A New Year: a Continuation of an Old Order, but not without Exceptions

[A stomach virus I suffered on the last day of 2018 prevented the timely writing of this Blog.]

At the beginning of January 2018, I wrote of uprisings - social uprisings by the people, later documented with marches and protests by the people in 2018. 

There weren't any major political revolutions in 2018, yet societal changes were jump started with mass movements to protect human life from gun violence, the environment and the oceans. One of the most profound changes in 2018 was the advent of women into seats of power, especially in the United States (US), where the most diversified class of the House of Representatives of the 116th Congress was seated yesterday, included a-record number of women - 102, including Minority women from Connecticut, Massachusetts, New York and Texas; Muslim women from Michigan and Minnesota and Native American women from Kansas and New Mexico.

The year 2019 has dawned with very much the same  problems as last year and with the same cast of actors in leading roles, some in diminishing roles and others coming into bigger roles. 

Latin America and the Caribbean are poised for larger roles in 2019, as deeper integration via the Organization of American States (OAS) and the Caribbean Community (CARICOM), transform two previously under represented regions into larger international partners.

American isolationism under Donald Trump will bring declining world influence and respect for the US. 

In the United Kingdom (UK), the former empire upon which the sun once never set, will become a mere shadow of its once might upon the execution of Brexit from the European Union (EU), March 29, 2019.

Such will be the times of 2019 of which the most romantic and unifying should come out of Latin America and the Caribbean - from the grandsons, the granddaughters and the scholars of great regional trail blazers - Jose Marti, Frantz Fanon, Errol Barrow, Eric Williams, William Demas, Che Guevara, Fidel Castro, Maurice Bishop and Simon Bolivar. 2019 will mark the ushering in of a new era in Latin America and Caribbean affairs.