Comissiong noted in a message on social media that CARICOM nations are preparing to celebrate this December 8, what he described as one of the boldest diplomatic decisions in the region’s history.
The diplomat reaffirmed that the commemoration revives the spirit of the October 1972 joint declaration, when the prime ministers of Barbados, Errol Barrow; Jamaica, Michael Manley; Trinidad and Tobago, Eric Williams; and Guyana, Forbes Burnham, gathered at the Conference of Heads of Government in Chaguaramas, announced to the world their sovereign decision to establish relations with Cuba.
In an act described as “speaking truth to power,” the four youngest independent states in the Western Hemisphere collectively opposed the isolation imposed on Cuba by the Organization of American States (OAS).
Their declaration affirmed their “sovereign right to establish relations with any other sovereign state” and their determination to “achieve meaningful and comprehensive economic cooperation among all Caribbean countries,” the Commission noted.
The ambassador remembered Prime Minister Barrow’s speech in Toronto in April 1973, in which he stated that the decision “shows that developing countries can take the initiative. We cannot stand idly by in the Caribbean and expect our strategy to be dictated by the prejudices of people in other countries.”
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