Summit of the Americas. Photo: Prensa Latina.
By María Josefina Arce
"Building a sustainable, resilient and equitable future" is the motto of the anti-democratic Summit of the Americas, in the U.S. city of Los Angeles, organized by the United States, which contrary to what it proclaims, maintains a genocidal economic, commercial and financial blockade against Cuba, designed to cause hunger, disease and despair among the Cuban people.
Confrontations, exclusions and sanctions cannot lead to that future, which Washington claims to support only in words and slogans, because history, facts and reality disprove it.
Sixty years of a criminal and unilateral siege have hindered the efforts of the largest of the Antilles in all socioeconomic spheres, with the well-known effects on Cuban families.
The effects of this hostile policy limit the scope of the archipelago's development, since it is aimed at preventing trade relations with third countries, obstructing banking and financial operations and putting pressure on foreign investments, limiting the sources of income that are destined to improve the living conditions of the citizens.
The administration of President Joe Biden maintains almost in its entirety the 243 measures adopted by his predecessor Donald Trump, several of them opportunistically taking advantage of the context of the global health emergency due to Covid-19.
The United States recently reversed some of those provisions, a limited step in the right direction. However, as the Cuban Ministry of Foreign Affairs rightly stated, the blockade, the longest in the history of mankind, has not been modified at all.
A demand of the great majority of UN member nations. Year after year since 1992, the General Assembly has overwhelmingly pronounced itself in favor of lifting the economic siege, which in six decades has caused losses of over 144 billion dollars.
Twenty-nine resolutions have already been approved in this regard, ignored by Washington, which now cynically speaks of building a better future for all in the region, when it violates the most elementary human rights of an entire people.
But it also pays no attention to the demands of its own citizens, who are also asking for progress in the normalization of ties with Cuba in order to promote exchange and cooperation for the benefit of the citizens of both nations.
A demand that does not cease. In recent days residents in the San Francisco Bay Area sent an open letter to Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, stating that it is time to forge a new path in their country's relations with the Caribbean nation.
"Let Cuba Live," thus begins the missive that denounces how the Biden administration has kept Trump's aggressive policy in force almost in its entirety.
The United States does not promote peace, cooperation and solidarity to advance a better future for America, which it continues to consider its backyard. The summit's slogan is an offense, a sign of contempt towards the countries of the area, as it maintains its hostile policy towards Cuba, so many times precisely, denounced and rejected by the region.
