By Alina Perera Robbio on March 18, 2025 from Havana
Boss, we’ll put Cuba on the list of terrorist countries. But first I will wash my hands. image: Jorge
The unilateral list of the US State Department, which designates Cuba as a state sponsor of terrorism, “has absolutely no international backing, is not associated with any of the multilateral mechanisms in the fight against terrorism, and much less with Cuba’s performance in the fight against terrorism”.
This was reaffirmed by Johana Tablada de la Torre, deputy director general of the United States Directorate of the Cuban Ministry of Foreign Affairs, in the continuation of the podcast From the Presidency, hosted by the First Secretary of the Party’s Central Committee and Head of State, Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez, and in which the Hero of the Republic, Gerardo Hernández Nordelo, also participated as a guest.
Regarding the main objectives of the fraudulent list of supposed state sponsors of terrorism, Johanna stated that it is intended to discredit Cuba and isolate it internationally, as well as being “an instrument of financial persecution, the harshest that exists”.
In terms of direct impact, the expert argued that the list “multiplies the financial siege that the blockade of more than 60 years has already imposed on Cuba”. Along the same lines, she said that it hinders travel to Cuba by foreigners, who do not necessarily have anything to do with the United States, or with living in that country.
Such a policy, explained Johana, “has a direct impact on tourism, with dramatic figures that have had an impact on the entire population”. Moreover, with the list, “Cuban exports are affected”, as “all international transfers are red-flagged when the word Cuba appears on them”.
Such financial persecution, added Díaz-Canel, “greatly reinforces the energetic persecution that is also taking place against us”.
Johana Tablada referred to the team that “unfortunately Trump has once again called on to deal with the Cuba issue”: they are “people who almost hijacked policy towards Cuba in the previous administration, and who are now doing so in great haste, because they have no support, either in their own country or in the international community”.
She added that, when the first measure of the Trump administration on Cuba is – within a package of 80 – to put Cuba back on the spurious and fraudulent list of states that sponsor terrorism, that means that they know that being off that list would give “a break to the Cuban population. Immediately: in travel, in tourism, in fuel, in the sale of pharmaceutical products, in the purchase of products that are now three times more expensive, in international cargo ships…”.
The Head of State commented to the diplomat: ‘From what you have explained, there is undoubtedly no legality in that list; because, furthermore, it is not protected by any international organization’. Later, the president pointed out that those who may be confused do not understand what it meant for Cuba – even if it was for five or six days – that the previous administration would have had to recognize that there was no evidence to include the Caribbean country on the list. The immediate inclusion of Cuba by the new administration has demonstrated the fallacy of this whole political operation.
PUNISHMENT WITHOUT LEGALITY OR MORALITY
In 2024 alone, as of November, there were 1,703 statements in favor of removing Cuba from the list. This is how 57 governments in the world and 107 political parties expressed themselves, and there were more than 660 statements of support for the island from parliaments and parliamentarians, as well as other organizations and entities that added their voices in that direction.
The data was provided by Johana Tablada in the podcast, who said that this “is saying what the world thinks”. The diplomat also reasoned: “Their plan is to make the simplest operations very difficult for Cuba, more difficult than for anyone else”.
As the international financial system is dominated by the United States, the war also includes, intimidating people around the world who “have dared to invest in us, to bet on us”.
It is difficult to think of another country, she stressed, that has been subjected to the level of measures to which Cuba has been subjected from 2019 to the present, and that has not collapsed.
“That is why,” Díaz-Canel emphasized, ‘I always describe this policy as totally perverse.’ He said it because ”it is inhuman, it is devoid of any consideration for the people.”
The Head of State denounced that those who take the measures then boast, saying that everything is done for the benefit of the Cuban people: “slander after slander, lie after lie, discrediting after discrediting, mutilation of the reputation of the Cuban Revolution. That’s all they are after”.
Gerardo Hernández Nordelo emphasized that the United States “not only does not have the slightest proof that Cuba sponsors terrorism: they have absolutely no moral right to put anyone on a list of this kind”.
He recalled that, during the time he lived in US territory, it was not difficult to find signs indicating areas where there were paramilitary training camps. These were, he said, a variety of groups sponsored by the United States; and, if not sponsored, at least tolerated.
Cuba has more than 2,000 victims of terrorism, emphasized Hernández Nordelo, who did not overlook the fact that “we continue to be affected, included on the list”, which “affects not only Cubans living in Cuba, but also those living in the United States”, some of them, he reasoned, victims of terrorism for the sole fact of advocating for normal relations between the two countries.
“They complain that they are called the hate industry, the evil industry, but that is what they live off,” Gerardo emphasized, referring to those who stigmatize Cuba; and he asked at another point: “The day that Cuba and the United States have normal relations, what will those who have made hate a business live off of?”
“What will the counter-revolution and the real terrorists of that counter-revolution who are there, who make a living from that business, live on?” the Cuban President asked. And Gerardo and Johanna talked about how these merchants of hate swindle the people who live in the northern nation, saying for many years that the Revolution has only a few days left.
THE PAIN IN THE MEMORY
President Díaz-Canel declared that he will never be able to forget the hard times experienced in Cuba during Covid-19, the “moment when we were denied lung ventilators”, the “moment when we were denied oxygen, and how they pressured under all these structures of blockade and the inclusion of Cuba on the list of terrorist countries, so that people did not receive basic things, at a terrible time.
“Cuba has not behaved like this,” reflected Johana Tablada, who did not overlook the fact that the enemy gambled that Covid-19 could do in Cuba what could not be done in so many years of Revolution: destroy that Revolution.
We will never tire of thanking those who gave us a helping hand when others stabbed us in the back, said the diplomat, who also acknowledged that there are many US organizations, many scientists who are building bridges with their counterparts on the island. Regarding the episode of the sonic attacks, in which the US government tried to blame the Caribbean country, the expert said that it is not known what the next episode will be, “but we do know that they are desperate to find a new pretext to prevent rapprochement”.
They have new measures against Cuba every day, said Johana Tablada, but they find it difficult to present them to the American people because they will ask themselves: And what has Cuba done to us?
Source: Granma, translation Resumen Latinoamericano – English