Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez addressed the United Nations General Assembly September 28 and denounced the United States government’s recent adoption of criminal, non-conventional methods to prevent the delivery of fuel to Cuba.
Over the last year, he noted, the U.S. government has qualitatively escalated hostile measures against Cuba and tightened the blockade, imposing additional obstacles to foreign trade and increasing persecution of financial transactions and banking relations.
He noted that this administration is guided by the aggressive Helms-Burton Act of 1996, which asserts “the brazen intention of challenging the Cuban nation’s right to self-determination and independence.”
“The economic, commercial, and financial blockade continues to be the principal obstacle to our country’s development and to the process of updating our socialist model of economic and social development, which our country has charted,” the Foreign Minister stated.
Rodríguez denounced, in the strongest terms possible, the lowness and degeneracy to which this U.S. administration has resorted, upon announcing that Army General Raúl Castro Ruz, first secretary the Communist Party of Cuba, will not be granted an entry visa to the country, adding, “This is an action without practical effect, meant as an affront to the dignity of Cuba and the feelings of our people.”
As part of his anti-Cuban obsession, Rodríguez noted, the current U.S. government, along with a Brazilian lackey, attacks the international medical cooperation programs that Cuba maintains with dozens of developing countries, to serve the neediest communities.
He reiterated that no matter how harsh the economic aggression may be, the threats and coercion will not force Cuba to make a single concession.
The Foreign Minister’s words were emphatic in reference to Cuba’s relations with Venezuela, based on mutual respect and true solidarity, stating, “We support, without hesitation, the legitimate government headed by Nicolás Maduro Moros and the civic-military union of the Bolivarian, Chavista people. We condemn the conduct of the U.S. government including the promotion of coups, assassination attempts, economic war, and sabotage of the electrical system.”
He denounced the foreign policy of the current U.S. administration, insisting that its strategy of military and nuclear domination constitutes a threat to world peace and international security.
“Capitalism is unsustainable. Its irrational and unsustainable patterns of consumption and production, and the unjust, increasing concentration of wealth are the principal threat to the planet’s ecological equilibrium. There will be no sustainable development without social justice,” he insisted before the UN General Assembly.
Rodríguez reiterated that Cuba remains committed to the exercise of human rights by all persons and all peoples, particularly the right to peace, to life, development, and self-determination, and concluded his remarks insisting, “If anyone presumes to force the Revolution to surrender, we repeat with the same vigor of Fidel: Homeland of Death! Venceremos!”
