‘We don’t need your aid—just lift the blockade’

José Ramón Machado Ventura, first vice president of the Cuban Council of State, spoke at a church in Harlem on Sept. 22 about the two issues hurting Cuba most now: the devastation wrought by Hurricanes Gustav and Ike and the continued imprisonment of the Cuban Five.

Hundreds of people filled the Church of the Intercession to hear Machado speak. As he entered he was greeted with cheers of “¡Cuba sí, bloqueo no!” and “¡Viva Cuba revolucionaria!”

One of Cuba’s elder statesmen, Machado had joined the guerrillas in the Sierra Maestra mountain range, where he served as a doctor and fought alongside Fidel Castro and Che Guevara.

Such a high-level Cuban official has not visited New York since President Castro’s visit in 2000. Machado was joined by Felipe Pérez Roque, minister of foreign relations, and Fernando Remírez de Estenoz, chief of the Department of International Relations of the Communist Party of Cuba.

The recent hurricanes were the most destructive to hit Cuba in many years, causing several deaths—a rarity in a country with a superb system for saving lives. The storms destroyed more than 60,000 homes and caused more than $5 billion in damage. To ensure their safety, the government evacuated 3 million people from their homes, almost one-third of Cuba’s population.

“It is our sacred moral duty to save the lives of our people,” Machado said. He added that neighbors and relatives took in those who had to flee their homes. “That’s the result of the education of our revolution, for solidarity not only to be proclaimed but to be carried out,” he said.

Noting that Haiti has also been devastated by the hurricanes, he said it should receive as much assistance as possible.

Machado said the U.S. was deceitful in offering to send a “humanitarian assessment team” to Cuba to inspect the affected area. Cuba said no to these spies and instead asked that the U.S. allow the sale of construction material to Cuba. In response, the Bush administration said this is not the time to ease the blockade of Cuba.

“If they want to help Cuba, why don’t they lift the blockade?” Machado asked. “They say Cuba is sacrificing its own people and refusing assistance. But the most important issue is the blockade.”

Machado also pointed to the struggle being waged on behalf of the Cuban Five, whose only crime was saving Cuban and U.S. lives from terrorist acts. He said while the five—Gerardo Hernández, Antonio Guerrero, Ramón Labañino, Fernando González and René González—are subjected to harsh and inhumane treatment in U.S. prisons, real terrorists like Luis Posada Carriles and Orlando Bosch are free to walk the streets of Miami.

Attorney Leonard Weinglass also spoke at the event. He said that on the tenth anniversary of their imprisonment, the Cuban Five remain resolute and strong in their struggle for freedom. The next step in the case is to seek a U.S. Supreme Court review of the 2006 ruling by the full court of the Eleventh Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals. That decision overruled a three-judge panel of the court, which said the five should never have been tried in Miami and ordered a new trial.

During his talk, Machado also denounced the U.S. war in Iraq, which he said has killed thousands of U.S. youth and hundreds of thousands of youth in other countries, and the torture of those imprisoned in the illegally occupied Guantánamo.

Machado pointed to the victorious election of Evo Morales in Bolivia and the successes of the Bolivarian revolution in Venezuela. “It’s increasingly difficult for imperialism to deceive the people of the Americas,” he said.

He concluded his talk with the battle cry of the Cuban revolution: “Ever onward to victory!”