‘We live in a mad world’

There were a lot of expectations that America’s relations with Cuba will change under President Barrack Obama, but it didn’t happen. Obama’s becoming president of the US led to a rise in expectations not only in Cuba and the Caribbean but also in Latin America and Africa. There has been no change with respect to […]

There were a lot of expectations that America’s relations with Cuba will change under President Barrack Obama, but it didn’t happen.
Obama’s becoming president of the US led to a rise in expectations not only in Cuba and the Caribbean but also in Latin America and Africa. There has been no change with respect to Cuba. The political embargo and blockade is vigorously enforced. The tightening of the blockade in the last five years is the main feature of the period. There is also a continued attempt to bring about unconstitutional change in Cuba and also interference in the domestic affairs of Cuba. There is however a better bilateral ambience with less rhetoric, no bilateral tension and there has been dialogue on technical issues in several areas.
The world saw the handshake between Presidents Obama and Raul Castro at Nelson Mandela’s funeral. Did it go beyond that?
Mandela is a very powerful symbol. His funeral made it possible for the two presidents to meet at the same event. President Raul Castro said handshake took place “because we are a civilised people. It is only natural.” We think there should be civilised relations between Cuba and the US despite our differences. Mandela was a big friend of Cuba. There has been an attempt [by the West] to portray Mandela as if he was not a revolutionary, as if Mandela had never been on the list of international terrorists issued by the US State Department.  Do you know that Mandela was on that list until 2008? For the same reason that Cuba has been included in the list of states that sponsor terrorism. The main pretext for including Cuba in that list is the alleged relationship between Cuba and Colombia’s FARC guerrillas but it is President Santos of Columbia that introduced Cuba’s issue to the Cartagena Summit of the Americas. The entire regional leaders urged the US to stop excluding Cuba from that regional forum and they also called for the lifting of the blockade.
How about Cuba’s relations with Africa? You offered to us tremendous military assistance during the fight for decolonisation and against Apartheid.
We have a profoundly cultural relationship with Africa. We have African blood in our veins, all of us. Our national poet says all Cubans are either from Carrabelle or from Congo. We have a relationship with Africa that has lasted for centuries. Many of the soldiers and even generals that fought in Cuba’s war on independence were Africans or descendants of Africans. The African struggle to end colonialism was an essential experience for all Cubans.  It features prominently in our music and our art. To my generation of Cubans who were not old enough to be guerrillas in the revolutionary war, the African struggle was our cultural and revolutionary experience. 300,000 Cubans went to Africa voluntarily in a population under 10 million at the time. South Africa built a mausoleum in memory of those killed under the apartheid regime and they added more than 2,000 Cuban casualties in Angola.
But the most important thing is they all went there voluntarily. There is not one family in Cuba that did not live through that experience which is a source of great national pride. There is a hardly a municipality in Cuba that did not have a deadly casualty from that war in Africa. I used to be a Lieutenant during the Angolan war. I was in the southern sector between Angola and Namibia, with MPLA and SWAPO comrades.
Cuban Ambassador to Nigeria interjected: Me too!  
Why is cooperation between Nigeria and Cuba small?
In terms of figures it is small. There is geographical distance and we have also faced economic problems and financial difficulties. We have now picked up cooperation particularly with Cuban technicians working in Nigeria and also Nigerian students studying in Cuba.
So what are the areas in which cooperation could be expanded?
Both countries have comparative advantages and we must make use of them. We have experience in terms of health, schools of medicine, manufacture of pharmaceutical products, including scientific research. We have been working on production of a vaccine against malaria. We faced financial restrictions in our attempts to make clinical trials in some African countries but we persist in our effort to make a vaccine against malaria. We do not have malaria in our region but this will be a major contribution to the African and Asian nations.
We are also working to produce a vaccine against cholera. We mostly want to help Haiti with cholera vaccine. Cuba is also producing therapeutic vaccines against cancer which is enjoying international recognition.
Economic relations between Cuba and Nigeria could be bigger; you have experience in oil production and we are looking for oil in our sea shelf.
How is Africa’s great friend Commandante Fidel Castro Ruz doing these days?
He is doing well. He is aging. He is very much devoted to the production of foodstuff, in particular the production of vegetable protein, to be able to produce animal protein without wasting foodstuff to feed animals. He also devotes a lot of work to climate change. The planet is in imminent danger.
There is an emergency that could affect the stability and also the governance of the whole planet. He also devotes his time to nuclear disarmament. The world today spends $1.72 trillion on weapons. Against whom will these weapons be used? Everybody says that nuclear weapons will not be used, that it will be a crime against humanity. So what is the use of having them? If the world is spending twice as much on weapons as it spent at the time the Soviet Union existed, the world will not be able to solve the problem of poverty. We live in a mad world.