Ungratefulness is worse than witchcraft

By *Jomo Thomas

The world owes Cuba a massive debt of gratitude. However, it is failing the Cuban people big time. No other country and its people in the last 100 years have done more for humanity than that proud Caribbean jewel, which sits 90 miles south of the most cruel empire in world history.

The Cuban people are being starved to death and subjected to submission by the United States and Europe, and the entire world cowers in fear as Washington blocks all fuel from entering the country. It is an American strategy that began with plots and assassination attempts against Fidel Castro and other Cuban leaders, the failed Bay of Pigs invasion of 1961 and the strangulation, embargo and blockage of essential goods, food and medicine that continues nonstop for 65 years.

That revolutionary Cuba has survived this veritable war on its independence and sovereignty is a tribute to the strength of purpose, dignity, unity, nationalism, and political and ideological consciousness of its people. But American imperialism is unforgiving and unrelenting. How dare the Cuban leadership defy the mighty America?

With the unlawful kidnapping of President Maduro of Venezuela and the dictates to leaders in Caracas, Mexico, Jamaica and other states that they can’t sell gas and fuel to Havana, the American regime is betting that this time around, Cuba will not only be on the ropes. The hope is that the economy will grind to a halt, factories, hospitals, and other essential institutions that sustain modern civilised society will collapse, and the Cuban revolution will finally be subdued and defeated.

Over the last 50 years, whenever the world called, Cuba answered. In 1975, when racist South African soldiers, supported by Europe and the United States, invaded Angola to thwart its move to national independence, the indomitable Fidel Castro, responding to the request of the fledgling government in Angola, sent tens of thousands of Cuban soldiers to defend, protect and beat back the apartheid butchers. The legendary Nelson Mandela credited the heroic Cuban effort, sealed in blood, with paving the way for the end of Apartheid, his release from prison and the attendant freedom and democracy enjoyed by Black South Africans.

Between 2014 and 2016, when the deadly Ebola disease outbreak in West Africa spread fear and death across the landscape, Cuban doctors, whom the regime in Washington slanderously claims are human trafficked by the Cuban government, bravely went to Africa to treat, assist and save lives.

During the COVID plandemic from 2020 to 2023, when the world was shut down in a massive experiment of thought control and human behaviour, little Cuba developed three vaccines which it shared with people in the Global South, sent hundreds of doctors to industrialised Italy and other distressed corners of the earth to soothe hearts and save lives.

For us in the Caribbean, Cuban assistance has been crucial in creating an all-important professional class. Thousands of people from Jamaica in the north to Guyana and Suriname in the south owe their training and professional careers to the selfless assistance of Cuba’s revolutionary government. Many of our doctors, engineers, economists, architects, and dentists owe their training and education to Cuba. Across Africa, Asia and Latin America, the story is the same.

No other country in modern history has been so generous in offering from its modest resources to the rest of the world. Yet the world stands askance as the Trump regime escalates its murderous regime change policies against Cuba.

Where is the conscience of the world? How could this inhumanity, aggression and assault against international law, the United Nations charter and universally recognised civilised norms be allowed to continue in the third decade of the 21st century?

Why are we so shamelessly abandoning our sovereignty? How is it possible that we can agree to the dictates of the hegemon to the north to take refugees from its shores, but specify that under no conditions would we take our kit and kin from Haiti?

How does St. Lucia benefit when PM Philip Pierre stands before professionals in Castries and declares that geo-political dictates demand that St. Lucia’s young people can no longer study in Cuba? It is sadly nauseating to witness a Cuban vessel leaving a Jamaican port empty because the Jamaican authorities refused to facilitate the sale of liquified petroleum gas (LPG). PM Holness needs his head examined. Cuba has offered so much to its Jamaican neighbour, less than 150 miles across the sea.

And as if all of this bad news is not depressing enough, PM Dr. Godwin Friday announced during his budget address on Monday plans to phase out the use of Cuban district medical officers in three years.

Dr. Friday cited two primary reasons for the policy shift: a language barrier, which he says is often faced by patients and staff, and the need to reduce foreign staffing costs associated with maintaining international medical teams. The government said its initiative was part of a wider health strategy focused on moving from dependence to capability and ensuring that local professionals staff the health system. One day after Dr. Friday’s announcement, Guyana disclosed that it had ended its bilateral medical cooperation agreement with Cuba, saying the agreement was no longer necessary because Cuban doctors are now coming to Guyana independently to seek employment.

Both countries offered contrasting reasons, but the decisions reek of American pressures and the regional governments’ abandonment of their sovereign rights.

While the language barrier is a real problem, developing countries such as ours must avoid cutting off our noses to spite our faces. As of Feb. 10, 2026, Cuban specialists fill the void in orthopaedics, anaesthesiology, endocrinology, internal medicine, pathology, oncology, cardiology, biomedical engineering, nutrition, and engineering.

Three years is an exceedingly short time within which to train and find replacements for these Cuban medical professionals. It takes four to five years to earn an undergraduate degree in any of these areas. Moreover, most locals in the medical field choose to remain general practitioners rather than pursue further specialised training. Our government’s policy pronouncement seems overly optimistic and driven by alien pressures and concerns that could seriously damage our medical infrastructure. For starters, who is going to run the diagnostic centre at Georgetown?

The world has changed and is changing for the worse. We risk the chance of becoming vassals to a president who derisively labelled us “shit hole countries”.

*Jomo Sanga Thomas is a lawyer, journalist, social commentator and a former Speaker of the House of Assembly in St. Vincent and the Grenadines.

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