Dr Vaughan Lewis, a native of St Lucia, is the Professor of International Relations of the Caribbean at the Institute of International Relations, University of the West Indies, St Augustine Campus, Trinidad. He has held various other academic posts in the Caribbean, the UK and North America, and for some years was Director General of the Organization of Eastern Caribbean States. In the past he has also been directly involved in the politics of his homeland, and was Prime Minister of St Lucia between 1996 and 1997.
As 2007 drew to an end, the Caribbean Community and the Government of Cuba celebrated, during the week of December 9, the 35th anniversary of the establishment of full diplomatic relations between Cuba and the then independent English-speaking Caribbean states of Barbados, Guyana, Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago.
Few today among our Caricom populations then under the age of fifteen years or so, will have any recollection of the climate of the times, and what it meant for these relatively new sovereign countries in this Western hemisphere to have undertaken this act. A strict embargo had been imposed in the early 1960s, with the legitimacy of the Organisation of American States (OAS) which our then relatively new members of the institution were required to follow. And this was a period too, when the full force of the Cold War between the Western and Socialist blocs was meant to apply to Caribbean states, and to a British government which had subordinated itself to the United States view in the mid-1960s, that under no conditions should British Guiana (now Guyana) become independent if Dr Cheddi Jagan’s Marxist People Progressive Party held power – even through British-monitored free elections.
We should of course observe that Jamaica at independence maintained the consular relations which had been in existence in Cuba prior to 1962, as a means of sustaining a connection with nationals and descendants of nationals, who had migrated to the sugar fields many years previously. But the Jamaica Labour Party government, originally led by Sir Alexander Bustamante and then by Donald Sangster and Hugh Shearer, strictly maintained the position enunciated by Bustamante: that in the Cold War stand-off, “We are with the West.”
But by the end of the 1970s things had begun to change in the Caribbean. Guyana, which had attained independence in 1966, under the apparently pro-western Forbes Burnham, had felt it necessary to, in the parlance of the time, “diversify” its external relations with countries in the world community, for the purpose of obtaining a degree of diplomatic sympathy in the event of a predatory move on its territory by Venezuela, which had made a claim to three-fifths of the inherited British Guiana. In doing this Burnham, and his Foreign Minister (now Sir) Shridath Ramphal sought to make connections with the then self-designated non-aligned states, many of which took a relatively sympathetic, or non-oppositionist view of the world socialist bloc led by the Soviet Union.
Then by 1972, Michael Manley, and his People’s National Party, attained office in Jamaica, espousing a philosophy of “democratic socialism,” and an intention to pursue a course of “economic regionalism” which would encompass all the countries of the Caribbean Basin, including those whose shores washed the Caribbean Sea – Venezuela, Mexico and Colombia. And even by the beginning of the 1970s, Trinidad and Tobago, whose leader Dr Eric Williams, tended to have a somewhat ambivalent view of the emerging political line of Fidel Castro’s government in Cuba, began to take a somewhat more sympathetic view of that country in the face of the Black Power uprising in Trinidad.
It was this setting which induced the view that the Caribbean independent states should take a more ‘objective’ view in terms of Third World and global opinion, and establish full diplomatic relations with Cuba. The United States expressed its displeasure when it gained knowledge of the impending decision, but the four states persevered in the line of action which they decided to take. In so doing they created a significant triumph for Cuba itself; and the Government of Cuba has constantly emphasized that significance.
From a hemispheric perspective, this was a bold move, breaching the OAS diplomatic embargo enforced by the United States – an act which had, up to then, been rejected only by Mexico. There can be little doubt that if any English-speaking independent country had attempted this before their accession to the OAS, their applications would have been peremptorily rejected. On the other hand, in the face of the continuing Cold War into the 1970s and ’80s, no one can confidently say that the bombing of the Cubana aircraft over Barbadian waters, undertaken by Cuban exiles – Caricom’s first experience of an act of what, today, is referred to as ‘international terrorism’ – was unrelated to the recognition initiative. And it might have been related also to the decision of Guyana and Barbados (for a limited period) to grant refuelling rights to Soviet military aircraft transporting Cuban troops to Angola and Southern Africa in 1975-76, in support of the liberation wars then going on there.
Today, the notion that there should be a relatively deep relationship – in terms of diplomacy, economic and social development – and a degree of political coordination in international affairs between themselves and Cuba, has become the norm among all Caricom states, even by a state like the Dominican Republic, which under various dictatorships and penetrated regimes, had hewed to the United States’ line on Cuba.
All have accepted, in particular, the health and education assistance initiatives from Cuba; and all adhere to the Caricom-Cuba Cooperation initiative which forms the broad framework for their relations.
This general acceptance of the Cuban government reflects first, of course, the disappearance of the world socialist system headed by the Soviet Union and the consequent end of the severe ideological competition, a relationship which rigidly defined the place of particular states in international affairs.
Secondly, it reflects the end of the absolute dominance of those relationships which the Caricom countries had in international relations – with the United States and with the European Union. In the hemipshere, the geopolitical and policy-defining hold which the United States has had for so long, has been loosened by a change in global economic relationships, and a lessening of financial dependence, which in turn permits a certain autonomy on the part of states’ economies like Brazil, Argentina and Venezuela. This has been changing the geopolitical relationships of the area, with the US seeking, through (i) the Free Trade Area of the Americas initiative to rearrange its dominance in this part of the world; (ii) the European Union trying to more effectively penetrate the Latin American part of the area through the negotiation of Free Trade Area relationships; and (iii) the change in commodity sale and purchasing relationships which has drawn the so-called emerging economies of China and India in particular into the production systems (in agriculture and minerals) of the hemisphere; and (iv) the financial autonomy gained by Venezuela with the dramatic rise of oil prices, and a consequent geopolitical flexibility permitting a growth of its influence in Latin America itself.
Europe, on the other hand has, with the signing of the Regional Economic Partnership with Caricom, signalled the end of traditional economic relationships with the community, and, in effect, a downgrading of Caricom’s significance for the old continent. The redefinition of the boundaries of the EU has created a variety of members with no sympathy for these relatively small states, and with objectives of extending the geopolitical interests of Europe eastwards and into Asia. Further, the European interest in the Caribbean is signalled by its apparent sense that it will be easier to deal with the Central American st
ates than ourselves, with countries like Portugal and Spain reinforcing their interest in South and Central America.
Venezuela and Brazil’s determination to resist the establishment of an FTAA as designed by the United States, further diminishes the hopes of some Caricom states of having a redefined, secure economic space in the hemisphere. And in any case, the Caricom states have themselves indicated their unwillingness to be so redefined unless the issue of Cuban participation in any future hemispheric economic space is reviewed towards that country’s full participation.
The surprising (certainly to the US) Caricom insistence on this actually reflects a significant Caricom understanding of its self-interest in the inevitable future economic growth and expansion of Cuba in the Caribbean-wide economy; and therefore, the need for a ‘pre-emptive’ Caricom states’ positioning vis-
