US punishes Cuba with its blockade, Peruvian communist asserts

 HAVANA, Cuba, Nov 1 (ACN) Manuel Guerra Velasquez, Secretary General of the Communist Party of Peru ( patria roja) is one of the many convinced that the U.S. economic, financial and commercial blockade against Cuba is an excessive act of revenge.

The constant harassment by the U.S. government for the past 60 years is evidence of its interest in trying to wipe out the exemplary socio-economic footprint of the Cuban Revolution, said the political leader in exclusive statements to the Cuban News Agency.

Guerra Velasquez is one of the secretaries, general secretaries and presidents of their respective groups, delegations from 60 countries and 77 political organizations attending the 22nd International Meeting of Communist and Workers' Parties (EIPCO by its Spanish acronym).

At the Havana Convention Center, venue of the forum held on October 27-29, he argued his certainty that the unity of such forces against imperialist hegemonism constitutes a key element in the struggle for the lifting of the U.S. blockade, without limits in its extension.

However, he contrasted the also endless resistance of the Cuban people to such a siege and their proverbial sense of solidarity even in the midst of the blockade and the battle for the survival of the COVID-19 pandemic, when Cuba sent 58 brigades of doctors and health personnel to 42 countries and territories, some of them European, to help face it.

Guerra Velasquez recalled and thanked the presence of Cuban medical brigades to respond to the effects of the Yungay earthquake in 1970, the most destructive earthquake in the history of Peru, which caused the death of more than 50,000 people.

He particularly emphasized the gesture of Commander-in-Chief Fidel Castro to donate blood for the victims of that catastrophe in an extensive area of approximately 450 km. long and 200 km. wide of the Peruvian coast and highlands, which in a matter of minutes destroyed the city of Yungay.