ABSTRACT
This chapter traces the course of events in the Commonwealth or English-speaking Caribbean since 1973, relative to the question of whether this subregion will ever be declared a zone of peace or will instead remain under the United States sphere of influence. The perception of the Caribbean by the US as a strategic primacy is longstanding. It has led US policy makers to forge a “special relationship” between the US and the Caribbean. In 1904, President Theodore Roosevelt unveiled the “Corollary” to the Monroe Doctrine which established a kind of US protectorate over the Caribbean. President Coolidge ordered a second military occupation of Nicaragua in 1927. After a Mexican supported revolution began, the US protested “Mexican-fostered Bolshevik hegemony between the United States and the Panama Canal,” and dispatched the marines. In La Paz, Bolivia on October 31, 1979, the Organization of American States at its twelfth session adopted a resolution to declare the Caribbean a zone of peace.
