On clear days from Montego Bay, you can sense Cuba just ninety miles north. Close enough to swim, if desperation or love demanded it. Close enough that between 1900 and 1930, 150,000 Jamaicans crossed that water to work, to live, to die. My grandmother's father rests in Cuban earth. Mortimo Planno, one of our most important Rastafari elders, was born there. The line from Cuba to Trench Town to the world runs through him—he walked up the gangplank in 1966 to escort Haile Selassie to the ecstatic crowd, he mentored Bob Marley, he taught us to see spirituality and justice as one struggle.
Cuba gave my neighbours in Norwood their sight back. The Jamaica-Cuba Eye Care Programme flew ordinary Jamaicans—many on their first airplane ride—to Cuba for free surgery. Over 3,400 sight-saving procedures. Acts of love between neighbours.
Cuba gave the world Ebola treatments when wealthy nations sent soldiers. Cuba developed five COVID vaccines while under blockade, a lung cancer vaccine America bought in secret, treatments for vitiligo that plague our people. Cuba gave us the Buena Vista Social Club, refuge for Hemingway, revolutionary spirit that moved my father to name my brother Ernesto Che.
And now? Now our Prime Minister offers "constructive dialogue" and "humanitarian concern"—mealy-mouthed platitudes—while Cuba starves, while her lights go out, while the United States tightens a sixty-year blockade. Now the eye programme ends March 20 because we fold under Washington's pressure.
I remember 2022, when Jamaica sent medical supplies to Matanzas after that devastating fire. We know how to be generous. So where is our flotilla now? Where are the small boats loaded with food and medicine crossing those ninety miles? Where are our artists, our churches, our elders demanding solidarity?
Rastafari has always understood that Babylon is one and resistance must be one. Mortimo Planno, born in Cuba, buried in Jamaica, knew the struggle doesn't stop at the water's edge.
So I ask my fellow Jamaicans, I ask the Rastafari brethren: Are we fairweather friends? Do we only love Cuba when it costs us nothing? When Cuba gave us sight, gave us prophets, gave us medicine and music and revolutionary hope—we celebrated. Now Cuba needs us, and we offer statements.
Lions do not watch family starve while issuing press releases. What are we waiting for?
