We are not all Americans now

Let’s start with Iran, on the other side of the globe, which seems hell bent on doing its own thing, in opposition to whatever the West desires. The Shah was forced into exile in 1979 because he was too American, and all Iran’s ensuing politics have been to prove that they are their own masters. This new defiance about developing a nuclear capacity is just that, to show they are nobody’s poodle and unreservedly, not the USA’s.

Then, let’s come around to our part of the world. Having been brought up while the USA still had an active naval base at Chaguaramas in Trinidad, I got used to and accepted the expression "the Americans." In Spanish though the "Americans" refers to all the people of the American continent, North, South and Central, and that includes us in the Caribbean. And, unlike in English, there is a separate word to describe the people who are citizens of the USA — estadounidienses. It’s an interesting distinction now that we Americans are escalating our old Cold War.

You may be forgiven for once thinking, when the writing seemed to be on the wall, that Cuba would be isolated after the demise of the USSR and collapse before long. But anticipating and expecting are different things, as I have been explaining to broadcasters in St Lucia this week. Perhaps only political scientists foresaw the rise of a new anti-US bloc that would come to challenge American hegemony in our region and have Cuba again playing a leading role in what I call the politics of defiance.

It’s interesting being in St Lucia where the effect of 13 of the 15 Caricom countries agreeing to the president of Venezuela, Hugo Chavez’s PetroCaribe oil deal is more in focus than in Trinidad, where we appear more troubled by the islanders’ seeming ingratitude and unthinking preparedness to jeopardise our economy.

But Prime Minister Manning warned the miscreants last week that they were being used in the new politico-economic movement against "US imperialism" in the region. By all accounts, they are beginning to see that may be true and that the terms of the deal may not be as attractive as they seemed.

It’s become clear that the Left —populist and socialist — is on the rise again in Latin America and a bloc is emerging, led by Presidents Chavez and Castro and including the newly elected Bolivian President, Evo Morales, who has declared his own provocative anti-US stance.

Chavez has dubbed this trio an "axis of good" as opposed to the Washington "axis of evil." Unquestionably, cheap oil in a cash-strapped region is critical. Yet, to judge from some of the sentiments I’ve picked up here, from St Lucians and others, there is a healthy dose of scepticism about American dominance in the Caribbean region too. It would be fair to speculate, therefore, whether those PetroCaribe signatories were totally unwitting in their getting into bed with the Venezuelans. Perhaps it was a small act of rebellion.

Mr Manning thinks it will backfire economically. Others are concerned that the USA regards any friend of Chavez as its enemy which may lay them open to US finger-wagging and worse. After all, the US blockade of Cuba is still on, and the invasion of Grenada didn’t happen long enough ago for anyone to have forgotten, nor did events in Panama, Nicaragua or even Chile.

So, with things shaping up as they are, are we all going to have to declare what sort of Americans we are? It’s very unlikely that Trinidad and Tobago will fly anti-US colours, but what about our Caricom brothers who could well become dependent on Venezuela for oil? And on whose side could Brazil’s own Leftist President Lula da Silva come down? In the same way that the USSR once had satellite states in the developing world, China is investing heavily in the new anti-US bloc and could emerge as the other power broker in the region.

I would not want to overstate it as the circumstances are different from post-WWII, and there is no obviously serious military build-up, but I hope nothing even vaguely resembling what Churchill called "an iron curtain" will ever descend across the American continent. Because if it did we could not anticipate events but we could expect they would not be ones that any of us would actually relish.