The following is a statement by the President of the Republic of Cuba, Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez

Díaz-Canel to the people of Cuba:
The order to fight is given, the revolutionaries to the streets.

The First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Cuba and President of the Republic of Cuba, Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez, appeared this Sunday live on national radio and television.

We have been honest, we have been transparent, we have been clear and at every moment we have been explaining to our people the complexities of the current moments. I remind you that more than a year and a half ago, when the second semester of 2019 began, we had to explain that we were going to a difficult situation. This was taken as part of popular humor and we have remained part of that conjuncture from all the signs that the United States government was giving, led by the Trump administration in relation to Cuba.

They began to intensify a series of restrictive measures, a tightening of the blockade, of financial persecution against the energy sector with the aim of suffocating our economy and that this would provoke the desired massive social outbreak, which sows the possibilities for the entire ideological campaign that It has been done, to be able to call for humanitarian intervention that ends in military interventions and interference, and that affects the rights, sovereignty and independence of all peoples.

That situation continued, then came the 243 measures that we all know and finally it is decided to include Cuba in a list of countries that sponsor terrorism, a spurious, illegitimate and unilateral list that the United States government has adopted, believing themselves to be the emperors of the United States. world.

Many countries suddenly submit to these decisions, but it must be recognized that others do not allow it to be imposed on them. All these restrictions led the country to immediately cut off various sources of foreign currency income, such as tourism, Cuban-American travel to our country, and remittances. A plan was made to discredit the Cuban medical brigades and the solidarity collaborations provided by Cuba, which received an important part of foreign currency from that collaboration.

All this situation caused a situation of shortage in the country, especially of food, medicines, raw materials and supplies to be able to develop our economic and productive processes that at the same time contribute to exports. Are cut

two important elements are the ability to export and the ability to invest resources. And from the productive processes to develop goods and services for our population.

We also have limitations on fuels and spare parts and all this has caused a level of dissatisfaction, coupled with accumulated problems that we have been able to solve and that came from the special period together with a fierce media campaign of discrediting as part of the war not. conventional that tries to fracture the unity between party-state and people; that tries to put the government as insufficient and incapable of providing well-being to the Cuban people and that it intends to raise from a position of the United States government that with them it is possible to aspire to the progress of a country like ours.

Those are well-known hypocritical recipes, speeches of double standards that we know very well throughout the history of the United States towards Cuba. How did they intervene in our country, how did they take over our island in 1902, how did they maintain domination of our island in the pseudo-republic stage, and how were those interests hit by the Cuban Revolution in its triumph?

The example of the Cuban Revolution has bothered them a lot for 60 years and they have been constantly increasing. They have applied an unjust, criminal, and cruel blockade, now intensified in pandemic conditions and therein lies the manifest perversity, the evil of all those intentions. Blockade and restrictive actions that they have never taken against any other country, nor against those they consider their main enemies.

Therefore, it has been a policy of viciousness against a small island that only aspires to defend its independence, its sovereignty and to build its society with self-determination according to the principles that more than 86% of the population has supported in the broad exercise. and democratic that we supported a few years ago to approve the current Constitution of the Republic of Cuba.

In the midst of these conditions comes the pandemic, a pandemic that has not affected only Cuba, but the entire world, including the United States. It has affected rich countries and it must be said that in the face of this pandemic neither the United States nor those rich countries had all the capacity to face its effects in the beginning, and in many of those first world countries, with much more wealth, the health systems, intensive therapy rooms. The poor were disadvantaged because there are no public policies aimed at the people for their salvation, and they have indicators in relation to the confrontation of the pandemic that have worse results than those of Cuba in many cases.

This is how we progressed, we controlled outbreaks and outbreaks, with a tremendous capacity to sacrifice our people, our scientists, our health personnel and almost the entire country has been involved in it. Five vaccine candidates have been created, of which one has already been recognized as a vaccine and which is the first in Latin America. Cuba is already vaccinating its population. It is a process that takes time. Vaccines must be produced, but at the moment we have one of the highest vaccination rates in the world and in a few weeks we have exceeded 20% of the population’s vaccination, a process that continues.

In recent months, strains that are more aggressive and cause more transmission of the disease have begun to circulate. In the middle of this situation, a group of complications begins to appear. In the first place, cases occur with a speed and accumulation that exceeds the capacities that we have been able to create to attend to these cases in state institutions. On the other hand, we have had to go to open capacities in other centers and by opening a more number of centers, to which we also have to give an energy priority even in the midst of accumulated energy problems that have caused us blackouts, the amount of circuits we have that protecting so that covid patients are treated causes that there are more circuits that are left with the possibility of causing annoying blackouts, but necessary, because we have to restore our electricity generation capacities. This has happened in recent days and has caused irritation, misunderstanding, concerns and affectations to the population.

By having more patients, there is more consumption of drugs, and also our stocks of drugs are running out, the possibilities of acquiring them are very difficult. In the midst of all this, we continue with will, thinking about everything, working for everyone. Now we have to go to the experience of home admission due to the lack of capacities in a group of provinces, and we have had to summon the family so that they have a more direct and responsible participation; and one never tires of admiring in the midst of this situation that capacity for creative resistance that our people have. And how with these values, if we accompany ourselves with responsibility and unity, in the shortest possible time with vaccination and with responsible behavior, complying with hygienic sanitary measures, social isolation and physical distancing, we will leave this pandemic peak sooner rather than later. which is not just a Cuban case.

What Cuba managed was to postpone this pandemic peak in time with everything we did, and also in the shortest time we will overcome it, and this is how we have ratified it these days in our tours of the provinces to specify all the confrontation strategies to the pandemic.

In a very cowardly, subtle and opportunistic and perverse way, from the most complicated situations that we have had in provinces such as Matanzas and Ciego de Ávila, those who have always approved the blockade and who serve as mercenaries on the streets of the Yankee blockade, begin to appear with doctrines of humanitarian aid and humanitarian corridor. We all know where they come from.

To strengthen the view that the Cuban government is not capable of getting out of this situation, as if they were so interested in solving the health problems of our people.

If you want to have a real gesture with Cuba, if you want to be concerned with the people, open the blockade and we will see how we play. Why do not they do it? Why don’t they have the courage to open the lock? What legal and moral foundation do they have supports that a foreign government applies this policy to a small country in the midst of such adverse situations.

Isn’t that genocide, isn’t that a crime against humanity? Criteria are raised that we are a dictatorship, a dictatorship that cares about giving its entire population health, that seeks well-being for all, that in the midst of these situations is capable of having programs and public policies based on everyone, that it is aspiring to vaccinate everyone with a Cuban vaccine, because we knew that no one was going to sell us vaccines and we had no money to go to the international market to buy vaccines. What strange dictatorship?

Now they shout that we are murderers. Where are the murdered in Cuba? Where are the disappeared?

Because the other countries that have suffered these events of pandemic peaks were not attacked in the press and that was not put as a solution by humanitarian intervention, nor were they armed these discrediting campaigns that they have wanted to arm against us.

Life, history and facts show that it is behind all this: that it is to suffocate and end the Revolution and for that they are trying to discourage our people from confusing. When people are in severe conditions like the ones we are living in, events like the ones we saw today in San Antonio de los Baños occur.

In San Antonio de los Baños, a group of people gathered in one of the most central parks in the city to protest and claim. Who were those people? They were made up of people from the village who are experiencing part of the shortcomings and difficulties, they were made by revolutionary people who may be confused and who may not have all the arguments or who were expressing their dissatisfaction.

Those two groups of people did it in a different way and looked for an argument and asked for an explanation. The first thing they said was “I am a revolutionary” “I support the Revolution.”

This was headed by a group of manipulators who were lending themselves to the designs of those campaigns that appeared on social networks. The famous SOSMatanzas or SOSCuba, the call to the cacerolazo so that in several cities of Cuba there would be demonstrations of this type and there would be social unrest.

This is very criminal, very cruel, especially at this time where we must ensure that people are in the houses that are collected, that they are protecting themselves. With the morality that the Revolution gives, the revolutionaries of San Antonio de los Baños, the authorities of the province, a group of comrades from the leadership of the country, we presented ourselves to San Antonio de los Baños.

This mass of revolutionaries confronted the counterrevolutionaries and we spoke with the revolutionaries and some who may be non-revolutionaries but who were asking for arguments. Later we marched and toured the town to show that in Cuba the streets belonged to the revolutionaries.

While that is happening, we know that there are other towns in the country, where groups of people in certain streets and squares have gathered, also motivated by such unhealthy purposes.

We call on all revolutionaries to take to the streets to defend the Revolution in all places, ”said Díaz-Canel.

The streets belong to the revolutionaries and the State has all the political will to dialogue, but also to participate, he added.

We are not going to hand over sovereignty, or the independence of this nation, “he said. They have to pass over our corpse if they want to overthrow the Revolution.