We are very pleased to publish below an interview with Carlos Miguel Pereira Hernández, Cuba’s ambassador to China, conducted by People’s Daily and published in Chinese on 13 October. The unabridged English translation has been provided to us by the Cuban Embassy in Beijing.

Timed to coincide with the 62nd anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between the Republic of Cuba and the People’s Republic of China, the interview gives an overview of the history and contemporary reality of relations between the two countries.

Noting that revolutionary Cuba was the first country in the Western hemisphere to extend diplomatic recognition to the People’s Republic of China – in 1960, just a year after the 26th of July Movement came to power – Pereira references the role played by Chinese immigrants in Cuba’s independence struggle. He points out that Cuba and China consider themselves “mutual referents in the construction of socialism with our own characteristics” and notes that President Miguel Díaz-Canel describes Cuba-China ties as “paradigmatic”, and President Xi Jinping describes them as those of “good friends, good comrades and good brothers”.

Describing the cooperation between China and Cuba fields in a vast array of fields, Comrade Pereira expresses confidence that the relationship will continue to deepen.

– Friends of Socialist China

This year marks the 62nd anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between China and Cuba, how do you assess the fraternal friendship between the two countries? What are your specific plans to further promote economic, trade and people-to-people exchanges between the two countries?     

Relations between Cuba and China were made official on September 28, 1960, a formal step after the announcement by Commander in Chief Fidel Castro a few days earlier in front of more than a million Cubans, in the context of the historic First Declaration of Havana, to recognize the New China and rescind ties with Taiwan. That just decision was born of the political and popular will that have accompanied our relations throughout these 62 years.

The nascent Cuban Revolution definitively broke with the Monroe Doctrine and blind obedience to Washington, allowing Cuba to become the first country in the entire Western Hemisphere to establish ties with New China. We are honored to have made that modest contribution as one of the first manifestations of independence from our foreign policy.

The historical foundations and deep bonds of friendship between our peoples go back to the arrival of those first Chinese immigrants 175 years ago, who also had an outstanding and glorious participation in our struggles for independence.

Throughout these years of uninterrupted relations, Cuba has had the historic privilege of always being in the front row in promoting exchanges with China. Our relations represent a model of cooperation based on equality, respect and mutual benefit. We consider ourselves mutual referents in the construction of socialism with our own characteristics and on that basis, we carry out a broad and systematic exchange of experiences.

Our bilateral relations, as we reach the 62nd anniversary of diplomatic relations, are accurate and broadly in line with the definitions given in this regard by our top leaders. In the words of President Miguel Díaz-Canel, the ties between Cuba and China are paradigmatic, and President Xi Jinping has described our bonds as those of good friends, good comrades and good brothers.

The special character of our bilateral ties is a historic consensus, which reaches today an unprecedented solidity, by virtue of the high level of political mutual trust, the broad coincidence of positions in the international arena and the multidimensional and full development of our ties.

In the last two years, even in the midst of the pandemic, our ties continued to grow, the mechanisms of inter-party dialogue, government, parliamentarians and thus of various sectors, continued to strengthen in pursuit of coordination and cooperation both bilaterally and in international organizations.

It can be said that Cuba and China have been fraternal countries, which have supported each other on core issues and, above all, in difficult times. Since our official ties were established, Cuba has always shown its unequivocal support for the “One China” policy, and the firm rejection of any action that threatens China’s sovereignty and territorial integrity. For our part, we have counted on the sustained support from the Chinese government and people, and in particular, in our fight against U.S. blockade, which continues to intensify even in times of pandemic.

On September 24, in the framework of the 77th Session of the General Debate of the United Nations, State Councilor and Foreign Minister, Wang Yi, in a historic and unprecedented pronouncement, requested for the first time in that important scenario, the lifting and immediate end of the genocidal blockade policy. This transcendental support from China becomes a new milestone in our bilateral relations that ratifies the special and exceptional character of our ties, as well as mutual support on core issues.

Our ties have had a multidimensional growth, including the integral development of economic, commercial and financial ties. Despite the differences in terms of volume and productive capacity, the complementarity of our economies and the excellent political environment in which they develop, confirm the enormous potential to be exploited in this area.

Today, our ties cover almost all sectors of the economy of both countries. China continues to be Cuba’s second largest trading partner, a fundamental source of financing on favorable terms and the main technological supplier for the execution of projects prioritized for the economic and social development of our country.

China has also consolidated as the main market for our exports of goods. Sugar, nickel, rum and tobacco are emblematic products with great acceptance and demand in the Chinese market, for their good quality and recognition in the international market. New items have been added in recent years and others represent very promising prospects such as lobster, white and sea shrimp, coffee, honey and biotechnology products.

Likewise, we are inserted in new business models such as cross-border electronic commerce, through the creation of the Cuban Pavilion “Cuban Excellences” on JD.com Group platform. This has also been part of strategy of deepening our relations with China and a new milestone in bilateral cooperation, allowing the introduction of more Cuban products to this market, as well as a greater promotion of Cuba’s image, through its tourist and cultural resources.

It is worth mentioning as a milestone in our economic ties, the signing of the Memorandum of Understanding in 2018 and subsequently the Action Plan for the joint construction of the “Belt and Road”. Under this initiative, we hope to promote new projects linked to tourism, renewable energies, communications with the Digital Silk Road, health, biotechnology and science and technology.

In this context, an important area for cooperation is foreign investment in which China has much to contribute in the development of Sino-Cuban investments in Cuba, especially in the development of infrastructure such as airports, ports, roads, tourism infrastructure, telecommunications, as well as in projects related to renewable energies, biotechnology and health.

It is also of great interest to promote cooperation in the biotechnology sector between Cuban scientific entities and Chinese companies and to promote cooperation in this area, through the models that we are developing today in China, such as joint ventures.

Similarly, and taking into account that China promotes and encourages domestic consumption of high-quality products, we believe that the export of Cuban products to the Asian giant is also an area of potential for cooperation.

Another sector with promise is the export of Cuban medical services. In this regard, our exchanges with Chinese counterparts have transcended broad interests in cooperating in specialties such as oncology, ophthalmology, primary health care, health and wellness tourism and the possibility of applying the innovative products of Cuban biotechnology, which have great impact and recognition at the international level.

People-to-people exchanges are fluid and close, highlighting the close historical and cultural links. There is an increasing interest in Cuba to know the culture and language of China, while, to cite just two examples, the learning of the Spanish language and Cuban salsa, are gaining more and more followers in China. On the other hand, Cuba is a safe destination and could be the gateway for Chinese tourism to the Caribbean.

The Communist Party of China and the Communist Party of Cuba are the leading nucleus of their countries’ respective socialist causes. How do you see the inter-party exchanges and cooperation between Cuba and China? What do you think is the greatest contribution made by the Communist Party of China to world political civilization in the last decade?

The relations between the Communist Party of Cuba and the Communist Party are forged on the basis of numerous affinities and consensuses, and also by the common challenge of building socialism based on different national realities, in the midst of a complex international situation characterized by growing unilateralism and the hegemonic attempt to impose on us the patterns and models of others.

The fluid inter-party dialogue throughout these 62 years, together with the frequent exchange of experiences in the construction of socialism, according to the conditions of each country, constitute essential pillars of the solid mutual trust that exists.

The recent exchanges between the party structures of both countries have been projected towards the implementation of the consensus reached between First Secretary Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez and Secretary General Xi Jinping, from a face-to-face meeting they had in Beijing in 2018 and the two telephone calls held after the beginning of the pandemic.

This year we celebrate the virtual IV Theoretical Seminar between both Communist Parties that strengthens the practice of the exchange of experiences in socialist construction.  In this context, the messages of both leaders were relevant, ratifying the utmost importance that both countries attach to strengthening the Parties in pursuit of the consolidation of strategic communication and political trust at the highest level.

On the other hand, the Communist Party of China has been central to the achievements of the New China, so it is of great importance in the international arena, for socialist countries such as Cuba and for left-wing and progressive movements.

The CPC was able to innovate Marxist theory by adjusting it to China’s own characteristics, which constitutes a valuable contribution to the study, dissemination and promotion of Marxism in the twenty-first century. The process of “sinicization” of Marxism is an example of the application of materialist dialectics, achieving a socioeconomic model, whose successes are undeniable.  The feat of eradicating extreme poverty in China is a tangible demonstration of the accurate leadership of the party organization.

For Cuba, China constitutes a benchmark of the conquests of socialism in modern times, which, under the leadership of the Communist Party of China, has managed to overcome adversities and meet development goals such as the revitalization of the nation.

In this regard, the holding of the Twentieth Congress of the Communist Party of China will be a historic moment, to which we will pay maximum attention and follow-up. Cuba wishes China success in celebrating this momentous event. We are convinced that as a result of the Twentieth Congress of the Communist Party of China we will find a strengthened China, determined to maintain its conquests, to build socialism, and to fulfill its second centennial goal.

The strengthening of inter-party exchange will continue at the end of the XX Congress, because it will be a favorable moment to promote new spaces for bilateral dialogue, based on the exchange of experiences, consultation and support in regional and international forums.

This October, Cuba remembers the installation of Soviet nuclear missiles in Cuba, a decision that triggered one of the worst crises of the so-called Cold War. For several days, the world was on the brink of a war with incalculable consequences, which showed the will of the Cuban people to defend their sovereignty at any cost.

Sixty years after the crisis, Resumen Latinoamericano takes a look back at the days of terror in which the world was on the brink of World War III in an unprecedented nuclear conflict.

It isn’t possible to understand the crisis without an in-depth analysis of the events in the US policy towards Cuba, which led to the presence of the missiles in Cuba.

The story goes back to 1959, when the Cuban Revolution led by Fidel Castro overthrew the US-backed dictator Fulgencio Batista and emerged as a new social justice paradigm, something Washington was unwilling to tolerate. Its new social and political initiatives put the island in the crosshairs of hostilities between Havana and the White House, a situation that worsened after the implementation of an agrarian reform, which included the nationalization of US-owned land and businesses.

The United States counter-attacked with a commercial, economic and financial blockade to prevent Cuba from buying or selling products. In this context, the newly born revolution declared itself socialist and had the Soviet Union as its main trading partner and ally amid the Cold War between Moscow and Washington.

On January 3, 1961, the then-President of the United States, Dwight Eisenhower, broke diplomatic relations with the Cuban government. Three months later, more than a thousand military personnel trained and paid by the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) invaded the Bay of Pigs in Cuba with the aim of overthrowing the revolutionary government. In less than 72 hours, the Cuban army thwarted their plans, an event that would go down in history as the first great defeat of US imperialism in Latin America.

In 1961, the arrival of J. F. Kennedy to the White House launched the most dynamic period of US diplomacy, a period of failures. The US administration’s revengeful spirit was born out of the humiliation suffered by the defeat of the US orchrastrated mercenary invasion. Cuba became a real obsession for Kennedy.

At the end of that year, Operation Mongoose was born, the biggest subversive plan orchestrated against Cuba from Washington, which was due to end with the direct military intervention on the island by the US Armed Forces in October 1962.

When Soviet intelligence (KGB) became aware of the plans, it offered the island to deploy missiles as a deterrent-defensive measure. However, Moscow had another interest in the background. In 1962, the US had installed a series of nuclear ballistic missiles called Jupiter in Turkey, capable of hitting Soviet territory within minutes in the event of a confrontation.

The proposal took Fidel by surprise. He didn’t want to accept at first, because of the risk it represented and because he didn’t want Cuba to be seen as a Soviet military base. After much thought, the revolutionary government agreed to accept the installation of the rockets under five conditions: that the United States lift the blockade, withdraw from the Guantanamo Naval Base, and put an end to pirate attacks, subversive activities, and violations of Cuban airspace.

The eyes of the world were on the island and Kennedy was beginning to feel a heavy pressure on his shoulders. He knew that the US people wouldn’t accept a nuclear conflict with the island, a war that would have been unleashed just because of his whim of wanting to subjugate the island. His chances for reelection were at stake, and it was then that he negotiated with Moscow the withdrawal of the rockets.

Cuba was excluded from the negotiations and its demands were ignored. Cowardly, the then-leader of the Soviet Union, Nikita Khrushchev, decided to accede to Kennedy’s request, and the missiles were dismantled over three weeks.

In an interview years later, Fidel stated that the island did not feel betrayed but very irritated and upset. “We think it was completely wrong. To exchange Cuba’s rockets for Turkey’s was immoral and unacceptable. Withdraw the rockets without discussing it with us beforehand was also wrong. I understand that there was a situation of great tension, of danger, but it was unacceptable to decide to withdraw the projectiles without consulting Cuba,” he said.

The island would not have objected, but “we would have demanded conditions. Khrushchev could have said he would withdraw the missiles if there were guarantees for Cuba. But this didn’t happen. The Guantanamo Base remained there, as well as the pirate attacks, the dirty war, the subversive plans. Everything remained,” he concluded.

The Cold War lasted until 1991, with the dissolution of the USSR. Kennedy was assassinated in 1963. Khrushchev died in 1971 at the age of 77. Neither witnessed the end of the conflict that almost led the world to disaster. Meanwhile, Cuba has been living for 60 years under the impact of an obsolete and failed policy. It is hard for us to not think about where we would be today if the new blockade at the time had been ended as part of the deal for removing the missiles.

Source: Resumen Latinoamericano – US

On Nov. 3, the United Nations General Assembly will vote YES for ending the U.S. economic, commercial and financial blockade of Cuba. Since the resolution was first introduced in 1992, 30 years ago, the global community of 193 countries has rejected the U.S. asphyxiation, maximum-pressure regime-change economic war waged against Cuba, its government, and its 11 million people.

Not surprisingly, the U.S. is expected to once again vote “no” along with apartheid-state Israel. Only once, in 2016 during President Obama’s last term, did the U.S. abstain, making the total 191 in favor of and none opposed to ending the blockade of Cuba. Cheers rang out, breaking the UN’s decorum.

The U.S. insists on maintaining the unilateral economic war against its much smaller island neighbor to quash its rebelliousness by starving the Cuban people through “adroit and inconspicuous” methods as planned in the April 6, 1960, State Department Mallory-Rubottom memo. However, much has changed in the 30 years since 1992.

First, Senator Marco Rubio, representing a small pro-blockade coterie in Congress, can no longer claim he speaks for Cuban Americans. Thirty years ago, Miami was a dangerous place for supporters of the Cuban Revolution and a center of struggle over Cuban parental rights for six-year-old Elian Gonzalez. In 1998 Miami was the site of the arrest of the Cuban 5 heroes, with screaming headlines falsely maligning them as Cuban spies.

For the past two years, however, on the last Sunday of every month, a movement led by Cuban Americans calls for the U.S. blockade to end and instead build bridges of love, “Puentes de Amor.” The car and bike caravans rally and drive through Miami streets, even down Calle Ocho, the iconic center of Cuban Miami. Into the third year, it continues. These activities are replicated throughout the Cuban diaspora and in cities across the U.S. and Canada.

Highlighting this development, Cuban Americans plan to lead a rally and march to the U.S. Mission to the United Nations in New York City on October 29, the Saturday before the upcoming debate on Nov. 2 and vote on Nov. 3. The demands of the march are: End the blockade, remove Cuba from the State Department’s arbitrary list of “State Sponsors of Terrorism,” and end all U.S. anti-Cuba economic and travel sanctions.

Second, the Puentes de Amor movement sparked “last Sunday” ongoing, coordinated solidarity activities in cities across the U.S., Canada and around the world. In addition to Miami, Bloomington, Indiana; Milwaukee; Minneapolis; Chicago; Hartford, Connecticut; Boston; Seattle; Portland, Oregon.; Albany and New York City; Los Angeles; Albuquerque; Phoenix and more set aside that weekend for activities calling for the U.S. blockade to end. 

The people of the U.S. vote YES!

Yet when Biden’s administration votes against Cuba’s resolution on Nov. 3, the United States government will falsely claim to represent the people of the U.S. This is no longer true. More than 41 million U.S. residents voted YES to end the blockade through resolutions from elected city councils, county commissions, state legislatures, school boards and labor organizations. 

A new round of resolutions will specifically call for the State Department and president to remove Cuba from the spurious List of State Sponsors of Terrorism. Cuba has been the target, not the sponsor, of terrorism organized in and by the United States since its 1959 revolution. The reality is that Cuba sponsors international literacy and health care, as shown from Haiti fighting cholera to Liberia fighting Ebola, to COVID-19 Henry Reeve Brigades in more than 50 countries. In the words of Cuba’s national hero, Jose Marti, Cuba acts with all for the good of all.

Support for revolutionary Cuba’s road, independent of the U.S. “backyard” or the Monroe Doctrine claiming all of the Americas for the settler-colonial U.S., is shown in the generosity of contributors in the U.S. When Cuba developed its own effective vaccines despite the U.S. measures blocking raw materials and syringes, hundreds of thousands of dollars were collected to send six million syringes. Every dollar and every syringe was a U.S. vote for ending the U.S. blockade. Cuba’s accomplishment is undeniable and measurable.

Look at this table of vaccination rates. Compare Cuba with Haiti. 

As directed in the 1960 Mallory-Rubottom State Department memo, the U.S. war on Cuba is “adroit and inconspicuous.” In the era of fake news, manipulation of images and social media bots, the U.S. war machine employs powerful media tools to obscure the truth about many developments, including Cuba. Going to Cuba, seeing and experiencing it personally, and meeting Cuban people is an important way to learn. But for those of us who have traveled to Cuba and live in the United States, it is our responsibility to act and not stop until the U.S. government fully normalizes respectful relations with Cuba. 

Florida Sen. Marco Rubio may have overstepped himself. He must have considered it a midterm election campaign stunt to rile up the rabid anti-Cuba electors in his state or to impress his benefactors. 

On August 5, Rubio publicly announced from a senatorial bully pulpit his letter to the FBI accusing illegalities and requesting an investigation of the high school teacher, U.S. military veteran, and Cuban American Carlos Lazo and the remarkable movement that has grown around him appropriately named Puentes de Amor, Bridges of Love. 

Let’s remember Lazo’s alleged crime is bringing powdered milk and pediatric liver transplant medicine for Cuban children. In so doing, the intentional harm done to Cuban families by the U.S. extraterritorial blockade is brought into plain view. One might think that Rubio, instead of multiplying his hate against Cuba, would be paying a little more attention to his Floridian constituents who remain without water and electricity after the devastation they are suffering from Hurricane Ian.

On Oct. 11, the Cuban solidarity group and fourteen individuals responded with force by issuing a letter to the U.S. Senate Ethics Committee requesting an investigation of Rubio’s defamation campaign. Most are longtime Florida residents and Rubio’s constituents. 

The letter cites the Senate Ethics Manual, which “condemns ‘improper conduct which may reflect upon the Senate.’ …

“Senator Rubio’s conduct harkens back to the dark era of McCarthyism, where the chambers of the Senate were used by its members to target, harass, defame, silence, persecute and imprison citizens whose political and policy views differed from Senators like Joseph McCarthy or Marco Rubio.”

Rubio is a self-righteous advocate for starving the Cuban people into relinquishing their sovereignty through an economic war. However, support for this opinion is dwindling in the Cuban-American community in Florida and throughout the U.S. For more than two years, Puentes de Amor has conducted monthly, public, bike and car caravans in Miami, calling for the U.S. blockade on Cuba to end. 

These caravans began after Lazo and others rode bikes from Washington State to Washington, D.C., carrying this same message in 2020, inspiring other cities to do it as well. Rubio is no longer the unchallenged spokesperson for Cubans living in the U.S. Many who hid their disagreement out of fear for the Miami terror campaigns of the past are no longer afraid. 

A press statement announcing the complaint is on the ACERE.org website. The full text of the complaint can be found here.  For anyone interested in signing the complaint, please fill out this form.

Ernest Hemingway learned in Cuba that the best way to get through a hurricane is to have your ears tuned to a battery-powered radio and keep your hands busy with a bottle of rum and a hammer to nail down doors and windows. The American writer appropriated the typical jargon of Cuban meteorologists and fishermen who speak of “the sea” in the feminine and of the hurricane as a demon or evil sorcerer, and who, when a storm leaves the island, usually say that “it entered in the channel” or that “it crossed the land.”

From the clashes with the cyclones and the turbulent waters came that jewel of literature, The Old Man and the Sea, which made William Faulkner, another giant, exclaim that Hemingway had found God.

On an island located at the crossroads of the winds, it is impossible not to live with the culture of hurricanes that have existed in the Antilles since the most remote evidence of life, some 6,000 years before Christ. The Taínos, Indigenous Cubans, gave the phenomenon its name and drew a spiral to represent the hurricane, a rotating symbol of the wind, which could be embodied in a monstrous serpent capable of wrapping the entire universe in its body.

In both reality and mythology, the hurricane has produced “tremendous fantasies” alike, in the words of the greatest Cuban novelist, Alejo Carpentier, who was inspired by the passage of the 1927 meteor over Havana to write some passages for his novel Ecue- Yamba – O! The storm, Carpentier wrote, caused the movement of “houses, intact, several kilometers from their foundations; schooners pulled out of the water, and left on a street corner; granite statues, decapitated from a chopping block; mortuary cars, paraded by the wind along squares and avenues, as if guided by ghost coachmen and, to top it off, a rail torn from a track, raised in weight, and thrown on the trunk of a royal palm with such violence, that it was embedded in the wood, like the arms of a cross.”

There are no significant differences between that description and what we have witnessed again in Cuba. Hurricane Ian left three dead and more than 89,000 homes affected in the province of Pinar del Río, caused the destruction of thousands of hectares of crops, led to trees and street lighting poles falling everywhere, left the country in total darkness for hours and with thousands of stories that turn anything told by two literary geniuses like Hemingway and Carpentier into pale tales.

The destruction can have infinite variations, but the hurricane is one of the few things that has not changed in thousands of years for the people of the Antilles. Whatever it may be called and whatever maybe be the strength of its fury, both the ancient and modern worlds have considered it a living creature that comes and goes over time and is not always cruel. When the excesses do not occur, the waters and the winds cool the summer heat and benefit agriculture, and everyone is happy.

However, this will be the first time that such a well known and recurrent natural phenomenon passes through Cuba accompanied by another equal or greater destructive force that has been created artificially in the new digital laboratories and is capable of such an evil that our Taíno ancestors could not have foreseen it.

While gusts of wind of more than 200 kilometers per hour blew in the north of Pinar del Río, more than 37,000 accounts on Twitter replicated the hashtag #CubaPaLaCalle (Cuba to the streets), with calls for protests, roadblocks, assaults on government institutions, sabotage, and terrorism, and with instructions on how to prepare homemade bombs and Molotov cocktails. Less than 2 percent of the users who participated in this virtual mobilization were in Cuba. Most of those who made the call to “fire up” the streets in Cuba were connected to American technology platforms and did so while hundreds of kilometers away from the country that remained in darkness. Perhaps some on the island kept their battery-powered radio. Still, what millions of Cubans had in the palm of their hands was not a bottle of Hemingway’s rum but a cellphone connected to the internet (the country of 11 million inhabitants has 7.5 million people with access to social media).

Let’s do an exercise. Imagine this panorama: you are anguished with the here and now. You have no electricity and no drinking water. What little food you have bought with great difficulty and kept refrigerated will go bad in no time. You don’t know what has happened to your family that lives in the western provinces, where the damage is apocalyptic. You have no idea how long this new crisis will last. Daily life before the hurricane was already desperate due to the economic blockade imposed by the United States, inflation, and shortages being faced by Cubans. Still, you see on your mobile that “everyone” (on the internet, of course) seems to be doing well and has plenty, while thousands of people on social media (and their trolls) shout that the culprit of your misfortune is the communist government. Your only light source is the mobile screen, which works like Plato’s allegory of the cave: you sit with your back to a flaming fire while virtual figures pass between you and the bonfire. You only see the movements of their shadows projected on the walls of the cave, and those shadows whisper the solution to your desperate reality: #CubaPaLaCalle.

At no other time in history has an immigrant minority had so much economic, media, and technological power to try to sink their country with their relatives still in Cuba before even trying to lend a hand in the midst of a national tragedy. What Mexican who lives in the United States puts political differences above helping their relatives after an earthquake? Why don’t Salvadorans or Guatemalans who live abroad do it now that Hurricane Julia has devastated Central America.

It is unprecedented and unheard of that the hurricane of a lifetime, and the hurricane of virtual hatred can arrive simultaneously, but that is just what happened in Cuba.

This article was produced by Globetrotter and was first published on La Jornada. Rosa Miriam Elizalde is a Cuban journalist and founder of the site Cubadebate. She is vice president of both the Union of Cuban Journalists (UPEC) and the Latin American Federation of Journalists (FELAP). She has written and co-written several books including Jineteros en la Habana and Our Chavez. She has received the Juan Gualberto Gómez National Prize for Journalism on multiple occasions for her outstanding work. She is currently a weekly columnist for La Jornada of Mexico City.

Hurricane Ian lashed at western Cuba on September 27, 2022. I waited desperately for a phone call from my friends in Puerto Esperanza, a small fishing village on the northern coast of Pinar del Río. Over a crackling phone line, my friends told me that the hurricane had ripped off the roofs of their houses and had cut their electricity supply. But they were safe. What comes next for them and their recovery from the loss and devastation caused by the hurricane is uncertain under the weight of a U.S. blockade that is now being overseen by U.S. President Joe Biden.

Since the Cuban Revolution triumphed in 1959, the United States has been at odds with the island’s independent path. This led to the start of a blockade on all trading activities between Cuba and the United States in February 1962, and the continued imposition of the blockade has put maximum pressure on the 11 million people who live on the island. Cubans have been resilient while dealing with these sanctions, which is “the longest embargo in modern history.” However, over the past five years, the United States has tightened its blockade by putting in place 243 new sanctions, reversing the process of normalization that began under former U.S. President Barack Obama in 2014 (and culminated in Obama’s visit to Cuba in 2016). Despite Biden’s campaign promise to ensure a more balanced foreign policy toward Cuba, compared to the approach followed by former President Donald Trump, Biden has increased pressure on the country.

Maximum pressure

When the COVID-19 pandemic struck, Cuba was fortunate to have a robust public health care system and an innovative biotechnological industry. However, under Trump—and later Biden—sanctions put enormous pressure on Cuba’s ability to respond to the pandemic. As the number of Delta variant cases grew in Cuba, its only oxygen plant was rendered nonoperational due to the inability of the plant’s technicians to import spare parts because of the U.S. blockade. As thousands of Cuban patients gasped for air, oxygen had to be rationed. Washington refused to make an exception. Cuban scientists created five vaccine candidates; only after most Cubans were vaccinated with these vaccines did Washington make an offer of donating U.S.-made vaccines to Cuba.

Back in 2017, the United States said that the Cuban government had used sonic weapons to attack its embassy—a phenomenon called “Havana syndrome”—which was shown to be untrue. Nonetheless, it served as a pretext for the United States to freeze relations with Cuba. For example, tourism began to collapse, and the island lost revenue as more than 600,000 people from the United States stopped traveling to Cuba annually. The U.S. government’s sanctions under Trump led to Western Union’s seizing operations on the island in 2020, cutting off the ability of families to send and receive remittances. Visa services were suspended by the U.S. Embassy in Havana, and the largest wave of irregular migration since 1980 began as Cubans were forced to trek through Central America or across the Florida Straits to arrive in the United States.

Cubans suffered through this tightened blockade with the U.S. offering no respite. The gross domestic product of the country began to shrink as the government and other entities could no longer purchase food, medicine, and oil because banks refused to handle these basic commercial transactions.

Using pain to put more pressure

On July 11, 2021, people across Cuba took to the streets to protest the difficult living conditions due to the scarcity brewed by the sanctions imposed by Washington. The U.S. government, from Biden to the lowest employee at the U.S. Embassy in Havana, did not waste any time before making a statement about the need to change the government in Cuba in response to the protests. They tried to spin the Cuban people’s protests over sanctions-related deprivation into an uprising for regime change, a core demand of a Miami mafia of Cuban exiles. The Cuban government was able to withstand that attempt by being as forthright as possible with the people about the range of problems that they face.

The year 2022 has not been any easier for the Cuban people. In August, the national energy grid began to suffer major signs of decay after years without repairs or renovations. Power cuts, a stark reminder of the “special period” during the 1990s when Cuba faced a similar power situation, have become ever-present from one end of the island to the other. Some provinces go without electricity for eight to ten hours. Then came the explosion of the Matanzas oil storage facility that left Cuba without urgently needed fuel and resulted in dozens dying while fighting the fire that raged on for five days. While Mexico and Venezuela immediately sent firefighters and equipment, the United States could only contribute with technical advice over the phone despite the call by U.S. activists, clergy, and intellectuals to provide more sizable aid.

Hurricane Ian’s assault on the island on September 27, 2022, has left behind devastation, with more than 50,000 homes damaged, Cuba’s tobacco crop deeply impacted, and its electricity grid damaged (although it is functional again for now).

Washington’s rigidity

All eyes turned to Washington—not only to see whether it would send aid, which would be welcome, but also if it would remove Cuba from the state sponsors of terrorism list and end the sanctions. Cuba’s inclusion on the list had been a last-minute decision made by Trump as he was leaving the White House (despite Cuba’s recognized role in the Colombian peace process). These measures mean that banks in the United States and elsewhere are reluctant to process any financial transactions, including humanitarian donations, for the island. The United States has a mixed record regarding humanitarian aid to Cuba.

Rather than lift the sanctions even for a limited period, the U.S. government sat back and watched as mysterious forces from Miami unleashed a torrent of Facebook and WhatsApp messages to drive desperate Cubans onto the street. In Havana, a few hundred people spread across the city banged pots and pans and demanded water, electricity, and food. Foreign journalists eagerly expected scenes of heavy repression and mass arrests, but this time Cuba’s response was one closest to its political tradition. Leaders of the Communist Party began to arrive at protests to speak to the people. Angel Arzuaga Reyes, responsible for the party’s international relations department, while speaking of his experience in the Diez de Octubre neighborhood, said that in those tense moments, promises or immediate solutions couldn’t be made, but explanations and information could be given to all those protesting.

The Cuban people are not the kind to give up easily and have a history of resilience. Many Cubans are facing the crisis by laughing and fighting through it. Walking in Havana only a few days after the hurricane, the signs of recovery were clear. Brigades of electricians working nonstop reestablished power back in record time and volunteers have cleaned most of the city leaving very little trace of Hurricane Ian’s destruction. After his fourth visit to Pinar del Río since September 27, Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel, surrounded by an anxious crowd, said, “what we can’t do is surrender or remain with our arms crossed.” There is yet much to do, but Cubans are determined to overcome all obstacles that come their way.

This article was produced by Globetrotter. Manolo De Los Santos is the co-executive director of the People’s Forum and is a researcher at Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. He co-edited, most recently, Viviremos: Venezuela vs. Hybrid War (LeftWord Books/1804 Books, 2020) and Comrade of the Revolution: Selected Speeches of Fidel Castro (LeftWord Books/1804 Books, 2021). He is a co-coordinator of the People’s Summit for Democracy.

Mr. President;
Distinguished delegates:

The delegation of Cuba to this Assembly, first of all, is pleased to fulfill the agreeable duty of welcoming the addition of three new nations to the important number of those that discuss the problems of the world here. We, therefore, greet, in the persons of their presidents and prime ministers, the peoples of Zambia, Malawi, and Malta, and express the hope that from the outset these countries will be added to the group of Nonaligned countries that struggle against imperialism, colonialism, and neocolonialism.

We also wish to convey our congratulations to the president of this Assembly [Alex Quaison-Sackey of Ghana], whose elevation to so high a post is of special significance since it reflects this new historic stage of resounding triumphs for the peoples of Africa, who up until recently were subject to the colonial system of imperialism. Today, in their immense majority these peoples have become sovereign states through the legitimate exercise of their self-determination. The final hour of colonialism has struck, and millions of inhabitants of Africa, Asia, and Latin America rise to meet a new life and demand their unrestricted right to self-determination and to the independent development of their nations.

We wish you, Mr. President, the greatest success in the tasks entrusted to you by the member states.

Cuba comes here to state its position on the most important points of controversy and will do so with the full sense of responsibility that the use of this rostrum implies, while at the same time fulfilling the unavoidable duty of speaking clearly and frankly.

We would like to see this Assembly shake itself out of complacency and move forward. We would like to see the committees begin their work and not stop at the first confrontation. Imperialism wants to turn this meeting into a pointless oratorical tournament, instead of solving the serious problems of the world. We must prevent it from doing so. This session of the Assembly should not be remembered in the future solely by the number 19 that identifies it. Our efforts are directed to that end.

We feel that we have the right and the obligation to do so because our country is one of the most constant points of friction. It is one of the places where the principles upholding the right of small countries to sovereignty are put to the test day by day, minute by minute. At the same time, our country is one of the trenches of freedom in the world, situated a few steps away from U.S. imperialism, showing by its actions, its daily example, that in the present conditions of humanity the peoples can liberate themselves and can keep themselves free.

Of course, there now exists a socialist camp that becomes stronger day by day and has more powerful weapons of struggle. But additional conditions are required for survival: the maintenance of internal unity, faith in one’s own destiny, and the irrevocable decision to fight to the death for the defense of one’s country and revolution. These conditions, distinguished delegates, exist in Cuba.

Of all the burning problems to be dealt with by this Assembly, one of special significance for us, and one whose solution we feel must be found first — so as to leave no doubt in the minds of anyone — is that of peaceful coexistence among states with different economic and social systems. Much progress has been made in the world in this field. But imperialism, particularly U.S. imperialism, has attempted to make the world believe that peaceful coexistence is the exclusive right of the earth’s great powers. We say here what our president said in Cairo, and what later was expressed in the declaration of the Second Conference of Heads of State or Government of Nonaligned Countries: that peaceful coexistence cannot be limited to the powerful countries if we want to ensure world peace. Peaceful coexistence must be exercised among all states, regardless of size, regardless of the previous historical relations that linked them, and regardless of the problems that may arise among some of them at a given moment.

At present, the type of peaceful coexistence to which we aspire is often violated. Merely because the Kingdom of Cambodia maintained a neutral attitude and did not bow to the machinations of U.S. imperialism, it has been subjected to all kinds of treacherous and brutal attacks from the Yankee bases in South Vietnam.

Laos, a divided country, has also been the object of imperialist aggression of every kind. Its people have been massacred from the air. The conventions concluded at Geneva have been violated, and part of its territory is in constant danger of cowardly attacks by imperialist forces.

The Democratic Republic of Vietnam knows all these histories of aggression as do few nations on earth. It has once again seen its frontier violated, has seen enemy bombers and fighter planes attack its installations and U.S. warships, violating territorial waters, attack its naval posts. At this time, the threat hangs over the Democratic Republic of Vietnam that the U.S. warmongers may openly extend into its territory the war that for many years they have been waging against the people of South Vietnam. The Soviet Union and the People’s Republic of China have given serious warnings to the United States. We are faced with a case in which world peace is in danger and, moreover, the lives of millions of human beings in this part of Asia are constantly threatened and subjected to the whim of the U.S. invader.

Peaceful coexistence has also been brutally put to the test in Cyprus, due to pressures from the Turkish Government and NATO, compelling the people and the government of Cyprus to make a heroic and firm stand in defense of their sovereignty.

In all these parts of the world, imperialism attempts to impose its version of what coexistence should be. It is the oppressed peoples in alliance with the socialist camp that must show them what true coexistence is, and it is the obligation of the United Nations to support them.

We must also state that it is not only in relations among sovereign states that the concept of peaceful coexistence needs to be precisely defined. As Marxists, we have maintained that peaceful coexistence among nations does not encompass coexistence between the exploiters and the exploited, between the oppressors and the oppressed. Furthermore, the right to full independence from all forms of colonial oppression is a fundamental principle of this organization. That is why we express our solidarity with the colonial peoples of so-called Portuguese Guinea, Angola, and Mozambique, who have been massacred for the crime of demanding their freedom. And we are prepared to help them to the extent of our ability in accordance with the Cairo declaration.

We express our solidarity with the people of Puerto Rico and their great leader, Pedro Albizu Campos, who, in another act of hypocrisy, has been set free at the age of 72, almost unable to speak, paralyzed, after spending a lifetime in jail. Albizu Campos is a symbol of the as-yet unfree but indomitable Latin America. Years and years of prison, almost unbearable pressures in jail, mental torture, solitude, total isolation from his people and his family, the insolence of the conqueror and its lackeys in the land of his birth — nothing broke his will. The delegation of Cuba, on behalf of its people, pays a tribute of admiration and gratitude to a patriot who confers honor upon our America.

The United States for many years has tried to convert Puerto Rico into a model of hybrid culture: the Spanish language with English inflections, the Spanish language with hinges on its backbone — the better to bow down before the Yankee soldier. Puerto Rican soldiers have been used as cannon fodder in imperialist wars, as in Korea, and have even been made to fire at their own brothers, as in the massacre perpetrated by the U.S. Army a few months ago against the unarmed people of Panama — one of the most recent crimes carried out by Yankee imperialism. And yet, despite this assault on their will and their historical destiny, the people of Puerto Rico have preserved their culture, their Latin character, their national feelings, which in themselves give proof of the implacable desire for independence lying within the masses on that Latin American island. We must also warn that the principle of peaceful coexistence does not encompass the right to mock the will of the peoples, as is happening in the case of the so-called British Guiana. There the government of Prime Minister Cheddi Jagan has been the victim of every kind of pressure and maneuver, and independence has been delayed to gain time to find ways to flout the people’s will and guarantee the docility of a new government, placed in power by covert means, in order to grant castrated freedom to this country of the Americas. Whatever roads Guiana may be compelled to follow to obtain independence, the moral and militant support of Cuba goes to its people.^[15]

Furthermore, we must point out that the islands of Guadaloupe and Martinique have been fighting for a long time for self-government without obtaining it. This state of affairs must not continue. Once again we speak out to put the world on guard against what is happening in South Africa. The brutal policy of apartheid is applied before the eyes of the nations of the world. The peoples of Africa are compelled to endure the fact that on the African continent the superiority of one race over another remains official policy, and that in the name of this racial superiority murder is committed with impunity. Can the United Nations do nothing to stop this?

I would like to refer specifically to the painful case of the Congo, unique in the history of the modern world, which shows how, with absolute impunity, with the most insolent cynicism, the rights of peoples can be flouted. The direct reason for all this is the enormous wealth of the Congo, which the imperialist countries want to keep under their control. In the speech he made during his first visit to the United Nations, compañero Fidel Castro observed that the whole problem of coexistence among peoples boils down to the wrongful appropriation of other peoples’ wealth. He made the following statement: “End the philosophy of plunder and the philosophy of war will be ended as well.”

But the philosophy of plunder has not only not been ended, it is stronger than ever. And that is why those who used the name of the United Nations to commit the murder of Lumumba are today, in the name of the defense of the white race, murdering thousands of Congolese. How can we forget the betrayal of the hope that Patrice Lumumba placed in the United Nations? How can we forget the machinations and maneuvers that followed in the wake of the occupation of that country by UN troops, under whose auspices the assassins of this great African patriot acted with impunity? How can we forget, distinguished delegates, that the one who flouted the authority of the UN in the Congo — and not exactly for patriotic reasons, but rather by virtue of conflicts between imperialists — was Moise Tshombe, who initiated the secession of Katanga with Belgian support? And how can one justify, how can one explain, that at the end of all the United Nations’ activities there, Tshombe, dislodged from Katanga, should return as lord and master of the Congo? Who can deny the sad role that the imperialists compelled the United Nations to play?^[16]

To sum up: dramatic mobilizations were carried out to avoid the secession of Katanga, but today Tshombe is in power, the wealth of the Congo is in imperialist hands — and the expenses have to be paid by the honorable nations. The merchants of war certainly do good business! That is why the government of Cuba supports the just stance of the Soviet Union in refusing to pay the expenses for this crime.

And as if this were not enough, we now have flung in our faces these latest acts that have filled the world with indignation. Who are the perpetrators? Belgian paratroopers, carried by U.S. planes, who took off from British bases. We remember as if it were yesterday that we saw a small country in Europe, a civilized and industrious country, the Kingdom of Belgium, invaded by Hitler’s hordes. We were embittered by the knowledge that this small nation was massacred by German imperialism, and we felt affection for its people. But this other side of the imperialist coin was the one that many of us did not see. Perhaps the sons of Belgian patriots who died defending their country’s liberty are now murdering in cold blood thousands of Congolese in the name of the white race, just as they suffered under the German heel because their blood was not sufficiently Aryan. Our free eyes open now to new horizons and can see what yesterday, in our condition as colonial slaves, we could not observe: that “Western Civilization” disguises behind its showy facade a picture of hyenas and jackals. That is the only name that can be applied to those who have gone to fulfill such “humanitarian” tasks in the Congo. A carnivorous animal that feeds on unarmed peoples. That is what imperialism does to men. That is what distinguishes the imperial “white man.”

All free men of the world must be prepared to avenge the crime of the Congo. Perhaps many of those soldiers, who were turned into sub-humans by imperialist machinery, believe in good faith that they are defending the rights of a superior race. In this Assembly, however, those peoples whose skins are darkened by a different sun, colored by different pigments, constitute the majority. And they fully and clearly understand that the difference between men does not lie in the color of their skin, but in the forms of ownership of the means of production, in the relations of production. The Cuban delegation extends greetings to the peoples of Southern Rhodesia and South-West Africa, oppressed by white colonialist minorities; to the peoples of Basutoland, Bechuanaland, Swaziland, French Somaliland, the Arabs of Palestine, Aden and the Protectorates, Oman; and to all peoples in conflict with imperialism and colonialism. We reaffirm our support to them.

I express also the hope that there will be a just solution to the conflict facing our sister republic of Indonesia in its relations with Malaysia. Mr. President: One of the fundamental themes of this conference is general and complete disarmament. We express our support for general and complete disarmament. Furthermore, we advocate the complete destruction of all thermonuclear devices and we support the holding of a conference of all the nations of the world to make this aspiration of all people a reality. In his statement before this assembly, our prime minister warned that arms races have always led to war. There are new nuclear powers in the world, and the possibilities of a confrontation are growing. We believe that such a conference is necessary to obtain the total destruction of thermonuclear weapons and, as a first step, the total prohibition of tests. At the same time, we have to establish clearly the duty of all countries to respect the present borders of other states and to refrain from engaging in any aggression, even with conventional weapons.

In adding our voice to that of all the peoples of the world who ask for general and complete disarmament, the destruction of all nuclear arsenals, the complete halt to the building of new thermonuclear devices and of nuclear tests of any kind, we believe it necessary to also stress that the territorial integrity of nations must be respected and the armed hand of imperialism held back, for it is no less dangerous when it uses only conventional weapons. Those who murdered thousands of defenseless citizens of the Congo did not use the atomic bomb. They used conventional weapons. Conventional weapons have also been used by imperialism, causing so many deaths.

Even if the measures advocated here were to become effective and make it unnecessary to mention it, we must point out that we cannot adhere to any regional pact for denuclearization so long as the United States maintains aggressive bases on our own territory, in Puerto Rico, Panama and in other Latin American states where it feels it has the right to place both conventional and nuclear weapons without any restrictions. We feel that we must be able to provide for our own defense in the light of the recent resolution of the Organization of American States against Cuba, on the basis of which an attack may be carried out invoking the Rio Treaty.^[17] If the conference to which we have just referred were to achieve all these objectives — which, unfortunately, would be difficult — we believe it would be the most important one in the history of humanity. To ensure this it would be necessary for the People’s Republic of China to be represented, and that is why a conference of this type must be held. But it would be much simpler for the peoples of the world to recognize the undeniable truth of the existence of the People’s Republic of China, whose government is the sole representative of its people, and to give it the seat it deserves, which is, at present, usurped by the gang that controls the province of Taiwan, with U.S. support.

The problem of the representation of China in the United Nations cannot in any way be considered as a case of a new admission to the organization, but rather as the restoration of the legitimate rights of the People’s Republic of China.

We must repudiate energetically the “two Chinas” plot. The Chiang Kai-shek gang of Taiwan cannot remain in the United Nations. What we are dealing with, we repeat, is the expulsion of the usurper and the installation of the legitimate representative of the Chinese people.

We also warn against the U.S. Government’s insistence on presenting the problem of the legitimate representation of China in the UN as an “important question,” in order to impose a requirement of a two-thirds majority of members present and voting. The admission of the People’s Republic of China to the United Nations is, in fact, an important question for the entire world, but not for the machinery of the United Nations, where it must constitute a mere question of procedure. In this way justice will be done. Almost as important as attaining justice, however, would be the demonstration, once and for all, that this august Assembly has eyes to see, ears to hear, tongues to speak with and sound criteria for making its decisions. The proliferation of nuclear weapons among the member states of NATO, and especially the possession of these devices of mass destruction by the Federal Republic of Germany, would make the possibility of an agreement on disarmament even more remote, and linked to such an agreement is the problem of the peaceful reunification of Germany. So long as there is no clear understanding, the existence of two Germanys must be recognized: that of the German Democratic Republic and the Federal Republic. The German problem can be solved only with the direct participation in negotiations of the German Democratic Republic with full rights. We shall only touch on the questions of economic development and international trade that are broadly represented in the agenda. In this very year of 1964 the Geneva conference was held at which a multitude of matters related to these aspects of international relations were dealt with. The warnings and forecasts of our delegation were fully confirmed, to the misfortune of the economically dependent countries.

We wish only to point out that insofar as Cuba is concerned, the United States of America has not implemented the explicit recommendations of that conference, and recently the U.S. Government also prohibited the sale of medicines to Cuba. By doing so it divested itself, once and for all, of the mask of humanitarianism with which it attempted to disguise the aggressive nature of its blockade against the people of Cuba.

Furthermore, we state once more that the scars left by colonialism that impede the development of the peoples are expressed not only in political relations. The so-called deterioration of the terms of trade is nothing but the result of the unequal exchange between countries producing raw materials and industrial countries, which dominate markets and impose the illusory justice of equal exchange of values.

So long as the economically dependent peoples do not free themselves from the capitalist markets and, in a firm bloc with the socialist countries, impose new relations between the exploited and the exploiters, there will be no solid economic development. In certain cases there will be retrogression, in which the weak countries will fall under the political domination of the imperialists and colonialists.

Finally, distinguished delegates, it must be made clear that in the area of the Caribbean, manoeuvres and preparations for aggression against Cuba are taking place, on the coasts of Nicaragua above all, in Costa Rica as well, in the Panama Canal Zone, on Vieques Island in Puerto Rico, in Florida and possibly in other parts of U.S. territory and perhaps also in Honduras. In these places Cuban mercenaries are training, as well as mercenaries of other nationalities, with a purpose that cannot be the most peaceful one. After a big scandal, the government of Costa Rica — it is said — has ordered the elimination of all training camps of Cuban exiles in that country.

No one knows whether this position is sincere, or whether it is a simple alibi because the mercenaries training there were about to commit some misdeed. We hope that full cognizance will be taken of the real existence of bases for aggression, which we denounced long ago, and that the world will ponder the international responsibility of the government of a country that authorizes and facilitates the training of mercenaries to attack Cuba. We should note that news of the training of mercenaries in different parts in the Caribbean and the participation of the U.S. Government in such acts is presented as completely natural in the newspapers in the United States. We know of no Latin American voice that has officially protested this. This shows the cynicism with which the U.S. Government moves its pawns.

The sharp foreign ministers of the OAS had eyes to see Cuban emblems and to find “irrefutable” proof in the weapons that the Yankees exhibited in Venezuela, but they do not see the preparations for aggression in the United States, just as they did not hear the voice of President Kennedy, who explicitly declared himself the aggressor against Cuba at Playa Girón [Bay of Pigs invasion of April 1961]. In some cases, it is a blindness provoked by the hatred against our revolution by the ruling classes of the Latin American countries. In others — and these are sadder and more deplorable — it is the product of the dazzling glitter of mammon.

As is well known, after the tremendous commotion of the so-called Caribbean crisis, the United States undertook certain commitments with the Soviet Union. These culminated in the withdrawal of certain types of weapons that the continued acts of aggression of the United States — such as the mercenary attack at Playa Girón and threats of invasion against our homeland — had compelled us to install in Cuba as an act of legitimate and essential defense.

The United States, furthermore, tried to get the UN to inspect our territory. But we emphatically refuse, since Cuba does not recognize the right of the United States, or of anyone else in the world, to determine the type of weapons Cuba may have within its borders.

In this connection, we would abide only by multilateral agreements, with equal obligations for all the parties concerned. As Fidel Castro has said: “So long as the concept of sovereignty exists as the prerogative of nations and of independent peoples, as a right of all peoples, we will not accept the exclusion of our people from that right. So long as the world is governed by these principles, so long as the world is governed by those concepts that have universal validity because they are universally accepted and recognized by the peoples, we will not accept the attempt to deprive us of any of those rights, and we will renounce none of those rights.” The Secretary-General of the United Nations, U Thant, understood our reasons. Nevertheless, the United States attempted to establish a new prerogative, an arbitrary and illegal one: that of violating the airspace of a small country. Thus, we see flying over our country U-2 aircraft and other types of spy planes that, with complete impunity, fly over our airspace. We have made all the necessary warnings for the violations of our airspace to cease, as well as for a halt to the provocations of the U.S. Navy against our sentry posts in the zone of Guantánamo, the buzzing by aircraft of our ships or the ships of other nationalities in international waters, the pirate attacks against ships sailing under different flags, and the infiltration of spies, saboteurs and weapons onto our island.

We want to build socialism. We have declared that we are supporters of those who strive for peace. We have declared ourselves to be within the group of Nonaligned countries, although we are Marxist-Leninists, because the Nonaligned countries, like ourselves, fight imperialism. We want peace. We want to build a better life for our people. That is why we avoid, insofar as possible, falling into the provocations manufactured by the Yankees. But we know the mentality of those who govern them. They want to make us pay a very high price for that peace. We reply that the price cannot go beyond the bounds of dignity.

And Cuba reaffirms once again the right to maintain on its territory the weapons it deems appropriate, and its refusal to recognize the right of any power on earth — no matter how powerful — to violate our soil, our territorial waters, or our airspace.

If in any assembly Cuba assumes obligations of a collective nature, it will fulfill them to the letter. So long as this does not happen, Cuba maintains all its rights, just as any other nation. In the face of the demands of imperialism, our prime minister laid out the five points necessary for the existence of a secure peace in the Caribbean. They are:

1. A halt to the economic blockade and all economic and trade pressures by the United States, in all parts of the world, against our country.

2. A halt to all subversive activities, launching and landing of weapons and explosives by air and sea, organization of mercenary invasions, infiltration of spies and saboteurs, acts all carried out from the territory of the United States and some accomplice countries.

3. A halt to pirate attacks carried out from existing bases in the United States and Puerto Rico.

4. A halt to all the violations of our airspace and our territorial waters by U.S. aircraft and warships.

5. Withdrawal from the Guantánamo naval base and return of the Cuban territory occupied by the United States.”

None of these elementary demands has been met, and our forces are still being provoked from the naval base at Guantánamo. That base has become a nest of thieves and a launching pad for them into our territory. We would tire this Assembly were we to give a detailed account of the large number of provocations of all kinds. Suffice it to say that including the first days of December, the number amounts to 1,323 in 1964 alone. The list covers minor provocations such as violation of the boundary line, launching of objects from the territory controlled by the United States, the commission of acts of sexual exhibitionism by U.S. personnel of both sexes, and verbal insults. It includes others that are more serious, such as shooting off small caliber weapons, aiming weapons at our territory, and offenses against our national flag. Extremely serious provocations include those of crossing the boundary line and starting fires in installations on the Cuban side, as well as rifle fire. There have been 78 rifle shots this year, with the sorrowful toll of one death: that of Ramón López Peña, a soldier, killed by two shots fired from the U.S. post three and a half kilometers from the coast on the northern boundary. This extremely grave provocation took place at 7:07 p.m. on July 19, 1964, and the prime minister of our government publicly stated on July 26 that if the event were to recur he would give orders for our troops to repel the aggression. At the same time orders were given for the withdrawal of the forward line of Cuban forces to positions farther away from the boundary line and the construction of the necessary fortified positions. One thousand three hundred and twenty-three provocations in 340 days amount to approximately four per day. Only a perfectly disciplined army with a morale such as ours could resist so many hostile acts without losing its self-control.

Forty-seven countries meeting at the Second Conference of Heads of State or Government of Nonaligned Countries in Cairo unanimously agreed:

“Noting with concern that foreign military bases are in practice a means of bringing pressure on nations and retarding their emancipation and development, based on their own ideological, political, economic and cultural ideas, the conference declares its unreserved support to the countries that are seeking to secure the elimination of foreign bases from their territory and calls upon all states maintaining troops and bases in other countries to remove them immediately. The conference considers that the maintenance at Guantánamo (Cuba) of a military base of the United States of America, in defiance of the will of the government and people of Cuba and in defiance of the provisions embodied in the declaration of the Belgrade conference, constitutes a violation of Cuba’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.

Noting that the Cuban Government expresses its readiness to settle its dispute over the base at Guantánamo with the United States of America on an equal footing, the conference urges the U.S. Government to open negotiations with the Cuban Government to evacuate their base”.

The government of the United States has not responded to this request of the Cairo conference and is attempting to maintain indefinitely by force its occupation of a piece of our territory, from which it carries out acts of aggression such as those detailed earlier.

The Organization of American States — which the people also call the U.S. Ministry of Colonies — condemned us “energetically,” even though it had just excluded us from its midst, ordering its members to break off diplomatic and trade relations with Cuba. The OAS authorized aggression against our country at any time and under any pretext, violating the most fundamental international laws, completely disregarding the United Nations. Uruguay, Bolivia, Chile and Mexico opposed that measure, and the government of the United States of Mexico refused to comply with the sanctions that had been approved. Since then we have had no relations with any Latin American countries except Mexico, and this fulfills one of the necessary conditions for direct aggression by imperialism.

We want to make clear once again that our concern for Latin America is based on the ties that unite us: the language we speak, the culture we maintain, and the common master we had. We have no other reason for desiring the liberation of Latin America from the U.S. colonial yoke. If any of the Latin American countries here decide to reestablish relations with Cuba, we would be willing to do so on the basis of equality, and without viewing that recognition of Cuba as a free country in the world to be a gift to our government. We won that recognition with our blood in the days of the liberation struggle. We acquired it with our blood in the defense of our shores against the Yankee invasion.

Although we reject any accusations against us of interference in the internal affairs of other countries, we cannot deny that we sympathize with those people who strive for their freedom. We must fulfill the obligation of our government and people to state clearly and categorically to the world that we morally support and stand in solidarity with peoples who struggle anywhere in the world to make a reality of the rights of full sovereignty proclaimed in the UN Charter.

It is the United States that intervenes. It has done so historically in Latin America. Since the end of the last century Cuba has experienced this truth; but it has been experienced, too, by Venezuela, Nicaragua, Central America in general, Mexico, Haiti and the Dominican Republic. In recent years, apart from our people, Panama has experienced direct aggression, where the marines in the Canal Zone opened fire in cold blood against the defenseless people; the Dominican Republic, whose coast was violated by the Yankee fleet to avoid an outbreak of the just fury of the people after the death of Trujillo; and Colombia, whose capital was taken by assault as a result of a rebellion provoked by the assassination of Gaitán.^[18] Covert interventions are carried out through military missions that participate in internal repression, organizing forces designed for that purpose in many countries, and also in coups d’état, which have been repeated so frequently on the Latin American continent during recent years. Concretely, U.S. forces intervened in the repression of the peoples of Venezuela, Colombia and Guatemala, who fought with weapons for their freedom. In Venezuela, not only do U.S. forces advise the army and the police, but they also direct acts of genocide carried out from the air against the peasant population in vast insurgent areas. And the Yankee companies operating there exert pressures of every kind to increase direct interference. The imperialists are preparing to repress the peoples of the Americas and are establishing an International of Crime.

The United States intervenes in Latin America invoking the defense of free institutions. The time will come when this Assembly will acquire greater maturity and demand of the U.S. Government guarantees for the life of the blacks and Latin Americans who live in that country, most of them U.S. citizens by origin or adoption.

Those who kill their own children and discriminate daily against them because of the color of their skin; those who let the murderers of blacks remain free, protecting them, and furthermore punishing the black population because they demand their legitimate rights as free men — how can those who do this consider themselves guardians of freedom? We understand that today the Assembly is not in a position to ask for explanations of these acts. It must be clearly established, however, that the government of the United States is not the champion of freedom, but rather the perpetrator of exploitation and oppression against the peoples of the world and against a large part of its own population.

To the ambiguous language with which some delegates have described the case of Cuba and the OAS, we reply with clear-cut words and we proclaim that the peoples of Latin America will make those servile, sell-out governments pay for their treason.

Cuba, distinguished delegates, a free and sovereign state with no chains binding it to anyone, with no foreign investments on its territory, with no proconsuls directing its policy, can speak with its head held high in this Assembly and can demonstrate the justice of the phrase by which it has been baptized: “Free Territory of the Americas.” Our example will bear fruit in the continent, as it is already doing to a certain extent in Guatemala, Colombia and Venezuela.

There is no small enemy nor insignificant force, because no longer are there isolated peoples. As the Second Declaration of Havana states:

“No nation in Latin America is weak — because each forms part of a family of 200 million brothers, who suffer the same miseries, who harbor the same sentiments, who have the same enemy, who dream about the same better future, and who count upon the solidarity of all honest men and women throughout the world…

This epic before us is going to be written by the hungry Indian masses, the peasants without land, the exploited workers. It is going to be written by the progressive masses, the honest and brilliant intellectuals, who so greatly abound in our suffering Latin American lands. Struggles of masses and ideas. An epic that will be carried forward by our peoples, mistreated and scorned by imperialism; our people, unreckoned with until today, who are now beginning to shake off their slumber. Imperialism considered us a weak and submissive flock; and now it begins to be terrified of that flock; a gigantic flock of 200 million Latin Americans in whom Yankee monopoly capitalism now sees its gravediggers…

But now from one end of the continent to the other they are signaling with clarity that the hour has come — the hour of their vindication. Now this anonymous mass, this America of color, somber, taciturn America, which all over the continent sings with the same sadness and disillusionment, now this mass is beginning to enter definitively into its own history, is beginning to write it with its own blood, is beginning to suffer and die for it.

Because now in the mountains and fields of America, on its flatlands and in its jungles, in the wilderness or in the traffic of cities, on the banks of its great oceans or rivers, this world is beginning to tremble. Anxious hands are stretched forth, ready to die for what is theirs, to win those rights that were laughed at by one and all for 500 years. Yes, now history will have to take the poor of America into account, the exploited and spurned of America, who have decided to begin writing their history for themselves for all time. Already they can be seen on the roads, on foot, day after day, in endless march of hundreds of kilometers to the governmental “eminences,” there to obtain their rights.

Already they can be seen armed with stones, sticks, machetes, in one direction and another, each day, occupying lands, sinking hooks into the land that belongs to them and defending it with their lives. They can be seen carrying signs, slogans, flags; letting them flap in the mountain or prairie winds. And the wave of anger, of demands for justice, of claims for rights trampled underfoot, which is beginning to sweep the lands of Latin America, will not stop. That wave will swell with every passing day. For that wave is composed of the greatest number, the majorities in every respect, those whose labor amasses the wealth and turns the wheels of history. Now they are awakening from the long, brutalizing sleep to which they had been subjected.

For this great mass of humanity has said, “Enough!” and has begun to march. And their march of giants will not be halted until they conquer true independence — for which they have vainly died more than once. Today, however, those who die will die like the Cubans at Playa Girón. They will die for their own true and never-to-be-surrendered independence”.

All this, distinguished delegates, this new will of a whole continent, of Latin America, is made manifest in the cry proclaimed daily by our masses as the irrefutable expression of their decision to fight and to paralyze the armed hand of the invader. It is a cry that has the understanding and support of all the peoples of the world and especially of the socialist camp, headed by the Soviet Union.

That cry is: Patria o muerte! [Homeland or death]

Source: Marxists Internet Archive

Che Guevara (14 June 1928 – 9 October 1967) was killed 55 years ago. Following is a report on Che’s legacy in socialist construction in Cuba.

As Minister of Industries in Cuba between 1961 and 1965, Che Guevara addressed the challenge of increasing production and labor productivity in conditions of underdevelopment and in transition to socialism, without relying on capitalist mechanisms that undermine the formation of new consciousness and social relations integral to socialism. Under capitalism, Guevara noted, competition for private profit drives the application of science and technology to industrial development, revolutionizing the productive forces. Socialist governments must find alternative methods. To these ends, Guevara set up nine research and development institutes, focussing on sugar cane derivatives, minerals and metals, the chemical industries, agricultural by-products, the mechanical industry, technological innovations, and automation. He established an institutional framework to begin experimentation at different ends of the production chain simultaneously. The short-term results were inevitably limited, but more significant than the productive achievements attained was the methodology introduced, the application of science and technology to production.

CONTACT Helen Yaffe Email iconhelen.yaffe@glasgow.ac.uk
© 2022 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

In September, Serena Brennerman, a 16-year-old white trans woman, was found drowned in Salem, Oregon. Serena’s death was ruled a suicide by the police. But her friends and community don’t believe it. She was physically harassed by bigots in her school for a long time. Some of this violence was even captured on video. Whether Serena was murdered or took her own life, she was a victim of the trans panic being pushed by the rich and powerful and embraced by violent neo-Nazis and TERFs.

There’s no ambiguity about the murders of Semaj Billingslea, a Black trans man, who was shot to death in Jacksonville, Florida, on Sept. 21, or Mya Allen, a Black trans woman, who was murdered on Aug. 29 in Milwaukee. Nearly three dozen trans people have been killed so far this year, most of them people of color, and that’s only counting those who were correctly gendered and identified.

There’s a war against trans, nonbinary, and gender nonconforming people in this country. It’s not new. But it has escalated to unprecedented heights in the last year and is spilling over into the whole LGBTQ2S community and those who support us. 

Doctors and children’s hospitals are threatened with bombings. Neo-Nazis shut down drag events, often aided by local cops. Parents are threatened with prosecution for supporting their trans kids. We are increasingly threatened and accosted on the street, in stores, on public transportation, with slurs and threats.

What are the supposed friends of the LGBTQ+ community in Washington doing to stop this? Not a damn thing. They tell us to vote for them, the way they told women to vote for them before standing aside and letting abortion rights be stripped away. Meanwhile, alleged progressives like Hillary Clinton and the New York Times are spouting TERF rhetoric and dismissing trans rights. 

The Biden administration and Congress have made it crystal clear that their priority is funding wars for empire on the other side of the world, not protecting the rights of people here.

It’s painful to watch. But we are not powerless.

On Sept. 25 something incredibly important happened just 90 miles from U.S. shores. After three years of democratic discussion and education at all levels of society, the people of socialist Cuba voted by a two-thirds margin for a new Code of Families. It enshrines in law the rights of queers, trans people and women in marriage and adoption. It changes the fundamental relationship between parents and children to one based on responsibilities and rights. It elevates chosen families to the same status as blood families. It embraces the rights that are being stripped away from us or that we never had at all.

In the U.S. media this was reduced to a vote for gay marriage. The Washington Post, Fox News, CNN and the rest don’t want people in this country to know what Cuba’s Code of Families is, or how it was achieved. They especially don’t want the trans and LGBTQ+ community to know, because people here might realize that we need to fight for what Cuba has: free health care, including gender-affirming care, free education, including comprehensive sex education, the right to housing and work and dignity for all.

There’s an old liberal saying from the 1960s that those who make reform impossible make revolution inevitable. Today’s liberals don’t mention that much, because it’s a damning indictment of their own inaction and complacency. 

Cuba made a revolution to get out from under the thumb of the U.S. empire. Washington has been punishing Cuba ever since. Cuba has been subject to a 60-year economic blockade on trade, medicine, food and more. Trump tightened the blockade and Biden has kept his hateful measures in place despite the pandemic and climate collapse.

One of the most hateful and destructive policies of the U.S. empire is using the rights of trans people, LGBTQ+ people and women as an excuse to attack other countries around the world in its wars for profit. It’s so obvious right now, as our own limited rights are being viciously stripped away. 

We need to rely on ourselves, not corporate-sponsored politicians, to fight for our rights. We need to build alliances with other people here and around the world who are fighting for their rights and against the U.S. empire. Trans people who are on the front line of so much abuse and bigotry can play a leading role in building a revolutionary movement here. Just look at how trans and other queer workers at Starbucks and Amazon have become an incredible force for organizing unions.

Bigots say get back, we say fight back! Protect trans kids! Unblock Cuba!

Ernesto “Che” Guevara — the great internationalist and revolutionary leader — died 55 years ago on Oct. 9, 1967, at the hands of Bolivian soldiers who were trained, equipped, and put in motion by U.S. Green Beret and CIA operatives. Che’s last words proved their defeat and his victory: “Shoot, cowards. You are only going to kill a man.” Che still lives.