CAMAGÜEY.- A package of chicken with the American flag in the blockaded Cuba? The bulk carrier Century Royal carrying 10,000 tons of grain from New Orleans to Cuba? And the blockade, does it not exist, or is it a story on the way? Questions like these flood the digital social networks and even reach the Cuban streets. Beyond the virtual scenario, some with the ingenuity that ignorance creates and others with a marked interest in generating these opinion matrices in the population.

In Cuba, we have inefficiency, officials, directors, and businessmen who do it wrong, unjustifiable errors, wrong planning, bills that don't add up, companies in bankruptcy, shortages, and scandalous prices, whether in state or private institutions, which are not the responsibility of the sanctions that weigh on us, although some of those who do it badly try to justify the unjustifiable; however, that does not diminish the effects of what constitutes the most comprehensive and prolonging system of sanctions that have been applied to any country and people since humanity has memory.

Just a few days ago, President Biden extended the Trade with the Enemy Law for another year, the legal basis for the so-called embargo on Cuba, which currently only applies to our country. The comprehensiveness of these suffocation measures does not even compare with those taken against Russia, Iran, North Korea, Venezuela, or any other nation that they, the policemen of the world, understand that they must pressure and blackmail based on power. The same Biden did it, who was part of the administration that decided on a shift in policy towards Cuba and considered it an anachronism. The genocide against these people has been endorsed by both Democrats and Republicans: Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, H. Bush, Clinton, W. Bush, Obama, Trump, and now Biden.

It is not unusual and it is not new that Cuba acquires a limited number of products in the United States, as permitted by the 2000 Law to Reform Trade Sanctions and Expansion of Exports, which authorizes the export of agricultural items to Cuba, conditioned to payment in cash in advance and without financing from the United States, conditions that are currently only required of the Greater Antilles. That same legislation prohibits travel by Americans for tourist purposes to Cuba, by defining "tourist activity" as any related to traveling to, from, or within Cuba, our country being the only one with that archaic prohibition.

So that you are not fooled, I give you additional information that of the 243 measures applied by Trump, 55 were issued during the COVID-19 pandemic, during a severe global economic and health crisis, which reinforces the intention of killing us that the blockade has.

And if that was not enough, add that the current Democratic administration between June and July 2021, refused to allow Cuba to acquire pulmonary ventilators, as well as the essential materials and supplies for the industrial scaling of Cuban vaccines against COVID-19 and, as if that were not enough, they opposed the acquisition of medical oxygen at the time its supply entered into crisis due to the failure of the main production plant. Being there, only 90 miles away, they preferred to see us die.

Right now, in an energy crisis, how nice it would be to be able to acquire financing from any North American bank for the more than 110 million dollars that are needed, for example, to repair unit 4 of the "Thermo" in Nuevitas, but that is not allowed by those who present themselves as friends and saviors of this people and then brand the Cuban government as bad, in the midst of unfair competition and the spirit of Undersecretary Mallory going around. That neighboring country could be our natural market in the absence of the manifest intention of surrendering due to shortages.

Like any action of psychological warfare, the blockade leaves the door open for Cubans to know that the screw can always be tightened a little more, and therein lies the essence of allowing limited purchases or trips, that we know and fear that it can always be more strong.

For us, as long as it exists, we have no other alternative than to try to develop ourselves creatively, jump over the wall while we can, with intelligence and mischief, we know that well; but we cannot tire of saying that despite chicken, grains and any other product "made in the USA", the blockade exists and it intends to kill.

Translated by Linet Acuña Quilez