San Juan—Five of the smallest communities in the Caribbean, not traditionally associated with the core West Indian civilisation with a British colonial past, have determined to pool their limited physical resources to better sell themselves to the world as an idyllic tourism destination.

As of the first quarter of 2007, French Saint Martin and Dutch Saint Maarten with the neighbouring St Eustatius, Saint Barth and the British Overseas colony of Anguilla will jointly market themselves (the Little Caribbean Alliance) as one destination with a multiplicity of dimensions; which means that the visitor can have five different experiences on the islands and in the communities.

In the instance of the French and Dutch sides on the one island, Saint Martin will first break free from its dependent relationship as part of the French overseas territory with Guadeloupe and St Maarten and the two other Dutch territories will opt out of the Netherlands Antilles; in both instances the communities, to become overseas territories, will then have direct relationships with France and Holland.

Almost four decades ago, Anguilla made a similar self declaration through the efforts of a man called Ronald Webster to separate itself from its former federation status with St Kitts and Nevis.

To achieve the purpose of combining their resources, the two communities on the island of St Martin will share the Princess Juliana international airport for visitors coming from abroad and they will utilise the smaller Grant Case airport on the French side of the island to welcome people they consider “family” arriving and departing from other parts of the Caribbean.

Just as a point of interest, while T&T and a couple of the other so called more developed countries of the region always flinch about proposals of integration to allow free travel into their territories, “small island communities” such as the St Martins, the Turks and Caicos Islands, the British and US Virgin Islands, the Cayman Islands and The Bahamas host a far greater per capita variety of Caribbean peoples, including Trinis, Jamaicans, Bajans, Guyanese and other “big island” people than we do of theirs—that has instructive implications for the free movement within the Caricom Single Market and Economy.

In addition to utilisation of the existing airport facilities in a sensible and productive manner, Saint Martin and St Maarten will co-ordinate their visa requirements to make life easy for the visitor.

The island communities always boast that their visitors cross international territory without even knowing that they do, without stop checks and the requirement to show passport and visas at a security checkpoint.

“We have inherited a situation within the Caribbean region which has caused more division than anything else. We are beginning to learn that if we can pool our resources in projects in which we have similar interests instead of allowing a quirk of history which has divided a little rock into two nations with two governmental systems, which could have seen us as one people pulling against each other, we have decided to work together as one destination, learning from our European principals,” said tourism director of St Martin, Alex Richards, as the rationale driving the alliance of the two communities.

Ironically, the wider Caribbean remains separated in its old colonial enclaves long after the British, French, Dutch and Spanish lost interest in colonial holdings.

The same hard-headed economic logic is behind Dutch Saint Maarten’s reason to co-operate with its French-Caribbean partner, says Regina Labega. She says they have agreed to operationalise the guidance of the new secretary general of the Caribbean Tourism Organisation, Vincent Vanderpool-Wallace, who incidentally is Bahamian.

“We have jointly agreed that on every piece of material that goes out we’ll show the Caribbean logo as well as the logos of the specific destinations amongst us,” says Labega.

It is a basic model of co-operation based on the European Union effort and adapted by Caricom, ie, have the economics drive the integration process.

The economic model of the Little Caribbean Alliance is assisted as there are now few customs and emigration restrictions for goods and people to move amongst the various territories.

As far as I am able to gather at this point, the administrations of the five communities are not envisaging political forms of unity to complicate matters as they enter upon the combining of resources for purposes of their tourism dependent economies.

Richards notes that although elections for local administrative control of the territory is scheduled for late 2006, the outcome will have no impact on the decision to proceed with the co-operation.

He says the people of the territory will not allow whichever political party that emerges winner to go back on what is so obviously in the best interest of everyone on the island.

In this respect, people are setting the agenda for the politicians not allowing them to play the kind of Anansi politics so typical everywhere in the West Indies: one party agrees, moreover, initiates a policy position when in office and rejects it as soon as it demits office and the other way around for good measure.

The model of self-determining small territories, banded together in colonial times for administrative ease of the colonising power, seeking release from the imposed relationship while not being absolutely new as indicated—Anguilla and Aruba amongst others have opted for direct relationships with the overseas “mother country”—should be instructive as it develops in the next decade.

As we in T&T and the citizens of St Kitts/Nevis are sharply aware, the smaller partners in these multi-island nations are forever dissatisfied with the constitutional, economic and social relationships into which they were lodged.

Perhaps a more deliberate decision, such as the one embarked upon by the Little Caribbean Alliance, may just give direction for the future of integration.

Yes, there are differences between the models of the Dutch and French territories compared to that which exist in the English-speaking Caribbean in that the members of this new alliance have developed even closer ties with the colonial powers while the latter are independent countries; but perhaps that’s a first stage before there can be meaningful union among the members of the Little Caribbean Alliance.