United States President Donald Trump signed an executive order on January 29, labelling Cuba an “unusual and extraordinary threat” to the US. The order imposes economic penalties on any country that attempts to deliver oil to the island, which has already been under a US economic and commercial blockade for more than 60 years.
According to Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel, no fuel has entered the country since December. The loss of fuel supply has severely disrupted the electricity grid on which schools, transportation and vital health infrastructure depend.
As the situation on the island worsens, people’s movements and organisations across the world have mobilised in solidarity with the Cuban people and called on the US government to lift the blockade once and for all.
More than 100 Cuban artists, intellectuals, dancers, musicians and writers released the following open letter, on February 16, calling on colleagues from across the world to denounce the US attacks and stand with Cuba.
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Cuba is not a threat: Open letter from over 100 Cuban artists and intellectuals to artists and intellectuals around the world
Cuba has struggled for centuries, first to win its independence and then to defend it unconditionally. Such resistance against the most powerful and predatory empire in human history has been achieved through the immense sacrifice of its people. The conscious resistance of those of us who live on the archipelago stems from convictions and reasons learned long ago.
José Martí, the great poet and patriot, defined our noble destiny in 1894: “The Antilles lie at the balance point of the Americas, and if enslaved, they would merely serve as a bridgehead for the war of an imperial republic.”
Cuba’s greatest wealth lies in its people. We possess no oil reserves or other highly coveted natural resources, but we have developed human capital capable of shaping resilience through creativity and knowledge.
Cuba does not foster terrorism, although we have been victims of it. We love peace, indissolubly tied to our independence. We have always wished to build a just and supportive society. We eliminated illiteracy and reduced infant and maternal mortality rates to levels similar to those in the developed world. We send doctors and teachers to other nations when others only drop bombs. We create vaccines that are distributed freely. We promote sports as a right of the people and are the Spanish-speaking country that has won the most medals in Olympic history.
We have a free system of art schools, which have trained dancers, actors, painters, filmmakers, musicians … many from humble origins, who have generated a powerful artistic movement, recognised internationally.
Since the revolutionary triumph of 1959, we have aspired to achieve the highest cultural level for our people. Fidel [Castro] showed us that illiteracy could be eliminated and that we must fight to eradicate racism and discrimination in all their manifestations, with a framework of laws and active vigilance. We are advancing the integration and defence of our women’s rights, with women now serving as parliamentarians, leaders and professionals on equal terms with men. We approved an advanced Family Code that protects love in its diverse forms of existence.
Despite the economic, commercial and financial blockade imposed by the US since 1962, successively tightened to the point of asphyxiation, implemented by the current US government, we do not renounce our dreams of prosperity, justice and peace.
Resistance costs us and imposes great sacrifices on our people every day, and means facing the cruelty of the US government’s extraterritorial measures with stoicism.
The empire says that Cuba represents a threat to its national security, which is ridiculous and implausible. It has imposed an oil blockade, resulting in the paralysis of hospitals, schools, industries and transportation. They try to prevent our doctors from saving lives; they try to paralyse our free and universal education system, to plunge us into famine, into a lack of energy to guarantee access to drinking water and cooking food; in short, they aim to slowly and bloodily extinguish a country.
Cuba resists and will resist this inhumane aggression, but it counts on the active solidarity of all honest, humanist and good-willed men and women of the world. It is about preventing a genocidal act and saving a heroic people whose only “crime and threat” has been to defend their sovereignty.
Cuba has never attacked any nation. Cuba exercises international solidarity even under conditions of extreme blockade. To be with Cuba today is to defend peace and the right of all peoples, no matter how small, to the full exercise of their sovereignty.
The Union of Writers and Artists of Cuba calls on all intellectuals and creators worldwide to mobilise in defence of the Cuban cause. As Martí defined it in 1895, writing about our duty in the Americas: “Whoever rises up today for Cuba, rises up for all time.”
[Abridged from Peoples Dispatch, where you can read the full list of signatories.]