Jamaica and Venezuela have had contacts going back more than 1,000 years. Taino Indians, inhabitants of Jamaica prior to the arrival of Europeans in the late 15th century, moved to Jamaica from northern parts of South America, including what is now Venezuela. The first arrivals, the “red wave,” were around the year 650 and the second set of arrivals took place sometime between 850 and 900.
Despite Jamaica falling from Spanish into British hands in 1655, the island conducted trade with Venezuela and other Spanish-ruled areas in the Americas. “The shipment of mules from Riohacha, the Guajira Coast, and Venezuela to Jamaica was, however, mostly in the hands of English and Spanish subjects,” noted Wim Klooster in the book, Dutch Atlantic Connections, 1680-1800: Linking Empires, Bridging Borders.
Jamaica-Venezuela relationship reached its zenith in the Petrocaribe deal the South American nation struck with Jamaica and several Caribbean and Central American countries in 2005. Petrocaribe allowed Venezuela, which has the world’s largest oil reserves, to sell oil on highly concessionary terms. Of independent Caribbean nations, only Barbados and Trinidad did not participate, the latter having its own oil.
The following from the Jamaica Gleaner in 2012 explains the deal:
Petrocaribe is an agreement between Venezuela and some Caribbean territories to purchase oil on preferential payment conditions. The agreement, which began in 2005, allows beneficiary nations to buy oil at market value but only pay a percentage of the cost up front. The balance can be paid over 25 years at 1% interest.
Beneficiary nations could purchase up to 185,000 barrels of oil per day and settle portions of their debt with goods and services. In effect, a long-term loan that allows for some level of barter trade.
Jamaica created the Petrocaribe Development Fund to manage the proceeds. The fund, which received about US$5 billion up to 2018, has been used for infrastructural development, including roads, ports and airports; social programs such as housing, education and sanitation; and the refinancing of government debt. In return for its generosity, Venezuela took 49 percent ownership in Jamaica’s Petrojam Refinery in 2008.
Prior to Petrocaribe, several failed and successful attempts were made for joint Jamaica-Venezuela cooperation. Javemex was an attempt by Jamaica in the 1970s, at the time the world’s largest exporter of bauxite ore, the raw material for aluminum, to bypass or replace American and Canadian multinational companies – Reynolds, Aluminum Company of America and Kaiser Aluminum, of the USA, and Alcan of Canada. These corporations controlled the island’s bauxite industry. “It was conceived as a huge US$300 million alumina refining complex to be jointly owned by Jamaica, Venezuela and Mexico,” writes Wilberforce Reid. “Jamaica would supply the bauxite for this plant and Venezuela would supply oil.”
Javemex experienced a stillbirth but other pacts, the Venezuela Oil Agreement and the San Jose Accord especially, were more successful. The San Jose Accord, signed in 1991 between Jamaica Prime Minister Michael Manley and Venezuela President Carlos Andrés Pérez, led to the construction of more than 10,000 houses in the city of Portmore, near the Jamaica capital, Kingston.
Jamaica and Venezuela struck a Joint Tourism Cooperation Agreement in 1999 to, among other things, “increasing the flow of tourists between the two countries…improve and increase tourist exchange…promote increased individual and group tourist exchanges…develop reciprocal training pogrammes for tourism personnel…arrange exchange visits by officials and experts in the tourism sector…exchange data available on international tourism markets, and on markets in both countries.”
The relationship between Jamaica and Venezuela ebbs and flows depending on the Jamaican political party in power. The People’s National Party, more open to socialist political and economic ideas and policies, is the more sympathetic party. The Jamaica Labour Patty, with a longer history of aligning itself closely with the United States, less so. Petrocaribe was struck in 2005 with the PNP in power and socialist Hugo Chavez ruling Venezuela.
Venezuela leaders have visited Jamaica, Chavez among them. He came in 1999 and with a 135-member delegation in 2005 to sign the Petrocaribe deal. Nicolas Maduro was on the island in September 2015 during the 10th anniversary of the Petrocaribe Agreement, the 50th anniversary of bilateral relations between both nations, and the 200th anniversary of the famous Letter of Jamaica by Simón Bolívar. Bolívar was the great liberator of Latin America, having a hand in the founding of Venezuela and other Latin American countries, wresting them from Spain. He fled to Jamaica and was exiled on the island for almost a year.
Maduro returned on a working trip in May 2016 and met with Prime Minister Andrew Holness.
Since 2018, the Jamaica-Venezuela relationship is experiencing stress. In the wake of recent political and humanitarian turmoil in the South American nation, Jamaica closed its embassy in Caracas, the Venezuela capital, and has moved to rescind Venezuela’s 49 percent ownership in Petrojam, the island’s strategically important oil refinery.
Former JLP leader and prime minister, Bruce Golding, notes that “Venezuela’s assistance to Jamaica is unquestioned but this cannot oblige us to turn a blind eye to the rape of democracy that has been taking place in that country and the injustice to which its people have been subjected.”
Others take strong exception to the island abandoning a long standing and supportive friend. “For Jamaica to kick a true friend while he/she is down is just disingenuous, at best,” writes Noel Mitchell.
The PNP, now in opposition and under whom most agreements and treaties with Venezuela were established, opposes the government’s actions. “Never before has Jamaica walked this road,” says Lisa Hanna, former government minister and opposition spokesperson on foreign affairs. “Not only are we eroding our longstanding traditions of remaining objective interlocutors, able to assist with a peaceful resolution of the conflict in Venezuela, but we are setting a dangerous precedent by doing what appears to be the bidding of other powers.”
The future of the relationship between the island and the South American country, going on for hundreds of years, remains uncertain.
Eron Henry is author of Reverend Mother, a novel, and Constitutionally Religious. Ole Time Sumting blog was recognized with an Award of Merit by the Religion Communicators Council in 2018