The Greater Caribbean This Week

Rubén Silié

The Thirty Seventh General Assembly of the Organisation of American States was held in Panama on June 3-5. The main theme of the meeting was the energy issue, which is a major concern for the entire world and particularly for the majority of the member countries that rely on the importation of oil to mobilise their entire economic infrastructure. The debate broached the problems of access, prices, transportation and other factors that have an economic impact on energy consumption, although it needs to be said that one of the crucial points in the discussion was the matter concerning the sustainability and impact of traditional forms of energy on the environment. In that regard, the meeting did its utmost to discuss and propose several alternatives to address the serious energy problem.

For Panama, the convening of that meeting was an opportunity to commemorate the thirtieth anniversary of the handing over of the Panama Canal to its legitimate authorities. Through this act, Panama regained the full territorial sovereignty which was interrupted by the United States of America for an entire century, since the Canal and its adjacent zones were under the absolute control of that Northern country, after an agreement, bearing no Panamanian signature, was imposed in 1903.

The member countries, together with their hosts, celebrated that achievement, led valiantly and astutely by General Omar Torrijos and which, at that time, garnered the support of all the rational voices of the continent. As for the United States, the negotiations were led by Jimmy Carter, the Democratic President, who was very much committed to the Region’s democracy and whose guidance was an important component in escaping the trap of the Cold War. However, the only country that was absent at that meeting to celebrate the thirtieth anniversary was one of those that emphatically condemned the occupation of the Canal and supported Panama’s fight to fully regain its sovereignty. I’m referring here to Cuba, whose absence was not due to a lack of motivation to celebrate that occasion, since that government surely and undoubtedly must have expressed its congratulations to its brother country by some other means.

That situation led us to contemplate the factors that motivated Cuba’s departure from the OAS. As we all know, in the midst of the Cold War and as a result of it, Cuba found itself at the heart of an international confrontation that produced a sense of intolerance for the revolutionary process embarked upon by the Cuban people to overthrow the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista, the last of a series of corrupt and repressive governments that reigned in Latin America and the Caribbean during the first half of the twentieth century. It is important to recall that this formed part of a dictatorial wave that struck most of the peoples of the continent and which, while unfortunately enjoying international recognition, did not engender great concern, on the part of the great powers of the region, for the fate of the human rights of the citizens of those countries.