Cuban–Latin American Relations in the Context of a Changing Hemis ...

that threats to the region did not come from outside the region but from within—an obvious reference to Cuba and its support for the Grenadian New Jewel Movement.¹⁴

However, a new regional and international climate developed in the early 1990s that made possible a reconciliation between Cuba and the other countries of the Caribbean. One factor was that in spite of tensions at the governmental levels during the 1980s, there remained important nongovernmental cultural ties within the region that kept open channels of communication. Second, a review of the events in Grenada revealed that the Cubans bore no responsibility for the tragic events; rather, the Grenadian leaders Maurice Bishop and Hudson Austin were responsible for them. Third, the fall of East European socialism, and with it Cuba’s close alliance with the USSR, ended the longtime ideological justification for Cuba’s isolation, a position that had animated Cuba’s conservative foes in the region.

These changes brought immediate results when the Eleventh Summit of the Countries of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) meeting in Kingston, Jamaica, in 1990 authorized the creation of a special commission to visit Havana and discuss with the Cuban government a framework for future negotiations and bilateral projects. The visit took place in May 1991, and simultaneously, the governments of Cuba and Grenada reestablished normal diplomatic relations, an important symbolic act eight years after the U.S. invasion and the rupture of relations between the countries. In the new political climate, Cuba also established diplomatic relations with Belize, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, and Saint Lucia, allowing for commercial relations to be opened between those countries and Cuba.

The changing context also extended beyond the Caribbean to the rest of Latin America. The end of the decade of the 1980s saw the completion of the transition to democracy in key countries such as Brazil, Argentina, and Chile as well as moves toward the negotiated end of civil wars in El Salvador and Guatemala. Cuba also witnessed in December 1989 the U.S. invasion of Panama and in February 1990 the unexpected electoral defeat of the revolutionary Sandinista government by the conservative U.S.-backed United Nicaraguan Opposition (UNO) of Violeta Chamorro.