By Sergio Martínez. Ambassador of the Republic of Cuba in Antigua and Barbuda.
On Thursday, June 11, the US government took another step in its criminal war of economic strangulation and total suffocation against the Cuban people. Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced the inclusion of the company CUBAPETROLEO, commonly known as CUPET, on the list of sanctioned Cuban entities. CUPET is the Cuban company responsible for importing oil and its derivatives into the country, as well as for domestic oil and gas production (it produces 100% of the gas that Cuban families use for their daily cooking). With this new measure, the fascist US Secretary of State is not only trying to prevent a single drop of oil from entering Cuba, but is also seeking to obstruct at all costs, the country's ability to extract and produce even a small portion of the fuel it needs for its survival from its own natural resources.
It is no coincidence that this new attack was announced after Cuba revealed that its scientists and oil industry workers had developed a novel technology that allows for the refining of its high-density, high-sulfur crude oil, to produce lighter fuels and derivatives, which can be used more efficiently for electricity generation. At the same time, CUPET has signing new contracts with major foreign companies, that present the possibility for Cuba to increase its currently very limited domestic oil production. Therefore, this measure seeks to obstruct any possibility of Cuba surviving the genocidal energy blockade imposed by the United States.
As usual, Marco Rubio doesn't hold back in launching all sorts of lies and outlandish arguments to try to justify this new aggression against the Cuban people. His objective continues to cause the greatest possible suffering and hardship to the entire population, to force us to surrender, to accept a return to the colonial and neocolonial past of total dependence and subordination to the interests of our powerful neighbor to the north. The Secretary of State himself acknowledged this criminal intention when he cynically stated recently that “in the summer, Cubans will not be able to alleviate the heat and high temperatures; they will have no way to store their food or cook it.”
The US government is using every means possible to promote a scenario of total collapse in the economic and social living standards of the Cuban population, in a way that the White House can be able to sustain their slanderous campaign of portraying Cuba as a failed state, and to justify a military aggression as a supposed “humanitarian and liberating action.”
We want to reiterate our calls upon the governments and peoples of the world to raise their voices in a sovereign manner and denounce the attempts by the US government to try to subjugate a small nation through genocidal policies of economic and social strangulation, and to unequivocally reject the threats to impose its imperial interests of domination by the use of military force.