Caricom day

Although the prompt did not ask for a history lesson, this bit of Caribbean information does fall under the calendar and purview of the challenge. A history lesson is the only way to present the story in a dignified manner.

I was born in Jamaica and for the most part our education back in the dark ages barely touched on the real history of slavery, the slave trade or the Caribbean history as a whole. We were taught from books edited by the UK education system which took a long while to be rescripted even after the country gained its independence from British rule.

The Colony of Jamaica gained independence from the United Kingdom on 6 August 1962. In Jamaica, this date is celebrated as Independence Day, a national holiday.

The island became an imperial colony in 1509 when Spain attempted to erase the Indigenous Taino people from not only the face of the earth, but history itself. The Spaniards used grotesque tactics in order to smother out the Taino blood and culture; such as raping and chemical/biological warfare. In 1655, British forces took the island and the British Empire claimed it. Over the years, escaped slaves joined the Indigenous Taino in the mountains, forming a society known as Maroons

Maroons fought and won a war against British forces (1728–1740) but lost a second war (1795–1796). In the 1800s, slavery was abolished and Jamaicans gained suffrage, although the British still held power.

Caricom Day

July 22 is CARICOM Day. It has a primary objective to promote economic integration and cooperation among its members.

Caricom is an intergovernmental organization that is a political and economic union of 15 member states (14 nation-states and one dependency) and five associated members throughout the Americas, The Caribbean and Atlantic Ocean.

Established in 1973, it ensures that the benefits of integration are equitably shared and also to coordinate foreign policy.

CARICOM was originally The Caribbean Community and Common Market. Founding states were Barbados, Jamaica, Guyana and Trinidad and Tobago. The organization was established in 1973 when the four founding members signed the Treaty of Chaguaramas. Its primary activities involve:

Coordinating economic policies and development planning.

Devising and instituting special projects for the less-developed countries within its jurisdiction.

Operating as a regional single market for many of its members (Caricom Single Market).

Handling regional trade disputes.

The secretariat headquarters is in Georgetown, Guyana. CARICOM has been granted the official United Nations General Assembly observer status.

CARICOM was established by the English-speaking countries of the Caribbean and currently includes all of the independent Anglophone island countries plus Belize, Guyana, Montserrat and Suriname, as well as all other British Caribbean territories and Bermuda as associate members.

The Anglosphere is the Anglo-American sphere of influence, with a core group of nations that today maintain close political, diplomatic and military co-operation. While the nations included in different sources vary, the Anglosphere is usually not considered to include all countries where English is an official language, so it is not synonymous with the sphere of anglophones, though commonly included nations are those that were formerly part of the British Empire and retained the English language and English Common Law.

English was the area's sole working language into the 1990s. The organization became multilingual with the addition of Dutch and Sranan Tongo-speaking Suriname in 1995 and the French and Haitian Creole-speaking Haiti in 2002. Furthermore, it added Spanish as the fourth official language in 2003. In July 2012, CARICOM announced they considered making French and Dutch official languages.

In 2001, the Conference of Heads of Governments signed a revised Treaty of Chaguaramas that cleared the way to transform the idea of a common market CARICOM into the CARICOM Single Market and Economy (CSME). Part of the revised treaty establishes and implements the Caribbean Court of Justice.

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Mike's prompt