Caribbean Nations Warm Up to Cuba With Economic Ties

KINGSTON, Jamaica —  Hundreds of college students from throughout the Caribbean are now studying at Cuban universities, courtesy of the Havana government.

Caribbean businesspeople are investing millions of dollars in Cuba’s booming tourist trade. The Jamaica-based SuperClubs resort chain is building its sixth complex on the Communist island, and Air Jamaica is running three flights a week into the eastern Cuban city of Santiago, adding to Cuban-Caribbean trade that tops $50 million annually.

And one by one, leaders of the Caribbean states are visiting Cuba, meeting with President Fidel Castro and signing agreements for economic, scientific and cultural exchanges that are reconnecting Cuba with its neighbors.

At a time when the Clinton administration is struggling to maintain its global isolationist policy against the Cuban regime--with Pope John Paul II due to visit the island next month--these are but a few examples of a quiet yet determined regional warming toward Cuba that is as rooted in economics as it is in diplomacy.

Much of the motivation is economic--the Caribbean nations are hoping that investing in the Cuban economy will pay off.

“The reality is that Cuba is going to become an important economic force in our hemisphere, and it behooves us in the Caribbean to be part of the process of Cuban development,” Barbadian Prime Minister Owen Arthur said this week after a five-day visit to Cuba.

“Cuba’s economy is opening up. Cuba is a competitor in tourism. That’s pragmatics,” added St. Lucian Prime Minister Kenny Anthony in a recent interview. “But what we also are saying is that Cuba is a part of the Caribbean family and that we cannot ignore it simply because it has a different political system.”

But implicit in the policy shift, which comes after decades when most of the Caribbean states toed Washington’s isolationist line toward Cuba, is a subtle slap at the United States.

In recent years, U.S. development aid to these islands has slowed to a trickle, and the Clinton administration has taken the lead role in blocking preferential European trade arrangements that supported the banana-based economies of several islands.

“For the first time, the people here have come face to face with U.S. policy. And the pain we feel touches the lives of our people very intimately,” said Anthony, whose nation’s economy is heavily reliant on tourism after the U.S. successfully blocked the banana subsidies. “The world is closing in on us. We have to look for new economic opportunities.”

Speaking at a conference of European and Caribbean states in Cuba earlier this month, Barbados’ Arthur also cited the trade preferences among “the convulsions and drastic changes in the global economy” that help justify the region’s policy shift toward Cuba.

Arthur also used his speech to frame the historical context for this shift: 20 years ago, he said, he joined in forging the first economic and technical agreement between Cuba and Jamaica.

Jamaica’s long-standing friendship with Cuba--Kingston has had an embassy in Havana for a quarter of a century--has been a constant irritant in its relations with the United States, and the fact that similar relationships now are materializing throughout the region is cause for concern in Washington, according to several diplomats in the region.

Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.) introduced legislation earlier this year aimed at punishing Caribbean and Central American countries that sidle up to Havana. Her bill would freeze U.S. aid levels to nations that sign agreements with Cuba or back its bid to join the Caribbean Community and Common Market.

For most Caribbean states, though, such a threat is virtually meaningless. U.S. aid is already negligible, regional officials said.

“It seems that at every critical moment that we need the support of the United States, we are abandoned by the United States,” St. Lucia’s Anthony said. “We therefore have some very, very critical choices to make. . . . Globalization presents new challenges, but it also presents new opportunities. And Cuba is among those new opportunities.”