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Vol. 79/No. 36 October 12, 2015
DC meeting takes up fight
to end US embargo of Cuba
BY OMARI MUSA
WASHINGTON — “We are at an historic moment. Work we have been doing for
years has helped change Cuba-U.S. relations,” Alicia Jrapko told some
100 participants gathered here Sept. 18 for a conference titled, “The
U.S. Blockade Against Cuba: Why It’s Wrong and What We Need to Do to End
It.” Jrapko is a leader of the International Committee for Peace,
Justice and Dignity for the Peoples.
“After the victory winning the release of Gerardo Hernández, Ramón
Labañino, and Antonio Guerrero last December,” she said, “many of us
froze.”
The three were the remaining members of the Cuban Five still held in
U.S. prisons, framed up for carrying out an assignment in Florida to
monitor the actions of paramilitary groups with a record of assaults
against Cuba and supporters of the revolution. “What do we do now?” she
said. “We focus on ending the embargo and return of Guantánamo to Cuban
sovereignty.”
“The blockade remains in place,” Cuban Ambassador José Ramón Cabañas
told the conference. Cabañas became ambassador after the historic
agreement between Cuba and Washington last December that freed the three
revolutionaries and opened the door to re-establishing diplomatic
relations between the two countries. He said Cuba needs more solidarity.
“The entire blockade must be lifted,” Cabañas said. “Guantánamo is
Cuba’s best bay — they have to return it.”
One conference panel featured graduates and students from the Latin
American Medical School in Havana. Cuba has sponsored thousands of
students from all over the world to attend who have returned to their
countries to provide medical care. Adriano Rodrigues from East Timor
noted that before the program there were no doctors in his country. “Now
there are 1,080 graduates,” he said. “We were not only trained as
doctors. We learned values — solidarity, humanism, equality, altruism,
sacrifice and what it means to be truly revolutionary.”
Another panel was dedicated to the fight to free Puerto Rican
independence fighter Oscar López Rivera, imprisoned in the U.S. on
frame-up charges for more than 34 years. “The fight of the Puerto Rican
people for sovereignty is what makes Oscar who he is,” said Rafael
Cancel Miranda, who spent more than 27 years in U.S. prisons for his
actions for Puerto Rican independence. “Cuba is an example. Cuba shows
that you have to fight to be free.”
The conference was preceded by two days of lobbying Congress, an
ecumenical service and an excellent photo exhibit titled, “The Cuban 5
Return: An Entire Country Celebrates.”
All events were sponsored by the International Committee for Peace,
Justice and Dignity for the Peoples, IFCO/Pastors for Peace, Institute
for Policy Studies, and endorsed by the National Network on Cuba and a
number of other groups.
Martín Koppel contributed to this article.
Related articles:
Castro at UN: Cuba speaks for the toilers of the world
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