On September 29, 1962, the Council of Ministers of the Revolutionary Government of Cuba issued a statement in response to a joint resolution of the U.S. Congress authorizing President John F. Kennedy to use arms against the island if it extended subversive or aggressive activities to any part of the Western Hemisphere and created a military capacity of external support that threatened the security of the United States.
In addition, our country was accused of developing large military capabilities that endangered the nations of the region in favor of the alleged hegemonic interests of international communism.
The statement affirmed that the island would never use its legitimate means of defense for aggressive purposes that would compromise U.S. security and pointed out that if the government of the country of the North did not harbor aggressive intentions against our homeland, it would not be interested in the quantity, quality or type of our weapons.
It also pointed out that if Washington were capable of giving effective and satisfactory guarantees regarding the integrity of our territory and ceased its subversive and counterrevolutionary activities, Cuba would not need to strengthen its defense, it would not even need an army, and all those resources that this implies would be gladly invested in the economic and cultural development of the nation.
This anti-Cuban media and political offensive was not an isolated event and it did correspond to a plan in the style of the mercenary invasion of Bay of Pigs, defeated the previous year, roughly copied in Operation Mongoose approved on November 30, 1961 by the then President Kennedy and his brother Robert, Attorney General, with which they hoped to get rid of the thorn of Bay of Pigs and in less than a year overthrow the Revolution.
Precisely in late September, according to Mongoose, counterrevolutionary uprisings were to begin throughout the country and actions of sabotage and attacks on military units were to be generalized, while in the international arena political and media campaigns would be developed with the support of the OAS and lackeys of the U.S. to justify an American military intervention for the month of October, actions that were neutralized by the State Security Bodies and the Armed Forces of the Revolution with the support of the people.
Starting in the 1970s, Operation Mongoose and other plans against the national territory were declassified, proving the reasoning of then Cuban President Osvaldo Dorticos, who on October 8, 1962 at the United Nations denounced that the Caribbean government and people were fully convinced that they were under the imminence of a military aggression by the US government and therefore had the right to acquire the weapons they considered necessary.
Operation Mongoose finally had to be dismissed because of an unexpected event for the US strategists: the October Crisis, due to the existence in Cuba of Soviet intermediate-range atomic rockets , established by agreement between Cuba and the USSR because of, among other reasons, the US invasion plans.
In that complex historical context that foreshadowed the October Crisis, 60 years ago, our country fought the first chapter of what would become a diplomatic and political battle, when Cuba responded to those attempts to intimidate our people with a joint resolution of the US Congress, authorizing aggression and genocide against the Homeland.
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