Vol. 79/No. 15      April 27, 2015

This was the first time a Cuban delegation attended the gathering. Washington engineered Cuba’s exclusion from the Organization of American States in 1962 as punishment for the popular revolution in 1959 that overthrew the U.S.-backed dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista and the proud declaration by working people there in 1961 of their decision to build a socialist society. The OAS, which sponsors the summit, includes every other government in Latin America and the Caribbean plus the U.S. and Canada.

At this year’s summit, Washington agreed to Cuba’s participation, bowing to growing demands by governments in the region who saw the exclusion of Cuba as an affront to their own independence and sovereignty. The U.S. change in position is aimed at removing an obstacle to expanding its markets and trade in the region, where U.S. companies are competing with rivals, especially from China.

“I thank all the countries of Latin America and the Caribbean for their solidarity, which enabled Cuba to participate on an equal footing,” Cuban President Raúl Castro said.

“As I’m owed six summits from which we were excluded, that’s six times eight,” Castro joked to applause and laughter, referring to the eight minutes allotted each head of state for their speeches this year. He asked for “a few minutes more.”

Castro gave the history of the struggle for Cuban independence and against imperialist intervention in the region. He noted that U.S. intervention in Cuba began in April 1898, when U.S. soldiers landed on the island as Cuban freedom fighters were on the verge of winning a nearly 30-year war against Spanish colonialism.

U.S. troops “came as allies and seized the country as occupiers,” Castro said. In 1901 the U.S. occupiers forced Cuba to add the Platt Amendment to the island’s constitution, granting Washington the right to meddle in the internal affairs of Cuba and handing over what is now the U.S. Guantánamo Naval Base.

Washington organized “the overthrow of democratic governments and the installation of terrible dictatorships in 20 countries” in Latin America and the Caribbean, Castro said, including in Guatemala, Chile and Panama.

“I must reiterate our total support, resolute and loyal, to the sister Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela,” Castro said, demanding U.S. sanctions against Venezuela be lifted.

“We suffered more casualties than the attackers” in the 1961 U.S.-led mercenary invasion of Cuba at the Bay of Pigs, Castro said, but the invasion was “defeated in less than 72 hours.” Since then, Cuba has been the target of scores of terrorist attacks by counterrevolutionaries, he added, causing more than 3,400 deaths and nearly 2,100 incapacitated for life.

Castro scoffed at Washington’s inclusion of Cuba on the State Department list of countries that sponsor terrorism and demanded it be removed.

On April 14 President Barack Obama announced plans to remove Cuba from the list, after a congressionally-mandated 45-day review period.

Even though Obama has joined Cuba in opening discussions on re-establishing diplomatic relations, Castro said, “the economic, commercial and financial blockade continues to be applied in full force against the island, causing harm and scarcities to the people and is the fundamental obstacle to the development of our economy.”

“Despite scarcities and difficulties, we remain true to sharing what we have. Currently there are 65,000 Cuban collaborators working in 89 countries, especially in medicine and education,” he said.

“If, with scarce resources, Cuba has been able to achieve this,” he asked, “what couldn’t be done in this hemisphere with the political will to join forces to contribute to the countries that need it the most?”

World order must be changed

Fellow heads of state welcomed Cuba’s participation. “Cuba is here because it fought for more than 60 years with unprecedented dignity,” Argentine President Cristina Fernández told the gathering.

There is the “beginning of a new relationship between the people of the United States and the people of Cuba,” Obama stated in his remarks. “The Cold War has been over for a long time. And I’m not interested in having battles that, frankly, started before I was born.”

But Obama made it clear that while the U.S. tactics toward Cuba have changed, Washington’s goals have not. “We’re still going to have serious issues with Cuba,” Obama put it at a press conference after the summit.

On April 11, Obama and Castro met for an hour to discuss further steps toward reestablishing diplomatic relations.

Obama told the press afterwards that “what we have both concluded is that we can disagree with the spirit of respect and civility, and that over time it is possible for us to turn the page and develop a new relationship in our two countries.”

“We have agreed to disagree. No one should entertain illusions,” Castro said, adding “we have to be patient — very patient.”

At a later press conference, Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez said that “lifting the blockade is essential for advancing toward normalized relations.”

Battle of ideas

The “Forum of Civil Society and Social Actors,” held April 8-10 as an official counterpart to the meeting of the heads of state, was a scene of heated debate.

Many in the official delegations from Cuba, which included university students and representatives of mass organizations like the Federation of Cuban Women, had not been given their credentials. Meanwhile, members of U.S.-backed opposition groups that have little support in Cuba, were accredited. The Cuban and Venezuelan delegations walked out of some of the planned activities in protest.

A youth forum — co-sponsored by Pepsi, Dell and other corporations along with the World Bank, Young Americas Business Trust and the Summit — also became part of the battle of ideas, with the participation of a delegation of 20 Cuban youth. “What we want to discuss in depth are problems like free and high quality education and health care for all,” Juan Cajar, a student at the University of Panama told the Cuban youth paper Juventud Rebelde.

As the youth forum opened, delegate Ariana Guerra, vice president of the Cuban Federation of University Students, told EFE news service that they were there “to defend just causes and to show our solidarity with the people of Venezuela.”

Some 3,500 people participated in an alternative Summit of the Peoples, organized at the initiative of unions and social movements in Panama that are part of the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America.

“Cuba will never let down the people of our America,” Miguel Barnet, head of the National Union of Writers and Artists of Cuba, told the gathering. “And our spirit of generosity and devotion will never be weakened. It is expressed in the thousands of Cuban doctors who combat lethal epidemics and in teachers who save many communities on the planet from the conditions of ignorance and spiritual and material misery that the capitalist system imposes.”

The Summit of the Peoples called for dismantling U.S. military bases in the Americas and an end to U.S. military intervention around the world; rejected the U.S. designation of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela as a threat to U.S. national security; called for an end to the U.S. embargo of Cuba; and demanded freedom for Oscar López, a Puerto Rican political prisoner in U.S. jails.  
 
 
Front page (for this issue) | Home | Text-version home