Twenty six years ago this Sunday, 27 March, the U.S. began illegal propaganda broadcasts against Cuba via the so-called Marti Television, a subject that was not touched upon by President Barak Obama during his recent visit to Havana—although on several occasions the U.S. president quoted statements and phrases by Cuba’s National Hero Jose Marti.

The misuse of the name of Jose Marti in the war waged by the United States against Cuba had begun earlier, on May 20th, 1985, with the creation of Radio Marti, a radio station out of Miami that broadcasts a daily, 'round the clock barrage of propaganda aimed at toppling the legitimate Government of Cuba. This effort costs the US taxpayers millions and millions of dollars every year, a useless expenditure that they should openly question.

José Martí lived and worked for almost fifteen years in the United States, where in 1892 he founded the newspaper "PATRIA" ("HOMELAND") and the Cuban Revolutionary Party, both of which had the objective of achieving the independence of Cuba and promote the independence of Puerto Rico.

In a letter to his Mexican friend Manuel Mercado, on May 18th, 1895, on the eve of his death in combat at Dos Rios, in Eastern Cuba, Marti wrote that he had lived in the belly of the beast and that he knew it well.

In that letter, considered to be his political testament, Marti reveals that his struggle was centered at achieving the independence of Cuba and with it preventing the United States from using that added strength to prey on the rest of the nations of Our Americas and extend its rule over the Caribbean and the rest of the Hemisphere.

President Obama did not speak in Havana about Jose Marti’s profound anti-imperialist thinking, nor did he refer to the outrage against the memory of the Cuban hero by successive U.S. administrations in creating, financing and operating up to today the ill-named Radio and TV Marti.

The stations not only violate the sovereignty of Cuba but are also a major weapon in the huge arsenal launched by the United States against Cuba in a desperate –and vain – effort to topple the Cuban Revolution. 

They are an insult to the people of Cuba and to the memory of our National Hero, and operate in violation of international rules and regulations.