Cuba and CARICOM in the changing environment

PhD. Jacqueline Laguardia Martinez

Seminar “Analysing Current Issues in the Changing Hemispheric Environment”

Guyana, April 11th, 2014

Talking points

1. The Cuba-Caribbean relation: Cuba and CARICOM

2. Cuba´s changing environment and its impacts on its relations with the Caribbean

Cuban Foreign Policy• It responds to issues regarding survival, national identity and

ideological positions in total coherence with the Cuban social project

• Open critic to USA aggressive foreign policy

• Global vision

• International activism

• Promoter of the representation of the developing world

• Supporter of preventive action aimed at meeting social and economic needs lead by multilateral organizations (UNESCO, FAO, UNDP, WHO, Human Rights Council)

• Solidarity as main philosophy and cooperation as implementation mechanism in the search for an international insertion qualitatively different. Since 1961 Cuba has registered cooperation actions in 157 countries with the participation of more than 400.000 Cubans

In the Caribbean

• Strength in the union with natural neighbors

• Decolonization and non-intervention

• Solidarity and integration before domination and competition

• Cooperation as a mechanism to apply the solidarity principle:

a. Social and Development goals: healthcare, education, sports, infrastructure

b. Security reasons: drugs and international crime, natural disasters and climate change impacts

Cuba – Caribbean relations: Isolation

• 1959: Cuba is labeled as the communist menace in the hemisphere

• 1962: Cuba is expelled from the OAS: 14 in favor, with one against (Cuba) and six abstentions (Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Ecuador, and Mexico)

• Isolation and exclusion (Benefits: DR obtained the Cuban sugar quota in the USA markets, American tourists found new destinies in the Caribbean,…)

• 1961: Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), Presidency in 1979 and 1983

• 1964: G-77

• 1972: Barbados, Guyana, Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago established diplomatic relations with Cuba

• 1983: Grenada Invasion

• 1990’s: Implosion of the USSR and the European Socialist Block

• Construction of new alliances

• Promote the participation in international and regional spaceswhere the USA does not participate: CARICOM, ACS, SELA, Ibero-American Summits, ALADI, Grupo de Rio, as a way to counterbalance renewed aggressive policy by the USA (Torricelli in 1992 and Helms-Burton in 1996 Acts)

• Do not accept conditionality regarding economic reforms towards free trade or neoliberal policies

Cuba – Caribbean relations

• 1991: A CARICOM Commission visited Havana

• 1993: Establishment of the CARICOM-Cuba Joint Commission

• 1994: Cuba joins the Association of Caribbean States (ACS)

• 2000: Cuba joins the African, Caribbean and Pacific group (ACP)

• 2000: Trade and Economic Co-operation Agreement between Cuba and CARICOM. (Two Protocols)

• 2002: First Summit Cuba-CARICOM

• 2005: Second Summit Cuba-CARICOM

• 2008: Third Summit Cuba-CARICOM

• 2009: OAS approves the possibility of Cuba’s return

• 2011: Fourth Summit Cuba-CARICOM

• Since 1992: general condemnation to the USA Blockade

From the 90´s: sustained growth

Cuban diplomatic relations with the CARICOM StatesCountries Dates

Antigua and Barbuda 1994

Bahamas 1974

Barbados 1972

Belize 1995

Dominica 1996

Granada 1979

Guyana 1972

Haiti 1998

Jamaica 1972

Dominican Republic 1998

Saint Kitts and Nevis 1995

Saint Lucia 1992

Saint Vincent and Grenadines 1992

Suriname 1979

Trinidad and Tobago 1972

Cuban cooperation in the Caribbean

• No ideological-political preconditions

• OPERACIÓN MILAGRO: Cuba has opened eye-surgery centers

• YO SÍ PUEDO: Literacy campaign

• High quality program of prevention against natural disasters consequences, recognized by UNDP

• Energy saving program

• Scholarships

Países Total

Caribe 1377

Antigua 55

Aruba 4

Bahamas 42

Barbados 3

Belice 119

Curazao 0

Dominica 36

Granada 25

Guadalupe 2

Haití 466

Islas Caimán 0

Islas Vírgenes 0

Jamaica 140

Rep. Dominicana 59

Martinica 0

San Vicente 67

Santa Lucía 47

Suriname 22

Trinidad Tobago 96

Guyana 178

Puerto Rico 0

San Martín 0

Saba 0

Turcos y Caicos 0

Guyana Francesa 0

Bonaire 1

San Kitts y Nevis 14

Antillas Holandesas 1

Cuban personnel working in the Caribbean, 2010

Cuba-CARICOM relation: A Positive Balance

1. Institutionalization

2. Sustained cooperation: health, education, sports, culture

3. Political support to Cuba´s initiatives in the UN

1. The relations are concentrated in the political and cooperation sectors

2. The economic relations are not substantial:

High cost of air and sea transportation

Legal and institutional differences

Insufficient finance and credit mechanisms

USA blockade

But…

1. The singularity of Cuba economic and political model

2. The “collective/shared sovereignty” criteria

3. The comprehensive revision that Cuba’s economy will endure (as Surinam in 1995 and Haiti in 1997)

4. The high dependency that CARICOM economies (and the CARICOM as a regional structure) have with the USA

Cuba is not Member of CARICOM because:

Obama administration towards Cuba

• Ignored U.S. demands to remove ALL Cuba travel ban (roll back the Clinton era Cuba travel )

• Ignored demands to remove the blockade

• Remained essentially the position of his predecessors of the need for “regime change in Cuba”, created mechanisms to organize and promote the internal counterrevolution

• Bases its rankings in denying legitimacy to the Revolution, the government and its institutions, confrontation based on human rights and fundamental freedoms

• Inclusion of Cuba in the so-called List of States promoting international terrorism of the United States’ State Department (Cuba was included since 1982)

Cuba´s new economic model

“Actualización del modelo económico socialista"

GoalTo make “economic

issues” a key criteria in

Cuban policies and

actions

VI Congress of the Cuban Communist Party, 2011

Main subject of

discussion

“Updating of the Cuban

Economic Model”

Cuban social contract bases

1. Same opportunities to all

2. Universal access to social services (health, education 100% by public provision)

3. State protection from poverty and abandonment

4. Fundamental means of production remain state owned

Guidelines for UPDATING• Political understanding of the urgency of transformations

• Deep economic transformation due to domestic problems and not external shocks

• It is not merely a generational takeover

• Synergies between economic growing and development (to move forward of the “crisis management”)

• Need of having a comprehensive socioeconomic vision

• Need to redefine the agents of the economy

• New institutionalization

• Structural transformations of the Cuban statist centralized model

Impacts in the cooperation programs• The updating of the economic model, together with the

global economical crisis and the negative effects of hurricanes (2008) have had an impact in the Cuban traditional cooperation approach: urgency to search for new cooperation possibilities

• But still will be present as a main component of Cuba international insertion

• Cooperation understanding still broader than technical assistance an very much focus on capacity building and development goals (Human Resources)

• To include certain economic rationality in the cooperation programs

• To implement new modalities: triangulated cooperation initiatives

Triangular cooperation initiatives

• Cuban joint action in Haiti with Venezuela, Brazil and Norway (Special attention to Haiti for being the most poor country in the hemisphere, for having fought the first independence Revolution in the Americas and because of the Haitian descendants living in Cuba)

• Ongoing Colombian peace negotiations together with Norway and accompanied by Venezuela

Triangulated cooperation with Venezuela in Haiti

• Establishment of 10 Integral Diagnostic Centers

• Operation Milagros

• Three Electricity Generating Equipments installed in Port au Prince, Gonaives and Cap Haitian

• 15 projects within the Food Program (irrigation, forest, seeds, various crops, small livestock, poultry, pigs, mechanization, plant protection, aquaculture, agribusiness and food production for sugar agro industrial development.

• Collaboration in the sugar sector in Central Darbonne

Cooperation: other actors to be included

• Brazil

• China

• ALBA

• CELAC

• Cuba bilateral relations

• Cuba as founder and main supporter of the recent regional fora

Conclusions

• Full use of the Cuba-CARICOM Agreements

• Full use of being part of the Caribbean Regional Negotiating Machinery

• Major association with other regional organizations that allow to Non Member States to participate as Observers. Cuba has been invited to work with Caribbean Disaster Emergency Management Agency (CDEMA), Caribbean Centre for Development Administration (CARICAD) and Caribbean Agricultural Research and Development Institute (CARDI)

• To evaluate the possibility of becoming Observer within this organizations

• To evaluate the possibility of becoming Observer in certain Ministerial Committees as the Council for Trade and Economic Development (COTED)

Possibilities to intensify Cuba-CARICOM relations

To sustain cooperation programs making use of the possibilities opened due to the new

regional and domestic contexts and considering Cuban current changing process

• Brazil and Venezuela as regional actors with strong presence in the Caribbean

• New regional fora and available funds

• Cuba’s new understanding of international cooperation, but still a main pillar of Cuban regional projection

• To move gradually some of the programs from Cuba to the recipient countries