Even as the US has threatened military action, a senior Cuban ambassador has blamed Washington for the country’s crisis and said Cuba is prepared for confrontation if diplomacy fails.
Michelle Martin, host:
The US is threatening military action against Cuba at the same time high-level talks are taking place in Havana. It’s against that backdrop that NPR’s Eyder Peralta interviewed Cuba’s ambassador to Mexico, whose dealings with the US go back decades.
AYDER PERALTA, BYLINE: I met with Ambassador Johanna Tablada de la Torre at the Cuban Embassy in Mexico City. At present, his country has been cordoned off. They have a blackout all day long. Food, medicine, fuel – everything is scarce. The ambassador blames all that suffering on the United States. Since President Trump took office, he has declared Cuba a national security threat, in part due to its ties to American adversaries. Trump tightened sanctions and imposed a de facto oil blockade at the beginning of the year.
Johanna Tablada de la Torre: So when the United States says they want Cuba to open up its economy, they’re not telling the truth. When the United States says they care about human rights in Cuba, they are clearly lying – clearly, because the United States is responsible for the worsening of the situation, for the tragic conditions we are living in in hospitals. We built one of the best care systems in the world. So when we have to see neonatologists using their hands to keep a baby alive because there is no electricity, no one will say it’s because socialism doesn’t work.
Peralta: I told him that when I was in Cuba, I heard the Cuban people blaming their government.
They are angry and want change. And I feel like every time I listen to a Cuban official speech and they blame the United States for everything, I never get to hear any self-reflection. And 70 years have passed.
Tablada de la Torre: Well, maybe you are not listening enough to our discussions, domestic discussions in Cuba. Whenever I watch the discussions of the Cuban Council of Ministers, I see the President talking about our own inadequacy, which is not appropriate – at a moment of maximum pressure, blaming the victim. If we are a family and a grown man is turning off our oxygen, turning off water pumps, cutting off electricity, I don’t think this is the time to say, can you do this better?
PERALTA: This month, the State Department sent a team to Havana for high-level talks. Ambassador Tablada de la Torre is one of the Cuban government’s most experienced US negotiators. She says that when they speak in good faith good things happen.
Tablada de la Torre: Also, we draw a line. We are not ready to put on the negotiating table who is the President of Cuba, what will be the economic system of Cuba. Things like this are decisions that the Cuban people have the right to make.
PERALTA: But the Trump administration has said they want fundamental changes to Cuba’s political and economic system. I tell him that if these things are off the table, no diplomatic settlement seems possible.
And especially after Iran, after what happened in Venezuela, a military intervention – a US military intervention appears to be very much on the table. It doesn’t seem so…
Tablada de la Torre: Possibly.
Peralta: …far-fetched.
Tablada de la Torre: I know.
Peralta: Is Cuba ready?
Tablada de la Torre: If they make the responsible, inhumane, unjustified decision to attack a small nation whose single decision does no harm to any American or Cuban Americans, we are ready. We are ready for them.
Peralta: Cuba’s ambassador says he hopes it doesn’t come to this.
Eyder Peralta, NPR News, Mexico City.
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