Havana, December 4 (RHC)-- A statement issued by the Cuban Foreign Ministry on Tuesday rejects any responsibility for the popular mobilizations currently rocking several Latin American countries. RHC brings you the full text of the statement.

Our America in the face of the onslaught of Imperialism and oligarchies

Statement by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs

The most recent events in the region confirm the U.S. government and reactionary oligarchies as the main culprits in the dangerous political and social upheaval and instability in Latin America and the Caribbean.

As the First Secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba, Army General Raúl Castro Ruz, anticipated on January 1, 2019: "Those who are excited about the restoration of imperialist rule in our region should understand that Latin America and the Caribbean have changed and so has the world (...) The region resembles a prairie in times of drought. A spark could generate an uncontrollable fire that would harm the national interests of all.”

President Donald Trump proclaims the validity of the Monroe Doctrine and appeals to McCarthyism to preserve imperialist domination over the region's natural resources, hinder the exercise of national sovereignty and the aspirations of regional integration and cooperation; try to re-establish its unipolar hegemony on a world and hemispheric scale; eliminate progressive, revolutionary and alternative models to wild capitalism; reverse political and social conquests and impose neoliberal models, regardless of international law, the rules of the game of representative democracy, the environment or the welfare of peoples.

On Monday, December 2, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo threateningly accused Cuba and Venezuela of taking advantage of and helping to increase agitation in the countries of the region. He misrepresents and manipulates reality and conceals the central element of regional instability, which is the permanent intervention of the United States in Latin America and the Caribbean.

The legitimate protests and massive popular mobilizations taking place in the continent, particularly in the Plurinational State of Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador and Brazil, are caused by poverty and growing inequality in the distribution of wealth; the certainty that neoliberal formulas aggravate the exclusionary and unsustainable situation of social vulnerability; the absence or precariousness of health, education and social security services; abuses against human dignity; unemployment and the restriction of labor rights; the privatization, increase in price and cancellation of public services and the increase of citizen insecurity.

They reveal the crisis of political systems, the lack of true democracy, the discredit of traditional conservative parties, the protest against the historical corruption typical of military dictatorships and right-wing governments, the scarce popular support for official authorities, the distrust of institutions and the justice system.

They also protest against brutal police repression, the militarization of the police under the pretext of protecting critical infrastructure, the exemption of repressors from criminal responsibility; the use of war weapons and riot police that cause deaths, serious injuries, including hundreds of young people with irreversible eye injuries from the use of pellets; the criminalization of demonstrations; rapes, beatings and violence against detainees, including minors; and even the murder of social leaders, demobilized guerrillas and journalists.

The United States defends and supports repression against demonstrators on the pretext of safeguarding the so-called "democratic order". The cover-up silence of several governments, institutions and personalities who are very active and critical against the left is shameful. The complicity of the big corporate media is outrageous.

People rightly ask where is democracy and the rule of law; what do the institutions supposedly dedicated to the protection of human rights do; where is the justice system whose independence is proclaimed?

Let us review some facts. In March 2015, President Barack Obama signs an unprecedented Executive Order declaring the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela "an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security, economy and foreign policy" of the great power. In November 2015, the costly electoral defeat of the left in Argentina occurs.

The neoliberal offensive had a decisive moment in August 2016, with the parliamentary-judicial coup in Brazil against President Dilma Rousseff, the criminalization and imprisonment of the leaders of the Workers Party, and later of former president Luiz Inacio Lula Da Silva himself, with the early participation of the U.S. Department of Justice, through the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, to install a dependent government, ready to reverse important social conquests through neoliberal adjustments, willing to the nefarious change of the development model, to allow the destruction of national businesses and the plundering privatization; to the cheap sale of the country's resources and infrastructure to American transnational corporations.

At the end of 2017, there was a protest in Honduras against the electoral result which was met by terrible repression.

In January 2018, the United States aborted from Washington the signing of an agreement between the Venezuelan government and the opposition . A month later, the Secretary of State proclaimed the validity of the Monroe Doctrine and callded for a military coup against the Bolivarian and Chavista Revolution.

In March 2018, the atrocious assassination of Brazilian councilwoman Marielle Franco took place, raising a wave of indignation in her country and the world.  The dark implications of power groups in her murder remains hidden. In April, Lula was imprisoned through spurious legal maneuvers. There is abundant evidence of U.S. intervention in the Brazilian elections, through specialized companies that use "big data" and polymetric technologies to manipulate the will of individual voters, such as those handled by the ultra-reactionary Steve Bannon and other Israelis.

In this period, judicial proceedings were opened against former Presidents Cristina Fernández de Kirchner and Rafael Correa. In April 2018, they attempted to destabilize Nicaragua through external interference and the application of unilateral coercive measures.

On August 4, 2018, the assassination attempt against President Nicolás Maduro took place. In January 2019, the self-proclamation of the unknown and corrupt Juan Guaidó, organized in Washington, happens. In March 2019, President Trump renewed the Executive Order considering Venezuela a threat. On April 30, an attempted military coup in Caracas failed resoundingly, and the United States, vindictively, ratchets up  its unconventional war against the South American nation that resists tenaciously and heroically from the civic-military union of its people.

Throughout the period, the U.S. government applies savage anti-immigrant policies in an aggressive behavior, full of hatred, to feed fear and division in voters.  It tries the xenophobic wall on the border with Mexico, threatens this and Central America with terrible tariffs and sanctions if they do not stop those fleeing poverty and insecurity, and multiplies deportations. It cruelly separates thousands of children from their parents, detains  69,000 minors and tries to expel the children of immigrants born and raised in U.S. territory.

Showing shameless subordination to the United States, the far-right government of Brazil headed by Jair Bolsonaro resorted to lies, xenophobic, racist, misogynist and homophobic discourse, combined with delirious projections about social and political phenomena such as climate change, indigenous populations, Amazon fires and emigration, which have generated the repudiation of numerous leaders and organizations. The Bolsonaro government has been dismantling the social policies that led Brazil during the governments of the Workers' Party to reduce notably the levels of poverty and social exclusion.

Since May 2019, tens of thousands of demonstrators have taken to the streets against cuts in education, pension reforms, discriminatory policies and gender-based violence.

The Brazilian government has intervened in the internal affairs of neighboring countries such as Venezuela, Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay, and has taken hostile positions towards Cuba, in violation of international law. As reported by Brazilian media outlets in April 2019, the Foreign Ministry instructed 15 of its embassies to coordinate with U.S. embassies to urge host governments to condemn Cuba in international forums.

Accompanied only by the United States and Israel, for the first time since 1992, Brazil voted this year against the United Nations General Assembly resolution calling for an end to the economic, commercial and financial blockade, which the United States is now tightening against Cuba, and for an end to the extraterritorial application of its laws against third states. 

At the same time, the Colombian government abstained in the vote on the resolution it has supported since 1992, which calls, at a time when the genocidal blockade of the United States against Cuba and its extraterritorial scope is intensifying, for an end to the genocidal blockade of the United States against Cuba. To justify this reprehensible decision, the authorities of that country resorted to ungrateful and politically motivated manipulation of Cuba's altruistic, consecrated, discreet and unobjectionable contribution to peace in Colombia, an issue in which our country's conduct is universally recognized.  It is well known the broad and critical debate that this fact generated in that nation. Cuba, in spite of everything, will continue to accompany Colombia’s efforts to achieve peace.

The American slander of attributing to Cuba supposed responsibilities in the organization of popular mobilizations against neoliberalism in South America constitutes an incredible excuse to justify and reinforce the blockade and the hostile policy against our people. Likewise, it is useless to hide the failure of the capitalist system, to protect lurching and repressive governments, to hide parliamentary, judicial and police coups; and to stir up the ghost of socialism in order to intimidate the peoples. In doing so, it also seeks to justify the repression and criminalization of social protest.

Cuba's only responsibility is that which emanates from the example set by its heroic people in defending its sovereignty, in resisting the most brutal and systematic aggressions, in the invariable practice of solidarity and cooperation with sister nations in Latin America and the Caribbean.

It hurts imperialism to see that Cuba has shown that there is another possible world and that an alternative model to neoliberalism can be built, based on solidarity, cooperation, dignity, fair distribution of income, equal access to professional advancement, citizen safety and protection and the full liberation of human beings.

The Cuban Revolution is also a proof that a people closely united, owner of its country and its institutions, in permanent and deep democracy, can resist victoriously and advance in its development, while confronting the longest aggression and blockade in history.

The coup d'état in Bolivia, orchestrated by the United States, using the OAS and the local oligarchy as instruments, is a demonstration of the aggressiveness of the imperialist onslaught. Cuba reiterates its condemnation of the coup d'état, of the brutal repression unleashed and expresses its solidarity with comrade Evo Morales Ayma and the Bolivian people.

While the U.S. government continues its unconventional war to try to overthrow the legitimately constituted government of President Nicolás Maduro Moros and invokes the Inter-American Treaty of Reciprocal Assistance (TIAR), Cuba ratifies its unshakable will to maintain cooperation with the Venezuelan government and people.

To the Sandinista government and people of Nicaragua, led by President Daniel Ortega, who face destabilization attempts and unilateral US coercive measures, we reiterate our solidarity.

The legitimate government of the Commonwealth of Dominica and its Prime Minister Roosevelt Skerrit deserve international solidarity and they already have that of the Cuban people, at a time when that island is a victim of external interference that has already provoked violence and aims to thwart the electoral process.

In this complex scenario, the government of Andrés Manuel López Obrador in Mexico confronts neoliberalism and defends the principles of non-intervention and respect for sovereignty, while the election of Alberto Fernández and Cristina Fernández as President and Vice President in Argentina expresses the unequivocal rejection by that nation of the neoliberal formulas that impoverished it, indebted it and seriously damaged its people. The liberation of Lula is a triumph of the peoples, and Cuba reiterates its call for worldwide mobilization to demand his absolute freedom, the restitution of his innocence and of his political rights.

The corruption that characterizes the behavior of the current U.S. government cannot be hidden. Its impact on the peoples of Latin America and the Caribbean has a cost in lives, suffering, instability and economic damage.

In the dramatic situation that the region and the world are going through, Cuba reaffirms the principles of sovereignty, non-intervention in the internal affairs of other States and the right of every people to freely choose and build its political system, in an atmosphere of peace, stability and justice; without threats, aggressions or unilateral coercive measures. Cuba also calls for compliance with the postulates of the Proclamation of Latin America and the Caribbean as a Zone of Peace.

Cuba will continue to work towards the integration of Our America, which includes making every effort to ensure that the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC), soon to be chaired by Mexico, continues to promote the common interests of our nations by strengthening unity within diversity.

To the relentless onslaught of the most reactionary forces in the hemisphere, Cuba opposes the unwavering resistance of its people together with the will to defend the unity of the nation, its social achievements, its sovereignty and independence, and socialism doing whatever it takes. We do so with optimism and unshakable confidence in the victory bequeathed to us by the Commander in Chief of the Cuban Revolution, Fidel Castro Ruz, under the guidance of our Party's First Secretary, Army General Raúl Castro and the leadership of President Miguel Díaz-Canel.

Havana, December 3, 2019.