Dr Var­ma Deyals­ingh

Abelar­do de la Es­priel­la, a right-wing politi­cian, took of­fice as Colom­bia’s new pres­i­dent on Au­gust 7. His vic­to­ry has been de­scribed as part of a broad­er, Trump-in­flu­enced right­ward shift in Latin Amer­i­ca.

Now, with lead­ers such as Milei in Ar­genti­na, Noboa in Ecuador and Kast in Chile, there is a no­tice­ably stronger group of gov­ern­ments that see clos­er align­ment with Wash­ing­ton as ben­e­fi­cial.

Latin Amer­i­can pol­i­tics has long os­cil­lat­ed be­tween left-lean­ing and right-lean­ing gov­ern­ments, of­ten dri­ven by dis­sat­is­fac­tion with cor­rup­tion, eco­nom­ic hard­ship and the poor per­for­mance of in­cum­bent gov­ern­ments, as wit­nessed by the Pink Tide of the ear­ly 2000s, when a wave of left-wing gov­ern­ments came to pow­er across the re­gion. At times, how­ev­er, these shifts have al­so been in­flu­enced by for­eign pow­ers pur­su­ing their own eco­nom­ic or strate­gic in­ter­ests.

Es­priel­la has re­versed the course from the pre­vi­ous left­ist Pres­i­dent Gus­ta­vo Petro by rap­proche­ment with Is­rael, as well as join­ing the Shield of Amer­i­c­as bloc.

This al­liance came none too soon. The 7.4-mag­ni­tude earth­quake that struck Colom­bia on Mon­day has seen $15.5 mil­lion in as­sis­tance promised by the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion.

Trinidad and To­ba­go is al­so part of this chang­ing land­scape. Our align­ment with the Joint Task Force South­ern Spear, and its suc­ces­sor, Joint Task Force West­ern Hemi­sphere, es­tab­lished on Au­gust 7, com­bines our ef­forts to com­bat transna­tion­al crime.

US Deputy Sec­re­tary of State Christo­pher Lan­dau’s Au­gust 9 vis­it fur­ther re­in­forces this tra­jec­to­ry, bol­ster­ing se­cu­ri­ty co­op­er­a­tion, strength­en­ing en­er­gy pri­or­i­ties and deep­en­ing eco­nom­ic col­lab­o­ra­tion be­tween our two coun­tries.

Lan­dau has been open­ing mar­kets for US busi­ness­es as part of the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion’s “Amer­i­ca First” ap­proach. He al­so vis­it­ed Guyana, look­ing at crit­i­cal min­er­als, in­vest­ment and eco­nom­ic co­op­er­a­tion.

This sug­gests Wash­ing­ton is look­ing at the re­gion as a strate­gic eco­nom­ic and se­cu­ri­ty zone. Guyana has enor­mous off­shore oil re­sources and grow­ing US in­vest­ment. T&T has en­er­gy in­fra­struc­ture, LNG ex­per­tise and a strate­gic ge­o­graph­ic po­si­tion when­ev­er Venezuela be­comes a ma­jor US for­eign-pol­i­cy is­sue.

Be that as it may, our eco­nom­ic sur­vival de­pends on Venezue­lan nat­ur­al gas, but ac­cess to that gas is on­ly pos­si­ble with US ap­proval.

Lan­dau’s open­ing of the Ibis Steel Plant at Point Lisas was par­tic­u­lar­ly sym­bol­ic. The for­mer Arcelor­Mit­tal fa­cil­i­ty is now un­der the con­trol of US-based Pin­na­cle Steel and Vana­di­um Cor­po­ra­tion. Lan­dau spoke about his coun­try’s need to “strate­gi­cal­ly po­si­tion” re­sources away from Chi­na, which can cut off sup­plies at any time.

For T&T, how­ev­er, the de­vel­op­ment car­ries an un­com­fort­able his­tor­i­cal irony.

Dr Er­ic Williams, who fought to end the Amer­i­can pres­ence at Ch­aguara­mas, viewed Amer­i­ca as neo­colo­nial­ist. He used the term “Amer­i­can Mediter­ranean” to de­scribe the Caribbean Sea, high­light­ing how ma­jor for­eign pow­ers viewed and used the re­gion. Just as the old Mediter­ranean served Eu­ro­pean em­pires, the Caribbean func­tioned as a strate­gic zone for US eco­nom­ic ex­pan­sion and mil­i­tary de­fence, while lo­cal is­land pop­u­la­tions re­mained “trapped in a sys­tem where their home­lands were val­ued on­ly to serve a for­eign me­trop­o­lis.”

Williams cham­pi­oned na­tion­al­i­sa­tion and state-owned in­dus­tries such as the Iron and Steel Com­pa­ny of Trinidad and To­ba­go (IS­COTT). He thought this was the way for­ward.

Un­for­tu­nate­ly, IS­COTT be­came a fi­nan­cial bur­den, los­ing mon­ey from in­cep­tion un­til 1994, when it was sold to In­di­an in­dus­tri­al­ist Lak­sh­mi Mit­tal. It be­came prof­itable un­til 2016. Low in­ter­na­tion­al steel prices, glob­al over­ca­pac­i­ty and ris­ing do­mes­tic costs even­tu­al­ly saw its de­cline.

This iron and steel re­vi­tal­i­sa­tion would have been both a dream and a neme­sis for Williams. His once-am­bi­tious project has restart­ed, but now in the hands of the “neo­colo­nial­ist.”

The les­son is not that for­eign in­vest­ment is in­her­ent­ly bad, nor that state own­er­ship is au­to­mat­i­cal­ly prefer­able. T&T has tried both ap­proach­es. Re­gret­tably, af­ter our oil booms and many in­vest­ments, many cit­i­zens still strug­gle to achieve a bet­ter qual­i­ty of life.

This ven­ture may well face re­newed pub­lic op­po­si­tion from cit­i­zens who once chal­lenged Patrick Man­ning’s pro­posed alu­mini­um smelter and may now de­mand that any op­er­at­ing li­cence be con­di­tion­al on proven en­vi­ron­men­tal per­for­mance, backed by in­de­pen­dent mon­i­tor­ing of emis­sions and waste from vana­di­um pro­cess­ing.

Some who op­posed the smelter then for po­lit­i­cal rea­sons may have no ob­jec­tion now. Such is the na­ture of pol­i­tics.

But we must in­sist that pub­lic health and en­vi­ron­men­tal safe­ty re­main non-ne­go­tiable.

The ques­tion be­fore us is not whether we should choose be­tween na­tion­al­ism and for­eign align­ment. It is whether we can lever­age our strate­gic im­por­tance to se­cure greater eco­nom­ic op­por­tu­ni­ties, and ad­vance our na­tion­al in­ter­ests with­out sur­ren­der­ing our in­de­pen­dence.

His­to­ry has brought us full cir­cle. The chal­lenge now is to en­sure that this new re­la­tion­ship with Wash­ing­ton serves Trinidad and To­ba­go as much as it serves Wash­ing­ton.