Cuba - solidarity and silence

On the day this was published in the Trinidad and Tobago Guardian, my country shamelessly voted not to support the resolution, Antigua & Barbuda, Saint Lucia, and Dominica stayed away, while Guyana, Haiti, and Jamaica abstained.

October 28, 2026

I first visited Cuba in 1987. I was detained at the airport. Was intensely interrogated during my trip to the hotel. Wrote a poem in which I surmised: “no place for a Trini”. Was told upon my return that “Special Branch” had come to my media house asking questions.

Then, I was roundly admonished by editor, Raoul Pantin, for repeatedly referencing “Fidel” in my copy. “What happen? He is your friend?”

Mention of “Fidel’s” hours-long speech one day was part of a mini-series on the labour movement in Cuba, how the media there operated, and some reflections on Havana and the sand at Playa Guanabo.

There were people back home who insisted that all was well there. Trinidad and Tobago had defiantly established diplomatic relations in 1972, alongside Barbados, Guyana, and Jamaica. To some, this had been complete anathema. To others, an opportunity for political romanticism not to be missed.

I concluded in 1987 that none of this deserved anything short of well-informed critical review. This was clearly not a straight-forward story.

It was true that while most people welcomed the 1959 overthrow of a corrupt regime that had itself forcibly seized power in 1952, not enough was subsequently done to recognise the relationship between development and human rights. We confronted a similar challenge in Grenada between 1979 and 1983 – solidarity reinforced by sycophantic silence on important challenges.

When I returned to Cuba in 2003 as an international conference rapporteur, having ended my Prensa Latina dispatches some years prior, things appeared more relaxed. But, yes, I was called aside in the hotel lobby and asked to identify people in a photo album. Yes, I had previously turned down a request to interview the wife of a detained journalist. Yes, I linked the two developments … and hereby confess to having “seen” but not looked at those photos.

I also knew my movements around Havana had been monitored and reported back to people I had not realised cared about my camera-bearing wanderings.

Delivering conference Report 2003

What I captured through those two encounters, though, was a country far more Caribbean than it cared to acknowledge. It had never considered Caricom membership. Regular people yearned for something different, but not at the expense of what they considered to be the badge of sovereign status.

That while external pressures to become different people persisted, there was a sense of being obstinately and uniquely Cuban.

There was also the fact that while some observers were prepared to remain silent on or actively rationalise human rights abuse, state neglect of some groups, and the unequal denial of opportunity, there were many who thought things could have been different through both the reform of official behaviour and the withdrawal of sadistic actions by others.

This was not a linear case of “good” vs “bad”. There was space to lobby for internal change even as regional friends militantly opposed aggressive, maliciously harmful outside pressures such as the embargo.

In a sense, Caribbean support for successive United Nations resolutions against far-reaching sanctions against Cuba could have more incessantly relayed knowledgeable, nuanced views on travesties against these Caribbean men, women, children, and babies.

Trinidad and Tobago's annual support for a resolution on the matter now spans decades and is before the UN General Assembly again today. Such support has been bipartisan, consistent, and defiant.

If the intention is to correct internal tensions and anomalies, this cannot occur in the midst of hunger, deprivation, and the sabotaging of the means through which a country and its people may pursue more than basic survival.

The current situation represents a near worst-case scenario. There are widespread electricity failures, water shortages, and disruptions in services essential to proper health care and support for the vulnerable. Close to a million people have had to access food aid within recent months and almost 100,000 surgeries have had to be postponed.

An Inter-American Commission on Human Rights report has concluded that while there exists substantial state responsibility for the situation, there have been the undeniably harmful effects of external sanctions and restricted access to international markets.

Few better states to capture the conundrum and to declare solidarity with the affected people than those of the Caribbean.

Today’s UN vote on the “necessity of ending the economic, commercial and financial embargo imposed by the United States of America against Cuba” offers an opportunity for a much more informed update.

I cannot believe there are those who are suggesting our sentiments will be expressed any other way than we have in the past. How could we have reached here?