Caribbean and Latin American Peoples Conference

Press release                                                                                        July 1, 2020

  

As  we commemorate July 1^st, 1863 abolition of slavery or emancipation day in the Dutch colonies, and almost all the Caribbean and world is in a post-colonial era, our island Bonaire and the other Dutch Caribbean islands up to today remained Dutch colonies. As the Dutch were about the last in 1863 to abolish slavery almost a century later, after other Caribbean islands , the Dutch misinformed and manipulated the international community that they finished the decolonization process and stop reporting to the UN in 1954 and continued with colonization of the Dutch Caribbean islands up to now.  Today July 1, 2020 we are making a dramatic call to the Dutch government  to abolish colonialism in the Dutch Caribbean islands.

Foundation We Want Bonaire Back on its continuing mission to raise awareness on the un-democratic situation on our island Bonaire participated recently in the first Caribbean and Latin American Peoples Online Conference

The Caribbean Peace Movement , the Caribbean Movement for Peace and Integration, the Christian Workers Union of Belize, the Jamaica Peace Council and the Global Afrikan Congress organized this first Caribbean and Latin American Peoples online conference with the support of several civil society and grassroots organizations from across the region.

This conference that was planned originally to conquer simultaneously with the yearly CARICOM heads of State conference, due to the non-travel situation in the Caribbean and the world this year conference was organized online on the COVID-19 Experience and Lessons aiming towards a regional peoples network supporting Integration, Peaceful Cooperation and Resilience against environmental and health threats.

Representatives from civil society and grassroots  organizations, ambassadors, journalists, lawyers, union leaders, economists, researchers, professors, medical scientists, professionals, human rights activists, deans and presidents of universities, psychiatrists,  from Cuba, Nicaragua, Venezuela, Jamaica, Belize, St Vincent and the Grenadines, USA, Martinique, Haiti, Brazil, Barbados, Bonaire participated in this historic conference.

Summary of the declaration to carry forward the mission in the legacy of our ancestors:  

The peoples of Latin America and Caribbean have a common history. Despite our differences in language which are legacies of colonialism that tend to divide and keep us apart, our history unites us around the common goal of overcoming the vestiges of domination by the metropoles. These vestiges of colonialism include the plundering of our natural resources, under-development of our economies, and the deliberate distortion of ‘our story’ in order to keep us in our places.

As it becomes our time now to reclaim our rightful place among humanity we need to walk in the footsteps of our Caribbean and Latin American leaders as Simon Bolivar, Toussiant L'Ouverture and all other leaders that hereafter emerged. Unification of our people is the most critical step towards integration and cooperation and are the indispensable components of our struggle to move forward and regain real genuine peoples developments for our Americas.

James Finies from Bonaire as panelist explained the undemocratic situation of Bonaire since the illegal annexation by Holland on October 10, 201 of the BES islands, and that Holland is using the corona-crisis now to extort, force Curacao, Aruba and St Maarten to surrender their limited autonomy back to The Hague government and that during this COVID-19 crisis it became more clear what is to be colonized as all the important decisions are made in The Hague , Holland.  The conference decided and committed that from now on special focus will be put to monitor and support the struggles for decolonization of all countries within the region and elsewhere across the globe.