By Earl Bousquet

   The region’s leaders wanted clarification in Jamaica on Washington’s announced plan to punish nations that host Cuban doctors and nurses in agreed bilateral medical and health assistance programs, which include all Caribbean Community (CARICOM) member-states.

   But the top US diplomat’s meeting with Prime Ministers Andrew Holness of Jamaica, Mia Mottley of Barbados, Dr Ralph Gonsalves of St. Vincent & The Grenadines, new PM Stewart Young of Trinidad & Tobago, was not the first of its kind.

   President Donald Trump, in 2019, invited five Caribbean leaders (from Bahamas, Dominican Republic, Haiti, Jamaica and Saint Lucia) to his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, in similar circumstances.

   Indeed, Venezuela was the major topic then and now.

   In 2019, the Florida summit led to the creation of the infamous Lima Group of pro-Washington nations in the Latin America and Caribbean (LAC) region that hounded the Nicolas Maduro administration at the Washington-based Organization of American States (OAS).

   The Caribbean leaders who left the Rubio parley told that Washington’s targets for punishment for hosting Cuban medical brigades did not include Jamaica and the Caribbean.

   But while they may have breathed deep sighs of relief on the Cuba medical programs, they left with different perspectives on the effects of Washington’s shifting attitudes to Caracas.

   An earlier Trump Executive Order (on March 24) promised to punish any country importing Venezuelan oil, resulting in an immediate pause on major exports.

But China condemned the moves and indicated it’ll continue importing oil from Caracas.

   President Trump had also earlier defied a US federal judge and illegally deported hundreds of detained Venezuelans to outsourced incarceration in El Salvador, accusing Caracas of deploying armed gangs to the US and resurrecting a 1798 law to justify detaining Venezuelans and declaring them gang members.

   President Trump had also earlier revoked the temporary protected status afforded hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans who’d sought political asylum in the USA.

   A clear message Secretary Rubio brought to the Caribbean, however, was that Washington continues to play political football with Venezuelan lives.

   Before Trump’s second coming in January 2025, Caracas was quietly welcoming hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans who’d already opted to return home, including children, assigned to homes and schools.

   But soon after entering the White House again, President Trump withdrew permission granted Chevron by President Joe Biden to help drill and import Venezuelan oil -for US reserves.

   Like President Trump did in Mar-a-Lago five years earlier, Secretary Rubio met individually with the Caribbean leaders in Kingston, but all left offering no words on what might have been agreed behind closed doors.

   A leaked US State Department document identifying four CARICOM nations with Citizenship by Investment Programs (CIPs) among many worldwide to be punished with visa restrictions had rattled CARICOM’s leaders before Rubio arrived, but he seems to have assured them they shouldn’t worry.

   Eight months after the July 28, 2024 Venezuela election that led to President Maduro being sworn-in for a third time for a second six-year term, Washington is again playing the elections trump-card against Caracas.

   Rubio’s statements in Georgetown also formally inserted the US into the long-standing but peaceful infractions over Venezuela’s ongoing claim to the entire Essequibo Region -including two-thirds of Guyana.

   Never mind the Argyle Accord between the two oil-rich neighboring Caribbean and South American states requiring softer language in cross-border exchanges, the thunderous quarrels keep alive fears about prospects of war in a region that both formally recognize as a Zone of Peace.

   Observers unfamiliar with the history of the over-100-year-old Venezuela claim quickly cast careless blame and take sides, speculating about worst possible outcomes instead of advising against continuing a war of words that only hastens public fears and uncertainties.

   It would surely be better for Guyana and Venezuela’s mutual friends in CARICOM and the Organization of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS), the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) and the Bolivarian Alliance or Our America (ALBA) to encourage each country to better educate the region’s people about their respective cases in this age-old unneighborly quarrel.

   The US Secretary of State has returned home, but the Caribbean’s troubles remain far from over.

   Another recent presidential Executive Order imposes excessively heavy fines on ships built in China and using American ports is set to possibly halt normal deliveries of goods to Caribbean ports by the biggest carrier, Tropical Shipping, nine of whose ships are Chinese-built.

   No nation anywhere can rest assured of not eventually feeling the inevitable repercussions of President Trump’s hasty efforts to change how the world turns.

   While Secretary Rubio was in the Caribbean, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth was in The Philippines on the first leg of a firefighting mission that includes Japan and South Korea, which recently met to discuss regional security issues -but without the US.

   Cuba’s international medical brigades will always remain unsafe by Washington’s measure, just as Venezuela’s oil pipelines to the world will continue to be blocked and blockaded until the transactional president discloses what he really wants from Caracas.

   As per modern usual, China is the only major nation that’s criticized Washington’s attitude towards Cuba and Venezuela, while Canada -under new Prime Minister Mark Carney- has indicated its historic relationship with the US ‘is now over’.

   The equivalent of King Donald II continues speaking about preventing World War III, while starting international trade wars, threatening to take the Panama Canal (and Greenland) by force and to turn Gaza into a modern American crown colony.

   President Trump is also ripping the US post-war trans-Atlantic alliance with Europe to pieces and weaponizing US aid.

   As such, the LAC region cannot but continue hoping for the best, while also planning for the worst.