September 18 (Belly of the Beast) Marnia Briones is a self-taught Cuban artist with an uncanny ability to turn discarded items into pieces of art. She turns old clothes into canvases, cigar boxes into dollhouses and cans into wind chimes.

Her art has been exhibited in Cuba, Venezuela, Spain, Italy and the United States.

But you can also find it in marginalized neighborhoods in Havana, Cuba, such as El Fanguito.

Learn more about Marnia and her artistic journey here.

Havana, Sepember 18 (RHC)– The President of the United States, Joe Biden, extended for another year the Trading with the Enemy Act, a 1917 regulation under which the blockade of Cuba was imposed — considered the longest in history.

“I hereby determine that the continuation of the exercise of these authorities with respect to Cuba for one year is in the national interest of the United States,” Biden said in the brief memorandum sent to the Treasury Department, published in the Federal Register.

The text stressed that “therefore, consistent with the authority conferred upon me by section 101(b) of Public Law 95-223, I continue for one year, until September 14, 2025, the exercise of those authorities with respect to Cuba, as implemented in the Cuban Assets Control Regulations, 31 C.F.R. Part 515.”

The Trading with the Enemy Act, enacted under President Woodrow Wilson (1913-1921), during the period of the First World War (1914-1918), empowers the government in power in Washington to restrict commercial activities with any nation that they consider an adversary.

Based on this legislation, on February 7, 1962, Democratic President John F. Kennedy issued Executive Order 3447, which officially began an economic, commercial and financial blockade that has survived 11 White House administrations. (Source: Prensa Latina)

Havana, September 16 (RHC)– Brazilian writer Leonardo Boff supports the open letter by French-Spanish journalist Ignacio Ramonet addressed to the President of the United States, Joe Biden, to demand the exclusion of Cuba from the list of States sponsoring terrorism.

Boff, a theologian and philosopher, founder of Liberation Theology, thus joins the more than four thousand signatures that support this noble and just initiative.

The letter was also signed by Belgian historian and economist Eric Toussaint, spokesman for the International Network of the Committee for the Abolition of Illegitimate Debt (CADTM); by the former member of the European Parliament and Secretary of International Relations of the Communist Party of Spain, Manu Pineda, and by the Dominican researcher Yuderkys Espinosa-Miñoso, director of the Caribbean Institute of Decolonial Thought and Research.

They were joined by the Puerto Rican professor and sociologist Agustín Lao-Montes; and the Argentine intellectuals Mario Goloboff and Pablo Vommaro, academic secretary of the Latin American Council of Social Sciences (CLACSO).

Through a call, released at the beginning of this month by the Havana institution Casa de las Américas, the battle to exclude the Caribbean nation from that list also has the support of the Nigerian writer Wole Soyinka, Nobel Prize for Literature, and the Argentine Adolfo Pérez Esquivel, Nobel Peace Prize winner.

In his letter, the writer and political analyst also asks the U.S. president to repair the “profound injustice committed on January 12, 2021 by his predecessor, Donald Trump, when, a few weeks after leaving the White House, he decided – without real legal basis – to re-inscribe Cuba on the list of State Sponsors of Terrorism (SSOT list, for its initials in English).”

For 65 years, despite the tensions between the United States and Cuba, not a single case of violent action occurring on US territory, sponsored, directly or indirectly, by Havana, can be cited. Not a single case!, the eminent intellectual specified.

The most atrocious consequences arise from the risk associated with any type of humanitarian aid, business, investment and trade that involves Cuba and, by extension, its citizens, he added.

The current wave of migration of Cuban expatriates to the United States, unprecedented in its magnitude, is perhaps the most illustrative example of the devastating impact and suffering caused by extreme and brutal measures against the Cuban economy, he said.

Mr. President, this situation has to end, Ramonet requested. You know, there is not a single valid and reasonable argument to accuse Cuba and keep its population under illegal and inhuman collective punishment.

You have the authority to, before leaving the White House, correct such cruel absurdity and remove Cuba from the SSOT list. Do it now!, indicated the prominent intellectual at the end of his letter, with the hope that Joe Biden will be up to this historic moment.    (Source: Prensa Latina)

Havana, September 13 (Radio Habana Cuba)– The First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Cuba and President of the Republic, Miguel Díaz-Canel, denounced this Friday that the blockade imposed by the United States on the island is a crime, an act of genocide and a massive violation of the rights of millions of Cubans.

In his account on X, the Cuban leader pointed out that the destructive impact of the blockade is the result of the unilateral and aggressive policy of the U.S. Government.  “Cuba will not give up its fight,” he assured.

Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez reported yesterday that as a result of Washington’s siege, Cuba suffered losses of five billion 56.8 million dollars, from March 1, 2023 to February 29, 2024.

He stated this when releasing the report ‘Need to end the economic, commercial and financial blockade imposed by the United States of America against Cuba’, which will be presented next October for approval by the United Nations General Assembly.

“If such a policy did not exist, the island’s Gross Domestic Product could have grown by eight percent during 2023,” he stressed.

The Minister of Foreign Affairs specified that the arbitrary inclusion of Cuba in the list of countries that supposedly sponsor terrorism deepens the difficulties and significantly affects Cuban families.

Since 1992, the international community has ratified its rejection of the blockade, reinforced to unprecedented levels during the impact of Covid-19, with the stated purpose of strangling the country’s economy to provoke a change of government.    (Source: Prensa Latina)

Havana, September 14 (RHC) — A group of 35 former presidents and prime ministers have sent a letter to U.S. President Joe Biden, demanding that he remove Cuba from the list of countries that, according to Washington, sponsor terrorism.

The news was announced by the former head of state of Colombia, Ernesto Samper (in office from 1994 to 1998), who declared that it makes no sense that a country like Cuba, which has worked for world peace and helped his nation sign the first agreements to end a conflict of many years, is linked to terrorism.

He also denounced that, as a consequence of this classification, the Cuban people are subjected to inhuman punitive measures due to the obstacle that this designation represents for access to medicines, food and basic living conditions.

The letter sent to Biden acknowledges that, in May of this year, the State Department made the decision to remove Cuba from the list of nations that do not cooperate in the fight against terrorism, but regretted that, in a contradictory manner, U.S. authorities insist on keeping it on the list of States allegedly sponsoring terrorism.

“How can it be said that a country cooperates in the global fight against terrorism and, at the same time, accuse it of openly supporting it?” the letter questioned.

“Without any proof, Cuba is accused of having links with terrorist activities of which it has been a victim and harsh sanctions are imposed on it due to this presumption that are directly hitting its population and permanently unbalancing its economy,” it added.

Furthermore, the letter continued, maintaining Cuba’s inclusion on the list of States sponsoring terrorism constitutes a coercive measure that is difficult to justify in the 21st century when equality between States must be a reality.

The signatories added that this unjust decision also affects the Universal Charter of Human Rights, an ethical pillar of contemporary international relations, by impacting the most vulnerable sectors of the population hit by the harmful effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, aggravated by the lack of medicines and equipment.

The difficult situation that the Cuban economy is going through can be explained, among other factors, by the measures applied by the United States and condemned for their unilaterality by the UN system, and by many people and institutions in different scenarios and opportunities, they stressed.

In another part of the text, they asserted that the Cuban government is seriously committed against terrorism and in favor of peace in the region and the world.

The letter is signed by the former president of the Spanish government, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero; former Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff, former Argentinean President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, former Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa and thirty other well-known politicians.   (Source: Prensa Latina)