When you are flying high and all is going well, there will be friends a plenty. People will always want to be associated with a winner because she or he will be in the spotlight.
However, it is when one is faced with adversity, trials, doubt, and without prestige, then one discovers the people who are truly friends and those who were simply hangers-on.
We in the Caribbean are not rich nations. Except for our reasonable rankings on the Human Development Index of the United Nations, our natural beauty, hardworking and friendly people, Caribbean countries face enormous challenges.
The nation of Cuba is the largest of the islands. It has the notoriety of being a thorn in the side of our mighty neighbour, the United States of America.
We regard the United States’ obsession with the island nation as neurotic, for there is simply no rational reason why it continues to treat Cuba like a pariah, when the rest of the world has moved on.
We do not seek to relegate the danger that the island posed in the 1960s during the Cuban Missile Crisis, which nearly catapulted this region into war zone, with the threat of war between the US and the Soviet Union.
But that was 60 years ago. From a military perspective, Cuba could be viewed as nothing more than a “toothless tiger” against the mighty USA.
In October 1962, the political and military crisis that erupted over the Soviet Union’s decision to install nuclear-armed missiles in Cuba, led to the US President John F. Kennedy instituting a blockade of the island and announcing a plan to use military action if the missiles were not removed.
Those arms were removed by the Soviet Union with the promise from the Americans not to invade the Fidel Castro-led Cuba.
This is 2022. The missiles have long gone. Fidel Castro has died. His brother Raul Castro who became president following Fidel’s demise, has also departed office.
In 2016, American president Barack Obama and his family visited Cuba and started the process of dismantling some of the economic and trade barriers, only to have them reinstated by his successor Donald Trump.
Cuba’s economy barely survives under the pressure of the embargo and other US hostilities. The Americans, through various acts passed by its Congress, prevents American businesses, and businesses organised under US law or majority-owned by American citizens, from conducting trade with Cuban interests. The embargo has been described as the most enduring in modern history.
It is a most perplexing situation given the absence of any Cuban hostility towards the US. In fact, the Cuban government has for decades practised a health and humanitarian diplomacy that has endeared the country to even the closest of American allies.
This was most pronounced when the COVID-19 pandemic hit. We in Barbados, and many other countries in this region, as well as Europe, benefited from Cuban medical assistance.
Its world-renowned medical doctors and scientists rushed to our aid. For those, who may have forgotten, when most of the developed world was hoarding its medical supplies, medicines, vaccines, and equipment, it was the Cubans who were willing to put self aside and come to aid.
So, it is with a grateful heart that we say: Thank You Cuba! Members of its Henry Reeve Brigade of medical specialists and nurses left the island this week after two years on assignment, assisting Barbadians during a time of crisis.
We were worried about this new disease that has killed over one million Americans and untold numbers around the world.
We were fighting a health and economic crisis. A shortage of nurses and doctors to fully address the needs of COVID-19 infected, while also addressing the other health concerns at our main institution, the Queen Elizabeth Hospital.
Cuban personnel were assigned to geriatric hospitals, the QEH, the Harrison Point Isolation facility and other satellite facilities treating COVID-19 patients.
We do not have enough space to talk about the educational scholarships, free medical surgeries over the years as well as other forms of assistance.
Money can buy you many things, but it cannot assure you of true friendship. Cuba does not have money to lend us to relieve our economic woes, but they have given us something of enormous value, and that is an enduring friendship.
