Havana, 9 February 2021 (AFP) – One hundred Cuban artists and academics, residents and expatriates on Tuesday (9) asked United States President Joe Biden to lift the embargo planted on the island in 1962.
“President Biden begins to end the system of sanctions affecting the people of Cuba,” said the signatories of an open letter given to United States diplomatic representation in Havana and sent to the White House.
The text, published in the independent digital magazine La Jovan Cuba and open to new signatures, is signed by prominent Cuban personalities, such as filmmaker Fernando Perez and actor Jorge Perugoria, as well as other figures in the intellectual and artistic world.
But it also includes names such as Alan Gross, who was sentenced to 15 years in 2009 by an American outsourcer who was jailed on the island and in 2014 as part of a relationship between the two countries led by Barack Obama was issued.
“The Trump administration has implemented a series of sanctions that increase the most frequent and widespread blockade / embargo imposed on a country,” the letter said. “Today, our people suffer exceptionally from economic scarcity,” he says.
The text was also signed by young playwright Yunior Garcia, one of the creators of the 27N movement and leading the unprecedented peaceful protests of the cast last 27 November.
In the letter, the signatories state that “the United States is not required to be our ideological ally, but may prevent being a hostile neighbor”.
– “First Step” – The letter, which had about thirty signatures in the morning, had a hundred in the middle of the afternoon and about a hundred comments from Internet users wanted to join the initiative.
The message speaks of Cuba’s struggle to maintain sovereignty and believes that “despite all the patriots who sacrificed themselves for a fully democratic Cuba, we are still far from this goal. However, it Getting Cubans is the responsibility, not the external pressure. ” , They say.
They clarify that “given the asymmetry of power between the United States and Cuba and the unidirectional nature of sanctions, it is the US responsibility to take the first step. We invoke the strength and values of its administration”.
The letter is published a few days after the presentation of a bill in the United States by Democratic Senator Ron Whedon supported by three other Democratic lawmakers, which calls for the lifting of the US embassy and the establishment of “normal commercial relations”. two countries.
President Biden, for his part, only pledged himself during the campaign to overturn Trump’s sanctions and send money from Cubans living in the United States.
The signatories include poet Alex Fleets, playwright Anton Arufat, academic Carlos Alzugare, journalists Rafael Hernández, noted academics Arturo López-Levy and Isabel Alfonso, jurists Julio Antonio Fernández Estrada and the famous Good Morning. Professor American Carlos Lajoie.
CB / LP / RS / MVV
