Cuba from Due South: An Anglo-Caribbean Perspective

Abstract

in 1962 a bluemountain peak showeda green horizonto unsuspecting eye.standing spyglassedstaring blindly,thought I'd see a dull grey linetinged with red and barbed around/the picture framingcaptive portraits/hiding from sunlight/ideologically bound.the Caribbean greensurprised my eyeand set my mindto thinking.did New YorkTimes twist theCuban line around?were refugeesfrom Trench Town'sequals or refusefrom Batista's hi-lifeheroes of torturechamber, green backedsnakes of a long-losthunting ground?In 1975, Marti'schildren came backinto sight . . .Fidel workersgreet yourfriendship/ thosewho read betweenthe lines/ unemployedcall out your name each dayon Kingston's boiling sidewalksboard meetings watchour people riseand plan their mutual fall in fear.1I START THIS NARRATIVE DANGEROUSLY and furtively, with my own poem, written in 1975 at a moment when Michael Manley government was approaching pinnacle of its engagement with Cuba. It was published as part of a collection four years later, in 1979, year before defeat of Manley's People's National Party (PNP) in bloody general election of 1980. I say dangerously and furtively because it is always risky business to critique your own work, even if more than three decades separate you from original composition. Yet, in searching desperately for material to illustrate this essay, I was pleasantly surprised to see - its literary (de)merits aside - how well it reflected my own evolving worldview of Cuban revolution and my attitude as a partisan in its support, as it probably still does those of a generation of now aging Jamaicans.Jamaica lies ninety miles due south of Cuba. Yet, as a middle-class high school student growing up in 19605, I found that it had been largely excluded from our mind's eye. When Alexander Bustamante won 1962 general elections, defeating Michael's father Norman Manley at polls, he declared unambiguously as he led us into independence that We are with West.2 What this meant in anti-communist atmosphere following US-backed Cuban exile defeat at Bay of Pigs, was that we were going to decisively distance ourselves from our closest geographical neighbour, despite long tradition of cohabitation that has existed between two Caribbean islands.Cuba has always loomed large, if just over horizon, in Jamaican imaginary. When Spaniards, fighting a desperate rearguard action in seventeenth century against English invaders, finally fled from Jamaica, it was to well defended, fer more important and secure colony of to north.3 When in nineteenth century Cuban independence fighters sought refuge, many came south to recuperate and rethink strategy for further engagement with Spanish colonialists. Jose Marti lived for a time in exile in Jamaica, as did outstanding general Antonio Maceo. Indeed, Maceo 's mother, Mariana Grajales, declared the Mother of Cuba by pre-revolutionary mayor of Havana in 1957, spent her final sixteen years in Kingston, where she was mourned at her funeral by many of more than 1,500 Cuban exiles who lived in city and beyond it.4 It was these exiles who had brought their tobacco planting techniques to Jamaica, significantly enhancing quality and cachet of Jamaican cigars.5 Yet, certainly from Anglo-Caribbean perspective, most important aspect of relationship was not southward migration of Cubans, but northward movement of West Indians to work primarily in Cuban sugar industry. Tens of thousands of Jamaicans, Barbadians, St Lucians and others, facing poverty at home, migrated to Oriente and other points, many never to return. …