Cuban donation drive gathers momentum at Agrofest

Agrofest visitors rallied to a Cuban donation srive on Sunday, spearheaded by the Hibiscus Sports and Culture Foundation, which accepted dry food and other donations for the stricken northern Caribbean island.

Lawyer Lalu Hanuman, coordinator of the ‘13th of June 1980 Movement’ — which commemorates and promotes the works of the Guyanese historian Dr Rodney Walters — joined the drive. “I’m here today in the context of the Cuban Solidarity movement. We have a stall in which we are accepting dry food and feminine products and such like feminine hygiene products to ship to Cuba.”

As the economic blockade, declared an embargo by the United States in February 1962, intensified in recent weeks, shipments of fuel to the Communist-run island have been barred by the US.

Hanuman said: “They’re actually now preventing fossil fuels from getting into Cuba, which means that the electricity supply is coming to a halt. Hospitals can’t function, schools can’t function, universities can’t function. There’s no internet, and it’s a dire situation, so we’re trying to fundraise by way of donations to ship to Cuba.”

Organisers are seeking assistance from the government to ship the donated goods to Cuba.

Hanuman said: “People have been bringing dry foods of one sort or another. Some people have been giving monetary donations, and then we’d go off and purchase something with it within the site because it’s the product we want, not the money. People have been very supportive, you know, and just average individuals from Barbados, working class people, and of course the Cuban community as well.

“There’s a big Cuban community in Barbados, and a lot of them have been making donations.”

Akealii Hall, founder and logistics coordinator of the Hibiscus Sports and Culture Foundation, which ran the drive and tent at Agrofest, said: “You have to understand that the Cubans that we are trying to help are here right now.”

Referring to the men and women now working as nurses, doctors, and regular people who have contributed to Barbadian society for many years, Hall added: “It’s now time for our Cuban brothers and sisters, as they’ve joined us before when we needed them, to actually try and support and help them.

“The Bajan people have been so forthcoming in their support and their giving and their willingness to help others because that’s what we do in Barbados when we’re on our knees, when the Caribbean is on its knees, when we’ve fallen down, we rise up, when things go wrong and it feels like nothing else is going to happen and nothing can get better, we rise up.”

The entire three-day farming showcase was “massive” for the drive and the “showcasing of that Cuban resilience, Caribbean resilience, Caribbean togetherness” and “unity”, said Hall, highlighting that standards set since the days of the West Indies Federation and now CARICOM were on display during the Agrofest drive.

Last October, Barbados’ CARICOM Ambassador David Comissiong pleaded on behalf of the Cuban people and the Caribbean for the United States to end the blockade and remove Cuba from the US State Department’s list of state sponsors of terrorism. 

The call came at the 49th anniversary of the downing of a Cuban airliner off Barbados in October 1976 and the third year of CARICOM-Cuba Against Terrorism.