‘Mightily like insurrection’: Revisiting Trinidad’s first Emancipation Day

On Trinidad's first Emancipation Day in 1834, Africans were no longer slaves, but they were not yet free. Their quiet self-restraint may have thwarted a plot to postpone their liberation.

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‘West Indian by conviction’: The Caribbean says farewell to poet and author Ian McDonald

“Ian McDonald was the Caribbean made flesh [...] He was a poet of rare grace, a scribe of eloquence, a keeper of our fragile, fierce cultural flame.”

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Tickets to nowhere: Haitian refugees fall prey to travel scams

Across Haitian social media, testimonies about fraudulent travel agencies appear almost every week. Most of these agencies ask for between 3,500 and 5,000 US dollars for trips that never actually happ...

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Cricket’s greatest all-rounder, Barbados’ Sir Garfield Sobers, dies at 89

“Sobers became an example of the West Indian’s claim to [...] full participation, on merit, in a world that had long assumed such mastery was the preserve of the coloniser.”

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‘I have never had the opportunity to vote’: How one Haitian doctor’s initiative is getting people involved in civic life

Haiti’s daily hardships have made Dr. Lucna Henrisme focus on teaching youth and women about their rights and duties as citizens, so that they can get involved in civic life.

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States of emergency and the Caribbean’s development challenge

Those involved in criminal acts may oppose how emergency powers are used, but ordinary citizens also want reassurance that such measures remain proportionate, accountable and tied to the public interest.

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Labour Day under a state of emergency in Trinidad and Tobago

Police used colonial-era law to block a protest of police authority in the name of protecting the “integrity” of a national event memorialising unauthorised, anti-colonial resistance to police.

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Beyond the binary: Global traditions of gender fluidity

In this collaborative article, Global Voices dives into non-binary gender representation traditions from around the world, spanning China, South Asia, Africa, the Caribbean, and more.

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Haiti’s ‘Grenadiers’ bring hope and joyful moments at World Cup 2026

”[It’s] more than a simple qualification for a football competition; it is a message for the whole world [...] Haiti is not summarised by gang violence, dirt and misery.”

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Haiti: Fleeing is not enough in Port-au-Prince and other major cities

Haiti is under the grip of armed gangs that control much of the capital, Port-au-Prince, and major national highways, inflicting violence that includes sexual assault, kidnapping, extortion, and arson...

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The serpent in the code: What allegations of AI usage in the Commonwealth Short Story Prize mean for regions like the Caribbean

“[E]xisting formulae for ‘authentic’ postcolonial prose are already so codified that a language model can reproduce them convincingly. AI does not disrupt literary taste so much as expose its furnitur...

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The serpent in the code: What allegations of AI usage in the Commonwealth Short Story Prize mean for regions like the Caribbean

“[E]xisting formulae for ‘authentic’ postcolonial prose are already so codified that a language model can reproduce them convincingly. AI does not disrupt literary taste so much as expose its furnitur...

globalvoices.org

Two-and-a-half centuries of rainforest protection in Tobago

Protecting this rainforest was a matter of survival for Tobago, but setting the forest aside for conservation also left an indelible mark on global environmental history.

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Who is defending Cuba’s threatened species?

Cuba hosts some of the world’s richest biodiversity but faces the impacts of climate change, human activity and weak protections. Scientists and activists strive to preserve endangered wildlife and ec...

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The ordeal of an undocumented Haitian migrant in the Dominican Republic

Regaining hope and confidence rests on finding a pathway to a country where he can regain his freedom and dignity, since persistent gang violence makes a return to Haiti impossible.

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This Earth Day, meet some of the Caribbean’s national birds

“Birds are among the most visible symbols of our natural heritage, inspiring national pride and reminding us that our islands are home to extraordinary biodiversity found nowhere else on earth.”

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Young men, masculinity and states of emergency in the Caribbean

The success of states of emergency are not often assessed by how such measures intersect with social dynamics — which in turn shape concepts of masculinity insecurity, and youths’ lived experience.

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Community micro-hydropower plants revolutionise isolated areas of the Dominican Republic

Community micro-hydropower projects in the DR rely on local leadership to deliver energy from renewable sources to isolated areas excluded from national distribution systems, contributing to reduced g...

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How Bad Bunny brought the issue of Puerto Rico’s power grid into world view

Puerto Rico’s electricity system has faced repeated crises since 2017’s Hurricane Maria, which destroyed much of the grid and triggered the longest blackout in modern U.S. history; outages remain rout...

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Concerns grow as Jamaica ends Cuban medical programme

Terminating the decades-old programme that brought hundreds of Cuban medical personnel to its shores is an unusual move, especially for a programme that had been running smoothly for 50 years.

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A rose by any other name? How one Trinidad Carnival band’s intimate gesture has sparked controversy

“You may dislike the choice [but] to declare that it denigrates culture is to flatten centuries of complexity into a single anxious conclusion.”

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Wasting renewable energy comes at a high cost for the Dominican Republic

By operating thermal plants above their limits and maintaining a grid with insufficient storage capacity, the DR wastes part of its clean energy and generates multimillion-dollar losses.

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Sly Dunbar, one half of the groundbreaking ‘Riddim Twins’ of Jamaican music, dies at 73

“Sly was an architect of sound. Alongside Robbie Shakespeare, he established a foundation that defined the era of Reggae and Dancehall.”

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Third World’s Stephen ‘Cat’ Coore, a Jamaican who straddled musical genres, dies at 69

Coore expanded the language of reggae, weaving roots with jazz, soul, funk, classical discipline and global sounds, while never losing Jamaica’s heartbeat. His guitar [...] spoke stories, unity, love ...

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The honeybee that stung Jamaica and yielded sweetness

The name “Melissa” is of Greek origin and translates to “honeybee” in English, but [the] fallout felt personal, as if we troubled the hive and threatened the queen.

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Year in Review: How the Caribbean survived 2025

By the end of the year, the U.S. and Venezuela, on opposite ends of the Caribbean archipelago, would have the region caught in the middle of an unfolding geopolitical standoff.

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‘The light plays tricks on us’: Trinidadian photographer Marlon Rouse’s ‘Sacred Objects, Fruit of the Land’

Rouse’s bold exploration rejects the familiar language of appetite, abundance and hospitality in favour of enquiry and even estrangement. The photos consider the fruit as organism rather than product.

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As U.S.-Venezuela tensions rise, Trinidad & Tobago thumbs its nose at CARICOM

Criticism around the prime minister’s posturing, which academic Richard Drayton called “defiantly, even rudely, anti-Caricom,” started in September, when the U.S. began to assert its military presence...

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Healing the past to strengthen the future: Why the Caribbean needs to talk about ancestral trauma

“What our grandparents practised instinctively through prayer, song, and time spent in the natural world, neuroscience is now validating with brain scans and data.”

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