Author: coha

CubaDominican RepublicPress ReleasesUncategorizedVenezuela
coha

Dominica: The Caribbean’s Next “Terror Island”?

In 1983, while aboard a New York subway, I noticed someone reading that day’s issue of the New York Post. The front page headline screamed, “YANKS INVADE TERROR ISLAND.” It was early on in the Reagan administration and the U.S. had just militarily intervened in the Caribbean nation of Grenada, ending the island’s short-lived socialist experiment. The landing was based on the pretext that the Reagan administration had suspected that the new commercial airport—which Cuban laborers were aiding Grenada to construct on the island—actually would be used to transport Cuban troops to fight alongside African revolutionaries. Today, another Caribbean nation, Dominica, has been forging links with leftist Cuba and Venezuela. Authorities on that small Caribbean island had better watch out, or they may be presiding over this generation’s “Terror Island,” but this time the name of the island is Dominica.

A tiny nation of 133 square miles whose population could barely fill the Rose Bowl, Grenada had posed no strategic threat to the U.S. But Maurice Bishop of the leftist New Jewel Movement, which had ruled Grenada since 1979, had become positively irksome to Washington. Inspired at least as much by Bob Marley as by Karl Marx, Bishop, a young LSE graduate and an island intellectual and visionary, had embarked on an ambitious social and economic program aimed at diversifying agriculture, developing cooperatives, and creating an agro-industrial base that was leading to a reduction in food imports. Bishop also established a free health service and secondary education system, resulting in a markedly higher literacy rate on the island.

The Reagan administration sought to halt the New Jewel Movement in its tracks: economic assistance through the World Bank and the Caribbean Development Bank was mysteriously blocked, aid from the International Monetary Fund was restricted, and any participation in the Caribbean Basin Initiative was dismissed out of hand. Reagan even refused to meet with Bishop when the Grenadian Prime Minister visited Washington in June, 1983. According to the Washington Post, the CIA had been engaged all along in a campaign to destabilize Grenada both politically and economically.

Read More
Publications
coha

Macedonia: Reaching Out to Win Latin American Hearts and Minds

Recent COHA print citations

See more citations

On the eve of the explosive consequences of Kosovo’s independence, an artificial “dispute,” created by Greece seventeen years ago over the name and identity of the Republic of Macedonia, threatens to further destabilize the Balkans, with possibly uncontrolled consequences for regional peace. Incredibly, far off Latin America may help diffuse this situation and offer a solution.

Greece falsely accuses Macedonia that the latter is engaged in irredentism and hostile propaganda — not to mention Greece’s preposterous claim that Macedonia does not have the right to its own name and to its historical, ethnic, and religious identity. Demonstrably, Greece’s moves are suspect: Macedonia historically and culturally did transcend the country’s current borders. In 1912-13, through two brutal regional wars, Macedonia was forcefully partitioned among Greece, Bulgaria and Serbia. The Macedonians were subject to qualified genocide and many were driven from their land.

It is this reality that Greece tirelessly tries to cover up. Human Rights Watch, among other credible organizations, has documented the existence of on-going discrimination against the remaining Macedonians in Greece. In fact, until recently, Greece had legal provisions preventing exiled Macedonians from entering Greece in order to claim title of their family property. This context should help explain the “name dispute,” the endless Greek misinformation campaigns, the hostile posturing, and attempts to censor and trivialize Macedonian claims, but now via more refined methods involving international mechanisms, in the hope of gaining legitimacy via international sanctions of Macedonia.

Read More