“We think elections are one of the major pillars of democracy, and any removal of a duly elected leader is a threat to the democratic forces in this hemisphere. It was difficult for the Caribbean to accept a government that was imposed and not elected. So we differed from the United States on that issue and suspended Haiti.” Caricom later restored Haiti to full membership upon the inauguration of René Préval as president, but the issue has smoldered ever since. “Haiti is still very much an issue, and we hope it will not go away,” John says. “Caricom would like to work hand in hand with donor countries to ensure that long-term institutional capacity is built in Haiti, so that Haiti can move on. That’s why it’s still on the front burner for us.” Another contentious issue is that of the International Criminal Court. “The United States wanted exemption for their soldiers from prosecution. Most of the Caribbean countries had refused to agree to that, and what the U.S. did was to pull military support from those countries. St. Vincent was one of those countries that held out to the end.” Even more galling for John and his fellow Caricom ambassadors is a proposal in Congress co-sponsored by Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.) and presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) called the Stop Tax Haven Abuse Act, which seeks to “restrict the use of offshore tax havens and abusive tax shelters to inappropriately avoid federal taxation.” In introducing the bill—which specifically blacklists 34 offshore jurisdictions, including the Bahamas, Bermuda, the Cayman Islands and the British Virgin Islands—Obama said “this is a basic issue of fairness. We need to crack down on individuals and businesses that abuse tax laws so those who work hard and play by the rules aren’t disadvantaged.” Nonsense, counters John—especially after action was taken following an earlier blacklisting by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). “It’s a false perception,” he says. “All the countries that were on the OECD blacklist have put measures in place to protect U.S. interests to a large extent, and to prevent money laundering and the perception of the region as a tax haven. That’s why all of our islands were removed from the list.” He adds: “We’re trying to build up our financial services sector, but at every opportunity, both the Bush administration and Congress have been talking about Caricom countries as tax havens, and that’s not true.” It also upsets John that the United States has been deporting thousands of criminals back to the Caribbean without consulting the countries in question. This, he charges, has led to a wave of violent crime, particularly in countries such as Jamaica and Guyana. “The U.S. has a deportee policy which we feel has a major impact on our crime situation. We’ve had people living in the U.S. since they were children, who are now in their 40s and being deported back home. They have no links to the Caribbean whatsoever. The U.S. would say there are no statistics to support a relationship between those deportees and the crime situation in our countries, but it has to be more than a coincidence,” he says. “Before, we had mainly crimes of passion. Now we have drive-by shootings, with guns being used as the weapons of choice.” The country that John represents, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, is typical of most eastern Caribbean states. Consisting of 32 islands, its 120,000 inhabitants live on only six of those islands, the largest being St. Vincent itself. “In St. Vincent, tourism has just recently eclipsed agriculture as the number-one source of foreign exchange,” the ambassador explains. “But that doesn’t mean we’re abandoning agriculture as one of the mainstays of our economy. We are blessed in that we have fertile soil. We have a volcano, and for a long time we’ve been a breadbasket of the Caribbean.” One thing that sets St. Vincent apart from its neighbors is its recognition of Taiwan rather than mainland China. Only four other Caricom member states—Belize, Haiti, St. Kitts and St. Lucia—have diplomatic relations with Taiwan. In fact, St. Lucia infuriated Beijing in April after it severed its 10-year relationship with China and restored ties with Taiwan. To Washington’s dismay, all Caricom member states seem to enjoy warm relations with Hugo Chávez, particularly since the Venezuelan president’s recent creation of the PetroCaribe initiative, which provides petroleum to Caribbean countries at subsidized prices. “If oil goes over a certain price, we don’t have to immediately pay that amount. Venezuela also said we can pay what we owe through other means like goods and services, such as bananas,” John says. “I don’t think there’s any government in the region that dislikes Chávez. We are too small to get in the middle of wars between countries that are bigger than us. We can end up being collateral casualties as a result.” Caricom nations also enjoy warm ties with Cuba’s Fidel Castro, who has provided scholarships for thousands of young people to study medicine in Havana. In addition, Cuba has sent thousands of doctors to the region and performed eye surgeries for people in a dozen Caribbean countries who couldn’t otherwise afford such surgery. But on the subject of Cuba, John declined to say too much. “We support lifting the embargo, and in a number of areas we work closely with Cuba, mainly health and education. For many of us, the relationship is strong. That does not in any way diminish our relations with the U.S.,” he says. “But since both Cuba and the United States are friends of ours, we must be very careful about this.” Since the demise of the Reagan-era Caribbean Basin Initiative, some Caribbean islands worry about preferential treatment in the U.S. market for their chief products. That concern increased last year with passage of the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA), which many see as direct competition to the much smaller economies of the Caribbean. “We have just established a U.S.-Caricom Trade and Economic Council, an interaction that takes place between our ministries of trade and the [U.S. Trade Representative],” says John. “We are not looking for parity with CAFTA. We do not think trade agreements should be a cookie-cutter arrangement. These issues are special and unique to our region because of our size, and therefore any relationship that is established will have to deal with those issues.” In the long run, according to the ambassador, the most important thing is that Caricom nations don’t want to be forgotten as bigger issues like Iraq and the worldwide fight against terrorism take priority. “Quite frankly, we have the biggest, wealthiest country and the poorest country, both in this hemisphere,” he says. “In the global scheme of things, the United States should be thinking about its regional groupings first—and not so much its relationship with the Middle East, Latin America or China. The focus should be on consolidating our hemisphere. The Caribbean is an integral part of this hemisphere, and we feel the dialogue must be focused on what we need to make this hemisphere competitive as a region.” Larry Luxner is a contributing writer for The Washington Diplomat.

Would you like to become a WashDiplomat sponsor?