Foreign Minister: “Fabricating excuses is part of the U.S. interventionist policy

 HAVANA, Cuba, Feb 15 (ACN) In a post on X to mark the 127th anniversary of the explosion of the battleship Maine in Havana Harbor, Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla decried the U.S.’s long-lived practice of coming up with pretexts to justify its imperialist and interventionist policy.

“They used the event to intervene in Cuba in 1898 and steal our independence after 30 years of struggle”, he wrote. “Fabricating excuses has always been intrinsic to the U.S. imperialist and interventionist policy."

On February 15, 1898, the sinking of the U.S. battleship USS Maine in Havana waters was blamed on Spain without any evidence to Spain and used by the U.S. government to justify is declaration of war on Spanish colonialism.

This episode contributed to the outbreak of the Spanish-Cuban-American War, which ended with the signing of the Treaty of Paris (1898) and Spain ceding ownership of Cuba, Puerto Rico, the Philippines and Guam to the U.S., thus thwarting Cuban independence after three decades of mambi wars.