Almost as if he had already guessed the advent of an individual of the stature of Donald Trump, the Cuban thinker José Martí wrote in 1891 that “the vain villager believes that the whole world is his village.” “As long as he remains mayor […] He already accepts the universal order as good, without knowing about the giants who carry seven leagues in their boots and can put the boot on him, nor about the fight of the comets in the Sky, which go through the air asleep, swallowing worlds,” Martí published in La Revista Ilustrada de New York; in an article in which he defended that “whatever remains of the village in America must wake up.” He titled it ‘Our America’. 125 years later, and with José Martí considered a national hero In Cuba, the Progressive International has recovered that section and deliver humanitarian aid in the Cuban capital, Havana, this Saturday, March 21.
With the different ones as an example, the idea of organizing a convoy to Cuba arose after the US military intervention in Venezuela and after the president of the United States announced that he would not only block oil shipments from Caracas, but would sanction any country that supplied crude oil to the island. A decision that UN experts defined as “a serious violation of International Law”, already subject to serious restrictions by the US embargo that began in the 1960s. “Access to essential goods and services, such as food, water, medicines, fuel and electricity, is fundamental to guarantee the right to life and other basic human rights,” recalls the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights.
The initiative to send humanitarian aid to Cuba emerged from the Progressive International, a global structure of left-wing people and organizations that was born during the pandemic to counter the rise of the extreme right in the world. David Adler, a 32-year-old Californian political scientist and economist, is its coordinator. In conversation with El HuffPostAdler says that when he heard Donald Trump “declare Cuba an extraordinary threat to the people of the United States” on January 29, he knew that “something truly historic, threatening and dark” was about to happen.. “We had to mobilize to prevent a good number of deaths on the island, deaths of children, mothers and grandmothers under the logic of the imperial domination of the United States,” he says.
In principle, as Adler himself remembers, “The idea was to put together a minimum humanitarian response to break the siege”. Hence, the first decision was to organize a maritime flotilla, but participation escalated quickly. “We saw an explosion of international solidarity, interest, commitment and both moral and political conviction with our mission, and that is why we went from a small flotilla to a large mobilization in all parts of the world,” he recalls.
“The cause of humanity”
As is the case with the different flotillas that try to break the Israeli blockade of Gaza (David Adler embarked on the Global Sumud Flotilla), although the “main ambition” of the Our America convoy is “to deliver medicines, food or solar panels for clinics and hospitals” in Cuba, it also seeks to “present an idea of popular diplomacy” that should be able to be transferred to the multilateral system. “It should not be the obligation or responsibility of ordinary people to carry humanitarian aid in their suitcase; It is an obligation of the States of the world, which have to answer the call of humanity, defend International Law and address a humanitarian crisis with sufficient help to cover the most basic needs of the Cuban people.“, he defends.
For Adler, The cause of Cuba is the cause “of humanity”. “What Donald Trump wants is not to build a Trump tower on the Malecón, nor to just change the president of the Popular Assembly; what he wants is to recolonize an entire hemisphere that he considers his backyard, starting with . That is why we mobilize, because the cause of Cuban self-determination is the cause of all humanity, of the entire anti-colonial struggle that has cost millions of lives across the planet,” he defends.
Six decades after the United States began the embargo on Cuba, David Adler believes that many of his compatriots do not know the reason for the blockade. If it depended on him… How would you end the embargo? “The first task is public education. All the figures, all the surveys that we have seen, say that American society does not support this blockade, but it does not understand what it means; it thinks that it is a form of sanction, not an economic war declared behind society’s back. The second task is mobilization, and that is why we started this convoy. And the third is the pressure on our representatives to do something in Congress. If 97% of the Democratic Party does not support this siege, then it is up to our representatives to do something. His silence is a shame.”
“America belongs to its people”
Despite not underestimating the “imperialist ambitions of Donald Trump”, Adler, who like Antonio Gramsci recognizes himself as a “pessimist of intelligence and an optimist of will”, considers that “little by little the world is waking up to what the threat of the reactionary international represents”. “We have a chance to rebuild another international, a progressive, humanist and democratic one that protects the victories of the 20th century. We are no longer talking about utopias, we are not even talking about socialism, but about defending the most basic rights of peoples who aspire to their own self-determination, their freedom,” says the American.
Returning to Martí and his essay ‘Our America’, again as if he were speaking then of the convoy that this Saturday wants to reach the Cuban capital, he wrote: “It is time for the recount, and for the united march, and we must walk in a tight square, like silver in the roots of the Andes.” America, completes David Adler, “belongs to its people, not to the gringo; America is not the backyard of the United States.”.
