SAINT Lucia Prime Minister Philip J. Pierre’s timely state visit to the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela last weekend and his highly-viewed interview with the popular Latin American and Caribbean international news agency Telesur, could not have come at a better time, as the two nations observe over-four-decades of bilateral ties that started as soon as Saint Lucia became independent in 1979.
The state visit is also historic from the standpoint that PM Pierre is the first of the island’s seven prime ministers to do so in the 21st Century.
Venezuela President Nicolas Maduro paid a fleeting visit to Saint Lucia under the previous Allen Chastanet-led administration, during which he also visited the busts of Venezuelan Liberator Simon Bolivar and his Saint Lucian naval commandant and trusted confidant, Jean-Baptiste Bideau.
Bideau is originally from Desruisseaux, Micoud and the remains of his original home still exist in the East Coast village; and his name is still highly-revered in Venezuela, where his remains were interned at the equivalent of a national heroes’ cemetery in 2017.
Bideau and Bolivar dedicated their lives to the battles for Venezuela’s independence and their history is filled with anecdotes about how close they were, Bideau having once saved Bolivar’s life and briefly served as Governor of Eastern Venezuela, before dying-in-battle in 1817, during the fierce Casa Fuerte fight in the state of Barcelona, after being overtaken by the invading Spanish forces.
Bolivar would two years later lead Venezuela to Independence in 1821 and Bideo has been memorialized there since.
Over two centuries after Bideau and Bolivar died, ties between Saint Lucia and Venezuela remain on a good footing, the only interruption being the previous administration’s toeing of the Trump Administration’s anti-Venezuela line in its last two years in office.
Saint Lucia-Venezuela ties virtually froze after Chastanet visited Trump in Mar-a-Lago in March 2019, with other Caribbean leaders in tow from The Bahamas, Haiti, Dominican Republic and Jamaica.
Under Trump’s diktat, Saint Lucia, The Bahamas and Jamaica stood-out as the three English-speaking Caribbean Community (CARICOM) nations most-ready to forget all Venezuela had done to help the region.
They blinded themselves to the fruitful Petro-Caribe free trade mechanism that saved energy costs for most CARICOM nations involved in the first genuine Caribbean Free Trade mechanism of its kind, dreamed-up by Venezuela’s late President Hugo Chavez.
They shut their eyes to the Operation Milagro eye program that also treated tens of thousands of CARICOM citizens, among the millions across the Caribbean and Latin America cared-for through that project, funded by Venezuela and administered by Cuban and Venezuelan doctors in Havana.
And Haiti’s then President Juvenel Moise looked away from the fact that over US $8 billion worth of PetroCaribe fuel provided to Haiti seemed to have gone-up in smoke.
The Mar-a-Lago meeting resulted in Chastanet and Jamaican Prime Minister Andrew Holness returning home and applying Trump’s privately-dictated sanctions, including virtual closure of the local Venezuela embassies by application of new measures that severely limited their ability to function.
Caracas had no choice but to recall its then ambassador to Saint Lucia, as the embassy here was progressively closed, the Venezuelan Cooperation Center’s popular Spanish lessons stopped and ties with the Bolivarian Republic were ground to a virtual halt.
Trumps designs for Venezuela would outlive his shelf-life at the White House and after his handpicked president for Venezuela, Juan Guaido, miserably-failed to live-up to his puppet-masters’ expectations.
Likewise, Chastanet’s five-year term (2016 to 2021) wasn’t long-enough to deliver for him, Saint Lucia’s ‘Tropical Trump’ also suffering the same humiliating fate of rejection at the polls in 2021, only nine months after Trump’s November 2020 rejection.
Since Venezuela became one of the first two nations to open an embassy in Saint Lucia after independence in 1979, the benefits of positive bilateralism have been realized through 44 years of positive continuity.
Almost four-and-a-half decades of ties have resulted in construction of bridges after hurricanes, provision of tens of thousands of computers for students and teachers to upgrade to 21st Century IT learning, outstanding and continuous help to the Saint Lucia School of Music, construction of a seating stand at the Vigie Sports Complex – and hosting of a first-and-only workshop for makers of ‘quatro’ guitars.
Venezuela also provided direct injections of capital assistance by the millions for social programs like NICE (National Initiative to Create Employment) and STEP (Short Term Employment Program), which funding was also rejected by the previous administration.
Saint Lucia was unable to hastily sign-up to the very-positive energy cost-saving PetroCaribe agreement during the Dr Kenny D. Anthony administration, as local legislation could have created a potential geopolitical complication for a useful economic and social development initiative.
Out of his usual abundance of caution, Prime Minister Anthony did not sign-up to PetroCaribe, but when the agreement was eventually bombed into smithereens by Washington under President Joe Biden, Saint Lucia was (and still is) the only non-oil producing CARICOM member-state not indebted to Venezuela for energy supplies delivered under Presidents Chavez and Maduro.
Fortunately, however, the July 26, 2021 elections returned the Saint Lucia Labour Party (SLP) to office under Prime Minister Philip J. Pierre, whose administration’s very-first international relations act was to restore normal relations with Venezuela, also resulting in the return to Saint Lucia of current Ambassador Lieff Escalona, to whom (most of) Saint Lucia-Venezuela progress, in the past decade, must be credited.
Prime Minister Pierre’s state visit to Venezuela last weekend concluded with new agreements that will benefit agriculture and road construction and a return of air services between Saint Lucia and Venezuela.
Former Prime Minister (and current Senior Minister) Stephenson King, Foreign Affairs Minister Alva Baptiste and Ambassador to ALBA Peter Lansiquot accompanied PM Pierre on the mission of resumption.
During the remaining three years of the current administration, it can be expected that bilateral ties between Castries and Caracas can return to higher heights, in mutual interests, in keeping with the two governments’ common adherence to the principles of non-intervention, constructive dialogue and mutual cooperation.