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As the year 2025 drew to a close, events moved quick­ly and of­ten over­lapped, cre­at­ing a sense that the coun­try was si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly look­ing out­ward to an un­cer­tain geopo­lit­i­cal en­vi­ron­ment and in­ward to un­re­solved struc­tur­al and so­cial chal­lenges.

From con­cerns over a US mil­i­tary in­stalled radar near To­ba­go’s air­port to the cor­ri­dors of Cari­com, from the hills of Pi­paro to the pock­ets of pub­lic ser­vants, De­cem­ber of­fered a com­pressed por­trait of a na­tion un­der pres­sure and in tran­si­tion.

The month’s sto­ry­line be­gan qui­et­ly but gained mo­men­tum as re­ports con­firmed the es­tab­lish­ment of a US-sup­port­ed radar sys­tem at the ANR Robin­son In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port in To­ba­go. While Gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials de­scribed the in­stal­la­tion as part of long-stand­ing co­op­er­a­tion to com­bat drug traf­fick­ing and transna­tion­al crime, the tim­ing and lo­ca­tion of the radar placed it square­ly with­in a broad­er and in­creas­ing­ly volatile re­gion­al con­text.