Speech by the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Cuba Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla at the opening of the V CARICOM-Cuba Ministerial Meeting. Havana Cuba. March 11, 2017. Deputy Chairman of the Council of State, Salvador Valdés Mesa;
Honorable Senator Maxine McClean, Minister for Foreign Affairs and Foreign Trade of Barbados and Chair of the CARICOM Council for External Relations and Community Affairs (COFCOR); Distinguished Ministers of Foreign Affairs and Heads of Delegations of the Caribbean sister nations; Her Excellency Mrs. June Soomer, Secretary General of the Association of Caribbean States; His Excellency Mr. Colin Granderson, Representative of the General Secretariat of the CARICOM Community. Cuba welcomes with great satisfaction this V Meeting of Ministers of Foreign Affairs CARICOM-Cuba, in which we will review the agreements emanating from the Fifth CARICOM-Cuba Summit; We will exchange on the development of our bilateral relations the new challenges imposed by the current regional, hemispheric and international context; And on how to advance towards the indispensable and indispensable Latin American and Caribbean unity, bearing in mind that our leaders will meet in Antigua and Barbuda in December.
Since December 8, 1972, the unitary spirit of the great Caribbean fighters and founding fathers of CARICOM has characterized the bonds of unswerving brotherhood between our peoples.
CARICOM's ascendancy, the active participation of all its member states and Cuba in the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States and the Association of Caribbean States, as well as the membership of several of our nations in the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples Of Our America-Treaty of Peoples' Trade and Petrocaribe, have contributed significantly to the progress of integration.
It is imperative to continue to defend the unity of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) as the indispensable, legitimate, unitary and diverse mechanism of political agreement, which has allowed the 33 states of Our America.
The Caribbean and Cuba share a history of colonialism and slavery, full independence, struggle for the development of our economies and for the well-being of our peoples.
We meet at a crucial moment for the region, which calls us to defend unity as the only guarantee to preserve our sovereignty and independence and defend the common interests of our peoples.
We face the danger of the introduction of extreme trade protectionism; The implementation of the Paris Agreement on Climate Change is threatened; We encourage the criminalization and deportation of our nationals whose human rights are frequently violated; Persecution on religious or racial grounds increases, and attempts are made to erect walls that will not solve the problems of poverty, the effects of climate catastrophes, and the consequences of the unjust international order, which are, among others, the causes of such migrations.
One of the elements that most affects our region is its increasing vulnerability and exposure to natural disasters, which lead to loss of lives and millions of damages. The catastrophe originated by Hurricane Matthew in the sister Republic of Haiti is an example of this. The need for solidarity and the participation of all of us and of the international community in its recovery, reconstruction and development, on the basis of absolute respect for its sovereignty and institutionality, was again evident. With Haiti, the world has a historical debt that we must jointly honor.
I reiterate the gratitude of the Cuban government and people for the sincere expressions of affection and solidarity we received from the Caribbean brothers for the physical disappearance of the Commander in Chief of the Cuban Revolution, Fidel Castro Ruz, the supreme defender of brotherhood and cooperation between Cuba And the countries of the Caribbean Community.
We remember at this time, international and Caribbean leaders of the importance of Prime Minister Manning and President Preval, to whose memory we pay homage.
As President Raul Castro Ruz said at the 14th Summit of the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America (ALBA-TCP) recently held in Caracas, and I quote: "No cause of the Patria Grande is foreign. We will never fail the caring brothers of the Caribbean. We ratify our support for your legitimate claim to compensation for the horrors of slavery and the slave trade; To their demand to receive cooperation according to their needs and not on the basis of indicators that classify them as middle income countries; Special and differential treatment in access to trade and investment, as well as financing to adapt to the effects of climate change and address natural disasters, such as small, vulnerable island states; And our rejection of the unjust persecution of which they are object on the part of the centers of the financial capital ", end of the quotation.
Let us work for the construction of an increasingly prosperous, equitable and sustainable Caribbean, convinced that we can all achieve this.
Thank you very much.