Dear comrades, members of the glorious and hard-working Cuban people, Communist Party of Cuba, and political and mass organisations, we would like to congratulate you on the 67th anniversary of the victory of the Rebel Army, under the leadership of Commander-in-Chief Fidel Castro Ruz, against the troops of the despotic regime headed by dictator Fulgencio Batista Zaldívar.
For more than six decades, our people have faced the greatest dangers, aggressions and harassment suffered by any country in history, subjected to a virtual state of systematic and ruthless war waged by the richest and most powerful imperialist power in the world, located ninety miles from its territory, with an area approximately 98 times its size and about 30 times the population of Cuba; where almost all factories, industrial, electrical and technological equipment before the triumph of the revolution were manufactured in the United States, and two years after the revolutionary victory, their sale and supply of parts to Cuba was prohibited.
Cuba is the only country in the world that is prohibited from using the US dollar, which was the currency of exchange for international transactions approved by the community of nations after the Second World War; and the only one to which US citizens have been prohibited from travelling during that period of time.
The set of measures applied within the framework of the economic blockade are not only commercial actions, but an economic war, whose objective is to impede its economic development and cause misery, hunger, disease, despair and unbearable suffering to the population, producing discontent and ultimately allowing for regime change, no matter how many children, elderly or disabled people suffer or die; the greater their number, the better.
When African countries, with the support of the Non-Aligned Movement, proposed economic sanctions against the apartheid regime of the Republic of South Africa at the United Nations in the 1980s, which were much milder than those applied to Cuba, the United States and its allies blocked them, arguing that they would affect the population, because measures of this kind always affect the population. Such was the hypocritical argument of Assistant Secretary of State for Africa Chester Crocker in his proposal for ‘constructive engagement’.
These atrocious and inhuman practices, which violate international law, explain why the overwhelming majority of representatives of the international community over the last three decades have systematically voted in the United Nations General Assembly in favour of lifting the US economic and commercial blockade against Cuba.
We demand that the United States government immediately and unconditionally lift the blockade against Cuba and remove the country from the list of promoters of international terrorism. Cuba has been the victim of numerous acts of terrorism, supported or permitted by successive US administrations.
We salute the efforts of the people and government of Cuba to achieve economic recovery and development in the country, and we will stand by them as always.
We also denounce the deployment of US military forces in the Caribbean region and the aggression and threats against the brotherly peoples of Venezuela and Colombia, with whom we stand in solidarity, and we reiterate our demand that the Caribbean be a zone of peace.
Long live the Cuban Revolution!
Until Victory, Always!
Association of Cuban Residents in Jamaica Major General Antonio Maceo Grajales