Transcription of the remarks made by Mr. Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla, Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Cuba, at the presentation, to the national and foreign media, of the updated national report by virtue of resolution 75/289 of the united nations general assembly entitled “necessity of ending the economic, commercial and financial blockade imposed by the united states of america against cuba” (august, 2021 - february, 2022).
I thank you all for your attendance. I do not know if you watched the images of the waterspout and the lightning over the Morro Castle. Do we have those images? (the images are shown on a screen). Let’s hope these didn’t cause any damage. I thank your for your attendance. On November 3 and 4, the United Nations General Assembly will consider, for the thirtieth time, the agenda item entitled “Necessity of ending the economic, commercial and financial blockade imposed by the United States of America against Cuba”.
This will take place in a particular context, characterized by the devastating effects of hurricane Ian; the impact of a global multi-dimensional crisis that includes an international economic crisis and an imminent threat of a global recession; a food crisis; an energy crisis and a health crisis, among others.
This context is also characterized by the unprecedented tightening of the blockade against Cuba, which dates back from the second half of 2019, as a result of a policy implemented by the preceding US Republican government, intended to suffocate our economy, impose an economic warfare and deliberately bring about the collapse of the Cuban economy and the entire country, without weighing up the serious humanitarian consequences or the impacts of that purpose, which will never be achieved although it will undoubtedly have unforeseeable consequences.
The report, which is available on-line to all of you and our people, our country and the Diplomatic Corps accredited to Havana, reveals these impacts. It is not that the blockade has adopted a new design. It has rather adopted a better surgical design, targeting each of the main sources of income of the country, viciously pursuing to increase its impact on the everyday life of our population, based on the best expression of that policy, which is the Memorandum drafted by Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Lester Mallory in April, 1960, recognizing that the purpose of the blockade was “to decrease monetary and real wages, to bring about hunger, desperation, hardship and overthrow of government”. The Helms-Burton Act of 1996 codified that same policy.
The maximum pressure measures against Cuba as well as the more than 200 additional blockade sanctions applied by President Donald Trump are pursuing the same cruel goals. I will give you some new data. Between August, 2021, and February, 2022, the losses caused by the blockade amount to some 3.8 billion dollars. It is a historical record for such a short time as these seven month period. According to very conservative data, Cuba’s GDP, despite the adverse circumstances facing the Cuban economy, could have grown by 4.5 per cent during that period, should these measures had not been applied.
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