D.K. Duncan
Fidel Castro's decision to step down as president of Cuba's National Assembly marks the end of an era, or "several eras", as Prime Minister Bruce Golding has suggested. With amazing alacrity, on Tuesday, February 19, 2008, the Jamaican Parliament through its elected representatives, took note of Castro's decision not to continue as president of the Cuban National Assembly.
Prime Minister Golding, in taking the initiative, spoke in positive terms of the former president's role as the longest serving head of state in modern history. Opposition Leader Portia Simpson Miller was more specific in her contribution. Members on both sides of the House supported and expanded on the positive sentiments expressed by the two leaders. The Senate followed in the same vein on Friday, February 22, 2008. For the first time there was a bipartisan point of unity around the Cuban question.
The Era: 1973-1979
Ché Guevara
One of the "several eras" that deserves some amount of reflection at this time is the decade of the 1970s. This period marked a qualitative deepening of the relations between Jamaica and Cuba at several levels - state, party and personal level. To a large extent the deepening of these relations was significantly influenced by the personal relationship that developed between the two leaders of that decade - Michael Manley and Fidel Castro. They met for the first time in 1973. Fidel had invited Michael and other Caribbean leaders to accompany him on his aircraft to the fourth Summit of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) to be held in Algiers.
Glowing terms
By the time the sixth summit of the NAM was held in Havana in September 1979, Manley described Castro in glowing terms, "... our hemisphere has had a movement and a man, a catalyst and a rock: and the movement is the Cuban Revolution and the man is Fidel Castro."
These were fighting words from the Jamaican leader, who had been directly pressured by US emissaries not to attend the conference in Cuba. These words rallied the 'reactionary forces' to defeat the Michael Manley government one year later on October 30, 1980.
When Manley was sworn in as prime minister of Jamaica in March 1972, he had not yet visited Cuba. Prior to that, persons who visited or attempted to visit Cuba, in the period between the 'Triumph of the Revolution' on January 1, 1959, and the early 1970s, had their passports taken away. Documents, books, periodicals, newspapers which referred to revolution, socialism, communism or Black Power were considered to be subversive literature. Persons found with them were brought before the courts. They faced jail terms if convicted.
One PNP leader, Dudley Thompson, the future minister of foreign affairs, stood out as a frequent visitor to Cuba. His relationship with Fidel and "several" progressive African leaders in the 1960s would serve Manley and the PNP well in the 1970s.
Golden opportunity
The long trip to and from Algiers gave Manley and Castro a golden opportunity to exchange views. This they did and the friendship became a lasting one. Manley's reaction to Castro seemed to mirror that of Ernesto 'Che' Guevara in 1955. 'Che' described this meeting with Fidel in his diary - "A political event was that I met Fidel Castro; the Cuban revolutionary. He is a young, intelligent guy, very sure of himself and extra-ordinarily audacious."
When Fidel and his guerillas descended from the Sierra Maestra on January 1, 1959, Che was at his side. Six years before, the failed attack on the Moncada Barracks, in 1953, had given rise to the 26th of July movement. The PNP Youth Organisation celebrated this event annually throughout the 1970s as it signalled the beginning of the movement - the catalyst.
Manley's trip to the fourth NAM and his conversations with Castro marked a turning point in Jamaican-Cuban relations. Following the Algiers trip, ties between the Jamaican and Cuban state were extended, moving from consulate-status to embassy-status. The then Senator Ben Clare became Jamaica's first ambassador to Cuba.
At the same time, Manley also played a key role in the united action by the other large Caribbean states - Guyana, Trinidad and Tobago as well as Barbados, in the setting up of Cuban embassies in their specific countries. The relationship between the Cuban Revolutionary organisation and the PNP developed. By the time of the first Congress of the Communist Party of Cuba (PCC) in December 1975, the PNP was represented at the level of its general secretary.
By the time Manley made his first visit to Cuba in 1975 plans had been made for Cuba to send doctors to Jamaica, build schools like Jose Marti, G.C. Foster, Garvey Maceo and Montpelier, and a youth construction brigade from Jamaica, later termed 'Brigadistas', was already in Cuba.
Fidel returned the compliment when he visited Jamaica in 1977. Castro won the hearts of the Jamaican people - a modern miracle considering the aversion of the Jamaican electorate to the 'communist bogey'. The Jamaican people again applauded when Fidel emerged from the North Street Roman Catholic Cathedral, having paid tribute to his friend Michael at his funeral in 1997.
United against apartheid
This growing admiration for Fidel among Jamaicans had its genesis in the concrete role that Fidel and the Cuban people played in the anti-apartheid struggle. In December 1975, Fidel sent a private emissary to Michael seeking his and Jamaica's support for the sending of Cuban troops to assist the Angolan people through the MPLA (the Angolan Political Organisation). The racist South African regime was moving troops to one of the front-line states to support their allies UNITA against the MPLA. Manley's response was swift and positive.
Position of support
As general secretary, I attended the Cuban Party Conference later that month. At a press conference, I was asked about the PNP's stand on the question of Cuban troops in Angola. On behalf of the party, I repeated the party president's position of support.
During that same month, the US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger was in Jamaica on vacation in Ocho Rios. He 'summoned' Manley to his resort. Manley responded by inviting him to Jamaica House. This meeting which discussed Cuban troops in Angola, Cuban relations, financial assistance among other things, became a turning point in US-Jamaica relations. Manley refused to retreat from support for the Cuban presence in Angola. Kissinger did not follow through on his promise of economic assistance to Jamaica.
The Jamaican establishment, which was furious when Manley travelled to Algiers with Fidel in 1973, were even more upset at this turn of events. The Jamaican electorate responded on December 15, 1976, by returning the PNP to office with a resounding victory - the largest electoral victory up to that time.
Manley was passionate about the lifting of US sanctions against Cuba. Prime Minister Golding feels that the time has come. US presidential candidate hopeful, Barack Obama, sees the need for a change in the approach to the making of US foreign policy. That "fierce urgency of now" which inspires Obama, if history decides, would lead to this shift in US-Cuba relations - in Fidel's lifetime.
That audacity which Ché perceived in Fidel in 1955 - which has survived nine successive US presidents over the 49 years - may yet prove to be the key characteristic of this extraordinary leader.
C.L.R. James, the famous Trinidadian, writing in the preface to his masterpiece, The Black Jacobins, stated: "Great men make history, but only such history as it is possible for them to make. Their freedom of achievement is limited by the necessities of their environment. To portray the limits of those necessities and the realisation, complete or partial, of all possibilities, that is the true business of the historian."
Dominated the 1970s and beyond
Two Caribbean men, "bestriding the narrow world like a Colossus", dominated the 1970s and beyond. Nurtured and spawned in the crucibles of the Cold War - catapulted to leadership by their concern for the social and economic inequalities of their peoples. Two men, sharing a gift of communication rarely seen in the same generation - lifting the levels of political consciousness to levels that cannot be reversed.
Aime Césaire, the West Indian poet, reminds us even if we only reflect that, "... the work of man is only just beginning and it remains to man to conquer all the violence entrenched in the recesses of his passion, and no race possesses the monopoly of beauty, of intelligence, of force, and there is a place for all at the rendezvous of victory."
The years 1973-1979 represent an era which challenges the historian to review the role of individuals in the making of history. At times, Fidel Castro must have felt like Gregory Isaacs, when he sang "One man against the world."
Dr. D.K. Duncan, the incumbent MP for Eastern Hanover, is a former general secretary in the PNP administration of the 1970s.
