Patricia Green | Maroons and the land struggle

“… A treaty is an agreement between states. Another word for treaty is convention. To be binding, a treaty must be in writing, made between states, intended to be binding, and governed by international law …” elaborates David Batts in ‘The Law and Constitution for Every Jamaican’. In Jamaica, there are two treaties of significance that pertain to land rights,: the 1670 Treaty of Madrid and the 1739 Maroon Treaty. I use these to advance the discussion ‘Change tenure over Crown lands’ in The Gleaner of September 25 as I ask myself, who were the Maroons of Jamaica and precisely what is their land struggle about?

The history of Jamaica and its laws has been written from the perspective of the English who captured the island in 1655. To understand the significance of those two treaties, the history must go beyond 1655 and back to the period of Taino lands. It then would anchor the initial “Maroons” [Cimaroones] as displaced Tainos fighting Spain to retrieve their lands, likewise later joined by displaced Spaniards fighting Great Britain to regain their possessions.

My research on the cultural landscape of Spanish Jamaica builds on the work of two primary scholars, Jamaican Hon. Sylvia Wynter-Carew O. J., during the 1980s, and North American Irene Aloha Wright during the 1920s and ‘30s. I followed their footsteps into the Archivo de Indias in Seville, Spain. Jamaica was a Spanish colony for 161 years after Columbus landed in 1494. Wright reports that there were two settlements: Oristan and Seville. My analyses show the Spanish encountering two Taino kingdoms, each with a ruling king called a cacique. Their Spanish names for these kingdoms were territorially what they called Melilla in the north, in which they named that Taino capital city and adopted it as their own, calling it Seville (ca. 1509). Importantly, historic Spanish documents omit any reference to ‘New Seville’. Oristan was the Spanish name given to the other Taino kingdom in the south with a capital town which the Spanish named “La Villa” and which they used as their principal town called Santiago de la Vega (ca. 1509), now named Spanish Town. Thus, Taino lands became Spanish Crown lands.

ENCOMIENDA

Wynter-Carew elaborates on a neo-serfdom system called Encomienda whereby caciques provided labour and provisions to the Spanish colonists. For example, the 1525 Seville, Jamaica church project was being constructed by skilled Taino stone masons and craftsmen led by Cacique Juan de Medina. Although unfinished, its carving fragments are evidence of cultural syncretism of great significance to the understanding of the history of art in the Americas. Moors [Moros] of ethnic North Africans in Spanish Jamaica, as the king’s enslaved labour, were responsible for the open ranges between the estates [realengo] under the king’s protection as Crown lands for rearing livestock that supplied exploration activities into Central and North America.

Frank Cundall and Joseph Luckert Pietersz in ‘Jamaica Under the Spaniards: Abstracted from the Archives of Seville,’ share that in 1611, the Spanish Jamaica population approximated 1,510, comprising 37 per cent ‘slave;’ 35 per cent Spaniard men and women; 11 per cent Spaniard children; seven per cent free ‘negro;’ five per cent foreigner/newcomer; and five per cent ‘Indian’ native of Jamaica [Tainos]. From studies across the Hispanic Americas, ‘Spaniard’ freed persons included converted Christians with Spanish names across all ethnicities including Indigenous and African peoples. So when Great Britain invaded and captured Jamaica from Spain in 1655, they encountered an integrated productive society, chased these inhabitants from their homes and off their lands, and moved into their buildings, claiming them as British properties.

Some Spaniards fled the island, however, many remained, carrying out guerrilla warfare. Infamous, as recorded by the Jamaica National Heritage Trust, was Juan de Bolas whose Spanish name was Juan Lubolo, regarded as the first Maroon chief. Lubolo assisted the last Spanish governor of Jamaica, Don Christoval Arnaldo Ysassi, in guerrilla wars against Great Britain in Jamaica from 1655 until Ysassi departed in 1660. The year after, the British Monarch King Charles II, by proclamation of 1661, placed all lands on the island of Jamaica under the ownership of the British Crown and made land grants to freed British persons. King Charles II proclaimed they “… shall hold and enjoy the said lands to be assigned, and all houses, Edifices, Buildings, and Enclosures, thereupon to be built or made, to them and their heirs forever ...”.

TREATY OF MADRID

The 1670 Treaty of Madrid was agreed between Charles II King of Great Britain and Carlos II King of Spain “… for the composing of Differences, restraining of Depredations, and the establishing of Peace in America, between the Crowns of Great Britain and Spain …”. Eighty-four years later, the Maroons, as inter-generational Spanish nationals, entered into the 1739 Maroon Treaty to compensate for their loss of lands to Great Britain and were granted British Crown lands. Respectfully, I submit that the Maroon Treaty responded to the separateness of these initial Maroons and their descendants inside Jamaica as Spaniards alongside those of Great Britain. I handled Jamaica Government Archives documents showing the Maroon returns listing their own enslaved persons.

Maroon lands, therefore, should be considered as Taino and Spanish family lands, and Batts posits that here in Jamaica, there is often reference to family land “… but it is as yet unrecognised in our law … passed down from generation to generation within the family and by general agreement is not to be sold …”. The Maroon Treaty reads under the Third Clause “… they shall enjoy and possess, and their posterity forever”.

Understand that if any enslaved African ran away from British plantation slavery to join the Maroon community, then that enslaved African would automatically have been unwelcome. Further, if he or she remained, the possibility of entitlement to generational inheritance may have become an issue. It, therefore, explains the Maroon arresting and returning runaways back to plantation slavery. Significantly, it underscores the event of 1796, when between 550 and 600 ‘Maroon’ men, women, and children were exiled from Trelawny, Jamaica, and shipped to Nova Scotia, Canada, en route to Africa. Batts states that a ‘trespasser’ is a ‘squatter,’ elaborating that “… the Trespass Act was passed in 1851 as part of the effort to ensure the recently emancipated would continue working on sugar cane plantations. Trespass to land is not a crime in England but a civil wrong (tort) …”. In like manner, the Maroon statehood would have viewed runaways as trespassers or squatters in their community.

What if successive governments were to put in motion the use of Crown lands to remedy land injustice even as was done through the Maroon Treaty of 1739? Maybe it would help prevent crime and reduce generational landlessness of Jamaicans who continually demonstrate their ability to provide affordable shelter for themselves.

Patricia Green, PhD, a registered architect and conservationist, is an independent scholar and advocate for the built and natural environment. Send feedback to patgreen2008@gmail.com.