Cuba: for the end of the blockade | OPINION

There is a recent history in Cuba and one that has lasted for sixty years. The first is that which relates the existence of problems, dissatisfaction and dissatisfaction on the island. The second is the story of the blockade, a measure that one powerful country, the United States, has taken against another small one over the course of six decades in an attempt to quell and bring it under control.

The political and media opposition in Argentina simplifies the story: it tells the first story without the second. Of course, this is not sustainable. The two are interdependent: the discontent on the island does not occur in a vacuum but in a scenario where the North American blockade has deepened following a series of measures ordered by the Trump administration and inherited by the Biden government.

Cuba is under attack and, in the face of an aggression of this magnitude, we must express our greatest solidarity. In addition, it is necessary to demand respect for the principle of the self-determination of peoples. In the name of freedom, it is not permissible to try to take away from another country the freedom to make its own decisions.

A few weeks ago, the United Nations General Assembly issued a new resolution against the United States’ economic blockade on Cuba: 184 votes in favor, 2 against and 3 abstentions. Only the United States and Israel opposed, and Colombia, Brazil and Ukraine abstained.

Since 1992, with the sole exception of 2020 due to the pandemic, the UN has taken this position every year against the unilateral measure of the northern power. France, England, Italy, Germany, United Kingdom, Spain, Japan, India, China, almost all members of the G20 or the OECD, among others, have voted in favor of lifting the blockade. In Latin America, with the exception of Brazil and Colombia, the rest of the region also supported the end of the measure. In other words, the United States, accompanied by Israel, holds a position that isolates them from the world. It is a bellicose stance in an absolute minority on the world stage. On 29 occasions, the multilateral organization has overwhelmingly called for the blockade to be lifted. Paradoxically, the way the United States promotes freedom in Cuba tries to take it away.

What does block mean? This means that the United States punishes anyone who does business with Cuba, for example ships that touch Cuban ports or insurance companies that insure those ships that come into contact with the island. The blockade also means Cuba has virtually no internet access and cannot operate financially in the world, among many other restrictions.

Regarding this issue, President Alberto Fernández said that “the blockades are causing untold damage to Cuba and Venezuela” and recalled that during the last two G20 meetings he had asked “please end the blockades in the world, because when they block a country, they block a society, and it is the least humanitarian thing there is ”. And he added, “I’m not the one who has to tell people what to do; neither Argentina nor any country in the world (…). Yes, it is necessary to promote the peace of the peoples and that the peoples find dialogue and exit ”.

The president takes up a tradition that saw one of its biggest demonstrations when Argentina broke the blockade against Cuba in the third Peronist government. At that time, the Argentine government promoted the granting of a loan to the Caribbean country to finance the purchase of locally manufactured cars. North American auto terminals (Ford, Chrysler, General Motors) refused to honor this commitment due to the US blockade against the island. Argentina’s Minister of the Economy, José Ber Gelbard, replied that “Argentina does not wait for permission from anyone for companies established in its territory to carry out transactions with countries with which it maintains normal diplomatic relations” .

In the same vein, Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador recently said that in order to help Cuba “the first thing to do is to end the blockade as requested by most countries in the world. It would be a real humanitarian gesture. No country in the world should be surrounded, blocked, it is the most contrary to human rights ”. He also expressed his “solidarity with the Cuban people” and felt that “a solution must be sought through dialogue, without recourse to force, without confrontation, without violence. It must be the Cubans who decide because Cuba is a country. free, independent and sovereign ”.

During the week, at a meeting of the Group of the Brotherhood attended by former presidents, former foreign ministers, parliamentarians and popular leaders of Latin America, Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez made a report in which he claimed that the recent attack on This is a political media operation organized from the territory of the United States and domains and accounts basically in Florida, with tampering with geolocation mechanisms, with the use expensive high-tech tools ”. Rodríguez added that “the American blockade and, in particular, the 240 measures applied by the government of Donald Trump, in particular the more than 50 that it applied during the pandemic, have prevented, for example, the acquisition of respirators or pulmonary ventilators for therapy. intensive or affect vaccine production ”.

In the same vein as the media manipulation commented on by the Cuban Minister of Foreign Affairs, the montage they made of the images of the demonstrations was grotesque. Of course, this does not mean that there are no problems and dissatisfaction on the island. But at the same time, a falsification device tries to bring out these massive and overwhelmed protests. For example, there are photos attributed to Cuba that have nothing to do with that country. One of them is contextualized as “Cubans want freedom”, but it is a photo of the celebration in Buenos Aires of Argentina’s Copa América triumph over Brazil. Another refers to “the Havana seawall”, but comes from a demonstration in Egypt in 2011.

They have to falsify the facts so that they can report them later.

* National deputy of the Front de Todos and President of the Solidarity Party