Orin Gor­don

In 2013, the Cape Verde gov­ern­ment re­quest­ed that its orig­i­nal Por­tuguese name, Cabo Verde, be used in­ter­na­tion­al­ly across all lan­guages. “Cape Verde” isn’t in­cor­rect, but it isn’t their pref­er­ence. If they want to re­name them­selves The In­vin­ci­ble Isles, that’d be al­right with me.

Cabo Verde play­ing Ar­genti­na to ut­ter ex­haus­tion in ex­tra time in Mi­a­mi on Fri­day night was the most soul-stir­ring mo­ment in sport so far this year. It was hard to watch their sup­port­ers in the sta­di­um bawl­ing their eyes out af­ter­wards. Mil­lions watch­ing on TV across the world prob­a­bly joined them at the eye-wa­ter foun­tain.

Much of the talk about Cabo Verde at the start of this World Cup was about their eye can­dy, which is among the best in the world. In the end, the heart and skill of their foot­ballers were the sto­ry. They faced three for­mer World Cup win­ners on their jour­ney … Uruguay, Spain and world cham­pi­ons Ar­genti­na. Not once were they de­feat­ed in reg­u­lar time. Obri­ga­do, Cabo Verde. You lit up this tour­na­ment.

Ja­maicans have a say­ing, “we likkle but we tallawah.” Tallawah means strong and fear­less. In Bei­jing in 2008, the me­dia seats were right up against the track, so I had a close-up view of Us­ain Bolt’s and Shelly-Ann Fras­er’s de­mo­li­tion of the glob­al com­pe­ti­tion. With no blas­phe­mous in­tent, it was a hair-rais­ing demon­stra­tion of the pow­er and the glo­ry of sport. It has to be felt rather than de­scribed.

That’s the beau­ty of sport. It’s the great equalis­er. We want to cheer for David, not Go­liath. Here’s what will hap­pen with Cabo Verde, an arch­i­pel­ago of ten is­lands and three pieces of rock off north­west­ern Africa. Many will Google the place and find that its air links with Por­tu­gal and Spain are good. Then they’ll vis­it. More tourism in­come. Their stand at World Trav­el Mar­ket in Lon­don in No­vem­ber will at­tract more at­ten­tion from tour op­er­a­tors. Hope­ful­ly they’ll be pre­pared for more traf­fic.

With a land area twice the com­bined size of the OECS coun­tries and a main is­land (San­ti­a­go) that is big­ger than Do­mini­ca, the largest in the sub-group, Cabo Verde’s GDP is well above the African av­er­age. The coun­try is easy to vis­it if you have the right pass­port, but even though they en­vis­aged union with Guinea-Bis­sau at one time, vis­i­tors from some parts of sub-Sa­ha­ran Africa have a hard­er time get­ting in.

The lead­ers of Cari­com, who be­gin their 51st Reg­u­lar Meet­ing in Cas­tries to­day, should con­sid­er some of the lessons of Cabo’s World Cup run and in­creased vis­i­bil­i­ty. In Dort­mund in June 2006, pri­or to the So­ca War­riors’ first World Cup match, Trinidad and To­ba­go jer­seys were sold out in the sports goods shops. Hun­dreds of Tri­nis in town for the game bought them, but they were al­so be­ing worn by scores of Ger­man teenagers.

Julien Al­fred and Ki­rani James have brought at­ten­tion to St Lu­cia and Grena­da. We in the re­gion are go­ing to have to be smarter, more in­ten­tion­al and more strate­gic in deal­ing with the op­por­tu­ni­ties pro­vid­ed by ex­po­sure, Ar­ti­fi­cial In­tel­li­gence and the in­for­ma­tion age.

Chair­man Philip Pierre, the Prime Min­is­ter of St Lu­cia, wants to see the de­lib­er­a­tions bring Cari­com clos­er to the peo­ple. Cari­com “must be seen and felt not on­ly in meet­ings and de­c­la­ra­tions, but al­so in com­mu­ni­ties, schools, busi­ness­es, (and) homes.” Pierre spoke of the ease of work and trav­el, long-un­re­alised aims that coun­tries are pur­su­ing in small­er groups.

The St Lu­cia leader al­so spoke of re­spect­ing the voic­es and con­tri­bu­tions of every mem­ber state. One of them, T&T, has tak­en a dif­fer­ent tack on a num­ber of im­por­tant is­sues, in­clud­ing the re-elec­tion of Sec­re­tary-Gen­er­al Dr Car­la Bar­nett. Noth­ing wrong with that. There ap­pear to have been pro­ce­dur­al mis­steps in that process, and I’ve ar­gued in this space that a do-over may be nec­es­sary.

Nev­er­the­less, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar has cho­sen to en­gage her peers by al­ter­nate­ly hec­tor­ing and talk­ing down to them. In St Kitts in Feb­ru­ary, on her re­turn to re­gion­al sum­mit­ry for the first time in more than a decade, she came across as con­sen­sus-averse and un­nec­es­sar­i­ly con­flict-prone.

None of that is go­ing to put any bread and roti on the ta­ble, or get us in the game in the in­for­ma­tion age.