2024-03-19 03:01:00
The charge d’affaires of the United States embassy in Havana, Benjamín Ziff, was summoned this Monday to the Foreign Ministry for Washington’s “interference behavior” during the protests over the blackouts and food shortages registered on Sunday in Santiago de Cuba . In a statement, Cuba blamed US sanctions for the country’s serious crisis, which he described as a “merciless economic war” supported by international media.
The Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs, Carlos Fernández de Cossío, “formally conveyed” to Ziff “the firm rejection of the interventionist behavior and slanderous messages of the US government and its embassy in Cuba regarding internal affairs of the Cuban reality.” The call to attention to the American diplomat occurs following hundreds of people went out to protest in Santiago de Cuba, in the east of the island and the second most important city in the country with 510 thousand inhabitants, due to blackouts of up to 13 hours a day.
Washington assured that these protests “reflect a “desperate situation” and considered “absurd” the accusation that it is behind the demonstrations, according to State Department spokesman Vedant Patel. Later, the State Department’s person in charge of Latin America, Brian Nichols, said that the United States “supports the Cuban people in exercising their right to assemble peacefully.”
Nichols further opined that “the Cuban government will not be able to meet the needs of its people until it embraces democracy and the rule of law and respects the rights of citizens.” The US embassy in Cuba said it had reports of “peaceful protests” in Santiago de Cuba and the city of Bayamo, in the neighboring province of Granma, and other places on the island.
US “direct responsibility”
Vice Minister Fernández de Cossío pointed out to Ziff “the direct responsibility” of Washington “in the face of the difficult economic situation that Cuba is currently going through, under the weight and impact of the economic blockade designed to destroy the country’s economic capacity.” The United States has maintained an economic embargo once morest the island for more than six decades, reinforced in recent years, first under the mandate of Donald Trump (2017-2021) and continued by his successor Joe Biden.
“If the United States government had even a minimal and honest concern regarding the well-being of the Cuban population, it would remove Cuba from the arbitrary list of States that supposedly sponsor terrorism,” warns the statement from the Cuban Foreign Ministry. In 2021, Washington once once more included Cuba on its blacklist of sponsors of terrorism, a measure that hinders the island’s commercial transactions and investments.
This Monday morning, President Miguel Díaz-Canel said on , he wrote on social networks. “We will not tire of fighting once morest the genocidal blockade or explaining to the people the causes of the problems and the government’s efforts to move the economy forward,” added Díaz-Canel.
The government of Nicaragua expressed this Monday its support for that of Cuba. In a document addressed to Cuban leader Raúl Castro and President Miguel Díaz-Canel, his Nicaraguan counterpart Daniel Ortega said that he trusts that “with the strength of that great people and the God of all triumphs, the story of honorable courage in the face of immoral audacity of the Earth Imperialists, will continue to shine.” Ortega said that he will continue writing “new pages of exemplary significance of the challenges imposed, showing once once more the indomitable spirit of Fidel, Raúl, Miguel, and that invincible Cuban revolution.”
Since the beginning of March, Cuba has faced a new streak of electricity outages due to maintenance work being carried out at the Antonio Guiteras thermoelectric plant, the most important on the island and located in Matanzas. This weekend the power outages worsened due to the shortage of fuel, necessary to power the other thermoelectric plants.
Authorities reported Saturday that the country was “completely affected” by the blackouts, including the capital, without reaching a widespread power outage. In 2022, Cuba experienced almost daily blackouts that caused outbreaks of social protest. Sunday’s demonstration is the largest since then. The pandemic, the tightening of US sanctions and endogenous errors in economic and monetary policies have aggravated the structural problems of the Cuban system in the last three years.
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