We compiled paleostress analyses from previous research works collected at 591 localities of striated fault planes in rocks ranging in age from Late Cretaceous to Quaternary in the circum-Caribbean and Mexico. The purpose of the study is to quantify a progressive clockwise rotation of the Caribbean plate during its Late Cretaceous to recent subduction of the proto-Caribbean seaway. Paleostress analysis is based on the assumption that slickenside lineations indicate both the direction and sense of maximum resolved shear stress on that fault plane. We have plotted directions of maximum horizontal stress onto plate tectonic reconstructions of the circum-Caribbean plate boundaries and infer that these directions are proxies for paleo-plate motion directions of the Caribbean plate. Plotting these stress directions onto reconstructions provides a better visualization of the relation of stress directions to blocks at their time of Late Cretaceous to recent deformation. Older, more deformed rocks of Late Cretaceous to Eocene ages yield a greater scatter in derived paleostress directions as these rocks have steeper dips, more pervasive faulting, and likely are affected by large rotations as known from previous paleomagnetic studies of Caribbean plate margins.

Despite more scatter in measurements from older rock units, four major events that affected the Caribbean plate and the Great Arc of the Caribbean (GAC) are recognizable from changing orientations of stress directions: (1) Late Cretaceous collision of the GAC with southern Mexico and Colombia is consistent with a northeast direction of maximum compression in rocks of this age range in southern Mexico and east-west direction in Colombia, as the GAC approached the proto-Caribbean seaway; (2) Paleocene-Eocene collision of the GAC with the Bahamas platform in Cuba and Hispaniola and with the South American plate in Venezuela is consistent with clockwise rotation of stress directions in rocks of these ages in the northern Caribbean and counter-clockwise rotation of these rocks in the southern Caribbean; (3) Late Miocene collision and indentation of the Panama arc with northwestern South America is consistent with east-west directions in rocks of these ages; and (4) Oligocene to recent strike-slip faulting along the northern and southern boundaries of the Caribbean shows consistent directions for the northern (northeast) and southern (northwest) Caribbean. Stress directions document the progressive clockwise rotation of the Caribbean plate and the GAC motion from northeast in the Late Cretaceous, to east-northeast in the Paleogene, to east-west in the Neogene.