Actions in Miami, across US, back Cuba’s nat’l sovereignty
MIAMI — The U.S. rulers’ escalating economic and political war against Cuba and its national sovereignty are worsening the humanitarian crisis facing the Cuban people. Groups from the National Network on Cuba to the Socialist Workers Party have called for protests to demand, “U.S. hands off Cuba!”
Thirty-five people attended a meeting at Florida International University here June 18 to a speak out against the U.S. government’s blockade against Cuba.
The event belied the picture presented in the media that Miami is a bulwark of support for Washington’s drive to strangle the Cuban people and crush their socialist revolution. The event was sponsored by the Miami Coalition to End the U.S. Blockade of Cuba and the Young Democratic Socialists of America.
Adrián Heredia, second secretary of the Cuban Embassy in Washington, D.C., spoke to the meeting by Zoom. Washington’s sanctions against Cuba are “totally unilateral and target the whole population,” he said. “Cuba is no threat to the United States. We want to have peaceful relations.”
Gerardo Delgado, who helped chair the meeting, pointed out that he is Cuban American. “My family didn’t come here to see an increase in sanctions and to be the architect of aggression against people back home in Cuba,” he said.
Uriel Ramirez, a founder of the Pan-American Medical Association and a graduate of Cuba’s Latin American School of Medicine, also spoke. The school was established by the Cuban government to provide medical training to thousands of students from around the world, including the U.S., at no cost for tuition, room and board.
The training he received in Cuba emphasized preventative care and accurate diagnosis, Ramirez said, and Cuban doctors treat patients as human beings. He appealed for funds to send medical supplies to the main trauma and pediatric hospitals in Havana.
One of the more devastating effects of the U.S. blockade is Cuba’s inability to get sorely needed drugs and medical equipment. What has been long recognized as one of the best medical systems in the Americas is now being strangled.
Kimberly Dawn Miller from the Black Alliance for Peace described the Caribbean American Day of Solidarity with Cuba held June 14. That day is the birthday of Che Guevara, a leader of Cuba’s socialist revolution, and of Antonio Maceo, a leader of the Cuban war for independence from Spanish colonial rule. Miller showed a video clip of a March demonstration in Kingston, Jamaica, in solidarity with Cuba. Protesters had called on people across the Caribbean to show that Cuba is not alone in the face of Washington’s attack.
Danny Valdes, a founder of Cuban Americans for Cuba, a group that has attracted a number of young Cuban Americans in Miami who are opposed to U.S. intervention in Cuba, and a member of the Democratic Socialists of America in New York, spoke to the meeting by Zoom. “Cuba is the only country they treat like this,” Valdes said, calling for an end to Washington’s sanctions.
During the discussion, Rachele Fruit, Socialist Workers Party candidate for U.S. Senate from Florida, said, “The U.S. targets Cuba because of the example of human solidarity it sets for working people the world over. That is only possible when working people take political power and eliminate capitalist exploitation.” Fruit urged groups everywhere to organize more public protests and meetings to tell the truth about Cuba and press Washington to back off.
A number of participants knew little about Cuba’s history or its revolution but had come to the meeting to learn more.
Solidarity activists in Miami are organizing to leaflet World Cup watch parties in the city in the coming days to get out the truth about Washington’s growing assaults on Cuba and protest against them.
The U.S. government announced additional sanctions June 11 on Cuba’s national oil company Cupet, making it harder for foreign companies to make energy deals with Cuba without Washington’s say so.
