Orville Taylor

A week ago the Maroons celebrated the 269th anniversary of the signing of the peace treaty with the English. There are many things about the Maroon wars that remind me of the present situation globally and locally.

After becoming established as a community having escaped from the Spaniards in the 1500s and 1600s, they engaged in a perennial war against them. By the time of the arrival of the British, the Spaniards had long released their remaining slaves, who swelled the ranks of the Maroons and became virtual thorns in their sides. Attacking from all angles and being very dark-skinned, they needed little camouflage in their nightly forays against the Europeans.

The Maroons were a separate community long before they were acknowledged by the English to be so. Furthermore, they were definitely considered to be a force to be reckoned with. One of their early 'area dons', Juan de Bolas, was so recalcitrant and powerful that they were forced to sign an earlier treaty with him in 1685.

Therefore, when Colonel Guthrie proposed the 1738 treaty with Kojo (Cudjoe) he was already running scared because he knew that the Maroons were more difficult to eradicate than the anopheles mosquito, which at the time was very present here. Like the insurgency in Iraq, Guthrie recognised that this was a war he could not win. So he compromised.

Yet, there is something even quainter about the Maroons that has piqued my attention. When the treaty was signed, they were allotted several geographical areas as their exclusive autonomous reserves. This includes part of the Cockpit Country, which is reputedly being earmarked for a 'bauxite' of a mining project. Stranger still, they agreed to be 'informers' in that all escaped slaves were to be apprehended and returned to their masters.

A Sense Of Revulsion

I am not sure if a fee or reward was involved, but Crime Stop and King Fish would welcome such an undertaking today. The idea of giving up one's own has never been a positive initiative in history, especially if the flight of the fugitives was a just one. Thus, when one considers the betrayal of Jesus by Judas or the American revolutionaries by Benedict Arnold, one gets a sense of revulsion.

Indeed, despite what we might think about the late dictator of Iraq, Saddam Hussein, only a fool would think that he was simply captured by superior American military power. Rather, the truth was that he was in a hole, with a trapdoor that he could not open himself from the inside. So obviously he had been betrayed.

Nonetheless, this is where the comparison between the Iraqis and the Maroons ends. Saddam's capture has not had any impact on the hostilities in Iraq, and even those who handed him over surely do not feel safe.

In contrast, the Maroon com-munities are among the most crime free in Jamaica. There may be several explanations for this but we can hazard two. Repugnant as it might seem to inner-city residents, the informer culture must be alive and well in the Maroon locales because they have a deeply-entrenched sense of community. This is sadly lacking. Indeed, it is one of the things that was systematically eradicated during slavery but more so in the post-independence period.

It was also in slavery that we learnt to be divided and ruled because the enforcers and slave drivers were all black slaves themselves. Records show that these drivers were especially cruel and would not voluntarily 'stop at all.'

After slavery, a rudimentary police force emerged. In 1865, the modern constabulary began, but unlike the Maroons, these were not socialised into the sense of community. Rather, they were designed to protect the former masters from the ex-slaves.

By the late 1960s and early 1970s, the few remnants of post-slavery community spirit were quickly sacrificed on the green and orange altars. We sowed the winds of destruction and are now reaping hurricanes of annihilation. Maybe the Maroons have something that we do not have. We had been enslaved for so long that we cannot be trusted to govern ourselves. Scary, isn't it?

'Paiti-colour' Face

Still, there is perhaps another explanation that is not necessarily unrelated. The crime wave we are experiencing has a 'paiti-colour' face. The typical shotter, rapist, robber is male, between 16 and 24, not in a tertiary institution, not in church or in a mosque, does not 'sight up Rastafari, and has no sense of his deep and proud African ancestry. Furthermore, he often sleeps in the day and 'bleaches' at night.

This may partially explain it. How else would you explain Haiti, with more guns per capita than Jamaica, an illiteracy rate almost thrice ours, 80 per cent poverty and close to two thirds un/underemployment, having a lower crime rate? Like Jamaica, it experienced its fair share of its communities becoming politicised, although not to the same garrison extent. However, its murder rate is less than half ours.

Tell me if I am wrong, but Haitians have far more connection to their ancestral past than we do. They have belief systems that seem to protect their young men from the vagaries of our own society.

It is for this reason that despite the cosmetics, we cannot lighten the race issue in understanding crime. As I have declared ad nauseam, it is not the little Syrian, Jewish, Chinese or light-skin Indian boys who are committing the murders. Despite the unfortunate incident last week when the offspring of a prominent academic allegedly killed his friend who is the progeny of one of our senior jurists, this is an aberration. Most of the victims and the perpetrators are little black boys who are lost along the development and identity track.