Orville Taylor | Marooned or Jamaican

Good sense prevailed and the good ‘sensi’ remained as the Jamaica Constabulary Force (JCF) officers backed off, withdrew, and allowed Colonel of the Accompong Maroons Richard Currie to claim a public victory and widen his stage presence. There were guns.

This was not the first encounter of its kind in recent times. Last September, a police party was repelled by a very vocal University of the West Indies graduate, one of my all-time favourite students, Danyel Borza, who challenged the legitimacy of the cops. In the background, a number of voices were shouting that they were willing to engage the cops in battle.

Let me just settle that folly. Never mind the title, the head of the Maroons is not a soldier, and they are not trained combatants. Therefore, inasmuch as the show of strength was a good symbolic stance, Currie and crew are not kin with LA Lewis. Therefore, they know that they have zero chance of winning any kind of war against the JCF, who will have the full backing of the military. Still, like Alexander Bustamante’s chest-baring standoff against the Jamaican police during the 1938 labour uprising, he stands to win a public relations battle ... or maybe not.

It is a dangerous game of ‘chicken,’ ‘sey feh’, or ‘hot patty’, and if it were a different set of cops and the armed Maroons had attempted to point in their direction, the outcome wouldn’t be pretty.

Still, Currie and his supporters are asserting that Accompong and other Maroon communities are autonomous, self-governing states. They are sovereign nations, perhaps like Lesotho, landlocked by South Africa, the Vatican in Italy, and Monaco in France. That is a big claim, and the source of the authority is a treaty between the British colonial government and their ancestors, led then by Cudjoe.

DILEMMA

Yet there is a dilemma. There is an implicit assertion that the Jamaican courts and justice system have no jurisdiction over the nation of the Maroons. Then if that be so, where would the treaty be validated and enforced? Indeed, accepting that the courts of Jamaica have the power to enforce the agreement could very well mean a capitulation of their claim of sovereignty.

But let us assume that the Maroons do recognise the Jamaican courts and thus wish the treaty to be treated as a contract enforceable therein.

What is clear is that the Maroon land is private property and cannot be extricated frivolously. However, is it any different from a piece of real estate or domicile for which a Jamaican citizen either has a title or common law residential rights?

Having looked at both the Windward Maroon Treaty and that which Cudjoe signed, I see nothing that even remotely suggests that Maroons are not Jamaican or independent. Indeed, both documents make it clear that in case of invasion or local crises, they “submit to the orders of the Commander in Chief on that occasion”. Indeed, “Captain Cudjoe, and his successors, shall wait on his Excellency, or the Commander in Chief for the time being, every year, if thereunto required”. Similarly, “Captain Quao, and all his people, shall be in subjection to his Excellency the governor for the time being … ”.

It might be argued that the clause, which requires permission from the Jamaican Government in order to trade outside of the communities, is an indication of their being ‘foreign’ and thus subject to ‘customs’. However, the regulation of trade among its subjects was one of the hallmarks of the British version of colonialism.

Pardon my naivete, but in an agreement or contract, which is essentially what the document is, are not ALL clauses valid? Thus, if one repudiates one element, such as the requirement to return escaped Africans or application to the government to trade, the residential white men (or their proxies), why would one think that the rest of the contract is valid and enforceable in law?

NOT SOVEREIGN STATE

Two years ago, one of the best legal minds in the Commonwealth, Dr Lloyd Barnett, a man who himself rejects the Queen’s titles, opined that the 1738 treaties clearly show that the Maroons were not a sovereign state and were in fact subject to Jamaican law. Moreover, the treaty has been amended at least half a dozen time by the Jamaican legislature, thus debunking any notion of sovereignty.

In the 1956 case R v Man O Rowe, it was held: “There is today, no difference or distinction whatever in the rights and obligations as defined by the law of this Island between the persons residing in the former Maroon settlements and those of any other British subject in Jamaica.” This is settled law. More recently, senior counsel, now Justice David Batts, opined, “A Jamaican court is unlikely to recognise any special right to the land for the Maroon.”

Be that as it may, like Rastafari, Maroons are custodians of our heritage and thus must be treated specially from a socio-anthropological perspective.

We need dialogue, however, to bring this matter to a settlement as well as the pungent elements of the treaty, which continue to be a divisive issue among us.

- Dr Orville Taylor is head of the Department of Sociology at The University of the West Indies, a radio talk-show host, and author of ‘Broken Promises, Hearts and Pockets’. Email feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com and tayloronblackline@hotmail.com.