COCKPIT COUNTRY

an approximately 500-square-mile (1,300-square-kilometre) region in the interior of Jamaica, southeast of Montego Bay. It is part of the great White Limestone plateau and has typical karst topography, with innumerable conical and hemispherical hills covered with dense scrubby trees, rising hundreds of feet above depressions and sinkholes with sharp, precipitous sidesthe cockpits. This difficult and inhospitable terrain provided refuge for cimarrones (Spanish: runaway slaves), called Maroons by the English, who bolted when the English conquered Jamaica in 1665 and waged relentless guerrilla warfare. The descendants of these unsubdued slaves, who intermarried with freed slaves and Arawak Indians in the area, today number about 5,000 and still inhabit the Cockpit Country, where they maintain a large measure of freedom from government interference. Social organization is based on the whole community, not the family, and all land belongs to the community. They pay no taxes, and the central government may interfere only in the rare case of a capital crime.