These are exciting and historic times for Caribbean Sports and Diplomacy.
Caribbean Community (CARICOM) leaders opened August 2024 starting Emancipation Day (August 1) observances and ending a forcibly-postponed 51st Summit in Grenada, discussing (among many other topics of major import): the region’s leadership of the global quest for universal recognition of and for People of African Descent; the disturbing trends that followed the official announcement of the results of the peaceful July 28 Venezuela presidential elections; and Caribbean citizens everywhere beaming with pride and joy watching every win by all Caribbean athletes in Paris.
Saint Lucia’s Julien Alfred won her nation’s first Olympic Gold — as the fastest woman athlete on Planet Earth from the world’s smallest nation to hold the prestigious title of 2024 Olympic Women’s 100m Champion.
But her win is also a lifelong Caribbean accomplishment (like Usain Bolt still being respectfully-celebrated by Caribbean citizens everywhere as ‘The fastest man alive’).
Dominica also won its first Olympic Gold, while Grenada and Saint Vincent & The Grenadines celebrated wider cracking the winning code.
The Games continue playing-out in Paris and medals are still being won, but it’s already crystal-clear that 2024 will be a historic year for Caribbean athletes.
The quiet effectiveness of CARICOM diplomacy was also loud in its silence as leaders responded to most-recent developments in Haiti, Cuba and Venezuela.
The largely English-speaking 14 CARICOM, including six independent Organization of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS) member-states, coexist with Latin America neighbours at the United Nations (UN) in New York and the Washington-based Organization of American States (OAS).
They also commune in the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) and the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America – People’s Trade Treaty (ALBA-TCP).
The unanimity clause (that requires support of all-14 members for any joint CARICOM decision) ensured regional leaders did not speak with one voice on Haiti, its oldest nation and newest member-state.
But, under the chairmanship of Guyana, CARICOM has been able to virtually walk on tightropes, without poles and over broken glass bottles, to ensure the process unfolding in Haiti — from February 29, 2024 to present — didn’t result in another largely-expected military invasion by an external armed force waving a Caribbean fig leaf.
Any honest analysis of CARICOM’s stances on Haiti, including criticisms, cannot but conclude that US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken did not get Washington’s way all-the-way, Caribbean leaders simply unwilling to give blanket support to the early plans for direct imperial intervention and occupation.
However, CARICOM Heads wasted no time wondering whether to together demand Washington’s unilaterally-scripted ‘list’ of nations supposedly ‘sponsoring terrorism’ globally.
CARICOM also bent-down-low to limbo under high-fire on Venezuela.
Guyana – at odds with its neighbour over the latter’s claim to over two-thirds of its territory and also being CARICOM’s current chair – demonstrated the diplomatic and political maturity of not kicking a rival when down.
Georgetown, mindful of its own experiences in 2020 when the then-ruling party and its allies lost but refused to leave office, quietly joined nations that called for further verification of the Venezuela results.
And President Dr Irfaan Ali, as CARICOM Chair and Commander-in-Chief of the Guyana Defence Force (GDF) didn’t join the chorus of the imperial cavalcade advocating and supporting external intervention in Venezuela.
CARICOM governments instead opted for quiet diplomacy on Venezuela, their abstentions and absences effectively barring a recent vote hurriedly called by Venezuela’s political enemies in the ‘new Lima Group’ at the OAS to accelerate external intervention, instead of mediation, in a nation that’s no-longer a member-state, Caracas having started the formal withdrawal process since 1999.
Fear of inviting avoidable political reprisals from Washington for endorsing Maduro is a likely factor in some CARICOM member-states’ reactions.
But CARICOM leaders also know they cannot be seen as being ingrate after the high level of assistance received from Caracas in the past 25 years.
The PetroCaribe trade mission benefitted most CARICOM nations through preferential energy and trade agreements, including bartering arrangements (like rice for oil), through a Free Trade mechanism that worked well for all.
PetroCaribe also benefitted other South American nations and effectively promoted the Caribbean as a Zone of Peace, before it was pummelled into by the effects of the hundreds of US-led sanctions that made it impossible for Venezuela to continue sell oil and gas or trade in US currency.
Venezuela and Cuba also led early calls for establishment of a common single Latin American currency, a call recently repeated by CELAC member-states at their last major summit in 2023.
The wider regional healthcare Milagro (Miracle) eye care project — also financed by Venezuela and jointly undertaken with Cuba — still benefits millions of citizens at national levels across the Caribbean and The Americas.
Saint Lucia and Dominica got new bridges from Venezuela to replace old ones swept-away by hurricanes and Caracas provides helicopter services to and from smaller Eastern Caribbean islands being more frequently smashed into by hurricanes worsened by accelerated Climate Change.
Saint Lucia and other islands benefitted from thousands of laptops provided by Venezuela to take IT to classrooms and annual scholarships in academia and sports.
Venezuela also supports development of music through cooperation between local music schools and its national symphony; and Caracas recently hosted more sporting and cultural exchanges with OECS member-states.
On a historical note, the modern Chavez-Maduro era has deepened the integration process between Venezuela and the Eastern Caribbean region that started two centuries ago with Simon Bolivar’s sacred and lasting alliance with Saint Lucian mariner Jean Baptiste Bideau, who eventually became Bolivar’s trusted naval captain and once saved The Liberator’s life.
Bolivar and Bideau fought side-by-side for Venezuela’s independence, the Saint Lucian shipwright building the sailing ships that also transported clandestine Caribbean freedom fighters to Venezuela from Trinidad & Tobago.
Bideau eventually served as Governor of Eastern Venezuela after the Spanish were defeated — and the Saint Lucian hero of Venezuela’s independence died in battle at the Casa Fuerte (Cold Fort) in 1807, to protect, defend and preserve the first Bolivarian republic.
Bideau’s remains were in 2017 removed to a national heroes’ cemetery in Caracas to observe the bicentenary of his death.
Meanwhile, today, while CARICOM was unable to speak with one voice on Venezuela, the Saint Lucia-based OECS Secretariat has spoken for its six-independent member-states — Antigua and Barbuda, Dominica, Grenada, St. Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia and St. Vincent & The Grenadines.
The OECS Commission’s statement said: “We congratulate President Nicolás Maduro Moros, on his victory and re-election to the Presidency of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela for a third term and urge that every effort be made towards national reconciliation.
“The OECS further expresses its appreciation of the invaluable solidarity and friendship extended by Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela which has flourished for over two decades…”
Here again, the maturity of Caribbean diplomacy is quietly playing-out on the regional and global stages, in ways and means that will never satisfy the usual criticisms from usual suspects, but which sees the region’s leaders sensibly choosing to sail calm waters and avoid rough seas, except when up against irresistible gale-force winds and hostile tides and currents.
Meanwhile, as security forces take control in Caracas, the new Maduro administration has called on all political parties that embrace the republic’s constitution to start post-election political dialogue and has committed itself to calling due national legislative elections.