Sovereignty does not mean isolation

Dear Editor,

A few years ago, I wrote in these pages about Jamaica still being ensnared in its colonial past. I argued that political independence had not necessarily translated into genuine sovereignty.

I still believe that, but I have begun to wonder whether we have been asking the wrong question. We spend enormous energy asking whether Jamaica is truly independent. We debate the King, the Privy Council, the governor general, and the republic question — all important matters. But perhaps the bigger question is this: What did we expect Independence to mean?

Somewhere along the way we seem to have confused Independence with standing alone. But human beings don’t live that way. I depend on my family, my family depends on our community, our community depends on other communities, and Jamaica depends on other countries. Even the most powerful countries on Earth depend upon other nations for resources, markets, technology, labour, and security.

There is no such thing as absolute Independence. There is only interdependence and the question of whether that interdependence is chosen or imposed. That distinction matters enormously for Jamaica.

We should absolutely want to complete the process of decolonisation; we should determine our own constitutional arrangements; and we should have the confidence to decide what relationship, if any, we want with the British monarchy and British institutions. But becoming a republic will not magically make us sovereign if we remain economically vulnerable, technologically dependent, food-insecure, and incapable of negotiating with larger powers on anything approaching equal terms.

Changing the head of State is not the same thing as changing the balance of power. And this is when I think we need a bigger imagination. Jamaica should not aspire to be an island alone, it should aspire to be part of a powerful family — and Caricom should be that family.

Unfortunately, we have spent decades talking about Caribbean integration without fully appreciating what it could mean. Imagine if we treated the Caribbean not merely as a collection of small states that occasionally meet for conferences, but as an extended political, economic, and cultural community. What might that future actually look like? Consider just a few possibilities:

• Imagine genuine regional freedom of movement;

• Imagine Caribbean universities pooling research and technological resources;

• Imagine regional manufacturing and pharmaceutical capacity;

• Imagine Caribbean countries negotiating collectively with Washington, Beijing, London, and Brussels instead of approaching the world’s major powers as small individual states;

• Imagine a Caribbean digital economy large enough to develop and own its own platforms and technologies;

• Imagine what our combined population, resources, talent, and diaspora could accomplish if we stopped behaving like isolated islands.

This would not make Jamaica less Jamaican, it would make Jamaica more powerful. A Jamaican can be Jamaican and Caribbean without contradiction. In the same way, I can belong to my family without ceasing to be an individual. Perhaps national sovereignty should work the same way.

And why should the circle stop at Caricom? Jamaica’s relationship with Africa is not merely historical, it is intellectual, cultural, and spiritual. Our National Hero Marcus Garvey understood this. Rastafari understood this. Pan-African thinkers understood this. Yet we have barely begun to imagine what a serious Jamaica-Africa relationship could look like beyond cultural festivals and diplomatic photographs.

Africa is not merely the place our ancestors left, it is a continent of enormous populations, markets, resources, technological ambitions, and increasingly influential economies. Therefore, one must ask: Why isn’t Jamaica building serious educational, technological, commercial, and political bridges with African countries? Why aren’t Caribbean and African relationships part of a deliberate strategy for strengthening the Global South?

This is not about replacing one dependency with another, it is about having many relationships rather than one centre of gravity. A small country does not become sovereign by pretending it is self-sufficient, it becomes sovereign by developing enough capacity and enough relationships that nobody else can dictate the terms of its existence.

Perhaps the great unfinished dream of Jamaican Independence was never supposed to be an isolated Jamaica standing proudly by itself. Perhaps it should have been a confident Jamaica helping to build a confident Caribbean — connected to Africa, connected to its Diaspora, connected to the wider Global South, and connected to the world — while remaining firmly, unapologetically Jamaican.

Yannick Pessoa

yannickpessoa@yahoo.com