President Ramotar, at a recent function to celebrate 40 years of diplomatic relations, reiterated Guyana’s solidarity with the people and Government of Cuba in the struggle to bring an end to the cruel economic embargo imposed by the U.S. and its cohorts for over five decades in their quest to bring Cuba to its knees. So far they have been unsuccessful and it is unlikely that they will be successful because of the resilience and patriotism of the Cuban people.

The reiteration of solidarity by the President is not surprising because the People’s Progressive Party (PPP) was supportive of the Cubans, long before diplomatic relations were established between the two countries. And from that time to now the PPP has been uncompromisingly supportive of the Cuban revolution and the struggle to end the economic embargo.
Earlier, PPP-led governments during our colonial period saw Guyana giving both moral and material support to Cuba, the latter in the form of rice and timber. In turn, when the PPP government came under severe attack by the local reactionaries in collaboration with their foreign masters in a desperate move to bring down the government, the Cuban government supplied us with fuel and foodstuff which were acutely short as a result of the terror, mayhem and political subversion which we experienced in the early 1960s.
In fact, successive PPP-led governments during that period came under increasing attack by the U.S. and its British ally.
However, the harsh and cruel economic embargo remains one of the foremost global political ironies because its author projects itself as the champion of liberalism and freedom and human rights, but this embargo runs contrary to these values and is most hypocritical in character.
But we all know that the Cuban embargo has nothing to do with human rights and freedom. That is just being used as a “Trojan Horse” to undermine the Cuban revolution by the U.S. to impose its will on the Cuban people through the installation of a puppet government and return their country to the pre-revolution state of being a U.S. playground.
If democracy and human rights are the issues with Cuba, then why economic embargoes were not imposed on brutal dictatorships such as  Somoza in Nicaragua; Gairy in Grenada; the Shah in Iran; Caetano in Brazil; Stroessner in Paraguay; Pinochet in Chile, etc. The list could go on and what is significant here is that not only  did the U.S. not impose an embargo, it actually helped to bring these tyrants to power and sustain them.
Such is the hypocrisy of the champion of human rights and freedom and democracy.
But the U.S. has  imposed not only an economic embargo, it has also imposed a human embargo because it has instituted all sorts of bureaucratic obstacles to make it extremely difficult for American citizens to travel to Cuba, again making a mockery of being a champion of freedom.
The strategy here of course is:(a) to prevent U.S. citizens from seeing the reality in Cuba as opposed to negative and propagandistic image being portrayed by the U.S. government and its allied media empires (b) to prevent the Cuban government from earning hard currency (c) reduce the influx of tourists which in turn will affect business and commerce in Cuba.
Through this strategy in combination with the economic embargo, the U.S. has been hoping and is till hoping will bring such severe economic hardship to the Cuban people that they will rebel against the government and bring it down.
It would seem that the U.S. has not learnt its lesson from Vietnam, Korea, Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere.
For nearly six decades it has used overt and covert means to bring down the Cuban government and it has failed. It was humiliated and disgraced in the infamous Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961, but it has not learnt its lesson.
This is so because like Vietnam and elsewhere it has failed to understand and acknowledge the resilience and strong patriotism of its peoples.
The overwhelming majority of the Cuban people are supportive of the Cuban revolution, the government and its policies. And most importantly the Cuban people fully understand why they are experiencing economic difficulties and therefore trying to undermine Cuba is an exercise in futility. The faster the U.S. and its friends understand this, the better it would be for all.