The Caribbean makes Latin America look good

The Latin Americans, who have written the book on political and social turbulence, ought to be glad that Guyana and the Caribbean countries are willing to participate in any summit with these leftists. We're doing them a favor just by being there.

"Second, in the specific case of the Summit of the Americas it is the hard truth that the Black Caribbean is still regarded by Latin America as a kind of inconvenient appendage on Latin America. It is therefore necessary through effective participation in the Summit and other meetings to assert the identity of the Caribbean as separate but at the same time an integral part of Latin America. It is imperative to steadily work at this as most global negotiations are conducted from a regional base with the Caribbean included in the Latin American group. The Caribbean has nevertheless made breakthroughs. Foreign Minister Rudy Insanally as a former President of the UN General Assembly and Foreign Minister Hunte of St Lucia the current President were chosen by the Latin American Group."

Why must the Caribbean assert any identity as "an integral part of Latin America"? That might be Guyana's situation, but it's not that of the rest of the Caribbean. There may be cultural commonalities as a consequence of colonialism, but how much does the rest of the English- and Dutch-speaking Caribbean have with Latin America, apart from cocaine? Let the Latin Americans keep their communist politics and stagnant economies to themselves while we "inconvenient appendages" in the Caribbean keep thriving.