May 2011


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“For those with a sense of the fullness of time, this post colonial collective is still young, grappling as many blocs (and couples) have done before us to find ways to live together harmoniously and respectfully, even on the days when it seems easier to chuck it all in, leaving nought.”

“Before we can have Caribbean literature, we need a Caribbean,” said BC Pires, throwing out a line that could easily hook any regional endeavour. BC, the writer, was winding up a discussion on the subject at the recent Bocas Lit Festival in Port of Spain, but his poignant jest fingers a gnawing sensation that Caribbean threads are broken, and not just in a literary sense.

A few months ago, UWI Vice Chancellor, Prof Nigel Harris, circulated to members of the university community the text of an enormous lecture given by a former Chancellor of this University, Sir Shridath Ramphal.

I was intrigued by its title: “Is the West Indies West Indian?” and the question he asked in its wake: “Worse still, are we less so than we once were?” The lecture never let up as Sir Shridath addressed the issue without euphemism or equivocation and with that authoritative candour that eventually alights on public figures in their gloaming.

I was similarly intrigued by the Vice Chancellor’s decision to circulate it, given his reticent veneer. Was it a rallying call?

I thought it was.

The Caribbean air has been full of noises that, as cacophonous as they are, tell us that neighbours are still shouting across their fences at one another. On the ground, people recognise blood relations and business partners, lovers and limers, and they intuitively feel commonalities. But political megaphones have been designed to drown out that orchestra of daily life. And so, from 1956 when active steps towards a federated West Indies began, to its official end on May 29, 1962 (49 years ago today), the union of our spirits has been obstructed by inscrutable political agendas.

Many groups, political and otherwise, have been formed; few have survived with their purposes intact. True, it is evolution’s mandate that survival is wrought by the capacity to adapt; but it is also true that few of these organisations established to represent West Indians have done what they have been set up to do.

So CARIFTA (the Caribbean Free Trade Association), segued into CARICOM after the Georgetown Accord of 1973 and in between came the Commonwealth Caribbean Regional Secretariat in 1968 and the Caribbean Development Bank the following year. The state of CARICOM, operating now with an interim Secretary General, has distressed the West Indian desire to see movement rather than stasis in Caribbean affairs. To the average person, the CSME (CARICOM Single Market and Economy) is a recent addition to the package of integrating instruments. Yet, though it was born in 1989 it really began coming to life when the former Prime Minister of Barbados, Owen Arthur, took it to be his legacy.

Global considerations make its implementation increasingly urgent, but who is driving it? In 2008, the late David Thompson had predicted a single economy by 2015, and announced that its watchword was harmonisation, which would depend on deeper social partnerships.

“As our people move throughout the region, there is legitimate concern about the access of CARICOM Nationals to social services in the host territory,” said Prime Minister Thompson. It is not only access to services that causes concern, but the very access to countries. In an April 3 editorial, the Jamaica Observer, commenting that “Caricom is in an advanced state of fragmentation,” complained that, “Nowhere is the lack of community spirit more evident than in the treatment meted out to Caribbean people as they try to move around the region. The immigration officials are among the most destructive elements undermining the goodwill for integration.”

They could not be acting in isolation, as a most unseemly discourse between government officials from Barbados and Jamaica about whether someone’s hand was legitimately probing someone’s privates demonstrated.

The reluctance to make the Caribbean Court of Justice, inaugurated in 2005 and located in a country which has not even accepted it as its final appellate court, baffles by its narrow-minded dismissal of integration.

Dispassionately, we must assess how far political drivers have taken us. For those with a sense of the fullness of time, this post colonial collective is still young, grappling as many blocs (and couples) have done before us to find ways to live together harmoniously and respectfully, even on the days when it seems easier to chuck it all in, leaving nought. To allow this journey to be defined in purely political terms denies our rich heritage and our deep intellectual waters.

The circulation of Sir Shridath’s lecture created an opportune moment to solicit the views on regionalism of the leadership of The University of the West Indies – one of the first to be still considered a necessary regional institution at the end of the Federation of the West Indies.

In the context of the challenges to higher education in a changed global circumstance that is more competitive and where the economic downturn in the region has had a powerful impact on tertiary level institutions, it seemed important to know the thinking of its leaders.

In recent times, many questions have been raised about the institution’s feasibility as a regional creature. Has each campus become so autonomous in terms of their offerings that they no longer need each other? Are campuses competing with each other? Has the cost for students, despite subsidies, made it too difficult to consider studying away from home? What strategies are there to meet the challenges of the times?

And so, to the Chancellor, Sir George Alleyne, the Vice Chancellor, Prof Nigel Harris, and the four Pro Vice Chancellors who are also Campus Principals: Prof Hazel Simmons McDonald (Open), Prof Clement Sankat (St. Augustine), Prof Gordon Shirley (Mona) and Professor Sir Hilary Beckles (Cave Hill), the following questions were asked.

1. It is nearly fifty years since the Federation project; independent nations have passed their infancy, but perhaps have not reached full maturity, the needs of then are not the ones of today. The federation was of a political nature, how would you define regionalism in this 21st century?
2. The UWI has proclaimed itself a regional institution, often declaring itself as the only one that still is. Is that still applicable?
3. What is your ideal regional UWI?
4. Should it still be a regional institution?

The Chancellor’s contribution comes from his recent inaugural Rex Nettleford Memorial Lecture, “Cultivating Caribbean Cultural Regionalism” in Jamaica.

This special issue of UWI Today, then, is a gathering of their individual ideas – not as a collective – on a subject that is concerned not only with how we see ourselves, but where we want to go and how we can get there.

Hopefully, it will be the start of a continuous dialogue that must intrigue us all, because no matter where we locate ourselves, the question remains: if we are not West Indian, then what are we?

By Vaneisa Baksh
Editor, UWI Today