by Stella Calloni, published by Internationalist 360°, May 1, 2020
The attack against the headquarters of the Cuban Embassy in Washington in the early hours of this Thursday, April 30 could never have taken place without the complicity of the powers-that-be, since it is an area in the neighborhood of the heavily guarded diplomatic headquarters, a reminder that without the complicity of the intelligence services it could never have taken place. In September 1976, the assassination of former Chilean Foreign Minister Orlando Letellier, a refugee from the Augusto Pinochet dictatorship in the United States, could not have taken place without the complicity of the government, as he died at the scene along with his secretary Ronny Mofit. Mofit’s husband was wounded when the car in which they were traveling was blown up by a remote control bomb placed by Cuban-American terrorists, at the behest of the dictator and with the knowledge of the then head of the CIA, George Bush senior.
The world must respond promptly to this attack, which is also a terrorist message to associates, as occurred in the case of the Venezuelan embassy that was attacked and occupied in the midst of the war against the government of President Nicolas Maduro in Washington, unleashing a series of attacks on diplomatic offices of that country in different regions.
The shooting at the Cuban embassy took place in the context of a unilateral war declared by the government of President Donald Trump and his advisors, who exemplified a 21st century barbaric fundamentalism against Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua, China, Syria, Iran and others, in an attempt to conceal the economic crisis that is devastating savage capitalism in its zero hour.
This also took place in the midst of the humanitarian disaster caused by the coronavirus pandemic, ignored by Trump’s arrogance and disdain for the American people and the peoples of the world before the “plague ” that struck like a hurricane in a country with no social or moral defenses, and with wholly insufficient basic infrastructure, ending the “American dream” for them and others.
Believing that it is still possible to escape forward, they have become the systematic creators of contradictions as never before and in desperation they resort to lies as crude as they are ineffective, that only work because of the enormous concentration of mass media operating under the orders of the Pentagon, serving as mercenary operatives of media and psychological warfare, without which their war plans could not prosper, as we have witnessed in recent years.
In the midst of the pandemic, attempting to cover up the reality of the decadence and brutality that precedes the end of the empire, the Trump government not only sent its fleet to the South Pacific and the Caribbean, threatening to invade Venezuela and possibly attempting to attack Cuba, but also deployed a desperate and brutal campaign against those countries, while Israel bombed Syria, which is also confronting the pandemic while trying to rebuild itself from the ruins left by the invaders, and the Palestinian people are also daily victims of the Israeli army’s policy of extermination.
The example of the Cuban doctors who make up the Henry Reeves Brigades, who have been collaborating for years in all natural and humanitarian disasters, being recognized in the world for their effectiveness, as well as for their great human qualities and capacity for sacrifice, is a model witness to the medicine that was able to establish Cuba, a country under a criminal blockade for more than 60 years, an island 90 miles off the US coast with little more than 11 million inhabitants, that became a powerhouse of world medicine, dignity and solidarity.
For several years, U.S. intelligence has been carrying out a systematic attack against Cuban doctors within the permanent war against socialist Cuba. The fact is that the doctors, like the Cuban teachers acting as armies of peace and solidarity, have been one of the most difficult targets to destroy, or discredit, because their work is carried out in territories of desolation in which the destructive work of the imperial power is sinking the peoples.
It is impossible to destroy this chain of solidarity, as was seen when dictators and undemocratic governments have attempted to do so. This happened in Brazil with Jair Bolsonaro, elected under a coup government, in Bolivia with de facto president Jeanine Añez, Lenin Moreno in Ecuador, who staged a post-electoral coup by separating himself from the party for which he was elected and from the program chosen by the Ecuadorian people, just as it happened with other governments that have the same dictatorial stamp for the same reasons.
At the beginning, the imperial order sought to discredit the Cuban doctors, as they did throughout these years, using their almost absolute media power to label them with their propaganda as inefficient, false spy doctors, etc. But the world’s recognition continues.
The violent propaganda against these servants of humanity had been weakened, and the fact that more than one hundred countries, including industrial powers, desperately appealed to the government of Cuba, asking not only for medical assistance, but also for medicines – such as those used against the effects of the Covid-19 in Wuhan, China, were a pandemic began that was quickly and responsibly controlled by the authorities of that country – unleashing the fury of the barbaric fundamentalists of the United States government.
While the Trump government persists in denying the problem, it accuses China of having created the virus, when the first nation to develop biological warfare was the United States.
The propaganda in the context of the pandemic was imposed again, bringing out the old and worn-out media artillery, and resurrecting politicians of our region who are under their total control, as happens in each of these states but without achieving any effect, because exposure to reality in extreme situations like this one, with thousands of dead and millions infected, is also a gravedigger of lies. What is happening is forcing them to change their campaigns and this has led them to the most crude and mediocre actions and speeches.
If we study everything that has been done against Cuba in more than 60 years of permanent attacks, or with Venezuela since 2002, but more violently and crudely since 2014, resorting to all kinds of terrorism against these countries, and in Nicaragua, pursuing a coup d’état, we see that, curiously enough, in this 21st century they are still fighting against Augusto César Sandino, who defeated them with rifles against airplanes in the early 20th century, or against José Martí , and Simón Bolívar in the late 19th century, and against a number of other ghosts reborn over and over again who give them no respite, suggesting that we have reached a crucial point.
Of course they need to change horses on the way every time, as we have heard in the last few hours, from the mouth of Trump himself the most decrepit face of the empire and its desperate officials like Mike Pence, Michael Kozak and others, chasing ghosts everywhere. In the face of their absolute failure, despite their own campaign and their increasingly weakened lackeys with regard to the example of the Cuban doctors, they now claim to be “protectors of human rights” for these professionals in order to “save” them from a “dictatorship”.
“The Cuban government has demonstrated time and again over the past 60 years its disinterest in protecting the human rights of these courageous doctors. But we, the international community, can and must defend their rights,” Kozak, the undersecretary of state for Western Hemisphere affairs, recently said, without any embarrassment. And he is not alone. Now the defense of the human rights of Cuban doctors, who they brutally offend by calling them “slaves”, is the task of Washington no less.
If the circumstances were not tragic, this is a 21st century decadent imperial comedy, as is the increasingly ephemeral and useless appearance of another Washington-created character such as Venezuela’s “president-in-charge” Juan Guaidó, who even in the midst of the pandemic, continues his discourse, crying out for the invasion of his country.
The war fleet that threatens our region carries soldiers, many of them victims of Covid 19, like the men of its most powerful aircraft carrier, Theodore Roosevelt, which nearly caused the uprising of the navy, when it refused to let the marines infected by the virus disembark in order to cover up what was happening. Trump forbade the Pentagon to report on the health status of members of the military.
In other words, he preferred that the crew of the aircraft carrier die, just as he preferred that almost 60 thousand or more people in his country die because he did not respond to the deadly reality of the pandemic and continued to accuse China which has defeated them in various fields, especially in morale.
The hospitals built in days with all the necessary standards and high-tech equipment in China speak much more than all words when compared to the shameful single tents installed in New York’s Central Park with beds and mattresses leaving behind evidence of the reality of what is happening inside the hitherto largest world power, in free fall, without a parachute and therefore more violent than ever.
Moreover, the way in which Cuba, in addition to its presence abroad, has handled the pandemic inside the country, or the way in which Venezuela and Nicaragua and other nations are being targeted by Washington, has proven their descent into hell. And in the face of this, not even the media can save them, since their managers are walking on a wire over cliffs and will inevitably be hit by the powerful economic crisis that already impacted wild capitalism in its descent long before the corona virus.
Everyone seems to believe that they still remain under the cloak of impunity with which they were protected for almost two centuries, since the birth of that empire in the 19th century, of wandering, brutal cowboys, or gold seekers of the same calibre.
The response must be collective, swiftly aggressive, creative, and dynamic as never before and with the power of imagination that has characterized Latin Americans and Caribbeans that many had lost in the labyrinthine colonization that now must become the corridors of resistance, to achieve the ultimate liberation. We will take care of our beloved and respected Cuban doctors in each of our countries and we will protect them from the sowers of hatred and the serial scoundrels like Trump, Pence, Kozak and similar characters who are attempting to invade a world that is beyond their reach and which this time will be forever…
*Featured Image: Police investigating the April 30 attack on the Cuban Embassy behind the statue of Cuban National hero, Josè Martí.
Stella Calloni is a Poet, writer, journalist and social researcher. She was born in La Paz, Entre Ríos province. He is currently a correspondent in South America for the newspaper “La Jornada” in Mexico.