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Vol. 72/No. 39      October 6, 2008

 
End the embargo against Cuba!
(editorial)
 
The devastation caused in Cuba by hurricanes Gustav and Ike makes it all the more urgent for working people around the world to demand an end to Washington’s decades-long criminal embargo against that nation. The island suffered billions of dollars in damage and losses, including homes, power stations, and crops.

An appeal to unions around the world by Cuba’s trade union federation, the Central Organization of Cuban Workers, states that an end to the embargo is the most important aid that can be given to the working people of Cuba.

For nearly 50 years the capitalist rulers in Washington have tried to bring the working people of Cuba to their knees—to punish them for making a socialist revolution and setting out to build a new society based on human solidarity. The embargo has included blocking Cuba’s access to medicines; industrial, farm, and transportation equipment; and cultural and sports exchanges.

According to Cuba’s report to the United Nations last year, the U.S. embargo has cost the Cuban economy more than $200 billion. Despite this hardship and Cuba’s legacy of underdevelopment, the Cuban Revolution has extended solidarity to working people in the places where it is needed the most.

Thousands of Cuban medical personnel provide otherwise unavailable medical care throughout Africa and Latin America. Cuban internationalists played a decisive role in the struggle by African nations for independence from their colonial oppressors and in the defeat of the apartheid regime in southern Africa.

It is that solidarity that is the source of the capacity of Cuba’s working people to respond to the recent storms by evacuating millions to safety while providing for medical care and other needs. There were no deaths on the island during Hurricane Gustav and only seven resulting from Hurricane Ike. That number stands in stark contrast to the 84 deaths in the United States.

As Cuba’s vice president José Ramón Machado Ventura explained speaking in New York September 22, the evacuations and low number of deaths is possible “because of the attention the revolutionary government gives to every citizen of the country.”

It is that example that the billionaire families and their government in Washington fear, an example that is also becoming a greater inspiration to working people around the world facing the consequences of the opening of a deepening world capitalist crisis.
 
 
Related articles:
Cuban gov’t leader speaks in New York
Socialist candidate: ‘Lift the embargo on Cuba!’
Government of Cuba mobilizes population in wake of hurricanes  
 
 
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