Jamaica’s general election of February 25, 2016 returns the JLP to power under Andrew Holness after four years of PNP government under Portia Simpson Miller. The island records approximately 1,350 murders in 2016, a rate of around 47 per 100,000 that places it among the most violent nations on earth. Tourism is growing strongly toward 2.2 million stopover visitors. And on June 23, the United Kingdom votes to leave the European Union — a decision whose implications for the Jamaican diaspora in Britain are immediate and alarming.

The defining event of the 2010–2011 period is the Tivoli Gardens incursion of May 2010, in which Jamaican security forces entered the West Kingston garrison community to arrest Christopher ‘Dudus’ Coke, a drug lord whose extradition the United States had been seeking for two years and whose political connections went to the highest levels of the Jamaica Labour Party. The operation kills 73 civilians. By 2011, Jamaica’s murder rate is declining from the 2009–2010 peak, Coke has been extradited and is in American custody, and the December 2011 election returns Portia Simpson Miller and the PNP to power after nearly four years of JLP government.

In 2006, Jamaica is in the grip of a violence epidemic that places it among the most dangerous countries on earth. Approximately 1,340 murders are recorded, a rate of around 49 per 100,000 population. Portia Simpson Miller becomes Jamaica’s first female Prime Minister in March when PJ Patterson retires after 14 years in office. Tourism is reaching 1.68 million stopover arrivals, generating record foreign exchange. And the relationships between the island’s political establishment, its garrison communities, and the international narcotics trade are under sustained scrutiny.

The September 11, 2001 attacks on New York and Washington DC strike Jamaica’s economy through its most vulnerable point: tourism. North American visitor arrivals collapse in the fourth quarter as Americans and Canadians cancel travel plans. Jamaica records approximately 1,139 murders in 2001 — a rate of around 43 per 100,000, continuing the steep upward trend of the late 1990s. PJ Patterson’s PNP government, re-elected for a third successive term in October 1997, governs a country of deepening social crisis against a background of unprecedented global geopolitical change.

By 1996, Jamaica’s murder rate has climbed to approximately 925 murders — around 37 per 100,000 population — as the violence epidemic that will characterise the 2000s begins its sustained acceleration. The island’s domestic financial sector is in the early stages of a systemic crisis that will cost the government approximately 40 per cent of GDP to resolve. Tourism crosses 1.16 million stopover arrivals. And the US Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act, signed by President Clinton in September, begins the mass deportation programme that will profoundly reshape Jamaica’s social landscape.

Michael Manley, who returned to power in February 1989 after defeating Edward Seaga’s JLP government, governs Jamaica in 1991 as a dramatically transformed politician. The ideological democratic socialist of the 1970s has become a pragmatic market reformer, continuing the IMF structural adjustment programme of his predecessor and maintaining Jamaica’s alignment with the Washington-led international economic order. The Gulf War of January–February 1991 briefly suppresses tourist arrivals. Jamaica records approximately 543 murders — around 22 per 100,000 — a rate that will look almost modest compared to what is coming.

Edward Seaga’s Jamaica Labour Party government, in power since the October 1980 landslide, governs Jamaica in 1986 as the most trusted Caribbean ally of the Reagan administration. The US Caribbean Basin Initiative is reshaping Jamaican trade. Tourism reaches approximately 740,000 stopover visitors. Jamaica records approximately 383 murders — roughly 16 per 100,000 — a figure that, in retrospect, represents the last period before the violence of the garrison communities and the narcotics trade begins its dramatic escalation.

Edward Seaga’s Jamaica Labour Party swept to power in October 1980 with 51 of 60 parliamentary seats, ending Michael Manley’s eight-year PNP government in the most violent election in Jamaican history. Within months, Seaga had flown to Washington to meet the newly elected Ronald Reagan and established what would become the defining bilateral relationship of Caribbean Cold War politics. Jamaica records approximately 257 murders in 1981 — around 10–12 per 100,000 — the lowest rate in its modern history. Tourism brings approximately 450,000 stopover visitors. The island stands at a turning point.