On the CBC-8 television channel, in the daily Magazine ¨Good Morning , Barbados¨ on Monday, December 14, the host Cassandra Crawford interviewed the Ambassadors of Cuba in Barbados, Sergio Jorge Pastrana, and of Barbados to CARICOM, David Comissiong, about the CARICOM-Cuba Summit recently held on December 8.
Ambassador David Comissiong explained that each year, CARICOM-Cuba Day is celebrated on December 8, in commemoration of the date in 1972, in which the first four independent countries of the English-speaking Caribbean established bilateral diplomatic relations with Revolutionary Cuba , in defiance of the diplomatic siege imposed on the largest of the Caribbean Antilles by the Organization of American States (OAS), under pressure from the government of the United States of America. On that date, the leaders of Barbados, Jamaica, Guyana and Trinidad and Tobago, respectively Errol Barrow, Michael Manley, Forbes Burnham and Dr. Eric Williams, established bilateral diplomatic ties with the Cuba of Prime Minister Fidel Castro, and joined the Mexico and Canada as the only countries in the hemisphere with full diplomatic relations with Cuba.
Comissiong added that every three years, a summit meeting of the Heads of State and Government of CARICOM is held, together with Cuba, and in this year, the event on that date should have brought together all the political leaders of the region to Havana, but the incidence of the pandemic of SARS-COV-2, COVID-19 had prevented the face-to-face conclave and it had been decided to hold the meeting by virtual teleconference.
Then the journalist asked Ambassador Sergio Jorge Pastrana about the content of the event and the Ambassador elaborated on how these meetings lay the foundations for the increase in cooperation relations of countries that share important historical ties and equivalent conditions of development. He highlighted the priority that cooperation ties in the health sector had in this particular meeting during this year, in the framework of the confrontation with the pandemic, and how Prime Minister Mia Amor Mottley had begun her speech precisely by thanking the support and collaboration of Cuban medical personnel that not only in Barbados, but throughout the Caribbean, had supported local efforts to face the pandemic.
The journalists also inquired about the work carried out by Cuba in the search for vaccines to face COVID-19, to which Pastrana explained how Cuban labs are working on four vaccine candidates based on the experience accumulated by the Finlay Institute of Vaccines and the Center of Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology, both institutions belonging to the research branch of the BioCubaFarma complex, in the development of various vaccines that are used in Cuba to immunize the entire population for several decades against 13 different diseases, and how these vaccine candidates were currently in various phases of clinical trials that predict that we might be able to have these drugs in the first part of next year 2021. Likewise, the Ambassador elaborated on another set of drugs developed in Cuba that have been integrated into protocols for the treatment of the various people and age categories who are affected by the disease, which have also been available to many people around the world, including some Caribbean countries, and Barbados specifically.
Pastrana recalled that in the celebration of Emancipation Day in 1998, in front of the statue of Bussa, the leader of the first slave revolt that took place in Barbados, Commander in Chief Fidel Castro Ruz had expressed in his speech (and he quoted ) that ¨ ... The Caribbean and Barbados can trust Cuba as the tree can trust the sap that runs through its veins ... ¨, and Ambassador Pastrana reinforced that this summit was the expression of the continuity of that commitment that will continue to expand and deepen in memory and faithful follow-up to the leaders who opened the doors of diplomatic relations between Cuba and the rest of the nations of the Caribbean Basin.