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More than a century of seeking work abroad
published: Sunday | June 11, 2006
Edward Seaga
SUMMER AND Christmas are the most popular homecoming periods for Jamaicans living abroad. But the summer period has developed a special significance for some Jamaicans who are particularly interested in discussing the diaspora, that is, the forced dispersal of Africans from their homeland for enslavement abroad. These discussions are awakening both interest and response among Jamaicans, who are residents in the island and abroad.
Of special interest at this time is the 200th anniversary of the cessation of the slave trade by enactment of the British parliament in 1807. Plans are being made locally to commemorate this historic event. The abolition of the slave trade began the eventual downfall of the sugar industry and, as a consequence, slavery, in 1838, freeing all slaves.
Dealing here only with emigration, which is the settlement of Jamaicans abroad, a pattern of waves has been evident over the last 125 years. Since Emancipation, Jamaicans have travelled wide and far, establishing a claim to being one of the most travelled people. These travels have been to seek greener pastures elsewhere in response to the failure of the Jamaican economy over the decades to provide sufficient jobs for Jamaicans at home.
MOVEMENT TO NEARBY LANDS
At first, the migration pattern involved movement to nearby countries in the region, particularly Panama, Costa Rica and Cuba.
One of the most monumental engineering projects in world history was undertaken in 1880 to build a canal across the Isthmus of Panama, then a state in New Granada, as Colombia was known. The canal would allow access to ships from the Atlantic to the Pacific and vice versa, considerably shortening the long, rough journey around the tip of South America, a nightmare to mariners. The Panama Canal, as it would come to be known, was of special interest to the United States since it would link its Pacific and Atlantic coasts by a much shorter, easier and more economic route.
But it was not the United States of America that was building the canal, at least not at the beginning. The project was undertaken by a French company which began operations in 1881. The company soon had to give up because of conditions of hardship which were proving either impossible or too expensive to overcome. The plight of workers who died by the thousands, largely from yellow fever, was among the chief
reasons. A French syndicate replaced the failing company and tried, on a lesser scale, to complete the project. By 1904, the United States Government bought out the project. With greater financing and effort, the project then proceeded to completion in 1914.
My mother's father was one of the thousands of Jamaicans who worked on the Panama Canal. George Henry Maxwell, Jamaican-born son of Scottish Presbyterian missionaries, was a railroad engineer who with his brother Frank had built the Kendal leg of the Jamaican railway. In Panama, he lived in the Canal Zone established by the Americans as a special territory, working as an engineer and there my mother Erna Aleta Maxwell was born in 1912.
J'CANS FLOCKED TO PANAMA
Despite the jungle and its deadly hazards to health, the primitive conditions of life, discrimination in pay and other degrading and destitute conditions, thousands of Jamaicans flocked to Panama for work beginning in 1881, 125 years ago, although there was some earlier migration from 1850 to Central America, including Panama and Costa Rica. Many could not tolerate the hazardous and debilitating conditions in Panama and returned home, but in the end, 24,000 Jamaicans remained to create a thriving Jamaican community in Panama.
Jamaicans were the most numerous of the Caribbean people. Some did well enough to be able to return home from time to time, decked out in the outlandish fashion and mannerism of Colón: dangling a long brass chain from belt to pocket, consulting frequently, for show, a fob pocket watch, patting a revolver indiscreetly stuck in the waist, and dressed in white with a Panama hat. This was the 'Colón man' who became a folk hero in Jamaica, immortalised in folk song:
Colón man da come, Colón man da come,
Brass chain da lick him belly bam, bam, bam;
But if you ask him fe de time
Him look upon de sun!
After 1914 when the Panama Canal was completed, work opportunities ended. So too did the work on the banana plantations of Costa Rica, Honduras and Nicaragua which had been in progress since the 1870s, employing 60,000 field workers from Jamaica. We do not know how many remained after Panama Disease nearly wiped out these plantations, but there exists today thriving and sizeable Jamaican communities at Port Limón in Costa Rica and Bluefields in Nicaragua.
MIGRATION TO CUBA
This led to the next phase of migration, to Cuba, to reap cane. Eighty thousand Jamaicans made the short trip to Cuba. Although many returned, the majority remained to work in the cane fields. In fact, more than some 25,000 Jamaican women joined the men, working mostly as domestic helpers. After the work on sugar plantations virtually ended in 1921, because of a collapse of the sugar price, thousands decided to stay on in Cuba rather than return home, despite the development of hostile relations with Cubans. In
1930, 60,000 Jamaicans were estimated to be living in Cuba, establishing a vibrant Jamaican-Cuban community.
America, land of dreams to be fulfilled, was the next venue for intrepid Jamaicans ceaselessly seeking employment. From 1913, Jamaicans refocused their migration to America. Many thousands immigrated to the north eastern states. This wave was discontinued by the Immigration Law of 1924 which prohibited further non-white immigrants to the United States. The onset of the Great Depression in America, beginning in 1929, and its consequential severe downturn on world trade together with the closure of the migration outlet in America and Cuba laid the foundation for the labour upheavals of 1938 when riots broke out across Jamaica.
By the 1940s Jamaicans were on the go again, responding to the need to release domestic pressures in the U.S.A. and United Kingdom. Many were recruited to replace American men in fields and factories during World War II. Later it was the U.K., the 'mother land', recovering from the loss of men in the war. The resultant labour shortage created a need for unskilled workers who would accept the lower pay offered by lower level jobs which were undesirable to the British people.
Jamaicans responded with the first batch of emigrants on board the Empire Windrush in 1947. The mass movement began in 1955. For a decade they travelled to a land of inhospitable climate and, to a certain extent, inhospitable people who needed them but did not want them. But they continued to go.
My father, Phillip Seaga, through his travel agency, chartered two Italian ships which became prime movers in the Jamaican migrant flow to Britain.
Between 1952-1962 165,000 Jamaicans migrated to the United Kingdom. Once again, they became the dominant ethnic migrant group from the Caribbean, so much so that black persons in some parts of England were generically referred to as Jamaicans, regardless of their island of origin. The massive Jamaican community in Britain has become one of the largest overseas settlements of Jamaicans. Many success stories surround their lives in Britain, notwithstanding the adversities and failures which they faced.
The U.K. trek of migration was suddenly curtailed in 1962 leaving thousands of unemployed at home who could no longer be accommodated with jobs. Again, Jamaicans were not prepared to sit and wait for better opportunities at home. There was a re-focus of plans for migration in the 1960s to the U.S.A. and Canada. This wave commenced slowly, and then picked up steam into the next decade, the 1970s, which became the most eventful decade of all.
The attempt to transform the Jamaican society and economy by radical political means between 1972-80 precipitated economic chaos and social disruption which played out in mounting stress and anxiety among the people and a collapsing economic framework. By the second half of the 1970s, the population was seeking a way out by the usual means, the emigration of thousands. But, this time there was a great difference. The exodus was not of working class people only, but professional and management personnel, as well as skilled and technical people. The outcome was devastating to the economy.
Some 175,000 persons migrated to the U.S. between 1970-1980, about 50,000 of them dependants. This figure speaks to quantity. But the quality of the emigration was equally astonishing. Between professionals, technical, managerial, skilled and semi-skilled members of the labour force, 16,100 migrated between 1977-1980. This was the equivalent of an estimated 60 per cent of the output of the university and other institutions of higher learning and those trained in various skills in 1979, the high point.
The pattern of the 1980s and 1990s have shown a consistency with the annual figures of recent decades, averaging 21,222 per annum, except 1997 to the present when the average dipped to 15,370 due to stricter immigration policies. Thus, the migration valve continues to remain open.
This 125-year chronicle of migration establishes:
1. that Jamaica has failed to provide enough employment for its labour force, and as a result;
2. waves of migration occurring almost back-to-back, provided employment outlets overseas for many, many thousands of Jamaicans, and;
3. without a substantial migration outlet as occurred between 1921-1940, the stage would be set for a social and economic explosion, as in fact was the case in 1938.
These findings should be borne in mind by Jamaican authorities as the government of the United States prepares to enact new legislation to curb immigration.
Sources:
-The Jamaican Economy: 1830-1930 by Gisele Eisner;
-Regional Footprints edited by Annette Insanally, Mark Clifford and Sean Sheriff;
-PIOJ, Economic and Social Survey (various issues)
published: Sunday | June 11, 2006
Edward Seaga
SUMMER AND Christmas are the most popular homecoming periods for Jamaicans living abroad. But the summer period has developed a special significance for some Jamaicans who are particularly interested in discussing the diaspora, that is, the forced dispersal of Africans from their homeland for enslavement abroad. These discussions are awakening both interest and response among Jamaicans, who are residents in the island and abroad.
Of special interest at this time is the 200th anniversary of the cessation of the slave trade by enactment of the British parliament in 1807. Plans are being made locally to commemorate this historic event. The abolition of the slave trade began the eventual downfall of the sugar industry and, as a consequence, slavery, in 1838, freeing all slaves.
Dealing here only with emigration, which is the settlement of Jamaicans abroad, a pattern of waves has been evident over the last 125 years. Since Emancipation, Jamaicans have travelled wide and far, establishing a claim to being one of the most travelled people. These travels have been to seek greener pastures elsewhere in response to the failure of the Jamaican economy over the decades to provide sufficient jobs for Jamaicans at home.
MOVEMENT TO NEARBY LANDS
At first, the migration pattern involved movement to nearby countries in the region, particularly Panama, Costa Rica and Cuba.
One of the most monumental engineering projects in world history was undertaken in 1880 to build a canal across the Isthmus of Panama, then a state in New Granada, as Colombia was known. The canal would allow access to ships from the Atlantic to the Pacific and vice versa, considerably shortening the long, rough journey around the tip of South America, a nightmare to mariners. The Panama Canal, as it would come to be known, was of special interest to the United States since it would link its Pacific and Atlantic coasts by a much shorter, easier and more economic route.
But it was not the United States of America that was building the canal, at least not at the beginning. The project was undertaken by a French company which began operations in 1881. The company soon had to give up because of conditions of hardship which were proving either impossible or too expensive to overcome. The plight of workers who died by the thousands, largely from yellow fever, was among the chief
reasons. A French syndicate replaced the failing company and tried, on a lesser scale, to complete the project. By 1904, the United States Government bought out the project. With greater financing and effort, the project then proceeded to completion in 1914.
My mother's father was one of the thousands of Jamaicans who worked on the Panama Canal. George Henry Maxwell, Jamaican-born son of Scottish Presbyterian missionaries, was a railroad engineer who with his brother Frank had built the Kendal leg of the Jamaican railway. In Panama, he lived in the Canal Zone established by the Americans as a special territory, working as an engineer and there my mother Erna Aleta Maxwell was born in 1912.
J'CANS FLOCKED TO PANAMA
Despite the jungle and its deadly hazards to health, the primitive conditions of life, discrimination in pay and other degrading and destitute conditions, thousands of Jamaicans flocked to Panama for work beginning in 1881, 125 years ago, although there was some earlier migration from 1850 to Central America, including Panama and Costa Rica. Many could not tolerate the hazardous and debilitating conditions in Panama and returned home, but in the end, 24,000 Jamaicans remained to create a thriving Jamaican community in Panama.
Jamaicans were the most numerous of the Caribbean people. Some did well enough to be able to return home from time to time, decked out in the outlandish fashion and mannerism of Colón: dangling a long brass chain from belt to pocket, consulting frequently, for show, a fob pocket watch, patting a revolver indiscreetly stuck in the waist, and dressed in white with a Panama hat. This was the 'Colón man' who became a folk hero in Jamaica, immortalised in folk song:
Colón man da come, Colón man da come,
Brass chain da lick him belly bam, bam, bam;
But if you ask him fe de time
Him look upon de sun!
After 1914 when the Panama Canal was completed, work opportunities ended. So too did the work on the banana plantations of Costa Rica, Honduras and Nicaragua which had been in progress since the 1870s, employing 60,000 field workers from Jamaica. We do not know how many remained after Panama Disease nearly wiped out these plantations, but there exists today thriving and sizeable Jamaican communities at Port Limón in Costa Rica and Bluefields in Nicaragua.
MIGRATION TO CUBA
This led to the next phase of migration, to Cuba, to reap cane. Eighty thousand Jamaicans made the short trip to Cuba. Although many returned, the majority remained to work in the cane fields. In fact, more than some 25,000 Jamaican women joined the men, working mostly as domestic helpers. After the work on sugar plantations virtually ended in 1921, because of a collapse of the sugar price, thousands decided to stay on in Cuba rather than return home, despite the development of hostile relations with Cubans. In
1930, 60,000 Jamaicans were estimated to be living in Cuba, establishing a vibrant Jamaican-Cuban community.
America, land of dreams to be fulfilled, was the next venue for intrepid Jamaicans ceaselessly seeking employment. From 1913, Jamaicans refocused their migration to America. Many thousands immigrated to the north eastern states. This wave was discontinued by the Immigration Law of 1924 which prohibited further non-white immigrants to the United States. The onset of the Great Depression in America, beginning in 1929, and its consequential severe downturn on world trade together with the closure of the migration outlet in America and Cuba laid the foundation for the labour upheavals of 1938 when riots broke out across Jamaica.
By the 1940s Jamaicans were on the go again, responding to the need to release domestic pressures in the U.S.A. and United Kingdom. Many were recruited to replace American men in fields and factories during World War II. Later it was the U.K., the 'mother land', recovering from the loss of men in the war. The resultant labour shortage created a need for unskilled workers who would accept the lower pay offered by lower level jobs which were undesirable to the British people.
Jamaicans responded with the first batch of emigrants on board the Empire Windrush in 1947. The mass movement began in 1955. For a decade they travelled to a land of inhospitable climate and, to a certain extent, inhospitable people who needed them but did not want them. But they continued to go.
My father, Phillip Seaga, through his travel agency, chartered two Italian ships which became prime movers in the Jamaican migrant flow to Britain.
Between 1952-1962 165,000 Jamaicans migrated to the United Kingdom. Once again, they became the dominant ethnic migrant group from the Caribbean, so much so that black persons in some parts of England were generically referred to as Jamaicans, regardless of their island of origin. The massive Jamaican community in Britain has become one of the largest overseas settlements of Jamaicans. Many success stories surround their lives in Britain, notwithstanding the adversities and failures which they faced.
The U.K. trek of migration was suddenly curtailed in 1962 leaving thousands of unemployed at home who could no longer be accommodated with jobs. Again, Jamaicans were not prepared to sit and wait for better opportunities at home. There was a re-focus of plans for migration in the 1960s to the U.S.A. and Canada. This wave commenced slowly, and then picked up steam into the next decade, the 1970s, which became the most eventful decade of all.
The attempt to transform the Jamaican society and economy by radical political means between 1972-80 precipitated economic chaos and social disruption which played out in mounting stress and anxiety among the people and a collapsing economic framework. By the second half of the 1970s, the population was seeking a way out by the usual means, the emigration of thousands. But, this time there was a great difference. The exodus was not of working class people only, but professional and management personnel, as well as skilled and technical people. The outcome was devastating to the economy.
Some 175,000 persons migrated to the U.S. between 1970-1980, about 50,000 of them dependants. This figure speaks to quantity. But the quality of the emigration was equally astonishing. Between professionals, technical, managerial, skilled and semi-skilled members of the labour force, 16,100 migrated between 1977-1980. This was the equivalent of an estimated 60 per cent of the output of the university and other institutions of higher learning and those trained in various skills in 1979, the high point.
The pattern of the 1980s and 1990s have shown a consistency with the annual figures of recent decades, averaging 21,222 per annum, except 1997 to the present when the average dipped to 15,370 due to stricter immigration policies. Thus, the migration valve continues to remain open.
This 125-year chronicle of migration establishes:
1. that Jamaica has failed to provide enough employment for its labour force, and as a result;
2. waves of migration occurring almost back-to-back, provided employment outlets overseas for many, many thousands of Jamaicans, and;
3. without a substantial migration outlet as occurred between 1921-1940, the stage would be set for a social and economic explosion, as in fact was the case in 1938.
These findings should be borne in mind by Jamaican authorities as the government of the United States prepares to enact new legislation to curb immigration.
Sources:
-The Jamaican Economy: 1830-1930 by Gisele Eisner;
-Regional Footprints edited by Annette Insanally, Mark Clifford and Sean Sheriff;
-PIOJ, Economic and Social Survey (various issues)
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