Independent Thought and Caribbean Community

• Author: Kari Polanyi Levitt
• Pages: 182-201

182 CARICOM: Appropriate Adaptation to a Changing Global Environment

Canadian Journal of Development Studies, Volume XXV, No 2, 2004

ABSTRACT—The article presents a brief history of CARICOM

assessing its performance and relevance in the context of the divergent

experiences of member countries in the thirty years since its inception

and of the changes to the region’s role in the world economy. It

concludes that, although CARICOM’s achievements over this period

have been significant – not least in the formulation of common

positions in the negotiation of international trade agreements – the

case for deepening and widening the integration process ultimately

rests on the idea of West Indian nationhood and the need to formulate

indigenous approaches to economic, political, and social

development.

RÉSUMÉ—Cet article retrace brièvement l’histoire de la

Communauté des Caraïbes (caricom). L’auteure en évalue la

performance et la pertinence à la lumière des expériences divergentes

des pays membres durant ses 30 années d’existence et de la

transformation du rôle de la région dans l’économie mondiale. Elle

conclut que, malgré les réalisations importantes de la caricom – un

exemple et non le moindre étant la formulation de positions

communes durant la négociation d’accords internationaux de

commerce – les arguments en faveur d’une intégration plus poussée

et plus vaste reposent sur l’idée de l’existence d’une nation antillaise

et sur la nécessité de formuler des politiques indigènes pour le

développement économique, politique et social.

INDEPENDENT THOUGHT AND

CARIBBEAN COMMUNITY

Kari Polanyi Levitt†

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Independent Thought and Caribbean Community

Introduction

For the past twenty years the developing world has been adjusting to the

agendas of the IMF and the World Bank. It is time to reclaim the right to

development and the right of nations to engage in the international economy

on their own terms. This requires an international rules-based order that

permits space for member countries to follow different and divergent paths

to development, according to their own philosophies, institutions, cultures,

and societal priorities. Governments cannot achieve this alone. It requires

the participation of civil society locally, nationally, and globally to subordinate

“economics” driven by the special interests of investors and creditors, by a

“politics” of democratic participation of people in decisions affecting their

livelihoods and well-being. The problems are particularly acute for small,

fragile economies in the era of globalization.

Independent Thought, Caribbean Development

and Regional Integration

The advent of independence in Jamaica and Trinidad & Tobago in 1962

and Guyana and Barbados in 1966 gave rise to an intellectual ferment to

move from political to economic decolonization. National development

planning to moderate external vulnerabilities and support domestic capacity

to serve domestic and regional markets with food and simple manufactured

goods encouraged a longer vision than the annual budget.

In the early years of political decolonization in the Caribbean, economic

transformation by national strategies of building agricultural and industrial

capacity attracted the best and brightest economists to public service. These

public servants were men and women of exceptional quality, training, and

national vision. They set their sights on structural transformation to reduce

dependency on the metropole and increase spaces of economic self-reliance.

First among equals was William Demas, Chief Economist of Trinidad &

Tobago and the architect of the Treaty of Chaguaramas, which formally

established the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) in 1973.

Notwithstanding the limitations of import substitution, important progress

in industrial development was achieved – although national plans were

sometimes no more than shopping lists for overseas development assistance.

When I first encountered the region in 1961, the Federation of the West

Indies was a brave project destined to fail because it was in large measure a

proposal designed in London as a convenient way to dispose of colonial