For­mer Saint Lu­cia prime min­is­ter Allen Chas­tanet re­cent­ly float­ed the idea of the with­draw­al of OECS states from some Cari­com arrange­ments in favour of bi­lat­er­al deals with T&T, Ja­maica, and Guyana.

Cit­ing per­sis­tent in­equities, Prime Min­is­ter of St Vin­cent and the Grenadines, Dr Ralph Gon­salves, has mean­while sug­gest­ed that leav­ing the Cari­com Sin­gle Mar­ket should be “on the ta­ble.”

While nei­ther leader ex­pressed firm com­mit­ments to such views, these po­si­tions echo a grow­ing glob­al trend away from mul­ti­lat­er­al­ism to­ward trans­ac­tion­al, bi­lat­er­al re­la­tions. It’s a shift that trades shared risk and mu­tu­al ben­e­fit for sup­posed na­tion­al gain, of­ten em­ploy­ing short-term log­ic.

In the Caribbean, this trend over­laps with ris­ing in­ter­nal ten­sions over ex­ter­nal pres­sures. There is no clear con­sen­sus on Venezuela. We’re di­vid­ed in our re­spons­es to Amer­i­can glob­al pol­i­cy. And our po­si­tions on Gaza have been painful­ly un­even.

Still, none of this is es­pe­cial­ly new. Caribbean in­te­gra­tion has al­ways had its chal­lenges. For in­stance, the years of rev­o­lu­tion­ary Grena­da, 1979 to 1983, were among the tough­est tests. Yet ours is not the on­ly in­te­gra­tion move­ment un­der pres­sure. Many, if not most, such projects across the world are fal­ter­ing.

Since hear­ing these re­cent sug­ges­tions of re­treat and sur­ren­der, I have been un­able to take the 1991 Re­gion­al Con­stituent As­sem­bly (RCA) of the Wind­ward Is­lands out of my mind. That wa­ter­shed ef­fort, in­volv­ing Do­mini­ca, Grena­da, Saint Lu­cia and St Vin­cent and the Grenadines, was an hon­est, open at­tempt to deep­en sub-re­gion­al in­te­gra­tion. It brought to­geth­er gov­ern­ment, op­po­si­tion, and civ­il so­ci­ety in se­ri­ous, struc­tured di­a­logue.

Re­gret­tably, we’ve rarely re­turned to that mo­ment. The Cari­com 2003 Rose Hall De­c­la­ra­tion dis­sect­ed “re­gion­al gov­er­nance,” but failed to achieve tan­gi­ble fol­low-through over the long term and is iron­i­cal­ly be­ing ref­er­enced in pro­mo­tion of next month’s Cari­com sum­mit in Ja­maica.

The RCA, in some re­spects, matched the far more struc­tured and cel­e­brat­ed West In­di­an Com­mis­sion (WIC) con­sul­ta­tions on the fu­ture of the in­te­gra­tion, which were launched the fol­low­ing year. The spir­it of the RCA ar­guably in­spired the now-de­funct As­sem­bly of Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ty Par­lia­men­tar­i­ans (AC­CP), promis­ing­ly launched in 1994.

What made the RCA unique was its in­clu­sive­ness. It brought to­geth­er rul­ing and op­po­si­tion par­ties, along­side civ­il so­ci­ety. Even at that time, de­spite the com­pli­cat­ed re­la­tion­ship be­tween the OECS and wider Cari­com, progress at the OECS lev­el was of­ten de­scribed as be­ing ahead of the larg­er group.

To­day, 34 years lat­er, Dr Gon­salves—who in 1991 was leader of his coun­try’s youngest and small­est par­ty (Move­ment for Na­tion­al Uni­ty)—has since run St Vin­cent and the Grenadines un­der a Uni­ty Labour Par­ty ban­ner for over two decades. Dr Ken­ny An­tho­ny, who served as an RCA ad­vi­sor, be­came prime min­is­ter of Saint Lu­cia and re­mains a sit­ting MP. Even Dr Vaugh­an Lewis, then OECS di­rec­tor-gen­er­al, briefly be­came prime min­is­ter of Saint Lu­cia.

The RCA con­sid­ered bold ideas, in­clud­ing a fed­er­al ex­ec­u­tive pres­i­den­cy and deep­er in­sti­tu­tion­al in­te­gra­tion. To­day, one of its au­thors wants de­tach­ment “put on the ta­ble.” Per­haps these lead­ers have pri­vate­ly ref­er­enced the RCA’s fi­nal re­port. If so, those re­flec­tions have not been shared pub­licly.

To some, in­vok­ing RCA mem­o­ries may seem re­mote or ir­rel­e­vant in light of the re­cent 77th OECS Au­thor­i­ty sum­mit held in St Vin­cent and per­sis­tent com­ments from else­where in the re­gion. But I think it mat­ters.

The cur­rent cri­sis of re­gion­al com­mu­ni­ca­tion on­ly adds to the prob­lem. Cari­com’s well-known “com­mu­ni­ca­tion gap” (my words) has helped fu­el pub­lic in­dif­fer­ence and ig­no­rance. De­clin­ing com­mit­ment to and from re­li­able lega­cy me­dia, com­bined with am­a­teur­ish and uni­di­rec­tion­al use of so­cial me­dia by re­gion­al in­sti­tu­tions, has made things worse.

So­cial me­dia is of­ten cit­ed as the an­swer, but such com­mu­ni­ca­tion isn’t just about YouTube videos or sta­t­ic posts and dis­patch­es, it’s about mean­ing­ful di­a­logue, strat­e­gy, and ex­per­tise. And yes, we do have pro­fes­sion­als in the sys­tem who know how to do it. They should be lead­ing this work.

The fact is we are not go­ing to so­cial me­dia our way out of this malaise. Reach­ing peo­ple where they are - in their own spaces, on their terms - will take much more than so­cial me­dia con­tent dumps. Per­haps a re­vived AC­CP or a Caribbean con­stituent as­sem­bly could help rekin­dle the se­ri­ous, peo­ple-cen­tred di­a­logue we need.

That’s the kind of stub­born mem­o­ry we need right now. One that push­es us to re­mem­ber what re­gion­al­ism can look like—rough around the edges but ef­fec­tive and promis­ing. Cari­com lead­ers should bear this in mind when they meet in Ja­maica from Ju­ly 6-8.

Be­cause at the mo­ment, very lit­tle is hap­pen­ing to in­spire the con­fi­dence we ur­gent­ly need in some­thing in­dis­pens­able to every­thing be­tween sur­vival and pros­per­i­ty.