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We are at such a time, and both policies and practices are deepening Caribbean divides. ‘The knock on the door at night’ is not within our regional culture; still less are intimations of ‘ethnic cleansing’. No Caribbean leader would countenance such departures from our norms and values; but all must not only believe, but also act as if they believe, that we forget our oneness at our peril; whether the ‘otherness’ that displaces it is an accidental place of regional birth, or otherness of any kind. I say ‘accidental’ because in the Caribbean the age-old process of trans-migration has made us all family: as a great Barbadian regionalist, the Rt. Excellent Errol Barrow, reminded us twenty-three years ago - concluding in his practical common-sense way that:

“If we have sometimes failed to comprehend the essence of the regional integration movement, the truth is that thousands of ordinary Caribbean people do in fact live that reality every day. … we are a family … and this fact of regional togetherness is lived every day by ordinary West Indian men and women in their comings and goings.”

So indeed it was; and for a very long time. My great-great grandfather on my mother’s side came to Guyana from Barbados looking for land and settlement, and found them - and so it has been up and down the chain of island societies that free movement fused into one: freedom curbed ironically with the arrival of our separate ‘national’ freedoms. But the roots of those family trees are now spread out in the sub-soil of the Caribbean. Social antipathy and divisiveness deny them; but DNA’s defy even Constitutions.

“CARICOM is at risk”, we have been warned. So it is; and few are blameless. Political leaders, in particular, have to be less casual about CARICOM, less minimalist in their ambition for it, less negative in their vision of it. Its foundations have been built on our oneness; not on the geography of a dividing sea. The Revised Treaty of Chaguaramas is not just embellished parchment; it is the logic of that oneness in a world which threatens our separate survival. And the revised treaty is not all; there are international Conventions to which all CARICOM member states are parties that are relevant to our rights and obligations to each other as human beings, much less family. The Caribbean Community is now our regional mansion within a global home. We have to make it more secure and habitable - through reaching goals like the CSME (or even the CSM), and reaching them together.

Next month is the 20th Anniversary of the Grand Anse Resolution on Preparing the Peoples of the West Indies for the Twenty-first Century - the Resolution that established the West Indian Commission. Nearing the end of the new century’s first decade, we are still ‘preparing’. No wonder ‘CARICOM is at risk’. In the era of globalization, we retrogress if we simply mark time while the world moves ahead. As CARICOM’s political directorate meet in Georgetown next week at their XXXth Summit they must demonstrate credibly that they still believe in Caribbean integration, that they care about securing it against risk, and that they are serious in their commitment to the objectives of the Treaty of Chaguaramas. I believe the people the Caribbean yearn for that assurance from inspired leadership.

And so must we all here; for without CARICOM, without the Community, where is the Caribbean Court of Justice; where, even, are Caribbean judiciaries? The siren song of separatism lures us to self-destruction - as it once did with the federal nation we were about to be 47 years ago. The Federation - ‘The West Indies’ - (how quickly we have forgotten its name) did not founder on technical rocks; it foundered on political ones. We have now re-built pains-takingly over nearly half a century; and are again ‘about to be’ - this time an economic community. And again the siren sings seductive songs of separatism. In our collective self-interest, resistance of that enticement has become a major challenge of our time; and it is from our political directorates that the will to resist must mainly come.

The Caribbean Court of Justice, with the full jurisdiction with which it must soon be endowed, with its rich inheritance of the common law and of that international law which is the under-pinning of globalization, is for me the greatest assurance that as a Community of Caribbean people we can meet and overcome the challenges of the time.

Click here for full Address at the Inauguration of the Caribbean Association of Judiciary Officers, Port of Spain, June 25, 2009

Fernando Henrique Cardoso - Brazil

Cesar Gaviria - Colombia

Ernesto Zedillo - Mexico

As Caribbean countries struggle to cope with an ever-rising tide of criminal violence connected to international narcotrafficking, a new report, from a commission co-chaired by three former  Latin American presidents, has been published with proposals that constitute a major departure from existing policies.

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Click here for the Report of the Latin American Commission on Drugs & Democracy

What the Drugs Problem Needs is  a Debate, Not a Disingenuous Battle Plan COHA
A Criminally stupid war on drugs in the US Clive Crook, Financial Times

We tried a war like this once before Mike Gray, Washington Post

Forge a Caricom Position on Drugs and Guns, Norman Girvan

I decided to wait until all the comments on my paper Port of Spain Declaration: A Critical Analysis were posted before making a global response. Four comments were received - those by Norman and Yash in this exchange and two others - by Wendy Lee and Margaret Gill - (Wendy’s contribution is posted on the website, Margaret’s is not) in two separate, parallel e-mail exchanges. Notwithstanding the several important points made by Norman and Yash (which I discuss below), it is my opinion that only Wendy’s and Margaret’s contribution grasped the essential issue involved - sustainable development.

Wendy posed the crucially important question “How can we get decision-makers to absorb and act on the information that is so readily available about sustainable development IMPERATIVES, including critical ecological requirements, instead of pursuing the same old false, unjust and unsustainable models?” Margaret identified another key aspect (one that I explored in the paper) - how do we inform and educate the Caricom public on that essential issue.

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Alberto Jones is an Afro-Cuban of Jamaican ancestry who runs the Caribbean American Children Foundation in Palm Coast, Florida

At this late stage of the fifty year old US-CUBA political strife, reasonable individuals would assume that those charged with inflicting pain, suffering and destruction on the Cuban people, would have concluded that their despicable task have come to an end, that the game is over, and as good sportsmen, they would retreat to their burrows and accept defeat with dignity.Doing what is right would have earned these Cuba-haters at least a few milligrams of sympathy, but it is now clear, that such principles are not part of their genetic make-up nor their life values.

Today, we were introduced to Dr. Jose Azel’s treatise. ‘Fidel Plays the Race Card’, Cuba Transition Project 6/16/09 ctp.iccas@MIAMI.EDU in which his mimetic, new found love for Afro-Cubans living in Cuba without family members overseas sending remittances, broke his heart. He is also profoundly offended by Castro casting himself once again as Robin Hood, with sinister overtones.

What this opportunist fails to include in his article, is that he is part of this multi-pronged effort to incite racial division, strife and a potentially dangerous racial confrontation without lines of demarcation, in such a highly mixed society.Like many others bent on squeezing out every penny out of US-AID, CIA and front foundations willing to pump millions of dollars into every fake organization purporting to be fighting the Cuban government, they are required to present a bio, a body of dirty work against Cuba to support their job application and approval.

Clever, educated and able to use some extra cash, why should Dr. Azel not build up his standing among his peers and future employers, by regularly compiling and publishing tendentious fact sheets as others do?

Key in this chain of command is Mr. Frank Calzon, who has not being indicted as yet, notwithstanding his closest aid, Felix Sixto sits in prison for the next six years, for depleting and pocketing nearly half a million dollars earmarked for their ‘Freedom Fighters’ in Cuba.

Still, the most disgraceful trait of this band of opportunists, is their shameless attempt to exploit real, unresolved problems that seriously affect the wellbeing of tens of thousands of Afro-Cubans, by pretending to be their benefactors, when most who are familiar with our convulsive history since our forceful arrival on these shores, are acutely aware of who our real tormentors are.

Beautifully laid out, are Dr. Azel’s bio-statistics of the Cuban government breakdown, is sublimely presented to draw a parallel with the racist, apartheid South Africa government, which by the way, most of them wholeheartedly supported and many fought alongside their defense forces.

Pitifully invoking the name of their newly coined poster boy, Dr. Elias Biscet and proudly reminding us of his Presidential Medal of Freedom, I wonder, as so many other Cuban dissidents who decided after time to set up shop in south Florida, if Dr. Biscet will be a welcome guest in his neighborhood, his home or as other Afro-Cubans, he will be confined and forced to find refuge in Allapath, Overtown, Parramore, Cabrina Greens or any of the hundreds of Ghettos reserved for Blacks and other minorities across the United States?

Has Dr Azel evolved at such an astronomic speed, that he no longer thinks and acts like his proud ancestors, who brag of having kept their puppet President Fulgencio Batista out of their exclusive Havana Yacht Club, Nat King Cole forced to use the kitchen door at the Hotel Nacional to perform, or when the Kasalta restaurant marked the border, beyond which, Afro-Cubans could not go after dark, without being escorted out Miramar by their private security guards?

Can any of these south Floridian, right-wing Cuban-Americans, suddenly enamored with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and staunch supporters of the Civil Rights Movement, present any document, pictures, newspaper articles or oral history, demonstrating that any one of them supported or was ever near any of these history changing developments in the early 60’s, when they enjoyed privileges denied to all blacks in the United States?

Although Cuban-Americans since the early 60’s had wide access to radio and print media in the US, never, did anyone of these upper class, rich, powerful individuals, with ample access to the highest level of the US government, ever uttered a word on behalf of blacks, whose flesh was ripped apart by attack dogs, lynched by supremacists, incarcerated in mass and murdered with impunity.

Thanks, but no Thanks, is all we can say to Dr. Azel and thousands like him, who are skillfully resorting to mimetic tactics, trying to inflame our sentiments, fight the Cuban government and hand them in a silver platter, a country they have proven to be genetically unfit to fight for by themselves.

June 18, 2009

cacf2@aol.com

On June 5, World Environment Day, Amazon Indians were massacred by the government of Alan Garcia in the latest chapter of a long war to take over common lands-a war unleashed by the signing of the Free Trade Agreement (FTA) between Peru and the United States.

Three MI-17 helicopters took off from the base of the National Police in El Milagro at six in the morning of Friday, June 5. They flew over Devil’s Curve, the part of the highway that joins the jungle with the northern coast, which had been occupied for the past 10 days by some 5,000 Awajún and Wampi indigenous peoples. The copters launched tear gas on the crowd (other versions say that they also shot machine guns), while simultaneously a group of agents attacked the road block by ground, firing AKM rifles. A hundred people were wounded by gunshot and between 20-25 were killed.

The population of the nearby city of Bagua, some thousand kilometers northeast of Lima near the border with Ecuador, came out into the streets to support the indigenous people’s demonstration, setting fire to state institutions and local office of the official party APRA (Alianza Popular Revolucionaria Americana)…

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Related articles

Victory In The Amazon: Defeating the U.S.-Peru Free Trade Pact Laura Carlsen

Sixteenth article in the series

The visceral misogyny which had stamped the Catholic church and its clergy like stigmata, from the time of the early Church Fathers, continued to exercise its baneful influence on Christian societies in the Renaissance and the post-Renaissance period. The Mexican anthropologist, Fernando Benitez, recounts in his book, Demons in the Convent (1998), that the Archbishop of Mexico, Francisco de Aguiar y Seijas (1680-1698) detested women so much that they were not allowed in his presence and, if, in a convent or monastery, a nun crossed his path, he would immediately cover his eyes with his hands. Only men were worthy of his sight - men and Christ. In his archbishopric, over zealous priests felt encouraged to give free rein to their misogyny.

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COALITION   FOR   A   HUMANE  AMNESTY

PRESS RELEASE

THE “REAL” IMMIGRATION PROBLEM IN BARBADOS!

There are thousands of Barbadians, who, having travelled to the U.S.A, overstayed their time, and are now in the process of working on getting their “green cards”. With 6 or 7 years of residence in the U.S.A under their belts, these Bajans have evolved into ‘Bajan-Yankees’, and we would be appalled if the U.S government suddenly started deporting them.

Yet, that is precisely what our Government is doing to ‘Guyanese-Bajans’ and ‘Vincey-Bajans’ in our midst! Our Immigration officers are raiding the homes and work-places of Guyanese and Vincentians who have been living in Barbados for 7 and 8 years, arresting them and putting them on the first flight out of Barbados. And several of these persons are the parents of children born in Barbados, and the owners of bank accounts and other forms of property in Barbados!

Most ordinary Barbadians are not aware that this is happening. Indeed, the Barbadian people have been so misled, that they believe that our Government has given all undocumented or ‘illegal’ Caribbean residents a six month period of time within which to go into the Immigration Department and regularize their immigration status. This is simply not true!

Admittedly, the Barbados government has advised undocumented’ Caribbean migrants that they are required to go into the Immigration Department between 1^st June and 1^st December 2009, but, they have warned that the only people who have a chance of being accepted are those who came to Barbados before the 1^st of January 1998 - almost 12 years ago. All of the others will therefore be subjected to the very real likelihood of deportation! And the Immigration Department has not waited until the 1^st of December 2009 to start deporting people! Indeed, they have already commenced a heartless campaign of arrest and deportation.

THE OLD FIVE YEAR AMNESTY

This inhumane approach to our Caribbean brothers and sisters may be contrasted with the progressive and constructive policy that was pursued by the previous Administration.

The previous government had a policy under which undocumented or ‘illegal’ CARICOM migrants who had resided in Barbados for 5 or more years, were permitted to come forward and apply for Immigrant Status. And once they were able to demonstrate to the Immigration authorities that they were gainfully employed, had no criminal record, and were likely to make a constructive contribution to our society, they were accepted.

Furthermore, if they failed to convince the Immigration Department and were rejected, they were given a right of appeal to an “Immigration Review Committee” chaired by a Minister of Government. If they failed to convince this Committee, they would then be ordered to leave Barbados.

This was a good policy, because it came to the rescue of persons who had become ‘Barbadianised’, and had become part of Barbadian society. Deporting such persons simply did not help anybody, and a wise Barbados government acknowledged this.

Barbados has never had a problem with this “five year amnesty” policy! Indeed, it was a good and humane policy and should be reinstated!

THE NEW SITUATION

The ‘real’ problem with the immigration situation in Barbados is that the traditional and long-standing exchange of migrants between Barbados and Guyana evolved into a ‘migrant labour phenomenon’ over the past decade, but the government of Barbados failed to acknowledge this new development, and therefore also failed to establish a formal ‘migrant labour programme’ with appropriate controls and administrative structures.

The reality is that the Barbadian economy and society has evolved in such a manner that the present generation of native Barbadians is no longer attracted to the physically taxing and repetitive labour of the agricultural, manual and low level service jobs that their parents and grand-parents were prepared to do!

Over the past decade or so therefore, the Barbadian economy has come to rely on imported Guyanese workers to perform essential but unwanted jobs in agriculture, construction, care of the elderly, and a range of low level services. This has helped Barbados to maintain strength and efficiency in these vital areas of its economy, and this, in turn, contributed to the maintenance of an overall strong economy in which the unemployment rate dropped to the historically low level of 6 per cent. In other words, the presence of Guyanese migrant workers in Barbados has not caused the unemployment of native Barbadians!

The belief that the quantity of employment available in Barbados is of a fixed nature and that migrant workers from Guyana simply take the jobs of existing Barbadian workers, is absolutely wrong! The fact is that the Barbadian economy has expanded along with the growth in the labour force! Indeed, our economy would be smaller, with lower per capita income, without our imported Guyanese, Vincentian and St Lucian labour!

However, rather than allowing needed migrant workers from Guyana to come to Barbados in an ad hoc manner, we need to put a formal ‘migrant labour programme’ in place, and run it properly! This is what our new government should be doing - not running down and deporting 5, 6, 7 and 8 year residents of Barbados!

THE SOLUTION

Our government is inflicting unnecessary damage on both the image and the economy of Barbados, with their inhumane and myopic immigration policy. Our organisation - the “Coalition For A Humane Amnesty“- therefore asks all Barbadians to join with us in insisting upon a reinstatement of the ‘five year amnesty’ policy, and the establishment of a formal, structured ‘migrant labour programme’ for guest workers from the CARICOM sub-region.

If you are interested in our campaign, please contact us at the Clement Payne Centre, Crumpton Street, Bridgetown, Barbados (Tel 246 435 2334;

e-mail: clementpaynechambers@gmail.com)

DAVID A COMISSIONG, Secretary

16 June 2009

The debate over Prime Minister Thompson’s declaration of an amnesty focussing on undocumented CARICOM nationals has stirred many an emotion in Barbados, Guyana, and the wider CARICOM. Since the announcement, differing views have penetrated the public sphere with mixed but petulant effects. There appears to be an escalation of underlying anxieties and fears voiced by both undocumented immigrants as well as Barbadian nationals. It is clear that the Government of Barbados is acting within the legal parameters open to it as a sovereign state.

Nevertheless, and in some quarters, arguments are being made that the Government may well be ‘mashing the crease’ with respect to its treaty obligations and commitments to the RTC Establishing the CSME, and in relation to international conventions for which the country is a signatory…

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Yash Tandon

Michael Hudson’s recent article (The Ending of America’s Financial-Military Empire, CounterPunch 15/06/09) is as usual very insightful. But whilst we see the beginning of the end of the empire, we must be vigilant that it is precisely towards its impending demise that the empire is likely to be at its most aggressive. (We are lucky with Obama, he is a good man, but the empire is the global military-industrial-financial complex).

I am from a small country-Uganda– and frankly I do not trust the bigger countries in the south (I mean their ruling elites)…

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