CÚPULA DA AMÉRICA LATINA E DO CARIBE SOBRE ... - Funag

CÚPULA DA AMÉRICA LATINA E DO CARIBE SOBRE INTEGRAÇÃO E DESENVOLVIMENTO - CALC
although tiny, we have a bigger say than if we were to deal with these matters
individually.
Our economies are reliant on a few sectors: the financial sector, tourism,
agriculture, and in Trinidad and Tobago, the oil industry, the petrochemical
industry. And if you look at the current crisis, all those sectors have been
affected, every single one of those sectors has been affected. But even before
this current crisis we had a more serious problem; we had major problems
reorienting our economy in the new world. We have traditionally exported to
protected markets. Just recently, the European Union, as part of the economic
partnership agreement, has demanded reciprocity. Without any doubt,
Canada and the US will also demand reciprocity in our discussions on a Free
Trade Agreement.
We face the challenge of increased criminality within the Caribbean and
Central America, and we can trace a lot of this back to the policies of the
United States of America. Take, for example, my country. We have had in the
last seven years the equivalent of about one third of my police force engaged
with deportees, hardcore deportees sent back from the United States of
America – drug dealers, murderers, rapists, pedophiles. So this is affecting
the region and our countries collectively, and we have been forced to deal
with these issues.
The energy crisis hit many countries in the region, but again it was
magnified in countries like ours. We want to thank Venezuela for the support
it has given us through PetroCaribbean, because in my country’s case, and
the numbers are similar for the rest of the Caribbean, at one point we were
using the equivalent of 40% of our Gross Domestic Product just to import
fuel. So you can imagine the difficulties a region like ours would have in trying
to confront other social and economic challenges.
I have looked at the declaration that we are going to issue. It includes
eighteen pages of everything under the sun. And I do not underestimate the
importance of these topics in the declaration. They are very, very important,
but I think we too often spend time on repeating the things that we know need
to be done and too little on addressing how it should be done. And yes, we
have said we need to reform the global financial institutions, yes, we need to
bring our integration efforts closer together, yes, we need to address the climate
crisis, but how are we going to do this in a meaningful way, because when we
get back to our countries, most of us will never, never ever look back to this
document. This is the problem, the relative isolation in which we live.
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