Cuba Gets Some Powdered Milk from Spanish Solidarity Group

The Alhucema Solidarity Initiatives Association based in Seville, Spain also sends medical supplies.

By 14ymedio

HAVANA TIMES – The Alhucema Association of Solidarity Initiatives in Seville, in the Spanish municipality of Morón de la Frontera, twinned with Morón de Ciego de Ávila since 1995, delivered medical supplies and powdered milk this Tuesday. The items, reports Invasor, were acquired by collection over the last two years in the “solidarity” fair Qué Linda es Cuba. This organization dedicates 20% of its income, says the official press, to “financing the trips and purchasing donations” for the Island, not only for its “twin” city,” but also for other “campaigns,”such as “contributions” of syringes for vaccination against Covid-19 and for “repairing the damage” – it indicates, without details – of the explosion of the Saratoga Hotel in Havana.

The Association members will not only deliver the donations but will also participate in the International Seminar for Peace and for the Abolition of Foreign Military Bases that will be held in Guantánamo on May 4 and 5. There are two military bases in Spain that are shared with the United States: an air force base in Morón de la Frontera and a naval station in Rota. The US ceased to have control over these bases in 1998.

The organization has helped Cuba on other occasions, the local press reports, although not by much. Two years ago, it delivered health supplies worth 3,000 euros to two hospitals, and four years ago, 1,000 euros worth of supplies together with the Maximiliano Tornet Association, from Huelva, also in Andalusia.

More advantageous for the Island is the donation of the French association Cuba Coopération France, which, according to Prensa Latina on Sunday, raised a total of 63,000 euros to “support vulnerable sectors” and will send a container of powdered milk to the country.

According to the official media, the organization states that the “immediate objective” is to collect 76,000 euros “in order to send a second shipment of powdered milk, aimed at alleviating the impact of the American blockade* on the population, in particular children and the elderly.”

The first container, however, will not arrive until mid-June, so the powdered milk situation will not improve in the coming days. Last March, the Government hurried to reassure the population, saying that the import of a total of 1,750 tons of food from several countries – 500 from the United States – would guarantee its availability until April.

In February, for the first time in its history, the Cuban government formally requested help from the UN World Food Program to obtain milk for children under the age of seven.

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*Translator’s note: There is, in fact, no US ‘blockade’ on Cuba, but this continues to be the term the Cuban government prefers to apply to the ongoing US embargo. During the Cuban Missile Crisis the US ordered a Naval blockade (which it called a ‘quarantine’) on Cuba in 1962, between 22 October and 20 November of that year. The blockade was lifted when Russia agreed to remove its nuclear missiles from the Island. The embargo had been imposed earlier in the same year in February, and although modified from time to time, it is still in force.

Translated by Regina Anavy for Translating Cuba.

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