Jamaica Diaspora Annual Roundup 2013

Annual Review | Published: 31 December 2013 | Jamaica Homes News

Key Takeaways: 2013 in Six Lines

• Nelson Mandela Dies on 5 December Aged 95: A World Mourns
• Snowden Leaks Reveal Scope of NSA Global Surveillance Programme
• Syria Civil War Produces Europe’s Largest Refugee Crisis Since WWII
• Caribbean CARICOM Formally Launches Reparations Commission
• Jamaica’s IMF Reform Programme Grinds Forward: Growth Elusive
• Boston Marathon Bombing in April Rattles US Diaspora Communities

The Year in Review

Nelson Mandela’s death on 5 December 2013, at the age of ninety-five, produced a global outpouring of grief and tribute that encompassed every community touched by the anti-apartheid struggle’s moral force — and that included Jamaica’s diaspora communities, whose own experience of racial injustice and struggle for dignity gave Mandela’s life a resonance that was both political and deeply personal. The memorial service at FNB Stadium in Johannesburg on 10 December, attended by ninety-one heads of state, was watched by millions worldwide. For Caribbean diaspora communities in the United Kingdom, the United States, and Canada, Mandela’s death was both a moment of grief for a specific life and a broader reflection on the long arc of the struggle for racial justice — a struggle whose unfinished dimensions the year’s other events illustrated at close range.

Edward Snowden’s release of NSA surveillance documents beginning in June 2013 revealed the scope of US and allied digital mass surveillance programmes — collecting communications data from millions of ordinary individuals worldwide without specific suspicion. For diaspora communities whose transnational communication patterns — regular international calls, money transfers, cross-border family conversations — were precisely the kind of communications that surveillance programmes captured, the Snowden revelations raised concrete questions about privacy and the relationship between minority communities and the security state. CARICOM’s formal establishment of a Reparations Commission in 2013 — seeking reparative justice for the transatlantic slave trade and its consequences — was the most significant formal regional step toward a reparations framework and generated active diaspora engagement in the legal and political campaign. Jamaica’s IMF reform programme continued its slow progress: the necessary fiscal adjustment was proceeding, but the growth required to make debt reduction sustainable remained elusive. The Boston Marathon bombing of 15 April — killing three people and injuring hundreds at the finish line — tested the resilience of American civic life and the diaspora communities that participated in it.

Jamaica Diaspora Annual Roundup 2013 | Jamaica Homes News. Compiled from four quarterly editions published April, July, October 2013, and January 2014.

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