Caricom’s SOA dilemma

Next month, the United States will host the Ninth Summit of the Americas (SOA) in Los Angeles. Not all Caricom states are likely to be in attendance. In fact, I believe a minority can be expected to register an appearance ... unless something compelling unfolds.

Mexico and Brazil have announced a general lack of interest and Caribbean regional heads are mostly hedging their bets. There is, as well, a political crisis in St Kitts and Nevis while other countries like Guyana say they are awaiting some kind of regional "consensus."

Developments surrounding this event provide evidence that Caribbean global affairs are best considered alongside a highly nuanced spectrum of interests, assets and needs and not as an immovable, linear narrative involving small, unimportant states.

Several Caricom states, including T&T, remain undecided about their participation in the SOA. Others are asking no questions. The reasons are numerous and multi-layered.

Among the contentions is the likely non-inclusion of Cuba, Nicaragua and Nicolás Maduro (as president of Venezuela) on the list of invitees.

Alongside Belize’s John Briceño, PM Rowley has called for a rethink of the issue at meetings with senior US officials.

Foreign and Caricom affairs minister, Dr Amery Browne is calling for “a summit which is inclusive rather than exclusionary.”

Antigua and Barbuda, Belize, and St Vincent and the Grenadines have publicly supported such a view, for marginally different reasons. Little has so far emerged from other Caricom members of ALBA (Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas) – Dominica, Grenada, St Kitts & Nevis, and Saint Lucia. But we can estimate their likely positions.

T&T and Belize are not members of this curious brainchild of the late Hugo Chávez. Neither are The Bahamas and Jamaica - though their positions on such matters have become increasingly predictable.

Antigua and Barbuda’s ambassador to Washington, Ron Sanders is insisting that the SOA is “not a meeting of the United States government; it is a summit of all the heads of State of the Western Hemisphere.”

He has also suggested that if Cuba is not invited and Juan Guaidó is welcomed as “the president of Venezuela” there is every likelihood of a Caricom boycott. This is however not expected to be a joint action.

Indeed, Guaidó’s controversial recognition by some countries has proven to be a persistent sticking point in hemispheric and global circles, including within Caricom.

Cuba’s estrangement is longstanding but far more subject to Caricom consensus. The country however remains outside the OAS fold. Yes, Obama met with Raul Castro on the margins of the 2015 SOA in Panama and rapprochement appeared on track but that’s now dead.

Venezuela officially left the OAS in 2017. The Summit is not, technically, an exclusive OAS affair, but is managed by a unit within the organisation.

Nicaragua forcibly invaded the OAS office in Managua recently and dramatically withdrew its membership.

Meanwhile, when Caricom leaders met in Belize in March, there was, apparently, no collective “decision” on a boycott of the SOA should Cuba, Nicaragua and Maduro’s (as distinct from Guaidó’s) Venezuela not be invited.

The matter was likely discussed in caucus but, as was the case with the contentious Commonwealth SG candidacy, there was no “consensus” on the matter. Otherwise, it would have certainly been included in the March 3 Caricom communiqué.

T&T hosted the Fifth Summit in 2009. Cuba did not attend, but Nicaragua and Venezuela were here in all their glory.

The Summit featured the famous photo-op involving Obama and Chávez. They were witnessed smiling and shaking hands, Nicolás Maduro in the background grinning childishly. Not much more is remembered in the midst of a virtual fiasco.

Obama stayed on his own at the Trinidad Hilton. The local press missed his press conference. Ortega, earlier blockaded at the airport, delivered a lengthy, ungracious opening ceremony rant.

Bolivia’s Evo Morales spannered local security to kick some early morning ball at the Queen’s Park Savannah, and Chávez presented Obama with a copy of Eduardo Galeano's ‘Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent.’

Chávez’s gesture, I suppose, was not unlike displaying an open tin of corned beef at a Hindu temple, at least among T&T sycophants who gleefully distributed soft copies of the Galeano diatribe.

More open sourness continued a week later in Caracas when ALBA member states Bolivia, Cuba, Dominica (!), Honduras, Nicaragua and Venezuela declared that the never formally approved “Draft” Declaration of the POS Summit had been “insufficient and unacceptable.”

The situation has since changed and become even more complex. Eleven of the Caricom heads who attended are no longer in office. PetroCaribe largesse has dried up. Nicaragua has descended into tyrannical chaos. Cubans are protesting openly on the streets. Democracy is being sternly challenged in the US.

Following an April 29 meeting between US VP Kamala Harris and Caricom leaders on energy matters, Harris promised to keep in touch “including at the upcoming Summit of the Americas in Los Angeles.” She is not likely to be holding her breath over this. Neither should we.