Dear Editor,
Your news item that contains a call from Caricom leaders to ‘End the embargo in Cuba,’ (December 9), smacks of the type of hypocrisy that is the hallmark of nations that have benefited from the democratic system, a system that allowed leaders to be freely elected by people who have the constitutional right to vote in regular elections.
Have they soon forgotten that when the former Soviet Union was pushing on all fronts, including through Cuba, to end democracy and establish communism as the supreme ideology for governments to embrace, the United States was leading the fight for democracy to stay strong and grow?
And now, because of this valiant fight by the United States, many countries, including all in the West Indies that adhere to some basic form of democracy, can now enjoy the freedom of electing governments, freedom of travel, freedom of association, freedom of speech and even freedom to call on the US government to end its embargo against Cuba.
Yet not one of these democratically elected leaders can find the guts to tell the Castro brothers that while the concerned peoples of the world sympathize with the Cubans in the face of the US imposed embargo, that they (the Castros) also have to do their part and end the ‘political embargo’ they imposed on their own people.
Are these democratically elected leaders not confident in the democratic system enough to want to sell the concept to the Castro brothers and their communist honchos in Havana? How can they look at how their own people enjoy the freedoms they have and yet not believe that Cubans also long to enjoy what their West Indian counterparts enjoy?
I want to specifically ask every single freely elected Caricom leader: Do you believe you would have been in power today if the Soviet Union and Cuba had succeeded in turning the region into a socialist Mecca?
Then there are the usual apologists who quickly crawl out of the woodwork to challenge the US’s own hypocrisy for doing business with countries that, like Cuba, do not have democratic governments! They specifically mention China and Saudi Arabia, among a few. While they have a minor point, there is an important element in politics that these apologists do not take into consideration: None of those countries ever literally challenged the United States militarily! And moreso, from a mere ninety miles away from American shores! (This does not excuse the absence of needed reforms in non-democratic allies of America, but it explains why Cuba has been specifically singled out.)
At the height of the Cold War when the superpowers − America and the Soviet Union − fought to promote their respective ideologies, Cuba received a nuclear missile (some say one, others say more than one) and had it strategically positioned to hit American soil in the event of an American attack on Cuba. That was as close to a direct threat to America the Soviet Union got vicariously through Cuba, and there was almost a war!
Ever since then, both Republican and Democratic parties that formed the US government maintained the embargo that has been more a punitive measure for the daring threat of a nuclear attack than it was merely for Cuba’s ideology.
Since America has not been affected by the embargo, but Cuba has, this is all the more reason why if there is any change to come about it has to be done simultaneously by the United States and Cuba with a respected third party to monitor the progress of changes in both US’s foreign policy towards Cuba and Cuba’s internal policy towards its own people.
As a Guyanese who lived through Burnham’s authoritarianism, I can empathize somewhat with what Cubans are going through, but since most Caricom countries never had such nightmarish experiences, their leaders can’t seem to relate to the silent cry of the Cuban people.
Or is it that these leaders are sending a subtle message to their fellow West Indians back home that what obtains in Cuba will sooner or later obtain throughout the region? Notice that Fidel Castro received an Honorary Order of the Caribbean Community Award! Given the timing of this award against the background of the Castro strongman rule, Guyanese have a right to ask if and when President Bharrat Jagdeo will receive his award?
Of all Caricom leaders, President Jagdeo ought to know how important it is for free and fair elections to be held for people in a country. He also ought to know and do better than he is currently doing in the myriad areas that constitute the democratic process and not keep settling for the notion that democracy starts and ends at the polling booth!
Yours faithfully,
Emile Mervin
