Mike Hammer, the U.S. chargé d’affaires, goes to Miami, the rat’s nest of Miami, to babble against Cuba. Who does this guy think he is? With arrogance and haughtiness as if he were an appointed intervenor in the so-called republic of 1902. With superlative cynicism, he blames Cuba’s government for the shortages suffered by the Cuban people, when it is the government he represents that is the main violator of Cubans’ human rights, sustaining an economic, financial, and commercial blockade imposed for over six decades—a criminal and inhumane act that has suffocated entire generations, depriving us of food, medicine, and essential resources.
But how can Hammer come to speak of human rights, human dignity, and U.S. “support” for Cubans? When that same country denied us even access to oxygen during the most difficult moments of the COVID-19 pandemic.
While in Havana he painted himself with a “diplomatic,” “friendly,” and “conciliatory” face, there in Miami he finally dropped his mask and showed his true face. A complete coward! During his “tours” of the island, he never visited a school, a hospital, a medical clinic, or a neighborhood in deep Cuba—he never went there. He simply preferred to meet with the same “dissidents” funded by Washington, following an interventionist script to the letter.
He has the audacity to say he speaks from “a country in freedom,” as if the United States were a model of human rights. “One can speak freely in a country,” he claimed, ignoring that in his “democracy,” students protesting genocide in Palestine are brutally repressed, migrants are caged in inhumane conditions, and those who challenge the system are persecuted. “Freedom” in the United States is a farce, a tale that crumbles under scrutiny when we see police violence, racial inequality, and the criminalization of dissent. That “freedom” Hammer speaks of is nothing but a myth upheld by an aging statue in New York, while the decadent empire can no longer sustain itself even with propaganda.
Most outrageous is the shamelessness with which he defends his government’s “hard policy” against Cuba. “We will return to a hard policy toward the Cuban regime,” he declared unabashedly, celebrating sanctions that, according to him, punish “repressors.” But no, Mr. Hammer, you know—and know well because that is the objective—those sanctions directly affect the Cuban people. He cynically admits these measures are part of his strategy while daring to blame the Cuban government for the difficulties they themselves have aggravated. It is the height of hypocrisy: the aggressor suffocating us presents himself as our savior.
He boasts of listening to the Cuban people, but his words are empty. “We want to approach and get closer to the Cuban people, show them we care about their situation,” he said. Concern? Where was that concern when your government blocked the entry of ventilators during the pandemic? Where is it when Cubans face blackouts and shortages largely caused by the restrictions they impose? His tours never sought to understand our needs (and they know those needs very well because they themselves provoke them with their “maximum pressure”), but to fuel their narrative of a “failed” Cuba to justify more interventionism.
This man dreams of the times when the Yankee ambassador gave orders in Havana as if he owned the island. But he mistakes the era. Cuba is no one’s backyard, and Cubans are not fooled by arrogant Yankees with delusions of conquerors. The blockade is the main cause of our difficulties, and no speech of yours can hide that truth.
To Mike Hammer and his ilk, we say clearly: We don’t need a gringo to “save” us. Cuba will keep resisting, as it has for over 60 years, against blockades, sanctions, and aggression. We are a sovereign people who decide our destiny, and no arrogant gringo will change that. Hammer, with his rhetoric, is nothing but another misguided imperialist pawn who thinks he can bend us. He is wrong! In Cuba, Cubans rule, and the arrogant like you can go to hell. Homeland or Death, We Shall Overcome!
(Taken from Mi Cuba por Siempre).
