Statement by the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Cuba, Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla, at the International Meeting of Solidarity with Cuba "For a world without blockade: active solidarity in the centenary of Fidel"
Good morning!
First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Cuba and President of the Republic,
Fellow President of the National Assembly of People’s Power,
Fellow prime minister,
Fellow Organization Secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba,
Comrade Teresa Amarelle, secretary general of the Federation of Cuban Women,
Dear fellow comrades:
Thank you. Deep gratitude to all and to the broad international movement that you represent, for your persistent, tireless and victorious solidarity with the Cuban people.
Yesterday’s demonstration by the Cuban people, more than 500,000 Habaneros, and more than 5 million Cubans, who throughout the country, made a conscious demonstration of unity, resistance, creation, commitment to the Revolution, and the willingness to defend it with ideas or with weapons, has been a transcendent fact. It has been a historic, vibrant day that we hope US imperialism has taken note of.
These are particularly dangerous times for humanity and for Cuba.
In an increasingly unstable international scenario, the use of force is normalized; there is talk of so-called peace based on force. The proliferation of unilateral coercive measures, cognitive or non-conventional wars, occupation of territories, conquest of natural resources, disregard and violation of international law, brutal use of instruments of domination rather than hegemony, put the world back in a situation of multidimensional crisis and threaten Cuba, which is in collimation, at the point of imperialism.
You will remember the infamous Memorandum of Undersecretary Mallory. It was the first formulation, classified for many years, of the design and objectives of the blockade on Cuba. To provoke hunger, despair and the overthrow of the government. It is, until this minute, the essence of American policy against Cuba.
The tightening of the blockade over the last 10 years has obviously had an impact on our social and humanitarian outcomes and economic performance. Since 2019, with the addition of 243 additional coercive measures, they have intensified efforts to deprive Cuba of supplies included in that summer of 2020, particularly fuel supplies. The cruel application of the blockade measures and its strengthening in the field of health, medical equipment and medicines can never be forgotten by our people as one of the worst episodes in the execution of the imperialist policy against Cuba, with the denial of pulmonary ventilators, the obstruction of medical oxygen balloons during the COVID-19 pandemic.
On January 29 of this year, the United States took the additional and extraordinary step of threatening tariffs against any country from whose territory, companies, business organizations, fuel is exported to Cuba. It is, in effect, an absolute energy blockade that adds to the intensified economic blockade and the accumulation of its effects for more than 60 years.
It is an act of war. It amounts to a naval blockade, typified in international law as an act of war.
When the naval blockade against the sister Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela was applied, the US government quickly changed the name, to avoid appearing as an international criminal, and began to call it quarantine. Recalling the one applied against Cuba during the October Crisis or the Missile Crisis.
It is an act that causes extraordinary damage to our population, to every Cuban family, and that also has very serious consequences for our economy. In fact, it had begun to affect us earlier, when US military commanders began to pursue, intercept, and confiscate foreign tankers in the Caribbean, or beyond.
It is known that Cuba cannot, for now, produce all the oil or fuel needs that demand the lives of the people or our economy. It needs to make imports in exercise of an internationally recognized right to freedom of trade and navigation. When the US government chases up fuel, it doesn’t just stop a ship from a supplier, a shipping company, or an insurance company. Transportation stops in Cuba, medical services are affected, health services are affected, the lives of millions and millions of people are harmed, our children, our elderly, our sick, and we try to sow despair.
It is an unprecedented scenario in the world in which a superpower abuses daily of the ability to impose on almost all states the prohibition to act in a sovereign manner, and in the case of Cuba, to export its own national products to the country it wishes. or its citizens to visit any nation on the planet.
It is not just a criminal attack against Cuba, but against the sovereign prerogatives of any state. It is an unacceptable act of intimidation against any country.
The consequences are not greater for Cuba than those that would likely be suffered by the vast majority of nations, precisely because of the orderly socialist nature centered on human beings and families, on the social justice of our economy. But the impact is severe and you have experienced it in the days you have lived in our homeland. The pressure is noticeable and the consequences for the people are suffered daily. We are not talking about an abstraction, but about people’s everyday life.
In this sense, you have surely also noticed how Cuban families adapt to these critical circumstances, the way our people face the consequences in a creative, innovative, resilient, firm and at the same time optimistic and joyful manner.
Some are asking how far Cuba will be able to withstand the energy blockade, or current conditions. The answer was found yesterday in our squares and streets across the entire nation.
Our people’s determination to overcome and move forward is firm, even in the worst-case scenarios. We produce about half of the crude we consume in Cuba. We can now refine it with new Cuban technology.
We have the largest reserves on the planet of nickel and cobalt, which are critical minerals. We have enough arable land. We have water, despite the drought and climate change circumstances. We have innovative and competitive industry and technology such as biomedical pharmaceuticals. But the most important thing is the people who are the protagonists of the Cuban Revolution.
The blockade is not the only form of aggression, but includes tolerance, impunity with which terrorist and violent acts against Cuba are organized from US territory, from where violence and sedition are daily incited.
It is also accompanied by a government and multibillion-dollar program in the deployment of a cognitive war against the Cuban people, aimed at disinforming, disorienting, demobilizing, breaking national identity, patriotic spirit, hurting Cuban sensibilities, damage the sense of dignity, affect the monolithic unity of the Cuban people around the party, the Revolution and its historical leadership and the current one, around General of the Army Raúl Castro Ruz and the first secretary and president Díaz Canel.
Confrontation is now also taking place on the symbolic and digital ground. The international colloquium Patria, recently held in Cuba, has shown the progress of an international coordination platform with great potential for articulation in the digital struggle, in the integration of technological sovereignty, including infrastructure, data, algorithms, content generation and distribution capacity of these, specialized training and operational capabilities for democratic, progressive, revolutionary and left intervention in the digital sphere, for the fight against the dictatorship of the algorithm.
This month of April and the days around the commemoration of the victory, the first military victory of Cuba against US imperialism, the first military defeat of the United States in this hemisphere, precisely on April 17, 18 million people participated in the digital conversation about Cuba.
It was significant on that day the convergence of Girón, the aggressions of the US government through some statements by its main leaders and the qualification by leftist leaders of the blockade as an act of genocide. Cuba at that time went from a bilateral issue with the US, I mean, to a first-level international case.
According to the networks, the military option against Cuba, the threat of direct US military aggression, ceases to be a speculative noise and enters into the real institutional debate in the world. Important matrices have imposed, as in the first place, that the oil blockade is an act severely directed against human beings, aimed at provoking humanitarian damage, at creating extreme damage to an entire people, as an act of collective punishment.
Two, the development of a multipolar front of international solidarity.
Three, the mention that Cuba is next, Cuba is next, the military escalation.
Fourth, the manipulation of human rights against Cuba and progressive governments.
Fifthly, the effects of a successful and effective Cuban communications offensive, with weight even in the conversation within the United States regarding our country and also global attraction regarding the talks or exchanges between Cuba and the government of the United States.
The two most frequent matrices are blocking and solidarity, reinforcing the same narrative.
Cuba is a beleaguered state, Cuba is an assaulted state, not an ineffective one. It is the denial of one of the main matrices that imperialism has tried to sow in people’s consciences.
It is true that we have started a process of exchanges with the US government. This is nothing extraordinary. We have done this in the past with virtually every US government, which I remember being thirteen, since the triumph of the Revolution.
Always, Fidel, Raúl, Díaz-Canel, the leadership of the state party and the government have been willing to respectful, serious and responsible dialogue to try to resolve our deep difference. There are previous experiences, we are willing to move forward on that path. There are bilateral issues on which we can exchange and for which it would be in the interest of both peoples to find a solution.
The political and economic order of Cuba is not part of this exchange, in no way. No internal matter of our people or our revolution is part of talks with the US.
We will never discuss with the United States matters that are solely within the sovereignty, independence and self-determination of Cubans.
I can assure you that we continue and will continue to fight, dream, committed to the continuous improvement of our process of socialist construction. We will continue to make progress toward achieving the highest possible degree of social justice, protecting it, defending it to the fullest extent, and ensuring its sustainability.
This is the Revolution of the humble, with the humble and for the humble.
It is the socialist and anti-imperialist revolution of the Cuban workers who took to our streets yesterday.
We know that Cuba is not alone, and you should count on a deep, unwavering loyalty to the just causes of the planet, to the anti-imperialist struggle, regardless of any risk for Cubans.
We will continue to be deeply Martians, feeling that homeland is humanity, and we will remain deeply internationalist like Fidel and Che until the end.
In a radio interview with the president of the United States on January 8, he said: "...well, I don’t think you can put much more pressure than to go in and blow everything up." He had been asked whether they would apply additional measures of economic pressure against Cuba. He acknowledged that they had practically exhausted their arsenal and that what remained was to go in and destroy everything.
It would be good if US imperialism, the government, and the military intelligence community could read and interpret well the signs of the heroic and unequal struggle of Cubans defending the sovereignty and security of the president of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela. fallen heroically fighting against imperialism.
Interpret well the march of the combatant people on the day of the aggression against Venezuela, the massive tribute to our fallen, the recent acts commemorating the victory of Girón, the more than 500 thousand habaneros who filled the anti-imperialist tribune José Martí yesterday in Havana, the more than 5.2 million Cubans who did the same throughout our country.
Cuba would be a wasp, Cuba would be a death trap, Cuba would be the scene of the war of all people if US imperialism dared to attack us.
Last night the president of the United States said, and I quote: "...talking about a place called Cuba, which we will take control of almost immediately," he said.
"Now Cuba has problems, we will end with one first, on the return of Iran", our solidarity with Iran. Trump said, "When we get back from Iran, we will bring in one of our great ones, perhaps the USS Abraham Lincoln, the world’s largest aircraft carrier. It will stop about 100 yards, about 90 meters off the coast of Cuba and the Cubans will say, "Thank you very much, we surrender."
Earlier, he had issued a new executive order, reiterating the designation of Cuba as an unusual and extraordinary threat to national security and US foreign policy, which is an infamous lie.
For the first time, they establish secondary sanctions, that is, sanctions that can be applied against any person, entity, company, etc. That for carrying out acts linked to Cuba, despite their interests in the United States, in the American economy, have no relationship with our country. In what means an extremely aggressive and unprecedented step in the extraterritorial application of the blockade against our homeland.
Attention is drawn not only to the text of the executive order and its opaqueness, which for example says that they do not feel obliged to publish who are the designated persons or entities or who would be designated in this punitive condition, precisely to broaden the effect of intimidation, of intimidation to everyone else.
They mention as priority areas for actions against Cuba the energy area, the military area or defense, metals and mining, security and finance. But it is significant not only the text of the order, but an information sheet distributed yesterday by the US government, which has a curious and threatening aspect when listing what they consider recent and successive military successes of the United States. The order does not say so, but the fact sheet means the reiteration of the military threat.
One wonders what justification the superpower’s government could have for a barbaric, brutal, rude, and uncultured act? What excuses could be written to cause the deaths of dozens of young Cuban and American fighters, and to cause destruction and suffering? What would the goal be? What would happen next? What impact would a military adventure of this nature have on the destabilization of the region, on the damage to the main trade and air routes that supply eastern US territory? Will it seek to murder hundreds of thousands of Cubans, to bring about the destruction of the country? Will you seek to create a situation of ungovernability, misery, disease, unpredictable calamities? Who would benefit from such a scenario, which we are sure will not happen because Cuba has the capacity to prevent it, to prevent it and to effectively defend its independence, sovereignty and socialist self-determination?
It puts the entire international community in a serious dilemma. In the face of these acts, no State may act in a sovereign and independent manner, exercise the sovereignty of its peoples, or consider that the only area of application on its territory is its national laws. will be able to defend the concept that only its national courts or tribunals will have jurisdiction over their own affairs if they do not take sides today in favor of justice, in favor of Cuba.
We Cubans today are worried about what will happen to the US aircraft carrier 90 meters off our shores. The Caribbean Sea crests when there are aircraft carriers. What will we do with that massive mass of metal? Could it become a bulk carrier, a tanker ship for international trade? Today the Cubans also comment that it could be a dance floor.
Cuba acts and will act responsibly. While we prepare for any eventuality, even direct military aggression, we are confident that sanity and common sense will prevail before embarking on such a risky adventure.
Again, there is no justification for aggression against our country.
Cuba does not threaten anyone. Cuba resists, also thanks to you because it is not alone.
Cuba defends itself, defends itself with ideas and will defend itself with weapons.
Thank you very much.