US ‘Joint Statement on Cuba’ ? National Network on Cuba Answers: ‘Biden’s Blockade Violates Cuban Human Rights’

August 1, 2021

photo: Abel Padrón Padilla

On July 25 — the very day when Cuban-Americans who walked 1300 miles to end the U.S. economic war against Cuba arrived in Washington, DC — the U.S. State Department issued a statement alleging its support for the human rights of the Cuban people.

The statement cites the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights but fails to note that for 29 consecutive United Nations General Assembly votes the majority of countries of the world have called for the 60 year unilateral US blockade of Cuba to end. The 2021 vote was 184 countries to only two, the United States and Israel. The U.S. blockade violates the human rights of the Cuban people by using starvation and the pandemic as political and economic weapons.

Why did Cuban-Americans walk from Miami to Washington, DC? Simply for their human right to send money to their families in Cuba; for their right to travel to Cuba beyond Havana; for their right to have family members be granted visas to visit them in the United States and reunification of families. What is standing in the way? The 243 executive orders by the previous president undoing steps taken by President Obama toward normalization of U.S.-Cuba relations. It is the United States 60 year economic war against Cuba that is at the root. Cuba’s crime? It has charted a different economic path that prioritizes human development for all over amassing vast riches for a few.

Many of the people waving Cuban flags in Washington DC on July 25 were fueled by the same concern for their families on the island as those walking to DC. That concern is certainly questionable in the case of those among them who advocated U.S. bombing and invasion. The underlying call, however, was for the Biden administration to act. Help the Cuban people.
The legitimate cry to help Cuban families became twisted for some into marching behind the U.S. 60-year regime change dream spanning 13 presidencies of both political parties. Millions of U.S. tax dollars fuel disinformation in Cuba and corrupt South Florida businesses that profit from continuing the blockade-caused suffering.

On January 6 we saw the result of a frenzied mass of people infected with a lie denying the result of the US election, preying on their racism and social insecurity. On July 11 the strategy was repeated in Cuba using the same social media tools also preying on insecurity and hardships created by the U.S. blockade and exacerbated by the pandemic-necessitated end of tourism income.

For people in the United States the lessons told in Antonio R. Zamora’s book, “What I learned about Cuba by going to Cuba,” are worth reviewing. In 1995 this Cuban-born lawyer went to Cuba in a time similar to this. He had been jailed in Cuba for his role in the failed Bay of Pigs invasion then after repatriation to Florida helped to build the Cuban American National Foundation political machine modeled on the Israeli AIPAC.

The 1995 trip changed his view. This is what he wrote in his 2013 book:

“The picture of Cuba prevalent in Miami was totally distorted. I already mentioned the many doomsday predictions common in Miami in the early 1990s, I did not get any impression that the government was about to collapse. On the contrary, I saw a working society in the sense that things were pretty normal. Adults went to work, kids went to school, the population looked calm, well fed, well dressed and reasonably happy. I did not see anybody protesting, throwing rocks or writing anti-government slogans on walls. …

“The economic crisis I was expecting because it was obvious that the collapse of the Soviet Bloc had affected Cuba very significantly. What was a total surprise was the slack of police security that I found in Cuba. In our week in Havana I did not see one rifle, machine gun or shotgun. In one day in any of the Latin American countries that I have visited you see ten. I did not see one road block on the trip to Varadero. I did not see military personnel or military equipment anywhere. This is clearly one difference between Cuba and Latin America.”

And today in Colombia, Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti and Puerto Rico — not to mention Palestine and Gaza — we see the reality of racist and repressive social relations the United States seeks to bring to Cuba under a phony flag of “democracy and freedom.”

Cuba’s response to the July 11 events is mild indeed when compared with the mass arrests and brutality commonplace in the U.S.; mass incarceration is still the norm in the U.S. disproportionately caging Black men and people of color. One death in Cuba? How many at the Capitol on January 6? How many deaths this year at the hands of the U.S. police?

None of the ragtag association of dependent right wing countries that gathered around the U.S. in this statement voted to continue the U.S. blockade at the UN General Assembly on June 23.

The United States and its Biden-Harris administration seek to reclaim a global role that has not existed since 1945 and will not exist again. The world has changed; the environment, global economic and pandemic crises are real. It is time to #unblockCuba to move forward together to build the better world that is not only possible, but is essential to the future of everyone on the planet.

NNOC co-chairs: Alicia Jrapko, Cheryl LaBash, Gail Walker, Mimut Nuhu, Sharon Wrobel
Treasurer: John Waller