By Alejandra Garcia on November 11, 2021 from Havana
photo: Andrew Wragg
Cuba is getting ready to make a transition toward normalcy after more than one year of struggle against the pandemic. On Monday, thousands of children from first to fifth grade will return to classrooms as the country’s borders will be open to receive international travelers and all Cubans who have been unable to return home due to international health restrictions.
November 15 will be a symbolic day; the country will gradually begin the reactivation of its economy, battered by the impact of the Covid-19 and the blockade imposed by the United States on the island for almost 60 years. On the 15th, we will also celebrate that these two realities were successfully overcome, thanks to the diligence of the Cuban authorities and the people’s capacity to make the impossible possible.
However, Washington, the right-wing in the region, the international media emporiums, and a small opposition group on the island, which calls itself Archipelago in social networks, insist on turning this date into a day of protest, hatred, and fear. It is no coincidence that these reactionaries and their masters chose this date because they would like nothing better than to sabotage the launching of our recovery that is based on hard work, patriotism and humanism.
“They seek to spoil our party, but they will not succeed. Nothing will take away Cuba’s enthusiasm after a year of achievements and challenges,” Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez Parrilla told a group of diplomats and the press accredited on the island on Wednesday.
“The constant attempts to generate destabilization conditions in the country have worsened in recent months. But we will not allow organized aggression from abroad to spoil our people’s joyful moment,” the minister added.
There is no doubt about who is orchestrating this operation, which involves U.S. high-ranking officials, lawmakers, and senators who feel an unjustified hatred against Cuba and its people. The attempt at this type of destabilization has had irreparable consequences in other countries.
No one I know supports the day of protests that the Archipelago insists on holding on Monday, even when the Cuban authorities did not authorize it. My closest friends, neighbors, and the people I hear talking on the street are afraid to even go out on the street that day, lest they be branded as government opponents. Much less will they hang white sheets on their balconies, nor will they wear white t-shirts on November 15.
The “powerful communicational machinery,” as Rodriguez called the destabilizing attempts that seek to turn a non-existent scenario into a supposed reality, has not managed to permeate the Cuban population, as they want to make it seem.
“You can walk through our streets, and you will see the joy of Cubans at this moment when our country is opening up to world travelers and a new year is approaching,” the minister said to the diplomats gathered at the Havana Convention Palace on Wednesday.
“The US government knows perfectly well that its campaigns try to provoke suffering, a suffering that causes the so-called social explosion,” Rodriguez clarified and said that this attitude violates our sovereignty and seeks to force a change of regime by strictly political decisions.
The script followed by Washington is not new. Sixty years have shown that this policy is destined to fail.
“The obstinate desire to see the end of the Revolution founded by Fidel will never come true. They need to wake up from that dream. It is not going to happen. Nothing is going to tarnish our celebration,” Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel reaffirmed.
Source: Resumen Latinoamericano – English