Cuba´s chair at OAS will remain empty

Fifty three years ago, the Organization of American States (OAS) expelled Cuba under the pressure of Washington, and although in 2009 the organization changed its decision, Cuba maintains its firm stance not to return to the OAS, an issue that now surfaces with the approach of the Summit of the Americas.

Cuba has many reasons to reject going back to the OAS, but they can be summarized just be recalling the role played by that organization during decades by acting as a platform of Washington to attack, occupy and exploit Latin American and Caribbean countries.

For this reason, Cuban diplomat Raul Roa, known as the Chancellor of Dignity described the OAS as the Ministry of US Colonies. Roa, an outstanding politician and intellectual, defended Cuba for years at the United Nations and died in 1982.

The OAS was created in 1948 during the International American Conference held in Bogota, Colombia. One of its first steps was to approve resolution supporting what it called regional collective intervention in Guatemala in 1954.

Such mercenary aggression, designed by Washington, was aimed at overthrowing the Jacobo Arbenz government and putting an end to the so-called Democracy Spring, under which the Arbenz government adopted a land reform and other measures that benefited his people.

With the consent and silence of the OAS, Cuban cities were bombed in the first years of the Revolution, and the 1961 Bay of Pigs mercenary invasion was orchestrated by the US administration.

And on January 3, 1962, the United States broke relations with Cuba; that same month the OAS passed resolution excluding the island from the inter-American system of nations.

The harmful role played by the OAS makes a long story.

The White House managed to have the OAS adopt, by narrow margin, a resolution allowing an intervention in the Dominican Republic in 1965 to prevent the victory of the Constitutional People´s Movement, and with the OAS complicity or approval, the United States invaded tiny Grenada in 1983 and Panama in 1989.

The OAS really has a long record of dirty actions over the past 60 years, which can be considered a betrayal against the nations of Latin America, said Cuban Revolution leader Fidel Castro in one of his articles published in 2009.

In June of 2009, the OAS General Assembly, held in Pedro Sula, Honduras, decided to put down the shameful resolution that expelled Cuba in 1962. Nearly forty years had come by when it happened, but the Latin American and Caribbean scene was now different, given the existence in the region of governments more committed to their people and with a far-reaching concept of independence.

The Cuban government said that the accord reached at the Honduras meeting was an unquestionable affront to the policy followed by the United States against Cuba since 1959. However, Havana ratified its position not to return to the OAS, which baked the hostile policy implemented by Washington, approved the US economic blockade of the island and stipulated that OAS member nations should break relations with Cuba.

Now, this issue comes to surface as the 7th Summit of the Americas is to be held April 10 and 11 in Panama, in which Cuba will be present for the first time. However, the Cuban position remains the same. The island now bets to new regional integration mechanisms, such as the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our Americas (ALBA); the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR) and the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC).

Strengthening, expanding and finding harmony among those blocs is the road that Cuba has chosen, instead of the illusion of returning to an organization that does not allow any reforms and that has already been sentenced by history. Cuba´s chair at the OAS will remain empty.

(English version of PL Spanish original)