Dehumanization In Jamaica Essay

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The recorded history of Jamaica begins in May 1494 when Christopher Columbus arrived on the island during his second voyage to the New World. At that point Jamaica was inhabited by the Tainos, a calm and peaceful people who lived simple lives. From as early as our primary school education, Jamaicans are taught that the arrival of the Spanish totally disrupted the tranquillity the Tinos enjoyed; bringing unknown communicable diseases to the island and forcing the Tainos to perform difficult tasks. The marks the beginning of violence and trauma on the island Christopher Columbus described as the “fairest isle mine eyes ever beheld”. Within fifty years the Taino population on the island was wiped out however the transition of the island from a peaceful idyllic paradise to a violent society did not end with the extinction of the Tainos. Rather it was merely the beginning, as by 1513 the Spaniards had begun the transhipment of Africans to the island as slaves. Like the Tainos, the Africans who came to Jamaica, were subjected to slavery and its well documented dehumanizing and traumatic experiences.
As time progressed the inhabitants of the island would come to be exposed to significantly levels of violence from the atrocities of slavery, the warfare between European nations battling each other for control of the New World, the fight for emancipation and independence, the post-independence political polarization, the gang warfare for drugs and control of turf and the increasing incidents of domestic violence and child abuse. Today the island is equally famous for its beauty as well as its high levels of violence. Violence is defined as “the intentional use of physical force or power, threatened or actual, against oneself, another pers...

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...erienced any form of trauma, violence and/or loss. This service is an outpatient clinic conducted at the UHWI and accepts referrals for children throughout the island. The clinic also offers training in grief and trauma management to paediatric residents, psychiatry residents and graduate students in clinical psychology and social work.
v. At the request of the Ministry of Education, a paper was submitted to the Ministry in 2008 on "Lessons learnt from violence" for their in-house journal. Among several recommendations, was incentives for reporting and responding to violence in a non-confrontational manner and for school administrators to provide on-the-job training for their staff to cope with and effectively implement strategies to not only discipline (intervene) but (prevent) teach students socially acceptable ways to manage their stress and traumatic exposure.

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