AN informal meeting in Barbados last Thursday between US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and foreign ministers of the Caribbean Community (Caricom) and Dominican Republic (except for Trinidad and Tobago and Suriname) climaxed with a ‘Commitment of Bridgetown statement on Partnership for Prosperity and Security’.

It was a meeting held on the initiative of Mrs Clinton and an agenda largely determined by the US State Department. The discussion followed her participation in last week’s meeting of the OAS General Assembly in Peru and brief official visits to Ecuador and Colombia.

Thirteen years ago, a mutually structured US-Caribbean Summit between then President Bill Clinton and heads of state and government of Caricom and the Dominican Republic was held in Barbados. The official agenda, shaped by prior intensive bilateral meetings of top officials and relevant ministers, had produced what came to be known as the ‘Bridgetown Accord’ on ‘Partnership for Prosperity and Security’.

A critical assessment of the benefits of that summit in Barbados on May 10, 1997 is yet to be made. But last Thursday’s informal few hours of discussions chose to continue the central theme of “partnership for prosperity and security” of the earlier historic event 13 years ago.

The ‘Commitment of Bridgetown’ gives the assurance that to “meet the common pledges of the 21st century, we (foreign ministers) declare our intention to act in concert to improve the social and economic well-being of our peoples, to ensure the safety of all our citizens to advance towards a secure and clean energy future, and to defend and strengthen our democratic institutions”.

It may therefore be quite useful to now have a serious assessment of the progress and ‘deficits experienced in the implementation of that Bridgetown Accord of 1997 in light of the current harsh realities of social and economic dislocations and rampaging crime and violence in the Caribbean.

While precious little more than the outlines have been referenced in statements by some Caricom ministers responsible for security, the Commitment of Bridgetown, in pointing to promised “US-Caribbean Security Co-operation”, states:

“We celebrate (celebrate?) the launching and reaffirm the commitments made at the recently concluded Caribbean-US Dialogue on Security Co-operation (CBSI) in Washington on May 27, 2010 including the adoption of three key documents that guide our new security partnership”:

Security focus

The referenced listed documents on security focus are:

* “A Declaration of Principles that reflects our joint political will to address our shared security priorities and responsibilities to our citizens and to work together to substantially reduce illicit trafficking, advance public safety and security, and promote social justice.

* “Plan of Action on Security Co-operation that establishes the concrete and practical ways we plan to partner in reducing crime and violence and in strengthening our institutions; and

* “The Joint Caribbean-United States Framework for Security Co-operation Engagement that defines how we plan to partner with each other to effectively address our strategic security priorities”.

While awaiting the unfolding of the agreed “principles”, ‘plan of action’ and ‘framework’ arrangements, it is quite relevant to recall here what happened 13 years ago between the USA and Caricom governments under the watch of then President Bill Clinton whose wife, Hillary, was also part of the US delegation to Barbados.

I reference here the much “celebrated” (to use a word in current usage) ‘Partnership for Prosperity and Security’, as outlined in the ‘Bridgetown Accord’ of May 1997 that devoted the substantial part — one-third of the relevant 32 pages — to ‘Justice and Security’:

The issues covered then certainly remain of interest to Caribbean citizens — in particular Jamaica (at this time of crisis spawned by moves to extradite the ‘baron of Tivoli Gardens’ Christopher ‘Dudus’ Coke) — as well as other crime-plagued jurisdictions (Trinidad and Tobago and Guyana, for example).

They included:

* An Arms Trafficking Control Regime for the Caribbean; Illicit drugs-reduction, education, rehabilitation and eradication; Combating Money Laundering;

* Criminal Justice Protection Programme (including personal security of witnesses, jurors, judicial and law enforcement personnel) in cases of murder related to drug-trafficking, gun-running and human trafficking); and

* Strengthening of Regional Security Forces; Combined and Co-operative Interdiction Efforts, and Collection, Analysing and Sharing of Information.

Consequently, the need for an independent assessment to determine the progress and failures in the implementation of the Bridgetown Accord of 1997.

Alliance for Progress

The moreso now, in the context of the June 10, 2010 two-and-a-half-page ‘Commitment of Bridgetown Statement’ that speaks to “celebrating the launching” and reaffirmation of “commitments” made at a ‘Caribbean-US Dialogue on Security Co-operation’. Very little was made known to the public by the governments concerned prior to and after that ‘Dialogue’ in Washington.

Not to be forgotten also, and of much relevance to current US initiatives on the Latin America/Caribbean region, is that 36 years before the Bridgetown Accord there was the famous ‘Alliance for Progress’.

It was the much hailed initiative of then President John Kennedy to battle poverty, foster social justice and democracy and to keep a perceived threat from “international communism” at bay. The Alliance for Progress was forged against the backdrop of the Fidel Castro-led Cuban revolution two years earlier.

Today, the Barack Obama/Hillary Clinton shared “strategic vision” for engagement in the Latin American/Caribbean region (as alluded to last week by Mrs Clinton in Ecuador), is very much occupied in monitoring the politics and dynamics of “change” under left, left-of-centre and centrist administrations in Venezuela, Brazil, Argentina, Nicaragua, Bolivia, Ecuador, Colombia, Chile and Peru.

Secretary Clinton had also noted in Ecuador that next year “we will celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Alliance for Progress”.

Critics of US policies and programmes in Latin America and the Caribbean may well ask: What is there to “celebrate”?

The plundering of vital resources by America’s multinational corporations and the endemic poverty, illiteracy and diseases across Latin America as well as in a Caribbean nation like Haiti, while Washington continues its mixed messages on Cuba and, differently, on Venezuela?

The late Eric Williams, Trinidad and Tobago’s historian prime minister, has recorded how Fidel Castro, fresh from his successful inauguration in January 1959 after Cuba’s revolution, was ridiculed at a summit in Buenos Aires, Argentina, when he proposed a US$30-billion aid programme for Latin America over 10 years, and the creation of a Latin American Common Market.

Williams noted in his epic work From Columbus to Castro – a History of the Caribbean (1492—1969) that “Castro’s opponents (at the conference), especially the United States, sneered. But two years later President Kennedy proposed his Alliance for Progress with US$10-billion over 10 years..

“In 1967,” wrote Williams, “the Organisation of American States, excluding Cuba which had by then been expelled, voted unanimously at Punta del Este in Uruguay for the establishment of a Latin American Common Market.”

Ironically, at last year’s Fifth Summit of the Americas in Port-of-Spain, hosted by then Prime Minister Patrick Manning, Venezuela’s controversial President Hugo Chavez used the televised official opening ceremony to make a dramatic presentation to President Obama of the internationally famous book Open Veins of Latin America.

It is a monumental work by Uruguayan journalist Eduardo Galeano that chronicles the savage exploitation of the natural and human resources of Latin America by the corporate interests of the USA.

Now, let’s see how an apparent ‘renewal’ of a pledged “partnership for prosperity and security” between the USA and the CARIFORUM states (Caricom plus Dominican Republic) really works for the PEOPLE of this region that bridges the two Americas.