When Bridges Are Preferred to Walls

The First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party and President of the Republic Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez held a cordial exchange with U.S. and Cuban-American businesspeople.

Author: Alina Perera Robbio | perera@juventudrebelde.cu

November 3, 2022 11:11:35

Photo: Estudio Revolución

The First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party and President of the Republic Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez held a cordial exchange with U.S. and Cuban-American businesspeople.

The First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party and President of the Republic, Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez, said at the Palace of the Revolution to U.S. and Cuban-American businesspeope, with whom he had a cordial exchange.

"Thank you very much for your time, for accepting this invitation and this meeting, for being in Cuba," he said as he welcomed the businesspeople attending the meeting.

Received in the emblematic Portocarrero Hall, the dignitary said to the attendees, who were in Cuba attending a Cuba-U.S. business forum organized by the Chamber of Commerce and the Focus Cuba group, that it was necessary to share with them about the reality of the Island, because they have " bet on working with Cuba and they are among those who prefer to build a bridge instead of a wall.

The Head of State referred to his interlocutors as men and women with whom Cuba will be able to overcome any problem and move forward.

In a relaxed atmosphere, the President told the guests that he was very pleased for their presence in Cuba because their participation in the Cuba-U.S. Business Forum in such a complex moment for the island was very significant.

Regarding the reasons behind that importance, Díaz-Canel explained that they express the will to strengthen business and trade relations between the two countries, and highlighted the singularity that "in this group there are also Cuban compatriots who live abroad and want to participate in the development of our country."

"Meetings like this one, in which we have great faith, also help us to ratify concepts we have defended: in the first place, that we are open to cooperation with the world, because we consider that cooperation and business interrelation at the international level is a way for our development.

"Secondly, it ratifies that we are open to strengthen and strengthen dialogue and relations with any country in the world, particularly with the United States."

In the case of the northern country, the President emphasized, the relationship should be based on a dialogue with respect; in which our sovereignty or our integrity is not attacked; in which there are no unilateral positions of force. If this is respected, there can be dialogue and a tightening of relations, regardless of our ideological divergences."

The Head of State expressed that "we have repeatedly stated to the Government of the United States, through the channels we have been able to use, that we are open to dialogue and to that conversation, without conditions, and with the possibility of covering all possible topics".

He made this explicit during the meeting. "I wanted you, who have been willing to visit us and to do business with Cuba, to see how we can have commercial relations, to know our positions".

He recounted other similar exchanges: "I met some of you when we were at the United Nations in New York a few years ago; we have met others from other visits you have made to Cuba, with whom we have met in this same place".

He stressed that, "systematically", and he personally - "in addition to what other people of the Cuban Government and the Cuban State do" - has sustained the exchanges "whenever the U.S. side agrees," whenever the interlocutors want to do so, whenever they do not feel pressured. When this is the case, "we attend to all the U.S. delegations visiting the country," he said.

CUBA AND ITS WILLINGNESS TO OVERCOME ADVERSITIES

To the U.S. and Cuban-American businesspeople who attended the meeting at the Palace of the Revolution, President Díaz-Canel explained that the Portocarrero Hall has been the place where he has met with artists, intellectuals, scientists, entrepreneurs from different sectors, and businessmen and women in all these years.

"You know that we are in an extremely complex moment. Traditionally we speak of a blockade, but at this moment it is not the blockade we used to face all these years that have passed. Since the second half of 2019, we have suffered an intensified blockade. More than 243 measures of the Trump administration were applied, which have been maintained without any change by the Biden administration."

He affirmed that in this policy "some steps have begun to be taken in the right direction, we would say in recent times, but they do not go beyond some announcements that have yet to materialize."

He reflected that "those measures have really put us in a very complex situation, because our main sources of financing were cut off, and the final point of those measures was when Trump put Cuba on a list of countries that, supposedly, support terrorism nine days before left the White House, which is totally uncertain and irrational".

The president explained that "being on that list limits a country, especially a country like ours, in a burdensome way, because from the outset all banks refuse to work (with the stigmatized nation); you lose all credit possibilities; you cannot export foreign currency abroad; you cannot operate with Cuban accounts in banks abroad; and overcoming those problems costs a lot of work."

Díaz-Canel did not overlook the fact that "the U.S. policy during the pandemic was very cruel. The intensification of those measures, and the maintenance of them by the current U.S. administration, was precisely at the time when the pandemic entered Cuba".

He denounced that "the U.S. government tried by all means to prevent Cuba from having access to vaccines, to medicines we needed"; and he recalled that, when there was a malfunction in "our medical oxygen plant", the U.S. "did everything possible so that entities, companies from which we went to buy oxygen in Latin America, would not sell us oxygen".

"When we needed to expand the services of our intensive care wards, they denied us and blocked the possible purchase of pulmonary ventilators; but it did not stop us".

At that point, the President referred to a transcendental episode: when the country's leadership asked its scientists to achieve sovereignty with its own vaccines in the face of the COVID-19 epidemic.

The host stressed that that call "turned into three vaccines already recognized, and two vaccine candidates, and although developing our own vaccines meant we started to vaccinate our population later because we had to wait for the results of the clinical trials, we had to do the emergency studies to be able to test our vaccines.

"In October 2021, we had already vaccinated more than 60 % of our population and the number of cases and, of course, deaths immediately started to drop.

In those months, Cuba became the country that vaccinated its population the fastest. Today we are among the two countries with the highest number of vaccination doses per inhabitant; more than 90 % of the population is fully vaccinated -we are ranked fifth or sixth in the world in this indicator-; and we were the first to immunize children over two years of age," he added.

The Head of State detailed that "in the last six months we have had almost no deaths -three deaths in six months-; we barely have daily cases; Cuba's lethality in this disease is 0.77 (that is, the ratio of deaths against sick people)"; a figure "far below that of the world, which is 1.35; and far below that of the Americas, which is 1.7.

In a frank conversation, Díaz-Canel added: "You may ask yourselves: Why is he telling us this story? I am telling it to you because of a fundamental idea."

He then reiterated Cuba’s very complex situation, which Cuba is facing with creative resistance, which is not only to resist, but to move forward and developgrow in the midst of adversities".

He then referred to this battle as a "very recent experience", as a "philosophy" to face all the problems Cuba has today".