(Editor’s note: This article is an English translation of a statement by the Federación de Mujeres Cubanas (Federation of Cuban Women).)
Comrades, sisters, friends:
I am speaking today as a woman who carries a growing life within me. I speak from my womb that is growing; from my body that is transforming itself; from my heart that is now beating for two. I have come to denounce the criminal imperialist blockade against Cuba as a direct aggression against life, health, maternity and infancy.
Being pregnant, I feel that the blockade is not an abstract word. It becomes the vitamin that isn’t available, the medication that can’t be found, the medical equipment that cannot be purchased. It’s the inflated prices due to distorted trade routes. It’s the anguish of not knowing if tomorrow, what is lacking today, will be available.
And this is not an accident, it’s not an internal problem, it’s an illegal action, a sustained one, designed to conquer a whole people by means of hunger, shortage and desperation. A policy that punishes pregnant women, children, the elderly and whole families. A policy that tries to break the daily life of a country that has decided to be free.
For these reasons and from my fear and my hope, I want to say this with complete clarity: The imperialist blockade is inhumane, it is unjust and it is illegal. And those who maintain it know perfectly well that they are having a cruel effect on those who have the least ability to defend themselves: those who are not yet born.
But I also want to talk about something else, something that the blockade has not been able to destroy, of what we ourselves, as Cuban women, continue to lift up daily. Because when something is lacking, a neighbor shows up. When a medication does not arrive, a whole network of support is created. When life gets hard, the family shows up, and the community and the solidarity that sustains us. These, my sisters, are what nobody can blockade.
I dream that my son or daughter will be born in a Cuba without punishments from abroad, without pressures from outside, without obstacles that we don’t deserve.
And to you—women, mothers and youth—I say: We can’t let them rob us of hope. Every time we denounce the blockade we are defending life. Our lives, the lives of our daughters and our sons. The life of Cuba.
My baby will be born on this island, and I want her to be born knowing that her mother didn’t give up, that our people didn’t give up, that the women of Cuba will never surrender.
Because every little girl and boy who is born in Cuba is a victory against those who would try to deny us the future. A victory of tenderness, resistance, life—a victory of the Revolution.
