JG - Jamaica, Cuba and the Caribbean's voice

From my archive of press clippings:

Jamaica Gleaner

Jamaica, Cuba and the Caribbean's voice

published: Sunday May 18, 2008

Robert Buddan -POLITICS OF OUR TIME

Bruce Golding's visit to Cuba last week signifies two things. The realities of the world order have made redundant the old idea that 'the west' or the United States can be the centre of our foreign policy as the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) thought it should be in the 1960s and 1980s. The People's National Party (PNP) had never believed it and courted 'the South', including Cuba, in the 1970s, the 1990s and beyond. Right up to the September elections, supporters of the JLP were still naively of the old view. But the crises of oil, trade and food have kept the JLP doing business with Venezuela, Cuba and China and remaining steadfast in CARICOM, even calling on Guyana to help with rice production.

Read the whole article here.

Snippet(s):

"The other signal is this: Jamaica and Cuba can entertain relations on a bilateral level to meet specific needs, such as in agriculture, water, housing, tourism and health. But at the same time, they can engage in a more global vision of change in the world order."

"Golding has promised President Raul Castro that he will use Jamaica's influence to improve relations between Cuba and the United States.

This is not likely to help much. Golding has little, if any, influence over Bush.

What is more, with four Jamaican Members of Parliament on the government's side holding American citizenship and another having Venezuelan citizenship, the Jamaican government could be seriously compromised considering the aggressive actions being taken against American citizens who violate the Cuban embargo and whose allegiance is sworn to the United States."

&

"US policy towards Cuba was not an irrelevant hangover of the Cold War but a clash of two world orders.

There is the current world order that the United States supports and a different vision of a world order that Cuba supports, one costly to the United States."