BARBADOS COUNTRY READER TABLE OF CONTENTS Richard W. Teare 1960-1962 General Officer, Bridgetown Gerald B. Helman 1962-1963 Economic/Commercial Officer, Bridgetown Robert B. Morely 1965-1967 Consular Officer, Bridgetown Eileen R. Donovan 1960-1965 Consul General, Bridgetown 1965-1969 Assistant Director, Office of Caribbean Affairs, Washington, DC 1969-1974 Ambassador, Barbados Thomas Macklin, Jr. 1970-1972 Political Officer, Bridgetown Peter P. Lord 1970-1974 Deputy Chief of Mission, Bridgetown Edward M. Featherstone 1973-1976 Economic Officer, Bridgetown Theodore R. Britton, Jr. 1974-1977 Ambassador, Barbados and Grenada Johnny Young 1977-1979 Administrative Officer, Georgetown Donald A. Camp 1979-1981 Political Officer, Bridgetown Nicolas Robertson 1980-1981 Assistant Public Affairs Officer, USIS, Bridgetown E. Ashley Wills 1980-1983 Public Affairs Officer, USIS, Bridgetown Anthony Kern 1981-1983 Regional Labor Attaché, Bridgetown George A. McFarland, Jr. 1983-1985 Deputy Chief of Mission/Chargé d’Affaires, Antigua, Virgin Islands Thomas H. Anderson 1984-1986 Ambassador, Barbados Paul A. Russo 1986-1988 Ambassador, Barbados Nadia Tongour 1988-1991 Political Officer, Bridgetown G. Philip Hughes 1990-1993 Ambassador, Barbados 1 Mosina H. Jordan 1991-1995 Director, Regional Caribbean Program, USAID, Barbados RICHARD W. TEARE General Officer Bridgetown (1960-1962) Richard W. Teare was born in Ohio in 1937. He received his bachelor’s degree from Harvard University in 1948. His career includes positions in Barbados, Philippines, Vietnam, Laos, New Zealand, and Australia. Mr. Teare was interviewed by Charles Stuart Kennedy in July 1998. Q: So you were in Barbados from ’59? TEARE: It was 1960, February, by the time I got there. I was by then 23 years old and I stayed until July of 1962. Q: What was the situation in Barbados in those days? TEARE: It was a British colony. In fact it prided itself on having the oldest parliament in the Western Hemisphere. It had been settled in the 1620s, I think. It was a member of the prospective West Indies Federation. Q: You might explain what that was. TEARE: Yes. This was a promotion really by the British to try to get most of the Caribbean colonies into a single unit and to shove them off into independence sooner rather than later. The winds of change I think had already started to blow there. They came along shortly afterwards in Africa. There was a large body of educated people although the islands were essentially rather poor and some of them had internal self- government with elected parliaments and premiers. I think the British thought they were ready and furthermore could be governed by themselves as a unit; that is they could govern themselves but in a Federation format. I think this was rather naïve on the part of the British. I think they didn’t fully appreciate the local pride, local animosities, and self-interest of several of the entities. Also there were big disparities in size. Jamaica had I think three million people. Barbados had only one quarter of a million. Some of the smaller islands had not even a hundred thousand people. There were inevitable jealousies. Trinidad was a fairly distant second to Jamaica but it was important nevertheless. Trinidad resented Jamaica and Barbados and the smaller ones resented the two bigger ones. They had a Federal Prime Minister by that time and he was a Barbadian, Sir Grantley Adams, and he was really the grand old man of politics there, the equivalent of Nkrumah in Ghana or Eric Williams in Trinidad. He was older than Williams. Of course, having 2 a Barbadian as a prime minister meant you didn’t have to give it to either Trinidad or Jamaica, compromise and so forth. There was a federal senate that had representation from each of the islands, equal representation, and there already was a Lower House, I guess, that was weighted in proportion to population. But the whole thing was really imposed from outside, or encouraged from outside. There was never any ground swell of support locally for it because each of the islands kept its own government going and that is where the intense, active political life was. No one got excited about the doings of the federal government in Port of Spain, not even the feds themselves. But the United States had made a commitment to the British to foster this development. So among other things we decided that we would elevate, if that’s the right word, the consulate general in Port of Spain to the title of United States Mission to the West Indies Federation. At some point, I guess by this time it was 1961, we assigned a senior career officer, Ivan White, who had been Deputy Assistant Secretary for EUR and DCM in Ottawa, I think. He was going to be Chief of this U.S. Mission and Ambassador, waiting in the wings to the entire Federation on the day it should become independent. Well, when Ivan arrived in Port of Spain there was nobody to meet him at the airport from the federal government, but there was the Protocol Officer of the Government of Trinidad and Tobago. That was illustrative of the way things were. The federal government never really got up and running. Island governments prevailed. I left Barbados in ’62 and I think Jamaica became independent in ’64 and Trinidad also, and Barbados itself in ’66 and most of the rest later in the ‘60s, although a couple of them never have. The Federation quietly faded away. We were left, I guess, with a little bit of egg on our vest. One incident that came back to have more significance later in my career, later in the ‘60s, was an occasion when there was something being considered by the federal parliament in Port of Spain that was of interest to us. The Deputy Principal Officer from Port of Spain came over to see Florence Daisch, one of the federal senators at her home in Barbados. This was done without the knowledge or prior consultation of my boss, the consul in Barbados. In fact this had happened before my time but he still talked about it frequently. The officer in question who made that unannounced trip was one Philip C. Habib who was deputy principal officer in Port of Spain at the time. I later wound up working for him in Saigon. But my Barbados boss’ attitude toward him was so bitter that I remember being skeptical that he was coming to Saigon about the time I got there. Q: I take it that even at that time there was considerable immigration to the United States, or attempted immigration? TEARE: Oh, there was and that was our biggest problem in the post, visa fraud attempts. The traditional outlet for population from the West Indies is to the UK. That was the case and is still true today. Barbadians used to come back from trips to London and say, “I did think I had never left home. All the railway trainmen there are Bajans.” That is not a good accent. But they felt at home. The London Transport was full of Barbadians. 3 Q: Oh, yes, and the busses too! I think all the conductors on the busses. TEARE: Yes, yes, exactly. A lot of them also went to Canada. Not too many were able to go to the United States in any given at that time because there was a sub-quota of the Western Hemisphere…a sub-quota of the British quota. There was supposed to be a hundred per year for quota immigrant visas. Now people have been going to New York, particularly, since at least the 1920s and there was a body of people already there who were petitioning for relatives some of whom had gotten on quota status. So we would issue several hundred immigrant visas per year even though we were on that line of sub-quota. But then there were a lot of people trying for NIVs through all manner of subterfuge. And when I think back on it now I think they were pretty amateurish compared with what I’ve heard of since. There was an affidavit of support for them, for example, from a particular travel agency that catered to the Barbadian trade in New York. We would get several of those a week in both NIV and IV cases and when you saw one of those coming you automatically became suspicious. A good case, we always used to figure, didn’t need that kind of help and a case that had that kind of help was prima facie suspicious. Well the law tells you in fact that you operate on a guilty until proven innocent basis on visas and that is the way we were. Applicants would say…I would say… “Well, Miss Kumberbash, it says here on your application that you are going to visit this Mrs. Bravid in Brooklyn for six months.” And I would say, “That seems like quite a long visit. Why should Mrs. Bravid give you room and board for all this time?” And then I would ask, “Are you related to her?” And she would say, “Well I just call she Auntie.” And I would say, “Does that mean she is really your Aunt?” And the applicant would say, “Well, I think there is some family connection.” And then the applicant would say, “Besides, I can’t stay any longer than six months because you will throw me out.” I had to explain that the Immigration Service really didn’t have the capacity to follow everybody and that was why we tried to screen them at the beginning rather than so forth and so on.