Jamaica’s beach access crisis: ‘We shouldn’t be forced to fight for what is already ours’

The Blue Lagoon has a fluid colour palette that is turquoise, sapphire or azure depending on how the sun hits it. Photograph: Destinee Condison/The Guardian View image in fullscreen The Blue Lagoon has a fluid colour palette that is turquoise, sapphire or azure depending on how the sun hits it. Photograph: Destinee Condison/The Guardian Jamaica’s beach access crisis: ‘We shouldn’t be forced to fight for what is already ours’ Activists argue business model is ‘plantation tourism’ designed to benefit elite and disadvantage most Jamaicans Campaigners go to court to fight privatisation of Jamaican coast D evon Taylor remembers when the Mammee Bay shoreline in St Ann, Jamaica , was filled with children frolicking in the ocean after school, fishers haggling with locals over the price of their daily catch and craft vendors carving souvenirs under almond trees. “I grew up on Mammee Bay,” Taylor says. He recalls fetching seawater in bottles for his grandmother when she was no longer able to go to the beach, learning to swim in the shallows, and watching generations of fishers cast their nets. “That beach raised us. It fed us.” Today, Mammee Bay is ground zero in his war against a multibillion-dollar all-inclusive tourism model that the government says is the backbone of the country’s economy, but that he and other activists argue is “plantation tourism”, designed to benefit rich visitors and the elite and disadvantage most Jamaicans. In 2019, locals were locked out of the beach by a fence and armed state and private security guards hired by investors building all-inclusive luxury hotels, Taylor says. “In protest, the community ripped down the fence and reoccupied the beach, but because of the restrictions on movement in Covid, you could not be there at certain times, and when they came back they met concrete walls,” he says. This escalated into a “violent displacement”, says Taylor, the founder of the Jamaica Beach Birthright Environmental Movement (Jabbem). “Gunshots were fired to disperse the protest.” For the people, it was a fight for survival, Taylor adds. “When you cut us off from the sea … you are actually setting us up to starve.” Mammee Bay and Little Dunn’s River in the northern parish of St Ann, the Blue Lagoon in the north-east, Bob Marley beach in St Andrews and Flankers/Providence beach in Montego Bay are the subject of five court cases, with the first trial scheduled for later this month. Each beach has its own story, Taylor says, but what they all have in common is communities that are being denied access to spaces that have social, economical and even spiritual significance, because successive governments have failed to address inequities inherited from colonial times when beaches and other land were owned by the British monarch. View image in fullscreen ‘We call it plantation tourism’, campaigners at the Blue Lagoon: Wilbourn Carr, Colin Beckford, Roseroy Gay, Leroy Patterson, Roy Williams, Donald Robinson. Photograph: Destinee Condison/