Caribe

The Caribbean that unites us

Magda Resik, Norman Girvan

18/03/2012

Opinión

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Transcript of an interview with Norman Girvan at the 2012 Havana Book Fair, Nicolás Guillén Auditorium, La Habana, Sunday February 12, 2012

- Magda Resik: Good afternoon. Welcome to our meeting, which is part of a program in our International Book Fair that is dedicated to an exchange with mostly foreign visiting personalities. Today I am honored to welcome a person who has always been highly respected in our academic circles because of his thinking and reflections on the Caribbean that unites us. It is an honor to have him with us today and to be able to learn more about this vast and multiple universe that is the Caribbean. He is someone who has also been close to our country because of his sensitivity to Cuban issues and to the needs, aspirations and realities of Cuba; someone who has committed himself to our nation in, I would say, an impressive way, even when there is not a big fuss about it. I believe that he is one of Cuba’s advocates whom we should highly appreciate as he has shown great sensitivity in raising his voice in favor of our country in different arenas.

I’m talking about Norman Girvan, who is a writer and researcher at the Graduate International Relations Institute at the University of the West Indies in Saint Augustine, Trinidad and Tobago. Norman, I’d like to begin by asking about your origins, because even though you work as an academic in Trinidad and Tobago, you were born in Jamaica and I would very much like to know how much of Jamaica there is in you, how much has the fact of being born in Jamaica influenced your later interest in the Caribbean as an object of academic study.

- Norman Girvan: Well, good afternoon. Thank you for having me here at the Fair and for doing me the honor of interviewing me. I never thought that I was really a subject worthy of interview, but I suppose it is one of those punishments that one has to endure when you reach my age and there is the false impression that because you have lived on the planet longer than many others; that somehow you must have something to say.

Well, how much of Jamaica there is in me. I’m one hundred percent Jamaican. My parents were both Jamaican. I have encountered a rather amusing experience travelling abroad of people wondering how I’m Jamaican when I do not have a black skin. Well, Jamaicans come in all colors, shapes and sizes. I have African origins and European origins, which I think is pretty obvious. I was born in Jamaica at the time when there was a nationalist ferment and my own father gave up a career in business to become active in the community development movement and the building of cooperatives amongst the small farmers, - the campesinos of Jamaica. So that I was born into a household where the nationalist ethos was very strong, we were just coming out of the twilight of colonial rule, the nationalist movement had been formed, Jamaican creole and Jamaican art were being legitimized and there was a sense of public and community service. My own father also had an interest in the wider region, in what was then known as the British West Indies and also with Latin America. One of the books that I remember taking from his library was Germán Arciniegas’ Biografía del Caribe in English, of course -- The Caribbean, Sea of the New World.

In the 1950’s, my father was recruited to be a community development adviser in a program that was taking place in the Ecuadorian altiplano, amongst the indigenous communities to promote self-organization and self-help activities among them. And during that time I spent two summer vacations as a young man with my parents in the highlands of Ecuador. Later he was recruited to work in a similar project in the town of Arica in Chile. So, you might say that my Caribbeanization and my Latin Americanization, my consciousness of what it meant to be Latin American and the Caribbean was very much a part of my personal experience as a child and as a young man. The months that I spent in Ecuador were particularly eye-opening to me, because I was able to observe at first hand the complete social exclusion and marginalization of the indigenous majority of the people of highland Ecuador. Later, unlike my elder siblings who were sent away to college in Canada, in my case, I studied at the University of the West Indies, right there in Jamaica. And I entered the University of the West Indies in Jamaica at a time of tremendous intellectual and political ferment. The year was 1959 and, of course, I don’t need to remind this audience of the significance of that year. In fact, the Cuban Revolution had a huge impact on my generation of young people. This was also a time of what we called the West Indies Federation, the attempt to form a federal state out of 10 different islands in the English-speaking Caribbean. So I became a regionalist at the University of the West Indies. I started out as a Jamaican nationalist and when I left I was a Caribbean regionalist and I have never seen, accepted or recognized any contradiction between nationalism and regionalism. So that is a synopsis of my formation.

- Magda Resik: And about your relationship with Cuba, you briefly talked about the impact of the Cuban Revolution on your generation, but when do you remember that a closer relationship with Cuba began? Did anything of the Cuban thinking get to you when you were in college?

- Norman Girvan: Yes, I would have to say that the influence of the Cuban Revolution started when I used to listen to Radio Rebelde broadcast from the Sierra Maestra, before the triumph of the Revolution. I like to tell the story of trying to tune in to the Miami radio stations which were broadcasting rock and roll, I would encounter this thing Radio Rebelde. My cohort, the students of my generation, we were very excited by the land reform, by the literacy programs of the Revolution, the urban reform and by the First and Second Declarations of Havana. We were, I think, some of us confused when the Revolution took a turn towards a very close alliance with the USSR. Some of us were not convinced that the Soviet model, either of political or economic management, was the one that was the most appropriate to our reality. Nonetheless, I think there was an understanding that it was a necessity for survival of the Cuban Revolution that such a close alliance should be made.

From the point of view of economic development, there was also great interest in the role that the sugar industry played in the economic policies of the Revolution, which first of all consisted of diversifying away from sugar and, secondly, to turn back to a very high emphasis on the production and export of sugar under or, if you like, in response to the socialist theory of comparative advantage. So, there were questions about some aspects of the Cuban experience, specifically, the Sovietization of, at least, at the institutional level of the Revolution and the return to high dependence of sugar. What came through very strongly to us, though, and certainly in my personal case, was the profoundly and deeply popular character of the Cuban Revolution, the tremendous degree of participation of the ordinary people of this country in all aspects of Cuban life. Those of us who were able to visit Cuba in the 1960’s, always came back in a state of barely suppressed euphoria. They never believed that it was possible. They had never experienced such a situation of enthusiasm, of unity of purpose and of a government and a State which are oriented first and foremost towards the needs of the population and was determined not to bow to the mightiest power on the planet. Later, there were other aspects of the Revolution which I came to appreciate to a much greater extent, and one of these was the important role that culture plays in the revolutionary process. I remember saying at a panel marking the 50th anniversary of the establishment of Casa de las Américas, a panel at the Caribbean Studies Association, that to me it was a source of great amazement, actually, that the Casa de las Américas was one of the first institutions set up by the Revolution. I also came here several times during the “special period” and what was noticeable is that in spite of the extreme degree of economic hardship and scarcity of resources that the government was experiencing, that the cultural institutions of the country were sustained and retained a large part of their vitality and their accessibility to the Cuban public. I often wonder if Cubans who have not travelled fully appreciate the extent to which culture is made accessible and is indeed a living part of the lives of Cubans, by comparison with other countries. I have to say, the experience of moving around this place where we are today and seeing so many people, and especially so many young people, attending a Book Fair, - a Book Fair - is quite extraordinary. The only kind of event which draws this number of young people in other parts of the region is a rock concert.

So, when structural adjustments took place in our countries in the English-speaking Caribbean the pressure on governments was to cut back on what were called inessential services and cultural institutions were one of the first casualties where cutbacks were instituted by governments under the pressure of the International Monetary Fund. So, when I commented on the differences that I observed in the way in which adjustments had been handled in our countries and the way in which it had been handled in Cuba, where culture was not cut, George Lamming was the one who said: “I will tell you what is the difference, the difference is that in the English-speaking Caribbean, culture is regarded as the icing on the cake. In Cuba, culture is the cake.”

Another aspect of the Cuban revolutionary experience that is very striking is the way in which national institutions have been formed and built and sustained. For example, the role of science and technology in which I had a research interest, the science and technology institutions, which have made such great strides and made such great contributions. The Cuban system of participatory democracy is, by no means, perfect, but there are many things about the way it functions from which I believe we can learn. I am very, for example, struck by the high degree of discussion, consultation, participation, refinement, which took place in the development of the Guidelines – the Lineamientos de reformas económicas y sociales, the deliberate process, the discussion at all levels of the society and all parts of the country. It’s quite extraordinary. Again, I wonder if Cubans who have not experienced other realities do not take this for granted. I can tell you, for example, that in my country, when there is an adjustment program, two or three officials negotiate the program with officials from Washington and then the program is announced. It is announced, it is passed through Parliament and it becomes law, and that’s it. Well, we know what is happening in Greece, supposedly the homeland of democracy, which is now being subjected, and Italy, to the rule of technocrats, acting on behalf of finance capital, but they are supposed to be democratic and Cuba is said to be authoritarian. What a joke!

The other thing that I want to mention is the internationalism of the Cuban Revolution, the solidarity that Cuba expresses to people all over the world1. I said yesterday on one of the Panels that we in the English-speaking Caribbean will never forget the contribution that Cuba made to the elimination of apartheid in Southern Africa. Never, and I daresay this holds equally for the entire Pan-African Diaspora. And we look on with admiration at the help that Cuba is giving to Haiti in the field of health, the fight against cholera, the support for people in the communities, the barrios, the villages by Cuban doctors and nurses and other medical professionals. We look on it with admiration and maybe even with some embarrassment that we are not making an equivalent effort commensurate with our resources. And the remarkable thing about this, to me, is that this is not exceptional, that literally hundreds of thousands of Cubans have served in scores of foreign countries in treating the sick and educating the people. I have been at a Misión Adentro in Venezuela where Cuban doctors are living with the people and serving the people in the community; and one of the visitors in our delegation, and Egyptian man in his fifties, he was so overcome with emotion that he started to cry. And the other remarkable thing is that I have the impression that this is steeped into the very value system of the Cuban population, or at least a good proportion of them—and yes, I am aware that there are those here who question the policy, who grumble about it, this is only natural, people are only human-- but what is striking to me as that it is an integral element of the popular ethic of the Revolution; it seems to be grounded in the very culture of this place. Somebody said it is Cuba’s unique contribution to Socialism. Call it what you like, call it socialism, call it humanitarianism, call it ‘Cuban internationalist socialist humanitarianism’; it doesn’t matter. Homeland is Humanity! You have given the rest of the world an example.

- Magda Resik: Girvan, there are two subjects that I’m planning to address with all Caribbean experts who will be interviewed in our program, - one has to do with the genesis of the Caribbean as we know it nowadays. What circumstances of that genesis have mostly determined what we are today? The other subject is something that maybe you can string together in your own speech, and it is that we usually talk about the Caribbean that unites us, but what divides us in the Caribbean?

- Norman Girvan: Well, I think we know that virtually everything in the Caribbean today is a consequence of what you have called the “Genesis” and what could equally be called the “Genocide”. More than any other parts of the so-called New World, the societies which were formed in this part of the world, were formed on the basis virtually of a tabula rasa, where the indigenous population was exterminated or died out by disease or as a result of enslavement or deliberate massacres by the invaders. So, we have societies that are the product of colonial exploitation, principally, in the form of the plantation system and the production of sugar, tobacco and coffee. And these plantation societies and colonial societies evolved over a period of several hundred years, with the result that we are all deeply steeped into the culture, the institutions and the structures resulting from the colonial experience. But there have been some very important breaks or discontinuities in that evolution, most notably Haiti in 1804 and Cuba in 1959. But these structures are highly persistent, as we see in Haiti and in Cuba, where the colonial legacy remains a very real one. In terms of, for example, the acute degree of dependence on imported food, the high degree of export orientation of the economy and the continuing legacy of race relations.

The Caribbean today represents an extremely complex reality. The common factor, as was noted earlier today, is that the Caribbean is the product of centuries of interest and exploitation by imperial powers of the resources of the region, including the labor that was brought here from various parts of the world. What we see, however, is that it is easier to get rid of the colonizers that to get rid of the colonial legacy, one that is steeped into our culture and into our institutions and one with which we must be in permanent contestation. As we were discussing earlier today, that contestation begins in the mind, in the culture and in the important task of intellectual decolonization, with which we need to grapple. Now, you asked what is it that unites us? What unites us is a common frame of reference of our historical experience. But what also unites us, in a context of diversity, has been the affirmation of what my old friend and colleague Rex Nettleford called “smaddification”. This is a Jamaican creole word; a loose translation might be “to become somebody” or, the affirmation of personhood. All the labor that was brought here was brought here in a condition of exploitation of one way or another and the process of creating a Caribbean identity out of those conditions is a process of resistance, of struggle and of affirmation of self, of the dignity of the human person and of the right to autonomy of our societies. In my perspective, that process of resistance and affirmation has taken and takes different forms in different parts of the region, but these different forms all take place within the frame of reference of resistance and affirmation. Caribbean peoples have created languages, have created music, have created great works of art, of literature, of poetry, of drama, have accomplished great feats in the world of sport and have also made great revolutions, each one responding to the specificities of the local experience and each enriching the collective Caribbean experience. We have a little island called Saint Lucia, which has 150 000 people and has produced two Nobel laureates. I once did a calculation of the per capita production of Nobel laureates in Saint Lucia, which exceeded that of Canada several times. At the Olympic Games held in Beijing, five of the eight finalists in the men’s hundred meters were men from the English-speaking Caribbean. Now this is, with a population of approximately 6 million, which is something like one thousandth of the world population, so if you do the calculation, five of the eight fastest men in the world came from a region with 0.1% of the world’s population. That tells you something too. Cuba, of course, in its tally of sporting medals, regularly exceeds by a very wide margin what you would expect from a country with a population of 11 million. Now, what I’m suggesting is that the resistance, the affirmation, the accomplishments of Caribbean people, in spite of and indeed, perhaps, because of the tremendous pressures to which we have been subjected, is what unites us. But we do not know it. So, the task and the responsibility of writers, intellectuals, communicators, film makers is to build these bridges of common experience and of interchange amongst the different peoples of the Caribbean. It is a great challenge, a great responsibility, but it’s an exciting one, because every time we engage in it we find out, every time I come to Cuba or attend any Caribbean event I’m finding out more things about this region and more things about myself.

- Magda Resik: Girvan, you insist on these issues of resistance, affirmation and cultural emancipation, and in that universe that would definitely help us maintain

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ourselves as a region with its own characteristics, where do you place that economic sustainability, that political affirmation that some experts have regarded as fundamental for a Caribbean independence?

- Norman Girvan: The terrain of the economics and the politics is the most difficult one in which to make progress, which is why some of us believe that the basis of progress in the economics and the politics has to lie in the cultural sphere. The economic sphere is an extremely challenging one. The Caribbean region experiences some of the highest rates of emigration in the world. We have a situation, for example, in my country - Jamaica, over 80% of the graduates of tertiary institutions from Jamaica are presently living overseas. In Guyana the proportion reaches over 90%. The average for the CARICOM region as a whole is somewhere between 55 and 60 per cent. And as we know, the rates are very high for Haiti and for the Dominican Republic and for Puerto Rico.

The Caribbean, as you know, two hundred years ago, was one of the richest parts of the planet or I should say was the source of some of the greatest riches on the planet, because the majority of the people who lived here did not share in those riches. I think Guadeloupe and Martinique were regarded as far more valuable than Quebec, that Surinam was far more valuable than what is now New York City and Haiti was the richest colony in the world, just before the Revolution. Since the decline of sugar, tobacco and coffee in relative terms and the demise of the plantation system, most Caribbean economies have experienced a degree of marginalization of one kind or another from the world capitalist economy. Since their riches have been exported and taken abroad to Europe and the United States, they had very little to fall back on in terms of educated labor force or the development of industries other than these primary products.

We do have new industries, notably, tourism, which today generates more foreign currency earnings than agriculture in the majority of Caribbean countries. But these industries, tourism industries and hotels function as enclaves, which have purchased very little from the farmers and from local industries. The visitors are brought here into all-inclusive hotels, most of the money stays abroad and very little of it trickles down to the local economy. Trinidad and Tobago which has energy has experienced favorable economic growth and public finances, but most of the resources generated in this way, a high proportion of these resources is being wasted. Barbados has achieved a high level of economic and human development, but is presently laboring under an extremely high debt burden and a growing fiscal deficit. Many of us have been talking and working towards a much greater degree of economic integration amongst the Caribbean states. One of the chief obstacles to greater economic integration is the absence of cheap and reliable transport links; but more importantly, I would say, has been the policies of opening up these economies to imports from the developed countries resulting from trade agreements, both with the WTO and bilateral trade agreements. I believe there are two subject areas, however, in which economic integration and cooperation amongst all Caribbean countries has the potential of yielding great benefits. One of them is food production and food security; and the other is the development of renewable energy sources. The political dimension of integration or cooperation is the most difficult one; if you look at the level of governments. Sovereignty is a very highly prized asset by all our governments and, unfortunately, sovereignty is interpreted as meaning that I have much to lose by a form of regionalism which means giving up some these sovereign powers to a regional body. Even within the Caribbean Community, where we have a very long tradition of cooperating amongst ourselves, member states are unwilling to give up some of their sovereignty to the regional body. So I believe we should perhaps at this stage of building our relationships prioritize functional cooperation in areas like food and energy and also give a great importance to the cultural dimension.

- Magda Resik: Well, and now my last question before I give people in the audience the chance to ask questions as well. A phenomenon of a renewed Latin America giving impetus to an integration process is taking place, and we usually speak of Latin America and the Caribbean, how much can the Caribbean benefit from these integration mechanisms that are being put forward? Do you imagine a Caribbean linked to that new Latin America?

- Norman Girvan: Well, I’m very glad you ask about this, because I’m quite excited about the things that are happening in the broader hemisphere and we have had a discussion about what term to use. I don’t like the term Latin America and the Caribbean, because it kind of implies that the Caribbean is somehow stuck on to Latin America somewhere on the periphery. And mostly I like the term “Nuestra América” “Our America”, the name invented by José Martí. Now I think what has happened in Our America in the last ten years is very exciting, very encouraging and is cause for great hope. Social movements of the people, of the indigenous, of the poor, of the Afrodescendientes, have had a great impact on political life in many countries of the continent, as you know. And neoliberalism, well, perhaps is not completely dead, but certainly perhaps one hopes it has been mortally wounded over most of the continent. And the hegemony of the United States, the ability of the United States to dictate the course of political and economic events in the continent has diminished severely--not entirely disappeared--but its far less than it used to be. So we have governments of the left, which have reformed their constitutions and moving towards participatory democracy, which are reinstituting the role of the State in the economy and which are generally following pro-poor and pro-people programs. And we have governments perhaps that may be called those of the moderate left, notably Brazil, which nonetheless oppose and have opposed successfully the United States’ plan for the Hemisphere – the FTAA. What I think is very important in these developments is the extent to which institutions have been created or have been strengthened which give some life and continuity to this new thrust in Latin America and I’m thinking notably of ALBA, UNASUR and CELAC. And also, I should have mentioned Petrocaribe, which has been of great importance to us in the Greater Caribbean region in providing a relief for the cost of importing oil.

The programs of solidarity, notably, launched by Cuba and by Venezuela - human solidarity and financial cooperation - have had a tremendous impact in the English-speaking Caribbean and indeed, I would say, in the whole Caribbean Community, because Haiti is a member of the Caribbean Community. Now, what’s important about all of this in terms of what we have been talking about is that the historical barriers which have existed for centuries between the islands and the mainland, and between the English and the Spanish speakers, are finally being transcended. You know, I should qualify what I just said, because there has always been movement of the people amongst the different parts of the region. For example, thousands of English-speaking West Indians went to Panama to help in the construction of the canal. And, of course, tens of thousands of Jamaicans and Haitians came to this country when the sugar industry was being developed by the American capital. And I suppose these movements came about in response to the necessities of capital and the needs for survival of ordinary Caribbean people. But what is important about the recent developments has been the participation of governments of the Caribbean Community in these new institutions – Petrocaribe, UNASUR, where two members of CARICOM belong to UNASUR – Guyana and Surinam, and CELAC, where all CARICOM countries attended and participated in the CELAC founding Conference last December. Just last week we heard that two more CARICOM countries will be joining ALBA, that is, Saint Lucia and Surinam. So we see a process of acercamiento, as I call it, between CARICOM and the other regions of Nuestra América, especially the continent of South America. And, of course, I see Assad Shoman looking at me from the front row, so I have to mention the role of Belize as a bridge CARICOM and Central America.

The question is how can these linkages be deepened, and strengthened and brought down to other levels of the population, beyond those of politicians and of governments. We need more programs of educational exchange and youth exchange amongst our countries. Cuba is a great example of the value of such programs as there are thousands of Caribbean students studying in this country and when they return, they are not only Spanish speaking, but they convey a sense of the Cuban experience to the wider public and all those with whom they come in contact. Some of them even return to Cuba as ambassadors, diplomatic representatives of their countries in Havana. But we need to broaden this to other countries, meaning, other countries need to offer scholarships and educational exchange programs, so that our young people can begin to get to know one another and our countries. The other thing that we need to work on is maritime transport links. Much of the intra-Caribbean trade, believe or not, goes by the port of Miami. There are certain economic reasons, I am told, which have to do with the fact that much of the international trade goes through containers and that only some ports are capable of handling such very vast containers, but I’m sure that there are solutions which our people can devise. We need ferry services and shipping services with smaller ships between, for example, Santiago de Cuba and Port Antonio, in Jamaica, between Central America and Cuba and Jamaica and all down the island

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