Cuban Ambassador to Nigeria, Carlos Sosa, in this interview, speaks on the lessons Nigeria, 55 years after independence, has to learn from his country’s resistance of the United States for 54 years
The US flag was raised in Havana recently. Does it mean anything to Cubans after 54 years of their differences with the US?
54 years is a long time since the US broke diplomatic relations with Cuba; it was an American decision, not Cuban. Our relationship with the US people has always been a good one but the problem was with the government which refused to recognise Cuba and accept the Cuban nation as a fact. After 54 years, they realized that the blockade was a failure, that they were being deceived and they couldn’t achieve most of the things they wanted to achieve.
The establishment of the relationship is the first step to normalisation. At the moment, we can say we are happy but we still have a lot to do before we normalise the relationship. In that deal, the American government made it clear that they had to lift what they called embargo which we call blockade.
The Cubans made it clear to President Obama that this was a blockaged and not an embargo. The second one is the Montana waste in the territory of Cuba. There are many things to be discussed, some of them complicated.
You said so many things still to be discussed. Can you tell us especially those complicated ones?
First is the question of the embargo or the blockade, without which we can’t trade with the United States. And Cubans can go to the United States but Americans can’t come to Cuba as tourists.
Third, it is impossible for Cubans to buy products from American companies outside United States.
For example, if there is an American company in Nigeria and we want to trade with that company, it is impossible because there is an American law which prohibits that. So there are things we can’t do until the embargo is lifted.
For example, we know that health services in the United States are very expensive and not all is covered by insurance. So many Americans want to go to Cuba because Cuba health system is the best all over the world and costs much less.
We can’t use the American dollar in our transactions across the world and you know that the reference carried in the world is the dollar. Investors hunt banks that have any link or transactions with Cuba. For example, the French bank, which is the largest and most important bank in France, was penalized with about 9 billion dollars for trading with Cuba. Recently, the Commerce Bank of Germany was penalized with more than 1 billion dollars for using the American dollar to trade with Cuba.
These are issues which could be solved by the Americans.
So what lessons can you say Cuba has learnt in these 54 years?
The first lesson is that we have reached where we are because we resisted when everybody thought, with the collapse of the Soviet Union and the socialist camp, Cuba will look up to the United States but the people of Cuba resisted; even the GDP of Cuba went down by more than 37 percent and we were in very poor condition, the people decided to unite behind their government. That is the first lesson; you resist, you win. Do you know what happens with those that are still accepting some conditions unlike us who stood our grounds?
What measures is Cuba putting in place to ensure that this renewed relationship with America is sustained?
First of all, the renewal of lives is unconditionally. Second, we have a highly educated population, we have more than one million Cubans with university degrees out of a population of 11.2 million. Even those who didn’t reach the highest point in the educational system in Cuba, everyone is prepared to debate, discuss anything and they are prepared to understand.
Cubans are happy because they kept their independence and sovereignty and that is the guarantee of the existence of Cuba as a nation. Cuba didn’t place any embargo on the Americans, Cuba doesn’t occupy any part of the American territory, we don’t finance any kind of movement to overthrow or change the American government.
For example we have the Nigerian democracy practised by the Nigerians which is the same thing we do in Cuba. We have elections every five years to elect the deputies who don’t receive salaries and are answerable to the people. They can be removed at anytime by the people who elected them; in our democracy, we don’t put the money to elect people.
Human right, for Cubans begin with the guarantee of life for every Cuban; there is housing, food in abundance, health care, education and we have many parties fighting to win elections. In Cuba, nobody has to propose to the people to vote for him to upgrade the system, only a foolish person will propose free education for the children because we have already achieved that. Things which are of utmost importance for many people in our point of view about human right is very strong. In Cuba, you can walk on the streets at 2am without attacked or harassed.
Human rights groups have often accused Cuba of human rights violation?
They accuse many people. They have even accused Nigeria but they don’t speak about what is happening in the United States. We don’t have police brutality in Cuba, nobody disappears in Cuba, we don’t have torture in Cuba, there is no single proof about any of the claims made against Cuba.
Life expectancy for a woman in Cuba is 80years while that of the man is 78. So if the government of Cuba was against the population and the system, why will they want to make them live longer? It is easy to understand, if you want them to disappear, we will make them to die early. Why do we send people to the university? Why do we take universities to the prisons where a prisoner can have a university degree when he comes out of prison? How can we have so much respect for human rights and still violate them? In Cuba, we have people that are decent but the decent in Cuba is not against the revolution, it is against some malpractices and mistakes we made in the past and people protested and we said we had to change and that is why we are changing; but there are some people in Cuba recognised by the Americans and they pay them millions of dollars to try to overthrow the Cuban government.
We have submitted our country twice to the Commission on Human Rights in Geneva, and we passed very well in two exams. Nevertheless, we are putting right the things that were wrong but on equal basis and not because the issues were in contrast with our political decisions before.
Meanwhile, the only countries that were put on trial before the Human Right Commission were third world countries; you never see America, you never see France, Germany or the British; only third world countries – African countries, Latin American countries, South east Asian countries. So we have started a machinery as a result of the implementation of the upgrade of the relationship between us and America to discuss all the issues including human rights.
We had the first meeting of the human rights bilateral commission in the United States; we sent a delegation to the United States because they complained about Cubans affairs and we complained about American affairs. We put people in prison in Cuba because of what they do and not for what they think but you put people in prison in the United States because of what they think. So we have different approaches and that is what we are discussing and hope everything will turn out right.
In terms of the economy, how much can Cuba say they lost during this 54 years of embargo?
More than one billion dollars; that is the effect of the measures taken against Cuba by the United States and that doesn’t include the loss of lives because you can’t put a price on the life of anybody; we lost more than 3,000 Cubans because of terrorist attacks coming from the United States and most of them were supported and financed by the United States. We have a number of diseases spread in Cuba, and there were attempts on the lives of Cuban leaders recognised by the CIA. 106 attempts in that category were recognised, so you can imagine how many were not recognised in that account and many things happened which affected directly the economy and lives of Cubans.
What measures is Cuba putting in place to bring in investors?
No small country can develop its process without foreign investors; there are things which are necessary.” Money which is not available, part of the American embargo is to prohibit the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank and similar organisations from learning money to Cuba and then foreign investments needed to create new capacities in the country to update some technologies we are using in the country. Though there are two places we are strong position like the bio-technology industry, the relations between America and Cuba have already accepted that one of their companies import into the United States our superior technology against lung cancer and another product for people suffering from ulcer. -Vanguard.
