One day after Washington announced measures imposing new visa restrictions on Cubans Feb. 25, more than 50,000 Cubans demonstrated in the city of Guantánamo, the capital of Guantánamo province, in an action called by the Central Organization of Cuban Workers (CTC).
Holding an “Anti-Imperialist Tribune” in Mariana Grajales Revolution Square, many workers, union members and students from Guantánamo, Caimanera, El Salvador and Manuel Tames joined in the protest chaired by Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel.
Demonstrators demanded “an end to United States interference in Cuba’s internal affairs, an end to unilateral policies against the island, and to repudiate the imperial presence in the illegal naval base in this territory,” the Guantánamo online provincial newspaper Venceremos reported.
Washington built a naval base and prisoner detention center in Guantánamo Bay after it seized land there in 1903 as part of the spoils of its victory in the 1898 Spanish-American War. For 122 years since, under every administration, Democratic and Republican alike, it has occupied the territory in violation of Cuba’s sovereignty — part of Washington’s decadeslong economic, trade and political war aimed at crushing the Cuban people and overturning their socialist revolution.
“The naval base in Guantánamo is a symbol of foreign interference and a constant reminder of the struggles that still lie ahead,” Juana Eglis Fernández Louit, general secretary of the local CTC, told the crowd.
“These policies have not succeeded in subduing the Cuban people,” she said, “but rather have strengthened our determination to defend sovereignty and peace.”
The day before, Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced that U.S. visa restrictions on Cubans traveling to the U.S. would be expanded, taking particular aim at Cuban internationalist medical volunteers. Thousands of Cuban health care workers have gone on medical missions abroad, often working in the most remote rural areas or worst-off working-class neighborhoods. Revolutionary leader Fidel Castro called them Cuba’s “army of white coats.”
Since 1963 more than 600,000 Cuban medical workers have volunteered.
During the Ebola crisis in 2014 the Cuban government selected 461 doctors and nurses, out of more than 15,000 volunteers, to serve in West Africa. Even before that Cuba had more that 4,000 health workers in 32 African countries.
To try and undercut these revolutionary missions, and as part of imperialism’s campaign against Cuba’s socialist revolution, Washington slanders them as part of a forced “labor export program” aimed at “enriching” the Cuban government while “depriving ordinary Cubans” of medical care.
Visas will now be barred to “current or former government officials, and other individuals, including foreign government officials, who are believed to be responsible for, or involved in, the Cuban labor export program, particularly Cuba’s overseas medical missions,” Rubio said in a State Department statement. He added the visa denials would also apply to their families.
Since the 1990s Washington has operated a new jail at Guantánamo to imprison immigrant workers before deporting them. Recently President Donald Trump dispatched U.S. Marines to rebuild the facility to hold up to 30,000 immigrants, and began sending some there.
Rally participants also protested Washington’s inclusion of Cuba on its “State Sponsors of Terrorism” list.