Jamaica and the Sugar Worker Cooperatives

Between 1974 and 1977, as part of a wider attempt by Prime Minister Michael Manley's regime to carry out a democratic reformist strategy of development, the three largest sugar estates in Jamaica were converted into worker-managed farms. Within a few years, however, the cooperative program was in disarray as the farms faced economic setbacks and as political conflicts developed among the sugar workers, local authorities, and the government. Drawing on his extensive field research in Jamaica, Dr.