“We Are Strongly Against Any Form of Relocation”: A St Ann Bishop Stands With Villagers as Bauxite Mining Closes In

• Residents of Gibraltar, St Ann, feared bauxite mining would push them off their land
• Bishop Robert Clarke of the Gibraltar Church of Christ said the community opposed any relocation
• Farmers said mined-out land was left unfit for cultivation
• Neighbouring Caledonia was held up as a warning of what mining can do to a village

In September 2019 the Jamaica Observer reported on a community in St Ann that felt the ground shifting beneath it. Gibraltar, in the Nip Street district, sits within an area mined by the Noranda Jamaica Bauxite Partnership, the operation formerly known as Kaiser, under Special Mining Lease 172. Residents told the newspaper they were anxious about losing farmland, living with dust, and seeing old family graves disturbed.

Among the voices was Bishop Robert Clarke of the Gibraltar Church of Christ. “They haven’t removed anybody in Gibraltar as yet, but I have heard that it is a possibility that they are going to relocate some people,” he said. “That is what we don’t want. It is going to affect the school population, the churches, and various groups so, we are strongly against any form of relocation.” For the bishop, the issue was not only who owned which acre, but whether a whole community, with its congregations and school, would survive.

Others spelled out what was at stake. Walter Edlin, a 69-year-old farmer, said the land he used to farm was now being mined. Farmer Henry McLeod worried that once the land was mined out, residents would have nothing to live off. Shurnette Brown-Jack, principal of Gibraltar All-Age School, pointed to a nearby district: “Caledonia is practically a dead community, and it is because of the mining.” A retired principal, Ivy Walton, recalled that people on government land had to move and those who sold their land had nowhere to live.

The report also noted that residents received quarterly dust nuisance payments of between $8,000 and $8,500, and that villagers questioned how well mined land was being restored for farming. Gibraltar lies about 42 kilometres from the Cockpit Country Protected Area, which has been at the centre of a long national debate about mining and conservation.

The story is a reminder that in rural Jamaica the church is often one of the last institutions holding a district together, and that its leaders can become advocates when land is at stake. For readers at home and in the diaspora who still hold family land in bauxite parishes such as St Ann, Manchester and St Elizabeth, it underlines some practical questions: is the land properly titled, who holds the mining rights beneath it, and what happens to the value of a family holding once mining arrives next door? Congregations with churches, halls or burial grounds in these areas face the same questions about their own property.

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