$Unique_ID{COW01974} $Pretitle{233J} $Title{Jamaica Chapter 1A. General Information} $Subtitle{} $Author{Rex A. Hudson, Daniel J. Seyler} $Affiliation{HQ, Department of the Army} $Subject{jamaica population percent british jamaica's political rate pnp years jamaican} $Date{1987} $Log{Coat of Arms*0197401.scf Figure 2.*0197402.scf Figure 3.*0197403.scf } Country: Jamaica Book: Caribbean Commonwealth, An Area Study: Jamaica Author: Rex A. Hudson, Daniel J. Seyler Affiliation: HQ, Department of the Army Date: 1987 Chapter 1A. General Information [See Coat of Arms: Jamaican Coat of arms] Before the Spaniards occupied Jamaica in the early sixteenth century, the island was inhabited by the Arawak Indians, who called it Xaymaca, meaning "land of springs" or "land of wood and water." Lying on the trade routes between the Old World and the New World, Jamaica served variously for centuries as a way station for Spanish galleons, a market for slaves and goods from many countries, and a prize for the Spaniards, the British, buccaneers, and entrepreneurs. By far the largest of the English-speaking islands in size and population, independent Jamaica has played a leading role within the Commonwealth Caribbean and has been active in international organizations. Jamaica's story is one of independence that began in the seventeenth century with the Maroons, runaway slaves who resisted the British colonizers by carrying out hit-and-run attacks from the interior. Their 7,000 descendants in the Cockpit Country have symbolized the fervent, sometimes belligerent, love of freedom that is ingrained in the Jamaican people as a result of both their British tutelage and their history of slavery. Independence came quietly, however, without a revolutionary struggle, apparently reflecting the lasting imprint of the British parliamentary legacy on Jamaican society. Despite its people's respect for the rule of law and the British Westminster system of government, Jamaica's first twenty-five years as an independent state were marked by significant increases in criminal violence and political polarization. The extremely violent 1980 electoral campaign and the boycott by the opposition party of the 1983 local elections strained the island's two-party political system. In 1987 Jamaica was still bitterly divided, both politically and socially. This trend seemed to belie the motto beneath the Jamaican coat of arms, reading "Out of Many, One People." Both kinds of violence on the island--political and criminal--have been attributed among other things to Jamaican cultural and societal traits, the socioeconomic structure of Jamaican politics, worsening economic conditions, narcotics trafficking, and inadequate law enforcement. Notwithstanding the periodic outbursts of violence around elections and the one-party legislative situation, the nation's well-institutionalized political system remained generally intact during the first quarter- century of independence. Jamaicans have cherished their inherited parliamentary system of government, whose roots extend back to the seventeenth century. Despite the divergent ideologies and intense antipathy of the two principal political parties, they have recognized their common stake in the stability of political life. Jamaica has no history of coups, assassinations of national leaders, or racial confrontation. The two main parties have alternated in power every ten years, and neither has ever retained power beyond its constitutionally mandated term of office. It was widely expected that a changeover would result from the elections constitutionally required in early 1989. Historical Setting From May 5, 1494, when Christopher Columbus first set foot on what he described as "the fairest isle that eyes have beheld," to its emergence as an independent state on August 6, 1962, Jamaica passed through three main periods. First, it served for nearly 150 years as a Spanish-held way station for galleons en route to and from the Spanish Main (the mainland of Spanish America). Second, from the mid-1600s until the abolition of slavery in 1834, it was a sugar-producing, slave-worked plantation society. Thereafter, it was a largely agricultural, British colony peopled mainly by black peasants and workers. The Spanish adventurer Juan de Esquivel settled the island in 1509, calling it Santiago, the name given it by Columbus. In the period of Spanish dominance from 1509 to 1655, the Spaniards exploited the island's precious metals and eradicated the Arawaks, who succumbed to imported diseases and harsh slavery (see The Pre-European Population, ch. 1). An English naval force sent by Oliver Cromwell attacked the island in 1655, forcing the small group of Spanish defenders to capitulate in May of that year (see The European Settlements, ch. 1). Within 3 years, the English had occupied the island, whose population was only about 3,000 (equally divided between the Spaniards and their slaves), but it took them many years to bring the rebellious slaves under their control. Cromwell increased the island's white population by sending indentured servants and prisoners captured in battles with the Irish and Scots, as well as some common criminals. This practice was continued under Charles II, and the white population was also augmented by immigrants from other Caribbean islands and from the North American mainland, as well as by the English buccaneers. But tropical diseases kept the number of whites well under 10,000 until about 1740. Although the slave population in the 1670s and 1680s never exceeded about 9,500, by the end of the seventeenth century imports of slaves increased the black population to at least five times the number of whites. Thereafter, Jamaica's blacks did not increase significantly in number until well into the eighteenth century, in part because the slave ships coming from the west coast of Africa preferred to unload at the islands of the Eastern Caribbean (see Glossary). At the beginning of the eighteenth century, the number of slaves in Jamaica did not exceed 45,000, but by 1800 it had increased to over 300,000. Beginning with the Stuart monarchy's appointment of a civil governor to Jamaica in 1661, political patterns were established that lasted well into the twentieth century. The second governor, Lord Windsor, brought with him in 1662 a proclamation from the king giving Jamaica's nonslave populace the rights of English citizens, including the right to make their own laws. Although he spent only ten weeks in Jamaica, Lord Windsor laid the foundations of a governing system that was to last for two centuries: a crown-appointed governor, an appointed advisory council that doubled as the upper house of the legislature, and a locally elected--but highly unrepresentative--House of Assembly. England gained formal possession of Jamaica from Spain in 1670 through the Treaty of Madrid. Removing the pressing need for constant defense against Spanish attack, this change served as an incentive to planting. For years, however, the planter-dominated House of Assembly was in continual conflict with the various governors and the Stuart kings; there were also contentious factions within the assembly itself. For much of the 1670s and 1680s, Charles II and James II and the assembly feuded over such matters as the purchase of slaves from ships not run by the royal English trading company. The last Stuart governor, the duke of Albemarle, who was more interested in treasure hunting than in planting, turned the planter oligarchy out of office. After the duke's death in 1688, the planters, who had fled Jamaica to London, succeeded in lobbying James II to order a return to the pre-Albemarle political arrangement, and the revolution that brought William III and Mary to the throne in 1689 confirmed the local control of Jamaican planters belonging to the assembly. This settlement also improved the supply of slaves and resulted in greater protection, including military support, for the planters against foreign competition. This was of particular importance during the Anglo- French War in the Caribbean from 1689 to 1713. Early in the eighteenth century, the Maroons took a heavy toll on the British troops and local militia sent against them in the interior; their rebellion ended, however, with the signing of peace agreements in 1738. The sugar monoculture and slave-worked plantation society characterized Jamaica throughout the eighteenth century. After the abolition of the slave trade in 1808 and slavery itself in 1834, however, the island's sugar- and slave-based economy faltered (see The Post-Emancipation Societies, ch. 1). The period after 1834 initially was marked by conflict between the plantocracy and elements in the Colonial Office over the extent to which individual freedom should be coupled with political participation for blacks. In 1840 the House of Assembly changed the voting qualifications in a way that enabled a majority of blacks and people of mixed race to vote. But neither the change in the political system nor the abolition of slavery changed the planters' chief interest, which lay in the continued profitability of their estates, and they continued to dominate the elitist assembly. Nevertheless, at the end of the eighteenth century and in the early years of the nineteenth century, the crown began to allow some Jamaicans--mostly local merchants, urban professionals, and artisans--into the appointed council. In 1846 Jamaican planters, still reeling from the loss of slave labor, suffered a crushing blow when Britain passed the Sugar Duties Act, eliminating Jamaica's traditionally favored status as its primary supplier of sugar. The House of Assembly stumbled from one crisis to another until the collapse of the sugar trade, when racial and religious tensions came to a head during the Morant Bay Rebellion of 1865 (see Political Traditions, ch. 1). Although suppressed ruthlessly, the severe rioting so alarmed the planters that the two-centuries-old House of Assembly voted to abolish itself and asked for the establishment of direct British rule. In 1866 the new crown colony government (see Glossary) consisted of the Legislative Council, which replaced the House of Assembly, and the executive Privy Council, but the Colonial Office exercised effective power through a presiding British governor. The Legislative Council included a few handpicked prominent Jamaicans for the sake of appearance only. In the late nineteenth century, Britain modified crown colony rule on the island and, after 1884, gradually reintroduced representation and limited self-rule. Britain also reformed the colony's legal structure along the lines of English common law and county courts and established a constabulary force. The smooth working of the crown colony system was dependent on a good understanding and an identity of interests between the governing officials, who were British, and most of the nonofficial, appointed members of the Legislative Council, who were Jamaicans. The elected members of this body were in a permanent minority and without any influence or administrative power. The unstated alliance--based on shared color, attitudes, and interest--between the British officials and the Jamaican upper class was reinforced in London, where the West India Committee lobbied for Jamaican interests. Jamaica's white or near-white propertied class continued to hold the dominant position in every respect; the vast majority of the black population remained poor and unenfranchised. Marcus Mosiah Garvey, a black activist and labor leader, founded one of Jamaica's first political parties in 1929 and a workers association in the early 1930s. The so-called Rastafarian Brethren (commonly called the Rastafarians--see Glossary), which in 1935 hailed Ethiopia's emperor Haile Selassie as God incarnate, owed its origins to the cultivation of self-confidence and black pride promoted by Garvey and his black nationalist movement. Garvey, a controversial figure, had been the target of a four-year investigation by the United States government. He was convicted of mail fraud in 1923 and had served most of a five-year term in an Atlanta penitentiary when he was deported to Jamaica in 1927. Garvey left the colony in 1935 to live in Britain, where he died heavily in debt five years later. He was proclaimed Jamaica's first national hero in the 1960s after Edward Seaga, then a government minister, arranged the return of his remains to Jamaica. In 1987 Jamaica petitioned the United States Congress to pardon Garvey on the basis that the federal charges brought against him were unsubstantiated and unjust. Dissatisfaction with crown colony rule reached its peak during the period between the world wars, as demands for responsible self- government grew. A growing mulatto middle class with increasingly impressive education, ability, and even property identified with British social and political standards. Nevertheless, Jamaicans, including whites, began to feel offended by a perceived British indifference to their economic difficulties and political opinions. They also resented British monopoly of high positions and the many limitations on their own mobility in the colonial civil service, especially if they were of mixed race. The rise of nationalism, as distinct from island identification or desire for self-determination, is generally dated to the 1938 labor riots that affected both Jamaica and the islands of the Eastern Caribbean. William Alexander Bustamante, a moneylender in the capital city of Kingston who had formed the Jamaica Trade Workers and Tradesmen Union (JTWTU) three years earlier, captured the imagination of the black masses with his messianic personality, even though he himself was light-skinned, affluent, and aristocratic (see Growth and Structure of the Economy, this ch.). Bustamante emerged from the 1938 strikes and other disturbances as a populist leader and the principal spokesperson for the militant urban working class, and in that year, using the JTWTU as a stepping stone, he founded the Bustamante Industrial Trade Unions (BITU), which inaugurated Jamaica's workers movement. A distant cousin of Bustamante's, Norman W. Manley, concluded as a result of the 1938 riots that the real basis for national unity in Jamaica lay in the masses. Unlike the union-oriented Bustamante, however, Manley was more interested in access to control over state power and political rights for the masses. On September 18, 1938, he inaugurated the People's National Party (PNP), which had begun as a nationalist movement supported by the mixed-race middle class and the liberal sector of the business community with leaders who were highly educated members of the upper-middle class. The 1938 riots spurred the PNP to unionize labor, although it would be several years before the PNP formed major labor unions. The party concentrated its earliest efforts on establishing a network both in urban areas and in banana-growing rural parishes, later working on building support among small farmers and in areas of bauxite mining. The PNP adopted a socialist ideology in 1940 and later joined the Socialist International, allying itself formally with the social democratic parties of Western Europe. Guided by socialist principles, Manley was nonetheless not a doctrinaire socialist. The ideology of the PNP during the 1940s was similar to that of the British Labour Party concerning state control of the factors of production, equality of opportunity, and a welfare state. A left-wing element in the PNP, however, held more orthodox Marxist views and worked for the internationalization of the trade union movement through the Caribbean Labour Congress, inaugurated in 1945. In those formative years of Jamaican political and union activity, relations between Manley and Bustamante were cordial. Manley defended Bustamante in court against charges brought by the British for his labor activism in the 1938 riots and looked after the BITU during Bustamante's imprisonment. Bustamante had political ambitions of his own, however. In 1942, while still incarcerated, he founded a political party to rival the PNP, called the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP). The new party, whose leaders were of a lower class than those of the PNP, was supported by conservative businessmen and 60,000 dues-paying BITU members, who encompassed dock and sugar plantation workers and other unskilled urban laborers. On his release in 1943, Bustamante began building up the JLP. Meanwhile, several PNP leaders organized the leftist-oriented Trade Union Congress (TUC). Thus, from an early stage in modern Jamaica, unionized labor was an integral part of organized political life. For the next quarter-century, Bustamante and Manley competed for center stage in Jamaican political affairs, the former espousing the cause of the "barefoot man" and the latter the cause of "democratic socialism," a loosely defined political and economic theory aimed at achieving a classless system of government. Jamaica's two founding fathers projected quite different popular images. Bustamante, lacking even a high school diploma, was an autocratic, charismatic, and highly adept politician; Manley was an athletic, Oxford-trained lawyer, Rhodes scholar, humanist, and liberal intellectual. Although considerably more reserved than Bustamante, Manley was well liked and widely respected. He was also a visionary nationalist who became the driving force behind the crown colony's quest for independence. Following the 1935-38 disturbances in the West Indies, London sent the Moyne Commission to study conditions in the British Caribbean territories. Its findings led in the early 1940s to better wages and a new constitution in Jamaica (see Labor Organizations, ch. 1). Issued on November 20, 1944, the new constitution modified the crown colony system and inaugurated limited self-government based on the Westminster model and universal adult suffrage. It also embodied the island's principles of ministerial responsibility and the rule of law. Elections were held in 1944, but only 31 percent of the population participated. The JLP--helped by its promises to create jobs, its practice of dispensing public funds in pro-JLP parishes, and the PNP's relatively radical platform--won an 18- percent majority of the votes over the PNP, as well as 22 seats in the newly created 32-member House of Representatives. Five percent of the vote went to the PNP and another 5 percent went to short-lived parties. In 1945 Bustamante took office as Jamaica's first premier (the preindependence title for head of government). Under the new constitution, the British governor--assisted by the six- member Privy Council and ten-member Executive Council--remained responsible solely to the crown. The Legislative Council became the upper house, or Senate, of the bicameral Parliament. Members of the House of Representatives were elected by adult suffrage from single-member electoral districts called constituencies. Despite these changes, ultimate power remained concentrated in the hands of the governor and other high officials. After World War II, Jamaica began a relatively long transition to full political independence. Jamaicans preferred British culture over United States culture, but they had a love-hate relationship with the British and resented British domination, racism, and the dictatorial Colonial Office. Britain gradually granted the colony more self-government under periodic constitutional changes. Jamaica's political patterns and governmental structure were shaped during two decades of what was called "constitutional decolonization," the period between 1944 and independence in 1962. Having seen how little popular appeal the PNP's 1944 campaign position had, the party shifted toward the center in 1949 and remained there until 1974. The PNP actually won a 0.8-percent majority of the votes over the JLP in the 1949 election, although the JLP won a majority of the seats in the House of Representatives. In the 1950s, the PNP and JLP became increasingly similar in their sociological composition and ideological outlook. During the cold war years, socialism became an explosive domestic issue. The JLP exploited it among property owners and churchgoers, attracting more middle-class support. As a result, PNP leaders diluted their socialist rhetoric, and in 1952 the PNP moderated its image by expelling four prominent leftists who had controlled the TUC. The PNP then formed the more conservative National Workers Union (NWU). Henceforth, PNP socialism meant little more than national planning within a framework of private property and foreign capital. The PNP retained, however, a basic commitment to socialist precepts, such as public control of resources and a more equitable distribution of income. Manley's PNP came to power for the first time after winning the 1955 elections with an 11-percent majority over the JLP and 50.5 percent of the popular vote. Amendments to the constitution that took effect in May 1953 reconstituted the Executive Council and provided for eight ministers to be selected from among members of the House of Representatives. The first ministries were subsequently established. These amendments also enlarged the limited powers of the House of Representatives and made elected members of the governor's Executive Council responsible to the Jamaican Parliament. Manley, elected chief minister (the new title for premier), accelerated the process of decolonization during his able stewardship beginning in January 1955. Further progress toward self-government was achieved under constitutional amendments in 1955 and 1956, and a cabinet was established on November 11, 1957. Assured by British declarations that independence would be granted to a collective West Indian state rather than to individual colonies, Manley supported Jamaica's joining nine other British territories in the West Indies Federation, established on January 3, 1958 (see The West Indies Federation, 1958-62, ch. 1). Manley became Jamaica's premier after the PNP again won a decisive victory in the general election in July 1959, securing thirty of forty-five seats in the House of Representatives. Membership in the federation remained an issue in Jamaican politics. Bustamante, reversing his previously supportive position on the issue, warned of the financial implications of membership--Jamaica was responsible for a disproportionately large share (43 percent) of the federation's financing--and an inequity in Jamaica's proportional representation in the federation's House of Assembly. Manley's PNP favored staying in the federation, but he agreed to hold a referendum in September 1961 to decide on the issue. When 54 percent of the electorate voted to withdraw, Jamaica left the federation, which dissolved in 1962 after Trinidad and Tobago also pulled out. Manley believed that the rejection of his profederation policy in the 1961 referendum called for a renewed mandate from the electorate, but the JLP won the election of early 1962 by a fraction. Bustamante assumed the premiership that April, and Manley spent his remaining few years in politics as leader of the opposition. Jamaica received its independence on August 6, 1962. The new nation retained, however, its membership in the Commonwealth of Nations and adopted a Westminster-style parliamentary system (see Appendix B). Bustamante, at age seventy-eight, became the new nation's first prime minister and also assumed responsibility for the new ministries of defense and foreign affairs. Jamaicans welcomed independence, but they had already spent their nationalistic passion over the emotional issue of federation. The general feeling was that independence would not make much difference in their lives. Geography [See Figure 2.: Jamaica, Topography and drainage.] Jamaica lies 145 kilometers south of Cuba and 160 kilometers west of Haiti (see fig. 1). Its capital city, Kingston, is about 920 kilometers southeast of Miami. At its greatest extent, Jamaica is 235 kilometers long, and it varies between 35 and 82 kilometers wide. Having an area of 10,911 square kilometers, Jamaica is the largest island of the Commonwealth Caribbean and the third largest of the Greater Antilles, after Cuba and Hispaniola (the island containing Haiti and the Dominican Republic). Jamaican territory also includes a number of cays (see Glossary). A cluster of cays is above, with the Pedro Banks, an area of shallow seas lying southwest of Jamaica that extend generally east to west for over 160 kilometers. To the southeast of Jamaica lie the Morant Cays, fifty-one kilometers from Morant Point, the easternmost point of Jamaica. Jamaica and the other islands of the Antilles evolved from an arc of ancient volcanoes that rose from the sea billions of years ago. During periods of submersion, thick layers of limestone were laid down over the old igneous and metamorphic rock. In many places, the limestone is thousands of feet thick. The country can be divided into three landform regions: the eastern mountains, the central valleys and plateaus, and the coastal plains (see fig. 2). The highest area is that of the Blue Mountains. These eastern mountains are formed by a central ridge of metamorphic rock running northwest to southeast from which many long spurs jut to the north and south. For a distance of over 3 kilometers, the crest of the ridge exceeds 1,800 meters. The highest point is Blue Mountain Peak at 2,256 meters. The Blue Mountains rise to these elevations from the coastal plain in the space of about sixteen kilometers, thus producing one of the steepest general gradients in the world. In this part of the country, the old metamorphic rock reveals itself through the surrounding limestone. To the north of the Blue Mountains lies the strongly tilted limestone plateau forming the John Crow Mountains. This range rises to elevations of over 1,000 meters. To the west, in the central part of the country, are two high rolling plateaus: the Dry Harbour Mountains to the north and the Manchester Plateau to the south. Between the two, the land is rugged, and the limestone layers are broken by the older rocks. Streams that rise in the region flow outward and sink soon after reaching the limestone layers. The limestone plateau covers two-thirds of the country, so that karst formations dominate the island. Karst is formed by the erosion of limestone in solution. Sinkholes, caves and caverns, disappearing streams, hummocky hills, and terra rosa (residual red) soils in the valleys are distinguishing features of a karst landscape; all these are present in Jamaica. To the west of the mountains is the rugged terrain of the Cockpit Country, one of the world's most dramatic examples of karst topography. The Cockpit Country is pockmarked with steep-sided hollows as much as fifteen meters deep and separated by conical hills and ridges. This area of the country was once known as the "Land of Look Behind," because Spanish horsemen venturing into this region of hostile runaway slaves were said to have ridden two to a mount, one rider facing to the rear to keep a precautionary watch. Where the ridges between sinkholes in the plateau area have dissolved, flat-bottomed basins or valleys have been formed that are filled with terra rosa soils, some of the most productive on the island. The largest basin is the Vale of Clarendon, eighty kilometers long and thirty-two kilometers wide. Queen of Spain's Valley, Nassau Valley, and Cave Valley were formed by the same process. The coastline of Jamaica is one of many contrasts. The northeastern shore is severely eroded by the ocean. There are many small inlets in the rugged coastline but no coastal plain of any extent. A narrow strip of plains along the northern coast offers calm seas and white sand beaches. Behind the beaches is a flat raised plain of uplifted coral reef. The southern coast has small stretches of plains lined by black sand beaches. These are backed by cliffs of limestone where the plateaus end. In many stretches with no coastal plain, the cliffs drop 300 meters straight to the sea. In the southwest, broad plains stretch inland for a number of kilometers. The Black River courses seventy kilometers through the largest of these plains. The swamplands of the Great Morass and the Upper Morass fill much of the plains. The western coastline contains the island's finest beaches, stretching for more than six kilometers along a sandbar at Negril. Two kinds of climate are found on Jamaica. An upland tropical climate prevails on the windward side of the mountains, whereas a semiarid climate predominates on the leeward side. Warm trade winds from the east and northeast bring rainfall throughout the year. The rainfall is heaviest from May to October and peaks in those two months. The average rainfall is 196 centimeters per year. Rainfall is greatest in the mountain areas facing the north and east. Where the higher elevations of the John Crow Mountains and the Blue Mountains catch the rain from the moisture-laden winds, rainfall exceeds 508 centimeters per year. Since the southwestern half of the island lies in the rain shadow of the mountains, it has a semiarid climate and receives less than 762 millimeters of rainfall annually. Temperatures are fairly constant throughout the year, averaging 25C to 30C in the lowlands and 15C to 22C at higher elevations. Temperatures may dip to below 10C at the peaks of the Blue Mountains. The island receives, in addition to the northeast trade winds, refreshing onshore breezes during the day and cooling offshore breezes at night. These are known on Jamaica as the "Doctor Breeze" and the "Undertaker's Breeze," respectively. Jamaica lies at the edge of the hurricane track; as a result, the island usually experiences only indirect storm damage. Hurricanes occasionally score direct hits on the islands, however. In 1980, for example, Hurricane Allen destroyed nearly all of Jamaica's banana crop. Although most of Jamaica's native vegetation has been stripped in order to make room for cultivation, some areas have been left virtually undisturbed since the time of Columbus. Indigenous vegetation can be found along the northern coast from Rio Bueno to Discovery Bay, in the highest parts of the Blue Mountains, and in the heart of the Cockpit Country. Population [See Figure 3.: Jamaica, administrative districts, 1987] In 1986 Jamaica had an estimated population of 2,304,000 persons, making it the most populous of the English-speaking Caribbean islands. The most recent census, in June 1982, recorded a total population of 2,095,858 persons, an increase of 13.4 percent over the 1970 census count of 1,848,508. Between 1970 and 1982, Jamaica's average annual rate of population growth was 1.1 percent, a relatively low rate in comparison with other developing countries. In 1986 the rate of population growth had dropped further, to 0.9 percent. Jamaica's low rate of population growth reflected gradually declining birth rates and high levels of emigration, the country's most striking demographic features. Nevertheless, significant reductions in mortality rates, resulting from better health care and sanitation, also affected the overall population growth rate, tending to raise it. Jamaica's annual rate of population growth has been relatively stable since the end of World War I. Between 1881 and 1921, emigration and disease caused the rate of population growth to fall to very low levels. Some 156,000 Jamaicans emigrated during this period, 35 percent of the country's natural increase. Between 1911 and 1921, the rate of growth was only 0.4 percent per year as workers left Jamaica for Costa Rican banana plantations, Cuban sugar estates, and the Panama Canal. The burgeoning industries of the United States and Canada also attracted many Jamaicans during this period. Thousands of Jamaicans, however, returned home when sugar prices fell because of the Great Depression. As a result, from 1921 to 1954 the rate of population growth rose, averaging 1.7 percent per year. Increased emigration after World War II reduced the rate of population growth once again. Between 1954 and 1970, the rate of growth was only 1.4 percent because large numbers of Jamaicans moved to Britain, the United States, Canada, and elsewhere. This exodus continued unabated during the 1970s and early 1980s, when 276,200 men and women, over 10 percent of the total population, departed. A significant percentage of the emigrants were skilled workers, technicians, doctors, and managers, thus creating a huge drain on the human resources of Jamaican society. The world economic recession of the early 1980s reduced opportunities for migration as a number of countries tightened their immigration laws. Nevertheless, by the mid-1980s, it was estimated that more than half of all Jamaicans lived outside the island. In July 1983 the Jamaican Parliament adopted the National Population Policy, which was developed by the Population Policy Task Force under the auspices of the Ministry of Health. The objectives of the policy were to achieve a population not in excess of 3 million by the year 2000; to promote health and increase the life expectancy of the population; to create employment opportunities and reduce unemployment, underemployment, and emigration; to provide access to family-planning services for all Jamaicans and reduce the average number of children per family from four to two, thus achieving replacement fertility levels; to promote balanced rural, urban, and regional development to achieve an optimal spatial distribution of population; and to improve the satisfying of basic needs and the quality of life through improved housing, nutrition, education, and environmental conditions. Family planning services have been visible, accessible, and active in Jamaica since the 1960s. The success of family planning reduced the country's birth rate by about 35 percent from 1965 to 1985. The Planning Institute of Jamaica, a government agency, estimated that the crude birth rate (the annual number of births per 1,000 population) was 24.3 per 1,000 in 1985. The fertility rate (the average number of children born to a woman during her lifetime) decreased from 5.5 in 1970 to 3.5 by 1983. The government perceived its population goal of 3 million or less by the year 2000 as feasible only if the yearly population growth rate did not exceed 1.6 percent and the replacement fertility rate were two children per woman. The crude death rate (the annual number of deaths per 1,000 population) was quite low at 6 per 1,000 in 1985. By comparison, the United States had a crude death rate of 9 per 1,000 in the same year. Between 1965 and 1985, Jamaica's crude death rate declined by 44 percent, the result of significant levels of investment in health care delivery systems and improved sanitation facilities during the 1970s. In 1985 life expectancy at birth (the average number of years a newborn infant can expect to live under current mortality levels) was very high at seventy-three years. The infant mortality rate (the annual number of deaths of children younger than 1 year old per 1,000 births) was 20 per 1,000 births during the mid-1980s, and this rate was consistent with the average rate of 23 per 1,000 found in other English-speaking Caribbean islands. Jamaica, like most of the other Commonwealth Caribbean islands, was densely populated. In 1986 its estimated population density was 209.6 persons per square kilometer. In terms of arable land, the population totaled nearly 1,000 persons per square kilometer, making it one of the most densely populated countries in the world. Since the 1960s, the population has become increasingly urban. In 1960 only 34 percent of the population lived in urban areas, but in the late 1980s more than 50 percent of the population was urban. Kingston and the heavily urbanized parishes of St. Andrew, St. James, and St. Catherine accounted for 48.3 percent of Jamaica's total population in 1983 (see fig. 3). Jamaica is a country of young people. Roughly 40 percent of the population was under 15 years of age in the late 1980s. The fastest growing age-groups were those ten to thirty-four years of age and those seventy and over. Slower growth for middle-aged groups was generally explained by their greater tendency to emigrate. The 1982 census revealed that the group up to nine years of age was the only one not becoming larger; this suggested both that the country's population was aging and that family planning was working. The 1982 census also revealed that 51 percent of the population was female. The country's national motto points to the various ethnic groups present on the island. Although a predominantly black nation of West African descent, Jamaica had significant minorities of East Indians, Chinese, Europeans, Syrians, Lebanese, and numerous mixtures thereof in the late 1980s. Approximately 95 percent of all Jamaicans were of partial or total African descent, including 76 percent black, 15 percent mulatto, and 4 percent either black-East Indian or black-Chinese. Nearly 2 percent of the population was East Indian, close to 1 percent Chinese, and the remainder white, of European or Middle Eastern descent. Although racial differences were not as important as class differences, the lightness of one's skin was still an issue, especially since minorities were generally members of the upper classes. About 75 percent of Jamaica's population was Protestant, and 8 percent was Roman Catholic; various Muslim, Jewish, and spiritualist groups were also present. Rastafarians constituted roughly 5 percent of the population. Religious activities were popular, and religion played a fairly important role in society. The most striking religious trend occurring in Jamaica in the 1980s, as it was throughout the Americas, was the increasing number of charismatic or evangelical Christian groups.