Five-Year Retrospective | Published: 31 December 2009 | Jamaica Homes News
Key Takeaways: 2005–2009 in Six Lines
- 1st and 2nd Biennial Conferences Establish Diaspora Institutional Architecture
- 7/7 London Bombings and Katrina Test Diaspora Solidarity in 2005
- Simpson Miller Becomes Jamaica’s First Female PM in 2006
- JLP’s Golding Wins Jamaica by One Seat in 2007
- Obama Elected and Bolt’s Beijing Triple Gold Define 2008
- Remittances Grow From US$1.6 Billion to US$2.0 Billion Before Recession Dip
2005–2009: The Five Years That Set the Terms
The first five years of this series were also the first five years of the Jamaica Biennial Diaspora Conference framework — and the two narratives are inseparable. The 1st Biennial of 2004, launched under P.J. Patterson and carried into implementation through 2005, established the proposition that Jamaica’s relationship with its global communities was a formal partnership deserving institutional structures. The 2nd Biennial of June 2006, the first hosted by Portia Simpson Miller following her historic swearing-in as Jamaica’s first female prime minister in March of that year, produced the more structured accountability mechanisms that the conference framework needed to be more than a recurring aspiration. By the time the 3rd Biennial was held in 2008 under Bruce Golding’s JLP administration — the first to be hosted by a new party since the series began — the framework had demonstrated its cross-party durability. The Biennial had become a permanent feature of Jamaica’s governance architecture in five years.
The five years were also the years when the global security environment that the diaspora inhabits was most violently tested. The 7/7 London bombings of July 2005 struck the transport networks and neighbourhoods of the British-Jamaican heartland in south London. Hurricane Katrina’s August 2005 devastation of the Gulf Coast displaced Caribbean-American community members and mobilised the diaspora’s humanitarian networks at a scale not seen before. The 2005 Atlantic hurricane season — the most active on record — underlined the Caribbean’s front-line climate exposure. Against these traumas, the period produced extraordinary moments: Asafa Powell’s 2005 world record announced the next sprint era; the 2006 US immigration demonstrations asserted diaspora civic presence at the largest scale in a generation; Barack Obama’s election in November 2008 was felt across every African-heritage diaspora community in the world as a statement that the barriers presumed to be permanent were not.
And then there was August 2008 in Beijing, where Usain Bolt ran 9.69 seconds in the 100m final while easing up to celebrate, and the world understood that it was watching something that had no precedent. The five-year period closed with Bolt’s Berlin world records of 9.58 and 19.19 in August 2009 — marks that closed the decade by extending the horizon of human sprinting possibility beyond anything previously imagined. Remittances to Jamaica grew from approximately US$1.6 billion in 2005 to US$2.0 billion by 2007–08, before the 2008-09 global financial crisis produced the first recession-era dip to approximately US$1.8 billion. The five-year period established the diaspora relationship’s institutional architecture, tested its humanitarian resilience, and produced the athletic and political icons that would define its cultural vocabulary for the decade ahead.
Jamaica Diaspora Five-Year Roundup 2005–2009 | Jamaica Homes News. Compiled from twenty quarterly editions and five annual roundups, 2005–2009.
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