The Caribbean Basin or Caribbean Proper (or the Caribbean Basin region[1]) is a geopolitical term used to describe countries which generally border the
Caribbean Sea.[2] As a geopolitical concept, the term often includes the country of
El Salvador, which only touches the
Pacific Ocean, for its similarities to neighbouring countries. The definition has also been taken literally at times[according to whom?] and can exclude areas such as
Barbados and the
Turks and Caicos Islands which also do not technically touch the Caribbean Sea.[3]
During the
Cold War, the then US President
Ronald Reagan coined the term to define the region benefiting from his administration's
Caribbean Basin Initiative (CBI) economic program, approved in
US law in 1983. Thus, the Caribbean basin included only the countries of the
Caribbean insular and
Central America that met the requirements of the CBI, and
Cuba and
Nicaragua, which the American government viewed as politically "repressive" and "economic failure" were excluded.[4][5][1] As a result of this US foreign policy initiative, the term "Caribbean Basin" began to be used as a geographic description in the 1980s.[6]
"...one area of the modern Caribbean basin owes its heritage to the legacy of the Spanish Empire; other segments were traditionally British preserve; a third area was French, and a final area, more diminutive, was dominated by the Netherlands in the colonial years. It is not surprising, therefore, as Solnick notes, that "often the history of the region is treated solely as a function of European colonial expansion."[7][8]
In the latter part of the 20th century, following the collapse of European colonialism, the Caribbean became "an American lake" which American hegemony seek to provide a form of unity in the region,[9] though the USA never saw itself as a Caribbean nation, nor did
Venezuela until the 1970s.[10] That view is supported by the America historian and author, Professor
Robert Pastor who argues that: "...all the nations in and around the
Caribbean Sea seemed to have in common was a view of the United States as the "colossus of the north" and the U.S. view of them as a "backyard."[10]
McCalla *, R., Slack, B., & Comtois, C. (2005). "The Caribbean basin: adjusting to global trends in containerization. Maritime Policy & Management", 32(3), 245–261.
[7]
Pastor, Robert, "Sinking in the Caribbean Basin." Foreign Affairs. Vol. 60, No. 5 (Summer, 1982), pp. 1038-1058. Council on Foreign Relations (1982) [in]
JSTOR[8]
References
^
abUnited States. Congress. Senate. Committee on Finance, "Caribbean Basin Initiative--1983: Hearing Before the Committee on Finance, United States Senate, Ninety-eighth Congress, First Session, on S. 544, April 13, 1983." Volume 98, Issue 277 of S. hrg, United States Congress. U.S. Government Printing Office (1983), pp. 53-55
[1] (retrieved 26 April 2024)
^Stephen J. Randall; Graeme S. Mount (1998). The Caribbean Basin: An International History. p. 1.
^Barca, Alessandro, "EE. UU. y la cuenca del Caribe. Crónica de un fracaso anunciado." [in] Nueva Sociedad NRO. 64 Enero-Febrero (1983), pp. 110-115.
[2] (retrieved 26 April 2024)
^Mendoza, María de Lourdes Sánchez, "Un acercamiento a la región del Caribe: su importancia estratégica y económica." UNAM (Relaciones Internacionales). (2006) [in] Catalogo Revistas UNAM
[3]
^Grugel, Jean (1995). Politics and Development in the Caribbean Basin. Macmillan Press. p. 2.
^Solnick, Bruce B., "The West Indies and Central America to 1898." New York: Knopf (1970), pp. ix, 188-9
^Mount, Graeme; Randall, Stephen; "The Caribbean Basin: An International History." The New International History. Routledge (2013), p. 1,
ISBN9781136141164[5] (retrieved 26 April 2024)
^
abPastor, Robert, "Sinking in the Caribbean Basin." [in] United States. Congress. Senate. Committee on Finance, "Caribbean Basin Initiative--1983: Hearing Before the Committee on Finance, United States Senate, Ninety-eighth Congress, First Session, on S. 544, April 13, 1983." Volume 98, Issue 277 of S. hrg, United States Congress. U.S. Government Printing Office (1983), p. 203
[6] (retrieved 26 April 2024)
^Thomas J. Anderson (2019). "8". In Alfonzo Gonzalez; Jim Norwine (eds.). The New Third World (2 ed.). Taylor & Francis.