Forty-eight Years of Defeats for Cuba’s Enemies
by Andrés Gómez, editor of Areítodigitall
Apr. 18, 2007
 MIAMI.— This is an exceptional month in the history of Cuba. Cuban people celebrate turning points in the history of Cuba in this month. April 16, 1961: Cuba claims the socialist character of the revolution. April 17, 1961: the US invades the Bay of Pigs, led, as we all know, by a contingent of Cuban counter-revolutionaries paid by the US government. And then on April 19, 1961, Cuban people celebrate the popular victory over the Bay of Pigs attack.
The US invasion at the Bay of Pigs was the last action of a campaign against Cuba’s independence promoted and financed by the government of the United States, which started with the revolutionary triumph in 1959. The defeat of this invasion was not only the first defeat of the imperial policy against Cuban sovereignty, which has been going on since late 19th century, but it also consolidated the revolutionary process. It gave the revolution the breathing space to develop and unfold in depth. It also proved the Cuban people’s capacity, in the revolution, to defend their fundamental rights and liberties from the attempts and campaigns to destroy them by the United States. The revolutionary national unity broke the myth of imperial invincibility and gave a fatal blow to the paralyzing neo-colonial hypothesis of Cuba’s geographical fatalism.
But it was just the beginning. The monstrous, dehumanized policy of the United States of permanent aggression against the Cuban people had just begun.
How much blood, how many people left dead and disabled, how much terror, how many necessities and daily sacrifices had been and continue to be caused by this terrible policy of aggression against Cuba?
But what an example for themselves, for the generations to come, for the entire humanity and for its best values the Cuban people have given during the last 48 years.
Forty-six years have gone by since the proclamation of the socialist character of the revolution and of the thundering victory in the Bay of Pigs. Many of us can recall —deep inside ourselves —, not only the days of that distant April, but also all the campaigns, part of the US policy of permanent agression conceived and executed by that country from those days until now.
There are our individual and our collective memory in the mountains of the Escambray, where bandits paid by the US government sew panic and death for four years in the early 1960s. Then, there was Operation Mongoose, with its fatal results of thousands of terrorist acts in Cuban territory —the largest operation of the CIA until that moment, which cost a billion dollars during the 13 months it last. The last action of this campaign was another invasion to Cuba, this time by US troops, which Cuba stopped and then, in its imperial paroxysm, the United States put the world on the verge of a nuclear war in October, 1962.
Ever since, there has existed the ongoing terrorist campaign executed by the likes of Luis Posada Carriles, Orlando Bosch, Guillermo Novo, Pedro Remon, Gaspar Jimenez Escobedo and many other killers to whom the government of the United States gives safe haven and impunity against their crimes so they can plan many more.
Ever since, there have been traitorous Cubans on the island who, without any reservations, sell themselves to the enemies of their homeland and plot against its independence — shamelessly calling themselves “dissidents.”
Continuously, over the last four decades, there has been the policy of a genocidal blockade which has caused great harm to our people.
The Cuban people have paid a high price for defending themselves and advancing amidst so much evil. Despite all this, as time goes by, they have been able to build a fairer and more equitable society and to set the foundations to improve it even more despite human weakness, misunderstanding and selfishness.
During the last 48 years, the enemies of Cuba have tried to destroy their independence and their revolution with blood, firepower and hunger. They have failed resoundingly. For them, for the enemies of Cuba, it has been 48 years of continuous defeats.
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