Obama and summit of Americas

Barack Obama's greatest breakthrough was not in Berlin before election or in London in the G20 summit after his poll victory. It was in Port au Prince in Trinidad in the summit of Americas. Here he stood with eleven Afro-Caribbean heads of state, showing that change has come to the Americas, The people of Afro-West Indies have the same root as Black America has. But they were separated and divided creating mini states. They are the worst affected poor states whose citizens often try to smuggle themselves to the USA.
This inhuman situation is connected with poverty and desperation and racism. Obama, the son of an American father, grew up amidst this situation.
Obama's standing with the heads of those eleven micro states was more significant than his dramatic overture to Hugo Chavez--another exponent of change. Latin America in general has welcomed Obama's stand of change towards Cuba. But it was Anglo-America that welcomed his historic initiative against poverty and sufferings of the underdeveloped regions. He wanted to include them in the global stimulus plan.
It is said that the poor are the worst enemies of the poor. That led to the self elimination of the black people in the USA. In fact more black people were taken into USA in the flow of slave trade, than free white immigrants from Europe. In the 1850s in some part of the USA there were more black people than whites. This demographic factor led the anti-slavery forces under Abraham Lincoln's leadership to their epoch victory in the American Civil War. Many among the oppressed in the USA see Obama as the present day Lincoln. That gave him the historic victory in the polls.
Demographically black and coloured people in the United States are rebounding. Their commanding position in the major American states made Obama's victory possible.
Class struggle and ethnic struggle are interconnected. That is a historic reality. Here the poor and the weak in order to survive turn to the strong and rich. In the process they defend the interests of the strong and rich against their fellow poor and weak.
But this circle comes to an end when the rich and strong lose their power in the course of events in history. Here the poor unite because they have nothing to lose. That is what Maurice Bishop, the immortal leader of Afro-Caribbean and martyred prime minister Grenada had asserted.
But the forces could not face the mighty armada of the United States. But that came in Port Au Prince when an American President, a black President, came to tell them that the time of disunity was over. A great dawn has knocked. Most of the black Afro-Caribbean states were former British colonies. The French territories of Guadeloupe and Martinique are part of Metropolitan France, so they were not represented. Someone joked that if Mr Sarkozy, another advocate of change, was invited there could be a historic troika. The Dutch West Indies were not represented. Today Holland is a great scene of European race politics. Abu Muttalib, a Muslim and Arab, has been elected the mayor Rotterdam, Europe's biggest port city. Many hope that he could turn into a European Obama.
Obviously, power relation in the world is not so simple. Mr. Obama cannot make changes, even if he wants, overnight. A constitutional democracy has many bindings.
But one can not ignore that the first gigantic revolution in America was the American war of independence. Before that there had been skirmishes between the slave traders and slaves, between the indigenous people and the colonialists.
The journey of Obama is not an end in itself. The American war of independence is a 200 years old saga. To many, the greatest event in the Americas in the last century was Cuban Revolution. And Cuba has single-handedly faced America for the last half a century!
The Afro-Caribbean leaders have good relations with Cuba. Obama has promised, he will open a new chapter.
But most important is his promise of equal partnership. Though we are far away, we must acclaim it.