“Thanks to the President's leadership, the United States is committed to promoting freedom and prosperity in Cuba. Let there be no doubt: under President Trump's leadership, we will hold the illegitimate Cuban regime accountable and support the Cuban people in their quest for freedom and justice,” U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on X.
Rubio's “praise” followed the headline announcing, yesterday, that “Donald Trump restores his tough policy toward the Cuban regime.” When did the current administration, or the previous one, or Trump's first one, or any of the 12 that have passed through the White House since 1959, abandon that tough policy?
The latest paper on Cuba, signed yesterday by the empire's top man, is more of the same. Its guidelines are: freedom for the people, democracy, respect for human rights and human dignity, and protection for dissidents and “peaceful demonstrators.” It legally prohibits U.S. tourism on the island, supports the economic, commercial and financial blockade; prevents the reestablishment of the “wet feet, dry feet” policy, restricts financial transactions to Cuba, and grants the “dedicated” Rubio the power to identify any entity under the control of, or acting for or on behalf of Cuban companies, as well as to regulate their financial transactions.
Regarding academic or other travel, it includes that travelers must “engage in a full-time program of activities that enhance contact with the Cuban people, improve civil society, and promote the independence of the people from the authorities.”
It announces the adjustment of the regulation defining the term “prohibited officials of the Government of Cuba”, which includes ministers and deputy ministers, members of the Council of State and Ministers, members and employees of the National Assembly of People's Power, employees of the Minint and Minfar, leaders of the CTC, members and employees of the National Supreme Court; directors, deputy directors and superiors of all Cuban state agencies; chief editors, editors and deputy editors of Cuban state media organizations and programs.
Who are they trying to deceive? All this has been suffered by the Cuban people for more than 60 years. The “brand new” memorandum does not even mention that it is the same as the one issued by Lester Mallory in 1960, the one that commanded the creation of chaos and desperation. Now he is doing it by chasing every Cuban transaction around the world, by falling back on any source of fuel for Cuba, with which he seeks to make it inoperative. He has yet to say that he is responsible for the blackouts, for the financial speculation that has created inflation in our economy; he is to blame for the precarious situation of transportation.
He has yet to say that including Cuba in the spurious list of sponsors of terrorism is part of that strategy to isolate it, to cut off its trade, with the aim of showing the largest island in the Antilles as a failed state.
What freedom can the government that has kept secret prisons, that locks up anyone in them for any reason, and without any legal protection, just because they do not agree with its strategies of domination, or because in its neo-fascist way it considers them inferior for being immigrants, speak of.
Is that democracy? Is it democracy to assault the legislative power because he lost a presidential election?
The one who sends to kill an innocent people, with their children, their mothers, their elderly, like the one in Gaza, in order to build a luxurious resort there, cannot talk about respect for human rights and human dignity.
Respect for human dignity is asked by the government that denied oxygen, in the midst of the covid-19 to the people it says it is going to protect? Does it understand that when it launches an army against its own people to crush the opinion, when what they ask for is a just and humane treatment?
Cuba's Political Bureau member and Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla said in X that this memorandum only “reinforces the aggression and the economic blockade that punishes all the Cuban people and is the main obstacle to our development. It is a criminal behavior that violates the human rights of an entire nation”.
