Ambassador Ortiz: Lessons from a Life of Service

12: Barbados and the Caribbean: Reaching the Top Rungs of the Ladder

Dolores and I shall always remember our stay in the Caribbean, my first ambassadorship, for the wonderful people there, who were so kind to us. They made us feel we were a part of their remarkable communities . My embassy was in Bridgetown, Barbados, but my posting was Ambassador to Barbados and Grenada, and special representative to Antigua, St. Kitts-Nevis, Anguilla, Dominica, St. Lucia, and St. Vincent. Each one of these beautiful little tropical islands had a prime minister brimming with self-importance. Each individual was markedly different in terms of personality, but most were very demanding. My experience in dealing with these diverse leaders, gave me a crash course in acting. Diplomacy to some degree is acting. As a diplomat, you can never be completely frank about your opinions. You dissimulate them. If someone asks what you think of an idea, you can’t simply say, “It stinks,” even if that’s what you think. As Dolores taught me, you must say, “That’s very interesting.” You can loathe somebody, but if he or she has the power to affect important U.S. interests, you must try to get along. Making an effort to be agreeable preserves one’s capacity to influence political leaders and governments’ policies. A diplomat must not have a proprietary attachment to his ideas. A diplomat succeeds  12 Barbados and the Caribbean: Reaching the Top Rungs of the Ladder when he convinces the person across the table to almost unwittingly lay claim to and adopt the diplomat’s ideas as his own. So often at the end of a day you’re dog-tired and want to enjoy a quiet evening at home, but it’s the French National Day or the Canadian Ambassador’s farewell, or whatever. If you don’t attend the event it could be a major problem, a diplomatic snub, so you attend and try to radiate interest and charm. You hate to drink warm blood, which I’ve had to do, or eat things that you find unpalatable or disgusting . But you say, “This is wonderful,” and you do it. The only place I drew the line on accepting drinkable offerings was in the highlands of Peru. There, the Indians drink chicha, an alcoholic drink made by chewing corn kernels and spitting the masticated mass into a pot with a narrow opening. The ladies sit all day chewing and spitting into the olla, which they then cover and let ferment. When the poor, hapless American Ambassador—that’s me—arrives, they say, “We’ve made the most wonderful chicha just for you.” And a dear lady ladles some into a dirty cup. When this happened, I drew the line. I pressed my lips to the cup, took a small drop, and said, “Wonderful!” Then I put the cup down and was sure to surreptitiously spill it out of sight on the dirt floor. My relaxed time in the Caribbean spared me many of these diplomatic horrors, but I did have to learn to deal with some strange individuals . Because each island’s prime minister had a distinct personality, I had to tailor my approach on each island. Some prime ministers were difficult and quite pompous. On St. Lucia, the prime minister was a fine upstanding person. He was intelligent and very quiet, and we worked well together. I felt very comfortable with him. In Dominica, the prime minister was a dynamic, wonderful woman. I won her over by being especially courteous, opening doors, and calling her “ma’am.” Grenada was a different story. The Prime Minister, Sir Eric Gairy, was strange. He was basically mad. He believed he talked to God, that he had encountered a flying saucer, and that he had spoken with little green men. When I presented credentials, he insisted that all the unfortunate people in attendance at the ceremony go to a bar he owned called the Gold Room. He kept ordering champagne,  BARBADOS AND THE CARIBBEAN expecting me to pay for it. We were being eaten alive by mosquitoes. It was a terrible night. After a short while in Grenada, I grew tired of Sir Eric’s frequent pleas for money. To help him out, I suggested that Grenada issue a series of postage stamps featuring UFOs. He did so and the impoverished state made lots of money as stamp collectors worldwide snapped up this unusual issue. Sir Eric beamingly told...