Vol. 79/No. 28      August 10, 2015

The meeting was chaired by César Sánchez of the July 26 Coalition and Joan Gibbs, general counsel for the Center for Law and Social Justice at Medgar Evers College in Brooklyn.

A video of Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez raising the Cuban flag at the opening of the Cuban Embassy in Washington, D.C., July 20 was greeted with a standing ovation.

“We’ve been clear that normalizing relations between Cuba and the U.S. will be a long process,” Reyes said. “We are not naive. The embargo is still in place. Our sovereign territory in Guantánamo needs to be returned.”

Reyes called the re-establishment of diplomatic relations between the two countries “a victory for all Latin American people and all revolutionary and progressive people around the world.” After 10 administrations, he said, the U.S. government has to recognize that “the Cuban people will never compromise any principle.”

“We will always be fighting for the liberation of Oscar López Rivera,” the Puerto Rican independence fighter imprisoned in the U.S. for 34 years, “and for African-Americans in their fight for the full enjoyment of their rights,” Reyes said.

“We will always be building our socialist project and defending our sovereignty and dignity,” he continued. “Sixty-two years after Moncada we have a revolution that’s totally alive.”

Speakers included Ben Ramos, a leader of ProLibertad, an organization that fights for the release of Puerto Rican political prisoners; Aminifu Williams, a representative of the People’s Organization for Progress in Newark, New Jersey, who invited participants to the Million People’s March in Newark the next day; and others.
 
 
Related articles:
Castro speech conveys strength, confidence of Cuban Revolution
 
 
 
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