The Human Zoo: Making Jamaica Fit For Foreign Corporations
by John Maxwell
This article originally
appeared in the Jamaica Observer.
"We are going to pay them to mess up Jamaica to the
specifications of a foreign corporation."
There is an
ancient joke about an American tourist being shepherded around Europe on a
package tour, collecting places without ever experiencing them. One morning his
wife asked him: "Where are we?" His bemused answer: "If this is Tuesday this must be Paris."
The cruise
ship business is even more soulless than the land based package tour. Cruise
ships are floating amusement parks designed to delude you into believing that
you are taking part in a mind expanding experience - traveling to foreign
countries to partake of the local culture. In fact the stops in the various
islands of convenience are basically to buy cheap water and to allow the crew a
day to clean the ship and make it ready for the next day of cruising and
boozing and goofing off at great expense.
Ginnigogs Rule
Eons ago,
shortly after returning from my exile in the UK, I attended a press conference
called by the entity called the Urban Development Corporation and featuring the
UDC's Chairman Moses Matalon and the Minister under whose portfolio the UDC
then fell - Mining and Natural Resources. The Minister was Allan Isaacs and I
will never forget his astonishment and then rage when in answer to one of my
questions, Mr. Matalon admitted that the UDC, then five years old, had never
published an annual report, as it was supposedly bound to do.
The Minister publicly exacted an undertaking from Mr.
Matalon to publish annual reports covering the UDC's first five years.
"The
UDC incurred a significant proportion of Jamaica's public debt, without the
authorization of Parliament."
And that
may have been the reason that Mr. Matalon later described me as an
over-educated rasta - wrong on both counts. His five annual reports were
combined in one short lavishly illustrated brochure in which it was revealed
that the "Universal Devastation Conglomerate" had incurred a significant
proportion of Jamaica's public debt, without the authorization of Parliament.
The UDC had simply issued IOUs to American banks, to finance its destruction of
downtown Kingston preliminary to reconstructing the city as a modern Miami in
the Caribbean. We are still waiting, 35 years later, for the reconstruction.
What astonished me then was the fact that Mr. Matalon, on his own, could
mortgage Jamaica to American banks without the knowledge of Parliament. It did
not appear that his former Minister, the famously over-sightful Edward Seaga,
either knew or cared what was happening.
This week,
in a statement to the Gleaner, the head of the Port Authority sounded as
if he had inherited Matalon's powers. According to the Financial Gleaner
of November 21:
"The US$102
million that Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines Limited (RCCL) is fronting on the
Falmouth cruise pier project will not give the American company an equity stake
in the port, the Port Authority of Jamaica has said.
"The funds
representing 45.5 per cent of the total project cost of US$224 million is,
according to PAJ president and chairman Noel Hylton, a loan to be repaid on a
negotiated schedule.
"The matter of
repayment is well under consideration; it is expected to take place over an
extended period."
Repayment
The Prime Minister, Mr. Golding is clearly au fait with
this arrangement. On November 10 the press published a release from the PM's
office to the effect that three days earlier, Mr. Golding "was met by Adam
Goldstein, CEO of Royal Caribbean International (RCI) in Kingston, ahead of
signing a US$224 million contract to develop the Falmouth Pier to accommodate
the world's largest cruise ship, in May 2010. Under the contract, the
government will invest US$122 million to dredge the harbor and construct the
pier. RCI will develop the land-based facilities, including shops and
attractions.
"The
Jamaican taxpayer will foot every penny of this extravagant and in my view, mad
scheme."
According
to Mr. Hylton, however, there is no joint venture. The Jamaican taxpayer will
foot every penny of this extravagant and in my view, mad scheme. The PM's
release hinted otherwise:
Under the
contract, US$122M will be utilized for harbor dredging and to build the
facilities for ships to dock. The other US$102M will be used by RCCL to lease
land from the Government, for the construction of all infrastructural
development. The facility is due to receive the largest ship in the world come
May 2010.'
Crazier and crazier
The world is now in the toils of the worst economic
crisis in history. Even on CNN, the journalist-millionaire anchors are publicly
worrying about their 401(k) nest eggs, rotting away with the stock market. All
over the world credit is acutely short. Jamaica, owing 137% of its GDP to
usurers of various stripes, has had its sovereign bonds downgraded to little
more than junk. The only source of funds is going to be the IMF, and they will
compel us to fire more people and strip our cupboard even barer than it is
already. The world's tourism industries are bawling about the crunch coming
from the contraction in disposable incomes. And yet, with our Jamaican hotels
on the bones of their balance sheets, we are going to borrow money to destroy
the integrity of Jamaica's loveliest town, dilapidated though it may be now, in
the interest of a foreign corporation. We are prostituting ourselves for a
foreign entity with no obligation or loyalty to Jamaica.
"We are going to borrow money to destroy the integrity of
Jamaica's loveliest town, dilapidated though it may be now, in the interest of
a foreign corporation."
It is instructive to learn how the decision was made.
The
Custodian of Trelawny, speaking at what was alleged to have been a consultation
about an Environmental Impact Assessment of the proposed cruise shipping port,
said, inter alia, "Now, the Port Authority has taken upon itself to make this
bold move, and that is to reincarnate as it were, not only the ports of
Falmouth but the attendance and glory and historical heritage of the town of
Falmouth"
Mr. Hylton
explained why he was doing all that he was doing for Falmouth. Having developed
the ports of Kingston, Montego Bay, Ocho Rios and Port Antonio it was Falmouth's
turn to be blessed by the attentions of the Authority.
Mr. Hylton
explained what provoked him to build the new port:
"There is a
new ship that is being built, which is called 'The Genesis of the Sea,' and
this ship is capable of taking ten thousand passengers and crew, and we would
like to host that ship in Jamaica."
That is
clearly good and sufficient reason to undertake a quarter of a billion US
dollar debt. It will allow a foreign corporation to show off the largest and
most vulgar expression of capitalist excess in existence.
The process
of site selection, was as one would expect, painstaking and thorough, although
Mr. Hylton did provoke laughter at one point:
"So, one Sunday morning I drove along the North coast and
on arriving in Falmouth I went over the wharf area - actually I had to jump the
wall.[LAUGHTER] And I looked at the place and I thought this is such a
beautiful place that we should develop [it] Looking at the historical charm of
the place and so on, I thought here it is."
From the
horses mouth, as it were, you get confirmation of something I have been saying
for years. Nothing so satisfies our developers as the prospect of obliterating
natural beauty and charm with concrete and asphalt.
"So, we
invited one of the major shipping lines down and we walked this whole town on
foot. We walked the whole town, and we thought that there was sufficient
materials here to reconstruct the waterfront of this city to bring it back to
its original glory. [APPLAUSE] And that morning when the shipping line and
myself walked this place, we sat down and we said, let's do it."
And that was how the decision to brutify Falmouth was
taken, with care, deliberation and extensive research.
"Nothing so satisfies our developers as the prospect of
obliterating natural beauty."
After more
careful deliberation the Port Authority decided to hire a firm to redesign
Falmouth
The artist
selected for this job was, surprisingly and purely coincidentally no doubt, a
firm called Idea Inc. which Mr. Hylton described as "an International Design
and Entertainment Company. It has developed story lines and thematic approaches
for destinations all over the world, and is currently developing port projects
in four other Caribbean Islands and Mexico, also a consultant to the world's
two major cruise lines, Royal Caribbean and the Carnival Cruise Lines. Its
president is with us today, Mr. Hugh Darley, he is the Projects Vision Planner.
He is a past Walt Disney Imagineer and has experience in developing projects in
over 70 countries. He has developed concepts for the Walt Disney Company,
Universal Studios and Paramount."
Mr. Darley,
being a man of great imagination will no doubt bring an entirely new vision to
Falmouth, unsullied by his past affiliations and visions. We are going to pay
him to mess up Jamaica to the specifications of a foreign corporation.
Although
the new cruise liners will dominate the landscape and obliterate the view
of Falmouth from the sea, Mr. Darley
promises to make it so that the two cruise ships with their fifteen or twenty
thousand passengers do not "overpower" the seven and a half thousand who live
in Falmouth.
As he
described it, whatever is architecturally valuable in Falmouth will be
incorporated into the new development which will become in effect, a gated
community stretching the entire waterfront of Falmouth. There will be a
facility to allow nearly two hundred large buses and an unknown number of
taxis, to transport the fifteen thousand or so guests to approved attractions,
and after their labors, return them to a segregated Market Square and a
Merchant Square where nearly half a million square feet of shopping mall will
be built and which will incorporate the historic Falmouth Courthouse as a
museum including a "Rum Bar."
Chaos to be built-in
"The idea
is that the courthouse could be a living museum; it would be restored and
developed to represent what was originally there" according to Mr. Darley. This
fidelity to history will probably include people playing the parts of the
slaves who were originally there. I am not being malicious. In several of the
North American examples of historic recreations, blacks are hired to play the
parts of slaves to make the experience as true to history as possible. Maybe
the one thousand jobs promised for Jamaicans as part of the development will
include these, or perhaps they will be part of the fruit and vegetable stalls
and the fish stalls and curio stalls which will be among Mr. Darley's "
opportunities for locals to participate in sales within the development through
these types of chaos opportunities all along the waterfront." [sic]
Wendy Lee,
the tireless engine of the Northern Jamaica Conservation Association, was, as
usual, a voice crying in the wilderness. ""If this is the complete EIA, it
means the terms of reference have not been met because there is no adequate
archaeological assessment of the town which is the heritage gem of the north
coast,"
She, and
many others deplore the extensive, mindless destruction of the phosphorescent
lagoon, the wetlands and the other characteristics that make Falmouth uniquely
Falmouth. Trelawny's famous black crabs will get even shorter shrift than the
human inhabitants of Jamaica and Falmouth.
Jamaica is
a small country and every development affects all of us. Developers get away
with EIAs that treat the immediate neighbors of any development as the
"interested public" - as in the Doomsday Highway, where the EIA was debated in
a small restaurant in Spanish Town. Projects which should be discussed in
Parliament are explained to small audiences in hurriedly arranged meetings in
obscure places.
The fallout
from these brazen assaults on the Jamaican physical - natural and built -
environment is not important; twenty vigorous claqueurs in some church hall are
thought adequate to give Jamaica's assent to some of the most monumentally
destructive and environmentally unsustainable enterprises on earth.
Pretty
soon, our people will find themselves cut off from their ocean, with their
biodiversity destroyed, their natural heritage and culture debased and their
national patrimony owned by others. We won't be able to swim in our beaches,
see our coastline, or explore the intellectually stimulating casinos which will
provide the prism and prison bars through which we can view twenty-first
century reality where courthouses become museums and justice becomes a rum bar
joke.
John Maxwell a veteran Jamaican journalist. He has covered
Caribbean affairs for more than 40 years and is currently a columnist for The
Jamaica Observer. He can be contacted at [email protected].
Copyright
©2008 John Maxwell
Black citizenship was non-existent for the first 200 years that enslaved and free people were present in what became the United States. Even long-standing legal victories are tenuous, and now…
“Haitian refugees and political exiles find themselves being refused the hospitality granted others.”
Rwandan and M23 forces are the aggressors in the DRC. They are integrated under Rwandan command.
Zohran Mamdani’s democratic socialist vision won NYC’s primary but lost Black voters to scandal-plagued Cuomo by 20 points, exposing the left’s racial blind spot even as Wall Street prepares to spend…
Trump’s ‘peace deal’ between Rwanda and the DRC is a corporate resource grab disguised as diplomacy, rewarding Rwandan war crimes while U.S. investors stake claims to Congo’s coltan mines.
