The Argentinean Movement of Solidarity with Cuba (MASCuba) categorically rejected the remarks made by President Donald Trump regarding Cuba during his speech at the UN General Assembly.
During his address at the opening segment of the 81st session of the major international forum, Trump did not hesitate to label the island’s government “an absolutely failed state,” adding that it “will fall due to strong historical pressure” exerted by his administration.
The president also declared that “freedom will come to Cuba” and accused the Cuban government of coordinating with left-wing radicals and communist networks in the United States. He also made sarcastic remarks about the island’s electricity crisis—a crisis actually caused by the oil blockade he himself ordered, backed by threats of sanctions against third countries that export oil to the Cuban market.
Furthermore, he threatened to use force against any Latin American country to protect U.S. national interests.
“The only truth he spoke was that ‘Cuba is under strong pressure’ — there is no doubt about that; threats against companies and countries to prevent them from supplying oil to the island are the cause of the country’s lack of electricity for most of the day,” MASCuba maintains.
Since the abduction of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores on January 3, only one oil tanker has arrived out of the fifty the country should have received, the solidarity organization notes.
It adds that more than seven thousand containers — filled with medical supplies, spare parts, solar panels, and many other essential items that have already been paid for — remain stranded in various ports because shipping companies refuse to deliver them for fear of U.S. economic sanctions and other punitive measures. “Cuba is not a failed state; Cuba is a country under attack — subjected to a genuine economic, political, and media war — that endures because the people stand united with their government,” asserts the Movement, which described Trump’s speech as deranged and psychotic.
The real issue, it states, is that Cuba and its people demonstrate daily that there is a way of living other than the exploitation of humanity by major hegemonic groups — that politics can be conducted by placing human beings, rather than obscene profits, at the center stage.
Washington’s ruthless economic war is inflicting irreversible damage on the island — such as rising infant mortality, blackouts that worsen families’ living conditions, and shortages of medicines and hospital supplies, among other hardships—yet it is a situation marked by a “dignity that awakens global solidarity,” the Movement emphasizes.
MASCuba demands an end to the blockade against Cuba, its removal from the list of state sponsors of terrorism, and “Oil for Cuba!! NOW!”
