In the midst of this pandemic we have seen with sadness an increasing number of victims reported every day in the world. Large numbers of people, including healthcare workers, are doing their best to avoid worst consequences. The best human values today are visible and fill us with pride in times of crisis.
Unfortunately, the pandemic has had an opposite effect in other people, bringing out feelings lacking human compassion. Specifically, those who suffer from pseudologia fantastica live in a bubble where Cuba is hell, even though more serious things happen where they live than in the Cuban 'hell'. Of course, the bubble bursts when it lands in Cuba. Those moral hypocrites try to give lessons of humanism to Cuba.
Added to that chorus of the pitiyankees mythology one can find no less than the Charge d'Affaires of the US in Cuba, Mara Tekach.
The head in office of dissidence in Cuba published a video accusing Cuba of media manipulation to try to divide and create disinformation campaigns –a theatre play where the oppressor is the victim. Mara Tekach is now the 'voice of the people', not of the empire.
But what was missing in that script? Morally, the blockade is unsustainable, and the they do everything possible to justify it. They pay to justify it; they lie and misinform to justify it. The US Congress allocates around $ 30 million dollars annually to promote 'democracy in Cuba'. Freedom of expression has a price and sponsors. The US has also created a department named Fuerza de Tarea ('Task Force') to manage Internet for Cuba, aiming at promoting "the flow of free and unregulated information within the island" through Internet.
Just look at the US-funded websites and you will find lots of fake news broadcast by them, as well as fabricated disinformation campaigns and states of opinion. Even during the pandemic, false information from audios, videos and photos circulate on social networks to cause confusion and panic. Do you remember the wave of 'Fake News' during the crisis in Venezuela with the guarimbas?
Mara Tekach explains that Cuba is not blocked by the United States, when the documents themselves published by the US Treasury Department and OFAC include lists of sanctions and regulations imposed by her Government.
President Donald Trump has intensified his policy of hostility to an unprecedented level: from June 16, 2017 until the beginning of March 2020, he has applied 191 coercive measures against Cuba.
When Mara Tekach's government prevents the entry of oil in Cuba, it has a social impact in all sectors of our economy. The blockade also affects private businesses: paladares, rental houses, cooperatives and all self-employed workers.
The US blockade does exist, and it is imposed by her government. The exchange between the two countries is asymmetric and not reciprocal. The purchase of food from the US by Cuba to which Mara refers, is set under exceptional conditions. Payment must be done in cash and in advance, through inadequate mechanisms of international trade, with the US being the greatest beneficiary. While her government sells food, it threatens their competitors with sanctions, forcing them to obey extraterritorial rules imposed by their country. The US, who pretends to be the main promoter of free market, makes profits from its own criminal policy. Cuba cannot export products to the US market. You offend Cubans, as if the development and well-being of our people depended on food ships.
Our association “Cubanos en UK”, based in the United Kingdom, has been a victim of the blockade since its foundation. United Kingdom-based American companies such as Eventbrite, Gofundme, Stripe, Paypal and most Banks apply the US extraterritorial blockade measures. Our association is non-profit, with no commercial links to Cuba. What odyssey investors interested in investing in Cuba would have to go through! How to risk large amounts of money and the US market when almost the entire international financial sector is subject to OFAC regulations?
Almost 30 years ago, Fidel Castro answered journalist María Elvira Salazar a question about foreign investment in Cuba.
"We are protected by the US. They do not want anyone to invest a penny here, therefore nobody protects socialism in Cuba today more than the United States. They don't want investments in Cuba.”
Our question for you Mara Tekach is the following: What right does the US have to impose a political system on Cuba or on any other foreign country?
Our country is free, sovereign and independent and we do not need permission.
(Translation by Embassy of Cuba in United Kingdom)