Havana. – (News Agencies) Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez described the blockade that the United States has maintained against the island for more than six decades, as a constant pandemic or hurricane, due to the damage it causes to the country.
After presenting to the press on Wednesday a new report on the losses generated by this unilateral policy in the last six months, he recalled that the siege of Washington is not the mere prohibition of buying in that nation, but the impossibility of acquiring the necessary financial resources to obtain goods in that market or in others.
It is, he said, the denial of medicine, of resources in all areas of energy, of fuel.
According to the data of the report that Cuba will present next November to the United Nations on the subject, between August 2021 and February 2022, this unilateral policy caused losses in the order of three thousand 806.5 million dollars.
Likewise, in the first 14 months of the administration of the US president, Joe Biden, the damages caused by these provisions reached six thousand 364 million dollars, which represents an affectation of more than 454 million dollars per month and more than 15 million of dollars daily.
Rodríguez pointed out that such hostility remains in force in the midst of the international economic crisis, in the conditions of a pandemic such as that of Covid-19, and in the face of recent events such as the massive fire at the supertanker base in the western province of Matanzas or the devastation caused by the passage of Hurricane Ian through the island.
He affirmed that in this scenario, the United States should change its policy against Cuba, cease the persecution of its financial transactions, allow the country to rebuild itself, eliminate the prohibition on North American companies offering contracts to the island, or at least relax the siege, apply humanitarian exceptions using executive powers.
It is what dictates morality, decency, and it is even what the national interest, politics and international law demand, he pointed out.
I am convinced that the United States government could do the right thing, using only executive capacities, he remarked.
Cuba has the right to live without a blockade, to live in peace”, he emphasized, concluding that Cuba, the United States and the world would be better off without a blockade.
"An Island on a Continent" 