Graphic: MGN Online

It marked the end of the long-established African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) Sugar Protocol with Europe since 1975. It meant a 36 percent price reduction for ACP sugar by 2008, or in other words, a complete economic disaster for those producers.

And even though EU development commissioner Luis Michel subsequently announced an aid package for ACP countries of 40 million euros, for many Caribbean nations like Guyana and Jamaica, whose sugar exports respectively account for $121 million and $34 million, such modest compensation proposal was no more then an empty gesture of diplomacy.

In this respect, though the CARICOM and the CSMA (Caribbean Single Market and Economy) have made laudable achievements for its member-states, these structures may not provide the necessary political and economic defense mechanisms to stop this ominous marginalization process, which looms over the West Indian Islands in the 21st century.

As was mentioned by Trinidad and Tobago’s Prime Minister Patrick Manning at a CARICOM Conference held in 2006, the Caribbean is no longer of strategic importance in today’s changing world. This is one of the reasons why Prime Minister Manning, along with his counterparts in Barbados, St. Vincent and the Grenadines and Grenada have talked more seriously about crafting a stronger political integration in the region.

But in truth, looking at the alarming variables of social decrepitude now taking on most of the islands, from severe unemployment to increasing street violence and crime, Caribbean leaders are forced to envisage the revisit of CARICOM’s late great-grand father: The short-lived West Indies Federation of 1958 to 1962.

For initially, this model of government was considered by its contemporaries and political advocates, such as the famous Pan-Caribbean Barbados born and Harlem-raised militant, Richard B. Moore, as an indispensable means of advancement for the peoples of that region.

Unfortunately, due to (deliberate) British mismanagement, coupled by the inability of its 10 member-states to successfully overcome the cultural isolation, parochialism and insularity between the Islands, which weakened its sense of unity, the Federation failed shortly after Jamaica and Trinidad decided to pull out.

But one of the key factors in its disintegration, was that England offered the West Indies a Federation while simultaneously withholding and pushing back its independence, thus generating dissatisfaction among larger members like Jamaica, who ultimately felt that pursuing its own independence was more feasible and worthwhile than to take on the awesome task of sustaining a mismanaged and under-financed Federation, particularly, since most of the financial burden for its maintenance was placed on Jamaica and Trinidad, who were its two largest members.

Nonetheless, some 49 years later, when looking at the ferocious political and economic climate created by globalization; when looking at Africa’s attempt to create an African Union, in spite of the Mother Continent’s tremendous obstacles in that pursuit, Caribbean countries need to seriously rethink the possibility of re-establishing the Federation. Considering there are far less cultural and linguistic obstacles between Caribbean peoples then between the various populations in Africa, there should be no excuse to refuse this endeavor.

In this effort, the Millions More Movement launched by the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan can serve as a catalyst in that direction.

During the Movement’s inaugural lecture, on October 15, 2005, Minister Farrakhan stated, ‘‘The Caribbean cannot continue to exist as little island nations. There must be a union of all the islands into a Caribbean Union with Venezuela and Cuba.’’

To achieve this goal, the Caribbean Diaspora in the United States, Canada, France and England must organize its ‘‘Talented Tenth,’’ as W.E.B. DuBois described our Black intellectuals, and craft a new Memorandum for a Federation in the Caribbean to be submitted to the CARICOM. This is similar to the initiative of Richard B. Moore in the 1950s, through Harlem-based West Indian immigrants from various islands who united to form the American Committee for West Indian Federation and the United Caribbean American Council. Mr. Moore originally drafted the first Memorandum for the West Indian Federation.

So, in the spirit of the Message the Honorable Louis Farrakhan was to deliver in Jamaica last September 2006, let us work on ‘‘Self-Improvement: The Basis for Caribbean Development.’’

(Roger Atangana Muhammad serves as chair of the Montreal Local Organizing Committee of the Millions More Movement (MMM), and is currently working to help establish the MMM International Organizing Committee which will encourage the idea for a Caribbean Federation. He may be reached for comment at ausar_maat@hotmail.com.)