Saint Vincent and the Grenadines was voted to take over CELAC’s rotating presidency for 2023, this week. It is the first time an anglophone country will head the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States. (Reuters)

Prime Minister Dr Ralph Gonsalves, addressing the 33-member hemispheric grouping, called for a fresh guard in these difficult times to reflect on the purpose of the integration movement. “We are forming a meaningful link between Latin America and Caribbean civilizations,” he said. (Loop News)

“St Vincent and the Grenadines is one of the smallest countries in CELAC, and we commit to working thoroughly with each of its countries,” he said.

Gonsalves said the CELAC presidency would put Kingstown “in a critical leadership position to help to define the dialogue which will take place between CELAC, consisting of 600 million people in 33 states, define the relationship between CELAC and the European Union over the next two to three years”.

The Community of Latin American and Caribbean States’ summit concluded Tueday, with a call for increased international funding for a region hit by economic and climate crises. The Buenos Aires Declaration also stressed the importance of democracy across the region, expressed support for negotiations between the Venezuelan government and its opposition, and demanded the United States lift its blockade on Cuba. (See Wednesday’s Latin America Daily Briefing.)

More Caribbean and the World

• Caribbean leaders are calling on the U.S. to rein in arms trafficking, as American-made guns continue to be Caribbean gangs’ primary source of weapons, reports InSight Crime. (See last week’s Just Caribbean Updates.)
  
  
• “The CARICOM bloc’s diplomatic response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was built around security-related foreign policy thinking. Since then, however, the Russia-Ukraine war’s economic repercussions have become a foreign policy priority for CARICOM—marking a return to another tenant of the bloc’s foreign policy logic,” writes Nand C. Bardouille in Geopolitical Monitor.
  
  
• William LeoGrande outlines strategies the U.S. could implement to aid Cuba’s private sector, which has taken on new dynamism in the past two years — Americas Quarterly.
  
  
• The U.S. government granted a license to Trinidad and Tobago to develop a major gas field located in Venezuelan territorial waters. The move marks a further easing of some sanctions on Venezuela, reports Reuters.

Decolonization and Reparations

• A Martinique appeals court dismissed a request from groups seeking slavery reparations in a blow to efforts that began more than 15 years ago. Among other reasons, the court cited a statute of limitations for those crimes and that a French law already allows the implementation of certain measures meant to “bring a memorial contribution to the recognition of slavery and the slave trade” and that it is not for the judiciary to decide if those measures are sufficient, reports the Associated Press.

Climate Justice and Energy

• Indigenous activists in Guyana have questioned Guyana’s efforts to monetize its forests by selling carbon credits, and say the government failed to carryout adequate consultation. (Climate Tracker)
  
  
• Young Barbadian ecologist Kyle Foster writes about his experience with the Sustainable Ocean Alliance’s Caribbean Youth Against Deep Seabed Mining campaign.
  
  
• Saona Island, a popular tourist destination, in the Dominican Republic is now completely powered by renewable energy. (Dominican Today)
  
  
• “Suddenly, Sargassum!,” written by Mark Yokoyama, co-founder of the Les Fruits de Mer association in St. Martin, tells the story of why so much sargassum has been washing up over the last decade. (All at Sea)

Public Security

• The Caribbean and Latin America was the deadliest region in the world for reporters last year. There were 67 killings reported for 2022 around the world — the most deaths in five years — and nearly half of those took place in the region, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists’ annual report. Seven journalists were killed in Haiti in 2022. (New York Times, Guardian)
  
  
• An increase in the size of cocaine seizures in Jamaica suggests that the island is playing a stronger role in international drug trafficking, as cocaine production soars in Colombia, reports InSight Crime.
  
  
• Two of the four homicides recorded in St. Vincent and the Grenadines so far this year are at the hands of police officers on duty, reports iWitness News.

Human Rights

• Rastafarian Paul Leonard (Simba Rock) has brought a constitutional motion in Barbados claiming he should be allowed the right to smoke marijuana in his home as part of his religious ceremonies. (Nation Barbados)
  
  
• A new report by the Caribbean Policy Research Institute examines the quality of state care for children in Jamaica.

Migration

• The International Organization for Migration’s Missing Migrants Project documented at least 321 deaths and disappearances of migrants in the Caribbean in 2022 — a drastic increase over the previous year.

Economics and Finance

• Cuba characterized an international firm seeking 72 million euros in Castro-era debt is a “vulture fund,” and said its claims in a London court are illegitimate. (Reuters)

Food Security

• Around five percent of Guyana’s population is undernourished and a further 43% cannot afford a healthy diet, according to a United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organisation report. (Kaieteur News)

Health

• Period poverty and lack of information about their reproductive cycle are significant obstacles for many Jamaican girls, reports the Jamaica Gleaner.

History

• “Portuguese and Amsterdam Sephardic Merchants in the Tobacco Trade: Tierra Firme and Hispaniola in the Early Seventeenth Century” focuses on the contraband trade with Tierra Firme and Hispaniola in the early seventeenth century by Portuguese and Sephardic merchants. (Repeating Islands)

Culture

• Dawn Duke’s Mayaya Rising: Black Female Icons in Latin American and Caribbean Literature and Culture is a new study of black women writers in the broader Hispanic Caribbean region. (Repeating Islands)
  
  
• Serge Hélénon’s “Palette palimpseste” is on view at the Fondation Clément (in Le François, Martinique). In “Ceci n’est pas une rétrospective » art historian and critic Dominique Brebion writes, “Hélénon’s work is complex and dense, always renewed, full of surprises, and several visits are necessary to extract the substantial marrow” (Repeating Islands)

Opportunities

• Apply to form part of the Commonwealth Foundation’s Civil Society Advisory Governors.
  
  
• The Media Institute of the Caribbean launched an Access to Information (ATI) Help Desk and Advocacy Toolkit.

Just Caribbean Updates
https://caribbeannewsupdates.blogspot.com/