Statement by the Cuban Ministry of Foreign Affairs on the situation in Latin America and the Caribbean

HAVANA, Dec 4 (ACN) Titled "Our America in the face of the onslaught of imperialism and the oligarchies", the Cuban Ministry of Foreign Affairs issued a statement analyzing the current convulsed situation suffered by the people of Latin America and the Caribbean. Below is the full text of the document.

OUR AMERICA IN THE FACE OF THE ONSLAUGHT OF IMPERIALISM AND THE OLIGARCHIES.
The most recent events in the region confirm the U.S. government and reactionary oligarchies as the main perpetrators of the dangerous political and social upheaval and instability in Latin America and the Caribbean.
As the First Secretary of the Cuban Communist Party, Army General Raul Castro, predicted on January 1, 2019: "Those who are enthusiastic about the restoration of imperialist rule in our region should understand that Latin America and the Caribbean have changed and so has the world (...) The region is like a prairie in drought. A spark could cause an uncontrollable fire that would harm the national interests of all.
President Donald Trump proclaims the force of the Monroe Doctrine and appeals to McArthyism to preserve imperialist domination over the region's natural resources, to hinder the exercise of national sovereignty and the aspirations of regional integration and cooperation; to try to re-establish its unipolar hegemony on a world and hemispheric scale; eliminate progressive, revolutionary and alternative models to savage capitalism; reverse political and social conquests and impose neoliberal models, regardless of international law, the rules of the representative democracy, the environment or people' welfare.
American Secretary of State Mike Pompeo threateningly accused Cuba and Venezuela on Monday, December 2, of taking advantage of and helping to increase turmoil in the countries of the region. He misrepresents and manipulates reality and disguises, as a main factor in regional instability, the permanent intervention of the United States in Latin America and the Caribbean.
The legitimate protests and massive popular mobilizations taking place in the continent, particularly in Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador and Brazil, are caused by poverty and growing inequality in the distribution of wealth; the certainty that neoliberal formulas aggravate the exclusionary and unsustainable situation of social vulnerability; the absence or precariousness of health, education and social security services; abuses against human dignity; unemployment and the restriction of labour rights; the privatization, increase in price and cancellation of public services and the growth of citizen insecurity.
They reveal the political systems crisis, the lack of true democracy, the discredit of traditional conservative parties, the protest against the historical corruption typical of military dictatorships and right-wing governments, the scarce popular support for official authorities, the distrust of institutions and the justice system.
They also protest against brutal police repression, the militarization of police under the pretext of protecting crucial infrastructure, the release of repressors from criminal responsibility; the use of war weapons and riot police that cause deaths, serious injuries, including hundreds of young people with irreversible eye injuries from the use of pellets; the criminalization of demonstrations; rapes, beatings and violence against detainees, including minors; and even the murder of social leaders, demobilized guerrillas and journalists.
The United States defends and supports repression against demonstrators on the pretext of safeguarding the so-called "democratic order". The shameful silence of several governments, institutions and very active and critical personalities against the left. The complicity of the big corporate media is shameful.
People rightly ask where democracy and the rule of law are; what do the institutions supposedly dedicated to the protection of human rights do; where is the justice system whose independence is proclaimed?
Let us review some facts. On March 2015, President Barack Obama signed an unusual Executive Order declaring Venezuela "an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security, economy and foreign policy" of the powerful nation. In November 2015, the costly electoral defeat of the left in Argentina occurs.
The neoliberal offensive had a decisive moment in August 2016, with the parliamentary-judicial coup in Brazil against President Dilma Rousseff, the criminalization and imprisonment of the leaders of the Workers Party, and later of former president Luiz Inacio Lula Da Silva, with the active participation of the U.S. Department of Justice, through the Law of Corrupt Practices Abroad, to install a dependent government, willing to reverse important social conquests through neoliberal adjustments, to the nefarious change of the development model, to allow the destruction of the national company and the plundering privatization; to the cheap sale of the country's resources and infrastructure to American transnational corporations.
In late 2017, there was a protest in Honduras against the election result and the terrible repression of it.
On January 2018, the United States aborted the signing of an agreement between the Venezuelan government and the opposition managed from Washington. A month later, the Secretary of State proclaims the validity of the Monroe Doctrine and calls for a military coup against the Bolivarian and Chavista Revolution.
In March 2018, the brutal assassination of Brazilian councilwoman Marielle Franco took place, raising a wave of indignation in her country and the world, from which the dark implications of power groups remain hidden. In April, Lula is imprisoned through spurious legal maneuvers. There is plenty of evidence of USA meddling in Brazilian elections, through specialized companies that use "big data" and polimetric technologies to manipulate the will of individual voters, such as those handled by the ultra-reactionary Steve Bannon and other Israelis.
In this period, judicial proceedings are opened against former Presidents Cristina Fernandez and Rafael Correa. In April 2018, they attempted to destabilize Nicaragua through external interference and the application of unilateral coercive measures.
On August 4, 2018, there was an assassination attempt against President Nicolas Maduro. In January 2019, the self-proclamation of the unknown and corrupt Juan Guaido, organized in Washington, takes place. In March 2019, President Trump renews the Executive Order as he considers Venezuela a threat. On April 30, it is the attempted military coup in Caracas that fails in a resounding manner, and the United States, in revenge, moves up in its unconventional war against the South American nation that resists tenaciously and heroically from the civic-military union of its people.
Throughout the period, the U.S. government applies savage anti-immigrant policies and aggressive behavior, full of hatred, to fuel fear and division in the electorate. Try the xenophobic wall on the border with Mexico, threaten this and Central America with terrible tariffs and sanctions if they do not stop those fleeing poverty and insecurity, and multiply deportations. It cruelly separates thousands of children from their parents, has detained 69,000 minors and tries to expel the children of immigrants born and raised in U.S. territory.
Showing shameless submission to the United States, the far-right government of Brazil headed by Jair Bolsonaro resorted to lies, xenophobic, racist, misogynist and homophobic discourse, combined with delirious projections about social and political phenomena such as climate change, indigenous populations, Amazonian fires and emigration, which have resulted in the repudiation of numerous leaders and organizations. In the government's administration, the social policies that led Brazil during the governments of the Workers' Party to significantly reduce levels of poverty and social exclusion have been dismantled.
Since May 2019, tens of thousands of demonstrators have taken to the streets against cuts in education, pension reforms, discriminatory policies and gender-based violence.
The Brazilian government has meddled in the internal affairs of neighboring countries such as Venezuela, Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay, and has taken hostile positions towards Cuba, in violation of international law. As reported in the Brazilian press on April 2019, the Foreign Ministry issued instructions to 15 of its embassies to coordinate with American ones to urge recipient governments to condemn Cuba in international forums.
For the first time since 1992, Brazil voted this year against, accompanied only by the United States and Israel, the resolution of the UN General Assembly to call for an end to the US economic, commercial and financial blockade against Cuba and for an end to the extraterritorial application of its laws against third states.
At the same time, the Colombian government abstained in the vote on the resolution it has supported since 1992, which calls, at a time when the genocidal blockade of the United States against Cuba and its extraterritorial scope is intensifying, for an end to that blockade. To justify this reprehensible decision, the authorities of that country invoked ungrateful and politically motivated manipulation of Cuba's altruistic, consecrated, discreet and unobjectionable contribution to peace in Colombia, an issue in which our country's conduct is universally recognized. It is well known the broad and critical debate that this fact triggered in that nation, which, in spite of everything, we will continue to support in its efforts to achieve peace.
The American slander of attributing to Cuba supposed responsibilities in the organization of popular mobilizations against neoliberalism in South America constitutes an incredible excuse to justify and harden the blockade and the hostile policy against our people. Likewise, it is useless to hide the failure of the capitalist system, to protect staggering and repressive governments, to hide parliamentary, judicial and police coups; and to awaken the ghost of socialism in order to intimidate the nations. In doing so, it also seeks to justify the repression and criminalization of social protest.
Cuba's only responsibility is that which emerges from the example given by its heroic people in defending its sovereignty, in resisting the most brutal and systematic aggressions, in the invariable practice of solidarity and cooperation with sister nations in Latin America and the Caribbean.
It hurts imperialism that Cuba has shown that there is another possible world and that an alternative model to neoliberalism can be built, based on solidarity, cooperation, dignity, fair distribution of income, equal access to professional advancement, citizen safety and protection and the full liberation of human beings.
The Cuban Revolution is also proof that a closely united people, owner of its country and its institutions, in permanent and profound democracy, can resist victoriously and advance in its development, in the face of the longest aggression and blockade in history.
The coup d'etat in Bolivia, orchestrated by the United States, using OAS and the local oligarchy as vehicles, is a demonstration of the aggressivity of the imperialist attack. Cuba reiterates its condemnation of the coup d'etat, of the brutal repression unleashed and expresses its solidarity with comrade Evo Morales and the Bolivian people.
While the U.S. government continues its unconventional war to try to overthrow the legitimately constituted government of President Nicolas Maduro and invokes the Inter-American Treaty of Reciprocal Assistance (TIAR), Cuba ratifies the unwavering will to maintain cooperation with the Venezuelan government and people.
To the Sandinista government and people of Nicaragua, led by President Daniel Ortega, who faces destabilization attempts and unilateral U.S. coercive measures, we reiterate our solidarity.
The legitimate government of the Commonwealth of Dominica and its PM Roosevelt Skerrit deserves international solidarity and already has that of the Cuban people, at a time when that island is a victim of external meddling that has already provoked violence and aims to thwart the electoral process.
In this complex scenario, the government of Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, in Mexico, faces neoliberalism and defends the principles of non-intervention and respect for sovereignty, while the election of Alberto Fernandez and Cristina Fernandez as President and Vice President in Argentina, expresses the unequivocal rejection of that nation to the neoliberal formulas that impoverished it, indebted it and seriously damaged its people. The liberation of Lula is a triumph of the people, and Cuba reiterates its call for worldwide mobilization to demand his full freedom, the restitution of his innocence and his political rights.
The corruption that characterizes the behavior of the current U.S. government is already unspeakable. Its impact on the Latin American and Caribbean people has a cost in lives, suffering, instability and economic damage.
In the dramatic situation that the region and the world are going through, Cuba reaffirms the principles of sovereignty, non-intervention in the internal affairs of other States and the right of each people to freely choose and build its political system, in peace, stability and justice; without threats, aggressions or unilateral coercive measures and calls for the fulfillment of the postulates of the Proclamation of Latin America and the Caribbean as a Zone of Peace.
Cuba will continue working towards the integration of Our America, which includes making every effort to ensure that the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC), soon to be chaired by Mexico, continues to foster the common interests of our nations by strengthening unity within diversity.
To the relentless onslaught of the most reactionary forces in the hemisphere, Cuba opposes the unwavering resistance of its people together with the will to defend the unity of the nation, its social conquests, its sovereignty and independence, and socialism at whatever price is necessary. We do so with optimism and unshakable confidence in the victory inherited by the Commander in Chief of the Cuban Revolution, Fidel Castro, under the leadership of our Party's First Secretary, Army General Raul Castro, and the leadership of President Miguel Diaz-Canel.
Havana, December 3, 2019.