Since the dawn of the Cuban Revolution, the United States implemented measures to undermine the new Revolutionary Government at all costs.
The reduction of oil supplies, the refusal to refine Soviet crude oil and the elimination of the sugar quota were only the beginning of what would become the longest genocide in history.
The will of the Government of the largest of the Antilles to act independently and implement economic and social changes in favor of the majorities was considered a real insult, a stone in the path of the supremacist and hegemonic dreams of the empire.
It was then that, in April 1960, Lester D. Mallory, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs, outlined, in a secret memorandum, the essence of the economic, commercial and financial blockade that would be unilaterally imposed two years later.
A coldly conceived strategy aimed at plunging the Cuban people into misery, so that they would see the transforming process as unviable and blame their misfortunes on the Revolutionary Government instead of those in Washington who were really responsible.
By means of the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961, the U.S. President was authorized to establish and maintain a total "embargo" on trade with Cuba, in addition to prohibiting any type of aid to the Government of the Island. On February 7, 1962, then President John F. Kennedy, invoking Section 620a of that legal instrument, declared the total blockade against Cuba.
We Cubans know a lot about what has happened since then; above all, about the way in which, from one administration after another, the blockade has been maintained and, it could even be said, that each one of them has given it a distinctive seal of cruelty, as is amply demonstrated by the current tenant of the White House.
During Donald Trump's first administration, the policy of hostility reached unprecedented levels. More than 240 actions were counted to tighten the blockade, designed to generate ungovernability and overthrow the Revolution.
Nothing changed during Biden's term, whose timid positive actions quickly went to ground after Trump's return.
The intention is clear and well known: to extinguish much more than homes. Their ultimate goal is to extinguish our dreams, our confidence in the Revolution and, above all, our freedom.
