By Alejandra Garcia, on July 5, 2022, from Havana
photo: Bill Hackwell
A recent report from Miami is assuring that there will be rebellion in Cuba, sooner or later. “The possibility of one or several rebellions of considerable magnitude is extremely high in the short term,” the Cuban Observatory of Conflicts (OCC, in Spanish) stated in a report published Tuesday. But they seem to be talking about a different country. Cuba is at peace.
The document was not published randomly either, it was timed for next week when the island will mark one year since the violent events of July 11, 2021. Every word wasn’t chosen by chance either it included, trigger words like “protest”, “violence”, “death.”
The report of the OCC, is based on supposed findings of the Foundation for Human Rights in Cuba that stresses that “nothing will prevent new rebellions because the hell of daily life remains unsolved,” and states that “Cuba’s precarious conditions cause the people to live a daily death.”
Groups like the OCC are manipulating our problems on behalf of the US to force another July 11. While the streets of the US are filling up with homeless people they seem to have no problem throwing millions to destabilize Cuba and there are many actors there who have no problem taking the cash.
Day-to-day life on the island is complex. The shortages are overwhelming; power outages due to breakdowns in the country’s main power plants bring a burden of stress on Cuban families and aggravate worries about finding food, medicines, and basic goods. It is not easy for anyone.
All this is true. But the report ignores several details: like what is the real cause of the shortages? How does the pandemic impact on this situation? How does the government seek solutions?
The blockade is not to blame for everything. There have been internal failures, the logical ones in a country that is being built on a day to day basis and under increasingly adverse conditions. But the blockade hinders the arrival of all kinds of vital inputs (technologies, fuel, food, medicines) essential for a country with scarce natural resources and an aging industry.
The pandemic also accentuated our shortages. The world collapsed for two years amid death and fear. Its effects are still palpable in every country on planet earth, and Cuba is no exception. Rising prices are a common denominator for all, and tourism -one of the pillars of our economy- is just beginning to revive globally.
Likewise, discrediting campaigns are trying to sink Cuba’s image before the international community. The ultra-right, driven by hatred and rancor, minimizes the island’s great achievements and portrays Cubans as ignorant people looking for an escape from a failed system or cowards who do not have the courage to take to the streets.
Cuba is not the Cuba they try to portray from Miami. Cuba is at peace, while the majority of its inhabitants are confident that violence is not the solution. Taking to the streets with stones and sticks does not build dialogue. Overturning police cars will not magically make the stores be stocked.
From the beginning of the blockade the US strategy has been to strangle Cuba at all human cost and deny other countries from trying to establish mutually beneficial relations with us through trade and peaceful co operation. Much of that funding is going now to take advantage of the objective conditions on the island to stir up violent opposition. However the days of the US being the world’s bully is fortunately slipping away as more and more countries are forming large trade and friendship alliances as a way around the tyranny of that archaic selfish hegemony from the North.
Source: Resumen Latinoamericano