Back to the Cold War

By Elio Delgado Legon

HAVANA TIMES — He was surrounded by the most reactionary and backward of the Right, the so-called Cuban-Americans, by murderers and terrorists who are responsible for thousands of deaths and maimed people in Cuba and the children of torturers from the Batista dictatorship, by such sad memories for the Cuban people.

The US president gave a speech in Miami on Friday June 16th, in which he spoke about Cuba, without knowing Cuba, just to please this select audience and, analysts say, with a well-defined objective in mind: to get votes in Congress from the reactionary congressmen with Cuban roots, who don’t know Cuba either.

Reversing history’s wheel, taking up a policy again, which former president Barack Obama labeled a failure and a holdover of the Cold War, is not a smart thing to do, by any means. But, we can’t expect less from somebody who is set on leading a nuclear power as if it were a real estate company.

Donald Trump wants to revoke some of the measures the previous US government adopted and has promised to apply the laws of the blockade to their fullest extent. Why? According to him, it’s so that human rights are respected in Cuba and so that the current political system is changed for another which resembles and is more similar to that of the United States.

With regard to the first point, the Cuban government has already repeated its willingness to enter a dialogue, as equals, about the respect for human rights in both countries, because the greatest violation of the Cuban people’s human rights is the trade, economic and financial embargo which the US government has imposed on Cuba. Furthermore, the place in Cuba where human rights aren’t respected is precisely the area which is illegally occupied by them at the naval base in Guantanamo, where prisoners are tortured and are held captive without trial, indefinitely, which is completely illegal and inhumane.

Plus, if we are going to argue about human rights, we can remind them of the racial discrimination US citizens suffer and the murders of black citizens by white policemen, the millions of people who don’t have access to healthcare, the exploitation immigrants are subjected to, making them work never-ending days for poor salaries; job discrimination for women, who earn less than men even though they do the same jobs, child labor exploitation and the gun violence which leaves thousands of innocent people dead every year.

We could also reproach them for their government’s abuse of taxpayers’ money which is spent freely to attack and intervene in other countries, where millions of innocent people die and also a lot of young US soldiers who don’t know why they go to these wars. Those who don’t die, return traumatized for the rest of their lives and are abandoned too, because the State doesn’t give them the medical attention they need, which leads many of them to commit suicide. A country with all of these weaknesses can’t be the judge of human rights in any other country.

With regard to our own political system, we have one the people chose when the 1976 Constitution was approved by referendum, because it’s the most democratic system that exists, without fraud, without unnecessary spending on campaign propaganda, without demagogy, without political parties or politicians like those we had in the past and who nobody wants to remember, or only remember so we never have them again.

Our political system being better than the one in the United States, proven by the fact that today’s president Donald Trump didn’t receive the majority of the US people’s vote, as he had nearly three million votes less than his opponent.

If Donald Trump wants to talk with Cuba about getting a better agreement, like he said, he will have to hear all of the truth, about our country and about his own too. We will see who is right and whether it’s a smart move on his part to go back to the Cold War.