Mark Wignall

Sylvia Brown (not her real name) is a member of the permanent underclass in Jamaica. When she was 14, her uncle attempted to rape her but during the ordeal she used a knife to cut him up.

He went to Kingston Public Hospital, she ended up in reform school, her mother took to the bottle and her father, absent most of the time, chopped up his brother (her uncle) the very day after he was discharged from the medical institution.

Sylvia had twins at 17 but she ran away from the maternity ward the next day, abandoning the infants. She is now 29 and has also taken to the bottle, drinking white rum like normal folk take coffee. She sells illegal numbers in and around her ghetto community, but she also hustles crack cocaine from a stall where she sells beer, stout, bun and cheese and juice.

Having only attended a fifth-rate all-age school, Sylvia is versed more in carnal matters than she can tell you where Westmoreland is. Barely literate and unemployable, Sylvia was probably consigned to the underclass from the day of her birth. Mother - loud, ignorant, violent and unforgiving; father - similarly ignorant and violent but, most of all, absent.

Desmond Philips (not his real name) lives in a ghetto off the Red Hills Road but his house looks like any of those forming the "concrete heaven" dotting the affluent hills of Jamaica.
Desi is doing well acting as one of four fronts for a businessman/druggist who is himself a front for a Negril "big man" who receives his orders directly from Colombia. Desi drives a BMW.

Sylvia gets her crack from boys working for Desi. And Desi's boys have their vendors all along Mannings Hill, Red Hills, Constant Spring and Half Way Tree roads. By the time the profits reach Negril, the huge amounts of cash are siphoned through a few large night clubs and three supermarkets, and lodged in banks and eventually "cleaned up".
As far as Sylvia is concerned, Desi is the "big man".

In recent weeks, much controversy has been created by Peter Phillips' speech on the political/drug don link and the police cracking down on those alleged to be drug kingpins.

If rumour were admissible in a Jamaican court of law, most politicians, big businessmen and even some well-known journalists would be now staring out the wrong side of prison cells. To the extent, however, that those who are rumoured and hence deemed (in the public domain) the Mr Bigs of illegality can afford expensive legal representation; it will mean that drug kingpins in too many instances will enjoy added days of freedom and the trade in illicit drugs will continue.

One of the nexuses which keeps the illegal drug trade not just alive and viable in Jamaica but kicking is the one which creates that all-pervading link between the Mr Bigs and those consigned to the permanent underclass in Jamaica.

The man or woman who occupies space in this sub-cultural netherworld may not quite remember the date of his consignment to the fringes of a bare existence, but he recognises the permanency of his existence there.
Exhortations from mainstream society and loud service-club appeals to the underclass to "change your ways", to get a skill, uplift one's chances of a better future are usually lost on those who don't even bother to listen anyway.

First, to the man or woman whose parents, children, names and future are permanently etched in this underclass, nothing annoys them more than stuffed shirts speaking to them from lavish podiums surrounded by fat, greasy and napping men and women who detest them anyway. The man in the underclass is convinced that the nine-to-five is a con, the "work ethic" a catch phrase, and the appeals to societal order merely an attempt to corral and control his energies.

He knows about the drug runnings, about the political link and all about the big businessmen who used it as a start. He is therefore convinced that his salvation will surely be found in the streets hustling crack, whether those streets are to be found along Spanish Town Road or an alley in the Bronx.

No one knows this more than the drug kingpin, the Mr Big. People like Sylvia are acutely aware that in lean times the politician is nothing more than a once-every-five-year con act and the private sector organisations are interested only in huge bottom lines.

Mr Big is always there for the Sylvias of the mean streets. He provides the lunch money for the children and next day's bellyful. The big companies provide talk, the politicians provide the burps and the area parson is the ideal man to lead the hymn singing when another member of the permanent underclass fails to reach 22 years old.

Too many of us who were blessed to receive higher education and have used it to leap the social barriers have allowed this lifetime of knowledge gathering to blind us to these simple realities.

I am not for one minute endorsing the nexus between the Mr Bigs and those consigned to the permanent underclass.

The hard fact is, as long as the drug kingpins exist, the underclass will have reason to maintain its permanency.
Until the society as a whole decides on what sort of future it wants for its children, until the political will overrules the political instinct and, until the bosses in our national security institutions deal a body blow to the illicit trade in drugs, the subculture which permeates the underclass will continue to show its ugly face.

Let us not make claims to fancy words spoken from a podium when we very well know that we are merely indulging in photo opportunities. It is better to admit that we have no immediate solutions than to suggest grand ones dishonestly when some of us, in the past, used the very same nastiness to propel ourselves to video heaven.

In other words, what does a man do when he has stolen all? Simple. He makes a profession out of castigating the new thieves on the block.

Some of us may not have all the solutions now, but we are certain about the mechanics of the problem. Who knows, we may be the first to make that first small step. The giant step will naturally follow.

mark_2000@yahoo.com

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