In the communities of El Cobre, in Santiago de Cubaand Cacocum, in Holguín, began this Saturday the delivery of the first two shipments of humanitarian aid sent by the US for victims of the Hurricane Melissa.
Cáritas Cuba announced that the delivery began yesterday morning in El Cobre and in the afternoon in Holguín and will extend until this Sunday night.
In it, as specified by the entity“priority was given to people with disabilities, the elderly alone, pregnant women, sick children, who were previously identified by the Cáritas teams in that community as those most vulnerable.”
Both shipments are made up of 528 non-perishable food kits and 660 hygiene kits and their distribution, as announced, is being managed by the Catholic Church on the island and Cáritas Cuba.
The organization of the delivery in the Santiago town is carried out with the participation of the Archbishop of Santiago de Cuba, the director of the diocesan Cáritas, a representative of Catholic Relief Services and Rogelio Deán Puerta, parish priest and rector of the Basilica Santuario de Nuestra Señora de la Caridad.
“The people were summoned in stages in order to provide adequate attention to each of them. Upon receiving their modules, they review their content,” explains the Caritas note replicated on Facebook by the Archbishopric of Santiago.
“Several means of transportation were contracted to allow the transportation of those victims who reside in mountainous and difficult-to-access areas,” the information adds.
In the case of the province of Holguín, the delivery has been made in the San Pedro Apóstol Parish in the Cacocum municipality.
Arrival of shipments
The first of the shipments had arrived in Holguín on January 14, on a flight from Miami. This, after the start of shipping was announced by Secretary of State Marco Rubio of the $3 million in disaster assistance committed by the Trump Administration after Hurricane Melisa in October of last year.
On Friday, January 16, the second US flight with aid destined for eastern Cuba arrived at the “Antonio Maceo” international airport in Santiago de Cuba.
All of what is considered aid from the American people is expected to reach 6,000 families (about 24,000 people) who were affected by Hurricane Melissa “in the four dioceses of the Eastern Region of the country (Bayamo-Manzanillo, Holguín-LasTunas, Santiago de Cuba and Guantánamo-Baracoa),” states the Cáritas note.
The arrival of aid from the United States to Cuba occurs almost three months after the hurricane and in the midst of a new scenario of tensions between the governments of both countries.
One day after Marco Rubio’s announcement, the Cuban Foreign Ministry issued a release in which he considered that “the US government is taking advantage of what would seem to be a humanitarian gesture for opportunistic and political manipulation purposes.”
On January 16, Washington admitted that it did not consult with its Cuban counterpart about humanitarian aid for the victims of Melissa, and stressed that it would never offer direct aid to the island’s authorities.
Aid from the United States arrives on the island 77 days after Melisa passed through the country, one of the reasons why the Cuban Government considers its delivery at this time as a political act.
However, Havana assured that it has accepted the donations “without conditions” because they directly benefit the population.
