Demonstrations have been announced to take place in Cuba on November 15. In the corporate-controlled media, including social media platforms, and among leading circles of both the Republican and Democratic parties in the United States, the demonstrations are being touted as a spontaneous protest against Cuban government policies. The fact that the Havana city administration has denied the protest leaders a permit is represented as a despotic, anti-people act.

In fact, the planned demonstrations are not spontaneous but a continuation of the decades-old policy of U.S. imperialism designed to destroy the achievements of the Cuban Revolution. The idea is to put even more economic pressure on Cuba so as to create even greater hardships for the Cuban people, and then to try to use those hardships to stir up discontent against the socialist government, with a goal of its overthrow and replacement with a client regime of U.S. imperialism and monopoly capital. This has been tried over and over again. It has indeed created problems for Cuba and the Cuban people, but it has not dislodged the Cuban government. And Cuba, as a sovereign independent nation, has every right to take action to stop this kind of outside interference.

Plenty of evidence has surfaced to indicate that the November 15th protests are being planned, funded, and directed by U.S.-based organizations, in many cases using various kinds of social media accounts.

Our taxpayer money to the tune of $6.6 million has been granted to groups that are organizing or supporting the demonstrations. These groups are based mostly in South Florida but also other places in the United States, and are channeling the money to the dissidents within Cuba. The majority of the groups have no purpose other than to subvert the Cuban government. Most of them have far-right orientations. Examples include the International Republican Institute, which, not for the first time, has received a million dollars of US Agency for International Development largesse. Another is the Victims of Communism Memorial Fund, whose origins lie in far-right, and often fascist or neo-Nazi, European expatriate groups set up in our country after the Second World War: It got half a million in USAID money to disrupt Cuba just this year. Few, if any, of these organizations do anything to help people who are suffering from repression in right-wing, U.S.-allied countries like Colombia or Guatemala. Thus their credibility as defenders of human rights is zero.

The same is true of the U.S. political leaders of the current anti-Cuba campaign. These include right-wing Republicans such as Senator Marco Rubio and Congressman Mario Diaz-Balart, as well as right-wing Democrats such as Senator Bob Menendez and Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman-Schultz. These politicians do nothing to solve the many problems afflicting ordinary working people in the capitalist United States, yet they are ardent to “save” the Cuban people from the supposed horrors of socialism.

And what is this Cuba that these people are so eager to destroy? It is a nation of just 11.3 million people, besieged since its revolution by imperialism, which has nevertheless achieved levels of social well-being far above those of its region, and in some measures better than those of the United States. Cuba has also outshone all the wealthy capitalist nations in its solidarity contributions to scores of other nations of Asia, Africa, and Latin America, through its many medical missions, educating thousands of health care professionals, and in many other ways. Cuba played a major role in defeating the odious Apartheid regime in South Africa, at the cost of the lives of Cuban volunteer soldiers. Cuba has never done anything to harm the interests of the people of the United States.

Public opinion surveys have clearly shown that a large majority of the people of the United States want to see the normalization of relations between the United States and Cuba, and approved of the partial détente between Cuba and the United States by the Obama-Biden administration. Yet the Biden-Harris administration, forgetting its electoral campaign promises, pays no heed to this and continues the nefarious and illegal policies of Trump.

The Communist Party USA demands:

*That the Biden administration immediately end all financial and moral support to organizations being used to violate Cuban national sovereignty and the right of the Cuban people to run their own affairs and determine their own future.

*That House Resolution 760 be voted down.

*That the Biden administration immediately revoke all the Trump-imposed sanctions on Cuba and on people, organizations, and companies doing business with Cuba.

*That the Biden administration cease to violate the right of U.S. citizens and residents to travel to Cuba.

*That the United States government conform to international law and resolve any differences with Cuba through diplomatic channels, and not through subversion and sabotage.

*That the United States abide by the UN Charter and end its illegal blockade against Cuba.

To this end, we are asking our party members and friends to contact the White House, the State Department, and their congressional representatives to demand these changes in U.S. policy.

Image:  Taymaz Valley (CC BY 2.0).

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