Portal:Jamaica
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Jamaica is an island nation of the Greater Antilles, 240 kilometers (150 mi) in length and as much as 85 kilometers (50 mi) in width situated in the Caribbean Sea. It is 635 kilometers (391 mi) east of the Central American mainland, 150 kilometers (93 mi) south of Cuba, and 180 kilometers (112 mi) west of the island of Hispaniola, on which Haiti and the Dominican Republic are situated. Its indigenous Arawakan-speaking Taíno inhabitants named the island Xaymaca, meaning either the "Land of Springs," or the "Land of Wood and Water." Formerly a Spanish possession known as Santiago, then the British West Indies Crown colony of Jamaica. It is the third most populous Anglophone country in the Americas, after the United States and Canada.  Jamaica's current Constitution was drafted in 1962 by a bipartisan joint committee of the Jamaican legislature. It came into force with the Jamaica Independence Act, 1962 of the United Kingdom Parliament, which gave Jamaica political independence. Constitutional safeguards include freedom of speech, press, worship, movement, and association. The Judiciary is independent of the executive and the legislature. Jurisprudence is based on English common law. 
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 Jamaican singer Jimmy Cliff in concert, 1997. 
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