By Michael Burke



So the World Cup football competition 2010 is behind us and Spain won it. Historically, many think of the Spanish Inquisition and in current terms think of the Real Majorca football team, if they know that Majorca is an island off the coast of Spain and part of the Spanish nation. Today I will look at Spain's impact on Jamaica.

Yes, Christopher Columbus was an Italian, but his voyages to the so-called New World were financed by King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain. On his second voyage to this side of the world, Columbus landed in Jamaica in 1494. While Christopher Columbus alone will have to answer for his sins, he nevertheless saw himself as the person called by God to implement a certain prophecy given by Isaiah.

In Isaiah 11:12 we read: "He will raise a banner for the nations and gather the exiles of Israel; he will assemble the scattered people of Judah from the four quarters of the earth." Regardless of his sins, no one, apart from Christopher Columbus can claim to have assembled the scattered people from the four quarters of the earth. The Spanish came finally to settle here in 1509.

Africans were brought here as labourers in 1513. Some historians today question whether they were actually slaves. Did the Spaniards really kill out the Tainos with hard work or did the Tainos leave in their boats for Cuba when the English arrived here in 1655? I find that much of the written history of the earlier period is English propaganda more than anything else.

Incidentally, all should know by now that Columbus did not see Arawaks but he saw Tainos. During Jamaica's Spanish era, there was an influx of Portuguese Jews who came here to escape the Spanish Inquisition, which was basically a plan to ensure that every citizen of Spain was Christian (Spain to this day is 99 per cent Roman Catholic). Much of the brutality of the Spanish Inquisition was the responsibility of the soldiers, and not even the Spanish Government, let alone the Pope, a fact that many anti-Roman Catholics conveniently ignore.

In Jamaica the Spaniards originally settled in the Taino town of Maima near St Ann's Bay, which the Spanish renamed New Seville. Because of mosquitoes, which the Spanish did not as yet know how to handle, combined with very poor sanitation, there were many deaths. So the Spaniards relocated to St Jago de la Vega, known today as Spanish Town.

The English invasion took place in 1655. One of the first casualties of the invasion was the Roman Catholic Church which was banned for 137 years between 1655 and 1792. It is indeed an amazing coincidence that the 137 years of being outlawed is synonymous to the 137th Psalm in the Bible, "By the rivers of Babylon, where we sat down and where we wept when we remember Zion."

Many of the Africans who were brought here during the Spanish era refused to be re-enslaved by the English and became known as the Maroons. After two civil wars with the English colonial authorities, the Maroons were given rights to virtually operate their own government in their own allotted lands. The Maroon wars created heroes, one of whom is recognised, the lone national heroine, Nanny. Incidentally, Nanny was not a myth, even if some of the stories about her are. Nanny's signature is on the Maroon Treaty which can be found in the National Library of Jamaica.

So the Spanish gave us Spanish Town and also the Maroons. Many place names in Jamaica are carry-overs from the Spanish era, several of which have been anglicised, for example, "Montego Bay". Some have been rearranged such as Ocho Rios. But the name the Spanish had was not Ocho Rios, which is the Spanish for eight rivers (and there were in fact eight rivers), but Las Chorreras (the Spanish for waterfalls, now known as Dunn's River Falls). Today the Spanish are building hotels in Jamaica. They are also renewing a national monument, the Holy Trinity Roman Catholic Cathedral, in Kingston

As far as the Roman Catholic Church is concerned, Spain, or more specifically Majorca, which is also famous for football, gave the world the Cursillo Movement in the late 1940s, a movement that renews and motivates adults in Christianity. The movement spread outside the Roman Catholic Church to many of the mainline Protestant churches four decades ago. It was introduced in the local Roman Catholic Church in Jamaica in 1967. Currently, the Anglicans in Jamaica are in the process of introducing cursillos to their flock.

If we are going to go the route of co-operatives seriously, it is a good idea to look at Mondragon Cooperatives in Spain, which can be seen on the internet. And there is a strong connection between living in Roman Catholic cultures and playing football at the World Cup level. While people from nations with cultures not Roman Catholic have won the World Cup a minority of times, cooperation and teamwork is nevertheless basic to football.

ekrubm765@yahoo.com

July 15, 2010

jamaicaobserver