Devon Taylor remembers when the Mammee Bay shoreline in St Ann, Jamaica, was filled with children frolicking in the ocean after school, fishers haggling with locals over the price of their daily catch and craft vendors carving souvenirs under almond trees. This was reported by Qazaqyia.kz citing The Guardian.
"I grew up on Mammee Bay," Taylor says. He recalls fetching seawater in bottles for his grandmother when she was no longer able to go to the beach, learning to swim in the shallows, and watching generations of fishers cast their nets. "That beach raised us. It fed us."
Today, Mammee Bay is ground zero in his war against a multibillion-dollar all-inclusive tourism model that the government says is the backbone of the country's economy, but that he and other activists argue is "plantation tourism", designed to benefit rich visitors and the elite and disadvantage most Jamaicans.
In 2019, locals were locked out of the beach by a fence and armed state and private security guards hired by investors building all-inclusive luxury hotels, Taylor says. "In protest, the community ripped down the fence and reoccupied the beach, but because of the restrictions on movement in Covid, you could not be there at certain times, and when they came back they met concrete walls," he says. This escalated into a "violent displacement", says Taylor, the founder of the Jamaica Beach Birthright Environmental Movement (Jabbem). "Gunshots were fired to disperse the protest."
For the people, it was a fight for survival, Taylor adds. "When you cut us off from the sea … you are actually setting us up to starve."
Mammee Bay and Little Dunn's River in the northern parish of St Ann, the Blue Lagoon in the north-east, Bob Marley beach in St Andrews and Flankers/Providence beach in Montego Bay are the subject of five court cases, with the first trial scheduled for later this month. Each beach has its own story, Taylor says, but what they all have in common is communities that are being denied access to spaces that have social, economical and even spiritual significance, because successive governments have failed to address inequities inherited from colonial times when beaches and other land were owned by the British monarch.
Still referred to as "crown land", these were handed over to the Jamaican state when the country gained its independence in 1962, but much of the legal systems managing these lands, including the 1956 Beach Control Act, were retained. The law, which gave the state ownership of the island's foreshore and seabed, meaning anyone wanting to use or develop on the beach needed government permission, is at the core of the all-inclusive tourism model that Taylor views as discriminatory.
"We call it plantation tourism because it has all the characteristics of a plantation – exploitation of a poorly treated labour force, and wealth that either does not stay in our country or is only in the hands of the elite."
In the parish of Portland, campaigners say they were misled and betrayed by local authorities who closed the Blue Lagoon in 2022 with a promise to reopen in 90 days with improved facilities and more opportunities for local guides and vendors. They claim it was later discovered that the intention was to permanently close public access roads to the lagoon to facilitate the building of private villas, which they describe as an infringement on their rights.
The 55-metre-deep (180ft) lagoon, hugged by lush, green vegetation and renowned for its mystical, fluid colour palette that is turquoise, sapphire or azure depending on how the sun hits it, is a treasure that they refuse to surrender. "For generations this beach has sustained all the communities around it," says Colin Beckford, the president of the Blue Lagoon Alliance.
Wilbourn Carr, 73, who has been going to the lagoon to swim since he was 14, says: "This space is not just for recreation, food and vending, it is also where our elderly come for the healing properties of the mineral spring from the mountain that feeds the lagoon."
More than 100 miles away in Flankers, fellow campaigners have filed an injunction to block developers from building in the sea and are fighting for the beach, which has been neglected by the state for decades, to be restored. "Our foreparents shed blood for this land. We shouldn't be forced to fight for what is already ours," says one campaigner, Olando Brown. "Being a Rastafarian, I meditate a lot, and this provides a space for me to do that. Why take away this beautiful gem from the people instead of trying to develop it with us?"
"The fisher folk need this space," says Jabbem's community coordinator for western Jamaica, Monique Christie, adding that it is important for local families who cannot afford expensive holidays. "You can pack some food, freeze some juice, walk to the beach and enjoy some of the natural resources of your country without it being a massive expense for the family."
In Little Dunn's River, Jabbem's direct action continues.