Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

There al­most wasn’t a de­c­la­ra­tion from the re­cent tenth sum­mit of the Com­mu­ni­ty of Latin Amer­i­ca and Caribbean States (CELAC), as there was a lot of di­vi­sion and Trinidad and To­ba­go and sev­er­al oth­er coun­tries dis­as­so­ci­at­ed them­selves from cer­tain as­pects of the de­c­la­ra­tion, ac­cord­ing to Bar­ba­dos Am­bas­sador to Cari­com, David Comis­siong.

And maybe the di­vi­sion can be at­trib­uted to the com­ing of the Don­ald Trump US pres­i­den­cy, Comis­siong added on CBC Bar­ba­dos’ Mornin’ Bar­ba­dos show last week.

Comis­siong spoke about “pres­sures and frac­tures” in CELAC af­ter at­tend­ing its tenth sum­mit from March 21-22 in Colom­bia. Comis­siong head­ed Bar­ba­dos’ del­e­ga­tion and is al­so Bar­ba­dos’ High Com­mis­sion­er to T&T.

This coun­try dis­as­so­ci­at­ed it­self from the sum­mit de­c­la­ra­tion’s claus­es call­ing for an end to the US’s block­ade on Cu­ba and for up­hold­ing the re­gion as a Zone of Peace. T&T al­so dis­as­so­ci­at­ed from the call to re­it­er­ate the im­por­tance of re­gion­al frame­works for di­a­logue on mi­gra­tion.

Cari­com com­pris­es al­most half of CELAC’s mem­ber­ship.

Comis­siong told Mornin’ Bar­ba­dos, “We al­most didn’t have a de­c­la­ra­tion, as po­lit­i­cal­ly, there’s a lot of di­vi­sion. Maybe we can put it down to the com­ing of this Trump pres­i­den­cy. But it seems as if this Trump pres­i­den­cy has re­al­ly gen­er­at­ed a lot of po­lit­i­cal di­vi­sion; in the world, I’d say, but cer­tain­ly in our hemi­sphere.

“Even if we look at this de­c­la­ra­tion, the feed­back dur­ing the week was that we may not get a de­c­la­ra­tion, as gov­ern­ments were find­ing it dif­fi­cult. Things that in the past we’d eas­i­ly agreed up­on, we were now hav­ing dif­fi­cul­ty.”

Ques­tion­ing who could be op­posed to sus­tain­able de­vel­op­ment, Comis­siong added, “Well, there were one or two coun­tries that ac­tu­al­ly op­posed that con­cept.”

He al­so not­ed the re­gion be­ing a zone of peace. “... Which is one of the great achieve­ments of CELAC and the 2014 procla­ma­tion of Ha­vana de­clar­ing Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean, a Zone of Peace. Well, T&T dis­as­so­ci­at­ed it­self from that para­graph.”

Comis­siong al­so cit­ed the is­sue of Cu­ba.

“For 33 years now, we’ve all gone to the Unit­ed Na­tions Gen­er­al As­sem­bly to de­nounce the block­age against Cu­ba and de­nounce Cu­ba be­ing uni­lat­er­al­ly in­clud­ed by the US on this list of state spon­sors of ter­ror­ism. That’s a set­tled part of Cari­com and CELAC pol­i­cy,” he said.

“Would you imag­ine ... well, we got the para­graph in the de­c­la­ra­tion, but 11 coun­tries found it nec­es­sary to make a reser­va­tion dis­as­so­ci­at­ing them­selves! Ar­genti­na, Chile, Cos­ta Ri­ca, Ecuador, Hon­duras, El Sal­vador, Pana­ma, Paraguay, Pe­ru, T&T and Guyana. Though I un­der­stand Guyana’s might have been a mis­com­mu­ni­ca­tion and it wasn’t re­al­ly so. Of­fi­cial­ly Guyana, but there might be a caveat at­tached to that.”

He con­tin­ued, “But one third of CELAC’s mem­ber­ship found it dif­fi­cult to agree to some­thing that they’ve been go­ing to the UN for three decades and vot­ing for. So that’s the re­al­i­ty: we do have these po­lit­i­cal di­vi­sions. How­ev­er, we were still able to pro­duce the de­c­la­ra­tion and the or­gan­i­sa­tion is still in­tact.

“We thought CELAC would be a space for po­lit­i­cal dis­cus­sion and re­solv­ing po­lit­i­cal/ide­o­log­i­cal dif­fer­ences we have among us, so it could be a unit­ed de­vel­op­men­tal body in our hemi­sphere. But in re­cent times, we can see the pres­sures and the frac­tures.”

The con­fer­ence’s high­light, Comis­siong said, was when Brazil’s Pres­i­dent Luiz In­á­cio Lu­la da Sil­va de­liv­ered a pas­sion­ate speech, “... in which he re­al­ly went to town on Pres­i­dent Trump, the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion and the dis­rup­tive role it is play­ing in in­ter­na­tion­al af­fairs. Pres­i­dent Lu­la was greet­ed with a stand­ing ova­tion.”

Comis­siong said that in­di­cat­ed to him that while some of the coun­tries had of­fi­cial poli­cies that might be ‘X,’ their rep­re­sen­ta­tives had a dif­fer­ent opin­ion.

“They all, every­body in that con­fer­ence, all stood and ap­plaud­ed Pres­i­dent Lu­la for a long time. He was re­al­ly ex­press­ing frus­tra­tion with what the world seems to have be­come with all of this war­fare, in­sta­bil­i­ty, this dis­re­spect for the UN, in­ter­na­tion­al law. He was ex­press­ing the frus­tra­tion so many of us feel: why have we de­scend­ed to this... where is this tak­ing us, how many hu­man be­ings are los­ing lives and how much de­struc­tion? That was the emo­tion­al high point of the en­tire event,” Comis­siong said.