Cuba’s answer to Trump

In a speech to the United Nations, stuffed with lies, starting with, “ … our country is stronger than ever before,” Trump was met with an awkward silence instead of applause. He attacked many countries in the Global South, asking if he should “annihilate the Islamic Republic and do it quickly” or “drive them into hell with no chance of survival,” and calling Cuba “an absolutely failed state.” The result was the walkout of first the Iranian delegation and then the Cuban delegation, among others. 

The New Republic (Sept. 22) noted: “Trump is also absolving the U.S. of any wrongdoing, as many of Cuba’s past and present issues can be directly tied to the U.S. embargo and blockade of the country, which has cut it off from vital survival resources. And yet Trump chose to use the U.N. bully pulpit to present his version of reality — one that Cuba and Iran’s leadership chose to walk away from rather than entertain.”

At the U.N. on Sept. 26, Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla denounced the “multidimensional aggression from the United States government that his country faces as a permanent, abusive and ruthless hostility that has lasted for almost seven decades.“ He outlined how the U.S. has increasingly prohibited other countries from trading with Cuba, in any form, for any product produced by Cuba, even to the point where countries that have requested free medical services from Cuban medical workers are prevented from doing so.

“It reaches the point of pressuring sovereign governments to unsuspected levels to renounce medical services that they requested from us, for the benefit of their respective populations and which are provided altruistically by Cuban professionals, because the U.S. government opposes such cooperation, without caring about the effect or the damage on the populations that are left deprived of free and quality medical care, that is, of a basic human right,” Parrilla said.

He pointed out that this bullying blockade was designed to kill not only Cuban people but anyone who cooperates with Cuba. “The United States government and the State Department have had to acknowledge the suffering inflicted, but they have the audacity and cynicism to insist on blaming the Cuban government. The executioner blames his victim. … The law of the jungle cannot be the future of humanity,” he declared. (Granma, Sept. 26)

President Diaz-Canel’s response was brief and to the point: “Unable to justify the punishment against the Cuban people and its genocidal economic war, the U.S. president repeats at the U.N. that Cuba represents a threat. The lie is the tool of those who refuse to accept the right to self-determination of the Cuban people. 

“We will keep fighting for peace, defending our sovereignty and working together to overcome the ruthless aggression imposed by the U.S. government. Cuba is not a threat, but the blockade is.” (Cuba Headlines, Sept. 22)