ON JANUARY 29, President Trump signed an executive order labeling Cuba an “unusual and extraordinary threat” to the US. The order imposes economic penalties on any country that attempts to deliver oil to the island, which has already been under a US economic and commercial blockade for more than 60 years.

These measures followed a broader US military campaign against Venezuela that further isolated Cuba. The seizure of Venezuelan tankers bound for Cuba as part of a US naval blockade on Venezuelan oil, and the detention of Venezuela’s president and first lady cut off one of Cuba’s primary fuel providers. According to Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel, no fuel has entered the country since December.

The loss of fuel supply has severely disrupted the electricity grid on which schools, transport, and vital health infrastructure depend.

As the situation on the island worsens, people’s movements and organisations across the world have mobilised in solidarity with the people of the island and called on the US government to lift the blockade once and for all.

On February 16, over 100 Cuban artists, intellectuals, dancers, musicians, and writers released a public letter calling on their colleagues from across the world to denounce the US attacks and stand with Cuba.

“Cuba resists and will resist this inhumane aggression, but it counts on the active solidarity of all honest, humanist, and good-willed men and women of the world. It is about preventing a genocidal act and saving a heroic people whose only ‘crime and threat’ has been to defend their sovereignty,” reads the letter.

“As Marti defined it in 1895, writing about our duty in the Americas: “Whoever rises up today for Cuba, rises up for all time.”

Here’s the letter in full.

Cuba is not a threat: Open Letter from over 100 Cuban Artists & Intellectuals to Artists & Intellectuals around the World

Cuba has struggled for centuries, first to win its independence and then to defend it unconditionally. Such resistance against the most powerful and predatory empire in human history has been achieved through the immense sacrifice of its people. The conscious resistance of those of us who live on the archipelago stems from convictions and reasons learned long ago.

Jose Marti, the great poet and patriot, defined our noble destiny in 1894: “The Antilles lie at the balance point of the Americas, and if enslaved, they would merely serve as a bridgehead for the war of an imperial republic.”

Cuba’s greatest wealth lies in its people. We possess no oil reserves or other highly coveted natural resources, but we have developed human capital capable of shaping resilience through creativity and knowledge.

Cuba does not foster terrorism, although we have been victims of it. We love peace, indissolubly tied to our independence. We have always wished to build a just and supportive society.

We eliminated illiteracy and reduced infant and maternal mortality rates to levels similar to those in the developed world. We send doctors and teachers to other nations when others only drop bombs. We create vaccines that are distributed freely. We promote sports as a right of the people and are the Spanish-speaking country that has won the most medals in Olympic history.

We have a free system of art schools, which have trained dancers, actors, painters, filmmakers, musicians… many from humble origins, who have generated a powerful artistic movement, recognised internationally.

Since the revolutionary triumph of 1959, we have aspired to achieve the highest cultural level for our people. Fidel showed us that illiteracy could be eliminated and that we must fight to eradicate racism and discrimination in all their manifestations, with a framework of laws and active vigilance.

We are advancing the integration and defence of our women’s rights, with women now serving as parliamentarians, leaders, and professionals on equal terms with men. We approved an advanced Family Code that protects love in its diverse forms of existence.

Despite the economic, commercial, and financial blockade imposed by the United States since 1962, successively tightened to the point of asphyxiation, implemented by the current US government, we do not renounce our dreams of prosperity, justice, and peace.

Resistance costs us and imposes great sacrifices on our people every day, and means facing the cruelty of the US government’s extraterritorial measures with stoicism.

The empire says that Cuba represents a threat to its national security, which is ridiculous and implausible. It has imposed an oil blockade, resulting in the paralysis of hospitals, schools, industries, and transportation. They try to prevent our doctors from saving lives; they try to paralyse our free and universal education system, to plunge us into famine, into a lack of energy to guarantee access to drinking water and cooking food; in short, they aim to slowly and bloodily extinguish a country.

Cuba resists and will resist this inhumane aggression, but it counts on the active solidarity of all honest, humanist, and good-willed men and women of the world. It is about preventing a genocidal act and saving a heroic people whose only “crime and threat” has been to defend their sovereignty.

Cuba has never attacked any nation. Cuba exercises international solidarity even under conditions of extreme blockade. To be with Cuba today is to defend peace and the right of all peoples, no matter how small, to the full exercise of their sovereignty.

The Union of Writers and Artists of Cuba (UNEAC) calls on all intellectuals and creators worldwide to mobilise in defence of the Cuban cause. As Marti defined it in 1895, writing about our duty in the Americas: “Whoever rises up today for Cuba, rises up for all time.”

The full list of signatories:
Miguel Barnet Lanza, writer, poet, and ethnologist. Honorary President of the Union of Writers and Artists of Cuba (UNEAC). National Prize for Literature and Heritage.
Nancy Morejón, writer and poet. National Prize for Literature.
Lesvia Vent Dumois, vice president of UNEAC. National Prize for Visual Arts.
Alpidio Alonso Grau, poet. Minister of Culture of Cuba.
Abel Prieto Jiménez, writer. President of Casa de las Americas…

This article first appeared in Peoples Dispatch.