Patricia Green | Build Jamaica’s heritage as viable tourism product

I used to travel when I was a student, and during the course of those travels it became easier for me to identify Jamaica to foreigners. I recall in 1970s, amid wars and tension in Algeria, I had the opportunity to visit Ghardaïa, one of five ksour (fortified cities) in the M’Zab valley of the northern Sahara Desert. The fort’s architecture is primarily earthen mud-brick.

The women wear a white ‘Haik’ that covers them from head to toe, exposing only one eye. These women taught me how to wear the Haik, holding the fabric in place between my teeth while walking and conversing, and carrying bags and boxes under its expansive billowing swirl of white cotton. Ghardaïa was the last frontier before embarking on a journey across the Sahara, and I found myself drawing maps to show them where Jamaica was.

Suddenly someone said, “Bob Marley,” immediately I was welcomed and protected as family. As I travelled across countries, I answered the questions of where I came from with “Bob Marley”! His music was pulsating loudly from speeding cars in Rome, Italy. African men in Heidelberg, Germany embraced me as “sista” telling me I was safe because Bob Marley songs aided African Freedom-fighter movements, coupled with Michael Manley who sent soldiers to assist them in battle.

I vowed to myself to give brother Bob a huge thank-you hug on my return to Jamaica. However, life happened. So, imagine my absolute joy when Rita Marley invited me to 56 Hope Road in 1986 and asked me, “Pat, what should I do with this property?” I immediately responded, “Let us turn it into a museum.” I had no idea that it would become Jamaica’s #1 global heritage tourism destination. That moment was indelibly etched in the annals of history, corroborated by many including former US President Barak Obama who secretly made the Bob Marley Museum his first tourist stop after landing in Jamaica for an official visit. Best was his declaration, “I shall return with Michelle;” apparently this destination was also on her bucket list.

Condé Nast serves the high-end niche market, and its magazine had reviewed the Bob Marley Museum, saying that it is worth going for a visit. It also showcases continuously, sites and/or properties listed on the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) World Heritage (WH) List. On July 31, UNESCO concluded its WH Committee meeting in New Delhi, India, and that same day Condé Nast Traveller published, ‘UNESCO Just Added 24 New World Heritage Sites for 2024.’ The WH Committee is responsible for implementing the 1972 ‘Protection of the World’s Cultural and Natural Heritage Convention,’ signed by 195 nations. Currently, Jamaica holds a seat on this prestigious committee, evaluating and monitoring sites/properties having Outstanding Universal Value (OUV) nominated by nations globally for inscription on the WH List. Algeria nominated Ghardaïa and other four cities. The WH Committee approved and inscribed them on the List in 1982.

INSCRIBED PROPERTIES

As of July, the list contained 1,223 inscribed properties including Rome and Heidelberg, comprising 952 cultural, 231 natural and 40 mixed categories. According to the Convention, heritage designated as ‘cultural’ includes monuments, groups of buildings, and sites; ‘natural’ includes physical, biological and geological formations, and natural beauty; ‘mixed’ combines both cultural and natural. Sometimes cultural heritage may be termed ‘cultural landscapes,’ meaning “combined works of nature and of man.”

In essence, the convention binds all state parties to consider their heritage as vital part of the country’s wealth, to be treasured locally and nationally, then preserved by the nation as a duty to the people of that nation and the world.

Cuba has nine properties from a Caribbean total of 21 on the WH list – 14 cultural, six natural, and one mixed, namely the Blue and John Crow Mountains in Jamaica. Before inscription, the State Party must place the property on the UNESCO tentative list; Jamaica has two, Seville Heritage Park and the Underwater City of Port Royal, latter now under advanced consideration.

I became excited learning of the 2024 inscriptions because I realised that Jamaica has many sites of global significance with OUVs that mirror them. Gone are the days of focusing only on colonialism and its architecture as heritage. The 2017 article ‘Protecting Geoheritage in the Caribbean – Insights from Jamaica’ by James-Williamson, Aratram, & Green parallels much of these new inscriptions, many geomorphological.

POSSIBLE HERITAGE SITES

Here are some of my suggestions:

• New 2024 Inscription: Vjetrenica Cave, Ravno – Bosnia and Herzegovina in the Dinaric mountain range contains endemicity, karst topography, biodiversity hotspots for cave-dwelling fauna, among others.

Parallel would be Trelawny, Jamaica – The Cockpit Country Cultural Landscape and Caves karst topography, biodiversity hotspots, including endemic flora and fauna species found nowhere else on earth.

• New 2024 Inscription: The Flow Country, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland serial sites in the Highland Region of Scotland with actively accumulating blanket-bog landscape and habitat diversity.

Parallel would be Jamaica– Portland Bight, Clarendon / Mason River, Clarendon/Palisadoes, Kingston/Black River Lower Morass, St Elizabeth serial sites, already on the Ramsar Convention on Biological Diversity, of significance as geological with endemic species enhancing climate change adaptation.

• New 2024 Inscription: Melka Kunture and Balcht – Archaeological and palaeontological sites in the Highland Area, Ethiopia serial prehistoric sites from two million years ago with four consecutive phases, Oldowan, Acheulean, Middle Stone Age and Late Stone Age techno-complexes.

Parallel would be Jamaica – Rudist Limestone serial sites of Jubilee, St. Catherine; Maldon School and Maldon School Cave, Westmoreland; Grantham, Clarendon; Black Rio Grande, Portland; and Green Island, Hanover diverse examples for the best record in the Caribbean of fossil rudist bivalves in the world dominating tropical seas, that lived and went extinct during the time of the dinosaurs.

• New 2024 Inscription: Human Rights, Liberation and Reconciliation - Nelson Mandela Legacy Sites, South Africa a fourteen-component serial site of 20th century political history including Sharpeville Sites of massacre of 69 people protesting the unjust Pass Laws, also Mandela’s influence in promoting understanding and forgiveness.

Parallel for my consideration, Jamaica – Paul Bogle Legacy Sites, and Marcus Garvey Legacy Sites. However, following the One Love movie, Bob Marley Legacy Sites should be promoted for the reconciliatory role, understanding and forgiveness in 20th century Jamaica, possibly a transboundary nomination with the United Kingdom and African sites.

It is critical to employ some creative strategies to identify, nominate, preserve and conserve the diverse and rich heritage of Jamaica. Give-back policies, such as from development projects across the island, towards identification and maintenance of the heritage, should be initiated. We need to recognise, focus and promote its heritage as a viable tourism product.

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 and columns@gleanerjm.com