That high point is being celebrated in Havana this weekend when virtually all heads of government of the 15-member Community, including President Bharrat Jagdeo, current chairman of CARICOM, join their host, President Fidel Castro, in a toast of 30 years of friendship and cooperation between Cuba and CARICOM.

Today, December 8, will mark three decades since four independent states of the English-speaking Caribbean - Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago, Guyana and Barbados -jointly reached out hands of friendship to the government and people of Cuba.

The visiting CARICOM heads and officials - among them Secretary General Edwin Carrington and Shridath Ramphal, former head of the Caribbean Regional Negotiating Machinery - were scheduled to touch down at Jose Marti international airport at varying times yesterday, most of them out of Barbados on a chartered Cubana aircraft.

All relatively small and without any significant clout, the original four CARICOM states had exercised their right to jointly reach out to Cuba but careful not to become involved in any anti-American activity while not concealing respect for the struggles of the Cuban people in the face of an unprecedented US economic blockade.

In contrast to that courageous stand, the low point in the foreign policy politics of the Caribbean, or more precisely that of some regional governments, would have been the involvement with Washington in the invasion on October 25, 1983 of the tiny spice isle of Grenada.

To mark the 20th anniversary of that US military invasion, a group of Americans are currently planning a cruise to Grenada to "celebrate" - yes, celebrate - what remains a dark chapter in the history of the Caribbean, a region that bridges the two Americas.

A week-long cruise is being organised by the former military aide to President Reagan's National Security Council, Colonel Oliver North, one of the darlings of rightwing America, who was exposed back in 1985-86 for his disgraceful involvement in what became known as the `Iran-Contra Affair’.

It was part of a conspiracy involving the use of some US$30M in profits from illegal arms sales to Iran, then at war with Iraq, to channel to the CIA-guided 'contra' guerillas in the US plan to topple the Sandinista government in Nicaragua.

'Communist' propaganda
Grenada was to be subsequently linked in what the Reagan administration, and the likes of North, had marketed with saturated anti-communist propaganda as part of a "communist troika" in this hemisphere - Cuba, Grenada and Nicaragua.

That sort of propaganda, carefully crafted, had helped the anti-Cuba media in and out of the region, to justify America's military invasion of Grenada on October 25, 1983, with the connivance - support if you wish - of some CARICOM governments of that period.

But, to return to the earlier stated high point - the joint diplomatic relations established with Havana: It was a bold, unique initiative in the realm of international relations that was to have had an historic impact in bringing Cuba out of the cold.

That was a disturbing development for 'Uncle Sam', with its sordid history of 'gunboat' diplomacy in the Latin American-Caribbean region. The non-resident diplomatic outreach to Cuba, in the face of the punishing economic, trade and financial embargo imposed by Washington, and still in force some 40 years later, attracted the applause of small, poor and developing nations across the globe.

Strangled economically, isolated diplomatically within this hemisphere, and suffering the consequences of Washington's influence on its Western European allies, Cuba was to soon realise that that joint initiative was more than psychological and moral comfort.

That commendable act of 30 years ago this month by four small Caribbean states, located in the 'shadow of the mighty eagle', was done without either any anti-US hostility or signal of an ideological shift towards the then other `superpower’ - Soviet Union.

If proof that neither size nor limited resources should not be an impediment in taking a principled stand in defence of sovereignty, or the right to self-determination, then it resided in that memorable decision by then Prime Ministers Eric Williams, Michael Manley, Forbes Burnham and Errol Barrow - all of whom are no longer with us.

Significantly, the initiative on diplomatic ties with Cuba followed the first-ever meeting in the Caribbean of Foreign Ministers of a then vibrant Non-Aligned Movement that took place in Guyana in that same year - 1972.

Prime Minister Keith Mitchell, who has been working to strengthen Grenada-Cuba relations - something now common to the entire Caribbean family of governments, including Haiti and Dominican Republic - may now wish to reflect on the implications of the coming cruise to Grenada by Oliver North and friends to "celebrate" the 20th anniversary of America's invasion of a tiny Caribbean state.

North's coterie of fellow right-wingers for the cruise would include some Congressmen, Reagan's former Attorney General Edward Meese, National Rifle Association executive vice-president Wayne La Pierre, and possibly also President Reagan's eldest son, Michael, according to an Associated Press report from San Juan, Puerto Rico.

Monument to Americans
For Antigua and Barbuda's High Commissioner to London, Ronald Sanders, reacting to the AP report of North's coming cruise, "this is utterly insensitive and crass behaviour. The occupation of Caribbean soil by foreign troops and the circumstances that led to it should be a matter of deep regret to Caribbean people. We should not seek to deny that it occurred. But we should certainly not be a party to its celebration...."

Organising the cruise is `The Freedom Alliance’, a charity founded by North who said that the event will help in raising money to benefit scholarships for US servicemen killed during the invasion of Grenada.

Some 58 lives were lost during the invasion that followed the tragedies of a bloody coup, including the execution of the Prime Minister Maurice Bishop and some top cabinet and party colleagues. The dead included 24 Cubans, 18 Americans and 18 Grenadians.

There are Grenadians who swear to this day that many more than 18 of their nationals perished during the invasion. But the only monument erected to that invasion commemorates the fallen American servicemen.

None of the other lives lost mattered. Not surprisingly, when he arrived in the island some four months after the invasion, Reagan's Secretary of State, George Shultz, saw in Grenada just "a lovely piece of real estate".

The international airport at Point Salines that was so much a symbol of the new development strategy of Maurice Bishop's People's Revolutionary Government (PRG), is yet to be renamed in honour of the young, charismatic political leader whose fate as a prisoner of once loyal 'comrades' hardly mattered to the invading force. It is their "heroism" that the disgraced Oliver North now wants to make a celebratory event.

History will not remember kindly those Caribbean leaders who allowed themselves to provide the fig leaf for that first American invasion of an ex-British colony that posed NO security threats to the 'super eagle' of world politics.

Trinidad and Tobago's late George Chambers and Barbados' late Errol Barrow had, in different ways, provided more than enough evidence to inform the misinformed about the measure of a Caribbean involvement in a Washington conspiracy to undermine Caribbean sovereignty.

But North and scores of Americans of like minds are coming to rub salt in wounds. No question of commiserating with Grenadians still suffering from the tragedies, the trauma of October 25, 1983. They are coming to "honour and celebrate" the "sacrifice" of American servicemen.

Why should they care about the dead Grenadians and Cubans? After all, such Caribbean victims of US military power do not really matter in the scheme of an Oliver North whose concept of "equality and freedom" would not have been lost on critical minds familiar with the `Iran-Contra’ conspiracy.