The dev­as­ta­tion suf­fered by some of the west­ern parish­es of Ja­maica, fol­low­ing the pas­sage of cat­e­go­ry 5 Hur­ri­cane Melis­sa, is a wake-up call for all Cari­com mem­ber states to ac­knowl­edge we are all our broth­er’s keep­er and need to step up when our neigh­bour’s house has been dam­aged by fe­ro­cious winds top­ping 180 miles per hour.

Giv­en the fact that one or more Caribbean coun­tries suf­fer mas­sive prop­er­ty de­struc­tion and loss of lives al­most every year, these col­lec­tive acts of as­sis­tance ren­dered to Ja­maica from yes­ter­day are al­most an act of na­tion­al self-preser­va­tion.

If Ja­maica was rav­aged by Melis­sa this year, Grena­da and St Vin­cent, as well as Ja­maica, were hurt by Beryl last year and it could be any coun­try next year.

The gal­vanis­ing of re­lief ef­forts through­out Cari­com is quite ap­pro­pri­ate, giv­en the fact that the com­mu­ni­ty has been di­vid­ed re­cent­ly by some geopo­lit­i­cal de­vel­op­ments re­sult­ing from the ag­gres­sive at­tempts of US Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump to ex­e­cute al­leged nar­co­traf­fick­ers in the Caribbean Sea.

Re­gion­al sol­i­dar­i­ty is not on­ly demon­strat­ed dur­ing nat­ur­al dis­as­ters.

In 2023, Venezuela caused se­ri­ous alarm with­in Cari­com, when it at­tempt­ed to en­force its claim to Guyana’s Es­se­qui­bo re­gion, go­ing as far as to hold a ref­er­en­dum ask­ing Venezue­lans whether the Guyanese land should be­come a state of the Span­ish-speak­ing South Amer­i­can coun­try.

That, and oth­er acts of provo­ca­tion by Venezuela, were the sub­ject of sub­stan­tial diplo­mat­ic ef­forts by re­gion­al prime min­is­ters and oth­er lead­ers in the hemi­sphere.

Those ef­forts cul­mi­nat­ed in the Joint De­c­la­ra­tion of Ar­gyle for Di­a­logue and Peace be­tween Guyana and Venezuela in St Vin­cent and the Grenadines. At that meet­ing, all coun­tries “re­it­er­at­ed their com­mit­ment to Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean re­main­ing a zone of peace.”

In­ter­est­ing­ly, Cari­com lead­ers held a vir­tu­al meet­ing last Thurs­day, where they “dis­cussed the in­creased se­cu­ri­ty build-up in the Caribbean and the po­ten­tial im­pacts on mem­ber states,” and agreed to reaf­firm “the prin­ci­ple of main­tain­ing the Caribbean re­gion as a zone of peace.”

The lead­ers al­so reaf­firmed “a com­mit­ment to fight­ing nar­co­traf­fick­ing and the il­le­gal small arms trade.

All re­gion­al po­lit­i­cal lead­ers at the meet­ing agreed to those po­si­tions, ex­cept for T&T’s Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, who re­served this coun­try’s po­si­tion, mean­ing she was not will­ing to af­firm the prin­ci­ple that this re­gion should re­main a zone of peace.

Asked whether she had sup­port from oth­er coun­tries in the re­gion, with re­gard to its pro-US po­si­tion, Mrs Per­sad-Bisses­sar told the Crime Watch pro­gramme on Mon­day, “It is very clear that some of our Cari­com part­ners have tak­en a dif­fer­ent view by talk­ing about a zone of peace. But there is no zone of peace in Trinidad and To­ba­go. Maybe there is a zone of peace in some of those oth­er Caribbean coun­tries be­cause they are fur­ther north. We are the clos­est here to the main­land and we are be­ing se­ri­ous­ly hit with the drug traf­fick­ing, the gangs, the car­tels, the gun­run­ning. That is not hap­pen­ing in their coun­tries.”

Un­for­tu­nate­ly, the T&T Prime Min­is­ter’s analy­sis that prox­im­i­ty to the South Amer­i­can main­land is the main dri­ver of this coun­try’s high mur­der rate falls flat if the mur­der rates of T&T and Ja­maica, lo­cat­ed in the north­ern Caribbean, are com­pared for the last decade.

And it is re­gret­table, there­fore, that Mrs Per­sad-Bisses­sar de­scribed Cari­com as “prov­ing to be an un­re­li­able part­ner, in some re­gards” based on a dis­agree­ment over what con­sti­tutes a zone of peace.