Looking again at Cuba

Earlier this week the regional media focussed quite a bit on the visit to the region of Stephen Harper, Canada’s Prime Minister and his efforts to forge a new economic partnership and closer relations with the Caribbean, a longstanding ally of Canada. One of the issues that marginally affected the apparently smooth exchanges was that of our relationship with Cuba, with the Canadian Prime Minister expressing some concerns about aspects of human rights and governance in Cuba. According to newspaper reports, the Barbadian Prime Minister indicated to him that the region’s relationship with Cuba was non-negotiable. Harper must have recognised that it was a sensitive area and appeared not to have pushed it.{{more}} The issue of the relationship between the English speaking Caribbean and Cuba is not new. Our leaders have long established diplomatic relations with Cuba and have accepted the fact that Cuba is one of us, that is, it is a part of the region though they speak a different language. I am sure that different Caribbean leaders have their concerns about Cuba as they have about other CARICOM states, but this should not affect our ability to relate to Cuba and its people. I have often said that in attempting to understand what is happening in Cuba today we have to look back at developments over the past 47 years and to see them as the context within in which we should examine Cuba today.

Cuba is not a threat to the Caribbean. Persons might not like the political system in Cuba but it is their system and emerged from a particular set of circumstances. There is no chance of their system coming to our part of the Caribbean because we have also emerged out of different circumstances and I don’t believe, anyhow, that the Cubans are interested in bringing their system to us. Many of us have been influenced in our attitude toward Cuba by the propaganda coming from our powerful neighbour to the north. I have often found it interesting that the USA could trade and relate to China and to grant it at times special status but at the same time have difficulty relating to Cuba in the way that civilised nations should relate to each other. But one understands the dynamics in operation. China has a huge market on which Corporate America has fixed its eyes. It is also a source of cheap labour. Cuba has been an embarrassment to the United States. Efforts over the years to get rid of its leader Fidel Castro have failed. After scores of failed assassination attempts there was joy in some areas that Castro was on his last leg, eventually overcome by illness. But Castro is still alive.

Despite penalties for going to Cuba, hundreds of Americans still go. Other countries including the Caribbean still maintain relations with Cuba and the United Nations annually calls for an end to the American trade embargo. Some of us consider developments in Cuba mysterious and tend to be very critical of them. Why for instance, some one asks, has Castro’s whereabouts during his period of illness been such a closely guarded secret? But if you had a leader against whom so many plots have been penned with American support why would you want to publicise his whereabouts to the world. I have concerns about Cuba but it is their system and there are certain factors that explain present day realities.

There is also another way of looking at the situation. In periods of crises, in particular war, and in cases as happened in the United States with 9/11, governments of the so-called free world find it necessary to put certain stringent and harsh measures that go against their reputed democratic norms. The Patriot Act in the United States testifies to this. We can also look back to the McCarthy era in the United States, the period of the late 1940s and 1950s when scores of people suffered loss of employment, destruction of careers and imprisonment for their political views. Even our own Hugh Mulzac suffered during this period. So my view is that we need to take all of these things into account when looking at what is happening in Cuba. If the American embargo is lifted the situation in Cuba will be completely different. In fact one of the countries that will benefit though not in the way some are hoping is the USA itself. Trade in agricultural products with the USA will rapidly increase. This is why the farming communities in the USA are some of the strongest opponents of the trade embargo. The Cuban political system itself will undergo changes. I also find it interesting when we talk about the hundreds of thousands of Cubans waiting to go to the USA. Could you imagine what will happen if the USA was to be opened up fully to us? We might have to ask who will remain at home?

The truth is that under existing circumstances the Cubans are deprived of lots of things. This is bound to change once Cuba is allowed to trade freely. You might question the issue of trading freely, but look at China. China still remains a Communist country but has found a way of engaging the so-called free world and of being involved on the world market. This article is really a call for us to soberly reflect on and re-examine what is happening in Cuba. Cuba is a poor, developing country but has made tremendous strides in a number of areas that are recognised widely. That country has made sacrifices in efforts to assist other countries through scholarships, through the provision of doctors who have worked in disaster areas and assisted in the development of sports, among other things. I am of the view that one of the things that colours and influences our attitude to Cuba is the way in which our Prime Minister has gone about the business, giving, consciously or not, the impression that he is a point man for certain leftist regimes. But other countries in the Caribbean have cordial relations with Cuba, and as with Owen Arthur, will express the view that the relationship with Cuba was non-negotiable. It appears to me that we do not get this kind of negative reaction to Cuba because they do not see Cuba as a threat. Cuba realises that it is very much a Caribbean country, having experienced the same kind of historical situation that we have faced, although colonised by Spain and for a long period of time re-colonised by the United States of America. We cannot divorce Cuba from the Caribbean and we have to allow the Cubans to work out their problems but must assist them in whatever way we can. We cannot decide for them in the way that Bush is trying to decide for the Iraqis and for the Arabs in the Middle East.

Cuba has a lot of problems, but which country does not have. Cubans are looking for a better way of life as all of us are doing. Cuba needs our support and solidarity. Even though we can disagree with their political system and style of governance we could all hopefully agree as a first step that the boycott should go and then we will be in a better position to criticise developments in Cuba.