Bustamante, Alexander

February 24, 1884
August 6, 1997

Alexander Bustamante, one of the leading political figures in Jamaica during the twentieth century, was born William Alexander Clarke at Blenheim Estate in Lucea, a coastal town in western Jamaica. He was the second of five children born to Robert Clarke, a white Jamaican, and Mary Wilson, Clarke's second wife, a colored woman of peasant stock. When he married Mary Wilson, Robert Clarke was employed as overseer at Blenheim Estate, a relatively large mixed farming enterprise leased and operated by his step-father, Alexander Shearer, and his mother Elsie Clarke Shearer. When the widowed Elsie Clarke married Shearer, a white Jamaican of Irish extraction, her social status was enhanced as the mistress of the Blenheim Great House. Her son, Robert, however, incurred her displeasure by marrying beneath him, and he found it necessary to build a modest cottage overlooking the Great House; it was in this cottage that William Alexander Clarke was born and lived with other siblings. Later, when failing health forced the aging Shearers to relinquish the lease, Robert Clarke was retained by the new management as property manager and overseer, and he took up residence in the Great House with his family.

Alexander (Aleck) Clarke left Blenheim in his late teens to become a store clerk, but by the age of twenty he had taken up residence at Belmont Estate, in the south-eastern

parish of St. Catherine, to be trained as a junior overseer. Belmont was owned by Thomas Manley, a black man, and his fair-skinned wife, Margaret Shearer. They were the parents of five children, including Norman Washington Manley (1893–1969), later to become Clarke-Bustamante's lifelong political rival. Together, they founded a political dynasty, each serving more than once as the head of the government while the other took the role of leader of the opposition. Both men were half cousins by virtue of sharing a common maternal grandmother, Elsie Clarke Shearer.

Restless, Alexander Clarke left Belmont Estate and went to Cuba in 1905. Initially, he worked as a public transit employee, but he was transferred, due to a promotion, to Panama. On his return to Cuba, he joined the Cuban president's Special Police Force. Between 1910 and 1931 he also made four return visits to Jamaica, including one to start a business venture. In 1934 he migrated from Cuba to New York City, where, identifying himself as Alejandro Bustamanti, a cultivated gentleman of Spanish birth, he worked in a private hospital until he returned, finally, to Jamaica in 1934, and set himself up as a small-business money lender.

The year 1935 witnessed the onset of labor unrest, culminating in an island-wide revolt of the working classes and peasants during 1937 and 1938. Simultaneously, the unrest gave birth to a political movement and a trade union movement. The expectation was that both would be complementary arms of a single process: the political arm was to be led by the leading barrister Norman Manley, who launched the avowedly socialist People's National Party in September 1938; while the trade union arm was to be led by Alexander Bustamante, who registered the Bustamante Industrial Trade Union (BITU) in January 1939.

In September 1940, Bustamante was incarcerated by the governor for making inflammatory speeches. He was released in February 1942, and immediately took absolute control of the BITU from a joint caretaker administration, which included his cousin Norman Manley. In July 1943, Bustamante launched the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) as the political arm of the BITU to contest the first general election based on universal suffrage under the new 1944 constitution. The BITU/JLP bloc won the election with a large majority and ushered in the era of "Bustamanteeism"—with its highly personalized rule—and of "political unionism." The BITU/JLP was returned to office for another five years in 1949, and Bustamante (whose surname was legally adopted in 1945) progressed from head of government to chief minister. The JLP lost the election of 1955, and Bustamante served as the leader of the opposition party from 1955 until 1961. He then dramatically reversed his political decline, regained power, and became the first prime minister of independent Jamaica from 1962 until 1964, when failing eyesight forced him to relinquish duties to an acting prime minister.

Bustamante was able to seize the opportunities for leadership provided by the social upheaval by going outside the interests of his own class, the indigenous plantocracy, and identifying himself with the downtrodden masses of the black population. He also enhanced his "representativeness" and acceptability by participating in the organizational work of other trade unions, and by sharing the platforms of activists associated with the teachings of Marcus Garvey (1887–1940), the Jamaican-born advocate of "black consciousness and pride." His credibility and legitimacy as an authentic leader of the working classes were cemented by his arrest and four days of incarceration in May 1938, and by his forcible internment two years later. He was a tall imposing figure, often elegantly dressed, and his fearless confrontations with the armed police as he led protest marches throughout Kingston served to reinforce the legend that he had initiated about himself—namely, that of the swashbuckling foreign adventurer who had lived in Spain and had served in the Spanish army as a cavalry officer and who, notwithstanding the Great Depression, had made his fortune in the New York stock market.

Bustamante also had an intuitive grasp of the psychology of the workers and peasants, and he could understand their yearnings for a measure of dignity and respect. Unlike previous Jamaican "messiahs" in the twentieth century, Bustamante focused on the material improvement of the dispossessed through direct action. His autocratic and flamboyant style of leadership, as well as his bravado, affability, and accessibility, inspired undying devotion and loyalty—especially on the part of women, towards whom he was always deferential and chivalrous. The refrain "we will follow Bustamante till we die" was chanted by thousands of his supporters at rallies and marches across the country.

While employers could count upon his sense of fair play, Bustamante was first and foremost a champion of the underdog. He would make realistic union demands and then strive to attain them, first by industrial action, and then, if need be, by political action. He also used the BITU to meet the emotional needs of workers, especially on the socially stratified sugar estates, by meeting the employers' high-handed action and deprecating language with equally intimidating language and action.

Deprived by the BITU of mass support, the rival PNP's only hope of electoral victory lay in building its own trade union base, with the result that Jamaican society evolved into two tribe-like political groupings, each with a political culture reflecting the ethics of the two dominant leaders. The Bustamante model of "political unionism"—involving the alliance of unions and parties, the overlap of leadership, and the use of the state apparatus to further labor interests—served to bring organized labor into the center of organized politics and to make support of labor critical to any party that wished to survive and achieve power. This situation led to the entrenchment of the two-party system of representative parliamentary government in Jamaica.

The support of a predominantly rural and agrarian labor force—with whom he shared an emotional attachment to the British monarchy—along with his own private-enterprise orientation, enabled Bustamante to establish the JLP as a genuine conservative party akin to the British Conservative Party. His political philosophy was one of "gradualism" combined with fiscal prudence, particularly as he felt that both he and the newly enfranchised working classes were on trial. Nation building was a process of gradually building development institutions. Bustamante thus had to be won over even to the cause of self-government and political independence by the force of circumstances, including pressure from the rival PNP/trade union bloc.

Although he was also won over to West Indian unity and Jamaica's participation in the West Indies Federation

(WIF, inaugurated in 1958), Bustamante was first and foremost a Jamaican nationalist, and he became increasingly disenchanted with the federation. By 1961 he had taken political opposition to the point where the Norman Manley–led PNP government opted for a referendum to settle the issue of Jamaica's continuing participation in the WIF. Bustamante and the JLP campaigned successfully against participation, leading to Jamaica's withdrawal and the breakup of the federation. The ensuing general election returned his party to office, and Sir Alexander Bustamante (he was knighted in 1955) became the first prime minister of Jamaica in 1962. His first act as prime minister was to complete the first phase of the "mental revolution"—the phrase he used in 1938 to describe Jamaica's social upheaval—by recommending the appointment of a black man to be the first native born governor general, a role representative of the formal head of state.

Illness forced Bustamante to retire his post in 1967, though he lived another thirty years. During his life he held many titles and honors, including Honorary Doctor of Laws, lifelong president of the Bustamante Industrial Trade Union (BITU), lifelong leader and "chief" of the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP), mayor of the Kingston and St. Andrew Corporation, and the first person to be named a National Hero in Jamaica during his or her own lifetime.

See also Jamaica Labour Party; Manley, Norman; People's National Party

Bibliography

Bustamante, Gladys Maud. The Memoirs of Lady Bustamante. Kingston, Jamaica: Kingston Publishers, 1977.

Eaton, George E. Alexander Bustamante and Modern Jamaica, 2d ed. Kingston, Jamaica: Kingston Publishers, 1975.

Eaton, George E. The Concept and Model of Political Unionism. Caribbean Labour Series, number 13. Curacao, N.A.: Caribbean Institute of Social Formation (CARISFORM), 1988.

Eaton, George E. "Economic Integration between Unequal Partners—The English Speaking Caribbean (CARICOM)." In Economic Integration between Unequal Partners, edited by Theodore Georgakapoulos, Christos C. Paraskevopoulos, and John Smithin. London: Edward Elgar, 1994.

Eaton, George E. "The Anglophone Caribbean Labour Movement and Caribbean Regional Integration." In Economic Integration in the Americas, edited by Christos C. Paraskevopoulos, Ricardo Grinspun, and George Eaton. London: Edward Elgar, 1996.

Nettleford, Rex, ed. Norman Washington Manley and the New Jamaica: Selected Speeches and Writings 1938–1968. Kingston, Jamaica: Longmans Caribbean Limited, 1971.

george e. eaton (2005)