Manuel Cabieses Donoso
Since January 2017, when Trump became president of the United States, the world has been living on the edge. The insane decisions of the American president are an insolent provocation to the independence and sovereignty of many nations.
For Trump there are no ethical or humanitarian limits. He orders the massacre of populations in the Middle East or the remote assassination of critics of imperialism, and without hesitation he launches a trade war that shakes the world economy, as if he were to deprive the people who need it to survive of food and medicine.
The brutality of his diktats has made his own country -the richest in the world- the main focus of the coronavirus pandemic and opened up suspicions of a leak from the Pentagon’s germ warfare laboratories.
The madman’s gross aggression is hitting sister nations hard. Venezuela and Cuba are victims of Trump’s rampage. The blockade on those countries has a genocidal purpose. It is intended to decimate their populations through hunger and epidemics. A bestial method to strangle the liberating processes in both countries. The blockade of Cuba and Venezuela is a crime against humanity that deserves the punishment of the International Court of Justice and the protest of the nations of the continent.
The blockade prevents Venezuela and Cuba from supplying themselves with resources to fight the coronavirus and with the food and supplies that their economies require. The blockade prevents them from accessing trade and international credit. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) denied Venezuela – under pressure from Washington – a loan of 5 billion dollars; but if the U.S. blockade did not exist, Venezuela would be a free client of international banks. Venezuela possesses vast reserves of oil and other resources that allow it to guarantee its foreign debt. In addition, in August last year, Trump seized many Venezuelan assets in U.S. territory. Billions of dollars -including the Citgo refinery- were seized by the United States government.
Trump has attempted by all means – including a failed assassination – to eliminate the legitimate president of Venezuela. More than a year ago, in a gesture befitting a monarch administering his colonies, he appointed a “president in charge” of Venezuela. His “viceroy” promised to overthrow President Nicolas Maduro within a month. But time passed and the “in charge” became a sad puppet that was useless for the empire. That’s why Trump has resurrected the Inter-American Treaty of Reciprocal Assistance (TIAR), an instrument of the Cold War, to prepare the assault on Venezuela. Colombia, the main supplier of cocaine to millions of drug addicts in the United States, is the logistical platform for the aggression against Venezuela. There are several U.S. military bases in Colombian territory and the local army is controlled by the Pentagon. Washington has also provided funds and weapons for several failed coup conspiracies. The peoples-armed forces alliance is the patriotic and revolutionary key to the process that has been developing in Venezuela for 20 years. Overcoming enormous difficulties – and the regrettable consequences of its own mistakes – the country continues to guide its Revolution towards socialism in the conditions of the 21st century. The seed sown by President Hugo Chávez has germinated in the collective conscience and the government of President Maduro – of undoubted democratic legitimacy – defies the defeatist predictions of the media that manipulates with the empire on a daily basis.
Cuba, in turn, moves the world with the example of its solidarity. Besieged since 1960 by the U.S. commercial and financial blockade, which has resulted in losses of 140 billion dollars, the Cuban people have once again demonstrated the moral fiber of their revolution. Internationalism -which regards Humanity as a group of brothers- is the cornerstone of their culture, educated in the revolution of Fidel and Che.
It is a small island – little bigger than the region of Antofagasta – and, moreover, poor. But its moral and political greatness has made it highly respected among the nations and loved by the people. Its tenacity as a nation and its lucid political leadership have made Cuba a bastion of medical and scientific research. Its laboratories are working in cooperation with China in the search for a vaccine against Covid-19. The prestige of its medical science has once again enabled it to come to the aid of other peoples in the fight against the pandemic.
A mortal enemy of Cuba, Trump, a billionaire in dollars but destitute in both ideas and principles, will not be able to defeat the Cuban Revolution. All the presidents of the United States have tried for 60 years.
Cuba’s uncompromising internationalism is a lesson for us who are lagging behind their level of collective consciousness.
Cuba’s example demonstrates that in the future, universal culture will be based on the humanist principles proclaimed today by that luminous island in the Caribbean Sea.
(Manuel Cabieses Donoso is a journalist and editor of Punto Final.)
