Vol. 80/No. 20 May 23, 2016

‘Give back Guantánamo,’ says Cuban leader in NZ

BY JANET ROTH

AUCKLAND, New Zealand – Yexenia Calzado, a representative of the Cuban Institute for Friendship with the Peoples, used her month-long visit to Australia and New Zealand to explain that last year’s opening of diplomatic relations between the Cuban and U.S. governments did not mean that relations had been normalized.

The conflict will continue until Washington “gives back Guantánamo and lifts the blockade,” she told a public meeting in Auckland April 27. She was referring to the U.S. naval base on Cuban territory occupied against the will of the Cuban people since 1903 and the 55-year U.S. economic embargo.

U.S. President Barack Obama’s March 22 speech in Havana made clear Washington “hasn’t changed the objectives it has had since the revolutionary triumph” of overturning Cuba’s socialist revolution, Calzado said. “Obama said he had no intention of interfering in Cuba’s internal affairs, but he has put aside millions for subversion in Cuba.”

While in New Zealand, Calzado spoke at meetings organized by the Cuba Friendship societies in Auckland and Wellington, and by the Caribbean Council, the FIRST Union, and the NZ Centre for Latin American Studies at the University of Auckland.

She was given a tour of the Otuataua Stonefields Historic Reserve by supporters of a campaign to prevent a developer from building 480 houses on adjacent Maori ancestral lands. Local Maori want to determine what happens to that land, which was confiscated from them in 1863.

Calzado, 26, was asked about the opinions of Cuba’s youth. “Younger people in Cuba have no experience with capitalism and some have hopes in the capitalist system. But the majority believe in the revolution,” she told a meeting in Wellington April 26. “Lots have heard from their grandparents about capitalism. My grandmother did not know how to read and write but because of the revolution was able to learn.”

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