By Ron Cheong

News Americas, TORONTO, Canada, Mon. Mar. 9, 2026: In a previous piece titled King Kong and The Island, it was argued that the long-running embargo and now naval “oil blockade” was cruel and unusual punishment against an island and its people. These actions have inflicted severe hardship and brought the nation to the brink of collapse, all in pursuit of self-determination.  Furthermore, the suffering has been inflicted by a superpower that is now demonstrating much less moral character than the people it directs its fury against, in the name of high-minded objectives. Whatever the flaws in the Cuban system, Cuba has demonstrated resilience, cohesion, and a people-centered ethic, which the US itself increasingly lacks.

People with portable lights during a blackout in Havana on March 4, 2026. (Photo by Adalberto ROQUE / AFP via Getty Images)

In addition to the above aggression, there has been a military strike on Venezuela without follow-through to support democracy there. There is also the war against Iran, which is driving up fuel prices, increasing inflationary strain, and disrupting tourism-dependent economies in the region.  And on top of that, a chaotic, whimsical regime of punitive tariffs against US friend and foe alike.

Let’s look back and place some context on what is currently amounting to the harshest ever punishment imposed on Cuba.

More than six decades after the United States imposed sweeping sanctions on Cuba, the policy has hardened into one of the longest-running economic sieges in modern history. What began as a Cold War strategy to counter Soviet influence has evolved into a dense web of financial restrictions, diplomatic pressure, and extraterritorial penalties that shape the economic life of a small Caribbean nation of eleven million people.

Today, as Cuba struggles through one of the most severe economic crises since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the question confronting Washington and the wider world is increasingly stark: has the embargo and current naval blockade become a show of strength whose humanitarian consequences now outweigh any possible strategic purpose?  Is the suffering of the people something to gloat over?

Cold War Origins

The origins of conflict traces back to the Cuban Revolution, when Fidel Castro overthrew the U.S. backed government of Fulgencio Batista, an authoritarian dictatorship, and nationalized major industries, including American-owned businesses.

Washington responded with escalating sanctions, culminating in the full trade embargo imposed by John F. Kennedy in 1962. At the height of the Cold War, the justification seemed straightforward: Cuba had aligned with the Soviet Union and hosted nuclear missiles during the Cuban Missile Crisis, bringing the world to the brink of nuclear war.

But the Soviet Union disappeared more than thirty years ago. The embargo did not.

Instead, it became institutionalized through laws, making it extremely difficult to lift sanctions without congressional approval.

A Sanctions System With Global Reach

The modern embargo extends far beyond a simple prohibition on U.S.-Cuba trade. Because the United States dominates global finance, sanctions often carry extraterritorial consequences.

Foreign banks risk penalties if they process transactions with Cuba. Shipping companies can face restrictions if they dock at Cuban ports and later attempt to enter the United States. Businesses trading with Cuba may lose access to American markets.

For a small island economy dependent on imports for food, fuel, and industrial inputs, these restrictions have profound effects.

Shortages of fuel, spare parts, and medical equipment have become chronic. Electrical grids struggle to obtain replacement components. Hospitals report difficulty acquiring certain medicines or specialized devices. The result is a fragile economic system increasingly strained by shortages and infrastructure failures.

Today, with the “targeted” naval oil blockade, blackouts across the island have underscored the severity of the crisis – inability to store perishable food, disabling sensitive equipment and emergency hospital care, and decimated its absolutely critical tourism lifeblood.  Sanctions have also magnified structural weaknesses by limiting access to credit, technology, and global markets.

Cuba On The Brink

Cuba now faces its most serious economic emergency since the early 1990s when the collapse of Soviet aid plunged the island into deep recession.

Inflation has surged. Migration has reached historic levels, with hundreds of thousands of Cubans leaving the island. Food shortages, power outages, and crumbling infrastructure have become daily realities.

The Cuban government attributes much of the crisis to the tightening of U.S. sanctions in recent years, particularly measures that target shipping, remittances, and access to international banking systems.

Adversaries of Havana say that the government’s own centralized economic system bears responsibility for many inefficiencies. Whatever the case, it has to be acknowledged sanctions restrict the country’s capacity to recover.

The Caribbean: A Region Caught In The Middle

The consequences of U.S.-Cuba tensions extend beyond the island itself. Across the Caribbean, governments navigate a delicate geopolitical balance between security and economic dependence on the United States and practical cooperation with Cuba.

CARICOM has historically long defended engagement with Cuba, viewing the island as an important partner in regional development.

Countries like Jamaica, Barbados, and Guyana maintained longstanding medical and educational cooperation agreements with Havana. Cuban doctors and nurses work in hospitals across the Caribbean, often filling gaps created by shortages of medical professionals.

For many small island states, these programs are not ideological statements but practical necessities. Recruiting doctors to remote or under-resourced regions is difficult, and Cuban medical missions have often provided critical support during crises – from hurricane recovery to public health emergencies.

Yet Washington has increasingly criticized these programs. Officials, including Marco Rubio, argue that the Cuban government exploits medical workers by taking a significant portion of their salaries and restricting their freedom of movement.

And the United States has imposed visa restrictions and other pressures to discourage Caribbean governments from participating in these missions.

For small states navigating economic vulnerability and climate risks, the situation presents a difficult choice: comply with the demands of the region’s largest power or risk losing access to essential healthcare personnel.  The immense pressure from the US has had consequences.  Jamaica is ending its medical cooperation with Cuba.  And Guyana is now hiring Cuban Doctors and Nurses directly.  In addition, the Guyana government, which depended on the Cuban medical program for decades and had deep fraternal and ideological kinship with Cuba in the past, has said the Cuban “Status quo cannot remain unchanged.”

The Venezuela Factor

The geopolitical web surrounding Cuba also includes Venezuela. For years, the government of Hugo Chávez – and later Nicolás Maduro – supplied Cuba with subsidized oil in exchange for Cuban doctors, teachers, and technical advisers.

When Washington imposed severe sanctions on Venezuela’s energy sector, the ripple effects reached Havana. With little oil reaching the country, blackouts now sweep across the island.

The sanctions regimes that targeted Venezuela and Cuba reinforced one another, tightening economic pressure across parts of the Caribbean basin.

The Paradox Of Russian Influence

The historical irony of the embargo is difficult to ignore.

The original policy originated from fears that Cuba had become a Soviet outpost in the Western Hemisphere. Yet in today’s political climate, some of the same voices advocating the toughest measures against Havana express far more conciliatory attitudes toward Vladimir Putin.

This contradiction raises uncomfortable questions about whether the embargo remains rooted in coherent strategic logic – or whether it has simply become a permanent fixture of domestic politics that has now taken on an even more erratic and punitive nature.

A Policy At A Crossroads

After more than sixty years, the embargo has, at least so far, failed to achieve its central objective: the transformation or collapse of Cuba’s political system, although Cuba may now be nearing exhaustion.

What it has definitely done is prolong an economic standoff that shapes the lives of millions of people and influences the geopolitical dynamics of the Caribbean.

Supporters argue that sanctions remain a legitimate tool for pressuring an authoritarian government. Others counter that the policy punishes ordinary citizens while entrenching political divisions.

As Cuba faces mounting economic strain and the Caribbean navigates competing pressures from larger powers, the question confronting Washington is increasingly unavoidable.

Is the embargo still a strategy – or has it become a tyrannical whim using a long-gone Cold War as a front, and whose human costs now exceed any political or strategic gains?

For Cuba and its Caribbean neighbors, an equitable and humanitarian resolution of this situation may determine whether the region moves toward greater cooperation or has the current incarnation of a conflict that began more than half a century ago hang over their heads as a collective shadow of a regrettable episode in Caribbean history.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Ron Cheong is a frequent political commentator and columnist whose recent work focuses on international relations, economic resilience, and Caribbean-American affairs. He is a community activist and dedicated volunteer with extensive international banking experience. Now residing in Toronto, Canada, he is a fellow of the Institute of Canadian Bankers and holds a Bachelor of Science degree from the University of Toronto.

RELATED: Clarion Across The Atlantic: Barbados Mia Mottley’s Third Mandate And The Rise Of Caribbean Moral Leadership

News Americas, NEW YORK, NY, Fri. Mar. 6, 2026: Just three Caribbean leaders are set to participate in a high-level regional security summit hosted by U.S. President Donald Trump this weekend, highlighting the region’s growing role in hemispheric discussions on migration, security, and organized crime and reinforcing the Monroe Doctrine.

Lionel Messi, a soccer player for Inter Miami CF, from left, US President Donald Trump, and Jorge Mas, owner of Inter Miami CF, during an event with Inter Miami CF in the East Room of the White House in Washington, DC, US, on Thursday, March 5, 2026. Inter Miami CF is visiting the White House to celebrate their 2025 championship win. Photographer: Yuri Gripas/Abaca/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Guyana’s President Dr. Mohamed Irfaan Ali; Trinidad and Tobago’s Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar and the Dominican Republic’s  Luis Abinader are the only Caribbean heads of government invited to the inaugural “Shield of the Americas” Summit, scheduled for tomorrow, Saturday, March 7th in Doral City, Florida.

The gathering will bring together leaders from 12 countries across Latin America and the Caribbean to discuss coordinated responses on tightening security, curbing mass migration, and dismantling drug cartels across the Western Hemisphere, signaling a shift toward a more focused alliance-based approach to regional security

According to the White House, the summit is designed to strengthen regional cooperation among governments confronting similar security challenges. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said the meeting will focus on building stronger partnerships to address issues affecting countries across the Americas. Ousted US DHS Secretary, Kristi Noem, has been named Special Envoy for The Shield of the Americas summit. But it is unclear if Noem will be present at the summit.

In addition to Guyana, the DR and Trinidad and Tobago, leaders from Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Costa Rica, Ecuador, El Salvador, Honduras, Panama and Paraguay are expected to attend the summit.

Ali and Persad-Bissessar are the only two CARICOM leaders invited as the US administration steps up its focus on organized crime, drug trafficking routes, and migration dynamics.

Guyana, one of the fastest-growing economies in the hemisphere due to its rapidly expanding oil sector, has also gained strategic importance in regional geopolitics and energy security. President Ali’s participation reflects the country’s expanding diplomatic profile as it engages more actively in hemispheric dialogue.

Meanwhile, Trinidad and Tobago continues to play a key role in Caribbean security cooperation and regional diplomacy. Prime Minister Persad-Bissessar’s presence at the summit signals the country’s continued involvement in discussions on regional stability and law enforcement collaboration.

The summit comes amid heightened concern across the Americas over the influence of transnational criminal organizations and the need for coordinated strategies to combat drug trafficking and organized crime networks that operate across borders.

U.S. officials say the “Shield of the Americas” Summit aims to strengthen intelligence sharing, security cooperation and policy coordination among participating governments as they confront these evolving threats. Leavitt added at the briefing the meeting aims to “promote freedom, security, and prosperity in our region.”

“President will be speaking with the leaders of this country who have really formed a historic coalition to work together to address criminal, narcoterrorist gangs and cartels and counter illegal and mass migration into not only the United States, but the Western Hemisphere, which remains a key and top priority of this President,” Leavitt said.

For the Caribbean, the participation of three of its leaders places the region within a broader hemispheric conversation on security, migration and economic stability – issues that increasingly connect Caribbean nations with developments across Latin America and the United States.

RELATED: IDB Growth Forecast: How Each Caribbean Economy Is Expected To Perform in 2026

By Nyan Reynolds

News Americas, NY, NY, Tues. Mar. 3, 2026: Every March, Women’s History Month invites reflection. It asks us to consider who shaped our world, who challenged injustice, who built institutions, and who carried culture across borders. Too often, those narratives center the same global capitals and the same familiar names.

But to understand modern political leadership, diasporic activism, literary authority, and cultural power, we must look to the Caribbean.

Caribbean women have never been confined by geography. From small island states and colonial territories emerged leaders, thinkers, artists, and organizers whose work reshaped the 20th and 21st centuries. Their influence moved across oceans. Their ideas crossed languages. Their leadership challenged assumptions about race, gender, power, and nationhood.

As we begin Women’s History Month, we highlight just a few of the women whose lives demonstrate a larger truth: Caribbean women are not peripheral to global history. They are central to it.

And this list is only a beginning.

Political Power: Rewriting the Image of Leadership

When Eugenia Charles became the first woman prime minister in the Caribbean in 1980, it was a defining moment for the region. Leading Dominica during a period of political instability and economic strain, she earned a reputation for firmness and resolve. Internationally, she stood alongside world leaders at a time when female heads of government were still rare.

Her leadership disrupted long-standing assumptions about who could command authority in post-colonial Caribbean politics. She was not symbolic. She was decisive.

Years later, Portia Simpson-Miller would rise to become Jamaica’s first female prime minister. Her story mattered not only because of her gender, but because of her journey. Coming from working-class roots, she expanded the image of national leadership. She embodied possibility for women who had never seen themselves reflected in the highest office.

Today, Mia Mottley represents a new phase of Caribbean political influence. Under her leadership, Barbados transitioned to a republic, formally removing the British monarch as head of state. Beyond regional milestones, her advocacy on climate justice has positioned her as one of the most respected voices on the global stage. In international forums, she has spoken with urgency about the vulnerabilities of small island developing states, insisting that global financial systems account for historical inequities.

Together, these women illustrate a clear progression. Caribbean women are not merely participating in governance. They are shaping international policy conversations, redefining sovereignty, and expanding what political leadership looks like.

Social Justice and Diasporic Vision

Long before “intersectionality” became common language, Caribbean women were articulating the connections between race, gender, labor, and empire.

Amy Ashwood Garvey, co-founder of the Universal Negro Improvement Association, was instrumental in shaping early 20th-century Pan-African thought. While often overshadowed in popular history, she advocated for women’s leadership within global Black liberation movements and worked to ensure that women were not relegated to supportive roles.

Her activism traveled across continents, from the Caribbean to the United States and the United Kingdom. She understood that Caribbean identity was inseparable from the wider African diaspora.

Similarly, Claudia Jones carried Caribbean radical thought into international spaces. Born in Trinidad and later active in the United States and Britain, she confronted racism, economic inequality, and gender discrimination head-on. She argued that the liberation of Black communities required attention to the unique experiences of women.

Jones also founded what would become the Notting Hill Carnival in London, transforming Caribbean culture into a powerful symbol of resistance and pride in the diaspora. What began as community expression evolved into one of the largest cultural festivals in Europe.

Through activism and institution-building, these women reshaped not only political discourse but cultural memory. They demonstrated that Caribbean women were theorists, strategists, and movement architects.

Literature and Intellectual Authority

If politics shapes policy, literature shapes imagination. Caribbean women have long insisted on telling their own stories.

Maryse Condé confronted colonialism and its aftermath through novels that explored identity, displacement, and womanhood. Her work complicated romanticized images of the Caribbean, revealing the layered histories of slavery, migration, and resistance. In 2018, she received the New Academy Prize in Literature, an acknowledgment of her global literary impact.

Edwidge Danticat has similarly ensured that Haiti’s history and the experiences of Haitian women are preserved in global consciousness. Through fiction and essays, she addresses migration, memory, political violence, and resilience. Her work bridges homeland and diaspora, reminding readers that Caribbean narratives extend far beyond tourism brochures and simplified stereotypes.

These writers expanded intellectual space. They challenged dominant narratives written about the Caribbean and replaced them with narratives written from within it. In doing so, they reshaped how the world understands Caribbean history and womanhood.

Culture as Global Power

Cultural influence is one of the Caribbean’s most visible contributions to the world. And women have been central to that influence.

Rihanna emerged from Barbados to become one of the most recognized entertainers and entrepreneurs in the world. Beyond music, her business ventures in beauty and fashion disrupted industries long criticized for limited representation. When she was declared a National Hero of Barbados, it symbolized more than celebrity recognition. It marked the elevation of cultural entrepreneurship as national pride.

Before and alongside contemporary icons, artists like Celia Cruz carried Afro-Caribbean music onto international stages. Known as the “Queen of Salsa,” her voice became synonymous with joy, defiance, and cultural affirmation. Through performance, she preserved and amplified Afro-Caribbean identity across borders.

Culture, in this context, is not entertainment alone. It is diplomacy. It is economic power. It is narrative control.

Caribbean women have used it to shift perceptions and claim space in industries that once excluded them.

More Than a List

It is important to say clearly: this is not an exhaustive roster. For every internationally recognized figure, there are countless Caribbean women shaping academia, grassroots activism, public health, environmental policy, education, and community development.

Women’s History Month offers an opportunity to widen the lens. To move beyond token recognition and toward deeper acknowledgment of sustained impact.

The Caribbean’s history is one of colonization and resistance, migration and reinvention. Within that history, women have always been central. They organized communities during independence struggles. They preserved language and culture under colonial rule. They built businesses, led classrooms, and carried families across borders in search of opportunity.

The 21st century did not create Caribbean women leaders. It revealed them to a wider audience.

Why This Moment Matters

Beginning Women’s History Month by honoring Caribbean women is not about regional pride alone. It is about correcting perspective.

Global history often flows through powerful nations and dominant narratives. Yet many of the ideas shaping today’s conversations about climate justice, diasporic identity, intersectional activism, cultural entrepreneurship, and post-colonial sovereignty have deep Caribbean roots.

The women highlighted here did not wait for permission to lead. They entered political chambers, literary circles, protest movements, and global industries with clarity about who they were and what they represented.

They shifted the image of the Caribbean woman from background figure to global force.

As this month unfolds, there will be space to explore their stories individually and to highlight many others whose work deserves equal attention. But at the outset, the message is simple.

Caribbean women have shaped the modern world.

Women’s History Month gives us language to celebrate that truth. The Caribbean gives us generations of women who made it undeniable.

 EDITOR’S NOTE: Nyan Reynolds is a U.S. Army veteran and published author whose novels and cultural works draw from his Jamaican heritage, military service, and life experiences. His writing blends storytelling, resilience, and heritage to inspire readers.  

RELATED:  “A” – Alien Registration And The Weight Of The Letter

By Prof. C. Justin Robinson

News Americas, NEW YORK, NY, Sun. Mar. 1, 2026: On August 1, 2023, I assumed the role of Campus Principal at The University of the West Indies Five Islands in Antigua and Barbuda, determined to make real the Vice

Chancellor’s call for UWI to be an activist university. At my induction ceremony on January 27 2024, I framed my principalship around what I called the ‘ Triple C Crisis: the Climate Crisis, the Crime Crisis, and the Chronic Non-Communicable Diseases Crisis.’ Three interlocking emergencies destroying Caribbean lives, potential, and futures. After watching the 50th CARICOM Heads of Government opening ceremony in St. Kitts last week, I believe more than ever that confronting these crises cannot rest with politicians alone. It must rest with us and let me say why through the stories of real people I know.

I.   The Brother and the Mother  

A brother sits in Anguilla, staring at his phone. The last message from his sister in Cuba reads: They want us to die! His sister, their mother’s daughter, born of a union with a Dominican man who settled in Cuba, lives on an island the United Nations warns is approaching humanitarian collapse. Cuba’s American-imposed fuel blockade has closed schools, grounded aircraft, darkened homes for twenty hours a day, and left garbage rotting in Havana’s streets. There are no half-sisters in Afro-Caribbean culture, she is his sister and her crisis is his crisis.

His mother wonders about her other son in Miami. Will I get the visa to attend his wedding? Can I get to see my child married?

This family watched CARICOM’s leaders speak from the Marriott Dome in Basseterre on

Tuesday night. Their words felt both vital and hopelessly distant. They heard Jamaica’s Andrew Holness warn that a prolonged crisis in Cuba will affect migration, security, and stability across the basin. They heard St. Kitts’ Terrance Drew deliver an arithmetic that should terrify every leader in that room, Cuba’s population is nine to twelve million, excluding Haiti, the rest of CARICOM does not amount to ten million.

And they heard Trinidad’s Kamla Persad-Bissessar tell the room, to our delight, that crime in Trinidad and Tobago has fallen by 42%. They also heard “who vex, loss” as she lauded President Trump and Secretary Rubio for deploying the US military in Caribbean waters, declared she could not depend on CARICOM for security, and called the regional body “unreliable.”

They heard about the dilemma around Cuba’s political system. Our leaders had no dilemmas about Cuba’s political system when Cuban aid was being accepted. This newfound moral dilemma among some of our leaders seemed curious, as the leaders shared the room with the prominently seated Saudi delegation, a detail worth lingering on, given that no one at the podium or from the USA was demanding democratic elections in Riyadh.

The brother turned off the television and his mother went to bed without an answer. The next morning she saw a clip of President Trump joking about people being afraid to go fishing during his State of the Union address.

II.  The Wife Who Cannot Sleep

In the village of Fancy, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, a wife lies awake listening for the sound of her husband’s boat engine. Since September 2025, the United States military has carried out at least forty-four strikes against vessels in Caribbean and Pacific waters, killing at least one hundred and fifty people. Washington calls them narco-terrorists. Families and governments say many were fishermen. Human Rights Watch has called the strikes “unlawful extrajudicial killings.”

This wife does not know geopolitics but she knows the sea has always fed her family. She knows that tonight, her husband is on that sea, in a small boat that looks exactly like every other small boat that has been blown to pieces without evidence, without warning, without apology. She can see the lights of Vieux Fort in St. Lucia across the water, the same waters where someone’s partner died on a boat just like her husband’s.

III.          The Sea moss Vendor, the Boutique Owner, and the Factory Worker

In Antigua, a sea moss vendor does his accounts. His profit margins depend on bottles sourced at the China price. Not any other price, the China price. When Washington pressures Caribbean nations to sever ties with Beijing, it is not a diplomatic abstraction to him, it is the survival of his enterprise. A small island cannot eat geopolitics, it must eat. When one global power offers you bullets and the other offers you bottles, a small island’s choice is not a moral one, but a survival instinct.

In Grenada, a boutique owner stocks affordable fashion sourced from Shein. This is not a confession, it is the reality of retail in a small island developing state. When supply chains are weaponized in great-power competition, she is a woman watching her margins vanish.

In Trinidad, a factory worker clocks in every morning at a plant whose business depends on exports to the Eastern Caribbean under the CARICOM Common External Tariff. When her Prime Minister calls the regional body “unreliable,” she wonders, unreliable for whom? That tariff is her pay cheque.

And somewhere in the Eastern Caribbean, a high school waits for a Huawei-equipped computer lab that may never arrive. The school did not choose Chinese technology over any other, there is no similar offer from anywhere. The students will not understand the geopolitics, but they will understand that everyone talks about coding, but they still do not have the computers.

IV.  The Triple C Crisis

Every person above is living inside the Triple C Crisis, whether they name it or not.

The Climate Crisis is here. Hurricane Melissa made landfall in Jamaica on October 28, 2025 as one of the strongest Atlantic hurricanes ever recorded, with winds of 185 miles per hour, killing at least ninety-five people and causing an estimated forty-eight to fiftytwo billion dollars in damage. Cuba’s eastern provinces, still recovering from Melissa, have no fuel to run recovery operations. Our reefs are bleaching, our coastlines are eroding and our aquifers are salinizing.

The Crime Crisis is our deepest wound. We are people who know how to love and that is what makes the violence so incomprehensible. In 2024, Trinidad and Tobago recorded a homicide rate of approximately 45.7 per 100,000, Jamaica approximately 40 per 100,000, each roughly eight to nine times the US rate. The wife in Fancy is afraid not only of American missiles but that her sons will become statistics in a crisis that predates any foreign intervention and will outlast every foreign policy. She cannot accept that extra judicial bombing of boats is the best we can do to solve the crime crisis.

It is too easy to write the role of American made guns and American addiction out of the Caribbean drug and crime story.

The NCD Crisis hides behind our beauty. We are not only the beach, reggae, and carnival capitals of the world, we are also the hypertension and diabetes capitals of the world. Over a third of Caribbean adults are hypertensive and barely a third have their blood pressure controlled. I am one of the victims and take my meds daily. The seamoss vendor is, without knowing it, part of the solution, promoting indigenous, nutritious products in a region that imports too much of what it eats.

V.  The Woman Nobody Elected

Let me tell you about a woman I know who runs a small community health initiative in the Eastern Caribbean. No government funding, no foreign grant, just a conviction that her neighbours should not die from conditions a blood pressure cuff could have caught. She organizes screening days at the church hall, she tracks who comes back and who does not, she calls the ones who do not. Nobody elected her, nobody will give her a podium at the Marriott Dome, but she is saving more lives than most communiqués.

Remember her as she is the answer to the question I am about to ask.

VI.  What Tuesday Night Taught Me

The leaders said many of the right things, but speeches are what leaders do, the question is what do we do.

Foreign priorities will change, American administrations come and go, the Cuba blockade may ease or tighten, but the Triple C Crisis will still be here. It was here before Donald Trump and it will be here next year and the year after that.

We cannot outsource the survival of our people to foreign powers or to leaders who come and go. But I am not here to castigate our politicians. They are playing a weak hand in a rigged game. When a superpower blockades your neighbor, blows up boats in your waters, and sends its Secretary of State to explain why this is all for your own good, no communiqué is enough. Our leaders need support, not from Washington, not from Beijing but from us, Caribbean people who understand that the cavalry is not coming because we are the cavalry.

VII.   What You Can Do Starting Today

This is not where I list policy recommendations for heads of government. They have had fifty years of those; this is where I ask what you can do.

Against climate: Grow something. A kitchen garden reduces your dependence on imported food shipped on fossil fuels. Buy from the farmer before the supermarket. Harvest rainwater. Teach your children a hurricane plan in the sunshine. If you run a church, make your grounds a community garden.

Against crime: Mentor a young man. I cannot say this loudly enough. The Caribbean’s crime crisis is overwhelmingly a crisis of young Black men killing other young Black men. Every dataset confirms it. This is a problem of disconnection, young men cut off from purpose, belonging, and legitimate paths to dignity. If you are an older man who found a way, go back and show a younger man the path. If you own a business, hire a young person who needs a chance more than a credential.

Against NCDs: Move your body. Cook your food. Know your numbers. When last did you check your blood pressure? Reduce the sugar, the salt, the processed imports. Rediscover the ground provisions and local fruits our grandmothers knew were medicine before we had a word for it. Dance thirty minutes a day, we are Caribbean, for heaven’s sake, we know how to move. We cannot build a thriving CARICOM on a population riddled with preventable disease.

VIII.  What Our Organizations Must Do

Civil society is the Caribbean’s most underused asset. Our diaspora, our churches, our service clubs, our credit unions, these outlast any government. They must now step up, not to replace our leaders, but to support them.

The woman with the blood pressure cuff and the church hall is not an anecdote. She is a model! Every civic organization should adopt at least one Triple C initiative. A Rotary club that mentors young men is fighting crime. A credit union financing solar panels is fighting climate change. A university training the next generation of Caribbean problem solvers, as we are trying to do at UWI, is fighting all three.

IX.   Beyond Words

The leaders will leave Basseterre on Friday, Rubio will fly home and the communiqué will be filed. On Monday morning, the seamoss vendor will still need affordable bottles. The factory worker will still need the CET. The fisherman in Fancy will still push off in the dark, and his wife will still lie awake until she hears his engine. The brother will still check his phone. The mother will still wonder about the wedding.

Caribbean people have survived slavery, colonialism, indentureship, hurricanes, volcanoes, earthquakes, pandemics, and fifty years of promises. We are still here. We still dance, sing, cook, worship, fish, farm, study, and build with a resilience the rest of the world admires but does not fully understand. That resilience is not a consolation prize, it is a resource, the most renewable resource we possess.

The brother cannot save his sister alone, but he can join with others who refuse to wait for a communiqué. The mother may not make, the wedding, but she can make sure her community is stronger for the grandchildren who follow. The wife in Fancy may not stop the missiles but she can help build a village where her sons choose nets over guns. The sea moss vendor can keep selling health in a bottle if we, his customers, his neighbors, his country, make sure he can.

It falls to us now, not to Basseterre, not to Washington, not to Beijing, but to us.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Prof. C. Justin Robinson is Pro Vice-Chancellor and Campus Principal of The University of the West Indies Five Islands Campus in Antigua and Barbuda.