…back at Fidel

There was a time when there was nary a soul across the globe who wouldn’t have recognised the name “Fidel Castro” – along with his sidekick, Che Guevara!! They exemplified the word “revolutionary” – in the age of overthrowing imperialism!! Well, it was his 100th birthday recently, and your Eyewitness figures he knows the man well enough to confidently predict that if he were around to blow out 100 candles on his birthday cake, he’d likely manage a three-hour speech on the revolutionary physics of candle combustion before getting around to the cake itself!! Fidel wasn’t a man of few words!!
But for us, he should be known more for Jagan’s admiration of his Soviet-style communism – in an era when the US and USSR were duking it out for global supremacy!! When he not only survived the US-sponsored Bay of Pigs invasion but also humiliated the Yanks, President JFK decided they weren’t gonna tolerate “another Cuba” in THEIR hemisphere!! And Jagan was out like a light!!
But Fidel survived – till a decade ago!! – and became a symbol of how the US could single-handedly unleash its wrath on enemies in their backyard!! Now over six decades since Washington first imposed its crushing economic embargo in 1960, the geopolitical landscape of Cuba remains a dark comedy of endurance!! The embargo was designed to turn Cuba into a cautionary tale of isolated economic ruin!!
But interestingly, Fidel’s magnetism was so powerful that Burnham – Washington’s replacement for Jagan – seeking to burnish his reputation in the Third World, led T&T, Jamaica, and Barbados to break diplomatic ranks with the US in 1972 to recognise Havana!! He even allowed Cuban troops heading to support Namibian guerrillas to refuel here!! The Yanks had to hold their nose – since the alternative was still the red Jagan!!
So, Cuba became a fixture of regional pragmatism as Washington exported sanctions and Monroe Doctrine rhetoric, while Havana exported thousands of doctors, teachers, and university scholarships!! We couldn’t resist!! Castro was the man who sent medical brigades to rescue our decrepit healthcare system – while Burnham flew in Castro’s plane to Non-Aligned Movement summits, feeling like a player on the Cold War chessboard!! Ironically, it was Cuban surgeons operating on his throat cancer at Big Hospital when he croaked on the table!!
Today, Cuba’s battling severe power outages and economic strain under renewed American sanctions!! But they stand less as a grand strategic victory and more as an ancient, rusting monument to bureaucratic momentum – outliving the man, outliving the Soviet Union!!
And leaving us in the Caribbean doing what we’ve always had to do – navigating the crossfire of bigger powers and trying to do what’s best for our development!!
Allying with the Yanks!!

…at India’s challenge
India’s broadcasting its goal of “Viksit Bharat 2047”, where it wants to achieve first-world status a century after independence.  The country launches spacecraft, builds digital payment systems, and produces software engineers by the millions – and is busy explaining to the world that the 21st century belongs to India. But however, there’s one small non-technological problem left to solve: its social operating system, long known as the caste system!!
First-world status ain’t measured by the number of billionaires, airports or skyscrapers – it’s measured by how efficiently a society allows all of its citizens to develop and deploy their abilities!! You can’t want to become a superpower while deliberately carrying hundreds of millions of people as excess baggage!! The irony is, India doesn’t need to abolish tradition – it just gotta abolish the idea that tradition should determine human potential!!
Very simply, if India really intends to become a first-world country, it gotta begin with the evidently revolutionary proposition – to them – that a person’s parents shouldn’t be their genetic career paths by caste!!

…for good leaders
As we digest director Nolan’s take on Homer’s Odyssey, let’s remember Thucydides’ caution: “The nation that separates its scholars from its warriors will have its thinking done by cowards – and its fighting done by fools.”

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