UNITED NATIONS, Nov 2 (NNN-ACN) — Every year since 1992, Cuba has presented to the United Nations General Assembly the report on the economic, commercial and financial blockade imposed by the United States of America against the island, which remains intact due to the genocidal policy of more than 60 years ago against the Caribbean island, and which disrespects the will of the vast majority of the countries that vote in the international body in favor of its lifting.
Cuban foreign minister Bruno Rodriguez Parrilla recently presented in Havana, before the national and foreign press, the document entitled “Necessity of putting an end to the economic, commercial and financial blockade imposed by the United States of America against Cuba” on the main damages caused from August 2021 to February 2022, and which reveals losses of 3.8 billion dollars, a record figure for seven months.
On Nov 2 and 3, Rodriguez Parrilla will present this report for the 30th time in the General Assembly, which is proof that this blockade is the central element that defines the U.S. policy towards the island, tightened during the administration of President Donald Trump and maintained unchanged by the current administration of Joe Biden.
Such economic warfare follows the legacy of Deputy Secretary of State Lester D. Mallory’s memorandum of April 6, 1960, which sought “to provoke disillusion and discouragement through economic dissatisfaction and hardship (…) to weaken economic life by denying Cuba money and supplies in order to reduce nominal and real wages, provoke hunger, despair and the overthrow of the government.”
To achieve these goals, President John F. Kennedy decreed the total blockade on Feb 3, 1962, as part of the so-called Operation Mongoose at the end of 1961, which meant a master plan of terrorist actions and subversive campaigns of all kinds to give the pretext of an alleged internal crisis and carry out a direct invasion.
Since then, U.S. administrations have maintained or increased actions aimed at economic choking. In 1992 they passed the Torricelli Act to totally prevent subsidiary trade with the Greater Antilles and impose sanctions on foreign ships visiting the island.
In March 1996, the Helms-Burton Act was signed, and since 2019, the then President Trump decided to apply its Chapter III, which extends measures and high fines against third countries, companies and banks that trade with the Cuban government, as well as including 243 additional pressure measures and placing the country once again on the spurious list of those that support terrorism.
Nevertheless, the blockade enforces its policy that works every time the country of the North needs to make some flexibility in terms of medicines, under licenses that are almost always delayed by the bureaucratic machine, even in the case of emergencies to save the lives of the sick, and since the 1990s it has allowed the purchase of food in cash and without facilities in U.S. banks.
The current head of the White House, Joe Biden, far from expressing his support for the cessation of such harassment, which did not produce results as he declared when he was vice president during Barack Obama’s term, is increasing similar practices against Venezuela, Nicaragua, Iran and North Korea, among others that do not follow his orders.
In a complex world scenario, our nation will fight and win another moral and political battle by presenting once again before the UN General Assembly the report against the genocidal blockade, which details the relentless persecution by the US government against financial transactions involving Cuba and which have affected practically all sectors of the economy. — NNN-ACN
