By Sir George Alleyne
Chancellor, The University of the West Indies
 I referred briefly to my concern for regionalism in my graduation addresses of 2010 when I expressed sympathy with the sentiments in a paper that the Guild of Students presented to the Finance and General Purposes Committee in which they emphasized the importance of a Caribbean unity and bond.
“The Inter Campus Guild Council believes that the true essence of the UWI – its history of developing regional strength, Caribbean oneness and a vibrant exchange of West Indian cultures, which should be at the pinnacle of our student mandate – has been dormant to our operations,” they said.
Their excellent paper also asserted that, “As the leaders of this University, we believe that an effort should be made to restore the West Indies back to The University of the West Indies.”
I was moved and impressed by this call from the students to have the University become a more vocal and persuasive advocate for the Caribbean regionalism, which was one of the main reasons for its establishment and indeed watered the roots of its very beginnings. I am taking their call seriously and can find no better occasion than a lecture in honour of Rex Nettleford to explore the nature of what regionalism should mean to us and how it can be promoted. I do this with some nostalgia, as in those days when Rex and I were undergraduates at Mona, the nature of Caribbean regionalism and the aspirations of the Caribbean people to establish their particular identity and claim their place, if not pride of place in the company of the world’s nations as an identifiable region, was the stuff of vigorous debate. There was no doubt that we had to be exploring – in sport, the arts and education – the ties that should bind us together. With the passage of time I have become perhaps less starry-eyed about many of the things I debated when I was young, but I am even more convinced now of the notion of a Caribbean regionalism and the benefits it confers.
There is an undisputed nexus between regionalism and Caribbean health that runs in both directions and the importance of critical institutions in protecting the latter has never been clearer. I will cite some examples of collective Caribbean action in health because they are in some way an expression of the Caribbean cultural identity factors and values such as sharing, kinship and reciprocity, and cultural identity is one of the foundations of regionalism. I am conscious of and comforted by Rex’s concern that there needed to be “a greater appreciation of the centrality of cultural variables in the development equation.” He would include matters related to health as proper dwellers beneath his umbrella of cultural studies. But I focus not on health itself, but on cooperation in health matters as such cooperation is another one of the prisms through which we see the light of our cultural Caribbean selves.
The Caribbean has a long history of regional cooperation in health, perhaps longer than in any other area. Initially most of the cooperation was in the field of control of communicable diseases. The fear of contagion is a powerful stimulus to cooperation. The achievements of this region in the control of childhood infectious diseases such as poliomyelitis and measles and more recently, German measles, have been nothing short of spectacular. The plans and strategies in this area have been codified as a formal programme of Caribbean Cooperation in Health.
But more recently attention has been turned to the non-communicable diseases such as cardiovascular disease, which includes heart disease and strokes; diabetes; cancer and chronic respiratory disease, which share a set of common risk factors, such as tobacco use, alcohol abuse, unhealthy diets and physical inactivity. The burden of these diseases weighs heavily on the Caribbean – the leading seven countries for prevalence of diabetes in the Americas are in the Caribbean. It is estimated that about one in every seven Barbadian adults is diabetic. The region has recognised that control of this new plague cannot be achieved by pious and not-so-pious admonitions to individuals to change their naughty behaviours. There has to be action by governments so that the healthy choice is the easy choice. The governments have to alter the environment to facilitate the decrease in the prevalence of the risk factors. For example the increase in taxes on tobacco must be employed as the most effective method of reducing tobacco use and inhibiting the young from beginning to smoke.
So seized were they of the importance of regional collective action that the Heads of Government met in a Summit in Port of Spain in 2007 to discuss these diseases and the approach to their control. That summit was a global first of its kind. But the collective action went further. Ably led by the Prime Ministers of St. Kitts/Nevis and Trinidad and Tobago, the Commonwealth Heads of Government when they met in Port of Spain in 2009 adopted a major declaration [the Port of Spain Declaration: Uniting to Stop the Epidemic of Chronic Diseases] on the approach to prevention and control of these diseases. But collective action has gone even further and Caribbean governments have spearheaded the adoption of a Resolution at the United Nations calling for a United Nations high level meeting with the participation of Heads of State and Government to address this scourge. This is historic as an achievement. It is only the second occasion in the history of the UN that there has been a meeting at this high level to address a health issue – and it was initiated and promoted by collective Caribbean regional initiative.
The collective action in health is not only in advocacy, but there is good evidence of action in the region. One of the more recent developments is the formation of a Caribbean Public Health Agency that will be a major advance in providing a Caribbean response to the shared Caribbean health problems in such areas as disease surveillance and control, nutrition and environmental health.
I will cite one final example of a successful, collective Caribbean health enterprise. Everyone knows that the Caribbean has suffered and continues to suffer grievously from the plague of HIV and the consequent AIDS. But the Caribbean approach is less well known. Ten years ago, five of us affixed our signatures in Barbados to a formal document creating the Pan Caribbean Partnership against HIV/AIDS (PANCAP). That Partnership has survived and thrived and has been recognised globally as a best practice. It has mobilised approximately US$80 million in support of the programmes in the Caribbean Regional Strategic Framework and has supported the training of over 200 professionals in HIV related areas. Of course, there is a lot more to be done, but they have been 10 years of solid achievement.
I have spoken mainly about health, partly because I believe that things cultural go beyond attention to the visual and performing arts and also because it is the field I know best. It is a source of a little pride that no other region in the world can claim the number of successful collective and cooperative health initiatives as we have seen in the Caribbean.
Lest I be accused of disciplinary jingoism let me hasten to say that there are other areas such as education, in which many of the same arguments could be made and examples of regionalism drawn. Most of this would not have been possible without the competent support of the CARICOM Secretariat. When brickbats are thrown at CARICOM and there is lamentation over inaction or slowness of action in political or economic issues, it is well that we also note those areas in which there has been effective action and strategic support for regionalism.
I have contended that it is in this area of the cultural regionalism that the functional cooperation that underlies the work of the Caribbean Community is best seen; although there is no doubt that there is functional cooperation in other aspects of the Community’s work. It is functional cooperation in this area that can touch the lives and hearts of the Caribbean citizens and have them accept that they have a stake in this Caribbean enterprise. There may be skepticism over the possibility of economic regionalism and discussion over whether the instruments necessary for it, such as the CCJ should be adopted, but there is no opposition to the premise that collective regional action in health as an aspect of cultural regionalism is beneficial to every state and bears fruit for every one of its citizens.
What is the role of The University of the West Indies in stimulating regionalism and the search for the answers to the solution of those problems which prevent us from going further and faster? The Vice Chancellor has established a Task Force to examine the barriers that inhibit the University strengthening its regional character, and as the students phrased it, “putting the West Indies back in UWI.” No doubt there will be a menu of suggestions as to how the work done here and the organisation of scholarship can contribute to a better appreciation of its West Indian origin. Attention will no doubt be given to facilitating the interaction of students from the region to create that sense of that identity which is essential to regionalism. Given the vertiginous growth of the technology of communication which has fed the interconnectedness that is the essence of globalisation, it cannot be beyond us to reduce the capacity of physical distance to inhibit the creation of a common West Indian purpose and identity. I do know that our paradigms of connectivity will change for the better to facilitate the capacity to interact. The young of today have become adept at navigating the digital cosmos in such a way that they will make obsolete our formal networks and licenses and utilise an information architecture that allows them to defy distance and tether time, coupling it with social software that allows a fluidity of intercourse at which persons of my generation can only marvel.
But there are other dimensions to restoring the West Indies in UWI besides creating the opportunities for reducing the physical separateness that is an inescapable consequence of our spread all over the Caribbean. Creating knowledge in our University about our own reality and our products is essential for several reasons. First, the application of local evidence to local problems gives more assurance of the relevance of the solutions proposed. But in addition, the University can burnish its brand and strengthen the feeling of institutional and regional identity through promoting and disseminating knowledge about its products – specifically its heroes. I know I am not alone in feeling a certain pride in and identification with the Caribbeanness of Rex Nettleford and Derek Walcott and Eddie Baugh and Ken Standard and many others like them. Good institutions create indigenous pride by having the young identify with great men and women who once walked where they now walk and played where they now play.
It must be obvious that I have a deep and abiding faith in this regional enterprise of ours and hold that we can foster the many aspects of cultural regionalism that strengthen it. I am confident that our University will find ways to address the concern of putting the West Indies back in UWI. This is not beyond the capacity of that Caribbean creative spirit which Rex espoused so well and the virtue of which he articulated in so many ways. We continue to be indebted to him for his creativity and compassion, and especially for his commitment to cultivating Caribbean cultural regionalism.
–This is an abridged version of the inaugural Rex Nettleford Memorial Lecture, “Cultivating Caribbean cultural regionalism” which was delivered by Sir George Alleyne, Chancellor of The University of the West Indies on February 17, 2011, in Kingston, Jamaica.
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