ACCOMPONG TOWN, St Elizabeth

Head of the Accompong Maroons, Colonel Sidney Peddie, says the maroon community will fight tooth and nail to prevent bauxite mining "or any other form of mining"
in their "home", the Cockpit Country.

"We the maroons who are the leading stakeholders where the cockpits are concerned are totally against such a move and will fight it right till death. it would be war, not gunshot war, but war using non-violent means," Peddie told the Observer West this week.

Peddie, who said he believed that one aim of the Government and mining prospectors was to investigate the possibility of "finding oil" in the Cockpits, said mining would seriously damage, if not destroy, the delicate eco-systems in the area as well as maroon heritage. The mountainous Cockpit Country is spread over several thousand acres linking St Elizabeth, Trelawny, St James and Manchester.

The people of Accompong, as well as recognised maroon communities in Portland and St Mary, are the descendants of Africans who intermittently fought British slave holders using Jamaica's mountainous interior as cover after the expulsion of Spanish colonialists by British invaders in the 1650s.
In Accompong, the anniversary of a peace treaty signed with the British in 1738 that allowed the Maroons to settle unmolested in the Cockpit Country is celebrated on January 6 each year.

Under pressure from environmentalists and others, the Jamaican Government recently suspended plans for bauxite prospecting in the Cockpits pending consultations
with all stakeholders. Environmentalists say the Cockpit Country is home to species of flora and fauna to be found nowhere else on earth and is also the last refuge in Jamaica to species that are in danger of extinction. They claim that mining and/or even the building of roads in the secluded area could cause irreparable damage.

The bauxite/alumina industry is a major plank of the Jamaican economy, providing estimated net foreign exchange earnings of US$378.7 million in 2005.

Peddie told the Observer West that though the Maroons formed one of the largest communities in the Cockpits with a historical claim to a large section of the land, the Government had made no contact to discuss the issue.

Instead, he said, the Accompong Maroons were forging an alliance with the South Trelawny Environmental Agency to ensure their case is represented in the strongest possible terms.

"We are setting up a combined, united force to fight this issue," said Peddie who took time out to discuss the bauxite mining issue while speaking of plans for the annual celebrations on Saturday (January 6).

Peddie said the maroons were confident that they and others in the Cockpits could develop a strong economy through sustainable environmental tourism and agriculture, without resorting to mining or other activities that could damage the physical environment.

He noted that a grant in excess of $637,000 had been received from the Environmental Foundation of Jamaica to put in Maroon trails as part of the drive to develop sustainable tourism.

"There are lots of tourists from everywhere in the world who would like to come and go on the original Maroon trails. We know those trails, we have been on them, we have practised them. We are ready to take visitors on those trails so a sustainable income can be had from activities like that.," he said.

Plans are also in place to maximise the benefits in other ways from the rich Maroon heritage and history, Peddie said.

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