Vol. 81/No. 43 November 20, 2017
‘Cuban Revolution will never negotiate its principles’
Below are highlights from the Nov. 1 speech by Bruno Rodríguez, Cuban foreign minister, introducing the annual resolution at the U.N. General Assembly calling for an end to the U.S. economic embargo against Cuba. Rodríguez departed from his prepared text to answer some of the slanders against Cuba raised by U.S. Ambassador Nikki Haley, justifying Washington’s decades of attacks against Cuba’s revolutionary government and its working people (see accompanying article). Translation is by the Militant.
The United States … does not have the slightest moral authority to criticize Cuba, a small country that practices solidarity, and with an extensive, recognized international record; an honorable, hard-working, and friendly people.
[U.S. Ambassador Nikki Haley] spoke in the name of the head of an empire that is responsible for most of the wars in progress on the planet today, and which kills innocent people, and is the decisive factor in worldwide instability and grave threats to peace and international security, trampling international law and the United Nations Charter, which she has just cynically evoked. …
When the Cuban Revolution triumphed [in 1959], Washington set regime change as its objective. The policy announced by President Trump on June 16 is not new; it is the same old policy, anchored in the past. …
It has been a history of lies and aggression: Operation Northwoods, Operation Mongoose. Information was just declassified showing that at that time [of the so-called Cuban Missile Crisis] the United States had prepared 261,000 soldiers, ready for a direct invasion of Cuba. The CIA’s base in Florida with more than 700 agents was the largest in history until the creation of the even bigger CIA base in Saigon. …
I quote the infamous letter by Undersecretary of State Lester Mallory, signed April 6, 1960 … [that] the objective of the blockade of Cuba was “to bring about hunger, desperation and overthrow of government.” …
This past June 16, President Donald Trump proclaimed the blockade to be the fundamental axis of his anti-Cuban policy, and announced a series of measures meant to reinforce it. …
[Referring to the U.S. government, Rodríguez said that] the use of torture; police killings of African-Americans; civilian deaths caused by its troops; the indiscriminate, and racially motivated death penalty; the murder, repression, and police surveillance of immigrants; the separation of families; the detention or deportation of minors; and the brutal measures threatening the children of undocumented immigrants who grew up and were educated in the United States are deserving of condemnation. …
[The ambassador] has come to tell us that she recognizes that the future of the island rests in the hands of the Cuban people. She is telling a flat out lie. Historically it was never that way. It is a history of their attempt to dominate and exercise hegemony over Cuba. …
Today I reiterate that Cuba will never accept conditions or impositions and we remind the president and his ambassador that this approach, applied by 11 of his predecessors, has never and will never work. …
More recently, under the pretext of illnesses of some diplomats in Havana, without the slightest evidence of their cause and origin — because they lie when they speak of attacks or incidents — nor the results of ongoing investigations, the government of the United States adopted new measures of a political nature against Cuba, which intensify the blockade and affect bilateral relations in their entirety. …
The U.S. government, with the political purpose of restricting travel and damaging international tourism to Cuba, also issued an unfounded and utterly dishonest warning to U.S. citizens to avoid visiting our country. …
As President Raúl Castro Ruz expressed, on July 14, “We reaffirm that any attempt to destroy the revolution, whether through coercion and pressure, or the use of more subtle methods, will fail … Cuba is willing to continue discussing pending bilateral issues with the United States, on the basis of equality and respect for the sovereignty and independence of our country, and to continue respectful dialogue and cooperation on issues of common interest with the U.S. government.
“Cuba and the United States can cooperate and live together, respecting our differences and promoting everything that benefits both countries and peoples, but it should not be expected that, in order to do so, Cuba will make concessions essential to its sovereignty and independence … nor will it negotiate its principles or accept conditions of any kind, something we have never done throughout the history of the revolution.”
Related articles:
US gov’t doesn’t have ‘moral authority’ to criticize Cuba
UN votes 191-2 against US embargo against Cuba
Dreke: ‘Che led by example, by his revolutionary morals’
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