I've never known of a cancer returning anything it destroyed,
voluntarily. Nothing will satisfy the American Empire's appetite
until it has reduced Cuba to the status of Puerto Rico. My fervent
hope is that Cuba never forgets that the smile at their door is
covering the face of a Crocodile.
Carl Jarvis
On 6/16/16, Roger Loran Bailey <dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
http://themilitant.com/2016/8024/802403.html
The Militant (logo)
Vol. 80/No. 24 June 20, 2016
(front page)
Cuban leader at NY conference: End US embargo, return Guantánamo!
BY MARTÍN KOPPEL
NEW YORK — The restoration of diplomatic relations between the U.S. and
Cuban governments was a victory won thanks to the steadfastness of
Cuba’s revolutionary leadership “and the resistance and dignity of the
Cuban people,” said Josefina Vidal, the Cuban foreign ministry’s
director general for U.S. affairs.
She was speaking together with José Ramón Cabañas, Cuban ambassador to
the U.S., and Jeffrey DeLaurentis, U.S. chargé d’affaires in Havana, at
a featured workshop during this year’s conference of the Latin American
Studies Association. Their counterposed remarks underscored Washington’s
continuing efforts to undermine Cuba’s socialist revolution, as well as
the Cuban leadership’s determination to defend it.
More than 6,000 professors, graduate students, publishers, writers and
others attended some portion of the conference, held here May 27-30,
which featured some 1,400 panel discussions and other events. The large
majority were from the United States, Canada and Latin America, along
with others from Europe and Asia.
A notable feature this year was the largest participation from Cuba
ever. According to leaders of the delegation, 260 Cubans were granted
visas to attend, while 50 were denied by the U.S. State Department.
Several dozen panels took up Cuba-related topics, including U.S.-Cuba
relations since December 17, 2014, when Washington and Havana publicly
announced steps that led to the reestablishment last year of diplomatic
ties. The U.S. government unilaterally broke relations with Cuba’s
revolutionary government more than five decades ago.
‘End embargo, leave Guantánamo’
In her presentation, Vidal outlined several areas in which Cuban
authorities were making or seeking progress in relations with
Washington, including direct mail service between the two countries,
cooperation in combating drug trafficking and migration talks.
Nonetheless, she stressed, Washington continues its decades-long trade
embargo against Cuba, its occupation of Guantánamo against the will of
the Cuban people and its policy of granting expedited U.S. residency to
Cubans who reach the United States outside legal channels. The U.S.
government continues to pursue its “goal of bringing about internal
changes within Cuba,” she said, in violation of the Cuban people’s right
to decide their own affairs.
DeLaurentis, the ranking diplomat at the U.S. embassy in Cuba (the Obama
administration has made no nomination to fill the post of ambassador),
spoke glowingly about Barack Obama’s visit to Cuba in March. He
reiterated Washington’s “support for the private sector” in Cuba and its
unhappiness that, among other things, Cuban laws do not allow U.S.
companies that might operate on the island to freely hire and fire workers.
Questioned by audience members about the U.S. occupation of Cuban
sovereign territory at Guantánamo, DeLaurentis curtly replied, “Gitmo is
not on the table.” Vidal reiterated that the only resolution of that
issue is “the unconditional return of Guantánamo.”
Asked by John Kirk, a professor at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova
Scotia, about the U.S. government’s Cuban Medical Professional Parole
Program, DeLaurentis made it clear Washington has no intention of ending
that policy, which encourages Cuban medical personnel serving abroad to
desert and move to the United States.
Ambassador Cabañas urged supporters of Cuba to lobby Congressional
representatives and educate them and others about the need to lift the
U.S. embargo against Cuba.
Many other panels at the LASA conference discussed a broad range of
topics, especially the growing economic, social and political crises in
Brazil, Venezuela, Argentina, Puerto Rico and other countries.
Hundreds of participants at the conference opening session gave an
enthusiastic welcome to a large group from Brazil wearing “No to the
coup” T-shirts, in opposition to current impeachment proceedings against
President Dilma Rousseff. Delegates expressed approval for an emergency
resolution denouncing the impeachment process in Brazil as
“antidemocratic.”
Other panels took up subjects such as U.S. immigration policy, gender
studies, contemporary literature, Black rights, Chinese investment in
the region, prison reform, agricultural policy and the fight for women’s
right to choose abortion. In most Latin American countries, abortion
remains severely restricted or even banned; only in Cuba is it available
to women as a basic health matter and free of charge.
One center of informal exchange was the large book exhibit area. At the
Pathfinder Press booth, titles explaining the world capitalist economic
crisis were among the most sought-after, as were books about the Cuban
Revolution.
A well-attended book launch at the exhibit hall featured Pathfinder’s
most recent book, “It’s the Poor Who Face the Savagery of the US
‘Justice’ System”: The Cuban Five Talk About Their Lives Within the US
Working Class. Speaking were American University professor Phil Brenner,
a prominent figure in Cuban studies; Raúl Rodríguez, director of the
University of Havana’s Center for Hemispheric and U.S. Affairs; and
Mary-Alice Waters, Pathfinder president and the book’s editor.
During the conference, New York and New Jersey groups in solidarity with
Cuba hosted a reception and dinner for the Cuban delegation, attended by
more than 150 people, including Ambassador Cabañas, Vidal, and Rodolfo
Reyes, Cuba’s ambassador to the United Nations.
That gathering heard much-appreciated remarks from Miguel Barnet,
president of the Union of Writers and Artists of Cuba and a member of
Cuba’s Council of State; well-known poet Nancy Morejón; and economist
Antonio Romero of the University of Havana. Romero explained the
challenges the Cuban government is today confronting in the context of
the world economic crisis and Washington’s intensified efforts to
undermine Cuba’s socialist revolution.
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