ABSTRACT
The French Overseas Departments in the Americas (DOM), integrated as they are with France, tend to be neglected in consideration of policy matters in the Caribbean. The creation of the North American Free Trade Area (NAFTA) and the Association of Caribbean States (ACS) offer the analyst a good opportunity to discuss the role of the DOM in the region. The ACS, formalized in 1994, institutionalizes for the first time relations between the Antilles archipelago, organized along instruments and principles that are mostly British, and the Spanish-speaking Central American isthmus. The United States has supported the Central American countries, which initially opposed the maintenance of favorable quotas for bananas coming from the Caribbean. The banana issue suggests the extent to which free trade can be detrimental to the smallest producers. For the Central American growers, taking over the banana quota allocated to the Antilles on the European market would merely represent an increase in their already large global exports.
