One of the most knowledgeable experts on the Caribbean, John Collins, has passed away in Puerto Rico after a long illness. He died on 11 August at the age of 80. Fellow journalist Doreen Hemlock of the Sun Sentinel of Florida wrote his obituary. Collins died of complications following a hip replacement surgery at the Veterans Affairs Hospital in San Juan, Puerto Rico. He had spent his final years in nursing homes, and his encyclopedia-like mind had already slipped away, writes Hemlock.
Born in St. Louis, Missouri, John adopted the Caribbean as his home and lived in the US Virgin Islands, the Dominican Republic, St. Maarten and mostly in Puerto Rico. He visited almost every island and nation in the region, many of them repeatedly, and contributed to publications across the archipelago.
Collins’ work as a journalist earned him four Overseas Press Club awards in Puerto Rico.
As an adviser on Caribbean affairs, he served three gubernatorial administrations in Puerto Rico from 1985-93, when the island helped develop its Section 936 loan program that provided more than US$1 billion in financing to 12 nations in the region.
“Puerto Rico will never realize how much we owe to John Collins,” said Antonio Colorado, the island’s former secretary of state and its former representative to US Congress. “Our relations with the Caribbean and everything we were able to accomplish in the 1980s and early 1990s was due in a very important part to what John did.”
Collins advised the Dominican Republic administrations of Presidents Joaquin Balaguer and Leonel Fernandez. He also contributed for many years as a fellow to the Global Foundation for Democracy & Development in Santo Domingo, founded by Fernandez.
Earlier, he had been a consultant in the US Virgin Islands to then-Senate President Ruby M. Rouss and to Gov. Juan Luis. He was elected as a delegate-at-large to the Fourth Constitutional Convention in the US territory in 1979.
Collins began in Caribbean journalism as a correspondent for United Press International from 1978 to 1983. He then worked with Caribbean Business weekly in Puerto Rico, first on staff and later as a contributor.
Colleagues remember the blue-eyed, high-energy Collins for his insatiable appetite to understand the Caribbean, read its newspapers, know its history, meet its leaders and influence its policy and development.
He served in the US Air Force from 1952 to 1956, deployed in Illinois, Texas, Kansas, Missouri, Washington DC, Germany, Morocco and Libya.
He considered among his early career accomplishments work at the United Nations as an official of a foundation supporting the UN Relief and Works Agency helping Palestinian refugees in the 1967-70 period and as a conference assistant during the UN General Assembly in 1958 led by Charles Malik of Lebanon.