Cuba Isn’t US Property

Elio Delgado Legon

HAVANA TIMES – When I heard the US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s speech, criticizing the OAS because they were dealing with women’s reproductive rights, announcing that they would cut funding for this reason, saying that the OAS should be dealing with the crisis in Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua, I couldn’t help but be reviled by this figure of the Empire, the same disgust I feel when I see OAS Secretary-General, Luis Almagro.

They are both loathsome beings in my eyes; the first for his arrogance, thinking he is the owner of Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua, as well as of the OAS. The second, for his submission to the Empire, turning the organization he leads into a real ministry of colonies, like our “Foreign Minister of Dignity”, Raul Roa Garcia, so accurately called it back in his day.

So as to interfere in Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua’s national affairs, they call these governments dictatorships who violate human rights; however, there is more democracy in any one of these three countries than there is in the US, a country where international consortiums rule, where corruption is so deeply rooted that it is no longer considered corruption.

Let’s take one example: every year, thousands of people die in the US every year, victims of gunshots, and large groups of citizens are demanding laws that at least limit and control the sale of firearms. However, the National Rifle Association bribes congressmen and congresswomen and even presidential candidates, so that people are still free to own a firearm, without any restrictions, as stipulated in the second ammendment of the Constitution, which dates back to the 18th century, when times were different. This is called corruption is any other country, so they have no right to call leaders of other countries “corrupt”, without any proof.

When it comes to democracy, when understood to be the people’s government or for the people, there is more democracy in Cuba than there is in the US, where they don’t take their citizens’ opinions into account at all.

Just because there are different political parties, that doesn’t mean that there is democracy. The Cuban government doesn’t have electoral parties, yet it has been approved by the vast majority of the Cuban people, and when the new Constitution was recently held up for a referendum, it won over 86% of the vote. And, every law and important decision is consulted with the population, their opinions being taken into consideration.

In Venezuela and Nicaragua, their presidents were also elected in the first round of elections by the vast majority. What really ticks off the Imperial “boss” is the fact that these governments are more concerned about workers, the poor, the people who have always been exploited, than they are about large transnational corporations, which only plunder the wealth of our nations.

Cuba has been threatened with the full application of Title III of the Helms-Burton Act, which would tighten the blockade that has the country in a noose even further, because it is more like a genocidal economic war that violates the rights of an entire population, rather than just a blockade.

US attacks on Cuba have led in past decades to over 3000 fatalities and almost 3000 cripples. Plus, they have introduced plagues into this country so as to do away with our people’s food source, such as the plague of African swine fever, which wiped out all the pigs on the island, one of the main sources of protein in Cubans’ diets.

Other plagues have causes great damage to different crops, severely harming national food production. Listing all of the damage done to our economy would be a never-ending task, but I can’t forget to mention the introduction of dengue hemorrhagic fever, which resulted in the death of 101 children and also many adults. It’s a criminal act that words cannot describe, but it must be weighing heavily on the consciences of the governments that authorize such dreadful acts.

Even so, even if we were to forget all of these attacks, Mike Pompeo is talking about the crisis in Cuba, and what he says the OAS should be doing, but I want to remind him that neither this organization, nor Cuba, are US property.