IRA MATH­UR

San­dra Ann Bap­tiste’s ca­reer as a jour­nal­ist and spe­cial­ist in Caribbean af­fairs spans over three decades, dur­ing which she has chron­i­cled ma­jor de­vel­op­ments across the re­gion with a par­tic­u­lar fo­cus on the re­gion­al in­te­gra­tion move­ment, Cari­com. Her ex­ten­sive ex­pe­ri­ence in print and broad­cast me­dia in­cludes work with renowned or­gan­i­sa­tions such as the BBC, CBC, CANA, the Caribbean Broad­cast­ing Cor­po­ra­tion, Voice of Bar­ba­dos, and the Guyana Broad­cast­ing Ser­vice.

As the first head of the Guyana Of­fice for In­vest­ment (GO-In­vest) and a Cer­ti­fied In­ter­na­tion­al Trade Pro­fes­sion­al (CITP), Bap­tiste has a deep un­der­stand­ing of the Caribbean’s so­cio-eco­nom­ic land­scape. Her new­ly launched book, Caribbean Per­spec­tives, which fo­cus­es on Cari­com from the 1970s to 2014, is a com­pelling col­lec­tion of ar­ti­cles span­ning just over three decades.

The col­lec­tion pro­vides in­sight­ful analy­sis of Cari­com and var­i­ous so­cial and eco­nom­ic is­sues in the re­gion, fea­tur­ing in­ter­views with over a dozen heads of gov­ern­ment and two Cari­com sec­re­taries-gen­er­al. The book delves in­to eco­nom­ic and trade is­sues, the re­gion’s ex­ter­nal trade re­la­tions, and tourism de­vel­op­ments, with a spe­cial sec­tion on the Com­mon­wealth.

Bap­tiste’s in­ter­est in jour­nal­ism be­gan in high school with an in­tern­ship at the Guyana Graph­ic news­pa­per, fol­lowed by a stint at the Guyana Broad­cast­ing Ser­vice dur­ing the launch of Cari­com af­ter which, she re­calls she was en­cour­aged by Dr Ed­win Car­ring­ton, (who lat­er be­came sec­re­tary-gen­er­al of Cari­com) to spe­cialise in the re­gion­al in­te­gra­tion move­ment. Her ca­reer flour­ished as she cov­ered nu­mer­ous Cari­com and Com­mon­wealth Sum­mits, trade, fi­nance, and tourism meet­ings, putting to­geth­er in-depth re­ports re­flect­ing the views of gov­ern­ment, pri­vate sec­tor, and civic lead­ers.

“Trav­el­ling around the re­gion and be­com­ing fa­mil­iar with the pol­i­tics, econ­o­my, peo­ple, cul­ture, and food was an amaz­ing ex­pe­ri­ence,” Bap­tiste re­mem­bers her tenure at CANA, the Caribbean Broad­cast­ing Cor­po­ra­tion, and Voice of Bar­ba­dos as “among the most pro­duc­tive pe­ri­ods” of her me­dia ca­reer.

Bap­tiste’s work has al­ways been about more than just re­port­ing; it has been about shar­ing the rich, com­plex sto­ries of the Caribbean’s pol­i­tics, econ­o­my, and cul­ture. Her re­la­tion­ships with key fig­ures like Ed­win Car­ring­ton and Rod­er­ick Rain­ford, along with sev­er­al heads of gov­ern­ment and busi­ness lead­ers, al­lowed her to pro­vide a nu­anced view of the re­gion’s de­vel­op­ments. Now, as a busi­ness and com­mu­ni­ca­tions con­sul­tant, Bap­tiste con­tin­ues to cham­pi­on Caribbean in­vest­ment, trade, and tourism through Carigold Sig­na­ture, a mag­a­zine based in North Amer­i­ca.

Her lega­cy of in­sight­ful jour­nal­ism and ded­i­cat­ed con­sul­tan­cy shapes the nar­ra­tive of Caribbean growth and uni­ty.

Ex­cerpt: Caribbean Per­spec­tives

–Page 32 with per­mis­sion from the au­thor ex­clu­sive­ly for the Sun­day Guardian WE mag­a­zine.

From “Slow Boat to Uni­ty”–The Pace of In­te­gra­tion

Caribbean World Mag­a­zine, Lon­don–1992

San­dra Ann Bap­tiste talks with Ja­maica’s Prime Min­is­ter Michael Man­ley and oth­er lead­ers about the strug­gle for an in­te­grat­ed mar­ket in the Caribbean. “Man­ley has warned that the in­ter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty was get­ting neg­a­tive sig­nals from Cari­com’s fail­ure to im­ple­ment many of its trade and oth­er agree­ments, which would be a pre­req­ui­site for the es­tab­lish­ment of a sin­gle mar­ket.

Over the past five years, Cari­com gov­ern­ments have im­ple­ment­ed about 30 per cent of de­ci­sions tak­en at their an­nu­al sum­mits. He seeks a stronger po­lit­i­cal will to en­sure that Cari­com ac­cords are trans­lat­ed in­to ac­tion. The re­gion’s lead­ers have been wide­ly and harsh­ly crit­i­cised dur­ing the con­sul­ta­tions which the in­de­pen­dent West In­di­an Com­mis­sion held in 1991 with­in the re­gion, and in the Unit­ed King­dom and Cana­da. Man­ley at­tach­es a lot of im­por­tance to the work of the West In­di­an Com­mis­sion which he hopes will help in­ject some bad­ly need­ed dy­namism in­to the move­ment.

In an in­ter­im re­port, the com­mis­sion, chaired by for­mer com­mon­wealth sec­re­tary-gen­er­al Sir Shri­dath Ram­phal, called for “im­me­di­ate ac­tion” in six ar­eas: eas­i­er trav­el for West In­di­ans with­in their own re­gion; the free move­ment of skills in the re­gion; steps to­wards a com­mon cur­ren­cy; the cre­ation of a Caribbean In­vest­ment Fund; cre­at­ing the CARI­COM Sin­gle Mar­ket and mo­bil­is­ing for in­ter­na­tion­al ne­go­ti­a­tions. Man­ley had hoped that the meet­ing of CARI­COM Heads of Gov­ern­ment in mid-Feb­ru­ary in Ja­maica would fo­cus sole­ly on these ar­eas. “There are cer­tain short-term prob­lems that you face in any in­te­gra­tion process, but it is jus­ti­fied by the tremen­dous trans­for­ma­tion in your ca­pac­i­ty to de­liv­er progress if you do in­te­grate,” he said.

“If three en­ti­ties as huge as Cana­da, the Unit­ed States and Mex­i­co look at the world econ­o­my and find it nec­es­sary to be­gin an in­te­gra­tion process, the whole of mighty Eu­rope with a his­to­ry of one thou­sand years now puts war­fare be­hind it and is go­ing to in­te­grate, who are we to think that we can af­ford not to?”

Do­mini­ca’s Prime Min­is­ter, Dame Eu­ge­nia Charles, is a lawyer by pro­fes­sion whose po­lit­i­cal ca­reer goes back 35 years. Now 73, she is a tough, no-non­sense politi­cian who is re­ferred to as the Iron La­dy of the Caribbean. She played an im­por­tant part in the in­volve­ment of Amer­i­can troops in Grena­da in 1983 when she went to Wash­ing­ton to see Pres­i­dent Rea­gan on be­half of the re­gion. She has been se­vere­ly crit­i­cal of Cari­com, par­tic­u­lar­ly the per­for­mance of the sec­re­tari­at. She wants it re­moved from Guyana–which has its own eco­nom­ic prob­lems and has failed to at­tract enough res­i­dents from oth­er is­lands.

Dame Eu­ge­nia is clear­ly frus­trat­ed. She com­plains that Cari­com pro­grammes nev­er get off the ground be­cause lit­tle at­ten­tion is paid to specifics like per­son­nel, fund­ing and re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for projects. In the 1970s and 1980s, in­ter­na­tion­al re­ces­sion and fluc­tu­a­tions in the price of oil have re­sult­ed in a slump in re­la­tions among Cari­com coun­tries.

At their 1989 Sum­mit in Grena­da, Cari­com lead­ers ap­proved the his­toric Grand Anse De­c­la­ra­tion, set­ting out tar­get dates for ma­jor ad­vances. Most of the dead­lines have not been met. Of the 19 de­ci­sions tak­en at Grand Anse, on­ly two have been im­ple­ment­ed. The re­gion­al in­te­gra­tion move­ment failed once again in 1991 to meet sev­er­al dead­lines which the Heads of Gov­ern­ment set. The Com­mon Ex­ter­nal Tar­iff (CET), a du­ty on goods im­port­ed from out­side the re­gion to give a boost to re­gion­al pro­duc­tion, has not yet been ful­ly im­ple­ment­ed.

Mem­ber states did not ad­here to the De­cem­ber 31 tar­get date for re­mov­ing all re­main­ing bar­ri­ers to in­tra-re­gion­al trade. Two Cari­com projects which did suc­ceed in 1991 were the lim­it­ed start-up of a Re­gion­al Stock Ex­change–in­volv­ing the cross-list­ing and trad­ing of stocks of com­pa­nies in Bar­ba­dos, Ja­maica and Trinidad and To­ba­go–and the es­tab­lish­ment of a CARI­COM Emer­gency Dis­as­ter Re­sponse Agency.

In 1992, the re­gion will con­tin­ue to feel the ef­fects of the in­ter­na­tion­al re­ces­sion. Tourism, its ma­jor in­dus­try, suf­fered from the Cold War and has been dealt a fur­ther blow with the col­lapse of Pan Am. Tourism is one area where there is room for co­op­er­a­tion, par­tic­u­lar­ly be­cause the out­look for this vi­tal in­dus­try is far from rosy. The Bar­ba­dos-based Caribbean Tourism Or­ga­ni­za­tion (CTO) has pro­ject­ed a hard win­ter, with lit­tle or no growth.

One pos­i­tive de­vel­op­ment was the his­toric mid-Feb­ru­ary meet­ing of CARI­COM Heads of Gov­ern­ment on the fu­ture of tourism, in­clud­ing the plans for the joint mar­ket­ing of the re­gion and fa­cil­i­ties to lure more in­vest­ment to the sec­tor, which is bad­ly in need of cap­i­tal for re­fur­bish­ment. The Caribbean De­vel­op­ment Bank (CDB) says that all of the Cari­com coun­tries, with the ex­cep­tion of Bar­ba­dos, ex­pe­ri­enced some growth in 1991, but the re­gion’s eco­nom­ic per­for­mance on the whole was “not very good.”

–End of Ex­cerpt

San­dra Ann Bap­tiste is cur­rent­ly the Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Con­sul­tant of Flori­da-based com­pa­ny Carigold Sig­na­ture, pro­duc­ing the Caribbean Busi­ness & Trav­el mag­a­zine and the Caribbean Tourism and Hos­pi­tal­i­ty In­vest­ment Guide.

Ira Math­ur is a Guardian Me­dia

jour­nal­ist and the win­ner of the 2023 Bo­cas Prize for Non-Fic­tion for her mem­oir, Love The Dark Days.

Web­site: www.iras­room.org

Au­thor in­quiries can be sent to iras­room@gmail.com