https://www.liberationnews.org/cuba-61-years-of-socialist-victory/
Cuba: 61 years of socialist victory
By Party for Socialism and LiberationJan 01, 2020
1186
Cuba: 61 years of socialist victory
photo: Needpix
Exactly 61 years ago today, Cubans poured into the streets to cheer the
triumph of the Rebel Army led by Fidel Castro. Fulgencio Batista’s
U.S.-backed dictatorship was defeated after he fled the country hours
before.
Cuba stands tall and proud today, receiving salutations from all over
the world for the heroic tenacity and humane principles of its socialist
revolution, defended by a people that has withstood a ferocious U.S.
blockade and aggression for 61 years.
President Miguel Díaz-Canel tweeted a message to the people today: “We
Cubans are winners of the impossible. And this is the right time for us
to set out for another exceptionally positive year.”
Despite an especially challenging year for Cuba as it faced heavy U.S.
economic attacks, it is encouraging news that its 2019 economy will end
on the plus side when statistics are tallied. In comparison, according
to Alejandro Gil Fernández, minister of economy and planning, growth in
Latin America and the Caribbean last year was only 0.1 percent.
Escalated aggression and tightening of the blockade
2019 is a year that Trump escalated U.S. aggression and a severe
tightening of the blockade.
The most harmful of U.S. measures was Trump’s recent implementation on
May 2 of Title III of the 1996 Helms-Burton law.
Now in effect, Title III entitles any U.S. corporation or individual —
even a Cuban individual who became a U.S. citizen after 1959 — to sue
any corporation or individual in the world that invests in former U.S.
property in Cuba. All U.S. properties were expropriated in the early
1960s by the revolutionary government in Cuba’s exercise of independence
and sovereignty. Although Cuba offered compensation, the U.S. government
prohibited U.S. entities from accepting such payment.
The U.S. government also blocked in 2019 the critically important oil
shipments from Venezuela to Cuba by sanctioning the ships that deliver
fuel. This has forced temporary suspension of some development projects,
in addition to impacting public transport and agricultural production.
But Cuba’s planned economy and socialist priorities assure that no
medical facilities or schools are closed, nor are gasoline prices raised.
Cuban doctors are now under attack in a U.S. campaign demonizing Cuba’s
medical international missions. The medical workers have also been
forced to leave Brazil, Ecuador and Bolivia with the rise of right-wing,
pro-U.S. governments.
Cuba’s doctors left Bolivia after the right-wing coup of November 2019,
despite — or because of — 14 years realizing 73 million medical
consultations and 1.5 million operations that saved so many lives.
Washington’s war on Cuba’s medical internationalism means that millions
of people in Brazil, Ecuador and Bolivia will be left as equally
deprived as the more than 40 million U.S. people who have no access to
health care, thanks to the capitalist system.
Cuba’s free and universal health care system is a moral threat to the
United States system, which makes super profits exploiting every human
being’s need for health care. This is why it is targeted.
Trump also severely limited travel to Cuba for people of the United
States, first by eliminating the people-to-people category for legal
travel. Then, on Dec. 10, he banned U.S. airline flights to eight Cuban
cities, leaving only Havana as a destination.
“The enemy has made the Cuban economy the primary target to destroy.
Every minute of resistance to the attack is just saying that only
socialism makes the miracle of a small victorious nation in face of a
mighty empire unable to crush it,” Díaz-Canel has written.
In the never-ending U.S. propaganda war, officials like to point to
Cuba’s economic difficulties and blame it on socialism, while enforcing
the longest and most extensive economic blockade ever. Twelve U.S.
presidents and 17 administrations have each proclaimed and tried to
bring down Cuba’s socialism.
But it is precisely socialism, where Cuba’s people come before all else,
that has enabled the island to survive and thrive. The unity and deep
revolutionary consciousness of the Cuban leadership and the people is a
great inspiration to justice-loving peoples of the world.
The Party for Socialism and Liberation salutes Cuba for its stellar
example of struggle, resistance and victory. We for our part will not
only continue our international solidarity with Cuba, all Latin America,
and the world, we are committed to the struggle for what the people here
and abroad need most of all, socialism in the United States.
Cuba, Latin america, Socialism
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Sam Harris
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― Sam Harris,
