Cuba will always be present for just causes, affirms Díaz-Canel

 

This was one of the ideas developed by the First Secretary of the Communist Party and President of the Republic, Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez, in an interview granted to the prominent Latin American intellectual Atilio Borón, for the Argentine radio stations Madres de la Plaza de Mayo and the National University of Avellaneda, which was also reproduced in several community radio stations in Venezuela, Argentina, Ecuador and other countries.

  The President reflected on the economic, commercial and financial blockade of the US government against the Cuban people; the confrontation with COVID-19; the acts of vandalism of July 11 and other events that are part of the destabilizing campaign of the White House and its intelligence agencies, among other current issues.

  He recalled that the blockade of Cuba must be seen today with the surname of intensified, due to the 243 measures applied by the Trump administration and maintained unalterably by the Biden administration.

And this tightened blockade, the US government, using intoxication laboratories, is mixing it "with an intense aggressiveness (...), based on an unconventional war, an intense media war, where there is a whole effort to discredit any conquest, any fact, to manipulate any decision taken in Cuba or any event occurring in our country".

  And all this -he further pointed out- is based on campaigns of lies, double standards, hypocrisy, disinformation and attacking very sensitive issues such as migration, democracy and human rights; in addition to a provocative behavior of the U.S. Embassy in Cuba that is a gross departure from the role that a diplomatic mission should play.

  In the social networks - Díaz-Canel commented to the interviewer - "there is a virtual Cuba that has nothing to do with the reality that our country is living, with the sense of resistance, the humanist and solidarity vocation, the dignity and heroism of the Cuban people.

  "Fidel always told us that a better world was possible and we have always shared and defended that maxim of Fidel; but I tell you that in the current circumstances, for a better world to be possible, we also have to make the virtual world improve, because really a virtual world loaded with banality, loaded with vulgarity and loaded with hatred and lies cannot then reflect that world we all want to improve."

  On COVID-19, the President recalled that in the worst moments, the US government tightened the blockade and its media campaign against Cuba. It tried to apply to us -he added, returning to a topic he had addressed at the beginning of the interview- the concepts of "Unconventional Warfare, and tried to apply the theories of Spring Revolution and all this to provoke one of the so-called soft blows in Cuba (...), blows that are not given with any softness".

  "I remember -he added- how the United States Government denied us oxygen at the times when we had oxygen shortages due to a breakage of our plants, and that was criminal. It denied us the entry of pulmonary ventilators and supplies that we needed for our confrontation with COVID-19".

  But in the midst of all these circumstances, of the growing aggressiveness of the U.S., "the first thing we defended was the lives of the people and, in the midst of all this rigor, the main resources that the country had were used to confront COVID-19".

  By the way, he referred to all the country's work in the prevention and control of the pandemic, which included the manufacture of our own vaccines produced by our scientists and scientists. It was an intense work that has allowed -he pointed out- Cuba to be today "one of the three countries with more vaccinated population with at least one dose, with more than 99 percent; Cuba is today among the six or seven countries that have more vaccinated population with a complete scheme, which in our case is three doses and reaches more than 89.6 percent of the population; we already have more than 60 percent of the population vaccinated with another booster dose.

  "Cuba -he added- was the first country in the world to vaccinate infant-juvenile populations over two years of age and there are already scientific researches that are giving possibilities to start vaccinating the population under two years of age".

 

   And in the midst of all this resistance - the Cuban President reflected late in the interview - Cuba was the one that "sent medical brigades to several countries to face COVID-19, even when COVID-19 was the epicenter in cities, for example, in Italy, in European cities". And Cuba, he said at another time, is giving, is willing to share, if the world needs it, highly effective vaccines. 

  The First Secretary of the Party stressed at another moment of the exchange that here we continue "ratifying the recognition and defense of our essences, which we will not renounce: independence, sovereignty, socialist democracy, peace, economic efficiency -which we have to continue building and perfecting-, and security in the conquests of social justice, which is precisely the socialism we defend in Cuba". 

  In the midst of all this situation -he also said-, we continue "perfecting our mechanisms of democracy, our participatory mechanisms, our mechanisms of popular control".

  And to this "we add a struggle for prosperity that ranges from food to recreation (...); to a higher spiritual wealth, because the issue is not only to solve material problems, we must also grow in the spiritual, in the sentimental, in the emotional; to the welfare that empowers both the functional design and the beauty in the things that are made".

  In his final words to Atilio Borón and the listeners of the radios that were broadcasting the interview, the President sent an "embrace for all Latin American peoples, for all those who in different latitudes of the world and in particular in our America also make Cuba a reason for their lives and by whom we constantly feel supported.

  "We, in the midst of these circumstances, also want to express to the people of Latin America and the Caribbean that the Cuban Revolution will continue defending its conquests, will continue defending socialism, that it will never surrender, that it will never give up and that they can count on the fact that Cuba will always be present for just causes." (Taken from the website of the

Presidency)