On February 25, Marco Rubio, Secretary of State for the United States of America, announced “the expansion of an existing Cuba-related visa restriction policy that targets labour linked to the Cuban labour export program. This expanded policy applies to current or former Cuban government officials, and other individuals, including foreign government officials, who are believed to be responsible for, or involved in, the Cuban labor export program, particularly Cuba’s overseas medical missions. This policy also applies to the immediate family of such persons.” Rubio continued: “Cuba’s labour export programs, which include the medical missions, enrich the Cuban regime, and…deprive ordinary Cubans of the medical care they desperately need in their home country. The United States is committed to countering forced labour practices around the globe. To do so, we must promote accountability not just for Cuban officials responsible for these policies, but also those complicit in the exploitation and forced labour of Cuban workers.”
What has been the response from Caribbean leaders? Three weeks after this bombshell announcement, there has been no collective statement. Jamaican Prime Minister Andrew Holness has not yet weighed in publicly; the Minister of Foreign Affairs and Foreign Trade, Senator Kamina Johnson Smith is reported as saying that “Jamaica has had quite a long history of participation in the Cuban medical cooperation programme, and in fact, that is replicated throughout the Caribbean, so the statement has been received with some concern.”
In Guyana, Kaieteur News has reported that “The Government of Guyana has written to the Trump administration about its policy on the hiring of Cuban medical professionals, enquiring whether there are specific issues the United States of America wants to be addressed.” And this weekend, President Irfaan Ali stated that “We have already responded to the U.S. through our official channels. That is, whatever workers we have here, whether it’s from Cuba, India… you know we have health care workers from all over, from Africa, from India, from Cuba…that they fall under the same labour laws, local labour laws and international labour laws.”
Responses from the Prime Ministers of Dominica and Grenada have been more forthright in their defence of this long-standing relationship with Cuba. Dickon Mitchell, Prime Minister of Grenada noted that “I think from our perspective that we have a legitimate partnership with the people and Government of Cuba who have over several decades provided support to Grenada in the medical field and I think we know what the realities are with our health challenges are in Grenada, particularly for specialist doctors, and so from our perspective we are clear that the partnership that we have with Cuba is legitimate and we will continue to support and defend the partnership.”
Roosevelt Skerritt, Prime Minister of Dominica, stated that “I think it is a matter for us to clarify the matter with the State Department and the US Government. I mean, everybody understands how important the Cuban programme has been and continues to be for many countries in the world, the Caribbean included. I do not believe that any health system public health system in the Caribbean can survive without the support of the medical personnel from Cuba. So it is a matter for us to engage, to seek clarification.”
The Prime Ministers of Antigua and Barbuda, Trinidad and Tobago, Barbados and St. Vincent and the Grenadines have come out with even more direct and robust responses.
Gaston Browne, Prime Minister of Antigua and Barbuda, has “totally reject[ed] the notion that we are involved in any form of human trafficking. These Cuban doctors and nurses represent the core of our healthcare service. If they were to take any punitive action against Caribbean countries because of the involvement of Cubans, they will literally dismantle our healthcare services and put our people at risk. This extraterritorial positioning, articulation, and threats – I don’t know that this is the route we need to go.”
On March 11, at a ceremony to mark the completion of the Port of Spain General Hospital Central Block, Prime Minister of Trinidad & Tobago Keith Rowley pointed out that “We rely a lot for our healthcare delivery on certain specialists who over decades we have obtained from India, from the Philippines, sometimes from Africa and mainly from Cuba. Out of the blue now we are being called human traffickers because we hire technical people who we pay top dollar equal to local rates. but we are now being accused of taking part in a programme where people are being exploited. That’s somebody’s interpretation. And of course there are local people here encouraging them to take away our US visas. I just came back from California, and if I never go back there in my life, I will ensure that the sovereignty of Trinidad and Tobago is known to its people and respected by all.”
One day later, in a statement to Parliament on March 12, Barbados Prime Minister Mia Mottley was just as definitive: “This matter, with the Cubans and the nurses, should tell us everything that we need to know. Barbados does not currently have Cuban medical staff or Cuban nurses, but I will be the first to go to the line and to tell you that we could not get through the pandemic without the Cuban nurses and the Cuban doctors. I will also be the first to tell you that we paid them the same thing that we pay Bajans, and that the notion, as was peddled not just by this government in the U.S., but the previous government, that we were involved in human trafficking by engaging with the Cuban nurses was fully repudiated and rejected by us. Now, I don’t believe that we have to shout across the seas, but I am prepared, like others in this region, that if we cannot reach a sensible agreement on this matter, then if the cost of it is the loss of my visa, to the U.S., then so be it. But what matters to us is principles. And I have said over and over that principles only mean something when it is inconvenient to stand by it. Now we don’t have to shout, but we can be resolute. And I therefore look forward to standing with my CARICOM brothers, I wish I could say brothers and sisters, but brothers, to be able to ensure that we explain that what the Cubans have been able to do for us, far from approximating itself to human trafficking, has been to save lives and limbs and sight for many a Caribbean person.”
Speaking in Portland, Jamaica last week, Prime Minister of St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Ralph Gonsalves, told the audience: “The Secretary of State of the USA has issued a statement that countries…which are complicit in his words with trafficking in persons and exploiting Cuban professionals, the doctors and engineers who come, that they, those who are complicit…will lose their visas [and so will their families]…and if he knows the facts, I am sure he will understand that we are not involved in that. But if it is determined that you have to take away my visa and Eloise’s [Prime Minister Gonsalves’ wife] visa, I want to say this publicly. It could be reported. I’m not looking to fight with anybody. But we have to be honest and open. The hemodialysis which we do in St. Vincent at the modern medical and diagnostic centre with these 60 persons. Without the Cubans there I would not be able to offer that service. So. Does anybody expect that I…because I want to keep a visa, that I would let 60 persons from the poor and working people to die? It would never happen.”
Professor Sir Hilary Beckles, Vice-Chancellor of the University of the West Indies, had this to say: “…I saw the Prime Minister of the Republic here, Dr. Rowley, making it clear that this country will not be intimidated in respect of the support given by the Cuban health services. And we’re being told that we have to pay a price if we continue to collaborate on a regional basis. I see the Prime Minister of Antigua and Barbuda, Gaston Browne, has said the same thing…If you go to the University of Havana right now…you will see a building, and on that building it says, University of the West Indies, Centre for Sustainable Development. There in Havana, in their University, we built that there, working with the government and people of Cuba…”
CARICOM heads were meeting when the announcement from the US Secretary of State was made. The Minister of Foreign Affairs and Foreign Trade of Jamaica said two weeks ago that CARICOM foreign affairs ministers were scheduled to meet on this matter. Guyana’s Vice-President Bharat Jagdeo has stated that “there is a regional as well as national engagement with the US State Department on these matters.” But the CARICOM website has no press statements, no communiques, no statements by CARICOM Heads, no releases from foreign affairs ministers. And we have some bold and clear positions on record from the Prime Ministers of Trinidad and Tobago, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, and Barbados. But then we have the statement made just a few days ago by Jamaica’s Health and Wellness Minister, Dr. Christopher Tufton, that suggests something quite different, something that seems like a contingency plan to replace Cuban medical personnel if the efforts to persuade the US government do not succeed: “We have had a strategic plan which we are moving ahead with. I’m actually travelling to the Philippines in a few weeks to consolidate some of the conversations that took place with the Minster who came to Jamaica and we have a signed MOU to pursue certain bilateral arrangements. We have had discussions with the Nigerians and in fact we have approvals for some faculty to come in and nurses. I met with them last week. I met with the Indian High Commissioner this week.
There are some conversations around that; there is a possibility I could be there also. The point I’m making is that we are not going to surrender or give up in terms of efforts, and if it means a void is created we will have to find a way to fill that void.”
So what exactly is CARICOM’s position? Foreign policy coordination is after all one of the mandates of this body. Where is the region? Caribbean folks in the region and diaspora want and deserve to know.
In the absence of a CARICOM statement, we leave the readers with this passionate defence of Cuba from a Caribbean citizen on social media (roughly translated from Jamaican):
“Me can tell the heads of state of Jamaica, if the Cubans cannot stay here, so shall the US embassy and so shall the USA not stay here either, you understand me, so it’s simple, if the Cubans cannot stay in Jamaica, so shall the US embassy shall just close down and go home back…my great grandmother, my foreparents, if you see how dem eye, if yuh see how cataract, the Cubans come and clean cataract off a dem eye. Mek me tell you something, Prime Minister of Jamaica, be mindful, beware, and know what you are doing, and the decision that you are making. If you don’t understand the system, please go back and read your history. Look at the Jose Marti High School, look at the Sav-La-Mar Hospital…don’t play around with the Cubans, yeah, and we will forever stand with the Cubans. Cuban have been sanctioned for sixty years, sixty years by the United States of America, and all now they have not lifted none of these sanctions from Fidel Castro days till now and the Cubans, as a country that have more than seventy, more than 150 sanctions on dem, help Jamaica more than America.
The most help America give Jamaica and the Caribbean is M-16 gun, is Glock 45, is AK 47, those are the things that America help Jamaica with…and we call them a partner?” The Caribbean citizen closed the powerful commentary with these remarks on the possibility of restrictions for refusing to back down on Cuba: If there are sanctions, “we can know who we truly is, because without a sanction Jamaica will never know who dem really is.”
