Jamaica: A Strange Sort of Paradise

Posted by brendan on May 16, 2011 in Travel | 2 comments

The word Jamaica conjured to my mind images of white-sand beaches, endless sunshine, and natty-dreaded Rastas wandering about to an ever-present Reggae beat. The country I discovered was much more complex than that. Topographically it shocked me – ranging from high mountains shrouded in eternal fog, to desert-like coastline spotted with cacti, to massive rivers and thundering waterfalls. Culturally it defeated my expectations – Rastas rarely seen, my surface impression was rather of a kind, if conflicted, culture which put great stock in honor, integrity, and happiness. I was told time and time again that Jamaicans know how to laugh at themselves, and how to laugh at others. In my six days in the country, I saw no reason to disagree with that assessment.

Of course, like most things, the situation is more nuanced. Although the Jamaicans I met were kind and giving to a fault, Jamaica has one of the highest murder rates in the world: in most United Nations’ reports it falls just behind El Salvador and Honduras. Although the Jamaicans I met were reasonably affluent, educated, and mobile, more than half a million Jamaicans live in poverty. And although the Jamaicans I met were open-minded and compassionate, Jamaica has been described by human rights groups as the most homophobic country on the planet: male homosexuality is punishable by ten years hard labor; homosexuals of both genders are driven from their homes, beaten, raped (in the case of lesbians), and killed; the police have been found complicit in hate crimes on multiple occasions; and Reggae artists such as Buju Banton have lyrics in their songs glorifying the execution and burning of gay men. The problem is wide-spread: a 2008 poll asked “Whether or not you agree with their lifestyle, do you think homosexuals are entitled to the same basic rights and privileges as other people in Jamaica?”, with 26% responding “Yes”, and 70% responding “No.” A more recent poll found an overwhelming 96% of respondents would not support any move to legalize homosexuality.

Had I been as educated as I should have when I arrived in Kingston, my experience of the country may have been very different. As it was, I had a lovely time. I was there for the birds – Jamaica has 28 species of bird found nowhere else on Earth – and they delivered. Over five days we went from one side of the island to the other, and saw 27 of the 28 endemics…

Here I have to stop, and to break the fourth wall. In all honesty, I wanted to write this as a travel-log: to tell you about the amazing places I visited – from coffee farms in the Blue Mountains, to the stark landscape of Hellshire Hills, to the best jerk stands in the world, to those white-sand beaches at Frenchman’s Cove, to beautiful waterfalls – and the kind, friendly people I met who made my trip such a wonderful experience. But I knew that to share that view of tourist Jamaica without sharing a bit of the darker side of the nation would be a disservice to anyone who read this. I knew that there were homophobic strands in Rastafarian (and Jamaican) culture; I knew that there was a machismo culture that led to violence against women; I knew that the laws of the country were on the wrong side of human rights; I knew all of these things, but I didn’t know the full extent of it.

So maybe in the future I will still write about the beauty, wonder, and depth of the Jamaican experience I had. But for right now, we’re going to talk more about homosexuality – about the horrific, day-in and day-out Jamaican experience that thousands of LGBT Jamaicans have.

When Human Rights Watch calls somewhere the most homophobic place on Earth, we should stand up and take note. This is a group that works in Uganda. In Lithuania. In the Gambia. They have seen more than I can ever imagine, and yet the author of the most recent paper on Jamaica’s homosexual situation, Rebecca Schleifer, said the situation there was “the worst any of us has ever seen.”

There are a lot of reasons given for why Jamaicans overwhelmingly seem to hate homosexuals with such a passion. The country, largely as a result of crippling poverty, has become a bastion for conservative, zealous Christian sects. The ideal of ‘Africanism’ holds particular weight in Jamaican culture, and homosexuality is seen as profoundly ‘un-African’. And the nation’s male population are highly invested in their masculinity – sexual promiscuity, extra-marital affairs, and directed sexual violence towards women are all seen as symbols of virility, while homosexual acts are seen as the worst betrayal of masculinity imaginable. And a 60-year-old elder in the Rasta community offered an alternate view in an anonymous interview he gave the Jamaica Observer:

Most commentators on both sides of the cleavage, with what could charitably be described as a misplaced sense of decorum, delicately skirt the issue and refrain from calling a spade a spade. The real reason why the average ‘Jah D’ in Jamaica has this extreme, rational aversion to male homosexuality is not (as a recent overseas writer to one of our dailies said he gleaned from conversation with some Jamaicans) because of ‘fear of the other’, it is not because of Biblical injunction; it is not because of its supposed ‘un-Africanness’ nor the fact that Jamaica is nominally a ‘Christian country’. It is simply that he cannot condone the abandonment of the clean ‘nip and tuck’ of normal heterosexual relations for the unhygienic foray amid waste matter, unfriendly bacteria and toxic germs.

This level of distrust and disgust for homosexuality is by no means confined to the older generation, or to Rastas. Violence targeted towards LGBT has increased in the past decades, driven by the growing power of the various posses (gangs) that dominate sectors of the major cities, and the increasingly violent rhetoric of many Dance Hall Reggae artists. This so called ‘Murder Music’ glorifies attacking and often gruesomely killing homosexuals, and revels in their death and dismemberment. Reggae artist Buju Banton is one of the most vocal inciters of violence – and is also one of the nation’s most popular Reggae artists, and a musician who has a high international profile, headlining events such as the Sierra Nevada World Music Festival and Reggae on the River. One of his breakout hits, Boom Bye Bye, is all about killing a ‘batty boy’ (homosexual), including lyrics such as:

(Its like) Boom bye bye
Inna batty bwoy head
Rude bwoy no promote no nasty man
Dem haffi dead
…
(Two man) Hitch up on an rub up on
An lay down inna bed
Hug up on another
Anna feel up leg
Send fi di matic an
Di Uzi instead
Shoot dem no come if we shot dem–

Lyrics like this are not rare in Dance Hall. Some are even more explicit. A Beenie Man song starkly states: “I’m a dreaming of a new Jamaica, come to execute all the gays.”

Nor is the problem one of Reggae’s creation. The posse culture which increasingly drives Reggae is devoutly homophobic. Indeed, artists such as Buju Banton are first and foremost leaders in their posse culture. Banton has been implicated in hate crimes against homosexuals in Jamaica as recently as 2004, allegedly beating a homosexual man nearly to death in a case that was later thrown out by a judge based on insubstantial evidence. The criminal justice system in Jamaica is notoriously weighted against homosexuals. There are hundreds of allegations of police either turning the other way, or actively supporting mob violence against homosexual men. The culture as a whole often also supports this violence – in 2004 a man discovered his teenage son was gay, and attempted to have a mob lynch him while at school.

Although the situation against men is the most visible – male homosexuality is illegal, while female homosexuality is not addressed – violence against lesbians is prevalent as well. As one might expect when a major force behind homophobia is a perceived threat to masculinity, violence towards lesbians often takes a sexual form. Rape is commonly seen not only as a way of punishing female homosexuals for their deviance, but as a way of reasserting one’s own masculinity. This too is addressed in popular culture, with lyrics such as Elephant Man’s, “When you hear a lesbian getting raped / It’s not our fault … Two women in bed / That’s two Sodomites who should be dead.”

The LGBT movement in Jamaica has been visible since 1974, when the Gay Freedom Movement (GFM) was founded by a Jesuit and five Jamaicans. Larry Chang, an editor for the GFM’s newsletter, went on to start the Jamaican Forum for Lesbians, All-Sexuals, and Gays (J-FLAG), before being granted political asylum in the United States in 2004. J-FLAG operates underground, but its leaders are still targeted for violence. Brian Williamson – the most public figure in J-FLAG – was stabbed and killed in his home in 2004. Police ruled it a botched robbery, but many believe it to have been an intentional hate crime. Rebecca Schleifer, of the Human Rights Watch, arrived on the scene soon after his murder, and found a mob celebrating and laughing over his mutilated corpse. She recalls people shouting out things such as, “That’s what you get for sin,” and “Let’s get them one at a time,” with others singing lines from Buju Banton’s Boom Bye Bye. The next year, Steve Harvey, a public campaigner against HIV/AIDS, was executed the day before World AIDS Day.

HIV/AIDS is a huge problem in Jamaica, with roughly 1.5% of the adult population thought to be infected. Although significant in the heterosexual population due to a culture of promiscuity, early sexual debut, and an aversion to protective measures against STIs, the culture of homophobia has led to a truly staggering problem among the homosexual male population. It’s estimated that more than 20% of homosexual males in the country are infected, having to hide their sexual orientation absolutely, leading to an impossible situation when it comes to education, outreach, and making protective barriers available.

So. That’s the situation, in a nutshell. I should say that when I was in the country, I didn’t observe any homophobia. I spoke about the situation with my guides (I was aware enough of the Rasta culture to understand there was at least an undercurrent of homophobia in Jamaica), and they all seemed open-minded, and repelled by the homophobia that was present in the culture – although they down-played it significantly. It wasn’t until I returned home and did my follow-up research that I realized just how bad the situation truly is.

It raises a number of ethical questions for me. Travel writers are not really journalists – not by any stretch of the imagination – and I still see my job as primarily to visit a place, discover the beauty and interesting experiences, and share them with my readers. But a consequence of what I do (if I do it well) is an increase in tourism to wherever I’m writing about. So what is my responsibility to my readers and to myself when the place I am writing about does awful things? The situation in Jamaica is by no means unique, and globally we can look at any number of things outside of homophobia – from violence towards and oppression against women, to totalitarian governments, to child slavery. Every government has corruption. Every set of laws is in some way unjust. And every culture has its intolerance. At the same time, should I promote Jamaica as a destination, rather than a Caribbean nation such as the Bahamas or Aruba that protects LGBT rights? Or should I treat it as I would any destination, but also discuss the darker side of things? That’s the option I’m choosing right now – I will write about my trip, in a lighter, gentler style, but first I will try to do my part to educate about the extreme hardships facing LGBT persons in Jamaica.

So, what can we do? I will be writing to the Jamaican government, letting them know my role as a travel writer, and that their national LGBT policies make me less likely to encourage visitors to go to their country. More than half of GDP and 25% of all jobs in Jamaica are tied to tourism, and the bulk of that tourism comes from North America and Europe. Those countries therefore have the power, and I would say the obligation, to try to swing their economic weight to affect real change.

On a larger scale, I think we all need to be pressuring our respective countries to add to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights adopted in 1948 to include LGBT persons as a protected class. The situation internationally has actually backslid in recent years, with language in 2010 being stripped out to make it easier for nations to look the other way in the case of LGBT-related executions. The 2008 United Nations Declaration on Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity is exactly what we need. But while we in the West and most of the South America are signatories, the vast majority of the world either signed an opposition document, or refused to sign. Political pressure needs to be brought to bear to ensure the world signs this document.

Until then, Jamaica remains a beautiful, unique, and welcoming (to me) island, plagued by horrible bigotry and violence. I loved my time there, I loved the people I met, and I hope to return – this time with eyes wide open.