Ot­to Car­ring­ton

Se­nior Re­porter

ot­to.car­ring­ton@cnc3.co.tt

The re­cent mil­i­tary strike on Iran by the Unit­ed States and Is­rael has drawn sharp crit­i­cism from Cuban and Caribbean lead­ers, who warned of po­ten­tial vi­o­la­tions of in­ter­na­tion­al law and threats to re­gion­al sta­bil­i­ty.

The Cuban Am­bas­sador to Trinidad and To­ba­go, Gus­ta­vo Vél­iz Oli­vares, con­demned the at­tacks at a com­mem­o­ra­tion of Fi­del Cas­tro’s birth­day held at the OW­TU Lennox Pierre Hall, de­scrib­ing them as “ag­gres­sive” and a dan­ger­ous es­ca­la­tion with the po­ten­tial to trig­ger nu­clear con­flict.

“Cu­ba con­demns in the strongest terms this ag­gres­sion,” Vél­iz Oli­vares said.

“The at­tack, car­ried out by the Unit­ed States and Is­rael, threat­ens peace and could es­ca­late in­to nu­clear con­flict.”

Fram­ing the cri­sis with­in Cu­ba’s his­to­ry of re­sist­ing for­eign in­ter­ven­tion, he em­pha­sised that the rev­o­lu­tion de­fends it­self both ide­o­log­i­cal­ly and, if nec­es­sary, mil­i­tar­i­ly. “The mod­el of to­tal bi­lat­er­al de­pen­dence was bro­ken Jan­u­ary 1, 1959,” he said, re­call­ing the tri­umph of the Cuban Rev­o­lu­tion.

Vél­iz Oli­vares high­light­ed Fi­del Cas­tro’s Op­er­a­tion Ver­dad, a press con­fer­ence held short­ly af­ter the rev­o­lu­tion, as a mod­el of de­fend­ing na­tion­al sov­er­eign­ty. He al­so con­demned US at­tempts to un­der­mine Cu­ba, in­clud­ing re­cent in­fil­tra­tions from US-reg­is­tered ves­sels, and crit­i­cised the decades-long eco­nom­ic block­ade.

He de­scribed the sanc­tions as “the longest and most se­vere in mod­ern his­to­ry,” caus­ing an es­ti­mat­ed US$7.5 bil­lion in dam­ages be­tween March 2024 and Feb­ru­ary 2025.

The am­bas­sador al­so high­light­ed Cu­ba’s in­ter­na­tion­al hu­man­i­tar­i­an work, in­clud­ing pro­vid­ing free med­ical treat­ment to thou­sands of Ukrain­ian chil­dren, as an ex­am­ple of the coun­try’s com­mit­ment to glob­al sol­i­dar­i­ty.

Join­ing the con­dem­na­tion, David Ab­dul­lah, po­lit­i­cal leader of the Move­ment for So­cial Jus­tice (MSJ), de­nounced the at­tacks as “con­trary to in­ter­na­tion­al law” and crit­i­cised on­go­ing vi­o­lence in Gaza and the West Bank. He de­fend­ed Cari­com lead­ers who sup­port Cu­ba’s call to end the US em­bar­go and chal­lenged crit­i­cisms of Cu­ba’s po­lit­i­cal sys­tem.

“Cu­ba’s democ­ra­cy is far more par­tic­i­pa­to­ry than the democ­ra­cy in Trinidad and To­ba­go, where elec­tions are heav­i­ly in­flu­enced by big mon­ey,” Ab­dul­lah said.

He al­so warned that up­com­ing meet­ings be­tween Caribbean lead­ers and US of­fi­cials, in­clud­ing at Mar-a-La­go, risk con­sol­i­dat­ing a right-wing bloc across Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean. “The at­tack on Iran, cou­pled with right-wing in­flu­ence in the re­gion, is very dan­ger­ous for Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean,” he said.

The event, at­tend­ed by sol­i­dar­i­ty groups, trade union­ists, and me­dia rep­re­sen­ta­tives, fea­tured a short film ho­n­our­ing Fi­del Cas­tro’s cen­ten­ni­al.

“Un­der­stand­ing our past is es­sen­tial to de­fend­ing our fu­ture,” Vél­iz Oli­vares con­clud­ed, in­vok­ing Cas­tro’s ral­ly­ing cry: “Un­til vic­to­ry, al­ways. Home­land or death, we shall over­come.”