 For more videos on people's struggles, please subscribe to our YouTube channel. Hello, you're watching People's Dispatch and today we're going to be talking about a very important open letter to the US president that also came on the New York Times today that's July 23rd. Now, this letter has a very poignant and powerful title. It says, Let Cuba Live. And it is been signed by a host of prominent personalities across the world, former presidents such as Lula and Rafael Correa, academics, artists, activists, writers, a whole host of personalities from around the world who asked the president and the US administration very serious questions about Cuba. To talk more about this, we have with us Manolo de la Santos from the People's Forum who's one of the organizers of the letter. Thank you so much Manolo for joining us. It's a pleasure to join and congratulations on your third anniversary. Thank you so much. Manolo to begin with for the first question is really about the core aspect of the letter which is about the coercive actions that the US imposed during the time of Donald Trump because this comes after a long series of say, you know, decades long series of set of actions, but specifically could you maybe talk a bit more about these coercive actions and the impact they had, which is letter to letter? Well, I think the core message of our letter to Biden is very clear and simple. The US government and Biden himself has consistently been talking about their need to stand with the Cuban people, how they, you know, they feel very deeply the suffering of the Cuban people, yet at no moment do they mention the blockade which has been their government's policy for the last 60 years, which has caused great suffering in Cuba. And in a way that, you know, reeks of hypocrisy, they refuse to allow remittances. They allow, they refuse to allow Cuba to get off the state sponsors of terrorism list, which, you know, are main, you know, it's a main blocking mechanism from Cuba being able to access hard currency international in order to buy food and medicine. With the stroke of a pen, President Biden today himself in the Oval Office could actually annul 243 sanctions or these coercive measures that actually were brought up and created under the Trump administration. And to which Biden originally said during his campaign that he would, you know, move towards normalizing with Cuba. It reeks of hypocrisy that he has done nothing for the Cuban people, yet wants to talk about their suffering. Absolutely. And in this context, of course, these issues also coming up because the recent protests in Cuba and the way it has actually been spun by the US political system. And in this case, there's a lot of bipartisanship both sides talking about this. So could you maybe also take us to that aspect in terms of how, say, a protest which took place in Cuba, the Cuban system, of course, addressing it, the leaders that met the protesters, there's been a lot of effort and negotiation. But the US and its politicians have taken it on a completely different track. Well, I think it's important to talk about the fact that there is an ongoing war against the people of Cuba. And we've seen the most brutal aspects of that war for the last 60 years in the form of the blockade, the fact that Cuba is deprived from a lot of international trade, from commons, from accessing financial institutions globally that cause major scarcities inside the island. We know that. But what we're seeing now in the past weeks, particularly after July 11th, is that there's a new cyber component to this ongoing war against Cuba. The fact that the United States government has actually spent, as far as we know, over $20 million in so-called media projects and laboratories, social media laboratories in southern Florida, where the heart of the Cuban exile community lives, to essentially create what doesn't exist on the ground. You know, what happened on Cuba on July 11th was legitimate protest over basic, you know, needs that the people have, more access to food, more access to medicine, no to the electro-outages, which were not, you know, a protest against the revolution, per se. These social media bots, which have appeared by the hundreds of thousands, often repeating, you know, tweeting 10 times per second, you know, at remarkable speeds, are all being funded from the United States. And it's all part of an effort, again, to create a virtual reality in which somehow the Cuban government is on the verge of being overthrown, that millions of Cubans are on the streets ready to fight against this evil, the communist dictatorship, when in actuality, none of this is true. The streets of Havana and the streets of cities across Cuba are calm. There is major dialogue happening between the Cuban government and its people. The Cuban government is accepting of many criticisms and is taking it very seriously that they need to address these situations in more concrete ways. But at the same time, these media bots in the cyber war are doing the utmost to ignore the reality of the blockade. In their minds, they can create a reality in which people are suffering in Cuba for no reason other than the Cuban government itself. Right. But under this context also, maybe you could take our viewers to especially how the past year in Cuba has been in terms of COVID-19 because the role of the government, the role of the people in terms of countering that has actually been widely celebrated. Yet we see that the country has actually hardly received any support despite developing five vaccines. Well, I think the world is, well not the world, but I would say the virtual world seems to forget now that Cuba was among the countries that had the best responses to COVID-19. Primarily because one, it mobilized all its popular organizations, its people to actually not just isolate, but to actively take care of each other. The fact that no one went hungry despite the diminishing resources on the island. The fact that everyone, you know, students and doctors were sent all across the country house by house to check on patients. The fact that Cuba with its little resources, but thanks greatly to the research that Cuba has been doing for the last 30 years, that it immediately was able to jump on to doing research cooperatively, in fact, with other countries like China and Vietnam to develop these five vaccines. The fact that to this day, every patient who has even, you know, the suspicion that they might have been contaminated by COVID, infected by COVID, is immediately taken to an isolation center. These are all great measures that the Cuban government and people have taken, and it has greatly reduced the toll of COVID-19 compared to other countries, not I wouldn't compare with the US, but other countries in the Latin American region, you know, when you compare with Colombia, when you compare with Puerto Rico, when you compare with countries like Mexico, you see there's a great difference in how Cuba has approached the situation and how the situation has evolved. But the reality is also that Cuba has diminishing resources. I mean, Cuba lost more than 2.4 billion US dollars in revenue last year that normally would have gone to health and education. At the same time, Cuba itself has to per patient who stays in hospital due to COVID has to pay over 500. This is the cost per day, 500 US dollars. So I think there's, you know, the strain of the blockade plus the pandemic has been brutal on the Cuban people and all that we are asking 400 signers around the world, but also the UN and many experts around the world are all saying the most humane decent thing to do would be to lift the blockade, particularly in this moment of pandemic. Absolutely. And finally, like you said, the global solidarity on this issue, especially in your letter, many similar initiatives has been quite inspiring because we see across the world, sensitive people, people with a progressive mindset united on this. Could you maybe talk a bit about the situation in the US as well right now, because we know that there is a particular political cynicism from both parties, like I said, which is sought to use Cuba for internal, you know, safe politics as well. But among the youth, among progressive movements, what is the kind of solidarity action that's taking place? Well, it's been really interesting to see that, you know, all sort of public speech about Cuba from the White House in the last few months has said that Cuba is not a priority. You know, we can't revise Cuba policy because it's not a priority. It's not a priority. And all of a sudden, there's been a huge turnaround in which the White House sees it a priority, but apparently only a priority to exfixiate the Cuban people. And both parties are essentially fighting each other to prove who can be more anti-communist and who can exfixiate Cuba better. I mean, the Republican criticisms of the Biden administration are now pretty much focused on why are they not suffocating the Cuban people harder, stronger? Why isn't the blockade more effective? And I think that's really concerning apart from the calls openly for bombing of Cuba military intervention in Cuba that are coming from both parties, both major parties in the United States. At the same time, we have to admit that over 60% of the millions of people living in the United States overwhelmingly support and enter the blockade. They see no reason for an aggressive antagonistic policy by the United States governments towards Cuba. And that's expressed in many ways. I mean, immediately, since we've launched our letter, we've done thousands of more signatures added to the petition. We've had expressions of solidarity, like a group of young people who were in New York City decided to do a projection of messages in solidarity with Cuba, demanding an aim to the blockade, but also a key message, which is to let Cuba live, give Cuba the right to live in peace without sanctions. There have been actions by young people across the country collecting medicines and other necessary supplies across the country in order to send to Cuba as part of humanitarian aid. Absolutely. Manolo, looking forward to more of these actions in the coming days. We'll be tracking that in people's dispatch as well. Thank you so much for speaking to us. That was Manolo de los Santos from the People's Forum. You can read the letter titled Let Cuba Live. The link is in the description. Thank you so much and see you next time.