After the storm

...A priest in one of Kingston's poorest areas summed up the prospects: "Everyone wants out...

...The publicity led to a national catharsis similar to that which followed our Willowbrook revelations...

...Carl Stone, a highly regarded Jamaican social scientist, estimates that Manley has about eighteen months to make a difference...

...Over the last decade-and-a-half, the country's export revenue has fallen drastically as a result of government mismanagement and shifts in world trade markets: sugar took a plunge (the U.S...

...Reflecting its British colonial past, Jamaica is heavily Protestant, with Baptists and Anglicans predominating...

...Multinational companies in industries such as garment assembly, many from the U.S., were invited to set up shop and given incentives in the form of tax breaks...

...Like the graceful snowy egrets that alight in the rubble of the Kingston dump-a vast tract where 5,000 people make their living by scavenging-the natural beauty of the island stands in stark contrast to the living conditions of the majority...

...The biggest news out of this election was the relative lack of violence...

...Most observers are skeptical that Manley will be able to do that, or be able to break with the traditional Jamaican pattern of "to the elected go the spoils...

...where the chronically infirm and mentally retarded were warehoused...

...There is no future here...

...One smaller craft was pasted high in a line of trees along the roadway, swept up there by "Mr...

...With its economy depleted in certain essential areas, its education and health care systems faltering, and its population growing, wise husbandry must guide Jamaica in replenishing and redistributing its national resources...

...I was traveling in Jamaica with a groupof journalists...

...Ho Lung regularly speaks out on controversial issues such as prison reform and controlling the drug trade...

...Since this is the only work available, many have little choice...

...A priest who was a poll watcher in the recent election told me he was surrounded by PNP supporters when they thought the ballots he was transporting to election headquarters to be counted were going to be spirited off in a Labor party van...

...Stone says that Manley's hardest task will be to raise the awareness of poor Jamaicans so that "their expectations begin to match the limited short-run possibilities...

...quota fell to its lowest point in this century...

...He is not likely to rode the boat this time around...

...Manley will try to cooperate with U.S...

...But in the long run, Jamaica can't make it by consuming its dead past...

...Recent estimates put the number of those living in poverty as high as 80 percent out of a population of 2.3 million...

...A great number of trees were downed by Hurricane Gilbert, and in many places the poor dragged them to clearings where they set up smoldering earth mounds to convert them into charcoal, which they then sold for small sums...

...The illiteracy rate, once one of the lowest in the Caribbean, has taken an alarming leap with the cutbacks in education...

...PATRICK JORDAN Patrick Jordan is an associate editor of Commonweal...

...In an effort to restrain the economic tailspin, former Prime Minister Edward Seaga (in power from 1980-89) agreed to a series of International Monetary Fund (IMF) demands, cutting government services, including education and health care, and drastically devaluing the Jamaican dollar in an effort to encourage exports...

...Though it was the height of the tourist season, our time was not spent on the famed sandy beaches, but in the slums of the capital city, looking at development projects...

...Seaga's conservative Labor government, in favor with the Reagan administration with which it shared similar foreign policy and economic tenets, encouraged free-trade zones on the island...

...But these more favorable employment figures hide the fact that most of those employed in the trade zones are vastly underpaid: $3 a day, which can only be described as a wage on which to languish...

...He has committed his government to sealing off Jamaica as a transfer point for drug-running operations between Latin America and the U.S...

...HH Driving from the airport at Kingston in early 1 HH March, I was reminded of a scene from Empire of the Sun...

...The hurricane, which caused $2.1 billion in damage to farming and temporarily set back the tourist trade, the island's largest industry, was just the latest in a series of troubles for the Jamaican economy...

...The small middle class is being squeezed out by inflation...

...anti-tlrug policies by clamping down on the island's production of marijuana...

...His hands are firmly tied by agreements already in place with the IMF, and his socialist views seem to have moderated...

...As one Jamaican put it, "nothing really changes [with elections here...

...More generous aid from abroad is needed...

...For his part, Mr...

...Half-a-year after the storm of the century, Hur ricane Gilbert, tore across Jamaica, the devas-H||H tation to the island nation is still there to see...

...The Catholic church is small (8 percent), but has a strong moral voice...

...While the hurricane season is over, and the poor still hope that they have a friend in Michael Manley, the storms are never far Off...

...As one Jamaican businessman put it, it will be simply impossible to change things without outside help...

...In the 1980 election, which Jamaicans call "the War," nearly 800 died...

...In his previous stint as prime minister (1972-80), Manley ran afoul of the U.S...

...It was among the first to call for a peace treaty between the political parties during the election campaign...

...Only a different set of men gets richer...

...This, coupled with the heightened price of imports and fuel during the same period, meant Jamaica accumulated a debt almost as high as its own Blue Mountains, $4.5 billion, and per capita one of the highest in the world...

...While he offered very few concrete proposals during his campaign, the poor believe that things have got to get better under him...

...Meanwhile, the profits from the free-trade zones continue to end up off-island, in the pockets of international investors...

...If the past is prelude, Labor will eventually succeed the PNP, only to be ousted in turn by the PNP...

...In many of the poorer areas of Kingston, there is a political tribalism that requires very little stirring to create trouble...

...It was no surprise then, that national elections in February decisively turned out, by a margin of 3 to 1, the Seaga government and returned Michael Manley and the People's National Party (PNP) to power...

...But not the help of those who fatten themselves on free-trade zones...

...this year only about a dozen met that fate...

...it dangled like a dry fly in a spider's web...

...He recently visited Jamaica on a trip sponsored by Food for the Poor.ood for the Poor...

...bauxite, the island's chief mineral export, has experienced a prolonged depression and is just beginning to come back...

...A recent church statement against the death penalty is a response to the island's dubious distinction of having the highest per capita rate of its citizens facing execution in the Western hemisphere: Since 1980, fifty-nine Jamaicans have been executed, and Amnesty International says that presently 200 are on death row...

...Eventide was revamped, broken up into smaller institutional settings, and given closer public oversight...

...with his populist-socialist policies and his support for Cuba...

...He escaped with his life only because the army arrived just at that moment...

...And while Jamaicans resent the wage exploitation in the free-trade zones, all their attempts at unionization have been rebuffed...

...While partial employment has dampened general unrest for the time being, everyone knows this is not an adequate solution for the long-term...

...The Kingston archdiocesan paper, Catholic Opinion, has called for electoral reforms...

...The slight increase in exports was outpaced by the rising price of imports, ending in even greater national debt...

...Father Richard Ho Lung, a native Jamaican who founded the Brothers of the Poor, a small group that lives and works with the indigent, writes a weekly column for the Daily Gleaner, Jamaica's largest newspaper, called "The Diary of a Ghetto Priest...

...In 1981, Ho Lung revealed the sfeSStfalous conditions in the national poorhouse, named Even-tfdfe...

...More than 40 percent of Jamaica's exchange earnings are being consumed by the debt, leaving almost nothing for investment...

...A number did, and unemployment island-wide fell from 40 percent to 25 percent (although in some areas it remains at 80 percent...

...Several old transport planes stood heavily damaged at the end of a runway, hit on the ground when Gilbert swept through...

...As a result, his life has been threatened by dealers...