Dear Editor,

The annual ritual of the Caricom Heads of Government summit has once again focused attention on the decades-old dilemma of regional integration with many now finally concluding what I have long stated: Caricom is not a prerequisite for Jamaica’s advancement. Even major institutional backers of the regional integration movement are having about-faces, but nothing is wrong with an about-face in the face of irrefutable evidence.

For too long, a movement that was dealt its death blow, way back in 1962, when “one from 10 left zero”, was allowed to live on the life support of “historical romanticism”. Caricom served its purpose with the establishment of a regional university and cricket team. While the former is an institution of which all peoples of the Caribbean can be proud, West Indies cricket is slowly driving the final nails into the coffin of Caribbean integration.

While regional integration sounds good in principle and on paper, the insular nature of Caribbean peoples, the historical antagonisms and handicaps of the member states and relatively low utilitarian value of Caricom have retarded the movement.

Caribbean integration has failed because Caribbean people have not accepted it as being essential to their development, or even viable. The Caribbean integration movement has been a reality only in the minds Caribbean leaders, many of whom studied together at UWI. There is absolutely no buy-in from the Caribbean masses and so the movement is viewed as an “old boys’ club”. Caribbean leaders and peoples continue to cling to their outmoded notions of sovereignty unwilling to relinquish any of their “independence” in an increasingly interdependent world.

Caricom in its present form is not economically viable, Caribbean markets are small and weak, with over 30 states in the US having at least five times the total population and with abundantly greater resources than the total region combined. A Caribbean movement without Cuba, Venezuela, Haiti and the Dominican Republic is of little economic value and significance. Caribbean leaders must find the political will to bring democracy to Cuba, fix Haiti and get the Dominican Republic on board.

Outside of that, Jamaica must look to forging partnerships with the larger economies: China, India, the EU and NAFTA. Globalisation has given efficient producers in small developing countries access to vast markets. At present, Jamaica accounts for nearly 50 per cent of Caricom’s population. Venezuela has been more beneficial to the Caribbean than

oil-rich Trinidad, the site of the Treaty of Chaguramas; it is easier and in some cases less expensive to import oil from the Middle East than Trinidad.

Caribbean peoples were attempting integration before the European Union was even conceived. Forty-eight years later we have not even finalised the free movement of labour and capital in a region noted for its homogeneity. For too long we have romanticised the idea of a Caribbean Community to our detriment, because until the philosophy which artificially divides Caribbean people into opposing territories (a feature of the colonial Caribbean) is abandoned, Caribbean integration will be a fleeting illusion to be pursued but never attained.

Phillip A Chambers

phillipdcchambers@yahoo.com