Dons are criminal non-state actors that evolved out of the divisive trade union and partisan battles in Jamaica from the 1940s to 1960s... ...The term 'don' is a recent one, however, one that gained venom in the 1980s... ...before that you had 'rude bwoys', 'top rankings' and 'area leaders'

Garrisons: Empires Of The Dons

By Damion Blake, jamaica-gleaner guest columnist

The Jamaican don is a unique figure, created by a divisive and polarised partisan culture, and produced by the social and economic conditions of urban poverty and limited access to legitimate employment.

Dons emerged in a country where social status and prestige are important markers of upward mobility, and what the late Professor Rex Nettleford termed a 'smaddy'.

But who really are dons? How have they come to dominate the geopolitical spaces of garrison neighbourhoods in Jamaica? I view them as governance actors who use both fear and material rewards as tools for achieving and maintaining power inside Jamaica's garrison communities.

I write this article against the background of research I conducted in one of Jamaica's urban communities in the Kingston and Metropolitan Area last year from August to December 2011. This urban inner city, which I will refer to as 'California Villa', is in a garrison constituency and has been termed a garrison community.

I interviewed more than 40 persons who lived and/or worked in the community. I also spoke with civil-society and NGO groups that have worked in garrison and inner-city communities for decades in Jamaica.

One respondent who lives in California Villa remarked, "Don is a leader, a man who decide when the war fi start and when it fi end. Him decide who lives and who dies." I found the pronouncement of the respondent to be both instructive and scary. Like an investigator, I followed several trails trying to better understand who these community figures really are.

The late Professor Barry Chevannes once referred to dons as "folk heroes"; I think in many ways Prof was right. Dons have a kind of social power inside garrison communities that gives them perverse legitimacy, respect, social prestige but, most of all, a deep fear among residents. Residents fear dons and the gangs they lead. To cross paths with, or diss, the don is an almost sure ticket to punishment.

Dons also have network connections outside the walls of garrison communities. One respondent who runs a community-based association remarked, "There is no don without a politician, and there is no don without his own police."

Categorising criminal dons

But are all dons the same?

From the research I carried out, I realised that there are different types of dons in garrison spaces; in fact, there are some community figures that have social influence, but are not really dons.

One respondent, who works closely with inner-city and garrison communities, informed me that there are some men called 'boss man' who provide material resources to residents in these communities. They have respect among the youth in the area, but they are, technically, not dons.

Based on my research, a three-tier structure of dons emerges: there is the mega don, the powerful community don, and the lower-ranked street/corner don. Most garrisons, it seems, tend to have street-level dons, with fewer powerful dons and still fewer mega dons.

The mega don operates across garrison communities, is awash in wealth, has transnational links to organised crime (drug and gun trafficking), leads a gang, has legitimate businesses but also organises mega robberies and extortion rackets.

The don is essentially a male (I came across no female dons) who has resources in the form of money, has some political association (loose or strong), has an arsenal of weapons, usually is a leader or top-ranking gang member, has respect in the community (whether out of fear or admiration), and someone who provides some social benefits to the community.

Dons are criminal non-state actors that evolved out of the divisive trade union and partisan battles in Jamaica from the 1940s to 1960s. The term 'don' is a recent one, however, one that gained venom in the 1980s; before that you had 'rude bwoys', 'top rankings' and 'area leaders'.

Damion Blake is an instructor and PhD student at Virginia Tech State University. Email feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com and damionkblake@gmail.com.

February 27, 2012

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Jamaica: After Christopher “Dudas” Coke, soul-searching

After Dudus, soul-searching
Keith Noel, Contributor
jamaica-gleaner:

IT IS now time to speak the truth and apportion blame.  I say speak the truth first because this requires thought, it demands guts, and it holds the answers.  It will literally 'set us free'.  Only after we speak the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, will we be in a position to apportion blame.

Let us all speak the truth, at least to ourselves.  Those who were in politics in the days when we first began to exploit the poor for their votes must answer hard questions; moreso those politicians who, to ensure political success, extended this to the point of putting guns in the hands of disadvantaged youth.  Those politicians who lied to the country, telling us that it was 'the other side' who was responsible for the gun violence, must converse with their conscience, along with those who, when in power, built high-rise housing communities and ensured they were peopled with his/her political supporters only.

And most of all, those politicians who, after realising that the garrison communities they had created had spawned a type of criminal who grew increasingly powerful, continued to give excuses for hugging them up, attending their funerals and repeating euphemisms about them 'protecting' their communities.  And I include those who lamely gave 'lists' of the names of these men to the police, in a facile attempt to lessen their power.

Hard-pressed

We now hear business leaders speak of the efforts they made to battle extortion.  Unless they come forward and speak about how easily they gave in to the criminals - admit their fear, confess their actual complicity at times - we will be in for another round of lies and will so easily slip back into the mode we are trying to escape.  And this includes all - the man with the emporium to the corner shopowner, the man with the fleet of buses, to the one running a single taxi.

Most hard-pressed will be the police.  I am not speaking only about the crooked cop who extorts money from a speeding driver or from a bar owner operating outside the scope of his licence.  More in need of this internal review will be the policeman who has been in the payroll of the don.  The cop who has passed on information about police activity, turned a blind eye, or helped him in other ways and, in so doing, has increased the level of public mistrust of the police!  So too, the honest cop who shrugs when his colleague does wrong!

Then, our entertainers.  In order to gain popularity among criminal elements, or to get their financial support, some have become spokespersons and proselytizers of the doctrine of the don.  It is they who have spread the 'informer fi dead' message and have encouraged youth to report offences to the big man and not the police.  It can NOT be 'money talk, an everything else park', his/her mind can not only be on the financial bottom line.  The bottom line must be the youth!  The media also must soul-search because, in an effort to gain popularity by being 'liberal' and 'of the people', some media persons have encouraged the anarchy that these entertainers have propounded.

But most of all, the general public has to accept blame.  Every man or woman who has had their purse stolen, their son beaten up, their daughter raped, and who reported it to the 'big man' instead of the police, has helped to establish this new order.  Every citizen who claims that the young 'shotta' in the lane is a 'defender' of the community and protected him when the police came to investigate a crime, is part of the problem.  So, too, is the church leader who, in his effort to maintain peace in the community, has turned a blind eye to any illegal activity of those he or she is trying to help.

Every person, public official or private citizen, must examine himself.  All of us, the church leaders, the school principals, the librarians who, in accepting that their institutions belong to the community, might have unwittingly or tacitly accepted the unrequested protection of the 'area leader', must now search for ways to let them and the community know that it is the ordinary folk on whom they depend, not any 'big man'.

Send feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com

June 7, 2010

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