The major issue of 2023 in the 15-nation Caribbean Community (Caricom) has to be, of course, the still-simmering Guyana-Venezuela border row with the two massing troops and heavy military equipment on both sides, forcing concerned leaders to hurriedly arrange mediation to ease tensions in the region.
For decades, Venezuela—Guyana’s neighbor to the west—has claimed Guyana’s western Essequibo region, contending that it was cheated out of the area during an 1899 boundary demarcation process. Successive administrations have provided little evidence over the decades that the mineral- and oil-rich area is Venezuela’s, but after massive amounts of oil and gas deposits were found offshore Guyana in 2015, Venezuela ratcheted up its claims to the area. These claims culminated in a December 3 referendum that approved annexation of the Essequibo.
Fearing that the two sides would have headed to war, Caribbean leaders and umbrella organizations like CELAC hurriedly arranged a mediation meeting in the eastern Caribbean nation of St. Vincent in mid-December, forcing both parties to agree to a declaration not to wage war or threaten each other with military force while setting up a mechanism for bilateral talks. A second round is due in March in Brazil.
Guyana is depending on an imminent ruling from the World Court in the Netherlands for a final decision about the border demarcation. Venezuela does not recognize the court.
Just as tensions were easing, Venezuela at year’s end placed its army on alert and ordered more than 6,000 troops to be ready for battle because Britain had sent a warship—the HMS Trent—to Guyana in a show of support for its former colony. The 1899 agreement was signed by Britain as Guyana’s colonizer. Caracas said it had viewed the presence of the vessel as an insult and a threat to the country.
Venezuelan Foreign Minister Yvan Gil in a statement described the vessel’s deployment as hostile, a provocation and a breach of a peace agreement Guyana and Venezuela signed during mediation talks in St. Vincent. “The presence of the military ship is extremely serious since it is accompanied by statements by political and military spokesmen of the person who served as the looter of Guayana Esequiba, who insists on getting involved in said controversy. These statements have also been synchronized with actions by the United States Southern Command, which clearly becomes a direct threat to peace and stability of the region,” Minister Gil said, ratcheting up tensions once again. Guyanese authorities said the ship would not be turned away by any means.
Other key issues of last year had to do with the deaths of 20 children at a dormitory for indigenous girls in Guyana’s southwest, near Brazil: 20 teenage girls were killed when a fire broke out at the facility in May. Around that time, regional leaders were setting up an eminent persons group of three former prime ministers to serve as mediators in Haiti’s seemingly never-ending political crises.
After several rounds of talks both in Jamaica and in Haiti, the group says encouraging signs are emerging that could lead to fresh elections, a new president taking office, and curbing gangs roaming the country. Caricom nations have already pledged to contribute to any multinational peacekeeping force headed to Haiti in the coming months.
Meanwhile, as a bloc, the region held a string of high-level meetings this year, including with Justin Trudeau of Canada and Paul Kagame of Rwanda, as they haggled over an international force to make peace in Haiti.
In addition, the region made some strides fighting with Europe to make former slave-trading nations pay reparations for the genocide against Africans, adjusting strategy to directly engage with some of the British families, like the Trevelyans and the Gladstones, to make them both apologize for the role of their ancestors and commit to paying as modern-day beneficiaries. In late December last year, Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte apologized for the Netherlands; King Willem did so at mid-year, even as pressure was being put on Britain’s King Charles and others to apologize and begin thinking about actual payment.
Barbadian Prime Minister Mia Mottley, the leader responsible for reparations in Caricom, recently made public her preliminary invoice for King Charles, tapping it at close to $5 trillion.
“We’re not expecting that the reparatory damages will be paid in a year, or two, or five, because the extraction of wealth and the damages took place over centuries. But we are demanding that we be seen and that we are heard,” she said. The conspiracy of silence for years “has diminished the horror of what our people faced,”
Again as a bloc, St. Lucia moved all constitutional hurdles to joining the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ), leaving its fellow eastern Caribbean neighbors and Jamaica in the lurch as they struggled to find ways around their constitutional roadblocks to also hook up with the regional apex court.
As extremely hot weather and drought stalked the region for much of the year, governments rejoiced about the massive rebound of the lifeline tourism sector ,with the Bahamas and Jamaica the shining stars. The two are likely to account for close to 13 million visitors by the end of the year as arrivals rebounded and have even surpassed pre COVID-19 levels in the past year.
As the year ended, Trinidad came close to matching the 2022 606 murder figure, ending at around 580. A court in Suriname in late December reaffirmed 2019’s 20-year sentence for mass murder of former military strongman and two-time elected president Desi Bouterse as he awaits a jail date or a pardon from President Santokhi for the 1982 killings of 15 government critics.
“This has been a landmark year for Caricom as we marked the 50th anniversary of the signing of the original Treaty of Chaguaramas with festivities across the region,” said bloc Secretary General Carla Barnett. “The occasion allowed us to reflect on our accomplishments, and recommit to the vision of the Caricom’s founders. The past 50 years have taught us that with collective action, we can achieve significantly more.”