The most recent events in the region confirm the United States government and reactionary oligarchies are primarily responsible for the dangerous political and social upheaval and instability in Latin America and the Caribbean.
By Cuban Ministry of Foreign Affairs
As anticipated on January 1, 2019, the First Secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba, Army General Raúl Castro Ruz:
“Those who are excited about the restoration of imperialist dominance in our region should understand that Latin America and the Caribbean have changed and the world too (…) The region resembles a meadow in times of drought. A spark could generate an uncontrollable fire that would damage everyone’s national interests.”
President Donald Trump proclaims the validity of the Monroe Doctrine and appeals to McCarthyism to preserve imperialist domination over the natural resources of the region, prevent the exercise of national sovereignty and the aspirations for regional integration and cooperation; to try to reestablish its unipolar hegemony on a global and hemispheric scale; to eliminate progressive, revolutionary and alternative models for savage capitalism; to reverse the 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.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo accused Cuba and Venezuela menacingly on Monday, December 2, of taking advantage and helping to increase the turmoil in the countries of the region. He misrepresents and manipulates reality and hides, as a central element of regional instability, the permanent intervention of the United States in Latin America and the Caribbean.
The legitimate protests and the massive popular mobilizations that are happening on the continent, particularly in the Plurinational State of Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador and Brazil, are caused by poverty and the growing inequality in the distribution of wealth; the certainty that neoliberal formulas aggravate the exclusive and unsustainable situation of social vulnerability; the absence or precariousness of health, education and social security services; the abuses against human dignity; unemployment and labor rights restriction; the privatization, cost and cancellation of public services and the increase in citizen insecurity.
They reveal the crisis of political systems, the lack of true democracy, the discrediting of traditional conservative parties, the protest against the historical corruption typical of military dictatorships and right-wing governments, low popular support for official authorities, the distrust in institutions and in the justice system.
They also protest against brutal police repression, the militarization of the latter under the pretext of protecting critical infrastructure, the exemption of criminal responsibility from repressors; the use of weapons of war and riot gear 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 protesters under the pretext of safeguarding the supposed “democratic order.” The disguising silence of several governments, institutions and very active and critical personalities against the left is a shame. The complicity of large corporate media is shameful.
Peoples wonder rightly where is democracy and the rule of law; what institutions supposedly dedicated to the protection of human rights do; where is the justice system whose independence is proclaimed?
Let’s review some facts. In March 2015, President Barack Obama signs an unusual Executive Order declaring the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela “an unusual and extraordinary threat to national security, economy and foreign policy” of the great power. In November 2015, the costly electoral defeat of the left in Argentina occurs.
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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 the former president Luiz Ignacio Lula Da Silva, with the early participation of the United States Department of Justice, through the Law of Corrupt Practices Abroad, to install a dependent government, willing to reverse important social conquests through neoliberal adjustments, through disastrous change of the development model, to allow the destruction of the national enterprise and plundering privatization; to the cheap sale of the country’s resources and infrastructure to US transnationals.
At the end of 2017, there was a protest in Honduras against the electoral result and its terrible repression.
In January 2018, the United States aborts the signing of an agreement between the Venezuelan government and the opposition run from Washington. A month later, the Secretary of State proclaims the validity of the Monroe Doctrine and calls for a military coup against the Bolivarian and Chavista Revolution.
In March 2018, the atrocious assassination of the Brazilian councilor Marielle Franco takes place, which raised a wave of indignation in her country and the world and from which the dark implications of power groups remain hidden. In April, Lula is arrested through spurious legal maneuvers. There is copious evidence of the intervention of the United States in the Brazilian elections, through specialized companies that use “big data” technologies and polymetry to individually manipulate the will of the voters, such as those managed by ultra-reactionary Steve Bannon and others.
During this period, legal proceedings are opened against former presidents Cristina Fernández de Kirchner and Rafael Correa. In April 2018, they try to destabilize Nicaragua through external interference and the application of unilateral coercive measures.
On August 4, 2018, there is the attempted murder against President Nicolás Maduro Moros. In January 2019, the self-proclamation of the unknown and corrupt Juan Guaidó, organized by Washington, takes place. In March 2019, President Trump renews the Executive Order that he considers the threat to Venezuela. On April 30, it is the attempted military coup in Caracas that fails in a resounding manner, and the United States, vindictively, escalates in 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 US government applies savage anti-immigrant policies and aggressive, hateful behavior to feed fear and division in voters. Starts the xenophobic wall on the border with Mexico, threatens it and Central America with terrible tariffs and sanctions if they do not stop those fleeing poverty and insecurity, and it multiplies deportations. Cruelly separates thousands of children from their parents, has arrested 69,000 children and tries to expel the children of immigrants born and raised on American territory.
Showing shameless subordination to the United States, the far-right Brazilian government headed by Jair Bolsonaro turned to lies, to the xenophobic, racist, misogynist and homophobic discourse, combined with delusional projections about social and political phenomena such as climate change, native populations, Amazonian fires and emigration, which have generated the repudiation of numerous leaders and organizations. In the management of the government, the social policies that led Brazil during the Workers’ Party governments to significantly reduce the levels of poverty and social exclusion have been dismantled.
Since May 2019, tens of thousands of protesters took to the streets against cuts in education, reforms to the pension system, 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 assumed hostile positions towards Cuba, in violation of International Law. As the Brazilian press published in April 2019, the Foreign Ministry issued instructions to 15 of its Embassies to coordinate with the US urging recipient governments to condemn Cuba in international forums.
For the first time since 1992, Brazil voted this year against, only accompanied by the United States and Israel, the resolution of the United Nations General Assembly to call for an end to the US economic, commercial and financial blockade against Cuba, and the cessation of the extraterritorial application of its laws against third States.
At the same time, the Colombian government abstained in the vote on the resolution that it has supported since 1992 and that demands, at a time when it intensifies, the cessation of the genocidal blockade of the United States against Cuba and its extraterritorial reach against the same. To justify this objectionable decision, the authorities of that country resorted to the manipulation, ungratefully and politically motivated, on the altruistic, consecrated, discrete and unjustifiable contribution of Cuba to peace in Colombia, an issue in which the conduct of our country is universally recognized The broad and critical debate that this event generated in that nation is known, which, despite everything, we will continue to accompany in its efforts to achieve peace.
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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 tighten the blockade and hostile policy against our people. Likewise, it is useless to hide the failure of the capitalist system, protect wobbly and repressive governments, hide parliamentary, judicial, police coups; and shake the ghost of socialism to intimidate the people. With this, it also aims to justify the repression and criminalization of social protest.
The only responsibility of Cuba is that which emanates from the example that its heroic people has provided in the defense of their sovereignty, in resistance to the most brutal and systematic aggressions, in the invariable practice of solidarity and cooperation with the sister nations of Latin America and the Caribbean.
It hurts imperialism that Cuba has shown that there is another world possible and that an alternative model to neoliberalism can be built, based on solidarity, cooperation, dignity, on the fair distribution of income, equal access to professional improvement, to the security and protection of citizens and to the full liberation of human beings.
The Cuban Revolution is also evidence that a closely united people, owners of their country and their institutions, in permanent and profound democracy, can resist victoriously and advance their development, in the face of the longest aggression and blockade in history.
The coup d’etat in Bolivia, orchestrated by the United States, using the OAS and the local oligarchy as an instrument, is a demonstration of the aggressiveness of the imperialist attack. Cuba reiterates its condemnation of the coup, the brutal repression unleashed and expresses its solidarity with comrade Evo Morales Ayma and the Bolivian people.
While the US 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 the unwavering will to maintain cooperation with the government and the people Venezuelans
To the Sandinista government and people of Nicaragua, led by President Daniel Ortega, who faces attempts at destabilization 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 already have that of the Cuban people, at a time when that island is a victim of external interference that has already caused violence and aims to thwart the electoral process.
In this complex scenario, the government of Andrés Manuel López Obrador in Mexico faces 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 from that nation to the neoliberal formulas that impoverished, indebted and seriously damaged its people. The liberation of Lula is a triumph of the peoples, and Cuba reiterates its call for worldwide mobilization for the claim of its full freedom, the restitution of its innocence and its political rights.
The corruption that characterizes the behavior of the current government of the United States is already unquestionable. Its impact on the peoples of Latin America and the Caribbean has a cost in lives, suffering, instability and economic damage.
At the dramatic juncture that crosses the region and the world, Cuba reaffirms the principles of sovereignty, non-intervention in the internal affairs of other States and the right of each people to freely choose and build their political system, in an environment of peace, stability and justice; without threats, aggressions or unilateral coercive measures and calls to fulfill the postulates of the Proclamation of Latin America and the Caribbean as a Zone of Peace.
Cuba will continue working on the path of the integration of Our America, which includes the realization of all efforts so that the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC), soon chaired by Mexico, continues to promote the common interests of our nations by strengthening unity within diversity.
Cuba opposes the relentless onslaught of the most reactionary forces in the hemisphere with the unwavering resistance of its people along with the will to defend the unity of the nation, its social conquests, its sovereignty and independence, and socialism at the necessary price. We do it with optimism and immovable confidence in the victory that the Commander in Chief of the Cuban Revolution, Fidel Castro Ruz, bequeathed us with the leadership of the First Secretary of our Party, Army General Raúl Castro and the leadership of President Miguel Díaz -Channel
Havana, December 3, 2019
Translated by JRE/EF
