January 6 (yesterday) was a dark day for me – mourning the death of the Cuban martyrs killed defending Venezuela’s Bolivarian Revolution and sharing in a collective memorial of the life of Saint Lucian writer and historian Gregor Williams.
A Venezuela solidarity event was held at the Bideau Park in Castries and the Gregor Williams soiree memoir took place at the National Cultural Center.
The rally, organized by the Interim Venezuela/St Lucia Association, was to express solidarity with Venezuelans after the January 3, 2025 invasion by US combat troops that featured abduction of President Nicolas Maduro and his wife Cilia and their forced extraction and extradition to the US.
It was advertised as ‘To protect the Caribbean as a Zone of Peace’ and the day’s theme was: ‘Whatever Happens in the Caribbean Area Affects Us All!’.
Indeed, from all the world has seen and herd since last weekend there’s no doubt that Venezuela can indeed happen anywhere else and every government and leader have been put on notice by none other than the US President.
And true, Saint Lucians are as-affected by the closure of Caribbean skies by the US actions against Venezuela as all other Caribbean nationals at home and abroad whose travel schedules have been thrown into costly chaos.
But even so, Saint Lucians are not typically ingrate and there are many who silently or quietly oppose the way one country has decided to designate itself the world’s policeman and prosecutor, judge, jury and executioner.
Saint Lucia has been a long-term beneficiary of Venezuela’s fraternal generosity.
Under Prime Minister Dr Kenny D. Anthony, Saint Lucia benefitted from Venezuela’s provision of laptops to help take schooling online, scholarships to medical institutions in Caracas and ongoing support for economic and social projects through loans and grants, including for the Short-Term Employment Program (STEP) and to the Saint Lucia Development Bank (SLDB).
Venezuela also built three new bridges in the south of the island following destruction by hurricanes, Venezuelan sailors re-built the pavilion at the Vigie Sports Complex in one weekend, Saint Lucia’s School of Music has benefited from Venezuelan assistance, local ‘quatro’ players were taught by Venezuelan craftsmen how to make their own indigenous instruments and other social and cultural programs included Spanish-teaching through the Venezuelan Cooperation Centre.
Between 2016 and 2021, the then Saint Lucia government (under Prime Minister Allen Chastanet) joined others in the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) to help the first Trump administration launch a series of Caribbean sanctions to help pin the Washington squeeze on the Maduro administration.
Saint Lucia sanctioned the Venezuela embassy and forcefully reduced its functioning ability, including receiving transfers to pay staff and hosting costs as agreed when the two countries established diplomatic ties after Independence in 1979.
The change of government in 2021 saw the new Philip J. Pierre administration immediately re-establish the friendly ties between the two nations, which preceded Venezuela’s independence in 1811, through the solidarity and friendship between the leader of Venezuela’s independence fight Simon Bolivar and Saint Lucia’s sailor and shipwright Jean Baptiste Bideau.
Bideau built vessels to transport voluntary fighters from Saint Lucia and the Eastern Caribbean’s other European colonies to Venezuela (through Trinidad & Tobago’s Gulf of Paria) to join the battles for Venezuela’s independence.
Captain Bideau saved Bolivar’s life on a beach during a crucial battle and served as Governor of Eastern Venezuela after independence, until his death in battle (in 1817) in defence of the revolution he helped make and shape.
As fate would have it, Gregor Williams and his wife Deirdre co-authored a chapter on Bideau’s contributions to Venezuela’s independence in a book entitled ‘Lideres del ALBA’ (‘Leaders of ALBA’) that highlights the roles of earlier Caribbean liberators, some who long-preceded the 19th Century.
Gregor and Deirdre were also always willing and available to share their historical knowledge with Saint Lucians about earlier contributions Bideau made to the liberation struggle in Saint Lucia that led to the successful slave revolt at Rabot in Soufriere in 1795, which led to one year of liberation from slavery.
Gregor and Deirdre’s book also informs that after Saint Lucia fell in 1796, Bideau contributed to the struggle that led to Haiti’s independence in 1804 and also helped the fight in Guadeloupe, before joining Venezuela’s Liberator, Simon Bolivar.
So, there are historical and contemporary reasons why Saint Lucians offered solidarity to Venezuela in Castries yesterday – and many more continue to in their minds, especially after Saturday’s military intervention that took dozens of Venezuelan and Cuban lives, destroyed national defence facilities and started a dehumanizing process of choreographed global humiliation of a Head of Government kidnapped at his home by violent force.
The Cubans slaughtered defending Bolivar and Bideau’s legacies were heroic martyrs no-less than their fellow compatriots killed defending the Grenada Revolution in 1983 — and a decade earlier supporting African liberation movements in Angola, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa and Zimbabwe.
Yesterday’s solidarity rally followed others in Trinidad & Tobago and Barbados, as well as in neighbouring Grenada and Saint Vincent & The Grenadines — and all Caribbean nations and dependent territories where millions benefitted from the Petrocaribe trade and energy assistance program and the ‘Milagro’ (‘Miracle’) eye care program funded by Venezuela.
Solidarity is free, but is a costly human sacrifice and an expression of always-dependable friendship between peoples and countries.
However, US military interventions in Grenada in 1983, Panama in 1989, Haiti in 2004 and Venezuela in 2026, have offered four decades of experiences and lessons seen, felt and learnt across CARICOM and the wider Caribbean and Latin American region, today being reflected in the solidarity being expressed with Venezuela across the region.
As such, Bolivar and Bideau will have been proud of and beaming over the role played by Gregor and Deirdre in connecting the historical dots that linked Saint Lucia and Venezuela for over two centuries.
And likewise, over the levels of mutual solidarity.