By: Calvin G. Brown (WiredJA)
Montego Bay, Jamaica, 14 July 2021. The Cuban Revolution continues to be the proverbial bone that's permanently stuck in the craw of the United States government, having suffered the indignity of the popular overthrow of its puppet Fulgencio Batista y Zaldívar and the nationalization of key companies and industries.
It matters not whether the administration is Democrat or Republican. The Cuban Revolution presented a dagger to the heart of the American capitalist system, represented by Cuban refugees and their descendants who now live in Florida, representing a formidable constituency with strong lobbying capabilities.
The Cuban people took to the streets to defend the revolution following opposition protests. Having inherited the sixty year old economic blockade which no other country in the world have undergone or experienced and which under normal circumstances would have crippled any other economy, the Biden administration has shown that it has no intention of loosening the economic stranglehold which now threatens to choke the Cuban people to death.
Even though President Biden is said to be a compassionate person, its hard to think that he ever once considered the grief experienced by the 11-million people of Cuba under the strictures of the COVID-19 pandemic.
To quote Dr. Ralph Gonsalves, "the global pandemic of COVID-19, the sharp down-turn in the global economy, and the devastating knock-on effects for developing countries, including tourism-dependent economies such as Cuba, coupled with the criminal economic sanctions and blockade against Cuba, have caused real hardship to the Cuban people and economy". Hence we understand the pain and anxiety of the people concerning the shortages of well needed commodities.
But, the Cuban sanctions are not in the name of democracy. Rather, as they say, "it's the economy" stupid. Further, it's the embarrassment caused by the losses occasioned by the Cuban Revolution. While it's all well to acknowledge that to the victory goes the spoils, this does not hold true when the tables are turned!
It is only natural that a country such as Cuba that has undergone the level of economic sanctions that has shaken the foundations of a country with resources such as Venezuela, should be negatively affected when resources as basic as food and medicine cannot reach the country as a result of economic sanctions.
There is very little doubt that the disorders and incidents that occurred in some locations in Cuba on July 11, 2021, are the result of a plan designed by the US government to, opportunistically, exert the greatest possible pressure against Cuba.
This was done at a time when the country faces a complex situation derived from 16 months of confrontation with the pandemic and the current outbreak, in addition to the severe resurgence of the blockade and the brutal restrictions it imposes on the Cuban people.
This has seriously affected the normal functioning of the Cuban economy, severely reducing income from exports of goods and services, access to fuel and medicines and medical supplies.
The sanctions include measures such as the failure to grant the number of visas to emigrate and travel temporarily to the United States and the suspension of consular services in Cuba, which considerably limits the travel of Cubans.
There is also very little doubt that these measures are intended to present a country in collapse and in chaos to provoke a social explosion and justify external intervention.
The fingerprints of the US destabilization agencies are all over the latest protest action, replete with financing granted to individuals in Cuba and abroad to promote internal disorder, provoke and carry out terrorist acts in public, encouragement of confrontation to Cuban institutions and laws, and a media campaign representing half truths of the Cuban reality.
The government of Cuba has called on their people to defend the Homeland against mercenary aggressions, terrorist attacks, economic sabotage plans, economic coercion measures and other destabilization plans which they charge comes from abroad.
Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel, has called for "the support of friendly governments to prevent these destabilization plans, organized and incited from abroad, from being sustained. At the same time, we appreciate the positions of friendly governments in favor of lifting the US economic, commercial and financial blockade against Cuba, which is the main obstacle to the development and well-being of the Cuban people and a flagrant violation of their human rights."
Cuba has “denounced the disinformation from the US, and has discredited the campaign articulated from Washington which attempts to project an image of instability, breaking the citizen's tranquility and our state of law and social justice.”
In the meantime, Biden is playing a waiting game, in the hope that the Trump era sanctions will continue cripple the Cuban economy in the hope of gaining a victory, pyrric or otherwise. But the Cuban people are resilient, having survived for the past sixty years on the goodwill of the majority of the world's nations and opposed by only the United States and Israel.
Read full article here: https://wiredja.com/index.php/op-ed/cuba-while-history-will-absolve-fidel-how-will-biden-fare