Commentary: The Greater Caribbean This Week: Cuba, the OAS and the new times
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| Published on Friday, June 15, 2007 |
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By Rubén Silié
The thirty seventh general assembly of the Organisation of American States was held in Panama on June 3-5. The main theme of the meeting was the energy issue, which is a major concern for the entire world and particularly for the majority of the member countries that rely on the importation of oil to mobilise their entire economic infrastructure. The debate broached the problems of access, prices, transportation and other factors that have an economic impact on energy consumption, although it needs to be said that one of the crucial points in the discussion was the matter concerning the sustainability and impact of traditional forms of energy on the environment. In that regard, the meeting did its utmost to discuss and propose several alternatives to address the serious energy problem.
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| Dr Rubén Silié Valdez is the Secretary General of the Association of Caribbean States. Feedback can be sent to: mail@acs-aec.org |
For Panama, the convening of that meeting was an opportunity to commemorate the thirtieth anniversary of the handing over of the Panama Canal to its legitimate authorities. Through this act, Panama regained the full territorial sovereignty which was interrupted by the United States of America for an entire century, since the Canal and its adjacent zones were under the absolute control of that Northern country, after an agreement, bearing no Panamanian signature, was imposed in 1903.
The member countries, together with their hosts, celebrated that achievement, led valiantly and astutely by General Omar Torrijos and which, at that time, garnered the support of all the rational voices of the continent. As for the United States, the negotiations were led by Jimmy Carter, the Democratic President, who was very much committed to the Region’s democracy and whose guidance was an important component in escaping the trap of the Cold War. However, the only country that was absent at that meeting to celebrate the thirtieth anniversary was one of those that emphatically condemned the occupation of the Canal and supported Panama’s fight to fully regain its sovereignty. I’m referring here to Cuba, whose absence was not due to a lack of motivation to celebrate that occasion, since that government surely and undoubtedly must have expressed its congratulations to its brother country by some other means.
That situation led us to contemplate the factors that motivated Cuba’s departure from the OAS. As we all know, in the midst of the Cold War and as a result of it, Cuba found itself at the heart of an international confrontation that produced a sense of intolerance for the revolutionary process embarked upon by the Cuban people to overthrow the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista, the last of a series of corrupt and repressive governments that reigned in Latin America and the Caribbean during the first half of the twentieth century. It is important to recall that this formed part of a dictatorial wave that struck most of the peoples of the continent and which, while unfortunately enjoying international recognition, did not engender great concern, on the part of the great powers of the region, for the fate of the human rights of the citizens of those countries.
This is one of the reasons why, at that time, the Cuban Revolution was the embodiment of the ideals of freedom and democracy for most of the youth throughout Latin America.
However, without going into detail regarding the alleged reasons for Cuba being excluded from the OAS, what is true is that those reasons have been historically surpassed by the life and political history of the continent. Today, although it does not belong to that organisation, Cuba maintains diplomatic relations with the vast majority of OAS member countries and if we had to qualify those relations, we would have to recognise that they do share cordial relations; moreover, they have moved beyond the framework of diplomatic formality, establishing co-operation and exchange programmes, among which education, health and sport stand out above the rest.
What is most important though is that Cuba is a fundamental factor in the treatment of the region’s agenda, as is usually the case, for example, with topics of high importance such as security, drug trafficking, the environment, migration and trade. No one has considered leaving Cuba out of the discussion and creation of consensus regarding such issues, which are so crucial for Latin America and the Caribbean.
Far from seeking to exclude Cuba, repudiation has been growing for the blockade being suffered by that nation and it can be said that there is no international forum in which this rejection has not arisen.
In other words, from the multilateral perspective, Cuba is strongly linked to the resolution of the common problems that affect and concern the remaining countries. Therefore, Cuba is part of the solution because without its consent, there would be no progress in many of the issues mentioned earlier.
Excluding Cuba from the largest political organisation in the region is a means of fanning the embers of a conflict that has ended, because the introduction of globalisation left the diplomacy methods of the Cold War behind and there was a move toward promoting the method of international governments, through the organisations that play that role.
Seeking to guarantee the governance of the region and excluding the voice of one of the countries is to turn one’s back on the new times and complicate the move toward a culture of peace that renounces the old ideological conflicts that served other purposes that have been historically overcome.
The views expressed are not necessarily the official views of the ACS. Feedback can be sent to: mail@acs-aec.org | | | | Reads : 191 | | | |
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