By Deisy Francis Mexidor on March 10, 2024
photo: Deisy Francis Mexidor
In order not to admit the lack of will to change the policy towards Cuba, the United States Government continues appealing to demagogic reasons, distortion and deceitful manipulation of pretexts.
This was stated in an interview by Prensa Latina with Johana Tablada, deputy director general of the U.S. Directorate of the Cuban Ministry of Foreign Affairs, who is currently on a working visit to Washington DC.
At this time not only the government, but the most conservative or anti-Cuban sectors of the U.S. society that repeat the lies such as in Cuba there are military bases of foreign countries or that the Government of Cuba is in a program to send soldiers to Ukraine, she said.
“It is absolutely false and has been denied just like the accusation of the Chinese bases that every week is put forward by The Wall Street Journal with total impunity and without any evidence,” Tablada stressed.
The diplomat referred to the “permanent deception with the issue of human rights in which the U.S. government grants privileged treatment to those people who have been targets or recipients of its financing projects for its intervention programs in Cuba’s internal politics”.
Those individuals -she added- “are then presented as the heroes they are not, since they have no support in our society”.
She emphasized that by favoring these people, many of whom do not even live in Cuba, they are trying to justify the permanent and real violation of the human rights of millions of Cubans; children, women and the elderly, who are being deprived of their fundamental rights by design. They are also deprived of their right to have a normal relationship with the rest of the world, normal with the United States and to develop to their real and maximum capacity, the official warned.
Referring to the issue of relations between the two countries, Tablada explained that “the policy of Joe Biden’s government has essentially followed the policy of Donald Trump’s government”.
Most or the vast majority of the measures are of maximum pressure, extreme, inhumane measures, aimed at preventing sources of sustenance from entering the Cuban economy and our population with the purpose of destabilizing the country and eventually provoking the overthrow of the Revolution, she said.
She recalled that with this position Biden “is even failing to keep his electoral promise that those inhuman measures affecting the Cuban family were going to be lifted”.
In 2024, there is still the possibility of a second term for President Biden, but there is also the possibility that in January 2025, what I call “President Trump’s demolition team” will return, Tablada said.
She considered that the sad legacy of this administration “will be the largest migratory wave in the history of Cuba, which has been very unfortunate for the Cuban population, for the Cuban family”.
She warned that this situation is “the result of this irrational, insensitive and disconnected from reality bet, of thinking that depriving people of sustenance, of cutting off all sources of income to the Cuban economy, will derail a process such as ours of independence and sovereignty”.
She reiterated that this is a policy that has been applied since 1959, when the Cuban Revolution triumphed, and it has not worked in the main objective of bending the will of the Cuban people to move forward.
“We must recognize and admit that they have succeeded in deteriorating the standard of living of Cubans, they have succeeded in provoking a difficult situation for our population,” she said.
Direct link
What is certain – Tablada pointed out – is that every day it becomes more difficult if not impossible to hide that there is a direct link between the impact of Trump’s maximum pressure measures maintained by Biden and the migratory wave produced since Cuba was fraudulently included, unjustly, in the list of State sponsors of terrorism.
“As we know it is not just another slander, this is a measure that goes directly to the jugular of the Cuban economy,” the diplomat said when referring to the arbitrary designation of Cuba as a State Sponsor of Terrorism. (SSOT)
The U.S. Government -she maintained- has not succeeded in applying that twisted logic that if the blockade is tightened, it will finally provoke a situation of revolt, of destabilization of our population, to blame the Cuban Government for the impact of the measures taken by them.
But we do have to admit that there has been a very severe, very painful impact on the standard of living of the Cuban family which today sees its basic food basket affected, the prices of transportation, the possibility of eating the food that is needed. Their idea is to push that this is because Cuba is a failed State; that is the narrative that is repeated, she pointed out.
Tablada anticipated that they are gathering data on the fines applied by the Department of Commerce to Cuba’s trading partners “and they have broken all the records of previous years”.
Among the measures implemented with full force against the island is one of the most criminal and ignoble measures carried out by the U.S. government, and that is the disinformation operation with Cuba’s medical cooperation.
This government also excluded Cuba from the review of coercive unilateral measures affecting the ability of states to fight Covid-19, she listed.
But it is important to make a separation between the position of the U.S. Government, the same one that has turned its face to the growing calls within the U.S. society, including in Congress, and the academic, economic, political, social, scientific, human rights, youth and solidarity movement sectors.
More than 108 resolutions have been adopted in the United States to remove Cuba from the list of countries sponsoring terrorism, to lift the blockade, to cooperate with Cuba in health areas, which should be the object of collaboration and not persecution, she insisted.
Tablada reiterated that Cuba is subjected to a deceitful operation, to a logic “in which I do everything I can to asphyxiate your economy and at the same time I am financing a permanent and systematic disinformation operation with hundreds of millions of dollars to make the victim responsible for the impact of those measures”.
The curious thing in this -she indicated- is that the same organizations and platforms that have high contributions from the US Government are the protagonists of this disinformation operation.
Important Levers
What is certain – Tablada pointed out – is that every day it becomes more difficult if not impossible to hide that there is a direct link between the impact of Trump’s maximum pressure measures maintained by Biden and the migratory wave produced since Cuba was fraudulently included, unjustly, in the SSOT list.
“As we know it is not just another slander, this is a measure that goes directly to the jugular of the Cuban economy,” the diplomat stated when referring to the arbitrary designation of Cuba as a State sponsor of terrorism.
The U.S. Government -she maintained- has not succeeded in applying that twisted logic that if the blockade is tightened, it will finally provoke a situation of revolt, of destabilization of our population, to blame the Cuban Government for the impact of the measures taken by them.
But we do have to admit that there has been a very severe, very painful impact on the standard of living of the Cuban family which today sees its basic food basket affected, the prices of transportation, the possibility of eating the food that is needed and their idea is that this is because Cuba is a failed State, that is the narrative that is repeated, he pointed out.
Tablada anticipated that they are gathering data on the fines applied by the Department of Commerce to Cuba’s trading partners “and they have broken the record of previous years”.
Among the measures implemented with full force against the island is one of the most criminal and ignoble measures carried out by the U.S. government, the disinformation operation with Cuba’s medical cooperation.
This government also excluded Cuba from the review of coercive unilateral measures affecting the ability of states to fight Covid-19, she said.
But it is important to make a separation between the position of the U.S. Government, the same one that has turned its face to the growing calls within the U.S. society, including the Congress, and the academic, economic, political, social, scientific, human rights, youth and solidarity movement sectors.
More than 108 resolutions have been adopted in the United States to remove Cuba from the list of countries sponsoring terrorism, to lift the blockade, to cooperate with Cuba in health areas, which should be the object of collaboration and not persecution, he insisted.
Tablada reiterated that Cuba is subjected to a deceitful operation, to a logic “in which I do everything I can to asphyxiate your economy and at the same time I am financing a permanent and systematic disinformation operation with hundreds of millions of dollars to make the victim responsible for the impact of those measures”.
The curious thing in this -she indicated- is that the same organizations and platforms that have high contributions from the US Government are the protagonists of this disinformation operation.
She stressed that they traveled “even though they cannot stay in hotels because it is part of that policy of pressure and extortion, and on the other hand I think that many excuses and pretexts have fallen, and masks of politicians who have made their career on the basis of torturing a country they do not know, that the vast majority were not even born there nor have they visited it.”
“The Cuba issue is used for political reasons to obtain benefits, contributions and to distribute that money that they achieve with the years that the U.S. Government approves,” she affirmed.
The diplomat emphasized that all this is for “intervening in internal affairs to approve regime change projects and to finance disinformation and fake news operations.”
While I do not lose hope, I am not optimistic that there will be any sign soon, because we honestly do not see any real will at this time and this policy of abuse, of extreme measures cannot be changed if there is no political will to do so, but on the other hand we do see a lot of pressure and interest in different sectors of the US society, she stressed.
We have reiterated to the U.S. government and to our counterparts here that the Cuban government’s position of moving towards a civilized relationship, of meeting at any conversation table where there is an issue in which there is a common interest, is still standing.
“In 2023, it is no secret to anyone, certain spaces for cooperation and exchange with the U.S. Government were reestablished, even when the toughest measures affecting the lives of Cubans have been maintained,” argued the Foreign Ministry official.
For Johana Tablada, this also demonstrates the goodwill of the Cuban government in total coherence with the aspirations of its people to live in peace with its closest neighbor.
Source: Juventud Rebelde, translation Resumen Latinoamericano – English