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Jamaica



  • How the Cold War Killed Cannabis as We Knew It

    When Henry Kissinger sought to assert American control of Caribbean bauxite ore reserves, he set off a political dirty war that poisoned the Jamaican interior and destroyed prominent strains of cannabis in the name of marijuana interdiction. 

  • Reggae Legend Toots Hibbert Dies At 77

    Toots Hibbert, the co-founder and lead singer of Toots and the Maytals, was one of the most distinctive and important voices of reggae and one of its founding fathers.



  • Jamaica offers apology and reparations to Rastafarians

    The government of Jamaica took responsibility for a single incident that blamed the island’s total Rastafarian population for the death of eight individuals in a farming community 10 miles east of the second city of Montego Bay 54 years ago.



  • Cindy Hahamovitch: The Lessons of Belle Glade

    Cindy Hahamovitch is a history professor at the College of William & Mary and the author of “No Man’s Land: Jamaican Guestworkers in America and the Global History of Deportable Labor .”WILLIAMSBURG, Va. — IN 1965, the secretary of labor, Willard Wirtz, stood under a porch light in Belle Glade, Fla., facing a crowd of guest workers from the Caribbean. Mr. Wirtz could smell sweat and burned sugar cane on their clothes but couldn’t see them, which was how the workers wanted it. Guest workers were often deported and blacklisted for striking or simply questioning whether they had been paid what they were owed.“I would hear their voices — they would ask questions,” Mr. Wirtz recalled, but “they weren’t going to be identified.”