T&T backlash

Even as Washington, DC in the United States (US) has reportedly eased conditions allowing individuals to apply for licences to supply Cuba with Venezuelan oil, one of the Caribbean’s leaders has been condemned to the “dustbin of history” for her perceived role in the capture of Venezuela President Nicolás Maduro, Cuba’s oil lifeline.

Professor Brian Meeks, one of Jamaica’s and the Caribbean’s leading scholars, said he believes Kamla Persad-Bissessar, the prime minister of Trinidad and Tobago, will be remembered with contempt for her rhetoric amid the crippling humanitarian crisis in Cuba, blamed on 67 years of economic embargo and, more recently, a fuel blockade aimed at bringing the country to its knees.

Persad-Bissessar, a fierce ally of the US, was criticial of 10 former regional leaders who last week repudiated the latest action by the US which in January imposed the fuel blockade on the Caribbean island, forcing Cuba to cut its workweek, reduce schools to operating only in daylight hours, and forgo instructions requiring video displays.

The T&T prime minister has also opened her country’s air and sea space to the US military.

Meeks, a professor of Africana Studies at Brown University in Rhode Island, as well as being an author, poet and former head of the Department of Government at The University of the West Indies, Mona, was responding to questions during a guest presentation at a meeting of the Kiwanis Club of Kingston on Tuesday night.

Professor Meeks spoke on the topic ‘Cuba, the Caribbean and the new Monroe Doctrine’.

SORDID MOMENT

The Monroe Doctrine of 1823 was a foreign policy in which the then US president, James Monroe, sought to grow US hegemony via political, economic and military predominance in the Western Hemisphere. The doctrine established spheres of influence, declaring that the western part of the world was the American continent and it would no longer be open to European powers.

“Let me start with Persad-Bissessar. I think that she is going to be confined to the dustbin of history for her approach to this entire episode,” Meeks said, in responding to a question from the audience about the role of the Trinidad and Tobago prime minister in “aiding and abetting” the capture and removal of Maduro by US Special Forces on January 3.

“One would think that, coming from a place like Trinidad and Tobago, which has a glorious history of standing on certain basic anti-colonial principles, that she will perhaps have a chance to reflect on this and look at where she’s going in the future. But history is going to be not kind to her when this story is fully told, and we don’t know all the details, but the little pieces that we do know, it is a sordid, sordid moment in the history of the government of Trinidad and Tobago.”

Last week, the former regional leaders issued a statement denouncing the fuel blockade, and urging humanitarian assistance. They said the region owed Cuba a debt of gratitude for its assistance over the years, and urged support for the Cuban people.

Persad- Bissessar allowed the US to operate in its territorial waters ahead of the capture and removal of the Venezuelan president, who was under pressure internally, accused of retaining power through elections manipulation and fraud.

Maduro was hand-picked by the late Hugo Chávez, a nemesis of the US. Venezuela, it was agreed, was a lifeline for Cuba, providing fuel to the country and snubbing US efforts to choke the communist nation.

With Maduro captured, removed, and facing criminal charges in the US, the application of the Monroe Doctrine is expected to see both Cuba and Venezuela align to US interests. Each country was an ally of the former USSR, now Russia, with one dominant political party, though smaller parties exist. However, there is little tolerance for political opposition.

During Tuesday night’s meeting of the Kiwanis Club of Kingston, via Zoom, it was acknowledged that despite the almost 70-year embargo, Cuba has one of the highest literacy levels in the region, training more doctors and teachers per capita than any other country in the world. The nation has been surviving on the strength of its health system, which has provided doctors and nurses to countries facing disasters, especially in Africa and parts of Europe.

Cuba’s Ambassador to Jamaica Tania Larroque Lopez has said that the current humanitarian crisis has forced her country to conduct only life-saving emergency surgeries.

Meeks was also questioned about Jamaica’s role in CARICOM and the regional bloc’s approach to the crisis, given Cuba’s decades of generosity to nations in the Caribbean.

“In relation to Jamaica, I can’t say. Being an interlocutor or an intermediary, it could be all kinds of things. It could be a cop-out, as much as it could be a real way to move things forward. Let’s take the most generous approach to this and say that there is always a role for an interlocutor at moments of crisis, and if we can play a role genuinely, to lead to an end to the blockade, you can’t compromise on that. You can’t be interlocutor and the blockade continues. No, the blockade is illegal, and it is wrong. You may not want to use my words, but find the words necessary for us to end it. But, frankly, if that is a cop-out, then we will know pretty soon,” Meeks argued.

Addressing the 50th Regular Meeting of the Conference of Heads of Government of CARICOM in St Kitts and Nevis earlier on Tuesday, Prime Minister Dr Andrew Holness called for political and economic reforms in Cuba, an identical call to that of the US. While stating that Jamaica stood in solidarity with the Cuban people, Holness said the situation did not require rhetoric, but clarity, and that Jamaica supported capitalism and multi-party democracy.

Speaking at the same CARICOM meeting, Persad-Bissessar said her country would not support dictatorship, whether in Cuba, Venezuela or any Caribbean territory. She also reiterated her support for the US military presence in the Caribbean to address, according to Washington, the illegal drug trade.

In seeking to solidify his argument about the Monroe Doctrine, Meeks said the US seizure of an oil tanker with 1.6 million barrels of oil last December in the Caribbean, the continuing sinking of more than 25 “so-called drug boats and the killing of more than 130 people, among them Venezuelans, Colombians, Trinidadians, and St Lucians”, were events over which there should be grave concerns. He posited that the large US naval flotilla in the Caribbean, and the subsequent invasion of Venezuela and kidnapping of Maduro “with the aim, clearly stated by the [US] State Department, to starve that country”, was all part of the doctrine.

“All of these moves together constitute a flagrant abandonment of international law. Surrounding each of these separate sets of incidents are enormous questions around whether there is indeed an international law, whether sovereignty exists for small states, did it ever, and, for us in the Caribbean, existential questions on our future as purportedly independent states,” Meeks said.

“At the forefront of the conversation has been statements from the president of the US [Donald Trump] that the Monroe Doctrine has returned in a new form, which he refers to [as the ‘Donroe Doctrine’]. Typical self-aggrandising, narcissistic passion.”

erica.virtue@gleanerjm.com