The Communist Party USA (CPUSA) rejects a recent statement by U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken on the subject of Cuba and other countries.

On Tuesday, May 25, the U.S. State Department announced that it will keep Cuba on the list of countries which do not fully cooperate in the fight against terrorism. Other countries that will be kept on this list include Venezuela, Iran, Syria, and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

Cuban foreign minister Bruno Rodriguez Parrilla immediately denounced this U.S. move, pointing out that Cuba itself has been the victim of more than 700 terrorist attacks originating in the United States.

We would add that last spring, even the Cuban embassy in Washington, DC, was the target of a violent terrorist attack. Fortunately, nobody was killed, but there was damage to the building and to a statue of Cuban national hero José Martí. To date, there has been no statement by the U.S. federal government condemning this attack.

The categorization of Cuba as a country which does not cooperate in the fight against terrorism is doubly hypocritical when we take note of the many cases in which governments allied with the United States engage in terrorist acts against their own citizens and are not put on any “list.” We need merely mention Colombia and Israel-Palestine in this regard. Cuba, for its part, has always actively opposed terrorism.

In December of 2014 former U.S. President Barack Obama and former Cuban President Raul Castro announced the beginning of a series of normalization steps between the two countries. Progress was made, though the repeal of legislation that forms the backbone of the U.S. economic blockade did not make headway in the U.S. Congress. Diplomatic relations were restored, the Cuban 5 prisoners were released, and there was cooperation between the two governments on a number of important fronts.

When Donald Trump came to power in January 2017, a process of reversing these advances was quickly initiated, and a large number of new economic sanctions were imposed on Cuba which have the purpose of causing suffering to the Cuban people. During the 2020 U.S. presidential elections, candidate Joe Biden intimated that he would return to the Obama approach to Cuba.

But it is clear that, at the very least, the Cuba issue is now on the “back burner” for the Biden administration.  We suspect that this is a concession to the anti-Cuba lobby within both the Republican and Democratic Parties. Whatever the reason, it is unacceptable.

The Communist Party USA once more demands that the U.S. government drop its imperialistic attacks on socialist Cuba and respect the national sovereignty of this nation of 11.3 million people, as international law demands.  The attacks against Cuba, including the sanctions, the trade blockade, and the “listings” are intended to harm the well-being of the Cuban people; they also harm the people of our own country who would benefit economically, socially, and culturally if they were ended.

We call on our members and friends to:

*Contact the White House, the State Department, and your congressional representatives and senators to support legislation ending the U.S. policy of economic aggression against Cuba.

*Support the campaign of “Syringes for Cuba.”

*Support the campaign to award the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize to Cuba’s Henry Reeve Brigade, which has saved many lives worldwide, including in the Covid-19 pandemic, through its international health solidarity work.

*Get your city council, state legislature, and/or other legislative body to join the campaign of passing strongly worded  resolutions demanding an end to the U.S. economic blockade of Cuba.

*Speak to your coworkers, relatives, friends, and neighbors to get them on board the growing movement for a radical change in U.S. policy toward Cuba.

Image: Cuban embassy, Washington, D.C., 2015 (CC BY-SA 2.0).

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