By Pasqualina Curcio on July 17, 2021
photo: Roberto Suarez
The cynicism of the U.S. towards the heroic Cuban people never ceases to amaze us. How is it that after 60 years -let’s be clear, 60 years, 3 generations- of genocidal blockade against the island, the government of the North calls for and promotes “humanitarian aid” for a supposed humanitarian crisis? Moreover, it does so when, in spite of calling itself the world’s leading power and registering a GDP per capita 7 times greater than that of the Caribbean country, it has not even managed to contain the virus.
The United States tops the world list of countries with the highest number of people infected and killed by Covid-19. The incidence rate of Covid-19 (number of infected persons per million inhabitants) in the USA is 104 infected persons per million inhabitants, that is, 4.5 times higher than that recorded by Cuba, which is 23. As for the mortality rate (number of persons dying per million inhabitants), that of the USA is 1.87 and that of Cuba 0.15, that is, 12.5 times more people die in the USA than in Cuba, despite the unimaginable shortages resulting from the 243 unilateral coercive measures imposed by the White House in the midst of the pandemic. Seen in this light, who in the world needs help at this time if not the American people? They have no morals.
The actions recently promoted by the US government against Cuba are part of an unconventional and multidimensional war that, according to manuals, are developed in the following way: they create, with different actions, real conditions to generate uneasiness, anguish and social and political destabilization in the population. Actions that are always accompanied by a narrative that, on the one hand, amplifies the events, for example, what is a small riot is shown to the world as a social explosion, and on the other hand, blames the governments, their policies and their economic model for what is happening. Phrases such as “dictatorship”, “failed state”, “failed socialism”, “violation of human rights”, “repression”, “terrorist” are always part of the discourse seeking to derive in the justification of, according to them, urgent “humanitarian aid”, which as we already know, is the euphemism for military intervention. They always do so in the name of “democracy” and “freedom”.
Non-conventional wars cannot, under any circumstances, develop without the media dimension, which is intrinsic and transversal to the rest of the dimensions.
The other dimensions are, according to Manual TC 1801 of the US Department of the Army, the economic dimension (this is never missing), the psychological dimension which goes hand in hand with the media dimension whose objective is to terrorize the population with messages premeditatedly elaborated in laboratories and through which they try to sow hatred in order to unleash fratricidal wars, also seeking to demoralize.
The diplomatic dimension, where the leading role in our Region has always been that of the OAS, in fact, Almagro, Secretary of the Ministry of the Colonies, has already spoken of the supposed failure of the “dictatorship” in Cuba. In this dimension also appear the NGOs that pretend to be defenders of human rights financed by USAID and NED with speeches of alleged violation of these rights by the Cuban government. The declarations of the High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet could not be missing, adding to the strategy of disinformation and confusion, without a single piece of evidence to show, said she was very “concerned about the excessive use of force against demonstrators in Cuba and the arrest of a large number of people, among them several journalists”, she also spoke of people being held incommunicado and missing and demanded the urgent release of the detainees who, according to her, were demonstrating “peacefully”. In Venezuela, the Lima Group and European parliamentarians joined in.
Then there is another dimension, that of internal politics, whose objective is to destabilize the streets through demonstrations that they try to show to the world as if they were peaceful, something like the guarimbas and the trancazos in Venezuela, but which in reality have armed groups with all kinds of arsenal. Groups that, in our country, went so far as to burn people alive. Of course, in the light of the media they are shown as very “peaceful” while the security forces that try to control the violent demonstrations are described as repressive. Let us not be surprised if a violinist or a nudist appears in these “peaceful” demonstrations in Cuba.
So far nothing is alien to Venezuelans, we have lived all this. Just as we have been victims of the other dimension, one of the most powerful: the economic one, which is acting day by day, sometimes invisibly and covertly, in each and every household. The recent queues to buy food or essential goods in Cuba, a consequence of an alleged shortage, should not be accidental. Beyond the genocidal blockade and the economic effects of the pandemic, this shortage, which is programmed and selective, is part of the war manuals, if not let’s ask the Chileans of Allende’s times, the Nicaraguans during the Sandinista revolution, the Soviets at the end of the 80’s, or the Venezuelans recently. Failure to place essential goods on the shelves in sufficient quantities generates long lines and with them discomfort, anguish, annoyance, sensations that are amplified and enhanced through the media that hold the Cuban revolution responsible. The economic weapon is the alteration of the distribution channels of these products together with hoarding. What we affirm is written in the declassified documents of the actions against Allende as part of the CIA plans.
Nor should it be accidental, but on the contrary, orchestrated with the rest of the actions, the fact that the counterrevolutionary web portal “Eltoque” created in 2014 began to publish an alleged exchange rate of the Cuban peso with respect to the US dollar in informal markets. Today the gap between the official exchange rate (24 pesos/US$) and the aforementioned portal (60/US$) is 36 pesos/US$. According to these portals, the peso has depreciated 200% since January 2021. We Venezuelans know this economic weapon very well: in the framework of the unconventional war they have induced us the depreciation of the bolivar, already confessed by US spokesmen, 3.5 billion percent since 2013, deriving in hyperinflation and all that this implies economically and of course politically. They have done so through the web portal dolartoday.
Not to mention the financial blockade, on which the Cuban brothers have a doctorate, and the constant electrical sabotages, as well as the trade embargoes that hinder the acquisition of fuel. In the economic dimension, obviously, the call for a general strike cannot be missing. Countless calls for strikes were made by the extreme right wing in Venezuela in the framework of the guarimbas.
All these dimensions of the unconventional war against the Cuban people are part of the desperate plans of the US Southern Command, which in its recent report of March 2021, dedicated it to Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela. Craig Faller reported that they are ready to defend “their territory” (as if America were theirs) against the “interfering and terrorist” pretensions of China and Russia. In the aforementioned report, the US confesses its fear of the commercial incursion of these countries in our region and its intentions to neutralize them, which includes controlling Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela.
An unconventional war is underway against the Cuban people, which seeks, by various means, to provoke, destabilize, demoralize and, of course, confuse the international community. As always, the people of Fidel, Ché and Martí, while offering humanity five vaccines against the pandemic, continue to give us an example of courage and resistance in the face of criminal imperial pretensions.
Source: Pasqualina Curcio website, translation Resumen Latinoamericano – English