http://jamaica-gleaner.com/gleaner/20080713/focus/focus4.html
Published: Sunday | July 13, 2008

My late grandmother Annie used to regale me with stories about life when she was young. I remember her laughing description of how stunned people were the first time they saw a plane in the sky, especially a next-door neighbour who bawled out 'Lawd a massy! Judgement day come!'

Another thing that stuck in the mind was her puzzled reaction to the increasing murder rates of the 1970s. She just couldn't understand it. When she was young, she recalled, the rare news that someone had been killed was always greeted with amazement that one human being could actually take another human being's life.

But then, my grandma was born in 1900, when the Jamaican murder rate was about two per 100,000, and probably among the lowest in the world. It stayed in that range while she was growing up. Contrary to popular belief, Jamaica was not always a violent place. In A Century of Murder in Jamaica 1880-1980 [Jamaica Journal: Volume 20#2, May-July 1987], Michelle Johnson showed that up until about 1955 our murder rate was lower than that of the United States, comparable with Barbados and only slightly higher than Britain's. Even in 1965 Morris Cargill could write in Ian Fleming's Jamaica that "We [Jamaicans] hate violence."

So far from being an indelible part of our heritage, as some argue, the nearly all-pervasive violence we have become used to is really an anomaly when viewed in historical perspective.

Over the years our murder rate has risen dramatically, not only absolutely but also relatively. The argument that 'Is not us alone, because murder gone up everywhere' is rubbish. Up to 1966 the Jamaican murder rate was significantly less than the American one, and as late as 1974 did not exceed it. Last year, it was over 10 times as great.

Greatest explosion

Our homicide rate in 1965 was 3.7 per 100,000. In 2007 it was nearly 60 per 100,000. This may be the greatest explosion of civil violence any nation without significantethnic, tribal, linguistic, ideological or religious differences has ever experienced.

What has caused a country ostensibly at peace to go from having one of the world's lowest murder levels to having perhaps the world's highest? That's the great question facing us. If we managed to figure out where we went wrong, we could try to correct our mistakes, or at least stop repeating them.

Some link it to the breakdown of our family structure, which perhaps began with mass emigration to Britain in the 1950s. Others cite the unemployment increase caused by the UK emigration curtailment after independence, the political guns that reportedly first surfaced in the mid- 1960s, the ideological extremism of the 1970s, the drug culture of the 1990s, and the increasing marginalisation of our young males.

But those who claim the present violence is primarily a result of poverty and lack of education need to explain why the much poorer and less-educated Jamaica of 1880 to 1965 was so much more peaceful.

One thing is certain - our present horrifying murder problem is a creation of our own making.

It is we Jamaicans, by our lifestyle choices and political preferences and lack of revulsion, who have allowed the cancer of violence to grow so inexorably. Only we can say 'no more'.

But sometimes you wonder if we have gone too far down the road for any turning back. In my grandma's time all killings were shockingly inexplicable occurrences. Nowadays, murders are routine events greeted with hardly a pause in conversation. The horror is that there is no horror.

Douglas Chambers' murder at first seemed different. Everyone initially expressed shock and horror at the brazen killing of a representative of the state. But then the usual cynical indifference took over. 'You see what happen when you don't know how to talk to people!' 'Boy, him mussi did mix up in some fish head business too'. 'Him too careless. Man in that position haffi walk wid bodyguard'.

Like most Jamaicans I'm mighty confused over just what led to Mr. Chambers' death. Was he a martyr to the fight against corruption, killed by those whose dark dealings he was threatening to expose? Or was he, as some are claiming, involved in the same kind of thing he vowed to stamp out? As usual, the general public doesn't know what to believe. Whatever the truth, he is one of the more than 800 Jamaicans murdered so far this year, and left behind a grieving wife and children.

Human nature is human nature, and the sorts of things that go in Jamaica happen the world over. Every country has aggressive and arrogant men. Public figures across the globe make shady back-door deals. Love triangles have been with us since Adam and Eve and Satan. What's different here is how often real or imagined transgressions of every sort result in violent killings. And worse, how easily we accept death for occurrences which elsewhere would end in angry words or amateur fisticuffs.

Our papers regularly record murders sparked by stepping on someone's toe at a dance, being seen with someone else's woman in public, getting into a heated argument. And they're usually met with a 'Well, a so it go' shrug, or even a laugh when some 'man and woman business' is involved. We've become so accepting of brutality that nowadays news of babies and children and whole families being slaughtered often doesn't even make the front pages.

Culture of death

It's no exaggeration to call ours a culture of death. And what makes most people despair of anything changing is that our senior politicians just don't seem to give a damn. Our three most prominent public figures - Bruce Golding, Portia Simpson Miller, and Peter Phillips - all represent garrison constituencies where voter intimidation is widespread, and the rule of law does not apply to all. But, apparently, this doesn't bother any of them, as evidenced by last year's election campaign, where both the PNP and JLP ran an endless number of ads about everything except crime.

Last month on the CVM TVprogramme 'Direct', Peter Phillips denied that he or Portia Simpson Miller represented garrisons. Indeed he would not even admit there was such a thing as garrisons. Mrs Simpson Miller also said as much on the Breakfast Club radio show later that week. As for Mr. Golding, whatever happened to his former big talk about de-garrisoning the nation and walking hand in hand with Mrs Simpson Miller through the inner cities? Were the cynics correct in dismissing those pious speeches which promised a new transparent, accountable and non-tribalist Jamaica as just opportunistic electioneering?

With leaders like these, it's no wonder the Jamaican murder rate has increased by a factor of 15 since independence. But are we the people, who continue to vote for them, not just as much to blame?