CARIBBEAN ISLANDS COUNTRY READERS TABLE OF CONTENTS CARIBBEAN AFFAIRS Robinson McIlvaine 1953-1956 Caribbean Commission, Washington, DC Allen C. Hansen 1962-1967 Caribbean Desk Officer, Washington, DC Charles H. Thomas 1964 Caribbean Desk Officer, Washington, DC Alexander F. Watson 1967-1968 Analyst, Bureau of Intelligence and Research, Caribbean Nations, Washington, DC John Edwin Upston 1981-1986 Coordinator of Caribbean Affairs, Washington, DC Richard T. McCormack 1985-1989 U.S. Ambassador to Organization of American States, Washington, DC Leslie M. Alexander 1989-1991 Deputy Director, Caribbean Affairs, Washington, DC Sally Grooms Cowal 1989-1991 Deputy Assistant Secretary for Latin America, Washington, DC CURACAO Richard Sackett Thompson 1960-1962 Consular Officer, Willemstad John T. Bennett 1960-1963 Consul, Willemstad Charles Lahiguera 1966-1967 Consular Officer, Willemstad Charles A. Mast 1967-1969 Consular Officer, Willemstad GRENADA Eileen R. Donovan 1968-1974 Principal Officer, Grenada, Barbados Theodore R. Britton, Jr. 1974-1977 Ambassador, Barbados and Grenada Sally Shelton-Colby 1979-1981 Ambassador, Barbados and Grenada Andrew F. Antippas 1983 Grenada Task Force, Grenada E. Ashley Wills 1983 Political Advisor for U.S. Invasion of Grenada, Grenada Sally Grooms Cowal 1983-1985 USUN Deputy Political Counselor, New York City Roy T. Haverkamp 1984-1986 Deputy Chief of Mission, St. George’s John C. Leary 1986-1988 Chief of Mission, St. George’s Hariadene Johnson 1989-1990 Development Officer, USAID, St. George’s Mary A. Wright 1989-1991 Political Officer, St. George’s Nadia Tongour 2001-2004 Principal Officer/ Chargé, St. George’s JAMAICA Perry W. Linder 1961-1964 Consular Officer, Kingston Nancy Ostrander 1967-1970 Chief Consular Officer, Kingston Kenneth N. Rogers 1968-1972 Political Officer, Kingston Bruce Malkin 1969-1972 Rotation Officer, Kingston William T. Breer 1972-1974 Political Officer, Kingston Kenneth N. Rogers 1972-1974 Jamaica, Guyana Desk Officer, Washington, DC Herman Rebhan 1974-1989 General Secretary, International Metalworkers Federation, Washington, DC Donor M. Lion 1977-1979 USAID Director and Economic Counselor, Kingston Dennis Hays 1977-1979 Consular/Administrative Officer, Kingston Roy T. Haverkamp 1978-1981 Deputy Chief of Mission, Kingston Herman Rebhan 1980 General Secretary, International Metalworkers Federation, Washington, DC W. Robert Warne 1981-1984 Deputy Chief of Mission, Kingston John Todd Stewart 1984-1986 Deputy Chief of Mission, Kingston David Rybak 1985 Private Sector Officer, USAID, Jamaica Elizabeth Ann Swift 1986-1989 Consul General, Kingston Sally Grooms Cowal 1989-1991 Deputy Assistant Secretary for Latin America, Washington, DC Herman J. Rossi III 1989-1992 Economic Counselor, Kingston Lacy A. Wright 1991-1995 Deputy Chief of Mission, Kingston James C. Cason 1997-2000 Deputy Chief of Mission, Kingston MARTINIQUE Clinton L. Olson 1952-1955 Consul, Martinique William B. Cobb Jr. 1955-1958 Consul, Martinique Frank Snowden Hopkins 1957-1960 Consul, Martinique Arva C. Floyd 1962-1964 Consul, Martinique Denis Lamb 1965-1966 Consul, Martinique Jon G. Edensword 1968-1970 Vice Consul, Martinique Richard M. Gibson 1972-1973 Vice Consul, Martinique Michael Norton 1980-1986 English Teacher, Martinique CARIBBEAN AFFAIRS ROBINSON MCILVAINE Caribbean Commission Washington, DC (1953-1956) Ambassador Robinson McIlvaine entered the State Department in the early 1950s. Before his career in the Foreign Service, he graduated from Harvard, served in the Navy and worked in both journalism and advertising. His oversees posts included Lisbon, Dahomey, Guinea, and Kenya. Ambassador McIlvaine was interviewed by Charles Stuart Kennedy in April 1988. Q: I notice you were with the Caribbean Commission, too. MCILVAINE: Yes. Q: What was that? MCILVAINE: That was a small "United Nations" made up of the dependent territories in the Caribbean. In other words, they were not independent. Q: This was the pre-independence period in the Caribbean. MCILVAINE: Yes. It had a secretariat based in Trinidad, and the commission was composed of two members, one from each metropole, and in our case, one from the Virgin Islands or Puerto Rico, our reason for being in it. In the case of the British, they had a British ambassador somewhere in the area; the French, the same way; and the Dutch. Then a senior member from one of their island dominions. We had two meetings a year in a different one of these territories each time, and it all had to do with economic development, etc... I was certainly not very well qualified to be on it, but I had enough executive experience and perhaps journalistic, analytic experience to have an idea of what was needed and help find the answers to the problems. Q: Do you think it was a very effective instrument for the time, and useful? MCILVAINE: Yes, I do, because I think it gave them a lot of experience in running their own things and having a little bit of an international experience before they became independent. Q: Within about five years or so, most of them were beginning to move toward independence. MCILVAINE: That's right. This was in '53. I don't suppose they got really independent until ten years later or more, but it was the beginning of that process. ALLEN C. HANSEN Caribbean Desk Officer Washington, DC (1962-1967) Mr. Allen C. Hansen joined USIA in 1954. His overseas postings included Venezuela, Spain, British Guiana, and Mexico. Mr. Hansen was interviewed by Dorothy Robins-Mowry in 1988. HANSEN: Then I went back to Washington, and Hugh Ryan was area director at the time. Again, there was concern about Guyana going communist, and Hugh Ryan knew that I was one of the few specialists on Georgetown. He therefore assigned me the job of Caribbean Desk Officer in order to utilize my expertise on the country that had been "British Guiana" before independence. Shortly after my arrival in Washington following my academic year in Philadelphia, he sent me to Georgetown to see what we might do to beef up the post. I cam back and recommended that we double the size of the post--from one American officer to two. There was some concern that since this wouldn't take a great deal of money, others in government might think we were not being serious enough with regard to this situation. However, I argued that given the size of Guiana, with a 100,000 population in the capital city and only 500,000 in the entire country, to put more than two officers there would be overkill. For the next ten years or so we probably had two officers there until the post reverted once again to a one-person post, which is really all that such a small country requires in my view. Q: A major accomplishment. HANSEN: And that's what we did. But during that time as Caribbean Desk Officer, a most interesting thing to me was that the Dominican crisis broke. Q: What was the Dominican crisis? This is in 1965. HANSEN: 1965, right. Cuba again showed its hand. LBJ was president at the time, and a civil war broke out in the Dominican Republic, sometime after the assassination of their long-time military dictator there, Trujillo. It looked like the people who represented the left, and were presumably supported by the Cubans, if not the Soviets, were going to take over. The American government decided that that was not to be and sent in some 22,000 troops to assure that the country's leaders who wanted free elections would be able to hold them. Now, every Latin American specialist knows that the worst thing, from a Latin American point of view, that the U.S. can do is to intervene in another country's affairs, especially military intervention. But we had to live with that. As far as USIA was concerned, Hugh Ryan (Area Director Hewson Ryan) went down with a task force of USIA officers to work on the internal and mammoth external public affairs problems this situation caused. Q: You mean shortly after the troops landed? HANSEN: This was maybe a few weeks after the troops landed. Because what happened, there was a stalemate. The U.S., of course, could have just wiped out the leftist revolutionaries, but that wasn't the idea. The idea was to try and see if this country couldn't get back to a democratic form of government with elections and so forth. The way the stalemate occurred was that the leftists held the center of the capital, Santo Domingo, and the rest of the country, practically, was in the hands of the people--some would say Rightists, but certainly the non-revolutionists. So while that stalemate was occurring, the U.S. sent a task force which included the USIA contingent, which tried to get the two sides together and tried to get some kind of responsible local government going that would be viable and where eventually elections could be held. One of the major things that the U.S. Administration wanted to do was to turn this whole mess over to the Organization of American States (OAS) as soon as possible. Eventually that is what occurred. The American troops left as did the Americans who were not assigned to the OAS or to the Embassy, and elections were eventually held. I was involved somewhat in that which I'll explain later. First, when I went down there for about three weeks during the fighting--I say fighting, but it was mainly during the stalemate. But the bullets were still flying between the lines, though the American troops tried to hold ground or make limited advances without killing anyone. Q: What were the American troops doing? HANSEN: After they had landed, they protected those areas of the city that were not in the hands of the rebel troops who were fighting against the established government.