Cuba's case against the US blockade as put to the United Nations General Assembly vote
MINREX (spanish) | Friday, 4 November 2022 | Click here for original article
Speech by the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla, at the presentation of draft Resolution A/77/L.5, entitled "Need to end the economic, commercial and financial blockade imposed by the United States of America against Cuba", on November 3, 2022.
"I express our heartfelt solidarity with the sister Caribbean nation of Belize that today suffers the ravages of a powerful hurricane.
Mr. president:
Distinguished Permanent Representatives:
Distinguished Delegates:
More than 80% of the current Cuban population was born under the blockade.
Three decades have passed since this Assembly began to demand, every year, the cessation of this policy, typified as an act of genocide and that has the effect "of a permanent pandemic, of a constant hurricane" and is universally rejected.
It is a deliberate act of economic warfare with the purpose of preventing financial income to the country, destroying the government's ability to meet the needs of the population, causing the economy to collapse and creating a situation of ungovernability. As Assistant Secretary of State Mallory proposed in 1960, it seeks to "provoke disappointment and discouragement..., reduce wages..., cause hunger, despair and the overthrow of the government."
Since 2019, the United States government has escalated the fence against our country to an extreme dimension, more cruel and inhuman, to deliberately inflict the greatest possible damage on Cuban families.
In the first 14 months of President Joseph Biden, the damage caused by the blockade reached 6,364 million dollars, more than 15 million a day.
Between August 2021 and February 2022, they set a record, for just seven months, of $3.806 million. In the absence of the blockade, in that period our GDP could have grown by 4.5%.
The accumulated damages in more than 60 years, reach 154 thousand 217 million dollars, at current prices; and, at the value of gold, they amount to 1 billion 391 thousand 111 million, one million million 391 thousand 111 million. What would Cuba be like today, if it had had those resources? What else could we have done? What would our economy look like?
It is impossible to quantify the anguish generated by the blackouts and the instability of the electrical service, shortages and long queues to acquire basic necessities, due to the obstacles to the life projects of families and, especially, of young people.
The blockade also creates the conditions that encourage irregular, disorderly and insecure migration; the painful separation of families; it costs lives of Cuban men and women; and contributes to transnational organized crime and human trafficking.
Mr. president:
During the covid-19 pandemic, the US government applied temporary humanitarian exemptions to countries that were victims of its unilateral coercive measures and other sanctions.
Why were Cubans excluded from this temporary humanitarian relief?
Even worse, while Covid claimed millions of lives on the planet and filled my country with pain, the blockade intensified and generated difficulties and delays for the arrival of essential medical supplies and equipment to face it, in particular, for the industrialization of Cuban vaccines. Even the acquisition of medicinal oxygen in third countries was hindered.
When the blockade prevented the supply of pulmonary ventilators, Cuba developed its national production with its own prototypes.
How could it be explained that a small country like Cuba has been able to defeat Covid-19 with its own resources and vaccines?
At the worst moment of the pandemic and despite our limited resources, we collaborated by sending 58 medical brigades to 42 countries and territories, joining the more than 28,000 of our health professionals who at that time were providing services in 59 nations.
But the blockade affects the national production of antibiotics, analgesics, hypotensives, cancer and heart disease treatments, and other essential medicines, which were previously not lacking on such a scale in our hospitals and pharmacies.
Cuban girls and boys with retinal conditions and glaucoma cannot count on the laser system of the American company IRIDEX CORPORATION in their treatments. Cases that progress to more severe forms run the risk of going blind.
Our children are also unable to use the American-made biological heart valves.
At birth, low-weight babies have to undergo open-chest surgery, since low-caliber catheters are not available, marketed by US firms such as BOSTON SCIENTIFIC.
The United States government has no way of justifying, under any circumstances, a policy that deprives Cuban children with cancer of receiving the ideal chemotherapy treatment.
The feat of saving and preserving life in the midst of such difficult circumstances can only be explained from the governmental and collective effort of our people, for decades, to build a robust science and health system, of a profound humanistic nature and of high quality, accessible to all Cuban men and women, at no cost.
Mr. president:
The blockade has also exacerbated the financial limitations and access to credit to invest, repair and maintain the country's thermoelectric plants and suppliers have increased prices considerably, alleging the risk of carrying out operations with Cuba.
After 26 years of uninterrupted work, the German group Continental Reifen Deutschland GmbH decided to cut off relations with the Cuba Petroleum Union (CUPET).
The French supplier CNIM reported that it would not be able to continue supplying spare parts for the Antonio Guiteras Thermoelectric Power Plant, as they were unable to link with a country subject to sanctions.
The persecution of financial, commercial and investment transactions related to our country is also incessant and obsessive.
Between January 2021 and February 2022 alone, 642 direct actions by foreign banks against the Cuban banking system were registered.
In the last year, a considerable group of banks from third countries refused to process payments to suppliers of the Cuban company ALIMPORT, an importer of food.
Under permits subject to restrictions imposed by law, Cuba can acquire limited agricultural products commercially in this country, but it is obliged to pay in advance, and without access to credit, which is also extremely difficult when, at the same time, hinder our sources of income.
Under these circumstances of financial harassment, the efforts of our government to ensure the regulated family food basket are incalculable.
Cuban entrepreneurs are often denied the use of payment platforms and electronic commerce.
In various latitudes, our nationals are even prevented from opening personal bank accounts, only because of their status as Cubans.
The financial persecution has been further reinforced by the arbitrary and fraudulent inclusion of our country in the State Department's unilateral list of alleged countries that sponsor terrorism, which exponentially raises the so-called Country Risk and forces us to pay for any merchandise even at double the its price in the international market.
Such action is inadmissible against a nation victim of terrorism, which still today suffers the instigation of violence and terrorist acts from US territory; and whose conduct of firm rejection and persecution of any form or manifestation of terrorism is irreproachable and recognized.
It was a lethal measure imposed by the previous Republican government, just 9 days after leaving the White House. The current President could correct it with just one signature. It would be morally correct and attached to the Law.
Mr. president:
The extraterritorial impact of the blockade also harms the sovereignty of the countries that you represent; It violates their national laws, submits them to the decisions of US courts under Title III of the Helms-Burton Act, punishes their businessmen and prevents third-party ships that docked in Cuba from accessing their ports.
It also prohibits subsidiaries of US companies in third countries from trading with Cuba; prevents the export to Cuba of articles produced in any country, when they have 10% or more of US components; and excludes products manufactured in third countries, if they contain Cuban raw materials.
Who could affirm without lying that the United States is a commercial partner of Cuba?
We do not attribute to the blockade all the difficulties that our country faces today; but whoever denies its extremely serious effects and does not recognize that it is the main cause of the deprivation, shortages and suffering of Cuban families would be untrue.
Mr. president:
The United States controls the most powerful media outlets and hegemonic digital technology platforms, and uses them in a virulent communications campaign of disinformation and discredit against Cuba.
It resorts to the most diverse methods of unconventional warfare and places our children, young people and artists in the target of political and media bombardment.
The US government allocates millions of dollars, tens of millions of dollars from the federal budget and covert funds and recruits government institutions and private companies to finance political operators who carry out campaigns of disinformation, hate and destabilization in digital networks against Cuba.
On October 24, the American transnationals Twitter and Meta (Facebook), which now have among their main directors the former campaign manager of an anti-Cuban Republican senator; They simultaneously deployed censorship actions against public media and Cuban users. They labeled publications that have seen their reach on the networks limited and eliminated critical accounts of the destabilizing operations against our country. It was a selective, coordinated action that violates the right to free expression of Cubans and that expresses the subordination of these companies to the discretion of US politicians.
Mr. president:
President Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez affirmed on July 22, at the Closing of the Ninth Period of Ordinary Sessions of the National Assembly of People's Power in its IX Legislature, and I quote: "Cuba's trajectory in the development of its relations foreign affairs demonstrates that the promotion of peace, cooperation and solidarity are defining characteristics of our international projection. We have shown it in our Latin American and Caribbean region, and also in other latitudes”. End of quote.
The current US government does not have its own policy towards Cuba. It acts by inertia and continues the inhumane policy of "maximum pressure" established during the Presidency of Donald Trump.
In recent months, he has taken steps to adjust some of the irrational restrictions on US flights to Cuba, the sending of remittances and consular procedures.
They are positive actions, but very limited in their scope and application. They do not modify, in any way, the economic, commercial, or financial policy or measures.
The extremely tightened blockade continues to be the central element that defines the policy of the United States towards Cuba.
The Cuban government is willing to advance towards a better understanding with that of the United States and to develop civilized and cooperative relations, based on mutual respect and without undermining our sovereignty.
I reiterate the call made by Army General Raúl Castro Ruz, in 2017, to the government of the United States, to remove and I quote “the obstacles that prevent or restrict the ties between our peoples, families and citizens of both countries. We must learn the art of living together in a civilized way, with our differences”, he concluded.
Even in the midst of the inhumane limitations imposed on us by the blockade, Cuba will never renounce its socialist system of social justice, confirmed in a free and universal Constitutional Referendum in 2019.
We will always defend the full exercise of all human rights by all our citizens.
We will never accept the attempts to impose pretended paradigms of democracy or another culture foreign to the Cuban one.
With the same energy that we defend the inalienable right of each country to decide its political, economic and social system, we demand respect for ours.
Faithful to the legacy of Commander in Chief Fidel Castro Ruz, in Cuba there will always be and I quote: a "government of the people, for all the people" and "a Revolution of the humble, with the humble and for the humble."
The most recent example of the exercise of real, participatory and inclusive democracy in our country serves as undeniable evidence.
In a popular referendum, the Cuban people voted in favor of a new modern and progressive Family Code, one of the most advanced in the world, irrefutable proof of the vocation to listen to all Cuban men and women, without any type of discrimination.
Our country does not stop renewing itself, based on the principle of “changing everything that needs to be changed”, in the construction of a sovereign, independent, socialist, democratic, prosperous and sustainable Nation; in the development of our "socialist state, of law and social justice, democratic, independent and sovereign".
We advocate for the increased participation of our youth and all citizens in the nation's political, economic, social, and cultural processes.
We advance in the decentralization of the economy and the empowerment of the socialist state company; thousands of small and medium-sized private and state companies have been created; science, technology and innovation, the computerization of society and social communication are promoted as pillars of government management; Greater opportunities are offered to foreign investment, within our development policy.
Cuba renews itself all the time. What remains immovable, anchored in the past and isolated, is the blockade.
We highly value the support of numerous governments, personalities, solidarity movements, political, social and popular organizations from around the world, in the face of the injustice being committed against Cuba.
Mr. president:
We deeply appreciate the commitment and expressions of Cubans and descendants of Cubans in all latitudes, including in the United States, whose voices are raised in defense of the sovereign rights of Cuba and in rejection of the application of this policy.
We also thank all those who have expressed their support for our country in the difficult situation of recovery from the serious damage left by Hurricane "Ian" in the western provinces last September.
Hundreds of thousands of our compatriots suffered its impact. 119 thousand 48 homes were damaged, large areas of crops were destroyed and severe damage was recorded to the electrical and communications infrastructure, among other damage.
We will continue to accept with gratitude the emergency aid that is offered, without conditions, to our people.
We appreciate the noble humanitarian efforts of American organizations, movements, and groups; of congressmen and personalities, from the solidarity movement and civil society organizations, who, given the magnitude of the aftermath of the hurricane, have asked the government of President Joseph Biden to temporarily lift the unilateral coercive measures against our country, to authorize the processing of donations by US banks and the purchase of materials to rebuild the affected areas.
Mr. president:
Distinguished Permanent Representatives:
Distinguished delegates:
Millions of Cubans are watching right now what is happening in this room. They have listened to your interventions and are attentive to your votes.
On your behalf, I must thank the declarations rejecting the blockade made by dozens of Heads of State and Government and other Dignitaries, in the general debate of this period of sessions and also by the speakers in the sessions yesterday and this morning.
By shortly casting your vote, you will not only be deciding on a matter of vital interest to Cuba and to Cubans.
You will also be voting in favor of the United Nations Charter and International Law. They will be speaking out in support of reason and justice.
Let Cuba live in peace!
Cuba would be better off without a blockade!
Every Cuban family would live better without the blockade!
The Americans would be better off without the blockade on Cuba!
The United States would be a better country without the blockade against Cuba!
The world would be better without lockdown!
I respectfully request that you vote in favor of draft resolution A/77/L.5, entitled "Need to end the economic, commercial and financial blockade imposed by the United States of America against Cuba." I do it in the name of the brave, noble and worthy people of Cuba, who despite adversity have not been and will not be defeated; on behalf of our girls, boys and young people, who oppose hateful policies, but suffer their cruel effects; on behalf of the generations of Cuban men and women who have been born and those who will be born under the most cruel and prolonged system of coercive measures that has ever been applied against any country and that must be abolished for the good of all.
Thank you very much."
Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla, Minister of Foreign Affairs, UNGA, 3 November 2022
