Driving through Western King- ston, a wrong turn landed us on a narrow street made nearly impassable by mountainous heaps of rubbish. Rows of shacks -some scarred by fire-lined the sidewalks, and, as all over King- ston and urban St. Andrew, once vacant wall space was decorated with partisan political graffiti. Here, the walls gave testimony for the People's National Party (PNP): "Vote PNP." "Socialism is love." In the first seven months of this year, such attacks claimed the lives of more than 350 people. But neither predator nor prey in this ur- ban warfare is drawn at random. Having cautiously manipulated our passage between the huge mounds of garbage, we im- mediately came upon their reason for being: iron barricades im- planted in the gutters virtually pro- hibited motor vehicle traffic through this PNP turf. Why the bar- ricades? To obstruct the after-dark invasions by gunmen-among them mere boys of age 12 and 13 -from nearby communities with opposing political loyalties. Both, in fact, are quite distinctly lo- cated-in the sufferer communi- ties composed of the working poor and the vast numbers of unem- ployed who hustle a precarious NACLA Reportupdate update*update update livelihood. In these communities, violence only adds devastation to the already pervasive poverty. This war in which both gunman and victim are sufferers has be- come an integral feature of elec- tion politics in the past 15 years. In 1966 and again in 1976-when armed gangs of unemployed youths raided opposing political ghetto strongholds-violence was only contained by the declara- tion of a State of Emergency and the temporary imprisonment of gang leaders. In keeping with re- cent tradition, the escalation of violence in the spring and summer of 1980 occurred in preparation for elections to be held this fall. In the upcoming contest, Ed- ward Seaga's opposition Jamaica Labor Party (JLP) is seeking to oust Prime Minister Michael Manley's PNP-the governing party for the last eight years and the founder and custodian of Jamaica's demo- cratic socialist experiment. Al- though an election is not constitu- tionally required until late 1981, Manley was under enormous pressure to call an early match. In negotiations with his administra- tion this past winter, the Interna- tional Monetary Fund (IMF) in- sisted that such a move was cru- cial to economic recovery: the ex- plosion of anti-PNP sentiment cre- ated too "uncertain" an environ- ment for badly needed private in- vestment. In February, the PNP yielded, promising elections in Oc- tober (although the Party was soon to abandon negotiations with the IMF). Once that decision was taken, the government moved to estab- lish the island's first Independent Electoral Commission. Bipartisan discussion of the project had oc- curred since 1977, provoked by JLP charges of rampant fraud in SeptlOct the 1976 PNP election victory. Ironically, it was the creation of the Commission and its commence- ment of enumeration (voter regis- tration) in April that catalyzed the 1980 campaign of violence in the ghetto constituencies of Kingston and St. Andrew. Political Victimization Sufferer political violence origi- nated in the practice of what is known in Jamaica as "political vic- timization": the party that controls the state apparatus distributes fa- vors exclusively to party loyalists and regularly victimizes support- ers of the opposition. The island's two principal parties find them- selves in a fundamental dilemma. The PNP and JLP are forced to seek electoral support among the poor who constitute the most nu- merous voting population. But the consequent demands from below confronting the victor far outstrip government spoils available for distribution to the masses. Hence, political victimization flourishes. This process has its most sys- tematic, and most vicious, appli- cation in the sufferer communities of the Kingston Metropolitan Area (KMA), i.e. Kingston and urban St. Andrew. The emergence of this urban-industrial complex, the hub of economic expansion in Jamai- ca's post-war "modernization" ef- fort, stimulated massive internal migration from the countryside in the 50s and 60s. But capital ac- cumulation has remained too lim- ited to absorb the burgeoning ur- ban labor force. In the KMA today, which houses almost 1/3 of Jamai- ca's 2.1 million people, scores of thousands-among the youth in particular-eke out a marginal ex- istence through some combina- tion of casual labor, family support and an ingenious array of legal and illegal hustles. These lumpen- proletarians and the working poor, who hold regular but quite tenuous employment, comprise Jamaica's ubiquitous sufferer population.* In the ghetto constituencies of the working poor and lumpen, the spoils of electoral war have pro- ven an extremely effective politi- cal tool. During its 10-year reign, 1962-72, the JLP succeeded in creating safe seats in the KMA -traditionally a PNP stronghold- through its ambitious low-income housing schemes. The Tivoli Gar- dens housing project was con- structed in Western Kingston and Wilton Gardens ("Rema") in South St. Andrew; work on the construc- tion sites, as well as the allotment of homes, was reserved for Party supporters. A third housing pro- ject, Arnett Gardens ("Concrete Jungle"), was under construction opposite "Rema" when the JLP suffered defeat at the polls in 1972; the project was completed and colonized by the PNP. By the mid-70s then, political victimiza- tion in the contiguous constituen- cies of Western Kingston and South St. Andrew had created fiercely opposed sufferer locales in juxtaposition, each beholden to its political benefactor. The Top-Ranking The conduit for the dispensa- tion of party patronage is the com- munity's top-ranking, its most notable and feared gangsters. Even before the politicization of gangs, an explosive sub-culture of street violence had crystallized in the mushrooming sufferer com- munities and leading rude boys quickly assumed local positions of power. Close links with politicians *Currently, 31.1% of Jamaica's labor force is unemployed. 39update update update update "PNP enter on their own risk" afford the top-ranking access to work contracts and other party fa- vors, i.e. opportunities to increase personal wealth and extend con- trol. And close links with top-rank- ing permit bourgeois politicians to foment an ever-more ferocious intra-class struggle that leaves un- 40 challenged the system that con- tinually reproduces poverty. The violent activity of the top- ranking and their underlings first assumed a political character in 1966 when both JLP and PNP can- didates in Western Kingston re- cruited street gangs to establish and defend Party turf. Not infre- quently, political violence was a simple extension' of pre-political gang warfare; arms obtained through party connections were used to settle old vendettas. Nevertheless, crucial political advantages accrue to the party NACLA Reportupdate update update update that controls the streets. Rival campaign activity is virtually im- possible; voter registration in hos- tile communities is hampered; and bogus voting is rampant since in- timidated polling scrutineers fail to show up on election day. Having recognized the advan- tage in controlling the streets, par- ty politicans sought and found, in the very structure of the ghetto, the mechanism that made control possible. Set in motion for the first time in May 1966, it engendered a night-time guerrilla war of rival top- ranking and their supporters in Western Kingston that culminated in the country's first declaration of a State of Emergency. (Invoked in October, the Emergency was hur- riedly lifted in November for fear that it would jeopardize the fragile tourist industry.) Ten years later, the socio-eco- nomic relations that structure the ghetto community once again found expression in sufferer war- fare. The cue to renewed violence in 1976 was the start of voter regis- tration in preparation for the pend- ing election. The principal arena of war was South St. Andrew, where armed gangs from "Rema," prop- ped up by Tivoli Gardens shock troops, fought pitched battles against "Jungle" rivals. To stem the violent tide, the Manley gov- ernment declared a State of Emer- gency in June, aimed chiefly at the political gunmen: all top-ranking known to the Special Branch were placed under "heavy manners" (temporarily imprisoned). The psychological impact of the Emergency was damaging to the JLP, which became identified with conspiratorial political violence. The widespread view of Seaga, who had assumed leadership of the Party in 1974, as a ruthless, power-hungry politician further SeptlOct undermined the JLP's standing, and, in December 1976, the elec- torate voted overwhelmingly to re- turn the incumbent Prime Minister and the PNP to power. Destabilization In its attempt to dictate the vot- ing outcome in certain keenly con- tested communities, the violence that marred the 1976 election re- called the earlier experience of 1966. But the greatly extended scale of violence and of direct par- ty involvement in its planning, and the inclusion among its targets of individuals outside the commun- ity gang structures-"socialist" youth, that is, PNP Youth Organ- ization members, were a new mark-suggested that political violence had assumed another function: it was widely suspected, and publicly asserted by the Prime Minister, that violence had be- come part of a well-orchestrated "destabilization" campaign to discredit Michael Manley's demo- cratic-socialist administration. Democratic socialism was the trump card played by the PNP in 1974 to consolidate its popular support before the looming eco- nomic decline had become too severe. By assigning itself spokes- man for the working class and es- pecially the sufferers, the Party successfully harnessed their anger and discontent in its own power designs. There did exist an historical precedent for this move: at the time of its formation in 1938, the PNP had committed itself to the principles of democratic so- cialism-a programmatic deriva- tive of Fabian socialism, i.e. British social democracy. However, in 1952, during the heyday of anti- communism, the Party purged its left wing, and there was no more talk of "socialism" until 1974 when a new generation of reform- ist politicians deemed it appropri- ate for public consumption. The JLP response to the PNP's renewed ideological thrust was consistent with its long tradition of vulgar red-baiting. (Since 1944, it has persistently charged the PNP with harboring communists.) In the summer of 1975, after Manley visited Cuba and professed admi- ration for some of its social experi- mentation, the JLP once again took up the cross. In alliance with the private sector organizations of the national bourgeoisie, and the influential Daily Gleaner, the "Laborites" waged a vicious anti- communist crusade likened by "Socialists" to the CIA campaign in Chile that preceded the 1973 coup. It was, in fact, the many "parallels with Chile"--psycho- logical warfare, economic sabo- tage and political terrorism-that raised the spectre of "destabiliza- tion" in the 1976 Jamaican elec- tions. The Plot Thickens These distinct though tangled strands of urban warfare-the scramble for control of individual communities on the one hand, and the campaign to create chaos and mass hysteria on the other-have been woven into an enormously complex and brutal 1980 scenario of violence. * On July 13, in a pre-dawn at- tack on Greenwich Town in South- west St. Andrew, a PNP yeat, five gunmen invaded a four-apartment tenement, killing four women and three men. The following morning in Jones Town, South St. Andrew, another PNP constituency, politi- cal gunmen murdered three wom- en, aged 55, 70 and 75. And in Fletcher's Land in West Central Kingston young children num- 41update update update update bered among the dead. The targeting for extermination of the elderly and young children, almost unfathomable in a culture that reveres its old and shields its young at all costs, and of women, previously excluded from the sphere of violence, marked a criti- cal break with past political war- fare, primarily a top-ranking affair. 0 During the spring and early summer, political gunmen forced the depopulation of Western King- ston's Coronation Market, the principal distribution center for food brought from the country- side. Attacks on country buses carrying rural higglers* to the ur- ban center, and shootings in the Market vicinity itself, compelled the diversion of produce to outly- ing markets. This disruption in the distributive system-Coronation Market was the primary source of foodstuffs for the urban poor and the chief supplier for urban hig- glers-vastly magnified the a!- ready severe food problems stem- ming from Jamaica's foreign ex- change shortage and the specula- tive machinations of corporate food distributors. Thus, for the first time since its emergence in 1966, political violence has been directly wedded to economic sabotage. * Also unprecedented are the nightly shootings at Kingston Pub- lic Hospital that have frightened off its staff and greatly limited ac- cessibility and service. In the seeming pointlessness of its new barbarism, the political violence of 1980 is carrying out a far more ambitious project than that of prior wars. "Random" ter- ror is aimed at both creating mass fear for life and limb and disrupting "*Market women who buy and sell food produce. 42 essential social services. This vio- lence constitutes a broad organ- ized effort to undermine the Manley government. But as such, it is a process grafted onto, and sometimes indis- tinguishable from the continuing urban warfare precipitated and structured by the PNP and JLP scramble for control of particular sufferer constituencies. The 1980 locus of warring com- munities reflects in part, the pat- tern of control established in past battles. In Western Kingston, con- trolled by Seaga since 1962, and South St. Andrew, a PNP strong- hold, internal violence is limited, But the top-ranking in these con- stituencies are expected to assist the invasion or defense of other constituencies-like West Central and Southwest St. Andrew-cur- rently under siege. The unprecedented level of vio- lence in the new battle zones bears witness to the incredible ar- senal of automatic weapons-of- ten more sophisticated that that readily available to the police-- now servicing certain gangs. The money behind the guns, the finan- cial backers of efficient murder, have yet to be exposed. But bipar- tisan appeals by Seaga and Man- ley for an end to the violence were an unconvincing response to the question of party complicity. Whatever Happened to the Working Class? Despite its hybrid nature, politi- cal violence in 1980, as in 1966 and 1976, is a war conducted on the edges of the working class; it is at core a process of sufferer fratri- cide. The politicians' successful use of the ghetto man in achieving their own opportunist ends is testi- mony to the desperate conditions of the sufferers. But it also ex- presses - and reinforces - the sufferers' limited consciousness of the economic forces responsi- ble for those conditions. The continuing pivotal role of sufferer violence constitutes a strong indictment of the PNP's democratic socialism. At a simple level, the involvement of sufferers iin a violent bid for control of urban constituencies is unbecoming a party pledged to "socialist" aims. Moreover, the PNP has permitted, if not pursued, a pivotal role for the sufferer in lieu of a pivotal role for the working class, that class alone whose conditions of existence in capitalist society enable it to lead the struggle for socialism. The Jamaican working class has lingered on the sidelines, as- suming only the most peripheral role in the furious ideological struggle of the current period. The two major trade unions-the Na- tional Workers Union (NWU) and the Bustamante Industrial Trade Union (BITU), affiliated to the PNP and JLP respectively--have not even bothered to decry the recent violence. Notwithstanding the tra- ditional economism of the Jamai- can trade union movement, the present political passivity of the working class reflects the ab- sence of leadership concerned to educate and organize the class around its political objectives -and in so doing, to give working, class leadership to the sufferer communities. The PNP's reliance on sufferer youth as the bulwark of its popular support exposes the PNP's demo- cratic socialism as a program aimed at democratic reform of the capitalist system; it is a far cry from a socialist program aimed at the fundamental reorganization of state and economy to eliminate capitalist social relations.
