Essential Afro-Latino/ Caribbean Current Events
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CARICOM Statement on Ukraine
Caribbean Organisation for Peoples Empowerment | Americas, Caribbean, World | February 26, 2022
CARICOM should defend world peace and not allow itself to become a tool of NATO warmongering
By A. T. Freeman
On the 13 February, CARICOM issued the following statement.
“The Caribbean Community (CARICOM) is deeply concerned by the on-going developments along the Ukraine border and calls on all parties involved to act responsibly and with self-restraint and responsibility to avoid destabilisation in that region.
CARICOM calls on all actors to intensify diplomatic efforts to settle differences peacefully and calls for the respect of Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity. The Community welcomes the efforts of the international community to promote dialogue and to find urgent solutions to de-escalate tensions in the region.
CARICOM reaffirms its commitment to respect for sovereignty, territorial integrity, non-interference in the internal affairs of another state, the prohibition on the threat or use of force, and peaceful resolution of disputes. Universal respect and adherence to these norms and principles of international law are fundamental to the maintenance of the international system and global peace and security.
The Caribbean Community will continue to monitor developments in this evolving situation”
While appearing to defend the principles on which the United Nations is founded, the CARICOM statement was, in fact, a thinly disguised statement in support of NATO’s warmongering in eastern Europe and a contribution to the global disinformation war launched by the NATO powers in defence of this warmongering. Taking its cue from the Anglo-Americans, CARICOM characterised the situation in eastern Europe as one concerning ‘developments along the Ukraine border’, while ignoring the central problem, namely NATO’s deliberate policy of advancing towards Russia’s borders in order to gain a military advantage that would allow them to make a military first strike against that country and make it impossible for Russia to retaliate. Given that the USA threatened the world with World War 3 unless the Soviet Union abandoned its efforts to place missiles in Cuba, it is clear that the architects of the NATO expansion towards Russia’s borders know exactly the military significance of their strategy.
Following this statement, it was reported in the regional press that, on 21 February, the CARICOM ambassadors in Washington held a meeting with the Ukrainian ambassadors to the USA and the United Nations. No similar meetings were reported with the Russian ambassador or diplomats from the main NATO states. The meeting was organised and hosted by Antigua and Barbuda’s ambassador to the United States, Sir Ronald Saunders, who is also the dean of the Caribbean diplomatic corps in Washington. Ambassador Saunders had previously written an article on the situation in eastern Europe, titled ‘Caribbean cannot ignore escalating tensions over Ukraine’, in which he declared, “Beyond the economic and financial impact on the region, if oil and gas prices rise, small Caribbean countries which came to independence by exercising the right to self-determination, and which treasure their sovereignty and territorial integrity, would have to be very concerned should Russia invade Ukraine to bring it back under Russian control. Any diminution in the sanctity of these norms of international law would pose a threat to Caribbean Community (CARICOM) states, such as Belize and Guyana, which are faced with territorial claims”.
It is a difficult to believe that in a world in which the big powers, and particularly the Anglo-Americans and their NATO allies show zero respect for the right to self-determination, sovereignty and territorial integrity, that a seasoned diplomat like ambassador Saunders could make such a statement. The Caribbean, in particular, has been a victim of precisely the violation of these principles by those who today are screaming at the top of their voices about Russia violating Ukraine’s sovereignty. Haiti, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Guyana and Grenada have all experienced this lack of respect for the UN charter principles. Even Venezuela had Juan Guaidó appointed as their president by the US government and their money and businesses seized by the British and US governments. Further afield, the world witnessed the western powers dismember Yugoslavia, carve out Kosovo from Serbia and declare it an independent state and destroy Iraq and Libya. At the moment, Saudi Arabia with the full support of the main NATO powers is waging a war of annihilation against the people of Yemen, Israel is occupying parts of Syria and routinely bombing that country, while the US, itself, is militarily occupying parts of Syria. In these circumstances, it is difficult to understand why CARICOM considers the situation in Ukraine a unique threat to the people of the Caribbean, while on the other cases of flagrant violation of the UN charter principles, it remains absolutely silent.
On the 24 February, CARICOM issued a further statement which read:
“The Caribbean Community (CARICOM) strongly condemns the military attacks and invasion of Ukraine by The Russian Federation and calls for the immediate and complete withdrawal of the military presence and cessation of any further actions that may intensify the current perilous situation in that country. The recognition by The Russian Federation of the regions of Donetsk and Luhansk represents a violation of the territorial integrity and sovereignty of Ukraine.
The hostilities against Ukraine go counter to the principles of respect for sovereignty, territorial integrity, non-interference in the internal affairs of another sovereign state and the prohibition on the threat or use of force, and the peaceful resolution of disputes, which are the bedrock of this Community.
CARICOM maintains that the principles of universal respect and adherence to these norms and principles of international law are fundamental to the maintenance of the international system and global peace and security.
CARICOM calls on all parties involved to urgently embark on intensified diplomatic dialogue to immediately de-escalate hostilities and work towards a sustainable peace”.
This statement lays bare the fact that CARICOM, under the guise of defending the principles of the UN charter, has, in fact, made itself a tool in NATO’s warmongering activity in eastern Europe. The disaster that has befallen the people of Ukraine is rooted in the US violation of that country’s sovereignty in 2014 by overthrowing its elected president, installing its own people in power there and turning that country into a base for provoking and threatening Russia. These US actions were carried out in violation of Ukraine’s sovereignty and against the best interests of the people of that country.
CARICOM does not help the people of Ukraine, the people of the Caribbean nor the cause of peace in the world by tacitly supporting this NATO warmongering. CARICOM should abandon its support for it and defend the principles of the UN charter in a consistent and honest way, without any hypocrisy and double standards. A good start in this direction would be a call for the disbanding of NATO which is an aggressive warmongering organisation and a permanent threat to world peace.
CARICOM Statement on Ukraine
Caribbean Organisation for Peoples Empowerment | Americas, Caribbean, World | February 26, 2022
CARICOM should defend world peace and not allow itself to become a tool of NATO warmongering
By A. T. Freeman
On the 13 February, CARICOM issued the following statement.
“The Caribbean Community (CARICOM) is deeply concerned by the on-going developments along the Ukraine border and calls on all parties involved to act responsibly and with self-restraint and responsibility to avoid destabilisation in that region.
CARICOM calls on all actors to intensify diplomatic efforts to settle differences peacefully and calls for the respect of Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity. The Community welcomes the efforts of the international community to promote dialogue and to find urgent solutions to de-escalate tensions in the region.
CARICOM reaffirms its commitment to respect for sovereignty, territorial integrity, non-interference in the internal affairs of another state, the prohibition on the threat or use of force, and peaceful resolution of disputes. Universal respect and adherence to these norms and principles of international law are fundamental to the maintenance of the international system and global peace and security.
The Caribbean Community will continue to monitor developments in this evolving situation”
While appearing to defend the principles on which the United Nations is founded, the CARICOM statement was, in fact, a thinly disguised statement in support of NATO’s warmongering in eastern Europe and a contribution to the global disinformation war launched by the NATO powers in defence of this warmongering. Taking its cue from the Anglo-Americans, CARICOM characterised the situation in eastern Europe as one concerning ‘developments along the Ukraine border’, while ignoring the central problem, namely NATO’s deliberate policy of advancing towards Russia’s borders in order to gain a military advantage that would allow them to make a military first strike against that country and make it impossible for Russia to retaliate. Given that the USA threatened the world with World War 3 unless the Soviet Union abandoned its efforts to place missiles in Cuba, it is clear that the architects of the NATO expansion towards Russia’s borders know exactly the military significance of their strategy.
Following this statement, it was reported in the regional press that, on 21 February, the CARICOM ambassadors in Washington held a meeting with the Ukrainian ambassadors to the USA and the United Nations. No similar meetings were reported with the Russian ambassador or diplomats from the main NATO states. The meeting was organised and hosted by Antigua and Barbuda’s ambassador to the United States, Sir Ronald Saunders, who is also the dean of the Caribbean diplomatic corps in Washington. Ambassador Saunders had previously written an article on the situation in eastern Europe, titled ‘Caribbean cannot ignore escalating tensions over Ukraine’, in which he declared, “Beyond the economic and financial impact on the region, if oil and gas prices rise, small Caribbean countries which came to independence by exercising the right to self-determination, and which treasure their sovereignty and territorial integrity, would have to be very concerned should Russia invade Ukraine to bring it back under Russian control. Any diminution in the sanctity of these norms of international law would pose a threat to Caribbean Community (CARICOM) states, such as Belize and Guyana, which are faced with territorial claims”.
It is a difficult to believe that in a world in which the big powers, and particularly the Anglo-Americans and their NATO allies show zero respect for the right to self-determination, sovereignty and territorial integrity, that a seasoned diplomat like ambassador Saunders could make such a statement. The Caribbean, in particular, has been a victim of precisely the violation of these principles by those who today are screaming at the top of their voices about Russia violating Ukraine’s sovereignty. Haiti, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Guyana and Grenada have all experienced this lack of respect for the UN charter principles. Even Venezuela had Juan Guaidó appointed as their president by the US government and their money and businesses seized by the British and US governments. Further afield, the world witnessed the western powers dismember Yugoslavia, carve out Kosovo from Serbia and declare it an independent state and destroy Iraq and Libya. At the moment, Saudi Arabia with the full support of the main NATO powers is waging a war of annihilation against the people of Yemen, Israel is occupying parts of Syria and routinely bombing that country, while the US, itself, is militarily occupying parts of Syria. In these circumstances, it is difficult to understand why CARICOM considers the situation in Ukraine a unique threat to the people of the Caribbean, while on the other cases of flagrant violation of the UN charter principles, it remains absolutely silent.
On the 24 February, CARICOM issued a further statement which read:
“The Caribbean Community (CARICOM) strongly condemns the military attacks and invasion of Ukraine by The Russian Federation and calls for the immediate and complete withdrawal of the military presence and cessation of any further actions that may intensify the current perilous situation in that country. The recognition by The Russian Federation of the regions of Donetsk and Luhansk represents a violation of the territorial integrity and sovereignty of Ukraine.
The hostilities against Ukraine go counter to the principles of respect for sovereignty, territorial integrity, non-interference in the internal affairs of another sovereign state and the prohibition on the threat or use of force, and the peaceful resolution of disputes, which are the bedrock of this Community.
CARICOM maintains that the principles of universal respect and adherence to these norms and principles of international law are fundamental to the maintenance of the international system and global peace and security.
CARICOM calls on all parties involved to urgently embark on intensified diplomatic dialogue to immediately de-escalate hostilities and work towards a sustainable peace”.
This statement lays bare the fact that CARICOM, under the guise of defending the principles of the UN charter, has, in fact, made itself a tool in NATO’s warmongering activity in eastern Europe. The disaster that has befallen the people of Ukraine is rooted in the US violation of that country’s sovereignty in 2014 by overthrowing its elected president, installing its own people in power there and turning that country into a base for provoking and threatening Russia. These US actions were carried out in violation of Ukraine’s sovereignty and against the best interests of the people of that country.
CARICOM does not help the people of Ukraine, the people of the Caribbean nor the cause of peace in the world by tacitly supporting this NATO warmongering. CARICOM should abandon its support for it and defend the principles of the UN charter in a consistent and honest way, without any hypocrisy and double standards. A good start in this direction would be a call for the disbanding of NATO which is an aggressive warmongering organisation and a permanent threat to world peace.
CARICOM Statement on Ukraine
White House: Venezuela Will Feel the Pressure of Sanctions Against Russia (+Missile Crisis)
February 27, 2022
Caracas, February 26, 2022 (OrinocoTribune.com) — According to Juan González, an advisor to US president Joe Biden for Latin America and the director of the National Security Council for the Western Hemisphere, the recent battery of sanctions against the Russian Federation due the conflict in Ukraine will also have an impact on those governments that have economic ties with Russia.
“The sanctions on Russia are so robust that they will have an impact on those governments with economic links with Russia,” stated González. “And that is by design, so Venezuela will start to feel that pressure; Nicaragua will start to feel that pressure, and Cuba as well,” he added in the typical US bully tone. However, he does not seem to have considered that many countries have already found alternatives to liberate themselves from the unprecedented level of sanctions and unilateral coercive measures that Washington maintains on more that 30 countries worldwide.
In the weeks previous to the Russian decision of entering Ukrainian territory, when Russian and US officials made comments about possible Russian military installations in Cuba or Venezuela, mainstream media raised a fever pitch over Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela, creating the impression of a battlefield in an attempt to reignite a scenario similar to the “Cuban Missile Crisis” of 1962. At that time an imminent nuclear apocalypse was averted, as Washington was ready to launch a nuclear attack after it was unveiled that Russian ballistic missiles were being installed in Cuba.
Joe Biden’s advisor, while discussing the implications of the new sanctions on Russia, added that Washington wants “negotiated solutions to the crisis in Venezuela, restoration of the democratic order in Nicaragua, and we want the Cubans to be the ones who determine their future, and not a dictatorship.” This was just another event in the endless Washington script to demonize progressive countries in Latin America that do not bow to US dictates and follow an independent foreign policy.
Some analysts believe that González’s comments, made during an interview for Voice of America (VOA), apart from being typical bluff trying to magnify the significance of US sanctions, might be a signal of a possible Washington plan to bring the Ukrainian crisis to Latin America and exploit that in its favor in the region. If that is the plan, then it will be counter-productive to take such an approach, taking into consideration the current balance of power between leftist and right-wing governments in the region that is not favorable for Washington.
When asked by the VOA journalist about how exactly the sanctions on Russia will impact the government of Venezuela, González, without much assertiveness, managed to say that the US sanctions that were applied against 13 of the most important financial institutions in Russia will affect any government or company that maintains trade with these organizations, and allegedly those governments that operate outside the US-controlled financial system will “feel the punch,” though he did not explain exactly how or why.
“Venezuela, and many other countries illegally sanctioned by the US regime, have shown that the power of US and European sanctions is not impossible to break,” said Indian analyst Saheli Chowdhury when consulted by Orinoco Tribune. “Sanctions affect the lives of millions in any country under sanction, but sooner rather than later, those same sanctions force those countries to develop mechanisms to minimize the effects and allow them to move on. This new battery of sanctions against Russia, in spite of the evident devastating initial effect, will facilitate the creation of more robust mechanisms to fight illegal sanctions, like the ones impose constantly by Washington, Canada and the European Union, among others.”
White House: Venezuela Will Feel the Pressure of Sanctions Against Russia (+Missile Crisis)
February 27, 2022
Caracas, February 26, 2022 (OrinocoTribune.com) — According to Juan González, an advisor to US president Joe Biden for Latin America and the director of the National Security Council for the Western Hemisphere, the recent battery of sanctions against the Russian Federation due the conflict in Ukraine will also have an impact on those governments that have economic ties with Russia.
“The sanctions on Russia are so robust that they will have an impact on those governments with economic links with Russia,” stated González. “And that is by design, so Venezuela will start to feel that pressure; Nicaragua will start to feel that pressure, and Cuba as well,” he added in the typical US bully tone. However, he does not seem to have considered that many countries have already found alternatives to liberate themselves from the unprecedented level of sanctions and unilateral coercive measures that Washington maintains on more that 30 countries worldwide.
In the weeks previous to the Russian decision of entering Ukrainian territory, when Russian and US officials made comments about possible Russian military installations in Cuba or Venezuela, mainstream media raised a fever pitch over Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela, creating the impression of a battlefield in an attempt to reignite a scenario similar to the “Cuban Missile Crisis” of 1962. At that time an imminent nuclear apocalypse was averted, as Washington was ready to launch a nuclear attack after it was unveiled that Russian ballistic missiles were being installed in Cuba.
Joe Biden’s advisor, while discussing the implications of the new sanctions on Russia, added that Washington wants “negotiated solutions to the crisis in Venezuela, restoration of the democratic order in Nicaragua, and we want the Cubans to be the ones who determine their future, and not a dictatorship.” This was just another event in the endless Washington script to demonize progressive countries in Latin America that do not bow to US dictates and follow an independent foreign policy.
Some analysts believe that González’s comments, made during an interview for Voice of America (VOA), apart from being typical bluff trying to magnify the significance of US sanctions, might be a signal of a possible Washington plan to bring the Ukrainian crisis to Latin America and exploit that in its favor in the region. If that is the plan, then it will be counter-productive to take such an approach, taking into consideration the current balance of power between leftist and right-wing governments in the region that is not favorable for Washington.
When asked by the VOA journalist about how exactly the sanctions on Russia will impact the government of Venezuela, González, without much assertiveness, managed to say that the US sanctions that were applied against 13 of the most important financial institutions in Russia will affect any government or company that maintains trade with these organizations, and allegedly those governments that operate outside the US-controlled financial system will “feel the punch,” though he did not explain exactly how or why.
“Venezuela, and many other countries illegally sanctioned by the US regime, have shown that the power of US and European sanctions is not impossible to break,” said Indian analyst Saheli Chowdhury when consulted by Orinoco Tribune. “Sanctions affect the lives of millions in any country under sanction, but sooner rather than later, those same sanctions force those countries to develop mechanisms to minimize the effects and allow them to move on. This new battery of sanctions against Russia, in spite of the evident devastating initial effect, will facilitate the creation of more robust mechanisms to fight illegal sanctions, like the ones impose constantly by Washington, Canada and the European Union, among others.”
White House: Venezuela Will Feel the Pressure of Sanctions Against Russia (+Missile Crisis)
UWI professor urges tough stance against IMF austere measures; stresses need for diversification
Article by Kareem Smith
Published on February 12, 2022
As the Government’s legal teams grapple with a constitutional disagreement over the composition of the Senate, a senior university academic is warning that an economic reckoning is on the horizon.
Director of the Sir Arthur Lewis Institute of Social and Economic Studies (SALISES) Professor Don Marshall says in just over a month, the country will likely face expectations from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) that could leave the Barbadian economy hamstrung.
He also cautioned that a laundry list of construction projects planned for the year should not be used to mask the need for real economic diversification.
“I think that the sooner the business, the review, and the legal opinions are back, the better in terms of getting on with the business of governance and government,” said Professor Marshall.
As part of the administration’s early priorities, according to the professor, is a swift rejection of what are expected to be very austere targets including the pursuit of a six per cent fiscal surplus, imposed by the IMF.
“You can’t pursue a policy of a fiscal surplus of six per cent and at the same time try to pursue much more robust diversification of the economy. We simply don’t have the policy space to do so,” Professor Marshall declared.
“That’s why I’ve been making the point constantly that while the fund is right in its assertion that their concern is about the fiscal, we have just voted into power a government, where, in terms of our life chances, the importance for us is to see that we have a robust industrial policy that is going to lead to a far sturdier diversification or begin the path towards a further diversification of the economy because that has been the Achilles heel of the Barbados government since 1966,” he added.
The respected academic explained that instead of imposing severe belt-tightening measures, efforts should be made to protect the country from the threat of future exogenous shocks, which, like the pandemic, could cripple fragile sectors like tourism.
With more fiscal space, he believes government should be facilitating the growth of entrepreneurial opportunities in new and innovative sectors like the cultural arts, horticulture, aquaculture and marine life.
“I am not dismissing the importance of retail, I’m not dismissing the importance of insurance and other forms of earning money. I’m just saying the bulk expression of Barbados’ enterprise culture has been about buying and selling. And, if we’re not producing to earn foreign exchange or save foreign exchange, then we find ourselves always at the mercy of shocks and impacts and pandemics and too many of our people are left unemployed or scarred by the unemployment experience,” said Professor Marshall.
He added that the six per cent targets outlined in previous IMF documents are a reminder of the painful adjustments endured between 2018 and 2020.
“We laid off 1500 people, we were streamlining social services and so on, and it was creating all kinds of hardships. And, it’s not just attaining the target, it’s sustaining it too. Barbados has never been run like that and I think we need to bell the cat and say straight that there’s no country in the world running fiscal surpluses at six per cent and at the same time deepening the development process,” he added.
The academic credited government for finding various off-budget programmes like the national cleanup campaign and the care package programme for helping to keep citizens’ heads above water.
But he said neither these nor the economically stimulating infrastructure projects are sustainable long-term.
“Barbados’ future cannot be based on the construction of the Hyatt, the construction of hotels, or the rebuilding of the stadium. That’s not development. That’s project-based development that is like a match. It burns bright when you strike the match, but afterwards, it burns out. In other words, it creates employment around the project, but it also creates a bit of a crisis in relation to your foreign reserves, because we don’t produce nails, tiles, marble, flooring, or doors. We don’t do any of that. So we get what you call the overheating of the economy. That is feckless growth,” said Marshall.
UWI professor urges tough stance against IMF austere measures; stresses need for diversification
Article by Kareem Smith
Published on February 12, 2022
As the Government’s legal teams grapple with a constitutional disagreement over the composition of the Senate, a senior university academic is warning that an economic reckoning is on the horizon.
Director of the Sir Arthur Lewis Institute of Social and Economic Studies (SALISES) Professor Don Marshall says in just over a month, the country will likely face expectations from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) that could leave the Barbadian economy hamstrung.
He also cautioned that a laundry list of construction projects planned for the year should not be used to mask the need for real economic diversification.
“I think that the sooner the business, the review, and the legal opinions are back, the better in terms of getting on with the business of governance and government,” said Professor Marshall.
As part of the administration’s early priorities, according to the professor, is a swift rejection of what are expected to be very austere targets including the pursuit of a six per cent fiscal surplus, imposed by the IMF.
“You can’t pursue a policy of a fiscal surplus of six per cent and at the same time try to pursue much more robust diversification of the economy. We simply don’t have the policy space to do so,” Professor Marshall declared.
“That’s why I’ve been making the point constantly that while the fund is right in its assertion that their concern is about the fiscal, we have just voted into power a government, where, in terms of our life chances, the importance for us is to see that we have a robust industrial policy that is going to lead to a far sturdier diversification or begin the path towards a further diversification of the economy because that has been the Achilles heel of the Barbados government since 1966,” he added.
The respected academic explained that instead of imposing severe belt-tightening measures, efforts should be made to protect the country from the threat of future exogenous shocks, which, like the pandemic, could cripple fragile sectors like tourism.
With more fiscal space, he believes government should be facilitating the growth of entrepreneurial opportunities in new and innovative sectors like the cultural arts, horticulture, aquaculture and marine life.
“I am not dismissing the importance of retail, I’m not dismissing the importance of insurance and other forms of earning money. I’m just saying the bulk expression of Barbados’ enterprise culture has been about buying and selling. And, if we’re not producing to earn foreign exchange or save foreign exchange, then we find ourselves always at the mercy of shocks and impacts and pandemics and too many of our people are left unemployed or scarred by the unemployment experience,” said Professor Marshall.
He added that the six per cent targets outlined in previous IMF documents are a reminder of the painful adjustments endured between 2018 and 2020.
“We laid off 1500 people, we were streamlining social services and so on, and it was creating all kinds of hardships. And, it’s not just attaining the target, it’s sustaining it too. Barbados has never been run like that and I think we need to bell the cat and say straight that there’s no country in the world running fiscal surpluses at six per cent and at the same time deepening the development process,” he added.
The academic credited government for finding various off-budget programmes like the national cleanup campaign and the care package programme for helping to keep citizens’ heads above water.
But he said neither these nor the economically stimulating infrastructure projects are sustainable long-term.
“Barbados’ future cannot be based on the construction of the Hyatt, the construction of hotels, or the rebuilding of the stadium. That’s not development. That’s project-based development that is like a match. It burns bright when you strike the match, but afterwards, it burns out. In other words, it creates employment around the project, but it also creates a bit of a crisis in relation to your foreign reserves, because we don’t produce nails, tiles, marble, flooring, or doors. We don’t do any of that. So we get what you call the overheating of the economy. That is feckless growth,” said Marshall.
UWI professor urges tough stance against IMF austere measures; stresses need for diversification
ALBA Secretary rejects NATO presence in Latin America
March 1, 2022
Executive Secretary of the Bolivarian Alliance (ALBA-TCP), Sacha Llorenti, spoke to RT en Español’s Jessica Sosa in Caracas on regional integration, U.S. and NATO presence in the region, and Bolivia’s search for justice for the 2019 coup. Llorenti served as Bolivian Ambassador to the United Nations under President Evo Morales and sat on the UN Security Council before heading the ALBA bloc. Below, we’ve transcribed a part of the interview, shortened for length. The full interview in Spanish can be watched here.
Jessica Sosa: There seems to be a resurgence of CELAC and other mechanisms to retake the issue of integration.
It must be remembered that Latin America and the Caribbean was declared a Zone of Peace in 2014. A few days ago, the anniversary of signing of the Treaty of Tlatelolco for the prohibition of nuclear weapons was also celebrated. There is huge potential in CELAC and we have to make our own space, away from the OAS, away from the United States and Canada, which have other interests.
Their priority is elsewhere in the world and where they begin to apply interventionist policies, the results are disastrous. We will have to ask the people of Libya how they are now, or the people of Iraq or the people of Syria, or remember what happened in Yugoslavia. It may not be too late. I think we are moving slowly. These processes are slow, but the goal is to have a strong CELAC.
Jessica Sosa: Now some analysts have suggested that the governments of Latin America swing like a pendulum from our right to our left and that this has been one of the threats against the integration processes. We still have foreign military bases in Latin American territory, to mention some of the threats that are still latent against the integration process.
I wouldn’t put it only in terms of left and right. The governments of the left, and I would add the progressive governments, have a project to build a great homeland, that Bolivarian dream. However, there are other governments that don’t have a project, not even for their country, they have a colony project. They are subordinate to the United States, not only the oligarchies, they respond to the mandate of the United States.
That is why they destroyed Unasur, that is why CELAC was paralyzed for so long. Mexico’s and now Argentina’s revival is what is making it possible for it to re-emerge. But what happens is that there are two different projects, the project of La Patria Grande and another project of La Colonia. They want to return to that time. The presence of military bases, the presence of NATO in our Zone of Peace and also promoted by some of the members of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC), is a danger. I believe that given its history, NATO’s presence in our region seriously jeopardizes international peace and security.
I repeat, look at what happened in Yugoslavia. Our Alliance is an alliance for life. There are other alliances like NATO for bombings, for the invasion of countries. What they have provoked in the world is unspeakable.
I had the opportunity to be on the Security Council in the midst of the war in Syria. More than half a million people died in that war of aggression provoked against the Syrian people. The same with Libya, the same with Iraq. Two million dead based on a lie, a series of lies. After more than twenty years they haven’t found the weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and these people want to give lessons on democracy. They want to give lessons on peace. The thing is, they have no principles, they have interests.
Jessica Sosa: Venezuela recently denounced Colombia on the issue of drug trafficking, the mismanagement of this situation and how it has tried to seize the Venezuelan border so that this to dominate the Venezuelan territory. Drug trafficking is also a pending task for Latin America.
Well, there are several pending tasks. One of them is the fight against drug trafficking. There again is the double standard of the United States, which decertifies some countries simply for political convenience, as if someone gave them the authority to certify or decertify, as if someone gave them that authority. We believe that the role of the United Nations should be privileged. But of course, it is clear which is the main producer and exporter of cocaine in the world.
I think that a very important issue is the presence of US military bases. And another issue that I do not want to pass up, is the complaint that has been reported which was also stated by President Maduro about the plans of the Macri government (of Argentina) to use military force against Venezuela.
Exactly the same people who organized that, using so-called ‘humanitarian aid’ in quotes, from the border with Colombia, from Colombian territory, to organize that offensive that aimed to destabilize the Revolutionary Government of Venezuela. The same government of Macri brought arms to the de facto government of Jeanine Añez in Bolivia and the same was linked to the role of Luis Almagro, both in the process of destabilization of Venezuela and the coup against Bolivia.
Those are not coincidences. It is very important that we do that pedagogical task of explaining to people that, I reiterate, these are not coincidences. One plus one equals two and in this case all of that is part of a scheme, since it is part of a plan. Another element is the presence of mercenaries, many of them Colombians, not only in the assassination of the President of Haiti, but also against the mercenary aggression against those in Venezuela.
Jessica Sosa: It has been discovered that there is a well-paid industry in Colombia.
We know of the assassination attempt against President Maduro and the presence of those same mercenaries shortly before the inauguration of President Luis Arce in Bolivia. So that is absolutely clear. There is a coordination of the international right, which is based in Miami to destabilize progressive governments.
Jessica Sosa: In Bolivia, the trial against Jeanine Añez as one of the heads of the coup against President Evo Morales is taking place. You yourself were in Argentina for a while to safeguard your life. What is expected of this trial?
Simply that justice be done. I believe that the trial that is taking place now has a very important character. It is a milestone for the history of Latin America and the Caribbean, because it is the case in which a self-proclaimed person is being prosecuted and sanctioned, and we hope that it will be duly prosecuted. What is being judged now is the entire prior phase of organizing a coup d’état with various political actors with the presence of the Catholic Church, with the presence of several ambassadors who, and in the absence of the legislative body that was the power of the State called to resolve this crisis, a handful of people with some ambassadors in a in facilities of the Catholic Church, decided who was going to be president of Bolivia.
She proclaimed herself in a session without quorum and without respecting the regulations, without respecting the Political Constitution of the State. I think that this is going to be a precedent to avoid other types of self-proclaimed or self-proclaimed in the future.
Jessica Sosa: The relationship of our countries with other axes such as Russia, China, how should it be?
It is strategic because what we want is a multipolar world. In other words, we don’t even have to talk about ideology, we have to refer to what the United Nations charter says, those principles and purposes of respect for the self-determination of peoples, the sovereignty of States, their political independence. The principle of non-interference in internal affairs, the principle of cooperation, the principle of peaceful resolution of controversies.
For those reasons, building ties with all the peoples and governments of the world, especially with major powers which are important in economic terms, also in protection and in defense of our own sovereignty. That’s what the Monroe Doctrine doesn’t want. It is what the United States doesn’t want. Because they believe that this is their backyard, but that is becoming less and less true, and it will be less true when we see the example of what various peoples and governments are doing among themselves.
ALBA Secretary rejects NATO presence in Latin America
March 1, 2022
Executive Secretary of the Bolivarian Alliance (ALBA-TCP), Sacha Llorenti, spoke to RT en Español’s Jessica Sosa in Caracas on regional integration, U.S. and NATO presence in the region, and Bolivia’s search for justice for the 2019 coup. Llorenti served as Bolivian Ambassador to the United Nations under President Evo Morales and sat on the UN Security Council before heading the ALBA bloc. Below, we’ve transcribed a part of the interview, shortened for length. The full interview in Spanish can be watched here.
Jessica Sosa: There seems to be a resurgence of CELAC and other mechanisms to retake the issue of integration.
It must be remembered that Latin America and the Caribbean was declared a Zone of Peace in 2014. A few days ago, the anniversary of signing of the Treaty of Tlatelolco for the prohibition of nuclear weapons was also celebrated. There is huge potential in CELAC and we have to make our own space, away from the OAS, away from the United States and Canada, which have other interests.
Their priority is elsewhere in the world and where they begin to apply interventionist policies, the results are disastrous. We will have to ask the people of Libya how they are now, or the people of Iraq or the people of Syria, or remember what happened in Yugoslavia. It may not be too late. I think we are moving slowly. These processes are slow, but the goal is to have a strong CELAC.
Jessica Sosa: Now some analysts have suggested that the governments of Latin America swing like a pendulum from our right to our left and that this has been one of the threats against the integration processes. We still have foreign military bases in Latin American territory, to mention some of the threats that are still latent against the integration process.
I wouldn’t put it only in terms of left and right. The governments of the left, and I would add the progressive governments, have a project to build a great homeland, that Bolivarian dream. However, there are other governments that don’t have a project, not even for their country, they have a colony project. They are subordinate to the United States, not only the oligarchies, they respond to the mandate of the United States.
That is why they destroyed Unasur, that is why CELAC was paralyzed for so long. Mexico’s and now Argentina’s revival is what is making it possible for it to re-emerge. But what happens is that there are two different projects, the project of La Patria Grande and another project of La Colonia. They want to return to that time. The presence of military bases, the presence of NATO in our Zone of Peace and also promoted by some of the members of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC), is a danger. I believe that given its history, NATO’s presence in our region seriously jeopardizes international peace and security.
I repeat, look at what happened in Yugoslavia. Our Alliance is an alliance for life. There are other alliances like NATO for bombings, for the invasion of countries. What they have provoked in the world is unspeakable.
I had the opportunity to be on the Security Council in the midst of the war in Syria. More than half a million people died in that war of aggression provoked against the Syrian people. The same with Libya, the same with Iraq. Two million dead based on a lie, a series of lies. After more than twenty years they haven’t found the weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and these people want to give lessons on democracy. They want to give lessons on peace. The thing is, they have no principles, they have interests.
Jessica Sosa: Venezuela recently denounced Colombia on the issue of drug trafficking, the mismanagement of this situation and how it has tried to seize the Venezuelan border so that this to dominate the Venezuelan territory. Drug trafficking is also a pending task for Latin America.
Well, there are several pending tasks. One of them is the fight against drug trafficking. There again is the double standard of the United States, which decertifies some countries simply for political convenience, as if someone gave them the authority to certify or decertify, as if someone gave them that authority. We believe that the role of the United Nations should be privileged. But of course, it is clear which is the main producer and exporter of cocaine in the world.
I think that a very important issue is the presence of US military bases. And another issue that I do not want to pass up, is the complaint that has been reported which was also stated by President Maduro about the plans of the Macri government (of Argentina) to use military force against Venezuela.
Exactly the same people who organized that, using so-called ‘humanitarian aid’ in quotes, from the border with Colombia, from Colombian territory, to organize that offensive that aimed to destabilize the Revolutionary Government of Venezuela. The same government of Macri brought arms to the de facto government of Jeanine Añez in Bolivia and the same was linked to the role of Luis Almagro, both in the process of destabilization of Venezuela and the coup against Bolivia.
Those are not coincidences. It is very important that we do that pedagogical task of explaining to people that, I reiterate, these are not coincidences. One plus one equals two and in this case all of that is part of a scheme, since it is part of a plan. Another element is the presence of mercenaries, many of them Colombians, not only in the assassination of the President of Haiti, but also against the mercenary aggression against those in Venezuela.
Jessica Sosa: It has been discovered that there is a well-paid industry in Colombia.
We know of the assassination attempt against President Maduro and the presence of those same mercenaries shortly before the inauguration of President Luis Arce in Bolivia. So that is absolutely clear. There is a coordination of the international right, which is based in Miami to destabilize progressive governments.
Jessica Sosa: In Bolivia, the trial against Jeanine Añez as one of the heads of the coup against President Evo Morales is taking place. You yourself were in Argentina for a while to safeguard your life. What is expected of this trial?
Simply that justice be done. I believe that the trial that is taking place now has a very important character. It is a milestone for the history of Latin America and the Caribbean, because it is the case in which a self-proclaimed person is being prosecuted and sanctioned, and we hope that it will be duly prosecuted. What is being judged now is the entire prior phase of organizing a coup d’état with various political actors with the presence of the Catholic Church, with the presence of several ambassadors who, and in the absence of the legislative body that was the power of the State called to resolve this crisis, a handful of people with some ambassadors in a in facilities of the Catholic Church, decided who was going to be president of Bolivia.
She proclaimed herself in a session without quorum and without respecting the regulations, without respecting the Political Constitution of the State. I think that this is going to be a precedent to avoid other types of self-proclaimed or self-proclaimed in the future.
Jessica Sosa: The relationship of our countries with other axes such as Russia, China, how should it be?
It is strategic because what we want is a multipolar world. In other words, we don’t even have to talk about ideology, we have to refer to what the United Nations charter says, those principles and purposes of respect for the self-determination of peoples, the sovereignty of States, their political independence. The principle of non-interference in internal affairs, the principle of cooperation, the principle of peaceful resolution of controversies.
For those reasons, building ties with all the peoples and governments of the world, especially with major powers which are important in economic terms, also in protection and in defense of our own sovereignty. That’s what the Monroe Doctrine doesn’t want. It is what the United States doesn’t want. Because they believe that this is their backyard, but that is becoming less and less true, and it will be less true when we see the example of what various peoples and governments are doing among themselves.
ALBA Secretary rejects NATO presence in Latin America
Address by ambassador Pedro Luis Pedroso Cuesta, Cuba’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations, in the United Nations General Assembly Emergency Special Session on Ukraine. New York, 1 March 2022
Mr. President,
Last 26 February, the Cuban Government issued a Statement on the events in Ukraine, clearly adopting a stance in favor of a solution that guarantees the security and sovereignty of all and addresses legitimate humanitarian concerns.
Cuba champions International Law and is committed to the Charter of the United Nations. Cuba will always defend peace and unambiguously oppose the use or threat of use of force against any State.
That is why we firmly support the Proclamation of Latin America and the Caribbean as a Zone of Peace, signed in 2014 in Havana by the Heads of State and Government of our region.
Cuba is also committed to International Humanitarian Law and calls on all parties to protect the civilian population, their possessions and infrastructure.
We deeply regret the loss of innocent civilian lives in Ukraine. The Cuban people have had and continue to have a very close relationship with the Ukrainian people.
Mister President,
It is impossible to make a rigorous and honest examination of the current situation in Ukraine, without carefully assessing the factors that have led to the use of force and non-observance of legal principles and international norms.
Cuba strongly endorses and supports those principles and norms, which are, particularly for small countries, an essential reference to fight hegemony, abuse of power and injustice.
The U.S. determination to continue NATO’s progressive expansion towards the Russian Federation borders has brought about a scenario with implications of unpredictable scope, which could have been avoided.
The United States’ and NATO’s military moves in recent months towards regions adjacent to the Russian Federation, preceded by the delivery of modern weapons to Ukraine, which altogether add up to a military siege, are well known.
Ignoring for decades the well-founded claims of the Russian Federation for security guarantees and assuming that Russia would remain defenseless in the face of a direct threat to its national security was a mistake. Peace cannot be achieved by sieging or cornering States.
History will hold the United States accountable for the consequences of an increasingly offensive military doctrine outside NATO’s borders, which threatens international peace, security and stability.
Our concerns grow bigger after NATO’s recent decision to activate, for the first time, NATO Response Force.
Cuba rejects hypocrisy and double standards. It should be recalled that in 1999 the United States and NATO launched a major aggression against Yugoslavia, a European country that was fragmented with a high cost in human lives in pursuit of geopolitical objectives, disregarding the UN Charter.
The United States and some allies have used force on many occasions. They have invaded sovereign states to bring about regime changes and interfere in the internal affairs of other nations that do not submit to their interests of domination and defend their territorial integrity and independence.
They are also responsible for the death of hundreds of thousands of civilians, which they call “collateral damage”, the displacement of millions of persons and the massive destruction of the geography of our planet because of their plundering wars.
Mister President,
The draft resolution on the situation of Ukraine not adopted in the Security Council on 25 February was not intended as a genuine contribution to resolve the current crisis.
The text that is now being considered by this General Assembly suffers from the same shortcomings and lacks the necessary balance.
It does not take into account the legitimate concerns of all the parties involved. It does not acknowledge either the responsibility of those who instigated or deployed aggressive actions that hasten the escalation of this conflict.
Mr. President,
We welcome the start of negotiations between Russia and Ukraine. Dialogue and negotiations, not war, are the only means of solving the conflict.
Cuba will continue advocating a serious, constructive and realistic diplomatic solution to the current crisis in Europe by peaceful means, ensuring the security and sovereignty of all, and regional and international peace, stability and security.
Many thanks.
(Cubaminrex-Permanent Mission of Cuba to the United Nations)
Address by ambassador Pedro Luis Pedroso Cuesta, Cuba’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations, in the United Nations General Assembly Emergency Special Session on Ukraine. New York, 1 March 2022
Mr. President,
Last 26 February, the Cuban Government issued a Statement on the events in Ukraine, clearly adopting a stance in favor of a solution that guarantees the security and sovereignty of all and addresses legitimate humanitarian concerns.
Cuba champions International Law and is committed to the Charter of the United Nations. Cuba will always defend peace and unambiguously oppose the use or threat of use of force against any State.
That is why we firmly support the Proclamation of Latin America and the Caribbean as a Zone of Peace, signed in 2014 in Havana by the Heads of State and Government of our region.
Cuba is also committed to International Humanitarian Law and calls on all parties to protect the civilian population, their possessions and infrastructure.
We deeply regret the loss of innocent civilian lives in Ukraine. The Cuban people have had and continue to have a very close relationship with the Ukrainian people.
Mister President,
It is impossible to make a rigorous and honest examination of the current situation in Ukraine, without carefully assessing the factors that have led to the use of force and non-observance of legal principles and international norms.
Cuba strongly endorses and supports those principles and norms, which are, particularly for small countries, an essential reference to fight hegemony, abuse of power and injustice.
The U.S. determination to continue NATO’s progressive expansion towards the Russian Federation borders has brought about a scenario with implications of unpredictable scope, which could have been avoided.
The United States’ and NATO’s military moves in recent months towards regions adjacent to the Russian Federation, preceded by the delivery of modern weapons to Ukraine, which altogether add up to a military siege, are well known.
Ignoring for decades the well-founded claims of the Russian Federation for security guarantees and assuming that Russia would remain defenseless in the face of a direct threat to its national security was a mistake. Peace cannot be achieved by sieging or cornering States.
History will hold the United States accountable for the consequences of an increasingly offensive military doctrine outside NATO’s borders, which threatens international peace, security and stability.
Our concerns grow bigger after NATO’s recent decision to activate, for the first time, NATO Response Force.
Cuba rejects hypocrisy and double standards. It should be recalled that in 1999 the United States and NATO launched a major aggression against Yugoslavia, a European country that was fragmented with a high cost in human lives in pursuit of geopolitical objectives, disregarding the UN Charter.
The United States and some allies have used force on many occasions. They have invaded sovereign states to bring about regime changes and interfere in the internal affairs of other nations that do not submit to their interests of domination and defend their territorial integrity and independence.
They are also responsible for the death of hundreds of thousands of civilians, which they call “collateral damage”, the displacement of millions of persons and the massive destruction of the geography of our planet because of their plundering wars.
Mister President,
The draft resolution on the situation of Ukraine not adopted in the Security Council on 25 February was not intended as a genuine contribution to resolve the current crisis.
The text that is now being considered by this General Assembly suffers from the same shortcomings and lacks the necessary balance.
It does not take into account the legitimate concerns of all the parties involved. It does not acknowledge either the responsibility of those who instigated or deployed aggressive actions that hasten the escalation of this conflict.
Mr. President,
We welcome the start of negotiations between Russia and Ukraine. Dialogue and negotiations, not war, are the only means of solving the conflict.
Cuba will continue advocating a serious, constructive and realistic diplomatic solution to the current crisis in Europe by peaceful means, ensuring the security and sovereignty of all, and regional and international peace, stability and security.
Many thanks.
(Cubaminrex-Permanent Mission of Cuba to the United Nations)
Address by ambassador Pedro Luis Pedroso Cuesta, Cuba’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations, in the United Nations General Assembly Emergency Special Session on Ukraine. New York, 1 March 2022
CARICOM & SICA Leaders Meet In Belize
Representatives of the CARICOM countries, Belize, March 1, 2022. | Photo: Twitter/ @kevinjohnchen
Published 3 March 2022 (10 hours 40 minutes ago)
Delegates will adopt a joint declaration that commits their countries to boost foreign policy consultation, regional public health systems, and cooperation in climate change fighting.
On Thursday, representatives of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) and the Central American Integration System (SICA) will meet on Ambergris Caye in Belize to strengthen cooperation in the face of regional health, economic, and political challenges.
"We believe that there should be a closer relationship between the two organizations, whose member countries share close cultural and historical ties. If we manage to do so, we will have a bigger and stronger voice in the international community," Belize’s Prime Minister and CARICOM Chairman Johnny Briceño highlighted.
Delegates will adopt a joint declaration that commits their countries to boost foreign policy consultation, regional public health systems, and cooperation in climate change fighting, tourism, and trade development.
The representatives are also likely to sign the CARICOM–SICA action plan proposed by both organizations’ foreign affairs ministers in January to strengthen joint dialogue, evaluation, and follow-up of common policies.
United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres is expected to be a special guest at the Summit, in which he will address issues such as the COVID-19 pandemic response, socio-economic development, and Haiti’s security and political crisis.
"Gutierrez will be pleased to see the policies we have adopted regarding these issues," Briceño stated. Opening statements by him and Panamanian President Laurentino Cortizo, who holds the SICA Pro tempore presidency, will be live-streamed.
Argentine President Alberto Fernandez’s speech on regional affairs management as the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) Pro tempore President will also be broadcasted by national television.
CARICOM & SICA Leaders Meet In Belize
Representatives of the CARICOM countries, Belize, March 1, 2022. | Photo: Twitter/ @kevinjohnchen
Published 3 March 2022 (10 hours 40 minutes ago)
Delegates will adopt a joint declaration that commits their countries to boost foreign policy consultation, regional public health systems, and cooperation in climate change fighting.
On Thursday, representatives of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) and the Central American Integration System (SICA) will meet on Ambergris Caye in Belize to strengthen cooperation in the face of regional health, economic, and political challenges.
"We believe that there should be a closer relationship between the two organizations, whose member countries share close cultural and historical ties. If we manage to do so, we will have a bigger and stronger voice in the international community," Belize’s Prime Minister and CARICOM Chairman Johnny Briceño highlighted.
Delegates will adopt a joint declaration that commits their countries to boost foreign policy consultation, regional public health systems, and cooperation in climate change fighting, tourism, and trade development.
The representatives are also likely to sign the CARICOM–SICA action plan proposed by both organizations’ foreign affairs ministers in January to strengthen joint dialogue, evaluation, and follow-up of common policies.
United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres is expected to be a special guest at the Summit, in which he will address issues such as the COVID-19 pandemic response, socio-economic development, and Haiti’s security and political crisis.
"Gutierrez will be pleased to see the policies we have adopted regarding these issues," Briceño stated. Opening statements by him and Panamanian President Laurentino Cortizo, who holds the SICA Pro tempore presidency, will be live-streamed.
Argentine President Alberto Fernandez’s speech on regional affairs management as the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) Pro tempore President will also be broadcasted by national television.
CARICOM & SICA Leaders Meet In Belize
Secure Da Bag
Veteran
Strikes, protests engulf Haitian capital as workers demand higher wages, better conditions
Alex Johnson
19 February 2022
Thousands of garment workers in Haiti’s capital city Port-au-Prince continued their demonstrations Thursday following several weeks of strikes and protests demanding livable wages and an end to the super-exploitative conditions at the hands of US-based clothing retailers. The citywide eruption of protests, uninterrupted even in the face of mounting police brutality, is an indication of growing working class opposition to the regime headed by Prime Minister Ariel Henry and backed by US corporations.
Factory workers during a protest demanding a salary increase, in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Thursday, Feb. 10, 2022. (AP Photo/Odelyn Joseph)
Protests first arose in late January as videos circulating on social media showed workers in Caracol Northern Industrial Park in Haiti, a major industrial hub employing upwards of 60,000 workers. Workers had been forced to labor in sweatshop conditions nine hours a day for a daily wage of $4. Police immediately responded to the walkout with brutal aggression. One graphic video showed an officer shooting a protesting worker in the back with live ammunition as he lay on the floor with blood trailing down his back.
A little more than a week later, the Valdor Apparel’s Tabarre 27 site, which is just outside Port-au-Prince, attempted to shut down the facility without compensating workers, triggering massive protests from workers who surrounded the building for several days. The general manager of the facility was reportedly trapped inside the factory. Workers claimed slave-like treatment, verbal and psychological abuse and the theft of pension and health taxes deducted from their miserable pay.
Last week, sweatshop workers at the SONAPI complex in the capital walked out to denounce the $4 a day wage, which many say cannot cover basic meals and transportation. Police were sent to the area where they unleashed tear gas against the protesting workers.
One worker spoke on video denouncing Valdor CEO Robert Rothbaum and the oppressive attempts to close the factory without paying workers. She said: “When we arrived … we learned that the factory was closing down and they were fleeing with our money. He [Rothbaum] has 11 factories in other countries. Robert is a multi-millionaire.
“For him to steal our money like this. We spent seven years working the machines. They’ve been sucking our blood for seven years. Working in these factories is not easy. It takes up all your energy. We have to pay for our children’s school. We have to pay for housing. All these things. Robert can’t do this to us. I will not lose my money.”
Union leader Dominique St. Eloi, who is also a coordinator for the National Union of Haitian Workers, told Reuters in a telephone interview that workers are seeking to raise their daily wages to approximately 1,500 gourdes (USD $15) from an appalling 500 gourdes (USD $5) a day. “With 500 gourdes per day, without any government subsidies, we cannot meet our needs while the price of basic goods, transport costs have increased,” said St. Eloi.
A spokesman for the office of Prime Minister Henry said he has been in discussion with the High Council of Salaries, the organization responsible for adjusting the country’s minimum wage, on how best to end the demonstrations. Henry also reportedly met Tuesday with industry leaders of dozens of US apparel makers operating in Haiti, but no information from the meeting has been released. There can be no doubt that the employers are deeply shaken by the uprising and are relying on Henry to crush social opposition.
Haiti has for decades been a haven for American apparel manufacturing companies to generate super-profits from operating massive sweatshops where workers are not paid enough to eat three meals a day. The destitution and exploitation of Haiti’s textile and garment workers can be traced back to the early 1990s, when the United Nations and the Organization of American States declared a trade embargo of Haiti but still granted concessions to US companies to reap booming profits from the impoverished workforce.
More than 60 US corporations are involved in shipping a torrent of goods intended for assembly into Haiti and then reimporting the assembled products back into the United States. Among the traded products are toys, fishing lures, cord, clay floor tiles, brooms, baseballs, softballs, pajamas, pants and T-shirts. The corporations received incentives offered under the Caribbean Basin Initiative, the US program to promote economic development in the Caribbean Basin, and the Generalized System of Preferences (GSP), which allows goods from developing countries to enter the United States tax-free.
The incentives for US corporations to move labor-intensive, low-technology assembly operations to Haiti helped reinforce an already lucrative enterprise for US multinational companies, which could pay low wages and virtually no taxes while reaping fabulous profits. In the decade prior to the election and ouster of President Jean Bertrand Aristide, the real wages of Haitian apparel workers were slashed by more than 50 percent, while assembly exports from Haiti to the United States skyrocketed. Apparel exports more than doubled from 1983 to 1989, rising from $81 million to $180.9 million.
Tensions had been burgeoning inside Haiti’s garment factories for the past two years due to the companies’ persistent non-compliance with social security payments and the disastrous health consequences for workers. This was detailed in a report in August of 2020 issued by GOSTTRA, a syndicate of the global union federation IndustriALL, describing the struggle for basic survival facing thousands of workers amidst the deepening social and health crisis triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Earlier that year, two workers employed by the investment and manufacturing firm Palm Apparel Group died after being denied medical care after their employer reportedly failed to pay their social security contributions on time. Sandra René died from complications during her pregnancy, while Lionel Pierre died after being denied dialysis treatment. Workers at both factories downed tools in protest shortly after both deaths to oppose their egregious treatment at the hands of management.
Palm Apparel management had also clamped down on GOSTTRA union leaders and rank-and-file workers who had been fighting against the anti-democratic and oppressive atmosphere inside several factories. In one instance, dozens of union leaders and members were dismissed after protesting against the company’s decision to send them home in the middle of the day. At a Horizon facility, union leader Sandra Emilion was dismissed after lodging a complaint against excessively high target quotas and company speedups. In the MBI factory, union leader Sonia Saintvil was unfairly dismissed after rejecting an offer of promotion on condition she quit the union.
At the time of the GOSTTRA report, roughly a third of the 57,000 workers in the country’s garment industry were suspended or terminated and had yet to receive any compensation from the government in spite of earlier promises to the contrary. The rest had been, and still are, working reduced hours in unsafe factories that lack even the most basic precautions to help prevent the spread of the coronavirus.
The leaders of the trade unions organizing the strikes have resorted to fruitless appeals aimed at pressuring management and the Haitian government to address the workers’ demands. National Union of Haitian Workers leader St. Eloi told Associated Press (AP) news that if factory managers did not respond with concessions to protesting workers, the union would ask Haiti’s government to raise the minimum wage, a totally bankrupt strategy.
Countless protests have taken place at Haitian factories in the nation’s poorest slums, which have for years seen waves of strikes over abysmal salaries and deplorable conditions. The recent demonstrations bear a resemblance to the mass protest movement that began in 2018 following an announcement in July of that year from then-President Moise that fuel prices would rise astronomically, further plunging the nation’s desperate workers and peasants deeper into poverty.
Opposition to the hike in the price of gas and other consumer goods eventually evolved into widespread demands for the immediate resignation of the corrupt president, who was at the center of scheme carried out by Haitian officials accused of stealing billions of dollars from a development fund subsidized by Venezuela that was intended to help low-income Haitians and rebuild dilapidated social infrastructure.
The mass protest movement would go on to plague the presidency of Moise and his Parti Haitien Tet Kale (PHTK) party for the next three years all the way up until the president’s assassination. Moise routinely made use of armed gangs and police to crack down on the protesters and terrorize the population, which included the infamous massacre of 57 people in Port-au-Prince’s La Seline neighborhood in 2019.
The widely despised president also faced social upheavals as a result of his own refusal to relinquish his position at the end of his term in early 2021 and his moves toward consolidating an authoritarian government.
The main demand of the demonstrators has been higher wages in the face of a surge in the cost of living that has made life intolerable for the population. According to the latest government statistics, the inflation rate in Haiti increased to 24.60 percent in November of 2021 from 19.70 percent in October. The social crisis has been magnified by the deterioration in the world economy as increases in commodity prices on the international market have substantially raised Haiti’s import spending and amplified inflationary pressures.
Exacerbating these conditions is the extraordinary uncertainty and instability surrounding Haiti’s political and social crisis. Prime Minister Henry, whose INITE party represents ruthless sections of the venal Haitian bourgeoisie, presides over an illegitimate government implicated in the assassination of President Moise last summer and has refused to step down despite his term ending on February 7. The country has also seen a sharp spike in violence and kidnappings by warring gangs acting in the interests of rival sections of the nation’s ruling class.
The strike wave engulfing Port-au-Prince raises the need for the political independence of Haiti's working class and the waging of a revolutionary struggle against the entire capitalist system.
Strikes, protests engulf Haitian capital as workers demand higher wages, better conditions
Alex Johnson
19 February 2022
Thousands of garment workers in Haiti’s capital city Port-au-Prince continued their demonstrations Thursday following several weeks of strikes and protests demanding livable wages and an end to the super-exploitative conditions at the hands of US-based clothing retailers. The citywide eruption of protests, uninterrupted even in the face of mounting police brutality, is an indication of growing working class opposition to the regime headed by Prime Minister Ariel Henry and backed by US corporations.
Factory workers during a protest demanding a salary increase, in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Thursday, Feb. 10, 2022. (AP Photo/Odelyn Joseph)
Protests first arose in late January as videos circulating on social media showed workers in Caracol Northern Industrial Park in Haiti, a major industrial hub employing upwards of 60,000 workers. Workers had been forced to labor in sweatshop conditions nine hours a day for a daily wage of $4. Police immediately responded to the walkout with brutal aggression. One graphic video showed an officer shooting a protesting worker in the back with live ammunition as he lay on the floor with blood trailing down his back.
A little more than a week later, the Valdor Apparel’s Tabarre 27 site, which is just outside Port-au-Prince, attempted to shut down the facility without compensating workers, triggering massive protests from workers who surrounded the building for several days. The general manager of the facility was reportedly trapped inside the factory. Workers claimed slave-like treatment, verbal and psychological abuse and the theft of pension and health taxes deducted from their miserable pay.
Last week, sweatshop workers at the SONAPI complex in the capital walked out to denounce the $4 a day wage, which many say cannot cover basic meals and transportation. Police were sent to the area where they unleashed tear gas against the protesting workers.
One worker spoke on video denouncing Valdor CEO Robert Rothbaum and the oppressive attempts to close the factory without paying workers. She said: “When we arrived … we learned that the factory was closing down and they were fleeing with our money. He [Rothbaum] has 11 factories in other countries. Robert is a multi-millionaire.
“For him to steal our money like this. We spent seven years working the machines. They’ve been sucking our blood for seven years. Working in these factories is not easy. It takes up all your energy. We have to pay for our children’s school. We have to pay for housing. All these things. Robert can’t do this to us. I will not lose my money.”
Union leader Dominique St. Eloi, who is also a coordinator for the National Union of Haitian Workers, told Reuters in a telephone interview that workers are seeking to raise their daily wages to approximately 1,500 gourdes (USD $15) from an appalling 500 gourdes (USD $5) a day. “With 500 gourdes per day, without any government subsidies, we cannot meet our needs while the price of basic goods, transport costs have increased,” said St. Eloi.
A spokesman for the office of Prime Minister Henry said he has been in discussion with the High Council of Salaries, the organization responsible for adjusting the country’s minimum wage, on how best to end the demonstrations. Henry also reportedly met Tuesday with industry leaders of dozens of US apparel makers operating in Haiti, but no information from the meeting has been released. There can be no doubt that the employers are deeply shaken by the uprising and are relying on Henry to crush social opposition.
Haiti has for decades been a haven for American apparel manufacturing companies to generate super-profits from operating massive sweatshops where workers are not paid enough to eat three meals a day. The destitution and exploitation of Haiti’s textile and garment workers can be traced back to the early 1990s, when the United Nations and the Organization of American States declared a trade embargo of Haiti but still granted concessions to US companies to reap booming profits from the impoverished workforce.
More than 60 US corporations are involved in shipping a torrent of goods intended for assembly into Haiti and then reimporting the assembled products back into the United States. Among the traded products are toys, fishing lures, cord, clay floor tiles, brooms, baseballs, softballs, pajamas, pants and T-shirts. The corporations received incentives offered under the Caribbean Basin Initiative, the US program to promote economic development in the Caribbean Basin, and the Generalized System of Preferences (GSP), which allows goods from developing countries to enter the United States tax-free.
The incentives for US corporations to move labor-intensive, low-technology assembly operations to Haiti helped reinforce an already lucrative enterprise for US multinational companies, which could pay low wages and virtually no taxes while reaping fabulous profits. In the decade prior to the election and ouster of President Jean Bertrand Aristide, the real wages of Haitian apparel workers were slashed by more than 50 percent, while assembly exports from Haiti to the United States skyrocketed. Apparel exports more than doubled from 1983 to 1989, rising from $81 million to $180.9 million.
Tensions had been burgeoning inside Haiti’s garment factories for the past two years due to the companies’ persistent non-compliance with social security payments and the disastrous health consequences for workers. This was detailed in a report in August of 2020 issued by GOSTTRA, a syndicate of the global union federation IndustriALL, describing the struggle for basic survival facing thousands of workers amidst the deepening social and health crisis triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Earlier that year, two workers employed by the investment and manufacturing firm Palm Apparel Group died after being denied medical care after their employer reportedly failed to pay their social security contributions on time. Sandra René died from complications during her pregnancy, while Lionel Pierre died after being denied dialysis treatment. Workers at both factories downed tools in protest shortly after both deaths to oppose their egregious treatment at the hands of management.
Palm Apparel management had also clamped down on GOSTTRA union leaders and rank-and-file workers who had been fighting against the anti-democratic and oppressive atmosphere inside several factories. In one instance, dozens of union leaders and members were dismissed after protesting against the company’s decision to send them home in the middle of the day. At a Horizon facility, union leader Sandra Emilion was dismissed after lodging a complaint against excessively high target quotas and company speedups. In the MBI factory, union leader Sonia Saintvil was unfairly dismissed after rejecting an offer of promotion on condition she quit the union.
At the time of the GOSTTRA report, roughly a third of the 57,000 workers in the country’s garment industry were suspended or terminated and had yet to receive any compensation from the government in spite of earlier promises to the contrary. The rest had been, and still are, working reduced hours in unsafe factories that lack even the most basic precautions to help prevent the spread of the coronavirus.
The leaders of the trade unions organizing the strikes have resorted to fruitless appeals aimed at pressuring management and the Haitian government to address the workers’ demands. National Union of Haitian Workers leader St. Eloi told Associated Press (AP) news that if factory managers did not respond with concessions to protesting workers, the union would ask Haiti’s government to raise the minimum wage, a totally bankrupt strategy.
Countless protests have taken place at Haitian factories in the nation’s poorest slums, which have for years seen waves of strikes over abysmal salaries and deplorable conditions. The recent demonstrations bear a resemblance to the mass protest movement that began in 2018 following an announcement in July of that year from then-President Moise that fuel prices would rise astronomically, further plunging the nation’s desperate workers and peasants deeper into poverty.
Opposition to the hike in the price of gas and other consumer goods eventually evolved into widespread demands for the immediate resignation of the corrupt president, who was at the center of scheme carried out by Haitian officials accused of stealing billions of dollars from a development fund subsidized by Venezuela that was intended to help low-income Haitians and rebuild dilapidated social infrastructure.
The mass protest movement would go on to plague the presidency of Moise and his Parti Haitien Tet Kale (PHTK) party for the next three years all the way up until the president’s assassination. Moise routinely made use of armed gangs and police to crack down on the protesters and terrorize the population, which included the infamous massacre of 57 people in Port-au-Prince’s La Seline neighborhood in 2019.
The widely despised president also faced social upheavals as a result of his own refusal to relinquish his position at the end of his term in early 2021 and his moves toward consolidating an authoritarian government.
The main demand of the demonstrators has been higher wages in the face of a surge in the cost of living that has made life intolerable for the population. According to the latest government statistics, the inflation rate in Haiti increased to 24.60 percent in November of 2021 from 19.70 percent in October. The social crisis has been magnified by the deterioration in the world economy as increases in commodity prices on the international market have substantially raised Haiti’s import spending and amplified inflationary pressures.
Exacerbating these conditions is the extraordinary uncertainty and instability surrounding Haiti’s political and social crisis. Prime Minister Henry, whose INITE party represents ruthless sections of the venal Haitian bourgeoisie, presides over an illegitimate government implicated in the assassination of President Moise last summer and has refused to step down despite his term ending on February 7. The country has also seen a sharp spike in violence and kidnappings by warring gangs acting in the interests of rival sections of the nation’s ruling class.
The strike wave engulfing Port-au-Prince raises the need for the political independence of Haiti's working class and the waging of a revolutionary struggle against the entire capitalist system.
Strikes, protests engulf Haitian capital as workers demand higher wages, better conditions
Washington shoots itself in the foot
Ernesto Cazal
7 Mar 2022, 4:36 pm.
The poor negotiations between the US and Venezuela could have a political balance contrary to Joe Biden (Foto: Andrew Caballero-Reynolds / AFP)
In a short amount of time, a series of events took place, centered around Venezuela, which from a political point of view have the elements of a melodrama with a hint of comedy. It all began when a plane left Washington, passing through Miami and ended its journey at the international airport of Maiquetía (La Guaira), where a delegation of US officials was reportedly received by the Venezuelan government.
The visit, unprecedented within the context of hostilities and diplomatic disagreements, was a sort of "effort" on the part of the US to breakdown the Russian–Venezuelan relationship. As reported by the New York Times, the government of Nicolás Maduro "could begin to see Mr. Putin as an increasingly weak ally".
Beyond the laughter that such a Manichean and contextually unaware objective could provoke, what must be emphasized is the primary motivation of the meeting between high-level officials of the Biden administration and the Venezuelan executive: oil trade.
In 2019, Donald Trump's government tightened the financial blockade against Venezuela in the form of an energy embargo, stealing Citgo and Venezuelan state money to transfer it into the hands of professional thugs (call it the "Guaidosian interim" or the Federal Reserve). When PDVSA products no longer had a place in the US market; Russian companies filled the space that had been denied to the Bolivarian Republic.
Russia replaced Venezuela in the US energy market after the US oil embargo in 2019 (Photo: The Washington Post)
Now that Joe Biden's administration has decided to unleash a full-scale economic-financial war against the Russian Federation, which has been ongoing since 2014, US energy interests are at risk. The US is at a key political crossroads with high domestic inflation and upcoming legislative elections in November. Consequently, US top policy makers have decided to knock on Caracas’ door.
In fact, it seemed more like Washington wanted to kick it in. Reuters reports, which should always be handled with extreme caution (along with other media in the hegemonic Anglosphere), state that "Washington sought guarantees of free presidential elections, sweeping reforms of Venezuela’s oil industry to facilitate production and exports by foreign companies and the regime’s public condemnation of the invasion of Ukraine".
It can be expected that the Bolivarian Government would agree to allow US and European companies to invest in its national oil industry, as Maduro himself has repeatedly pointed out and according to a recent report by the Wall Street Journal. However, for Venezuela to turn its back on a strategic ally of the Global South such as Russia seems laughable after all the aggressions committed by the West against our respective countries over the years.
Indeed, the government of Vladimir Putin has been instrumental in counteracting the "maximum pressure" strategy perpetrated by the North American establishment. The Russian Federation has provided oxygen to the Venezuelan economy and trade in the Eurasian area of influence in the face of the full-spectrum blockade maintained by Washington, including the veto on the use of the SWIFT system.
Venezuela is not willing to commit strategic and political suicide by reneging on cooperation with Russia, having the same aggressors on the opposite side of the street and sharing interests that have nothing to do with ideology and everything to do with the existential. The US multilateral offensive against the two countries has strengthened the ties we already shared. Solidarity and mutual support has been a reciprocal state policy in basically all scenarios of multipolar construction and crisis.
Regarding the "electoral guarantees", even the colonial European Union (EU) agrees that the results of the past mega-elections in Venezuela were legitimate. The EU even remarked on how the representative composition of the current National Electoral Council (CNE) is in accordance with the institutional requirements of any democracy, even a weak one such as that of European countries tied to the interests of NATO.
But the tragicomic arrogance of the Biden administration becomes more evident if we place the spotlight on the characters who, according to the Washington Post, are said to have visited the Miraflores Palace.
Choosing these officials to represent the US in negotiations is a blunder in light of their professional profiles, recent actions, statements, and the bitterness they unleashed against the Venezuelan authorities. It was not for nothing that New York and Washington media were preparing the ground for the meeting to take place, knowing that the demands bordered on the extreme.
It is quite possible that the window for negotiation will remain open, with further dialogue in Mexico in a perhaps not so distant future. The channels between the US and Venezuelan governments have been opened while the relevance of that fantasy called "Guaidó's provisional presidency" is sinking to the bottom of the political ocean.
However, Washington’s prerogatives are unfulfillable and bordering on the absurd. They have no basis in the current geopolitical reality, especially if we take into account how Venezuela flatly rejects the latest version of the "night of broken glass" in the West with extreme Russophobia that to a certain degree, Venezuelans have already experienced in areas of US influence.
And despite the unilateral aggression, the economic forecasts of institutions and personalities that cannot even be remotely classified as Chavistas, such as the IMF and ECLAC, there has been a positive growth of the GDP, that is, an increase in the productive capacity of the country. It certainly cannot be said that we are on the track towards economic independence and stability. Yet we are overcoming many difficulties, with or without the lifting of the oil embargo, or the admission of licenses by the Treasury Department.
After all, the gringa delegation came to Caracas, and not the other way around. The (political) ball is in the North American court, although it seems that they do not want to take advantage of it.
If Biden signs the decree that would end up prohibiting imports of Russian oil to the United States, without accessing other energy markets related to his strategic interests, those who are going to pay (very) dearly are ordinary American citizens, and it is very likely they may blame the Democratic Party in midterm elections. In that sense, Washington would be shooting itself in the foot politically, stabbing a deep wound into its economy at the same time that its unilateral hegemony is going to shyt, even as its hubris remains intact.
US officials have no choice but to fall into a constant state of excess, maintaining a coherence in their anti-diplomatic behavior that is only analogous to the mythical image of Nero when he decided to drink wine and play his lyre while, in the distance, he watched the flames frolic over the city of Rome. History remembers him as a maniac blinded by his own complacency, typical of artists who are not very talented.
Washington shoots itself in the foot
Ernesto Cazal
7 Mar 2022, 4:36 pm.
The poor negotiations between the US and Venezuela could have a political balance contrary to Joe Biden (Foto: Andrew Caballero-Reynolds / AFP)
In a short amount of time, a series of events took place, centered around Venezuela, which from a political point of view have the elements of a melodrama with a hint of comedy. It all began when a plane left Washington, passing through Miami and ended its journey at the international airport of Maiquetía (La Guaira), where a delegation of US officials was reportedly received by the Venezuelan government.
The visit, unprecedented within the context of hostilities and diplomatic disagreements, was a sort of "effort" on the part of the US to breakdown the Russian–Venezuelan relationship. As reported by the New York Times, the government of Nicolás Maduro "could begin to see Mr. Putin as an increasingly weak ally".
Beyond the laughter that such a Manichean and contextually unaware objective could provoke, what must be emphasized is the primary motivation of the meeting between high-level officials of the Biden administration and the Venezuelan executive: oil trade.
In 2019, Donald Trump's government tightened the financial blockade against Venezuela in the form of an energy embargo, stealing Citgo and Venezuelan state money to transfer it into the hands of professional thugs (call it the "Guaidosian interim" or the Federal Reserve). When PDVSA products no longer had a place in the US market; Russian companies filled the space that had been denied to the Bolivarian Republic.
Russia replaced Venezuela in the US energy market after the US oil embargo in 2019 (Photo: The Washington Post)
Now that Joe Biden's administration has decided to unleash a full-scale economic-financial war against the Russian Federation, which has been ongoing since 2014, US energy interests are at risk. The US is at a key political crossroads with high domestic inflation and upcoming legislative elections in November. Consequently, US top policy makers have decided to knock on Caracas’ door.
In fact, it seemed more like Washington wanted to kick it in. Reuters reports, which should always be handled with extreme caution (along with other media in the hegemonic Anglosphere), state that "Washington sought guarantees of free presidential elections, sweeping reforms of Venezuela’s oil industry to facilitate production and exports by foreign companies and the regime’s public condemnation of the invasion of Ukraine".
It can be expected that the Bolivarian Government would agree to allow US and European companies to invest in its national oil industry, as Maduro himself has repeatedly pointed out and according to a recent report by the Wall Street Journal. However, for Venezuela to turn its back on a strategic ally of the Global South such as Russia seems laughable after all the aggressions committed by the West against our respective countries over the years.
Indeed, the government of Vladimir Putin has been instrumental in counteracting the "maximum pressure" strategy perpetrated by the North American establishment. The Russian Federation has provided oxygen to the Venezuelan economy and trade in the Eurasian area of influence in the face of the full-spectrum blockade maintained by Washington, including the veto on the use of the SWIFT system.
Venezuela is not willing to commit strategic and political suicide by reneging on cooperation with Russia, having the same aggressors on the opposite side of the street and sharing interests that have nothing to do with ideology and everything to do with the existential. The US multilateral offensive against the two countries has strengthened the ties we already shared. Solidarity and mutual support has been a reciprocal state policy in basically all scenarios of multipolar construction and crisis.
Regarding the "electoral guarantees", even the colonial European Union (EU) agrees that the results of the past mega-elections in Venezuela were legitimate. The EU even remarked on how the representative composition of the current National Electoral Council (CNE) is in accordance with the institutional requirements of any democracy, even a weak one such as that of European countries tied to the interests of NATO.
But the tragicomic arrogance of the Biden administration becomes more evident if we place the spotlight on the characters who, according to the Washington Post, are said to have visited the Miraflores Palace.
- Roger Cartens, a former lieutenant colonel of the US Army Special Forces who participated in the 1989 invasion of Panama (where there were more civilian than military deaths), and who serves as hostage negotiator for the State Department, was once again in Caracas with the intention of securing the release of the so-called "Citgo 6".
- Juan Gonzalez, senior director of the National Security Council for the Western Hemisphere, who recently stated that the recent "sanctions" against Russia were also designed to target Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela.
- James Story, "ambassador for the US External Office for Venezuela" based in Bogotá, a political operator who usually meets in his Colombian residence with the main actors of the Venezuelan coup to plan further destabilizing actions against the Republic.
Choosing these officials to represent the US in negotiations is a blunder in light of their professional profiles, recent actions, statements, and the bitterness they unleashed against the Venezuelan authorities. It was not for nothing that New York and Washington media were preparing the ground for the meeting to take place, knowing that the demands bordered on the extreme.
It is quite possible that the window for negotiation will remain open, with further dialogue in Mexico in a perhaps not so distant future. The channels between the US and Venezuelan governments have been opened while the relevance of that fantasy called "Guaidó's provisional presidency" is sinking to the bottom of the political ocean.
However, Washington’s prerogatives are unfulfillable and bordering on the absurd. They have no basis in the current geopolitical reality, especially if we take into account how Venezuela flatly rejects the latest version of the "night of broken glass" in the West with extreme Russophobia that to a certain degree, Venezuelans have already experienced in areas of US influence.
And despite the unilateral aggression, the economic forecasts of institutions and personalities that cannot even be remotely classified as Chavistas, such as the IMF and ECLAC, there has been a positive growth of the GDP, that is, an increase in the productive capacity of the country. It certainly cannot be said that we are on the track towards economic independence and stability. Yet we are overcoming many difficulties, with or without the lifting of the oil embargo, or the admission of licenses by the Treasury Department.
After all, the gringa delegation came to Caracas, and not the other way around. The (political) ball is in the North American court, although it seems that they do not want to take advantage of it.
If Biden signs the decree that would end up prohibiting imports of Russian oil to the United States, without accessing other energy markets related to his strategic interests, those who are going to pay (very) dearly are ordinary American citizens, and it is very likely they may blame the Democratic Party in midterm elections. In that sense, Washington would be shooting itself in the foot politically, stabbing a deep wound into its economy at the same time that its unilateral hegemony is going to shyt, even as its hubris remains intact.
US officials have no choice but to fall into a constant state of excess, maintaining a coherence in their anti-diplomatic behavior that is only analogous to the mythical image of Nero when he decided to drink wine and play his lyre while, in the distance, he watched the flames frolic over the city of Rome. History remembers him as a maniac blinded by his own complacency, typical of artists who are not very talented.
Washington shoots itself in the foot
Jamaicans shun UK royal visit, demand slavery reparations
By DÁNICA COTO, Associated Press - 3h ago
FILE- Britain's Prince William and Kate, Duchess of Cambridge attend the 1st Battalion Irish Guards' St. Patrick's Day Parade at Mons Barracks, March 17, 2022 in Aldershot, England.
SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) — Dozens of well-known leaders in Jamaica including professors and politicians are demanding an apology and slavery reparations as the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge prepare for a trip to the former British colony.
The group is rejecting the visit of Prince William and Kate scheduled for Tuesday, part of a larger trip to the Caribbean region that coincides with the 60th anniversary of Jamaica’s independence and the 70th anniversary of the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II.
“We see no reason to celebrate 70 years of the ascension of your grandmother to the British throne because her leadership, and that of her predecessors, have perpetuated the greatest human rights tragedy in the history of humankind,” read a letter published Sunday ahead of the couple’s visit and signed by 100 Jamaican leaders.
The weeklong royal tour of Central America and the Caribbean that began on Saturday was taken at the behest of the queen, who is William’s grandmother. The trip aims to strengthen Britain’s ties with Commonwealth countries, but it’s off to a rocky start and comes as some countries consider cutting ties to the monarchy like the eastern Caribbean island of Barbados did in November.
Local opposition forced the royal couple to cancel a visit to a cacao farm in Belize that was planned for Saturday, while the upcoming trip to Jamaica has angered some who say they are still waiting for an apology and slavery reparations.
Jamaica lawmaker Mike Henry, who has long led an effort to obtain reparations that he estimates at more than 7 billion pounds, told The Associated Press in a phone interview that an apology is only the first step for what he described as “abuse of human life and labor.”
“An apology really admits that there is some guilt,” he said.
Hundreds of thousands of African slaves toiled in Jamaica under more than 300 years of British rule and faced brutal conditions. There were numerous bloody rebellions, with one woman called “Queen Nanny” leading a group of formerly enslaved Africans known as Jamaican Maroons whose guerrilla warfare became renown and battered British forces. “Queen Nanny” remains the sole female of Jamaica’s eight national heroes.
During their two-day stay in Jamaica, Prince William and Kate are expected to celebrate Bob Marley’s legacy, a move that also has riled some Jamaicans.
“As a Rastafarian, Bob Marley embodied advocacy and is recognized globally for the principles of human rights, equality, reparations and repatriation,” stated the letter of those demanding an apology.
The group said that it would be celebrating 60 years of freedom from Britain, adding that it is saddened “that more progress has not been made given the burden of our colonial inheritance. We nonetheless celebrate the many achievements of great Jamaicans who rejected negative, colonial self-concepts and who self-confidently succeeded against tremendous odds. We will also remember and celebrate our freedom fighters.”
Jamaicans shun UK royal visit, demand slavery reparations
By DÁNICA COTO, Associated Press - 3h ago
FILE- Britain's Prince William and Kate, Duchess of Cambridge attend the 1st Battalion Irish Guards' St. Patrick's Day Parade at Mons Barracks, March 17, 2022 in Aldershot, England.
SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) — Dozens of well-known leaders in Jamaica including professors and politicians are demanding an apology and slavery reparations as the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge prepare for a trip to the former British colony.
The group is rejecting the visit of Prince William and Kate scheduled for Tuesday, part of a larger trip to the Caribbean region that coincides with the 60th anniversary of Jamaica’s independence and the 70th anniversary of the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II.
“We see no reason to celebrate 70 years of the ascension of your grandmother to the British throne because her leadership, and that of her predecessors, have perpetuated the greatest human rights tragedy in the history of humankind,” read a letter published Sunday ahead of the couple’s visit and signed by 100 Jamaican leaders.
The weeklong royal tour of Central America and the Caribbean that began on Saturday was taken at the behest of the queen, who is William’s grandmother. The trip aims to strengthen Britain’s ties with Commonwealth countries, but it’s off to a rocky start and comes as some countries consider cutting ties to the monarchy like the eastern Caribbean island of Barbados did in November.
Local opposition forced the royal couple to cancel a visit to a cacao farm in Belize that was planned for Saturday, while the upcoming trip to Jamaica has angered some who say they are still waiting for an apology and slavery reparations.
Jamaica lawmaker Mike Henry, who has long led an effort to obtain reparations that he estimates at more than 7 billion pounds, told The Associated Press in a phone interview that an apology is only the first step for what he described as “abuse of human life and labor.”
“An apology really admits that there is some guilt,” he said.
Hundreds of thousands of African slaves toiled in Jamaica under more than 300 years of British rule and faced brutal conditions. There were numerous bloody rebellions, with one woman called “Queen Nanny” leading a group of formerly enslaved Africans known as Jamaican Maroons whose guerrilla warfare became renown and battered British forces. “Queen Nanny” remains the sole female of Jamaica’s eight national heroes.
During their two-day stay in Jamaica, Prince William and Kate are expected to celebrate Bob Marley’s legacy, a move that also has riled some Jamaicans.
“As a Rastafarian, Bob Marley embodied advocacy and is recognized globally for the principles of human rights, equality, reparations and repatriation,” stated the letter of those demanding an apology.
The group said that it would be celebrating 60 years of freedom from Britain, adding that it is saddened “that more progress has not been made given the burden of our colonial inheritance. We nonetheless celebrate the many achievements of great Jamaicans who rejected negative, colonial self-concepts and who self-confidently succeeded against tremendous odds. We will also remember and celebrate our freedom fighters.”
Jamaicans shun UK royal visit, demand slavery reparations
Law 70 of 1993: a victory for Afro-Colombians the State still does not fully comply with
In 1993, this emblematic law was approved, the result of the struggle of the Afro-Colombian community. Although it is a great advance in terms of land titling and legal recognition, this regulation still has gaps in its implementation that no government has wanted to address.
21 May, 2022 — 1:10 p.m.
Camilo Alzate González
The mobilization of the communities — which included marching and occupying churches and official buildings — ensured that a transitory article in the new Constitution led to the enactment of Law 70 of 1993. Photo: Óscar Pérez
Among the documents of the Catholic Church or Chocó there are still copies of a telegram that, in the early months of 1991, reached all the members of the National Constituent Assembly en masse.
More than 10,000 telegrams were sent from all corners of the Colombian Pacific to the Constituents. In each one of them you could read “We, black people, exist” as well as “Multiethnic and multicultural Colombia demands recognition of the rights of the black communities as an ethnic group”. This strategy to grab the attention of those who were discussing the content of the new Magna Carta became known as the “black telegram” and its goal was to ensure that the Political Constitution included a special section recognizing the rights of the Afro-Colombian communities.
At that time, the Colombian Pacific was experiencing the vibrancy of a potent social movement led by certain sectors of the Catholic Church, which seeked to stop extractivism to protect the ancestral homelands of the indigenous and Afro-Colombian communities. During the late 1980s, huge organizations among the black communities were founded, such as the Peasant Association of the Atrato and the Peasant Association of San Juan, which soon became the biggest Community Councils in the country. The first demand of this movement was the titling of the territories of the Pacific — which up to that time were considered wastelands — to whom were their ancestral inhabitants: indigenous peoples and Afro-Colombians.
It was in this same context that the process of building a new Political Constitution broke out, where black people were left without representation because, although several constituents came from the indigenous movement, such as Lorenzo Muelas and Francisco Rojas Birry, there was no spokesperson for the Afro-Colombian communities. However, ethnic organizations took on the task of influencing those who discussed the new constitution so that the rights of Afro-Colombians would be inscribed in it.
The mobilization of the communities, which included marching and occupying churches and government offices, ensured that a transitory article of the new Constitution led to the enactment of Law 70 of 1993, which aims to “recognize the black communities that have occupied wastelands in the rural, riverside areas around the rivers of the Pacific Rim, with respect to their traditional production practices, and the right to collective ownership”.
There is a consensus within the ethnic organizations that this was a huge victory for the Afro-Colombian communities. From being survivors of slavery and victims of historical racism, they went on to have a law that enshrined their rights to self-determination and titled almost the entire Pacific coast to them, in a form of property similar to indigenous reservations.
Law 70 cemented the beginning of the Community Councils as decision-making bodies in those territories, and also gave force to prior consultation with the communities, an essential requirement before developing any megaproject or intervention on their lands. With the collective titling of the lands to the communities, devastating dynamics were partially stopped, such as the expansion of cattle ranching and the deforestation that it entails, as well as the razing that logging companies carried out along the Pacific coast without major benefits for the communities that had inhabited these territories.
But although the law meant a great advance in land titling and the recognition of Afro-Colombians as an ethnic minority that is subject to rights, 29 years after its promulgation it still has gaps and shortcomings that the communities, year after year, demand be corrected. The total regulation of Law 70 has been a constant demand in the civic strikes of Chocó and the Pacific, without the national government having taken measures to fulfill this commitment.
“They have not regulated chapter 4 which has to do with natural resources”, explains José Santos Caicedo, from the coordination commitee of the Process of Black Communities in Buenaventura and the coast of Cauca. “During Santos' second term, the decree proposal remained in his office, because it was done with the Ministry of Environment and Sustainable Development and the communities had been consulted”, Caicedo points out. The president never signed it.
“They have not regulated chapter 5 which has to do with mining resources”, says Caicedo. The Afro-Colombian leaders finishes by saying: “they have not regulated chapter 7, which has to do with the development model, so that the territories can foster their economic and cultural development. If a regulation is made today, it must be adjusted to compensate for everything that was not implemented”.
In October 2021, the National Summit of Black People took stock of Law 70 and its implementation, where they emphasized the great progress it has meant for the communities.
“A public policy of ethnodevelopment was adopted for black communities and progress was made in autonomy and self-determination; for example. we have prior consultation”, explains attorney María Fernanda Angulo, advisor to several Afro-Colombian organizations and Community Councils of the Pacific. “One of the greatest achievements is that we have 5,700,000 hectares awarded and titled; it is a high level of compliance with the goal proposed by the law”, says Angulo. “But a large part of the chapters have not been regulated; the absence of regulation prevents the law from being implemented. Political participation and organization still need to be well developed”.
And just a couple of months before said summit, on August 26, 2021, the Administrative Court of Cauca ruled on a compliance action that had reached its office requesting that the executive be ordered by judicial means to regulate the articles of the law that were still pending. The Court agreed with the plaintiff and ordered the national government to regulate several articles of the law within six months, something that has not happened so far.
Attorney María Fernanda Angulo insists that “there is no budget to comply with what Law 70 says, we need to allocate and execute resources so that the law becomes real. There are already legal actions to declare an unconstitutional state of affairs, because there is a constant violation of the rights of Afro-descendants”.
Law 70 of 1993: a victory for Afro-Colombians the State still does not fully comply with
In 1993, this emblematic law was approved, the result of the struggle of the Afro-Colombian community. Although it is a great advance in terms of land titling and legal recognition, this regulation still has gaps in its implementation that no government has wanted to address.
21 May, 2022 — 1:10 p.m.
Camilo Alzate González
The mobilization of the communities — which included marching and occupying churches and official buildings — ensured that a transitory article in the new Constitution led to the enactment of Law 70 of 1993. Photo: Óscar Pérez
Among the documents of the Catholic Church or Chocó there are still copies of a telegram that, in the early months of 1991, reached all the members of the National Constituent Assembly en masse.
More than 10,000 telegrams were sent from all corners of the Colombian Pacific to the Constituents. In each one of them you could read “We, black people, exist” as well as “Multiethnic and multicultural Colombia demands recognition of the rights of the black communities as an ethnic group”. This strategy to grab the attention of those who were discussing the content of the new Magna Carta became known as the “black telegram” and its goal was to ensure that the Political Constitution included a special section recognizing the rights of the Afro-Colombian communities.
At that time, the Colombian Pacific was experiencing the vibrancy of a potent social movement led by certain sectors of the Catholic Church, which seeked to stop extractivism to protect the ancestral homelands of the indigenous and Afro-Colombian communities. During the late 1980s, huge organizations among the black communities were founded, such as the Peasant Association of the Atrato and the Peasant Association of San Juan, which soon became the biggest Community Councils in the country. The first demand of this movement was the titling of the territories of the Pacific — which up to that time were considered wastelands — to whom were their ancestral inhabitants: indigenous peoples and Afro-Colombians.
It was in this same context that the process of building a new Political Constitution broke out, where black people were left without representation because, although several constituents came from the indigenous movement, such as Lorenzo Muelas and Francisco Rojas Birry, there was no spokesperson for the Afro-Colombian communities. However, ethnic organizations took on the task of influencing those who discussed the new constitution so that the rights of Afro-Colombians would be inscribed in it.
The mobilization of the communities, which included marching and occupying churches and government offices, ensured that a transitory article of the new Constitution led to the enactment of Law 70 of 1993, which aims to “recognize the black communities that have occupied wastelands in the rural, riverside areas around the rivers of the Pacific Rim, with respect to their traditional production practices, and the right to collective ownership”.
There is a consensus within the ethnic organizations that this was a huge victory for the Afro-Colombian communities. From being survivors of slavery and victims of historical racism, they went on to have a law that enshrined their rights to self-determination and titled almost the entire Pacific coast to them, in a form of property similar to indigenous reservations.
Law 70 cemented the beginning of the Community Councils as decision-making bodies in those territories, and also gave force to prior consultation with the communities, an essential requirement before developing any megaproject or intervention on their lands. With the collective titling of the lands to the communities, devastating dynamics were partially stopped, such as the expansion of cattle ranching and the deforestation that it entails, as well as the razing that logging companies carried out along the Pacific coast without major benefits for the communities that had inhabited these territories.
But although the law meant a great advance in land titling and the recognition of Afro-Colombians as an ethnic minority that is subject to rights, 29 years after its promulgation it still has gaps and shortcomings that the communities, year after year, demand be corrected. The total regulation of Law 70 has been a constant demand in the civic strikes of Chocó and the Pacific, without the national government having taken measures to fulfill this commitment.
“They have not regulated chapter 4 which has to do with natural resources”, explains José Santos Caicedo, from the coordination commitee of the Process of Black Communities in Buenaventura and the coast of Cauca. “During Santos' second term, the decree proposal remained in his office, because it was done with the Ministry of Environment and Sustainable Development and the communities had been consulted”, Caicedo points out. The president never signed it.
“They have not regulated chapter 5 which has to do with mining resources”, says Caicedo. The Afro-Colombian leaders finishes by saying: “they have not regulated chapter 7, which has to do with the development model, so that the territories can foster their economic and cultural development. If a regulation is made today, it must be adjusted to compensate for everything that was not implemented”.
In October 2021, the National Summit of Black People took stock of Law 70 and its implementation, where they emphasized the great progress it has meant for the communities.
“A public policy of ethnodevelopment was adopted for black communities and progress was made in autonomy and self-determination; for example. we have prior consultation”, explains attorney María Fernanda Angulo, advisor to several Afro-Colombian organizations and Community Councils of the Pacific. “One of the greatest achievements is that we have 5,700,000 hectares awarded and titled; it is a high level of compliance with the goal proposed by the law”, says Angulo. “But a large part of the chapters have not been regulated; the absence of regulation prevents the law from being implemented. Political participation and organization still need to be well developed”.
And just a couple of months before said summit, on August 26, 2021, the Administrative Court of Cauca ruled on a compliance action that had reached its office requesting that the executive be ordered by judicial means to regulate the articles of the law that were still pending. The Court agreed with the plaintiff and ordered the national government to regulate several articles of the law within six months, something that has not happened so far.
Attorney María Fernanda Angulo insists that “there is no budget to comply with what Law 70 says, we need to allocate and execute resources so that the law becomes real. There are already legal actions to declare an unconstitutional state of affairs, because there is a constant violation of the rights of Afro-descendants”.
Law 70 of 1993: a victory for Afro-Colombians the State still does not fully comply with
Argentina conducts census of its Afro-descendant community for the first time
The South American country is asking citizens about their ethnic identity in what scholars hope will be a change from Eurocentric views on how the nation was built
MAR CENTENERA
Buenos Aires - MAY 19, 2022 - 14:00 BRT
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A man walks past a mural of a young Afro-Argentine woman in Buenos Aires in November 2021. NATACHA PISARENKO (AP)
Nélida Wisneke is Afro-Argentine. This teacher and writer recounts that her ancestors were slaves who fled from Brazil in the 19th century. At 55 years old, for the first time she will see her ethnic identity recognized in the new national census: Argentina is asking all the country’s inhabitants if they are descendants of Africans or indigenous peoples, one of the main novelties of the census and much celebrated by the entire Afro-Argentine community.
“The state is beginning to repay the historical debt it owes us. For the community it is extremely important, because based on these data it will be possible to develop public policies to get out of invisibility and be able to access basic rights,” adds Wisneke, author of the novel No te olvides de los que nos quedamos (or Do Not Forget About Those of Us Who Remain).
“I think this is a historic moment for the Afro-Argentine community because this census represents the fruit of many years of struggle. Beyond the statistical data on economic and sociodemographic conditions, which are important to advance towards a more inclusive society, it is also very important that it makes the community visible. It changes the Eurocentric and colonial paradigm with which our society was conceived,” says musician Emanuel Ntaka, today in charge of the Afro-descendant Program of the Argentine Ministry of Culture.
In the previous census, carried out in 2010, there was a question about Afro-Argentine identity as a sample in some of the forms, but not in all. Now, it is one of the 61 questions included in the survey that will be carried out throughout the country. The 2010 census recorded that nearly 150,000 people perceived themselves as Afro-descendants, 10 times less than the estimate made by community leaders.
In the 12 years that have passed since then, Ntaka explains, Afro-descendant organizations have worked to try to reverse decades of policies of invisibility and social homogenization. Still, there is a possibility that the number is lower than the real number because there are people of African descent who choose not to perceive themselves as such.
Prejudices are installed from childhood, even at school. “In school events, the representation of the Afro-Argentine is picturesque. They are the empanada sellers, the porridge sellers, the laundresses… that is the place that we Afro-descendants occupy in the construction of this country. But in reality, the African influence is everywhere, from the war of independence to culture, with the influence in music, in cuisine, in language,” Ntaka points out.
In an official video released this past week for the census, prominent Afro-Argentine figures appear proudly talking about their ancestors. “I am Miriam Victoria Gómes, I was born in the province of Buenos Aires, and I belong to the Cape Verdean community of Dock Sud,” says one of the people featured in the video. Ntaka details that he is the son of a teacher from the Argentine province of Santiago del Estero and a South African singer and activist father. “Collecting data on our living conditions is going to be a necessary instrument for public policy,” says actress Silvia Balbuena, a descendant of slaves who arrived in Argentina in the 15th century.
One of the community’s goals is to combat structural racism in Argentine society. Wisneke experienced it first hand: she is the only one of 10 siblings who has completed her studies. Born into a peasant family in Misiones, in the extreme northeast of Argentina, this teacher says that her ancestors were slaves. “They came from Brazil and settled in Misiones. They were part of the quilombos [settlements], of which nobody talks here,” she points out as an example of the visibility of this community in a country that is proud of its European roots but not of others. “Very recently, in the city of Córdoba, a plaque was inaugurated in commemoration of the first sale of slaves, in 1588. The African presence in Argentina is very old,” Wisneke underlines.
Ntaka was 23 years old when a group of skinheads attacked him at a bus stop in 2001. “You fukking Black, go back to your country,” he heard them scream before they began to beat him until he was unconscious. To which country did they want him to return if Argentina was the country in which he was born? With that question in mind, the attack became the starting point of his activism promoting the rights of the Afro-Argentine community. The census will offer a first x-ray of who they are and how they are faring.
English version by Robert Adams.
Argentina conducts census of its Afro-descendant community for the first time
Expanding the Global Reparations Movement
By Webmaster | May 6, 2022
Over 200 leaders and advocates from 22 nations revisited the 2015 Reparations Summit in New York, birth of the NAARC, the CRC’s contribution to galvanizing the movement on four continents and bringing Africa fully on-board
By Earl Bousquet —
The Global Reparations Netnwork is on the threshold of its next logical stages of development and expansion following an evening of recollection and celebration of an event seven years ago that welded the links of separate chains across borders, boundaries, and barriers.
On the evening of April 22, leaders and representatives of the National African American Reparations Commission (NAARC) and the CARICOM Reparations Commission (CRC) met online to remember and be further inspired by the historic April 17, 2015 Reparations Summit in New York.
The memorable 2022 memorial gathering was themed ‘Expanding the Global Reparations Movement’ and it gathered people, thoughts, and actions in pursuit of a common goal with different approaches, based on similar principles forged by time and history.
The NAARC delegation was led by its Convenor, Dr. Ron Daniels, who’s also President of the Institute of the Black World 21st Century and the CRC delegation by its Chair, Sir Hilary Beckles and included representatives from states and member-entities across the US.
The 10-member CRC delegation also included the CARICOM Secretariat’s Director for Culture and Community Affairs Dr Hilary Brown, and Chairs of seven CARICOM National Reparations Committees (NRCs) from Antigua & Barbuda, The Bahamas, Dominica, Guyana, Jamaica, Saint Lucia and St. Kitts and Nevis.
The gathering acknowledged the way the joint initiative by 14 CARICOM member-states in 2013 together calling for Reparations from Britain and Europe for Slavery had galvanized the US Reparations Movement to such an extent that the NAARC was born just two years later.
Photo of NAARC, CRC and Special Guests, 2015 Summit
The 2015 event that gave birth to the NAARC was attended by celebrated icons of the African-American struggle for Equality, Justice and Reparations and against institutional racism, including the unyielding champion of the HR-40 Bill over four decades John Conyers, Civil Rights leader of the Black Power era Jesse Jackson and celebrated actor Danny Glover.
The fillip from the CARICOM governments initiative and the continuous collaboration that followed between NAARC and CRC had brightened the dimming lights of the US Reparations movement in quick time, to the extent that Reparations for African Americans became an issue that all Democratic Party contenders for the Presidency in 2019 necessarily had to state their positions on reparations, outdoing themselves fishing for African-American votes.
Then came Joe Biden’s thumping of Donald Trump on November 4 and the defeated Trump’s engineered insurrection on Capitol Hill on January 6, leading to the forced cancelation of what was planned to be a memorable Martin Luther King birthday holiday.
And then came George Floyd and the tsunami from the Black Lives Matter movement that hit Africa and America, Asia and Europe, touching every shore in every part of the globe.
And then John Conyers left, drawn across a once-forbidden bridge in a ceremony followed worldwide like he’d never have thought or dreamed of while listening as a young activist to Martin Luther King delivering his ‘I have a dream’ speech.
And then came the traction behind the HR-40 Bill on the Hill in the hands of teams led by Representative Sheila Jackson Lee and backed by NAARC and others.
Looking back and ahead, the over 200 representatives of Caribbean, African and American peoples in 22 countries talked about expanding the global movement to its next logical stages through sharing and activating their diverse ideas, common 10-Point Plans for Reparations and riding the respective waves of the regional and continental movements to shore-up the movement on disperse shores.
Sir Hilary and Ron Daniels, the co-chairs, both noted the 2022 event, like 2015, had also helped re-energize the Reparations Movement on both sides, giving birth to seven years of fruitful cooperation that was further strengthened beyond imaginable bounds by George Floyd’s death, which gave life to tumbling of statues associated with slavery on both sides of The Atlantic, from Bristol to Barbados, to General Lee’s last horse-ride into his final sunset.
The gathered clans heard from Barbados’s CARICOM Ambassador David Commissiong about Prime Minister Mia Mottley’s leadership of the CARICOM Prime Ministerial Subcommittee on Reparations (PMSC) and the need to ensure the African continent and India, as common victims of the Slave Trade and Involuntary Indentureship, work together in the new dispensation where European and US governments are stalling on offering Full and Formal Apologies for their roles in Slavery, despite the UN having declared Slavery a Crime Against Humanity in 2001.
The UN’s Decade for People of African Descent (2015-2024) drew attention to the need to ensure coordinated approaches to participation in what’s left of the decade by embracing the activities to be undertaken by the UN’s Permanent Forum, on which both CARICOM and the USA are represented.
Representatives of NAARC updated on recent events at colleges, universities and legislative levels of respective jurisdictions, from the status of Reparations initiatives in different US states, to continuation of what Guyana’s Eric Smith described as “decolonizing people’s thinking on Africa.”
The CRC is expanding new ties with traditional African Queens and Kings and building on the foundation laid by last year’s first CARICOM-African Union (AU) Summit to deepen new and old trans-Atlantic ties.
Speakers recalled that Columbus opened the way for Christian missionaries to bless European genocidal destruction of ancient civilizations with crosses and swords blessed by bishops and popes and outlaw First People’s religious rites to open the way for Christianity, then outlawed African religions the enslaved arrived with.
This is a time when Caribbean people are living Marcus Garvey’s dream of reconnecting with Africa and African Americans are living Dr King’s dream of knowing who they are and what they’re worth in a land they also built, without promised lands of milk and honey or on imagined homesteads of 40 acres to be farmed by one barren mule.
Indeed, America’s fight for independence from Britain had (and still has) its Reparations implications that successive transatlantic alliances between London and Washington have simply failed to erase.
But the unprecedented 2013 call by 14 independent Caribbean nations for reparations opened-up a new chapter in the continuing struggles in the Caribbean and The Americas, Africa and India, for Reparations from Europe for Slavery and Native Genocide.
The NAARC and CRC engaged in a healthy discussion on the ongoing debate and shared differing as well as common perspectives on ‘Who Should Receive Reparations’ – but all agreeing that on both sides in the USA and the Caribbean, reparations are owed!
The significance of the event was also underwritten by the presence of two acclaimed authors, who’ve recently released new titles telling the Reparations Story from different perspectives: Hilary McD. Beckles, author of ‘How Britain Underdeveloped the Caribbean’, and Kris Manjapra, author of ‘Black Ghosts of Empire’.
Britain and Europe are already busy planning ahead for the Bicentenary of Emancipation while ignoring CARICOM’s calls to start negotiating Reparatory Justice for the region; and eight years after CARICOM made the first call for discussions with the European Union (EU), there’s been no response from Brussels.
But participants left the session with renewed commitment to take the Reparations Movement to the next stages (local and national, regional and continental, global and universal), to continue what Ron Daniels described as a movement that’s “advancing, surging and exploding in ways that frighten them…” — those still dreaming of turning back the hands of time and history.
Participants agreed to undertake actions to Advance the Status of Reparations Movements in US and the Caribbean, develop Strategies to Work Together to Expand the Global Reparations Movement, Connect the Caribbean Political Leadership with the US Congressional Black Caucus, Examine Africa’s Role in the European Slave Trade and ‘Healing the Wounds’, as well as Expanding Africa’s Engagement in the Global Reparations Movement.
But while the Caribbean and American Reparations advocates discussed the past and present and planned for the future, another chapter was also being written and unfolding simultaneously by the Caribbean Reparations movement: ensuring the British Royal Family also got the Caribbean’s Reparations message loud and clear, especially given its own historical role in and benefits from Slavery.
The visits by Princes William and his wife Kate Middleton to The Bahamas, Belize and Jamaica and that by Prince Edward in April to Antigua & Barbuda, St. Lucia, St. Vincent and the Grenadines were all met with protests calling for Reparations at each port of call and most Prime Ministers indicated they were thinking of leading their nations out of the monarchy and into republicanism.
The visiting Royals were also reminded that it was under Queen Elizabeth I that the Royal Africa Company was established over 400 years ago, to ensure the Royal Family profited from the kidnaping and enslavement of Africans and the Transatlantic Slave Trade.
They had come to the Caribbean to celebrate Queen Elizabeth II’s 70th year on the throne, but returned to Buckingham Palace with bad news for Her Majesty: the islanders not singing ‘God Save The Queen’, no longer ‘loyal to the crown’ and no longer wanting her to continue reigning over them – all thanks to the work of the CRC and its national committees in the last eight years.
The online meeting bridged the Caribbean and US Reparations Movements once more in ways that again demonstrated that the cooperation between NAARC and the CRC and their respective works in the Caribbean and the US are part of the global movement for Reparatory Justice that just keeps on growing and expanding, continually transcending seas and skies, countries and continents, or boundaries, borders and barriers.
Participants from all corners of the Caribbean and the US all agreed that all must be done, not just to work towards ensuring support for CARICOM’S efforts to organize Reparations Summits between Governments of Africa and the Caribbean, India and Europe, to take the causes of People of African, Caribbean and Indian Descent to the next logical stages of continuity in a struggle that started from the day the first indigenous person was killed by the Europeans and the first African was kidnapped for sale.
But, for the first time in history, Reparations is in sight — even on the distant horizon — and this generation, during this 21st Century, like those over centuries before, will continue to cause the ripples and ride the waves within all their means to ensure the struggle continues to continue.
As Sir Hilary Beckles said in his remarks: “We are a trans-boundary people and we’ll always pass-on the knowledge we acquired from those before us to the youth; and we will not relent until we achieve our ultimate goals…
“We are inspired by our ancestors to make the spiritual connectivity that drives us, which is why we have met here (online) because we as one people have no borders…’
***
Earl Bousquet is a prominent Caribbean journalist and head of St. Lucia’s Reparations Committee.
WATCH VIDEO
Streamed live Friday, April 22, 2022 — A Public Discussion and Reflections on the Historic 2015 International Reparations Summit With the National African American Reparations Commission and the Caricom Reparations Commission.
Expanding the Global Reparations Movement
Royals, republicanism and reparations: Wessexes feel the heat in Caribbean
Weeks after William and Kate’s controversial Caribbean tour, more nations signal plans to ditch the monarchy
Shanti Das
Sun 1 May 2022 11.00 BST
Last modified on Sun 1 May 2022 11.26 BST
Prince Edward and Sophie, Countess of Wessex during the Caribbean tour. Photograph: Tim Rooke/REX/Shutterstock
Sitting across from the prime minister of Antigua and Barbuda last week, partway through a royal tour to celebrate the Queen’s platinum jubilee, Prince Edward laughed awkwardly. Gaston Browne had just asked the prince whether he and his wife Sophie would use their “diplomatic influence” to push for the payment of slavery reparations to Britain’s former colonies. “We believe that all human civilisation should understand the atrocities that took place,” the Caribbean nation’s political leader told the Queen’s youngest son.
In the same meeting came a second blow. “One day,” the prime minister told the couple, Antigua and Barbuda – a former British colony where the Queen is still the head of state – would cut ties with the monarchy and become a republic. Prince Edward shuffled nervously in his seat. “I wasn’t keeping notes, so I’m not going to give you a complete riposte,” he said. “But thank you for your welcome today.”
Protesters in St Vincent during the royal visit last week. Photograph: Kenton X Chance/I-Witness News
The painful exchange was one in a series of historic moments in the Earl and Countess of Wessex’s week-long tour of the Caribbean, the second royal tour to the region in two months to be mired in controversy.
By the end of the trip last Thursday, two Commonwealth nations had indicated their intention to cut ties with the royal family and become republics. St Kitts and Nevis also revealed its plan to review its ties with the monarchy.
“The advancement of the decades has taught us that the time has come for St Kitts and Nevis to review its monarchical system of government and to begin the dialogue to advance to a new status,” Shawn Richards, deputy prime minister, told reporters.
Prince Edward meets Gaston Browne, prime minister of Antigua and Barbuda. Photograph: Stuart C Wilson/Getty Images
The declarations follow similar moves by other Commonwealth realms, several of which signalled their own plans to cut ties with the monarchy following a separate tour of the Caribbean by the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge in March.
During that tour, William and Kate were accused of harking back to colonial days after they shook hands with crowds behind a wire mesh fence in Jamaica, and rode in the back of a Land Rover like the Queen did 60 years ago. Protesters accused them of benefiting from the “blood, tears and sweat” of slaves, while in the Bahamas they were urged to acknowledge the British economy was “built on the backs” of slaves and to pay reparations.
Jamaica’s prime minister Andrew Holness told William and Kate that his country was “moving on” and may be the next to become a republic, while a minister from Belize said it was time to “take the next step in truly owning our independence”.
The latest declarations mean six of the 14 countries beyond the UK that have the Queen as head of state have now indicated that they want to remove her – Antigua and Barbuda, the Bahamas, Belize, Grenada, Jamaica and St Kitts and Nevis.
If they do they will join countries including Trinidad, Guyana, Dominica and most recently Barbados, which became the world’s newest republic in November.
The royal tours have also led to renewed calls for reparations – an acknowledgement of the history of enslavement and payment for the damage – from Britain and the monarchy, even from countries with no current plans to cut ties with the Queen.
In St Vincent and the Grenadines – which held a referendum on becoming a republic in 2009 that failed to pass when 55% of voters voted against such a move, and has no current plans for another vote – protesters as well as supporters greeted Edward and Sophie during their visit.
“This wrong was done against a sector of the human race by another and this wrong must be compensated,” said Idesha Jackson, 47, one protester who came out during the Wessexes’ visit.
The controversy has led to concern at the Palace. After returning to the UK in March, Prince William acknowledged the monarchy’s days in the Caribbean may be numbered. “‘I know that this tour has brought into even sharper focus questions about the past and the future,” he said, adding that the future was “for the people to decide upon”.
On Saturday it was reported that after getting home William and Kate summoned senior staff for a meeting to “clear the air”, with a source telling the Mirror they felt they had been “poorly prepared”. “If they aren’t in tune with what is going on in the world they will be left fighting for their futures,” the source said.
For now, future royal tours would be “unwise”, said Peter Hunt, the former BBC royal correspondent.
“The world has moved on in the wake of the Windrush scandal and Black Lives Matter,” he said. “Any future trips would be unwise. The role of Britain and the monarchy in the slave trade would feature, and the royals appear ill-equipped to rise to the occasion.”
Royals, republicanism and reparations: Wessexes feel the heat in Caribbean
Weeks after William and Kate’s controversial Caribbean tour, more nations signal plans to ditch the monarchy
Shanti Das
Sun 1 May 2022 11.00 BST
Last modified on Sun 1 May 2022 11.26 BST
Prince Edward and Sophie, Countess of Wessex during the Caribbean tour. Photograph: Tim Rooke/REX/Shutterstock
Sitting across from the prime minister of Antigua and Barbuda last week, partway through a royal tour to celebrate the Queen’s platinum jubilee, Prince Edward laughed awkwardly. Gaston Browne had just asked the prince whether he and his wife Sophie would use their “diplomatic influence” to push for the payment of slavery reparations to Britain’s former colonies. “We believe that all human civilisation should understand the atrocities that took place,” the Caribbean nation’s political leader told the Queen’s youngest son.
In the same meeting came a second blow. “One day,” the prime minister told the couple, Antigua and Barbuda – a former British colony where the Queen is still the head of state – would cut ties with the monarchy and become a republic. Prince Edward shuffled nervously in his seat. “I wasn’t keeping notes, so I’m not going to give you a complete riposte,” he said. “But thank you for your welcome today.”
Protesters in St Vincent during the royal visit last week. Photograph: Kenton X Chance/I-Witness News
The painful exchange was one in a series of historic moments in the Earl and Countess of Wessex’s week-long tour of the Caribbean, the second royal tour to the region in two months to be mired in controversy.
By the end of the trip last Thursday, two Commonwealth nations had indicated their intention to cut ties with the royal family and become republics. St Kitts and Nevis also revealed its plan to review its ties with the monarchy.
“The advancement of the decades has taught us that the time has come for St Kitts and Nevis to review its monarchical system of government and to begin the dialogue to advance to a new status,” Shawn Richards, deputy prime minister, told reporters.
Prince Edward meets Gaston Browne, prime minister of Antigua and Barbuda. Photograph: Stuart C Wilson/Getty Images
The declarations follow similar moves by other Commonwealth realms, several of which signalled their own plans to cut ties with the monarchy following a separate tour of the Caribbean by the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge in March.
During that tour, William and Kate were accused of harking back to colonial days after they shook hands with crowds behind a wire mesh fence in Jamaica, and rode in the back of a Land Rover like the Queen did 60 years ago. Protesters accused them of benefiting from the “blood, tears and sweat” of slaves, while in the Bahamas they were urged to acknowledge the British economy was “built on the backs” of slaves and to pay reparations.
Jamaica’s prime minister Andrew Holness told William and Kate that his country was “moving on” and may be the next to become a republic, while a minister from Belize said it was time to “take the next step in truly owning our independence”.
The latest declarations mean six of the 14 countries beyond the UK that have the Queen as head of state have now indicated that they want to remove her – Antigua and Barbuda, the Bahamas, Belize, Grenada, Jamaica and St Kitts and Nevis.
If they do they will join countries including Trinidad, Guyana, Dominica and most recently Barbados, which became the world’s newest republic in November.
The royal tours have also led to renewed calls for reparations – an acknowledgement of the history of enslavement and payment for the damage – from Britain and the monarchy, even from countries with no current plans to cut ties with the Queen.
In St Vincent and the Grenadines – which held a referendum on becoming a republic in 2009 that failed to pass when 55% of voters voted against such a move, and has no current plans for another vote – protesters as well as supporters greeted Edward and Sophie during their visit.
“This wrong was done against a sector of the human race by another and this wrong must be compensated,” said Idesha Jackson, 47, one protester who came out during the Wessexes’ visit.
The controversy has led to concern at the Palace. After returning to the UK in March, Prince William acknowledged the monarchy’s days in the Caribbean may be numbered. “‘I know that this tour has brought into even sharper focus questions about the past and the future,” he said, adding that the future was “for the people to decide upon”.
On Saturday it was reported that after getting home William and Kate summoned senior staff for a meeting to “clear the air”, with a source telling the Mirror they felt they had been “poorly prepared”. “If they aren’t in tune with what is going on in the world they will be left fighting for their futures,” the source said.
For now, future royal tours would be “unwise”, said Peter Hunt, the former BBC royal correspondent.
“The world has moved on in the wake of the Windrush scandal and Black Lives Matter,” he said. “Any future trips would be unwise. The role of Britain and the monarchy in the slave trade would feature, and the royals appear ill-equipped to rise to the occasion.”
Royals, republicanism and reparations: Wessexes feel the heat in Caribbean