador in 1993-1994. He can be reached at LacyWright@cox.net.
