Prime Minister Ralph Gonsalves speaking at the 6th CELAC Summit which took place in Mexico, said, the fact that the grouping is still together is a progress of sorts; however, more needs to be accomplished.
“Not to do too much because if we seek to do everything, we will end up doing nothing, but to single out certain matters on which we can provide benefits to people, which is really what we are about.
“This organisation is called the community of States of Latin America and the Caribbean, but really, it is about the unity of our two civilisations. The Caribbean civilisation and the Latin American civilisation have different national components in these civilisations.
“There is out there in the real world, in our real history and our contemporary circumstances, a host of factors that predispose us towards integration and which induce us towards integration”.
Gonsalves said there are several other integration efforts, much tighter than CELAC.
“We have the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States; we have CARICOM, we have the Association of Caribbean States washed by the Caribbean Sea, 24 countries, El Salvador I think it’s the only one which is a Pacific country.
“However, because of its closeness with other Central American countries, it is part of the Association of Caribbean States. That organisation focuses on five matters, Trade, Technology, Tourism, Transportation and Natural Disasters.”
Prime Minister Gonsalves said there had been other organisations that have come and gone, yet, there is this persistent quest for integration.
“What kind of integration should we be going for? It shouldn’t be mechanistic. It should be organic, where the whole is more than a summation of the individual paths. In this organisation, despite different ideological or political perspectives, there are practical problems that face us and face our people where we can have sensible conversations and sensible dialogue.
“Amidst our differences politically and even internal economic arrangements, we can have compromises. We do not have to be compromising, but we need very much to address the issues so that at the end of the day when we leave this particular political forum, we can say that there are indicators which we can look at which could benefit people”.
Gonsalves said he is delighted to see that there would be the operationalisation of a disaster fund, which is something efficient. This, he said, is something which would be of great value to all of us in the region.
“I leave with this in the urging of a conversation always and come to compromises and try to see if we can get rid of as many of the vanities which we all possess because the rain which falls, falls upon all of us.
“There is an elephant always present in the room, which is not here. In our relationship with the United States of America, we have oscillated from time to time between submission and resistance.
“I think we need to have amidst all of that, a proper conversation with the United States as to what practical accommodations that we can make in this hemisphere.”
The 6th Summit of Heads of State and Government of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) was held Saturday in Mexico City.
The Community of Latin American and Caribbean States is a regional bloc of Latin American and Caribbean states thought out on February 23, 2010, at the Rio Group–Caribbean Community Unity Summit, and created on December 3, 2011, in Caracas, Venezuela, with the signature of The Declaration of Caracas.
