Cuba does not fear the measures to reinforce the US blockade
Declaration of the Cuban Government released Wednesday, in which it energetically repudiates the measures announced by the government of the United States, which reinforce the US economic blockade imposed on Cuba more than half a century ago, and it reiterates that it will not allow itself to be intimidated, nor distracted from the essential and urgent tasks of the development of the national economy and the construction of socialism.
Declaration of the Revolutionary Government
The Revolutionary Government of the Republic of Cuba repudiates in the strongest terms the measures announced by the Government of the United States on June 4, 2019, with which it reinforces the economic blockade imposed on Cuba for more than 60 years, at a cost to the Cuban economy that in 2018 exceeded 134 billion dollars at current prices and the figure of 933 billion dollars, taking into account the depreciation of the dollar against the value of gold on the international market.
This new escalation, with effect from June 5, reinforces even more the harsh restrictions already suffered by U.S. citizens to travel to Cuba, it adds absolute prohibitions for vessels of all kinds from the United States and it immediately prohibits cruise ships from visiting our country.
The intention continues to be to wrest political concessions from the Cuban nation, through the suffocation of the economy and damage to the population’s living standards. In this particular case, the measures also seek to prevent the people of the United States from becoming aware of the Cuban reality and thus to defeat the effect of the slanderous propaganda that is produced daily against our country.
They are actions that disregard the opinion of most Americans, whose interest in knowing Cuba and exercising their right to travel was evidenced in the 650,000 who visited us in 2018, along with half a million Cubans living in the United States.
On April 17, National Security Advisor John Bolton, on the occasion of an anti-Cuban show that included the presence of defeated mercenaries in Bay of Pigs and relatives of the henchmen of Fulgencio Batista’s tyranny, had warned that his Government would restrict non-family travel to Cuba. it is known that this individual has managed to take over U.S. foreign policy towards the Western Hemisphere, which constitutes the main threat to peace and stability in the entire region.
The United States promotes the Monroe Doctrine without modesty, with which it seeks to deny sovereign equality and the right to self-determination of each and every nation in the hemisphere.
The recent assaults against Cuba are argued under new pretexts. The most notorious among them is the slanderous accusation that Cuba intervenes militarily in Venezuela, a lie that has been publicly and consistently rejected by the Cuban Government.
They go to the unscrupulous extreme of proposing to Cuba to betray its convictions and the principles that have accompanied the foreign policy of the Cuban Revolution, in exchange for promises of negotiation or relief from the draconian and criminal measures that make up the economic blockade.
Cuba’s solidarity with Constitutional President Nicolás Maduro Moros, the Bolivarian and Chavista Revolution and the civil-military union of its people is not negotiable. The more than 20,000 Cuban collaborators who voluntarily and selflessly render social services in that country, most of them in the health sector, will remain there as long as they are welcomed by the Venezuelan people, cooperating with that sister nation.
For Cubans, treachery is not an option. We are not naïve, it has been 150 years of arduous struggle for our independence, having to face from the first day the hegemonic ambitions of U.S. imperialism.
Cuba will not allow itself to be intimidated, nor distracted from the essential and urgent tasks of the development of our economy and the construction of socialism. Closely united, we will be able to face the most challenging adversities. They will not be able to suffocate us, nor will they be able to stop us.
Havana, 5 June 2019
(Taken from ACN in Spanish)
Written by Radio Grito de Baire
