Headless state, or state of headlessness?

Orville Taylor, Guest Columnist

They did it for sport. Chop off the head of your captives in one blow and you win the game. Of course, that is after you have brutalised them and taken away their humanity. If you did not decapitate him in one fell swoop, you had to try again with another victim or you lose.

If you know Jamaican history, you would realise that this was the action of Christopher Columbus' Spaniard conquistadores here in Jamaica and the victims were the Tainos, who we mistakenly called Arawaks for hundreds of years.

It wasn't so gruesome because it was removed from our eyes by an obscure history book or boring history teacher. Nor was it such a big deal when David, victoriously, cut off Goliath's head in 1 Samuel 17:51. However, when the aristocrats were guillotined during the French Revolution, we were appalled, and tales of head-hunting tribesmen in Melanesia brought back by British explorers spurred wild stories. Doubtless, we could not conceive of black tribal peoples who lived outside Africa, so it was more fodder for the legends of people who depicted us as dark-skinned savages who took each other's heads.

However, by the end of World War II, we had accepted that the removal of heads was barbaric, so we winced at the Japanese slicing off of heads of allied prisoners of war. Therefore, when the genocide in Rwanda claimed many lives and corpses were mutilated and hundreds of beheaded cadavers showed up in 1994, those of us who pay attention to happenings outside this hemisphere were revolted. It was blacks killing blacks. Then blood diamond and undeclared civil wars in Sierra Leone and Sudan, respectively, led to more stories of this savagery.

Not new to jamaica

Nevertheless, we are never accustomed to it. We forgot, however, that it did occur here in 2004 when the body of a relative of an alleged gang leader was stolen from a mortuary and 'killed' again guillotine style, and the head paraded in west Kingston. That was to send a message.

The message by modern practitioners of this atrocity is simple. "Be scared, be very afraid. We have no respect for anything ... nothing is sacred." We live in Jamaica, a place which is a deputy USA, and a locale where we are completely in touch with the rest of the world. The Taliban and al-Qaida used traditional-style executions, and in a YouTube-connected virtual universe we viewed them almost as fast as they were posted. And the Mexicans learned too.

In 2006, President Felipe Calderon started his own war on drugs and, with the assistance of Uncle Sam, began to root out corruption. Dozens of police officers, public officials and 'decent' citizens were arrested and charged and a few went the way of extradition across the border. Many erstwhile untouchables, with links to the government, are now guests in President Obama's correctional hotels. Indeed, a number of drug dealers and gang lords and foot soldiers lost their lives as they tackled agents of the state, oftentimes to prevent the capture of an accused kingpin. Hmmm!

Mexico became a sort of military-policed state, as the regular civilian boys in blue were deactivated. Gringo agents from the Drug Enforcement Administration were deployed, and other types of paramilitary aid poured in. Truthfully, what happened in west Kingston in 2010 strongly reminds me of what began in Mexico in 2006. Now you see the comparison?

Murders multiplying

Far from getting the desired effect, the removal of the gang heads dramatically increased the level of crime, and homicides multiplied faster than cockroaches in a pit toilet. By 2011, more than 30,000 gang members were killed in a relentless war for ascendancy.

The sad fact is that the drug dons were keeping order in a state where the government either lacked the political will or capacity to do so. They kept one order and the drug clansmen were more interested in making money than killing. Each gang, even rivals, knew its place in the hierarchy.

Any of this sounds familiar? Over the past few decades as government played politics and corruption, the underclasses were left to fend for themselves, and they created ghettos, or barrios, with their own social order. It's not new: Oscar Lewis wrote about the 'culture of poverty' in the 1960s by studying Mexico. I, Ivy bwoy, drew parallels between Mexico and us from as far back as 1983, and I published on the topic in 2002.

Back to Mexico. Initially thought to be copycats of al-Qaida, the 'druggists' started paying more homage to a minor dark saint from their syncretic religion, which is a mixture of Roman Catholicism and their indigenous Mayan and Aztec beliefs. Her name is Santa Muerte, or Saint Death. She looks like the Grim Reaper and can protect those who worship her. My original drawing of her accompanies this article. It's not devil worship because the criminals might be ungodly but are not godless. They pray to her, make sacrifices and treat her like devout Catholics treat Mary, the mother of Christ. However, she also answers 'bad prayers' and kills enemies. Her followers have delusions of invincibility and even believe that they will be reincarnated. How, therefore, do you kill people who do not fear death?

Frightening warnings

However, when you cut off someone's head, the spirit and soul go with it, and there is no return. Whatever might be the depth of feelings regarding Santa Muerte, beheadings are frightening warnings. They are designed to make the observer's bowels loosen, and if you survive, bow to the perpetrators.

I am not sure if it is simply a copying of the Mexicans, but what is true is that the Jamaican authorities might have clipped the wings of dons and taken out some of the major players in the country. In their wake, there has been a spurt of wakes and nine-nights because the underworld has been thrown into a state of anarchy. Furthermore, they have a set of bleached-face, black-skinned boys ready to unwittingly serve the saint they resemble.

In a country where only 25 per cent of murders lead to an arrest, and an even more ridiculous rate of conviction, who is to stop the murderers from plying their trade? At least when the dons were around, the cops knew exactly who to hold accountable. And, of course, when the politicians had more direct control over them, they were capable of ordering the homicides as the analytically challenged Ernest Smith suggested at a Jamaica Labour Party rally. They do not have this now.

Like Mexico, the seeds of death have borne fruit, and the solution is not on the horizon.

Orville Taylor, PhD, is a sociologist, lecturer and talk-show host. Email feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com and tayloronblackline@hotmail.com.