CUBA: "The Debt is Unpayable" - Speech by Jamaican Scholar Upon Recipt of Honary Doctorate in Havana

THE DEBT IS UNPAYABLE
Norman Girvan

Available in Spanish as well:
http://www.rebelion.org/noticia.php?id=77240
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Remarks at the Great Hall of the University of Havana on receipt of the
degree of Doctor of Economic Sciences, Honoris Causa

December 3, 2008

http://www.normangirvan.info/the-debt-is-unpayable-norman-girvan/

I cannot begin to express the deep sense of honour that I feel on your
bestowing upon me the degree of Doctor of Economic Sciences, Honoris Causa
of the University of Havana.

Its significance for me is even greater by virtue of its coinciding with the
marking of the 50th Anniversary of the Triumph of the Cuban Revolution.

I was a child of 12 when Fidel and his comrades stormed the Moncada
Barracks. As teenagers, we would tune our radio dials to the Miami stations
to get the latest in rock and roll. Sometimes we hit on Radio Rebelde,
broadcast from the Sierra Maestra. Radio Rebelde was my introduction to the
Cuban Revolution.

At the time of the Triumph of the Revolution I had just left High School and
started my first job. The events of 1959—the trials of the criminals of the
Batista dictatorship, the Urban Reform, the Land Reform—were followed with
great interest and mounting excitement by my generation in Jamaica.

Our imagination was captured by the literacy programme by which young Cuban
boys and girls left the cities to teach poor peasants in the countryside;
learning as much or more from their host families as they were imparting to
them.

I listened to the First Declaration of Havana during my first year at the
University in Jamaica, courtesy of a recording of the address obtained by a
fellow student. Fidel’s passionate denunciations of Yanqui imperialism—the
profits of American corporations obtained at the price of undernourishment
and infant mortality in Latin America—are still ringing in my ears.

The image of a million Cubans, assembled in one place as the National
General Assembly of the People of Cuba, expressing their approval of the
social and economic measures taken by the Revolution, and declaring their
independence of foreign domination, was a transformative experience for me,
a young man of eighteen. It helped to shape my view of the world.

Jamaica and the other West Indian territories were then preparing for
national independence. The Cuban Revolution was a source of inspiration to
many of us on the ability of a small Caribbean country to chart its own
course of social justice, economic transformation, and national independence
by relying on the mobilisation of the entire population, by relying on the
will and energy of its people; with a leadership that trusted the mass of
the population and refused to bow before threats, intimidation, economic
punishment and counter-revolutionary violence from the greatest military
power on the planet; just 140 kilometres from its shores. It remains so to
this day.

During Playa Giron, I moved a resolution in the University Students Council
condemning the shameless attempt to crush the Revolution by an illegal
invasion launched from the territory of the United States. My collaborator
in that Resolution was a young student from Guyana by the name of Walter
Rodney. As you know Walter visited Cuba several times and was profoundly
affected by the Revolution. You also know that he was victim of political
assassination in 1980.

At the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis, I had just arrived in London to
commence graduate studies. Some of us, like myself, were dismayed at the
way in which Cuba had been drawn into a confrontation between the two
super-powers, one that could end with a nuclear holocaust of global scale.
Others argued that Cuba had no choice but to secure an alliance as a means
of protecting its Revolution and its national sovereignty. The debate
continues to this day.

In the late 196os I was a member of the New World Group, founded by Lloyd
Best, whose book on Plantation Economy, co-authored by Kari Polanyi Levitt,
is being launched in its Spanish edition at the Casa de las Americas this
week. Professor Levitt is present among us and was recently the recipient of
an honorary doctorate from the University of the West Indies.

In a famous essay entitled “Independent Thought and Caribbean Freedom”,
Lloyd Best argued that Cuba’s turn to the Soviet Union was a symptom of the
failure of the rest of the Caribbean to provide moral, political and
economic support for its struggle for self-determination.

In 1959-1960 Dr Eric Williams of Trinidad and Tobago was campaigning for the
return of the Chaguaramas Naval Base from the United States to the
Government of Trinidad, to be the site of the capital of the newly formed
West Indies Federation. In the end Dr Williams made an agreement which left
the US in control of the base. Lloyd Best argued that an historic
opportunity had been missed for a linkage of anti-imperialist issues across
the Caribbean, from Trinidad in the east to Cuba in the west; to forge an
‘integration of the regional consciousness’. He challenged us to:

“Consider what might have happened if the Government of Trinidad and Tobago
had declared the(Chaguaramas) base nationalised, proclaim independence and
joined Cuba in taking over the sugar industry. The colonial answer is to say
that the marines would have come and that the other Caribbean governments
would have sold out as they did in 1953 when the PPP ran into trouble in
Guyana. But...Castro’s movement (and) the PNM ... had struck their roots in
a Caribbean consciousness and it would not have been easy to cut them down.

“And even if the marines had come. Would we not have fought them as the
Cubans were in any case to do against their agents at the Bay of Pigs and
the Constitutionalists, in Santo Domingo in 1965? How much territory could
they have held if they had had the whole Caribbean roused against them? And
even if they did hold territory – for a while – they would never have
enjoyed any moral conquest and the satisfaction of seeing Cuba turn to
another imperialism for support. And the Caribbean would have emerged from
the struggle as morally and politically integrated as it has always been
culturally. . . .

“If the opportunity was missed then, it was largely for lack of political
experience. But the time will come again. (867-868)

The time will come again! That vision of a united and independent Caribbean
was central to the motivation of the New World Group in the 1960s, a vision
that was deeply rooted in the consciousness of a common history of
colonialism and metropolitan rivalry, of the plantation system, of slavery
and indentureship, of resistance and rebellion, of continuous assertion of
an indomitable human spirit, of humanity in the face of brutality, of love
of freedom and of life itself, of a Caribbean aesthetic permeated by a
sense of the natural beauty of our islands and mainland, infused with the
rhythms of our people and our music and our language, which are often so
closely intertwined, and with their creative imagination.

And Cuba is an integral part of that Caribbean consciousness, of the
Caribbean family.

George Beckford of Jamaica, another leading figure in the New World Group,
was himself the author of a seminal work on the Plantation System in the
Third World, Persistent Poverty. He visited Cuba in 1965, and was the victim
of repressive action by the Government of Jamaica when his passport was
seized after his return.

‘Gbeck’s’ professional interest, as an agricultural economist, was in the
Land Reform and sugar economy; but what immediately impressed him, he wrote,
were three important contrasts with the rest of the Caribbean:

“.. First, the conspicuous absence of symptoms of unemployment (and
underemployment); the signs of poverty are much less stark than elsewhere in
the region – there is no prostitution and no begging of any kind, not even
the covert kind of begging which produces ‘tipping’ in other places. Second,
the omnipresence of education schemes – on radio and television, in the
newspaper and factories, and throughout the length and breadth of the
country. And, third, the obvious involvement of the people with matters
affecting the national life. The national and international awareness of the
population at all levels and the general atmosphere of national cohesion, of
public order, and of self-confidence are certainly not characteristic of the
rest of the Caribbean”. (A Caribbean View of Cuba, (New World Quarterly II.
2)271).

He refers to the speech of Fidel in Santa Clara on July 26, 1965, with over
600,000 people present; and writes:

“Clearly, there is much significance to Prime Minister Castro’s public
challenge to a visiting American newspaperman during that speech at Santa
Clara when he stated:

“Let him take pictures, let him take films and see if in Washington, New
York or anywhere else they can raise the enthusiasm of more than five
hundred thousand citizens. Let’s see if any of those puppet governments of
Brazil, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Paraguay and other….if any one, or all of them
together are capable of bringing together half a million people like those
who are meeting here today…A crowd, large or small, can always be assembled
by different means, but what it is not possible to create is the enthusiasm
of this crowd.”

“Any witness of the occasion (said Beckford) could not possibly disagree”.
(276)

Yes, the Revolution had a huge impact on the thinking, on the imagination,
of my generation; and indeed on those that followed. It has retained its
iconic significance as a permanent feature of our Caribbean landscape.

I am reminded of the words of Prime Minister Michael Manley of Jamaica at
the Non-Aligned Summit of 1980; that Latin America and the Caribbean could
count ‘on a movement and a rock; and that movement is the Cuban Revolution
and that rock is Fidel Castro’.

In the decades following the Sixties I had the opportunity to form many
associations with Cuban organizations, to collaborate professionally with
Cuban academic centres, and to form long-lasting personal friendships with
Cuban colleagues.

The collaboration embraced many subject areas and activities—science and
technology policy research and economic planning in the 1970s; in the 1980s
and 1990s the Association of Caribbean Economists, the Regional Coordination
of Economic and Social Research - CRIES, and the Centre for American
Studies; the National Association of Cuban Economists, ANEC, since the
1980s; and of course the Association of Caribbean States in the 2000s.

You could almost say that I came of age with the Revolution and am growing
old with it. But the Revolution retains a youthful vigour, and I try to
follow that example!

There were some funny moments. I remember when Carlos Rafael Rodriguez
warned us, as the first Jamaican delegation to visit the USSR, about
accepting payment for Jamaican exports in convertible roubles, because they
could not be used to buy anything. When I asked why they were called
‘convertible’, he replied with a broad smile, ‘that is we have been trying
to find out for a long time’.

My friend Roberto Verrier Castro is President of ANEC. I once referred to
him, jokingly, as President Castro. Roberto was sitting on the podium in the
presence of Fidel; and his expression showed that he was not amused.

I remember the generosity of ANEC in hosting my family--my wife and two
children and I--on a two-week visit in 1999, when we went to several
provinces, including Santiago, Pinar Del Rio and Villa Clara. On that
occasion I was made an Honorary Member of ANEC, and I wish to thank that
Association once again.

I am very happy that Jasmine, my partner and soul mate, is here to share the
occasion with me tonight.

You never know what children will notice. On our return to Jamaica from that
trip, I overheard my 10-year old daughter telling a friend—“In Cuba,
everyone is the same”.

I used to have a framed photograph of Fidel, Che and Camilo hanging on the
wall in my house. One day it mysteriously disappeared.

Much later my son of 19 confessed that he had taken it with him when he went
abroad to study. It was now hanging on his wall. He had been twelve years
old when we visited the Che memorial in Santa Clara.

Certain other things stand out, and I want to use this opportunity to put
them on record.

I want to say that I remember with especial pride and pleasure a long
meeting I had with the Commander in Chief, while I was ACS Secretary
General, late one night in his office in 2002, in which he explained to me
the programme to make every Cuban child computer literate; and gave me his
frank opinion of the antics of the foreign minister of a certain
neighbouring Latin American country that lies to your west!

I want to say that in my contact with Cubans as individuals what has always
stood out to me are your professionalism, your discipline, your
organization, your individual and national self-confidence combined with a
total absence of a sense of superiority, your value system that is not
driven by the worship of money and material objects, your willingness to
share and your solidarity with others.

I hope you never lose those qualities. You are an example to the rest of us.

I want to say that we in the Caribbean, especially those of my generation,
will never forget the contribution made by Cuban men and women to the
liberation of southern Africa from the scourge of apartheid.

I want to say that we will never forget—or we ought never to forget—the
70-odd young men and women of Cuba, Guyana and other countries who were
taken to their deaths off the coast of Barbados in 1976, victims of one of
the most heinous acts of terrorism in the history of our region.

I want to say that we will never forget the support provided by Cuba to the
people of Grenada during their revolutionary process in 1979-1983; nor the
unequivocal condemnation by Cuba of the murder of Maurice Bishop and several
others when that process came to a tragic end, and the Cubans who gave their
lives in the invasion that followed.

I want to say that for a country in Cuba’s position to have survived the
collapse of the Soviet Union, with all that that brought about in the
disappearance of markets, of vital supplies of food, fuel and spare parts, a
huge fall in national income; to have survived this catastrophe, in the face
of a tightening in the US embargo; to have survived it while preserving
many, if not most of the gains of your Revolution, without widespread crime
and major social unrest, without brutal political repression of the kind
that we have seen in many other countries experiencing much less severe
degrees of structural adjustment; for this to have happened defies all
social, economic and political logic.

It is like a miracle, except that we haven’t had any miracles on earth for
past 2000 years.

So I want to say that, in my simple way of seeing things, I believe that
this ‘miracle’ can only be explained by the practice of a profound
participatory democracy in Cuba, with a leadership that explains everything,
a people that discusses everything, an economic adjustment that was
equitably shared, and a people determined to defend their Revolution and
their independence, no matter what the cost.

But the thing that stands out most of all, the quality that want to mention
above all, is the internationalism of the Cuban people.

The Guyanese revolutionary Walter Rodney, whom I mentioned earlier, is
reported to have said once that “West Indians live more in time and than in
space”.

I believe this is one of the most profound statements ever made about the
Caribbean condition. It is all the more remarkable that Walter made it while
he was a student at high school.

What did he mean by this? I believe he was saying that the West Indian sense
of himself, of his place in the world, is governed more by a consciousness
of the historical forces that have shaped us than by the geographical
confines of our existence.

It cannot be an accident, for instance, that Marcus Mosiah Garvey, the first
person from the English-speaking Caribbean to create an anti-imperialist
mass movement, was a Pan-Africanist. His political organization took in most
of the English speaking islands, with branches in Cuba, Central America and
the Continental United States. Garvey lived more in time than is space.

He helped to inspire Mandela, Kenyatta and Nkrumah.

He was followed by outstanding Pan Africanists from our islands and
mainland, like George Padmore, CLR James, Sylvester Williams and Walter
Rodney.

People could not understand how Michael Manley, leader of a tiny nation of 2
million people, could have the audacity to campaign for a New International
Economic Order.

Bob Marley called for “World Citizenship, and the Rule of International
Morality”.

And Jose Marti spoke not only of ‘Nuestra America’. He proclaimed “Patria es
Humanidad”—the Fatherland is Humanity--the message of welcome that greets
visitors to Cuba arriving at the airport in Havana that bears his name.

Jose Marti lived more in time than in space. And his legacy of
internationalism is sustained by Che, by Fidel, and by the entire Cuban
people.

One of Fidel’s most moving speeches was one I heard him give at the South
Summit here in Havana in 2000. It was called Global Economic Apartheid.

And that sense of internationalism, dare I suggest, is a psychic bond
between us as Caribbean people. And the practice of international solidarity
that flows from it is the one I think of most, when I think of the Cuban
Revolution.

In 1985 I attended a Conference here on the External Debt of Latin America
and the Caribbean. Fidel proclaimed ‘La Deuda es Impagable’—‘The Debt is
Unpayable’!

Tonight, Cuban friends, as I thank you most sincerely for this honour you
have given me, from one of the most distinguished Universities in our
hemisphere, which I accept not only in my name but in the name of my
generation of Pan-Caribbean thinkers, in the names of Lloyd Best and George
Beckford and others in the New World Group; tonight I want to acknowledge to
Cuba that la deuda es impagable.

But I do not mean the debt that is owed to the banks by the people of the
Latin America and the Caribbean, and is measured in United States dollars. I
mean the debt that is owed to the Cuban people by the rest of the Caribbean
and indeed by all humanity, that is measured by their sacrifices and their
solidarity and the unshakeable resolve of their leadership.

For the 185,000 Cuban medical personnel who have served in 103 countries in
the last ten years alone, la deuda es impagable.

For the nearly 350 million visits carried out by Cuba’s Global Health
Programmes in poor communities abroad in the past seven years, for the one
million four hundred thousand lives that have been saved, and for the
327,000 persons who have had their sight restored under Operation Milagro,
la deuda es impagable.

For the 2,451,000 persons in 13 countries who have learned to read and write
through Cuban literacy programmes, la deuda es impagable.

For the 27,000 students from 120 countries studying in Cuba and for the
thousands of scholarships granted the sons and daughters of the Caribbean to
gain a higher education, la deuda es impagable.

For the 330,000 Cubans who served in Angola from 1975 to 1991, and for the
blood of 2,000 of them who gave their lives in the struggle against the
racist regime, and for the families whom they left behind, la deuda es
impagable.

For doing all this, while withstanding an economic embargo for nearly half a
century from the mightiest power on the planet, that cost an estimated $93
billion dollars, equivalent to 12 times the foreign debt of Cuba, for the
material sacrifices and hardship you have endured, providing hope and
inspiration to the rest of the world, la deuda es impagable.

For invoking the immortal words of your National Hero Jose Marti, that
‘Patria es Humanidad’, and for living it, day by day, month by month, year
by year and decade by decade, la deuda es impagable.

For giving universal meaning to the ‘Patria’ in the pledge, ‘Patria or
Muerte, Venceremos!’, la deuda es impagable.

December 3, 2008