Trench Town troubles as Jamaicans decide to change their leadership

UPDATE - On September 5 2007 Portia Simpson Miller, the first female Prime Minister in the history of Jamaica, conceded and said her party will accept the results of the general elections on September 3. She will be replaced by Bruce Golding, the opposition leader. The Labour Party won 32 out of 60 seats in the Jamaican House of Representatives and will be in charge for the first time in 18 years.
In Tench Town, Kingston’s notorious slum, people seem to have followed the final days of the campaign from the sidelines.
In this proud but extremely poor neighborhood where Bob Marley once grew up and became a reggae star, people are trying to survive.

Kingston. While trying to avoid the potholes on the streets of downtown Kingston, Dig, the taxi driver suddenly comes up with a request. He wants to be paid before entering Trench Town (photo Jean-Cosme Delaloye), Kingston’s notorious slum where Bob Marley once grew up. “You should never show any money in Trench Town”, he says. In Jamaica, the neighborhood is considered to be the birthplace of reggae music but also one of the most dangerous places on the island despite the fact that crime recently declined there.

Dig drives into Trench Town by using a street alongside a dry canal. On one side of it, light blue apartment buildings seem to be crumbling under the weight of the years. On the other, shacks or small concrete houses are nestled against one another. In the 50s and 60s, as Bob Marley was growing up and starting his career, Trench Town was the heart of reggae music and was politically important in Jamaica as a battle for the control of the neighborhood unfolded in the 1970s. Trench Town spiraled into violence as the two major rival Jamaican political parties — the People’s National Party (PNP) and the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) (read below), started to enforce a rule to make sure only their supporters had access to jobs and services.

At the time, Trench Town was controlled by the PNP, which put it at war with neighboring Rema, a JLP stronghold. The road connecting the two became the front-line in a political war. After a while people controlling the neighborhoods turned to drug trafficking and extortion, and Trench Town was the center stage of a gang war.

Politics does not seem to play a prominent role in the life of the neighborhood. Both parties are now represented inside Trench Town but as Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller (PNP) and JLP leader Bruce Golding were campaigning frantically in the last few days leading up to today’s election, people in Trench Town were more concerned about the damage caused by hurricane Dean than about the polls.

Kevin, a 26-year old carpenter, kills time smoking ganja. The young man has been without a job since Dean hit the island on August 19. He says he will have to wait until after the elections to be able to start working again. Next to him, a young man says in patwa that his neighborhood needs “institutions” for young people. “People are tired of politicians, says Wayne Gray, president of the Trench Town Development Association, a non for profit organization. They have been used by both parties and young people can only rely on themselves”.

Sitting in the back yard of a small and basic place serving food in Trench Town, Bombstraight, a 36-year old rasta man, says that people in his neighborhood feel being let down by the government and by the church. A young woman with a shy smile and a large scar on the left cheek, speaks briefly about the violence in the area.

Older people in Trench Town reminisce it as a place full of talents that has been reaped. A man, whose surname is Coopa, speaks fondly about the time when Bob Marley used to live here. For people like Coopa, financial help can only come from abroad. But in the meantime, groups like the Trench Town Development Association try to encourage projects in the area. In a small orange office without windows, Maria, the technical director of a female football team from a neighboring slum, is preparing for the match against a “very good opponent” the coming week end. She has had to adapt to the waves of shootings in and around Trench Town: “One night, one of my girls got a text message from a family member telling her there had been a shooting in her neighborhood and asking her not to come back, Maria says. She finished training, spent the night at one of her friends and went back home the following morning”.
Jean-Cosme Delaloye / Kingston

Seven dead in the final hours of the campaign

7 people were shot dead on Friday August 31 in separate incidents in Kingston and Mandeville. A police curfew was imposed over the week end in a troubled Kingston neighborhood and political meetings were canceled.
Jamaica, which celebrated this year 45 years of independence, had a rough couple of weeks since hurricane Dean hit the island on August 19. The country was in a state of emergency for a week and most of its 2,7 million inhabitants did not have electricity for at least a week after Dean.
The PNP and the JLP – Jamaica’s two main parties - wrapped up their campaign in those difficult conditions after the poll originally scheduled for August 27 was postponed for a week. The PNP has been in power for 18 years and the country is currently led by Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller, the first woman to occupy such a position in Jamaica’s history. The JLP and its leader Bruce Golding are serious contenders this year and could well win the elections.
J-C De

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