Cuba responds to unsubstantiated U.S. claims regarding the Alan Gross case
Press statement from Josefina Vial Ferreiro, U.S. director at the Cuban Ministry of Foreign Affairs
THE last few days have seen an intensification of statements and false reports from the U.S. government related to the case of U.S. citizen Alan Gross, particularly related to the alleged deterioration of his health.
Once again, the U.S. government is lying to the public, by affirming that Mr. Gross is suffering from cancer and is not receiving adequate medical attention.
These lies have not stopped, not even after his family and U.S. authorities were given the results of the biopsy of a lesion on Mr. Gross’ back, which leave no doubt that he does not have cancer.
From the very first day, a team of Cuban doctors of international repute have systematically attended to Mr. Gross. This team has the results of a biopsy and other examinations which demonstrate that Mr. Gross is not suffering from cancer or any other illness representing a threat to his life. The U.S. has no evidence to demonstrate the contrary. If these distortions persist, we shall be obliged to divulge further evidence.
The U.S. government is also lying about Mr. Gross’ prison conditions, his schedule of telephone calls and visits.
The U.S. government is continuing to lie as to the causes which led to Mr. Gross’ detention, with the sole purpose of evading his direct responsibility for his situation and that of his family.
The U.S. government has never addressed the case of Alan Gross seriously and has only reiterated the unsustainable position that it has nothing to negotiate with Cuba in order to find a solution. At the same time, it insists on demanding from Cuba a unilateral decision which does not consider our humanitarian concerns related to the case of the Five. This is not realistic. I reiterate today Cuba’s disposition to immediately establish a dialogue on the issue of Gross.
On the basis of these fabrications and curiously coinciding with the anniversary of Mr. Gross’ detention, the U.S. government has pressured the UN Human Rights Council Working Group on Arbitrary Detention to force a decision declaring Mr. Gross’ detention arbitrary. Today, we denounce these acts of pressure, which led to a violation of the customary procedures and timing of the Group’s work.
Yesterday, December 4, the government of Cuba received the opinion of this group describing Alan Gross’ detention as arbitrary.
Today, we are circulating via the MINREX website Cuba’s response to the United Nations Group, which demonstrates that the detention of Mr. Gross cannot in any way be described as arbitrary.
Alan Gross was detained, tried and sentenced with all guarantees and rights of due legal process and in fulfillment of principles related to judicial independence. Mr. Gross violated Cuban laws by committing acts that constitute serious crimes, acts which are severely punished in most countries, including the U.S.
The United States does not permit any other government to ignore its regulations and clandestinely send individuals to its territory, with government funding from this other government, to establish illegal and covert communications systems, without undertaking any kind of procedure or registration, far less so when the objective is to destabilize the existing order.
Mr. Gross has received decorous and humane treatment since he was arrested.
The United Working Group is the same body which, in May 2005, declared arbitrary the detention of the five Cuban anti-terrorists, taking into consideration that they were held in solitary confinement for 17 months, did not have due access to lawyers and the evidence related to the case, as well as the existing climate of predisposition and prejudice which contributed to the Five being presented as guilty from the outset, given the absence of objectivity and impartiality.
The government of Cuba once again invites the U.S. government to serious talks on these issues in order to achieve a humanitarian solution acceptable to both sides.
International Press Center
Havana, December 5, 2012.
Democrats and U.S. Labor Delusional About Latin America
Diatribes and Curious Silences
By ALBERTO C. RUIZ | CounterPunch | September 4, 2012
The Democrats just put out their platform on Latin America, and it demonstrates only the loosest connection to reality. Thus, while praising the “vibrant democracies in countries from Mexico to Brazil and Costa Rica to Chile,” as well as “historic peaceful transfers of power in places like El Salvador and Uruguay,” the Democrats continue to point to Cuba and Venezuela as outliers in the region in which the Democrats plan “to press for more transparent and accountable governance” and for “greater freedom.” Of course, it is their Platform’s deafening silence on critical developments in the region which says the most about their position vis a vis the Region.
Not surprising, the Democrats say nothing about the recent coups in Honduras and Paraguay (both taking place during Obama’s first term) which unseated popular and progressive governments. They also say nothing about the fact that President Obama, against the tide of the other democratic countries in Latin America, quickly recognized the coup governments in both of these countries. Also omitted from the platform is any discussion of the horrendous human rights situation in post-coup Honduras where journalists, human rights advocates and labor leaders have been threatened, harassed and even killed at alarming rates.
As Reporters Without Borders (RWR) explained on August 16, 25 journalists have been murdered in Honduras since the 2009 coup, making Honduras the journalist murder capital of the world. In this same story, RWR mentions Honduras in the same breath as Mexico (a country the Democrats hold out as one of the “vibrant democracies” in the region) when speaking of the oppression of journalists and social activists, as well as the general climate of violence which plagues both countries. As RWR stated, “Like their Mexican colleagues, Honduran journalists – along with human rights workers, civil society representatives, lawyers and academics who provide information – will not break free of the spiral of violent crime and censorship until the way the police and judicial apparatus functions is completely overhauled.” And indeed, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists, 38 journalists have been killed in Mexico since 1992, and it has been confirmed in 27 of these cases that the journalists were killed precisely because they were journalists. Meanwhile, in Mexico, over 40,000 individuals have been killed due to the U.S.-sponsored drug war – hardly a laudable figure.
Of course, in the case of Honduras, and Paraguay as well, things are going fine for U.S. interests post-coup, with Honduras maintaining the U.S. military base which President Manuel Zelaya, overthrown in the coup, had threatened to close. Similarly, in Paraguay, one of the first acts of the new coup government was agreeing to open a new U.S. military base – a base opposed by Porfirio Lobos, the President (and former liberation Bishop) overthrown in the coup. The other act of the new coup government in Paraguay was its agreement to allow Rio Tinto to open a new mine in that country, again in contravention of the deposed President’s position. The Democrats simply do not speak of either Honduras or Paraguay in their Platform.
Instead, the Democrats mostly focus on their alleged desire to bring freedom to Cuba, saying nothing about the strides already made by Cuba itself where, according to a January 27, 2012 story in the Financial Times, entitled, “Freedom comes slowly to Cuba,” “there are currently no prisoners of conscience.” This is to be contrasted with Colombia, the chief U.S. ally in the region, which houses around 10,000 political prisoners and prisoners of conscience. The Democrats, shy about such unpleasant facts, simply say nothing about Colombia – this despite the fact that Colombia just announced historic peace talks with the guerillas which have been engaged in a 50-year insurgency in that country. Apparently, this does not deserve a mention amongst the Democrats’ anti-Cuba diatribe.
Meanwhile, the Democrats also single out Venezuela as a country which it is hoping to free from its alleged chains. What the Democrats fail to note is that Venezuela already has a popular, democratically President in Hugo Chavez who is making life better for the vast majority of Venezuelans, and who appears poised to receive the majority of the votes of the Venezuelan people in the upcoming October elections as a consequence. Thus, according to Oxfam, “Venezuela certainly seems to be getting something right on inequality. According to the highly reputable UN Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean, it now has the most equal distribution of income in the region, and has improved rapidly since 1990.” Again, contrast this with the U.S.’s chief ally Colombia and with Mexico, the two countries with the worst problems of inequality in the region. As the Council on Hemispheric Affairs noted earlier this year, “both Colombia and Mexico suffer from some of the world’s most unequal distributions of wealth. In 1995, Colombia was ranked the fifth most unequal country (of those with available statistics), with a Gini coefficient of 0.57, while Mexico was ranked the eighth worst with a Gini coefficient of 0.52. Between 2006 and 2010, Colombia’s inequality ranked 0.58, while Mexico’s coefficient was 0.52, qualifying them as two of the lowest ranked countries in the world.” The Democrats, uninterested in such trivialities as social equality, simply ignore such inconvenient data.
For its part, U.S. labor, as represented (albeit very poorly) by the AFL-CIO’s Solidarity Center, continue to march in step with the U.S. government and the Democrats in their imperial delusions about the Region. Thus, while for some time simply hiding the fact that it has been working in Venezuela at all, the Solidarity Center, in response to pressure about this issue, has recently admitted on its website that it has been continuously working in Venezuela these past 13 years – i.e., to and through the coup in 2002 which the Solidarity Center aided and abetted by funneling monies from the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) to the anti-Chavez CTV union which was a major player in the coup.
Stinging from the just criticism over this, the Solidarity Center now claims — reminiscent of George W. Bush who fancied himself a “uniter” as opposed to a “divider” – claims that it is in Venezuela to unite the divided labor movement. Thus, the Solidarity Center states: “[g]iven the political fragmentation and divisions between unions in Venezuela, Solidarity Center activities work to help unions from all political tendencies overcome their divisions in order to jointly advocate for and defend policies for increased protection of fundamental rights at the workplace and industry levels. The Solidarity Center currently supports efforts to unite unions from diverse political orientations (including chavista and non-chavista, left and center) to promote fundamental labor rights in the face of anti-labor actions that threaten both pro-government unions and traditionally independent unions.” In its statement, the Solidarity Center says nothing about the progressive labor law which President Chavez just recently signed into law without any help from U.S. labor. This law, among other things, outlaws outsourcing and subcontracting, shortens the work week, increases minimum vacation time, increases maternity leave and requires employers to provide retirement benefits.
The Solidarity Center statement about Venezuela is laden with irony as well as hubris. The U.S. labor movement is itself greatly fragmented, with two competing houses of labor (the AFL-CIO and Change to Win) as well as divisions even within these two confederations. That the Solidarity Center would presume to be able to unite any union movement outside its borders is laughable. Indeed, only imagine the reception from the labor movement in this country if China’s labor confederation purported to intervene in the U.S. to help unite the labor movement here. Aside from wondering how exactly the Chinese unionists planned to do this, many would wonder about the ends to which such unity, once miraculously created, would be applied. And, one must wonder the very same about this in regard to the Solidarity Center’s role in Venezuela. First of all, the so-called “chavista” unions want nothing to do with the Solidarity Center, funded as it is by the NED and U.S.-AID, especially after the 2002 coup. Again, they would have to question what the Solidarity Center, which just received a massive grant of $3 million for its work in Venezuela and Colombia, would want to “unify” the Venezuelan union movement to do. The question appears to answer itself, and it is not a pretty one.
A modest proposal for the AFL-CIO and its Solidarity Center is to focus on uniting the labor movement at home in the U.S. to challenge the power that capital has on our political system; pressing for better U.S. labor law (on this score it could learn a lot from Venezuela and its labor movement); abandoning its labor paternalism (if not imperialism) and leaving it to the Venezuelans to unite their own labor movement. Similarly, the Democrats, instead of worrying about ostensibly bringing U.S.-style democracy (more like social inequality and militarism) to other countries in the Region, should spend more time trying to make this country less beholden to corporate and monied interests, and thereby more democratic in the process. But again, this is not what the Democrats are about. What the AFL-CIO is about, aside from blindly supporting the Democrats, is anyone’s guess.
Alberto C. Ruiz is a long-time labor and peace activist.
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Media & Opposition: False Perceptions of Venezuela’s Democracy
By Rachael Boothroyd | Correo del Orinoco International | May 25th 2012
Earlier this week Al Jazeera English published an article by Nikolas Kozloff, a former academic turned author who now spends his time writing satire and lambasting the Venezuelan government while hiding behind his Oxford PhD as a veil of objectivity. The focus of Kozloff’s latest article was the Cuban-Venezuelan “Barrio Adentro” initiative, a social mission which provides free healthcare to Venezuela’s poor, and free, community based training for Venezuelan medical students.
Despite the program being one of the government’s most popular, and the fact that it is often cited as an exemplary case of Cuban internationalism and solidarity, in his article Kozloff instead decides to detail the alleged “harrowing” conditions that Cuban doctors are subjected to while treating patients in Venezuela.
According to Kozloff’s article, Cuban medical personnel are overworked, obliged to treat 60- 70 patients a day, constantly spied on, and used by the Venezuelan state for political purposes. The sources of Kozloff’s outlandish statements are none other than leaked documents from the US embassy in Caracas, which, the cables reveal, has been aiding dissident Cuban doctors to apply to the US government for “humanitarian parole” so that they might be transferred to Miami as “asylum seekers”.
According to the documents, 73 Cuban medical personnel were transferred to Miami by 2009. Despite the fact that over 80,000 Cubans have worked in the mission, with 30,000 Cuban medical personnel currently working in Venezuela, Kozloff finds that these 73 Cubans are representative enough of the whole Barrio Adentro mission for him to conclude that the program is “fraying at the edges” in the run-up to this year’s elections.
But questionable e-mails written by staunchly anti-Cuban US diplomats might not be the best sources for judging the merits of a social program which has, by all accounts, dramatically increased Venezuelans’ standards of living. So much so, that despite the vast amounts of propaganda against the healthcare program, the opposition’s candidate, Henrique Capriles Radonski, has been forced to pledge that he will maintain it should he by some miracle win the elections this year.
Kozloff’s selective analysis of the state of the Barrio Adentro program is typical of most “political commentaries” covering the Venezuelan elections in the international press, which are currently contributing to a distorted understanding of Venezuela’s political reality in the run up to the October elections.
Opposition Out of Touch
While most commentators either stress Capriles’ youth (he’s 39) and his energetic campaign, or apparent “indecision” on the part of Venezuelan voters, the reality on the ground is quite different in Venezuela. The opposition have faced defeat after defeat for the past two months.
Not only do nearly all polls in Venezuela give Chavez a 20-30% lead over his opponent, but the Capriles campaign has also made several tactical mistakes. In a move that alienated working class voters in May, Capriles announced that he did not attend the country’s International Workers’ Day march because he was an “employer” and not an employee. His campaign has also been responsible for the persecution and assault of several community media journalists, harking back to the days of repression under previous governments.
In the international arena, in a subtle snub against the Venezuelan opposition coalition, Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos stated in an interview that Chavez represented “stability” for the continent that was both essential for regional unity and beneficial for Colombia. Meanwhile US ally and former Colombian president Alvaro Uribe’s vocal support for Capriles has backfired, only serving to reinforce the perception of Capriles as the candidate of US imperialism amongst the Venezuelan public. Just this week, Capriles’ US advisor, Peter Greenberg, also admitted that Chavez’s lead over Capriles was “irreversible”.
These concerns are also being echoed by conservatives inside the country with even rightwing journalists such as Rafael Poleo mourning Capriles’ “hopeless” election campaign and members of the opposition coalition demanding that the campaign be restructured. “Capriles could be out anywhere today, but the rest of the country does not know about it… (his) strategy is not working, his candidacy is not growing, and Chavez’s illness has hyper-personalized electoral debate. People are only talking about Chavez”, explained Oscar Schemel, President of the Hinterlaces polling company.
Throughout this election campaign the opposition’s most serious failure is to have misunderstood the extent to which new mechanisms of participatory democracy have grown in Venezuela. The concept of democracy has taken on new meaning and the working class and organized communities are currently at the helm of an unprecedented experiment with radical new forms of democratic participation. Citizens’ democratic participation is now channelled through communal councils, communes, socialist workers’ councils and cooperatives, which extend the democratic process into their everyday lives and allow them to transform their own socio-cultural surroundings. Venezuelan democracy is no longer reducible to national elections every 6 years, rather it is something constructed every single day.
Following an unsuccessful 12-year battle against Chavez waged on its own terrain, the opposition is now attempting to compete on the Revolution’s terrain and the results are perhaps even less rewarding. The opposition has totally failed to understand just how Venezuela’s political terrain is constantly shifting and continuously being propelled forwards by the country’s new grassroots democratic format.
Just like Kozloff, the Venezuelan opposition continues to look at Venezuela from a distance. Their sources are US diplomats, US political advisors or the Venezuelan elite. From this perspective, Barrio Adentro is merely a political strategy. For Kozloff, it is merely the product of a transient deal with Cuba which can be rolled back should another government take power. For Capriles it is a program he must pledge to maintain in order to have any chance of winning votes.
But for many Venezuelans Barrio Adentro is more than a political strategy and more than a program, it is a social process which has become an integral part of their everyday lives, which has brought dignity, value and identity, and shaped their communities and changed their educational possibilities. These are changes that can’t be perceived from the upper class district of Altamira in Caracas, and much less from a newsroom in New York.
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Somnambulant in Cartagena
By ROBERT SANDELS | CounterPunch | April 27, 2012
“I watched Obama closely at the famous ‘summit gathering.’ Fatigue sometimes overcame him, he involuntarily closed his eyes and occasionally slept with his eyes open.”
– Fidel Castro [1]
The Sixth Summit of the Americas, held April 14 and 15 in Cartagena de Indias, Colombia was supposed to be about what President Barak Obama wanted to talk about; instead it was about everything he didn’t want to hear.
The theme of the summit was “Connecting the Americas: Partners for Prosperity,” but what most of the 33 leaders present wanted to discuss with Obama was decriminalizing drugs, supporting Argentina’s claim to sovereignty over the Islas Malvinas (Falkland Islands) and an end to US exclusion of Cuba from the summits.
Having no good answers on these and other matters Obama shut down, — if Fidel observed correctly — put his mouth on auto pilot, recited the words to the anthem about free trade, national security, and prosperity for all and then refused to sign the final declaration.
The US agenda of prosperity through promotion of market capitalism, asymmetric free trade agreements, privatizations, unfettered flow of capital, and excessive protection of intellectual property rights is currently out of favor in most of the region.
Free trade of the kind pedaled by Bill Clinton and George W. Bush is no longer a regional issue. In a sense, all of these summits have been pointless if one recalls their main purpose. When Clinton convened the first one in Miami in 1994, it was not to address the forever problems of the region but to follow up on the successful negotiation of a dubious free-trade agreement with Mexico (NAFTA) by extending US commercial and financial penetration into the rest of the region under a Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA). That drive was stopped cold at Mar del Plata, Argentina during the 2005 summit.
Led by Brazil, – the largest regional economy and the “B” in the BRICS — many leaders in Cartagena saw Obama’s free trade and monetary obsessions as his way to help resolve US economic problems but not theirs. The cheap-dollar strategy may help US exports, job growth and narrow its trade deficit but those gains are seen as other people’s losses.
Meanwhile, the Federal Reserve makes nearly interest-free dollars available to financial institutions that then can engage in the lucrative carry trade – moving cheap dollars to places like Brazil where, perforce, interest rates are higher.
Brazil’s President Dilma Rouseff has complained to Obama’s face that the Fed’s actions have caused a “monetary tsunami” and are driving up Brazil’s currency. [2] The central bank has tried to reduce upward pressure on the Brazilian real through capital controls and dollar purchases, a situation that seems at odds with Obama’s “partnership for prosperity.”
Cuba: the Phantom of the Summit
Most or all the delegates (except Obama and his faithful Canadian companion Stephen Harper) wanted an end to the US policy of excluding Cuba from the summits and to the 50-year old blockade of the island. The Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America (ALBA), which includes Bolivia, Cuba, Ecuador and Venezuela, had already formally demanded that Cuba be invited to Cartagena. Ecuador’s President Evo Morales reported that it was not just ALBA but Rouseff and other leaders in the Caribbean and South America who were saying, “there will not be another summit without Cuba.” [3]
In his speech opening the Cartagena summit, host President Juan Manuel Santos said that another summit without Cuba was ”unacceptable.” [4]
Of all the speeches and rumors of speeches in this hermetically sealed summit perhaps Santos’ remarks were the most striking. Here was a conservative president of one of the few loyal US allies left in Latin America, the recipient of billions in US aid to fight a proxy war on Colombia’s coca leaves under Clinton’s 1999 Plan Colombia, one of the few countries to sign a free trade pact with the United States and host to US troops on seven Colombian military bases telling Obama that his views on Cuba were based on an “outmoded ideology.” It was a “cold war anachronism,” he said. [5]
The Cuba issue could not have taken Obama by surprise. What did he expect after it was pounded into him when the previous summit foundered on the issue? At the 2009 summit in Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago, his colleagues wanted to talk about readmitting Cuba to the OAS. The summit ended with no agreement on the final declaration, which only the host government signed, but there was consensus that Cuba could re-apply for admission. That is not going to happen because Cuba does not want to rejoin the OAS and even if it did, Obama could impose the majority-crushing one-country veto arguing that Cuba isn’t democratic.
The constant harping about the lack of democracy in Cuba seems especially odd considering that the US government has never paid attention to the annual lopsided vote in the UN condemning the blockade. And in this very summit there was little exercise of majority rule when the United States and Canada blocked agreement on a final declaration because it contained inconvenient resolutions.
Obama, in office only a few weeks when he went to Port of Spain in April 2009, was well regarded in the region. He talked about cooperation and admitted that mistakes were made by his predecessors. He was generally praised for dropping Bush’s harsh restrictions on Cuban-American travel to Cuba. He has tried to live on those meager crumbs ever since, pretending that by reverting to the travel rules in play under Clinton he was “easing” Cuba policy when in reality the policy has remained the destruction of the Cuban revolution.
Soon after Port of Spain, however, Obama supported the June 2009 Honduran coup that followed the arrest and defenestration of President Jose Manuel Zelaya — who of course was democratically elected. Then as now Obama never tired of calling upon Cuban President Raul Castro to hold elections, without which, the island could never attend a Summit of the Americas.
Honduran President Porfirio Lobo, the direct beneficiary of that coup, attended the summit.
The lesson of Port of Spain was that John F. Kennedy’s 1962 expulsion of Cuba from the OAS was now reversed. The lesson of Cartagena was that there wouldn’t be any more of these summits without Cuba.
Who said summits are pointless?
A war on the war on drugs
Latin American leaders of all political hues have been murmuring recently about legalization or decriminalization of drugs. Guatemala’s President Otto Perez Molina is probably the furthest to the right in that group, which includes ex-presidents Cesar Gaviria of Colombia, and Ernesto Zedillo and Vicente Fox of Mexico and current Mexican President Felipe Calderon, who, against a background of some 50,000 deaths in his militarized war on drugs, has lately suggested the idea should be on the table.
Appearing slightly flexible on the issue, Obama told Univision News, “I don’t mind a debate around issues like decriminalization,” but added, “I personally don’t agree that’s a solution to the problem.” [6]
Whether or not there was a debate on drugs during the closed-door sessions, Vice President Joe Biden had already made the rounds in Mexico and Central America to promise there would be no legalization while Obama was in office.
And, as if to drive the point home, the summit had barely closed when General Douglas Fraser, chief of the US Southern Command, (Was there a democratic vote among the peoples of the region to include themselves in a US military zone?) made it clear that what Obama doesn’t like, the United States doesn’t like. The general called for greater cooperation from the region on planning for the naval side of the war on drugs. It seems that Operation Hammer, which will cover the Caribbean coast of Central America and the Pacific coast of South America, is about to begin and he wants “the naval forces of all the region” to get with the plan. [7]
If Obama’s views on legalization were not clearly spelled out in Cartagena, they are in his 2012 National Drug Control Strategy, which “rejects the false choice between an enforcement-centric ‘war on drugs’ and the extreme notion of drug legalization.” [8]
His 2012 budget to pay for that strategy authorizes $15.1 billion for traditional enforcement methods and $10.1 billion for prevention and treatment. The Marijuana News and Information blog notes that the percentage for enforcement is the same or higher than what Bush proposed spending. [9]
While hinting at flexibility on the drug issue, Obama announced at the summit that the United States was increasing funds for the foreign war on drugs led by “our Central American friends” and pledged more than $130 million dollars for it in 2012. [10]
As for the Malvinas, President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner argued for inclusion in the final declaration of Argentina’s claims of sovereignty.
Pressed to declare himself, Obama pleaded neutrality. That’s a “no.”
There was a certain airy dismissiveness about Obamas demeanor at the summit. He danced away from the serious issues and, apparently forgetting he was the U.S. president, said, “I’m not somebody who brings to the table here a lot of baggage from the past, and I want to look at these issues in a new and fresh way.” [11]
That was a curious, even astonishing statement by a man who has willingly shouldered a good deal of imperial baggage. Of course the baggage is his to dump or carry: 54 years of it since Dwight Eisenhower tried to block Fidel from taking power, 51 years of it since the Bay of Pigs, 50 years of it since JFK got Cuba kicked out of the OAS and now nearly four years of Obama continuing the blockade, instituting his own cyber warfare against Cuba and continuing to pay Cubans to act as agents of US policy inside the island.
What baggage has he not made his own?
The other summit
Obama’s election-year intransigence on the issues at Cartagena has badly damaged and probably sunk the Americas summitry and with it maybe even the OAS. The best thing for Obama is to let the summits die and blame it on Fidel and Raul Castro (also on Santos, Rouseff, Morales, Rafael Correa, among many others).
Waiting to take its place is the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC), inaugurated in Caracas last December as an OAS without the United States and Canada.
Behind it is ALBA, which held its own, little noticed meeting in Caracas just before the Cartagena summit. It was the summit that most of the Cartagena delegates most likely would have preferred. Its final declaration supported Argentina on the Malvinas, condemned the blockade of Cuba and called the exclusion of Cuba from the Americas summits “unacceptable.” [12]
“Perhaps,” wrote Fidel, “CELAC will become what it should be, a hemispheric political organization without the United States and Canada. The decadent and unsustainable empire has earned the right to rest in peace.” [13]
Robert Sandels is a writer for Cuba-L and CounterPunch.
Notes.
[1] Fidel Castro, Reflexiones, Granma, 04/17/12,
http://www.granma.cu/espanol/reflexiones/17abril-reflexiones.html.
[2[Reuters, 04/14/12,
<http://www.vancouversun.com/news/Scandal+mars+Obama+wooing+Latin+America+wi
th+video/6473757/story.html>.
[3] ALBA-TCP website, http://www.alianzabolivariana.org/modules.php?
name=News&file=article&sid=8495.
[4] La Jornada (Mexico), 04/14/12,
http://www.lajornadajalisco.com.mx/2012/04/14/inaceptable-una-nueva-cumbre-s
in-cuba-santos/.
[5] Ibid.
[6] Interview, Univision News, 04/14/12,
http://univisionnews.tumblr.com/post/21081359245/obama-dont-mind-debating-le
galization-of-drugs.
[7] United States Southern Command website, 04/18/12,
http://www.southcom.mil/newsroom/Pages/Western-Hemisphere-Defense,
-Security-Leaders-Gather-to-Discuss-Transnational-Organized-Crime-in-Central
-America.aspx.
[8] White House,
http://www.whitehouse.gov/ondcp/2012-national-drug-control-strategy.
[9] Marijuana News and Information, 04/20/12,
http://www.theweedblog.com/obamas-2012-drug-strategy-is-a-reminder-the-feds-
are-addicted-to-the-drug-war/.
[10] Xinhua, 04/14/12,
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/world/2012-04/15/c_131527076.htm.
[11] Washington Post, 04/15/12,
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/the_americas/obama-concludes-summit-of-t
he-americas-on-the-defensive-about-inviting-cuba/2012/04/15/gIQAVrgAKT_story
.html.
[12] Granma Internacional, 04/18/12,
http://www.granma.cu/ingles/cuba-i/18abr-17gobierno.html.
[13] Fidel Castro, Reflexiones, Granma Internacional, 04/17/12,
http://www.granma.cu/espanol/reflexiones/17abril-reflexiones.html.
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In Memoriam
James Petras, In Memoriam
02.13.2026
Professor James Petras, 89, world-renowned sociologist, public intellectual, and scholar of Latin American politics and global economics, died peacefully on January 17, 2026, in Seattle, WA, surrounded by family.
A prolific scholar and activist, he devoted his life to challenging power, imperialism, and inequality. … continue
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- German Gas Crisis…Chancellor Merz Allegedly Bans Gas Debate Ahead of Elections!
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- New Study Rebuts The Assumption That Anthropogenic CO2 Molecules Have ‘Special’ Properties
- Climate Scientist Who Predicted End Of “Heavy Frost And Snow” Now Refuses Media Inquiries
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- One Reason Only For Germany’s Heating Gas Crisis: Its Hardcore-Dumbass Energy Policy
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