Cuba remains committed to the elimination of nuclear weapons and the application of the provisions of the Treaty of Tlatelolco, as today marks the 55th anniversary of that document being opened for signature.
The Treaty for the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons in Latin America and the Caribbean -known as the Treaty of Tlatelolco, Mexico- was ratified by all the countries of the region and its purpose is to prohibit the testing, use, manufacture, acquisition or emplacement of this type of weaponry in this part of the planet.
Likewise, it commits the signatory nations to exclusively use for peaceful purposes the nuclear material and facilities under their jurisdiction, with which Latin America established the first nuclear-weapon-free zone in the world. Then those of the South Pacific would be added in 1985, Southeast Asia in 1995, Africa in 1996, Central Asia in 2006 and Mongolia, which in 2000 obtained international recognition as a State free of nuclear weapons through a Resolution of the UN General Assembly.
With the Treaty, according to the document’s preamble, the Latin American and Caribbean countries seek to “contribute to putting an end to the arms race, especially nuclear arms, and to the consolidation of a world in peace, founded on the sovereign equality of States, the mutual respect and good neighborliness.
However, there is still a latent danger that events such as the bombings by the United States of the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the end of World War II will be repeated, because humanity continues to be threatened by the existence of more than 13,000 weapons of this kind. type in the hands of a few countries.
This situation was repeatedly denounced in international forums by the Cuban authorities, who in turn promote the reinforcement of that policy.
Proof of this is the declaration of Latin America and the Caribbean as a Zone of Peace, proclaimed in the Cuban capital in 2014, when the second Summit of Latin American and Caribbean States was held here.
“I solemnly proclaim Latin America and the Caribbean as a zone of peace,” then-Cuban President Raúl Castro said on January 29, 2014, in a plenary session attended by 30 heads of state.
The 33 countries assumed “the permanent commitment to the peaceful solution of controversies in order to banish forever the use of and the threat of force in the region,” assured Raúl Castro.
The proclamation of a peace zone is considered one of the most symbolic agreements adopted by the members of the regional organization, at a time when several countries had border disputes.
Cuba concretely expresses its commitment to world peace and to the application of the Treaty of Tlatelolco and nuclear disarmament, under strict international control and in adherence to the principles of irreversibility, verification and transparency.
But at the same time it insists that the only guarantee against the threat of the use of nuclear weapons is their total elimination and in this the Treaty of Tlatelolco continues to be a legal and political reference for the world.
