SANTA CRUZ, St Elizabeth – Thousands of people celebrated Jamaica’s culture and history at the 268th annual Maroon Festival at the historic Maroon village of Accompong in the Cockpit Country in northern St Elizabeth on Friday.

Guest speaker at a late-afternoon ceremony, Sydney Bartley, Jamaica’s Director of Culture, spiced his message of national, cultural and racial pride with a heady mix of song and dance to mesmerise a huge crowd and cap a day described by Accompong leader, Sidney Peddie, as “the mother of all celebrations”.

As has become customary for the annual celebrations which mark the signing of a peace treaty between Maroon hero Cudjoe and British colonial representatives in 1738, there was also a strong commercial aspect with scores of vendors lining the narrow roads offering food, craft and other wares.

And as usual, hundreds journeyed to the Kindah Tree – an ancient, wide-spanned mango tree under which Cudjoe and other Maroon leaders are said to have cajoled their people into united action – to witness and participate in age-old Maroon rituals.

The Maroons are the descendants of slaves from West Africa freed by the Spaniards when they were ousted by the British in 1655 as well as those who escaped from British slave owners.

The Maroons settled in Jamaica’s mountainous interior from whence they fought sporadic guerilla battles with the British for more than 70 years. In the case of some Maroons, sporadic hostilities with the British lasted for over 130 years.

Accompong apart, Charles Town and Moore Town in Portland and Scott’s Hall in St Mary are the surviving, fully recognised Maroon communities.

Easily the high point of Friday’s activities was the afternoon civic ceremony.

Bartley who is the director of culture in the Ministry of Education, Culture and Youth, used speech, song and dance to remind his audience of their “rich culture and history” and their responsibility to honour the ‘sacrifices’ of their ancestors.

“. When we see the problems we face, too many times we feel that it is impossible to overcome .but what greater problem could any man face than to be in total subjugation, to be visited with the greatest inhumanity (slavery) that man could ever visit on man.

If such a people could come out of it and not abandon their humanity, their dignity, their hope .why should we in 2006 believe . that we are not able to overcome the problems that face us.,” said Bartley to loud applause.

To give up, he suggested was to ‘insult’ the ancestors who had sacrificed much, in some cases their lives, to achieve freedom and political independence

Calling on the award-winning Hartford Culture Group of Westmoreland – which had earlier performed folk song and dances – to back him up, Bartley punctuated his speech by lead-singing and dancing traditional folk songs as well as popular cultural hits by the likes of Bob Marley, Tony Rebel and Buju Banton.

For well over an hour, the scene took on the look of a stage show with the audience joining in song and dance, then hanging on to Bartley’s every word during the breaks from music.

Before that, Peddie told of plans to improve the lot of the Accompong Maroons through a range of projects including the development of a sports complex , the redevelopment of early maroon trails as tourist attractions, upgrade of a trade centre for information and technology, development of a history club and documentation unit, culture club and film unit, and the improvement of educational opportunities.

Help was being sought and in some cases had already been received from local and overseas agencies, he said.

The overall aim he said was to build on the foundation laid by the “blood, sweat and tears” of Maroon ancestors.

Peddie also updated his audience on the progress of the Accompong Foundation, formed over a year ago and is now being incorporated as a non-profit limited liability company.

The foundation which includes representatives from Jamaica government agencies, has 11 different areas of responsibility, such as the coordination of the annual festival as well as a 20-year plan of action for the protection and preservation of maroon heritage.

Professor Verene Shepherd of the Jamaica National Heritage Trust spoke of plans for Jamaica’s participation in Ghana’s Joseph project which in 2007 will commemorate the 200th anniversary of the abolition of the slave trade.

The project is intended to establish links with the descendants of African slaves worldwide, acclaim African excellence and work towards healing “the wounds of slavery and establish a culture of pilgrimage to Africa…”

Shepherd argued that in honour of their ancestors, Jamaicans and others in the African diaspora had a responsibility to agitate for air links to Ghana and West Africa and the abolition of visa requirements for travel to Africa.

Ghana, from whence many Jamaicans descended, was a focal point of this year’s Maroon celebrations – the theme being ‘Celebrating our African Ancestry – the Ghana connection’.

Representatives of other Maroon communities, Colonel Frank Lumsden of Charles Town and Noel Prehay of Scotts Hall called for greater unity and more effort to preserve Maroon culture and traditions.

Lumsden warned of the dangers posed by environmental damage and called for Maroons to rediscover their links with their ancestors.

Claiming that the Cockpit mountains contained flora and fauna to be found nowhere else, Accompong historian and executive council member Melville Currie told his audience that as far as maroons were concerned “we own the Cockpit Country . it is our land.”

His comments came against the backdrop of long-standing claims by the Maroons that land guaranteed to them under the 268 year-old treaty with the British, have been steadily infringed by outsiders.

Visiting Surinamese Maroon, Kenrick Cairo urged Jamaican Maroons to be proud of their heritage and ancestral customs and to do all in their power to preserve it.

myersg@jamaicaobserver.com