Cuba is the only country in the world that has suffered the application of such strong and coercive measures to intensify a prolonged blockade, warned Johana Tablada, Deputy Director General for the United States of the Foreign Ministry.
Addressing the effects of this cruel unilateral fence on the occasion of the 60th anniversary of its officialization by the then president of the United States, John F. Kennedy, the official explained that “immigration and consular issues” easily show the negative impact of that policy. .
He recalled that almost five years ago the government of the current president in the White House, Donald Trump, made the arbitrary decision to close the consular office after “manufacturing lies and science fiction ideas that US diplomats were attacked.”
The pretext of the alleged acoustic attacks – now called by Washington “anomalous health incidents” – served Trump to tighten the blockade by eliminating flights to Cuba, suspending consular services, among a set of 243 measures taken during his mandate (2017- 2021), still in force with Democrat Joe Biden.
Many wonder how long they will have to continue to suffer from these policies and, for example, pay three times the price of a plane ticket to be close to a family member, Tablada said.
For how long families will be separated, that is one of the effects, but probably one of the most inhumane of US policies, he added.
In a special program of Cubavisión Internacional, José Ramón Cabañas, the first ambassador to the United States after the reestablishment of diplomatic ties between the two countries, referred to the obstacles to payments and the difficulties with the banks due to this hostile policy.
While Ramón Labañino, Hero of the Republic of Cuba and Vice President of the National Association of Economists and Accountants, recalled the economic costs of the blockade and how its intensification hindered the confrontation with the Covid-19 pandemic.
That same criterion was supported by the writer and poet Miguel Barnet, who pointed out that the siege of Washington tightened in the midst of a context of great vulnerability for the Cuban people.
An Honorary Member of the National Union of Writers and Artists of Cuba, Barnet lamented the brake on cultural exchanges and said that calling the blockade an “embargo” is a fallacy.
For Antonio Carricarte, president of the Cuban Chamber of Commerce, the extraterritorial effects of the blockade are reflected in punitive and dissuasive measures to intimidate third countries to prevent commercial relations with the island.
Executive Order 3447 signed by Kennedy on February 3, 1962 gave legal status to this unilateral fence, the longest in history against any country.
