By José Manzaneda, Co-ordinator of Cubainformación
Over the last few years Mexico has come to the aid of the Cuban people on several occasions. A month ago it sent 400,000 barrels of oil to alleviate the acute crisis of electricity supply on the island.
Investments
In no time political and media pressure from the establishment was brought to bear. An editorial in the daily newspaper, the Wall Street Journal, which has the largest circulation in the US, condemned this provision of oil to Cuba and launched a clear threat that this was “another reason why businesses are dubious about Mexico being a good place to invest”. The major Mexican media, all controlled by the right wing, disseminate these tidings of business panic saying we are living through “uncertainty as to whether the [Mexican] president’s internal policies might discourage investment in Mexico”.
The Wall Street Journal repeated the usual lies put about by the Miami mafia such as there being no blockade on Cuba and that help from other countries was only used to finance its military forces, it intelligence agency and the secret police.
Borrowing
But the threats against Mexico are not confined to the area of investment. They also affect financing. “The United States cancels a loan of $800 million to Pemex for having given oil to Cuba” was the ‘news’ – firmly denied by the Claudia Sheinbaum government – but broadcast by various Mexican media outlets.
Sneaks
Every line of attack in the economic war waged by the US government against Cuba has its collaborator organisations and agents. As far as energy supply is concerned there is one key person called Jorge Piñón, a former executive of various US energy companies who is now working in the Energy Institute of Texas University from where he acts as an expert analyst on Cuba’s energy situation for several media outlets, as long as they are anti-Castro – agencies such as Reuters and Efe and daily papers such as El Financiero, El Mundo, El Pais, the Miami Herald or the BBC.
With the assistance of Marine Vessel Traffic, the AIS map maritime tracker of ships at sea, Piñón gathers detailed data regarding the number of oil shipments to Cuba, the location of the ports, the routes and the names of the ships involved, as much those from Mexico as those from Venezuela, Russia and other countries. This careful documentation is undoubtedly used by the US Treasury to uncover secret information about operations conducted by Cuba and its allies, and to impose sanctions on shipping companies.
Jorge Piñón, who was born in Cuba, arrived in the US at the age of 12 as part of the so-called Peter Pan operation, a plan to evacuate minors following the triumph of the Cuban Revolution, an operation organised by the CIA and the Catholic Church.
Far from being purely technical and neutral, his analyses are absolutely politicised. “There will be no change in the Cuban electricity supply system until the government changes its economic model” he keeps repeating. Because the problem is “not the US embargo” but Cuban ‘mismanagement’. Unbelievable! Any even minimally serious analyst would know that the US war against all Cuba’s sources of profit have left the country bereft of capital, causing an acute shortage of fuel and the breakdown, for lack of resources, of its electricity supply. This is quite apart from the specific and systematic levy of fines on ships and their owners aimed at preventing, delaying or reducing the entry of oil into the island.
Piñón told the newspaper El País that “Cuba needs a billion dollars” to “recapitalise its electricity producing sector”. Really? And how will it manage to do so if its trade and investments are sanctioned and, as a result of its inclusion in the list of ‘terrorist countries’, it cannot secure any banking credit? Piñón calmly asserts that Cuba ought to imitate Vietnam by ‘changing its economic model’ in order to ‘attract foreign investment’. Oh, really? Is Vietnam, then, also affected by a Helms-Burton law that prevents all foreign investment, Mr Piñón?
The US government is the cause of Cuba’s energy crisis. And this is so very obvious that it would require a whole army of sneaks and collaborationists to be able to hide the US’s genocidal policies towards Cuba.
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