A Chat with Dr. Armstrong Alexis, CARICOM’s Deputy Secretary General

It was a little past 9pm in Accra, Ghana and a little past 5pm in Georgetown Guyana on June 26th, 2022 when I sat to have a virtual conversation with Dr. Armstrong Alexis, CARICOM’s Deputy Secretary General. My goal was to listen to the makings of a man who had been charged with the responsibility of stewarding and shaping what is a large part of the Caribbean identity in this dispensation: CARICOM. Initially, my plan entailed simply using the contents of our conversation to profile Dr. Alexis in an essay. However, as we got into the meat of the conversation, I felt that what I was hearing would be most valuable in its raw, untouched form. From advice on career, insight on the workings of CARICOM, to conversations about how the Caribbean and Africa can work towards fostering better relations, this is our conversation.

The Foundations: Family, Education, and Influences

Chadia Mathurin: My aim here is to pull back the curtains not just on the people who have shaped our identity as Caribbean and African people but also those who are presently responsible for shaping it and what we will leave for future generations.

Dr. Armstrong Alexis: Right.

Chadia Mathurin: So I’d like to give a comprehensive picture of who you are as a person; not just the professional side. So with that said, we can go into it. Tell us a little about where you grew up, how you grew up and the people who shaped your life.

Dr. Armstrong Alexis: I actually was born in the UK.

Chadia Mathurin: Really?

Dr. Armstrong Alexis: Yes. My parents worked in the UK but then my father being a very nationalistic person decided that he did not want his children to grow up in the United Kingdom so I was just about 2 years old when my parents re-migrated to Saint Lucia, so I have no recollection of the United Kingdom as a child. 

I grew up in Gros-Islet – Massade Gros-Islet – and in a sense my dad was also a path breaker in his own right so when he moved back to Saint Lucia in the 1960s, he did not reside in the village. He moved into, you know, the hills in Massade and everyone thought that he was this crazy Saint Lucian guy who returned from England and was really mad because in those days they considered a lot of Saint Lucians coming back from the UK to have a particular kind of orientation. And we pretty much lived in the hills and our only neighbors were our cousins. My father’s brother who also lived in England had also built his house way up out in the hills.

We had no other neighbors at the time other than the Boys Training Center. So I grew up in a very close knit family. My friends were my cousins.

Dr. Armstrong Alexis: I went to school at the Gros-Islet Infant, Gros-Islet Primary followed by Corinth [Secondary]. I’ll give you a little joke about that in a while, but Corinth, and then I went off to the SDA Academy and went into teaching. So that’s sort of the quick snap of it. 

I said I was going to give you a little joke about Corinth because at the time when I did Common Entrance there seemed to have been a lot of influence and human intervention in terms of who went to what school. So my elder brother went to St. Mary’s College and two years later, I wrote the exam. There seemed to have been some level of information shared with my parents that I had made it to Saint Mary’s College¹ widely considered the top boys’ secondary school on the island of Saint Lucia and the information changed [that no, that was not correct]. In the end I found myself at the Corinth Secondary School; the Corinth Junior Secondary School.

And you know, Chadia, I consider myself to be a late developer so my first three years in secondary school I was not the best performer. I wrote the Common Middle which was in Form Three. At the time you [one] wrote Common Middle and then you could leave the junior sec [secondary] and go to a senior secondary school, whether it was Saint Mary’s College [or] Castries Comprehensive. I failed that exam. My father said, “No. I mean, I know you have much more ability than that” and then my dad decided he was going to invest in my education and sent me to SDA (Seventh Day Adventist Academy).

I wrote the Common Middle which was in Form Three. At the time you [one] wrote Common Middle and then you could leave the junior sec [secondary] and go to a senior secondary school, whether it was Saint Mary’s College [or] Castries Comprehensive. I failed that exam.

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Chadia Mathurin: Oh wow.

Dr. Armstrong Alexis: I don’t know if it is the fact that I consciously knew that I was the only one who my parents were spending money, every term, to send to school [but] I got to SDA and nothing could stop me. I mean literally nothing could stop me. All of the courses which I was failing in From 3 at Corinth, when I went to SDA I repeated Form 3, I was the top student in Accounts, top students in English, top students in Math, top student in everything. [laughs]. I did not graduate top student in my year because I had some really good students in my year but I graduated certainly in the top ten percent (10%).

Chadia Mathurin: Mm hmm.

Dr. Armstrong Alexis: And [for] my first job I returned to my alma mater, the Gros-Islet Primary School, and I taught there for a year and then went to Teachers’ College for two years. So I had only one year experience. In those days you went into the classroom and some people spent 4, 5 years in the classroom before they go to Teachers’ College. I only spent one year in the classroom and then went to Teachers’ College. Because I also did not want to go to A Level. I figured my parents had spent all of that money sending me to SDA, every term they had to find money and I figured, you know, the path to University was… The Teachers’ College certificate took you straight to university and A Level grades took you straight to university, and I figured you know, I prefer to go to Teachers’ College, continue to receive a salary, and when the time is right I will go to University as opposed to asking my parents to spend more money on my education when they had spent money on Form Three, Form Four and Form Five. So that’s how I ended up teaching and when the time was right I ended up going to university.

Chadia Mathurin: Okay

Dr. Armstrong Alexis: So educationally that’s it. I went to UWI² University of the West Indies, I did an undergrad degree, then I stayed, I did my Master’s. Yeah, and much later on I did a Doctoral Programme.

Chadia Mathurin: So in terms of siblings, where do you fall in the birth order?

Dr. Armstrong Alexis: I’m the second. I have an elder brother. I’m the second followed by another brother who passed away at the age of twenty one, a sister who’s now nursing in England, followed by a brother who is now home with my mom, and the last in the family is a girl, my sister who’s a Development Economist by training but currently taking care of her family. And she lives in the United States. My elder brother who is senior to me by two years, he lectures Computer Engineering at the University of East London in the UK.

Chadia Mathurin: So you’ve basically answered my first two questions, but there is a question that isn’t on my list that I want to ask. Who would you say are two or three of the people who impacted your life most?

Dr. Armstrong Alexis: Usually when that question is asked people always talk about the influence of their parents, their father and so on. I will avoid doing that because for me that goes without saying, right?

In terms of persons who I encountered very early in my life who had a tremendous influence on me? One of my cousins, Carell Moise, he was a national cricketer, one of the best dressed guys in the Gros-Islet village. I got very close to Carell very very early and I just always saw him as my elder cousin who was my little hero. Thereafter, I met persons like Michael Aubertin, the Mighty Mighty who passed away sometime ago, because I was involved in the Catholic Youth Movement. Mike was the Co-ordinator of the Catholic Youth Office and I always enjoyed discussions and debates with Mike.

And then later on, in my maybe late teens, I encountered people like Mario Michel when we formed the National Youth Council in 1985. Mario certainly had a tremendous influence on my life in terms of how a young professional can be so committed to community development, to national development, and I sort of patterned a lot of who I am behind that kind of influence. So I would say perhaps almost in that order – because they also happened at different stages in terms of my age – I would say that these would be the three people who certainly had some level and impact and influence on how I developed, and what I got interested in.