Cuba celebrates a victory in its struggle against the U.S. blockade with overwhelming support in the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) against the U.S. economic embargo

The extraterritorial impact of the blockade harms the sovereignty of the countries of the United Nations, sanctions their businessmen and impedes access to their ports for third party ships that dock in Cuba

By Maby Martinez Rodriguez

Cuba celebrates Thursday a new victory in its struggle against the U.S. blockade, by achieving overwhelming support in the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) for a resolution approved by 185 votes in favor, two against and two abstentions.

The report presented for the thirtieth time states that only between August 2021 and February 2022 that unilateral policy caused Cuba losses in the order of 3,806.5 million dollars.  The figure is 49% higher than that reported between January and July 2021 and a record in just seven months.

At current prices, the accumulated damages during six decades of the blockade amount to 150,410.8 million dollars, with a great weight on sectors such as health and education, in addition to the damage to the national economy and the quality of life of Cuban families.

In the first 14 months of the Biden Administration alone, the losses caused by the blockade amounted to 6,364 million dollars, which is equivalent to an impact of more than 454 million dollars a month and more than 15 million dollars a day, according to the document.

The extraterritorial impact of the blockade harms the sovereignty of the countries of the United Nations, sanctions their businessmen and impedes access to their ports for third party ships that dock in Cuba.  It also prevents the importation into Cuba of articles produced in any country when they have 10% or more of U.S. components, the foreign minister denounced.

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Do Not Exclude Cuba from the Summit of the Americas

Cuba denounces U.S. government exclusion of Cuba from preparations for Ninth Summit of the Americas

Excerpts from statement to the press by Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla

I am obliged to denounce the fact that the U.S. government has decided to exclude the Republic of Cuba from preparations for the Ninth Summit of the Americas set to take place in Los Angeles, June 8-10; and is currently exerting extreme pressure on numerous governments in the region that have privately and respectfully opposed this exclusion.

The U.S. government is misleading the public and governments of the hemisphere by saying that it has not yet made decisions regarding invitations.

I respectfully urge Secretary of State (Anthony) Blinken to say honestly whether or not Cuba will be invited to the Ninth Summit of the Americas.

A central axis, according to preparations for the event, will be health.  And I must inform our people and international public opinion that there are currently negotiations underway, conducted in an unclear manner, with quite a few neoliberal elements, and many shortcomings, in relation to the real needs of the peoples regarding the COVID-19 pandemic, the structural causes of precarious health systems that have led to tragic consequences and caused an extremely high number of deaths in our hemisphere, including the United States of America, and have avoided substantial cooperation and basic financing to address these consequences, and are now negotiating in an opaque manner a so-called Health and Resilience Action Plan for the Americas through the year 2030.

I must note that these negotiations are being held, in an obscure manner, with the exclusion of Cuba and other member states of the Pan American Health Organization, which are participating in these processes, in violation of their own mandates.

Cuba has always, in a modest but altruistic and persistent fashion, provided the possibility for international cooperation in health, which has been recognized worldwide.

There are Latin American vaccines against COVID-19 which are Cuban. The medical brigades that responded to the COVID emergency in the region, in the hemisphere in more than 50 countries on the planet, have been Cuban.

It would be convenient to take into account during this process, and benefit our peoples, Cuban medical presence in confronting natural disasters and epidemics in the past, the provision of tens of thousands of medical scholarships for low-income Latin American, Caribbean and United States youth, the existence of the Latin American School of Medicine in Havana, Operation Miracle that returned the sight of millions of low-income persons, Cuba's ability to establish cooperation, transfer state-of-the-art technology, provide pharmaceutical products, vaccines and novel treatments, the ability to share advanced protocols and medicines in the field of health…


Another central axis of the Summit, from which Cuba is intended to be excluded, is emigration.  A document with a long title: Letter of Understanding on Migration Management and Protection of Migrants is also being negotiated behind the back of international, US, Latin American and Canadian public opinion.  It is a code that seeks to force Latin American and Caribbean States to repress migration, to absorb the migrants that the United States decides to process outside its territory, which incorporates elements of the racist, xenophobic and plundering U.S. vision of our migrants.  It does not address in any way the real causes of migration, but it does, however, offer palliatives, stimuli, financing and economic incentives to countries that send migrants to the U.S. and are closer to its borders, to attenuate this process.

With Cuba, however, his recipe is the extreme tightening of the blockade, causing deprivation to Cuban families, the application of Undersecretary Mallory's stark memorandum: "depressing wages, causing hunger, despair and the overthrow of the Government," is the American prescription in relation to Cuba…
The exclusion of Cuba from the Ninth Summit of the Americas would constitute a serious historical setback in relation to the two previous editions.  In Panama, in 2015, Army General Raúl Castro Ruz led the delegation from our island which participated on equal footing, and raised his firm, dissenting voice, but always serene, respectful and constructive…

A third axis of the Summit of the Americas is that of democracy and human rights.  In the obscure negotiations taking place today, the intention is to establish the Organization of American States to certify all elections in the region.  This is the same OAS of the coup in Bolivia, and the intention of the United States, historically responsible for coups in our region, and also responsible for the coups in recent decades against progressive governments.

How can a Summit take place, centered on democracy, having excluded, at the arbitrary whim of the host, certain countries of Latin America and the Caribbean?  Can anyone think of something more undemocratic?
The U.S. has no moral authority to set itself up as a model in this matter or to criticize others…

The Ninth Summit of the Americas could still be an opportunity if, in an inclusive manner and on equal terms for all countries, it debated, without exclusions and with sincere commitment, the most pressing problems that affect the continent.

Cuba supports the genuine efforts to promote dialogue, links and cooperation between Our America, the America of Bolivar and Martí, and the United States, between the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States and the United States government…

Cuba, which firmly defends the unity within the diversity of Our America, today expresses our profound gratitude to the peoples and governments that maintain a courageous, dignified, solidary position, demanding of the U.S. government that Cuba not be excluded from the Ninth Summit of the Americas.

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Operation Peter Pan - Cuba

Peter Pan and child trafficking
By Gabriel Molina:



• IT is particularly difficult for Cuba’s enemies to justify the reason for U.S. citizens being prohibited to travel freely to Cuba.

Approximately 10 years ago, almost at the end of his second term, President William Clinton attempted to restore that right to his compatriots. At that time he affirmed that allowing citizens to travel to Cuba would be in the interest of the United States, as the best means of influencing the island.

But the rights and interests of U.S. citizens are not being respected. Mafia groups from Florida demanded of Clinton’s successor, the hated Bush, that he revoke that policy given that, incredibly, the ones who were influenced were the visitors and not the visited.

In total contrast to what is happening in relation to other underdeveloped countries, the interest of those groups, mostly located in Miami, is to provoke Cubans into leaving the island and taking refuge in the United States. Its neighbors cannot understand why, while walls have been constructed to keep them out, all kinds of obstacles are being put in their way, while they are hunted, maltreated, expelled and even killed, Cubans reaching U.S. territory illegally are given refugee status and all kinds of privileges – in the name of democracy and freedom.

That arbitrary regulation has been the cause of an incessant human trafficking that has turned into a lucrative and deadly business.

It all began 50 years ago, when in 1960 the CIA came up with a false law widely reproduced and distributed by its agents. In that way, Cubans were led to believe that the revolutionary government had decided to remove parental custody of children and abrogate it to the state.

An unheard of mass of confused children preparing to travel alone to the United States began to crowd into Havana’s José Martí airport. That was because approximately 14,000 families failed to think or act sensibly and let themselves be deceived by the criminal plot organized by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), under the codename Operation Peter Pan.

Researchers José Wajasán and Ramón Torreira describe it as "a sinister manipulation on the part of Washington of the major fears of Cuban parents."

In their book Operation Peter Pan, the authors quote documents from the Kennedy Library declassified from National Security Files, which, via a letter from General Maxwell Taylor, inform of a covert action program to defeat the Cuban government.

For the first time on October 26, 1960, the CIA-created Radio Swan referred to a supposed law to take children aged 5 to 18 from their parents, in order to convert them into "monsters of [Marxist] materialism."

The custody conspiracy had gone into operation by word of mouth months earlier. Initially the CIA gave the task to the conspiracy group headed by the ex-prime minister of the Carlos Prío government, known as Pony Varona, a derivative of his name Tony, in honor of his lack of personal refinement.

Later, other groups became involved, because Varona left the country, leaving the mission in the hands of his closest partners, Leopoldina and Ramón Grau Alsina, niece and nephew of ex-president Ramón Grau San Martín, who confessed their guilt after their arrest. They printed out the false law, saying that they had stolen it from President Dorticós’ office and circulated it clandestinely. The apocryphal document stated in its Article 3: "When this law comes into effect, the custody of persons under 20 years of age will be exercised by the state via persons or organizations to which this faculty has been delegated."

Panic virtually spread among thousands of Cuban families. Having structured the plot at national and continental level, the U.S. government stated that it could take in all Cuban minors who wished to travel there, without visas or papers. In that violation of its own immigration laws, Washington gave large sums of money to the airline companies to transport the minors to Miami.

Father Bryan O. Walsh, whom the authorities placed at the head of the program, declared years later that he received approximately 15,000 children. It was a tremendous paradox: parents abandoned their children to an unknown fate, with the ingenuous intention of protecting them.

The majority of those children suffered from major traumas that culminated in a total sense of non-belonging. Some of them learned alone to insert themselves in society, while there were extreme cases like that of Robert Rodríguez who, at the age of 55, brought a lawsuit before a Miami court, claiming that during the five years that he was under a "protection program in the archdiocese of the city, he was the victim, along with other children, of continuous sexual and emotional abuse." He affirmed that "he was mistreated and sexually abused in the various camps where he was placed, as were other children taken there."

During the last 50 years, a number of variations of Operation Peter Pan have emerged from Miami and Washington. The most recent one, essayed since 2003, did not surprise anyone. It was very much part of the excesses of the Bush administration, looked down on by the rest of the world on account of its unscrupulous form of government. But, by maintaining Cuba on the list of countries trafficking minors – as it announced on June 14 – the government of President Barack Obama, which it was thought had a minimum amount of decency, is destroying the few hopes of change that some people might still be holding onto. •

June 23, 2010

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