Panday: Fidel a charming man

Panday greeted the news of Castro’s death at age 90 by saying, “Oh, I didn’t know he had died.” “I met him on several occasions while he was alive and on every occasion, he was charming.

He’s brilliant, and, he was daring and he was courageous. As a matter of fact, I think he is the greatest revolutionary of the 20th century. I think he was an inspiration to every patriot who was prepared to lay down his life for his country,” Panday told Sunday Newsday.

He noted that while Trinidad and Tobago has always regarded Cuba as a friend and member of the Caribbean family, it was his hope that the communist island-state would be truly integrated into the Caribbean family of nations in the near future.

“The Caribbean has always embraced Cuba as a friend and as part of the family, and, I hope that that would grow and that Cuba would truly become a part of the Caribbean family.” Former labour minister Errol McLeod said the world had lost a “giant of a man” who had gone to meet other legendary leaders such as Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King Jr and other world personalities who had shaped the world in the last century.

“I met him on three occasions and he was everything that the western world didn’t want him to be. He was a gentle person, he was deep and committed in his thoughts and he was resolute in what he sought to to do to establish the independence of Cuba and other third world developing economies.

His independence was against western, imperialist, capitalist tendencies,” McLeod said.

McLeod said he expected that the reformation which had began under Castro would be continued and Cuba would “take some steps towards normalization of its economy and other developmental goals.” Minister in the Ministry of Education Dr Lovell Francis praised Castro as a “Caribbean hero” and one of the most important figures of the 20th century.

Francis, a former history lecturer at the University of the West Indies, made the comments while speaking with the media following a press conference yesterday at the El Dorado West Secondary school.

“As a person who taught Caribbean history, Latin American history, I mean I understand the significance of the life of Fidel Castro.

If you ask me if I would have liked to live in Cuba during his tenure - probably not. But from an academic sense if you ask me if he was an important historical figure, an important ‘freedom fighter’, I would have to say ‘yes’,” he said.

Francis pointed out that people forget that the Cuba that Fidel Castro grew up in was an American colony “with all of the negative connotations of being a colony” including that your property is owned from elsewhere and your economy is run from elsewhere.

“Castro was a young lawyer who was basically trying to fight for the rights of the citizenry of his island against an imperialist American power that was not concerned with listening to him. So he becomes part of a revolutionary movement that in the context of the 20th century if you were anti-capitalist you’re going to be socialist.

It was the politics of the era. So the enemy of my enemy is my friend so of course he is going to lean towards the Soviet Union,” he said.

He continued: “And I am not saying that that is irrelevant. What I am saying is this is a Caribbean island that had the same history of slavery and colonialism and neo-colonialism. Did it have dire consequences for them? Yes. But that does not totally undermine his stature as one of the most important 20th century figures of the world. As a person who fought for freedom.

Whether you want to balance that against the fact that he was a dictator, how you view that depends on you, but that does not take away from the fact that he was a freedom fighter. He fought for the freedom of his people against an imperialist, colonialist power.” Francis said how people view Castro has to do with their own political view “but for me, despite the fact that he might be a dictator, I still view him as a Caribbean hero”.