Who are Rastafarians

The Rastafarian cult is a messianic movement unique to Jamaica. Its members believe that Haile Selassie, former Emperor of Ethiopia, is the Black Messiah who appeared in the flesh for the redemption of all Blacks exiled in the world of White oppressors. The movement views Ethiopia as the promised land, the place where Black people will be repatriated through a wholesale exodus from all Western countries where they have been in exile (slavery). Repatriation is inevitable, and the time awaits only the decision of Haile Selassie. Known only to the true believers, the details of the actual departure are secret. In the past some fantasies called for planes to the United States, and then ships from there to Africa. Some envision the operation being launched from the shores of Jamaica by at least ten British ships at a time, while others see the operation being undertaken in Ethiopian vessels at Jamaican expense.
The destination of this great migration is also vague in the minds of some speculators. The majority see Ethiopia as their homeland; others view Africa as the true homeland. There is no unanimity about the destination. To many, Ethiopia means Africa, while to others, Ethiopia is the promised land, though they will settle for any part of the continent.

The author, who has observed the Rastafarians since 1946 and has carried out systematic research among them from 1963 to 1966 (on which his first monograph was based), later returned to Jamaica to study their development from 1966 to the deaths of Haile Selassie and Bob Marley. An up-to-date assessment of the movement may be stated as follows:
The present membership of the Rastafarian movement, including sympathizers, may number three hundred thousand.2 No census has yet given an accurate account of the membership, but a knowledgeable Rasta leader states that six out of every ten Jamaicans are either Rastas or sympathizers.3
The membership is young and has no individual leadership. Up to 80 percent of those seen in the camps and on the streets are between the ages of seventeen and thirty-five. The leading brethren are mostly men from thirty-five to fifty-five years of age. The older members are either ex-Garveyites or sympathizers of his movement.
Most members are male. Women play an important role in Rastafarianism at present, but the majority are followers of their husbands. In special meetings women act as mistresses of songs or as secretaries, but these roles are changing rapidly. The male assumes most of the responsibilities of the movement, though at present, a large segment of Rastafarian women now sell their products such a knitted clothing, baskets, mats, brooms, art works, and other sundries.
Until 1965, the membership was essentially lower class, but this is no longer the case. Once considered "products of the slum," the Rastas have now penetrated the middle class. They are found among civil servants and the elite; some are students at the prestigious University of the West Indies; some are in the medical and legal professions and other upper-class occupations.
Based on the earlier research, the members were almost all of African stock. At present, the overwhelming majority
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of members still are, but there are also Chinese, East Indians, Afro-Chinese, Afro-East Indians or Afro-Jews, mulat-toes, and a few Whites. Every ethnic minority is now represented in the Rastafarian camps.
The members are predominantly ex-Christians. About 90 percent of the members interviewed were from Protestant or Catholic churches or Pentecostal sects. The minority who said they had no church connection did acknowledge that they came from Christian homes.
As a group the Rastafarians see Jamaica as a land of oppression—Babylon. Their only avenue of escape is by supernatural means or by seizing the power and creating a Utopia for the oppressed.
The Place, People, and Language
The island of Jamaica is the third largest in size of the West Indian islands after Cuba and Haiti. Jamaica is 150 miles long and 52 miles wide, subtropical, a land of warm weather without the extremes of climate common to the mainland of the United States. Jamaican harbors are among the world's finest, and Jamaican rivers add beauty and economic value to the island. Hills and mountains form the center of the island, ranging from the gentle Cockpit Mountains of the west to the high John Crow and Blue Mountains of the east, with altitudes exceeding seven thousand feet. These high mountains and the broad, easily drained plains below provide diversity of climate and agriculture.
The population of Jamaica is presently estimated at a little less than two million people, of which nearly a half-million now reside in Kingston, the capital and largest city.4
The distribution of people by racial origin can be summarized as follows: those of African origin, 90 percent; Caucasians, about 1 percent; descendants of East Indians, 3 percent; those of Chinese descent, about 2 percent.5 Of the remaining 4 percent, the Jews and Lebanese are the largest identifiable groups. Thus the vast majority of Jamaicans are
4 The Rastafarians
currently of African or Afro-European descent. By contrast, the original inhabitants of the island (when Columbus discovered it in 1494) were the Arawak Indians, a homogeneous people completely different from any group living there now. Columbus' arrival introduced the natives to the Europeans, a meeting which proved eatastrophic for the Arawak Indians: by the time the British conquered Jamaica in 1655 the Arawaks were extinct.
English is the formal language of the island. The greater part of the masses, however, speak a Jamaican dialect. Cas-sidy's Jamaica Talk6 (the first scientific work to deal with the dialect) portrays Jamaica as a place where "a pepperpot of language is concocted." He observes that "Jamaica-talk" is not the same for every Jamaican because of the vast spectrum of dialects. "Jamaica-talk" exists in two main forms which Cassidy illustrates as lying at opposite ends of a scale. At one extreme is the type of "Jamaica-talk" that emulates the "London standard" or educated model spoken among many of the elite. At the other extreme is the inherited talk of peasant and laborer who remain largely unaffected by education and its standards. Their speech is what linguists call "creolized" English; that is, fragmented English speech and syntax assimilated during the days of slavery and mixed with African influences. This Anglo-African admixture continues to be spoken in much the same form today.
There is, though, a third dialectical element in Jamaica located in the middle of the language scale where one discovers an increasing inclusion of local elements of Jamaican rhythm and intonation of words that the Londoner would have no need to know. These characteristics of the language evolved within an island population, which Cassidy calls "Jamaicanism." He defines this term by citing five main divisions:
1. Retention, which includes English words now rare or poetic that are still in common use in Jamaica.
2. New formations, which are in turn subdivided into alterations, compositions, and creations.
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3. Borrowings which are French and Portuguese words which came into English as early as the eighteenth century.
4. Onomatopoeic echoisms.
5. Usage of words which, though not exclusively Jamaican, is the preferred term on the island.7
Speaking of the greatest influence on "Jamaica-talk," Cas-sidy concludes:
Of non-British influences it is obvious that the African is the largest and most profound; it appears not only in the vocabulary, but has powerfully affected both pronunciation and grammar. We may feel fairly certain about two hundred and thirty loan-words from various African languages; and if the numerous compounds and derivatives were added, and the large number of untraced terms which are at least quasi-African in form, the total would easily be more than four hundred. Even at its most, the African element in the vocabulary is larger than all the other non-English ones together.8
Cassidy's studies, which were carried out in the 1950s, made no mention of the influence of the Rastafarian movement on "Jamaica-talk." Since the 1950s, a new linguistic change has taken place in Jamaica. This is what we may call a "Rasta dialect"—highly symbolic and radically revolutionary. The development of this new linguistic component will be discussed in Chapter 5.
Education in Jamaica has generally followed the British pattern. Though understandable from a historical perspective, the system has created much confusion in the social patterns of the Jamaican people. During the colonial period (and to a great extent to the present day), children were taught about the English culture without attempting to relate it to the environment in which they lived. Madeline Kerr, in her analysis of five schools, points out that the subject matter was basically meaningless to the children. Central to the curriculum was the Bible, taught from a strictly fundamentalist point of view. Children memorized enormous passages of prose and poetry and learned to read by
6 The Rastafarians
chanting passages from books. Discipline in the schools was often harsh, and although some teachers restricted the amount of lashing, beating was the rule, not the exception.9
Prior to independence (and even today), children attended elementary school up to the age of eleven when they were expected to pass a common entrance examination. The completion of this test entitled the child to enter an approved school until he or she passed the General Certificate of Education. This certificate admitted the child, in some cases, to a university.
One of the great problems of education in Jamaica is the lack of proper training of teachers, the majority of whom, until recently, reached a standard scarcely higher than the American high school.
With the coming of self-government there has been a remarkable increase in educational facilities. In 1944, primary school teachers numbered less than three thousand; by 1960, the figure had grown to over five thousand. School attendance figures are even more revealing. Whereas in 1944 there were only 171,455 elementary school pupils, by 1960 the figure had grown to 315,000. Great emphasis was also placed on secondary education. While there were only twenty-three secondary schools in 1944, by 1960 the number had reached forty-one.10 Recently, compulsory education has been instituted by the government. But the future of Jamaican education is in a deplorable state. Teachers are poorly paid, and with the economic downturn due to the closing of the bauxite companies and the weakness of the Jamaican dollar, high inflation has caused the closing of elementary and secondary schools, and even of one teacher's college.
The University College of the West Indies (now the University of the West Indies) was founded in 1948 at Mona, near Kingston, with an enrollment of thirty-three students. Current enrollment exceeds five thousand.11 A number of vocational and technical schools have been constructed on the island to encourage and meet the demand for mechanical and technical skills in a developing nation. These upper-
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level educational institutions provide an excellent education but their number and capacity to meet the needs of an exploding population are grossly inadequate.
Jamaica's economy is basically agricultural, employing over 40 percent of the island's labor force.12 Before the Second World War, agriculture accounted for 36 percent of the island's total exports in the form of sugar, bananas, and rum and comprised four-fifths of the island's export revenue. By 1961, however, agriculture provided only 13 percent of the total income. In the past ten years, rapid developments have taken place in mining, manufacturing, and tourism. All three industries presently are experiencing the uncertainties of worldwide inflation and recession. Thus the future of the Jamaican economy will demand courageous leadership and sound fiscal planning.
A striking characteristic of Jamaica's agriculture is the large number of small farmers. There are 159,000 small farmers, of whom 113,000 work less than five acres.13 A recent report states that the agricultural pattern of Jamaican farmers has not changed in the last 100 years, largely due to lack of land and primitive techniques. The former government was dedicated to rectifying this imbalance, and new laws have been instituted to make unused lands available to the small farmers. At present, efforts are being focused on increasing agricultural exports.
One of the largest known deposits of bauxite in the world was discovered in Jamaica in the early 1950s. This discovery promoted the establishment of a mining industry and boosted the general economy. Bauxite and aluminum accounted for 50 percent of the island's earnings in 1982.14 The Manley government moved to nationalize the bauxite industry, which created a mini-international upheaval among the ranks of multinational cartels. However, because of world inflation, the bauxite companies experienced a decline in profits and decided to cease mining bauxite in Jamaica. All three companies have now left the island or are about to leave. This has left Jamaica with a staggering deficit.
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Industry has become a serious concern for the government. Its industrial development program has been implemented by the Industrial Development Corporation and included incentive legislation as well as promotional activities in the United States, United Kingdom, and Canada. As a result, the island now has a wider variety of manufactured products using both local and imported raw materials. Among these new products are clothing, footwear, textiles, paints, and building materials, including cement. Some of these are used locally, but most are exported.
This economic picture greatly affects the lives of Rastafarians. It is in response to this cultural and economic condition that the Rastafarians have emerged as a movement. The competence of most Rastas lies in the semiskilled or the marginally skilled occupations. They are mostly prepared to do farm labor, but possess no land. Some have taken up painting, masonry, or carpentry; others have become domestic servants, janitors, wood workers, or small shopkeepers. Wages for these occupations, when work is available, does not exceed twenty dollars per week. The labor problem in Jamaica is such that the number of unskilled laborers far exceeds the demand, and the population of unskilled laborers grows in geometric proportion yearly. Unemployment has created a large body of criminals who prey on both rich and poor. It has also caused mass emigration to North America and a deterioration of the human spirit.

The City of Kingston
The city of Kingston and its environs are a study in contrasts; beautiful suburban communities in the highlands overlook miles of slum dwellings in various stages of blight and decay as they swelter in the hot, putrid air which varies only a degree or two each night year-round. The ten-mile bus route from Tower Street to Cross Roads—on any of the many arteries leading north—is a jungle of dilapidated hous-
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ing projects interspersed with new government office buildings which tower over what was once a thriving community of commercial and cultural enterprises. Now these areas seem deserted by the exodus of the more affluent population to the suburbs with new shopping malls in the greener pastures of St. Andrew.
Leaving the city and going north, one comes to an abrupt divide known as Cross Roads. This is indeed the crossroads between poverty and ostentation displayed by the middle-and upper-class Jamaicans who flaunt their manicured gardens and mansion-like houses, complete with quarters for the servants who attend them. Cross Roads was once a charming village town, containing one of Jamaica's most beautiful movie theaters, and pride of the city—Carib. Today, the theater stands blushing at the Jamaican omnibus terminal which spreads like an ulcer just past the Carib's entrance. As many as twenty-five buses filled with sweating passengers converge on this spot hourly.
The line of demarcation seen at Cross Roads typifies the division of wealth between the Jamaican upper-class and the masses from which the Rastafarian population is drawn. Slum conditions in Jamaican cities are probably the worst in the Caribbean, except for Haiti. The Rastafarian poet Sam Brown, in his unpublished poem "Slum Condition," depicts the existing situation in Kingston more eloquently than any other. The first verse describes the appearance of the slums of Jones Town and Trench Town where most cultists live:
Tin-can houses, old and young, meangy dogs, rats, inhuman
stench,
Unthinkable conditions that cause the stoutest heart to wrench. Tracks and little lanes like human veins, emaciated people, Many giving up the ghost, their spirits broken, their gloom
deepens. Precocious boys and girls, yet adults, police, thieves,
conglomerates, Generally disjointed, sexually abandoned masters of their fate.
The next verse portrays what it is like to exist under these conditions:
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Tribal warfares, rapings, inhumanity, police brutality, daily
occurrence, Yet, they are diamonds in the rough, who bites with this
abhorence.
Like Alice, slums without pity, lacking love, each grim and screws, Some ailing ones weaker than the rest, don't know what to do.
Sam Brown then shows that the cultists are aware of the causes of their oppressions:
Some young desperates look to the hills, see the seat of their
distress,
They see the dwellers of the hills as them that do oppress. Churches wedged in among the hovels, squealing pigs, juke-boxes
blaring, Small land space, old cars and bars, Jesus could not get a hearing.
In the following lines he shows the callous attitude of the elite to the poor:
Men, women and children stark naked, lunatics of wants,
reformatory,
Milk powder, polio victims, rickity, medical infirmary. Executives in horseless chariots sometimes pass through hold their
noses, Hapless poor look with vengeful eyes, for them no bed of roses.
Finally, the results of years of oppression—the gunmen who now make life unbearable:
Better wanted, not worse, for him it can't be worse, Conscience of man, humanity, civilization in reverse. People in fear, bulldozer mashing, smashing, cannot save the
situation,
Lift the ban, free the food, for peace reassemble the nation. Corruption to achieve material, graft, bribes, high and low, Official-mantled crooks, gunmen equal, the innocent have no place
to go.15
The author of this poem has lived his entire life in the slums of Jamaica. He was an occupant of the tin can houses in that part of the city then known as "Back-O-Wall," before the government destroyed it with a fleet of bulldozers. Since then, the Rastafarians have moved into other tin can houses in the heart of the city, or on the edges of it. The poem
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touches on all of the sights, sounds, and smells of Kingston: the churches in the hovels, the blaring juke-boxes, the gunmen and their victims, and the ever-present police. The attitudes of the slum dwellers are clearly shown in the lines, "Some desperates look to the hills, see the seat of their distress," and "Hapless poor look with vengeful eyes, for them no bed of roses." Around 1975 the ratio of the haves to the have-nots in Jamaica was put at twenty to one. The narrowing of this gap is the declared goal of the present government. But for now, the result of the disparity in living conditions is hatred, fear, distrust, and anxiety among the wealthy, while the life of the poor grows only more unbearable.
The Rural Areas
Although great strides toward better living conditions have been made in the rural areas in the last decade, this has not changed the pitiful state of housing, cultivable lands, and economic wage differentials. In fact, the majority of rural Jamaican housing remains the same as that described by Martha Beckwith in her study of 1929.16 Typical of these areas are the "wattle and daub" dwellings, houses built with sticks, covered with wattle, plastered with clay and a little cement, and then whitened with lime. Thatch palms cover the roof, though sheets of zinc are used by the more affluent. The average house is occasionally floored with boards, but more usually has only an earthen floor. Three of every four of these houses have no electricity or running water and most have only an outside pit-latrine. Cooking is done outside the house in a separate kitchen with wood or coal. One out of four rural houses that has an inside kitchen has a kerosene stove for cooking. About half of the rural dwellers rent their houses or lease their lands from large estate owners. It is not unheard of for families who have lived on a piece of land for generations to suddenly find themselves dispossessed by a neighboring landowner who, by fact or by fraud, can show that the land belongs to him.
In the last decade much attention has been given to the plight of the rural poor by the Jamaican government. One of
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the most grievous problems in the countryside is the access to cultivable lands. Prior to independence, about 60 percent of the land was held by 1 percent of the population—largely cane farmers who acted as absentee landowners. The rural farmers had but a small piece of land, mostly on the hilly slopes, on which to eke out a living. A large proportion of the cultivable lands were either kept as grazing lands for the very rich or left idle as private holdings. Since independence, the government, under a very unpopular Land Acquisition Act, has been laying claim to these lands and returning them under a lease-hold arrangement to small farmers, hoping to improve the conditions of the rural poor and to encourage able-bodied persons in the city to return to the country.17
The wage differential in Jamaica is probably the most alarming in the world. The few people who have a profession or some skill receive as much as thirty times more than the unskilled. In instituting the Minimum Wage Law of 1975, the prime minister, the Honorable Michael Manley, startled the House of Parliament with the following revelations: twenty-eight thousand or more Jamaicans earn less than ten dollars per week; sixty-four thousand earn less than fifteen dollars per week; and one hundred one thousand earn less than twenty dollars per week. The author is convinced that about one half of all Jamaicans would fall under the category of twenty-five dollars per week per capita.18
Unemployment and Crime
The legacy of colonialism now seen in the maldistribution of land and wealth represents a growing problem which must be remedied quickly if Jamaica is to survive. Eighty percent of the common laborers who are unskilled earn twenty-five dollars per week when they do get work. Add to this the permanently underemployed and the unemploy-ables, and the situation is a sociopolitical headache for a new nation. The Seaga government, which since 1981 has adhered to a platform of capitalism and private initiative,
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has rejected the socialist enterprise of the previous government and has adopted the American model, which has had a detrimental effect on Jamaica's poor.
In the meantime, the people who have no concept of the enormous difficulties facing the government are impatient. This impatience is mirrored in the rapid growth of crime on the island. Easy access to guns and their indiscriminate use have turned living conditions into a nightmare. The situation, though frightening, is understandable. The history of Jamaica is one long tale of exploitation by a few rich families whose privileges were never questioned. But with independence, Jamaica was thrust into the arena of the underdeveloped nations with little or no aid from those who benefited from the island. Many of these rich families continued to profit from their investments, spending little or nothing on the island. They were on the island but not of it. Most investors did not even keep their wealth in Jamaican banks, but stashed it in foreign banks. With the announcement of democratic socialism in the seventies and the sudden awakening of social and cultural consciousness under the Manley government, the people of wealth migrated from Jamaica, leaving the government and its people to simmer in a "stew" not of their own making.
With the passing of the old order, the oppressed masses have become bewildered by the rapid change which allows little time to learn the new symbols, which were in various stages of formulation. The result was a mild chaos, mirrored in an ambivalent longing for the old, oppressive society, while groping uncertainly toward an untried future. The birth pangs of unrest shook the body. The criminal element, which emerged from the people who have been consistently denied a share in the wealth of their homeland, is now determined to get a piece of the pie by any possible means. The means now utilized is violence against the Black and White society. No one is excluded in this "war." The Jamaican gunman is a cold and systematic killer executing what he believes to be his duty. Gun crimes have become so
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pervasive that the former government originated an internationally unique institution (probably the first in any democratic country)—the Gun Court—which is both a court of law and a detention camp.
The term is a pseudonym for a process of incarcerating apprehended gunmen and later trying them under the Jamaica Gun Court Act of 1974. Under this act, if a person is found guilty of possessing an unlicensed firearm, or even a few bullets, he receives a mandatory sentence of "detention for life with hard labor." A gunman can be released from this sentence only when deemed fit to live a wholesome life in the community, and that at the discretion of the governor general of Jamaica.
In 1978, this social modification technique was designed to control the crime wave that drove Jamaicans to the brink of despair. The island was flooded with illegal firearms of largely unknown origin. As a crime control technique, the gun court was so unique in the Americas that it became a feature story on "Sixty Minutes" (CBS) in 1975. Despite the urgent need for the control of crime in Jamaica, some of the island's legal experts were convinced that a court set up outside the judicial provisions of the Jamaican constitution was illegal. As a consequence, in April of 1974, four men sentenced to indefinite detention for possession of firearms were encouraged to appeal their cases with the intention of testing the constitutionality of the Gun Court Act of 1974. The case was ultimately brought before the Privy Council Judicial Committee of Great Britain, which still operates as the court of last resort for Jamaican citizens. The Privy Council heard the case for six days; the final decision was that the Gun Court is constitutional, but a sentence of "indefinite detention is unlawful." Emboldened by this ruling, the gunmen opened a new campaign of violence. Shooting, burning, and other violent crimes spurred the government to rewrite the Gun Court Law of 1976. It demands a life term for firearm crimes, with no appeal; but under special privileges granted by the Jamaican Appeals Council, the act
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has also been widened to deal with violence of a political nature, which many observers believe to be at the heart of the Jamaican crime wave.
Early in 1976, violent crimes in Jamaica necessitated the government's call for "national emergency," which temporarily suspended certain freedoms of its citizens in order to deal with the criminal outbursts. Since 1982, the police have begun the practice of shooting anyone found with a gun. The number shot by police each year is staggering. Meanwhile, the Gun Court still exists on South Camp Road.
At the extreme end of Jamaican society stands another group who disagree with the tactics of the gunmen, but whose philosophy suggests that the remedy for Jamaicans' woes is total revolution similar to that of Cuba. Supported by the gunmen, this philosophy is advocated by intellectuals who are avid students of Marx and Lenin. Although this group sympathized greatly with the declared democratic socialism of the former government, it felt that this halfway measure was not drastic enough to cure the ills of Jamaica. It might placate a few, but it could not cure the disease. To them socialism was a step in the right direction. But anything short of scientific socialism and a social revolution which will dislodge the privileged and destroy the strangle hold of multinational corporations will be but salve on a deep wound.
The present government has reversed the socialist policies of the past and has instituted the American free-enterprise system, under which goods and services are brought in at exorbitant prices and profits. These businesses are staffed by a middle class who depend on their monied masters for their existence. On the bottom are the hungry masses, effectively kept at a distance by the arm of the law, whose duty it is to protect capital. With independence and the awakening consciousness of the masses—a climate which now pervades all Third World nations—there has emerged a militant avant-garde that opposes this reversal by the present government. The group feels that it is its duty to bring about
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the millennium by forcible means. The middle-class intellectuals, although sympathetic to socialism, feel that the problems demand revolution now. In the meantime, the once beautiful island of paradise now exists with an overgrown serpent coiled around its center. The frustration of this situation was expressed by the columnist of the Sunday Gleaner on June 29, 1975, who wrote under the heading "Paradise Lost":
More and more criminals appear to possess guns and to use them on victims with or without provocations; people's houses are being broken into and the inmates killed, wounded or raped; residents are being chased away and their houses burned or broken down; shops, betting places and payrolls are being robbed right and left; complaints and witnesses are disappearing so that accused have to be let off for lack of evidences, and physical evidences have been destroyed; by bombing a police station; criminals are escaping after conviction; courthouses have been invaded and the police attacked to free prisoners; organized gangs of young thugs have taken over meetings; praedial larceny is more prevalent than ever.
The government has been trying to rectify these problems, but its success has been limited at best.
Religion:
To enter into a discussion of Jamaican religiosity, one must first deal with a short historical background of the island's inhabitants, the earliest being the Arawak Indians, who were finally destroyed under Spanish rule between 1502 and 1655. When the British conquered the Spanish in 1655, not a trace of these Arawak people could be found. As a result, the Spanish substituted African slaves in small numbers until, under the British, thousands of West African slaves were brought to Jamaica.
The West Africans brought to the island were mostly from the Gold Coast and Nigeria. The British Planters insisted on these people above all others because of their sturdiness. It was the Ashanti, however, that left the greatest cultural im-
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the millennium by forcible means. The middle-class intellectuals, although sympathetic to socialism, feel that the problems demand revolution now. In the meantime, the once beautiful island of paradise now exists with an overgrown serpent coiled around its center. The frustration of this situation was expressed by the columnist of the Sunday Gleaner on June 29, 1975, who wrote under the heading "Paradise Lost":
More and more criminals appear to possess guns and to use them on victims with or without provocations; people's houses are being broken into and the inmates killed, wounded or raped; residents are being chased away and their houses burned or broken down; shops, betting places and payrolls are being robbed right and left; complaints and witnesses are disappearing so that accused have to be let off for lack of evidences, and physical evidences have been destroyed; by bombing a police station; criminals are escaping after conviction; courthouses have been invaded and the police attacked to free prisoners; organized gangs of young thugs have taken over meetings; praedial larceny is more prevalent than ever.
The government has been trying to rectify these problems, but its success has been limited at best.
Religion:
To enter into a discussion of Jamaican religiosity, one must first deal with a short historical background of the island's inhabitants, the earliest being the Arawak Indians, who were finally destroyed under Spanish rule between 1502 and 1655. When the British conquered the Spanish in 1655, not a trace of these Arawak people could be found. As a result, the Spanish substituted African slaves in small numbers until, under the British, thousands of West African slaves were brought to Jamaica.
The West Africans brought to the island were mostly from the Gold Coast and Nigeria. The British Planters insisted on these people above all others because of their sturdiness. It was the Ashanti, however, that left the greatest cultural im-
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print on Jamaica, noticeable to this day. Consequently, the language of the Jamaican peasants still carries hundreds of words that need no translation from the original Ashanti tongue—Twi. But the area most dominated by Ashanti influence was the folk religion, still practiced today under the name of Kumina.19 The word comes from two Twi words: Akom—"to be possessed," and Ana—"by an ancestor." This ancestor-possession cult became the medium of religious expression for all Africans during the slave period. Throughout most of the Caribbean, this kind of African religious syncretism seems to have taken place. Examples can be found in Haiti where all the tribes taken there seem to have fused their religious rituals under the Dahomean rubric known as Vodun.20 The same thing happened in Trinidad where the Nigerian influence dominated, fusing the disparate elements into a cult known as Shango.2* A similar process also occurred in Cuba under the name Santeria.22
Slave Religion in Jamaica
Unlike Haiti, where the slaves were commanded if not forced to be members of the Catholic faith, the English planters in Jamaica adamantly refused to share their religion with the slave population. The Church of England and its high liturgy was considered too sophisticated for people of "lesser breed" and, further, the masters feared that the preachers—in their unguarded inspirational moments— would stretch the equality of humanity before God a little too far. The slaves, left to themselves, developed elements of the remembered religious systems from their homeland. This was not difficult to do because among the slave population were African religious functionaries who had been indiscriminately carried to the island. According to Herbert DeLisser, one of Jamaica's historians on slavery:
Both witches and wizards, priests and priestesses, were brought to Jamaica in the days of the slave trade, and, the slaves recognised the
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distinction between the former and the latter. Even the masters saw that the two classes were not identical, and they called the latter "myal-men and myal-women" . . . [these were] the people who cured . . . ."
DeLisser goes on to say that the legitimate slave priests and priestesses of African religion were unable to function in their customary roles and therefore turned to sorcery— practicing witchcraft as ritual aggression against the slave system. They became what is known in Jamaica as obeah-men and obeah -women. The word obeah is known throughout the English slave regions, and is derived from two Ashanti words oba—"a child," and yi—"to take." The idea of taking a child was the final test of a sorcerer, a deed giving the status of Ph.D. in witchcraft.24 Obeah, then, became the most dreadful form of Caribbean witchcraft, plaguing both Black and White in the days of slavery and continuing to haunt Jamaicans today.
Although the legitimate priests and priestesses were unable to do their work under slavery, they did not wholly forget their roles. They remained capable of casting and exorcising spells. Exorcism became the function by which they were best known and in this role became known as mya7-men and mya7-women. The word myal has come to mean "being in a state of possession," and the ritual which accompanied it was a rigorous dance now known as Kumina. Kumina soon caught on among the slaves and later became the slave religion.
The earliest eyewitness of this cult-behavior was the Moravian missionary, J. H. Buchner, who was in Jamaica in the late eighteenth century:
As soon as darkness of evening set in, they assembled in crowds in open pastures, most frequently under large cotton trees, which they worship, and counted holy; after sacrificing some fowls, the leader began an extempore song, in a wild strain, which was answered in chorus/ the dance followed, grew wilder and wilder, until they were in a state of excitement bordering on madness. Some would perform incredible revolutions while in this state, until, nearly exhausted, they fell senseless to the
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ground, when every word they uttered was received as divine revelation. At other times obeah was discovered or a shadow was caught; a little coffin being prepared in which it was enclosed and buried.25
Buchner's observations were very accurate. The details hold true even today. A Kumina is called on special occasions, especially for ceremonies surrounding the rites of passage (birth, puberty, marriage, and death). But other calamities, such as sickness and other natural or unnatural occasions, may necessitate a Kumina service. This service is accompanied by drumming and dancing. A sacrifice is always necessary; alcoholic spirits are always present; and the dancing continues until spirit possession is achieved. These spirits are always the ancestors of the dancers or of the person who calls the Kumina. Under spirit possession a revelation is given by the ancestors concerning the occasion for which the Kumina is called. This revelation is considered very important and is heeded in every detail. It may consist of the reason for the sickness or the death, suggest the cure for the illness, or warn of coming calamities. Under possession, the evil spirit that may have caused the person's illness may be captured. It might be a ghost sent by an obeah-man or woman to haunt the house. Under Kumina possession, the revelation is sometimes given in an unknown tongue, very often in an African language, now forgotten, but known to the possessed.
Missionary Religion
Brief mention must be made of the entrance of missionary religions into the island. The Spaniards brought Roman Catholicism to Jamaica in 1509; few documents survive to describe the Spanish slaves. When we meet the remnants of these Africans, known as Maroons, who served the Spanish in the mountains, they were still worshipping their Ashanti God—Nyankopong.26 The Spanish Catholics seem to have evangelized the Arawak Indians found on the island before the arrival of the Blacks. When the British finally drove out
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the Spaniards in 1655, the Arawaks were extinct. Their number was estimated to have been sixty thousand.27
When the English came, the Church of England followed, but they paid no attention to the African population. One hundred and sixty-one years after England took over Jamaica and established the slave trade, no attempt had been made to Christianize the slaves. All this time the slaves continued to serve their African dieties. It was not until 1816 that the Jamaica House of Assembly passed an act to "consider the state of religion among the slaves, and to carefully investigate the means of diffusing the light of genuine Christianity among them." This act was not heeded. The resistance of the Planters to teaching Christianity to the slaves was so strong that no clergyman would dare risk his benefits to do so. According to historian Edward Long, however, the Anglican ministers of that period were so deficient in morals that they were incapable of preaching the gospel to anybody; as he said, "Some were better qualified to be retailers of salt-fish or boatswain to privateers than ministers of the Gospel."28
The urge to consider the state of religion among the slaves was brought about by the entrance of the Moravians in 1734, the Methodists in 1736, the Baptists in 1783, and the Presbyterians in 1823.29 These nonconformist denominations were a real threat to the establishment, finding ready ears among the slaves and winning over large numbers to their cause. The loose rituals of these churches—especially the early Methodists and Baptists with their spirit-filled enthusiasm—fit beautifully the exuberant religion of the slaves and brought about an early syncretism between Christianity and various African religions. The slave masters saw, in this amalgamation of the "doctrine of Methodism combined with African superstition,"30 an imminent danger to the community. Every effort, legal and illegal, was utilized to arrest the spread of the nonconformists.
Despite resistance and persecution by the established
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church, the spread of Christianity continued unabated until the emancipation of the slaves in 1835. hi that year the slaves celebrated the occasion as the Great Jubilee. Recognizing the considerable effort of the nonconformist churches on their behalf, the slaves flocked to these denominations in great numbers. But as the nonconformist churches gained official recognition, their spirituality diminished, and they began to establish themselves as real denominations with rules, rituals, and structures far removed from the interests of their newly emancipated members. The slaves, sensing a new regimentation of their lives by the Europeans, were not satisfied with the new order. The churches were little prepared for what was soon to develop in Jamaican religion.
The Great Revival of 1860-61
About 1860-61, just over two decades after the emancipation, the missionary religions were in the process of consolidating their religious efforts when a revival similar to the Great Awakening in the United States swept the island. The enthusiasm was so powerful that the missionaries were unable to cope with the demand. Thousands of slaves flocked to the churches day and night—men, women, and children. The behavior patterns of this revival were similar to those observed in New England by Jonathan Edwards, with much singing, crying, dancing, spirit possession, and loud prayers. W. J. Gardner, a Congregationalist minister of that time who evidently relished a more sedate approach to God, described it as follows:
In 1861, there had been a very remarkable religious movement known as "the great revival." Like a mountain stream, clear and transparent as it sprung from the rock, but which becomes foul and repulsive as impurities are mingled with it in its onward course, so with this most extraordinary movement. In many of the central districts of the island the hearts of the thoughtful and good men were gladdened by what they witnessed in changed lives and characters of people for whom they long seemed to have laboured
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in vain; but in too many districts there was much of wild extravagance and almost blasphemous fanaticism. This was especially the case where the Native Baptists had any considerable influence. Among these, the manifestations occasioned by the influence of the myal-men were common. To the present time what are called revival meetings are common among these people.31
Gardner was correct in his observation. He saw practices which were not those of the sedate Congregational church: to him they were repulsive and extravagant, even blasphemous and fanatic. He saw in these behaviors the influence of Kumina.
P. D. Curtain, in his book The Two famaicas, referred to this Great Revival as the parting of the ways between the missionary churches in Jamaica and the present Afro-Christian sects. As he noted, "What appeared to have been a missionary hope, turned out to be a missionary's despair."32
The Great Revival allowed the African religious dynamic—long repressed—to assert itself in a Christian guise and capture what might have been a missionary victory. Since then, Christianity has been a handmaiden to a revitalized African movement known as Revival religion.
Af 10-Christian Syncretism.
At present there are three types of Afro-Christian sects in Jamaica: Pukumina, which is mostly African in its rituals and beliefs; the Revival cult, which is partly African and partly Christian; and Revival Zion, which is mostly Christian and the least African in its rituals and beliefs. I place these Revival cults under the broad heading of Afro-Christian religions because all have adopted some aspects of Christianity in their rites, and prefer to be called Christian. All have general characteristics by which they can be analyzed. For example, the leaders of these cults are known as the "shepherd" or "shepherdess," the leader of a band. A band is a collection of believers from twenty to two hundred members who occupy a yard, or a ritual center where meetings and other rituals are held.

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