Cuba, friendship and Kamara Rose

By *Jomo Sanga Thomas

(“Plain Talk” Sept. 27, 2024)

Cuban solidarity is vitally essential to SVG, and Cuban friendship and assistance are critically important to many countries worldwide. It is often said that the world calls, and Cuba answers. Last week Friday, at the Cuban embassy, SVG/Cuba Friendship Society members gathered to meet and greet Tamara Armenteros Alcee, an official from the Cuban Institute of Friendship with the Peoples (ICAP).

Ms Alcee conveyed solidarity, love, friendship, and determination. She told the story of Cuban sacrifice in the face of illegal U.S. sanctions and embargo. She thanked the Vincentian people and government for their crucial solidarity and support. She vowed that the Cuban government and people will always extend a hand of friendship and assistance to those in need.

Ms Alcee also brought a special gift for Kamara Rose, the legendary revolutionary thinker, writer, and leader who did so much to foster greater friendship and understanding of the Cuban revolution. She delivered a medal of friendship from Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canal. 

On July 26, 1976, Renwick Rose, Caspar London, and a group of Vincentian patriots formed the Friendship Society in Kingstown. Apart from friendship, the society promoted cooperation between the peoples of the two countries. It was instrumental in facilitating people-to-people exchanges and paving the way for the first Vincentian students to receive free tertiary training in Cuba, beginning in 1980. Many speakers hailed Rose’s modesty, discipline, commitment and self-sacrifice at the ceremony. One speaker, in tribute, declared him the best prime minister SVG never had.

In accepting the Cuban award, Kamara Rose called on those gathering to redouble their efforts to ensure that Cuba is removed from the ridiculous U.S. list of countries engaged in state-sponsored terrorism. More pointedly, Rose called for friends of Cuba to write their own stories about the struggle to bring an end to the U.S. embargo against Cuba. 

He reminded the audience that on Oct. 6, 1976, a few months after the Friendship Society’s formation, Cubana Airlines 455, en route from Guyana to Cuba, was blown out of the sky by agents of the American Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) minutes after it left Barbados. All 73 persons on board were killed. 

The criminals were never punished. They went on to live lives of comfort in Miami, Florida. U.S. government officials and Cuban counter-revolutionaries celebrated them. Rose noted that the despicable event was the Caribbean people’s baptism to terrorism. He further said that the terrorists then are the major terrorists of today: the U.S. and Israeli governments. We only have to look back at the last year and the engagement and connivance of these governments in the ethnic cleansing and genocide committed against the people in West Asia, particularly Palestine, Lebanon, Syria and Iran.

Among the benefits derived from SVG’s relations with Cuba is that almost 400 Vincentian professionals received scholarships and free education in Cuba. Cuban assistance in university education across the Caribbean and the world runs in the tens of thousands. This solidarity is genuinely phenomenal. No other country in human history has such a record as chalked up by little socialist Cuba.

Lest we forget, Cuban assisted SVG in designing the Argyle International Airport, Georgetown Medical Complex, and Vision Now programme, among other projects. This assistance began as early as 1979 when a vessel filled with humanitarian aid pulled into Kingstown following the eruption of the La Soufriere volcano.

Dougie Slater, a former minister of health and one of the first students to study in Cuba, assured the Cuban Ambassador, Carlos Ernesto Rogriguez Etcheverry and Ms Elcee that Cuba can always count on the friendship and solidarity of the current administration. He warned those who criticised the Gonsalves government not to throw away the proverbial “baby with the bath water”.

Most honest observers have concluded that what used to be called the Vincentian project of development has now been whittled down to the preservation of Gonsalves and his clansmen. The waters have become muddy; vision lacks foresight and insight, and the road to betterment for the citizens is now jammed by selfishness, corruption and a leader who recklessly saddles our nation with debt, all the while celebrating that our debt with Taiwan is a hook in our national gill that he dares anyone to try to remove. 

Dr. Franklyn James, another Cuban graduate, made one of the most perceptive analyses and observations when speaking about the importance of solidarity. He reminded the gathering that Western, particularly U.S., regime-change operations against Venezuela, Libya, and Iran must not be viewed in isolation. These aggressive acts by imperialism, he noted, are intended to ensure that revolutionary Cuba remains isolated and is ultimately strangled and defeated. 

In light of this profoundly correct analysis, Vincentian progressives owe it to themselves and the nation to ask why imperialism has allowed the “progressive” Gonsalves, who has won by the narrowest of margins since 2010, to survive and remain in power. Such courtesy was not accorded to democratically elected governments of Salvador Allende of Chile, Michael Manley of Jamaica, Bertrand Aristide of Haiti, Mohammed Morsi of Egypt, Manuel Zelaya of Honduras, Lula Da Silva of Brazil, Evo Morales of Bolivia, Hugo Chavez or Nicolas Maduro of Venezuela.

The demand is to let Cuba live. The blockage costs the country billions of dollars each year. This loss of revenue could greatly assist in the sister island’s national development. Any analysis based on gross national product will reveal that Cuba has contributed much more to our development than Taiwan since 1979.  

As Fidel Castro said in another context, we must never harbour ingratitude. 

*Jomo Sanga Thomas is a lawyer, journalist, social commentator and a former senator and Speaker of the House of Assembly in St. Vincent and the Grenadines.

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