Trini Dispatch — Sunday, April 12, 2026
April 12, 2026 • 3 min readGood morning. Pour a strong coffee. The week left a lot to untangle.
THE CARICOM WAR IS NOW AN INTERNATIONAL STORY
What began as a regional dispute over Venezuela policy and the reappointment of CARICOM’s Secretary-General has now crossed into the international press. The Associated Press is covering it. The core: PM Persad-Bissessar has spent months demanding that Secretary-General Carla Barnett not receive another term, citing Trinidad’s position that CARICOM sided with what she calls a “Maduro narco-government” through the zone-of-peace framework, and that Trinidad pays roughly 22 per cent of the bloc’s budget and has nothing to show for alignment it never agreed with. Regional leaders have pushed back. The emergency Friday meeting produced no resolution. Persad-Bissessar is not softening. This is either a principled stand or a regional fracture — possibly both, simultaneously.
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