Chaguaramas Treaty

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Chaguaramas was the location charted for the creation of the capital of the short-lived West Indies Federation . It is also the place where the Treaty of Chaguaramas was signed, establishing CARICOM, the Caribbean Community and Common Market, in 1973. It was signed on July 4, 1973 in Chaguaramas , Trinidad and Tobago.

The first four signatories were Barbados, Jamaica, Guyana and Trinidad and Tobago.

The Federation of the West Indies, also known as the West Indian Federation, was a short-lived Caribbean federation that existed from January 3, 1958 to May 31, 1962. It consisted of numerous Caribbean colonies of the United Kingdom . The expressed objective of the Federation was to give rise to a political unit that would become independent from Britain as a single state--possibly comparable to the Australian Federation, or Canadian Confederation; however, before that could happen, the Federation collapsed due to internal political inconsistencies.

Despite the collapse of the Federation, some say that  the West Indian cricket team is a legacy of the Federation, even though the side was actually structured thirty years preceding the birth of the federation.

Another unwavering regional fixture, legitimately created before the Federation, is the University of the West Indies . During the Federation, the University engaged in a policy of regional development beyond the main Jamaica campus. Two other campuses were established: one in Trinidad and Tobago , established in 1960, and one in Barbados , established a concise time after the Federation dissolved in 1963.

CARICOM took the place of the 1965–1972 Caribbean Free Trade Association (CARIFTA), which had been structured to offer a continued economic linkage between the English-speaking countries of the Caribbean following the disbanding of the West Indies Federation which lasted from January 3, 1958 to May 31, 1962. A Revised Treaty of Chaguaramas establishing the Caribbean Community including the CARICOM Single Market and Economy (CSME) was signed by the Heads of Government of the Caribbean Community on July 5 2001 at their Twenty-Second Meeting of the Conference in Nassau , The Bahamas.

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