Havana, December 14 - The President of Cuba, Miguel Díaz-Canel, assured today that imperialist ambitions will never be able to break the unity of the peoples, nor will they bend the will to fight and faith in victory with their threats and aggressions.
In his speech at the 25th Summit of Heads of State and Government of ALBA-TCP, held virtually, the Cuban leader highlighted that meeting this Sunday, 21 years after its creation, is a demonstration of loyalty to its founding principles of solidarity and cooperation.
He also paid tribute to its founders, Commanders Fidel Castro (1926-2016) and Hugo Chávez (1954-2013), who were inspired by the ideas of the heroes Simón Bolívar and José Martí.
The Cuban president stated that the Latin American and Caribbean integration bloc will continue to be an essential space "of solidarity, dignity, and resistance" against destabilizing campaigns, pressure measures, and the most varied forms of aggression.
He emphasized that "we will continue fighting for a common goal, which is the unity, peace, and sovereignty of the peoples," always faithful to the ideas of Bolívar, Martí, Fidel, and Chávez.
Díaz-Canel denounced the imperial ambitions of the United States over Venezuela, expressed by a government that shamelessly seeks to revive the era of gunboat diplomacy with the intention of forcibly imposing its will on the right to independence and free self-determination.
He noted that the new U.S. National Security Strategy incorporates an "even more aggressive and offensive" approach to that old but very dangerous Monroe Doctrine, of America for the Americans.
In this regard, he defended that Latin America and the Caribbean "are not anybody's backyard, not even their front yard," because we are sovereign states.
Commenting on the U.S. naval and air military deployment in the Caribbean Sea and its deliberate threat to Venezuela, the Cuban leader stated that they reveal "a hegemonic and criminal purpose that should alert all the peoples and governments of the continent."
In his address, the dignitary reiterated his government's denunciation of the assault and seizure of an oil tanker by the United States Armed Forces on December 10, carrying 1.9 million barrels of oil, which irrefutably demonstrated the true intentions behind that deployment.
He condemned in strong terms "this vile act of piracy and theft of the Venezuelan people's resources, which constitutes a serious violation of international law concerning the principles of freedom of navigation and free trade and harms not only Venezuela but also the international community."
Díaz-Canel also denounced that since 2019, the economic, commercial, and financial blockade imposed by the United States for more than six decades has reached extreme levels, "increasingly cruel and inhumane," with the inclusion of the island on the spurious list of alleged countries sponsoring terrorism.
In this sense, he demanded the immediate and unconditional end of all those punitive measures and thanked the peoples and countries that oppose this "genocidal blockade against Cuba."
