Hutton

BACK IN the early 1970s when he was a teenager, Clinton Hutton was drawn to Marcus Garvey's message of black empowerment. He was also struck by how much the Pan African icon had accomplished at a young age.

"Garvey started the UNIA (Universal Negro Improvement Association) when he was 26 years old. Many of Bob Marley's best songs were written in his 20s!" Hutton exclaimed.

He believes these are achievements that should be emulated by Jamaican youth.

"They have got to learn that it's not when they reach 30 or the big 40 that they should be responsible. Responsibility starts now," said Hutton.

Hutton, a lecturer in the Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of the West Indies, Mona campus, feels that wayward youth, exploited by politicians, have contributed to Jamaica's failure to live up to its pre- and post-Independence promise.

Within 10 years of Independence from Britain in 1962, Jamaica's version of America's baby boomers had put the country on the international map with an exciting new sound (reggae), a movie com-parable to Rebel Without A Cause (The Harder They Come) and a charismatic socialist prime minister (Michael Manley).

Still struggling

Despite continued strides in music and sport, Jamaica is struggling.

After such a promising start, where did it go wrong?

Hutton says the rot set in during the mid-1960s with the first wave of political tribalism.

"It started with the construction of garrisons and its consolidation in the 1970s. That has had a tremendous negative impact that we are paying for now," Hutton said. "Garrisons have produced a level of criminality and organised crime that is going to take us some time to come out of," he added.

Many sociologists recog-nise west Kingston as Jamaica's first garrison.

Formerly known as Back-O-Wall, it was bulldozed in 1965; its residents were removed and replaced by supporters of the ruling Jamaica Labour Party (JLP).

That trend continued in the 1970s when Manley's People's National Party ran the country, and built similar low-income housing projects in areas like Trench Town and Duhaney Park.

Pawns for politicians

Many of the thousands of homicides recorded in Jamaica in the last 20 years were committed in garrisons.

Hutton says these areas, which once yielded scholastic and commercial achievers, became pawns for politicians. This dependence, he stressed, resulted in laziness and ultimately criminality.

Delroy Chuck is speaker of the House of Representatives and has been the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP's) member of parliament for North East St Andrew since 1997.

Chuck agrees with the UWI lecturer that politicians have contributed greatly to Jamaica's lost generation. He says many of them have not focused their resources in the right places.

"We have spent far too much money trying to alleviate poverty and not enough on sectors that create employment. We have not led the people to recognise that economic expansion is the way forward," Chuck said.

Some of the communities in North East St Andrew, such as Grants Pen, were once among the most violent in Jamaica. There are still pockets of hostility among gangs but the police say there has been a considerable drop in homicides.

Empowerment programmes

Chuck credits the transformation of his constituency to empowerment programmes funded and orchestrated by the American Chamber of Commerce, the United States Agency for International Development and the Stella Maris Foundation.

There are similar initiatives in garrisons throughout the country, including August Town in St Andrew and Flankers in St James, areas still affected by high levels of crime.