Over the years since his 2006 election as Mexico’s president, Felipe Calderon has maintained, against the odds, the quite good relations for which his nation has come to be appreciated by our Caribbean Community (CARICOM).
Faced with major social and economic challenges and, worse, the nightmare of killings involving some of the most dangerous drug cartels, President Calderon has, nevertheless, kept faith with our Caribbean region.
Mexico’s role as a regional member of the Caribbean Development Bank (CDB) and its bilateral and multilateral trade, economic, cultural and technical cooperation within CARICOM have served to underscore the truism of the accord it signed in Jamaica back in July 1974, when our economic integration movement was just one year old, as born at Chaguaramas in Trinidad and Tobago in 1973.
It is to the credit of CARICOM that it has always sought to sustain good relations with Mexico – irrespective of changing governments – and to recognize the political and cultural influences of such a huge friendship.
In the circumstances, we look forward to more than a polite reaffirmation of CARICOM/Mexico relations when the official Declaration Of The Second Summit is revealed today at the conclusion of rounds of meetings, aware as we are, of the painstaking efforts that preceded its consideration by technical, diplomatic officials and ministers of foreign affairs for endorsement by heads of state and governments.
Host Prime Minister Freundel Stuart had articulated some of his own expectations, as well as those of his fellow CARICOM Heads, in a pre-summit briefing last week when he pointed to the pluses in having the friendship of Mexico to voice some of the social and economic grievances of Community partners at the coming G-20 Summit to be hosted by President Calderon.
Among such grievances would be a correction to the falsehood expressed by the recently defeated President of France, Nicolas Sarkozy, that Barbados is among some claimed “tax havens” in the Caribbean/Central American region.
As Prime Minister Stuart was to passionately explain: “Barbados has been having to battle for its life in the international business sector in terms of being labelled a tax haven and being accused, from time to time, of various derelictions or breaches, none of which is corroborated by fact . . . .”
Well, since Mexico, as a dependable ally of CARICOM, and the third most powerful hemispheric partner of the United States which, happily, has already signalled its own disagreement over France’s misleading characterization of regional states as “tax havens”, we expect that President Calderon will seek to reflect our Community’s concerns when he hosts the coming G-20 Summit.
