No blockade can defeat revolutionary Cuban people - Fidel Castro
CUBA: Ailing Cuban revolutionary leader Fidel Castro made a
surprise appearance in Havana Sunday to vote in parliamentary polls,
expressing confidence in the revolution despite a decades-long US trade
embargo.
Castro’s visit to the voting precinct in Havana’s El Vedado
neighbourhood was the main event in Sunday’s elections, during which
Cubans chose 612 members of the National Assembly as well as deputies of
local legislatures.
“I am convinced that Cuban are really a revolutionary people,”
86-year-old Castro told reporters, who surrounded him at the polling
station. “I don’t have to prove it. History has already proven it. And
50 years of the US blockade have not been -- nor will it be -- able to
defeat us.” The United States slapped a commercial, economic, and
financial embargo against Cuba in October 1960 after Castro’s
revolutionary government nationalized the properties of United States
citizens and corporations. It was broadened to become a near-total
embargo in 1962 as Cuba’s alliance with the Soviet block became
apparent.
Images shown on Cuban TV as well as his pictures in the newspaper
Juventud Rebelde showed Castro in animated conversation with voters at
the precinct. He wore a dark shirt and a bomber jacket.
In his comments, the revolutionary leader also praised the creation
of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC), whose
presidency Cuba formally assumed last week at a summit in Santiago,
Chile. Set up in Caracas in December 2011 at the behest of Venezuelan
President Hugo Chavez, CELAC groups all nations from across the Americas
except the United States and Canada.
The Cuban chairmanship of the group marked Havana’s full regional
reintegration and was seen as a major diplomatic coup for Havana.
“This was a step forward which we owe to the efforts of many people,
including Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez,” Castro told reporters and
voters.
AFP |