Based in Jakarta, Indonesia’s capital, Ramírez was in New Zealand at the invitation of organizers of a festival of Cuban movies held in October.

Among the 50 attending the meeting were Cuban volunteer teachers involved in a literacy program in the North Island town of Te Awamutu.

The ambassador said that the roots of Cuba’s artistic strength go back to 1961, two years after the overthrow of the U.S.-backed dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista. That year saw a campaign to eradicate illiteracy, a massive effort that produced “better education and a better and more critical attitude toward art in general,” he said.

At the beginning of the meeting, Ramírez presented a slide show produced by the Cuban foreign ministry detailing the impact of the economic war by Washington and other imperialist powers against the Cuban Revolution since 1962.

In the 1990s, Washington extended the embargo’s reach with the Torricelli and Helms-Burton acts, which broadened U.S. governmental powers to slap punitive measures on third countries that trade with Cuba.

Citing one example of the impact of these measures, Ramírez said that Cuba is blocked from purchasing planes manufactured both by the U.S. aircraft manufacturer Boeing and its European rival Airbus because of the U.S. components Airbus uses. As a result, Cuba is forced to lease the planes at a substantial added cost.

In response to a question about Cuba’s response to recent hurricanes that devastated several Caribbean countries and caused loss of life in the southeastern United States, Ramírez said, “We feel proud of what was done during hurricanes Charley and Ivan— we evacuated almost 2 million people.” Only a handful of people in Cuba were killed by hurricane Charley and none during Ivan.

“These things we do in Cuba you can’t do just with money, they require a lot of solidarity,” Ramírez said. Cubans had opened up their homes to the evacuees, he added.

One participant expressed concern that Cuba would be “swamped by U.S. culture” if Washington ended the embargo.

In reply, the ambassador noted that some capitalist politicians in the United States oppose the embargo today not because they support the Cuban Revolution, he said, but “because they think they can topple the revolution a different way, by making it go the way of Poland and Czechoslovakia.” Cuba does not shrink before such a possibility, he said. “We’re not against people-to-people cultural exchanges,” he emphasized. The Cuban government instead promotes such exchanges. “We already watch more than 300 U.S. movies a year. We introduce many cultural influences from abroad into the Cuban melting pot. We are not afraid of foreign influence in Cuba.”

In an interview with the Scoop online news service conducted during his visit, Ramírez said that under the embargo, “American companies are not allowed to import Cuban music or Cuban movies. They are not allowed to engage in any cultural exchanges with Cuban artists. They are not allowed to invite any Cuban artists to the United States. They are not even allowed to come to Cuba to see it on their own.”

The Scoop reporter added that “Cubans who wish to perform in the U.S. must do so free of charge.”
 
 
Related articles:
Marchers back Maori land rights
Wellington: 2,000 protest rightist National Front  
 
 
Front page (for this issue) | Home | Text-version home