Who Really Owns Jamaica? Land, Beaches, and the Politics That Keep Us Divided

For generations, Jamaicans have wrestled with the unresolved question of land ownership. In more recent decades, that struggle has sharpened into a deeply emotional and visible fight over access to public beaches. These two issues are often discussed separately, but my sense is that

they are not separate at all. They are historically and structurally linked; born of the same injustice and sustained by the same political habits.

To understand where Jamaica is today, we must begin where the problem started.

For more than 400 years, Africans were forcibly transported to Jamaica and compelled to work the land under Spanish and British rule. They cleared it, cultivated it, and extracted wealth from it; without pay, without ownership, and without rights. The profits of this labour flowed outward, enriching British monarchs, merchants, and financiers. Jamaica was productive, but Jamaicans were property.

Resistance was inevitable. Some escaped and formed Maroon communities, pushing back militarily against the plantation system. The Maroon Treaties of 1738 and 1739 secured limited territorial autonomy, but these agreements applied to a minority. The overwhelming majority of Black Jamaicans remained locked out of land ownership entirely.

Emancipation Without Land Was Never Freedom

When slavery ended in 1838, many believed justice would finally follow. It did not. Instead, colonial authorities introduced new mechanisms to preserve control. Crown Lands; vast areas that could have formed the basis of a land-owning Black peasantry; were largely withheld or priced far beyond the reach of the newly freed population. Credit was restricted. Taxes were imposed. Plantation labour remained the only viable option for survival.

The desperation this created boiled over in Morant Bay in 1865. Paul Bogle’s rebellion was not simply about wages or punishment; it was about land, political exclusion, and dignity. The brutal suppression of that uprising sent a lasting message: demands for land justice would be met with force, not reform.

Independence Changed the Flag, Not the Land Logic

By the mid-twentieth century, limited land settlement schemes emerged, particularly in the 1940s and 1950s. These initiatives helped some Jamaicans lease or acquire small plots for farming or housing, and they should not be dismissed. But they were never designed to fundamentally alter land ownership patterns. They relieved pressure without dismantling the structure.

Independence in 1962 raised hopes that this unfinished business would finally be addressed. Jamaicans elected representatives who looked like them, spoke like them, and came from similar social backgrounds. Surely, many believed, this generation would correct the greatest injustice inherited from colonialism. Today, that hope remains largely unrealized. Across Jamaica, many families who have occupied and worked lands for fifty or seventy-five years find themselves being evicted through court orders that privilege paper titles over lived reality. At the same time, large tracts of land are transferred to a narrow local elite, politically connected interests, and foreign buyers presented as “investors.” These processes are legal; but is legality the same as justice?

Political Division as a Tool of Control

This ongoing dispossession does not persist by accident. It is sustained by Jamaica’s deeply divisive political culture.

Our two-party system thrives on tribal loyalty. Structural issues like land ownership are rarely framed as national crises; instead, they are reduced to partisan talking points. Citizens are encouraged to defend party colours rather than confront shared historical wrongs. Those who raise questions are accused of being anti-development, anti-Government, or anti-progress.

This division serves a purpose. While supporters argue, the slow consolidation of land continues quietly. Deals are made. Titles are transferred. Fences go up.

Nowhere is this more visible than along Jamaica’s coastline.

Beaches: The Final Commons Under Siege

For decades, Jamaicans accessed beaches freely, not as a privilege but as a way of life. Increasingly, that access is being eroded. Developments rise, security appears, signage changes, and what was once public becomes practically private.

The controversy surrounding Bob Marley Beach in St Thomas is only the most recent example. Similar situations exist across Portland, St Mary, St Ann, Trelawny, St James, Hanover, and Westmoreland. Jamaicans are told access still exists—somewhere, somehow—while the reality becomes narrower and more humiliating.

The devastation caused by Hurricane Melissa in October 2025 exposed the absurdity of this arrangement. Beaches are not just recreational spaces; they are part of the national commons and natural buffers in times of crisis. Yet even then, access remained subject to ownership claims and private control.

A National Question, Not a Partisan One

Land and beach access should never be partisan issues. They are questions of sovereignty, dignity, and historical repair. What makes this issue even more troubling is the fact that a people divided along political lines cannot effectively challenge a system that has benefited from their fragmentation for centuries. This is the Jamaica that exists in 2025. And until Jamaicans confront land inequity as a collective national struggle and reject the politics of division that sustain it; Independence will remain incomplete. We may sing about “the land we love,” but the fences tell a different story.

The unresolved land question is not history. It is present tense. And it will continue to shape Jamaica’s future unless we decide, together, to finally answer it.