Cuba’s state newspaper wrote Wednesday that the country’s political order would not give any ground despite a visit from President Obama later this month.
An editorial in Granma pledged that the long-embargoed nation would cling “to its revolutionary and anti-imperialist ideals,” and that normalized relations with the United States would not lead to reform there.
“Cuba has assumed the construction of a new relationship with the United States, fully exercising its sovereignty and committed to its ideals of social justice and solidarity. No one can presume that to do so we must renounce a single one of our principles, [or] concede an inch in their defense,” the nearly 3,000-word piece stated.
The editorial also declared that the United States must bury its posture toward regime change in Cuba.
“At the same time, the pretension of fabricating a domestic political opposition, supported by money from U.S. contributors, must be abandoned.”
The White House was unmoved by the writing, and vowed to provide an audience for dissidents.
“We’ve obviously got a pretty long agenda for the president’s trip to Cuba, and that long agenda includes visiting with political opponents of the Cuban government and standing up for, in a very tangible way, the universal human rights of the Cuban people,” White House press secretary Josh Earnest said Wednesday.
“But this also is an opportunity for us to use the moral influence of the United States to advocate for greater freedoms for the Cuban people. That’s something that the United States does around the world, and it certainly makes sense that we’d be doing that in a country just 90 miles off our shore.”
