I travelled to Cuba in 1985. I wanted to go see for myself. After travelling around the island, my money fell short. I met some young Guyanese men in Havana. For a few days before I returned to Trinidad they gave me accommodation in their students’ dorm. They were students at the Medical Faculty at the University of Havana. They had been granted scholarships by the Cuban Government to become doctors.

I do not recall any official contesting my lodgings at the dorm. It is the Cuban spirit to help those in distress. Without batting an eye, without desire for recompense, I recall the alacrity with which the Cubans sent troops to Angola and Zimbabwe (1970s) to train soldiers fighting against the apartheid regime in South Africa.

I recall Fidel Castro standing in the UN General Assembly and gospelling against apartheid, which at the time was shielded by Great Britain and the US.

I remember the Cubans hustling to Pakistan, the mountains there, to rescue villagers hit by an earthquake. And how they hustled over to Italy at the time of the COVID-19 pandemic as lorries with makeshift mortuaries sped down the highways with the dead.

Cuba has provided medical support to Caricom nations for 50 years now. I recall Cuba assisting individuals and sports federations in Caricom in boxing, track and field.

For a number of years Cuba has held observer status at Caricom congresses. And Cuba has historically housed embassies in many Caricom states. I don’t recall Cuba engaging in electoral or political interference in any of these states, or trying to overthrow them — or infiltrating, invading, or interloping militarily.

In sum, from the field to the UN podium, Cuba has been a global revolutionary force struggling to defeat South African and Palestinian apartheid; for fiscal and economic independence from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank; for health support with its affordable lines of pharmaceuticals and medical brigades; for Non-Aligned and Third World sovereignty; for independence movements in Africa, South East Asia, Latin America, and the Caribbean. And Cuba has been a steadfast Caricom ally.

When Venezuela called for support against the US military campaign in late 2025, who else would answer the call? Who else would be on the front line? Thirty-two Cuban soldiers died in defence of the now-kidnapped President Nicolas Maduro and First Lady Celia Flores.

Now that Cuba is in crisis, its distress aggravated by 60 years of sanctions, blockades, military threat, and incursion, a recalcitrant minority of Caricom leaders are bad-mouthing it. Chief amongst them is the Trinidad and Tobago Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar. In her February 2026 speech at the Heads of Caricom meeting, she stated: “I will not support a dictatorship in Cuba or anywhere else. We will not support it. What we do? We support regular free and fair democratic elections in a multi-party system. There must be the rule of law. There must be majority rule and minority rights. We must have the separation of powers and the checks and balances. We must have accountability and transparency.”

If Cuba is a dictatorship, with no democracy, no rule of law, no transparency, why has her Administration in the past consistently voted with Caricom and the UN demanding an end to the US economic, commercial, and financial embargo against Cuba to advocate for the unconditional lifting of sanctions, citing them as unjust and a violation of international law? Why did she meet President Raúl Castro in Port of Spain in December 2011 during her first term as prime minister, and at a CELAC meeting in Havana in 2014? And why offer the Hindu namaste clasped palm in 2011, and shake hands with him in 2014?

Just as she facilitated Trump’s regime-change gambit against Venezuela, she is now doing so against Cuba with neither blink nor blush.

Another one to look at is Irfan Ali, the president of Guyana. Like Persad-Bissessar, he attended US President Donald Trump’s fake Shield of the Americas summit in Florida. Asked by a
FOX reporter about US regime-change in Cuba, Ali stated: “We agree that there must be an attempt to have the status quo changed. Those changes must lead to a society in which the rule of law, in which democracy, in which freedom is celebrated… So, yes, a transition that involves these, and I think that is what the president is referring to.” Ali is openly agreeable to Marco Rubio’s and Trump’s regime-change slow-march in Cuba.

However, in December 2022, Ali had stated: “When we think about our health-care system and the thousands of doctors and nurses that benefited from training in Cuba; when we think about our engineering system; when we think about the medical brigades that came to support our health sector; when we think about the selfless sacrifice of sharing even when Cuba itself had limited resources, it tells us about a people who are committed to the cause of humanity, a people who are committed to the upliftment of humanity, a people who are committed to ensuring that they do their bit to making the world a better place.”

Last week, the governments of Guyana, Jamaica and Dominica buckled under US pressure and announced the truncation of their 50-year-old medical programmes with Cuba. The US has labelled these programmes “forced labour” and “State-sponsored human trafficking”. When the US campaign against the Cuban medics arose in March 2025, Persad-Bissessar, then Opposition leader, advocated the use of local medical personnel. (‘Kamla: Use local medical personnel’, March 12, 2025,
Trinidad Express)

Trump wants to be exchequer of the global oil/gas economy — just as his treasury secretary now is in Venezuela’s post-invasion international oil trade.

Persad-Bissessar and Ali are slavishly peddling Trump’s petro-imperialism and regime-change ops on the pretext of Caribbean democracy, law, and security.

What a twiddling twosome of pansies to so turn on Cuba at this moment of its existential crisis.

Dr Wayne Kublalsingh has been a university professor, writer, and activist in Trinidad & Tobago, and has worked tirelessly to promote authentic economic development. Send comments to the Jamaica Observer or wbkubla@yahoo.com.

Kamla Persad-Bissessar 

IRFAN ALI.