STATEMENT ON THE CUBAN BLOCKADE

FROM: TRINIDAD AND TOBAGO CUBA SOLIDARITY

We the members and friends of Trinidad and Tobago Cuba Solidarity, today express our unwavering solidarity with, and support for the people of Cuba and the Cuban Revolution.

We are, undoubtedly part of a vast army of freedom loving peoples the world over, who affirm once again, with relentless conviction, that the Cuban peoples have an undisputed and unqualified right to self determination, national sovereignty and freedom to determine their destiny.

Today, on behalf of all humanity, in the name of the poor and marginalized, in the cause of justice and equality, and armed with the belief that a better world is possible, we denounce and repudiate the illegal, immoral and genocidal blockade, unilaterally imposed by the United States administration, against the people of Cuba.

President Fidel Castro and the heroic Cuban people , in spite of the longest and most inhumane act of war ever implemented against a sovereign state, have fought incessantly against the real enemies of mankind, which are, hunger, disease, poverty, ignorance and exploitation.

In Cuba, the student teacher ratio on average is twenty to one, as opposed to thirty to one in the United States.

Life expectancy which was 60 years in 1959, is 76.13 years today, because of the excellent quality of health care services provided by the revolution. No country in the world has given as much physical and moral protection, in terms of health and education, to its children as Cuba has.

One hundred percent of children and adolescents in Cuba, including those afflicted by physical or mental disability attend the appropriate schools and study.

In spite of the most ferocious and implacable blockade in history, unemployment in Cuba is 2.3 percent, several times lower than in the United States, the richest and most industrialized country in the world.

In contrast, Fidel reminded us recently, at a meeting to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the Group of Seventy Seven, that

-20 percent of the world population realize 86 percent of the total consumption.

-more than 850 million adults are illiterate.

-more than 12 million children die every year in the Third World from curable illnesses.

-325 million children in underdeveloped countries do not attend school.

He concluded; " environmental deterioration is increasingly alarming as is the devastating effect of climate change on Third World countries. ... In our countries there is a scarcity of food and sources of drinking water, whereas the developed countries waste resources unceasingly."

This reality of stark and unabated exploitation and plunder of the Third World by the rich and powerful, is further exposed by the imminent failure to achieve the objectives of the UN Millennium Declaration, a fear expressed by Dr. Ricardo Alarcon De Quesada, at the UN General Assembly on September 16th 2005.

We of Trinidad and Tobago Cuba Solidarity, therefore are acutely aware that the defense of the ideals and principles and gains of the Cuban Revolution, is in fact the defense of the aspirations and hope of the billions of poor and oppressed to emerge from the shadows of hopelessness, and despair.

Renunciation of the illegal, immoral and unjust blockade imposed by 10 successive U.S. Administrations, is in fact renunciation of poverty, illiteracy, ignorance, exploitation and death, and is in fact, a powerful assertion of the right to life, to justice, freedom, self determination, and peaceful coexistence in this world.

Senator Dr. Jennifer Jones Kernahan

President

Trinidad and Tobago Cuba Solidarity