In 2014, Latin America and the Caribbean were declared a Zone of Peace. In this territory, countries do not sanction each other or threaten each other with nuclear arsenal ships. They do not attempt to delegitimize legally established governments, but rather support them, because offering a hand to a state is also helping its people.
These days, when Venezuela is under military siege by the U.S. empire, and Cuba knows it is continually harassed by the same enemy, their peoples forget the distance and build bridges to realize the shared dreams of Fidel and Chávez, which were also the aspirations of Bolívar and Martí: a united America, from the Rio Grande to Patagonia.
A ROUTE FOR SOLIDARITY
Like the peace that moves through the Caribbean, pure white, even though saltpeter tries to defile it... And in the cabin, in the center, watching over the cargo, those eyes—Chávez's—launch not missiles, but messages, to remind the world that Our America is not alone.
Thus, while U.S. ships and submarines point their guns at Venezuela, the ship Manuel Gual departed from the port of La Guaira, later receiving the Mariel Special Development Zone, in the presence of members of the Political Bureau of the Party's Central Committee, Prime Minister Manuel Marrero Cruz, and the first secretary of the Party in Artemisa, Gladys Martínez Verdecia, as well as Yudí Mercedes Rodríguez Hernández, member of the Secretariat of the Central Committee and head of its Department of Services, and the Venezuelan ambassador to the island, Orlando Maneiro.
This is the first voyage of the shipping and trade route of the ALBA-TCP countries, in response to the need for a regional maritime transport solution raised at the 24th Summit of the alliance in December 2024.
This "brave crew" is, in the words of the interim Minister of Domestic Trade and Foreign Investment, Carlos Luis Jorge Méndez, the bearer "not only of a valuable cargo of material goods, but above all of the sincere affection of the people and government of Venezuela towards Cuba."
"It is," he said, "a reminder that our peoples, when they unite, are stronger and freer (...) a commitment to a shared future, joint development, and the dream that our nations can prosper on the basis of complementarity and unity, without depending on anyone but the strength of our own peoples.
"May every ship that sails the Caribbean on this route serve to honor the memory of Fidel and Chávez and (...) to promote the certainty that we are building together a more just, sovereign, and prosperous future for our peoples. While some impose blockades and sanctions, we open paths of brotherhood," he said, while reiterating Cuba's rejection of the deployment of U.S. military forces and resources in the Caribbean and the disinformation war they are waging to justify aggression against the South American nation.
More than 6,100 tons of products, such as food supplies and animal feed, fertilizers, and seeds, arrived in the containers of the Manuel Gual. With this inaugural voyage of the ALBA route, the experience becomes a commercial model that will reduce logistics costs, promote new productive niches, expand the market for producers, and generate direct benefits for consumers.
However, it is not only a regional tool for economic independence, as Fidel and Chávez dreamed of when they created ALBA, but also a demonstration of solidarity, complementarity, and collaboration in facing social challenges, according to Orlando Maneiro.
It is an expression of the commitment and political will of the heads of state and government of the member countries to integration based on principles of equity and resistance to imperialism, he said.
After this voyage, the ALBA ship will arrive at various destinations in Latin America and the Caribbean to establish the first regular maritime routes and thus lay the foundations for a sovereign logistics network.
CUBA WILL NEVER BE SILENCED IN THE FACE OF INJUSTICE
The Cuban Institute of Friendship with the Peoples (ICAP), together with the Cuban Chapter of the Anti-Fascist International, showed its unconditional support this weekend throughout the country for the people of Venezuela, threatened by the U.S. military deployment in the Caribbean.
In the capital, the meeting was chaired by Teresa Amarelle Boué, member of the Political Bureau of the PCC and Secretary General of the Federation of Cuban Women; Inés María Chapman Waugh, Deputy Prime Minister; Fernando González Llort, Hero of the Republic and president of ICAP; and Orlando Miguel Maneiro, ambassador of the South American nation.
Under the premise that "Venezuela is not a threat, Venezuela is hope," the statements on drug trafficking and paramilitarism, without legal basis, promoted by the U.S. administration, which seek to violate the sovereignty, territorial integrity, and self-determination of the sister country, were condemned.
At the meeting, Fernando González Llort stated that ICAP supports the actions that the government of Nicolás Maduro decides to implement to guarantee the country's security: "Keep in mind that Venezuela is not alone. Cuba will never remain silent in the face of injustice; we will defend the truth, equality, and the rights of our Venezuelan brothers and sisters."
Santiago is also on the side of the birthplace of Bolívar and Chávez, as demonstrated at an event attended by, among others, internationalists from the island who served in that land.
"I fondly remember the welcome I received from the brotherly Venezuelan people when I provided medical assistance in 2003," said Dr. Arelis Machado Elías, while denouncing that imperialism "cannot stand progressive ideas enduring among the peoples."
The people of Cienfuegos, for their part, demanded an end to hostility against Venezuela and Latin America, which is, as was made clear there, evidence of the extraterritorial, colonial, and regional peace-violating nature of imperialist actions.
From the La Rotonda cinema in Santa Clara, a call was made to respect the region as a Zone of Peace and free of weapons of mass destruction. Meanwhile, the people of Bayamo raised their voices as a bastion of dignity. Their words of solidarity, sharp as an insurgent machete, built a bridge across the Caribbean to embrace Venezuela, threatened under the pretext of false ghosts of drug trafficking. Ciego de Ávila was also the scene of solidarity and internationalist support.
"If the Yankees were fair, instead of a threat to their national security, they would recognize that Venezuela is a hope for other Third World peoples. But we can't ask for pears from an elm tree," said young Carla López at the ICAP headquarters in Guantánamo.
Camaguey also demanded that hands be kept off that country, with which the Cuban people have had a special relationship for more than two decades.
The event also reiterated the right of peoples to self-determination and to democratically choose their path.
