One big challenge due to differences in different territories is religion. With Christians, Muslims, Hindus, Rastafarians and so on all in the region, it is hard for the Caribbean to try to run as one body with all different beliefs. For example, if a Muslim were to be chosen to be the leader of the combined countries, conflict would arise, as Christian and Muslims do not believe in the same thing, and Muslims and Rastafarians do not believe in the same thing. Disagreement would arise in both the government itself and amongst the peoples. In government with all different religions on the leaders table, many arguments will come to, as with different religions come different values. For example, the Muslims would more than likely suggest that having more than one wife is not considered bigamy and would make it law that one could have more than one. The Christians would go against that, as they believe that only one wife is godly, and it would be extremely hard for a compromise to be made. As a single religion would be ideal for an amalgamation of countries to cooperate, and it would be impossible to convert everyone to any one religion, then religion is one big obstacle in the way of national unity.
Another issue, which is present, is the fact that in the different countries, different languages and dialects of languages are spoken. A language barrier is a serious impediment to the success of national unity. If proper communication cannot go on, then proper conclusions cannot be made, and any progress politically is extremely slow. Also, the people will not feel a sense of Caribbean unity, if they cannot understand or relate to their other Caribbean residents. Lots of segregation of language will occur if national unity was achieved, and that would deceive the whole idea of unity.
With many different cultures and religions, come many different festivals and bank holidays. If the Caribbean were to come together, then all these festivals would have to be celebrated. All the Christian festivals, Hindu festivals, then each country would want their remembrance days for different important people in their history to be celebrated, and the amalgamated nation would end up with almost three weeks in holidays. The different religions are tied with the different histories of each country, these different histories bring about some of the different festivals in the countries, and these countries feel like they need to celebrate these events as they think it is important to their individual country. If some particular event is not celebrated, those people of that particular territory will not be pleased, and feel as though they may be less or that the ‘higher’ people think so.
Race is also a factor; in some countries, there is racial integration, such as Trinidad and Guyana, in other islands such as Barbados and Guyana, there is not much. If the countries were to merge, then the races would have to mix, which is not natural for many, and this could cause problems moving forward, if the population does not get along.
With different histories, different governmental systems have formulated. For example, Cuba is now a communist country, and to try to get them to join with the other Caribbean territories would be almost impossible. To have total national unity among Caribbean nations, a single government would have to be involved. With all the different governments and governmental statuses and so on, the process to narrow down a small group of people to make up the government to rule the Caribbean, if it was to become one nation, would be hard, and no one would ever be satisfied.
Also, because of the different histories, and their resources, some countries are economically richer than others, and these rich countries would not want the merger to occur because they would feel like they are looking after the poorer countries, and they see it as sharing resources. While this would be good for the poorer countries, this would mean that the profits for the richer countries are less, and they mostly do not want that. This is partly because of the fact that even if there were the union of the countries, most countries would still think of themselves as individual territories because of the fact that they are all individual islands, and they are accustomed to they inward way of thinking. This refusal to join mentally with the other countries of the Caribbean will hinder the development of any national unity in the region.
With different economies, there are many different currencies in the Caribbean, one big problem, would be how to figure out what currency to put. Do they put one that is stable? Or do they put the most common one? Whatever the decision, once again, everyone is not going to agree, and this could become a serious problem, especially at governmental level. A different stable currency for all Caribbean islands, however, would put us higher on the world trading market.
For all the Caribbean territories to merge, full cooperation and hard work needs to be put in. At the current moment, there are too many differences between islands for a merger to happen. While a merger would be the ideal event we as the Caribbean need in order to survive on the world market, many people in the islands do not want it to happen. With globalisation coming into effect, this amalgamation should rapidly occur, but it is not going to happen, because of all the challenges the cultural differences pose.
