A recent article in the local newspaper with the headline: MENTAL ILL PERSONS MIGRATE TO HIP STRIP only serves to highlight the importance of Tourism and Tourists and the lack of regard for Jamaica and Jamaicans. It is this callous disregard specifically for Montego Bay and Montegonians that helps to foster the underlying hostility to the Industry that manifests itself in so many ways, including harassment, littering and lack of civic pride.
The tone of the article and the complaints expressed by businesses and those whose lives thinly depend on the Tourism trade only serve highlight what has become the norm and is acceptable downtown, and what is a cause for concern in the places where tourists are judged to frequent, mistakenly or not. The irony is that more or a significant amount of tourists can be seen traversing the heart of the filthy town where the mentally ill have citizenship and homes than on the Hip Strip….
What is a form of naivete coupled with a dangerous and heartless outlook where greed for gain is the only consideration drives the kind of decadent thinking where visitors are nore highly regarded than your citizens for just money. The desperate dependents on only the crumbs from the Industry do not even regard highly their lives and those of their fellow citizens as exemplified by the remark that if a tourist got killed then they would sue the government.
According to the report, taxi drivers opined about the dangerous intrusion on tourists’ space, not thinking for a moment that their wives and children are exposed to even greater dangers downtown where they roam freely and are frequently armed. Even in a Black country, Black lives do not matter to Negroes, so how futile then the effort of trying to get white people to believe and act as if they are important.
When Walt Disney built Disney World, he built it primarily for the white citizens of America and welcomed everyone else. Right now it is one of the leading attractions in the world enriching the coffers of the US. In Jamaica, it is a ‘tourists-first effort, and that is why the yield is not as fruitful as the undertaking is fraught with corruption and evil.
This is yet another indication of how unimportant the masses are to the government and Tourism interests, and it is a pitiable condition. The people are so beaten and beat up that they do not regard their lives and those of their brothers and sisters as being important, hence the internecine war that has drenched the country with blood.
There are better ways to regard highly the lives and interests of your citizens you expect to lustily sing the National Anthem, and those of your visitors passing through. In fact, if the citizens are treated with love and importance, it can only redound to the benefit of the Industry. When are the players going to graduate to a higher level of thinking? Indeed, when is the government, because they ought to be leading the way…