January 1, 2009 marks the 50th anniversary of the Cuban Revolution, with commemorative events held in virtually every corner of the world. This week we carry excerpts of an acceptance speech given by Jamaican economist Norman Girvan earlier this month at the University of Havana, where he was awarded the degree of Doctor of Economic Sciences, Honoris Causa.
The entire speech can be accessed at http://normangirvan.info
By Norman Girvan
At the time of the Triumph of the Cuban Revolution I had just left High School and started my first job. The events of 1959 were followed with great interest and mounting excitement by my generation in Jamaica. I listened to the First Declaration of Havana during my first year at University in Jamaica. Fidel’s passionate denunciations of Yanqui imperialism — the profits of American corporations obtained at the price of undernourishment and infant mortality in Latin America — are still ringing in my ears.
The image of a million Cubans, assembled in one place as the National General Assembly of the People of Cuba, expressing their approval of the social and economic measures taken by the Revolution, and declaring their independence of foreign domination, was a transformative experience for me.
West Indian territories were then preparing for national independence. The Cuban Revolution was a source of inspiration to many of us on the ability of a small Caribbean country to chart its own course of social justice, economic transformation, and national independence by relying on the will and energy of its people; with a leadership that trusted the mass of the population and refused to bow before threats, economic punishment and counter-revolutionary violence from the greatest military power on the planet; just 140 kilometres from its shores.
I am reminded of the words of Prime Minister Michael Manley of Jamaica at the Non-Aligned Summit of 1980; that Latin America and the Caribbean could count ‘on a movement and a rock; and that movement is the Cuban Revolution and that rock is Fidel Castro’.
In my contact with Cubans as individuals what has always stood out to me are your professionalism, your discipline, your organization, your individual and national self-confidence combined with a total absence of a sense of superiority, your value system that is not driven by the worship of money and material objects, your willingness to share and your solidarity with others.
I hope you never lose those qualities. You are an example to the rest of us.
We in the Caribbean, especially those of my generation, will never forget the contribution made by Cuban men and women to the liberation of southern Africa from the scourge of apartheid.
We will never forget the 70-odd young men and women of Cuba, Guyana and other countries who were taken to their deaths off the coast of Barbados in 1976, victims of one of the most heinous acts of terrorism in the history of our region.
We will never forget the support provided by Cuba to the people of Grenada during their revolutionary process in 1979-1983; nor the unequivocal condemnation by Cuba of the murder of Maurice Bishop and several others when that process came to a tragic end, and the Cubans who gave their lives in the invasion that followed.
For a country in Cuba’s position to have survived the collapse of the Soviet Union, with all that that brought about in the disappearance of markets, of vital supplies of food, fuel and spare parts, a huge fall in national income; to have survived this catastrophe, in the face of a tightening in the US embargo; to have survived it while preserving many, if not most of the gains of your Revolution, without widespread crime and major social unrest, without brutal political repression of the kind that we have seen in many other countries experiencing much less severe degrees of structural adjustment; for this to have happened defies all social, economic and political logic.
I believe that this ‘miracle’ can only be explained by the practice of a profound participatory democracy in Cuba, with a leadership that explains everything, a people that discusses everything, an economic adjustment that was equitably shared, and a people determined to defend their Revolution and their independence, no matter what the cost.
But the thing that stands out most of all, is the internationalism of the Cuban people.
The Guyanese revolutionary Walter Rodney is reported to have said once – while still a high school student – that “West Indians live more in time than in space”. This is one of the most profound statements ever made about the Caribbean condition.
What did he mean by this? I believe he was saying that the West Indian sense of self, of our place in the world, is governed more by a consciousness of the historical forces that have shaped us than by the geographical confines of our existence.
It cannot be an accident, for instance, that Marcus Mosiah Garvey, the first person from the English-speaking Caribbean to create an anti-imperialist mass movement, was a Pan-Africanist.
His political organization encompassed most of the English speaking islands, with branches in Cuba, Central America and the Continental United States. Garvey lived more in time than in space. He helped to inspire Mandela, Kenyatta and Nkrumah. He was followed by outstanding Pan Africanists from our islands and mainland, like George Padmore, CLR James, Sylvester Williams and Walter Rodney.
People could not understand how Michael Manley, leader of a tiny nation of 2 million people, could have the audacity to campaign for a New International Economic Order.
Bob Marley called for “World Citizenship, and the Rule of International Morality”.
And Jose Marti spoke not only of ‘Nuestra America’. He proclaimed “Patria es Humanidad”—the Fatherland is Humanity—the message of welcome that greets visitors to Cuba arriving at the airport in Havana that bears his name. Jose Marti lived more in time than in space. And his legacy of internationalism is sustained by Che, by Fidel, and by the entire Cuban people. And that sense of internationalism is a psychic bond between us as Caribbean people. And the practice of international solidarity that flows from it is what I think of most, when I think of the Cuban Revolution.
In 1985 I attended a Conference here on the External Debt of Latin America and the Caribbean. Fidel proclaimed ‘La Deuda es Impagable’—‘The Debt is Unpayable’!
Tonight, as I thank you for this honour you have given me, from one of the most distinguished Universities in our hemisphere, which I accept not only in my name but in the name of my generation of Pan-Caribbean thinkers, in the names of Lloyd Best and George Beckford and others in the New World Group; tonight I want to acknowledge to Cuba that la deuda es impagable.
But I do not mean the debt that is owed to the banks by the people of Latin America and the Caribbean, and is measured in United States dollars. I mean the debt that is owed to the Cuban people by the rest of the Caribbean and indeed by all humanity, that is measured by their sacrifices and solidarity and the unshakeable resolve of their leadership.
For the 185,000 Cuban medical personnel who have served in 103 countries in the last ten years alone, la deuda es impagable.
For the nearly 350 million visits carried out by Cuba’s Global Health Programmes in poor communities abroad in the past seven years, for the one million four hundred thousand lives that have been saved, and for the 327,000 persons who have had their sight restored under Operation Milagro, la deuda es impagable.
For the 2,451,000 persons in 13 countries who have learned to read and write through Cuban literacy programmes, la deuda es impagable.
For the 27,000 students from 120 countries studying in Cuba and for the thousands of scholarships granted to sons and daughters of the Caribbean to gain a higher education, la deuda es impagable.
For the 330,000 Cubans who served in Angola from 1975 to 1991, and for the blood of 2,000 who gave their lives in the struggle against the racist regime, and for the families whom they left behind, la deuda es impagable.
For doing all this, while withstanding an economic embargo for nearly half a century from the mightiest power on the planet, that cost an estimated $93 billion dollars, equivalent to 12 times the foreign debt of Cuba, for the material sacrifices and hardship you have endured, providing hope and inspiration to the rest of the world, la deuda es impagable.
For invoking the immortal words of your National Hero Jose Marti, that ‘Patria es Humanidad’, and for living it, day by day, month by month, year by year and decade by decade, la deuda es impagable.
For giving universal meaning to the ‘Patria’ in the pledge, ‘Patria or Muerte, Venceremos!’, la deuda es impagable.
