LEGAL PLURALISM & THE MAROON LEGAL SYSTEM “The Maroons of the
Americas have long proffered rich resources for historians,
anthropologists, and sociologists interested in understanding
the violence and creativity that accompanied forced exile to the
Americas, the duplicitous nature of colonial power, and the
liberatory potential of resistance to both. But the Jamaican
Maroons were not merely sociological types or Utopian symbols;
they were distinctive cultural and political actors within a
Jamaican and transatlantic social order uniquely configured by
African, Amerindian, European, and Caribbean elements.” -
(Wilson 2009, p. 48) Deep in the remote impenetrable karst of
Jamaica's Cockpit Country, “where deep canyons and limestone
sinkholes abound but where water and good soil are scarce”,
exists the town of Accompong, the oldest continuous free
community of Africans in the New World(Price, Maroons). In and
around the town of Accompong, more than 500 “maroons”, the
descendants of a class of escaped slaves turned