We cannot remain silent in the face of the blockade.

These days the world once again joins its voice in favor of the island. The echo is multiplying in nations such as the United Kingdom, China, Panama, Germany, Italy, Turkey, where neither confinement nor masks stop an indisputable truth: the need to put an end to the economic, commercial and financial blockade maintained by the United States government against Cuba.

And the fact is that this iron and inhuman policy tries to mercilessly suffocate the Cuban people, an injustice in the face of which bridges of love are extended between continents.

Sixty years after the then U.S. President John Kennedy decreed the total embargo on imports from his country to this nation, its consequences are increasingly cruel.

A chain of events preceded that decision, all motivated by the desire to crush the triumphant Revolution. After the first restrictions on fuel exports to Cuba, the reduction and later the total suppression of the Cuban sugar quota in the U.S. market began, as well as the rupture of diplomatic relations.

The hostility initiated by the Einsenhower administration was immediately overcome by Kennedy and his undeniable support for the mercenary invasion. Nothing seemed to be enough, neither the leg of young Angela, shattered by a large caliber bullet, nor the death of Nemesia’s mother, nor the rest of the lives extinguished by the bombs.

As a continuation of that attack on Playa Giron, the said U.S. president decreed a financial war that still assaults and kills.

This is the war that they insist on calling embargo, as a kind of euphemism misused on the basis of legal figures that do not typify it.

A war that, in addition to being illegal, translates into the suffering of so many patients and their families because of the impossibility of acquiring medicines, reagents, spare parts for diagnostic and treatment equipment, as well as instruments and other supplies necessary for the functioning of the sector in the U.S. market.

According to official figures, the accumulated damages since the beginning of its application amount to 144.413 billion 400 thousand dollars.

As referred to in the Report of Cuba pursuant to Resolution 74/7 of the United Nations General Assembly, the tightening of its siege with the initiation of legal proceedings for the first time in 23 years under the Helms-Burton Act has not only affected the island, but also U.S. companies and companies from third countries that have done business with Cuba.

Culture, education, sports, the food industry, science, communications and transportation have not escaped the harmful effects of the blockade.

That is why Cuba’s friends stand up in March, in April, even in times of pandemic to condemn it; because in the face of the effects of that genocidal policy, neither they nor the Cuban people themselves can remain silent.

Written by Jeidis Suárez García.