Emir Olivares Alonso, Fernando Camacho, Enrique Méndez, Andrea Becerril and Georgina Saldierna
La Jornada Newspaper
Wednesday, October 30, 2024, p. 23
Mexico reiterated yesterday, before the 79th General Assembly of the United Nations (UN), its condemnation of the US blockade against Cuba and demanded its end without further delaywhen beginning the debate on a new resolution against this punitive measure, in force for more than six decades, amid the clamor of the international community to put an end to this instrument neocolonialist, unjust and inhuman.
As they have been doing since 1992, the Cuban authorities asked the General Assembly to approve a resolution, which will be put to a vote today, on the need to end the economic, commercial and financial blockade imposed by the United States against Cuba that has marked the lives of the island’s inhabitants in recent decades.
More than 80 percent of the population has lived under the sanctions imposed in 1962, in the midst of cold warby President John F. Kennedy, to suffocate the government of Fidel Castro.
Mexico’s ambassador to the UN, Héctor Vasconcelos, emphasized that this is a unilateral measure conceived as a means of political pressure to, from the outside, achieve changes in the internal affairs of another State, which contravenes the principles of the United Nations Charter and threatens peace between peoples.
He highlighted that the government of President Claudia Sheinbaum maintains that there should be no unilateral sanctions of any kind and urged open a new chapter and allow Cuba to fully participate in the global community without the restrictions imposed by this unjust and inhuman blockade.
In turn, the Russian ambassador, Vasili Nebenzia, asserted that the blockade is a clear example of neocolonialismwhile the representative of Venezuela, Samuel Moncada, described it as planned crime.
The Cuban Foreign Minister, Bruno Rodríguez, thanked the support of the 31 delegations that spoke yesterday at the UN.
In 2015, during the administration of Democrat Barack Obama, the United States and Cuba began a process of normalizing diplomatic relations, although without lifting the blockade. But in 2017, Republican Donald Trump reinforced its implementation and added 243 measures that his successor, Democrat Joe Biden, has maintained, including the permanence of Cuba on the list of countries promoting the terrorismwhich brings more restrictions.
Against the punitive measure in the Senate and lower house
Meanwhile, the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate of Mexico also spoke out in favor of eliminating the blockade against Cuba, considering it untenable and contrary to the human rights of the island’s citizens, at the initiative of the PRI and PT groups, in the first case, and Morena in the second.
All the measures applied force Cuba to resort to intermediaries to access certain products, pay more for merchandise, for insurance and freight, as well as face the increase in commissions applied by banking-financial entities. In this way everything becomes brutally more expensive.says the Senate document.
(With information from agencies)
