John Maxwell
Almost everything you thought you knew about bauxite is a lie, beginning with the Authorised Version of how the Industry began. 'Although deposits of aluminous red earth have been known to occur in the Tertiary Limestone areas (which covers two thirds of the land surface of Jamaica) since the 1820's, it was not until the 1940's that their economic significance as an ore of aluminum was recognised."
That's not as bad as the garbage disseminated in various quarters, including schools, which attributes the 'discovery' to one of Jamaica's merchant barons in the 1940s.
According to that story the merchant, who owned land in St. Ann, noticed that his crops were not doing well on red earth and sent some away to be analysed. And presto! a bauxite industry.
The very first Government Geologist, J.G.Sawkins, had mapped some of the major deposits and discussed their possible importance in his official Notes of 1867. And Aluminium Ltd of London had had its agents mapping and getting options on land in Jamaica since 1936.
The discovery of mineral wealth in the Third World has usually been the precursor to communal strife up to and including civil war (Nigerian oil, Congolese cobalt, uranium, oil, etc., etc.,) and social dissolution. Jamaica has been no different, only slightly less bloody.
Mining usually destroys the environment, fragments communities, intensifies inequality and enhances criminal activity. Bauxite has disfigured the landscape, opened land to illegal deforestation and increased soil erosion. The dust nuisance from mining and transportating bauxite is spread wide as are the asthma and other collateral medical conditions. The fallout is much greater and more severe in the neighbourhood of alumina refineries. The toxic effusions of these hellholes destroys the roofs of houses, furniture, livestock and most shameful of all, the lungs of childre Red mud polluted water contributes to hypertension, stroke and early death
But all this is just a start, a sample, of the enduring curse of bauxite, that magic mineral that only 50 years ago was going to be the engine of our development, was going to make us all rich and happy.