Cuba’s Strength In the Face of Aggressions

Elio Delgado Legon

HAVANA TIMES — In one of my previous articles published by Havana Times, I wrote that, as I saw it, Cuba was not an enemy of the United States. Cuba could not be this – it has never attacked any country or waged wars against anyone. On the contrary, it has sought to develop a policy of friendship towards all peoples of the world and comes to the aid of anyone who asks for help – even the people of the United States.

The government of the United States, on the other hand, doing everything in its power to keep the revolution from succeeding, supporting Fulgencio Batista’s dictatorship with advisors and weapons, openly declared itself an enemy of Cuba’s revolutionary government on the very 1st of January of 1959.

I won’t enumerate the acts of aggression against Cuba perpetrated by the United States – these are well-known. It is a sad story of terrorist actions organized by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), actions whose mere mention is enough to anger one, ranging from the organization of armed terrorist bands in the country, through the Bay of Pigs invasion, the bombing of the La Coubre steamer and a Cuban commercial airliner with 73 people on board, to the introduction of plagues that have killed crops, animals and people.

In all cases, Cuba has come out victorious and stronger, even though these acts of aggression have meant the death or mutilation of thousands of Cubans and many steps back in plans to develop the country. No US administration, however, has learned the lesson, and all have insisted on overthrowing the revolution in order to establish a regime that will suit their hegemonic interests in Latin America more adequately.

The United States’ economic, commercial and financial blockade remains unshakably in place and has become a means of persecuting Cuban transactions anywhere in the world. Faced with the evident failure of this policy, condemned at the United Nations almost unanimously, the United States now attempts to influence Cuban youth, hoping that, in the mid or long term, this sector of the population will bring pressures to bear on the country and steer it towards capitalism.

With the pretext of helping people communicate with one another, they have stolen the personal information of thousands of young people who have mobile phone lines and illegally created a kind of Cuban Twitter, in order to send subversive messages to people (without their previous consent) in the hopes of mobilizing them against the revolution. They have finally become convinced, see, that the counterrevolutionary movement they have supported for years is totally discredited and hasn’t secured any support from the masses.

The US leadership doesn’t realize that Cuba isn’t just any old country, that Cuba experienced a revolution that united the people around their leaders and that young people in Cuba are no longer illiterate and know the difference between truth and lies. No one in our country wants to go back to the underdeveloped capitalism that existed before 1959, when infant mortality rates were at 60 for every thousand live births and life expectancy was only 59 years.

It’s true some young people emigrate to developed countries in search of financial improvement, but they are not the majority. The majority chooses to stay in their country and help it move forward, confident the future will be better, in spite of all the obstacles placed in our way.

That is the great strength the revolution evinces in the face of all aggression – past, present and future. Don’t be mistaken: the Cuban people, young and old, are united in defense of their revolution, as was clearly demonstrated this past May 1st. History has demonstrated that the people, united, will never be defeated.