CAN CARICOM STAND UP?

Last weekend on a wintry Sunday afternoon in March, the United States sent a special envoy to speak with CARICOM foreign ministers about the new policy to deny them access to the United States if their countries continued to hire Cuban doctors.  The case made for the United States in public in this matter is ideological.  It is not based in facts.  None of the countries in CARICOM are in anyway involved in anything approximating human trafficking but that is the peg on which the new policy of the United States hangs its hat. 

The facts can’t change their minds.  Their leaders are blinded by the hatred of emigres in South Florida who cannot get over the fact that Fidel Castro defeated them in 1959 and he and his successors have been able to create a successful nation since then. 

 What will CARICOM do in response? 

 So far Denzel Douglas has been the strongest from little from St Kitts and Nevis.  He said that his nation will not be the subject of external pressure and will do what it perceives to be in their best interests. 

Let’s hope others in CARICOM will speak up. We do not need to go to the United States and we can stay quite safely at home.