systemicdisorder | A small country immiserates itself under orders of international
lenders; unemployment and poverty rise, the debt burden increases and
investment is starved in favor of paying interest on loans. If this
sounds familiar, it is, but the country here is Jamaica.
So disastrous has austerity been for Jamaica that its per capita
gross domestic product is lower than it was 20 years ago, the worst
performance of any country in the Western Hemisphere. In just three
years, from the end of 2011 to the end of 2014, real wages have fallen
17 percent and are expected to fall further in 2015, according to the
country’s central bank, the Bank of Jamaica.
Such is the magic of austerity, or “structural adjustment programs,”
to use the official euphemism of the International Monetary Fund and
World Bank.
A new paper from the Center for Economic and Policy Research, “Partners in Austerity: Jamaica, the United States and the International Monetary Fund,”
reports that the amount of money Jamaica will use to pay interest (not
even the principal) on its debt will be more than four times what it
will spend on capital expenditures in 2015 and 2016. And despite a new
loan, the country actually paid more to the IMF than it received in
disbursements from the IMF during 2014!
As a further sign of the times, the current pro-austerity government
of Jamaica is led by the National People’s Party, the party of former
democratic socialist President Michael Manley. President Manley took
office in 1972 on promises to combat social inequality and injustice,
and he is credited with enacting legislation
intended to establish a national minimum wage, pay equality for women,
maternity leave with pay, the right of workers to join trade unions,
free education to the university level, and education reforms that
enabled students and teachers to be represented on school boards.
He also became an international figure advocating for progressive
programs to be implemented elsewhere. Naturally, this did not sit well
with the United States government. When President Manley stood with
Angola against the invasion by the apartheid South African régime and
supported Cuban assistance to Angola, he defied a warning from U.S.
Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. The CIA presence in the Jamaican capital, Kingston, was doubled.
A Jamaica Observer commentary noted parallels between the overthrow of Salvador Allende in Chile and unrest in Jamaica later in the 1970s:
“The imperialists applied the same ‘successful’ Chile model of destabilisation in Jamaica. They applied the same strategy of ‘making the economy scream,’ creating artificial shortages of basic items, promoting violence, including the savage murder of 150 people in a home for the elderly. Violence erupted in Jamaica as was never seen before in the ‘shock and awe’ tactics mastered by the imperialists whenever they want to create fundamental change in someone else’s country. Manley and Jamaica yielded under the pressure and eventually took the IMF route.”
Replacing human development with austerity
The conservative who took office in 1980 reversed President Manley’s
programs. By the time that President Manley returned to office in 1989,
he had moved well to the right under the impact of changing world geopolitical circumstances and the dominance of neoliberal ideology. As an obituary in The Economist dryly put it, “He did as the IMF told him, liberalised foreign exchange and speeded up the privatisation of state enterprises.”
The one-size-fits-all program, a condition of IMF and World Bank
loans, includes currency devaluation (making imports more expensive),
mass privatization of state assets (usually done at fire-sale prices),
cuts to wages and the prioritization of the profits of foreign capital
over a country’s own welfare. The 2001 film Life and Debt,
produced and directed by Stephanie Black, depicted a country on its
knees thanks to “structural adjustment.” The film’s Web site sets up the picture then this way:
“The port of Kingston is lined with high-security factories, made available to foreign garment companies at low rent. These factories are offered with the additional incentive of the foreign companies being allowed to bring in shiploads of material there tax-free, to have them sewn and assembled and then immediately transported out to foreign markets. Over 10,000 women currently work for foreign companies under sub-standard work conditions. The Jamaican government, in order to ensure the employment offered, has agreed to the stipulation that no unionization is permitted in the Free Trade Zones. Previously, when the women have spoken out and attempted to organize to improve their wages and working conditions, they have been fired and their names included on a blacklist ensuring that they never work again.”
