How do we measure the pain of a person, a family or a country? How do we prevent victims from becoming cold statistics while their faces suffer the effects of a protracted war?
The military industrial complex can tell us the exact cost of a missile, a tank or the latest fighter, but it can never count the aftermath and the losses suffered by its targets. It can never tell us the true value of life.
Economic asphyxiation has become the preferred method of torture by the US government of those who will not submit. Sixty-two years have passed since US President John F. Kennedy signed the blockade against Cuba, an order that was issued as a death sentence and has been perfecting the vile art of strangulation.
Let us assume for a moment that you have the power to remove the web of laws that make up that policy and stop its economic damage. With 15 minutes without a blockade, Cuba could buy hearing aids for disabled children and adolescents in special education; with half an hour, electric and conventional wheelchairs for this system.
If you stop the blockade for 8 hours, Cuba could obtain all the toys and teaching aids for its children’s circles; for 38 hours, a year’s worth of study materials and, for 3 days, guarantee the annual maintenance of public transport throughout the country.
At this point you would see that the main obstacle to Cuban development is precisely the economic asphyxiation and financial persecution that directly affect the people.
By stopping the blockade for 9 days, we could import the medical supplies and reagents for the national health system, which are necessary for a year. With 18 days, the annual maintenance of the electro-energy system and, with 25 days without US policies, we would have the financing required to cover the country’s basic medicine needs for a year.
DAMAGE CAUSED BY THE U.S. BLOCKADE AGAINST CUBA
Cuba already suffers accumulated damages amounting to one trillion 499 billion 710 million dollars; (13.8 million USD per day). However, the human cost of a unilateral aggression, sustained for six decades, is incalculable.
The line drawn by Under-Secretary of State Lester Mallory in April 1960 remains: «(…) every possible means must be rapidly employed to weaken the economic life of Cuba (…) a course of action which, being as skillful and discreet as possible, will make the greatest possible progress in depriving Cuba of money and supplies, in reducing its financial resources and real wages, in bringing about hunger, despair and the overthrow of the Government».
THE PROFITEERS OF THE BLOCKADE
It would not take much effort to understand that sustained aggression also generates the appropriate mechanisms for a small group to profit over the years from the war, propaganda and economic machinery provided by Washington, and who can finally obtain favours and political recognition.
In the name of a people they do not know, with no cultural, family or sentimental roots whatsoever, the spokespersons of the day and the initiatives for sanctions that attack those they claim to defend flourish.
The «hijacking» of Cuba policy by this group keeps the hand that can, with its signature, stop the damage and injustice immobile. The rejection of the majority of countries in the United Nations, the permanent condemnation of its unilateral coercive measures, the support of world solidarity for our country and the demand of millions of people who wish to «overthrow» the blockade have not been enough.
The figures shared are faces that look adversity in the face from the streets of Cuba. Statistics of men and women who embody the cost of sovereignty. Figures that ultimately reflect the failure to erase an ideal and the will of a people.
