Current Panorama of the Caribbean 2024-2026

Abstract

The Caribbean, due to its geographical position, constitutes one of the most geopolitically important regions in the world. Defined as the American Mediterranean, its strategic value was magnified by the construction of the Panama Canal, completed in 1914, in line with the geopolitical thinking of Alfred T. Mahan, the leading U.S. naval strategist of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Mahan conceived military and commercial power as essential to the security and prosperity of the United States (García Muñiz and Rodríguez Beruff, 1994).

As a result of its complex history, the region is characterized by pluralism, multiethnicity, multilingualism, multiculturalism, and marked political diversity. Its political heterogeneity is reflected in the coexistence, within the same regional space, of independent countries and non-independent territories, federal and unitary republics, parliamentary constitutional monarchies, and presidential, semi-presidential, and parliamentary systems of government. This diversity is also evident in territorial scale, ranging from countries such as Colombia and Mexico, with more than one million square kilometers, to small islands of less than 500 square kilometers, such as Montserrat, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Antigua and Barbuda, Barbados, Grenada, and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines. Similarly, population disparities are significant, with countries of more than 50 million inhabitants alongside small islands with fewer than one hundred thousand residents.

The heterogeneity of the Greater Caribbean is also reflected in the uneven levels of economic development among its countries. The region includes large economies such as Mexico and Colombia; small economies, such as most of the Lesser Antilles; countries with high macroeconomic growth, such as Guyana, the Dominican Republic, and Panama (Inter-American Development Bank [IDB], 2024; Ministry of Economy, Planning and Development [MEPyD], 2025; Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean [ECLAC], 2025); as well as countries with low levels of development and high poverty rates, such as Haiti.

This large, diverse Caribbean—seeking unity amid its diversity—currently faces multiple shared challenges that affect both its internal development and its relations with the United States. These challenges include unresolved territorial disputes, democratic fragility and declining public trust, irregular migration, violence, and transnational crime, all of which have significant negative effects on democratic quality and human development in the region