Caricom and Cuba

In an impressive display of solidarity with Cuba, all 14 leaders of the independent Caricom states attended the Third Caricom-Cuba Summit in Santiago de Cuba on Monday and awarded an honorary Order of the Caribbean Community to ailing ex-President, Fidel Castro, in recognition of his role in fostering closer ties between Caricom and Cuba.

The reports indicate that the summit discussions focused on the financial, energy and food crises and climate change, and their impact on the region, as well as on enhanced cooperation between Cuba and Caricom. All this was however overshadowed by Caricom’s call for an end to the US embargo on Cuba.

Ever since Barbados, Guyana, Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago pioneered the establishment of diplomatic relations with Cuba in 1972, in the early post-independence years, when anti-colonial feelings and leftist tendencies ran strong and the Non-Aligned Movement was at its peak, Caricom countries, in the face of US disapproval, have enjoyed a special relationship with Cuba.

In return for their diplomatic recognition of Cuba and the nurturing of a relationship based on the principles of international law, including respect for sovereignty, non-intervention and non-interference in domestic affairs, Caricom countries have benefited from close cooperation with Cuba, which has provided scholarships, medical treatment and technical assistance in a wide range of areas. Guyana alone can attest to the extraordinary fruits of the relationship in terms of the number of Guyanese educated in Cuba and the medical services provided to our citizens in both Guyana and Cuba.
Cuban assistance to Caricom over the years is probably quantifiable. What is harder to put a figure to is the invaluable diplomatic and political support Cuba has reaped in its decades-long struggle with the USA. For Cuba, the bigger picture is that its investment in diplomacy and assistance, in spite of its own straitened economic circumstances, has been immeasurably rewarded in the battle for hearts and minds in Caricom.

Year after year, Caricom states have repaid Cuba for its generous friendship by voting for the repeal of the US embargo, along with most of the countries of the world at the United Nations General Assembly. Caricom’s position has been a principled one, consistent with international law and good relations among sovereign states. Moreover, the desire for the normalization of relations between the USA and Cuba, and the return of Cuba to the hemispheric family of nations makes sense in the context of regional cooperation and stability.

Now, Caricom has stepped further out of the crease and issued a call to President-elect Barack Obama to lift the blockade. In his opening remarks to the summit, Caricom Chairman, Prime Minister Baldwin Spencer of Antigua and Barbuda, speaking on behalf of his colleagues, made the most explicit call yet by the community for the removal of the embargo: “The Caribbean Community hopes that the transformational change which is underway in the United States will finally relegate that measure to history.”

In the summit declaration, Caricom heads and Cuban President Raúl Castro thus called for “an end to the economic, commercial and financial embargo of the Republic of Cuba and urge the Government of the United States of America to heed the overwhelming call of the members of the United Nations and to lift with immediate effect the unjust economic, commercial and financial embargo imposed against the Republic of Cuba and cease the application of measures adopted as of 6 May 2004 to reinforce that policy.”
Caricom heads have clearly been emboldened by the historic wind of change that has blown through the USA with the election of Mr Obama and the imminent departure of George W Bush and his neo-conservative cabal. Perhaps they are also taking their cue from the Rio Group, which last month admitted Cuba as a full member.

Maybe it is a sign of the times that it is the USA which now runs the risk of being isolated in the hemisphere on the Cuba question. It is a far cry indeed from 1962 when the communist state was suspended from the Organization of American States at the urging of the USA. But the US attitude may still be critical of Cuba’s eventual readmission to the hemispheric fold.

As we have previously noted, Mr Obama said in his campaign that he would remove the restrictions on Cuban Americans travelling to Cuba and sending remittances to relatives. He has also stated that he would be prepared to talk with Raúl Castro. But it remains to be seen whether he will maintain the embargo as a means of pressing for change in Cuba or be inclined to remove it as a means of accelerating change in that country.

Caricom leaders are right to have called for the lifting of the embargo. More than anything else, it has arguably been responsible for Cuba remaining a relatively closed society, with the attendant lack of economic progress and the stifling of democracy and human rights.

Indeed, it is a brave call. It is also understandable, given the history of solidarity and cooperation between Caricom and Cuba, and it is consistent with the pursuit of a principled foreign policy by Caricom.

However, for some, it would also have been an equally brave, understandable and principled move, and a balanced one at that, if Caricom leaders had called on the Cuban government to adhere to the norms and practices of representative democracy, with due respect for the rights of its people to economic freedom and freedom of expression.

But that might have been considered churlish behaviour by guests who have long benefited from the friendship and cooperation of their host. For the time being then, Caricom’s strategy appears to be to continue to promote the wider embrace of Cuba to maintain mutually beneficial ties and, hopefully, to foment change.