Invasion: A Reflection on the Current Geopolitical Climate in the Caribbean
September 9, 2024
A few months ago, I watched Invasion at The Movies. It is now making waves on Netflix, although it is still unavailable on the Cura-çao platform. The film tells a gripping and disturbingly plausible story: Aruba and Curaçao are invaded by a Latin American dictator from a fictional republic, a thinly veiled representation of Venezuela. As I watched, I thought, “This could theoretically happen,” but I soon told myself it was cleverly fabricated fiction.
Then came last Friday. I turned off an invitation to sit in a current affairs program covering the situation in Venezuela. I do not know enough about the region’s political dynamics, leaving me unable to engage deeply with the broadcast. But the next day, Sunday, September 8, 2024, reality hit close to home. The news broke that the Venezuelan presidential candidate, Edmundo González Urrutia, had sought refuge at the Dutch Embassy before departing for Spain, where his son lives, in a bid for political asylum. Suddenly, the plot of Invasion felt eerily relevant.
Venezuela has long held claims over these islands, and there was even a time when Uribe from Venezuela took control of Curaçao. A few days before Gonzales’s asylum plea, a Dutch defense memo was published in the local papers, warning that our islands are in an increasingly unstable geopolitical environment. Russia and China are mentioned as powers influencing the region. Considering the global complexities at play, I would also add Iran to that list. The BRICS alliance continues to develop, and with the U.S. elections in November 2024 on the horizon, the situation is even more unpredictable.
For Curaçao, the challenges seem endless. The island faces politial instability with elections just eight months away, compounded by ongoing struggles with transnational crime and corruption. Meanwhile, the general population is simply trying to survive, caught in an energy transition, including a heatwave and a shift toward a new world order. It’s a complex time for us all, one where fiction and reali-ty sometimes seem to blur as global forces reshape the future of our small but significant islands.
How long until we realize that the "invasion" in Invasion is not just a far-fetched story but a genuine geopolitical concern for us?
Miguel Goede
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