On May 24th, the Israel Lovell Foundation hosted the celebration of Africa Day in Barbados with the panel discussion “Haiti and Cuba in Global Pan-African Liberation and the Struggle Against Imperialism.
The panel included the Honorable Trevor A. Prescod, MP, Minister in the Prime Minister’s Office for Pan-African Affairs and Heritage, who delivered the opening remarks. He was joined by the Chargé d'Affaires of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, Ms. Martha Ortega, and Mr. David Abdulah, a Caribbean patriot and labor activist with the Social Justice Movement (SJM), who gave the panel’s keynote address, dedicated to Haiti. Academics from several universities in the region participated virtually.
The Ambassador of the Republic of Cuba to Barbados, Yanet Stable Cárdenas, addressed the audience, emphasizing that the Cuban economy has not collapsed, nor is it a failed system as some try to portray it to the world. The Trump Administration, in an attempt to justify military aggression in our country, has reached the height of its arrogance and meddling by trying to prosecute Army General Raúl Castro, the historical leader of the Cuban Revolution.
The current situation in Cuba is due to a very real reason: the intensification of the blockade imposed on Cuba for more than six consecutive decades, compounded by absurd Executive Orders from the United States government aimed at suffocating our economy and forcing an entire population to live with all kinds of shortages, subjecting them to prolonged periods without electricity by preventing other countries from selling us oil and its derivatives.
But despite all the hardships we suffer today, the Cuban people resist, survive, and vehemently denounce before the world this collective genocide imposed upon us by imperialism. This is all because we firmly defend our sovereignty and refuse to submit to the hegemonic and expansionist policies of the U.S. government. The Cuban people desire peace; we pose no threat to anyone. On the contrary, we have ample evidence of solidarity shown to all the peoples of the world over the years. We want to avoid war at all costs, and we advocate for dialogue on equal terms, respecting reciprocity and cooperation between both countries. However, it is the Trump Administration that refuses to respect our sovereign right to choose how we want to develop our society.
For Cuba, celebrating this Africa Day alongside the countries of the ancestral African continent and those of our Caribbean region is to remember each year, and to recognize time and again, that the history of our country cannot be written, nor the idiosyncrasies of the Cuban people understood, without looking to the past, because the African continent lives in our music, in our cultural and religious traditions, and African blood runs through our veins—rebellious blood, resilient blood—and that… no one can and will ever be able to take away.