ON THE EVE of hosting yesterday’s 40th anniversary event at the University of the West Indies Cave Hill Campus on the theme The Meaning And Implications Of Cuba-CARICOM Diplomatic Relations In The Current Global Politico-Economic Environment, Cuba’s embassy in Barbados issued a statement that underscored its government’s deep appreciation of the “friendship and solidarity” maintained by the Caribbean Community.
The four decades of continuing cooperation between Cuba and CARICOM had its genesis in the bold, historic initiative by a quartet of Community states – Barbados, Guyana, Guyana and Trinidad and Tobago – to jointly establish diplomatic relations on December 8, 1972, with the government in Havana facing a fiercely hostile United States foreign policy to isolate it internationally.
“Friendship” and “solidarity” were to become embedded in the diplomatic lexicon of CARICOM-Cuba expressions of mutual cooperation – whether at scheduled meetings in Havana or in varied capitals of the Community, as well at times of severe political challenges and even human tragedies.
For example, the terrorists bombing of a Cubana passenger aircraft over Barbados on October 6, 1976, that killed all 73 people aboard.
The terrorism weapon employed by United States-trained and financed anti-Cuba agents has long been a recurring factor and maintained along with the unprecedented trade, financial and economic embargo implemented by successive Washington administrations against a comparatively small Caribbean nation.
As recent as February this year, the United States government of President Barack Obama spurned a renewed proposal by Cuba for a bilateral programme between the two nations to combat terrorism.
Ironically, according to a statement from the Cuban Foreign Ministry, the United States State Department chose instead to arbitrarily list Cuba among states it deems “sponsors of international terrorism” – without providing specific evidence.
According to the Cuban government, “the United States does not have the slightest authority to judge us . . . ”. The administration in Havana has argued that, on the contrary, “it is well known that the US government has used state-sponsored terrorism as a weapon of its policy against Cuba which has resulted in 3 478 deaths and 2 099 disabled victims, while sheltering dozens of terrorists who live freely in its territory . . .”.
Against the harsh realities of a half-century of the US-imposed economic blockade against Cuba, and now Washington’s arbitrary categorization of it as a sponsor of international terrorism, it seems that Havana’s “friendship” with CARICOM may require at least a collective request by the Community’s governments for the United States to scrub Cuba from its “sponsors of state terrorism” list.
Such a call by CARICOM could well include a request for evidence of the claimed acts of terrorism, if the allegation is not to be dismissed as lacking credibility and simply designed to justify America’s maintenance of the trade and economic embargo against Cuba, which is also a member of the CARIFORUM group of countries (CARICOM plus the Dominican Republic).
