How the IMF wrecked Jamaica
Thirty years ago the US and the IMF moved to destabilise Jamaica’s radical government with
disastrous consequences for the population, writes Abbie Bakan
When Michael Manley and his People’s National Party (PNP) were elected in Jamaica for a second term in December 1976, all who challenged imperialism and racism walked tall.
It showed that the country backed his refusal to adhere to the repressive terms demanded by the International Monetary Fund (IMF). “We are not for sale,” he announced to a cheering crowd of 35,000 at the National Stadium in the capital Kingston.
At the time, Manley was recognised as “the Socialist International’s most important representative in the Third World”, according to Caribbean scholar Fitzroy Ambursley.
This was a test case – for both the IMF and the anti-imperialist movement. The proposed IMF structural adjustment programme for Jamaica was to be a model for neoliberalism and global debt negotiations throughout the Third World.
The story of the rise and demise of Manley’s battle with the IMF is rich in lessons for today’s anti-globalisation movement.
Jamaica is a tiny island nation in the Caribbean, the home of Bob Marley, reggae music and the birthplace of pioneering black nationalist leader Marcus Garvey.
Ever since Christopher Columbus landed and mistakenly thought himself in India over 500 years ago, the Caribbean islands have also been the object of colonialist occupation and exploitation.
Michael Manley was a symbol of resistance not only in Jamaica but internationally. He first came to office in the 1972 election.
Manley’s early years in power saw a number of important progressive reforms for the population.
The previous ban on Marxist and Black Power literature was lifted. Secondary education was made free and accessible, and a partial land reform policy was enacted.
Provoked
The foreign-owned electricity, telephone and bus companies were nationalised.
In January of 1974, Manley’s government announced a plan to alter the system of tax breaks offered to US and Canadian bauxite (aluminium ore) companies based in Jamaica.
These companies mined aluminium for the war industry. The PNP annulled previous agreements and imposed a production levy on all bauxite mined or processed in Jamaica.
This ruling severly provoked the anger of the US and other ruling classes. A massive, and now well-documented, destabilisation campaign followed.
Aluminium and bauxite processing were shifted to other locations. The levy was claimed to be illegal and contested by the bauxite companies, which filed actions with the World Bank’s international centre for the settlement of investment disputes.
Local businesses, which had gone part way with Manley on the nationalisation of foreign businesses, now buckled and found common cause with their international allies.
Lay-offs and soaring price increases set off an inflationary spiral that wiped out previous wage increases. Foreign capital inflow plummeted, and the CIA became involved with fomenting local political rivalries.
A terror campaign was unleashed as young Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) members found ready access to weapons in a guns-for-ganja trade.
Sanctions
At first Manley attempted to hold a steady course.
Fuelled by popular support among Jamaica’s working class and peasantry, the radical prime minister resisted the terms of an IMF reform package.
In the December 1976 election Manley was re-elected in a landslide, winning 47 of the 60 seats in the parliament.
But after Manley’s refusal to adhere to the terms of the IMF, the economy was strangled by sanctions while a media campaign sent a wave of fear among potential tourists.
Lay-offs increased, interest rates skyrocketed and everything from soap to canned fish was in desperately short supply.
This was the limit of social democratic reform. Manley would soon prove an unreliable ally of the poor and the working class – and there would not be sufficient independent organisation among the mass of the Jamaican working class to steer their own course when he started to retreat.
In 1977 Manley announced Jamaica’s “People’s Plan” for economic and political reform.
Despite radical rhetoric, by May of that year Jamaica had accepted an IMF “standby agreement” of £38 million to ease the balance of payments crisis.
The IMF re-established a line of credit – with massive strings attached.
The loan was conditional on an attack on the standard of living of the population. The poorest were hit the hardest, with a dramatic cut in public spending as the leading edge of the programme.
As Jamaica was put to various IMF “tests”, repeated failures led to more and more regulation of the island’s domestic economic programmes.
Confusion and despair spread among Jamaica’s population, especially young students and the poorest sections of workers and peasants. Political violence and the fortunes of the black market soared.
By the election of October 1980, the JLP under the leadership of Edward Seaga was back in office, and with the largest margin of victory in its history – 52 seats to the PNP’s eight.
Only a year earlier, revolutions in Grenada and Nicaragua indicated that there was a growing mood of opposition to the US-dominated market model in the region.
But now Jamaica had set a pattern of moving halfway in opposing the grip of the imperialist market, and then backing down.
The JLP’s Seaga government was welcomed by the US as the new model of the times. This gave confidence to the likes of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher – and heralded the rise of neoliberalism.
At the end of the eight years of Manley’s “democratic socialism”, the average income in Jamaica was 25 percent lower and the cost of living 320 percent higher.
Like many social democratic governments before and since, Manley’s reformist politics proved incapable of mounting the challenge needed to halt the force of global capital.
But at the end of Seaga’s term, Jamaica had paid out a total of £443 million to its foreign creditors, including £176 million to the IMF.
Jamaica’s foreign debt had grown to over £2.2 billion, among the highest per capita in the world.
It was in this context that Manley returned as prime minister to lead another PNP government in 1989.
Poverty
He had abandoned the left rhetoric of his earlier government. Instead the market was seen as the triumphant model to pursue. However, even on the terms set by the IMF, Jamaica had clearly failed to meet anticipated development goals.
Rather than economic prosperity, Jamaica endured further decades of insufferable poverty. Today, even the IMF’s own economists are starting to recognise the problem.
In a 2006 IMF-commissioned working paper, Public Debt and Productivity: The Difficult Quest for Growth in Jamaica, author Rodolphe Blavy struggles with the apparent “puzzle” of Jamaica’s low growth rates.
He concludes that perhaps massive debt might have something to do with it, noting that Jamaica is “among the most indebted countries in the world”.
Today we are in a new period of radical reform in the Global South. There are certainly many similarities between the politics of Hugo Chavez and the first government of Michael Manley.
But there are also differences. Venezuela has far more resources than Jamaica. The US is a less powerful player relative to its competitors in the world economy than 30 years ago.
And if there is a strong, independent movement of workers and the poor, the forces of resistance may well have a better chance of staying the course.
But the history of Jamaica’s battle with the IMF makes it clear that if the grip of imperialism is to be definitively challenged, it must be replaced with another system based on very different priorities.
And it will be the working classes and the poor, not the corporate bosses, who will have to set those priorities.
Michael Manley 1924-1997
Norman Manley, Michael’s father, was the founder of the People’s National Party.
The rival Jamaica Labour Party was founded in 1962 by Michael’s cousin Alexander Bustamante.
Michael Manley won the Central Kingston seat in the Jamaican Assembly in 1967. He retained this seat in repeated elections until his retirement in 1992.
One of my professors said “Manley was white but his policies were black” and that’s always a problem in this world. The neoliberal principles that ruined Jamaica economically are the same principles why some Americans are still hurt $8 per hour and why the Walton family have over 100b while their workers need food stamps. The few and shrinking middle class refuse to stand up for the poor and call them unambitious etc because they can afford a little more out of life. Everyone is busy hustling to improve their lives by small margin without realizing if they stopped for one second the entire population could claim more.
At the end of the day Seaga benefited from this and exploited it. What he did was actually a betrayal of his people. Nationalizing crucial resources is quite common – see China etc for good examples. Developing economies/industries cannot compete with American industries so the only way is to protect your resources or have in place rules capable to ensuring some benefit to your nation. The global south has been lingering for decades trying to rise through a neoliberal global marketplace. China is the only one having any significant success. Jamaica’s position in the world should always be judged through these lens, but so many young Jamaica talk about dem want a food or things too hard, without realizing Jamaica is over-performing many many countries in the global south.
Another snippet of Jamaica’s experience with the US/CIA/IMF can be found here in Killing Hope by William Blum – Here is a link to the excerpt below
https://books.google.ca/books?id=-IbQvd13uToC&pg=PA263&lpg=PA263&dq=henry+kissinger+on+Jamaica&source=bl&ots=cIvaMhFm9E&sig=8SqtMv6glhtNQfI4kv8Sb6oZ3j4&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwi8m6fXkr7LAhXBm4MKHVrhBNsQ6AEIJDAB#v=onepage&q=henry%20kissinger%20on%20Jamaica&f=false
43. Jamaica 1976-1980
Kissinger’s ultimatum
“I can give you my personal word,” said Henry Kissinger to Jamaican Prime Minister
Michael Manley, “that there is no attempt now underway involving covert action against
the Jamaican government.”1
Manley has written that at this moment “similar assurances given concerning Chile
flashed a little ominously across my mind.”2
(Kissinger had given his personal word
about American non-intervention to the Chilean Ambassador in Washington in 1971 at a
time when the US government, and Kissinger in particular, were actively plotting the
downfall of the Chilean government. When the ambassador mentioned press references to
covert American actions against his country, Kissinger responded: “Absolutely absurd
and without foundation.”)3
Michael Manley also knew first-hand that American non-intervention in the
affairs of Jamaica was not something to be taken for granted. During the 1972 election
campaign, the American Ambassador in Jamaica, Vincent de Roulet, had
promised Manley that the United States would not interfere in the campaign if Manley
did not make nationalization of the foreign-owned bauxite industry an election issue.
De Roulet feared that if Manley did so, he would oblige the opposition Jamaica
Labour Party to vie with Manley’s party for popular support on the question.
According to de Roulet, Manley agreed and both sides kept their promise.4
Secretary of State Kissinger had arrived in Jamaica in December 1975 to suggest
to Manley that he change his policies or else US-Jamaican relations “would be
reviewed”.5
Kissinger raised the subject of Jamaica’s request for a $100 million trade
credit. “He said they were looking at it,” wrote Manley later, “and let the comment
hang in the room for a moment. I had the feeling he was sending me a message.”
6
263
KILLING HOPE
The Jamaican prime minister—a graduate of the London School of Economics and the
son of Norman Manley who had led Jamaica to independence from the British in 1962—
had incurred Washington’s displeasure since taking office in 1972 by behavior such as the
following:
• Expressing support for the MPLA regime in Angola which the United States was attempting to
topple at the very moment of the Kissinger-Manley meeting, an issue that was one of the
Secretary of State’s obsessions and one which he raised during the talk.
• Establishing diplomatic relations with Cuba and the Soviet Union and maintaining close ties with
the Castro government, although “no closer,” said Manley, “than … with Mexico and
Venezuela “.7
• Advocating a form of democratic socialism, though maintaining a decidedly mixed economy
which featured nothing more radical than could be found in many countries of Western Europe
in the areas of health, education, minimum wage, and social services. Manley’s party, the
People’s National Party—whose slogan was “Socialism is Love”—belonged to the Socialist
International, as have ruling parties in modem times in Austria, Great Britain, West Germany
and Sweden.
• Prevailing against the transnational aluminum companies, principally American, which operated
on the island because it is rich in bauxite, the raw material of aluminum. The Jamaican government
had imposed a production levy to obtain a significant—and what was regarded as longoverdue—increase
in the payments made to it by the companies, and had then persuaded other
bauxite-producing countries in the Third World to do the same. The government also intended
to buy out 51 percent of the foreign bauxite mining operations, and planned, along with
Venezuela and Mexico, to build an international aluminum processing complex outside the
multinational system.8
Manley was pressured by both Washington and the Jamaican left. “Everyone wants me
to be either a capitalist or a communist,” he said at one point. “Why can’t they just let me
be? … I’ve always been a democratic socialist and that’s what I want in Jamaica.”9
He
viewed the multinational corporations in a similar vein, declaring that they “have grown
used to two types. One is the mendicant of the neo-colonial syndrome. The other is the revolutionary
who simply sends in the army to take over the operation. Here they were dealing
with neither. This was part of our search for the third path.”10
The Jamaican prime minister did not toe the line Kissinger had drawn. Five days after
the Secretary of State had departed, Manley informed him that “Jamaica had decided to
support the Cuban army presence in Angola because we were satisfied that they were there
because of the South African invasion … I never heard another word about the hundred million
dollar trade credit.”11
At the time of Kissinger’s visit, certain de-stabilization operations had already gotten off
the ground, particularly in the area of propaganda, but it was primarily afterward, beginning
in the election year of 1976, that covert actions started to escalate. In January, a few
weeks after Kissinger had left, the US Embassy in Kingston was increased by seven. Manley
has noted: “Yet all aid to Jamaica suddenly slowed to a virtual hair. The pipelines suddenly
became clogged. Economic co-operation contracted as the embassy expanded.”12
Investigative reporters Ernest Volkman and John Cummings, writing in Penthouse
magazine in 1977 and citing “several senior American intelligence sources”, stated that the
de-stabilization program drawn up by the CIA station chief in Jamaica {Norman
Descoteaux) contained the following elements:
a) “Covert shipments of arms and other equipment to opposition forces”: Politics in
Jamaica had long been spiced with strong-arm tactics, but this now intensified in both fre-
264
Jamaica 1976-1980
quency and deadlines, and in the use of arson, bombing and assassination. “The CIA
quickly sought to organize and expand the violence: shipments of guns and sophisticated
communications equipment began to be smuggled into the island. In one shipment alone,
which was grabbed by Manley’s security forces, there were 500 submachine guns.”13
Some of the CIA’s traveling army of Cuban exiles arrived on the scene. One was Luis
Posada Carriles, a former officer in Cuban dictator Batista’s secret police, now a CIAtrained
explosives expert who was implicated in the mid-air bombing of a Cuban Airlines
plane in 1976 which killed 73 people. Posada was reportedly spotted at the scene of more
than one bombing in Jamaica.14
The well-publicized violence was a body-blow to Jamaica’s vital tourist business. The
foreign tourists stayed away in droves, forcing many hotels to close their doors and consigning
thousands of workers to the ranks of the unemployed.
b) “Extensive labor unrest”: A wave of strikes by transport, electrical and telephone
workers hit the island, reportedly provoked in part by graduates of the American Institute
for Free Labor Development, the CIA’s principal labor organization in Latin America.15
c) “Economic de-stabilization”: In addition to the US credit squeeze and curtailment of
aid, and the damage to tourism, the fragile Jamaican economy suffered from the actions of
the aluminum companies. As an act of retaliation for the bauxite production levy—which
had become law in May 1974—and with the tacit encouragement of Washington, the companies
systematically reduced production, which hurt Jamaica in several ways.
16
In August
1975, the American firm, Revere Copper and Brass Company, closed its aluminum refinery
after only four years of operation, saying that it was uneconomical.17
In January 1976, the
company announced that it was suing the Jamaican government over the levy.18
Whether
there was any underlying de-stabilization motive connected to these actions is not known.
A cargo of flour, brought to Jamaica on a German ship, the Heidelberg, was discovered
to have been contaminated with the poison parathion, an insecticide which had been
banned from Jamaica for many years. Much of the flour had already been sold and about
17 people died from it in December 1975 and January 1976. Later in the year, in October,
a large shipment of rice from Costa Rica, on board the ship City of Bocbum, arrived to
relieve a rice shortage Jamaicans had been suffering through for months. This too was
found to be contaminated by parathion and had to be destroyed.l9
The two incidents are
reminiscent of the contaminations of sugar carried out by the CIA against Cuba (q.v.).
d) “Covert financial support for the opposition”: This was principally the conservative
Jamaica Labour Party (JLP). In June 1976, Jamaican security forces announced the uncovering
of a plot to overthrow the government involving leading members of the JLP; another
arrested party member was found to be making Molotov cocktails in a mineral-bottling
plant he owned.20
No evidence of CIA involvement in the conspiracy has been revealed.
e) “Mobilization of the middle class into CIA-created anti-government organizations to
carry out well-publicized demonstrations”: Groups with names such as “Silent Majority”
and “Christian Women Agitators for Truth” were formed, the latter attacking those who
criticized the United States and the CIA. In one instance, the group brought up the example
of the famed and revered American doctor, Tom Dooley, who had founded seven hospitals
for the poor in southeast Asia. The Christian Women could not have known then that Dr.
Dooley had been a witting, active CIA operative in Indochina.21
There was also an attempt
by a newly formed “National Council of Women” to replay the pots — and — pans scenario
which had worked so well in Chile, but this fizzled out.22
(This featured women, mostly of
the upper classes with their maids, banging on pots and pans in a street march to demonstrate
the government’s inability to provide enough food for their families.)
265
KILLING HOPE
f) “Infiltration of security services and armed forces to turn them against the government”
: “With liberal bribes, the CIA turned many security personnel into paid informants
for the agency.” Several soldiers were part of a plot to assassinate Manley in July, one of at
least three such attempts which “the CIA was directly involved in”; another, in September,
employed Cuban exiles; the third turned to Jamaican gunmen to do the job. This last was in
December, a final act of desperation on election night; all three attempts failed, not even a
shot was fired, and Manley easily won re-election.23
During the campaign, CIA officer James Holt was accused of contriving a plot to turn
the military against Manley’s People’s National Party. According to the accusation, a tape
of a PNP youth rally was spliced with a message, purporting to be from Fidel Castro, urging
young people to rise up in armed struggle against the police and the army. The tape was
supposed to fall into the hands of the military and cause dissension.24
Press attacks against the government were carried out at a level of integrity only slightly
above that of Holt’s alleged tape. This was particularly the case with the Daily Gleaner
whose campaign was very similar to that of El Mercurio in Chile before the fall of Allende,
and it is eminently reasonable to assume that it was similarly financed by the CIA. Both
newspapers had close links to the Inter-American Press Association (IAPA) of Miami, the
Cleaner’s Managing Director, Oliver Clarke, being elected to the association’s executive in
1976. The IAPA, though not a formal CIA front, had received funding from the Agency and
had been a reliable and valuable press asset for it since the 1950s.25
The Gleaner emphasized the omnipresent Cuban menace and how Manley was a prisoner
of Castro and the KGB. One recurrent theme, echoed in the American press, was the
presence of Cuban troops in Jamaica, a bald lie and something that would be impossible to
conceal on the small island.
Propagandists arrived from the United States as well. Evangelists and faith healers
came down to set up their tents and preach against communism and the government to the
highly religious population.26
à la the Christian Anti-Communist Crusade in British Guiana
during the CIA’s campaign against the government of Cheddi Jagan (q.v.).
With Henry Kissinger removed from formal power, and with the less interventionist
Carter administration taking office in January 1977, American policy toward Jamaica was
tempered: the economic pipelines were unclogged to some extent and the CIA, without the
urgency of an upcoming election, diminished its activities.
It cannot be said, however, that Washington officialdom had learned to respect
Manley’s wish to “just let me be”. Pulitzer prize-winner Les Payne reported in Newsday in
February 1980 that “the Carter Administration remains determined to drive the country’s
Socialist prime minister from office unless he moderates his pro-Cuban policies.” In an earlier
article, Payne quoted a State Department source: “If within a 6-month testing period,
Manley shows some signs of moderating his position, then we will take a softer line. If not,
then we will continue to pursue a hard line.”
27
There was no let-up in the Gleaner’s diatribes against Manley and his government. The
newspaper reprinted numerous articles from all over the world which bore the standard
CIA themes and syntax and undocumented assertions that the Agency’s press assets are paid
for. The Gleaner openly encouraged disaffection and mutiny in the security forces, and
overthrow of the government. The following, from a column by John Hearne in June 1980,
was not very unusual:
266
Jamaica 1976-1980
In many other countries, somebody with a disciplined force of men behind him would have long
ago taken the Government away from them … In most Third World countries, our Ministers,
Ministers of State, Party commanders, heads of statutory boards, among others, would now be
in forced exile or buried in common graves.28
Throughout, the Gleaner and other anti-Manley newspapers in Jamaica bemoaned the
threat to freedom of the press posed by the government—on the premise, apparently, that
this is only what one can expect from a “communist” government—and continued to print
freely what in other countries would lead to arrest for sedition.
Manley was defeated for re-election in October 1980, due primarily to a continuing deterioration
in the standard of living of the masses of people. While recognizing the importance of
this factor, the former prime minister attributed his defeat also to “propaganda and finely calculated
violence”, the latter having persisted throughout his second term, being particularly
heavy during file election year when 800 people lost their lives in political violence. Manley
wrote drat “Unless there is overwhelming and widely accepted evidence laying the blame for
violence at the door of one party, it tends to damage the government in power, since it is the
government that people look to for their personal security.”29
He added:
The Jamaican establishment had mastered the ways of de-stabilization. It knew how to use fact
and create fiction for maximum effect. We do not know what was the part played by the CIA in
the last year. By then it may not have mattered because the Cleaner and the ALP had clearly
reached postgraduate level.30
@LOL, thank you for your input, here is a better link to that book. If individuals were to read the section that pertains to Jamaica and still walk away blaming Manley, whilst absolving Seaga and the USA, I would be stunned:
http://vho.org/aaargh/fran/livres8/BLUMkillinghope.pdf
Here is part II that speaks about Jamaica:
https://archive.org/stream/pdfy-y_8iHigC3Ms5TngF/BLUM%20killing%20hope_djvu.txt
People, let’s debate the facts of this article.
The IMF did not destroy Jamaica, the politicians did, blaming the IMF is pointless. The politicians has full control on how they wanted to implement this from the very start.
Through the years politicians has abused it, they then turned to poor people to pay for the years of their greed and despicable behavior, sadly there’s no end in sight
Please read the following and tell me that you still believe what you wrote:
The Jamaican prime minister — a graduate of the London School of Economics and the
son of Norman Manley who had led Jamaica to independence from the British in 1962
had incurred Washington’s displeasure since taking office in 1972 by behavior such as the following:
• Expressing support for the MPLA regime in Angola which the United States was attempting to topple at the very moment of the Kissinger-Manley meeting, an issue that was one of the Secretary of State’s obsessions and one which he raised during the talk.
• Establishing diplomatic relations with Cuba and the Soviet Union and maintaining close ties with the Castro government, although “no closer,” said Manley, “than … with Mexico and Venezuela “.
• Advocating a form of democratic socialism, though maintaining a decidedly mixed economy which featured nothing more radical than could be found in many countries of Western Europe in the areas of health, education, minimum wage, and social services. Manley’s party, the People’s National Party — whose slogan was “Socialism is Love” — belonged to the Socialist International, as have ruling parties in modem times in Austria, Great Britain, West Germany and Sweden.
• Prevailing against the transnational aluminum companies, principally American, which operated on the island because it is rich in bauxite, the raw material of aluminum. The Jamaican government had imposed a production levy to obtain a significant — and what was regarded as long- overdue — increase in the payments made to it by the companies, and had then persuaded other bauxite-producing countries in the Third World to do the same. The government also intended to buy out 51 percent of the foreign bauxite mining operations, and planned, along with Venezuela and Mexico, to build an international aluminum processing complex outside the multinational system. 8
Manley was pressured by both Washington and the Jamaican left. “Everyone wants me to be either a capitalist or a communist,” he said at one point. “Why can’t they just let me be? … I’ve always been a democratic socialist and that’s what I want in Jamaica.” 9 He viewed the multinational corporations in a similar vein, declaring that they “have grown used to two types. One is the mendicant of the neo-colonial syndrome. The other is the revolutionary who simply sends in the army to take over the operation. Here they were dealing with neither. This was part of our search for the third path.”
The Jamaican prime minister did not toe the line Kissinger had drawn. Five days after the Secretary of State had departed, Manley informed him that “Jamaica had decided to support the Cuban army presence in Angola because we were satisfied that they were there because of the South African invasion … I never heard another word about the hundred million
dollar trade credit. ”
At the time of Kissinger’s visit, certain de-stabilization operations had already gotten off the ground, particularly in the area of propaganda, but it was primarily afterward, beginning in the election year of 1976, that covert actions started to escalate. In January, a few weeks after Kissinger had left, the US Embassy in Kingston was increased by seven. Manley
has noted: “Yet all aid to Jamaica suddenly slowed to a virtual hair. The pipelines suddenly became clogged. Economic co-operation contracted as the embassy expanded.”
Investigative reporters Ernest Volkman and John Cummings, writing in Penthouse magazine in 1977 and citing “several senior American intelligence sources”, stated that the de-stabilization program drawn up by the CIA station chief in Jamaica {Norman Descoteaux) contained the following elements:
a) “Covert shipments of arms and other equipment to opposition forces”: Politics in Jamaica had long been spiced with strong-arm tactics, but this now intensified in both frequency and deadlines, and in the use of arson, bombing and assassination. “The CIA quickly sought to organize and expand the violence: shipments of guns and sophisticated communications equipment began to be smuggled into the island. In one shipment alone, which was grabbed by Manley’s security forces, there were 500 submachine guns.”
Some of the CIA’s traveling army of Cuban exiles arrived on the scene. One was Luis Posada Carriles, a former officer in Cuban dictator Batista’s secret police, now a CIA- trained explosives expert who was implicated in the mid-air bombing of a Cuban Airlines plane in 1976 which killed 73 people. Posada was reportedly spotted at the scene of more than one bombing in Jamaica.
The well-publicized violence was a body-blow to Jamaica’s vital tourist business. The foreign tourists stayed away in droves, forcing many hotels to close their doors and consigning thousands of workers to the ranks of the unemployed.
b) “Extensive labor unrest”: A wave of strikes by transport, electrical and telephone workers hit the island, reportedly provoked in part by graduates of the American Institute for Free Labor Development, the CIA’s principal labor organization in Latin America.
c) “Economic de-stabilization”: In addition to the US credit squeeze and curtailment of aid, and the damage to tourism, the fragile Jamaican economy suffered from the actions of the aluminum companies. As an act of retaliation for the bauxite production levy — which had become law in May 1974 — and with the tacit encouragement of Washington, the companies systematically reduced production, which hurt Jamaica in several ways. 16 In August 1975, the American firm, Revere Copper and Brass Company, closed its aluminum refinery after only four years of operation, saying that it was uneconomical. 17 In January 1976, the
company announced that it was suing the Jamaican government over the levy. 18 Whether there was any underlying de- stabilization motive connected to these actions is not known.
A cargo of flour, brought to Jamaica on a German ship, the Heidelberg, was discovered to have been contaminated with the poison parathion, an insecticide which had been banned from Jamaica for many years. Much of the flour had already been sold and about 17 people died from it in December 1975 and January 1976. Later in the year, in October,
a large shipment of rice from Costa Rica, on board the ship City of Bocbum, arrived to relieve a rice shortage Jamaicans had been suffering through for months. This too was found to be contaminated by parathion and had to be destroyed. 19 The two incidents are reminiscent of the contaminations of sugar carried out by the CIA against Cuba (q.v.).
d) “Covert financial support for the opposition”: This was principally the conservative Jamaica Labour Party (JLP). In June 1976, Jamaican security forces announced the uncovering of a plot to overthrow the government involving leading members of the JLP; another arrested party member was found to be making Molotov cocktails in a mineral-bottling plant he owned. 20 No evidence of CIA involvement in the conspiracy has been revealed.
e) “Mobilization of the middle class into CIA-created anti-government organizations to carry out well-publicized demonstrations”: Groups with names such as “Silent Majority” and “Christian Women Agitators for Truth” were formed, the latter attacking those who criticized the United States and the CIA. In one instance, the group brought up the example
of the famed and revered American doctor, Tom Dooley, who had founded seven hospitals for the poor in southeast Asia. The Christian Women could not have known then that Dr. Dooley had been a witting, active CIA operative in Indochina. 21 There was also an attempt by a newly formed “National Council of Women” to replay the pots — and — pans scenario
which had worked so well in Chile, but this fizzled out. 22 (This featured women, mostly of the upper classes with their maids, banging on pots and pans in a street march to demonstrate the government’s inability to provide enough food for their families.)
f)”Infiltration of security services and armed forces to turn them against the government”
: “With liberal bribes, the CIA turned many security personnel into paid informants for the agency.” Several soldiers were part of a plot to assassinate Manley in July, one of at least three such attempts which “the CIA was directly involved in”; another, in September, employed Cuban exiles; the third turned to Jamaican gunmen to do the job. This last was in
December, a final act of desperation on election night; all three attempts failed, not even a shot was fired, and Manley easily won re-election.
@Highlander i totally agree with you :thanks2
@lalibela, yeah i have the book too in pdf. If i could teach every Jamaican history mi sure a new JLP party woulda haffi mek. Seaga sold out the prime minister and it’s amazing how the gleaner is left leaning today. Can you imagine writing that manley should be overthrown because he wanted to nationalize an important resource and the US turning against him ? History is cruel and it’s about control. Many of the best policies in the US are socialist inspired policies. And a leading candidate today is promoting socialist ideas with strong support. But back then just seeking progress through other economic models was worthy of intense American interference. 500 sub machine guns, 100 plus elderly in a home was burned to death to make Manley look weak. Jamaica needs a new national identity outside of being the best in certain sports, reggae, tourism etc. We need this history to be taught in every high school. We need a new consciousness. But unlikely because it’s going to be viewed as partisan. We went the other way but where did it take us? Not far and it’s amazing we’re not like some African country not having a chance.
@LOL, what bothers me the most is that most on here read the facts that we are presenting and then have the audacity to say that Manley was a failure. The truth is just not convenient enough for them. The events of the seventies are so well documented and they all point to what we have been saying.
You are correct, the very social policies/reforms of the Manley implement are now becoming popular in the present.
I desperately hope that Jamaicans will wake up. Believing in Manley does not mean that you can’t or should not support you contemporary politician of choice–especially if said politician represents good. Jamaica will embrace Manley’s ideals when they are more popular elsewhere. We don’t have the courage and fortitude to dictate terms that are best for us. Seemingly, we enjoy being told what to do by others.
Seaga is the worst thing to ever happen to Jamaica and I’m sure there is a place in hell fi him soul. When ppl talk bout JLP and champion dem and a big up Seaga mi shake mi head cause dem nuh know the evil that man perpetrate on this land. Jamaica would have been in a better place than it is today had it not beed for that wicked raashole. Mi nuh business wha nobody wan say, mi nuh have nuh respect fi him. How can you plan with another country to cause destruction on your own land just for personal gain. F**ked up!!!
Trust me, only clueless and wicked people support Edward Seaga.
I really think we should take a good look at Edward Seaga before he came to Jamaica.Boston native and graduate of Harvard.Why did he come to Jamaica?
I agree with you; I have been saying this for the longest!
@Anon, I wanted to say that from the last thread but I didn’t want to come off as too extreme to say he is a plant lol. That woulda be too much.
But all I know is that during that period – once you graduate from a top school in the US the CIA and FBI would be the first to offer you a job. So it’s very possible he was offered something lol but this is something not explored but i’m sure it was floated elsewhere.