Cuba

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Why we don’t need more than one party
Excerpts from speech delivered by Comandante en Jefe Fidel Castro, July 26, 1988

Author: Fidel Castro Ruz | internet@granma.cu

may 13, 2021 09:05:38


Photo: Granma Archives

There is one very essential idea, and that is never to forget where we are situated, which is not in the Black Sea, but in the Caribbean, not 90 miles from Odessa, but 90 miles from Miami, with a border on our own land, in an occupied part of our territory, with imperialism. Our people are in charge in our country; and our Party is responsible for its policy, its line, its defense.

Our Party knows that mistakes bemade that weaken it ideologically... There will be nothing to weaken the authority of the Party! Without the Party no revolution is possible, without the Party no construction of socialism is possible!

And we must say here, once and for all, that we do not need more than one party, in the same way that Martí did not need more than one party to wage the struggle for the independence of Cuba, in the same way that Lenin did not need more than one party to make the October Revolution. I say this so that those who believe that here we are going to begin to allow parties in the pockets of someone else. To organize who? Counter-revolutionaries, the pro-Yankees, the bourgeoisie? No, here there is only one party, which is the party of our proletariat, of our peasants, of our students, of our workers, of our people, solidly and indestructibly united…

We do not need capitalist political formulas, that is complete garbage, they are useless, with their penchant for incessant politicking. I was talking about how, here, they demanded votes in for exchange medical attention; none of these phenomena exist now. We have created our own form of political organization appropriate to the country, we do not copy; People's Power is our own form of organization...

We do not need to rectify anything at all, given that we have a very democratic system, much more democratic than all systems of the bourgeoisie, of millionaires, of the plutocracy which is, really, who governs, in general, in capitalist countries.

We have nothing to learn and we will not stray one iota from this path, on which power emanates from the people. And you know that our Party came from the people, it did not fall from the sky, and that our members are chosen among the best of the youth and among the best workers...

And you know very well what it means to be a Party member: It means being the first in everything when there is a difficult task, an internationalist mission, a sacrifice, a risk; taking the first shift, the first possibility is for the Party member, ours is not a party of the privileged, but a party born from the heart of the people, whose members must to serve as examples, and when they do not, the Party takes charge of removing them from its ranks.

http://en.granma.cu/cuba/2021-05-13/why ... -one-party

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Cuba’s one party must represent the interests of the entire population
During a recent meeting of the Communist Party of Cuba’s Political Bureau, a document was presented summarizing concepts and guidelines approved at the 8th Congress, to facilitate debate among members and the people as a whole

Author: René Tamayo | internet@granma.cu

may 27, 2021 09:05:17


Photo: Estudios Revolución

During the last meeting of the Communist Party of Cuba’s Central Committee Political Bureau, presided by its first secretary, Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez, a document was presented summarizing the ideas, concepts and guidelines outlined in the Central Report to the 8th Congress, the closing remarks and documents approved by working commissions. Introduced by Rogelio Polanco Fuentes, Secretariat member and head of its Ideological Department, the text served as the axis of the virtual meeting held by the national leadership with some 2,600 key Party cadres across the country.

The gathering’s closing comments, delivered by First Secretary Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez, constituted essential reflections on the work of the Party and the defense of the Revolution in these times.

He insisted that in the process of debate now opening among the membership and the entire people, it is imperative that for everyone interpret for themselves "what continuity is and what unity is, and how unity is defended and how continuity is defended." If we do not do this, we have not understood the 8th Congress, he added.

Unity, he argued, has been forged, defended, and consolidated by the historic leadership over the course of years of Revolution, but it now poses new challenges.

The gradual process through which the historic generation has conferred on new generations central responsibilities in the Party, the state and government requires the moral authority of the single party, which is called upon to guarantee this unity, representing the nation, he stated.

"It is very important to maintain unity - and this is a concept of Army General Raúl Castro Ruz - that a single party must be more democratic, give more participation, reach more consensus, work more collectively."

The single Party, Díaz-Canel said, "must represent the interests of the entire population."

The moral authority of the Party is essential to maintaining unity, he reiterated, and a large portion of this moral authority depends on the exemplarity of the membership, a value shared by all revolutionaries and our entire population.

Díaz-Canel emphasized another essential concept: continuity, insisting that we must defend it with a broad vision that includes consolidating the authority gained by the accomplishments of the historic generation.

"We must preserve the leadership and moral authority of our organization, that is what gives continuity," and this also includes exemplarity, in our conception of being the political vanguard. "Generational continuity is a fundamental part of unity, that is why the Party must work hard with youth," he stressed.

The First Secretary went on to address a number of issues and tasks related to the work of the Party, including its internal life, and reiterated that the development of the national economy, along with the struggle for peace and ideological firmness, constitute the main missions of the organization, and therefore are today's priorities.

The present and future of the country, the defense of the Revolution and our progress depend on what we are capable of doing with our own efforts, without renouncing solidarity with other peoples, he added.

http://en.granma.cu/cuba/2021-05-27/cub ... population

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We must maintain the Party’s authority based on the prestige we earn with our work
Díaz-Canel insisted on the importance of maintaining strong ties with the masses, increasing militancy and intransigence, encouraging the participation of youth, strengthening the work of grassroots organizations, and ensuring that debate among Party members coincides with the country’s public agenda

Author: Granma | internet@granma.cu

may 28, 2021 10:05:53


Photo: Estudios Revolución

The essential point emphasized at meetings of the Party Central Committee Secretariat, led by First Secretary Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez and Roberto Morales Ojeda, secretary of Organization and Cadre Policy, with leaders in the provinces of Pinar del Río and Artemisa, was that the guidelines, ideas, concepts and agreements of the Communist Party of Cuba 8th Congress must be incorporated into regular work at all levels, as will be discussed in meeting of this type across the country.

Díaz-Canel insisted that the ideas, concepts and guidelines approved at the Congress, in April, must produce concrete results and recalled in Pinar del Rio that the epidemiological situation caused by COVID-19 prevented public debate before the paramount gathering of Party members.

He specified that the 8th Congress was distinguished by two themes: continuity and unity. In this regard, he noted that in order to continue strengthening unity, maintaining the moral authority of the Party is key.

"This authority was built by the historical generation on the basis of its merits. No one can deny the role that the Party plays in society, but now it is up to us to maintain and enrich this based on the prestige we earn with our work, confronting the country’s problems alongside the people", he emphasized.

He stressed the need for the Party to be increasingly democratic, encouraging the participation of Cuban men and women, members and non-members.

"How do we defend this unity? By eliminating dogma, fighting prejudice, confronting any vestige of discrimination," he said, reiterating the will to "advance by resisting" based on our own efforts, consolidating socialism to develop a prosperous society.

http://en.granma.cu/cuba/2021-05-28/we- ... h-our-work

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Remembering Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara on his 93rd birth anniversary
Posted Jun 16, 2021 by Eds.

Originally published: NewsClick.in by Shubham Sharma and Rishav Sharma (June 14, 2021) |

‘A man who acted as he thought best and who has been absolutely faithful to his convictions.’

If the nineteenth century was the age of Marxist theory, then the twentieth century was the age of Marxist theory in action. For all his life Marx remained immersed in his research while Engels stuck to his father’s business—“accursed commerce” as he called it—mainly to sustain Marx and his family. Notwithstanding this, the radical duo saw enough political action. The 1848 revolutions, the Chartist movement in Britain, the formation of the International Working Men’s Association, the Paris Commune were some such events. But in their lifetime, they never saw a successful regime change by social forces that claimed to be guided by their theory.

Ironically, none of the revolutions of the twentieth century inspired by Marxism took place in states/societies that Marx and Engels considered to be most ripe for it. It was backward Russia, agrarian China, and even backward states of Latin America where Marxism saw the light of day. Cuba was one such country and Che Guevara one of its foremost heroes.

Ernesto Guevara de la Serna, born in Rosario, Argentina, traced his ancestry to Ireland and Basque, Spain, although he never took it seriously and considered himself a thoroughbred Latin American. This emotion was best put on display when he was just twenty-four and during a sojourn in Peru, he declared that the “division of America into unstable and illusory nations is a complete fiction. We are one single mestizo race with remarkable ethnographical similarities”. He then proposed a toast to Peru and a United America.

His parents were fairly progressive by Argentinian standards of the time; atheists and forward-looking. His architect father was called “the communist” not because he was a member of the Communist Party, although he considered himself a proud socialist, but because he paid his plantation workers in cash and on time! Guevara senior actively sheltered veteran republicans of the Spanish Civil War and apprehended local Nazi operatives. His wife, Celia, was a lover of literature with a marvellous sense of humour. She drove her children in her 1926 Maxwell convertible to school, excursions and swimming lessons.

Che grew up sheltered from the conservative Catholic church which always actively supported regressive politicians. He read literary classics and a wide range of books on world politics. Before Marx, he admired Gandhi and had read Nehru’s Discovery of India. His tryst with Marxism came when he landed a job in Buenos Aires City Council’s Supplies Division where he had enough peace to read and write. He wrote a philosophical dictionary wherein he kept a record of his reading and musings. His essays on Marx and Engels were eventually published by his estate in 2007 under the title A Biographical Synthesis of Marx and Engels.

Politically speaking, Che’s radicalisation took off when on his fabled motorcycle journeys he encountered a beleaguered Chilean worker who had been jailed for being a communist. After further investigation, Che saw how the American copper mining company was exploiting the Araucanian people of Chile. Wages languished and their conditions were appalling. Workers and their trade unions were bested by the mining conglomerate in atrocious ways. For instance, the company manager accompanying Che and his mate, Alberto, had no compunction to reveal that when the trade union called a meeting, he and other members would entice several union leaders to the local brothel so that meeting lacked the required quorum.

The event that had the biggest impact on Che was the counter-revolution against Jacobo Arbenz Guzman’s government in Guatemala. Arbenz’s land reform aimed at correcting the imbalance created by estate-led coffee production which had caused only 2% of the population to control 72% of arable land. The largest private landholder in Guatemala, the United Fruit Company of the United States of America was also affected. It had 1,65,182 hectares of its 2,21,862 hectares acquired and redistributed. This daring elicited an aggressive response from U.S. imperialism because it had very close ties with the Eisenhower administration and John Foster Dulles, then secretary of state, was on the board of the company. United Fruit hired a public relations company to whip a frenzy about the spread of communism in Guatemala. General Castillo Armas’s CIA-backed coup removed Arbenz. And this was the point where Che clearly understood that in the face of open and direct assaults on the political independence of the Latin American states by American imperialism and its cronies, only revolutionary violence could liberate them. As Trotsky memorably put it, but in a completely different context, “the devil does not cut its own claws”, Che decided to shoot through the claws of the devil for the rest of his life.

After Guatemala, Che went to Mexico and had a fateful encounter with exiled Cuban revolutionaries. After the failed Moncada uprising of 26 July 1953 the leader of the revolt, Fidel Castro, was in Mexico City. Neither Castro nor Che recorded the exact date of their meeting, but both vividly remembered the encounter as a “meeting of minds”. They talked through the night. In an interview with the American journalist Lee Lockwood, Castro admitted, “I believe that at the time I met Che he had a greater revolutionary development, ideologically speaking, than I had. From the theoretical point of view, he was more formed, he was a more advanced revolutionary than I was.” Che was won over by Castro, he fell in with the latter’s plan to organise a revolution in Cuba.

By the late eighteenth century, Cuba became a service colony for Spanish fleets carrying bullion from South America to Spain. During the early part of the nineteenth century, Cuba was the only Spanish colony in Latin America that did not experience a successful independence movement. On the contrary, the revolution in Saint-Domingue at the turn of the century led to the arrival of 30,000 refugees in Cuba who were utilised to ramp up sugar and coffee production. The break came with the nationalist revolt of Jose Marti in 1895 which ended with American involvement in 1898 and freedom from Spain. American interference was predicated not upon some ennobling notion of national self-determination but greed and avarice. Americans had their eyes on Cuba for a very long time. President Thomas Jefferson attempted to buy Cuba from Napoleon during the French occupation of Spain in return for a free hand in South America. In 1850, the U.S. Minister in Madrid made a secret offer of $100 million for Cuba, but Spain turned it down.

Even after Cuba became politically independent it remained an appendage of the U.S. Under the Platt Amendment, the U.S. maintained the right of intervention in Cuba, a right that was (mis)used several times during the first two decades of the twentieth century. Cuba was also forced to cede the naval base at Guantanamo Bay in the South of the island. By 1929, U.S. investments in Cuba represented a quarter of its total investments in Latin America. And by the 1950s, when the U.S. became the leader of the so-called free world and the foremost champion of the “free market”, it controlled 40% of Cuba’s sugar production, 90% of its telephone and electrical services, 50% of the railways, 90% of its cattle ranches, and 25% of its bank deposits. Political scientist Prof. George Lawson notes in his 2019 book, Anatomies of Revolution, that in pre-revolutionary Cuba, the U.S. ambassador was considered the “second most important person on the island”.

The political pygmy who was making all this possible in Cuba was the military dictator Fulgencio Batista. During his sojourn in Mexico, Fidel had netted $50,000 in cash and pledges, just enough to support his band of 82 guerrillas. Just before leaving for Cuba, Fidel scouted for a trainer and got one in Colonel Alberto Bayo, a veteran of the Spanish Civil War who had fought heroically against the forces of fascist Franco. Che emerged as the top student in the guerrilla fighting course. Despite severe asthma, he endured gruelling marching sessions and practice sessions which lasted for twelve hours a day, sometimes longer.

Without much procrastination, the guerrillas landed in Cuba on 30 November 1956. The ensuing battle was protracted, marked by initial losses that had the guerrillas retreat into the Sierra Maestra mountains. Moved by the appalling conditions of the Campesinos (farmers), the rebels established medical centres and schools in the mountains. Che led these initiatives and to everyone’s surprise, the Campesinos flocked to learn to read and write. Within two years, there were thirty schools run by the rebels. And as the movement grew in tandem with the widespread dissatisfaction against Batista’s corruption and intransigence, no other political faction apart from Fidel and Co. were in a position to take over the reins of power. On 1 January 1959, the rebels marched on Havana.

Che’s participation in the revolution made it immune to depiction as a national one. After Thomas Paine, one could not think of any revolutionary other than Che who participated in revolutions away from their mother countries. The internationalism of the liberal and the communist sort had giants of their own but none made revolutions possible in countries other than their own through direct participation. This is what makes Che unique in the communist tradition.

Another important aspect of Che’s political vision is his ideas of a socialist economy. In 1963-64, the debate around the Cuban economic system abounded. Che argued against sole reliance on raising the level of productive forces. He called for a dialectical reciprocity wherein the transformation of man and his conditions was carried out simultaneously, one reinforcing the other. For him, any attempt to make the productive forces race ahead of man risks the rise of technocratic bureaucratism which might substitute democratic participation of the large majority of people. Students of heterodox economics have a lot to learn from this period when a new society was being forged, a far cry from the abstract models currently in vogue.

Today, on his 93rd birth anniversary, we honour the man and his legendary legacy. Towards the end of his life, he wrote to his children, “Your father was a man who acted as he thought best and who has been absolutely faithful to his convictions.” And remained he did. He died not as a minister in Cuba but rebel in Bolivia. The theory of “socialism in one country” remained anathema to him. Jean-Paul Sartre called him “the complete man”, a title stolen by Raymonds, an Indian suiting and shirting brand, to hawk their wares. Notwithstanding this, the legend of Che is etched in history’s hippocampus.

https://mronline.org/2021/06/16/remembe ... niversary/

When I visited Cuba about 15 years ago(when Fidel was alive) you did not see street or public art depicting Fidel, you saw Jose Marti firstly and Che not far behind.

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The world reacts to Cuba’s demand: 184 nations against the U.S. blockade!
The UN General Assembly overwhelmingly approves the resolution "Necessity of ending the economic, commercial and financial blockade imposed by the United States of America against Cuba".

Author: Yisell Rodríguez Milán | informacion@granmai.cu

Author: Lisset Chavez Bergues | internet@granma.cu

june 23, 2021 14:06:54



With a vote as impressive as all those on other historic occasions, the Cuban resolution demanding an end to the blockade was approved this Wednesday in the United Nations General Assembly by 184 votes in favor, 2 against and 3 abstentions.

Colombia, Ukraine and the United Arab Emirates abstained; while the United States and Israel opposed Cuba's demand.

After the result of the vote was announced, Communist Party of Cuba First Secretary and President of the Republic Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez, tweeted: 184 votes in favor, 2 against and 3 abstentions. This is how the world reacts to Cuba’s demand. It's now been 28 years of worldwide rejection of the blockade. The blockaders have run out of arguments. Those in solidarity strengthen support. Eliminate the blockade.

Party Political Bureau member and Cuban Minister of Foreign Affairs Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla likewise posted, "184 countries against the blockade! Once again, from the United Nations. A great victory for the Cuban people, for justice and truth."

During his remarks before the General Assembly, Rodríguez denounced the United States government’s decision to use the pandemic as an ally in its unconventional war against the Revolution, intensifying the blockade and causing the country losses of some 5 billion dollars in just one year.

He noted that also remaining in full force are the more than 240 hostile measures adopted by the administration of Donald Trump, which interrupted the delivery of remittances to Cuban families, hurt the nation’s self-employed, disrupted family reunification, and made our battle against COVID-19 more difficult.

A large majority of the U.S. population, nonetheless, support the elimination of the blockade and normalization of travel, he emphasized.

The human damage is incalculable, Rodríguez said, stressing that no Cuban family's life escapes the effects of this policy, while other states are victims of the extraterritorial impact of the blockade.

It is neither legal nor ethical that the government of a great power blockade a small nation in an attempt to impose a government of its design, he stated, adding, "It is not permissible, it is unacceptable."

Cuba's demand is to live in peace with no blockade, to end the persecution of our economic relations and the manipulation of our reality, and eliminate obstacles to our development.

Rodríguez also thanked the international community for its support of Cuba. "We are encouraged by the solidarity of thousands of people who have gathered around the world to demand an end to the U.S. blockade," he said. "On behalf of my country, of our honorable and generous people, I submit for your consideration the draft resolution “The necessity of ending the economic, commercial and financial blockade imposed by the United States against Cuba."

http://en.granma.cu/mundo/2021-06-23/th ... s-blockade

So tell me again, who is the pariah?

Granma's image didn't work so I found one.

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Cuban President Calls To Join Forces Against Opposition


Miguel Diaz-Canel talks to people who were protesting in San Antonio de los Baños, Artemisa, Cuba, Jul 11, 2021. | Photo: Twitter/ @PresidenciaCuba
Published 11 July 2021

The current protests are contaminated by groups of opportunists who take advantage of the current crisis to undermine order and generate chaos.


On Sunday, Cuban President Miguel Diaz Canel addressed the country to denounce the destabilizing strategy played by the opposition sectors to generate chaos in the Caribbean country.

In his speech, the president addressed the protesters' main dissatisfactions, after having talked personally to them in the municipality of San Antonio de los Baños, located some 50 Km to the west of Havana.

"The protests involve many revolutionary citizens who want an explanation for the current situation in the country, but are also contaminated by groups of opportunists who take advantage of the current crisis to undermine order and generate chaos," said Diaz-Canel.

He also mentioned that the main instigators of these protests do not want any positive change for Cubans but a change of regime to impose a neoliberal model, the same one that has prevented thousands of people from accessing the indispensable means to survive COVID-19.

"If they want to have a good gesture with Cuba if they want to help the Cuban people, lift the Blockade," add the Cuban president.

The tweet reads: "The #Revolution is true dialogue and puts truth and ethics before obscenity and perversity. It does not negotiate its existence, it does not legitimize mercenaries, and it acts with security and firmness."

Recently, many national and foreign artists and personalities have called for humanitarian aid to be sent to Cuba due to the increase in COVID-19 cases, arguing there was no way to do it.

These statements triggered protests in several localities in the country, demanding solutions to the current situation.

However, Cuban authorities have declared that Cuban borders and diplomatic missions abroad remain open and willing to process any donation that helps the country to face the economic crisis.

https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Cub ... -0004.html

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Latin America expresses its support to the Cuban people and Government


Cubans march in Havana against the campaign to discredit the Government of the Caribbean country. | Photo: EFE

Published July 12, 2021 (5 hours 41 minutes ago)

The Cuban president denounced that the provocations of the small groups are intended to create a scenario of instability and chaos on the island.

Latin American collectives, movements and organizations expressed their support for the Cuban people and government on Sunday in response to the smear campaign promoted by the United States against the Caribbean island.

The executive secretary of the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America-Peoples' Trade Agreement (ALBA-TCP), Sacha Llorenti, condemned the interventionist actions against Havana promoted from Washington.

Sacha Llorenti also rejected the accusations of the Secretary General of the Organization of American States (OAS), Luis Almagro, in support of destabilizing actions registered in the Caribbean island.

"Luis Almagro's hands, stained with coups and blood, are once again trying to interfere in Cuban affairs," Llorenti warned through a message on Twitter.


From Argentina, the Union of Press Workers of Buenos Aires (Utpba), condemned the actions promoted by the United States to destabilize Cuba.

'The Utpba is and will be as always with you and the heroic Cuban people beyond words. Long live Cuba. Long live the Revolution, 'said the text, signed by the general secretary of that group, Lidia Fagale, and her deputy secretary, Leandro Torres.


Colombian academics, politicians and social activists expressed their solidarity with the Cuban people and Government, in the face of the maneuvers to try to destabilize the country.

The president of the Comunes party, Rodrigo Londoño, expressed his solidarity with Cuba in the face of the aggressions promoted by the United States and its criminal blockade.


'I join those who defend the sovereignty of the Cuban people, their revolution and their political project. I urge unity in defense of the homeland of Fidel and Martí. Cuba is dignity. '

Former senator and renowned activist Piedad Córdoba joined the expressions of support and solidarity for Cuba and the government of its President, Miguel Díaz-Canel.

From El Salvador, the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN) rejected the campaign aimed at generating destabilization in Cuba.


The leftist formation condemned in a statement the media manipulation to impose a narrative alien to the Cuban reality, under the auspices of imperialism and the counterrevolution.

The Venezuela-Cuba Friendship and Mutual Solidarity Movement and other organizations repudiated the destabilizing attempts against the Cuban Revolution.

'A few hours ago, opportunists and heralds of chaos, once again came out on the communication stage with a supposed concern for Cuba and asking for help and freedom. They are the same voices without an echo in the hearts of the noble Cuban people, who for more than 60 years have been victims of the genocidal blockade imposed by the North American empire, 'says a statement from the movement.


The solidarity group, the Movement for the Integration and Emancipation of Human Rights of the South, the Civil Association Victims of Caracazo and Terrorism of the Fourth Republic State, also express that the main help that Cuba needs is the lifting of the coercive and unilateral measures that attempt suffocate the town.

Given the mobilization of opposition groups financed and supported from the US, President Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez pointed out on Sunday that in the face of smear campaigns, revolutionaries must take to the streets to defend the Homeland.

In this sense, the Cuban president denounced that the provocations of the small groups seek to create a scenario of instability and chaos to invade the nation.


The president called on Cubans to mobilize in most cities to face up to the provocations of manipulators who promote protests, but support the illegal US sanctions.

"We know that there are revolutionary masses confronting anti-revolutionary groups, we are not going to admit that no mercenary and sales of the American empire are going to cause destabilization in our people, "he added.

https://www.telesurtv.net/news/latinoam ... -0001.html

Google Translator

In this photo we see the result of the president's call for 'revolutionaries in the street', hardly the pogrom the stenographers of the State Dept insinuate. The dishonesty of these capitalists tools is total.

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San Antonio de los Baños: Whatever it takes, Díaz-Canel!

Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez arrived in San Antonio de los Baños in the province of Artemisa to talk with inhabitants about a provocation by a group of counterrevolutionaries attempting to subvert the public order, while Cuba is struggling against COVID-19, as well as the brutal blockade imposed by the U.S. government

Author: Laura Mercedes Giráldez | informacion@granmai.cu

july 12, 2021 13:07:58



Foto: Estudios Revolución

Yesterday afternoon Benito Alonso Gonzalez left the comfort of his home in the municipality of San Antonio de los Baños, in the province of Artemisa, because a group at the service of foreign and annexationist interests, paid and directed by the United States, was looking to provoke a social explosion.

He went to the park, and spoke to reporters there about "the traitors who want to sell the Revolution for a few pesos," the revolution that helped save his brother from COVID-19 just two weeks ago, the revolution that asks us to stay home, to avoid seeing more people die due to the pandemic.

There, the First Secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba Central Committee and President of the Republic, Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez, Benito himself, and the provocateurs came across a crowd of residents carrying Cuban flags and shouting: Long live the Revolution, Homeland or Death, Venceremos!

"Those of us who have come this far are faithful custodians of the Revolution, we want it strong, we were raised by the Revolution. And now, with the presence of Díaz-Canel, we feel firm, secure, because the Revolution is with the people, who are the true owners of the streets. In Cuba we will not allow those who want to take away what we have conquered to enter," warned Antonio Crespo, a resident of San Antonio who joined the popular response.

Also in the park where Díaz-Canel went to confront those who intended to fracture the unity of the Party, the state, the government and the people, were father and son, Roberto Reyes Herrera, president of the Antonio Briones Montoto agricultural cooperative production unit, and Yosbel Reyes Sotomayor. The former recalled the hard times Cubans faced before 1959, which his parents told him about, and insisted that he is grateful for "the opportunities the Revolution has given me, that a few do not want to recognize."

His son likewise stated, "I’m sure that it was the Cuban-American mafia who paid the provocateurs who wanted to take advantage of the difficult situation Cuba is experiencing," adding, "The youth of San Antonio are on the side of our leaders, that is why we have taken to the parks and the streets.”

The flags, the cheers, the revolutionary conscience and confidence in those who are working every day to move our nation forward, left drowning in a sigh of impotence the malicious imperialist lackeys who made Benito leave his quiet Sunday at home. He insisted, "Let it be known, the people of Cuba are not those who disturbed the peace today, those who love the empire so much. The people of Cuba are the doctors, the scientists who made the vaccines, those of us who came to tell the President: Whatever it takes, Díaz-Canel, whatever it takes!"

Photo: Estudios Revolución

http://en.granma.cu/cuba/2021-07-12/san ... diaz-canel


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Concentration in Miami in favor of the protests in Cuba that demand "humanitarian intervention" from the United States (Photo: Eva Marie Uzcátegui / AFP)

INTERESTS BEHIND THE REQUEST FOR "HUMANITARIAN INTERVENTION" IN CUBA
12 Jul 2021 , 12:23 pm

For months in Cuba the coal of new efforts for the "change of regime" has been stirred under the screen of the San Isidro Movement, a group of artists from the Island who went on to conform as political activists, using typical tactics of the "coup de color "that can also be traced to the demonstrations on Sunday, July 11, highly promoted by US politicians in Florida and anti-Cuban operators in different parts of the world. What's behind?

According to reports from anti-Castro sources , the protests began in the cities of San Antonio de los Baños and Palma Soriano, and were quickly replicated in other Cuban cities, with Havana as the protagonist in the main western media.

Although they were not characterized by being massive demonstrations against the government of President Miguel Díaz-Canel, they were amplified and manipulated on social networks to make them pass as thousands of Cubans. In The New York Times , his correspondents spoke of "hundreds", no more, in Havana. In fact, human rights organizations and Twitter accounts used images of mass protests in Egypt and other latitudes to sell this version, being denied even by Mexican President Andrés López Obrador .


The hashtag #SOSCuba and #CorredorHumanitario were used extensively by media fighters from the regional right, journalists Yoani Sánchez and Patricia Janiot being among the most retweeted and with the greatest exposure of the visible agenda of the protests.

Among the same protesters, United States flags were raised and the song "Patria y vida" was sung, performed by several Cuban musicians living in Miami (Florida) with members of the San Isidro Movement who live on the island.


Similarly, what happened in some streets of Cuba had its mirror on social networks, where the messages with the hashtag #SOSCuba were replicated by armies of bots and other specimens of Big Data, trying to create a perception in the imaginary 2.0 crowd in support of the pro-American agenda.


Faced with these events, the Cuban president summoned "the revolutionaries to the streets" in order to face up to the new attempts at a "soft coup" in situ . Hundreds and thousands of Cubans also came out to counter-protest in different cities, including Havana, in defense of the revolution. The first president Díaz-Canel went in person to San Antonio de los Baños to demonstrate.


In contrast to the revolutionary marches, in the anti-Castro ones there was violence, looting and destruction of government materials and infrastructure. They overturned police vehicles and the provocations of some against the Cuban police, who are known not to carry lethal weapons, did not wait, and any action to restore order in the face of chaos was answered by more belligerent provocation .


The background of all these "soft coup" actions corresponds to an update in the mechanisms, methods and modes of intervention within the framework of the US agenda against Cuba. All under a delicate context in the health field, a product of the covid-19 pandemic and the attacks of the economic, financial and commercial blockade on the island, the main spark of all the vicissitudes that are experienced in the island country.

MIAMI IN ACTION: TIME FOR THE INTERVENTION

The difficult situation that the Island is experiencing has the coronavirus as its protagonist, with the highest number of positive cases and deaths since the pandemic began. This trance comes to be the product of the entry into the country of new variants that spread in the country, according to the national director of Hygiene and Epidemiology of the Ministry of Public Health of Cuba (Minsap), Francisco Durán.

In response, the Cuban government will apply new international sanitary control measures as of July 15.

Cuban music groups and operators of the San Isidro Movement have taken advantage of the current situation to ask the "international community" to open a "humanitarian corridor" or a "humanitarian intervention" in Cuba.

Hence the most direct connection between the protests registered on Sunday, July 11, and the actions of the San Isidro Movement , whose most visible leaders are not only committed to demonstrations in the style of Gene Sharp's manuals and his political pupils, but also also with the terrorist agenda of anti-Cuban groups in Miami that have provided financing, logistics and media support to those who have directly confronted the Cuban government.


Of course, it would not be the first time that so much US money has gone into the pockets of non-state agents who have sought to effect "regime change" in the island country. The Granma newspaper of the Communist Party of Cuba published a report stating that nearly 250 million dollars were dedicated by the United States administrations in the last two decades to anti-Castro subversion programs.

With the imposition of the US blockade, in force for more than six decades, Cuba has been able to stay on its feet due to the strategic planning of the State to advance social programs in various areas to give the population a break from the tireless gringo offensive against the Cuban revolution. In mid-June, the Díaz-Canel government denounced that, according to its own estimates, the island lost more than 9 billion dollars between April 2019 and December 2020 due to the blockade imposed by Washington.

Without a doubt, the political operator who has given the most space to the agenda of the so-called "Miami worm" in the corridors of the US Congress and in the White House (being an important decision maker during the Trump Administration) is Senator Marco Rubio, Cuban-gringo with proven connections to South Florida drug trafficking .

On Twitter, on Sunday the 11th, he was the most enthusiastic US politician to promote pro-US protests, turning his speech to the need for the US government to intervene in some way in Cuba, calling on the Biden Administration to rule on the situation, using the hashtags #SOSCuba and #PatriayVida in more than 50 tweets and retweets that can be seen on his Twitter Timeline .


In Miami there were also rallies in favor of anti-Castro protests and demanding "international intervention" to overthrow the Díaz-Canel government.

But the truth is that the folly in the requests for "humanitarian corridor" or "humanitarian intervention" corresponds to the interests of the most extreme sector of Florida.

The protests at no time were expressed against the blockade on the island, as well as none of its spokesmen, making invisible the cause for which there is an unprecedented health crisis in that country. This when in recent June the United Nations General Assembly voted a resolution rejecting the embargo against Cuba , which this time obtained 184 votes in favor, just two against (the United States and Israel) and three abstentions (Colombia, Brazil and Ukraine ).

The island government has been forced to ask for donations at the international level since, due to the blockade, it has not been able to have basic sanitary materials for the protection of the population, such as syringes, filter tips and vials. This despite the fact that its pharmaceutical industry has managed to develop five vaccine candidates, two of them (Abdala and Soberana 02) already confirmed with more than 90% effectiveness in three doses.

Ernesto Soberón, director general of Cuban Consular Affairs Residents Abroad of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MINREX), recalled , during a meeting with the press on Saturday, July 10, that whenever Cuba has faced a situation of this type, it has been counted with international solidarity, either from friendly governments or from the Cuban community abroad, thanking the thousands of donations without the need to politicize them as the anti-Castro operators have done outside and inside the island, asking for some type of foreign intervention.

"This disinterested gesture has no relation to the false chaos that the enemies of the Cuban Revolution want to show through campaigns that aspire to a health intervention or humanitarian corridor, concepts and terms related to events of armed conflicts and violations of international law, situations that have nothing to do with what happens in our country, "said the official.

A humanitarian corridor, for example, does not apply to the context that Cuba lives, since it supposes a type of temporary demilitarized zone destined to allow the safe transit of "humanitarian aid". But generally these types of requests are made by the United States Army in areas of armed conflict, so military language is an important component when it comes to understanding the interests behind the request.

Similarly, a humanitarian corridor may be associated with a no-fly zone or as a means of supplying arms to a besieged force. Are these the real demands in Miami and on the part of the population that raises Florida's interests on the island?

The protests on Sunday, July 11, raised the idea that Cuba needs the intervention of the United States and the "international community" that translates into a "change of regime", supposedly demanded by the Cuban people themselves. The same one who has protested countless times against the economic, financial and commercial attacks of Washington, and who has been silenced and ridiculed in the same number of times by the same political and media operators who support the cause of the reigning leadership in the south of Florida.

https://misionverdad.com/globalistan/in ... ia-en-cuba

Google Translator

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on edit:
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The following is an unofficial translation of President Díaz-Canel’s words from CubaDebate.cu (Italic and bold type in the original article).

We have been honest, we have been transparent, we have been clear and at every moment we have been explaining to our people the complexities of the current moments. I remind you that more than a year and a half ago, when the second semester of 2019 began, we had to explain that we were entering a difficult situation. … Since then we have remained under that situation as a result of all the United States government moves led by the Trump administration in relation to Cuba.

They began to intensify a series of restrictive measures, a tightening of the blockade, of financial persecution against the energy sector with the aim of suffocating our economy and expecting that this would provoke the desired massive social outbreak, which sows the possibilities for the entire ideological campaign that it has done, to be able to call for humanitarian intervention that ends in military intervention and interference, and that affects the rights, sovereignty and independence of all peoples.

That situation continued, then came the 243 measures that we all know about [Trump’s measures tightening the blockade, banning all remittances, etc.] and finally they decided to include Cuba in a list of countries sponsoring terrorism, a spurious, illegitimate and unilateral list that the United States government has adopted, believing themselves, the United States, the emperors of the world.

Many countries suddenly submitted to these decisions, but it must be recognized that others do not allow it to be imposed on them. All these measures led to the immediate cutting off of various sources of foreign income such as tourism, Cuban-American travel to our country, and remittances. A plan was made to discredit the Cuban medical brigades and the solidarity collaborations provided by Cuba, which received an important amount of foreign exchange for that collaboration.

This whole situation caused a situation of shortages in the country, especially of food, medicines, raw materials and supplies to be able to develop our economic and productive processes that at the same time contribute to exports. Two important elements are cut off: the ability to export and the ability to invest resources. And from the productive processes, to then develop goods and services for our population.

We also have limitations on fuels and spare parts and all this has caused a level of dissatisfaction, coupled with accumulated problems that we have been able to solve and that came from the special period together with a fierce media campaign of discrediting, part of the unconventional war that tries to fracture the unity between the party, the state and people; that tries to portray the government as insufficient and incapable of providing well-being to the Cuban people whereby the U.S. government tries to convey that only with them can a country like Cuba hope to progress.

Those are well-known hypocritical recipes, speeches of double standards that we know very well throughout the history of the United States towards Cuba. How did they intervene in our country, how did they take over our island in 1902, how did they maintain domination of our island in the pseudo-republic stage, and how were those interests dealt a blow by the Cuban Revolution in its triumph?

The example of the Cuban Revolution has bothered them a lot for 60 years and their aggression has been constantly increasing. They have applied an unjust, criminal and cruel blockade, now intensified in pandemic conditions and therein lies the manifest perversity, the evil of all those intentions. Blockade and restrictive actions that they have never taken against any other country, nor against those they consider their main enemies.

Therefore, it has been a policy of viciousness against a small island that only aspires to defend its independence, its sovereignty and to build its society with self-determination according to the principles that more than 86% of the population has supported in the broad and democratic exercise that we supported a few years ago to approve the current Constitution of the Republic of Cuba.

In the midst of these conditions comes the pandemic, a pandemic that has not affected only Cuba, but the entire world, including the United States. It has affected rich countries and it must be said that in the face of this pandemic neither the United States nor those rich countries that had all the capacity to face its effects in the beginning—and in many of those first world countries—with much more wealth, their health systems and intensive therapy rooms collapsed. The poor were disadvantaged because there are no public policies aimed at the people for their salvation, and their indicators in relation to the confrontation of the pandemic have worse results than those of Cuba in many cases.

This is how we were progressing, we controlled the outbreaks and new outbreaks, with a tremendous capacity of our people, our scientists and our health personnel to sacrifice, and almost the entire country has been involved in it. We have created five vaccine candidates, of which one has already been recognized as a vaccine and which is the first in Latin America. Cuba is already vaccinating its population. It is a process that takes time. Vaccines must be produced, but at the moment we have one of the highest vaccination rates in the world and in a few weeks we have exceeded 20% of the population’s vaccination, a process that continues.

In recent months, strains that are more aggressive and cause more transmission of the disease have begun to circulate. In the middle of this situation is that a group of complications begin to appear. In the first place, cases occur with a speed and accumulation that exceeds the capacities that we have to be able to create, to attend to these cases in state institutions. So we have had to go to open up capacities in other centers for the cases. By opening up more centers, we have also had to give priority for electrical energy use, even in the midst of accumulated energy problems that have caused us blackouts. The amount of electricity circuits we are having to protect so COVID patients are treated, creates a situation where more circuits are causing annoying but necessary blackouts, because we have to restore our electricity generation capacities. This has happened in recent days and has caused irritation, misunderstanding, concerns and affectations to the population.

By having more patients, there is more consumption of medications, and our stocks of drugs are also running out, the possibilities of acquiring them being very difficult. In the midst of all this, we continue with will, thinking about everything, working for everyone. Now we have to go to the experience of [COVID-positive cases] cases staying home, due to the lack of capacities in a group of provinces, and we have had to summon the family so that they have a more direct, responsible participation. We do not tire of admiring in the midst of this situation the capacity for creative resistance that our people have. And how with these values, if we maintain responsibility and unity, in the shortest possible time with vaccination and with responsible behavior, complying with hygienic sanitary measures, social isolation and physical distancing, we will leave this pandemic peak sooner rather than later, which is not just the case for Cuba.

What Cuba managed to do was postpone this pandemic peak over time with everything we did, and in the shortest time we will overcome it. This is what we have affirmed these days, in our tours of the provinces to specify all the strategies of confronting the pandemic.

In a very cowardly, subtle and opportunistic and perverse way, from the most complicated situations that we have had in provinces such as Matanzas and Ciego de Ávila, those who have always approved the blockade and who serve as mercenaries of the Yankee blockade on the streets, begin to appear with doctrines of humanitarian aid and a “humanitarian corridor.” We all know where they come from.

They do this to strengthen the claim that the Cuban government is not capable of getting out of this situation, as if they were so interested in solving the health problems of our people.

If you want to have a real gesture of support with Cuba, if you want to be concerned about the people, lift the blockade and we will see how we engage. Why don’t they do it? Why don’t they have the courage to lift the blockade? What legal and moral foundation do they have to support a foreign government that applies this policy to a small country in the midst of such an adverse situation.

Isn’t that genocide, isn’t that a crime against humanity? They make claims that we are a dictatorship. What a strange dictatorship it is that cares about giving its entire population health care, that seeks wellbeing for all, that in the midst of these situations is capable of having programs and public policies based on everyone. A dictatorship that is aspiring to vaccinate everyone with a Cuban vaccine, because we knew that no one was going to sell us vaccines and we had no money to go to the international market to buy vaccines.

Now they shout that we are murderers. Where are the murdered in Cuba? Where are the disappeared?

Why were the other countries that have suffered these events of pandemic peaks not attacked in the press? Why were they not given the solution of humanitarian intervention? They were not attacked with discrediting campaigns that they have wanted to launch against us.

Life, history and facts show what is behind all this: It is to suffocate and end the Revolution and for that they are trying to discourage our people by misleading them. When people are in severe conditions like the ones we are living in, events like the ones we saw today in San Antonio de los Baños occur.

In San Antonio de los Baños, a group of people gathered in one of the most central parks in the city to protest and demand. Who were those people? They were made up of the people who are experiencing some of the shortcomings and difficulties, there are revolutionary people who may be confused and who may not have all the arguments or who were expressing their dissatisfaction.

Those two groups of people did it in a different way and looked for an argument and asked for an explanation. The first thing they said was “I am a revolutionary” “I support the Revolution.”

This was headed by a group of manipulators who were lending themselves to the plans of those campaigns that appeared on social networks. The famous SOSMatanzas or SOSCuba, the call to the banging of pans, so that in several cities of Cuba there would be demonstrations of this type and there would be social unrest.

This is very criminal, very cruel, especially at this time where we must ensure that people remain in the houses who are protecting themselves from the pandemic. With the morale that the Revolution gives, the revolutionaries of San Antonio de los Baños, the authorities of the province, and a group of comrades from the leadership of the country presented ourselves in San Antonio de los Baños.

This mass of revolutionaries confronted the counterrevolutionaries and we spoke with the revolutionaries and some who may be non-revolutionaries but who were asking for arguments. Later we marched and toured the town to show that in Cuba the streets belong to the revolutionaries.

While this is happening, we know that there are other towns in the country, where groups of people in certain streets and squares have gathered, also motivated by such unhealthy purposes.

The state has all the political will to dialogue, but also to participate. We will not hand over our sovereignty nor the independence of this nation. They have to pass over our corpses if they want to overthrow the Revolution.

https://mronline.org/2021/07/13/cuban-p ... e-streets/

[blindpig]

What is happening in Cuba? (+ Video)
"We are calling on all the revolutionaries of our country, all the communists, to take to the streets in any of the places where these provocations are going to take place today, from now on and in all these days," said the President of Cuba. Yesterday

Author: Yisell Rodríguez Milan | yisell@granma.cu

Author: Yaneidy Abreu | internet@granma.cu

Author: Yudy Castro | castro@granma.cu

Author: Yenia Silva Correa | internet@granma.cu

Author: Lisandra Leyé del Toro | internet@granma.cu

Author: Ricardo Alonso Venereo | internet@granma.cu

July 12, 2021 07:07:40

9:00 am CHECK ALL COVERAGE HERE http://www.granma.cu/cuba/2021-07-12/en ... este-lunes


Live: Government of Cuba addresses the people this Monday morning
Accompanied by a team of officials and executives of the Party and the Government, the First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Party and President of the Republic, Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez, began his appearance with a greeting to the people of Cuba who this Sunday starred in a conference historical defense of the Revolution.

He commented that since the middle of last week they had decided that a group of colleagues, linked to the tasks of confronting the pandemic, would provide extensive information to our people. That is the objective of this appearance.

Likewise, during the meeting it is intended to clarify a group of matrices that, in recent hours, they have tried to impose, as well as actions of discredit on the ways in which Cuba faces the pandemic, with the purpose of creating discontent and fracturing the unity of the town.

LIVE VIDEO HERE https://www.facebook.com/CanalCaribeCub ... %2CO%2CP-R



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8:30 am PROVINCE BY PROVINCE, SUMMARY OF YESTERDAY'S DAY

The network of correspondents of the Granma Newspaper moved throughout the national territory. The full report can be read here .

Guantanamo: From the first anti-imperialist trench in Cuba, cadres of the Party, the Union of Young Communists, the organizations of the masses and unions, representing the people of Guantanamo, took various points of the city of Guaso to ratify that, in effect, the streets are of the revolutionaries.

In the midst of the difficult epidemiological situation in the province, the masses and authorities of the Upper Cuban East prevailed the voice and the desire to defeat the common enemy, now COVID-19, but also the unbreakable decision to never allow anyone to demerit the effort that the country makes to preserve lives.

"I had to be and I was, no one can tell me, they did not achieve what they wanted, we continue to be a trench as is all of Cuba," said citizen Niurka Garzón Cuevas, who together with a representation of workers, militants of the PCC and of society civilians staged an act of patriotic reaffirmation this afternoon in the José Martí de Guantánamo park.

The call for unity, the rejection of vandalism and blockade, as well as the message of hope and of taking care of all of us transcended, both at the points where counterrevolutionary rallies were attempted, and from the networks.


Live: Cubans, throughout the nation, at the call of the Homeland and its President (+ Video)

Santiago de Cuba: Strong proof of this support took place in Palma Soriano, when, upon learning of what happened in that city, the Commander of the Revolution Ramiro Valdés interrupted in Songo-La Maya his visit to support the confrontation against COVID-19 to exchange with the palm trees, and as soon as he broke into his glorious olive green uniform he was acclaimed by the people.

"As if by magic," Gilberto Romero Sauder, the coordinator of government programs in the province, testified, "that went from the rudeness of the small group of leaders to the ovation of the vast majority of people (undoubtedly many confused) who spontaneously gave cheers to Fidel, to Raúl, to Díaz-Canel, and of course to Commander Ramiro Valdés ».

Together with the highest authorities of the Party and the government in the province, Lázaro Expósito Canto and Beatriz Johnson Urrutia, Valdés Menéndez then joined the act of revolutionary reaffirmation staged by hundreds of people from Santiago who spontaneously gathered in front of the headquarters of the Provincial Committee of the Party , in the vicinity of the central Plaza de Marte, in this city.

Granma: «We have come out to defend the truth and reason of a country that despite being blocked put the lives of its people first in the face of the pandemic and today has its first vaccine; the same country that cares for the elderly as well as for children and that does not leave anyone helpless ", said, for his part, the renowned artist José Alberto" The Nightingale.

Like them, other people from Granma have also come to guard their workplaces and block any attempt at cheap vandalism.


In pictures: The people in the streets defending the Revolution

Yaima Pérez Pérez, a worker at the Comercial Bayamo store, said that more than a duty it is a commitment of each revolutionary not to let them try to harm the Revolution's conquests.

"I am not alone taking care of my job, I am taking care of the future of my children, their tranquility and their happiness because I want them to continue living and growing in a sovereign nation," he stressed.

Hundreds of Bayamo people also arrived at the Rotunda located on 26 de Julio Avenue, in Bayamo, reaffirming with songs, slogans and flags the premise that Cuban independence is neither sold nor negotiated.

Holguín: The revolutionaries located in front of the headquarters of the Provincial Committee of the Communist Party of Cuba, were violently attacked with stones by many of those who claimed a minute before that it was a peaceful demonstration to express some disagreement.

However, the stones did not intimidate the comrades guarding the building and at the opportune moment, together with the forces of order, they undertook self-defense actions before which the aggressors withdrew.

This was followed by an act of revolutionary reaffirmation in which the National Anthem was spontaneously sung in a vibrant call to combat so as not to allow the adversary to take the initiative away from us in the severe conflicts that lie ahead due to his insistence on subverting the social order.

Those gathered expressed support for the Communist Party and the President of the Republic, Miguel Díaz-Canel, at the same time that they demanded the end of the economic, financial and commercial blockade of the United States against Cuba.

Las Tunas: The silence in the streets of Las Tunas was broken this Sunday afternoon when groups of young people shouted in chorus "With Díaz-Canel pa'lo que se! », After the First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Cuba and President of the Republic of Cuba, Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez, summoned the revolutionaries to defend the Homeland.

At the time of writing this note, in most of the municipalities of Las Tunas the people, especially the young people, marched through the main avenues with flags and posters demonstrating their unrestricted support for the Revolution. From balconies and rooftops the applause and fiery voices of those who do not allow themselves to be manipulated by the hate and discredit campaigns against our country were heard.

Camagüey: The attempt to subvert the institutional order in this legendary city by groups of stateless people, counterrevolutionaries and criminals of all kinds received the energetic response of the people, together with the forces of the Ministry of the Interior, permanent watchdogs of citizen tranquility.

At the call of their masters and payers of crumbs, those who wanted, with their actions, to break the unity of the Cubans, and for this, in their desire to provoke a social outbreak, they threw stones and other blunt objects at the mass of workers and law enforcement officers who impeded their advance.

Camagüey experienced a new test of unity this Sunday, in which the National Anthem was heard louder than ever and the flag of the lone star waved with special beauty. From a point not far away, El Mayor watched the good Cubans, machete in hand.


San Antonio de los Baños: «Pa 'whatever Díaz-Canel is! Pa' whatever it is!» (+ Video)

Ciego de Ávila: A radio address by the highest authorities of the province was enough so that, spontaneously, the people gathered around the Martí Park, the scene where Carlos Luis Garrido, first secretary of the Party in the province, called to fight those who tried to subvert order.

The march was not crowded, but it was the people's response, Julio Gómez Casanova, first secretary of the Party in the municipality of Ciego de Ávila, acknowledged just an hour later.

«Defending the Revolution is defending the future. We have to be calm, prepared and alert, because they are being manipulated, "he said in clear reference to those who allow themselves to be managed by spurious interests.

Sancti Spíritus: A tour of Granma in the late evening hours through the center of the provincial capital, a city of just over 100,000 inhabitants, found the people of Spiritism talking from the door of their house and commenting on the intervention of the First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Party and President of the Republic, Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez, on the recent events reported in some parts of the country.

Faced with specific provocations in the main city and in Trinidad, the people and the social organizations at the forefront did not take long to express their support for the Cuban social project and in particular the government of President Díaz-Canel.

Cienfuegos: Up to the time of writing this note, reaffirmation acts and marches had taken place in three populous neuralgic points of the city: San Carlos Street, Reina's working-class neighborhood, and Martí Park.

In this place, in the heart of the Historic Center of Cienfuegos, the member of the Central Committee and the first secretary of the Party in the province, Maridé Fernández López, called on the people of Peru to make their own and support the premise given by our President: revolutionaries. And not from the mercenaries, some answered.

Villa Clara: The provocateurs and instigators of hatred forgot a detail when choosing one of the stages to orchestrate the demonstration in the capital of Villa Clara. They did not take into account that the street they walked on is called Independence, a sacred word for worthy Cubans, who are the majority in this country.

The hundreds of Santa Clara residents who came out to that artery to respond with the dignity that characterizes the children of the land of Marta Abreu and El Che, the confused in good faith and the mercenaries who want nothing more than annexation, did remember the sacred definition that names that street, where the bust of Ramón Leocadio Bonachea, son of this town, who starred in the Protest of Hornos de Cal stands.

Pinar del Río: Only in the provincial capital, spurred on by the counterrevolution that follows orders from the United States, a small group of people tried to concentrate on Alameda Avenue around 4:00 pm, with calls for chaos and civic disobedience .

Faced with an unusual event in this city, incited from abroad through social networks, the people of Vueltabajo immediately gathered in the place, to cut off the provocateurs and reaffirm that the streets belong to the revolutionaries.

Between flags and slogans, people from Pinar del Río from all sectors expressed their support for this great work that since 1959 began to transform the life of a province that until then was considered the Cinderella of Cuba, due to its alarming rates of poverty.

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7:30 am SUMMARY OF WHAT HAPPENED ON THIS SUNDAY'S DAY IN CUBA

This Monday, at 9:00 am, the First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Cuba and President of the Republic, Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez, along with members of his government team, will appear on Cuban television and radio in joint transmission.

*E printed diting of the newspaper Granma on Monday 12 July 2021 (download here) http://www.granma.cu/file/pdf/2021/07/1 ... 071209.pdf
*Full speech by the President of Cuba this Sunday: We defend the Revolution above all http://www.granma.cu/pensar-en-qr/2021- ... 1-01-07-22
*What happened in San Antonio de los Baños? http://www.granma.cu/cuba/2021-07-11/an ... in-vacilar
*They faced the revolutionary provocations near the National Capitol http://www.granma.cu/cuba/2021-07-12/po ... 1-01-07-54

[youtube]https://youtu.be/_D8QlNr8pVY[/youtube]

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INTELLECTUAL OPINIONS

Rolando Pérez Betancourt, film critic and columnist for Granma: The country needs help, as others needed it before, with the aggravating circumstance that we are in an economic situation worsened by the blockade, those seven letters of funeral intentions, which many fight lightly of a stubborn who does not understand, or does not want to understand.


Sincere hearts, no tricks

Helping the other, selflessly, is the most beautiful reverence that can exist, and Cuba has examples to fill the pages of a newspaper.
Receiving international aid to get ahead in this tense moment is therefore not a shame, and hopefully the shipments that allow us to meet our needs will skyrocket.
But conditioning "humanitarian aid", manipulating it with crude revanchist intentions, linking it to campaigns aimed at creating a chaos of survival among those who today need not tricks, but sincere hearts reaching out, lowers the human condition to limits that, once the crisis has passed. storm, they will hardly be forgotten.

Victor Fowler, poet, essayist, critic, narrator: A process of social change like ours is an inordinate experiment in the creation of a new culture (of work, of solidarity, of participation) that is obliged to discuss itself all days.


The mistake I didn't make

It is to deploy new ways for permanent communication between the leaderships and all sectors of the population, either through the misaligned use of the mass media, through the actions of political organizations or through that instrument of massive scope and potentialities. infinite that are the CTC, the FMC and the CDR. It is to renew, create, multiply, amplify and strengthen (again and again) the tools of popular control.

I repeat that none of the above is comfortable or simple, but rather –as it happens when we have to overcome routines, hierarchies and centuries of obedience– is equivalent to moving between rough edges (sometimes getting hurt), but always following that compass that says where is the combination between sovereignty, social justice and hope.
The mistake I did not make was that of forgetting who I am, what my dreams are, what past I come from, where I belong, what name my enemy has and what meaning I give to all of the above.
Living like this is a challenge and that is how I am reborn every day.

Teresa Melo, Cuban poet and editor: In Cuba you have demanded the extra that must be added because it is Cuba. Because Cuba is blocked, with concrete acts and results against life, denounced over and over again, and each time hidden and ignored and buried in mountains of false news, which turn the networks into swamps of chaos.


The corridors of friendship are open

New millions of dollars for subversion, generators of thousands of messages with the same labels, repetitive direct letters to establish a matrix, letters to establish "corridors" written by those who are immobile, null or slow to condemn suffocation.
There are people without memory, which is not our case. They have applauded each measure against Cuba and have asked for more extreme ones. They have asked for bombs, drones, naval sieges, landings, burns, assaults, murders ... Now they hypocritically multiply requests for help, which later became a corridor and is now intervention, always with the name "humanitarian."
Here the humanitarian intervention for months has been carried out by the sleeplessness and consecration of millions who work for the good of all, on the red lines of society. The rest: since the pandemic began, Cuba has received help from governments and solidarity associations, from Cubans, from friends of Cuba, from young people who have studied at our universities, from those whom Cuba has cured or taught.
That is the intervention of humanity, with its ability to reach out. As Cuba has done. Whoever wants to do for her: the corridors of friendship have always been created ... those who condemn and say together with us: Down with the blockade. Join.

Karima Oliva, Master in Educational Psychology: The opinion matrix that they are inducing now is the same as all the previous campaigns that we have seen, and we will continue to see it, varying its thematic content, depending on the context: the Cuban State collapsed, the management of the Government is inefficient and the system does not work. Arguments against that thesis abound.


Let's face campaigns instead of serving them

Paradoxically, one of the most obvious logical arguments is provided by the blocking policy itself, since, if they were so sure that our system does not work, they would never have spent a minute of the last 60 years blocking us.

Cuba does not need to be intervened by military troops from international bodies that, with high probability, would be subordinate to the country that is responsible for a large part of the crisis that we are experiencing.
The participation of people who are paid or not, well intentioned or not, counterrevolutionary or not, in the campaign for SOS, among others, is convenient only to the interventionist agenda of the United States. It's your terms, it's your guideline. Let us ask the peoples of the countries that have intervened humanitarianly in recent years how they have fared with the "freedom" that they have brought and with all that prosperity and the American dream.



Miguel Barnet, Cuban poet and intellectual: In an interview with Prensa Latina, the poet recalled that the history of the Caribbean country contains difficult situations, although the current one is the worst, since it is accompanied by the confrontation with the COVID-19 pandemic and considered that this it is a moment of reflection and sanity.

«We must look inside ourselves and know that we defend the values ​​of Fidel Castro and of a Revolution that promotes justice in all areas: culture, education and health and, therefore, it is necessary to close ranks again, not with a patriotism of barricade ”, affirmed the essayist.

Barnet referred to conscious patriotism, defended by the leader of the Antillean nation, and allusive to the certainty of "knowing that what we can never get to is neoliberalism and savage capitalism."

The Cuban narrator and ethnologist meant that the true solution to the problems of this continent — and it has been demonstrated with the Revolution — is socialism and, therefore, the safeguarding of the main human rights: life, education and health care.

“We are a country of peace and that is how we must act. Our fight is against vandalism and against that unconscious and punishable attitude of those who tear off a flag or break a shop window. What can we think of those destroyers? Are they going to rule this country? Never, "he said.

The intellectual argued that although this is a peaceful nation, we are at war against the coronavirus and against the economic, commercial and financial blockade imposed by the United States for more than 60 years, “that is our worst enemy, the one that has us most harmed, wounded and devastated.

«Remove that measure and you will see everything that Cuba can do, double what has been achieved to date. It is a moment, I repeat, to close ranks and support this Revolution that has given us dignity and has turned us from multilateral organizations into a bastion of decorum, "he concluded.


Musicians Israel Rojas, Yoel Martínez and Nelson Valdés as well as the actor Manuel Porto:

Martí said that "Homeland is the sum of all loves ...", and in defense of them, and of the unity of a people that has marched in a tight box since 1959, this Sunday the Cuban musical duet took to the streets of Havana Buena Fe, which, like a large group of artists, confirmed its position and affiliation on the left before the cameras of Cuban Television, during a special program that reported provocations orchestrated by counterrevolutionary groups in various locations in our country, as reported the Uneac website.

«I believe in the great Cuban family, and I cannot go against it. We have always had a position to improve the revolutionary process. We have said it of all the colors and all the flavors ", expressed Israel Rojas, director of the group.

«In this difficult hour, we are here to defend the Cuban Health System, which would be the only one capable of keeping the pandemic at bay. That is why it seems so tremendous to us that, at a time like this, civil disobedience is called, to go out into the streets in a reckless, suicidal act, an act that, I consider desperate, to overthrow the Revolution. I'm very sorry.

The author of the song The strength of a country, insisted that this is a moment of unity, of discipline, of trying to cut the pandemic peak.

«It is time to be attentive to what Dr. Durán commands us, almost every day in a spiritual way. But if such a thing is called, there will be no choice but to defend that health system.

The singer, who enjoys the sympathy of millions of followers inside and outside the archipelago, remarked: “This must be defended out of conviction. Woe to the one who makes a mistake and believes that all of us who defend the Revolution are assholes. Be careful with that !? ", he emphasized several times and concluded:" There are many people here who have killed themselves for this country, our own family. That same blood is there. Don't cheat on that blood ».

As usual, the musician Yoel Martínez, also accompanied Israel Rojas on the scene of denunciation and combat. He shared - from the Cuban television set - the voice that came from his conscience and from his heart.

«The pandemic is a very strong enemy. There is no way to defeat it if we do not unite, if we do not bet on peace, for tranquility? ».

He added that “it must be clear that the streets will always belong to our children, our elderly, and us young people, but to do good, never to preach hatred, or to harm each other, and less in a moment like this. If we have to go out to defend, then we are here for that ».

Another voice that joined the scene of the grateful, of those who love and found was Nelson Valdés, who in statements to the Cuban Television Information System made it clear that he will be in the place that is necessary to defend the Homeland.

"Is today; There is no tomorrow, and it is important that Cuban families, that Cuban artists defend the sacrificial and honest work of so many doctors and so many people who are now tainted by this, that what it does is exacerbate the situation in the country today. He who does not feel for the country and does not come out to defend it today, then, is a coward.

For his part, the prominent actor Manuel Porto, National Award for Community Culture, and Artist of Merit of Radio and Television, likewise arrived at the building of the Cuban Institute of Radio and Television, located in Havana's Vedado, with the words of their father throbbing inside them.

«When my father saw that the dove landed on Fidel, on January 8, 1959, he took me by the hand and said, do you see that man there? That is your future! So it was.

«The Revolution has been able to open so many horizons. Our art has traveled the entire world. We have many problems, but we must solve them ourselves, "said the Founder and Director of the Korimacao Art Project.

«Those boys who are preaching change in Cuba cannot imagine what can happen to them, what awaits them. They keep hearing siren calls and the blockade is true. Let them remove the blockade to show that we are inefficient, as some say.



The actor that we enjoy these days in the soap opera Vuelve a mira, which is broadcast on Cuban Television, also said: “I want someone to tell me that imperialism has stopped fighting to destroy this revolution, even for a minute. Let them tell me that this country is not capable of teaching the world, through art, through culture, how important human beings are to the fight for the most underprivileged ».

«Art is the highest form of expressing the culture of a country, and all artists have a duty to defend that legacy, that thought of the function of art. You don't have to be a communist. You have to be Cuban, and defend your land, what you carry inside your heart, defend the people who have died for you, "he concluded.

Other notable artists and intellectuals of our country took to the streets this Sunday to combat provocations orchestrated from abroad, because patriotism purifies and sublimates them, as Martí said, and because they are aware that «the Homeland is sacred, and those who They love her, without interest or fatigue, they owe her their whole lives.

http://www.granma.cu/cuba/2021-07-12/en ... cuba-video

Google Translator

more video at link.

[blindpig]

Cuba Implicates US in Financing Destabilization Op on Sunday


Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Cuba Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla offered a press conference to the national and international press today about U.S. involvement in last Sunday's destabilization efforts incited via social media. | Photo: Twitter/@CubaMINREX

Published 13 July 2021 (13 hours 27 minutes ago)

"There was no social outburst in Cuba this Sunday—there were disturbances, disorder, caused by a communicational operation that has been prepared for a long time, to which multimillionaire resources, laboratories, technological platforms with funds from the United States Government are destined," denounced the member of the Political Bureau and Minister of Foreign Affairs, Bruno Rodriguez Parrilla.


He highlighted the great international solidarity aroused by Cuba. For this reason, for months and, above all, in recent weeks, Cuba has been receiving numerous offers of solidarity, of practical support, of donations, often modest, but of enormous symbolic and moral value, which encourage the efforts of our people.

He mentioned the support of governments, international organizations, groups of people, solidarity associations, organizations of Cubans living abroad and others.

He commented that a communiqué was issued by the US President, Joe Biden, in relation to the events that took place this Sunday in Cuba, and, in general, the world has reacted with respect, based on the impeccable conduct of the Cuban country, always attached to the truth, always transparent, always with the people and for the people.

But with cynicism, hypocrisy and manipulation, Rodríguez Parrilla added, politicians in the United States refer to these events, with Biden asking for the "regime in Havana" to listen to the Cuban people, "to alleviate their needs."

In that sense, he agreed, saying it would be good for the U.S. president to listen to the Cuban people who for years have been demonstrating against the blockade, and if he wants to do something, he should also listen to U.S. citizens and lift this policy against Cuba and the 243 measures he inherited from President Trump.

Rodriguez suggested he could eliminate what was imposed during the pandemic, because the U.S. government has used the virus as an ally to tighten the blockade, in a brutal and cruel way.

It could also, he continued, stop using the means of repression with which the police in the United States represses Afro-descendants, minorities, journalists... and it could stop exporting those tremendous means of repression to other countries in the world.

On June 15, he recalled, a first call was launched for the campaign using the label SOS Cuba, aimed at damaging the vote of the United Nations General Assembly against the blockade of Cuba, which expresses the position of the international community. But that campaign, he stressed, failed in the face of the voting results, where the United States was totally isolated, and changes have been introduced in that action.

This Sunday in Cuba, reiterated the Foreign Affairs Minister, there was no social outburst; there were disturbances, disorder. Even the international press recognizes that there were violent actions in the riots, but not the social outbreak for which the U.S. Government has been working, in a hidden way or more publicly in recent times.

Bruno Rodríguez said that, in recent years, the people have suffered an intensified blockade, aimed at damaging the country's income with surgical precision, which translates into shortages and deprivations affecting Cuban families.

According to the Chancellor, since June 23, the international community has been alerted that the U.S. government, the anti-Cuban mafia, extreme right-wing sectors in Florida are calculating, although they are wrong, that if they provoke hardships and promote artificial leaders and try to create a situation in the networks that does not exist in reality, they can achieve their goals. Elements of unconventional warfare have been used in these days.

However, Bruno Rodriguez affirmed, the forceful response of the people made the communicational operation and the campaign fail, although today it is resumed with other axes, and the attempt to generate a situation of ungovernability and social disorder.

Here, he pointed out, there has been a brutal attack against those who defend the truth and measures aimed at preventing the revision of the policy that the Democrats have proposed, in issues that have to do with the population, such as travel, remittances, consular services.


"I challenge the U.S. government to confirm or deny that the main political operators of the company that generated the campaign against #Cuba have received funding from the State Department and USAID."

In addition, he explained, the issue related to those who are delirious about generating an irregular migratory flow to the United States, which is a dangerous gamble that costs lives, is reopened once again.

In the midst of all this scenario, as already mentioned, the SOS Cuba label was launched on June 15, so here, said the Foreign Minister: "I accuse and urge the U.S. Government to acknowledge or deny that the Miami-based company that generated this label and this campaign received a certificate from the Republican government of Florida to act with state funds."

"I urge you to confirm or deny that the main political operators of this company, connected with a publication financed by the U.S. Government, and which is part of the group of media, mainly based in Miami, that systematically act against Cuba and which generated this campaign, have received financing from the State Department and the USAID, as part of the information war against our country.

"I also urge them to deny that the political operators who launched this label have been organizing demonstrations with signs of violence against the Cuban Embassy in Washington, which not long ago was shot at, without the U.S. government saying a word."

Bruno Rodríguez also denounced that, from a Florida-based media laboratory, the campaign for a Humanitarian Intervention in Cuba was launched on Twitter on July 5.

A humanitarian intervention, he clarified, was what happened in Yugoslavia in 1999. The NATO bombings were a humanitarian intervention not authorized by the UN Security Council. Therefore, those who instigate this are calling for a U.S. military intervention in Cuba, in violation of Cuban laws and international law.

"I call on Twitter and the U.S. government," said the Foreign Minister, "to recognize or deny that political operators actively used tags, groups of robots, trolls, which are users coordinated with automated means to flood the networks, in this campaign against Cuba."

"Despite the denunciations, Twitter did not apply its own rules to try to prevent these actions from being consummated, even with calls for assassination and violence," he stressed.

In addition, the Cuban Foreign Minister called on Twitter "to say whether it is true or not that the geolocation systems of the accounts were altered to deceive people and make it appear that more than half of them were in Cuba, when that is totally false."

Rodriguez reassured that, "we will continue to present copious information on these accusations to the U.S. government and the Twitter company, on which we have all the evidence".

https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Cub ... -0010.html

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AMLO Doubles Down in Defense of Cuba: Blockade Main Cause


"I ascribe the situation in Cuba to the United States blockade because no one can sell to Cuba and if a company does it, it is sanctioned," the president said. | Photo: Twitter/ @deolhonofront

Published 13 July 2021

"No one should be surrounded; they must be fully free; one should not act in this way because it violates human rights and is contrary to universal brotherhood. It is my position that there should be no interference, that the principles of non-intervention, self-determination or peaceful conflict resolution are respected," the head of state, known as AMLO, said.


Mexican President Andres Manuel López Obrador remarked once again that the U.S. blockade against Cuba is the leading cause of suffering on the island. This, after condemning calls to military interventions in the aftermath of the July 11 disturbances.

"I ascribe the situation in Cuba to the United States blockade because no one can sell to Cuba and if a company does it, it is sanctioned," the president said, noticing that the United Nations General Assembly votes every year against the unilateral economic siege as "no one can be isolated."


"No one should be surrounded; they must be fully free; one should not act in this way because it violates human rights and is contrary to universal brotherhood. It is my position that there should be no interference, that the principles of non-intervention, self-determination or peaceful conflict resolution are respected," the head of state, known as AMLO, said.

The Mexican president doubled down on his defense of the Cuban revolution denouncing the information group Article 19 financed directly by the United States embassy in Mexico to mislead people by sharing fake images of Sunday´s demonstrations.

https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/AML ... -0012.html

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Lula Rejects the Manipulation of Narrative Against Cuba


Lula recalled that Cuba has one of the most educated populations globally. | Photo: Twitter/ @em_com

Published 13 July 2021 (12 hours 57 minutes ago)

"I'm tired of seeing a banner against Lula, against Dilma, against Trump... People demonstrate. But you didn't see any soldier in Cuba with his knee on a black man's neck, killing him... Cuba's problems will be solved by the Cubans," the leader added.



Former Brazilian president and socialist leader Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva denounced via Twitter on Tuesday the manipulation of the Cuban reality in the aftermath of Sunday´s disturbs.

"What is happening in Cuba that is so special that they talk about it so much?! There was a march. I even saw the president of Cuba at the march, talking to people. Cuba has already suffered 60 years from a US economic blockade, even more so with the pandemic, it is inhumane," Lula said.


"Biden should take advantage of this moment to go on television and announce that it will adopt the recommendation of countries at the UN to end this blockade."
"I'm tired of seeing a banner against Lula, against Dilma, against Trump... People demonstrate. But you didn't see any soldier in Cuba with his knee on a black man's neck, killing him... Cuba's problems will be solved by the Cubans," the leader added, referencing the police brutality witnessed by demonstrators in the U.S.

Moreover, Lula recalled that Cuba has one of the most educated populations globally. According to the World Bank, Cuba has the most educated population in Latin America, yet the 59 years of U.S. blockade on the island seriously hinders its development.

"If Cuba didn't have a blockade, it could be the Netherlands. It has intellectually prepared, highly educated people. But Cuba has not even been able to buy respirators because of an inhuman US blockade," Lula explained.

https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Lul ... -0013.html

[blindpig]

Are the protests in Cuba a struggle between democracy and authoritarianism?
Stephen Gowans Cuba July 13, 2021 4 Minutes
July 13, 2021

Stephen Gowans



Readers of The Wall Street Journal might come to the conclusion that an uprising has erupted in Cuba against ‘authoritarianism’ and the Cuban Communist Party.

But a careful reading of the newspaper paints a more nuanced picture.

There is, according to the Journal, “a pattern of simmering tensions across swaths of the developing world, where people are largely unvaccinated, governments are unable to afford sustained stimulus measures and economies are falling further behind and struggling to rebound from last year’s record contraction.”

In South Africa, for example, the government has “deployed its army … to help quell violent protests” after “hundreds of angry residents ransacked shops and malls, torched cars and blocked major roads.” The police have “arrested nearly 500” protestors.

“At the end of March, 33% of South Africans were unemployed, a figure that rises to 43% when discouraged job seekers are included.” A “record wave of Covid-19 infections across the country….has overwhelmed hospitals and led to shortages of oxygen.”

In another part of the developing world, Cuba, simmering tensions have also spilled over into protests. There, hundreds of “Cubans took to the streets … protesting a lack of food and a shortage of Covid-19 vaccines.” Cubans are registering “their opposition to the economic fallout from Covid-19 … widespread shortages of food and medicine, and numerous daily blackouts from failing electric power.”

Unrest in Cuba matches unrest in South Africa, part of the simmering tension in the global south. The roots are the same.

Yet, despite Cuba’s pandemic-induced economic travails and consequent political distemper fitting a pattern across the global south—exacerbated in Cuba’s case by six decades of US economic strangulation—The Wall Street Journal cast “Cuba’s unrest” as framing the “world’s big struggle: dictators vs. democracies.”

Columnist Gerald F. Seib used the occasion of the Cuban protests to rail against authoritarian regimes, among which he includes Cuba’s government, despite the reality that Cuba has elections and assemblies. But in the US view, an electoral system is not truly democratic unless it bears a close resemblance to the United States’ own plural elite model, one of multiple parties representing the interests of business elites, which periodically vie for the votes of an electorate whose interests are largely ignored.

Bernie Sanders recently referred to the US system as one that doesn’t respond to the needs of the people. Sanders told New York Times’ columnist Maureen Dowd, ‘It’s absolutely imperative if democracy is to survive that we do everything that we can to say, ‘Yes, we hear your pain and we are going to respond to your needs.’’’

The obvious question for Sanders is: how can a system that doesn’t respond to the people’s needs be called a democracy? And how can responding democratically save democracy. If responding to the people’s needs is a new initiative, then democracy is already dead. More accurately, in the US case, it has yet to be born.

Sanders would have hewed closer to the truth had he said, “It’s absolutely imperative if democracy is to be created for the first time that we not only do everything that we can to say, ‘Yes, we hear your pain and we are going to respond to your needs’ but that we also actually respond to their needs.”

Seib opens his storehouse of demons, condemning them for the crime of autocracy on the basis of how long they’ve been in power: Ayatollah Ali Khamenei (32 years); Vladimir Putin (22); Xi Jinping (9). Harvard political scientist Graham Allison calls Xi’s government a “responsive authoritarianism”—which seems to be another of way of saying it’s the democracy that Bernie Sanders says the unresponsive US plural elite system is not.

This “seems a boom time for autocrats,” Seib writes. “Yet the seething unhappiness in Cuba, Venezuela, Iran and Hong Kong [but not South Africa, Haiti, Colombia, Brazil, and Lebanon] raises the question of how long the authoritarian run can last?”

Apparently, for quite some time, if the autocrats are US allies. The Hashemite monarchy of Jordan’s “U.S.-Backed King”, as the Journal describes him—and aptly, too, considering that US taxpayers pay him more than $1.5 billion yearly—has lasted 75 years. The Khalifa family, which allows the US Fifth Fleet to use Bahrain as its home base, has ruled over the Persian Gulf country for 255 years. The House of Saud, which rules US best friend Saudi Arabia, has clung to power with US assistance for more than three-quarters of a century. And we mustn’t forget Abdel Fatah el-Sissi, Egypt’s military ruler, whom Donald Trump once called his favorite dictator. Like the authoritarian government of Jordan’s autocrat King Abdullah, the government of autocrat President el-Sissi, also receives more than $1 billion yearly from an appreciative United States, for services rendered.

In US propaganda, autocrats are not condemned as autocrats so long as they render services to the beneficiaries of the US plural elite system, i.e., Wall Street, while governments that don’t genuflect to US plural elite needs, and choose instead to respond to their own citizens’ needs, are labelled autocrats, whether they are or not.

Owing to the US campaign of strangling the Cuban economy—a campaign now in its seventh decade—Cubans have lived with a lower standard of living than their socialist economy is capable of producing (which is the point of Washington blockading the island.)

Cuba has, nevertheless, done remarkably well in the face of US-imposed adversity. In 2019, the country’s GDP per capita was $9,100 (current $US), according to the World Bank, not far off China’s $10,217. Of course, neither country is anywhere near US GDP per capita, but, having been looted by great powers, they have steep hills to climb. US sanctions, and now the pandemic—which has slashed tourism by nearly 90 percent—makes the climb all the more difficult for Cuba.

“The truth is that if one wanted to help Cuba, the first thing that should be done is to suspend the blockade of Cuba,” Mexico’s president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, told reporters on Monday. “That would be a truly humanitarian gesture.”

Unfortunately, neither Wall Street nor the capitalist system at whose center it lies, are humanitarian.

https://gowans.blog/2021/07/13/are-the- ... tarianism/

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We defend the Revolution, above all else
For 60 years the example of the Cuban Revolution has bothered the United States, stated First Secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba and President of the Republic, Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez, yesterday, during a special message from the Palace of the Revolution explaining to the people the most recent provocation orchestrated by small groups of counterrevolutionaries.

Author: Gladys Leydis Ramos López | internet@granma.cu

Author: Juan Diego Nusa Peñalver | internet@granma.cu

july 12, 2021 11:07:59


Photo: Estudios Revolución

For 60 years the example of the Cuban Revolution has bothered the United States, stated First Secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba and President of the Republic, Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez, yesterday, during a special message from the Palace of the Revolution explaining to the people the most recent provocation orchestrated by small groups of counterrevolutionaries.

The President began his remarks with a revolutionary greeting to the entire people, and said: "Unfortunately, we have been obliged to interrupt our Sunday, that all our families take to rest and spend time together, to inform you and share with you a series of elements related to the events that have been taking place today, which are part of a high level, systematic, escalating provocation, which has been promoted by the counterrevolution over these days."

What is the background to this situation we are experiencing, he asked.

"We have been honest, we have been open, we have been clear, and at all times we have explained the complexities of the current situation to our people. I remember that more than a year and a half ago, when the second half of 2019 was just starting, we had to explain that we were heading toward a difficult conjuncture, and we used that term, which was later taken up as part of popular humor, since we have remained in this ‘conjuncture’ for a long time...Beginning with all the signs that the U.S. government, headed by the Trump administration, was giving in relation to Cuba."

Diaz-Canel recalled that the adoption of an extensive series of restrictive measures to tighten the blockade began; financial persecution, energy persecution, with the goal of asphyxiating the country’s economy.

He denounced ongoing efforts to provoke a massive social explosion in Cuba, including all sorts of propaganda and ideological constructions they fabricate to call for misnamed humanitarian interventions, which end up as military interventions and interference, trampling the rights and violating the sovereignty, the independence of peoples.

This succession of hostile acts continued, he noted, "Then came the 243 measures we all know about. And in the last days of that administration the decision was made to include Cuba on the list of countries sponsoring terrorism."

He reiterated that this list is a totally spurious list, an illegitimate list, and a unilateral list, fabricated by the U.S. in the belief that they are the power dominates the world, that they are the emperors of this world."

He noted that, unfortunately, due to the lack of principles that exists within more than a few international institutions and national governments, many cave in and go along with these hostile measures and actions.

"It must be recognized that others do not submit to be the imposition of these measures, but they are limited by the extraterritorial nature that these.

"And that further increased the impact of the restrictions, which above all implied that the country was immediately cut off from its main sources of foreign currency income: I am talking about tourism, I am talking about the trips of Cubans and U.S. citizens to our country, about the much-awaited remittances to Cuban families from their relatives in the United States."

The President also denounced U.S. efforts to discredit Cuban medical brigades, since this medical collaboration, beyond the many instances of solidarity provided, also generates foreign currency income.

All this, he said, is causing shortages in the country: "Shortages of food, of medicines, raw materials and inputs needed by our economic and productive processes, which contribute both exports and supplies for the people; therefore here two important elements are cut off: the capacity to export and to acquire foreign currency to import and invest, and the capacity of the productive processes to be produce a full range of goods and services for our population."

He pointed out that the country "has seen its fuel supply limited, access to spare parts limited, and all this has caused dissatisfaction, has exacerbated accumulated problems, which we have not been able to resolve, have been around since the special period, and to all this has been added a ferocious media campaign to discredit us, as part of a so-called non-conventional war, which attempts, on the one hand, to break the unity of the Party, the government, the state and the people, attempting to portray the government as inept, incapable of providing wellbeing to the Cuban people, attempting to portray the U.S. government as “very concerned about the welfare of the Cuban people,” who it has unjustly blockaded, telling them how they can aspire to development and progress in a country such as ours.

"These are the usual hypocritical prescriptions and speeches of double standards, which we know very well, throughout the history of United States behavior toward Cuba. We know how they intervened in our country, how they appropriated our island, how they maintained domination of our Island during the pseudo-republic and how their interests were hit hard by the triumph of the Cuban Revolution.

"For 60 years the example of the Cuban Revolution has bothered them, and they have constantly tightened… applied an unjust, criminal, cruel blockade, reinforced, worse than ever under pandemic conditions. Therein lies the manifest perversity, the maliciousness of all these intentions: blockade and restrictive measures, which they have never taken against any other country, or against those they consider their main enemies.

"This has been a work and a policy of viciousness against a small Island, which only aspires to defend its independence, its sovereignty and build, with self-determination, its society in accordance with the principles that more than 86% of the population has approved, has supported in the broad and democratic exercise we held, to approve the current Constitution of the Republic of Cuba.

"And in the midst of these conditions comes the pandemic, a pandemic that has not only affected Cuba, a pandemic that has affected the whole world, a pandemic that has also affected the United States, that has affected rich countries. It must be said that the United States and other rich countries did not have the capacity to confront the effects of this pandemic at the beginning.

"And in many of those first world countries, with much more wealth, health systems collapsed, intensive care units were overwhelmed. The poor have been disadvantaged because there are no public policies directed toward saving the people,” and these rich countries in many cases have worse results than Cuba in terms of responding to the pandemic.

"And we were impacted by the pandemic and, in the midst of all these other restrictions, with the reserves that the country has created, with the little we had in the country, with the little we have been able to acquire this difficult year and a half, is that we have been able to meet these challenges, these tests.

"And we have done it with courage, we have done it without giving in and, above all, we have done it by sharing among all the little we have, and we have not only shared within Cuba, we have shared with the world. There is the example of the Henry Reeve internationalist brigades, which has gone to places brutally affected by the pandemic.

"And this is how we have moved forward, controlling one wave after another, with a tremendous capacity for sacrifice on the part of our people, of our scientists, of our health personnel, of almost the entire country involved in this.

Díaz-Canel recalled that five candidate vaccines have been developed, one already recognized as a vaccine, the first in Latin America against COVID-19. Cuba is already vaccinating our population, and this is a process that takes time. Vaccines must be produced, but we currently have one of the highest vaccination rates in the world and in a few weeks we will have reached more than 20% of the total population," he noted.

However, he noted, in the last few months more aggressive strains have appeared, and in the midst of this already serious situation, another group of complications began to appear.

"First of all, new cases are emerging at a speed and accumulation that exceeded the capacities we have been able to create to treat these patients in state institutions. On the other hand, we have been obliged to expand capacity in other centers," he explained.

In this sense, by opening more centers, to which energy priority must be given - in the midst of the accumulation of problems in the generation of electricity, the number of circuits that we must protect, to attend these patients, has increased.

With more patients, he continued, the stock of medicines is also running low and acquiring them is very difficult; and in the midst of all this, we continue to work for everyone.

"Now we have been obliged to resort to home isolation due to the lack of capacity in a number of provinces, and call on families to participate more directly, more responsibly. One never tires of admiring the capacity for creative resistance of our people."

With these values, he insisted, with vaccination advancing, complying with the necessary sanitary measures, we will emerge sooner rather than later from this peak in the pandemic, which is not only hitting Cuba. Cuba managed to postpone this high point with everything we did, and we will overcome it.

But now, he noted, in a very cowardly, subtle, opportunistic and perverse manner, exploiting the most difficult situations we have in provinces like Matanzas and Ciego de Avila, those who have always supported the blockade, those who have served as mercenaries, lackeys of the Yankee empire, begin to appear with calls for a humanitarian intervention, a humanitarian corridor, to strengthen the idea that the Cuban government is not capable of handling this situation, as if they were really interested in the welfare and health of our people.

“If they want to make a gesture toward Cuba, if they really are concerned about the people, if they want to solve Cuba's problems: lift the blockade and let's see how we do, why don't they do that? Why don't they have the courage to lift the blockade, what legal and moral basis allows a foreign government to implement such a policy against a small country, and in the midst of such adverse conditions? Isn't this genocide?”

He denounced the assertion that a dictatorship exists in Cuba, "A dictatorship that is concerned about providing healthcare for its entire population, that seeks welfare for all, that in the midst of this situation is capable of conducting public policies, aspiring to vaccination with a Cuban vaccine, because we knew that no one was going to sell us any, since we don’t have the money to buy them," he said.

"What a strange dictatorship," he exclaimed. Now they are shouting that we are murderers. Where are the murder victims in Cuba, where are the missing persons in Cuba? Other countries that have suffered these pandemic peaks were not attacked in the press and they were not offered humanitarian intervention as a solution, nor were they subjected to these slander campaigns as we are, Díaz-Canel emphasized.

"I believe that life, history, the facts show what is behind all this, which is the effort to asphyxiate us and put an end to the Revolution, and for that they are trying to discourage our people, to confuse our people. And when the people are facing severe conditions, then events like the ones we experienced in San Antonio de los Baños take place."

About the events in this area, he detailed:

Who was part of the group? It included members of the population, who have needs, who are experiencing some of these shortages; it included revolutionaries who are confused, do not have all the arguments, or were expressing these dissatisfactions, but they were doing differently, because they were seeking to understand, seeking explanations.

"But this was led by a core group of manipulators who are indeed lending themselves to the designs of the SOS Matanzas or SOS Cuba campaigns… Several days ago, they were preparing demonstrations or social disturbances of this type in several Cuban cities. This is criminal, at a time when people should be at home, protecting themselves."

Diaz-Canel reported that revolutionaries in San Antonio de los Baños, provincial authorities, a group from the country's leadership showed up there, we confronted the counterrevolutionaries and we talked to the revolutionaries, and to those asking for explanations, to show that Cuba’s streets belong to revolutionaries.

He pointed out that we know there are other groups of people gathering in streets and plazas, in other cities of the country, also moved by unhealthy purposes. "I am also giving this information, to reaffirm that in Cuba the streets belong to revolutionaries, that the state, the revolutionary government, guided by the Party, are more than willing to discuss, to argue and to participate with the people in the solution of problems, but recognizing the real cause of our problems, without allowing ourselves to be confused."

Those who are encouraging demonstrations are not interested in good healthcare for Cuba, he emphasized. Remember that their model is neoliberal, the privatization of health, of medical services, of education; that everyone should save themselves as best they can, that those who have the money can access health care, he warned.

"We are not going to surrender sovereignty, the independence of our people, or the freedom of this nation. There are many of us revolutionaries in this town who are willing to give our lives and this is not a slogan, it is a conviction. They will have to step over our corpses if they want to confront the Revolution, and we are ready for anything and we will be in the streets fighting."

We know that incidents of this type are being orchestrated in the streets of Havana and that there are large groups of revolutionaries confronting counterrevolutionary elements. We are separating the confused revolutionaries, the inhabitants of Cuba who have specific concerns, but we are not going to allow any counterrevolutionary, any mercenary, to provoke destabilization among our people.

"This is why we are calling on all revolutionaries in our country, all communists, to take to the streets in any of the places where these provocations may take place today, from now on, throughout these days," he insisted.

"As I said in my closing speech at the Party Congress, we revolutionaries defend the Revolution above all else, we communists on the front lines, and with that conviction we are now in the streets, we are not going to allow anyone to manipulate our situation, or defend a plan that is not Cuban, that is not for the welfare of Cubans and that is annexationist. This is the task to which we call revolutionaries and communists of this country," he concluded.

http://en.granma.cu/cuba/2021-07-12/we- ... e-all-else

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Cuba Possesses the Most Precious Asset: Revolutionary Conscience
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on JULY 12, 2021
Jorge Capelan


For those who say that in Cuba: “…they have nothing. It can neither import nor export anything. Production is low due to lack of inputs and machinery and they cannot buy spare parts, people are hungry and tired…”

We tell them:

Don’t believe it, there are reserves…. What is happening today is nothing compared to the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Cubans are not “tired”. After 60 years of blockade (3 generations), most people are not “tired”, they are hardened. It is like saying that the Palestinians in Gaza, on the west bank of the Jordan or in Lebanon are “tired” – not to mention the Iranians….

I went to Cuba for the first time in 2003, after 13 years of special period and a few months after Fidel said to Bush in the anti-imperialist esplanade in front of the US Embassy: “Hail Caesar, those who are going to die salute you”. What I can tell you is that a critical mass of the Cuban people today will not allow a “regime change” there.

Adding the Youth and the Party, there are millions of communists in Cuba. Only a political genocide can free the hands of the Miami mafia to make their “dream” of recovering what they lost during the Revolution come true. Most people in Cuba know that. When I went there in 2003, Havana was full of subway tunnels that connected the whole city and they had taught the population to throw ninja stars to confront the Marines in case they wanted to intervene. All that infrastructure exists today.

It is like here in Nicaragua, if they had destabilized the country there would have been a war impossible to extinguish. That is the drama of the empire: the victims of genocide are not willing to be killed and they know how to defend themselves.

The Party in Cuba is not separated from the people. It is the people and workers who themselves make proposals as to who can be a member of the Party, and no one else’s signature is valid to admit anyone.

And another thing, no matter how much they want to ignore it: There are millions of Cubans who have been educated from school onwards in the idea that principles are worth more than any material thing. It is not only the people who fought against Batista, nor those who were teaching literacy, it is entire generations who were fighting in Angola, or as volunteers in Africa, in Afghanistan, in all Latin America, etc…. From the ideological point of view, the Cubans are much stronger than the Soviets in the 80s.

For historical and current reasons, the imperial coup will not happen in Cuba.

https://libya360.wordpress.com/2021/07/ ... onscience/

[blindpig]

The streets of Cuba belong to revolutionaries and we will defend them
Enemies of the Revolution want to take advantage of our problems to apply the social unrest formula they have used in other countries; but with Cuba there are no formulas that work

Author: Juan Diego Nusa Peñalver | internet@granma.cu

Author: Yudy Castro Morales | internet@granma.cu

Author: Milagros Pichardo Pérez | internet@granma.cu

july 13, 2021 15:07:11

"We are here because the streets belong to Fidel, because the streets of Cuba belong to revolutionaries." This was the phrase we heard the loudest walking along several Havana avenues Sunday afternoon, July 11, when an entire people came out to defend their Revolution.

We heard it, for example, in front of the Capitol, seat of the National Assembly of People's Power, and along Prado down to the waterfront Malecon. We heard it up to Belascoaín, and along Carlos III, where neighbors gathered, waving flags and, above all, ideas.

A woman shouted from her balcony, "Viva la Revolución!" and "Viva Cuba Libre!" Her voice joined those of many younger residents who, on the street below, waved the 26th of July Movement flag and repeated, louder and louder, clearer and clearer: "Fidel, Raúl and Díaz-Canel are here," "Patria o Muerte, Venceremos" (Homeland or Death, We will win).

We heard it along Infanta, from women and men, Cubans with few and many years of age, all with the same conviction: a country like ours, with so many dreams and more than a few pains, is defended tooth and nail, knowing that, as the poet said, "For this freedom/ beautiful as life/ we must give our all/ if necessary/ even the shadow/ and it will never be enough."

We heard it from Julio Alejandro Gómez, a blogger who joined the honest demands of those who love and create and took to the streets, "because I am a revolutionary and I know that this is a manipulation. They want to take advantage of our needs and problems to apply the same formula of ‘social unrest’ that they have used in other countries; but with Cuba there are no formulas that work. The Revolution belongs to the people and is defended by the people."

We heard Alberto Bermudez, who lives on Infanta, and in the midst of the racket, hummed "I die as I lived" with a group of buddies and, soon thereafter, it was the notes of the national anthem they offered.

"Unity and continuity," others shouted, while Alberto interrupted his song to affirm, "Fidel, this is your people, and the streets belong to the people. The order has been given and we are here. We are going to win, in spite of COVID-19, in spite of whatever."

The same phrases, shouted along the way, led our group of reporters to Alfredo Vázquez, provincial secretary of the Federation of Cuban Workers in Havana, who was injured in one of the confrontations with the "destabilizers."


Foto: Ricardo López Hevia

"They hit me hard on the head and I ended up with a seven-stitch gash. But here I am, my flag stained with blood, ready to continue defending the Revolution, because to die for the Homeland is to live," he insisted without slowing his pace, just like Cuba, the land of revolutionaries who are never intimidated.

And there beside Via Blanca, Faustino Leonard, a resident of Cerro municipality, also spoke to us about the day, with the remains of rocks thrown still on the street.

"The quarrel was tough here, but there were more revolutionaries. The saboteurs ran away to hide, probably to some cave, like rats usually do. Let no one doubt it, this country belongs to the people, and will continue to belong to us."

http://en.granma.cu/cuba/2021-07-13/the ... efend-them

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The United States tries to take advantage of the price Cubans are paying for the blockade and the pandemic
Cuban government officials and activists have reiterated their demand for an end to the blockade imposed by the US which over six decades has cost Cuba $147.8 billion in damages

July 13, 2021 by Manolo De Los Santos, Vijay Prashad



Amid the campaign being waged against Cuba on social media and fueled by protests in response to food shortages and electricity cuts, hundreds took to the streets to defend the revolution.
Cuba, like every other country on the planet, is struggling with the impact of COVID-19. This small island of 11 million people has created five vaccine candidates and sent its medical workers through the Henry Reeve International Medical Brigade to heal people around the world. Meanwhile, the United States hardens a cruel and illegal blockade of the island, a medieval siege that has been in place for six decades. In April 2020, seven United Nations special rapporteurs wrote an open letter to the United States government about the blockade. “In the pandemic emergency,” they wrote, “the lack of will of the US government to suspend sanctions may lead to a higher risk of such suffering in Cuba and other countries targeted by its sanctions.” The special rapporteurs noted the “risks to the right to life, health and other critical rights of the most vulnerable sections of the Cuban population.”

On July 12, 2021, Cuba’s President Miguel Díaz-Canel told a press conference that Cuba is facing serious shortages of food and medicine. “What is the origin of all these issues?” he asked. The answer, he said, “is the blockade.” If the US-imposed blockade ended, many of the great challenges facing Cuba would lift. Of course, there are other challenges, such as the collapse of the crucial tourism sector due to the pandemic. Both problems—the pandemic and the blockade—have increased the challenges for the Cuban people. The pandemic is a problem that people all over the world now face; the US-imposed blockade is a problem unique to Cuba (as well as about 30 other countries struck by unilateral US sanctions).

Protests

On July 11, people in several parts of Cuba—such as San Antonio de los Baños—took to the streets to protest the social crisis. Frustration about the lack of goods in shops and an uptick in COVID-19 infections seemed to motivate the protests. President Díaz-Canel said of the people that most of them are “dissatisfied,” but that their dissatisfaction is fueled by “confusion, misunderstandings, lack of information and the desire to express a particular situation.”

On the morning of July 12, US President Joe Biden hastily put out a statement that reeked of hypocrisy. “We stand with the Cuban people,” Biden said, “and their clarion call for freedom.” If the US government actually cared about the Cuban people, then the Biden administration would at the very least withdraw the 243 unilateral coercive measures implemented by the presidency of Donald Trump before he left office in January 2021; Biden—contrary to his own campaign promises—has not started the process to reverse Trump’s designation of Cuba as a “state sponsor of terrorism.” On March 9, 2021, Biden’s spokesperson Jen Psaki said, “A Cuba policy shift is not currently among President Biden’s top priorities.” Rather, the Trump “maximum pressure” policy intended to overthrow the Cuban government remains intact.

The United States has a six-decade history of trying to overthrow the Cuban government, including using assassinations and invasions as policy. In recent years, the US government has increased its financial support of people inside Cuba and in the Cuban émigré community in Miami, Florida; some of this money comes directly from the National Endowment for Democracy and from USAID. Their mandate is to accelerate any dissatisfaction inside Cuba into a political challenge to the Cuban Revolution.

On June 23, Cuba’s Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez said that the Trump “measures remain very much in place.” They shape the “conduct of the current US administration precisely during the months in which Cuba has experienced the highest infection rates, the highest death toll and a higher economic cost associated with the COVID-19 pandemic.”

Costs of the Pandemic

On July 12, Alejandro Gil Fernández, Cuba’s minister of economy and planning, told the press about the expenses of the pandemic. In 2020, he said, the government spent $102 million on reagents, medical equipment, protective equipment and other material; in the first half of 2021, the government spent $82 million on these kinds of materials. This is money that Cuba did not anticipate spending—money that it does not have as a consequence of the collapsed tourism sector.

“We have not spared resources to face COVID-19,” Fernández said. Those with COVID-19 are put in hospitals, where their treatment costs the country $180 per day; if the patient needs intensive care, the cost per day is $550. “No one is charged a penny for their treatment,” Fernández reported.

The socialist government in Cuba shoulders the responsibility of medical care and of social insurance. Despite the severe challenges to the economy, the government guarantees salaries, purchases medicines and distributes food as well as electricity and piped water. That is the reason why the government added $2.4 billion to its already considerable debt overhang. In June, Cuba’s Deputy Prime Minister Ricardo Cabrisas Ruíz met with French Minister of Economy and Finance Bruno Le Maire to discuss the economic consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic. France, which manages Cuba’s debt to the public creditors in the Paris Club, led the effort to ameliorate the debt servicing demands on Havana.

Costs of the Blockade

On June 23, 184 countries in the UN General Assembly voted to end the US-imposed blockade on Cuba. During the discussion over the vote, Cuba’s Foreign Minister Rodríguez reported that between April 2019 and December 2020, the government lost $9.1 billion due to the blockade ($436 million per month). “At current prices,” he said, “the accumulated damages in six decades amount to over $147.8 billion, and against the price of gold, it amounts to over $1.3 trillion.”

If the blockade were to be lifted, Cuba would be able to fix its great financial challenges and use the resources to pivot away from its reliance upon tourism. “We stand with the Cuban people,” says Biden; in Havana, the phrase is heard differently, since it sounds like Biden is saying, “We stand on the Cuban people.”

Cuba’s Prime Minister Manuel Marrero Cruz said that those who took to the streets on July 11 “called for foreign intervention and said that the [Cuban] Revolution was falling. They will never enjoy that hope,” he said. In response to those anti-government protests, the streets of Cuba filled with tens of thousands of people who carried Cuban flags and the flags of the Cuban Revolution’s 26th of July Movement. Cruz said, “The people responded and defended the revolution.”

https://peoplesdispatch.org/2021/07/13/ ... -pandemic/