Intransit-unfriendly culture in Caribbean

I write this column from Paraguay, in South America. No, I am not here bird-shooting; I am attending a meeting of the Inter-American Development Bank, where I will give a presentation.

I flew here through Sao Paolo, Brazil, where I picked up my connecting flight on a different airline to Asuncion, the Paraguayan capital. I did not have to collect my luggage. I did not have to go through customs or immigration. I did not even go through a security check. I deplaned my American Airlines flight from Miami in Sao Paolo and went straight to the boarding gate for my Tan flight to Paraguay. How civilised!

It is, of course, quite different when I fly to St Vincent or St Lucia through Barbados or Antigua on Caribbean Airlines; in those air transportation hubs, I have to collect my luggage, go through immigration and customs, walk (it seems) a quarter of a mile with my checked baggage, hand luggage and laptop, to have to check in all over again at the LIAT counter. Extremely inconvenient, to say the least!

And we have CARICOM, which is supposed to make things intraregional (including travel) easier and more efficient. And both airlines are owned by Caribbean governments, all of which are members of CARICOM!

No hassle

When I arrived at Norman Manley International in Kingston, they were able to check both me and my baggage straight through to Asuncion, despite the changes in airlines and countries; I received in hand all three boarding passes - Kingston to Miami, Miami to Sao Paolo, and Sao Paolo to Asuncion - at the same time. Now, why can't we do this within CARICOM?

I can't even give the credit to Mercosur, the CARICOM equivalent in South America, for neither Jamaica nor the United States of America (two of my way points) are Mercosur countries. The credit must go to simple common-sense airline cooperation. If we can't collaborate in CARICOM on a simple matter like airline travel, about what will we be able to successfully collaborate?

I thought that one of the legacies of the Cricket World Cup in the Caribbean was supposed to be ease of inter-island travel. In preparation for the thousands of expected visitors, most of the host countries rebuilt or renovated their international airports, and put in a combined immigration system, where once you entered CARICOM at any immigration desk in the region, you didn't have to fill out any further immigration forms until you left the Caribbean.

Well, the legacy is a big disappointment! Great fanfare attended the redesign and renovation of the two air transportation hubs I mentioned, only to see them be rebuilt in an intransit-unfriendly manner! Why were not facilities for inter-airline baggage transfers built into the new designs? Why were not airline reference desks put in the arrival lobbies and intransit lounges to make going through immigration and customs a second time unnecessary?

And I am not even drawing reference to the legacy of the white elephant and the waste of money that was the 'multi-purpose' stadium in Trelawny! That is proof that not only Bruce Golding and the JLP suffer from poor judgement!

Some legacy!

And the Caribbean single immigration space flew away with the Cricket World Cup. So much for the Caribbean Single Market and Economy! Some legacy!

Those of us who have travelled in Europe through the Schengen countries know how such a system can work. Last year, I took a train from Barcelona in Spain across the border into France; if the signs in the towns had not changed language from Spanish to French, you would not have known you had changed country. And these are nations which have historically fought wars against each other for centuries!

I have had a so-called CARICOM passport for some years now, and I cannot detect any advantage it brings me when I travel - either within CARICOM or outside. Could someone explain?

We in the CARICOM region have a similar history, and we have not fought any wars against each other (except posturing over fishing rights and patties). Surely, we understand economies of scale, and understand what the European Union, Mercosur and ASEAN member countries understand. But we also understand tribalism, and we practise it within our countries and with our neighbours.

It was Martin Luther King Jr who said, "We must learn to live together as brothers, or perish together as fools."

Peter Espeut is a sociologist and a rural development practitioner. Email feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com.