The Two Souls of Caribbean Unity: Federation from Above or Below?
Where does the soul of Caribbean unity dwell? Today, the pursuit of Caribbean unity is monopolized by statesmen and political elites. But desires for genuine unity persist among the ordinary people of the Caribbean. We, who advocate a genuine Caribbean federation from below, must resist the capture of this desire by symbolic gestures and elite compacts. This ersatz form of federation — dictated from above — confines the practice of regionalism to closed-door summits and boardrooms. But their monopoly on Caribbean unity has not extinguished the popular will. The bankrupt unity of Caribbean rulers rests on violent repression doled out by police and military intervention. This, the old politics, must come to an end.
Et tu, UWI?
For some, the embers of West Indian Federation glow faintly in three regional institutions. The first, the University of the West Indies, remains intact. Yet, as bean counting and national chauvinism afflict the governments of its three flagship campuses in Barbados, Jamaica, and Trinidad and Tobago, this guardian of Caribbean intellectual tradition continues its descent into a factory of aspiring professionals and managers for the civil service, state industrial firms, and multinational corporations. An institution once treasured as a place of cosmopolitan exchange is now compelled to educate petty functionaries in fields such as business management, criminology, engineering, and political science. Many are funneled into positions as advisors and consultants to regional governments and opposition parties. Where Caribbean intellectuals and teachers face the brunt of retrenchment and budget cuts at the hands of mercenary politicians, they deserve our unwavering support. But UWI is also a refuge of the old politics of elite rule and ethnic patronage. Those who uphold a perennial resistance to the old politics are often deprived of steady employment. To build Caribbean unity, we must also extend solidarity to the teachers and intellectuals who are marginally employed or not employed at all.
Batting Light
West Indies Cricket, the second vestige of Federation, is equally suspect. This October, humiliating losses at the hands of lesser sides from Scotland and Ireland in the group stage of the T20 World Cup marked a nadir previously unimaginable to long suffering fans of the West Indies. Losses on the cricket pitch are not in themselves political defeats against the cause of Caribbean unity. Rather, the disappointment in our top batsmen and bowlers thinly veils anger at corruption of the beloved game by the shortsighted bureaucrats of the West Indies Cricket Board and multinational sport conglomerates.
At its best, cricket reveals that our working people, unemployed, and youth are capable of creative genius. But the old politics limit the expression of this genius. Ordinary people are deprived of the capacity to govern themselves, their workplaces, and their communities. When this is blunted, Caribbean people turned to sport and to the popular arts as outlets for the expression of the popular will. In the era of anti-colonial agitation and post-independence nation building, the masses took pride in the marvels of the cricket pitch. As spectators, their mass participation in the spectacle of cricket confirmed their capacity for self-organization into what Guyanese poet Martin Carter described as a “free community of valid persons.”
Now, this is perhaps less an outlet for the frustrated desires for Caribbean unity than it is a spectacle of gross individualism embodied by the majestic innings of batsmen Chris Gayle, Dwayne Bravo, and Andre Russell. Plying their trade in the limited-overs extravaganza of the India Premier League (IPL), their flicking and sweeping boundaries deceptively enchant us with dreams of mastering our destiny through acts of individual brilliance.
Beaten back by the limited opportunities afforded to ordinary people after the collapse of the West Indies Federation, many lived vicariously through transcendent feats of celebrity cricketers. For spectators, this individual spectacle replaces the collective struggle of a side that pulls together for victory. There is little collective struggle to be found today in cricket or West Indian society. Or, rather, we look for unity in our state houses and cricket boards when its soul resides in the throngs of cricket fans in Sabina Park, Queen’s Park Oval, and the Bourda Oval.
CARICOM: Caribbean Unity in the Empire’s Clothes
But there is another regional institution that claims a monopoly on Caribbean unity. The last survival of Federation, the Caribbean Community (or, CARICOM), persists as a regional secretariat composed of sitting governments and the Caribbean Single Market Economy (CSME), a treaty of economic integration ratified in 1989. Often lambasted as a dustbin of nonbinding summits and memoranda, CARICOM enjoys a newfound international reputation by dint of its advocacy for reparations, debt relief, and climate financing from former colonial powers.
But what kind of unity does CARICOM aspire to? The unity of the Caribbean people themselves or their rulers and bureaucrats? Elsewhere, I contend that Prime Minister Mia Mottley of Barbados represents the vanguard of the new CARICOM. Mottley, without question, is the most successful and charismatic Caribbean politician of her generation. This is not a compliment but an observation. Last November, she removed Queen Elizabeth II as ceremonial head of state, making good on a campaign promise to declare Barbados a republic. In her friendly disposition toward international celebrities like Nigerian artist Burna Boy and homegrown superstar, Rihanna, Mottley enjoys broad appeal among Bajan voters and international observers. In January, her Barbados Labour Party won a clean sweep of all thirty contested seats in parliamentary elections.
At the United Nations and COP27, Mottley remains steadfast in her demands for reparations and climate justice. On media tours, Mottley conveys this agenda to international audiences. In a tete-a-tete with CNN anchor Christiane Amanpour in April 2020, Mottley dazzled viewers with her appraisal of the dual crises of climate change and COVID-19 in the Caribbean: “We suffer a number of risks,” Mottley reasoned. “One, we are a highly indebted region largely because we are perhaps the most travel-dependent and trade-dependent region in the world…This is a peculiar moment for Caribbean states, not just Barbados. And it is one which we hope we can summon the rest of the global community to recognize.” Mottley’s indictment of metropolitan governments for their crude dismissal of climatic threats earned her praise from adoring fans. At COP27 in Egypt, one Trinbagonian delegate fancied aloud that they “want Mia Mottley to run the Caribbean.” The charismatic “Aunty Mia” pulls at the heartstrings of Caribbean unity. On social media, we find traces of burning desires for federation.
Social media is an imperfect measure of the Caribbean popular will. But penetrating insights are present. A desire for Caribbean unity extends beyond the narrow horizon of party politics. One soul of Caribbean unity seeks endorsement from hierarchical governments in the region. This spirit demands that a charismatic leader above society be genuine. But this search for proper leadership, like the unrequited support of West Indies Cricket, demonstrates the unfulfilled desire of ordinary people to take center stage in political affairs.
But the capture of these desires by populist rulers of Mottley’s ilk should give us pause. Again, Mottley deserves our attention because of her political success and popular appeal, not in spite of it. Her charisma successfully masks a troubling reality of policing, militarism, and collaboration with empire. As we line up behind her clamors for a common front for reparations and climate justice, what sits behind her masquerade of Caribbean unity? Batons, bullets, tears, and blood.
Guardians of the Fallacy
What sort of Federation would Mottley represent were she to run the Caribbean? As Caribbean people, we are desperate for a popular champion capable of stoking the embers of Caribbean unity anew. But behind her charismatic masquerade, Mottley’s Barbados continues to play host to the Regional Security System (RSS). When Mia Mottley stands beside US Vice President Kamala Harris, we should ask why she escapes the “top cop” label often placed on the latter. As Mottley endorses reparations and justice in international forums, she guards a tradition of repression and violence directed toward the self-directed movement of the Caribbean working class.
The RSS formed in 1982 as a compact between Barbados and four members of the Organization of Eastern Caribbean States — Antigua and Barbuda, Dominica, St. Lucia, and St. Vincent and the Grenadines. Forged out of a self-professed “need for a collective response to security threats,” the military and intelligence compact grew to include St. Kitts and Nevis in 1983.
The six signatories collaborated on their first joint campaign in October 1983, when the RSS and Jamaica Defense Force deployed troops to Grenada in support of Operation Urgent Fury. The RSS continues to boast this history as evidence of its “mutual cooperation” to “restore democracy” in the region. After the collapse of the New Jewel Movement, the post-revolution government in Grenada joined the RSS compact in 1985. Guyana, its most recent member nation, formally signed on to the RSS agreement in September 2022.
I hope, friends, that you are keeping score. The RSS has tallied a score of six not out. Grenada, invaded by the United States in 1983, and Guyana, invaded and destabilized by Anglo-American empire in the 1950s and 1960s, have joined this pact. While AFRICOM is familiar to many leftist critics as a military arm of imperial interests on the African continent, the RSS expands without comment or fanfare.
The resumé of RSS operations from the 1983 invasion of Grenada to its station in Mia Mottley’s Barbados includes responses to well-documented upheavals — such as the 1990 Jamaat al-Muslimeen coup in Trinidad and Tobago — and lesser-known prison uprisings of 1994 and 2005 in St. Kitts and Barbados, respectively.
Some Caribbean intellectuals avoid reckoning with the evasion of direct democracy through the movement for popular assemblies that represented the initial promise of the Grenada Revolution. There are others who have built a cottage industry around the conclusion that Caribbean youth have no interest in rebellion and revolution. They are misguided at best, duplicitous at worst. That the RSS continues to accumulate an arsenal of weapons and counter-insurgent tactics demonstrates they understand the insurgent capacity of ordinary people. Derided as gangs and “troublesome youth organizations,” the signatories of RSS do not seek to engage the working people, the youth, or the unemployed for their perspectives and desires for the new society.
Instead, the neglect and disdain for young people leaves many vulnerable to reactionary fundamentalists ranging from the Jamaat al-Muslimeen to ISIS, who prey upon the youths pursuit of dignity and devotion. The ruling elites, fearing the will of the people, promise only to exterminate their capacity for self-organization. When ordinary people rise up, progressive leaders like Mottley direct them back into the old mess of winner-take-all electoral politics.
In Jamaica and Trinidad, her counterparts put down the uprisings launched against police murders of Susan Bogle and Ornella Greaves. They pledge assistance to a puppet government in Haiti to restore order. Where conservative and progressive politicians unite on these matters, a movement for Caribbean federation from below must remain independent of party politics. We cannot serve two masters at once.
Meanwhile, Haitian citizens fill the streets to protest fuel price increases and the corrupt squandering of PetroCaribe funds. Nowhere does the power of direct democracy burn brighter than in Haiti today. In any insurgent moment, there is uncertainty. People do not always know exactly what they want. In Puerto Rico, this takes the form of plebiscites on Commonwealth Status where the majority choose “none of the above.” Our criticism should be friendly toward those striving for a new society as they are in Haiti today. In moments of this sort, there is possibility in the midst of repression. Caribbean unity demands working to place power in the hands of ordinary people rather than guardians of the police state — whether they bear the name Moïse or Mottley.
The “Nothing” Left
There is nothing left of the Caribbean left. “Socialist” parties readily align with their counterparts against the working people of the region. But if we remain alert, the new masquerade of the Jamaica, Barbados, Antigua and Barbuda, and Guyana governments will become clear. By claiming a monopoly on Caribbean unity, they obscure its forgotten soul. Are there legacies of direct democracy that have been covered up and repressed?
While the late Jamaican economist Norman Girvan continued to lament the absence of a “coherent long-term strategy” for Caribbean unity under CARICOM in the 2010s, the coherence of regional security protocols and counter-insurgency measures remains one area in which the incumbent and aspiring rulers of the region are conspicuously aligned. More importantly, progressives like Girvan limited their agenda to a practice of advising Caribbean governments, banks, and trade union bureaucrats with the policy recommendations of a social democratic left. The lessons of the past half century are proof that this cannot suffice as a strategy to usher in the new society. The Caribbean left will embrace and cultivate direct democracy, workers self-management, and Caribbean federation from below or it will learn again and again that it has nothing left to speak of.
All Power to the Assemblies
Those who strive for a Caribbean federation from below must begin by opposing the RSS, the regional security system of Eastern Caribbean police and military sponsored by the United States. The leaders of this paramilitary compact eagerly accept awards from hemisphere security institutes sponsored by the U.S. State Department.
By opposing this tendency, the working people of the Caribbean (including the youth and unemployed) can gather assemblies to fashion proposals for the future of their neighborhoods, villages, and workplaces. When their proposals garner greater support than aloof politicians, many more will gather with them. We must understand respect for ourselves, respect for Caribbean women and queer communities, respect for ethnic and religious diversity, must begin with the dignity of self-organization. Self-organization is a rupture with orthodoxy. It marks a break from those who tell us what must be and what is impossible. Ruling elites and their advisors play a mas of Caribbean unity while insisting that unity is beyond the reach of the Caribbean working people.
Direct action will replace the power of diplomatic boardrooms with power in the streets. Marches, protests, and assemblies mark a new beginning. Demand the restoration of the RSS budget to assemblies of the workers, the poor, and the unemployed. Subsidize travel and cooperation within the region for those who cannot afford to do so. Demand reparations for the working people and not the politicians and police who patrol and murder in the name of unity.
To find the embers of Caribbean unity, we can look to the popular arts. Sparrow mused in his “Federation” calypso: “But I find we should all be together/ Not separated as we are.” How odd our shock is, then, when the Jamaican dancehall artiste Skillibeng set the music video for his single, “Whap Whap,” in East Port of Spain and proudly waved a Trinbagonian flag.
Skillibeng is not Sparrow. His is not a Federation song. But dancehall — and its offshoot, Trinibad — thrives among the very people abandoned and condemned by the old politics of CARICOM and the RSS. Perhaps Skillibeng will make a chune on it.
