Caracas, March 29 (Prensa Latina) Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro today congratulated and thanked the governments and peoples of the Caribbean for their overwhelming response to U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio during his tour of the region.
At the closing of the 25th Meeting of the Political Council of the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America-People’s Trade Treaty (ALBA-TCP), the president stated that the senior official “came to the Caribbean for wool and left shorn.”
Maduro said Rubio is lying and dismissed “all the garbage he tried to impose against Cuba and its Revolution, trying to tarnish the honor and morality of Cuban medicine.”
From our Bolivarian and Martian hearts, “we thank you for your courage and clarity,” he emphasized, and asserted, “You came out like a shaved cat.”
The dignitary described the Secretary of State’s tour of the region as “a failure and a botched job.”
He commented on how much there is to talk about Cuban medicine and noted that the Venezuelan people, deep in the countryside, hamlets, and neighborhoods, know of the “caring hand of a Cuban doctor, who has saved their lives and lovingly cared for their health.”
In this regard, he mentioned the Barrio Adentro Health Mission, founded in 2003 by Commanders Hugo Chávez (1954-2013) and Fidel Castro (1926-2016), and stated that 22 years later, Venezuela can say “it has learned what humanistic and healing medicine is.”
He recalled that the development of that Mission, when it began in the Bolivarian Republic, for years was also subject to the constant conspiracy of the fascist and coup-mongering right and a brutal campaign.
Maduro emphasized that the Venezuelan people saw the humility, simplicity, knowledge, ability, willingness, and determination of Cuban medicine on the ground, which he described as one of the great achievements of the Cuban Revolution and of Fidel Castro.
Speaking at the ALBA-TCP meeting, the island’s foreign minister, Bruno Rodríguez, asserted that the Caribbean nations “will always have a sister in Cuba who will stand by them,” despite any risk of a tightening of the blockade, in their right to receive fair, special, differentiated, and essential treatment.
In this regard, he mentioned their legitimate demand for reparations and compensation for the horrors of slavery and colonialism, and to address the growing challenges arising from the prevailing unjust international financial system and climate change.
The Cuban Foreign Minister reaffirmed Havana’s willingness to maintain the agreements reached with each country, protected by standards and practices, despite threats from proconsul ambassadors and the U.S. Secretary of State.
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