On January 24, more than 1 million people demonstrated outside the US Interest Section in Havana against US aggression. Days earlier, a screen was installed on the USISH building to display continuous provocative messages. The following is abridged from a speech to the rally by Cuban President Fidel Castro.
The United States government is in pursuit of the following objectives: First, the release of terrorist Luis Posada Carriles, who was trained by US authorities — Bush senior included — and used to perpetrate monstrous crimes against the Cuban people. Recruited in 1961, this repulsive character was trained to carry out special operations during the Bay of Pigs invasion. He and Orlando Bosch, officially pardoned by Bush senior, subsequently received rigorous training to execute despicable acts of terrorism against Cuba.
Posada was given instruction to take part in Operation Condor, an international terrorist organisation responsible for odious crimes against Latin American personalities. He is the mind behind the mid-air bombing of a Cuban airliner, which claimed the lives of 73 people off the coast of Barbados on October 6, 1976. Taken out of a Venezuelan prison by the CIA on August 18, 1985, he immediately became involved in the dirty war against Nicaragua, supplying weapons to the "contras" in El Salvador and introducing drugs into the United States in the same planes that brought weapons.
For over four decades, Posada maintained close ties with US intelligence agencies, received financing from various administrations and was used by the Cuban American National Foundation in attempts to assassinate the Cuban head of state. Efforts by the current US president, and a pardon signed by Panamanian President Mireya Moscoso, finally secured his release from prison on August 26, 2004. Then, taken to a Central American country under protection from the US government, he was authorised to secretly enter the United States. Between March 18 and 20, 2005, he entered the country on the Santrina, a yacht captained by the notorious terrorist Santiago Alvarez, a man who, strangely enough, is also being held for weapons trafficking and gross violations of US national security laws. These are irrefutable facts.
Second, the current US administration has utterly failed in its efforts to isolate and stifle Cuba economically. But it does not accept this failure, and grows dangerously desperate.
Third, the US government has done everything in its power to please the Cuban American terrorist mafia, which resorted to fraud in Florida to put President George W. Bush in office.
Fourth, President Bush and his administration have committed themselves to implementing a macabre transition plan in Cuba, an act of flagrant interference in the internal affairs of our country, which would return it to a state of backwardness.
Fifth, the US government has implemented every imaginable measure to deprive Cuba of completely legitimate sources of income. It has made it more difficult for people to send remittances to Cuba and callously forbidden or made it next to impossible for Cuban-born US residents to visit their relatives on the island.
Sixth, the US government is intent on openly violating the US-Cuba Migratory Accords.
Seventh, the US government is looking for any pretext to prevent, at all costs, the sales of agricultural products to Cuba, which have been growing, while our country has paid every cent on time during five years, something that government did not expect from a blockaded nation facing constant aggression.
Eighth, the US government is intent on breaking the minimal diplomatic links that exist between Cuba and the United States today. The gross acts of provocation of the US Interests Section in Havana do not and could not have a different objective.
The Bush administration is well aware that no government on earth can tolerate such an affront to its dignity and sovereignty.
Cuba's attitude, and its response to the empire's provocations, will be entirely peaceful, but we shall counter the insult and persist in our determination to fight to the death, against whatever belligerent act of the brutal empire that threatens us.
From Green Left Weekly, February 1, 2006.
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