Cuba faces significant challenges, however, the Cuban people have repeatedly shown themselves capable of meeting the challenges they take up.
By Isaac Saney
Special Advisor to the Canadian Network on Cuba
Recent events in Cuba illustrate how intense the imperial pressures on the island nation are. It always bears underscoring that every effort to defy imperialism’s dictate and build a new society has raised unrelenting western destabilization and sabotage: from the Haitian Revolution to African, Asian, and Latin American national liberation projects.
Cuba has faced – and is facing – the longest economic siege in history from the most powerful military and economic imperial power that has ever existed. Like the Haitian Revolution, the Cuban Revolution is the unforgivable example that must be destroyed. Washington’s overarching strategy aims at denying and eradicating Cuba’s right to self-determination, sovereignty, and independence. The ultimate goal is to reimpose U.S. domination, hegemony, and tutelage.
Cuba has repeatedly repelled the unceasing all-sided, military, economic, financial, and propagandistic assault by U.S imperialism. The empire has never accepted the verdict of the Cuban people; it has waged an unceasing economic war and campaign of destabilization aimed at restoring U.S. imperialism’s domination and tutelage.
Since the triumph of the Cuban Revolution in 1959, the United States has relentlessly pursued an ongoing assault on the Cuban people, employing both military and economic, including orchestrating invasions, assassinations, and terrorist attacks against civilians, as well as engaging in systematic economic sabotage. This intention was explicitly articulated by Lester D. Mallory, Vice Secretary of State, and a key architect of U.S. Cuba policy. In a now-declassified U.S. State Department memorandum dated April 6, 1960, Mallory stated:
“The only foreseeable means of alienating internal support is through disenchantment and disaffection based on economic dissatisfaction and hardship… every possible means should be undertaken promptly to weaken the economic life of Cuba… denying money and supplies to Cuba, to decrease monetary and real wages, to bring about hunger, desperation, and the overthrow of government.”
Read: Amid blackouts and scarce food, Cuba protests rattle ‘cradle’ of the Revolution
The primary objective of Washington’s strategy is the nullification and eradication of Cuba’s right to self-determination, sovereignty, and independence—aiming to reimpose U.S. domination, hegemony, and tutelage.
The sinister goal is to coerce the Cuban people into submission by strangling the economy, creating shortages, hardships, and exacerbating social inequalities—the very issues the Cuban Revolution has tirelessly worked to eliminate. This strategy seeks to instigate massive social unrest that would then serve as a pretext for U.S. intervention.
Overcoming the deepening global crisis in a manner that prioritizes the well-being of its citizens over the interests of global imperial powers is a significant challenge for any country. This challenge is particularly formidable for Cuba, which grapples with a harsh, all-encompassing commercial, trade, and financial blockade. The U.S. economic war against Cuba extends beyond U.S. borders, affecting businesses from other countries engaged in or seeking trade with Cuba. It stands as the primary impediment to Cuba’s social and economic progress, representing a blatant violation of the human rights of the Cuban people, costing the island nation more than $1 trillion U.S., underscoring its profound and detrimental effects. A poignant testament on the criminality and immorality of the U.S. economic blockade was the November 2nd, 2023, when the United Nations, for the 31st time, overwhelmingly rejected Washington’s economic war with a vote of 187 to 2.
The Cuban government’s response to the current public protests driven by frustrations over shortages of dialogue, discussion and explanation of the causes and measures being employed to resolve the ongoing crisis is to be contrasted with the massive deployment of the police state apparatus that we see so often in the so-called rich world and among its allies. There is no doubt that Washington will spare no efforts to manipulate the current situation in Cuba thought the use of various social media and digital platforms in order to further destabilize the island nation. Moreover, it was recently revealed that U.S. intelligence agencies have been directly intervening in the Cuban economy to artificially inflate prices, stimulate inflation, and cause greater shortages of already scarce goods.
Cuba faces significant – and what for many may seem overwhelmingly- challenges, however, the Cuban people have repeatedly shown themselves capable of meeting the challenges they take up.
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