Strategy against Cuba: Who is the bad guy?

Strategy against Cuba: Who is the bad guy?
Fecha de publicación: 
23 June 2017
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The shift on US policy toward Cuba unleashed the pride of a sovereign people and owner of its fate.

Nobody in Cuba was on tenterhooks waiting for the imperial announcement, Cuban FM Bruno Rodriguez said on Monday. However, Cubans’ reaction following the speech by US President Donald Trump arose immediately.

The shift on the policy to follow with Cuba unleashed the anger of a sovereign people and owner of its fate.

Simple and wise words gathered the television newscast last June 16 by asking people about the measures that, according Trump, he will apply to toughen Washington’s economic, financial and commercial against this small island.

A young university student stated his indignation because of “the ignorance about Cuban history of the president, who calls heroes a group of mercenaries from the Bay of Pigs invasion who came to Cuba trained by U.S. and motivated by money rather than by a feeling of patriotism”.

Another student asserted he does not believe the US head of state has legitimacy to criticise the Cuban electoral system nor our state, when a system as corrupt as the United States was the one that put him in the White House without even having the popular vote.

A grey-haired man said, “Tell Trump that we Cubans think he is mad, that we support our Commander in Chief, that the Revolution will never end, that we will remain firm and that we will always say Long live Fidel”.

When asked whether human rights are respected in Cuba, a woman answered emphatically: “What does he know? He should visit us to see with his own eyes”. She also described the announcement of the new measures as a setback in the policy of friendship of our peoples and as a ridiculous action that a powerful country picks on a very small island, which has proven itself courageous and does not care about difficulties.

Likewise, a nurse denounced the difficulties faced by Cuban public health every day to offer medical care for children with cancer. “We had to buy medicines through third countries at higher prices”, she said.

For his part, Julio Enrique, a reader of our website, wrote: Thank you Mr Trump, because your clownings watched last Friday bring, first of all, the benefit of strengthening the Cuban people around the Revolution, the Government. Besides, I am leaving you a message: Your blockade will continue to reinforce our bravery.

Carlos, another CubaSí reader remarked: "I have just turned 59 years old and since I can remember I am listening to the same speech, how long the people of the United States with such great people who are scientists, intellectuals, will allow these caricatural characters to continue influencing that country’s governments in office, such as these pseudo-Cubans who are least concerned with Cuba and our people, except to continue enriching themselves with their very old note saying they love a Cuba they actually don’t agree with, because their story of raising funds will be over. That’s enough with the lies of Marcos Rubio, Ileana, the other Mario and their clique.

The real danger is Trump?

The show starred by Trump from Miami last Friday has caused an almost unanimous annoyance, but we should not forget that since 1959 all American administrations have worked hard to remove the thorn in the flesh meant by Cuba. We are a bad example, a small island that has been determined to defend its humanist-socialist project at all costs.

Although it is true that in his moment of glory Barack Obama and other senior officials have described the economic, commercial and financial blockade imposed by the United States on Cuba as obsolete and meaningless, it hasn’t been to prevent Cuban families from the shortcomings and hardships it has caused, but because it is useless in order to put forward their own interests.

Not by choice Ben Rhodes, former adviser to former President Barack Obama, after Trump’s announcement, immediately published in The Atlantic magazine: “Trump’s new measures should be seen as the last illogical gasp of a strain of US politics with a 50-year track record of failure”.

Rhodes stresses that the instinct for isolation that Trump embraced will fail and in defense of Obama’s legacy, he states in the aforementioned publication that “It didn’t have to be this way and it won’t stay this way”.

A word to the wise is enough.

We should not overlook that the political maneuver implemented by the previous administration, on the basis of rapprochement and dialogue, equally bet on a regime change, the split of Cubans inside the island and the divorce of the private sector with the Cuban State, and judging by the security in Rhodes’s words, it doesn’t seem to be a dead strategy.

Unfortunately, Trump doesn’t have the political intelligence and image demanded by diplomacy at present. Nevertheless, although today his speech may mean a setback in bilateral relations and resumes the cold war policy, it takes credit with its direct confrontation against Cubans for increasing our unity and anti-imperialism.

Unintentionally, perhaps, the newly-elect US president has shattered the “peaceful” and dangerous strategy of his predecessor, labelled by many as an excellent actor.

Translated by Jorge Mesa Benjamin / Cubasi Translation Staff

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