The Cuban government is taking advantage of the Coronavirus pandemic scourging the planet today to heat up its disinformation war. A simple search into their press and troll media shows a ramp-up of the propaganda work. This time around we believe it’s worthwhile to take a look at two parallel campaigns, one for domestic consumption and the other one for export.
Once again, they blame the United States
The Cuban government is now busy promoting the idea that President Trump should “lift the economic blockade against Cuba at least provisionally.” That seeks to portray such US move as the magic wand that would allow them to buy food and medicine in this crucial moment.
Truth is, sales of food and medicine to Cuba are not banned by sanctions. Millions of Cubans who all these years have been consuming American agricultural products like chicken, corn or soy are witnesses to it. The only condition is for the Cuban Government to pay cash and in advance to US providers.
It is the everlasting and cruel internal blockade of the Castro government against Cuba’s private sector, as well as its centralized agricultural system based on the so-called Acopio State mechanism that lets the harvests rotten in the field, what must be eradicated immediately. These are the ones to blame for making the Island’s economy as fragile as a banana plantation facing a hurricane. If a famine came up amidst this pandemic, no one moderately informed should blame it on the US embargo, but rather on the internal blockade. This is the time to demand from the Cuban government to release immediately and unconditionally its iron grip on the country’s economy.
On the threshold of an unimaginable catastrophe like the one already looming, freeing the Island’s productive forces would mean allowing even the truly private sector to trade with and receive credits from US-based businesses. Why ask a foreign government to loosen its sanctions when the quick and permanent solution to the problem could come from Plaza de la Revolución?
Humanitarian solidarity?
A second narrative that has been thoroughly rekindled these days is about the supposed humanitarian and solidarity-prone nature of the Cuban government. Consider the following presumptions that this deception is built upon. Cuba “opens its arms” to welcome cruise ships stranded at sea with sick passengers on board because ports elsewhere refuse to receive them. Havana feverishly encourages other countries, regions and cities to hire their “internationalist solidarity” doctors and health specialists. On the other hand, Cuban laboratories offer to export their “wonder” drugs capable of curing this horrible disease. And each time, Cuban officials emphasize that the United States government opposes such urgent, humanitarian, international crusade.
In fact, there is nothing disinterested, humanitarian or commiserate in these measures. For bringing in those ships, the government demanded and obtained multimillion-dollar payments as a precondition for accepting them, and it certainly couldn’t care less about the safety of Cubans.
On the other hand, Washington is not and has not been opposed to Cuban doctors and nurses being hired by other countries, but it does insist that they should receive full and direct payment for their services, so that they are not exploited by slave-trade companies such as the Comercializadora de Servicios Médicos Cubanos S A that seizes between 70 and 85 percent of their wages.
Make no mistake: in the run-up to Apocalypse, a handful of gangsters in military uniforms, who keep talking about “the Revolution” as if we were still in 1959, are looking for political and financial opportunities to strengthen their control over the Cuban population and find new sources of profit for their own benefit . Do not let them confuse you.