What do you get when you extract the reggae and calypso, the jerk chicken and rum punch, and the people and their passion from a Caribbean island? You're left with Gilligan's Island minus the huts and the hammocks. Gilligan's island, like any tropical or Caribbean island, is an exotic, magical place that overwhelms the senses with lush, tropical foliage and turquoise waters too bright to believe. However, it's the Caribbean culture - the people and their language, the music and dance, the food and festivities, the history and traditions - that breathes life into the Caribbean. It is this culture, then, that separates the traveler from Thurston and Lovey and that prevents the traveler from sailing on the Minnow on a "three-hour tour."
For the Caribbean, one very important aspect of culture is its history. Caribbean history, and, in particular, the history of the slave trade, has had an enormous impact on Caribbean culture. The history of the Caribbean slave trade is filled with stories of both horrible struggle and fearless resistance. It is this ability to endure that surges through the Caribbean soul even today. At the forefront of this passionate resistance is a group of people called the Maroons.
The term Maroon is widely used throughout the Caribbean to represent escaped African slaves, who, during the time of the Caribbean slave trade, escaped into the wilderness. The word Maroon comes from the Spanish word Cimarrones, meaning wild cattle (French-Marrons and English-Maroons). This term was used because these slaves were usually trained as trackers and hunters of wild cattle. For four centuries, thousands of Maroons escaped the plantations and European colonization and sought freedom in the wilderness. Not only did they escape, they also created settlements, fiercely challenged colonial powers, changed the plantation system, and created a new identity out of their mixed African, Native American, and European experiences.
The descendants of these original Maroons still survive in settlements in many areas throughout the Caribbean with larger populations in Jamaica, Surinam, French Guyana, Columbia, Mexico, and the Bahamas. The Maroon settlements in Jamaica, still present today, seem to have had an enormous impact on the country's identity and culture.
After Columbus arrived in Jamaica in 1494, the Spanish were the first Europeans to settle in Jamaica, bringing the plantation system and slaves, mostly from the Guinea coast, to the island. Spanish names like Ocho Rios, Montego Bay, Oracabesa, and St. Jago de la Vega (Spanish Town) are still present today.
